Gun Guys

 --Guns composite, Paolo Pellegrin

___________________

The New York Times recently ran an interview on gun control with Joe Nocera and Dan Baum, a liberal gun owner and author of the book, "Gun Guys: A Road Trip" (What Gun Lovers Think).

It makes sense that we "need to speak with a different voice" on this topic. Now, we have only the National Rifle Association who have totally cleaved from the political Progressives, and the non-gun owning Liberals who deride almost every argument for private gun ownership (they are the knee-jerk liberals who will see fit to laugh even at the man's book title ("Road trip ... like with Bob Hope?")  Everything is fair game for their scattershot attacks.

We need to stop taking potshots and consider the objective, which is our society's safety in this case. Even in this NYT piece which should have been a reasoned debate, the Times writer could barely restrain his thinly-veiled and yet poorly-developed disgust with all things firearms.

Here is an excerpt from Baum's argument:

You don’t understand guns, and you don’t know gun guys, yet you want to make rules for things you don’t understand for people you don’t know. And that is not how we’re going to end up safer.  . . .  We should be insisting on real responsibility from gun owners instead of doing what we’re doing now, which doesn’t get us anywhere. Because you don’t really think that by adjusting the number of rounds in a magazine we’re going to make everybody safer. You can’t possibly believe that. 

. . .

I think somebody who wants to carry a gun should be at least as well trained as the police. Right now, for example, if I wanted to carry a gun, my permit would be good in 30 states. But in every state it’s different. I can wear it in a restaurant in this state, but not in that state. In this place, I can take it near a school, but in that place I can’t. Flip the script. Say, “If you get licensed to carry a handgun, you can carry it anywhere. But you have to be trained at least as well as a police officer.” Do you worry when there’s a police officer in your kid’s school? No. You trust the police officer. Trust gun owners. Raise everybody’s level of responsibility instead of treating them like children. It’s getting us nowhere.

Faulty Premise

I never expected, Perry, to see you
reduced down from a full-grown pestilence 
to such a frivolous fraction of a man 
--The Lonesome Road, O. Henry    
_______________________

The New Yorker magazine recently featured an essay stating that guns have no purpose beyond that of killing -- an incendiary and obviously false statement, but that is America: "You're with us, or you're against us"; subtlety and nuance is not our strong point.

Most in the anti-gun side do not know that the United States government funds and staffs a program called the Civilian Marksmanship Program (CMP) which sells ammunition and surplus World War II semiautomatic 8-shot Garand rifles and 30-round M1 Carbines for use in training civilians to shoot in coordination with the National Rifle Association (NRA).  The CMP descends from the Directorate of Civilian Marksmanship (DCM), an earlier program with the same goal.

The CMP and the DCM are and were funded by tax dollars for the express purpose of instructing the populace in safe gun handling and shooting techniques.  In our opinion, this is a better use of tax dollars than providing arms and training to foreign armies and police.

However, the killing machine meme is far sexier than seeing weapons as tools or hobbies.  Just as the Phony War on Terror (PWOT ©) is propped up as being an existential threat to the survival of our nation in order to justify an ongoing war, the cries for gun control would have no oomph without the hyperbole of the demon shooting stick.

Guns are more than the sensational spree shootings plastered across the news, much as terrorism is different than the Jack Bauer "24" version in which terrorists © lurk behind every bush in The Homeland (™).  Target practice and skill at marksmanship is a long-venerated activity not equivalent to killing. Many collectors never fire their vintage weapons; weapons collectors and sport shooters do not pose a societal threat.

Probably no DCM or CMP gun has ever been used in a violent crime; no registered machine gun has ever been used in an illegal manner. So why do we require collector firearms to be regulated as if they were killing machines?  Why must the transactions of such guns be booked and logged, and necessitate meaningless waiting periods, after we have already passed a background check?  How many background checks are required for a collector to perform in a lifetime of collecting guns before it becomes superfluous?

We in the U.S. will never get realistic and effective gun control because we fail to recognize the fallacy of our basic presumptions.

Guns are not just about killing.

Swallow This

Here we go again with
Mickey Mouse and Rin-Tin-Tin 
--Old Army Cadence Call 

I'm crazy for trying and crazy for crying
And I'm crazy for loving you 
--Crazy, Patsy Cline 

No escape from the mass mind rape
Play it again jack and then rewind the tape
And then play it again and again and again
Until your mind is locked in 
--Bullet in the Head, 
Rage Against the Machine
  ___________________

Is gun control a real life issue or just another hot-button topic used by both parties to keep We the People in a constant state of emotional upheaval?  The issue serves to polarize and harden the plaque in our partisan arteries, without demandingd any rigorous proof which might substantiate the taking of one side over the other.

Meanwhile, our national "debate" hinges on the straw man argument: You are for gun control, or you are for unfettered Wild West violence.  Good, compassionate limp-wristed liberals vs. insane, gun-toting bloodthirsty tea baggers.  Only, the reality is not so facile. Who speaks for common sense today?

Let us use the figure of 30,000 annual gun homicides in the United States (this figure includes justifiable use of firearms).  30K is a lot of dead people, but so what?  Dead folks are helpful to society in many different ways; in fact, they are essential lest we deplete our raw resources. Requiescat In Pace.

Why do we get crazy about gun deaths but barely raise a whisper about the approximately 100,000 annual U.S. deaths due to  wrongly prescribed pharmaceutical drugs and drug reactions and interactions?  There is one death (accidental or intentional) every 24 minutes in the U.S. due to drugs found in our own medicine cabinets; 61 deaths per day, on average, or 22,265 deaths per year.  How do you legislate drug safety?

Good liberals decry the gun lobby and take easy pot shots at those who embrace their guns, but a far bigger and more nefarious lobby is that of Big Pharma, whose products will kill every one of us far more efficiently and in larger numbers than will guns any day of the week.  Insidiously, too.

If gun deaths are unacceptable, then so too are prescription drug deaths, or tobacco-related deaths, or alcohol-related deaths.  We tried to legislate the latter with the Eighteenth Amendment and the Volstead Act but found out that our citizens have a remarkable facility for circumventing the law.  Banning things rarely works in a free society, though legislation may. The caveat is that a free society must sign on to the strictures. We abide by a Bill of Rights which accords us the right to weapons ownership.

The issue comes down to power and control of our lives. Are we a liberal or a conservative society?  Is the Federal government  allowed or legally able to force background checks and then to use these as investigative and intelligence tools?  Why and how can the government use private legal purchase of firearms to establish a national database for firearms purchasers?  Further, is such a warrantless intrusion into our rights of privacy and ownership consistent with what we are as Americans?

Why do we have a Fourth Amendment?  We should get clear on this when discussing Second Amendment infringements.

Guns look scary and go "BOOM!", and when used destructively, the results can be spectacular.  Because it is a simple, discrete item, it is easy to focus on.  We are susceptible to being riled up by the press and our leaders like marionette puppets chittering on about the latest train wreck dujour, whether personal or political (or best -- a combination of both).  Yet we ignore the many other forms of death which stalk us every day of our lives, some of which may be as easily legislated as gun ownership and may be more productive in terms of protection.

It seems that we have an unspoken covenant that condones certain methods of self-destruction, while opposing gun violence. But why is the death wrought at the end of a gun any different from that caused by any number of other mundane modalities?

What are willing to swallow? At the current mortality rate from prescription drugs, we have more dead bodies stacked up every 11 days than we do victims of all spree shootings since 1980.  Where is our sense of perspective?  All of this death without one extended magazine or assault rifle.

Guns are viewed as symbols of freedom by many Americans.  In fact, we would not have our nation had the citizens not owned firearms; it was not via mediation that the Brits decided to leave us to our own devices.

We are also a nation of death, and one form is as serviceable as the next.

Rational Thought

  We don’t need no truthless heroes 
--The Spy Hunter, Project 86   

Christ was crucified for preaching without a police permit 
--Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert Heinlein 

___________________________

In 2011, out of 12,664 homicides, 6220 people were killed in the United States with handguns versus 323 killed with rifles (Obama's Potemkin Gun Plan); the 323 figure includes all rifles, including the so-called assault rifles. 

The proposed gun control aimed at these military look-alike rifles is pure theater, much like the Transportation Security Administration (TSA).  Neither address a significant threat or make us safer, while both serve to irritate law-abiding citizens. We accept the idea that limiting magazine capacity is reasonable and rational (A Rational Response to Sandy Hook), but lack statistics to verify the effect.

Since 1982 the U.S. has suffered at least 62 mass shootings, leaving 543 dead.  During the same period there were 564,452 homicides, which means that .01% of all murders in the US are due to mass or spree shootings.  We are reacting to the grand spectacle of the spree shooting event, when regular workaday homicide is the real problem. Why do we not have data on the types of weapons used in these murders?

George Gascon at Politico (Time to Ban Assault Magazines) notes that between 1984 and 2011, the killers used a magazine that carried more than 10 rounds.  He claims 1,500 rounds were used to kill 225 people and wound 242 others.  If true, this means that the killer in each episode fired approximately 70-75 rounds.

It is clear that neither the Gun Control Act of 1968, the George W. Bush assault weapon import ban, the Bill Clinton assault rifle ban nor the Brady bill has had any effect upon the criminally-minded shooter.  The laws only harass legal gun purchasers.

In addition, The New York Times reports that 80,000 people were caught lying about prior criminal records when attempting to buy a gun in 2010 ( Lie and Try), while only 44 were charged with a crime.  It makes one wonder why people lose their voting and gun rights after they have served their complete sentences, to include probationary time -- especially when their crimes are not violent?

Ranger is against gun control and believes that such laws are ineffective at best, and unconstitutional at worst.  Guys like me are not National Rifle Association weenies who have never seen military service, nor are we politicians who have no experience with violence. We who have served in the military have been acutely trained in all things weaponry, yet we are being told we may not own a weapon with more than rounds in the magazine (11 rounds, since I will have one up the snout).  And you think limiting our magazine capacity is all that it will take to keep you safe?  From us?!?

We used our skills to defend you, the citizens, and now Ranger takes offense that he will be told in what manner he may defend his body and his home.  If my government does not trust me now, then why did they trust me when I was a soldier?  Please, America, don't tell me that I may defend democracy with a real assault rifle but cannot defend my home with an ersatz version. 

Ranger finds himself a stranger in a strange land when he is barraged in the creative media by the ubiquitous terror threat wreaking mayhem and death, countered by well-outfitted Jack Bauers, yet is told to stand down by the same actors who peddle this brand of paranoia.  Does this hypocrisy gall anyone else? 

In a nation of limited economic resources, from where will the funds for enacting the new laws come?

--Who will pay for private gun sales background checks?

--Who will be tasked with the record-keeping?

--Doesn't requiring private background checks trun every private owner and seller of a firearm into a "federal firearms dealer"?

--If the buyer or seller must pay for this required back, does this mean that gun rights are subject to a form of taxation in order for the gunman to exercise his civil rights? If Poll Taxes are illegal, then would this constriction upon a civil right be commensurate?

The U.S. already has the largest prison population in the world, and the new gun laws will add a new category of criminal to that mix: A normal citizen selling a gun to another citizen sans background check.  This type of criminality is the basis of most totalitarian regimes, and will require secret police and agents to ferret out miscreants who disobey the new laws.  Along with the informants will arise a thriving new black market. 

There is nothing good to expect from the proposed laws, other than a temporary soothing of the madding populace which is now being treated to a constant news feed which keeps their collective mind in a Tourette's-like state.  The new proposals will be a feint and a ruse, but it will not address our high homicide rate.

 The gun control rules will not keep guns out of the hands of bad guys.

Man With the Golden Gun

--President Obama--

There's a bad man cruising around 
in a big black limousine 
 Don't let it be wrong, don't let it be right 
Get in his way, you're dead in his sight 
--Big Gun, AC/DC 

Mama used to tell me 
Girl, you better load your gun up right 
She said ya, ya gotta come out smokin' 
Hit it with your best shot every time 
--Love is in Control, Donna Summer 

I know my destiny is like the sun
You see the best of me when I have got my gun 
--I'm Gonna Get Me a Gun, Cat Stevens
___________________

Surely every president loves his photo ops, and why should President Obama be any different?

Since gun control is a hot-button issue, BHO does not wish to look like a wussy as he ramrods through his position, ergo the recent photo of him striking a pose while skeet shooting.  But the photo seemed as inauthentic and staged as his ostensible dip in the Gulf of Mexico after British Petroleum's disastrous oil spill of 2010.

In that one, Mr. Obama was seen static in a small patch of some nondescript body of water with one of his offspring over the caption, "Swimming in the Gulf".  It seemed strained and joyless, like he was trying too hard, the lack of any place identifiers making the location of the dip indeterminate.  Not that swimming in the Redneck Riviera is a cause for joy, but still, there was no frolic in the dip.

Now we have an equally serious Mr. Obama drawing a bead on some skeet, so here is some minutiae (as seen through a gunman's lens):

--The Length of Pull (LOP) is too great. The gun is too long for Obama (Ranger measured the photo with calipers to confirm.)  With a too-long LOP the gun is too far forward, precluding proper use of the eye on the sighting plane of the shotgun.  Obama's head is too erect and not in proper relation to the gun target eye-line.

--His ear protection appears to be of a general industrial variety, not the slimmer profile earphones used in the shooting sports.  The slimmer earphones are designed to not interfere with the "stock-weld" -- the proper placement of the cheek in relationship to the stock.  If the President were properly down on his gun, the earphones would bang into the stock.

--What are the puffs of smoke coming from the the compensation ports in the barrel?  Doesn't HBO shoot  smokeless powder loads?  Further, where is the recoil which would be expected from a 12-guage shotgun?  Also, what is the (apparently) plastic wad just out of the bore?  Is this round live, or just a blank load for the photo?

--Where is his headgear (this appears to be a summer shot)?  Most shooters wear sun protection.  Mr. Obama was wearing a hat while out golfing with House Speaker John Boehner, but not here.

--This is how it's done

Further thoughts:

Has Mr. Obama taken National Rifle Association training for his shooting skills?  Why not bring the NRA on board, say to a summit at Camp David to help work out a reasonable gun owning stance for the nation?  If United States presidents can bring Palestinians and Jews to the bargaining table, then surely  a gun guy like Mr. Obama should be able to communicate with the leadership of the nation's largest gun lobby.

Why must our nation be so riven and suffer so much antagonism?  To what endpoint the ongoing and corrosive hostility?  The White House could set up a reloading room at the Camp, and the happy shooters could schmooze while cleaning their weapons and discussing their love of all things guns, reveling in their mutual uniquely American brand of manhood.

If Obama does not invite the NRA, then they should invite him.  If Mr. Obama could bring radical academic Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and a police officer together in a "beer summit", he can hobnob with the NRA.

The one positive of the photo is that Obama did not shoot anyone in the face (as a recent hapless past Vice President did.) Being a gunnie, we are sorry he did not visit our local Coon Bottom Skeet and Gun Club whilst here in the Panhandle for his previous photo op.

We just hope the President is not shooting blanks, in any sense of the term.

Son of a Gun

--Falling Ifs, Matthew Heller

"You're a business owner, maybe,
and you're kind of pissed about Obama?
Take the bumper stickers off your car,
and no more sharing in the employee break room.
And no goddamn talking about the Rapture
ever, ever again.

"Are we clear? Because if you don't listen to me,
the only places we'll be competitive
are districts composed solely of people
who plan to shoot someone within the next 30 minutes
and actual Confederate veterans.   
Mostly northern Florida I guess."
--Karl Rove to the GOP: "Please, Please Stop Talking,
Goblinbooks 

 What [the Arab Spring] really means is
the empowerment of the Muslim Brotherhood
across the region
--Gerard de Villiers
 _________________________

Mr. Goblinbooks has a good sense of things in this neck o' the woods.

Let us talk about gun control here in the good ole Homeland.

So we're gonna do it: No more high-capacity magazines for civilians and ban assault rifles (even though they are not assault rifles).  The manufacturers will eliminate the flash suppressors, the bayonet lugs and the extendible stocks, and everything will be copacetic.  However, you will have the very same rifle, minus the bells and whistles -- what is euphemistically called a "Post-ban rifle".  Now we will all be much safer ... don't you feel better?

Meanwhile, after the love-fest, the United States still lurks near the bottom of the life expectancy scale among industrial nations, despite the fact we spend more for personal health care.  Removing bayonet lugs will not solve that problem.

We suffer tobacco-related death, aggressive and oblivious drivers, alcohol-related death and the myriad of death by stupidity but what do we do?  We focus on 10-round magazines and military look-alike rifles.  Perhaps this is because eliminating the stupid is a lot harder than regulating weapons.

And this is what passes for leadership in America.

A Thousand Words

 --Moro Islamic Liberation Front   

It is the height of madness to give radical Islamists 
... new and more powerful weapons 
-- Special Ops Veterans Blast Obama’s Weapons Deal 
with the Muslim Brotherhood 
_______________________

International gun control doesn't get much press, but it surely impacts the nature of the Global War on Terror, which should be the premier violence issue in the United States today (but is not.)

Ranger recently came across a photo heading an article on last fall's Fillipino peace deal (Philippine Peace Deal Signed), and noted the Moro Islamic Liberation Front members sounding off with a hearty "Allahu Akhbar" were carrying U.S.-manufactured assault rifles and belt-fed machine guns. Their M-16's have 30-round magazines, while one of the "rebels" lifts a U.S.-issue M-14 with a puny 20-round magazine (but then again, it is a serious 7.62 x 51 knock-down rifle.)  So -- who paid for and supplied these weapons to an Islamic military group?

Ranger reckons "Made in America" is still the mark of excellence in the international arms bazaars supported by U.S. policy.

The category in which these rebels belong is hazy.  They are kitted up as regular soldiers, but they are rebels and do not belong to any government, operating outside of the nation-state paradigm.  However, they are being integrated into the social structure of the government, in a move reminiscent of the British accord with the Irish Republican Army in Northern Ireland.

The Philippine accommodation is cited as a "critical breakthrough" which will allow for the transition of public resources from the military to the economic sectors.  Similarly, when will the U.S. stop its sale of the Long War and transition the freed up resources to address the dire social and economic needs here at home?

Let the Philippines, Iraqis, Libyans, Malians, Egyptians and all the other usual suspects resolve their own problems without U.S. intervention, and we will address our own problems -- as we ever do -- with our own resources, which we should pull back from their sandboxes. The U.S. actions of the last 10+ years have been neither rational nor productive.

The U.S. arms the world, and wonder why they kill each other so well.

Only Militias Need Guns

--Ayeh ... maybe 

Now it is not good for the Christian's health

to hustle the Aryan brown,

For the Christian riles, and the Aryan smiles

and he weareth the Christian down;

And the end of the fight is a tombstone white

with the name of the late deceased,

And the epitaph drear:  "A Fool lies here

 who tried to hustle the East." 

--The Naulahka,Rudyard Kipling

 ____________________

While gun control mania grips the United States, your government has been busy arming Libyan and Syrian terrorists (Mideast folly: U.S. arms find their way to Islamic extremists):

"[T]he Obama administration decided instead to provide arms, or money or other materiel translatable into arms, to the Libyan and Syrian oppositions through third parties.

"The instruments chosen were Sunni Muslim Persian Gulf monarchies Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates"

In a Catch-22, the U.S. has been opposing radicals for the last decade (in Afghanistan and Iraq), except where we support them (in place of, "Libyan and Syrian oppositions," put, "Islamic militants often affiliated with al-Qaeda".) We want stricter background checks and copious paper trails when selling guns to American citizens, while in the Middle East handing out assault rifles to any open hand claiming to be an insurgent.

We are against anti-government militias in the U.S., while supporting the same abroad in their activities against our once, erstwhile friendly regimes, like Qadaffi's Libya and Assad's Syria.  It's all so 1776, unless one wakes up and realizes what that actually implies.

Our friends and foes alike know one truth: the U.S. speaks with forked tongue.

Scattershot

This is the argument of a totalitarian. 
You can't know what we're doing to protect you, 
even if we're doing it to you, 
because then we can't protect you 
and you will be killed by bad people 
and it will be your own fault 
--Should Auld Civil Liberties Be Forgot, 
Charles Pierce 

What a wonder is a gun
What a versatile invention!
First of all, when you've a gun-
Everybody pays attention 
--Gun Song, Assassins soundtrack

 They who can give up essential liberty
to obtain a little temporary safety,
deserve neither liberty nor safety 
--Benjamin Franklin
 ________________

Along with death and taxes, gambling remains Big Business in the United States.

As the mega-million dollar state lotteries roll on despite the player's incredibly slim odds of winning, this metaphor seems right for a society that accepts odds of thousand-to-one of winning. The  
Lotto Mentality was the impetus behind entering the Phony War on Terror (PWOT ©) and drives much of our legislation, including our gun laws.  We buy Lotto tickets, fight wars and legislate with only the slightest chance of winning.

Betting on a legal solution to our domestic violence issue is as losing a proposition as is buying a Florida Lottery ticket.  It is a response to the cry to "do something", but it is as well thought out as an grade school teacher denying the entire class recess because someone threw a spitball. (This is not to dismiss a spree killing as being akin to such a classroom transgression, but to compare the punishment of all for the crime of one.)

We fight in Iraq and Afghanistan and call it a war while in reality it is nothing but controlled bully behavior, asserting our military dominance under the pretense of caring about their welfare.  In reality, we occupy their country because they are the enemy.

The same bullying is conducted in the United States towards its own citizens, when Ranger feels like the enemy because he believes he has the right to own weapons, including those that would be carried by a law enforcement officer.  If a government does not trust its citizenry, then it is an adversary, and is not by, of and for the people; the people are not the enemy.

Gun ownership will not protect our democracy; then again, neither will anything else, to include myriad technologies.  It is the hallmark of a cosseted democratic society to believe that we can be protected.

Did Jose Padilla think that he would be thrown in a brig, devoid of all rights of citizenship? Did "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh expect to bear the barbaric treatment thrown his way? Did Bradley Manning expect two years in prison before even being tried for an offense?  What were the odds?

Will guns make us free?  Probably not, but they are an indicator of the health of our freedoms and our status as free citizens versus subjects of our elected government.  It is ironic that so many argue for the continued abridgement of our civil rights, as though a bloated entity will be a better controller of our behavior than each of us may be himself.

Killing is wrong, whatever the source.  Handguns and assault rifles are but a piddling threat compared to what can be done in the name of the government.  Ranger for one does not fear the governed.  The abrogation of gun rights once accorded to the governed rarely bodes well for those so deprived.  Consider how the Holocaust might have played out had the slaughtered had access to small arms -- think about the doomed Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

Back to the Lotto: You can play and not win, or you can not play and not win; either way, you're a loser.  If my government does not trust me, I have lost the most important measure of citizenship.

Winning $530 million off a $1 ticket will not compensate for that loss.

Defining the Problem

____________________

At brother site Milpub we recently had a 134-comment thread on the Newtown shooting tragedy; after 134 comments it is clear that we are neither able to define the problem nor are we able to even agree if there is a problem.

Ranger hearkens back to 1973, when he commanded the 3rd Army Marksmanship Training Unit. It became apparent to him at that time that the leadership of the National Rifle Association (NRA) was transforming itself and its magazine, The Rifleman, into a Right-wing mouthpiece for the Republican party.  The magazine shifted its focus in the 1970's from the shooting sports and gun collecting to political matters.  Soon, the agenda became aligned with the Christian Right, an affiliation which has been maintained through today.

This far-Right stance was adopted after Nixon's 1968 Presidential election politicized and radicalized a fraught nation with his law enforcement emphasis.  This focus was a thinly-veiled racial agenda since being tough on crime meant being tough on black criminals.  The nation was riven, Right and Left; the divisiveness continues today, hence the problem agreeing upon the "gun issue".

Ranger will try for a definition by asking the questions:

• Do we have a gun problem?  Of the 300 million guns estimated to be in private hands, perhaps 30 million are "kill your neighbor" guns.  Let us assume that the 270 million collector and curio firearms are not the problem. (These guns are still regulated the same as the neighbor-killing guns.)  Therefore, is the problem with the weapon itself, or its maintenance? 

• Do we actually have a "gun storage" problem?  Should we require legally-acquired firearms and ammunition to be properly secured away from casual contact?  Would this reduce the number of tragic random shooting episodes?

• Should we allow firearms in households where a member is adjudicated criminally insane, or even mentally defective?  Should these homes be subjected to special regulations?  Who will define the status of the mentally defective?  Can a person be a head case yet still adjudicated non-violent and not a danger to himself or others?

• What sorts of mental disability would invalidate one's gun rights?  Should soldiers suffering from Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) be denied gun ownership?  What about Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome (PTSD)?

• Should safe handling courses and hunter safety courses be required before firearm possession?  If so, who will teach the courses and create the program?  

Well, it is a start. These are the sorts of issues that we should discuss, and probably even enact into law before considering more Draconian measures like weapons bans, magazine restrictions and all of the other initiatives being bandied about by the anti-gun lobby.

If we pass laws that require education and safe handling to include safe storage, and this does not work to mitigate the spree killings that have our public up in arms, then it will be time to consider tightening up the requirements of ownership even further.  But short of these initial efforts it seems injudicious to bypass the simplest controls which have proven effective in countries like Canada and Germany.

Doing other than this is similar to starting a presumptive war without first exhausting all diplomatic possibilities in order to avoid the ultimate conflict.

We should contemplate all possible solutions before jumping headlong into a needless battle.

Making a Killing Making a Killing

______________________

Some brief thoughts on the issue of gun control in America.

There is a problem in modern society allowing for grandiose spree gun killings.  While the complicit are multitudinous, and not all (or even most) may be amended, their consideration is sophistry; something must be done in the breach.

Gun owners fear that constrictions upon ownership are but a slippery slope to confiscation of their weapons.  To the concern that no one needs a black rifle they say, "Yes, and no one needs to drink soda, but they do."  They say cars are deadly weapons, too, and can cause mass deaths; they do, but the deaths are usually unintentional.  Ditto if one decides to gorge himself on either food or possessions -- one is responsible for oneself only, and the price of such indulgence will be paid by him alone.

Murder is the ultimate deprivation of human rights; once dead, there is no amending of the action. No atonement will undo the offense.  If we claim each life is sacred, then it is grotesque hypocrisy to say that spree killing is the price of freedom.  Crimes of passion, gang killings, revenge and the whole sorry lot of it can be understood; however, random spree killings cannot be rationalized.

The gunnies will tell you the 1927 Bath school killing --which killed 38 elementary school students and six adults -- was done with explosives, and they are correct; there are many ways to kill.  But for this moment, there is a problem which may be reduced via proper control of the machine used to kill.  The United States should manage the training, licensing and authorization of those who wish to be armed. 

Just as freedom of speech is reined in to protect the innocent (with libel and slander laws), so must the right to bear arms be controlled inasmuch as possible in order to protect the innocent.  Of course laws only work as protection when society agrees to comply, but perhaps the deterrent value of guaranteed jail time would ensure that many of these weapons would not make it into the hands of the deranged or malignant.

Canada does not often get a nod from the United States, but some of their policies regarding gun ownership are correct.  Since guns are sold with locks in the U.S., it should be mandatory that they are locked once in the home, and the gun and ammunition should be secured. If there is a member of the household with a known mental health issue, there should be a special mandatory sentencing of that gun owner should that weapon be used by that household member in a criminal manner.

The Second Amendment has customarily been equated with the right to individual gun ownership. While I do not see the reason for anyone to own a semi-automatic weapon, I also support the Constitution and all rights which issue therefrom.  While the right itself should not be infringed, the manner in which weapons are licensed, sold and stored should be amended to ensure the utmost protection for our citizens, and that is not currently being done.

Mandatory firearms safety training courses for anyone buying a gun, better background checks, securing the weapon and ammunition in the home ... these are starting places, but changes must be enacted lest we are willing to live in a real-life violent video game.  The gunnies say spree shootings are a price we must be willing to pay in order to live free.

That is not the sort of freedom I recognize. 

Violence is Here to Stay

--Lisa and Paul

_______________________

[Ranger has lots of meaty posts regarding recent events ... but as we're on the road for the holidays, posts will be meted out in a helter-skelter manner.]

Today, we enjoyed lunch with Ranger's friend Paul Longgrear and he shared his thoughts on the most recent shocking (sadly, no) school shooting.  What follows are Paul's written thoughts on the matter:

The evil, demonic-inspired massacre at the Newtown elementary school is a terrible thing, but we can prevent it from happening ever again.

Am I angry about all those dead kids? Yes, and I want a real solution.  The question is, do we want to prevent the next occurrence?  Do we want to protect innocent children and their caregivers?  Do we want them to come home unscathed at the day's end, or do we want to keep an assault rifle out of the hands of an evil nutcase?  The two are not commensurate; the first is almost 100% doable; the latter is not.  While the matter is juggled as a political hot potato, more lives hang in the balance.

In the 1950's and 60's Muslim terrorists targeted Israeli schools and children on field trips.  Yet it has been almost 40 years since the last school massacre at Ma'alot.  The Israeli's attacked the problem, not the origin of the problem. Israel saw the problem as endangered children, not assault rifles in the hands of their enemies.  

They fenced in their schools and stationed armed guards at the gates.  It is embarrassing that we do not have a politician to front this immediate solution.  The guards could be trained soldiers in civilian clothing.  It is not an impossible solution, and is one fairly quickly emplaced.


Pragmatism demands we decide: Do we love our political agenda more than we love the immediate preservation of life?  We can play politics with guns, or protect our children.  We have never been able to ban drugs, so why think we can ban anything?  You can criminalize it, but once people are dead, you cannot make them undead (no matter how many zombie films you watch.)

If you are in the first camp, brace yourself for the consequences of your inaction: decades of violence while "assault" weapons (possibly) work their way out of the system due to obsolescence.

If you want your children safe, petition you elected representatives and declare that you want their schools protected.

--Paul Longgrear, Col. USARMY (ret'd)

addendum:  Paul proposes stationing armed guards outside the school at the exterior entrances. He does not propose placing armed guards in school. LF
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Ranger would add:

We already have metal detectors at most schools, but they are worthless once someone breaches the detector.  We also have Officer Friendlies on the school campus, so the idea of police has already been integrated into the culture.

The next logical step (which does not encroach upon our civil rights but DOES protect our right to self preservation) would be to secure the entrances to schools with an armed guard, either at the entrance or at a remote post.  The logical personnel for this position would be retired military veterans or Homeland security personnel.

Take some HSA personnel out of the airports and put them on-task to do a necessary job -- protecting Americans from their own.  This is the real and present danger ... not frisking citizens who might be carrying more than 3 ounces of shampoo or handing out Ziploc baggies.

License to Kill: Part II

 Mitt Romney beat Barack Obama becaus
he was more energetic in distorting the significance
of their miniscule differences
--Robert Scheer

 Since when do we have to back our President,
or should we, when the President is proposing 
an unconstitutional act
--Wayne Morris (D-OR)  
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The issue of gun control parallels those of the Phony War on Terror (PWOT ©), Counterinsurgency and nation building. Throw in the economy, unemployment and immigration, too.  The similarities are both constitutional and perceptional.

We spend billions of dollars for intelligence to guide us, and proceed to not employ the data in intelligent ways; emotions trump rationale.  Emotions keep us in thrall to a Big Brother (fill in the blank: government; medical system; etc.)

The statistics on gun control are confusing as the players have an interest in obfuscating what should be simple facts.  Ditto the other areas of concern.  The National Rifle Association, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and Explosives, Department of Justice, anti- and pro-gun lobbies all utilize agit-prop to the limits of their budgets.  Along with a complicit media, the citizens are left unable to ascertain the facts which might lead to a reasoned position.

Our understanding is constrained by the quality of the input received; we only know what we are told, and that is seldom exclusively based in objective reality.  Because I lack all of the facts, I cannot make an intelligent estimate of any given situation.

Just as no one can prove that George W. Bush's presidential policies were idiotic (though surely criminal), nor can we verify the logic of our gun control protocol.  None of the vested interests are willing to provide un-spun data.

The only reasonable position in such a quagmire is that of the skeptic.

License to Kill

 The personal is the political
--Carol Hanisch

That second dose of soma had raised
a quite impenetrable wall between
the actual universe and their minds 
--Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
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A few additional thoughts on the recent mass killing in Aurora, Colorado (Spree Killers follow-on):

The main question that should arise from such events is not, "Why are we so well-armed?" but rather, "Why are we so violent?

From that compelling and inscrutable question to some particulars, the answers to which have also been kept opaque.

[1]  News accounts say shooter Holmes  possessed "explosives", but give no details.  There are allusions to "fire works" rigged as booby traps, but fireworks are not "explosive devices"; fireworks and gunpowder (propellants) are not even close to being explosives, so why the hyperbole?

This crazy could have done just as much damage with his shotgun or pistol alone, yet the press fronts the assault rifle angle, adding to and exploiting the mystique of a tragic situation.

[2] It is reported that Holmes possessed a "gas canister" but what exactly was this cannister?

[3] If Holmes was kitted out in body armor and helmet, then why did he not engage the police in a gun fight? Why wear armor to kill soft targets?

[4] Holmes' AR-15 assault rifle jammed, preventing him from emptying its 100-round magazine. Ranger consistently writes that people who use hicap magazines are amateurs, and this situation bears this out.

If 100-round magazines were reliable than the military would use them.  Losers like Holmes do not know this fact.

[5] The Denver Post reported that the Federal Assault Weapons Ban (AWB) that expired in 2004 would have prevented the sale of the AR-15 rifle used in the shooting, and the 100-round drum magazine attached to it.  In fact, the Federal Assault Weapons Ban is a cruel hoax played upon the American people -- there has never been a viable assault weapons ban.

The Executive Order (under George H.W. Bush) banned only the import of assault rifles.  Additionally, assault rifles are like pornography in that they both defy description and logic in U.S. Code.  Until 1994 there was no assault weapons definition in U.S. Statutes.  They were still produced domestically.

The 1994-2004 AWB was a cosmetic ban only which did NOT remove AR-type rifles from the marketplace; manufacturers simply removed the telescoping stocks, sometimes pistol grips, bayonet studs, flash hiders and grenade launching capabilities.  (Incidentally, assault rifles historically were by definition selective fire, which means "auto-semi-or safe"; U.S. law ignores this fact.)

The 1994 AWB applied only to the citizenry, and not to police or security agencies, a bit of hypocrisy.  As well, the AWB did not remove "kill your neighbor" weapons from gun shops, so the law did not do much to keep us citizens "safe" from weapons harm.

The usually incendiary William Saletan of Slate online wrote that "Someone pulling a firearm on Holmes could have triggered an even wilder shooting spree," a totally useless bit of baseless conjecture.  A trained gunman with a concealed carry permit (CCW) could have neutralized the gunman.  Or not.

We cannot know since it did not happen.  However, a cinema showing a midnight film not equipped with an off-duty police presence for security detail is a real failure, with a real tragic outcome.

The AWB of 1994 was ineffective in terms of reducing gun-related crime.  Historically, the AR15-type weapons constitute less than 2% of gun crime statistics, so it is hard to understand the argument against black rifles.  They can be had for $200 and are cheap and prolific; the cheap SKS rifles are not assault weapons by U.S. standards, anyway -- they just look the part.

It is the ubiquity of cheap weapons which is the key to gun control, since most criminals cannot afford expensive weapons like the AR-15, at $1,200 to $3,000.  If they could afford fancy guns they would be collectors, and not criminals

Again the question, not "Why are we so well-armed?" but rather, "Why are we so violent?" As on the national, so on the personal level.

Ideologue

--When I get to likin' someone, they ain't around long.
--I notice when you get to DISlikin' someone
they ain't around for long neither
--The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976)
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The exit of George Bush did not signal the end of an ideological presidency.

Specifically, Ranger refers to the ideological posture of this White House vis-a-vis gun ownership. Obama skirted the issue during his candidacy, but it seems that through Attorney General Eric Holder the country is being presented with another challenge to our constitutional rights.

There is a serious divide within the U.S. We fear a few al-Qaeda terrorists as though they can destroy us, yet fail to bring together the divergent elements in our own society. The gun crowd is Right Wing and militarily patriotic; many have served in the military and fill most police institutions. Liberals seldom soldier or become law enforcement types, which is not to say they are not patriotic.

Why is Obama, through Holder, alienating the conservative segment of the population by threatening assault weapons bans and other infringement of 2nd Amendment rights? Mr. Holder says we are cowards in the discussion of race, but this administration is cowardly in its avoidance of a discussion on firearm ownership. This is causing dire fear and hatred to brew from the Right. Why would they do this?

This is a battle that need not be fought and is destructive to the cohesion of the nation. A more restrictive stance on gun ownership will produce a pendulum reaction, putting a Republican back in the White House in 2012.

Mr. President, wake up and smell the cordite.