What a Sane Country Would Do

Orlando was the worst, but it was only a matter of degree.

You all know the statistics:

  • More than 30,000 people are killed by firearms each year in this country
  • More than 30 people are shot and murdered each day
  • 1/2  of them are between the ages of 18 and 35

And our lawmakers do absolutely nothing to prevent these deaths. Quite the contrary–they facilitate them.

Rational laws that would save lives don’t have to violate anyone’s sacred Second Amendment rights. (I do wish some of those Second Amendment purists were half as vigilant about other provisions of the Bill of Rights…). We simply have to stop electing people too timid and/or self-serving to stand up to the NRA–lawmakers willing to enact rational measures that overwhelming majorities of Americans–and majorities of its own members– support.

Just for starters:

The day after the San Bernardino massacre, Senate Republicans defeated a measure that would have prevented terrorists from buying guns.

The GOP-controlled Senate refusal to pass new gun control measures came weeks after the Washington Post reported that suspected terrorists had successfully purchased more than 2,000 guns from American dealers between 2004 and 2014, even though law enforcement is notified whenever someone on the FBI’s watchlist attempts to purchase a firearm.

You might think that allowing people we deem too dangerous to be allowed on a plane should be prevented from buying lethal arms, but according to the NRA, that would violate their rights.

And learning anything about the nature and extent of gun violence would also evidently imperil the Second Amendment. President Obama lifted the ban on such research, but Congress has adamantly refused to fund it. It’s anyone’s guess what the NRA is afraid such research would uncover…

The invention of a gun that can only be fired by its owner would seem to be a no-brainer–a boon to all those “good guys with guns” the NRA keeps talking about. If stealing that good guy’s gun becomes futile because only he can use it, that would certainly seem to be a good thing. But the introduction of guns with that feature was met with death threats (click through if you don’t believe me), intimidating retailers who might otherwise sell them, and a fear that laws might be passed requiring all guns sold to have the feature. That, of course, would reduce gun sales…

NO “good guy” needs an assault weapon. (I love the argument that citizens need these armaments in order to defy an overreaching government. Anyone who thinks the possession of an assault rifle would allow him to prevail over government drones, tanks and other sophisticated arms in the event our government suddenly went on the offensive is simply insane.)

None of these measures would interfere with legitimate ownership and use of a gun. All of them would make us safer.

The NRA doesn’t care. Their constituency is the gun manufacturers.

The question is: why do we continue to elect lawmakers in thrall to an organization that isn’t even responsive to its own membership?

71 Comments

  1. I just saw this comment on a friend’s facebook page. Mind you, this friend of mine is definitely far from being the brightest crayon in the box. She is adamantly against Obama and Clinton and is even more adamantly for Trump and no gun control. She is certain that Obama and all Dems want to come and take away her gun.

    Here is the comment:

    Debbie Veilleux I’m sorry but I think that this gay bar, I think that the Sandy Hook School, I think that the theater were all set ups with guys who had mental problems, scoped out for a long time, then fed the desire into their sick minds to go and kill. I believe it’s either Clinton or Obama’s putting people up to something in order to remove guns from our hands. Then they’ll have complete control and can take over our country. If you don’t like what I’ve got to say, explain it better than I do. But you’ll not get me to change my mind.

  2. Nancy; I received comments on Facebook from a friend of a friend who believes I am not very smart because I believe what I am told on the news. He knows that ALL of these killings are planned and carried out by our own government. I responded that I had been watching live reporting from Orlando for hours so the information was first hand and up to date, not newcasts. I am still not very smart because that WAS the news I was watching and I believed it; he again said the government planned it all. I suggested he is a conspiracy theorist and we needed to end our conversation. He did agree that we need to end our conversation and I was wrong in my assessment of him; he KNOWS Jesus. Sigh, sometimes I get so tired.

    No surprise at such belief from him but I find it hard to believe my intelligent, caring friend is really his friend. It was her Facebook post we commented on and she had stated her grief and heartbreak over the Orlando massacre; another senseless killing of our young people.

  3. JoAnn and Nancy, I don’t know your friends but they are unfortunately not unique. We’ll probably never know the cause of their preference for a delusionary world but it seems likely that it’s not all internal, someone benefits from taking them there.

    Fear or freedom. It seems I suppose like an obvious choice until you’re afraid, then any port in the storm.

  4. JoAnn, the friend that I mentioned really is not very bright and obviously her friend isn’t either. I don’t have any interaction with that friend other than on fb. We went to high school together and she was not anywhere close to being even in the upper half at that time. I believe people like her are the ones that can really be led by the nose to believe anything they are told, especially if they are told that someone wants to control them. They are either too lazy or too ignorant to verify if what they are told is true.

    When I asked her why she is sure that Obama wants to take her gun away she refused to answer. I am sure she actually wasn’t able to answer my question because she doesn’t have any facts to back up her claim. She just KNOWS!

    Pete, you are probably correct. I really do dislike having to live in or near this idiocy. These people are going to vote for Trump. God help us all if Trump somehow wins the election.

  5. JoAnn, these very same people are always mentioning Jesus, yet they spread hatred around on a daily basis. Like you, I get so tired.

  6. Darn, I thought I would get the old standby causation/correlation comment that is never used in context.

    Pete, we have a constitution. As the good Dr. Seuss Kennedy knows, we can’t just deny those citizens their rights because they are on a list.

    Why is the CDC who should study gun control? What disease are they studying?

    Define ‘assault?’
    If we are going to ban assault weapons, what does that mean?

    Speaking of causation and correlation, what do smarts and healthcare have to do with this discussion?

    You passed the Affordable Care Act on a partyline vote, and you weren’t smart enough to make it affordable. The law gives access and makes it mandatory to have health insurance, but it in no way makes it affordable.

  7. Pete, regarding the Bloomberg article:

    Mist of the guns used by gangs in Chicago are purchased in Indiana. It is a very short drive to NW Indiana. There was a story about this on the news a few years ago when we were trying to get the gun laws changed in IN.

  8. William. There is nothing in the Constitition or any court decision interpreting it that says that killing machines can’t be regulated.

    Before Conservatives hijacked and shut down Congress it was a responsible institution that was collectively smart enough to save citizens from horrible risks like the killing machine industry has foisted upon us solely because that’s what their ad agency, the NRA, gets paid millions to do. 300 deaths a day. There are not many diseases that effective at reducing our population.

    Both the Revolutionary and Civil Wars are over and America won both. WWI and II settled all remaining questions about our resolve to live free.

    Several other countries in the world have solved this problem. Despite what you wish was true we the people are as capable as they.

    Conservatives tried leading and failed both repeatedly and spectacularly. The remaining choices defined by Thomas Paine are follow or get out of the way.

    Pick one.

  9. Does the 2d Amendment give me the right to carry a bazooka? How about a mortar? A bomb carrying drone? A machine gun? A mortar? A bomb? Handgrenades? I don’t think so.

  10. Pete,

    Let’s go. I’m on your side.

    This is an excerpt from They Though They Were Free: The Germans 1933-45 by Milton Mayer. The following is a confession from a very educated German interviewed after the war:

    “…..the whole process of its coming into being, was above all diverting. It provided an excuse not to think for people who did not want to think anyway. I do not speak of your ‘little men,” your baker and so on; I speak of my colleagues and myself, learned men, mind you. Most of us did not want to think about fundamental things and never had. There was no need to. Nazism gave us some dreadful, fundamental things to think about—we were decent people—and kept us so busy with continuous changes and ‘crises’ and so fascinated, yes, fascinated, by the machinations of the ‘national enemies, ‘without and within,’ that we had no time to think about these dreadful things that were growing, little by little, all around us. Unconsciously, I suppose we were grateful. Who wants to think?”

    “To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it—please try to believe me—unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, that most of us had ever had occasion to develop. Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, ‘regretted,’ that unless one were detached from the whole process from the beginning, unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these ‘little measures’ that no ‘patriotic German’ could resent must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. One day it is over his head.”

  11. Pete
    Regulate? Yes. Take away without due process because you are on a list? Not so sure.

    I think you are mistaken in many of your assertions. But, hey, we are all entitled to express our opinion. Thank you, Constitution.

    Settled remaining all remaining questions about our resolve about anything? Not convinced.

  12. Marv, I’m sure that there are more unlike you and I than like us in our resolve to make apparent the toxins that are being fed to the American public drop by drop, more every day, here, this will help you sleep.

    There is nothing out of the ordinary each day. Like the frog we ignore each degree the water heats up.

    It’s only when you compare the beginning and now as a whole that the change is apparent.

    And that change could be, just could be, normal cultural evolution. But then when you consider how much wealth and power have been transferred from we the people to those of great power and nearly infinite wealth that we ask: could it be conspiracy? Not the stuff of fiction but just the evolution of predators perfecting tooth and claw and speed and strength.

    Yes, it definitely could be.

    Break out the democracy. Unleash enlightenment.
    To the barricades. Embrace freedom for all and shine intense attention on those at the gate.

    We can still win this peacefully, intellectually, democratically, Constitutionally.

  13. William. “Take away without due process because you are on a list?” I’ve never heard this proposed by anyone. Have you? By who and when?

  14. Van
    Focus, bud.
    Regulate, yes.
    What? And who?

    Others, toxins?

    I would focus more on those trying to kill us for our beliefs than those expressing their opinions.

    Tighten up on what you are asking fir on gun control.

    Figure out what assault is and who may or may not own and purchase.
    Figure out what may or may not be able to be sold.

    And Pete- focus. You can’t take away a person’s right to own a gun because they are on a terrorist watch list, or no fly list. You can’t take away a US. Citizen’s constitutional right without due process as was suggested in the good Dr. Seuss Kennedy’s original blog, in red.

    She said no fly list, no guns. She knows you can’t do that to a citizen. You, however lost focus.

    She said to ban assault weapons. Define assault. She won’t, because she can’t, but it sounds good. You lost focus and went on a partisan rant. If you folks focus, you may gather some support.

  15. Pete
    Did you read Dr Seuss Kennedy’s original post? It should be the basis of all the comments that follow.

    Dr. Seuss Kennedy
    If you didn’t know that you can’t take away a constitutional right without due process, you should.

    If you are advocating the ban of assault weapons, you should know the legal definition of assault weapons, shouldn’t you?

    Otherwise, you are no different than Mr. Trump who makes outrageous statements without knowing the facts. Right?

  16. William, I have no reason to kill things so no reason to buy machinery to do so. I am therefore hardly the expert. I could easily design regulations to reduce the human cost of your hobby. I’ll bet though you wouldn’t like the result but I guarantee effectiveness.

    How’s this? All guns equipped to only be shot by the registered owner who would remain liable for any crime committed using them?

  17. Pete
    Not a gun owner, nor advocate. They scare me.

    Good luck with that!
    Was Mateen’gun registered to him?

  18. To say that we “would” do these social actions at a politically significant 2016 scale “if sane” undercuts the entire equation = . What are “we” doing that is insane anywhere at the humans’ properties and habitats of the mainland.

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