Stop the Madness

“I don’t care about your sympathy. I don’t give a s--t that you feel sorry for me...Get to work and do something. I’ll tell the president the same thing if he calls me. Getting a call from a politician doesn’t impress me.” - Richard Martinez, Santa Barbara gun victim's father

This weekend's tragedy in Santa Barbara leaves us wondering what will it take to get the country to confront the widespread availability of guns that lies at the heart of our developed-world-leading murder rate.  The craven toadies in Congress beholden to the NRA have done nothing - not after Sandy Hook, not after Gabby Giffords' shooting, not after the D.C. navy yard, not after any number of other recent mass shootings.  Gun lobby apologists and paranoid wing-nuts stifle any discussion of our unreasonably lax gun laws.

Comprehensive Federal gun control laws are a must if we are going to ever stop the ongoing killings in our communities.  The first and minimum step is a universal background check law with no loopholes, with annual renewal requirements for possession of a gun combined, and with severe civil and criminal penalties for non-compliance.  I'm amazed to read officials and pundits decrying how helpless we are in "identifying potential killers".  Well, if the mentally unstable and violent felons couldn't get their hands on weapons under any circumstances, you would eliminate that concern, wouldn't you?

And if the NRA complains about a national gun registry - well, tell them to go screw themselves.  That is exactly what is needed.  I mean if you have nothing to hide, why would you be against it?  If we require car registrations and driver licenses to be renewed, why shouldn't we require the same of guns and gun owners?

Then there's the disturbing trend of gun extremists threatening women.  Mother Jones reports on the attacks against paralyzed gun reform advocate Jennifer Longdon in a May 15 post and notes that these attacks are not isolated incidents:  "Ever since the Sandy Hook massacre, a small but vocal faction of the gun rights movement has been targeting women who speak up on the issue—whether to propose tighter regulations, educate about the dangers to children, or simply to sell guns with innovative security features. The vicious and often sexually degrading attacks have evolved far beyond online trolling, culminating in severe bullying, harassment, invasion of privacy, and physical aggression."

"Mother's Day" video aimed at women calling for gun reforms

(There are other videos and photos in the Mother Jones article.  This one is, believe it or not, one of the less offensive.  These videos and photos add a whole new dimension to the phrase "gun nut".)

Kudos to Chipotle and Starbucks and the others who've taken a step towards sanity by discouraging or prohibiting guns from being brought into their establishment.  But individual, private actions will never be enough to stem the country's gun violence.  Comprehensive Federal action is needed and it is needed now. Maybe there will be some movement on meaningful gun legislation in the coming days or maybe the NRA and its apologists will once again thwart even a minimal step towards restoring sanity to our gun laws.

Links
80 killed by guns in week prior to Santa Barbara

Sunday Round-Up - September 22,2013

This is the weekly selection of news and opinion from sources outside the US mainstream media.  Today's topic is gun violence.  Sources include Mother Jones, Salon.com, the Daily Kos, and The Guardian.

Earlier this month, NRA-backed candidates won recall elections in Colorado against two state legislators who were instrumental in passing Colorado's tough new gun control law.  On Monday, a deranged shooter, who was able to purchase a gun legally in the state of Virginia, killed 12 people at the Washington Navy Yard. 

Take a look at the Mother Jones special report: "America Under the Gun: A Special Report on Gun Laws and the Rise of Mass Shootings."  It is perhaps the finest piece of research journalism on the subject that I've seen.  The report features "A Guide to Mass Shootings", a profile of the 62 mass shootings that occurred in the last 30 years ("Of the 143 guns possessed by the killers, more than three quarters were obtained legally."); "More Guns, More Mass Shootings—Coincidence?" ("In not a single case was the killing stopped by a civilian using a gun. And in other recent (but less lethal) rampages in which armed civilians attempted to intervene, those civilians not only failed to stop the shooter but also were gravely wounded or killed. Moreover, we found that the rate of mass shootings has increased in recent years—at a time when America has been flooded with millions of additional firearms and a barrage of new laws has made it easier than ever to carry them in public places, including bars, parks, and schools."); 151 Victims of Mass Shootings in 2012: Here Are Their Stories; The NRA Myth of Arming the Good Guys; Mass Shootings: Maybe What We Need Is a Better Mental-Health Policy  .  In addition, there are links to other relevant MoJo articles and the report is packed with information-rich graphics and data to rebut all of the fallacious arguments proposed by gun lobbyists.

On September 18, The Daily Kos had a short post reporting columnist Frank Rich's grim assessment: "After being asked if there is any way to end the gun violence, his answer: Essentially, no. Perhaps the best thing we can do is at least call out the problem for what it is: state-sponsored terrorism. The American people and their elected representatives allow our own homegrown equivalent of suicide bombers — suicide shooters — legal access to weapons with which they can mow down innocents almost anywhere they please." Rich goes on to say that guns are ingrained in American culture and stopping gun violence may take as long as it took to end slavery.  The blogger concludes: "A grim assessment but I think Frank Rich might just have found the one argument that can move politicians back to reality "So you are saying that you are soft on domestic terrorism?"

Brian Beutler in his September 17 post "How to silence the NRA" on Salon.com writes of the "calculated strategy" by gun lobbyists used after mass shootings. "There’s one time, and only one time, you can count on the NRA to be more subdued than your average gun obsessive, and it’s the 24 to 48 hours after a mass shooting....Two entwined calculations motivate the temporary silence. The first is simple self-preservation. The gun lobby is at its weakest when crazy people use the weapons it has made so easily obtainable to slaughter innocents in public places. The second is more oblique. Mass shootings breathe new life into arguments for gun control, and one way to suffocate them is to feign propriety and indignation — to shame adherents into saying nothing until the public has moved on."  Beutler concludes his post with a comparison between two relatively rare events - mass shootings and airline accidents. " If fatal airline accidents became much more common in the U.S. than they are right now...it would be bizarre for a political movement to rise up after each tragedy to shout down anyone demanding tougher FAA safety inspections. But that’s about where gun obsessives in this country are right now."

The Guardian featured an emotional appeal from the chief medical officer at a Washington, D.C., hospital that treated victims of the Washington navy yard shooting.  Janis Orlowski "has become a rallying point for gun campaigners, calling on Americans to eradicate the 'evil in our society' that led to the tragedy.  'I would like you to put my trauma center out of business,' Janis Orlowski, chief medical officer at MedStar Washington Hospital Center, told reporters in the aftermath of the massacre. 'I would like to not be an expert on gunshots. Let's get rid of this. This is not America."
In an emotional address to the cameras, she added: "We just cannot have, you know, one more shooting with, you know, so many people killed. We've got to figure this out. We've got to be able to help each other.'  The Guardian September 17 post has a video of Orlowski's comments.