I got some heat from several people for my last post where I recommended relaxation of concealed carry permits. Karen Duda (Duda – that’s Spanish for doubt, but much more likely a Slavic surname) commented the following:
But allowing everyone to carry a gun does NOT make us safer. Case in point: when Gabrielle Giffords was shot and nine others injured by a nut job who never should have been able to get a gun, there was a young man in the crowd who had his gun, for which he has a legal permit, on him. He did not use it to try to stop the attack. He later said that he was afraid if he pulled out his (legal) gun people would have thought he was the shooter or an accomplice. So the fact that he had a gun did NOTHING to protect anyone that day.
I replied thusly:
Karen, I agree, allowing everyone to carry a gun would not make us safer. And you bring up a very good and important point about the Giffords incident. Not only that but, in a situation like the Giffords one, besides the risk of being mistaken for a homicidal maniac, if a person with a legal permit and gun did decide to shoot at the person who started the shooting -- assuming he knew for sure who started the shooting -- he might risk hitting innocent bystanders by mistake, like those trained and authorized cops did by the Empire State Building in Manhattan some months ago when that nutjob decided to shoot and kill his former boss. You also bring up a very good point about 'accomplices.' Can you imagine the havoc some crazed killers could produce if two or more of them started blasting away in a crowd where everyone had a legally authorized gun? More guns, less crime? If I sound like I'm contradicting myself, I can understand that. But I can explain my position, and I will, in my next post.
Well, I won’t be able to explain my position in detail this time because I want to use this post to get my policy recommendations out before Obama presents Biden’s task force recommendations. Let me say this for now; guns are a double edged sword. In some instances they can do good. They can prevent crimes and even save lives. They can diffuse dangerous situations. Of course in other instances they can do great harm. They can make dangerous people and situations exponentially more dangerous. And the more dangerous and lethal those guns are, the more dangerous and lethal those people and situations become.
The biggest obstacle, that I see, preventing us from achieving the healthiest and safest society we can is the refusal of the most passionate of us, on both sides of the gun issue, to see and acknowledge the reality of guns’ double edged nature. Our emotional biases tend to allow us to see only the side that comforts, supports and reinforces those biases. Acknowledging the other side of the sword is crucial in figuring out the best things to do.
Here are my policy recommendations:
1. Relax concealed carry laws. Ultimately, local governments/authorities are and should be the deciders of if and how to implement these laws but I would strongly recommend that they be relaxed with specific and stringent safeguards in place.
2. Put in place an immediate moratorium on the production and sale of all firearms.
3. Require that all guns in circulation be accounted for and registered by the owners.
4. Confiscate all illegal guns. That’s right, I said ‘confiscate.’ I agree with Wayne LaDouchebag, the executive vice president of the National Rifle Association (who always says how that no good tyrant President of ours – who was twice elected by a majority of the voting public – is responsible for the gun massacres because of his absolute refusal to enforce the laws that are already on the books because he wants things to get so bad that he will then use that as the excuse to take away all guns from everyone except for the blue helmeted UN forces in the black helicopters who will now be in charge of running the US of A.) I think it’s about time the government started enforcing the laws that are already on the books.
5. Here are the ‘well regulated’ parts: Require a license to buy, own and carry a gun that includes a background check, the passing of a training class and the registration for each and every gun and…
6. Redesign all new guns manufactured to strict specifications that limit the trigger speed, caliber/velocity of bullets and magazine size and…
7. Finally, dare I say it; limit all purchases to one gun per person.
Sound crazy Wayne? Well then call me crazy!
Sound farfetched? Naïve? Of course it is. How could we possibly stand up to the ferocious rage of the heavily armed gun nuts who would love nothing better than to finally get to use all of that fire power that they’ve been stockpiling for all of these years? Plus, who the hell is going to listen to me? But if anyone with any influence were to listen to me I could give a series of tactics and a strategy that might actually make these proposals seem much less farfetched.
These would include lessons on how to frame and win the debates with the anti-gun control side.
Removing the credibility of the NRA by pinning the blame for these gun deaths on the NRA’s depraved indifference to the consequences of their efforts to sabotage any and every effort to regulate guns.
Conceding on concealed carry permits is also a crucial tactic, but not a Machiavellian one. This is the one single argument that the pro-gun people have that would probably save lives if important safeguards are taken.
One other tactic may be the single best strategy for getting these proposals enacted: present these proposals to the American people to be voted on, yes or no, in a national referendum! If the American people vote yes and the gun nuts want to fight the will of the people, well who are the tyrants now? The gun nuts would have no choice but to overthrow themselves!
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
Friday, January 4, 2013
The NRA Created the Problem That Requires the Solution They Always Wanted
In the same way the Republicon Party deliberately drove up the debt in order to use it as the excuse to get rid of the social programs they’ve always despised, the NRA deliberately caused the country’s gun problem in order to use it as the excuse to get rid of the gun laws they’ve always despised.
The Republicons drove up the debt with a strategy they called ‘Starve the Beast.’ This economic policy was implemented by the Reagan and Bush Jr. administrations by cutting any and every tax they could get their hands on while hugely increasing spending. They grew the Beast to mammoth proportions and simultaneously cut off its food supply. Now they are saying we need to solve the problem of the debt by getting rid of those programs they hate. A conservative’s dreams come true.
The NRA’s strategy was to ferociously oppose, thwart and sabotage any and every gun control law that ever came up. They worked together with the gun manufacturers to flood the country with a dizzying array of diabolical weapons, some of which can kill a hundred people in seconds. Thanks to the NRA, these weapons are unregistered, unaccounted for and easily obtained by any criminal and homicidal maniac who wants one. Now they say we need to solve this problem by allowing guns to invade every single space in our lives. A gun lover’s dreams come true.
Both of these groups circumvented the will and the wellbeing of the general public. They both used specious, fallacious and underhanded arguments to support their positions and attack their opponents. They both employed the unfair and undemocratic use of money to target politicians who wouldn’t bend to their will. They both pursued policies that only benefited their own narrow self-interests while damaging the health and wellbeing of both the people and the economy. And they both appear to be on the verge of accomplishing their goal of imposing their extremist views on the entire country, the vast majority of who oppose those views.
(An interesting aside. The radical-right is always accusing the Government of being tyrannical whenever it does something they don’t like. That’s why they say we need guns in the first place. To ‘take out’ the politicians ‘we’ think are tyrannical. But why would ‘we’ want to ‘take out’ the politicians we voted into office? Well, of course ‘we’ wouldn’t. The ‘we’ is actually ‘they’ and the ‘they’ is actually the radical-right nutbags. And what is those nutbags’ definition of ‘tyranny?’ Like I said, it’s whatever policy they don’t like, which happens whenever they lose an election. Here’s a better definition of tyranny: two unelected creeps – Wayne LaPierre and Grover Norquist – pay themselves millions of dollars and then circumvent the democratic process in order to impose their harmful and dangerous minority views on the entire country, depriving citizens of their Constitutional rights in the process. What a couple of scumbags.)
There is one major and unfortunate difference, though, between the Recons’ ‘Starve the Beast’ policy and the NRA’s ‘unfettered access to any kind of gun they feel like having’ policy. There is a much better and fairer alternative to the ‘Starve the Beast’ policy of even more tax cuts for the rich and service cuts for everyone else. That would be significant spending cuts to the Military, a single-payer universal healthcare system and a restoration of the Clinton-era tax rates, for everyone, with higher added brackets for the super-wealthy that top out at 50%, the same top rate as Reagan’s first term when the conservalibertarians bragged that that tax rate got us out of the second worst recession since the Great Depression and created millions of jobs.
However, in the case of gun-control policy, because of the terrible predicament that the NRA has put this country in, there is no better alternative than to allow guns to invade every single space in our lives, and by this I mean allowing law-abiding citizens to carry guns in places many of us might think to be inappropriate, repugnant or downright crazy. As hard as it is for many of us to admit, the logic and the evidence of concealed carry permits seems irrefutable. Most Americans realize this. This is why the NRA has been winning the debate so far. (Their positions on other forms of gun control are a completely different story, though.) The sad truth is guns have already invaded every single space in our lives. The NRA never allowed our society to adjust from the 18th century world when the 2nd Amendment was written to the modern one we live in today. The NRA forced us to live in a wild, wild, west society where the gun-nuts and the free market rule us and our gun control laws are a ridiculous joke. And, instead of muskets or even six-shooters, we have gun manufacturers making and selling with impunity the most lethal 21st century weaponry devised by man. Under those circumstances, it’s better to have a gun yourself than not to.
I’m not the only liberal to come to this conclusion. I recently saw an interview with Craig R. Whitney, a former reporter and editor at The New York Times, about a book he wrote called “Living With Guns: A Liberal’s Case for the Second Amendment.” Jeffry Goldberg wrote an article in the Dec. issue of The Atlantic titled “The Case for More Guns (And More Gun Control).” Ezra Klein recently hosted Rachel Maddow’s show where he covered the same ground and interviewed a criminologist named Richard Rosenfeld. All of these persons elaborated on some of the points I made in this post, plus they offered policy recommendations that go beyond relaxing certain gun restrictions like concealed carry.
I agree with and appreciate most of what they said. They all acknowledged some realities that most liberals find very hard to accept. I give them a lot of credit for this. This is the first step in formulating a best course of action. Goldberg, in particular, wrote a very good article. However, I do have some complaints. These have to do with things they didn’t say and the way they said some of the things they did say. Also, they didn’t go far enough in their policy recommendations.
In upcoming posts I will outline specifically what these things said and not said are. I will also give my own policy recommendations. And I will give my explanation of why the NRA has been winning the debate on guns despite the fact that their gun policies (except for concealed carry) are completely insane.
The Republicons drove up the debt with a strategy they called ‘Starve the Beast.’ This economic policy was implemented by the Reagan and Bush Jr. administrations by cutting any and every tax they could get their hands on while hugely increasing spending. They grew the Beast to mammoth proportions and simultaneously cut off its food supply. Now they are saying we need to solve the problem of the debt by getting rid of those programs they hate. A conservative’s dreams come true.
The NRA’s strategy was to ferociously oppose, thwart and sabotage any and every gun control law that ever came up. They worked together with the gun manufacturers to flood the country with a dizzying array of diabolical weapons, some of which can kill a hundred people in seconds. Thanks to the NRA, these weapons are unregistered, unaccounted for and easily obtained by any criminal and homicidal maniac who wants one. Now they say we need to solve this problem by allowing guns to invade every single space in our lives. A gun lover’s dreams come true.
Both of these groups circumvented the will and the wellbeing of the general public. They both used specious, fallacious and underhanded arguments to support their positions and attack their opponents. They both employed the unfair and undemocratic use of money to target politicians who wouldn’t bend to their will. They both pursued policies that only benefited their own narrow self-interests while damaging the health and wellbeing of both the people and the economy. And they both appear to be on the verge of accomplishing their goal of imposing their extremist views on the entire country, the vast majority of who oppose those views.
(An interesting aside. The radical-right is always accusing the Government of being tyrannical whenever it does something they don’t like. That’s why they say we need guns in the first place. To ‘take out’ the politicians ‘we’ think are tyrannical. But why would ‘we’ want to ‘take out’ the politicians we voted into office? Well, of course ‘we’ wouldn’t. The ‘we’ is actually ‘they’ and the ‘they’ is actually the radical-right nutbags. And what is those nutbags’ definition of ‘tyranny?’ Like I said, it’s whatever policy they don’t like, which happens whenever they lose an election. Here’s a better definition of tyranny: two unelected creeps – Wayne LaPierre and Grover Norquist – pay themselves millions of dollars and then circumvent the democratic process in order to impose their harmful and dangerous minority views on the entire country, depriving citizens of their Constitutional rights in the process. What a couple of scumbags.)
There is one major and unfortunate difference, though, between the Recons’ ‘Starve the Beast’ policy and the NRA’s ‘unfettered access to any kind of gun they feel like having’ policy. There is a much better and fairer alternative to the ‘Starve the Beast’ policy of even more tax cuts for the rich and service cuts for everyone else. That would be significant spending cuts to the Military, a single-payer universal healthcare system and a restoration of the Clinton-era tax rates, for everyone, with higher added brackets for the super-wealthy that top out at 50%, the same top rate as Reagan’s first term when the conservalibertarians bragged that that tax rate got us out of the second worst recession since the Great Depression and created millions of jobs.
However, in the case of gun-control policy, because of the terrible predicament that the NRA has put this country in, there is no better alternative than to allow guns to invade every single space in our lives, and by this I mean allowing law-abiding citizens to carry guns in places many of us might think to be inappropriate, repugnant or downright crazy. As hard as it is for many of us to admit, the logic and the evidence of concealed carry permits seems irrefutable. Most Americans realize this. This is why the NRA has been winning the debate so far. (Their positions on other forms of gun control are a completely different story, though.) The sad truth is guns have already invaded every single space in our lives. The NRA never allowed our society to adjust from the 18th century world when the 2nd Amendment was written to the modern one we live in today. The NRA forced us to live in a wild, wild, west society where the gun-nuts and the free market rule us and our gun control laws are a ridiculous joke. And, instead of muskets or even six-shooters, we have gun manufacturers making and selling with impunity the most lethal 21st century weaponry devised by man. Under those circumstances, it’s better to have a gun yourself than not to.
I’m not the only liberal to come to this conclusion. I recently saw an interview with Craig R. Whitney, a former reporter and editor at The New York Times, about a book he wrote called “Living With Guns: A Liberal’s Case for the Second Amendment.” Jeffry Goldberg wrote an article in the Dec. issue of The Atlantic titled “The Case for More Guns (And More Gun Control).” Ezra Klein recently hosted Rachel Maddow’s show where he covered the same ground and interviewed a criminologist named Richard Rosenfeld. All of these persons elaborated on some of the points I made in this post, plus they offered policy recommendations that go beyond relaxing certain gun restrictions like concealed carry.
I agree with and appreciate most of what they said. They all acknowledged some realities that most liberals find very hard to accept. I give them a lot of credit for this. This is the first step in formulating a best course of action. Goldberg, in particular, wrote a very good article. However, I do have some complaints. These have to do with things they didn’t say and the way they said some of the things they did say. Also, they didn’t go far enough in their policy recommendations.
In upcoming posts I will outline specifically what these things said and not said are. I will also give my own policy recommendations. And I will give my explanation of why the NRA has been winning the debate on guns despite the fact that their gun policies (except for concealed carry) are completely insane.
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