My good friend DogGone does most of the writing here. I'm extremely glad to have her as a partner, just to be clear. Occasionally she says things just before I do (and usually better), "stealing" my thunder :) a little.
On gun control that has not been true. DG has diligently researched (as she always does) point after point, debunking right-wing myth after myth. Yet, there are a couple of points that have jumped to mind which I think deserve being written about. I don't have cool pictures (sorry DG), but I hope my points come across all the same.
A very nice man (David from England) whom I met on a train ride through Canada once told me that a good test of an idea is whether or not you can clearly express it on the back of a post card. The idea is that it you should be certain enough about what you are trying to say that you need only a few words to help someone else understand your point. With that in mind I'll offer a few observations.
Post Card #1
Mr. Wayne LaPierre and the leadership of the NRA have argued that, "New gun laws won't stop criminals from getting guns." That's true, determined people will skirt the law. My question for Mr. LaPierre is this, do laws against murder mean we no longer have murder? Laws are never perfect, they are designed to set out punishment for illegal conduct and to deter behavior we don't like, they are never expected to stop all crime.
Next ...
This week a woman testified before Congress trying to justify why assault rifles and high capacity magazines should not be limited under the law. Her reason was that another woman had "called 911 when two violent criminals were breaking into her house. While waiting for the police, and with her screaming babies crying in the background, she used her firearm to kill one assailant, and the other fled." When questioned, she didn't know if an assault rifle had been used. It turned out that in fact the woman had used a shotgun, a weapon perfectly legal under any proposed law. When questioned further later that day by Lawrence O'Donnell, this same woman could not name one instance where anyone, poor little defenseless woman or big strapping he-man, had defended their home with an assault rifle.
Post Card #2
The idea here is both of course that her example was silly but moreover that we don't use anecdote to establish law. I know of a story where a young boy drove his critically ill mother to the hospital. The boy was 6 years old. Since the boy needed a car, he obviously couldn't carry his mother, shall we allow children to drive? The story is joyful, but obviously we recognize the common good is not served by modifying the law to deal with this rare event.
Going on....
Some people have argued that allowing civilians to own military grade small arms is, in part, what keeps America "free." The idea goes that it is the opposition to tyranny which the 2nd Amendment is designed to protect against and prohibit.
It's true that in 1776, colonial civilians helped to wage a successful war of insurrection against an otherwise distracted British Army. However, one of the first things they did was to organize, and ultimately train as a standing army. More importantly, one of first acts of that army was to obtain military hardware (namely cannons which were used to surround New York Harbor). More importantly still, without the help of the French Navy at Yorktown, the colonials would not have defeated Cornwallis, and ultimately the British. It took a standing military, an organized army and military armaments to win our nation's freedom. The idea that the "minuteman" with his trusty Kentucky Rifle singlehandedly defeated the British is poppy-cock. Even that was much through good fortune, until Yorktown, the Colonial Army under Washington lost every major battle. Untrained civilians are no match for standing armies, even then.
Since that time, especially since the middle 1800's, there have been nearly zero situations (and I say nearly zero because I don't know of one single example but ther's always some weird outlier) where a bunch of civilians have succeeded in overthrowing a government IF the army of that nation opposed them and even then the rebellion needed (ahem) military arms of their own. The rebels in Libya, for example, were losing until NATO provided air support to stop the Libyan bombers and helicopters from shooting them. In Syria, the rebels have not succeeded in large part, according to those rebels, because they do not have access to military hardware. Quite simply, the idea that a civilian army could withstand a military army is ludicrous. I say this with all respect for the determination of those who would stand up to totalitarianism, but it's just fact. In fact, history shows that only by using improvised bombs, fighting from the shadows, can rebels even survive, let alone succeed. They need military armaments and they need training. Mr. LaPierre's (and others) idea here is mythology at best.
Down to brass tacks...
The point in the end about armaments is this, in a nation of laws, of law enforcement and justice, we decided to change the laws of 1776 and to prohibit individuals from owning cannons. We decided later to prohibit them from owning automatic weapons (machine guns). We did so, in part, because, unlike our founding fathers, we found it necessary to have a standing army. It is that point, the hope by our founders to avoid a standing army, one of the key elements of tyranny in their opinion, which was the genesis of the 2nd Amendment as much as any other idea. But even the Revolutionary War showed that civilians were at best, a temporary measure, an irregular force able to, at best, harass an organized army, not defeat it and overthrow a government.
Post Card #4
So ultimately we changed our laws because while most gun owners are responsible (certainly), in a nation of 330 Million people, a small handful, like Timothy McVeigh, might just use bombs or machine guns, to kill those with whom he disagreed with politically. He might, like John Brown, illegally take up arms rather than using the "remedies" defined in our laws. The idea of having individuals own cannons or machine guns did not withstand the test of time, it was made moot and irrelevant when we decided to have a standing army, and we changed those laws because it wasn't needed or in our common interest. Most of all though, we changed it because it is through laws and voting that we change our government, not threats of "2nd Amendment Remedies", a threat I only hear from my conservative friends when they've run out of logic and reason and see they are losing the argument on the ideas and merits.
Yet even further
Post Card #5
Mr. LaPierre famously likes to say that, "The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun." Really? Is that what stopped the IRA? Is it what stopped the British in South Africa during the Boer wars? We had guns in Vietnam, why didn't we stop the North Vietnamese? Why did World War I end the way it did? The Palestinians continue to reign death upon Israel, do the Israelis have no guns?
In fact, most criminals are not stopped by a bullet, but simply by a police officer showing up and arresting them. When someone takes a hostage, we try to talk them down, and often succeed. Using violence is the last resort, only undertaken normally when the hostage taker has started killing the hostages. No, in fact stopping a bad guy most of the time is done with NON-violence, is done by responding not with firepower, but with restraint. Certainly SOME bad guys (like Hitler) have to be opposed with force. However, too often those on the "pro-gun" side like to single out only Neville Chaimberlain while failing to remember Ghandi or Mandella. Either way, rarely is a gun-slinger/hero on the street corner the solution (rarely=just about never). Our own "wild west" was wild because of the lack of law enforcement. Once the law was present many towns enacted ordinances against carrying firearms (in opposition to the 2nd Amendment no less - go figure..) and they did so because of the consequences of "easy gun play."
No Mr. LaPierre, the "bad guy" almost always is stopped in the simplest of ways, by a civil society using law, enforcement, and the courts. No unlike your Hop-Along Cassidy mythology, the fact is nearly all the time, violence answering violence does not end it. What ends the violence is when people grow weary of that violence. That is what ended the "troubles" in Northern Ireland, that's what ended World War I, what ended the bloodbath in the Balkans and I suspect it is what will end the strife in Palestine. Certainly there are plenty of guns, plenty of "good guys", yet the violence has not ended. The point is, you and those who see only guns as the solution fail to recognize you need a vast shift in your world view, you need to look at how to change the tone, how to change the argument not just from the tactical approach to how to react to violence, but instead into looking at what is bringing about that violence. In the US, in part at least, it is brought about by our love affair, our unique "perverse" love of guns, whether it is for safety, feeling powerful, feeling like we can be Rambo or James Bond or Wyatt Earp, whatever it is, we have guns too easily at hand, making a bad day or bad argument far too easily turned into tragedy. The gun isn't the cause, but it is the vehicle, as is our obsession with the imagery and fantasy that we can be invincible if only we have a gun.
Going on further...
It is time for a change. It is time to change our laws and recognize we have an unhealthy love affair with guns. That love affair has cost us, and dearly. We can, in a nation of laws, decide to make this change without threat to our liberty, without loss of true freedoms or even the ability to defend ourselves. We make laws for the common good, not just that which helps a few people feel sexy or powerful or even the insecure who feel unsafe feel more safe. They feel unsafe despite living in a nation with millions of police and the most powerful standing army in the world We make changes in laws and decisions based on weighing the good (benefit) against the loss of liberty (the cost). Often we do this by comparing the proportionality of the cost and the benefit. Put simply, the cost of our love affair with guns which greatly facilitates the loss of 30,000 lives each year in the US by gun violence, this cost is NOT outweighed by the tiny fraction of the benefit achieved by having 200 people per year kill an armed assailant who is attempting to invade their home. A ratio of 150:1 is not justification, silly anecdote not withstanding. Additionally, the overall ratio of roughly 30:1 of murder/suicide to justifiable use of guns ALSO not a justification. The cost is too high. The fact some woman DID defend herself is about as relevant as the 6 year old driving - it's nice a story, but it's a story, or more correctly, it's a singular example justifying nothing.
Last Post Card (#6)
So, my question is, when do we become tired of the killing? Clearly more guns (51% of US households own guns according to the NRA) has not stopped the violence nor has it stopped crime. When do we become embarrassed that we have 30,000 gun related deaths a year while Great Britain and most other western countries have 1/200th the rate? When do we recognize that guns are not a cure-all? That Roy Rogers on every street corner both doesn't work and isn't needed? Much like those in Northern Ireland, when do we become ashamed at watching casket after casket filled with the broken bodies of our children and others we cherish flow into the ground and finally say "Enough!"
On gun control that has not been true. DG has diligently researched (as she always does) point after point, debunking right-wing myth after myth. Yet, there are a couple of points that have jumped to mind which I think deserve being written about. I don't have cool pictures (sorry DG), but I hope my points come across all the same.
A very nice man (David from England) whom I met on a train ride through Canada once told me that a good test of an idea is whether or not you can clearly express it on the back of a post card. The idea is that it you should be certain enough about what you are trying to say that you need only a few words to help someone else understand your point. With that in mind I'll offer a few observations.
Post Card #1
Mr. Wayne LaPierre and the leadership of the NRA have argued that, "New gun laws won't stop criminals from getting guns." That's true, determined people will skirt the law. My question for Mr. LaPierre is this, do laws against murder mean we no longer have murder? Laws are never perfect, they are designed to set out punishment for illegal conduct and to deter behavior we don't like, they are never expected to stop all crime.
Next ...
This week a woman testified before Congress trying to justify why assault rifles and high capacity magazines should not be limited under the law. Her reason was that another woman had "called 911 when two violent criminals were breaking into her house. While waiting for the police, and with her screaming babies crying in the background, she used her firearm to kill one assailant, and the other fled." When questioned, she didn't know if an assault rifle had been used. It turned out that in fact the woman had used a shotgun, a weapon perfectly legal under any proposed law. When questioned further later that day by Lawrence O'Donnell, this same woman could not name one instance where anyone, poor little defenseless woman or big strapping he-man, had defended their home with an assault rifle.
Post Card #2
The idea here is both of course that her example was silly but moreover that we don't use anecdote to establish law. I know of a story where a young boy drove his critically ill mother to the hospital. The boy was 6 years old. Since the boy needed a car, he obviously couldn't carry his mother, shall we allow children to drive? The story is joyful, but obviously we recognize the common good is not served by modifying the law to deal with this rare event.
Going on....
Some people have argued that allowing civilians to own military grade small arms is, in part, what keeps America "free." The idea goes that it is the opposition to tyranny which the 2nd Amendment is designed to protect against and prohibit.
It's true that in 1776, colonial civilians helped to wage a successful war of insurrection against an otherwise distracted British Army. However, one of the first things they did was to organize, and ultimately train as a standing army. More importantly, one of first acts of that army was to obtain military hardware (namely cannons which were used to surround New York Harbor). More importantly still, without the help of the French Navy at Yorktown, the colonials would not have defeated Cornwallis, and ultimately the British. It took a standing military, an organized army and military armaments to win our nation's freedom. The idea that the "minuteman" with his trusty Kentucky Rifle singlehandedly defeated the British is poppy-cock. Even that was much through good fortune, until Yorktown, the Colonial Army under Washington lost every major battle. Untrained civilians are no match for standing armies, even then.
Post Card #3
Since that time, especially since the middle 1800's, there have been nearly zero situations (and I say nearly zero because I don't know of one single example but ther's always some weird outlier) where a bunch of civilians have succeeded in overthrowing a government IF the army of that nation opposed them and even then the rebellion needed (ahem) military arms of their own. The rebels in Libya, for example, were losing until NATO provided air support to stop the Libyan bombers and helicopters from shooting them. In Syria, the rebels have not succeeded in large part, according to those rebels, because they do not have access to military hardware. Quite simply, the idea that a civilian army could withstand a military army is ludicrous. I say this with all respect for the determination of those who would stand up to totalitarianism, but it's just fact. In fact, history shows that only by using improvised bombs, fighting from the shadows, can rebels even survive, let alone succeed. They need military armaments and they need training. Mr. LaPierre's (and others) idea here is mythology at best.
Down to brass tacks...
The point in the end about armaments is this, in a nation of laws, of law enforcement and justice, we decided to change the laws of 1776 and to prohibit individuals from owning cannons. We decided later to prohibit them from owning automatic weapons (machine guns). We did so, in part, because, unlike our founding fathers, we found it necessary to have a standing army. It is that point, the hope by our founders to avoid a standing army, one of the key elements of tyranny in their opinion, which was the genesis of the 2nd Amendment as much as any other idea. But even the Revolutionary War showed that civilians were at best, a temporary measure, an irregular force able to, at best, harass an organized army, not defeat it and overthrow a government.
Post Card #4
So ultimately we changed our laws because while most gun owners are responsible (certainly), in a nation of 330 Million people, a small handful, like Timothy McVeigh, might just use bombs or machine guns, to kill those with whom he disagreed with politically. He might, like John Brown, illegally take up arms rather than using the "remedies" defined in our laws. The idea of having individuals own cannons or machine guns did not withstand the test of time, it was made moot and irrelevant when we decided to have a standing army, and we changed those laws because it wasn't needed or in our common interest. Most of all though, we changed it because it is through laws and voting that we change our government, not threats of "2nd Amendment Remedies", a threat I only hear from my conservative friends when they've run out of logic and reason and see they are losing the argument on the ideas and merits.
Yet even further
Post Card #5
Mr. LaPierre famously likes to say that, "The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun." Really? Is that what stopped the IRA? Is it what stopped the British in South Africa during the Boer wars? We had guns in Vietnam, why didn't we stop the North Vietnamese? Why did World War I end the way it did? The Palestinians continue to reign death upon Israel, do the Israelis have no guns?
In fact, most criminals are not stopped by a bullet, but simply by a police officer showing up and arresting them. When someone takes a hostage, we try to talk them down, and often succeed. Using violence is the last resort, only undertaken normally when the hostage taker has started killing the hostages. No, in fact stopping a bad guy most of the time is done with NON-violence, is done by responding not with firepower, but with restraint. Certainly SOME bad guys (like Hitler) have to be opposed with force. However, too often those on the "pro-gun" side like to single out only Neville Chaimberlain while failing to remember Ghandi or Mandella. Either way, rarely is a gun-slinger/hero on the street corner the solution (rarely=just about never). Our own "wild west" was wild because of the lack of law enforcement. Once the law was present many towns enacted ordinances against carrying firearms (in opposition to the 2nd Amendment no less - go figure..) and they did so because of the consequences of "easy gun play."
No Mr. LaPierre, the "bad guy" almost always is stopped in the simplest of ways, by a civil society using law, enforcement, and the courts. No unlike your Hop-Along Cassidy mythology, the fact is nearly all the time, violence answering violence does not end it. What ends the violence is when people grow weary of that violence. That is what ended the "troubles" in Northern Ireland, that's what ended World War I, what ended the bloodbath in the Balkans and I suspect it is what will end the strife in Palestine. Certainly there are plenty of guns, plenty of "good guys", yet the violence has not ended. The point is, you and those who see only guns as the solution fail to recognize you need a vast shift in your world view, you need to look at how to change the tone, how to change the argument not just from the tactical approach to how to react to violence, but instead into looking at what is bringing about that violence. In the US, in part at least, it is brought about by our love affair, our unique "perverse" love of guns, whether it is for safety, feeling powerful, feeling like we can be Rambo or James Bond or Wyatt Earp, whatever it is, we have guns too easily at hand, making a bad day or bad argument far too easily turned into tragedy. The gun isn't the cause, but it is the vehicle, as is our obsession with the imagery and fantasy that we can be invincible if only we have a gun.
Going on further...
It is time for a change. It is time to change our laws and recognize we have an unhealthy love affair with guns. That love affair has cost us, and dearly. We can, in a nation of laws, decide to make this change without threat to our liberty, without loss of true freedoms or even the ability to defend ourselves. We make laws for the common good, not just that which helps a few people feel sexy or powerful or even the insecure who feel unsafe feel more safe. They feel unsafe despite living in a nation with millions of police and the most powerful standing army in the world We make changes in laws and decisions based on weighing the good (benefit) against the loss of liberty (the cost). Often we do this by comparing the proportionality of the cost and the benefit. Put simply, the cost of our love affair with guns which greatly facilitates the loss of 30,000 lives each year in the US by gun violence, this cost is NOT outweighed by the tiny fraction of the benefit achieved by having 200 people per year kill an armed assailant who is attempting to invade their home. A ratio of 150:1 is not justification, silly anecdote not withstanding. Additionally, the overall ratio of roughly 30:1 of murder/suicide to justifiable use of guns ALSO not a justification. The cost is too high. The fact some woman DID defend herself is about as relevant as the 6 year old driving - it's nice a story, but it's a story, or more correctly, it's a singular example justifying nothing.
Last Post Card (#6)
So, my question is, when do we become tired of the killing? Clearly more guns (51% of US households own guns according to the NRA) has not stopped the violence nor has it stopped crime. When do we become embarrassed that we have 30,000 gun related deaths a year while Great Britain and most other western countries have 1/200th the rate? When do we recognize that guns are not a cure-all? That Roy Rogers on every street corner both doesn't work and isn't needed? Much like those in Northern Ireland, when do we become ashamed at watching casket after casket filled with the broken bodies of our children and others we cherish flow into the ground and finally say "Enough!"
Thank you for the compliments, Pen. I shall try to continue to live up to them.
ReplyDeleteMy biggest gripe with the statement by La Pierre about good guys with guns stopping bad guys with guns is that the NRA, under La Pierre's leadership has done so very much to put guns in the hands of bad guys -- too much to believe his protestations about bad guys.
I am cynical enough to believe that his effort to arm felons, drug users, and the dangerously mentally ill may have been entirely intended to bring us to this point, to arm them to create the fear that we need to arm everyone else.
He is a hypocrite who does not give a damn about anyone's safety, and who is determined to do everything he can to sell more guns. The lives of the men, women and children of this country be damned.
The terrorist attack on 9/11 killed some 3,000 people in the WTC. We are losing ten times that many every year to private firearm ownership.
Clearly, if 3,000 deaths to a terrorist attack means we have a war on terrorism, 30,000 deaths a year from private firearm ownership means we have a war BY private firearms on our safety, and the solution to that is fewer guns, limited kinds of firearms, magazines, and ammunition, not more guns, not more armed people.
Women are far more likely to be killed by guns in the home, mostly by the men in their lives, than they are to defend themselves against an intruder or intruders.
The hell with anything Whine La Pierre has to say, or those who side with him. They are fact averse fanatics.
One more comment about the woman who used a shotgun to defend herself against two intruders (who did not have guns).
DeleteTwo words : Meleanie Hain.
Clearly, neither a shot gun, nor an assault style weapon, nor a handgun is effective personal defense against the enemy with whom you live, and that is the enemy who does the most shooting of women.
I am not familiar with recent statistics, but before 2003 (notably before the war in Iraq) the three countries with the highest level of personal gun ownership were Iraq, Somalia, and the United States. As we found was the case in Iraq and Somalia, the free access to weapons such as AK-47s and high-powered rifles did not lead to any increases in "freedom" regardless of which sense of the word used. The high level of personal ownership of weapons in Iraq did not lead to downfall of a brutal dictator despite clear internal dissent (so guns did not result in any sense of personal freedom), and in Somalia clearly did not contribute to any form of a stable government (so no freedom in the sense of self-governing or self-determination).
ReplyDeleteI find it interesting too that part of La Pierre's argument is that we should enforce the gun laws already on the books... so why aren't these guys beating the drum to install Obama's nominee to head the ATF? Or for that matter, why have they (and Republicans) blocked any recent nominee to head the ATF? Maybe because they don't really want the laws enforced?
Welcome Robert 7132.
ReplyDeleteI believe you are correct; they try to undermine the effectiveness of laws, and they try to undermine and underfund the enforcement.