Guns Are No Mere Symbol - They Silence Others

Not to belabor the issue of gun control in Virginia, but a piece in The Atlantic gets to the true agenda of the gun rights fanatics - many from outside of Virginia - who descended on Richmond this past Monday.  Coming fully armed as if going into war was not meant to be an exercise of free speech as alleged but rather had two different goals: (i) threaten and intimidate legislators, and (ii) silence those holding opposing views who did not attend Lobby Day out of fear for the physical safety. To me, it all underscores the reality that the gun lobby and those it manipulates care nothing for the rights of other citizens - much as hunters years ago ignored "posted" signs on my family's property and willfully trespassed on our property.  Their rights superseded our right to be safe on our own property. The mindset on display was all about wanting special rights and trampling on the rights of others. Here are article highlights:

Few places in the United States concentrate as much history in 14 acres as the grounds of the Virginia state capitol. Thomas Jefferson designed the capitol building; Patrick Henry laid its cornerstone; in 1807, Chief Justice John Marshall sat there to preside over the treason trial of former Vice President Aaron Burr. The capitol’s second floor displays a Carrara-marble statue of George Washington made by sculptor Jean-Antoine Houdon, considered the most accurate rendering of its subject. In 1861, a state convention voted there to secede; in 1865, United States Colored Troops re-raised the Stars and Stripes above it as Robert E. Lee’s retreating troops burned the city around them. A few days later, Abraham Lincoln stood at the equestrian statue of George Washington in Capitol Square and—for the first and only time—addressed an audience of freed slaves. In 1990, Lawrence Douglas Wilder, the first African American ever elected governor of a state, was sworn in on the capitol’s north steps. . . . . If there is holy ground in America, Capitol Square is part of it.

On Monday, hundreds of protesters stood outside the designated protest area with the weapons they fear the Virginia General Assembly will limit. Their presence underscores the many contradictions of this strange and ominous event.

To begin with, of course, the celebration of firearms took place on the 35th celebration of the federal Martin Luther King Jr. holiday (within that lies the contradiction that the Commonwealth of Virginia until 2000 tried to use the same day to honor King and the Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson). King’s gift to the national conversation was a commitment to nonviolence, and his life was ended by an assassin with a firearm. Second, the day of the march had come to be known in Virginia as Lobby Day, a day on which citizens could gather in the square and, in the words of the First Amendment, “peaceably assemble, and … petition the government for redress of grievances.”

But note who was not in Capitol Square on Monday. The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence had also planned to assemble and petition for gun-control legislation—as it had done in peaceful competition with gun-rights groups in previous years. This year, because of the threats of armed violence surrounding the gun-rights march, that gun-control demonstration had to be canceled. The delegate from Manassas, Lee Carter, the South’s only socialist legislator, went into hiding because of death threats. Carter had not, in fact, sponsored an anti-gun measure, but gun-rights groups spread disinformation on the internet that he had done so; his life—and his ability to function as a legislator—was endangered.

One group’s politics canceled those of others, in other words. Self-government in a democratic society is supposed to follow a model of openness—different ideas and points of view compete in a “marketplace of ideas” for the support of the people and their representatives. That model doesn’t work when one side kills the other, or even threatens to.

This is the contradiction at the heart of the national dialogue about the Second Amendment. As Justice John Paul Stevens wrote in his 2010 dissent in McDonald v. City of Chicago, the “right to keep and bear arms,” is fundamentally “dissimilar from those [the Supreme Court has] recognized in its capacity to undermine the security of others … Firearms may be used to kill another person.”

Second Amendment activists have, over the years, gone to great lengths to obscure the difference between gun rights and genuine civil liberties, especially the freedom of speech. After Virginia Governor Ralph Northam banned weapons from the square, gun-rights groups rushed to court to seek invalidation of the order. According to news reports, their lawyers “argued that prohibiting rallygoers from carrying guns would violate their Second Amendment right to bear arms and their First Amendment right to free speech” because “carrying guns is a form of symbolic speech.”

This is a potentially deadly confusion. The freedom to buy, own, and carry firearms, whatever its scope, is in no respect like the freedom of speech. Speech consists of words and launches ideas. “Symbolic speech” refers to signs, flags, photographs, and gestures that express those words and ideas. A gun is not merely a symbol; it is not like words or ideas. It is an instrument of violence and death, and its display amid a crowd is a threat.

The right to bear arms in political debate is not the power to speak for oneself; it is, at least implicitly, the power to silence others. It is not the right to persuade; it is the right to terrorize. It is not the right to participate in civil society; it is the power to threaten to disrupt, even to destroy it. As the historian Jill Lepore wrote in The New Yorker in 2012, “When carrying a concealed weapon for self-defense is understood not as a failure of civil society, to be mourned, but as an act of citizenship, to be vaunted, there is little civilian life left.”

Hopefully, the armed fanatics - again, many not even Virginians - will galvanize legislators and the vast majority of Virginians who want gun control to refuse to be threatened and intimidated by those who seek to silence them.

Republicans’ "Thoughts and Prayers" Are a Cruel Joke

Whenever a mass shooting occurs, Republicans are quick to offer "thoughts and prayers" which translates to "we are not going to do anything to stop these events." Sadly, gun lobby money and appeasing an increasingly toxic and knuckle dragging party base are more important than passing legislation that might actually reduce the increasingly regular carnage. The worse hypocrisy, of course, when Trump offers "thoughts and prayers" after inciting extremist followers to vent their hate and suggests violence against those with opposing views or different skin color.  A column in the Washington Post looks at this cruel joke that is the norm in today's GOP. Here are excerpts:

Back-to-back massacres in El Paso and Dayton kill 31. Cue the thoughts and prayers!

“Melania and I send our heartfelt thoughts and prayers,” tweeted President Trump, who vows to veto gun control.

“Elaine’s and my prayers go out to the victims,” tweeted Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who blocks votes on gun control.

Do they not realize that “thoughts and prayers” has become a meme, a cynical punchline conveying inaction on guns? It’s what people say when they plan to do nothing.

Republicans’ reflexive response to the endless massacres has become a cruel joke, as effective as a Hallmark sympathy card. They seem to realize how weak it sounds: CNN reported that it invited 50 Republican lawmakers to talk about the shootings; only one accepted. Democrats mentioned thoughts and prayers too — as insufficient. Sen. Ed Markey (Mass.) complained: “My Republican colleagues cut and paste the words ‘thoughts and prayers’ into a tweet and then do nothing on gun violence.”

Trump proposed action, tweeting Monday in support of “strong background checks.” But, as after Parkland, Fla., he quickly dropped the idea, omitting it from his on-camera remarks.  Instead: More thoughts and prayers!

Trump, who last week shared the sentiment that “DEMOCRATS ARE THE TRUE ENEMIES OF AMERICA,” said “now is the time to set destructive partisanship aside.”

Eventually, disgusted Americans will force Republicans to act. Until then, here’s a thought: We don’t have a prayer.

Vote Democrat whenever possible.  Send your "thoughts and prayers" to the GOP.

Guns and America's Deep Sickness

In less than 24 hours, two mass shootings occurred.  One in El Paso, Texas at 10:00 am yesterday morning killing 20, seemingly targeting Hispanics and motivated by hatred and white supremacy beliefs by a shooter enamored with Donald Trump, and the other in Dayton, Ohio at 1:00 am this morning that took 9 lives where details are still emerging.  The common thread: guns capable of rapid fire that no sportsman would need for hunting and that no average person would need for self-defense. No other developed nations has the number of now regular mass shooting - mass murder - for a simple reason.  They have sane gun laws and bar civilians from having military style weapons designed for one purpose only: killing and killing rapidly. Despite this reality, earlier this year at the NRA convention, the Texas Observer reports the governor of Texas made these bullshit statements:

Texas Governor Greg Abbott said religion and the Second Amendment are the best ways to curb gun violence and mass shootings.

“The answer to gun violence is not to take guns away, the answer is to strengthen the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens,” said Abbott during his brief speech to about 5,000 firearm enthusiasts. “The problem is not guns, it’s hearts without God.”

I'm sorry, but God is not the answer.  The answer is sane gun control laws and the ban and confiscation of all assault weapons in the hands of civilians.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at the disturbing sickness of mass shootings in America.  Here are article excerpts (note: since the end of the assault weapon ban in 2004, the number of mass shootings has increased)

The places change, the numbers change, but the choice of weapon remains the same. In the United States, people who want to kill a lot of other people most often do it with guns.

Public mass shootings account for a tiny fraction of the country’s gun deaths, but they are uniquely terrifying because they occur without warning in the most mundane places. Most of the victims are chosen not for what they have done but simply for where they happen to be.

There is no universally accepted definition of a public mass shooting, and this piece defines it narrowly. It looks at the 164 shootings in which four or more people were killed by a lone shooter (two shooters in a few cases). It does not include shootings tied to gang disputes or robberies that went awry, and it does not include domestic shootings that took place exclusively in private homes. A broader definition would yield much higher numbers.

This tally begins Aug. 1, 1966, when a student sniper fired down on passersby from the observation deck of a clock tower at the University of Texas. By the time police killed him, 17 other people were dead or dying. As Texas Monthly’s Pamela Colloff wrote, the shooting “ushered in the notion that any group of people, anywhere — even walking around a university campus on a summer day — could be killed at random by a stranger.” The people who were killed came from nearly every imaginable race, religion and socioeconomic background. Their ages range from the unborn to the elderly; 189 were children and teenagers. In addition, thousands of survivors were left with devastating injuries, shattered families and psychological scars. Semiautomatic rifles have been used in some of the country’s deadliest shootings, such as those in Newtown, Orlando, San Bernardino and Las Vegas. The AR-15, a lightweight, customizable version of the military’s M16, soared in popularity after a 10-year federal ban on assault weapons expired in 2004. Some of the Las Vegas shooter’s guns had been fitted with legal devices called “bump-fire stocks,” which allow semiautomatic rifles to fire as quickly as automatic ones.

The country’s most popular type of firearm, 9mm semiautomatic handguns, are used by many law enforcement officers. They are generally light and inexpensive, easy to conceal and control, and they fire as quickly as a person can pull the trigger. The gunman who killed 32 students and teachers at Virginia Tech in 2007 used a 9mm semiautomatic Glock 19 (and a .22-caliber Walther P22, another popular caliber). In this data, 9mm semiautomatic handguns show up more than any other weapon. In the 50 years before the Texas tower shooting, there were just 25 public mass shootings in which four or more people were killed, according to author and criminologist Grant Duwe. Since then, the number has risen dramatically, and many of the deadliest shootings have occurred within the past few years.

Australia drastically changed its gun laws in the mid-1990's after a mass shooting occurred.  Since then gun deaths have plummeted. Recently, New Zealand radically changed its gun laws after a deadly mass shooting occurred.  Only in America does the murder of innocent people mean nothing to politicians - mostly Republicans - who put NRA and gun manufacturer money above the lives of their constituents.

Virginia’s Top Democrats to Call for Stricter Gun Laws

Governor Northam.

With the guns and the silencer - which many believed allowed the Virginia Beach shooter to take more lives - legal in Virginia, Virginia's top three Democrats are calling for stricter gun laws.  For many years the road block to more sane gun laws in Virginia - and across the country - has been Republicans in the Virginia General Assembly and other state legislatures who are bought and owned by the gun lobby. The ftutory framework act that no law abiding citizen needs a silencer means nothing to Virginia Republicans and Virginia ranks 5th in the nation in terms of the number of silencers on the streets (Texas ranks first).  Virginia's top Democrats are saying enough is enough after last Friday's deadly rampage and are calling for reform of Virginia's ridiculous pro-gun statutory framework which puts gun rights ahead of the safety of all Virginians.  A piece n the Washington Post looks at the renewed call for common sense changes to Virginia's gun laws.  Here are highlights:

RICHMOND — All three of Virginia’s statewide elected officials plan to stand together Tuesday to call for tighter gun safety policies in the wake of Friday’s mass shooting in Virginia Beach.

Gov. Ralph Northam, Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax and Attorney General Mark R. Herring, all Democrats, expressed frustration over the weekend that Republicans who control the General Assembly have repeatedly stifled efforts to consider any form of gun control.

One top Republican suggested Monday that he was open to taking up the issue, though he did not commit to specifics. “I was in Virginia Beach yesterday, and I think there ought to be a meaningful discussion legislatively and in the community about gun control,” said Senate Majority Leader Thomas K. Norment Jr. (James City), according to an account in the Virginia Gazette newspaper that was confirmed by his spokesman.

Norment was addressing about 80 protesters who had gathered outside his office in Williamsburg. They were chanting and holding signs calling for gun control, citing the horrific events Friday, when a Virginia Beach city employee shot and killed 12 people in a municipal building.

But Norment, who voted against a ban on high-capacity ammunition magazines this year, added via email that none of the failed legislation met standards for “merits, practical application, and efficacy.”

The topic is especially sensitive in an election year when all 140 seats in the legislature are on the November ballot. Republicans are nursing two-seat majorities in both the Senate and the House of Delegates, and Democrats are hoping to inspire bigger-than-usual turnout to change the balance of power.

Polls have shown that Virginians increasingly favor tightening the state’s gun laws, which are among the most permissive in the nation. A June 2017 Quinnipiac University poll found that 91 percent of Virginians supported requiring background checks for all gun buyers, for instance.

Northam on Tuesday could call for a special legislative session to force the General Assembly to take up gun control, according to two people familiar with the governor’s plans. . . . Northam hinted at possible action in interviews over the weekend.
“We have stepped up our enforcement of some of the gun laws, but . . . when the laws are as weak as they are in Virginia, it makes it that much harder to keep our commonwealth safe,” [Attorney General Mark] Herring said Monday in an interview.

Though he would not discuss what Northam might propose Tuesday, Herring said he favors requiring universal background checks for gun purchases; banning high-capacity magazines, silencers and “bump stock” devices that accelerate firing; reimposing the one-gun-a-month law; and passing “red flag” laws that allow police to seize weapons from someone whom the courts have deemed to be a threat.

On Sunday, Fairfax spoke at a church in Virginia Beach and called for similar measures.
 The issue — as well as the need to console a grieving community — has drawn all three executive branch leaders back into the limelight after several months when they kept relatively low profiles. Northam and Herring are under fire for blackface incidents from their youth, and Fairfax has denied accusations from two women that he sexually assaulted them in separate incidents in 2000 and 2004.
 Another powerful Republican on Monday seemed in no mood for compromise.

Sadly, I suspect Virginia Republicans will continue to take the gun lobby's blood money.  They need to be voted out of office in November, 2019.

Mass Shooting in Virginia Beach: Will Virginia GOP At Last Support Gun Control?

Historically, Virginia Beach has been a Republican bastion, although during the last few election cycles that distinction is fading as the city becomes more racially and socially diverse.  Yesterday, some of the Virginia GOP's anti-gun control agenda came home to roost as 12 innocent city of Virginia Beach employees were murdered at the city municipal center by another city employee armed with a gun with a silencer and multiple extended magazines - things one does not need if one merely has a weapon for self-protection.  The event was chilling for me since when I worked in the past with a large Virginia Beach law firm and represented developers, I frequently went to meetings in Building 2 at the municipal center which is now a major crime scene.  

As one friend on Facebook asked "How many mass shootings is it going to take before we say NO to the murder merchants at the NRA and YES to gun legislation that actually works?"  Any politician who sends "thoughts and prayers" to the victims and their families yet has voted against gun control legislation is nothing short of a lying hypocrite.  In their own way, they have blood on their hands just as much as the shooter who from the facts known fits the pattern of the quiet loner filled with hate inside - precisely who should not have a gun with multiple extended magazines.  I suspect as more information becomes known, it will be found that the shooter legally purchased the weapon and magazines used to snuff out 12 lives. Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring summed it up well:

In recent years there have been mass shootings at American elementary schools, colleges, government buildings, offices, concerts, movie theaters, nightclubs…even churches, mosques, and synagogues. We have to do more to stop this kind of violence. Life doesn’t have to be this way, and it shouldn’t be this way.

New Zealand acted decisively in the wake of its recent mass shooting.  The usual suspects will whine that now is not the time to talk gun control, which is patently untrue.  The USA could do the same as New Zealand if politicians ceased taking NRA and gun manufacturer gun money and voted for common sense gun control that included strict background checks and rigidly restricted automatic weapons and extended magazines. 

Come November, the entire Virginia General Assembly is up for election.  Take the time to register to vote and get out and vote for pro-gun control candidates - which will mean voting a straight Democrat ticket.  Vote the political whores of the NRA and gun lobby out of office. Regular mass shootings does NOT have to be the norm.

New Zealand To Ban Military-Style Semiautomatic Weapons

New Zealand's prime minister.

In a stunning display of what can happen when politicians are not bought and owned by the gun lobby, less than a week after it experienced a horrific mass shooting, New Zealand is moving to ban military-style semiautomatic weapons.  Meanwhile, in the USA where mass shootings are all too prevalent, Congress continues to fail to pass common sense gun control legislation.  While the Democrat controlled House of Representatives will try to change this sad reality, the political whores of the NRA and gun manufacturers in the Senate will likely kill any such legislation.  Huffington Post looks at the quick and dramatic action underway in New Zealand.  Here are article highlights (note the stiff fines and possible prison time for offenders):

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said Thursday that the country will ban military-style semiautomatic weapons in an announcement that comes just six days after shootings at two mosques in Christchurch killed 50 people.

“Every semiautomatic weapon used in the terrorist attack on Friday will be banned,” Ardern said at a news conference.

Ardern said Thursday that the shooter used two legally purchased semiautomatic rifles that were modified with high-capacity magazines, “turning them into military-style semiautomatic weapons.” A suspect in the massacre, a white supremacist extremist, has been arrested.

A day after the shootings, Ardern pledged to change New Zealand’s gun laws and said she would announce plans within 10 days.

The ban includes military-style assault rifles, high-capacity magazines and tools to modify firearms, and the arms “will be categorized as weapons with an E-class endorsement” until legislation formally passes, according to Ardern. Most people in New Zealand likely do not have a license for that class of firearm, meaning an owner of such weapons would be breaking the law with the new categorization. Once legislation on the ban passes, which is expected, possessing such firearms will result in a $4,000 fine or three years in prison.

The ban is also supported by the opposition party in New Zealand, according to its leader. Parliament is hoping to create a buyback scheme in which gun owners will be compensated for returning their weapons. Ardern said weapon sales “should now cease” and expects stores to return their firearms stock to suppliers.

Police Minister Stuart Nash said Thursday that “owning a firearm is a privilege and not a right in New Zealand.”  Nash also said the full ban will go into effect in three weeks and that anyone who applies to buy a gun during that period is wasting their time.

The prime minister said her Cabinet will meet Monday to consider more changes to gun laws, saying there are still loopholes.

How inspiring to see politicians who put the safety of the public first rather than lining their pockets with campaign donations from the gun lobby. 

13 Dead in Mass Shooting at Bar Packed with College Students

Once again America's insane gun laws have claimed a dozen lives (13 if you cont the shooter) in a mass shooting in California.  The slaughter - in which every member of Congress who accepts NRA  money and votes against common sense gun laws shares complicity - took place at a bar packed with college students in Thousand Oaks, a city considered among the safest in America.  The lessons are two fold: (i) only comprehensive European or Australian style gun laws will lessen the carnage, and (ii) nowhere is truly safe as long as guns can be freely purchased.  Only America has continued mass shootings and, I'm sorry, but it is because of our insane laws that allow almost anyone to acquire a gun.  No doubt we will hear more bullshit refrains of "thoughts and prayers"  rather than see any meaningful change in America's laws that allow the slaughter to continue.  Here are highlights from the Los Angeles Times:

At least 13 people are dead after a mass shooting inside a crowded Thousand Oaks bar late Wednesday night, with a gunman throwing smoke bombs and raining bullets on an event popular with college students. 

The shooting at the Borderline Bar & Grill left 12 people dead, according to Ventura County Sheriff Geoff Dean. A sheriff’s department sergeant responding to the scene was shot several times and died at a hospital. The gunman is also died. More people were wounded.

The gunman, who is believed to be among the dead, burst into the bar around 11:20 p.m., cloaked in all black as he threw smoke bombs and began shooting at targets as young as 18 authorities and witnesses said. Several witnesses described the weapon used as a pistol.

Deputies arrived and got into a firefight with the suspect, which left one deputy seriously injured, according to Capt. Garo Kuredjian, a Ventura County Sheriff’s department spokesman.

Witnesses reported a horrifying scene as gunfire echoed through the club and those inside ran for cover, in some cases using chairs to break windows to escape the building. Others hid in bathrooms and an attic as they frantically called loved ones who were hearing reports of the shooting.

Teylor Whittler went to Borderline to celebrate her 21st birthday on Wednesday night. She was dancing with friends in the bar when she heard what sounded like firecrackers. She quickly turned and followed the noise, only to find a man holding a gun near the entrance to Borderline.

The FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force had been dispatched to the scene, according to an agency spokeswoman. She could not immediately comment on a motive in the shooting. Representatives from the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives had also been dispatched. Kuredjian said hundreds of people were inside the bar at the time of the shooting, but he could not comment on the extent of the injuries suffered by those shot. The number of people injured is likely to rise, he said, as many victims transported themselves to area hospitals and emergency rooms with injuries.

Wednesday nights are college-themed nights open to students as young as 18, according to the bar’s website. Witnesses said the event is popular with Moorpark college students, and the Pepperdine student newspaper tweeted that students from its campus were also inside at the time of the shooting.

Some witnesses said the bar was a hub for country music fans. Many of the attendees Wednesday night normally attended the Stage Coach country music festival in California and, tragically, some were survivors of the massacre at the Route 91 Harvest Festival in Las Vegas that left 58 dead last year.

Until we have meaningful gun control laws in America, the death count will continue to grow.  Meanwhile, the gun industry laughs all the way to the bank.  Utterly disgusting and morally wrong. 

Open Carry Racism Predates Trump

Over the weekend the husband and I attended the 15th annual Commonwealth Dinner in Richmond, Virginia.  The event is Equality Virginia largest fundraiser of the year and includes numerous elected officials - Republicans uniformly boycott the event - and LGBT activists and supporters from across Virginia.   At the event, one sees LGBT individuals and couples of various generations from Virginia's urban areas as well as those from rural areas that are less than LGBT accepting.  In addition to a uniform desire to make Virginia a more open and accepting state, the attendees have one other thing in common: we are all uniformly hated by white Christian nationals and their gun loving neo-Confederates.  Indeed, if one follows both self-styled: Christian" family values organizations and the the NRA and its strident supporters one thing is almost immediate observable: almost everyone in these groups is white.  Another common characteristic is that these people insanely believe that they are being subjected to persecution and oppression by those they deem "other."  The Trump/Pence regime has courted the underlying hatred of these far right whites, but, in truth, the racism long predates the rise of Trump as noted by a piece in Religion Dispatches.  Here are article highlights:

The idiosyncratic pantheon of Trump administration staffers continues its exodus, a stream of comic book villains exiting stage right. The combination of venality, incompetence, and pathological narcissism, however, remains. And the world lives in the Trump era’s bubble of strangely dilated time: everything agonizingly slow—and bewilderingly fast.

But for all the post-mortems on the 2016 election, for every Hillbilly Elegy that says to white rage “I feel your pain,” or every column wondering how evangelicals can tolerate Stormy Daniels, there’s a larger diagnosis that Americans need to undertake. A frank assessment of the conditions enabling Trump’s election—and I’m not talking here about Russia and the UAE—means that we look squarely at the tendency of Americans to invest more in “authenticity” than capability, and to combine this with a paranoia that long predates Trump. At the center of this venerable right-wing fantasy (and it does provide the right with subversive pleasure) is the idea that without a “straight talker” to cut through the BS, the state will come for our guns and our freedom of religion.

It’s a capacity for offense, outrage, and embattlement which provides most Americans with their surest sense of authenticity these days. . . . . Nothing outrages Americans more, of course, than religion. What characterizes our moment is the literal and metaphorical weaponization of such outrage. And both depend on the unhinged imagination that too many citizens imagine is superior to dull facts.

And in Trump’s America, solid facts—the lifeless bodies of school students, the realities of institutional racism, the norms and laws hourly flouted—are commuted into things that can be ignored, as if their hold on us was mere fantasy. The “again” that is central to the MAGA phenomenon is a yearning for the not-realness of black bodies, women’s bodies, Muslim bodies, or the dead who bear the marks of our complicity.

But what needs to be acknowledged is that while Trump is truly exceptional in his disregard for laws, norms, and institutions, he’s also a recognizable product of a half-century’s con game.

Significantly, it was with Ronald Reagan’s endorsement of conservative evangelicals that the link between personal religion and politics was cemented firmly in ways we currently recognize. Rather than simply a lens through which people decide to support particular laws or policies, with Reagan religion became central to what we might call Politics as Personal Radiance. In a time of shrinking public resources and uncertain futures, we began to bathe willingly in the light of charisma, hoping that its warmth would sustain us where the state no longer would. . . . . This focus on the personal, on the sincerely held belief, on personality and inner piety all combined into a vertiginous atmosphere in which everyone could become offended by everyone else.

Voters didn’t want someone who was experienced and efficient as much as they wanted somebody who looked at the world the way they do. . . . . Trump is in no small part the product of this combination of vanity and imagination. He will fight for us, we hear. He tells us we matter, they say. At least he says what he means, the mantra goes. But however hollow these rationales ring, behind the phenomenon is a toxic mix of white-guy swagger and religious exclusivism.

Armed white citizens appearing in public came partly to define the Obama era and the resurfacing of aggressive white supremacy. . . . . Groups held “open carry” church services and warned about Obama’s anti-gun conspiracy. In the age of false-flag tweets, bots, and Breitbart, America’s politics became increasingly about displaying our vehement opposition to a thing that has not happened. What counts as truth is confirmed in our fearful anticipation—we can’t trust an expert, but we can trust what we feel.

A failure to question such fantastical narratives of embattlement and persecution allowed the chief Birther to ascend to the Oval Office. Who could possibly profess shock at the massive increase in American hate groups since 2016, or at the rise in public violence, after years of open carry racism, of hoarding bullets before Obama can tax them, or of attempts to intimidate crowds at Black Lives Matter marches. At the end of the phrase “Make America Great Again,” there may as well be an “Or Else.”

The fearful times we live in didn’t just drop out of the sky. Trump just turned up the volume on what’s been cultivated for at least a half-century: a steady, shrill white noise that drowns out other voices in America. It’s much easier to double down on the idea that we’re embattled, especially when we’re not, than to admit to ourselves we need to rethink certain fundamental realities: like who “the people” are.

While white racists, defined through imaginings of their own heroic resistance, indirectly acknowledge the erosion of their historic privilege, now there are skyrocketing rates of African-American gun owners, gun clubs, and more. For all that Richard Spencer or Stephen Miller might wish otherwise, for all the fearsomeness of alt-righters in the streets, for all the pieties about “our way of life” and the whiteness of its religion, ours is a time of things refusing to conceal themselves, to be swept under nostalgia’s rug.

It’s still possible that Americans might make it through this bleak time with an increased readiness to listen and practice a politics of humility, rather than indulge in carnival, braggadocio and self-serving fantasies of persecution. But if privileged Americans keep drowning out the voices of those who actually, materially suffer, new noise will get louder too

White the white Christian nationals - the Christofascists, if you will - want all of the rest of us to conveniently disappear, after the Commonwealth Dinner gala, it is clear that the LGBT community is not going away and we will not quietly allow the haters to go unchallenged.   Women, Hispanics, blacks and others need to do the same.  Being denied the ability to persecute others does not amount to persecution of the would be persecutors. Would that the legitimate media - which excludes Fox News, a/k/a Faux News - would underscore this reality.

Why Does the Far Right Demand Respect It Doesn't Give to Others?

Whether the issue be gun control or the right's false flag of "religious liberty," conservatives demand that their beliefs and sensibilities be afforded respect even when they are directly controverted by empirical and objective fact, yet  they afford no respect to the beliefs of others.  Being gay, one sees the double standard all the time, especially from ignorance embracing Christofascists who want respect for their "deeply held beliefs" yet who attack anyone who rejects such antiquated and  scientifically impossible beliefs.  Then, of course, there are working class whites who voted for Trump and Republicans even though they advance policies that directly harm such voters.  Personally, I am over respecting the beliefs of  those who are bigots or simply dumb as bricks when facts do not support their claimed beliefs.  Deciding to embrace ignorance and bigotry is a choice and deserves no deference or respect. This is especially true of "conservatives" who slime those (i) who refute their beliefs, or (ii) with whom they disagree.  A prime example is what is being done to the Parkland high school students now being dragged through the mud by right wing sites and conspiracy theory formenters.  A column in the Washington Post looks at the hypocrisy of gun fanatics who want respect from others while giving none in return.  Here are excerpts:

Supporters of even modest restrictions on firearms are regularly instructed that their ardent advocacy turns off Americans in rural areas and small towns. Those in favor of reforming our firearms laws are scolded as horrific elitists who disrespect a valued way of life.

And as the mass killings continue, we are urged to be patient and to spend our time listening earnestly to the views of those who see even a smidgen of action to limit access to guns as the first step toward confiscation. Our task is not to fight for laws to protect innocents, but to demonstrate that we really, honestly, truly, cross-our-hearts, positively love gun owners and wouldn’t for an instant think anything ill of them.

What is odd is that those with extreme pro-gun views — those pushing for new laws to allow people to carry just about anytime, anywhere — are never called upon to model similar empathy toward children killed, the mourning parents left behind, people in urban neighborhoods suffering from violence, or the majority of Americans who don’t own guns.

Depending on the survey, somewhere between 58 percent and 68 percent of us live in households without guns. But no one who belongs to the National Rifle Association is ever told to prove their respect for our way of life. Rarely is it pointed out that the logic of the gun lobby’s position is to create a world in which everyone will need a gun, whether we want one or not. 

The students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, an institution that suffered the worst effects of our inaction on guns, have not gotten the memo that they are supposed to shut up, and may they be blessed for this. You can tell their angry outspokenness is having an impact, and not only because President Trump has taken modest steps to suggest he hears the message. More telling is that some of the same right-wingers who demand deep respect for gun culture have shown no scruples about trashing the kids.

Bill O’Reilly was so upset at the attention their protests are drawing that he accused the media of “promoting opinions by teenagers who are in an emotional state and facing extreme peer pressure in some cases.” The condescension is revolting, and never mind that without emotionalism and peer pressure to conform, O’Reilly’s former employer, Fox News, would go out of business.

Former representative Jack Kingston (R-Ga.) doubted the capacity of these students to think or act for themselves. “Their sorrow can very easily be hijacked by left-wing groups who have an agenda,” he said on CNN. Young people who disagree with him can’t possibly have minds of their own.

No wonder the foes of gun sanity are worried. On Wednesday, the students and supporters gathered at the state Capitol in Florida shouting “vote them out!” — a day after the state’s Republican-led legislature voted down a ban on many semiautomatic guns and large-capacity magazines.

How come only one side of the supposed culture war on guns is required to exude respect for the other? Because the culture-war argument is largely a gimmick pushed by the gun lobby as a way of demonizing its opponents. None of us who endorse stronger gun laws wants to disrupt anybody else’s way of life. And none of the measures we are proposing would do that.

What truly alarms the gun lobby is that many steps to curb the scourge of gun violence enjoy broad support, from those who own guns as well as those who don’t. A Quinnipiac pollreleased on Tuesday, for example, found that 97 percent of Americans favor background checks for all gun buyers. 

I am all for Americans reaching out across our cultural divides. But if we wait to act until our cross-cultural understanding is complete, many more who might have been saved will die.

Without Changes to America's Gun Laws, "Thoughts and Prayers" Are a Fraud

Each time America witnesses another mass shooting with it seems an ever growing number of people murdered, we hear the same bloviating about "thoughts and prayers" for the dead and their traumatized families and friends. This nauseating refrain comes most often from politicians - especially Republicans - who could reduce future carnage if they but had the balls to say "no" to the gun manufacturer lobby and its front organization, the NRA.   Tellingly, as The Hill is reporting, here in Virginia where we have state wide elections next month, the NRA has delayed running its $1 million political ad campaign attacking Democrats who support gun control and supporting the Republican ticket that wants even looser and more irresponsible gun legislation in Virginia:

The National Rifle Association (NRA) has delayed political advertisements in Virginia in the wake of a mass shooting in Las Vegas that left at least 59 people dead and more than 520 injured.

The nation’s largest gun rights organization had originally booked $32,000 in cable television advertising to begin Tuesday, according to Advertising Analytics, a nonpartisan ad-buying firm that keeps tabs on the television market. 

Now, those advertisements will begin on Oct. 10. At the same time, the NRA will devote just more than $1 million to ads airing on broadcast networks in markets around Virginia.  

I propose any easy litmus test for who is sincere in their mealy mouthed statements about "thoughts and prayers" for the dead and their families:  are they accepting money from the NRA or allowing themselves to be backed by the NRA?  If the answer is "yes." then you know that they do not mean a word of their disingenuous statements.  A column in the Chicago Sun Times sums the situation well.  Here are highlights:

Did you see the video? Did you see country music singer Jason Aldean, his guitar slung over shoulders, standing front and center when the gunfire began? He knew that sound, that staccato rip of mass-produced death. He fled for the safety of the back of the stage, and the crowd screamed and people were hit and bled and died, and nobody could be sure where the gunfire was coming from. At last check, 59 people were dead from the bullets that flew during a country music show in Las Vegas. Five-hundred-plus more were injured. By the time you read this, more likely will have died. [W]e know that sound, that ripping of bullets from a single indefensible weapon designed for nothing else. Not for hunting. Not for defending our homes. Not for target practice.

Automatic and semi-automatic guns are designed to kill people by the bunches — and this one on this night did its job superbly.

We are so damn sad. We can’t begin to express our sorrow for all the people who were killed in Las Vegas, even as we slept so soundly in our beds in the Midwest. We are beginning to hear their names, see photos of their faces, and they could be any of us — they are any of us. Nice folks out for a night of music, our brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, friends and neighbors. Dead now. Do we feel survivor’s guilt? We should.

The president offers his condolences. For what it’s worth. And there will be prayers and funeral services. For what they’re worth.

And politicians in the pocket of the gun lobby, tons of them, will stand on the floor of the House and the Senate and say how tragic this shooting was and how something must be done — but don’t punish the law-abiding gun owner because guns are American freedom, guns are apple pie, guns are the flag, guns are the national anthem.

And they won’t tell you that every honest opinion poll for a generation in this country shows Americans are sick to death of the carnage.

The National Rifle Association hates those polls. Guns are money for them. Gun-makers make them rich.

[W]e have called for saner gun laws time and again, only for the gun nuts to twist the message: The crazy liberal media wants to take your guns!

So let’s make two points clear:

• Most of America, to judge by the polls, wants to take illegally obtained guns away from bad people — the drug-dealers and the gang-bangers. Not legally obtained guns from decent people, but illegally obtained guns from bad people. And that means better licensing of gun stores and a ban on the easy sale of weapons at gun shows and garage sales. Seriously: people buy guns in many parts of America, legally, at garage sales.

• Most of America also wants to ban access to semi-automatic and automatic weapons.

The guns that killed in Aurora and at Virginia Tech and Newtown and Umpqua College and San Bernardino and . . .

In June, the Washington Post did the arithmetic and reported that 889 men, women and children have been killed in mass shootings in the United States since Aug. 1, 1966. . . .
 After 50 years, we are closing in on 1,000 deaths from mass shootings. The Las Vegas tally gets us almost there.

Are we properly horrified yet? Will we do something finally? Will we honor the dead in Las Vegas by, at long last, demanding gun sanity?  If we continue to do nothing, all our tears [and thoughts and prayers] are a fraud.

A piece in the Washington Post looks at some of the dead.  Take a good look at the faces and brief bios of those who died.  Then grasp the realize that every politician who has opposed sane gun control laws and a ban on assault weapons played a role in this carnage and has blood on their hands. 

Wayne LaPierre is the NRA's Hit Man

The recent horrific mass shooting in Oregon has triggered another round of discussion about the need to change America's insane gun laws.  As noted in prior posts, most of the GOP sees no need for change - no doubt in large part because of the millions of dollars GOP candidates in particular receive from the NRA.  Research has shown that the real financial strength of the NRA comes from the gun manufacturers and not the hunters who allow themselves to be used as tools by the ever mercenary gun manufacturers and their hit man, Wayne LaPierre who strikes me as a totally amoral - if not immoral - individual who makes a plush living pushing policies that ultimately kill people.  A piece in Salon looks at LaPierre and the death that he and the NRA peddle.  Here are some highlights:

Although 26-year-old Christopher Harper-Mercer pulled the trigger on the gun that killed nine people at Umpqua Community College in Oregon on Thursday, Wayne LaPierre, the fanatic executive vice president of the National Rifle Association, also has blood on his hands.

LaPierre, who has worked for the NRA since 1978 and served as its top official since 1991, is the organization’s hit man when it comes to intimidating elected officials to oppose any kind of sensible gun control laws, including a federal law requiring background checks on would-be gun buyers and a national registry of guns. LaPierre likes to fulminate about gun owners’ rights. But he’s been silent on the Oregon killings, just like he’s been silent after the murders of other innocent victims of America’s epidemic of gun violence.

For decades, the NRA has fought every effort to get Congress and states to adopt reasonable laws that would make it much less likely for people like Harper-Mercer to obtain a gun. The NRA even defends the right of Americans to carry concealed weapons in bars, churches, schools, universities, and elsewhere. This poses a huge threat to police and civilians alike.

Harper-Mercer was obviously an emotionally troubled man.  . . . . Although the murderer’s psychology and motives may be fascinating, it should not be the major focus. There are plenty of deranged people in the world, but in most well-off countries they can’t easily get their hands on a firearm.

Our nation’s weak gun laws allow felons, domestic abusers, and the mentally ill to arm themselves.

In 2013, there were 33,636 deaths from firearm violence in the United States, including 11,208 homicides (31 a day) and 21,175 suicides. Firearms were used in 69.6 percent of all homicides that year. Of course, many more people are injured — some seriously and permanently — by gun violence.

According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), the medical cost of treating non-fatal gun injuries totaled $3.7 billion in 2005. The direct medical costs of treating fatal gun injuries combined with the economic damages of lost lives totaled $37 billion.

The Umpqua Community College incident was the 264^th mass shooting in the country this year, according to the Washington Post, which defines a mass shooting as involving at least four people shot. In those incidents, 380 people were killed.  

The NRA has two knee-jerk responses to the epidemic of gun violence. The first is that the Second Amendment gives all Americans the right to possess guns of all kinds — not just hunting rifles but machine guns and semi-automatics. Efforts to restrict gun sales and ownership are, according to the NRA, an assault on our constitutional freedoms.

The second is the cliché that “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” To the NRA, gun laws have nothing to do with the epidemic of gun-related killings. This contradicts research documenting that states with stronger gun laws have fewer gun-related deaths.

[S]ince the Newtown massacre, most new state laws have loosened, rather than tightened, gun restrictions, according to the Pew Research Center.

One of the NRA’s biggest victories occurred in 2003, when passed a law sponsored by Rep. Todd Tiahrt, a former Republican congressman from Kansas that makes it more difficult for public safety officials to shut down the illegal market in gun sales. A handful of gun dealers are responsible for most of the guns used in crimes and seized by law enforcement officials. 

Under LaPierre’s leadership, the NRA has not only dramatically expanded its ties to the gun manufacturers, but has also linked the NRA to the far right, including the Tea Party. LaPierre is a regular presence at gatherings of extreme right-wing groups, whose paranoid warnings about the threat of tyranny and Obama’s secret plan to confiscate all guns are meant to scare Americans into buying more guns and joining the NRA.

A 2014 Pew Research Center survey found that gun ownership is concentrated among older adults, rural residents, and whites, especially white Southerners. The NRA is able to mobilize a small but very rabid and vocal group of gun owners — as well as owners of gun shops — to attend rallies, write letters to newspapers and comments on blog sites, and contact elected officials.

Every American grieves for the families and friends of the people killed in Oregon this week. But until we tame the power of the NRA, we can expect more killings like this, a part of the deadly daily diet of murders throughout America committed by angry gun-toting people whose “freedom” to own weapons of mass destruction that the NRA defends.

The NRA must be defeated and, preferably, destroyed.