jesus and gun safety

Posted on January 28, 2013 by greg

I’m not a Christian; I need to say that right up front. I’m not a Christian, but I’ve read the Bible — both the Old and New Testaments. I’m not a Christian, but I respect the teachings of Jesus. So I was more than a little bit surprised when I was sent a link to this article in the National Review Online: The Biblical and Natural Right of Self-Defense.

The author, David French, makes this the the basic premise of his argument:

Simply put, self defense is a biblical and natural right of man.

He then cites passages in the Old and New Testaments that he suggests supports his argument. I won’t debate his Old Testament arguments because the Old Testament is full of behaviors we no longer tolerate in modern society (like animal sacrifices and slavery). But I can’t help but wonder about his use of the New Testament to support his notion that Jesus would support the Second Amendment.

French mentions that the disciples of Jesus carried weapons, and that they did it on his command. And hey, he’s right. In Luke 22 Jesus does, in fact, tell his followers to purchase some swords.

Then said he unto them, But now, he that hath a purse, let him take it, and likewise his scrip: and he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one.

Let’s put aside the argument that in the original Attic Greek (the language in which the Gospel of Luke was written) there’s some dispute whether there’s actually any mention of a ‘sword’ at all. According to Strong’s Concordance, the Greek word μάχαιρα is the term under discussion. That apparently translates into machaira, which leads to the question: just what the hell is a machaira? Homer (yes, that Homer — the guy who wrote the Iliad and the Odyssey) described a machaira as a knife; Xenophon (another ancient Greek) indicated it was a long knife or short sword useful for cavalry. Both of those men lived a few centuries before Jesus was born, and nobody seems really sure what was considered to be a machaira at the time Luke was written (which was around a century after Jesus died). But for the sake of this discussion, let’s agree to assume it’s a sword.

So the question you have to ask is why? Why did Jesus want his followers to have swords? French would have you believe the answer is self-defense. But if that was the case, why would Jesus think two swords was enough to defend thirteen people?

And they said, Lord, behold, here are two swords. And he said unto them, It is enough.

Jesus may not have been a great military commander, but he wasn’t stupid. He had to know two swords in the hands of his untrained followers would be useless against Roman legionnaires. So why would he think two swords were enough for his purpose?

It would depend on what his actual purpose was. If you’re a Christian, I’d suggest the answer lies in the passage that lies immediately between the two I just quoted:

For I say unto you, that this that is written must yet be accomplished in me, And he was reckoned among the transgressors: for the things concerning me have an end.

In other words, in order to fulfill the scriptures Jesus had to be viewed as a transgressor and arrested. It seems likely he intended to provoke the authorities into arresting him. He’d done something similar a few days earlier; that fuss with the money-changers in the Temple was clearly a provocation. Wandering around with some armed followers could be an effective way of getting the Romans to act.

If Jesus had intended the swords to be used in self-defense, then he wouldn’t have prevented them from actually being used for self-defense — which is exactly what he did later that evening. When the Romans came to arrest him, one of his disciples drew his weapon and separated a slave from his ear.

And, behold, one of them which were with Jesus stretched out his hand, and drew his sword, and struck a servant of the high priest’s, and smote off his ear.
Then said Jesus unto him, Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.
Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels?
But how then shall the scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be?

Again, Jesus is saying he has to be arrested and punished in order for the scriptures to be fulfilled. The swords weren’t for fighting; they weren’t for self-defense; they weren’t for personal protection. If he needed personal protection, he says he could hit up God for a dozen legions of angels. That’s a LOT of angels. So it seems probable the swords were intended to incite the authorities to act. A lot of non-violent religious leaders have used similar tactics — Gandhi forced the British to arrest him, Martin Luther King forced the police to arrest him.

It’s also worth recalling that after his disciple smote off the slave’s ear, Jesus re-attached it. Still later, when he’s presented to Pontius Pilate to answer for his ‘crimes,’ Jesus specifically says his followers are not fighting and defending themselves. Pilate asks him if he’s the King of the Jews. And what did Jesus say?

Jesus answered, My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is my kingdom not from hence.

If my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight. That seems pretty clear. At no point in the Bible does Jesus ever advocate violence; not in self-defense and certainly not in defense of property.

But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.

And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloke also.

Nonviolence, even in the face of monstrous brutality, was the hallmark of early Christianity. All those early Christian martyrs didn’t inspire their followers by going all Bruce Willis on the Romans. They did it by courageously applying their faith even when it meant their certain death; even when it meant the deaths of their loved ones.

David French, in his article, says:

The idea that one is required to surrender his life — or the lives of his family, neighbors, or even strangers — in the face of armed attack is alien to scripture.

Sorry dude, it’s not only NOT alien to scripture, it’s essential to scripture. It’s fundamental to Christianity. If French wants to ignore the New Testament in favor of the much harsher Old Testament, I’m okay with that — so long, of course, as he’s consistent and is willing to exact appropriate punishment for folks who refuse to leave grapes in their vineyard for the poor to gather (Leviticus 19:10) and makes immigrants as welcome as natives (Leviticus 19:34).

But if he’s going to bring Jesus into it, I think he’d do well to actually read what Jesus is supposed to have said and believed:

Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these.

And the scribe said unto him, Well, Master, thou hast said the truth: for there is one God; and there is none other but he:

And to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the soul, and with all the strength, and to love [his] neighbour as himself, is more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.

And there it is. It’s pretty pathetic that a non-Christian should have to remind David French of that.

what you need to ignore for this to work

Posted on January 25, 2013 by greg

I keep seeing phenomenally stupid shit like this from Second Amendment absolutists. Hitler imposed gun control, then created a totalitarian state and killed everybody!! Obama wants to impose some gun control measures!! Obama and Hitler are exactly the same!!!

Let me just say I have nothing personal against stupid people. Some of my best friends are stupid. On occasion, I’ve been known to be stupid my ownself. But Jeebus on toast, guys, does anybody really need to be THIS stupid?

See, here’s the problem with the whole ‘Hitler imposed gun control’ meme. In order to make that claim, you have to ignore a LOT of the historical record. Document archives, contemporaneous newspaper articles, history books — you just have to ignore them. All of them. You have to ignore a buttload of stuff that happened even before Adolf Hitler came to power. And then you have to ignore what Hitler actually did. That’s a whole lot of serious ignoring.

For example, you have to ignore the basic fact that Germany lost World War One. The Great War. The War to End All Wars. You know…the war you saw in Season Two of Downton Abbey. You have to entirely ignore the fact that the Treaty of Versailles imposed strict limitations on the German military AND on the amounts and types of weapons that Germans could own, as well as regulating shooting clubs. To comply with that treaty, the post-war German government passed the Regulations on Weapons Ownership act, which declared:

“[A]ll firearms, as well as all kinds of firearms ammunition, are to be surrendered immediately.”

Got that? All firearms and all ammunition. Surrendered. Immediately. Now that’s some serious gun control, right there. But you have to ignore that for this ‘Obama is Hitler’ business to work.

A decade later, in 1928, some of those restrictions were eased. The German government passed the Law on Firearms and Ammunition, which allowed German citizens to possess personal firearms. But they didn’t make it easy. You had to obtain a permit to own a gun. You had to obtain another permit to sell a gun. You had to have a different permit to carry the gun. And, of course, all of those guns had to be registered. But you have to ignore all of that, remember, if you want to buy the Obama = Hitler concept.

So there was all of that gun control, and Adolf Hitler had nothing to do with it. Hitler didn’t become Chancellor of Germany until 1933. Did he then impose stricter gun control? Nofuckingway. He relaxed them. Well, only for members of the Nazi Party, true. They no longer needed a permit to buy or carry a handgun. But it was the first step.

Hitler did nothing else for five years, then in 1938 the Nazis passed the German Weapons Act. Gun control, right? Nofuckingway. The new law eased gun restrictions even more. The law reduced the legal age for gun ownership from 20 to 18 years. It no longer required German citizens to obtain a permit to buy and possess rifles and shotguns. Permits to carry those weapons were extended from one to three years. All limits on the number of weapons or the amount of ammunition were eliminated. Firearms still had to be registered, but now any German citizen could get one. But you have to ignore all that, remember, to meet the ‘Obama and Hitler, brothers in gun control’ notion.

Later in 1938, the government enacted the Regulations Against Jews’ Possession of Weapons Act, which essentially prohibited Jews — even those who were citizens of Germany — from owning weapons. Yay, finally something Second Amendment absolutists don’t have to ignore. Gun control!

Of course, they still have to ignore the fact that by that time Jews were also prohibited from being employed by the government, from practicing law, from practicing medicine on Gentiles, from teaching, from marrying or having sexual relations with persons of ‘German or German-related blood,’ from holding public office, from serving in the military, from voting, from being citizens. Not to mention the fact that Jews were required to carry special Jewish identity cards and wear yellow stars on their clothing. Denying them access to firearms was just one of the rights Jews were denied. That stuff, you have to ignore in order to play ‘Obama, Hitler — what’s the difference?’.

Second Amendment absolutists would have you ignore the historical record and believe Adolf Hitler imposed strict gun control on the German citizenry. They’d have you believe Hitler was able to become the supreme leader of Germany because the populace had been disarmed. They’d have you believe that if the people of Germany had been armed, the Holocaust would never have happened.

That’s complete and utter bullshit. Adolf Hitler became the supreme leader of Germany because the German people adored him and elected him. He didn’t slaughter millions of innocent people because they were unarmed; he slaughtered them because the citizenry allowed him to do it. And while Hitler did forbid Jews and communists and Romani people from owning weapons, that was just one of the human rights they were deprived — all with the consent of the people.

But you need to ignore all that in order to accept Obama as Hitler.

To compare President Obama’s small, sensible steps toward some minimal firearm safety legislation to Hitler’s practices isn’t just offensive, it’s profoundly stupid. It’s stupid on several levels. And somewhere around the lowest level of stupid, you find the folks who aren’t even able to keep their totalitarian dictatorships straight. Like in the poster above. Obama as a Sturmabteilung brownshirt along with a faux Chinese font intended to be suggestive of Maoist Marxist-Leninism? Really?

For fucks sake, people, a little totalitarian consistency — is that really too much to ask? There’s got to be a limit to how much you can expect people to ignore.

a quick response…

Posted on January 21, 2013 by greg

…to the guy (I assume it’s a guy) who sent me an email me saying

[T]here’s nothing paranoid about standing up against tyranny. obama is paranoid about an armed citizenry and wants us disarmed.

Dude, look up ‘tyranny’ in the dictionary. The fact that you can, without fear of reprisal, publicly call the President of the United States a tyrant is confirmation that you’re NOT living under tyranny. The fact that on Gun Appreciation Day groups of people all over the United States were able to peaceably assemble in public and openly denounce the elected leader of the nation in the most objectionable terms is a testament to the fact that you’re not living under tyranny.

The fact that THIS guy is still free to walk the streets and continue to post videos and own firearms (even if he’s not legally allowed to carry them concealed at the moment) is verification that you’re not living under tyranny.

And another thing — the fact that you think you’re living under tyranny is evidence that you’re paranoid.

paranoia and romantic defiance

Posted on January 20, 2013 by greg

It was an odd day, to be sure. It certainly highlighted the centrality of guns in the minds of many US citizens. Even the name of the event — Gun Appreciation Day — struck a strange chord. These are the folks who tell us guns are tools — and you can’t blame the tool, they say, for how a person uses it. But we’ve never had a Drill Press Appreciation Day, or a Chainsaws Across America rally. The name itself is evidence that guns are different. They’re not just tools. Not even close.

My cousin and I attended the local Gun Appreciation Day event, which was held on the grounds of the State Capitol building. We arrived about half an hour early and joined the crowd that had already gathered. It wasn’t quite what we’d expected — mostly white, middle-class families with young kids. Even more surprising, the gender distribution was about equally divided — nearly as many women as men. Everybody was dressed neatly in a style I think of as ‘conservative casual.’

It was the Pro-Life rally demonstrating on the anniversary of the passage of Roe v. Wade. The Pro-gun rally was a wee bit farther away, on a different terrace.

There was no crowd at the pro-gun rally — not at first. There were a few men sort of scattered about the area, standing alone or in pairs. I wandered around until I found one of the event organizers, who pointed out the designated assembly spot. I then played border collie for a bit, herding some of the early arrivals to the rally point.

A sizable crowd did eventually gather. I estimated the crowd to be maybe three hundred people. The organizers have claimed an attendance of over six hundred. Maybe more showed up after I left.

These were the people I’d been expecting to find at Gun Appreciation Day. Almost exclusively male, almost exclusively white (though to be fair, this is Iowa — so ‘almost exclusively white’ is sort of redundant). Lots of camouflage jackets, lots of ball caps with NRA logos or the icons of sports teams. Lots of beards. Lots of stoic faces. Lots of flags. Several American flags, a scattering of Naval jacks, and lots of Gadsden flags (the yellow Don’t Tread on Me flag designed during the American Revolution by Christopher Gadsden).

For the most part, people were awfully quiet waiting for the rally to begin. These were the sort of men who are reluctant to start a conversation with another guy — a guy they don’t know. Once you got them talking, though, they were uniformly cheerful and friendly. In a way, these guys weren’t very different from, say, collectors of Beanie Babies or Star Trek memorabilia. If you engaged them in a conversation about guns, they were positively chatty. At the merest mention of black powder muzzle loaders or the relative merits of a 16 inch upper barrel receiver for an AR-15, these guys would happily natter away for hours.

You expect peculiarities at any gathering of people with esoteric interests. On one level, these guys were no more eccentric than a gathering of the Society for Creative Anachronism or the Baker Street Irregulars. On another level, of course, these folks are radically different. And that difference, in my opinion, lies in a strange mixture of paranoia and romanticism.

From the comments I heard from the people in the crowd, and from the speeches given by the organizers, it seems clear many of these folks are driven in large measure by the romantic mythos of the ‘frontiersman.’ The mythos is rather contradictory — it involves a lone man, but one with a family that requires protection from savages. It’s all about self-sufficiency, but self-sufficiency within a network of similar ‘lone men with families’ who all bond together in times of need.

In this mythos, the frontiersman acts as both a stepping-stone and a bulwark between the wilderness and civilization. The uncivilized frontier is dark and full of danger, but the frontiersman manfully shoulders the burden of protecting civilization while being partially shunned by it. Whether it’s Natty Bumppo in The Last of the Mohicans or Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings or the Jack Nicholson character in A Few Good Men, the frontiersman stands at the border of a dangerous world and defends those who can’t or won’t defend themselves — women, children, and men who aren’t suited or capable of doing a man’s job.

There’s also the romance of defiance at work here. The concept of standing up against tyranny is very attractive, of course. But the rallying cry of “You can have my gun when you pry it from my cold dead hands” is only meaningful if somebody is actually trying to take your gun. If not, then it’s just sad and pathetic blustering.

There was a great deal of bluster in the speeches yesterday. There they stood, those gallant speakers, on the grounds of the State Capitol, having been issued a permit by the government to hold a rally in which they could give speeches describing their courageous stance against governmental tyranny. They were, in effect, exercising their Constitutional rights by freely and publicly stating they were being denied their Constitutional rights.

Although I’m convinced a deep strain of heroic romanticism influenced a lot of the folks at Gun Appreciation Day, there was also a more disturbing facet — paranoia. There was a pervasive sense of fear among many of these people. They seem to truly believe they are under attack — that somebody is actively seeking to do them harm, that somebody is out to get them in some way. There was a stone-solid conviction among the people at the rally that they absolutely needed multiple firearms with high capacity magazines to protect themselves from…well, from lots of things. Despite all their protestations of courage, the heart of their argument is grounded in fear.

They’re afraid somebody will attack them in their homes. Not just somebody, but several somebodies. One woman at the rally said limiting ammunition magazines to ten rounds would would make it difficult to defend her family against multiple intruders. They’re also afraid somebody will attack them on the street, so they need to be armed all the time.

They’re afraid in their homes, they’re afraid on the streets, and they’re afraid of their own government. Those fears seem primarily grounded in wild suppositions about what the government might do and incorrect information about what the government has actually done.

They carried signs proclaiming Those who make peaceful revolution impossible make armed revolution inevitable. They carried signs with fictional quotations by Thomas Jefferson: The strongest reason for people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government. Paranoia combined with romantic defiance against a threat that doesn’t exist — it’s an unhealthy but intoxicating mix.

But perhaps the strangest thing about the day is this: I was certain that many of the people at the rally were carrying concealed weapons. The organizers think as many as half of the people there were armed. That’s probably an exaggeration, but even if only a quarter of them were carrying, that’s a LOT of guns.

And yet I didn’t feel particularly safe. To be fair, I didn’t feel particularly at risk either. I’m pretty sure, though, that if a shot was fired at that rally, an awful lot of innocent people would have been wounded — and possibly killed — in the chaos of the returning fire.

It was an odd but instructive day. I rather doubt I learned what the organizers of Gun Appreciation Day would have wanted me to learn, but I left the rally feeling all the more convinced of the need for sensible gun control legislation.

by any means necessary

Posted on January 15, 2013 by greg

Tomorrow President Obama is supposed to announce his new gun policy proposals. Yesterday, Steve Stockman (why yes, he IS a Republican from Texas) objected to those new proposals — whatever they are.

Yes, you read that correctly. Texas Republican Steve Stockman is objecting to the proposals President Obama hasn’t yet made. I guess he doesn’t want to wait until the last minute to start his objecting. Texas Republican Steve Stockman is so incensed by the proposals the president hasn’t yet made that he’s threatening to defund the White House and to file articles of impeachment.

In his press release, Stockman says “The President’s actions are an existential threat to this nation.” He warns that he “will seek to thwart this action by any means necessary.”

Texas Republican Steve Stockman (No, wait…that’s Jean Paul Sartre…sorry)

By any means necessary. That’s an interesting phrase, isn’t it. Sartre said it first, though I’m not sure if Sartre and Stockman would agree on gun control.

“I was not the one to invent lies: they were created in a society divided by class and each of us inherited lies when we were born. It is not by refusing to lie that we will abolish lies: it is by eradicating class by any means necessary.” — Jean Paul Sartre

Texas Republican Steve Stockman — probably not really into eradicating class. Just a guess on my part.

The phrase was repeated by Malcolm X, who oddly enough probably would agree with Stockman on gun control, though I doubt Stockman would be comfortable living next door to Malcolm X.

Texas Republican Steve Stockman (No, wait…that’s Malcolm X…sorry)

“We declare our right on this earth to be a man, to be a human being, to be respected as a human being, to be given the rights of a human being in this society, on this earth, in this day, which we intend to bring into existence by any means necessary.” — Malcolm X

Texas Republican Steve Stockman — probably not really interested in Malcolm X’s rights as a human being. Just a guess.

Malcolm wanted black folks to be armed. Probably to protect themselves from people like Texas Republican Steve Stockman. It was in response to the Black Panther Party acquiring military-style weapons and brandishing them in public that some of the most stringent gun control measures in modern U.S. history were passed. Don Mulford, a conservative Republican state assemblyman in California, proposed legislation prohibiting the carrying of a loaded weapon in any California city. Republican Governor Ronald Reagan happily signed the law. Imagine a law like that being proposed today (or tomorrow, by President Obama).

Texas Republican Steve Stockman probably thinks Don Mulford and Ronald Reagan were socialists from Kenya. And maybe gay. Just a guess on my part.

Texas Republican Steve Stockman

Texas Republican Steve Stockman wants to be very clear about the seriousness of the danger posed by President Obama’s yet-to-be-announced proposals:

“The President’s actions are not just an attack on the Constitution and a violation of his sworn oath of office – they are a direct attack on Americans that place all of us in danger.” — Texas Republican Steve Stockman

Sartre, Malcolm X, Texas Republican Steve Stockman. By any means necessary. Great minds think alike.

Phenomenally stupid minds also think alike. Did I mention that Steve Stockman is a Republican from Texas?

responsible and irresponsible

Posted on January 8, 2013 by greg

Two years ago today Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was meeting her constituents in a grocery store parking lot in a suburb of Tucson, Arizona. A young man named Jared Loughner arrived at the event with a concealed Glock 19 9mm pistol, which he’d legally purchased a few months earlier.

Loughner used that weapon to shoot Giffords through the head at point blank range. He then began firing randomly at others at the event. When he paused to reload, he was tackled and subdued by bystanders. Loughner had fired 31 rounds (although he had a 30 round magazine, he’d arrived at the event with a round already in the chamber). He had a second fully loaded 30 round magazine in his pocket, along with two 15 round magazines. That’s a total of 91 rounds.

The shooting only lasted about 15 seconds, during which Loughner managed to shoot 18 people, killing six of them. Had he been limited to the standard 15 round magazine sold with the weapon, the carnage would have been reduced.

Today, on the Facebook page of the National Rifle Association, you can find this graphic:

The numbers may be accurate, but not surprisingly, they’re deliberately misleading. The NRA is right — rifles and shotguns are NOT the weapons of choice for murder. Handguns are. The majority of murders are fairly spontaneous events, often fueled by alcohol or drugs. Folks get drunk, get in an argument, a fight starts, a gun is pulled, and there you are. It’s fairly rare for somebody to have a shotgun or rifle on them in most murder scenarios; usually in the time it takes for a person to leave the area and go fetch a rifle or shotgun, either the intended shooter calms down enough to re-think the situation or the intended victim hauls ass and leaves.

So no, there aren’t a lot of murders by rifle or shotgun. However, when it comes to mass shooting, rifles are one of the weapons of choice. The irresponsible NRA fails to mention that in their graphic. There were also some other numbers missing from the NRA’s graphic, so I’ve added them.

Blunt Instrument Murders: 496 (1.36 deaths per day)
Hands/Feet Murders: 726 (1.98 deaths per day)
Knife Murders: 1,694 (4.64 deaths per day)
Firearm Murders: 8,583 (23.51 deaths per day)
All Firearm Deaths: 31,347 (85.88 deaths per day)

Firearms make it easier to kill, it’s that simple. Easier to kill yourself, easier to kill other people — accidentally or intentionally. Large capacity magazines make it easier to kill more people; it’s also that simple. Those are facts the NRA doesn’t want you to know.

I’m not an advocate for disarming the U.S. As I’ve said before, I rather like guns. But it’s possible to like guns and still want to see the annual body count reduced.

Today, on the second anniversary of the shooting she somehow managed to survive, Gabby Giffords and her husband, Mark Kelly, have launched Americans for Responsible Solutions — an organization dedicated to sensible firearm policy. In their opinion piece, Giffords and Kelly write:

We have experienced too much death and hurt to remain idle. Our response to the Newtown massacre must consist of more than regret, sorrow and condolence.

They’re right. Regret doesn’t change anything. Sorrow and condolence don’t change anything. People can change things. And it’s way past time we did.

this shit has to stop

Posted on December 24, 2012 by greg

Set fire to a building, wait for the police and the fire department to show up, fire a few rounds at them, run away.

This used to be a tactic used in inner cities during the infamous Long Hot Summer of 1967. A hundred and sixty urban riots during a four month period. A lot of anger and rage against government — national, state, municipal, it didn’t matter. Tension about the war in Southeast Asia, tension about racism, tension about drug laws, tension exacerbated by the summer heat. Start a fire, wait for the response, fire a few rounds, run away. The motives in 1967 were personal and political. Not like this — not like what happened this morning in Webster, NY.

Scene of the shooting, Webster, NY

This morning, in a middle-class, lakeside suburb near Rochester, firefighters — and let me stress this: volunteer firefighters — arrived at the scene of a home fire and were shot at. Four firefighters were shot; two are dead. The gunman is also dead. The house that was on fire — it burned to the ground since the firefighters couldn’t extinguish the blaze while being shot at. Three other houses were also destroyed when the fire spread; four others were damaged by fire.

I don’t know if the shooter started the fire. I don’t know if this was planned or spontaneous. I don’t know how the shooter was armed or what sort of ammunition he used. But I know this: this shit has to stop.

Last week, it was children and their teachers. This morning, volunteer firefighters. Regular people who give up some of their free time to train and practice putting out fires. Regular men and women who, when called, willingly stop whatever they’re doing and respond to help the people of their communities. They don’t care if the house belongs to a friend or a stranger, they don’t care if the house is owned by Democrats or Republicans, they don’t care if the inhabitants are black or white, they don’t care if it’s the home of illegal immigrants. They get the call and they deliberately put themselves in real danger, because it needs to be done.

And some asshole with a gun shoots them.

My guess is Wayne LaPierre of the National Rifle Association will suggest that all firefighters should be armed so they can return fire.

Let me be clear about this. It’s NOT the individual firearms that’s the problem. The problem is ALL the firearms. It’s the easy availability of firearms and the availability of high capacity magazines. Making firearms more difficult to obtain IS NOT going to stop mass shootings; our culture is much too fucked up at this point for that to stop. But we can, over time, at least try to reduce the body count.

This shit has to stop.

more guns

Posted on December 21, 2012 by greg

In his news appearance today Wayne LaPierre, the Executive Vice President of the National Rifle Association, made this dubious claim:

[N]obody has addressed the most important, pressing and immediate question we face: How do we protect our children right now, starting today, in a way that we know works?

That might sound like a profoundly stupid claim, considering that a lot of people have, in fact, been addressing that very issue. But since the NRA believes there’s only one possible answer to the question, they assume the question really hasn’t been addressed. The NRA’s answer, of course, is we need more guns.

More guns. For three and a half decades, that’s been the NRA’s answer. Since 1977, when new leadership took over the NRA, the group has been pressing the ‘more guns’ solution. They’ve stopped representing hunters and ordinary folks; now they represent firearms manufacturers. What do firearms manufactures want to sell? More guns.

Wayne LaPierre, NRA Chief Executive

In his speech today, LaPierre pointed out that

[F]ederal gun prosecutions have decreased by 40 percent, to the lowest levels in a decade.

What he neglected to mention is the NRA’s role in that situation. LaPierre failed to note his group has helped Republicans draft legislation making it more difficult for law enforcement agencies to investigate and prosecute firearms cases.

Because of Republicans in Congress (all of whom are supported by the NRA), the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (the only federal agency allowed to investigate federal firearms crime) has fewer field agents now than it did 40 years ago. There are fewer than 2500 agents to oversee the activities of more than 60,000 licensed gun licensed gun dealers (and nobody knows how many unlicensed gun dealers). The BATF hasn’t had a Director for more than six years, because Republicans in the Senate refuse to confirm any nominee not supported by the NRA.

The NRA drafted legislation offered and passed by Republicans that prohibit the BATF by law from performing more than a single unannounced inspection of a licensed firearms dealer in any 12-month period. The BATF is also prohibited from requiring gun dealers to conduct inventory checks to detect loss and theft. What do those limitations mean for criminals? More guns.

The NRA also drafted and lobbied for a Republican-sponsored law requiring the Justice Department and the FBI to destroy within 24 hours the records of all gun buyers whose background checks were approved. That makes it harder to catch gun dealers who falsify their records. It also makes it more difficult for law enforcement to identify and track straw purchasers (people who buy guns for folks who wouldn’t be able to pass a background check). What does that put in the hands of more criminals? More guns.

If that’s not enough, the BATF is also prevented by law from providing gun trace data to municipal and state law enforcement agencies. This data can show where illegal guns are coming from, who buys them, and how they travel across state lines. Criminological studies consistently reveal that most of the firearms seized at crime scenes are sold by a very small percentage of licensed gun dealers. The denial of that sort of information means it’s almost impossible to prosecute gun dealers who supply criminals with more guns.

In fact, Riverview Gun Sales, the gun shop that sold the weapons used in the Newtown, CT school shooting, also sold the weapons used to kill eight people in Hartford, CT in 2010. In 2007, an employee of that same gun shop was accused of stealing 33 firearms from the shop’s inventory. Only two of those guns were recovered. The man pleaded ‘no contest’ to stealing those two guns; he received an 18 month suspended sentence.

Riverview Gun Sales

So LaPierre is right. Gun prosecutions are down — and we have the NRA to thank for that. And criminals can also thank the NRA for giving them greater access to more guns.

The NRA’s solution to the tragedy in Newtown, CT isn’t to make it more difficult for crazy people to arm themselves. Their answer is more guns. Their answer is to turn schools into armed camps. LaPierre said this today:

[W]e need to have every single school in America immediately deploy a protection program proven to work and by that I mean armed security.

Rather than try to prevent the shootings, the NRA’s answer to school shooting is to make somebody available to return fire. More guns.

LaPierre did say one thing today that I agree with completely. He said,

If we truly cherish our kids, more than our money, more than our celebrities, more than our sports stadiums, we must give them the greatest level of protection possible.

He’s right, we must give school children the greatest level of protection possible. But that doesn’t mean arming teachers or placing armed, uniformed guards in every schoolhouse in the US. It doesn’t mean providing still more guns. The greatest level of protection would be to make it more difficult for deranged people to obtain a firearm. It would be to reduce the number of rounds that deranged people can fire. Giving the greatest level of protection would include giving BATF and other law enforcement agencies the tools they need to actively investigate and prosecute firearms violations.

You know what else ‘giving school children the greatest level of protection possible’ would mean? It would mean telling the National Rifle Association to go fuck itself.

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