The premise of the rush to buy so many more guns has been the claim of needing personal protection.
Underlying that notion is the idea that we all have to be free to shoot someone to protect ourselves, because law enforcement only acts after a crime, and that we should all have the option to escalate to lethal violence rather than use alternatives, if we want to or think we might need to, without accountability for using other, less violent or non-lethal alternatives. Shoot first laws remove the legal premise that has been at the core of Castle Doctrine and Self-defense laws for centuries - the duty to retreat if possible, the requirement to try to avoid lethal violence.
The right demands the right to use violence, including lethal violence, and opposes any measures on any level that obstruct it by requiring non-lethal alternatives as preferable.
The reality is that the efforts of law enforcement have resulted in a steady decline in crime over the past several decades. Clearly, investing in law enforcement works, when not gutted by the ill-conceived cost cutting of the right. The statistical evidence is irrefutable that law enforcement prevents crime.
The conservatives would have us believe we have to give up safety, we have to give up spending on law enforcement and first responders, further to enrich the wealthy. They posit that unemployment is a greater problem than crime, and in doing so they enrich the gun manufacturers and empower the NRA who are the manufacturers puppets. They would rather put money in the pockets of the rich, who have NOT been creating jobs with that additional money, because they incorrectly believe we have to choose between enriching the wealthy, and spending money on public sector jobs.
The underlying premise of that choice is that we can all DO the role of protection just fine without bothering with the courts - so the right also under funds THEM. And we can do it without law enforcement as well, by taking the law into our own hands, not only in our homes, but in public places.
That is the core premise of the shoot first laws. We don't need no stinking badges to shoot people!
The problem is that every argument, every hostility - real or imagined, every conflict can build until someone feels unsafe, until someone feels threatened to the point of violence. The role of a third party in law enforcement is that they both have greater authority, greater accountability, greater training -- and yes, insurance for when (not if) mistakes are made, because anytime humans are involved a mistake is possible. They also have a much less emotional involvement in decisions about violence, and they have to justify their use of violence objectively, not subjectively.
Law enforcement has stricter limits put on the violence they can use, and they have to justify that aggression; excessive violence is penalized for public authority in ways it is NOT for private self-defense. That is also the premise of shoot first laws, a terrible flaw.
All of this promotes a gun culture in this country where offense between individuals or groups is met with lethal force instead of other solutions. This is as true of the gang banger mentality as it is of the old white flabby and crabby shooter.
It is the common thread of our gun culture in two very different shootings, and it is that gun culture which is a tragic, massive failure, the antithesis of a civilized country and a developed, civilized society. We see it in the arrests made of two gang bangers in Connecticut here; and we see it in the conduct of an old angry white man in a road rage shooting here in Minnesota.
The behavior is the same; in both cases, people make the choice to use lethal force because they believe it is justified. It is not justified in EITHER case, and the instances where lethal force is wrongly perceived as the ONLY alternative, or the best alternative, is no different than in the completely avoidable shooting of unarmed people in the majority of shoot first cases either. Consistently, are opting for lethal force is wrong, it is bad, it is a cultural failure. This is a problem of a flawed foundational premise that justifies avoidable escalation and avoidable violence.
Until we can separate the right wing nuts from their excuses for clinging to lethal violence as the solution for every problem, we will have a cultural failure. The chronic assertion that for every tragedy where someone should not have had a firearm in the first place is MORE GUNS, and more violence underlines why the right is so very wrong, so very backward, so very brutish.
The notion that by penalizing kids, especially boys, from fighting in our schools we are 'feminizing' our culture is just one more example of why the right is so very wrong. Violence is not masculine.
These are the same people who want to legalize violence against women as well, who believe that we don't need to worry about rape and pregnancy because they have a badly mistaken notion that women can't get pregnant from rape. These are the same people who see nothing wrong with rape unless it is TOO violent; not violent enough-------hey, then it's ok to force sex on a woman who does not consent. We've seen that with the attempted legislation, signed and supported by EVERY single one of our Republican members of Congress. Legislation against violence towards women? Oh NO - we can't have that! No support there! Legislation against intra-service violence in our military? OH NO - they won't support THAT! Because if we stop the rape of women -- AND MEN -- in our military, then, according to the right, we have a sissy, feminized armed forces. We have to tolerate rape, or in the belief system of the right, be weak, bad, FEMALE-like.
The notion that violence, including lethal violence, against anyone who is seen as 'other' and therefore threatening must be condoned extends to race as well by the right. In the case of George Zimmerman, every time he saw a young black man, he assumed he was a criminal. It may very well be that Zimmerman did not harbor antagonism towards black women, or black children; but he clearly did so towards black teens who were male, or black men. That set of assumptions about a group of people, the automatic and deeply held belief they are criminals, reflected in Zimmerman's prior 911 calls, and his calls about Trayvon Martin are clearly racist. That racist assumption that Trayvon Martin was a criminal, when he was not, was a fundamental part of the shoot-first decision rather than letting law enforcement deal with Martin. It was the foundation for Zimmerman harassing and stalking Trayvon Martin that led to their confrontation, and the fatal shooting.
The right defends that utterly avoidable escalation of violence, that vigilante taking the law into his won hands by Zimmerman. They don't want to accept that law enforcement was at most a minute or two away, and would have dealt with the reality, not the Zimmerman racist fantasy, WITHOUT lethal force.
The right wants to make it acceptable for gay kids to be beaten up and bullied; not allowing a little fist fighting is to feminizing. Not allowing gay kids to be bullied is a threat against Christianity. It is one more example of the right condoning violence, endorsing violence, approving violence and the escalation of violence against anyone they consider other, anyone they believe should be submissive or subordinate, as a means of domination. That includes women as acceptable victims, gays as victims, people of color as victims, even children as victims of abuse and even lethal force, a force that they want to be able to administer PERSONALLY, not through the third person intervention of courts and law enforcement, where moderation, balance, proportionate consequence is guaranteed and protected.
The ultimate example of the culture of violence and intimidation embraced by the right is the jackass who wants to legalize parents killing their children for being disrespectful. It is the ultimate, logical extension of the right wing belief in force to coerce conformity, to enforce social dominance and hierarchy that puts old white men on top, and everyone else in forcible submission to them - women, children, gays, the poor being submissive to the wealthy, all minorities, people of any religion other than Christianity, being submissive to the dominant white Christian majority.........who are losing that majority. It scares hell out of the right, which only escalates the vicious cycle of their obsession with violence.
The right relies on violence as their fall-back solution for anything that makes them uncomfortable, for anything that challenges them, that they think disrespects them, anything that does not conform to their radical and backwards, narrow ideology. It is true of their approval of physical abuse with fists, and it is true of their justification of violence with firearms.
It is just plain wrong, and it is inherently a weakness on their part. Here is why:
The right does not really support freedom; they only support conformity. The right does not really believe in freedom for everyone; they support a rigid class and culture patriarchal view of how society should operate. They want to harm, physically and otherwise, anyone who disagrees with them, and will seek every possible pretext to legalize doing so.
Underlying that notion is the idea that we all have to be free to shoot someone to protect ourselves, because law enforcement only acts after a crime, and that we should all have the option to escalate to lethal violence rather than use alternatives, if we want to or think we might need to, without accountability for using other, less violent or non-lethal alternatives. Shoot first laws remove the legal premise that has been at the core of Castle Doctrine and Self-defense laws for centuries - the duty to retreat if possible, the requirement to try to avoid lethal violence.
The right demands the right to use violence, including lethal violence, and opposes any measures on any level that obstruct it by requiring non-lethal alternatives as preferable.
The reality is that the efforts of law enforcement have resulted in a steady decline in crime over the past several decades. Clearly, investing in law enforcement works, when not gutted by the ill-conceived cost cutting of the right. The statistical evidence is irrefutable that law enforcement prevents crime.
The conservatives would have us believe we have to give up safety, we have to give up spending on law enforcement and first responders, further to enrich the wealthy. They posit that unemployment is a greater problem than crime, and in doing so they enrich the gun manufacturers and empower the NRA who are the manufacturers puppets. They would rather put money in the pockets of the rich, who have NOT been creating jobs with that additional money, because they incorrectly believe we have to choose between enriching the wealthy, and spending money on public sector jobs.
The underlying premise of that choice is that we can all DO the role of protection just fine without bothering with the courts - so the right also under funds THEM. And we can do it without law enforcement as well, by taking the law into our own hands, not only in our homes, but in public places.
That is the core premise of the shoot first laws. We don't need no stinking badges to shoot people!
The problem is that every argument, every hostility - real or imagined, every conflict can build until someone feels unsafe, until someone feels threatened to the point of violence. The role of a third party in law enforcement is that they both have greater authority, greater accountability, greater training -- and yes, insurance for when (not if) mistakes are made, because anytime humans are involved a mistake is possible. They also have a much less emotional involvement in decisions about violence, and they have to justify their use of violence objectively, not subjectively.
Law enforcement has stricter limits put on the violence they can use, and they have to justify that aggression; excessive violence is penalized for public authority in ways it is NOT for private self-defense. That is also the premise of shoot first laws, a terrible flaw.
All of this promotes a gun culture in this country where offense between individuals or groups is met with lethal force instead of other solutions. This is as true of the gang banger mentality as it is of the old white flabby and crabby shooter.
It is the common thread of our gun culture in two very different shootings, and it is that gun culture which is a tragic, massive failure, the antithesis of a civilized country and a developed, civilized society. We see it in the arrests made of two gang bangers in Connecticut here; and we see it in the conduct of an old angry white man in a road rage shooting here in Minnesota.
The behavior is the same; in both cases, people make the choice to use lethal force because they believe it is justified. It is not justified in EITHER case, and the instances where lethal force is wrongly perceived as the ONLY alternative, or the best alternative, is no different than in the completely avoidable shooting of unarmed people in the majority of shoot first cases either. Consistently, are opting for lethal force is wrong, it is bad, it is a cultural failure. This is a problem of a flawed foundational premise that justifies avoidable escalation and avoidable violence.
Until we can separate the right wing nuts from their excuses for clinging to lethal violence as the solution for every problem, we will have a cultural failure. The chronic assertion that for every tragedy where someone should not have had a firearm in the first place is MORE GUNS, and more violence underlines why the right is so very wrong, so very backward, so very brutish.
The notion that by penalizing kids, especially boys, from fighting in our schools we are 'feminizing' our culture is just one more example of why the right is so very wrong. Violence is not masculine.
These are the same people who want to legalize violence against women as well, who believe that we don't need to worry about rape and pregnancy because they have a badly mistaken notion that women can't get pregnant from rape. These are the same people who see nothing wrong with rape unless it is TOO violent; not violent enough-------hey, then it's ok to force sex on a woman who does not consent. We've seen that with the attempted legislation, signed and supported by EVERY single one of our Republican members of Congress. Legislation against violence towards women? Oh NO - we can't have that! No support there! Legislation against intra-service violence in our military? OH NO - they won't support THAT! Because if we stop the rape of women -- AND MEN -- in our military, then, according to the right, we have a sissy, feminized armed forces. We have to tolerate rape, or in the belief system of the right, be weak, bad, FEMALE-like.
The notion that violence, including lethal violence, against anyone who is seen as 'other' and therefore threatening must be condoned extends to race as well by the right. In the case of George Zimmerman, every time he saw a young black man, he assumed he was a criminal. It may very well be that Zimmerman did not harbor antagonism towards black women, or black children; but he clearly did so towards black teens who were male, or black men. That set of assumptions about a group of people, the automatic and deeply held belief they are criminals, reflected in Zimmerman's prior 911 calls, and his calls about Trayvon Martin are clearly racist. That racist assumption that Trayvon Martin was a criminal, when he was not, was a fundamental part of the shoot-first decision rather than letting law enforcement deal with Martin. It was the foundation for Zimmerman harassing and stalking Trayvon Martin that led to their confrontation, and the fatal shooting.
The right defends that utterly avoidable escalation of violence, that vigilante taking the law into his won hands by Zimmerman. They don't want to accept that law enforcement was at most a minute or two away, and would have dealt with the reality, not the Zimmerman racist fantasy, WITHOUT lethal force.
The right wants to make it acceptable for gay kids to be beaten up and bullied; not allowing a little fist fighting is to feminizing. Not allowing gay kids to be bullied is a threat against Christianity. It is one more example of the right condoning violence, endorsing violence, approving violence and the escalation of violence against anyone they consider other, anyone they believe should be submissive or subordinate, as a means of domination. That includes women as acceptable victims, gays as victims, people of color as victims, even children as victims of abuse and even lethal force, a force that they want to be able to administer PERSONALLY, not through the third person intervention of courts and law enforcement, where moderation, balance, proportionate consequence is guaranteed and protected.
The ultimate example of the culture of violence and intimidation embraced by the right is the jackass who wants to legalize parents killing their children for being disrespectful. It is the ultimate, logical extension of the right wing belief in force to coerce conformity, to enforce social dominance and hierarchy that puts old white men on top, and everyone else in forcible submission to them - women, children, gays, the poor being submissive to the wealthy, all minorities, people of any religion other than Christianity, being submissive to the dominant white Christian majority.........who are losing that majority. It scares hell out of the right, which only escalates the vicious cycle of their obsession with violence.
The right relies on violence as their fall-back solution for anything that makes them uncomfortable, for anything that challenges them, that they think disrespects them, anything that does not conform to their radical and backwards, narrow ideology. It is true of their approval of physical abuse with fists, and it is true of their justification of violence with firearms.
It is just plain wrong, and it is inherently a weakness on their part. Here is why:
The right does not really support freedom; they only support conformity. The right does not really believe in freedom for everyone; they support a rigid class and culture patriarchal view of how society should operate. They want to harm, physically and otherwise, anyone who disagrees with them, and will seek every possible pretext to legalize doing so.
DG- There are some circumstances where I feel having a gun in the home is warranted. Unfortunately, I live on the third floor of a condo. My condo only has one door. No back door.
ReplyDeleteNow this doesn't mean that I sleep with a loaded gun under my pillow. They are still stashed away in the safe. But it is a nice piece of mind. Although, I will admit that I probably have a better chance of winning a nine figure lottery, than I do of having to use a firearm as a last resort.
As far as Zimmerman, I really wish I was in is inner circle. I would love to know how he truly feels about these events. After all, in the end, he is responsible for a young man losing his life.
"Stand your ground" Did you happen to see the Dateline about two months ago on this case?
http://www.chron.com/news/article/Texas-man-in-stand-your-ground-case-could-get-life-3632897.php
This guy actually recorded the incident. They played it on T.V. If you were to watch the homemade video, you would think this guy was using the SYG law for the sole purpose of taking a life.
He was convicted for doing exactly that.
ReplyDeleteHowever the number of instances of avoidable homicides, of homicides where shoot first was used to defend shooting an unarmed person who was no threat --- they're heartbreaking, they're horrible, they're simply insane.
We should never allow this. NEVER.
You are correct. Citizens who are threatened by an unprovoked attack experience a duty, an obligation, to suffer injury or death rather than provide any lethal force in an attempt to deter the attack.
ReplyDeleteDimensio, you falsely define the problem.
ReplyDeleteThere are an increasing number of individuals who go out seeking these conflicts, who escalate rather than de-escalate them.
A more correct definition is that very few citizens are ever attacked, and that it is possible for them to neither experience injury OR death.
The statistical reality is that you are more, not less, likely to be killed or injured if you own a gun than if you do not.
You are five times more likely to be killed or injured if you OWN a firearm. Having a gun makes you less, not more safe.
from Forbes:http://www.forbes.com/sites/robwaters/2012/07/24/gun-violence-the-public-health-issue-politicians-want-to-ignore/
•Two-thirds of the 179,000 homicides committed during the 2000s made use of a firearm, usually a handgun.
• If a gun is used during a domestic violence assault, there’s a 23-fold increased likelihood that the victim will die. Women who are victims of domestic violence are five times more likely to be killed if their abuser owns a firearm.
• Having a gun facilitates suicide. According to a California study, suicide by handgun is the leading cause of death in the first year after people buy one. Many don’t wait that long. In the first week after the purchase of a handgun, the suicide rate among firearm purchasers was 57 times as high as the adjusted rate in the general population. More than 75 percent of guns used in suicide attempts and accidental injuries of people under 20 were stored in the home of the victim, a relative, or friend. Would all these people have committed suicide if a gun had not been easily available? Some would have, of course, but the easier (and faster) it is to kill one’s self, the more likely a person is to do it.
Gun bans can have an impact. In 1991, 15 years after Washington, D.C. banned handguns, researchers from the University of Maryland conducted a study to assess the impact of the ban. They tracked homicides and suicides in the district from 1968 to 1987 and found that homicides by firearm fell by 25 percent and suicides committed with firearms dropped by 23 percent. Murders and suicides committed by other means neither rose nor fell—in other words, people didn’t use other methods to commit an act they already wanted to commit. And there was no similar reduction found in the adjacent metropolitan areas in Maryland and Virginia.