Tag Archives: Second Amendment

Another Morning Celebrating Freedoms and Rights in America

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As I write this we’re up to 131 mass shootings since the first of the year. If like me you’re bad at math, that’s 131 in 87 days. … and it’s not even 10 am, so that number will likely go up before I finish this rant … which is part of that same sick ritual.

Of all the daily rituals of American life is there one sicker and sadder than the post-mass shooting reaction cycle? The answer is, “no.”

We all know the basics. There’s overwhelming public support for the very … very … basics. Like the “red flag” laws to take handguns, rifles, bazookas, whatever away from the guy in your neighborhood out naked in the street screaming at squirrels. And for background checks before the sketchy dude at your local “gun show” hands over a machine gun to an 18 year-old who can’t spell his own name. Basic stuff.

But nothing changes. Or I should say nothing changes that might mitigate the constant slaughter. In fact, the only real change is in states with deeply craven, insecure Republican politicians who feel obligated to produce new and less restrictive “gun rights” every legislative session. That naked guy waving a gun at squirrels? Let’s enhance his Second Amendment right to tote his machine gun into the Dollar General and sue anyone who says he can’t. That folks is “freedom.”

Christmas card of Andy Ogles — obviously Republican — congressman for the Nashville district where yesterday’s school slaughter took place. His statement on yeasterday’s killings. “My family and I are devastated by the tragedy that took place at The Covenant School in Nashville this morning. We are sending our thoughts and prayers to the families of those lost. As a father of three, I am utterly heartbroken by this senseless act of of violence.” Classy.

Republicans, less terrified these days of the imploded-by-their-own-scandals NRA than they are of their gun obsessed “base”, most if not all of whom are MAGA-nauts, ritually claim “there’s nothing we can do”. And with more guns floating around the country than people, they have something of a point. The only thing that would truly reduce the slaughter(s)-of-the-day is confiscating, mmm, 330 to 340 million guns, which is never going to happen.

But … I have always had my “to do” list for at least obstructing the ever-increasing rate of these obscenities.

A: Federal legislation overriding any and all state laws — here’s looking at you Texas, Oklahoma, Tennessee and West Virginny, etc — requiring permitting, licensing and proof of insurance for all firearms in your possession. If the day ever comes when the USA gets Minnesota-like liberal control of the White House and Congress … this should be Job #1.

B: Market-based insurance for every type of gun. Let State Farm and Liberty Mutual assess the risk of naked squirrel guy owning an AR-15. Likewise the slightly twitchy, macho “hunter” dude regaling his bar buddes about the 28 guns he’s got prepped and ready back at his trailer. An annual $1000 bill for every Glock he packs to the church picnic might slow him down … a bit.

C: A federal tax on ammunition. There’s plenty wrong everywhere, but when some numbskull teenager working part time at Taco Bell can afford 3000 rounds of ammo for his combat rifle, we’ve moved deep into “whacked”-land. How does $10 a bullet sound?

D: Constant cultural ridicule of the gun obsessed. I don’t know about you but in my conversations with (clearly single issue) gun “enthusiasts”, the sexual over-compensation of their gun ownership/brandishing positively oozes from their pores. The guys (95% being male, with easily 30% checking the all the markers for incel status) stockpiling weapons and ammo and living in a perpetual bubble of “threat assessment” have plainly lost control over a fundamental facet of human psychology. Their guns have replaced something they’ve lost, or can’t get up any longer.

If they weren’t armed and dangerous I’d let it slide. But given their personal armory and their influence over chickenshit Republican politicians, they are the richest, ripest targets for masculinity-lacerating ridicule — from late night comics, bloggers, Twitter obsessives and (god forbid!) mainstream editorial writers,. Lay it on. Thick and heavy. And keep it coming. Identify them as the impotent fools they are. Deprive them of the macho high they get from “open carry.”

Being a former Catholic I’m a big believer in the power of shame, and America’s gun-obsessed don’t get near enough of it.

Why Not Regulate Guns Just As We Already Regulate A Similarly Dangerous Hunk of Steel?

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Imagine you turned on the news today to learn that Group A of politicians is accusing Group B of politicians of plotting to confiscate all automotive vehicles. As evidence, Group A is noting that Group B supports requiring users of vehicles to be licensed, registered, and of sound mind and body, and opposes the use of armored tanks or monster trucks on community roadways.

In that news story, imagine that political Group A is insisting that no vehicle regulations be used.  After all, they claim, any regulation would be equivalent to, or would surely lead to, confiscation of all vehicles.

We would think Group A was delusional, even though we all adore cars and are vehemently opposed to them being confiscated. But that, my friends, is the world in which we are living, when it comes to gun control.

Gun control = confiscation meme
Almost every debate about responsible gun control regulation is dodged by gun advocates. Instead of debating proposed gun regulations on the merits, gun advocates instead claim that the mere mention of a gun regulations constitutes ipso facto evidence that guns are about to be confiscated. That ridiculous assertion has been trotted out there for decades, despite the fact that gun confiscation has never even been proposed by a mainstream politician, much less come close to being enacted.

Obama_gun_control_confiscation_memeIf you really think President Obama, who has been President for seven years now and only has one year left in his term, is a gun confiscator, wouldn’t you think he would have confiscated by now? Don’t you think he would have done it in the first two years of his presidency, when his party controlled the House, Senate and White House?

Obviously, no one is going to confiscate guns, because there is no political support in America for confiscating guns. It hasn’t happened, and it’s just not going to happen.

We need to put those confiscation delusions to rest before America can have a reasonable debate about how to responsibly regulate guns.

A Familiar Regulatory Framework

How should America regulate guns?  My approach is simple: Let’s regulate guns similarly to how we regulate cars and trucks. Both motor vehicles and guns are hunks of steel that pose relatively little public danger when used responsibly, but are extraordinarily dangerous when used irresponsibly. For that reason, society keeps motor vehicles legal, but we regulate them to reduce the risk of harm.

Therefore, we should regulate guns just as we regulate motor vehicles:

  • Users should be licensed.
  • Users should have to pass a basic safety related test in order to get a license.
  • Users who are not physically or mentally equipped to safely operate the equipment should not be licensed to do so.
  • There should be rules for safe use of the equipment.
  • Users who don’t use the equipment responsibly should lose their license.
  • Each piece of equipment should be registered.
  • Equipment registration data and user licensure data should be readily available to law enforcement officials to help them enforce laws.
  • The equipment should be able to be used in many parts of the community, but not in all parts of the community.
  • The equipment should be required to have locking devices to help the user secure it from theft and use by minors and other unlicensed citizens.
  • The equipment should be required to have reasonable safety features.
  • The equipment makers should be held liable for failure to produce safe equipment, just as every other manufacturer is.
  • Equipment that is unnecessarily dangerous to the community shouldn’t be legal.

That’s what American society does with cars and trucks, with relatively few complaints or abuses, and that’s what we should do with guns.

Would applying the motor vehicle regulatory model to guns stop every accidental shooting, murder, mass murder and suicide? Of course not. Just as regulated motor vehicles still are dangerous, regulated guns would still be plenty dangerous. But just as motor vehicle regulations limit the harm caused by cars and trucks in society, gun regulations would limit the harm caused by guns in society.  It would make a difference.  It would make things less bad.

So let’s have an honest debate about that familiar and successful regulatory model.  And for once, let’s have the debate without getting side-tracked by ridiculous delusions of confiscation.

If Only We Really Were Terrorized

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Lambert_to_the_SlaughterAs President Obama was preparing to give yet another eulogy for a mass murder by one of his constituents word was coming in of ISIS maniacs chopping the head off a man in France and slaughtering dozens of people on a beach in Tunisia. I’ll let you guess which of the two killing sprees will be universally described as “terrorism” and which has not.

Oh sure, since the Charleston church slaughter, there has been the usual attempts by the usual people to attach the “T” word, with all its emotional weight, to this latest incident of psychopathic gun play. But it hasn’t stuck, and it won’t the next time a white male American maniac — who may or may not have been given a high-caliber revolver and a few 40-bullet clips of ammo by his father for his 21st birthday (a rite of passage into American manhood) — exercises his Second Amendment rights in a grade school, a church, a movie theater or (wait for it) a football stadium.

Americans are now so inured to these mass shootings they have all but completely lost the ability to shock or upset us. Despite the vastly more likely possibility that we will be gunned down by some pathetic nitwit armed with a small arsenal he bought off the internet or out of some guy’s trunk in a WalMart parking lot, the freakout fear factor about “terrorism” simply doesn’t register. Who among us even thinks about it as we buy a ticket to “Jurassic World” or settle in for a show biz sermon at some mega church? The answer is: Practically no one.

Terrorism of the kind that makes us demand elected leaders “do something about this, now” applies only to dark-skinned foreigners. Scrawny white creeps spraying innocent folks with bullets are merely, “disturbed individuals” who skipped their meds. So instead of freaking out over how people like that can buy assault rifles and all the ammo they want, the conversation, abetted by a media terrified of upsetting conservative gun fetishists, turns instead to … the Confederate flag. A symbol rather than a lethal reality.

Contrast the impassive response to our bi-weekly mass murders to the number of people you know or hear about who devote time every day digesting and imagining the horrors of ISIS jihadis running amok in Times Square or the Mall of America.

Point being, one could be described as a rational fear. 300-plus million guns, no end of mentally disturbed time bombs lurking in every city and suburb and no real restraints on their ability to arm themselves any time the urge compels them vs. organized fanatics on the other side of the planet.

Of course, when, not if, some “ISIS inspired” nut job actually does kill someone here, the ensuing media meltdown — think of CNN and FoxNews with their hair on fire — will insure that everyone connected to a TV set is scared witless by the return of terrorism to our shores. At that point, more billions will be spent and more Constitutional freedoms gladly shucked away to prevent anything of the sort from happening again.

Meanwhile, while we wait for the first beheading in Disneyland or some other strategically chosen symbol of American infidel-ism (I’d skip Las Vegas, personally), we will calmly observe, with appropriate head-shaking and mutterings of practiced dismay, the regular and routine slaughter of our fellow innocents by characters who look pretty much like us.

Some of the stunted response to this self-inflicted terror comes out of sheer resignation. Gun control forces have accepted that given Republican and blue dog Democrat control of Congress and their fealty to the NRA, no good will ever come of pushing for tougher legislation. Post-Sandy Hook, red states generally loosened gun restrictions while blue states enacted only marginal new controls. Congress, as usual, was an embarrassment.

As Ronald Reagan used to say, “Government is the problem.”

Until someone or some influential entity figures out a way to castrate the NRA, to the point where the quivering fence-sitters dare to vote against gun nut interests and survive their next election, nothing will change.

All in all it’s a case of how we’d be better off if we really were “terrorized”.