It felt strange, even for someone who has owned some kind of firearm for more than 50 years, to open the trunk of my car, take out an assortment of rifles, and openly walk through the parking lot with what any newspaper reporter would love to describe in lurid verse as an "arsenal" and including of course "weapons of war." Wars are wars after all, even those that ended 150 years ago. I was hardly the only one with an armful of expensive hardware of course, it being a gun show. There were acres of cars that the acres of "gun nutz" had arrived in, but if I had been expecting vintage Dodge Chargers with Confederate flags or jacked up trucks with nasty bumper stickers and layers of mud, I would have been disappointed. No Daisy Duke. I was parked between a Prius and a Cadillac. After having my relics examined by a nice chatty fallow to be sure they weren't loaded, to insert plastic zip ties to be sure they couldn't be loaded, I was advised not to take any less than $900 for one rifle. Welcome to gun prices. Welcome to the gun culture.
Lots of army surplus clothing, holsters, belts, boots -- even bulletproof vests on display. Booths from a local gun range offering senior discounts on Tuesdays: booths full of sporting goods and bow-hunting items, a booth with costumed civil war reenactors who kept me there a long time talking about my 1863 Tower carbine. Some of the gun culture, a large part of it, is history culture.
Tables and tables of new commercial ammunition, hand made cartridges, surplus ammunition which usually comes in boxes of 100, or 250 or 500 rounds and would having even one box delight those people who write howling headlines? A couple of hours at the range? Hell no, it's an arms cache suitable only for a mass murderer.
And of course there was a large, well staffed NRA booth with a bowl of Tootsie Rolls and piles of safety pamphlets. Maybe they were perverts and murderers and closet Nazis -- even the ladies -- but they didn't look it. Still I walked on. Well dressed businessmen, an off-duty cop I know, some guys in camo, some guys in Army uniform, a fellow Ham and pillar of the community Sunday School teacher type just there to buy a few boxes of ammunition for cheaper than Wal-Mart sells them. It's the South and everybody loves guns. Even your mama.
All in all, a nicer looking crowd than I see at the barber shop and some of the restaurants I frequent. I spent more time talking about history and historical weaponry and to people making sure I knew what my stuff was worth, than I spent conducting business and met several history buffs but not one snob and not one unfriendly person. No swastika tattoos, no white sheets, no one talking to himself. What can I say? I may do it again.
I sold most of what I brought and all to licensed firearms dealers who yes, despite what you hear, really do conduct background checks and boy, were my pockets bulging when I left. Did I mention that gun prices have soared and continue to soar?
I don't know, maybe it's like my experiences with the scary "biker Culture" that have had nothing whatever to do with the stereotypes we fling around. I've begun to suspect that there are so many gun cultures that don't resemble either the others or the stereotype as there are kinds of Liberals or Conservatives or Bikers or Bookworms or Bloggers. There might be a lesson about lumping people together, stereotyping people and making cheap shots here somewhere, but it's time for dinner and I'm part of the food culture too, doncha know.
Showing posts with label Guns. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Guns. Show all posts
Monday, July 28, 2014
Monday, April 14, 2014
God, Guns and Hitler
I have certain misgivings about hate crime laws, but we're reminded this morning -- the eve of Pesach or The Passover, and a week before Hitler's birthday, that people who belong to hate-based organizations and creeds, who post virulent hate messages and calls for extermination on-line, need their constitutional right to keep and bear arms infringed.
I feel quite protective of our guaranteed right to free speech and our right to think what we think, but speech that incites to violence, that creates a mortal danger to the public, is something else and that's been established for a long time. Frazier Glenn Miller is a founding member of the Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and the White Patriot Party. That's not a crime, more's the pity, nor is shouting "Heil Hitler" from the back of a police car, but perhaps we ought to consider making it a felony to belong to groups who advocate murder because as far as I know, it's illegal for felons to own firearms.
I know -- penalties and restrictions don't prevent criminals and especially psychopathic criminals from committing crimes, but there's something wrong with Mr. Miller or Mr. Cross as he often calls himself, to own weapons. There's something wrong if the targets of hate groups need to arm themselves or to hire armed guards or to go about in fear because we elevate and protect a right to be armed above the right to remain alive. We shouldn't have to wait for people like that to run amok before we do anything. Threatening violence against groups or individuals should be sufficient to disarm someone.
Lest one think that being a white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant is protection and a reason not to worry, Methodists were shot in this tragedy as well.
I feel quite protective of our guaranteed right to free speech and our right to think what we think, but speech that incites to violence, that creates a mortal danger to the public, is something else and that's been established for a long time. Frazier Glenn Miller is a founding member of the Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and the White Patriot Party. That's not a crime, more's the pity, nor is shouting "Heil Hitler" from the back of a police car, but perhaps we ought to consider making it a felony to belong to groups who advocate murder because as far as I know, it's illegal for felons to own firearms.
I know -- penalties and restrictions don't prevent criminals and especially psychopathic criminals from committing crimes, but there's something wrong with Mr. Miller or Mr. Cross as he often calls himself, to own weapons. There's something wrong if the targets of hate groups need to arm themselves or to hire armed guards or to go about in fear because we elevate and protect a right to be armed above the right to remain alive. We shouldn't have to wait for people like that to run amok before we do anything. Threatening violence against groups or individuals should be sufficient to disarm someone.
Lest one think that being a white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant is protection and a reason not to worry, Methodists were shot in this tragedy as well.
Wednesday, February 27, 2013
Can we talk?
We don't talk much about "going postal" any more. The preferred venue for demented folk who want to die in a blaze of glory and/or be the talk of the town for a week or so as payback for having been ignored or misunderstood or reviled is no longer the United States Post Office. Schools are now the place, or at least a popular place. Shock value is about as high as it gets and apparently killing kids is as easy as taking candy from them.
But it's certainly not exclusive to the US or the direct consequence of the 2nd amendment or the NRA. Norway, Great Britain and even Switzerland have recently been host to wild and often suicidal shooting sprees by demented individuals not connected to terrorist groups and as far as I know, none of those countries have guarantees of any right to keep and bear arms. Does the alleged "ease" of obtaining firearms or the right to obtain them play a part in the frequency of such insane actions? Has it more to do with the rates of fire of available firearms, the type of ammunition, the appearance of a gun, the materials it's made of? A great number of words have been spoken, shouted, screamed and written down about such questions and some of those words and related opinions have been false or deliberately misleading and the result of organized groups using public outrage as a political tool.
The Sandy Hook school shooting had, as it seems, something to do with some miserable tortured soul wanting to emulate Anders Breivik, the Norwegian nut who used explosives and firearms to kill 77 hapless young people and perhaps other similar killers. Perhaps Adam Lanza, had he not killed himself as well, would have been interested in today's workplace shooting near Luzern, Switzerland leaving, at last count, three dead and seven wounded. At least it would have been easier to top. Lanza never came close to Breivik's "score." I use the word score by the way, not because I'm cold and without feeling, but because I believe such monsters are that way and see all this as part of a gruesome game. It's game and a game played on TV screens as much as those ever popular "first person shooter" games played on X-boxes and computers.
Run Amok shootings are much more rare in Switzerland, a country with its own gun culture and high level of recreational shooters and low crime rates -- but still they happen and some obviously happen as some sort of grotesque competition, some sort of rage to go out as a part of some sort of bloody horror that I can't understand, nor do I have any qualifications as or the vocabulary of a psychologist. I think I can however, talk about the differences in the ways other countries react. Switzerland's liberal voters recently rejected tighter gun controls while American Liberals, for the most part have been so eager for more of any type that the inconsistencies and inaccuracies and falsehoods used to argue for them go unnoticed. Their political opposites are in a similar state of panic. Any legislation is the end of all freedom.
Great Britain banned handgun ownership in 1997 along with other firearms with short barrels -- and even some BB guns -- after only two rampage killings since WWII. Yet there was another in 2010 with thirteen dead and eleven injured. Firearms fatalities continued to increase until 2008 after which they began to decline as they have in the US. Anti-gun sentiment there exists to the degree that few police officers are permitted to carry guns. Yes, they have a lower gun homicide rate but then it always was lower and it seems hard to prove at this point that all that restrictive legislation has achieved more than to force the Olympic pistol shooting team to practice abroad. It remains a very popular sport in Switzerland.
Attributing different rates of gun crime to cultural and social conditions or to availability of mental health services in different countries isn't a popular or well tolerated subject in the Liberal community, at least in my experience. Far too much energy goes into the inflation of fear and we have for too many arguments for gun control that depend on calling Grandpa's Remington 700 deer rifle a "sniper rifle," a Ruger Mini 14 Ranch Rifle an "assault rifle" if you put a plastic stock on it -- full metal jacket bullets are "armor piercing" if they will penetrate body armor and hollow points for hunting become "cop killer ammunition." For years, the line of Glock pistols used by most police departments were described by anti-gun writers as plastic guns designed to be smuggled onto airplanes and those aren't the only lies and distortions that drove me away from their side.
Are we all at a higher risk of mad, rampaging lunatics mostly because we allow certain 100 year old technology or because we allow lunatics the same freedom as the sane and responsible? Would movie theaters, post offices and schools still be scenes of slaughter if we banned 10 round magazines, autoloading rifles, etc? Chris Kyle, the most lethal sniper in US history says even full auto weapons, already banned, aren't the weapon of choice if you want to kill a lot of people. It's hard, unfortunately, to question the dogmas of either side in our emotional climate and with wildly polarized propagandists shouting down discussion -- while blaming the other side for stifling discussion..
Is it really ever more dangerous to live in America? It's hard to substantiate the assertion that it is, as heinous as some spectacular crimes may be and as relentlessly as they are exploited by our ravenous for ratings day and night media. Mass killings by religious leaders, like David Koresh and Reverend Jones don't seem to generate talk of banning anything and many seek to explain them as the result of religious persecution by the government, yet anything pertaining to guns seems to bring out stock rhetoric that often seems canned and unrelated to facts. That sort of thing seems as American as a love of weapons. As American as sweeping problems under a legislative rug. As American as witch hunts, cover ups and made up minds. Can we talk? Sorry, this is America.
But it's certainly not exclusive to the US or the direct consequence of the 2nd amendment or the NRA. Norway, Great Britain and even Switzerland have recently been host to wild and often suicidal shooting sprees by demented individuals not connected to terrorist groups and as far as I know, none of those countries have guarantees of any right to keep and bear arms. Does the alleged "ease" of obtaining firearms or the right to obtain them play a part in the frequency of such insane actions? Has it more to do with the rates of fire of available firearms, the type of ammunition, the appearance of a gun, the materials it's made of? A great number of words have been spoken, shouted, screamed and written down about such questions and some of those words and related opinions have been false or deliberately misleading and the result of organized groups using public outrage as a political tool.
The Sandy Hook school shooting had, as it seems, something to do with some miserable tortured soul wanting to emulate Anders Breivik, the Norwegian nut who used explosives and firearms to kill 77 hapless young people and perhaps other similar killers. Perhaps Adam Lanza, had he not killed himself as well, would have been interested in today's workplace shooting near Luzern, Switzerland leaving, at last count, three dead and seven wounded. At least it would have been easier to top. Lanza never came close to Breivik's "score." I use the word score by the way, not because I'm cold and without feeling, but because I believe such monsters are that way and see all this as part of a gruesome game. It's game and a game played on TV screens as much as those ever popular "first person shooter" games played on X-boxes and computers.
Run Amok shootings are much more rare in Switzerland, a country with its own gun culture and high level of recreational shooters and low crime rates -- but still they happen and some obviously happen as some sort of grotesque competition, some sort of rage to go out as a part of some sort of bloody horror that I can't understand, nor do I have any qualifications as or the vocabulary of a psychologist. I think I can however, talk about the differences in the ways other countries react. Switzerland's liberal voters recently rejected tighter gun controls while American Liberals, for the most part have been so eager for more of any type that the inconsistencies and inaccuracies and falsehoods used to argue for them go unnoticed. Their political opposites are in a similar state of panic. Any legislation is the end of all freedom.
Great Britain banned handgun ownership in 1997 along with other firearms with short barrels -- and even some BB guns -- after only two rampage killings since WWII. Yet there was another in 2010 with thirteen dead and eleven injured. Firearms fatalities continued to increase until 2008 after which they began to decline as they have in the US. Anti-gun sentiment there exists to the degree that few police officers are permitted to carry guns. Yes, they have a lower gun homicide rate but then it always was lower and it seems hard to prove at this point that all that restrictive legislation has achieved more than to force the Olympic pistol shooting team to practice abroad. It remains a very popular sport in Switzerland.
Attributing different rates of gun crime to cultural and social conditions or to availability of mental health services in different countries isn't a popular or well tolerated subject in the Liberal community, at least in my experience. Far too much energy goes into the inflation of fear and we have for too many arguments for gun control that depend on calling Grandpa's Remington 700 deer rifle a "sniper rifle," a Ruger Mini 14 Ranch Rifle an "assault rifle" if you put a plastic stock on it -- full metal jacket bullets are "armor piercing" if they will penetrate body armor and hollow points for hunting become "cop killer ammunition." For years, the line of Glock pistols used by most police departments were described by anti-gun writers as plastic guns designed to be smuggled onto airplanes and those aren't the only lies and distortions that drove me away from their side.
Are we all at a higher risk of mad, rampaging lunatics mostly because we allow certain 100 year old technology or because we allow lunatics the same freedom as the sane and responsible? Would movie theaters, post offices and schools still be scenes of slaughter if we banned 10 round magazines, autoloading rifles, etc? Chris Kyle, the most lethal sniper in US history says even full auto weapons, already banned, aren't the weapon of choice if you want to kill a lot of people. It's hard, unfortunately, to question the dogmas of either side in our emotional climate and with wildly polarized propagandists shouting down discussion -- while blaming the other side for stifling discussion..
Is it really ever more dangerous to live in America? It's hard to substantiate the assertion that it is, as heinous as some spectacular crimes may be and as relentlessly as they are exploited by our ravenous for ratings day and night media. Mass killings by religious leaders, like David Koresh and Reverend Jones don't seem to generate talk of banning anything and many seek to explain them as the result of religious persecution by the government, yet anything pertaining to guns seems to bring out stock rhetoric that often seems canned and unrelated to facts. That sort of thing seems as American as a love of weapons. As American as sweeping problems under a legislative rug. As American as witch hunts, cover ups and made up minds. Can we talk? Sorry, this is America.
Saturday, December 29, 2012
George Bush and the NRA
". . . and forgetting long-passed mischiefs, we mercifully preserve their bones and piss not on their ashes."
-Thomas Browne-
_______________
I have to admit that there was a time I considered joining the NRA -- a couple of times actually. The first was when I heard that Michael Moore belonged to it and I thought that membership would mean that my frequent maledictions might find their way to someones desk, and the second was when I found that the one local rifle range that allowed black powder muzzle-loaders like my flintlock Kentucky long rifle required NRA membership. In both instances my better senses took over and I decided it wasn't worth it.
I understand that following Wayne LaPierre's comments after the Sandy Hook massacre there has been a rash of resignations from the rank and file membership and a recent Snopes e-mail and a number of blog articles have reminded me of the 1995 resignation from the NRA of George H.W. Bush. The President wrote an open letter to the NRA after the group's refusal to disassociate itself from the then NRA spokesman LaPierre who gloated over the deaths of the "Nazi's" as he called the federal officials slaughtered in Oklahoma City.
TREASON: the offense of attempting by
overt acts to overthrow the government of the state to which the
offender owes allegiance or to kill or personally injure the sovereign
or the sovereign's family.
I didn't vote for Bush. I've condemned him vehemently for his positions and offensive statements. Although to compare GHWB to his 'George-without-the-H' scion is to make the old man look like George Washington in retrospect, I was enraged when he told us that he couldn't see how an atheist could be a citizen, and when he vetoed the Brady Bill, I wrote him an unpleasant letter.
These days, I have no faith that the Brady three day waiting period measure had any salubrious effect, and although I'm still not a real fan, I have to give him credit for some things -- amongst which is his resignation letter. Responding to Mr. LaPierre's vicious characterization of some of the murdered Federal Officers he had know personally as:
"jack booted thugs . . . wearing Nazi bucket helmets and black storm trooper uniforms” wanting to “attack law abiding citizens,” the former president and life member of the NRA condemned LaPierre's words as a "vicious slander on good people."
And slander it was, a thundering manifesto of obvious disregard for the 19 children murdered by a mad bomber or bombers and of utter and vicious contempt for the lawful government of the United States of America and a tacit approval of armed insurrection. Now what is the definition of treason again? Does anyone still see that loathsome miscreant as the defender of the Constitution or the advocate for lawful and peaceful gun owners? I don't even want to know the answer.
Bush, "a gun owner and an avid hunter." wrote :
"Over the years I have agreed with most of N.R.A.’s objectives, particularly your educational and training efforts, and your fundamental stance in favor of owning guns. However, your broadside against Federal agents deeply offends my own sense of decency and honor; and it offends my concept of service to country. It indirectly slanders a wide array of government law enforcement officials, who are out there, day and night, laying their lives on the line for all of us."
For an organization heavily funded by those seeking to make the government the tool of plutocrats, an organization willing to ignore the murders of 168 people in it's quest to de-legitimize the legitimate government and its institutions and interfere with enforcement of its laws to claim to be upholding anything but violence and lawlessness is foul and disgusting and worthy of the same kind of contempt as the Klan or the Aryan Nation. They are not a gun owner's lobby, they are a Hate Group, an enemy of freedom promoting the use of arms to oppose and defy a democratically elected government.
George H. W. Bush is an old man in failing health I've never really liked, but for that one act I choose to remember him. And to Mr. Lapierre: I tell thee churlish beast: A ministering angel
shall he be when thou liest howling.
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Much ado
Appearances can be deceiving. I get e-mails with pictures of huge crowds rallying against Obama because only the far left liberal cringe loonies would think Obama had any support in "forcing his ideas down our throats." All the conversations I overhear, all the bumper stickers I see and all the viral e-mails I get support the idea that nobody likes Obama, everyone is drinking the tea and that 2012 will be the "End of an Error."
But Obama's ratings are on the way up, they've been no worse than Reagan's. Sarah Palin's are on the way down and at this point more people have favorable opinions of Socialism, than of the Tea Party.
Where was the "there are no legitimate uses for guns" crowd when a bomb was found at an MLK parade Monday? There are sure as hell no legitimate uses for IEDs, so why is there no attempt to make them go away by "tougher" ' assault bomb ban' legislation? Why aren't we terrified of bombs now? In fact there isn't even increased support for more gun bans - just a lot of sound and fury.
I keep reading that since this latest assassination, America is for "stricter gun control" That's deceptive too, since what the vast majority is in favor of isn't what you'd think from those articles and blogs. The country is hugely in favor of the second amendment, doesn't want any more bans on types of weapons and accessories. What they do want - nearly unanimously - is a massive effort to improve the background check system to keep certain people away from firearms says The Huffington Post. According to the Christian Science Monitor, the blogs may be blaring, the activists may be active, but there really isn't a renewed support for more of the same old "gun control."
You know, it's isn't only Fox News making things seem other than they are.
But Obama's ratings are on the way up, they've been no worse than Reagan's. Sarah Palin's are on the way down and at this point more people have favorable opinions of Socialism, than of the Tea Party.
Where was the "there are no legitimate uses for guns" crowd when a bomb was found at an MLK parade Monday? There are sure as hell no legitimate uses for IEDs, so why is there no attempt to make them go away by "tougher" ' assault bomb ban' legislation? Why aren't we terrified of bombs now? In fact there isn't even increased support for more gun bans - just a lot of sound and fury.
I keep reading that since this latest assassination, America is for "stricter gun control" That's deceptive too, since what the vast majority is in favor of isn't what you'd think from those articles and blogs. The country is hugely in favor of the second amendment, doesn't want any more bans on types of weapons and accessories. What they do want - nearly unanimously - is a massive effort to improve the background check system to keep certain people away from firearms says The Huffington Post. According to the Christian Science Monitor, the blogs may be blaring, the activists may be active, but there really isn't a renewed support for more of the same old "gun control."
You know, it's isn't only Fox News making things seem other than they are.
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Oh shit
Not again.
Two students were shot at a Los Angeles High School today because some idiot put a cocked and locked pistol in his backpack and it went off when he dropped his pack on a table. One could call it an accident, but you'd at least have to put the word in italics.
There's no resemblance to the Tucson shooting, although the student obviously illegally possessed the gun, illegally concealed it and illegally brought it into a school, he wasn't out to shoot anyone at that particular moment. I'll bet there will be more calls to make it even more illegal, but more than likely he was a gang member, so illegality isn't a deterrent any more than it is to a psychotic. It may have earned him some status in fact.
It may surprise some people, but we have a maze of gun control laws and they aren't doing a good enough job with this kind of crime and these kinds of criminals: gang members, psychotics and sociopaths - a tiny but deadly element.
But without knowing just how the kid got the gun, I can only speculate about what went wrong and can't talk about what to do, other than to do a better job with the metal detectors. There's a gun show loophole. There are hard to control private transfers, some legal, some not and some guns are stolen. Even though nothing short of a 24 hour curfew and a police state with no civil rights will stop such crimes, it's time we stopped calling for, stop being comfortable with more and more "gun control" bills based on twisted descriptions, laden with straw arguments and riddled with loopholes. It's time for -- no, please don't laugh - some bi-partisan and rational reconsideration.
It's also time to remember that in a huge country, with a growing population, crime can be on the decline and still appear to be on the rise.
Two students were shot at a Los Angeles High School today because some idiot put a cocked and locked pistol in his backpack and it went off when he dropped his pack on a table. One could call it an accident, but you'd at least have to put the word in italics.
There's no resemblance to the Tucson shooting, although the student obviously illegally possessed the gun, illegally concealed it and illegally brought it into a school, he wasn't out to shoot anyone at that particular moment. I'll bet there will be more calls to make it even more illegal, but more than likely he was a gang member, so illegality isn't a deterrent any more than it is to a psychotic. It may have earned him some status in fact.
It may surprise some people, but we have a maze of gun control laws and they aren't doing a good enough job with this kind of crime and these kinds of criminals: gang members, psychotics and sociopaths - a tiny but deadly element.
But without knowing just how the kid got the gun, I can only speculate about what went wrong and can't talk about what to do, other than to do a better job with the metal detectors. There's a gun show loophole. There are hard to control private transfers, some legal, some not and some guns are stolen. Even though nothing short of a 24 hour curfew and a police state with no civil rights will stop such crimes, it's time we stopped calling for, stop being comfortable with more and more "gun control" bills based on twisted descriptions, laden with straw arguments and riddled with loopholes. It's time for -- no, please don't laugh - some bi-partisan and rational reconsideration.
It's also time to remember that in a huge country, with a growing population, crime can be on the decline and still appear to be on the rise.
Friday, January 14, 2011
What we have here is a failure to communicate
It's an old joke. Maybe you've heard it, maybe I told it to you. I am getting old and I do repeat myself -- but anyway: this guy goes to the psychiatrist who gives him a Rorschach test. Every ink blot he looks at makes him think of sex. "That's two dogs going at it" he says. "That's three people and a chicken having sex, that's a vulva. . ." and on and on.
"I suspect you may have a problem," says the shrink.
"Hey, wait a minute, you're the pervert showing me the dirty pictures!"
A couple of years ago, a relative of my mother's was here to dinner along with my father. For years I have had my parents' old 20 gauge Remington 870 sitting unused in a closet. Back in the day they had had a large piece of farm property in Northwest Illinois and sometimes, of an afternoon, they would use it to shoot clay pigeons. Trap shooting isn't my thing and it hasn't been fired in 30 years, so "would you like me to sell it?" I asked dad. "It may be worth 5 or 6 hundred."
My aunt's eyes got wide. "Well you can't really sell it can you? Someone will buy it and use it to kill someone." Being more diplomatic and patient in person than I am here, I didn't offer the explanation that it would certainly be bought by someone who wished to use it for what it was designed for - trap shooting and that the odds of her being killed in a car accident on the way home were hugely greater. But it does no good to argue, not knowing is the best defense of one's prejudices and you can't trust anyone who tries to overcome them. They might buy a gun and kill you.
I still smile when thinking of visiting relatives, particularly young ones, cringing and looking for the exits when I mention a chain saw ( I have two) or a machete (I have several - I live in the jungle.) They're WEAPONS! Never mind that I've carried a scout knife or Swiss Army knife since I was 10 and feel helpless without such a basic tool. Of course it's conceivable that I could cut my finger with it and after all it's a weapon and someone could grab it and kill me. I don't usually dare mention that I collect them and own over a hundred - proof of criminal intent rather than an addiction to nostalgia, no doubt, for those whose lives are a flight to safety in which your company is required.
Is it me, showing them murder weapons and making them afraid, or is the problem theirs - the terror of inanimate objects? I doubt there will ever be agreement. There's a gulf, a gap of generation and place and circumstance and culture, and it's getting wider and harder to see across as time goes on. It's responsible for more discord than we credit it with. Neither side of the valley of the shadow will listen to the other without imposing shibboleths.
I once endured a debate between an automotive engineer and some safety activist. It never really turned into a debate because the lady in question kept repeating, "but you agree that the most important thing is how a car does in a crash, right?" Her opponent had a different set of priorities. I mention it because it's no different than any of our political discussions, and of course, all our discussions are political.
The weather in America is political and so any discussion of firearms demands that one side admit that we need more gun control while the other needs to admit we either already have a sufficiency or better yet, even a little is too much.
When I was very young and began to be involved with Scouting and the lure of the woods, it was not only considered normal but essential that a young boy have some training with small caliber firearms. Magazines like Open Road and Boy's life always had ads for BB guns, hunting knives and .22 caliber 'boy's' rifles. Like archery, like learning survival skills, it built confidence, concentration and was a tie with a disappearing past. Maybe good preparation for the military as well. Safety through training and knowledge and preparation was the idea, but that was then.
I grew up reading Stewart Edward White and Dan Beard; Teddy and Kermit Roosevelt -- Earnest Hemingway, James Fenimore Cooper. Men who had skill with and knowledge of firearms. I read books on the outdoor life and woodcraft by the mysterious "Deep River Jim" and countless others. I learned to shoot and handle a rifle safely at age 11 in summer camp in the Michigan woods. I still have 20 acres on an island in Michigan where neighbors are few, far away and Ojibway and you hear coyotes at night and you feel better knowing you can fire a few times without reloading, even though odds are you'll never have to. I still remember.
Old men live in a world of memories. Old men like to remember. Today, if you show me an image of a classic Stevens Favorite rifle I think of campfires and log cabins and fishing reels; cedar and canvas canoes, that old Sears Roebuck bolt action .22 I carried down the Flambeau wrapped in canvas. day-long walks through the wooded hills along the Galena river with my flintlock rifle, thinking of Daniel Boone. I smell autumn smoke, hear trout streams; the simple pleasure of knocking over tin cans at a hundred yards.
Show that 'boy's rifle' to any number of people and their thoughts will turn to murder, fear, danger, suspicion, distrust, demands that scary things be taken away and people locked up. Is that my fault for showing them scary things and am I the one with the problems? Sure, there is a paranoid right that is terrified of the 'Liberal' Anti-Santa Obaminator going up the chimney with the family AK, but it's no less delusional than insisting I'm really likely to spontaneously transmogrify into Charles Manson the second and so can't be trusted with that extra box of ammunition or that .22 Ruger target pistol with that 10 round magazine (murderer's special, no doubt.)
The Chicago Tribune used, every autumn for a hundred years, to reprint a nostalgic page about an old man and his grandson looking at hayricks at sunset and dreaming of teepees and campfires and things no longer there. They stopped a few years ago, since such things don't mean anything to the kind of people who read the paper any more and of course it used the word Indian which is offensive according to people who are not Indians and burning leaves in autumn is dangerous and produces pollution and the grandfather is smoking tobacco -- and so best to turn on the iPod and move on in perfect safety toward outbrave, new, safe and odorless world.
"I suspect you may have a problem," says the shrink.
"Hey, wait a minute, you're the pervert showing me the dirty pictures!"
A couple of years ago, a relative of my mother's was here to dinner along with my father. For years I have had my parents' old 20 gauge Remington 870 sitting unused in a closet. Back in the day they had had a large piece of farm property in Northwest Illinois and sometimes, of an afternoon, they would use it to shoot clay pigeons. Trap shooting isn't my thing and it hasn't been fired in 30 years, so "would you like me to sell it?" I asked dad. "It may be worth 5 or 6 hundred."
My aunt's eyes got wide. "Well you can't really sell it can you? Someone will buy it and use it to kill someone." Being more diplomatic and patient in person than I am here, I didn't offer the explanation that it would certainly be bought by someone who wished to use it for what it was designed for - trap shooting and that the odds of her being killed in a car accident on the way home were hugely greater. But it does no good to argue, not knowing is the best defense of one's prejudices and you can't trust anyone who tries to overcome them. They might buy a gun and kill you.
I still smile when thinking of visiting relatives, particularly young ones, cringing and looking for the exits when I mention a chain saw ( I have two) or a machete (I have several - I live in the jungle.) They're WEAPONS! Never mind that I've carried a scout knife or Swiss Army knife since I was 10 and feel helpless without such a basic tool. Of course it's conceivable that I could cut my finger with it and after all it's a weapon and someone could grab it and kill me. I don't usually dare mention that I collect them and own over a hundred - proof of criminal intent rather than an addiction to nostalgia, no doubt, for those whose lives are a flight to safety in which your company is required.
Is it me, showing them murder weapons and making them afraid, or is the problem theirs - the terror of inanimate objects? I doubt there will ever be agreement. There's a gulf, a gap of generation and place and circumstance and culture, and it's getting wider and harder to see across as time goes on. It's responsible for more discord than we credit it with. Neither side of the valley of the shadow will listen to the other without imposing shibboleths.
I once endured a debate between an automotive engineer and some safety activist. It never really turned into a debate because the lady in question kept repeating, "but you agree that the most important thing is how a car does in a crash, right?" Her opponent had a different set of priorities. I mention it because it's no different than any of our political discussions, and of course, all our discussions are political.
The weather in America is political and so any discussion of firearms demands that one side admit that we need more gun control while the other needs to admit we either already have a sufficiency or better yet, even a little is too much.
When I was very young and began to be involved with Scouting and the lure of the woods, it was not only considered normal but essential that a young boy have some training with small caliber firearms. Magazines like Open Road and Boy's life always had ads for BB guns, hunting knives and .22 caliber 'boy's' rifles. Like archery, like learning survival skills, it built confidence, concentration and was a tie with a disappearing past. Maybe good preparation for the military as well. Safety through training and knowledge and preparation was the idea, but that was then.
I grew up reading Stewart Edward White and Dan Beard; Teddy and Kermit Roosevelt -- Earnest Hemingway, James Fenimore Cooper. Men who had skill with and knowledge of firearms. I read books on the outdoor life and woodcraft by the mysterious "Deep River Jim" and countless others. I learned to shoot and handle a rifle safely at age 11 in summer camp in the Michigan woods. I still have 20 acres on an island in Michigan where neighbors are few, far away and Ojibway and you hear coyotes at night and you feel better knowing you can fire a few times without reloading, even though odds are you'll never have to. I still remember.
Old men live in a world of memories. Old men like to remember. Today, if you show me an image of a classic Stevens Favorite rifle I think of campfires and log cabins and fishing reels; cedar and canvas canoes, that old Sears Roebuck bolt action .22 I carried down the Flambeau wrapped in canvas. day-long walks through the wooded hills along the Galena river with my flintlock rifle, thinking of Daniel Boone. I smell autumn smoke, hear trout streams; the simple pleasure of knocking over tin cans at a hundred yards.
Show that 'boy's rifle' to any number of people and their thoughts will turn to murder, fear, danger, suspicion, distrust, demands that scary things be taken away and people locked up. Is that my fault for showing them scary things and am I the one with the problems? Sure, there is a paranoid right that is terrified of the 'Liberal' Anti-Santa Obaminator going up the chimney with the family AK, but it's no less delusional than insisting I'm really likely to spontaneously transmogrify into Charles Manson the second and so can't be trusted with that extra box of ammunition or that .22 Ruger target pistol with that 10 round magazine (murderer's special, no doubt.)
The Chicago Tribune used, every autumn for a hundred years, to reprint a nostalgic page about an old man and his grandson looking at hayricks at sunset and dreaming of teepees and campfires and things no longer there. They stopped a few years ago, since such things don't mean anything to the kind of people who read the paper any more and of course it used the word Indian which is offensive according to people who are not Indians and burning leaves in autumn is dangerous and produces pollution and the grandfather is smoking tobacco -- and so best to turn on the iPod and move on in perfect safety toward out
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
The Liberals did it, the Liberals did it!
The reaction was swift and predictable. Trolls, whose abusive name calling I won't indulge by posting have assured me that the Arizona shooting was the work of a "Liberal" like me although a man obsessed with returning to the gold standard and pretty much toeing the Tea Party line sounds pretty conservative although I'm the first to say those words are less meaningful as descriptive words than they are as tribal markers. Enraged paranoid schizophrenic who was provided a target by irresponsible political rhetoric? But that won't do, this is a game for two parties, not for reasonable people.
Fox, without of course admitting any culpability or telling it's viewers that they were
doing it, has demanded it's talking heads tone down the rodeo of rage. Sarah Palin redacted the hell out of her web site and that picture of smiling Beck pointing two pistols at the camera suddenly disappeared from view so that they can say who me?
I don't expect any public self-examination and I do expect the hunt for false equivalence to escalate on the Republican side along with the effort to portray the shooter as being outside the ring of righteous wrath, around which their circus tent is pitched. I'm sure that soon enough, Michelle Bachmann's desire to have people "armed and dangerous" so that they can "fight back" will be cleansed of inherent irresponsibility and any trace of inappropriateness, but I'm not sure the idiot rage can be stopped at this point even if God raptures up the entire Fox staff and Bachmann loses the power of speech. (please, God?)
The hoplophobes, the safety nuts who would dearly like and fatuously think they can legislate away all they are afraid of, (and that's lots of things) from cars that go faster than a Model T to McDonalds Happy Meals are pushing
more gun control and usually without any knowledge of guns or how they're already controlled. There's a great deal of hoopla about "extended magazines" from those who call them clips and confuse cartridges with bullets.
Hey, that a handful of Saudis and Egyptians could hijack a plane because reinforcing the cockpit doors was an unnecessary government regulation is scarier, but that's just me. I still don't want to make all sharp things illegal. That Tim McVeigh and accomplices were able to buy fertilizer and fuel oil and rent a truck was more deadly. Where's the Mothers Against Ammonium Nitrate movement? What's to stop me from buying some and going spontaneously insane?
Frankly I'm more spinally shivered that people drive drunk while talking on the phone and smoking cigarettes at 40 over the limit in 7500 pound vehicles with bumpers at the height of my face. It's a clear and present danger. I'm in danger from people who run jet skis through packed anchorages at 60mph and towing their kids behind on inner tubes more than from madmen with guns in a country where violent crime has been declining for decades. If I go 6 miles southwest of here, I'm in more danger from alligators and wild hogs than from any man sane or otherwise. But even if we do ban everything that has the potential for mayhem -- like alcohol or drugs or 1200 horsepower speed boats; kitchen knives and chain saws, most of us are smart enough to know it won't solve the problem. Most of us.
The problem is crazy violent people. Instead of providing care and treatment, we protect their freedom to roam about, soak up the Fox fantasies about overthrowing the government with violence until they flip and buy a gun or drive the wrong way down the interstate -- or fly a plane into an IRS office.
Freedom isn't safe. I wish I could make those words flash like a neon sign and I wish the Democrats would not so quickly and obliviously shoot themselves in the foot by making this about more ineffective gun control. That's not because I like them so much. It's because what I want is something between the "we can't trust you to be responsible" and the "why should I have any responsibility for anything" attitudes.
Fox, without of course admitting any culpability or telling it's viewers that they were
doing it, has demanded it's talking heads tone down the rodeo of rage. Sarah Palin redacted the hell out of her web site and that picture of smiling Beck pointing two pistols at the camera suddenly disappeared from view so that they can say who me?I don't expect any public self-examination and I do expect the hunt for false equivalence to escalate on the Republican side along with the effort to portray the shooter as being outside the ring of righteous wrath, around which their circus tent is pitched. I'm sure that soon enough, Michelle Bachmann's desire to have people "armed and dangerous" so that they can "fight back" will be cleansed of inherent irresponsibility and any trace of inappropriateness, but I'm not sure the idiot rage can be stopped at this point even if God raptures up the entire Fox staff and Bachmann loses the power of speech. (please, God?)
The hoplophobes, the safety nuts who would dearly like and fatuously think they can legislate away all they are afraid of, (and that's lots of things) from cars that go faster than a Model T to McDonalds Happy Meals are pushing
more gun control and usually without any knowledge of guns or how they're already controlled. There's a great deal of hoopla about "extended magazines" from those who call them clips and confuse cartridges with bullets."Why would anyone want one?"is the loaded question as though they weren't the choice of many yacht owners who find themselves in an updated and unwanted episode of Pirates of the Caribbean - and many of my friends have been. It's either that or buy an Uzi at twice the price. They used to be banned! it's said, and that's true - or sort of true since they weren't really taken off the marked by that ban. With a supply of tens of millions of units, banned weapons and accessories actually saw a boost in sales of "pre-ban" items, but that remains news to those who really are so far out of the great loop of reality they think a semi-automatic rifle is far more dangerous when it has a plastic military stock instead of a nice walnut one. No military in the world uses what we're told is an "assault rifle" and of course the famous ban didn't actually ban these civilian weapons -- but who reads? Who needs to when we have those freeze dried, microwaveable TV Dinner opinions available? Solidarity, on both sides of the mainstream, is too much fun to risk and emoting is the American pass-time, of course. But I digress.
writes one website Jeremiah. How could we have made that illegal without making it illegal for millions and millions and millions of people who like to shoot targets, clay pigeons or real pigeons? How could we make it impossible when all our efforts to make things go away by outlawing them have failed and made the alleged problem worse? Are Democrats all about not trusting the citizenry and imposing prior restraints without probable cause? It's too easy for their opposition to make that case and apparently it's too hard for Democrats to recognize the contradiction or that they're equally the party of fear as the party that obsesses about taking away guns and imposing Sharia law. In fact this incident could be a gain for Republicans who have used the fear of more gun bans to make Democrats into depraved authoritarian bogeymen.
"That Jared Loughner was legally able to obtain the gun and ammo that he used to attempt an assassination of a member of Congress, slay a federal judge, and kill others should send a shiver down the collective spine of this nation."
Hey, that a handful of Saudis and Egyptians could hijack a plane because reinforcing the cockpit doors was an unnecessary government regulation is scarier, but that's just me. I still don't want to make all sharp things illegal. That Tim McVeigh and accomplices were able to buy fertilizer and fuel oil and rent a truck was more deadly. Where's the Mothers Against Ammonium Nitrate movement? What's to stop me from buying some and going spontaneously insane?
Frankly I'm more spinally shivered that people drive drunk while talking on the phone and smoking cigarettes at 40 over the limit in 7500 pound vehicles with bumpers at the height of my face. It's a clear and present danger. I'm in danger from people who run jet skis through packed anchorages at 60mph and towing their kids behind on inner tubes more than from madmen with guns in a country where violent crime has been declining for decades. If I go 6 miles southwest of here, I'm in more danger from alligators and wild hogs than from any man sane or otherwise. But even if we do ban everything that has the potential for mayhem -- like alcohol or drugs or 1200 horsepower speed boats; kitchen knives and chain saws, most of us are smart enough to know it won't solve the problem. Most of us.
The problem is crazy violent people. Instead of providing care and treatment, we protect their freedom to roam about, soak up the Fox fantasies about overthrowing the government with violence until they flip and buy a gun or drive the wrong way down the interstate -- or fly a plane into an IRS office.
Freedom isn't safe. I wish I could make those words flash like a neon sign and I wish the Democrats would not so quickly and obliviously shoot themselves in the foot by making this about more ineffective gun control. That's not because I like them so much. It's because what I want is something between the "we can't trust you to be responsible" and the "why should I have any responsibility for anything" attitudes.
Sunday, January 09, 2011
6 dead in Tucson
Went out to dinner last night -- a little tiki hut place on the Fort Pierce inlet -- and everybody was glued to the TV wondering if the Saints could pull off an upset. A loud place but not a word anywhere about the blood still waiting to be cleaned up in Tucson. Not a word.
It's all been so predictable that it feels hardly worth posting about it. We're already listening to the "rush to judgment" rhetoric because after all, the guy could be a lone nut, whether or not that mysterious accomplice is apprehended. So why call it political at all? Maybe the guy just didn't like blonds or children or supermarket crowds. So why blame the Republicans for their daily "kill the traitors" passion play. I mean it was all protected speech anyway. (damn good thing we don't have hate speech laws like the Socialists.)
I mean all that hoopla about how it was the government who killed those people in Waco, not the messianic impostor / child molester and none of that rhetoric had anything to do with Tim McVeigh and associates murdering 168 people in the Murrah building. Hell no, it was the fertilizer that blew up the building and fertilizer control was the real issue, not rebel militias and hate spewing mass media.
The guy who murdered McKinley was all hopped up on Emma Goldman's anarchistic bombast. She told us that he was "president of the money kings and trust magnates." She told us that Czolgosz was a modern day Brutus, killer of tyrants ( sound familiar?) but it's better to blame the Ivor Johnson company. Hey, you don't grind the axe you wish you had, you grind the one you brought.
The protected speech of Taft supporters that spurred the certified nutjob Schrank to shoot the "tyrant" Teddy Roosevelt? Not their fault. We already know about the Tyrant Lincoln. But hey, Obama was a "tyrant" to reform health care, even just a little. and as the stateswoman Michelle Bachmann says, we have to be "armed and dangerous" because that tyrant is the most corrupt president in history. Armed and dangerous. Don't retreat, reload. Next time the guns will be loaded. Here they are - the ones with the cross hairs on them -- take a stand, take them back, but it's not our damned fault that someone was nuts enough to do what we told them to do!
My God, why hast thou forsaken me?
And I mean, why mention that we find it far too Stalinesque to provide mental health services and mandatory commitment to people who are basically only shirkers and malingerers? This just proves they don't deserve it! Besides if we can judge people insane, dangerous and incompetent we might have to enforce those laws that keep guns from them and that would be tyranny. You know what we do to tyrants, right?
And of course we need to make a quarter billion firearms disappear by waving more magic legislation because 60 years of ever tightening regulation has done so much good and never mind that it would take more door kickings and home invasions without probable cause than Hitler ever envisioned to accomplish such a Herculean task. Let's go after box cutters and bottles of mouthwash and shampoo and let's ban mosques so no one can attack us. Let's do like we do with marijuana: just trot out the old rhetoric and blame the same old suspects and keep on doing what doesn't work. Pull the string on the America doll and hear that old scratchy and fatuous voice: Ban, ban, ban, ban, ban and let's not be namby-pamby socialists and discuss the causes of things.
No, we have no proof that the shooter was motivated by the vicious and endless call to violence, so why mention all those Ann Coulter references to killing congressmen and judges? ask the Republican first responders. Want to stop people from murdering doctors? Why take away the chemicals you can make explosives with and take away nails and glass and batteries and canvas backpacks and it will stop, right? Don't blame the "abortion is murder" profiteers. Don't blame biblical gay bashers, blame pick-up trucks. Truks drag gay teens to death, not bigots.
And after all, some liberal somewhere must once have said something we can twist into a false equivalence. I remember one minor league academic who claimed that "heads should roll at Newscorp" was just such a call for ritual murder by this liberal, commie, socialist, sociopath. I guess it's all been my fault all along.
No, all that mess in Africa would never have happened if we banned machetes in Rwanda and that's what they should have done. Never mind the incessant voices chanting "kill the Tutsi cockroaches." Take away the sharp objects and say goodbye to murderous intent. We'll all live in peace.
It's nobodies fault, really, now let's get a good night's sleep and get back to talking about the Saints-Seahawks game last night. A sad night for N'awlins.
It's all been so predictable that it feels hardly worth posting about it. We're already listening to the "rush to judgment" rhetoric because after all, the guy could be a lone nut, whether or not that mysterious accomplice is apprehended. So why call it political at all? Maybe the guy just didn't like blonds or children or supermarket crowds. So why blame the Republicans for their daily "kill the traitors" passion play. I mean it was all protected speech anyway. (damn good thing we don't have hate speech laws like the Socialists.)
I mean all that hoopla about how it was the government who killed those people in Waco, not the messianic impostor / child molester and none of that rhetoric had anything to do with Tim McVeigh and associates murdering 168 people in the Murrah building. Hell no, it was the fertilizer that blew up the building and fertilizer control was the real issue, not rebel militias and hate spewing mass media.
The guy who murdered McKinley was all hopped up on Emma Goldman's anarchistic bombast. She told us that he was "president of the money kings and trust magnates." She told us that Czolgosz was a modern day Brutus, killer of tyrants ( sound familiar?) but it's better to blame the Ivor Johnson company. Hey, you don't grind the axe you wish you had, you grind the one you brought.
The protected speech of Taft supporters that spurred the certified nutjob Schrank to shoot the "tyrant" Teddy Roosevelt? Not their fault. We already know about the Tyrant Lincoln. But hey, Obama was a "tyrant" to reform health care, even just a little. and as the stateswoman Michelle Bachmann says, we have to be "armed and dangerous" because that tyrant is the most corrupt president in history. Armed and dangerous. Don't retreat, reload. Next time the guns will be loaded. Here they are - the ones with the cross hairs on them -- take a stand, take them back, but it's not our damned fault that someone was nuts enough to do what we told them to do!
My God, why hast thou forsaken me?
And I mean, why mention that we find it far too Stalinesque to provide mental health services and mandatory commitment to people who are basically only shirkers and malingerers? This just proves they don't deserve it! Besides if we can judge people insane, dangerous and incompetent we might have to enforce those laws that keep guns from them and that would be tyranny. You know what we do to tyrants, right?
And of course we need to make a quarter billion firearms disappear by waving more magic legislation because 60 years of ever tightening regulation has done so much good and never mind that it would take more door kickings and home invasions without probable cause than Hitler ever envisioned to accomplish such a Herculean task. Let's go after box cutters and bottles of mouthwash and shampoo and let's ban mosques so no one can attack us. Let's do like we do with marijuana: just trot out the old rhetoric and blame the same old suspects and keep on doing what doesn't work. Pull the string on the America doll and hear that old scratchy and fatuous voice: Ban, ban, ban, ban, ban and let's not be namby-pamby socialists and discuss the causes of things.
No, we have no proof that the shooter was motivated by the vicious and endless call to violence, so why mention all those Ann Coulter references to killing congressmen and judges? ask the Republican first responders. Want to stop people from murdering doctors? Why take away the chemicals you can make explosives with and take away nails and glass and batteries and canvas backpacks and it will stop, right? Don't blame the "abortion is murder" profiteers. Don't blame biblical gay bashers, blame pick-up trucks. Truks drag gay teens to death, not bigots.
And after all, some liberal somewhere must once have said something we can twist into a false equivalence. I remember one minor league academic who claimed that "heads should roll at Newscorp" was just such a call for ritual murder by this liberal, commie, socialist, sociopath. I guess it's all been my fault all along.
No, all that mess in Africa would never have happened if we banned machetes in Rwanda and that's what they should have done. Never mind the incessant voices chanting "kill the Tutsi cockroaches." Take away the sharp objects and say goodbye to murderous intent. We'll all live in peace.
"When you look at unbalanced people, how they respond to the vitriol that comes out of certain mouths about tearing down the government. The anger, the hatred, the bigotry that goes on in this country is getting to be outrageous. And, unfortunately, Arizona I think has become sort of the Capital. We have become the Mecca for prejudice and bigotry."said Sheriff Dupnik of Pima County. The damned liberal commie rat. But let's do nothing about that murderous rhetoric or the roaming madmen stirred to mayhem. It's the ACLU, it's the Liberal Media, it's Keith Olbermann -- it's the Satanic Obamanator who wants to give your hard earned money to the 'Negroes' and illegal wetback leprosy spreading drug addled rapists and other unworthies. No, the "conservatives" the loyal opposition didn't expect anyone to actually take the calls to violence seriously and the Constitution protects us when we lie and libel and paint targets on people - and we're strict constitutionalists, you know.
It's nobodies fault, really, now let's get a good night's sleep and get back to talking about the Saints-Seahawks game last night. A sad night for N'awlins.
Friday, October 29, 2010
High noon in Brooklyn
Waving a .44-caliber Magnum revolver, young Winston Cox ( allegedly) entered the Brooklyn, NY beauty parlor saying:
It was the wrong beauty parlor. It was the wrong beauty parlor because Ferris Jones was there to get her hair done, and being an off-duty police officer, she was packing heat. She mentioned that disturbing fact to Cox, who at age 19 already has a long rap sheet, but he preferred to answer with his revolver. Had I seen it in a Gene Autry movie, I'd have groaned, because that kind of shooting isn't easy, especially under the circumstances, but officer Jones shot the gun out of his hand and jammed the entrance door lock with another shot. The wounded man managed to kick out a door panel, but was soon arrested.
Everyone loves a story like this. The officer handled a potentially deadly situation without anyone being killed and no innocent party was harmed. But I have to wonder what would have happened if she were a civilian. In New York, it would have made her a felon, I believe and she would probably be sued by the "victim." Just ask Bernie Goetz.
Of course if as many Brooklyn women had guns in their purses as they do here in Florida, one might speculate that the would be robbers might think twice, but that's hard to substantiate. It's easier to substantiate that having the tools to defend your life is only illegal in a handful of states, whose statistics don't seem to show a benefit from that prohibition.
In my nine years in Florida, I've yet to read of anyone caught in that crossfire people who advocate against the ownership of firearms like to speculate about, but I regularly do read about home invasions and armed robberies being thwarted here in my area - and often by women. So although I continue to hear about "gun nuts" and the NRA and lobbyists, I have to think some of it is excessive and based on fear and superstition and old beliefs that cripple reason. But that's just me and your opinion could differ.
“This is a robbery. I will kill you.”
It was the wrong beauty parlor. It was the wrong beauty parlor because Ferris Jones was there to get her hair done, and being an off-duty police officer, she was packing heat. She mentioned that disturbing fact to Cox, who at age 19 already has a long rap sheet, but he preferred to answer with his revolver. Had I seen it in a Gene Autry movie, I'd have groaned, because that kind of shooting isn't easy, especially under the circumstances, but officer Jones shot the gun out of his hand and jammed the entrance door lock with another shot. The wounded man managed to kick out a door panel, but was soon arrested.
Everyone loves a story like this. The officer handled a potentially deadly situation without anyone being killed and no innocent party was harmed. But I have to wonder what would have happened if she were a civilian. In New York, it would have made her a felon, I believe and she would probably be sued by the "victim." Just ask Bernie Goetz.
Of course if as many Brooklyn women had guns in their purses as they do here in Florida, one might speculate that the would be robbers might think twice, but that's hard to substantiate. It's easier to substantiate that having the tools to defend your life is only illegal in a handful of states, whose statistics don't seem to show a benefit from that prohibition.
In my nine years in Florida, I've yet to read of anyone caught in that crossfire people who advocate against the ownership of firearms like to speculate about, but I regularly do read about home invasions and armed robberies being thwarted here in my area - and often by women. So although I continue to hear about "gun nuts" and the NRA and lobbyists, I have to think some of it is excessive and based on fear and superstition and old beliefs that cripple reason. But that's just me and your opinion could differ.
Monday, June 28, 2010
The Constitution comes to Chicago
"Liberal anti-gun groups are already fuming" says Raw Story's report of the Supreme Court's decision that the Second Amendment constitutes a restraint on State and local government's ability to abridge the right to keep and bear arms.
I don't know about the authoritarians we keep insisting on calling "liberals," but I'm starting to give off some steam here myself. If there is in fact a long term drop in gun ownership, it's a surprise to me, seeing as there are lines outside of gun shops and sales of guns and ammunition are booming. Prices of ammunition are soaring. If the domestic arms industry is suffering, the lawsuits by cities like Chicago are certainly part of it and the ability of foreign makers to sell more cheaply has hurt every American industry.
If these long standing blanket handgun bans have made the few cities that enacted them safer, it's never shown up in any statistics that I've seen. In fact as gun laws have liberalized nationwide, gun related crimes have decreased.
Yes, I've seen the posters, heard the slogans, listened to the blather: show me the numbers. I suggest that just as there was a lot of sound and fury and learned diatribes about the bloodbath that would follow the demise of the National Speed Limit, the facts contradicted that idiot's tale quickly and continue to do so. Facts however, are the enemy of zealots; whether they're anti scary-thing activists or the profiteers who perpetuate the War on Drugs that never worked and which has been responsible for the majority of violent murders.
Show me the effectiveness of the Chicago or Washington DC handgun bans. Show me that these cities have been any safer than cities without them. Tell me I'm part of a gun lobby, tell me I'm trying to dismantle gun laws -- it may convince the choir you preach to, but you certainly are stretching the truth with the intent to deceive. Nothing less than dismantling all gun laws? Hell no, I don't want minors to own guns. I don't want to remove most of the restrictions on where you can carry them, where you can display them openly how you can transport them and certainly not on where and when you can use them. Call me cynical, but in the years since you told me someone was going to "shoot the Avon Lady " if we allowed someone to shoot an armed home invader, invasions have decreased and the Avon lady is still alive and well. It's all been a pack of lies you told to generate revenue and get votes -- and sorry, if you're attacking my freedom, you're sure as hell not a Liberal and if you disagree, you don't speak English very well either. Call me cynical, but it's you willing to ignore the constitution for your own ends, not me.
Since the handgun ban never had any effect on the gangsters who use handguns in crimes, except to make burglars a bit bolder, restoration of rights to home defense just isn't going to create that bloodbath, but proof of failure has always been seen as evidence for success and a demand for continuation of policy by authoritarians.
"People will die because of this decision" says Washington, DC's Violence Policy Center, but the question is really about how many died because of the blanket ban on hand gun ownership, isn't it? Perhaps since suicide is the leading cause of handgun death, some will choose Beretta over barbiturates or the window or driving the wrong way on the expressway.
"It is a victory only for the gun lobby and America's fading firearms industry. The inevitable tide of frivolous pro-gun litigation destined to follow will force cities, counties, and states to expend scarce resources to defend longstanding, effective public safety laws. The gun lobby and gunmakers are seeking nothing less than the complete dismantling of our nation’s gun laws in a cynical effort to try and stem the long-term drop in gun ownership and save the dwindling gun industry."
I don't know about the authoritarians we keep insisting on calling "liberals," but I'm starting to give off some steam here myself. If there is in fact a long term drop in gun ownership, it's a surprise to me, seeing as there are lines outside of gun shops and sales of guns and ammunition are booming. Prices of ammunition are soaring. If the domestic arms industry is suffering, the lawsuits by cities like Chicago are certainly part of it and the ability of foreign makers to sell more cheaply has hurt every American industry.
If these long standing blanket handgun bans have made the few cities that enacted them safer, it's never shown up in any statistics that I've seen. In fact as gun laws have liberalized nationwide, gun related crimes have decreased.
Yes, I've seen the posters, heard the slogans, listened to the blather: show me the numbers. I suggest that just as there was a lot of sound and fury and learned diatribes about the bloodbath that would follow the demise of the National Speed Limit, the facts contradicted that idiot's tale quickly and continue to do so. Facts however, are the enemy of zealots; whether they're anti scary-thing activists or the profiteers who perpetuate the War on Drugs that never worked and which has been responsible for the majority of violent murders.
Show me the effectiveness of the Chicago or Washington DC handgun bans. Show me that these cities have been any safer than cities without them. Tell me I'm part of a gun lobby, tell me I'm trying to dismantle gun laws -- it may convince the choir you preach to, but you certainly are stretching the truth with the intent to deceive. Nothing less than dismantling all gun laws? Hell no, I don't want minors to own guns. I don't want to remove most of the restrictions on where you can carry them, where you can display them openly how you can transport them and certainly not on where and when you can use them. Call me cynical, but in the years since you told me someone was going to "shoot the Avon Lady " if we allowed someone to shoot an armed home invader, invasions have decreased and the Avon lady is still alive and well. It's all been a pack of lies you told to generate revenue and get votes -- and sorry, if you're attacking my freedom, you're sure as hell not a Liberal and if you disagree, you don't speak English very well either. Call me cynical, but it's you willing to ignore the constitution for your own ends, not me.
" We know the facts prove the opposite and that areas of the country with the highest concentration of gun ownership also have the highest rates of gun death"34,000 gun deaths? What about the fact that 83% of the gun deaths in households containing guns are suicides. Why aren't you mentioning that most of the 'people who will die' if Chicagoans can keep a gun at home are just as likely to have died otherwise. Why is that a danger to me or you? Perhaps the incomplete facts support the argument, but the complete facts suggest that banning rope or prescription pain killers or alcohol or windows that open or razor blades will be as stupid an exercise and of course none of those can protect your life, now can they?
Since the handgun ban never had any effect on the gangsters who use handguns in crimes, except to make burglars a bit bolder, restoration of rights to home defense just isn't going to create that bloodbath, but proof of failure has always been seen as evidence for success and a demand for continuation of policy by authoritarians.
Monday, April 19, 2010
Kind of a blast.
Amongst the most common criticisms of President Barack Obama published in my local papers are that he has an "agenda" for taking away our guns. The few howlers offering any proof of this nefarious plan depend mostly on the fact that Obama is a Democrat and on redacted quotes from Rahm Emanuel or references to obviously incendiary articles with titles like "Rahm Emanuel to disarm America" and calling him things like "a Zionist gun-grabbing Communist." Even if we're to discount the Skinhead origin of much of this and ignore the supercharged, nitrous injected hyperbole so common to apoplectic extremists intent on portraying everyone else as extremely angry, we need to remember one thing: Rahm Emanuel is not the President of the United States, and has no authority in any way related to being able to do anything about Gun laws. That's the job of Congress and this congress seems unlikely to consider any such thing even if the President suggested it -- and he certainly hasn't. The Courts have ruled on the side of allowing private citizens to own and carry firearms, most of the legislators elected in the last election are pro-gun and that seems to be that.
Of course, just like the Tea people, out there howling about a tax increase they didn't get and death panels we've had all along and about taking back the country they never owned from the majority without any recognition of the blazing, neon lit irony -- my fellow gun owners and second amendment supporters are about, as I write this, to mount an armed protest against the gun-grabbing liberal commietyrantmarxistafrican, are unaware or are unwilling to be aware that Obama signed into law last year a bill making that demonstration legal by finally allowing firearms to be carried in National Parks. Thanks, Pres. As a Liberal, I approve of that.
I don't know whether it's too much of a strain on people from Stormfront to pass beyond the shoddy "democrats grab guns, Obama is a Democrat, he will grab guns" syllogism and into the world of real events. It doesn't matter however, since the supply of things real and imagined will always allow the kind of Storm and Stress they need. For those of us able do discern elitist things like irony however, it's a blast.
Of course, just like the Tea people, out there howling about a tax increase they didn't get and death panels we've had all along and about taking back the country they never owned from the majority without any recognition of the blazing, neon lit irony -- my fellow gun owners and second amendment supporters are about, as I write this, to mount an armed protest against the gun-grabbing liberal commietyrantmarxistafrican, are unaware or are unwilling to be aware that Obama signed into law last year a bill making that demonstration legal by finally allowing firearms to be carried in National Parks. Thanks, Pres. As a Liberal, I approve of that.
I don't know whether it's too much of a strain on people from Stormfront to pass beyond the shoddy "democrats grab guns, Obama is a Democrat, he will grab guns" syllogism and into the world of real events. It doesn't matter however, since the supply of things real and imagined will always allow the kind of Storm and Stress they need. For those of us able do discern elitist things like irony however, it's a blast.
Tuesday, March 09, 2010
Irreversible Ratchet
The barber shop I frequent looks like something out of the old West, or at least a Hollywood version of it. Cowboy movie posters, ammunition boxes -- It has more old guns and shooting paraphernalia on display than most small gun shops and indeed Bob the barber is a licensed gun dealer.
So anyway, there I am waiting my turn along with one deputy and the rest of my disreputable contemporaries and reading American Rifleman -- and the first thing I see is an article by Wayne LaPierre of the NRA telling us that the "irreversible ratchet" of gun control has been turned back in Canada after their gun registration policy has cost a fortune and produced no measurable results. Why am I laughing? It's because that "camel's nose" and "irreversible ratchet" argument has been used to death since I can remember to counter any gun control laws at all, reasonable and unreasonable. It's because all I hear from NRA sources is that Obama is a gun grabber and he's so close to grabbing your guns that you'd better stock up on ammo and bury it in the back yard because here we go down the slippery slope to disarmed totalitarianism. Catalogs are selling books on just how to do that and ammunition prices are sky high, along with the prices of military surplus waterproof containers. Shops can't keep AK-47s on the racks.
Then if one looks at the news and realizes that under the current administration gun rights have been expanded to allow concealed carry in the national parks, as they are in most state parks and nearly everywhere else, that the last bastion of handgun banning, Chicago, Illinois may be about to fall and that 309 members of Congress and a majority of Americans approve, -- one has a hard time believing that there is a nationwide confiscation program being planned or that any gun control measures are by nature irreversible. Nearly all the states now issue concealed carry permits while crime continues to decline, so if that policy of citing the slippery slope fallacy has been debunked, where is the apology for all the fear mongering? were they wrong? Did the will of the majority actually prevail over the evil gun grabbing Liberals just like it's supposed to?
No, the ratchet works both ways, the camel isn't interested in your tent and the slope wasn't so slippery after all. Do I suspect that the worst thing that could happen to the NRA would be a definitive affirmation of the second amendment of the individual's right to keep and bear arms and a legislative branch inclined to go along with them? Does a red-neck shoot in the woods?
So anyway, there I am waiting my turn along with one deputy and the rest of my disreputable contemporaries and reading American Rifleman -- and the first thing I see is an article by Wayne LaPierre of the NRA telling us that the "irreversible ratchet" of gun control has been turned back in Canada after their gun registration policy has cost a fortune and produced no measurable results. Why am I laughing? It's because that "camel's nose" and "irreversible ratchet" argument has been used to death since I can remember to counter any gun control laws at all, reasonable and unreasonable. It's because all I hear from NRA sources is that Obama is a gun grabber and he's so close to grabbing your guns that you'd better stock up on ammo and bury it in the back yard because here we go down the slippery slope to disarmed totalitarianism. Catalogs are selling books on just how to do that and ammunition prices are sky high, along with the prices of military surplus waterproof containers. Shops can't keep AK-47s on the racks.
Then if one looks at the news and realizes that under the current administration gun rights have been expanded to allow concealed carry in the national parks, as they are in most state parks and nearly everywhere else, that the last bastion of handgun banning, Chicago, Illinois may be about to fall and that 309 members of Congress and a majority of Americans approve, -- one has a hard time believing that there is a nationwide confiscation program being planned or that any gun control measures are by nature irreversible. Nearly all the states now issue concealed carry permits while crime continues to decline, so if that policy of citing the slippery slope fallacy has been debunked, where is the apology for all the fear mongering? were they wrong? Did the will of the majority actually prevail over the evil gun grabbing Liberals just like it's supposed to?
No, the ratchet works both ways, the camel isn't interested in your tent and the slope wasn't so slippery after all. Do I suspect that the worst thing that could happen to the NRA would be a definitive affirmation of the second amendment of the individual's right to keep and bear arms and a legislative branch inclined to go along with them? Does a red-neck shoot in the woods?
Saturday, August 22, 2009
Wild Wild West
If you see someone standing on your front lawn taking pictures of your house and you stick your head out the door to ask what the hell he's doing, maybe you'd better find out if he's a Republican first.
Robert Lutes, a resident of Boise, Idaho suburb, Meridian, probably wishes he had
done that. Asking the man on the lawn to tell him what it was about, his question was answered with a .357 magnum revolver pointed at him by the Republican Party chairman of Boise County, Charles McAffee, a "tea-party" activist. No, it wasn't high noon, it was just before dinner time.
There is a controversy of course about whether Lutes was engaged in heated discussion or argument about his delinquent mortgage payments before McCaffee drew on him, but McCaffee, working for collection agency used by Wells Fargo, says he pulled the gun on the unarmed homeowner to "de-escalate" the conflict. No, really.
I am unable to establish Idaho's policy on such use of a concealed weapon, but I know that in Florida, it is illegal to display or "brandish" even a legally carried gun to gain advantage in or "de-escalate" a dispute or argument. Since McAffee was arrested for aggravated assault, I would assume a similarity in the laws. Again, I don't know if Idaho is a "castle doctrine" state, but I suspect it is and under that philosophy, Lutes would have been justified in shooting a Republican Party County Chairman and tax protester like any other armed home invader.
The more civilized part of my nature is glad he didn't, but the little demon on my shoulder sort of wishes the idiot Mr. Teabags had been dealt a little bit of old fashioned Republican justice.
Robert Lutes, a resident of Boise, Idaho suburb, Meridian, probably wishes he had
done that. Asking the man on the lawn to tell him what it was about, his question was answered with a .357 magnum revolver pointed at him by the Republican Party chairman of Boise County, Charles McAffee, a "tea-party" activist. No, it wasn't high noon, it was just before dinner time.There is a controversy of course about whether Lutes was engaged in heated discussion or argument about his delinquent mortgage payments before McCaffee drew on him, but McCaffee, working for collection agency used by Wells Fargo, says he pulled the gun on the unarmed homeowner to "de-escalate" the conflict. No, really.
I am unable to establish Idaho's policy on such use of a concealed weapon, but I know that in Florida, it is illegal to display or "brandish" even a legally carried gun to gain advantage in or "de-escalate" a dispute or argument. Since McAffee was arrested for aggravated assault, I would assume a similarity in the laws. Again, I don't know if Idaho is a "castle doctrine" state, but I suspect it is and under that philosophy, Lutes would have been justified in shooting a Republican Party County Chairman and tax protester like any other armed home invader.
The more civilized part of my nature is glad he didn't, but the little demon on my shoulder sort of wishes the idiot Mr. Teabags had been dealt a little bit of old fashioned Republican justice.
Thursday, August 06, 2009
The sky is falling
I live in a small county in Florida. Violent crime rates in this county are declining with 486 per 100,000 population last year. In Pittsburgh they are also declining with about 1070 which is none the less about twice the national average. of course far from all of violent crimes involve firearms. A great many involve fists, beer bottles, baseball bats and knives, but Pittsburgh has much, much more restrictive gun control than Florida and probably fewer guns.
For what it's worth, traffic fatalities in Florida are at 14 year lows and even if shark and alligator attacks and lightening strike fatalities reflect a growing population, you can't say it's getting more dangerous, despite the constant appeal to the relentless fiction that it is.
You'll be reading about the four people killed in Pittsburgh by a misogynous, racist, paranoid and perhaps schizophrenic nutjob for some time and you will hear suggestions that this could have been prevented by even tighter gun control although there won't be any practical, or constitutional, suggestions short of blanket confiscation. The won't be any evidence that such has ever been the case. Pittsburgh already requires guns to be registered. Florida does not.
There are many reasons that you might consider Pittsburgh to be more dangerous than an unincorporated town in Florida, but obviously registration Vs. non registration requirements aren't a significant factor, so can we dispense with the knee-jerk reactionary rhetoric and the stereotyping of gun owners -- but we won't. We'll hear the same axe grinding, throwing out the same sparks and we will continue to advocate the same cures that haven't had any effect and ignore whatever it is that has.
Just watch and see.
For what it's worth, traffic fatalities in Florida are at 14 year lows and even if shark and alligator attacks and lightening strike fatalities reflect a growing population, you can't say it's getting more dangerous, despite the constant appeal to the relentless fiction that it is.
You'll be reading about the four people killed in Pittsburgh by a misogynous, racist, paranoid and perhaps schizophrenic nutjob for some time and you will hear suggestions that this could have been prevented by even tighter gun control although there won't be any practical, or constitutional, suggestions short of blanket confiscation. The won't be any evidence that such has ever been the case. Pittsburgh already requires guns to be registered. Florida does not.
There are many reasons that you might consider Pittsburgh to be more dangerous than an unincorporated town in Florida, but obviously registration Vs. non registration requirements aren't a significant factor, so can we dispense with the knee-jerk reactionary rhetoric and the stereotyping of gun owners -- but we won't. We'll hear the same axe grinding, throwing out the same sparks and we will continue to advocate the same cures that haven't had any effect and ignore whatever it is that has.
Just watch and see.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Oh please!
Here we go again. Some group called the Violence Policy Center has released statistics showing that in a 23 month period 44 US residents were killed by people legally carrying concealed weapons and therefore the "violence" is too much to bear and we must ban the practice. Perhaps my math is faulty but I think that translates to a 0.0000075% chance of being shot and killed in any given year.
No figures were given with regard to the number of lives saved by legally owned guns, but in my small county of 130,000 people several have been this year so far and of course shooting deaths in Florida have declined steadily since the State started issuing licenses and instituted the "castle doctrine."
I don't feel like doing all the work, but I'd like to see how many people die in ER waiting rooms every year because they can't get insurance. I'd like to see how many people are shot by drug gangs and more than anything I'd like to see how many innocent people are shot by the police. I'm willing to bet that more people are killed by MADD members driving SUVs while talking on the phone.
Of course the Flu claims about 36,000 lives every year and cars even more. Cigarettes and alcohol? Well, you know. More people are killed every year by lightening in Florida alone and we're not closing the golf courses in a hysterical panic.
At the risk of being called a "nut" I take a vastly higher risk of dying and of killing someone else every time I take the boat out -- or the car for that matter and I have to conclude that our friends at the Violence Policy Center are proceeding from the conclusion that guns are so frightening that the right to self defense against violent criminals is washed away by their phobia and so they must grasp at these meaningless arguments and fallacious conclusions like a drowning man at straws.
Yes, yes, the NRA. Everything including the Constitutional right is the fault of "the gun lobby." Forget not that that worn out straw/bogey man only exists because people are tired of being forced to accede to other people's phobias and it has such clout because it has so many individual, dues paying members. Much more of this twaddle and they'll have one more member.
No figures were given with regard to the number of lives saved by legally owned guns, but in my small county of 130,000 people several have been this year so far and of course shooting deaths in Florida have declined steadily since the State started issuing licenses and instituted the "castle doctrine."
I don't feel like doing all the work, but I'd like to see how many people die in ER waiting rooms every year because they can't get insurance. I'd like to see how many people are shot by drug gangs and more than anything I'd like to see how many innocent people are shot by the police. I'm willing to bet that more people are killed by MADD members driving SUVs while talking on the phone.
Of course the Flu claims about 36,000 lives every year and cars even more. Cigarettes and alcohol? Well, you know. More people are killed every year by lightening in Florida alone and we're not closing the golf courses in a hysterical panic.
At the risk of being called a "nut" I take a vastly higher risk of dying and of killing someone else every time I take the boat out -- or the car for that matter and I have to conclude that our friends at the Violence Policy Center are proceeding from the conclusion that guns are so frightening that the right to self defense against violent criminals is washed away by their phobia and so they must grasp at these meaningless arguments and fallacious conclusions like a drowning man at straws.
Yes, yes, the NRA. Everything including the Constitutional right is the fault of "the gun lobby." Forget not that that worn out straw/bogey man only exists because people are tired of being forced to accede to other people's phobias and it has such clout because it has so many individual, dues paying members. Much more of this twaddle and they'll have one more member.
Friday, April 17, 2009
Ban the Assault weapons!
If the movement spreads, we may be faced with a movement to ban Jedi-style "assault flashlights" in the United States. After all with some 400,000 or more people in the UK declaring themselves to be Jedi we just have to ban something.
Meanwhile Barak Obama has re-affirmed his support of banning "military style" weapons, which are ordinary rifles that look like the real military rifles that have been banned since 1934 but are not. The plan is to keep Americans from the lookalikes so that Mexico won't have a problem with the real thing. Doesn't make sense to me, but I haven't had my morning loco-weed yet. Perhaps we have to evoke the scary drug-war straw man once again to obscure the lack of evidence that the previous ban had any effect whatever on crime in the US. Evidence to the convinced, after all, is like garlic to a vampire and so must not be talked about.
Sugarman, although he is a licensed gun dealer himself and should know better, seems to have pioneered the tautological term " assault weapon" and admits to using it solely for it's ability to deceive the public, not for reasons of honesty. The concern that police departments are "outgunned" can only be seen as fictitious propaganda (I'm trying not to call it a lie, since I'm such a nice person) when we note that even the tiny town of Jasper, Florida, population 1795, with its seven man police force equips every police car with top of the line fully automatic military weapons: machine guns.
Yesterday, in the affluent nearby community of Palm City, Florida, a woman home alone was assaulted by a man who used a shotgun to blow open her back door. Somehow she managed to use the family .40 caliber semi-automatic pistol to wound and drive off the assailant, who is now in custody. That pistol of course fires a more powerful bullet than the semi-auto 9mm Uzi "assault weapon" the banners would like to ban and has the same rate of fire. Still, we don't call it an "assault weapon" since it doesn't look like one. Pass me the loco-weed please.
Even better: we don't call a shotgun an assault weapon either even though it was used in an assault. Any way, the woman is alive, thanks to her "defense weapon" and the "shoot the Avon lady law" that was passed in 2006 over the hysterical objections of the anti-gun lobby. So far, none of our Avon ladies are missing and Mrs. Russo is still alive.
What's in a name? asked Juliet. In magic-thinking America: apparently a great deal, and unlike the immutable rose, the same firearm can be different things. Whether it's an assault weapon or a self-defense weapon has nothing to do with the weapon or its use, yet we think of one as much deadlier because people are spending a great deal of money making us think that way. Too bad our president has given them his large ear.
Meanwhile Barak Obama has re-affirmed his support of banning "military style" weapons, which are ordinary rifles that look like the real military rifles that have been banned since 1934 but are not. The plan is to keep Americans from the lookalikes so that Mexico won't have a problem with the real thing. Doesn't make sense to me, but I haven't had my morning loco-weed yet. Perhaps we have to evoke the scary drug-war straw man once again to obscure the lack of evidence that the previous ban had any effect whatever on crime in the US. Evidence to the convinced, after all, is like garlic to a vampire and so must not be talked about.
"The weapons' menacing looks, coupled with the public's confusion over fully automatic machine guns versus semi-automatic assault weapons--anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun--can only increase the chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons. In addition, few people can envision a practical use for these weapons."
-Josh Sugarmann, Assault Weapons and Accessories in America, 1988-
Sugarman, although he is a licensed gun dealer himself and should know better, seems to have pioneered the tautological term " assault weapon" and admits to using it solely for it's ability to deceive the public, not for reasons of honesty. The concern that police departments are "outgunned" can only be seen as fictitious propaganda (I'm trying not to call it a lie, since I'm such a nice person) when we note that even the tiny town of Jasper, Florida, population 1795, with its seven man police force equips every police car with top of the line fully automatic military weapons: machine guns.
Yesterday, in the affluent nearby community of Palm City, Florida, a woman home alone was assaulted by a man who used a shotgun to blow open her back door. Somehow she managed to use the family .40 caliber semi-automatic pistol to wound and drive off the assailant, who is now in custody. That pistol of course fires a more powerful bullet than the semi-auto 9mm Uzi "assault weapon" the banners would like to ban and has the same rate of fire. Still, we don't call it an "assault weapon" since it doesn't look like one. Pass me the loco-weed please.
Even better: we don't call a shotgun an assault weapon either even though it was used in an assault. Any way, the woman is alive, thanks to her "defense weapon" and the "shoot the Avon lady law" that was passed in 2006 over the hysterical objections of the anti-gun lobby. So far, none of our Avon ladies are missing and Mrs. Russo is still alive.
What's in a name? asked Juliet. In magic-thinking America: apparently a great deal, and unlike the immutable rose, the same firearm can be different things. Whether it's an assault weapon or a self-defense weapon has nothing to do with the weapon or its use, yet we think of one as much deadlier because people are spending a great deal of money making us think that way. Too bad our president has given them his large ear.
Friday, March 13, 2009
A plan to ban.
Banning things in the hope that they will go away is a process that shares a lot with prayer. Mostly because neither works. Drugs, alcohol, pornography and dancing on Sunday have always outrun or outlasted the censors but the censors never stop of their own free will despite the evidence that what they try to stop won't bring on God's wrath, won't destroy the fabric of civilization or bring on chaos. That their ideas don't work never convinces the zealot and we are and always have been a country where zealots rule.
I thought it was inevitable that there would be shootings and stories of shootings, now that more people are out of work, out of hope and feel cheated by circumstances. Of course others think the same and still others see it as an opportunity to beat on the Gun Ban gong again and so when random acts of violence occur, they will be played up to be more significant than they are. We've always had random acts of violence, we probably always will, despite the cycles of calls for ever more irrelevant, ineffective and perhaps fraudulent gun control laws. I've been listening to this all my life and so far, they haven't "grabbed our guns" and violent crime rates don't seem to be much affected by gun control laws, stringent or relaxed. Indeed allowing people to carry concealed weapons in Florida and making it legal to use deadly force against an attacker seems to have coincided with a substantial reduction in robberies and home invasions and still, crimes perpetrated by licensed people are virtually non-existent.
The renewed hysterics at the NRA and in other groups have convinced many that the Obama administration is determined to pursue the reinstatement of the "assault weapon" ban and so sales of semi-automatic weapons designed to look like real assault weapons have soared. and continue to remain high. According to the Wall Street Journal, a record 1,529,635 background checks were performed on firearms sales -- for the month of November. I'm not great at arithmetic, but I think that rate translates to 18 million gun purchases a year and that doesn't include private sales or gun show sales that don't require background checks. There is fear on both sides and both sides are doing all they can to promote as much of it as possible.
Tuesday's Alabama shooting is seen in two ways by people in two camps. Neither will see the situation as arguing against their persuasion. Some point out that the victims were all unarmed and so were perfect and perfectly defenseless victims. Others will argue that if semi automatic rifles with stocks made to look like military weapons were again banned, such things would not happen. Both sides could do with a bit more honesty.
Alabama of course allows concealed weapons to be carried by permit holders, and though it's possible that the shooter might not have done what he did if he thought some of them might be "packing" this example makes it pretty hard to substantiate the principle and impossible to say for sure. Easier to illustrate is the pretense that the AK, or SKS or Mini-22 I can buy down the street and off the shelf is an "assault weapon" No military in the world uses them. They fire the same kind of ammunition at the same rate of fire as any semi automatic hunting rifle. Just like Grandpa's semi-auto shotgun, one round is fired for every pull of the trigger, yet over and over and over, college journalism graduates with no knowledge, pump out commentaries like the WSJ article that tells us:
Right after Reuters tells us that the shooting was the result of " easy" gun access in America, they report that in Germany on Wednesday, a 17-year-old gunman went on a shooting spree at his former school, killing up to 15 people before dying in a shootout with police. Germany has very strict gun control laws. Perhaps Reuters controls irony as well.
Elsewhere in the world, knife murders are occurring more frequently - at least being reported more frequently. There are a lot of statistics that seem to link times and places where people are forced to be defenseless with increased crimes of armed aggression, but the statistics are either flaunted or ignored depending on which side you're on and that side seems to me to have little to do with reality. Again Reuters mentions that "some people" defend the right to self defense as though the abridgement of that right were not clearly forbidden in the constitution and without mentioning that the "Some people" seem to be a majority.
It doesn't take a genius to realize that the news is being used and being distorted to create a greater sense of outrage and sell more papers. The very word "assault" conjures up pathological aggression and is chosen to create just as much irrational and hysterical opinion as are the polemics of the "pro-gun" people.
Is there a sane middle ground between the NRA hysterics and the anti-second amendment hysterics? Of course, but sometimes I think we're the only ones there -- and I'm not too sure about you.
I thought it was inevitable that there would be shootings and stories of shootings, now that more people are out of work, out of hope and feel cheated by circumstances. Of course others think the same and still others see it as an opportunity to beat on the Gun Ban gong again and so when random acts of violence occur, they will be played up to be more significant than they are. We've always had random acts of violence, we probably always will, despite the cycles of calls for ever more irrelevant, ineffective and perhaps fraudulent gun control laws. I've been listening to this all my life and so far, they haven't "grabbed our guns" and violent crime rates don't seem to be much affected by gun control laws, stringent or relaxed. Indeed allowing people to carry concealed weapons in Florida and making it legal to use deadly force against an attacker seems to have coincided with a substantial reduction in robberies and home invasions and still, crimes perpetrated by licensed people are virtually non-existent.
The renewed hysterics at the NRA and in other groups have convinced many that the Obama administration is determined to pursue the reinstatement of the "assault weapon" ban and so sales of semi-automatic weapons designed to look like real assault weapons have soared. and continue to remain high. According to the Wall Street Journal, a record 1,529,635 background checks were performed on firearms sales -- for the month of November. I'm not great at arithmetic, but I think that rate translates to 18 million gun purchases a year and that doesn't include private sales or gun show sales that don't require background checks. There is fear on both sides and both sides are doing all they can to promote as much of it as possible.
Tuesday's Alabama shooting is seen in two ways by people in two camps. Neither will see the situation as arguing against their persuasion. Some point out that the victims were all unarmed and so were perfect and perfectly defenseless victims. Others will argue that if semi automatic rifles with stocks made to look like military weapons were again banned, such things would not happen. Both sides could do with a bit more honesty.
Alabama of course allows concealed weapons to be carried by permit holders, and though it's possible that the shooter might not have done what he did if he thought some of them might be "packing" this example makes it pretty hard to substantiate the principle and impossible to say for sure. Easier to illustrate is the pretense that the AK, or SKS or Mini-22 I can buy down the street and off the shelf is an "assault weapon" No military in the world uses them. They fire the same kind of ammunition at the same rate of fire as any semi automatic hunting rifle. Just like Grandpa's semi-auto shotgun, one round is fired for every pull of the trigger, yet over and over and over, college journalism graduates with no knowledge, pump out commentaries like the WSJ article that tells us:
"Gun sales have soared in the months since the presidential election, due in part to fears among gun owners that President Barack Obama intends to ban assault weapons, or guns that can fire rounds more quickly than standard weapons." [italics mine]No they can't, unless standard means bolt action, like the antique used to shoot JFK. The items formerly banned as "assault weapons" weren't. They may be able to hold more ammunition, but it's the same ammunition and they are not automatic weapons or machine guns at all. Again Reuters assures us they were Military Assault Weapons and implied that since he was a quiet person, any quiet person is a danger if he's allowed to have a rifle stock with a pistol grip.
Right after Reuters tells us that the shooting was the result of " easy" gun access in America, they report that in Germany on Wednesday, a 17-year-old gunman went on a shooting spree at his former school, killing up to 15 people before dying in a shootout with police. Germany has very strict gun control laws. Perhaps Reuters controls irony as well.
Elsewhere in the world, knife murders are occurring more frequently - at least being reported more frequently. There are a lot of statistics that seem to link times and places where people are forced to be defenseless with increased crimes of armed aggression, but the statistics are either flaunted or ignored depending on which side you're on and that side seems to me to have little to do with reality. Again Reuters mentions that "some people" defend the right to self defense as though the abridgement of that right were not clearly forbidden in the constitution and without mentioning that the "Some people" seem to be a majority.
It doesn't take a genius to realize that the news is being used and being distorted to create a greater sense of outrage and sell more papers. The very word "assault" conjures up pathological aggression and is chosen to create just as much irrational and hysterical opinion as are the polemics of the "pro-gun" people.
Is there a sane middle ground between the NRA hysterics and the anti-second amendment hysterics? Of course, but sometimes I think we're the only ones there -- and I'm not too sure about you.
Monday, December 08, 2008
Buy 'em while you can!
So I leave the dim coolness of the ophthalmologist's office and emerge into the Florida Noonday blaze and gain an immediate appreciation of how a vampire feels when he can't make it back to his coffin before the sun rises. Even with my darkest sunglasses on, my dilated pupils won't allow me to drive so I decide to get a haircut at Bob's, where you can look at his massive collection of old guns, antique ammunition signs and cowboy paraphernalia while you and the good old boys get your hair length reduced.
Even after an hour, I still can't see well enough to drive, so I go across the street to the gun shop looking to chat with the proprietor who, up to now, has been almost as lonely as the Maytag repairman would be if the claims were true, and willing to pass the time talking about outdoorsy things. Of course since Obama the Antichrist was elected, things are different at gun shops and the place was full of people and almost devoid of those non-automatic, civilian versions of military weapons that the more hysterical of us like to call "assault weapons."
The conversation was lively and as gun shop conversations have been of late, all about "that man" and the certainty of his rabid opposition to all forms of weaponry in private hands.
It's not, actually. I looked and what it does say is that Obama believes the second amendment conveys an individual right, that he is concerned with the impediments to hunting and fishing and is determined to increase access and provide incentives to open more land to those uses and that he will protect the rights of law abiding citizens to own, transport and use guns. Of course that's not enough for the NRA and a lot of other people, but it's not wholesale confiscation and it's not the rabid, hysterical and diabolical plan to disarm the general public that the Deppity says it is.
Anyway I asked if he had sold all the AK's he had on the racks last Summer and he said he had, and I asked if was getting any more and he said yes, but he wouldn't say when because it would be a mob scene if word got out, but it should be soon and they would all be gone within hours.
Pasted on the glass counter where bowie knives and ear muffs and safety glasses were displayed was a cartoon of a car plastered with Obama stickers. The driver was saying to a questioner: "No, I don't, but I own a gun shop."
For some people, business has never been better.
Even after an hour, I still can't see well enough to drive, so I go across the street to the gun shop looking to chat with the proprietor who, up to now, has been almost as lonely as the Maytag repairman would be if the claims were true, and willing to pass the time talking about outdoorsy things. Of course since Obama the Antichrist was elected, things are different at gun shops and the place was full of people and almost devoid of those non-automatic, civilian versions of military weapons that the more hysterical of us like to call "assault weapons."
The conversation was lively and as gun shop conversations have been of late, all about "that man" and the certainty of his rabid opposition to all forms of weaponry in private hands.
"I don't know" said the creepy guy, using a magnifying glass to inspect a nickel plated double barrel derringer chambered for .45 long colt and 410 shotgun shells.
"I just change channels when that guy comes on" says he. " I can't stand to listen to him."
"Well it's all on his web site." says the Deputy Sheriff, lovingly examining a monstrous, long barelled Smith &Wesson .460 SVR Magnum revolver with green laser sight and bipod. "Jesus, there's nothing in Africa you couldn't take down with this one."
"You've read it?" asks the store owner. "No, but his whole gun policy is on his web site. I just can't stand to read it, but I'm telling you if we're supposed to knock on doors looking for everyone's guns, it ain't gonna happen. I mean he's talking about making lists of all registered guns and there is no gun registration in Florida in the first place. You just know the crime rate's gonna skyrocket."
"I guess the ATF has the authority to come in here and look at my books though" says the owner, let's call him Joe.
"Yeah, but I'll just tell them I sold them all privately or at a gun show and I don't have any guns any more" says creepy guy with a creepy, conspiratorial grin.
"Well it's all on his web site" says the Deppity. "He's going to bring back the Brady bill and the assault rifle ban and all the rest. It's on the web site."
It's not, actually. I looked and what it does say is that Obama believes the second amendment conveys an individual right, that he is concerned with the impediments to hunting and fishing and is determined to increase access and provide incentives to open more land to those uses and that he will protect the rights of law abiding citizens to own, transport and use guns. Of course that's not enough for the NRA and a lot of other people, but it's not wholesale confiscation and it's not the rabid, hysterical and diabolical plan to disarm the general public that the Deppity says it is.
Anyway I asked if he had sold all the AK's he had on the racks last Summer and he said he had, and I asked if was getting any more and he said yes, but he wouldn't say when because it would be a mob scene if word got out, but it should be soon and they would all be gone within hours.
Pasted on the glass counter where bowie knives and ear muffs and safety glasses were displayed was a cartoon of a car plastered with Obama stickers. The driver was saying to a questioner: "No, I don't, but I own a gun shop."
For some people, business has never been better.
Wednesday, November 05, 2008
Hide the guns!
It sure doesn't take long. My mailbox has begun to collect hysterical warnings about how the second Amendment is in grave danger and we're in for an era of bigger more intrusive government. No, I don't think any of it comes from Mars or from troglodytes raised underground. It's hard to understand though, how any Earthling is able to associate Democrats with big, free spending government in light of the history of the last decades and it's as hard to understand Obama's statements about the second amendment as advocacy for "gun grabbing," as it is to understand how the idea of income taxes is Marxist.
But Americans are as irrational about guns as we are about politics in general. As far as I can tell, Obama supports the current court's interpretation, which affirms the individual citizen's right to keep and bear arms, but insists that communities can pass gun safety laws such as to require background checks. This is hardly "gun-grabbing" in my opinion and although I do question the wisdom of requiring traceable serial numbers on bullets (in fact I think it's a supreme act of sanguine ignorance) it's not "gun-grabbing." It's just an unworkable day-dream only possible to someone who knows nothing about firearms and how they work.
Still, this kind of anti Democratic fanaticism is promoted passionately by organizations from the NRA to Jews For the Preservation of Firearm Ownership. Democrats raise taxes and grab guns - even if they don't. So it is written.
Obama did indicate support for Washington DC's handgun ban and I strongly disagree with him. Of course so did the Supreme Court and there's the catch. Obama can't write laws and although congress can write laws and presidents can sign them, the courts can override them and the courts have indicated that the second amendment, "shall not be infringed" clause and all, means what it says. As a constitutional scholar, Obama knows it.
Obama also knows, at least I think he does, that he was elected to restore fiscal discipline, to restore sensible regulation to financial markets and stop the hemorrhaging of our economy. It remains to be seen, but I think the pet projects of Nanny State Democrats aren't going to be on the agenda for quite a while. Who worries about needing a haircut when their femoral artery is severed? It's way too soon to think about burying your AK in the back yard.
But Americans are as irrational about guns as we are about politics in general. As far as I can tell, Obama supports the current court's interpretation, which affirms the individual citizen's right to keep and bear arms, but insists that communities can pass gun safety laws such as to require background checks. This is hardly "gun-grabbing" in my opinion and although I do question the wisdom of requiring traceable serial numbers on bullets (in fact I think it's a supreme act of sanguine ignorance) it's not "gun-grabbing." It's just an unworkable day-dream only possible to someone who knows nothing about firearms and how they work.
Still, this kind of anti Democratic fanaticism is promoted passionately by organizations from the NRA to Jews For the Preservation of Firearm Ownership. Democrats raise taxes and grab guns - even if they don't. So it is written.
Obama did indicate support for Washington DC's handgun ban and I strongly disagree with him. Of course so did the Supreme Court and there's the catch. Obama can't write laws and although congress can write laws and presidents can sign them, the courts can override them and the courts have indicated that the second amendment, "shall not be infringed" clause and all, means what it says. As a constitutional scholar, Obama knows it.
Obama also knows, at least I think he does, that he was elected to restore fiscal discipline, to restore sensible regulation to financial markets and stop the hemorrhaging of our economy. It remains to be seen, but I think the pet projects of Nanny State Democrats aren't going to be on the agenda for quite a while. Who worries about needing a haircut when their femoral artery is severed? It's way too soon to think about burying your AK in the back yard.
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