NYT: End the Gun Epidemic in America

Yesterday, the New York Times took the unusual step of running its main editorial on the front page of the paper's print edition.  The topic?  Gun control and the need to end America's insane epidemic of gun violence and the pressing need to remove military assault rifles and other weapons designed for mass killing from civilian hands.  The Second Amendment - while ill advised in my view - does not grant unfettered rights and it is time that the rights and safety of the majority of citizens trump the rights of gun fanatics and males who need to own a gun to compensate for inadequate penis size (these same nutcases probably drive large, jacked up pickup trucks for the same reason).  No other advance nation in the world has daily, yes, daily mass shootings, be cause no other advance nation has such insane gun laws.  Yes, criminals and would be terrorists might still acquire guns, but at least it would be more difficult and the ease with which large numbers of people can be murdered would be reduced..  Here are highlights from the editorial.

All decent people feel sorrow and righteous fury about the latest slaughter of innocents, in California. Law enforcement and intelligence agencies are searching for motivations, including the vital question of how the murderers might have been connected to international terrorism. That is right and proper.

But motives do not matter to the dead in California, nor did they in Colorado, Oregon, South Carolina, Virginia, Connecticut and far too many other places. The attention and anger of Americans should also be directed at the elected leaders whose job is to keep us safe but who place a higher premium on the money and political power of an industry dedicated to profiting from the unfettered spread of ever more powerful firearms.

It is a moral outrage and a national disgrace that civilians can legally purchase weapons designed specifically to kill people with brutal speed and efficiency. These are weapons of war, barely modified and deliberately marketed as tools of macho vigilantism and even insurrection. America’s elected leaders offer prayers for gun victims and then, callously and without fear of consequence, reject the most basic restrictions on weapons of mass killing, as they did on Thursday.

Opponents of gun control . . . point out that determined killers obtained weapons illegally in places like France, England and Norway that have strict gun laws. Yes, they did.

But at least those countries are trying. The United States is not. Worse, politicians abet would-be killers by creating gun markets for them, and voters allow those politicians to keep their jobs. It is past time to stop talking about halting the spread of firearms, and instead to reduce their number drastically — eliminating some large categories of weapons and ammunition.

It is not necessary to debate the peculiar wording of the Second Amendment. No right is unlimited and immune from reasonable regulation.

Certain kinds of weapons, like the slightly modified combat rifles used in California, and certain kinds of ammunition, must be outlawed for civilian ownership. It is possible to define those guns in a clear and effective way and, yes, it would require Americans who own those kinds of weapons to give them up for the good of their fellow citizens.

What better time than during a presidential election to show, at long last, that our nation has retained its sense of decency?

No More Liberal Apologies

Some of my former Republican colleagues - especially those who seem to have suffered a "Stepford Wife" like transformation and ceased thinking independently, preferring instead to imbibe gallons of "Kool-Aid" - claim that I have gone all mindless liberal.  I maintain that I haven't changed but that it is the GOP which has changed.  It's changed into something ugly, selfish, racist and anti-Christian despite its self prostitution to the Christofascist.  Much I my "liberalism" I would describe instead is a continuing grasp on common sense and a realization that the GOP's war on workers and other groups hated by the Christofascists and Tea Party is steadily destroying the lives of average Americans and creating a toxic business climate in the long run.  While I make no claim to have her savvy, Senator Elizabeth Warren makes some points that support my view.  Here are excerpts from a column in the Washington Post:

What all the descriptions miss is Warren’s most important contribution to the progressive cause. She is, above all, a lawyer who knows how to make arguments. From the time she first came to public attention, Warren has been challenging conservative presumptions embedded so deeply in our discourse that we barely notice them. Where others equivocate, she fights back with common sense.

Since the Reagan era, Democrats have been so determined to show how pro-market and pro-business they are that they’ve shied away from pointing out that markets could not exist without government, that the well-off depend on the state to keep their wealth secure and that participants in the economy rely on government to keep the marketplace on the level and to temper the business cycle’s gyrations.

Warren doesn’t back away from any of these facts.  . . . .  “There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own,” she said. “Nobody. You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear: You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for.” It was all part of “the underlying social contract,” she said, a phrase politicians don’t typically use. 

Warren’s book tells her personal story in a folksy way and documents her major public battles . . . But the book is most striking for the way in which her confident tone parallels Ronald Reagan’s upbeat proclamations on behalf of his own creed. Conservatives loved the Gipper for using straightforward and understandable arguments to make the case for less government. Warren turns the master’s method against the ideology he rhapsodized.
Would you rather fly an airplane without the Federal Aviation Administration checking air traffic control? Would you rather swallow a pill without the Food and Drug Administration testing drug safety? Would you rather defend our nation without a military and fight our fires without our firefighters?”  How often are our anti-government warriors asked such basic questions?

But doesn’t being pro-government mean you’re anti-business? Well, no, Warren says, quite the opposite. “There’s nothing pro-business about crumbling roads and bridges or a power grid that can’t keep up,” she writes. “There’s nothing pro-business about cutting back on scientific research at a time when our businesses need innovation more than ever. There’s nothing pro-business about chopping education opportunities when workers need better training.”

At the end of a long liberal era, Reagan electrified conservatives by telling them they didn’t have to apologize anymore for what they believed. Now, Warren insists, it’s the era of liberal apologies that’s over.