I’ve been too stunned by the attack in Orlando to fully gather
my thoughts, but I ought to publish this before the subject becomes entirely politicized.
I’ve learned that after years of writing
this blog and having expressed over and over again my belief that automatic
weapons, the kind that was used in the Orlando massacre, need to be outlawed,
that mine is but just one lonely voice. Nonetheless I must write what I think. The
NRA would have you believe that this puts our nation on the slippery slope to
repealing the 2nd amendment.
That slope is as preposterous as outlawing automobiles, which are simply
regulated. I don’t know any responsible members of either political party who believe
that the 2nd amendment needs to be repealed. It needs updating to take modern day weaponry
into account, killing machines our forefathers never imagined at the time of
the 2nd amendment.
The math is pretty clear; this no one can dispute. Pack a lot of people into a relatively small
space, as in the Paris or Orlando attacks, and anyone with military designed
weaponry can kill a lot of people.
Banning the sale of such weapons, making them illegal to
own (paying current owners to turn them in), is not going to eliminate
them. I’m not stupid. But they will be harder to obtain. Go to the next level by requiring licenses
and registrations for guns as we do for cars, would be another step in the right direction. Will that suddenly make everyone safe? Again, I’m not that stupid.
This attack in Orlando is not only about guns, it’s about
the LGBT community, our way of life, and the potential it has for still
hardening the line about a particular ethnic minority group. The Islamic religion is essentially a
peaceful one, and to ostracize practicing Muslims will only lead to more radicalization,
the very objective of ISIS. So this is
the time to indeed rally around our flag, the very symbol of E Pluribus Unum -- that we are a nation of diversity and should celebrate that diversity and mourn for the LGBT community and for us all..
Ironically, I wrote a piece for Flag Day three years ago, which was on the heels of the Edward
Snowden affair. But I started it off
with an appeal to ban automatic weapons.
It is still (in my opinion) as relevant as when it was written, so I
paste it below and after that I paste, in reverse chronological order, a number
of pieces I wrote about gun control.
Much repetition I suppose, but I still believe much relevancy.
Friday, June 14,
2013
Flag Day and the
Electronic World
Flag Day. A time to
reflect on the adoption of the flag we honor, and what it symbolizes. In the world of 1776, it is a nation
committed to freedom in its purist form.
Oceans separated us from the rest of the world, difficult for an
invading army to breach that defense.
The Second Amendment,
giving us the right to bear arms, was passed in 1791, a means of maintaining a
civilian militia. ("A well regulated militia being necessary to the
security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall
not be infringed.") At the time the
flintlock musket was the standard weapon. Count on being able to fire it maybe
2-3 times a minute. Arms have evolved to the point where a deranged individual
can hoard a surfeit of automatic weapons, making that one person a veritable
army.
And communications
used to be dependent on the mail, then the telegraph, the telephone, and now
electronic everything, marrying all methods of communication from the printed
word to video. The Internet has given
rise to threats that could not even be imagined by the framers of the
Constitution and the Fourth Amendment.
Maybe it is time
for a public debate on the issue, but the data mining being done by the
National Security Agency cannot be a surprise to anyone. Edward Snowden's so called whistle blowing merely
politicizes what most suspected.
If anyone asked us
the day after 9/11 whether the government should make use of private electronic
communications with the sole objective of preventing any such future event, we
would have merely said, where do we sign on?
How short everyone's memory is.
It is ironic that a liberal constitutional law professor -- Barack Obama
-- now, as President, is carrying forth the NSA program which had been condoned
by his predecessor.
The brave new
electronic world exponentially enhances the weapons of guerrilla warfare, the
preferred tactic of terrorist adversaries.
One does not fight this with the tactics of warfare when the
Constitution was written, soldiers standing in straight lines right out in the
open. Clandestine electronic
communications are fodder for equally clandestine data mining. So, let the "debate" begin in
Washington, but if it is anything like exchanges over the budget, it is liable
to do more harm than good, unless there can be some consensus on an oversight
mechanism that still preserves the intent of the program.
Tuesday,
December 8, 2015
It Can’t Happen
Here?
Unfortunately,
the horror in San Bernardino has fed into all of this, “legitimizing” such
dangerous rhetoric and escalating it to personal attacks on President Obama (who
now has low polling numbers about keeping America “safe,” the exact inverse of
what those numbers were after bin Laden was nailed) - and subsequent
accusations that any call for stronger gun control laws is merely politicizing
the San Bernardino tragedy.
But such calls
have gone on for years with fierce Republican and NRA opposition. I do not naively believe that better gun
control laws and enforcement would magically eliminate such tragedies,
especially in the short term. But I do
believe that the Second Amendment, which was written in the days of musket
rifles and flintlock pistols, needs serious updating.
At that time,
we needed an armed militia and also the founding fathers believed that an armed
citizenry would be deterrent to the rise of a despotic government. The world has changed since then, weapons of
war unimaginable to our forefathers, and, now, mostly in the hands of the
military and law enforcement. To make
some of the same weapons legitimately available to the citizenry no longer serves
the purpose of protecting us from a despotic government as the military will
always have superior weaponry (is an converted AR-15 adequate protection
against a tank?). The proliferation of automatic weapons just further endangers
us all, giving us a false sense of security by just having one in our closet.
No, this is a
country of laws and checks and balances and we have to depend on our
tried-and-true institutions as well as the much maligned (by Trump in
particular) fourth estate to keep our government transparent and trustworthy.
If some fringe element threatens us in our homes and public places, we need
better intelligence to prevent it and rapid response law enforcement to protect
us.
Fully automatic
weapons (ones that operate as a machine gun) need to be banned, and guns should
be registered just like a car, an equally dangerous thing. That means getting a license, passing a
rigorous background check and license renewals (a gun owner having to report if
it is sold, just like a car). Guns for
self defense, hunting and target practicing are understandable but how can one
argue that an automatic weapon is needed?
Certainly not for hunting (where is the sport in that?). Do we really want our neighbors to be totting
an automatic weapon citing Florida’s ambiguous “stand your ground” law as a
justification?
Will that keep
guns out of the hands of the “bad guys” as the Republicans like to call
them? No, but it’s a start and of course
the devil is in the details of how such gun control is administered. Senseless to get further into it here – I’m
merely expounding an opinion.
Friday, October
2, 2015
Carly Sidesteps
Switching gears
to one of the major issues of our times, gun control. I’ve written about this topic before and it
is sad that we make no progress in this area and now, still, another mass
slaughter, this one at the Umpqua Community College in Oregon. CNN now reports that the police have
identified thirteen (!) weapons connected with the murderer.
As President
Obama wearily declared in his news conference, these incidents have become
routine in this country and our response is routine: commiserate with the families and do
absolutely nothing to diminish the problem.
Thank you NRA and its obedient congressional cronies.
I’m no
Pollyanna when it comes to this subject.
People should have the right to have registered weapons for target
practice and hunting, and for self protection (with licensing akin to getting a
driver’s license, testing etc.), with stringent background checks before any
weapon could be bought. Assault weapons
should be banned. Would those steps
eliminate the problem? No. But it’s a start. On a macro basis, it is a cultural problem
(just look at popular culture which glorifies violence and guns), as well as
educational and income equality feeding the problem.
Saturday, April
26, 2014
Weekend Thoughts
Can you imagine the
effrontery of what Georgia's legislature euphemistically calls the "Safe
Carry Protection Act"? Just ask any
parent of a child who was at the Sandy Hook Elementary School slaughter.
Georgia
"Cracker" takes on a new meaning. Crack! Pow! Rat-tat-tat! To what extreme and at what cost of lives do
we take the interpretation of the Second Amendment? When the Second Amendment became part of the
Bill of Rights the reigning weapon was the Musket, accurate perhaps up to the
length of a football field, and if you were experienced, perhaps you could get
two shots off per minute. Compare that
to today's weapons. Is that what our
Founding Fathers meant, the right of every citizen to carry AK-47s which can
fire 600 rounds per minute with a maximum range of 30 football fields?
Georgia takes this
to another level. Bring your gun to your favorite bar, have a few drinks, and
shoot 'em up! Then, go to church with
your fellow gun-toting religious zealots and pray! And, bonus time, give a gun to your kid to
take to college!
Georgia now joins
twenty two other infamous states with some form of "stand your
ground" laws as opposed to eighteen states that have laws imposing "a
duty to retreat," seemingly a more civilized law that puts the burden on
the threatened individual to avoid deadly force where reasonable (like getting
the f**k outta there!), only resorting to deadly force where unavoidable, such
as being in one's home during an armed home invasion.
I've written about
this before, ad nausea. Here's but one of several on the subject that makes the
point. It just seems that in the wake
(sadly and certainly no pun intended) of the Newtown, CT tragedy, the NRA has simply
put state governments in its powerful lobby cross hairs (pun intended). Frankly, although I support the second
amendment for hunting and target practice, it's dispiriting that we can't have
stronger laws to outlaw automatic weapons and institute laws that mandate
registering weapons as we must register automobiles (which can be equally
lethal). It's a stain on our legislative
resolve (or lack of it to be precise).
Monday, January
20, 2014
"Existential
Illegitimacy"
There have been
twenty mass shootings since Obama became president and he is helpless to do
anything about it without the complete cooperation of Congress. After the shooting in Newton, Connecticut,
only a few miles from where we lived for twenty plus years, there was a ground
swell (verbal only) in Congress to do something to control the sale of certain
automatic weapons, but by the time the NRA got finished with their lobbying
campaign, that effort was AK47ed to death.
Explain that failure to the parents of the children slaughtered.
Thursday,
January 17, 2013
You Call That a
Gun?
Florida
airwaves are chock full of reports of surging gun sales and crowded local
shooting ranges before the sword of Damocles (Obama) comes swiftly down. Interestingly, or tellingly, it is the sales
of the AK47 type of military weapons that are selling most briskly and at
record prices, soldier citizens plunking down $1,000 or more for their favorite
assault weapon. Apparently, their
rationalization for needing a military weapon is, well, for their inevitable
confrontation with the US Military.
These particular stalwart supporters of the Constitution (a.k.a.
conspiracists) "know" of clandestine government plans to send troops
door-to-door to confiscate their booty.
The problem with that is if they are harboring AK47s, perhaps the
military might come knocking on their doors with a tank? Now that's a gun!
In a more
serious vein, it's about time after all the empty talk that the Second
Amendment to the United States Constitution is brought into the 21st
century. The framers of the Constitution
could never have envisioned what now constitutes the word "arms."
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Running Through the Jungle
That jungle is
here. The U S of A. The conservative mind would like us to believe that we'd
all be safer carrying a weapon (or at least, "feel" safer). When John
Fogerty wrote (and the Creedence Clearwater Revival recorded) his prophetic
1970's, Run Through the Jungle,
it was thought that, along with many of his other songs, the jungle he was
referring to was Vietnam. Wrong. It was his plea, still unanswered, that some
gun control sanity transpires -- here. The lyrics refer to 200 million guns --
then the population of the United States....
Run Through The Jungle
Whoa, thought it was a nightmare,
Lo, it's all so true,
They told me, "Don't go walking
slow
'Cause Devil's on the loose."
Better run through the jungle,
Better run through the jungle,
Better run through the jungle,
Woa, Don't look back to see.
Thought I heard a rumbling
Calling to
my name,
Two hundred million guns are loaded
Satan cries, "Take aim!"
Better run through the jungle,
Better run through the jungle,
Better run through the jungle,
Woa, Don't look back to see.
Over on the mountain
Thunder magic spoke,
"Let the people know my wisdom,
Fill the land with smoke."
Better run through the jungle,
Better run through the jungle,
Better run through the jungle,
Woa, Don't look back to see.
Now, only forty
years later, there are 300 million people who could be armed, locked and
loaded. Wouldn't you feel safer?
And toward that
end, in Florida we have "Stand Your Ground," Yeehaw!!!
With the tragic
killing of unarmed Trayvon Martin, by a "crime watch volunteer,"
George Zimmerman, Florida's "Stand Your Ground" provision has proven
to be the gun-slinging cowboy's best friend. This NRA supported measure says
"a person who is not engaged in an unlawful activity and who is attacked
in any other place where he or she has a right to be has no duty to retreat and
has the right to stand his or her ground and meet force with force, including
deadly force if he or she reasonably believes it is necessary to do so to
prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another or to prevent
the commission of a forcible felony." "Reasonably believes?"
Does a hooded black youth give cause to "reason?"
Life imitating
art? It conjures up the Bertolt Brecht play, The Exception and the Rule, a parable for these times, in
which a merchant hires a coolie to help him cross a desert to close an oil
deal, but near the end of the journey, when the exploited and abused coolie
offers his boss some water, the merchant mistakes the gesture for an attack and
shoots him dead. He is put on trial but acquitted as the court concludes the
merchant did not know the coolie meant no harm and therefore the killing was
pardonable. If the one with power
kills, he may do so merely out of fear. One has to be armed to have that
power and Brecht saw that as an issue in class warfare.
Let's escalate
this insanity further. Guns in classrooms. The Colorado Supreme Court recently
upheld a state law that allows residents to carry concealed weapons, finding
that the University of Colorado's campus gun ban violates the "law."
Colorado is not the only state with such a law and guns are not the only
"approved" concealed weapons. In some states such weapons
"may" include one or more of the following: Brass knuckles,
Slingshots, Martial arts weapons, Knives, Swords, Spears, Daggers, Clubs,
Electronic dart guns, Blackjacks, Sand bags, Razors. Sounds like a scene from West Side Story or Blackboard Jungle. Or something out
of Medieval "Fechtbuchs." Including "sand bags?" Ouch
Will we EVER learn?
