How America Can Free Itself from Guns

The recent horrific murders in Charleston have revived debate and posturing on America's insane gun ownership policies that help make gun violence off the charts compared to the rest of the developed world.  Advocates for unrestricted gun ownership cite the 2nd Amendment and believe their rights - much like the Christofascists do on religious belief - trump the rights of everyone else.  It is no surprise that both groups are core constituencies for the Republican Party that places the rights of the extremist few above the rights of the majority.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at strategies to end the gun insanity that plagues the nation.  Here are highlights:

Advocates of a saner approach to guns need a new strategy. We cannot go on like this, wringing our hands in frustration after every tragedy involving firearms. We said “enough” after Sandy Hook. We thought the moment for action had come. Yet nothing happened. We are saying “enough” after Charleston. But this time, we don’t even expect anything to happen.

What’s needed is a long-term national effort to change popular attitudes toward handgun ownership. And we need to insist on protecting the rights of Americans who do not want to be anywhere near guns.

None of this should mean letting Congress off the hook or giving up on what might be done now. So kudos to Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) for saying on Tuesday that they are looking for ways to bring back their proposal that would require background checks for gun sales. 

Lest anyone doubt that gun control measures can work, a study released this month by the Center for Gun Policy and Research at Johns Hopkins University found that a 1995 Connecticut law requiring a permit or license contingent on passing a background check was associated with a 40 percent drop in gun homicides.

But as long as gun control is linked to ideology and party — and as long as the National Rifle Association and its allies claim a monopoly on arguments about individual rights — reasonable steps of this sort will be ground to death by the Washington Obstruction Machine.

That’s why the nation needs a public service offensive on behalf of the health and safety of us all. It could build on Sandy Hook Promise and other civic endeavors. If you doubt it could succeed, consider how quickly opinion changed on the Confederate battle flag.

My friend Guy Molyneux, a progressive pollster, laid out how it could happen. “We need to build a social movement devoted to the simple proposition that owning handguns makes us less safe, not more,” he told me. “The evidence is overwhelming that having a gun in your home increases the risks of suicide, domestic violence and fatal accidents, and yet the number one reason given for gun purchases is ‘personal safety.’ We need a public health campaign on the dangers of gun ownership, similar to the successful efforts against smoking and drunk driving.”

When we talk about guns, we don’t focus enough on the reality, reported in the 2015 Annual Review of Public Health, that nearly two-thirds of the deaths from firearm violence are suicides. Yes, people can try to kill themselves with pills, but there’s no coming back from a gunshot to the head. Those in the throes of depression who have a gun nearby are more likely to act on their darkest impulses.

Nor do we talk enough about accidental deaths when children get their hands on guns, or what happens when a domestic argument escalates and a firearm is readily available. The message is plain and simple: Households that voluntarily say no to guns are safer.

“This is not about the government saying you cannot own a handgun. This is about society saying you should not have a gun, especially in a home with children.”

“Those of us who want to live, shop, go to school and worship in gun-free spaces also have rights,” Molyneux said. “In what way is ‘freedom’ advanced by telling the owner of a bar or restaurant they cannot ban handguns in their own place of business, as many states now do? Today, it is the NRA that is the enemy of freedom, by seeking to impose its values on everyone else.”

The nation could ring out with the new slogans of liberty: “Not in my house.” “Not in our school.” “Not in my bar.” “Not in our church.” We’d be defending one of our most sacred rights: The right not to bear arms.

The Quickening Pace of Gun Rampages

According the NRA - which is documented to be a front for gun manufacturers rather than "sportsman - more guns make Americans safer.  It's a lie, of course, like so much of what comes out of the far right.  Now, a new FBI study confirms what many of us have sensed: shooting rampages with numerous deaths are increasing in frequency.  Another take away?  Most of the shooters use guns that were legally purchased thus demolishing the NRA myth that its criminals using stolen to commit the carnage.  The New York Times in a main editorial looks at the disturbing findings which underscore the need for serious control in this nation.  Here are excerpts:

It is a sorry commentary on the shooting sprees that regularly afflict the nation that only recently has the Federal Bureau of Investigation been authorized to delve into how prevalent the threat has become. The bureau’s new survey across the past 13 years concludes that horrific shootings like those in 2012 at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., and the movie theater in Aurora, Colo., are occurring with greater frequency.

The average annual number of shooting sprees with multiple casualties was 6.4 from 2000 to 2006. That jumped to 16.4 a year from 2007 to 2013, according to the study of 160 incidents of gun mayhem since 2000. (In 2000, The Times examined 100 spree killings, all those that the paper’s staff could find going back 50 years.) The F.B.I. report makes the shooters’ terrible effectiveness clear: 486 people were killed — 366 of them in the past seven years — and 557 others were wounded, many of them gravely incapacitated for years afterward. Sixty percent of the sprees ended before police could arrive, and 40 percent of the shooters committed suicide. F.B.I. analysts found that many of the gunmen had studied earlier gun massacres and were attracted to the attention mass killers received.

Part of the gun lobby’s grip on timorous congressional lawmakers has involved the suppression of studies and information vitally needed to enlighten the public and galvanize support for stronger gun safety laws. Congress ducked the need for effective controls after the Sandy Hook massacre, which left 20 children and six adults dead. The new F.B.I. survey is the first such federal study, despite decades of gun carnage.

[T]he bureau’s report did not address the issue of easily available military rifles and pistols that enable crazed shooters to spray crowds with bullets in a matter of seconds. The report’s casualty count of innocent Americans is undeniable. And the likelihood that gun sprees will continue is inescapable.

The far right is obsessed with terrorist threats from groups like ISIS, yet the never ending opposition to serious gun control has made it easy for American born terrorist sympathizers to arm themselves to the hilt to maximize the deaths they can inflict.  Any sane person - which sadly rules out far right "conservatives" - can see the idiocy of this situation.

Oklahoma's Tornado Disaster - The Courage of Teachers

One of the perennial bogey men that the Republicans like to trot out and beat up are the nation's teachers and their various teachers unions.   Teachers are all too often depicted as lazy bureaucrats who are failing to do their jobs and who support a liberal agenda that would destroy traditional America.   And when it comes to slashing budgets, the Republicans love to slash education spending and to cut the ranks of teachers in our public schools. And then every once in a while, a tragedy happens that shows that teachers are not what the far right and the GOP would have the public believe.  Last year we saw the amazing courage and sacrifice made by teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary School in the face of a maniacal shooter.  This week we are seeing profiles in courage and selflessness by teachers at the devastated elementary schools in Moore, Oklahoma.  CNN looks at this latest example of heroism - some would say simply doing their jobs - by teachers.  Here are highlights:

Each day more than 55 million students attend the country's 130,000 schools.  Each day, parents and guardians entrust some 7 million teachers with the education of our children.  And on a normal day, that is all we expect teachers to do -- teach.

But on those not-so normal days we are reminded that for six hours a day and more, five days a week, teaching is not the only thing teachers are charged with doing. On those not-so-normal days, we are reminded that teachers are also asked to be surrogate parents, protectors, heroes.  Monday was one of those not-so-normal days.

The nation watched in horror as a 2-mile-wide tornado with winds up to 200 mph tore through Moore, Oklahoma. As sirens blared and the ground shook, the full force of the twister hit Plaza Towers Elementary School around 3 p.m. It was full of students, young scared children who had nowhere to hide as the tornado ripped off the roof, sending debris everywhere.

"We had to pull a car out of the front hall off a teacher and I don't know what her name is, but she had three little kids underneath her," a rescuer said. "Good job teach."  And that teacher was not the only one whose body shielded children from harm.

A couple of years ago, as state and local officials were looking for ways to cut spending, a study from the American Enterprise Institute emerged in 2011, asking a provocative question: Are teachers overpaid?

Using abbreviated metrics -- such as comparing private sector employees' SAT and GRE scores with those of teachers -- the study's co-author Jason Richwine said the findings suggested that "years of education could be an overestimate of cognitive skills."

A counterintuitive and insulting proposition. But in retrospect that shouldn't be too surprising considering Richwine's doctoral dissertation advocated keeping out immigrants with low IQs, which he maintained are lower than those of the "native white population." He also co-authored an attack on immigration reform for the Heritage Foundation. And he resigned as the group's senior policy analyst shortly afterward.

We can certainly talk about the realities of the economy, debate the best method to evaluate effectiveness and discuss the drawbacks of unions. But anyone who characterizes teachers as overpaid is forgetting what we entrust them with each and every day.  Our children.  On a normal day, you don't think about that too much.

But on a not-so-normal day, that is all you can think about.  Anne Marie Murphy, a mother of four, died trying to protect 6-year-old Dylan Hockley as Adam Lanza terrorized the halls of Sandy Hook Elementary School in December. When police found the two victims, Murphy was still holding Hockley in her arms.  And five other educators did not run away from the threat but gave their lives trying to protect students, trying to protect children.

There is more to the article that deserves a read, but you get the point.  The GOP loves robber barons of Wall Street who make millions exporting American jobs, but as a party the GOP cares little about teachers.  Teachers, many of whom are unsung heroes.   Rather than support them, the GOP is always scheming to lay them off or divert funds to Christofascist schools via vouchers.  We need to rethink how we pay and honor teachers.

44 Percent Of Republicans Think Armed Revolution May Be Necessary To Protect "Liberties"

The descent of the Republican Party into a fetid swamp of insanity continues unabated despite the efforts of some to pull the party out of a long term death spiral.  A new survey reveals that 44% of Republicans (obviously the Christofascist and Tea Party elements) believe an armed revolt may be  needed to protect their "liberties."   Of course, by "liberties" they mean their ability to force their religious and social views on the rest of America.    As a former GOP activist, I am still amazed at how insane the GOP has become and again trace it to the rise of the Christofascists within the party.  When those who embrace ignorance, reject science and modern knowledge and yearn for a return of segregation and the sodomy laws gain control, insanity is what follows.  Here are highlights from The New Civil Rights Movement looks at the survey findings:

Forty-four percent of Republicans believe “an armed revolution might be necessary in order to protect our liberties,” according to a new poll just released by Fairleigh Dickinson University’s PublicMind.

Only eighteen percent of Democrats and twenty-seven percent of Independents agreed. Regardless of party, sixty percent of those with a college degree did not agree an armed revolution might be necessary.

“Nearly three-quarters (73%) of Democrats say that Congress needs to pass new laws to protect the public from gun violence, but the views of Republicans are almost completely opposite: 65 percent don’t think new laws are necessary,” the survey states.

If those “armed revolution” numbers aren’t shocking enough for you, try these.  “Turning to attitudes toward the Sandy Hook shooting in December 2012, which prompted the recent debate over the need for new gun control laws, the survey finds that overall, a quarter (25%) of Americans think that facts about the shootings at Sandy Hook elementary last year are being hidden and an additional eleven percent are unsure.”

But wait — there’s more.   “Republicans are more likely to think that the truth about Sandy Hook is being suppressed, with 32 percent agreeing,” the survey notes.

A U.S. Senate in the Grip of the Gun Lobby

Today in a shameful act that I find disgusting, the U. S. Senate defeated a bi-partisan authored effort to bring some minimal sanity to America's gun control laws.  The winner today was the NRA and the gun manufacturers for which it constitutes a front organization.  The losers were the nearly 90% of Americans who support background checks and minimal efforts to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and the mentally ill.  It goes without saying that GOP senators led the charge to kill the legislation.  Not surprisingly the families of children massacred at Sandy Hook elementary are outraged.  Similarly outraged is a victim of gun violence herself, former Congresswomen Gabrielle Giffords who has let loose with an op-ed in the New York Times.  The piece deserves a full reading.  Here are highlights:

SENATORS say they fear the N.R.A. and the gun lobby. But I think that fear must be nothing compared to the fear the first graders in Sandy Hook Elementary School felt as their lives ended in a hail of bullets. The fear that those children who survived the massacre must feel every time they remember their teachers stacking them into closets and bathrooms, whispering that they loved them, so that love would be the last thing the students heard if the gunman found them..

On Wednesday, a minority of senators gave into fear and blocked common-sense legislation that would have made it harder for criminals and people with dangerous mental illnesses to get hold of deadly firearms — a bill that could prevent future tragedies like those in Newtown, Conn., Aurora, Colo., Blacksburg, Va., and too many communities to count. 

Some of the senators who voted against the background-check amendments have met with grieving parents whose children were murdered at Sandy Hook, in Newtown. Some of the senators who voted no have also looked into my eyes as I talked about my experience being shot in the head at point-blank range in suburban Tucson two years ago, and expressed sympathy for the 18 other people shot besides me, 6 of whom died. These senators have heard from their constituents — who polls show overwhelmingly favored expanding background checks. And still these senators decided to do nothing. Shame on them. 

We know what we’re going to hear: vague platitudes like “tough vote” and “complicated issue.” I was elected six times to represent southern Arizona, in the State Legislature and then in Congress. I know what a complicated issue is; I know what it feels like to take a tough vote. This was neither. These senators made their decision based on political fear and on cold calculations about the money of special interests like the National Rifle Association, which in the last election cycle spent around $25 million on contributions, lobbying and outside spending. 

Speaking is physically difficult for me. But my feelings are clear: I’m furious. I will not rest until we have righted the wrong these senators have done, and until we have changed our laws so we can look parents in the face and say: We are trying to keep your children safe. We cannot allow the status quo — desperately protected by the gun lobby so that they can make more money by spreading fear and misinformation — to go on.

I am asking every reasonable American to help me tell the truth about the cowardice these senators demonstrated. I am asking for mothers to stop these lawmakers at the grocery store and tell them: You’ve lost my vote. I am asking activists to unsubscribe from these senators’ e-mail lists and to stop giving them money. I’m asking citizens to go to their offices and say: You’ve disappointed me, and there will be consequences. 

Mark my words: if we cannot make our communities safer with the Congress we have now, we will use every means available to make sure we have a different Congress, one that puts communities’ interests ahead of the gun lobby’s. To do nothing while others are in danger is not the American way.

Very well said.

Newtown Shooter Had NRA Certificates and Virtual Arsenal

As the NRA continues its campaign of lies and disinformation against rational gun control  - because its financial backers, the gun manufacturers want to restrictions whatsoever - new information is coming out about Adam Lanza, the shooter in the Newtown, Connecticut massacre last December.   Among the new details is information on the extent of the weapons arsenal in his home, the insane amount of ammunition in the home, and the presence of NRA certificates.   Thanks to the high volume magazines so loved by the NRA, Lanza was able to fire 154 bullets in less roughly five minutes.  The NRA may try to disclaim Lanza, but the evidence puts him and his at best foolish (I would argue criminally negligent) mother right in the NRA camp.   The Hartford Courant has details.  Here are excerpts:

Newtown shooter Adam Lanza's home contained an arsenal of guns, more than 1,000 rounds of ammunition, samurai swords, a bayonet and knives, search warrants released Thursday show.
The warrants show that police found the items after searching Lanza's home and car following the Dec. 14 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, where Lanza killed 20 first-graders and six women.

The warrants state that investigators found two rifles, a BB gun and a starter pistol in the house, including the .22-caliber rifle that he used to kill his mother, Nancy Lanza, before going on his killing spree. Lanza had taken four additional guns with him to the school.

A gun safe, where some weapons were stored, was in Adam Lanza's bedroom, a warrant indicates. The list of more ammunition filled nearly two pages. Investigators found full boxes of shotgun shells with buckshot, hundreds of rounds for the .22-caliber rifle, numerous boxes of ammunition for handguns as well as the instruction manual for the Bushmaster AR-15 used in the shooting.
Investigators found 12 knives, three samurai swords, a bayonet, eye protection, ear muffs for a gun range, Simmons binoculars, paper targets and Lanza's National Rifle Association certificate.

Police found three photographs of a dead person covered in plastic and blood. The warrants do not indicate whether authorities know the identity of the person.

They also found a bank check to Lanza from his mother for "the purchase of a C183 (firearm)," one of the warrants states. Although investigators identified the "C183" as a firearm, it is unclear if any such weapon with that designation is made. Police confiscated a military-style uniform from Lanza's bedroom, a warrant indicates.

Families of the victims were briefed late Wednesday night about what details were going to be released in the search warrants.

Sedensky said in his report that police recovered from Lanza's body three, 30-round magazines for the Bushmaster, each containing 30 rounds. They also located in the area of the shootings six additional 30-round magazines, three of which were empty and the others containing 10, 11 and 13 live rounds. There was one 30-round magazine on the gun.

Lanza blasted his way into the school by shooting out the front glass and then proceeded to two classrooms, firing 154 bullets in less than five minutes. He killed himself with one final shot as police were closing in.

Lanza killed 17 people in Lauren Rousseau's classroom, including 15 children, shooting most of them at point-blank range as they tried to hide in a bathroom in the back of the classroom. One girl survived by playing dead.

He then backtracked into the classroom of Victoria Soto and killed seven more, including five children. All were shot multiple times.

The NRA and politicians that do its bidding literally have blood on their hands.  One can only hope that members of Congress will remember the faces of those murdered when it comes time to vote on gun control rather than the dollars the NRA and its lobbyists pay to them

Obama Takes on Gun Extremists

It will be interesting to see if Barack Obama holds his resolve to push through meaningful control measured that should have the support of all but the most extreme gun fanatics and the political prostitutes of the NRA in Congress.  It will likewise be interesting to see whether moderates will get off their asses and make it clear to members of Congress that they need to enact gun control legislation or else facing the wrath of the NRA will be the least of the politicos' worries.  This needs to be a real come to Jesus moment for Republicans who are only too happy to regulation the womb and police the bedroom, but who prostitute themselves all too readily to the NRA and the gun manufacturers who finance it.  A column in the Washington Post looks at the coming political fight.  Here are excerpts:

President Obama went big in offering a remarkably comprehensive plan to curb gun violence, and good for him. But his announcement Wednesday is only the beginning of a protracted struggle for national sanity on firearms. Extremists have controlled the debate on guns for many years. They will do all they can to preserve a bloody status quo. The irrationality of their approach must be exposed and their power broken.

Far from acting as if his work was now done, the president made clear that he is fully invested in seeing his agenda realized — and fully prepared to lead a national movement to loosen the grip of resignation and cynicism in the face of brutality and carnage. Gun violence is not some “boutique” issue, as it is occasionally called. We are in danger of having mass shootings define us as a nation. As a people, we must rise up against this obscenity.

This fight is especially challenging for many who view themselves as “moderates” or “centrists.” Moderation is a thoroughly honorable disposition, and Obama’s proposals are moderation incarnate. By international standards, they are very cautious. The president did not call for registering all guns or confiscating assault weapons. He strongly endorsed the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Second Amendment right to bear arms. He is operating within a broad consensus about what is possible and what can work. 

An assault-weapons ban received 38 Republican votes in the House in 1994 and is backed by 58 percent of Americans, according to a Washington Post/ABC News poll. Were those Republicans outside the mainstream? And what about that 58 percent of Americans? The poll also found that 65 percent favored a ban on high-capacity magazines, another part of the Obama plan, and 86 percent favored closing the gun-show loophole, part of the effort to make sure there are background checks for all gun purchases.

But the lobbies that purport to speak for gun owners (while actually representing the interests of gun manufacturers) don’t care what the public thinks.

Too often, moderation has become a synonym for cowardice. Too often, moderates lack the guts to define the sensible middle of the road themselves — as Obama has done on the gun issue — and then to defend it. Instead, they yield to the temptation to calibrate where everyone else stands before deciding what they believe. This allows extremists who lack any shame to drag our discourse off the road entirely, into a ditch of unreason, fear and invective.

[T]he NRA’s vile new advertisement that uses Secret Service protection for the president’s daughters to make a small-minded political point .  .  .  .  .  tells us all we need to know, that the gun lobby is deeply afraid of the facts and the evidence. This is why one of the most important actions the president took was to end the ban on research into gun violence by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,

He [Obama] acknowledged that the battle ahead would be difficult. He predicted he would have to fight the lie that his plan constituted “a tyrannical assault on liberty.” And he sought to mobilize a new effort to counteract the entrenched power of those who have dictated submissiveness in the face of bloodshed. “Enough,” Obama declared, insisting that change would come only “if the American people demand it.” Will we?

I hope readers will contact their members of Congress and make it clear that they need to support the President's proposals or face the consequences in 2014.