Tag: guns

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It is a fact that there will be many more mass shootings in the U.S. So whenever I see a new one that makes the news, I am tempted to feel rather sanguine about it. There is no element of surprise. They come and go like the rain and the wind even though, unlike the rain and the wind, it is possible to stop them.

Here’s the basic elements of the American equation:

  • guns are easily, readily available almost everywhere in the country
  • the government has not the slightest real curiosity about the purpose, mental condition, or emotional stability of the purchasers of these guns
  • these guns include assault rifles capable of firing off hundreds of rounds very, very quickly
  • a substantial percentage of the population is mentally ill or emotionally unstable or becoming emotionally unstable or about to get fired or dumped by a girlfriend
  • there is no way to detect a person who is about to be emotionally unstable and may choose to mark his first occasion with a few fireworks

Given these elements, mass shootings are not likely: they are inevitable. They are not merely inevitable: they are scheduled. We may not know the exact date and time of any particular mass shootings but we know with a good deal of certainty that they will occur on a regular basis over any fixed period of time and that no one will make any real attempt to prevent them from happening again. In fact, a lot of effort will be made– successfully– to ensure that they happen again.

Here’s another fact:

  • since no one can know when a person will begin shooting, having armed guards at various locations, like schools, will, at best, limit the damage.

And then, here’s the kicker:

  • some people will be killed by accident by some of the armed guards, or as a result of more guns being in circulation due to the the belief that arming as many people as possible will prevent future mass killings
  • the armed guards are very likely to miss their targets very often, thereby killing more bystanders

Even the police, with all their training, can rarely shoot straight in an actual confrontation with a man or men with guns.

In a high-noon scenario, a shoot-out, at the OK corral or wherever, each duelist knows that the other person is about to try to shoot him. Each person has a fair chance of beating the draw and shooting at the other person first. In reality, most of these shots will miss. In a mass shooting, the killer always has first draw.

Are we being brainwashed by TV in which killers always hold last conversations with their victims before shooting? We better hope the killers are brainwashed too– if not, the first shot at an armed guard will be a surprise every single time.

There is no high noon for a mass killer. Since no one really waits for someone to start shooting, and you can’t possibly always wait, the killer will draw his weapon first and stands a pretty good chance of killing a fair number of people before anyone anywhere nearby can respond. So go ahead and vote for that idiot politician who wants to add the cost of an armed police officer or private security guard to every elementary school in the country just so every potential killer doesn’t have to ever undergo a grueling background check before he takes possession of a new gun. Go ahead, and if you are unlucky enough to be a parent of the first child shot at the next school shooting and the security guard did not have ESP and did not manage to anticipate that the kid with the kit bag was a killer with a semi-automatic rifle and shoot him first, go ahead and sue, if you want. The Republicans have passed a law making everyone responsible for providing guns to mentally unstable people– and lots and lots of ammunition– immune to lawsuits.

Yes, Toyota can be sued for an imaginary accelerator problem, but no gun manufacturer or gun store owner can be sued for providing an efficient, deadly weapon to a deranged teenager.

Americans live in a country which has virtually scheduled for itself a mass shooting every few months. It has guaranteed it. You vote for these assholes over and over again– you have nothing to complain about. Spare me your shock and outrage when the next one happens, on schedule, soon. You refuse to do anything about it.

[Update 2019-03-27: a State Supreme Court in Hartford, Connecticut has just reinstated a lawsuit against Remington in spite of the legislation exempting gun-makers from liability.]

 

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The Naked Assassin: Nidal Malik Hasan

Nidal Malik Hasan killed 14 soldiers the other day, at Fort Hood, Kileen, Texas.

Hasan was an army psychiatrist who was supposed to help frustrated and anxious soldiers deal with their issues before being sent back to war, or civilian life. He was also a devout Muslim. Republicans are sounding the alarm about this– kind of screeching, really, that you can’t trust a Muslim, and that this whole idea of “tolerance” and respect for diversity, should be shelved in a favor of a good, old-fashioned, bitchin’ jihad.

Pat Robertson solemnly intoned that Islam is a religion of death. This, from the guy who supports the death penalty and once advocated assassinating Hugo Chavez.

Hasan is a Muslim. He apparently became more and more disturbed about the idea of serving an army that was involved in war against Muslims as it became clear that he himself was going to be deployed to Afghanistan. I suppose he wouldn’t have been bothered if we had been making war on fellow Christians, as in World War I and II, or Buddhists, or Hindus or Communists.

Come to think of it– why was it a problem? In all of the history of the world, has the religion of our enemies ever been a factor in whether or not we were gladly willing to slaughter thousands of them without mercy? My goodness, Mr. Hasan– what’s your problem? Why are you in the military in the first place? If you don’t want to kill people….

The real reason we kill people is, usually, money. Oil. What’s love got to do with it?

Or is it race, after all? If Germany had continued to fight like the Japanese, would we have used the nuclear bomb on Berlin? Do you even wonder for a moment? Never.

When I first heard about the shootings at Fort Hood, I thought, well, there you go: another trained killer does his job. Why are we surprised? Why is anyone surprised when, occasionally, trained killers “go off” without orders, without a plan, without logic, except that blinding, incoherent fury at the world?

But Hasan is a Muslim. He is a devout Muslim. He went to a strip club. That’s right– several times, shortly before the shooting, where he paid girls to give him lap – dances. So how did we know he was a “devout” Muslim? Because he said so? The way we say so, when we proclaim that we are devout Christians, going off to destroy Iraq even though it had nothing to do with 9/11?

There was usually more than one customer at the strip club, and most of them were not “devout” Muslims.

Senator Joe Lieberman insists that he is going to investigate if the army did a lousy job of assessing the risk posed by Dr. Hasan, since he clearly proclaimed his ethical problems with serving in the American army long before he exploded into the news.

Now let me be clear– I don’t think anybody can know for sure, in advance, just who is going to be the next mass killer in America. If the signs were that clear, you would hear about people being detained because some credible experts believed these persons were about to go on a shooting spree. Never happens. Why? Because we can’t know who is about to do it. Well, yes, there is that constitutional issue– but Bush solved that and Obama doesn’t seem poised to change it. Yes, we can arrest and detain and even torture people who have not committed any crimes. Damn right. Bless you, Rudolph Giuliani.

It seems to me that the army was actually quite sensible about dealing with Hasan. I would bet that he wasn’t the only Muslim in the army who expressed strong misgivings about the mission to Afghanistan. I would bet that there was not a single “unmistakable” sign that he was about to do what he did. Unless you count the fact that he bought some guns.

But then again, he was in the army. Then again, he was in America.

It is my understanding that the Obama Administration is continuing George Bush’s policy of “extraordinary rendition”– detaining and hold terror suspects and shipping them to other countries like Egypt or Jordan or Syria to be tortured.

Was there ever a bigger public illusion than the illusion of democracy in the U.S.?

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The Courteous Gun

Mr. Wong told the man that he had probably shot 10,000 rounds in about a year’s time. “He was pleasant,” the man recalled. “He was courteous. You would never suspect that he would pose a threat to anyone.” NY Times, April 11, 2009

You mean, aside from shooting 10,000 rounds?

What more information do you need? The man who didn’t want his name used happened to be using the shooting range next to Jiverly A. Wong one day. He noticed that Wong was practicing the art of firing his hand gun rapidly and accurately. This is America, where “you would never suspect” that someone practicing using a handgun would pose a threat to somebody. After all, Mr. Wong had a permit.

If that statement– “would pose a threat to anybody”– doesn’t alarm you, you must a red-blooded red-state rural American.

The NRA would probably respond, as they have in the past, that if only someone else in the room had had a gun, Mr. Wong would have been stopped.

Okay– let’s say someone else in the room had a pistol strapped to his leg. Mr. Wong fired 98 shots and killed most of his victims in the first 60 seconds. So this potential hero is sitting in the classroom working on his forms and a stranger walks in. The stranger pulls out his pistols and starts firing, quickly, randomly. Let’s say we’re really lucky and our hero isn’t one of the first ones hit. Let’s say we’re even luckier and he doesn’t happen to be directly in front of the shooter. The potential hero, quick as he can, gets to his feet and pulls out his own heroic tool. Is he going to stop Mr. Wong with an accurate shot, under terrifying circumstances, before the damage is done?

Maybe the hero gets lucky and gets his gun out before he is himself hit, and maybe he draws it without drawing Mr. Wong’s attention, and maybe he isn’t too nervous and excited and is able to aim and keep his hand steady and get off an accurate shot or two. Even under the best of circumstances, several people will already be dead. And anyone who has seen real footage of people engaged in a gun battle know that it is very difficult to shoot calmly, accurately, under those circumstances.

I wonder if the families of Mr. Wong’s victims consider themselves martyrs to the second amendment. They died so Americans can be free to own guns without the slightest impediment.

On this website a writer argues, remarkably, that if we allow the government to abridge the rights guaranteed under the second amendment, they will feel free to take away the rights guaranteed under any of the other amendments.

Okay. Would this person be amenable to the argument that if we allow the police to tap our phones, they will then feel free to plant hidden cameras and microphones in our bedrooms? If we allow the government to ban pornography, will they soon come after our editorials? If you let your child have a sip of beer, will he then feel free to do drugs?

From the same hilarious pro-gun website:

To deny a human the right to defend him- or herself from any threat is the most grievous crime against humanity that I can think of. Human enslavement, you say? Genocide? Well, that kind of thing can’t happen to an armed populace. Hitler’s holocaust, together with a world war, began by disarming the German people. So to own a gun for the purpose of defense is one of the most universal and basic human rights – period.

That’s pretty amazing.  Aside from the historical inaccuracy (the Nazis never “disarmed” anybody) the writer essentially asserts that the only way to preserve freedom is through violent resistance.  Virtually every developed nation in the Western world is a vigorous example of the contrary.

And when, pray tell, have Americans ever used their guns to defend liberty?  And you really think you will stop tanks and aircraft with your pistol and your AK-47?

What’s even more amazing is that after years and years of solid majorities favoring some form of gun control, the NRA has been able to stymie every effort to do it.

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The NRA and Iraq

Does the NRA, and Charlton Heston, know what their lusty cohorts in the White House are doing in Iraq?

The NRA argues that every man, woman, and child in America should be armed. That’s the best way to ensure democracy and freedom. If the government starts regulating the possession of handguns, rifles, shotguns, and Uzi submachine guns, it will soon be able to take away our precious freedoms and liberties.

The U.S. government under George Bush is trying to do precisely that to Iraq. It is bursting into their “homes” and searching for weapons and it plans to take them away if it finds them.

The NRA says that just because guns are dangerous and are often used to commit felonies doesn’t mean that any citizen should have the slightest difficulty obtaining them. In other words, you can’t assume someone is going to do something illegal with a gun, the way you can assume someone is going to do something illegal with a blank CD or a minidisc.

But here you have George Bush acting as if Saddam Hussein doesn’t have the natural right as a citizen of the world to own a few nukes or chemical bombs.

My question is– what if Saddam, or somebody, persuaded the U.N. to send a weapons inspection team to the U.S., to see if they have anything that could hurt people around the world? Like mines, chemical weapons, nukes, artillery, and guns.

Ah– but we’re the good guys. Well, we are. But we’re not perfect. And who knows what kind of idiot might end up in the White House some day?

It doesn’t seem unreasonable to me that in a society that controlled access to guns, the police would still have access to them. That’s the special nature of their jobs. They have special authority. They’re supposed to keep us from hurting ourselves and each other.

So the U.S., it could be supposed, has to have nukes to make sure that the Saddam Husseins– and Charlton Hestons — of the world don’t go around bullying other people.

The trouble is that the U.S. sells mines and helicopters and bombers to other countries. Sometimes, through happenstance, we end up facing the barrels of our own guns.

Why doesn’t the NRA step up and put an end to this nonsense? Where is Charlton Heston when you really need him? He should be railing against the Bush administration! Chemical weapons don’t kill people– despots do! And when you criminalize the possession of nukes, only the tyrants will have nukes! Saddam Hussein should show up at the next NRA party– usually held in a nearby town after a mass shooting– and hold a nuclear bomb in his arms above his head and proclaim, “…from my cold dead fingers!”

I can’t even begin to explain North Korea or Iran in this context. Except that Iraq, of course, has the oil.

And that reminds me of what a famous outlaw, Willie Sutton, said when someone asked him why he robbed banks.

Because that’s where they keep the money.

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The Festive Charlton Heston

In a letter, the N.R.A. president, actor Charlton Heston, said the group was canceling a gun show along with all other “festive ceremonies normally associated with our annual gathering.” The group was nevertheless going to hold its annual members meeting at the city’s convention center. From the New York Times, April 21, 1999

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“Festive ceremonies normally associated with our annual gathering”?????

This is Moses speaking. Moses also asserted that the massacre at Littleton, Colorado shows that every school should have armed guards. Governor of Minnesota and Wrestler Jesse Ventura agreed: “Had there been someone who was armed, in this particular situation, in my opinion, it may have stabilized.” But what does “stabilized” mean to a man who used to run around in tight underpants and throw chairs at people in masks?

Well, why stop at permitting concealed handguns? I think they should be obligatory. Just imagine: you’re at school. A couple of kids come in wearing black trench-coats with furtive expressions on their faces. You gonna wait to see what happens? Hell, no. Case closed. Incident ended. No more anxiety for all those parents sending their kids off to school in the morning– they can trust that everyone is well protected!

Wouldn’t you feel better knowing that your teenage daughter was at school, surrounded by a bunch of illiterate metal morons carrying concealed handguns?

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Think of how convenient that concealed hand-gun might be as well, next time you meet up with those hooligans from that rival football team across town, or that dorky teacher that failed you in Consumer Ed!

Charlton Moses Heston, interrupting his prayer breakfast (I kid you not) also said this: “If there had been even one armed guard in the school, he could have saved a lot of lives and perhaps ended the whole thing instantly.”

Errr…. according to the New York Times, Neil Gardner, of the Jefferson County Sheriff’s department, was in the school at the time, and was quite armed. In fact, sounds like he took a few shots and then cleared out as quickly as possible.

And I’m ashamed about the prayer breakfast bit. Deeply ashamed. Deeply, deeply, deeply. Everyone reading this should know that many, many Christians abhor violence and guns, and don’t consider a gun show to be a “festive” occasion, regardless of whether or not it opens with a prayer breakfast.

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The Wilder and Crazier Lawyers

New Approach to Gun Control

Since the lawyers have finally taken care of the evil tobacco industry, let’s think about some good things lawyers might do for us.

I have an idea. The lawyers sued the tobacco industry because the tobacco industry markets a product which has been proven to cause serious medical problems for the consumers that use it, and which costs our society billions of dollars to provide medical treatment for these consumers.

That line of reasoning sounds simple and logical enough. But the tobacco industry is just a start. Why not sue the companies like Browning Arms (Utah, makers of the Browning shotgun), or Smith & Wesson that make guns? Here again we have a product which is bad for the consumer, but which the consumer stupidly buys anyway, deluded into thinking the product enhances his manhood or femininity, and which causes death and untold suffering, and which costs us taxpayers billions of dollars every year to provide medical treatment for the casualties.

This is really not much of a stretch, folks. The government routinely analyzes products or activities that are harmful to the public and, if it is proven that the harm they produce exceeds their usefulness or value, they enact legislation to prohibit or restrict it. The government does this for pornography, cigarettes, alcohol, toxic chemicals, radiation, drugs, and so on. The government even assumes that anyone who buys a recordable CD might be thinking about duplicating a copyrighted piece of music. It doesn’t wait to see if you are actually going to do it or not. It ASSUMES you are, and taxes you for it. Gives the money to the recording industry so they can pay their lawyers.

Now, the government looked the tobacco industry and came to a weird conclusion. It said, well, you do a lot of damage to people’s health. You lie to them and deceive them. You probably put additives in that increase the users level of physical addiction. Pay us and we’ll let you continue to do these bad things.

If Mosanto corporation, for example, produced a fertilizer that caused cancer in the people who eat the food grown with it, would we accept a payment from Mosanto in exchange for letting them continue to sell it? Only if we were complete idiots.

Guns are dangerous. Only an idiot would believe they do more good than harm. Think about it. Would we be safer in a world where everybody had a gun, or where nobody had a gun?

Since the government has already made a bargain with the NRA to allow the continued sale of almost any kind of gun you can imagine, we have no alternative but to hire lawyers and sue the gun industry.

Of course, if the end result is an agreement similar to the one reached with the tobacco companies (Clinton had a much better proposal but the tobacco lobby bought off enough Republican Congressmen to get it killed) what we will end up with is this: the gun lobby acquires immunity from further prosecution in exchange for about $250 billion dollars, almost all of which goes to the lawyers anyway. The $250 billion dollars are earned back by the gun lobby mainly by applying surcharges to sales of weapons to the military and police departments. Not only does the taxpayer get to fund the legal challenge, they also get to pay the penalty. And the icing on the cake: we have the same problem as before, except that it’s worst, because the gun manufacturers will have immunity from prosecution.

We could do the same for weapons manufacturers. Sue them for hundreds of billions of dollars for all the suffering and death they contribute to people around the world. Give all the money to the lawyers. We get to continue providing weapons to every 2-bit revolutionary or reactionary government in every sad, pathetic little starving country in the Third World, while, once again, the lawyers make a killing.

Don’t look at me. You elected the fools.

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The Noble Charlton and His Festive Murder Weapons

Charlton Heston, who played Moses in Cecil B. DeMille’s pompous and boring “10 Commandments” has just been elected President of the National Rifle Association.

Charlton Heston claims he was a liberal back in the 1950’s and early 60’s. He was in favor of the civil rights movement. Then it all got out of hand he became an arch-conservative. The NRA hopes the luster of Moses will revive the somewhat sagging fortunes of the NRA, which has lost more than 500,000 members in the past two years.

The NRA only has about 2.5 million members, yet they virtually dictate U.S. policy in regard to gun regulation, because they have the big bucks.  The general population has no regard for the NRA but– here’s the key– Republican Primary voters do.  Once you win the primary, you tone down your virulent pro-death views and act as if you’re a moderate.

The NRA fought tooth and nail against Clinton’s efforts to ban the importation of assault rifles.

I’m not going to waste my time making a case against virtually unrestricted gun sales, which the NRA advocates. Only an idiot would believe we are safer if everyone has a gun than if no one has a gun. Shall I repeat it? Yes, it sounds harsh, but sometimes you have to call a spade a spade: only an idiot would believe that we are safer if everyone has a gun than if no one has a gun.

John Sayles recently produced a brilliant movie (“Men with Guns”) that dramatizes better than almost any other what the meaning of a gun is. If Jesus were here today, I think he would say something like “anyone who buys a gun has already committed murder in his heart”.

That said, I am not totally unsympathetic to those who buy a hand-gun out of fear and keep it next to the bed. The truth is, American’s have made their bed: they have made guns readily available to everyone. They have created a sick, ultra-competitive, violent society, and now they have to deal with it. American culture constantly hammers home the message that if you are poor or unemployed or on welfare, you are a valueless parasite and a worthless human being. I sometimes think they will never solve the gun problem– it’s too late.

But the politicization of gun control can be changed.

A few years ago, a man came home to his house, heard a noise in a closet, flung the door open and shot whoever was in there. It turned out to be his own daughter, who died in his arms.

Well, hey, anybody can make a mistake. What bothers me about this case, however, is the fact that the man was never even charged with careless use of a firearm. Similarly, a Japanese student was shot to death when he walked up someone’s driveway to ask for directions to a party. You could, maybe, argue that it wasn’t quite the same thing as first degree murder, but the killer was not even charged with negligence. What if he had run him over instead, while drunk or drugged? Do people actually believe that such negligence is more criminal than firing a handgun at a stranger walking up your driveway before you have the slightest idea of what he wants?

The most offensive irony of all this is the large number of fundamentalist Christians who support these insane gun laws and yet call themselves “pro-life”.

“Moses” should take a few tablets himself and start rereading his scriptures. Or did I miss the verses where Jesus tells his disciples to travel light, preach the good news to the poor, and pack a .45.

The satirical Arrogant Worms had it right:

“Wouldn’t it be great if everybody had a gun?.
Wouldn’t it be great if everybody had a gun?
No one would ever get shot,
’cause everybody would have a gun
Wouldn’t it be great if everybody had a gun…”

The sad part is that some people would take those lyrics seriously.