Michael R. Weisser's Blog, page 109

When It Comes To Gun Violence, It’s Time To Stop Being Polite.

Back in 2014, when Mike Bloomberg ponied up $50 million to help empower Shannon Watts and her ladies (that’s not a rock band) to begin leveling the playing field against the NRA, the guardians of our beloved 2nd Amendment began running some television ads designed to remind us lucky gun owners how mean-spirited and dangerous a guy like Bloomberg could be.  One ad aired during the battle over extending background checks in Colorado, and it showed a Western-style chick tooling along in her 4X4, with a voice-over accusing Mayor Mike of being an “elitist” and “hypocrite” because he wanted to ban snack foods, soda and, of course, guns.

                The snarky NRA campaign fizzled, of course, but what I found interesting was the attempt to link firearms regulation to Bloomberg’s long-standing public health concerns on healthier eating, as if full-calorie soft drinks, potato chips and guns all help promote the common good.  Now it’s one thing to argue about whether or not guns represent a benefit or a risk; John Lott gets away with promoting the ‘more guns equals less crime’ nonsense because scholars whose research supports the opposite point of view are honest enough to admit that their argument may not yet be airtight.  But the medical evidence on health risks from soda pop and junk foods is compelling, even though the NRA would have you believe that the benefits of guns, smokes and Twinkies are one and the same.  I’m surprised the NRA didn’t also score Bloomberg for his anti-smoking campaign, but give the folks in Fairfax credit for a bit of reality-testing, if only a bit.

What I won’t give them credit for, however, is their continued attempt to pretend that firearm regulation doesn’t work and that any effort to extend regulations is nothing more than a nefarious effort to get rid of all the guns.  And their latest broadside in this respect is the editorial by NRA head lobbyist  Chris Cox, who responded to the Virginia shooting of two journalists by stating, “the fact is that no piece of legislation would have stopped this brutal crime.” And in case you’re wondering, the NRA does have a solution for the occasions when a deranged individual gets his hands on a gun and starts shooting everything in sight – it’s called “fix the mental health system,” whatever that meaningless sentence can be believed to mean.

The position of the NRA boils down to this: there is no such thing as gun ‘violence;’ people are violent and guns are beside the point.  Ergo, we need to solve the root causes of violence and forget about the guns. This is not only a cynical and self-serving approach to the problem, it’s not true.  And I think it’s time for all the gun-control activists to stand up, take off the gloves, and begin responding in kind.  I’m not saying that the activist community should invent false arguments to promote the idea that guns are a risk to life and health; the evidence is clearly there.  They should stop being so worried about the 2nd Amendment, they should stop being so polite, they should tell it like it is.

When the NRA says guns aren’t the problem, people are the problem, they are promoting behavior that is a risk to well-being and health.  When the NRA says background checks don’t work so we don’t need to extend background checks to private sales they are making it easier for guns to get into the wrong hands. When the NRA says they were “touched” by the Virginia tragedy they are shedding crocodile tears, because it’s the proliferation of handguns designed to be carried by all those dutiful ‘armed citizens’ which brought that shooting about.

If I learned anything from the recent shenanigans of Donald Trump, it’s that he who yells loudest usually gets heard.  I don’t see why the gun-control community can’t ramp up the volume and drive their arguments home.  The good news is that their arguments are true, and sooner or later, truth will out.

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The Bad News For The NRA Is There Are Lots Of People Who Believe ‘Thou Shalt Not Kill.’

                 Yesterday I found myself in the company of 150 people from all over the United States who came to Washington, DC because they want to do something about gun violence.  What they don’t want to do is entertain the stupid idea that more guns will protect us from violence and crime. That crap used to be promoted only by connivers like John Lott who used this insultingly unfounded nonsense to build a following on the red-meat lecture tour.  But now it’s been taken up by lackluster, red-striped Presidential wannabes who will stoop no matter how low to try and spear a few votes. The group that convened in DC was decidedly of a different sort.

It was an eclectic assemblage, representing national and state-level advocacy groups, political and policy experts from within the Beltway and without, researchers, activists from all over the place, in every respect a serious-minded and, more important, an energetic  group of folks.  I have been following the gun debate going back to the 1960s; in other words, before there was a real debate.  And I don’t remember a time when so many different types of people from so many different backgrounds were as committed to serious and continuous efforts to reduce or eliminate the violence caused by guns.  And just in case any NRA sycophant or 2nd-Amendment devotee wants to argue the case, let me make one thing completely and perfectly clear: it’s the gun stupid, it’s the gun.

                So I sat, watched and listened to speakers at the National Gun Violence Prevention Coalition Annual Meeting and I came away with the following thoughts.  First, the level of gun violence, both mass shootings and individual events, can no longer be justified or excused just because the 2nd Amendment protects individual gun rights. Since August, for example, there’s been a guy or maybe guys who have been shooting at motorists riding through Phoenix on Interstate 10. To date there have been at least eleven confirmed shootings, and the only good news is that’s it not that easy to hit someone in a moving car.

Now if you can explain to me how a lawfully-armed citizen walking around with his or her gun should be considered as a bulwark against this kind of crime, I’ll meet you tomorrow at the Morton’s Steakhouse of your choice and pick up the tab. According to the Gun Violence Archive, by year’s end the death toll from shootings may exceed last year’s number by 20 percent. The day in, day out reports of what appears to be an endless spiral of gun violence has clearly aroused more than its usual share of concern, and this concern was clearly evident at the DC conference this past week.

The NRA’s response to this situation is to have Chris Cox find an instance where an individual, in this case Vester Flanagan, used a legally-purchased gun to commit mayhem, the “proof’ that more laws won’t do anything to stop violence caused by guns.  This argument is so dumb I’m surprised that even a twit like Cox would try to foist it on the members of the NRA.  To follow his logic, the next time that there’s a pile-up on the Interstate we’ll understand why speed limits don’t help to save lives.

I spent a few minutes at the conference speaking quietly and emotionally to the parents of a young man who was among the 12 audience members killed in Aurora by James Holmes.  They told me they needed to help prevent more tragedies like the tragedy that resulted in the loss of their son.  I told them I don’t think it’s possible to understand what happened in Aurora in rational terms, but what they are doing will have a rational and objective end.  And the end will be that gun violence will disappear because ways will be found to respond to their courage and their strength.  There is, after all, a moral imperative called Thou Shalt Not Kill.

 

A New Article Explains How Crime Guns Get Into The ‘Wrong Hands’

When a serious scholar like Philip Cook publishes research on gun violence, the pro-gun community usually ignores what he has to say.  This is because Professor Cook has been publishing important work on the risks of guns for nearly forty years, and the folks who don’t believe that guns are a risk would rather pretend he doesn’t exist.  Which is why I found it interesting that his latest work on how criminals get their guns has made the headlines in the pro-gun media, from the NRA to the National Review.

Philip Cook

The pro-gun headlines, however, tell a much different story than the one we get from Phil Cook.  Because what Cook and his research colleagues were trying to find out was information about the operation of the ‘informal’ gun network; i.e., gun transfers which occur outside of the regulatory environment that defines initial gun transfers between customers and FFLs.  And since only 10% of the guns acquired by the survey respondents came directly from legal sources, the whole point of this research was to illuminate the shadowy and unmapped world of illegal guns.  Or to be more precise, how guns were acquired by people who were then arrested for using or carrying them in illegal ways.  Incidentally, this article appears in the special Preventive Medicine issue on gun violence edited by Daniel Webster and David Hemenway whose lead editorial I discussed last week.

The pro-gun noisemakers are falling over each other telling their followers that this article justifies their opposition to every gun regulation of any kind, because the criminals themselves admit that only 10% of the guns they use come through legal channels to them.  So what’s the point, for example, of expanding background checks to secondary transfers if gun-toting criminals get all the guns they want without undergoing a background check at all?  To quote the geniuses at the NRA: “Since these criminals do not use gun stores, gun shows, or even legal private gun sellers, there is no point in the criminal supply chain where a background check would make any difference whatsoever.”

The NRA’s been peddling this crap since they lost the battle to prevent NICS background checks in 1994. Here’s the organization’s official statement on the issue: “NRA opposes expanding background check systems at the federal or state level. Studies by the federal government show that people sent to state prison because of gun crimes typically get guns through theft, on the black market, or from family members or friends, and nearly half of illegally trafficked firearms originate with straw purchasers—people who can pass background checks, who buy guns for criminals on the sly. No amount of background checks can stop these criminals.” And guess what?  Now they have the esteemed gun researcher Phil Cook validating the NRA point of view!

Except that’s not the point of Phil’s research at all. To the contrary, the article contains a very interesting graphic (Page 30) along with excerpts from respondent interviews which illustrate the degree to which nearly all the guns acquired by inmates passed through multiple hands following the initial, legal transaction that took place in an FFL’s store.  And even though the lack of NICS checks over secondary (or tertiary or quaternary or quinary) transactions was the rule for guns by themselves of their friends, few of the jailed inmates interviewed in this study had any idea of exactly how or when their guns first disappeared from lawful commerce and ended up in the mean streets.

What makes this article so powerful and compelling is that it’s not based on data so much as on the words of gun-carrying criminals themselves.  The fact that again and again inmates mentioned their fears of getting caught with a gun validates the notion that gun regulations work.  The respondents in this study clearly understood that giving them a gun was putting it in the ‘wrong hands.’ In that respect, the felons in Cook County Jail are way out in front of the NRA.

Suicide And Guns: A New Brady Report Spells It Out.

I want to commend the Brady Center for their newly-issued report on suicide and guns.  It’s available on the Brady website and should, no must be required reading for everyone involved with gun violence at any level: advocates, researchers, caregivers and the general public.  I downloaded it earlier this evening and read it without stopping from end to end.  Then I read it again.  Bravo Brady for a job very well done.

The report was issued for National Suicide Week and I wish I could say that suicides as a public health issue have been brought under control.  Unfortunately, that’s not true. According to the CDC, the suicide rate per 100,000 was 10.44 in 2000, it was 12.57 in 2013 (the last year for which we have validated numbers.)  These rates translate into 29,350 suicide deaths in 2000 and more than 41,000 in 2013.  Worse, it appears that this increase is directly associated with the use of guns, with the gun suicide rate increasing by 13% over the past seven years.

                Wouldn’t you just know it, but the NRA has a a history of being concerned with guns and suicide, except in the case of America’s oldest civil rights organization, their concern takes the form of preventing efforts to identify individuals who might be at risk to use a gun to take their own lives.  The best example of their concern in his regard is the Florida gag order (Docs vs. Glocks) that prohibits physicians from talking to patients about their ownership of guns.  The law makes an exception in cases where the patient might be an ‘imminent’ threat to himself or someone else, but as the Brady report makes clear, most suicides are impulsive, last-minute affairs and it often takes lots of sensitive sifting of verbal cues by a caregiver before the potential victim acknowledges that suicide is on his mind.

Where the NRA really shows its true concerns about suicide is their efforts to keep any discussion about gun suicide in the military completely out of bounds.  Military suicides have nearly doubled over the past ten years and the military suicide rate per 100,000 is nearly 40% higher than the rate for non-military folks.  In 2011 a provision was quietly tacked onto the annual Military Authorization Bill that prevented any soldier from being asked if he kept a gun in an off-base home.  Meanwhile a study done in Israel (and mentioned in the Brady report) showed a 40% drop in at-home suicides by soldiers when they were no longer allowed to take their guns with them when they went home on a weekend pass.

One of the most pernicious strategies employed of late by the NRA is guns on college campuses, traditionally gun-free zones.  The latest battleground  – where else? –  is Florida, where NRA lobbyist Marion Hammer has the troops all set and ready to march into the State House and promote a campus-carry bill again.  The fact that college dormitories are the most popular sites for mass, binge-drinking activities doesn’t faze crazy Granny Hammer one bit.  But here’s one little piece of data from the Brady report that might give some of the Florida legislators pause.  A recent study found that college students had substantially lower suicide rates than kids in the same age bracket who weren’t in school, a difference partly attributed to a ninefold decrease in gun availability on campus as opposed to guns in private homes.

The truth is the NRA couldn’t care less about what’s in the Brady report. I can just hear it in the next couple of days, ‘It’s not gun violence, it’s mental health.’  They’ve been getting away with this nonsense because mental health has always been a touchy issue and suicide, in particular, is something we’d rather not face.  But the Brady report makes it clear that suicide moves more quickly move from potential to actual when there’s a gun around.  In case you haven’t yet figured it out, It’s the gun stupid, it’s the gun.

Time To End Gun Violence Whatever It Takes.

Last week the NRA unleashed its attack dog John Lott to explain to the American people why more gun laws don’t do anything to curb gun violence.  And what was his proof?  The fact that Dylann Roof killed all those folks in a Charleston, SC church with a legally-purchased Glock.  And since background checks can’t predict whether someone who passes a check will then go on a rampage, and since everyone knows that criminals don’t obey laws, what’s the point of burdening all those law-abiding gun owners with more laws and regulations that keep them from enjoying their guns?

I’ll tell you the point.  Laws work.  And the reason they work is that every, single gun that gets into civilian hands first got there because of a legal, regulated sale.  And if every transfer of a gun thereafter had to go through some kind of regulated exchange, don’t ask me how, don’t ask me why, but fewer guns would get into the ‘wrong hands.’ And if you don’t believe me, just take a look at the cogent and well-articulated piece in The Trace by Evan DeFilipis and Devin Hughes which explains, how gun laws reduce gun crimes.

 

Andy & Allison Parker

Asking our lawmakers for proper and effective responses to gun violence will be the centerpiece of a national, community-based effort led by Everytown on July 10.  They have created a series of public events in communities around the country with the most appropriate theme – Whatever It Takes.  Some of the events will be fashioned around the general issue of gun violence; others will be remembrances of specific events; others will focus on convincing public officials that work remains to be done.

In Asheville, NC, there will be a meeting to remember the horrendous Virginia Tech massacre that killed 32 people in 2007, including a student named Julia Pryde, whose father will speak at the event.  Raleigh, NC will be the site of a gathering to honor Kim Yaman, a survivor of the 1991 University of Iowa shooting , and at Hilton Head, SC, a group will remember 17-year old Dominique Xavier Milton-Williams, who was killed at Coligny Beach on July 19. A contingent will be in DC, of course, to present the case on Capitol Hill, and a group will visit the Nashua, NH office of Senator Kelly Ayotte who voted against expanding background checks after Sandy Hook but then pretended she voted for background checks when, in fact, she voted for a Republican-backed substitute bill that didn’t expand NICS checks at all.

September 11 will mark the 14th anniversary of the Twin Towers attacks, a day which, between the Trade Center, Pentagon and Shanksville, America lost 2,996 souls.  A moment none will ever forget. Know how many Americans have been killed by gunfire in the last fourteen years?  Try 470,000 and I’m undercounting by more than a bit. Know how many combat deaths we suffered in both World Wars, Korea and Viet Nam?  About 50,000 less.

So there’s every good reason to mark these gun deaths tomorrow or any other day. In fact, perhaps Everytown should get some like-minded Senator or Congressman to introduce a bill that would officially mark Gun Violence Day every single year. And if the NRA, the gun industry and simple fools like John Lott want to tell you that none of these killings would have occurred if everyone was walking around with a gun, they can all lay brick.  It’s time for honest people who put human life above childish self-defense fantasies, come together and do whatever it takes to get the job done.

In the interests of full disclosure, I should say Everytown didn’t coin the phrase ‘whatever it takes.’  It was actually first said by the father of slain TV journalist Allison Parker, who now knows first-hand the pain which comes from losing a loved one to this terrible state of affairs.  Let’s help him and everyone else who somehow go on living even though their lives have been shattered by a gun.  Time to get it done.

What To Solve Gun Violence? Get Rid Of All Gun Laws.

Today’s Trace contains a very important and must-read article by the Armed With Reason crowd, a.k.a. Evan DeFillippis and Devin Hughes, concerning the single, most hot-button issue in the gun debate.  I am referring to whether it makes any difference whether we regulate guns, since gun violence is mostly the handiwork of criminals and criminals don’t follow laws.  Of course the NRA would never be so brazen as to publicly promote the idea that guns shouldn’t be regulated at all.  What they do instead is to go through the back door by saying that when guns are used by ‘good guys,’ criminals fear to tread; hence, we should make it as easy as possible for all the good guys to get their hands on guns.  And since the only thing that criminals understand is a good, swift kick, let’s punish gun-wielding criminals as quickly and harshly as possible and let everyone else enjoy unfettered 2nd-Amendment rights.

Evan and Devin take issue with this nonsense by pointing out right at the beginning of their well-researched essay that there’s a difference between how criminals react to strong laws as opposed to how they react to weak laws or no laws at all.  And the fact that most states have little or no legal barriers to the bad guys acquiring guns isn’t an argument for refusing to enact or strengthen current gun laws.

A perfect example of this false argument proferred by the gun industry is their opposition to expanded NICS background checks.  Since every gun is initially purchased by a law-abiding consumer, you would think that creating a system of secondary background checks would be a no-brainer when it comes to keeping guns out of the ‘wrong hands.’  But expanding background checks to private transfers means, if nothing else, expanding regulations per se.  And while Evan and Devin cite multiple studies which show that qualifying people to own guns invariably leads to less gun violence and less gun crime, the gun industry can always point to this or that example of someone like Vester Flanagan in Virginia who passed a background check and still committed mayhem with a gun.

                I can actually absolve The Donald for pandering to his red-meat audience by saying that we don’t need any more gun laws because he’s never been a public official responsible for enforcing any laws at all. But when Bridgegate Christie negates the need for gun laws and ascribes New Jersey’s low gun violence rate to the fact that he’s a tough governor, he’s simply saying something that’s not true. In fact, the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence gives Jersey an A- rating on its gun laws, one of only 6 states to achieve this grade.  Christie can pretend to be as tough as he wants, but he happens to be enforcing some pretty strict laws.

After Dick Heller and his attorneys got the Supreme Court to rule that the 2nd Amendment gave citizens the right to keep a loaded handgun in their home for self-defense, Heller went back into Court and challenged what he considered to be the overly-restrictive licensing process that was put into place. The District of Columbia argued that their licensing regulations were necessary in order to help keep guns out of the wrong hands, but this argument was challenged by none other than Gary Kleck who stated in his deposition that “only the law-abiding will register their guns.”  To which the Federal District Court, in rejecting this argument “with prejudice” responded: “According to Plaintiffs, it seems, municipalities should be limited to enacting only those firearms regulations that lawbreakers will obey – a curious argument that would render practically any gun laws unconstitutional.”

You got that one right.  The strategy of the NRA is exactly to make all gun laws unconstitutional.  Such efforts and the stupidity they reflect are illuminated by the clear and forceful research of DeFillipis and Hughes.  As I said at the beginning, this is a must read.

 

 

Thank God Our 2nd Amendment Rights Are Being Protected By Kasich, Walker And Bridge.

Okay, it’s time to play gun nut quiz.  And here’s the gun nut question today: What do the following states – California, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, New Jersey – have in common?    And the answer is – actually they have two things in common.  Each state contains at least one city with a murder rate at least four times the national average – Oakland, Detroit, Cleveland, Milwaukee, Newark;  and each state is home to a Republican Presidential candidate: Fiorina, Carson, Kasich, Walker, Christie.

                Right now the national murder rate per 100K is somewhere slightly above 4.  The murder rate in Oakland is 22, in Detroit it’s 45, Cleveland’s rate is 14 (oops, that’s only 3.5 times the national average), Milwaukee rolls in at 17 and peaceful  Newark sits at 40. Now you would think that Fiorina, Carson, Kasich, Walker and Christie would know something about gun violence, given the fact that they come from states with cities that have murders happening as if it were Mog.  And if you don’t know where Mog is, take a look at a map of Somalia – it’s what our Airborne guys call Mogadishu, the place we lost a couple of Black Hawks back in those heady days before the Twin Towers came crashing down.

                Before I get into this issue too deeply, I’m going to give Carly and Ben each a pass, because they come from California and Michigan respectively, but they don’t live there any more.  On the other hand, Kasich, Walker and Bridgegate are the friggin’ governors of their states.  They live there, they work there, and they are ultimately responsible for public safety there.  And since most murders occur with the use of guns, and these guys need to show they are doing something about murder rates that are beyond belief, let’s see what, if anything, they have to say about guns.

I’ll start with Kasich.  “I believe in the 2nd Amendment.”  That’s from a 2010 webcast during his successful gubernatorial campaign.  What was Kasich supposed to say?  I love how all these red-meat politicians ‘believe’ in the 2nd Amendment.  Duhhh, it’s part of the Constitution.  What are they supposed to day?  That they don’t believe in it?  In 2011 Kasich signed a bill that allows Ohioans to bring concealed weapons into establishments that served liquor, including nightclubs, restaurants, stadiums, malls and, of course, restaurants.  He really believes in the 2nd Amendment.

               Scott Walker also believes in the 2nd Amendment.  He believes in it so much that he says it’s his duty as Governor to “protect and preserve our Constitutional freedoms.” To prove how important the 2nd Amendment is to our freedom, he recently signed a bill that ended a long-established 48-hour waiting period to purchase a handgun in Wisconsin.  The fact that the bill’s supporters used a fabricated tale about a woman who ended up being killed by her husband because she couldn’t get her hands on a gun is further proof of Walker’s commitment to Constitutional rights, in this case the right to tell a lie protected by the 1st Amendment’s defense of free speech.

As for Bridgegate, he began huffing and puffing after the Roanoke shooting with the standard bromides about the ‘terrible tragedy,’ his condolences to the families, the usual crap.  But then he cut to the chase and reminded the interviewer that we didn’t need any new gun laws, we just needed to enforce the laws we already have.  And in case anyone was wondering who would do the enforcing, I’ll let Bridgegate tell you himself: “New Jersey has a Governor who enforces the law.”  Christie enforces laws so well that the only person who didn’t get fired after millions of commuters were unable to get to work was the guy who should have been fired – Christie himself.

When it comes to your 2A rights, you’ll have nothing to fear from Kasich, Walker or Chris.  As for the cities withgun violence rates through the roof, let’s not worry about a few bodies here and there when the Constitution will be defended by all those armed citizens and their guns.

Another 2nd Amendment Battle To Help Good Guys Keep And Use Their Guns.

I am a member of the NRA.  In fact, I’m a Life Member.  This means, among other things, that every few days I receive an email from the lobbying arm of the organization, NRA-ILA, which contains some scary stories about threats to my 2nd-Amendment rights, followed by a plea from Chris Cox to send some dough.  Most of the stories are the usual Obama-this and Obama-that, God only knows what the NRA will do to stave off total collapse if the Republicans run the table in 2016. But every once in a while some story catches my eye and it’s my civic duty as a gun nut to bring it to everyone’s attention, NRA members or not.

The story begins with the following headline: “Foster Family Loses Children For Exercising Second Amendment Right.”  It comes out of Clark County, Nevada, (a.k.a. Las Vegas) where a couple, Kristi and Rod Beber, had three foster children taken away from them following a disturbance in front of their home.  It turned out the Bebers kept a loaded, unlocked handgun in their home which, according to the Department of Family Services, “did not describe an adult exercising sound judgment.”

                The Bebers, of course, have become rock stars on the red-meat digital network, with stories about their suffering (basically a reprint of the local news story linked here) popping up on Breitbart, The Blaze, various gun blogs, all the usual crap. What I can’t find is whether Clark County DFS removed the kids because the Bebers owned a gun per se, or was it the result of details that came out of the specific incident that resulted in the cops being called out to their home. What I did find interesting is the fact that the DFS website’s home page carries a large advertisement for the county’s shooting range, the Clark County Shooting Complex, which is called Nevada’s ‘Five-Star’ Range.  Oh well.

In June the Legislature passed and the Governor signed a bill that, according to the Bebers, the NRA, the Breitbart gang and Glenn Beck gave Rod Beber the right to do exactly what he did, namely, to use his gun to defend his family from harm: “This bill authorizes a person who holds CCW to carry a concealed firearm on the premises of a family foster home if it is stored in a locked secure storage container except when used for certain lawful purposes.” The bill was passed in June, the incident at the Beber residence took place in April; hence, he wasn’t covered by the law and, even if he were, it’s not clear that he was actually using the gun that night for ‘certain lawful purposes.’  We’ll get all the facts when Beber shows up to speak at the NRA annual show next year.

But let’s suppose, just for a minute, that Beber has a case.  Let’s suppose that he really did lose his 2nd-Amendment rights just because the incident at his home occurred two months before the law was changed.  And let’s even forget the cautionary words written by Antonin Scalia in Heller and seemingly forgotten by everyone: “Nor does our analysis suggest the invalidity of laws regulating the storage of firearms to prevent accidents.” What I really find interesting about the Beber case is the fact that the law was changed at all.  I mean, how many people in Nevada could the DFS regulation on foster-care gun ownership really affect?

What’s happening is that the NRA is methodically and relentlessly poring through laws and regulations in state after state to find every, single instance in which anyone faces any kind of regulation of their so-called gun rights.  And while the Law Center To Prevent Gun Violence offers a pretty good description of current state gun laws, is anyone out there tracking the ongoing effort to weaken and/or abolish those laws?  I don’t think it’s being done at all and I’m hoping it’s not too late.

 

Don’t Get Rid Of The Guns, Get Rid Of The Nuts. Thank You Donald, Chris, Bobby, Et. Al.

So it’s official.  The Republican Party, or at least its putative Presidential candidates, has decided that the key to eliminating gun violence is to get rid of the nuts, not the guns.  The idea that gun violence has nothing to do with the gun and everything to do with the crazy people who on occasion use guns, has been floating around for a long time.  But after last week’s Virginia ambush, first The Donald and then every other red-meat Republican (a redundancy if I ever wrote one) fell into lockstep proclaiming that the real culprit was a mental health system that still needed to be “fixed.”  Here’s Bridgegate Christie explaining it to dopes like you and me who actually believe that stricter gun regulations should be in effect: “We need to have more information about people’s mental health background, but we don’t need new laws to do that.”

                Just for a moment I’m going to pretend that these jerks know what they’re talking about and go along with their stupid and pandering idea that ‘fixing’ mental health will ‘fix’ the problem of gun violence.  So let’s take three instances of horrific gun violence and see if the ‘fix mental health’ bullshit has even the slightest connection to reality or not.  The three instances I’m going to mention involved three shooters named James Holmes, Adam Lanza and Elliot Roger.  Together, these three ‘nuts’ shot 126 people, of whom 41 died either at the scene or in a hospital following the attacks.

What did these three young men have in common besides their ability to use a gun?  They not only had documented histories of some degree of mental distress, but had all been seen by mental health professionals in a short period of time before the actual shootings took place.  The official report on the Sandy Hook episode indicates that Adam Lanza’s mother dragged him hither and yon for mental health consultations; Elliott Roger’s diary contains numerous references to treatment by shrinks.  In the case of Holmes, who committed the worst massacre of all, his psychiatrist actually reported threats he was making to the University of Colorado Neuroscience Department because he had flunked out of school, reports that were forwarded to the campus police who took no action at all.

                When we look at instances of individual shootings, we find a similar pattern wherein the shooter made contact with professional caregivers prior to the event, expressed concern about what was going to happen, disclosed the possibility of violence, but then was allowed to go about his business as if the discussion had never taken place.  I cited a case earlier this year in which a severely-agitated young man visited no less than seven different medical facilities in and around Fargo, ND, complaining that his room-mate was trying to poison him but was told in every visit to go home and take previously-prescribed psychiatric meds.  The cops then encountered him wandering in front of his apartment at 1 AM, but after he told them that his room-mate had a gun they decided that no crime was about to be committed and told him to go back home.  Three hours later, this young man shot his room-mate to death.

                Every single state has a system whereby certain designated individuals must report suspected child abuse.  And once reported, the agency designated to deal with the problem must take action to see if the report is true.  The Federal Child Abuse and Prevention Act defines abuse as: “An act or failure to act which presents an imminent risk of serious harm.” And notice the word ‘must.’  Not maybe, not perhaps, must.

We don’t need to cop out on the issue of gun violence by pretending that the NICS system should get better reports on which nuts are walking around who shouldn’t be able to buy a gun.  We need to acknowledge that anyone who expresses anger or possible violence becomes an imminent threat if he has access to guns.  And the guns must be taken away.  Not maybe, not perhaps, must.

Molly Ann Wymer Talks About Guns And Hits The Nail On The Head.

Two days ago Molly Ann Wymer uploaded a video to her Facebook page, where she has been posting videos for the past year or so, and the last time I looked, it had received over `16 million views in less than three full days!  Now I don’t know if Facebook keeps records on how many views any particular page receives, but I can tell you that this is by far and away the largest audience to ever watch a social media post about guns.  What has made this effort so resoundingly successful is the fact that Molly Ann has obviously found a way to talk about guns to the widest possible audience imaginable, and both sides in the gun debate better figure out what she’s doing that none of them are doing, because otherwise she’s going to end up owning the public debate all by herself.

               Wymer has a disarming way of talking about guns as if it’s just another, simple problem that can be solved if we would all just get along.  She talks about going into a gun shop where the salesman greets her by calling her “ma’am,” which is a traditional Southern-ism that used to mean that women were somehow not quite the equal of men.  They were treated differently, they were expected to act differently, there was a whole sub-culture of deference and politesse which, in fact, did nothing more than to put women in a traditional, subservient class. The look on Wymer’s face and the way she rolls her eyes as she describes the gun shop conversation is enough, in and of itself, to tell you that this lady is no subservient gal.

Anyway, she goes on to say that she loves being single but sometimes feels afraid, which is why she wanted to buy what she calls a “protection gun.”  Now the use of the word ‘protection’ is the tip-off that something new and different is about to take place in a digital space, because the gun industry has spent a gazillion dollars trying to sell the false idea that guns are the best means of self-defense, but no gun maker has ever produced a product called a ‘protection gun.’  And of course Molly Ann goes on to say that the gun shop guy then rushed to assure her that, “Ma’am (which pissed her off again) all guns are the same.”

And this is the point at which the video takes a brilliant turn.  Because after a few additional Ma’ams, Molly says to the storekeep, “I watch the news, and I know there are guns that arrack people and guns that protect people and I would like the protection kind of gun.”  She then goes on to say that she bought a “pink one” because that was more “feminine” and here’s the kicker: “If we can just figure out how to get all the murder guns and the attack guns and not keep selling them and just sell protection guns, I think that would be great and solve a lot of problems.”

Now I’ve been following the gun debate for more than forty years, and this is the first time I have heard the two sides of that debate referred to simply in terms of what a gun can do.  Of course a gun can be used for self-defense, but the same gun can also be used to inflict great harm against someone who isn’t a risk or threat to the gun owner at all. And by verbally juxtaposing the words ‘attack’ and ‘protection’ with the idea that we are talking about different kinds of guns, what Molly Ann has done is reduce the whole argument about guns to what it really is: a dispute about what a gun represents in its most finite form. Because what protection means to the pro-gun community is what attack means to people who want to regulate guns.  And Molly Ann Wymer has expressed this better than anyone else.