Tweet
I hear people talking about how hard it will be to get this new public safety bill passed. The media pick this up and include it in all their stories, as if the playing field didn’t change after Newtown. They are being told that the NRA post Newtown has the same power as pre-Newton.
Malarkey.
I’m an activist, not a politician, so I understand the logic of the right wing rhetoric. They want everyone, especially the media, to believe that a minority of people will defeat this bill. They are pushing the idea that popular support will fade away like in the past. Some people who follow politics cynically agree with this. This makes the NRA smile.
The NRA leadership want you discouraged and thinking, “What’s the point? There are millions of guns out there. The NRA is too powerful. They will rally their troops and call their bought off representatives. I’m not going to win. I should just give up,”
Malarkey.
It doesn’t have to be that way. We need public safety enthusiasts to act. And Biden, the consummate politician, knows this.
Yesterday Joe Biden was talking about gun violence in America. He talked about a lot of things but he said something that reflected his view of reality in DC.
“Elected officials respond to intensity. If number ten on your list of things you want your congressman to do is something about gun safety, that’s not going to get you very far, if there is a smaller group that its number one on their list to make sure nothing is done, guess who they hear from? So make your voices heard.”
I started thinking, what can increase our actions and the intensity of them? Yes, we have short attention spans, but studies of memory like described in the book, The Seven Sins of Memory, talk about setting up reminders based on location or context. Let’s use how our brain works to help us:
Every time you hear about a story about one or more people getting killed by a gun that’s your reminder to make a call or send an email to support public safety bills.
The sad, sick news is that if you started this plan this after Newton, as of today you would have had almost 1224 reminders to do something. (link to a great ongoing interactive list from @gundeaths and Slate that keeps track of gun deaths in the US.)
And by the way, don’t just focus on the federal and state level. Here’s today’s hot tip. Contact your local school board. They need to hear that you DON’T want to arm teachers, administrators, janitors and custodians.
Right now the gun enthusiasts are pushing school boards to do this. If the only people they hear from are them, they might think there is consensus. You no longer can rely on your school board members thinking. “Arming teachers it a terrible idea.” Pathetically, some school boards pick up the crazy and incorrect NRA rhetoric on guns. Check out this story from Ohio.
State school-board president defends Hitler post on Facebook
State Board of Education President Debe Terhar said she was not comparing President Barack Obama to Adolf Hitler when she posted a photograph of the Nazi leader on her Facebook page with a message critical of the administration’s new gun-control efforts.
When I listen to right wing gun podcasts and radio, I hear about their methods to beat back sensible laws. I hear them talking about how they will lobby school boards to send their teachers to gun training classes (two whole days of training! Woot! You are practically an FBI sharpshooter after two days!) I hear them ratcheting up the fear and downplaying the death of innocents.
So going forward here’s what I’d like you to do:
1) Read about a gun death. 2) Find out who your local school board, state or federal representative is 3) Call or email your thoughts to them. 4) Repeat as necessary.
Be intense. Be a public safety enthusiast. Be an intense public safety enthusiast. Things can get better if you act.
LLAP,
Spocko
25 Comments
I hope I used Malarkey right.
def. of malarkey: “Exaggerated or foolish talk, usually intended to deceive”.
While much of the talk/excuse making from the NRA and the RKBA crowd is exaggerated and foolish, not all of it is about deception.
The claim regarding millions of guns is true; around 300 million guns now owned by our people. Any ban which may be put in place by congress, of the Bushmaster XM-15 for example, likely won’t be retroactive.
Thus 1,000′s of these particular guns will still be privately owned, still be in circulation, and still be more or less readily available to people like Mr. Lanza, who intend to do great harm in a short period of time.
My take is part of the answer must be much more rigorous monitoring of sales/trade of the guns that are already out there, universal background checks and longer waiting periods before any gun is sold or traded.
I do think a buy back program could be an important tool. Partnered with a hefty personal liability insurance imposition for ownership of a particular class of weapons on all current owners regardless of purchase date and a limited time-frame to take advantage of the buy back. Owners weigh the costs and evaluate their real fears or needs.
Thanks spocko.
Excellent idea. When people get overwhelmed by the scope of the problem I remind them that we as a nation can pull off big product recalls especially of deadly items. And if people ask, where will the money come from, maybe bullet taxes?
You know Teddy Partridge wrote a great piece last week about having someone on the left who wants to be much more assertive about getting guns out of our society. As I was writing this I was also thinking about something that people agree on first, that felons and violent mentally ill should not have legal access to weapons. The next step that people are afraid to talk about is, what are the steps to ensure those people have to give up the guns they have. This is a step people don’t like to bring up. Why? Because of all the violent talk about what people will do if someone tries to take their guns.
So if NRA members agree that felons and violent mentally ill shouldn’t have guns then why don’t they help everyone by supporting the people who need to make sure those people don’t have guns? Because they freak out about slippery slopes and black helicopters. They WANT the government agents to be afraid to take any guns EVEN when they agree that certain people shouldn’t have them. By their constant scary talk they help these people keep their guns.
So if I go to them and say, “Okay, YOU solve this problem. You agree with me that felons and violent mentally ill shouldn’t have guns. So what is your process for confiscation? Or do you want people to violate the law that you agree with?”
“Elected officials respond to intensity.”
That is malarkey.
Biden, of all people, should know that.
When he was conducting the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings, people from all over the country, mostly women, bombarded their Republican and Democratic Senators with phone calls.
Bush had made the nomination. It was Thurgood Marshall’s seat and filling it with another African American was all but mandatory. There were not that many African American Republican judges then. So, the intense women could sit in their hats. Thomas was confirmed.
More recently, people from all over the country called and emailed their Senators and their Rep over and over. I emailed and called at least twice a week for months. There were marches and demonstrations. Health care providers literally walked across country. All for a public option. Guess what?
The NRA doesn’t get support for its agenda by intensity. It gets support by paying for it.
Someone, please name me the last time a public outcry got their Senators or their Rep to vote in a way that surprised their constituents. Do that; and I was call D.C. five time a day.
Until that happens, the public option was my last attempt.
Follow the money.
Good point. Let’s say that money is intensity. (After all we now know that money is speech.) What you are telling us is that for any kind of bill to pass we need to tie money to it. And it needs to be more money than what the NRA gives. If you look at who the NRA give money to we could meet that if it became an issue supported by a money.
So let’s ask the question. “Who will make more money (or spend less money) if there are fewer gun deaths?”
Insurance companies?
Health care?
Are the societal costs of so many dead via guns zero?
The other thing that we can look at is looking at who profits from gun death and figure out a way for them to pay for it. Look at the cigarette companies and the cost of health care. Lawsuits and taxes help fund programs against them. Of course gun manufacturers have worked to inoculate themselves from being sued, but that doesn’t have to be set in stone.
License and registration fees can be used. But of course the guns everywhere folks have an answer to that one. On the Commonwealth club last week the president of CalGuns, Gene Hoffman said, “There is a moral imperative that poor people can actually buy and use firearms.” I kid you not.
That
The reason Obama gave Biden only a month is that Americans have a short attention span. The effect of Sandy Hook will wear off soon. I don’t think there is time for us to figure out a way to make life insurance companies get their lobbies on gun control fast enough.
Congress is either going to pass this or not. And our calling intensely and often is not going to change anyone’s vote. I can’t think of a single time it has and I guess neither can you.
Do you know how long it took for cigarette companies to be accountable for anything? And they are still not out of business. To the contrary, the settlement took them off the hook for a lot of liability.
“The effect of Sandy Hook will wear off soon.” Possibly. But we will have another mass shooting with in a 3 months. And, as I said in the article, will remind people. I’ve said before when writing about food safety that it will take the deaths of a significant number of the children of the rich and powerful for things to change. Because it takes big events to push back at entrenched special interests.
As for lobbyists, they can change their tune pretty quickly, the decisions are being made now. One of the things about “calling your congress person” is that they aren’t the only ones you should call, but when you do call them that starts a change of thinking in your other actions. That is why in this piece I suggest you focus locally, School boards. And guess what, some of the people who are making these calls WORK in the insurance industry. They are thinking, ‘What can I do, from my point of view to make things better?” Technology people do this all the time. The insurance industry figured out that texting and driving was a bad thing and they are working against it in multiple ways. Laws, rates. Education campaigns. What if the got off the fence and actively got involved?
Yes. I know that it took a long time for cigarette companies to be accountable. But it happened. And it took leverage in the form of lawsuits and a shift of public opinion. Research studies that were conclusive and publicized.
If you look at how the gun lobby has been pushing guns they are using the same techniques at the cigarette companies. They started fake front groups of “smokers” rights. They did a lot to cover up research. The NRA uses the 2nd Amendment as a club and tries to put everything under that banner, even to the point of invalidating other’s rights.
I don’t expect to put the gun manufacturers out of business, but doing nothing because it’s not everything is to give in to despair.
One of the groups that I work with has the idea of getting a corporate sponsor to help fund the kind of big budget mind changing work that was done against cigarettes. Because in America today having those kind of resources helps.
Personally I wanted Mars Candy company to fund programs against gun violence. Why Mars? Because they are the makers of Skittles. Those were in the hand of Trayvon Martin. If those two are forever linked, why not make the link lead to funding programs that mean more live children to eat candy?
When a tragedy is big enough it can change the configuration of people’s thoughts. And I think Sandy Hook might be that tragedy.
BTW, I appreciate your comments. Thanks! These questions are exactly the kind of thoughts that friends of mine have mentioned and this gives me a chance to discuss them.
just repeating this again….
what i find most bizarre is that as a “city” person, nearly everyone I know would be fine with all guns being outright banned. and we are the ones who would actually need “protection”. Seems that the people who think they need the most “protection” are country folk who dont seem to get that even if there was a gun grab, their little neck of the woods would be at the bottom of the list.
Amen, brother. How does their right to bear arms trump the right of me to send the kids to the movies without fear of them getting shot down by some wacko with an assault rifle?
Book Salon up with Michaela Walsh’s Founding a Movement: Women’s World Banking, 1975-1990 hosted by Bethany McLean
Good point- the Thomas fiasco. This guy had the lowest ABA rating ever given to potential SCOTUS judges; he still got crammed down our throats by Biden, Danforth and the rest.
yeah, they are really listening to us.
I have to say I’m disappointed seeing my side of the fence using the same “WHAT ABOUT THE CHILDREN?!?” rhetoric complete with appeals to emotion and shaming language as the right wing does. All of this grandstanding, this urge to get up in the NRA’s face no matter what, will do nothing to address the root causes of gun violence. Instead you’re cheering as legislators draft laws focused on weapons used in a tiny percentage of violent crimes, based on criteria like whether or not the firearm has provisions for a grenade launcher or bayonet. I’m sorry but I think I must’ve missed the sudden rise in drive-by bayonetings. Yes, let’s feed the persecution complex of the fringers in American firearms culture. Let’s not talk about mandatory safety and competency training, or background checks for EVERY firearms sale, or better screening to prevent people with a predisposition to violence from purchasing firearms. Let’s not talk about countries like Germany, Switzerland, Finland and others who have similar rates of gun ownership to the US but whose violent crime rate make the US look like Somalia. Let’s not do any of that stuff and let’s just go straight for a ban, written by people who know jack about firearms outside of which ones look scary and who think a spree killer is going to put off by the inconvenience of having to reload a few extra times. Let’s label all firearms owners as paranoid, reactionary, racist thugs.
There have been so many golden opportunities over the past ten or twenty years to take the wind right out of the extreme right-wing leadership of the NRA and start turning American firearms culture away from what it’s become. Instead the mainstream Left seems more interested in validating every single thing the NRA says by shouting, “Yes, we are coming for your guns. No, we don’t know a single thing about them except they’re all evil and they’re only meant to kill people.”. Their answer to everything is “MORE GUNS EVERYWHERE”, your answer is “NO GUNS ANYMORE”; both answers are simplistic, short-sighted, unworkable and completely divorced from the actual problems we’re facing as a nation.
Hi MertvayaRuka: Thanks for commenting. I can sense your frustration. Now while I can’t speak for everyone on your “side of the fence” I’m interested to know what you read, who you listen to and who you talk to that informs your views.
1) Reguarding the “what about the children” rhetoric and appeals to emotion. I’m going to own that. Guilty as charged. You know why? Because it is appropriate in this case. To NOT use emotion would be to miss the point. We are humans. Who have human emotion. As Micheal Dukakis learned, to respond to an emotional tradgy with a sensible logical answer is not how we respond normally.
Morea later.
spocko, thank you. I’m going to start by saying I really do have the utmost respect for you; you’ve been fighting the good fight against the screaming heads of the Right and I’ve been in awe of what you’ve been doing since I first read about you on Orcinus.
I guess I’m in an odd place really but I’ll tell you I’m not alone there. I’m pro-choice, pro-marriage equality, pro-LGBT rights, I could go on but it would take me hours to list everyplace I’m of like mind and you’re being such a kind host I don’t want to waste a bunch of time. I’m also pro-private ownership of firearms, but not ownership without any regulation of any sort and I definitely do not believe that any of the “culture war” crap the NRA has dragged into the matter belongs there. I’ve never been a member and despite their advocacy for gun owners I will not give them one red cent as long as they have people like Ted Nugent claiming to speak for me.
I am part of a small (1000+ members but we’ve been gaining a lot more people lately due to the NRA’s ugly and paranoid rhetoric driving them off) online community of people who are liberal/Left and are gun owners. I would link the group here but as I am not a moderator of that community I do not feel it would be appropriate for me to do so, but if you wish I am sure one of them would be happy to speak with you further regarding both the community and this particular issue. Many of them, including myself, own the types of firearms currently being focused on. I would say a lot of us read sites like FDL, but not many of us speak up because at best we’re usually spoken to very dismissively, at worst the conversation degenerates into hostility and insults.
I am with you on responding to a horrific tragedy like this with emotion. But there comes a point where we have to move past emotion towards solutions: functional, practical solutions not feel-good base-pandering solutions. But it’s not happening. People are still running on outrage and fear. The NRA wants to turn our schools into armed camps. The other side wants to eliminate all guns meeting an arbitrary set of criteria (or just all guns entirely). We need to be very, painfully honest here for a moment. What both sides are focusing on is a small number of deaths in random incidents, caused by individuals resourceful enough and determined enough to adjust to what weapons were available to them and who could probably have been prevented from doing what they did if someone had paid attention to all the red flags popping up. Armed guards in schools wouldn’t have deterred them and not being able to get their hands on an “assault rifle” wouldn’t have either. Yes, there is an appeal to emotion but it is not leading to a logical response, it is leading to quick, simple, flashy and ultimately pointless solutions to appeal to the respective bases of both the NRA and the mainstream Left. There is no way in hell more than a handful of school districts are going to approve letting teachers and administrators carry guns on campus and there is no way in hell Dianne Feinstein’s reworked Assault Weapons Ban is going to pass. The fact that you can be licensed to carry a firearm does not magically make the person carrying it competent or skilled enough to use it in a crisis situation. The fact that my shotgun has a pistol grip, folding stock and removable 10-round magazine does not magically make it any deadlier than a bog-standard 12-gauge pump shotgun you can find at a pawnshop for $350. And just as the people who talk a bunch of shite about how if they’d only been at that school/theater/whatever mostly have no idea what they’re talking about, neither do the people who are drafting these proposed laws. Guns are not magic. You give an untrained person a $900 AR tricked out with $600 worth of addons, it’s not going to turn them into the Terminator. Most of the spree killers have had next to no experience with firearms at all and go for stuff that they think is badass but is actually impractical or far more complicated than they think. We hear a lot about James Holmes’ AR with the 100-round drum, but what we don’t hear about is that it jammed after about four or five rounds and he had to abandon it. That’s because that drum wasn’t a magic “kill 100 people” device (like he probably thought), it’s a finicky range toy that has to practically be soaked in graphite lube to work properly and weighs about five pounds when it’s loaded. The shooter at the mall in Oregon even managed to jam a standard 30-round capacity AR magazine.
This is one of the main problems I’m having with the anti-gun Left. Just as the Right seems to see them as magical talismans against evil, the Left seems to see them as magical talismans *of* evil. Even siller, there are exceptions made for hunting rifles or anything with a capacity of six rounds or less, as if those firearms are somehow less deadly because they don’t hold more bullets and they’ve got wood furniture instead of black plastic. I own a Mosin-Nagant bolt-action rifle, bought it for about $150. This firearm is literally half a century older than I am. It has a non-removable magazine that can only hold five rounds. It doesn’t even have a scope. But it also fires a round comparable to the American .30-06, is still easy to use despite the somewhat punishing recoil and has a maximum lethal range of about 500 yards or more. At this point, we are literally quibbling about differences in ergonomics that have little to no effect on the relative lethality of a firearm. As I see it, this leaves us with a choice. We can either continue letting cosmetics and design dictate how we approach gun violence in our society, or we can maybe take a step back and take a look at the other more solid commonalities in both the spree killing incidences as well as in the much larger majority of violent incidents involving guns. There are much more complicated factors at work here, both on the small-scale of spree killings and the larger scale of drug- and gang-related violence, factors that are being ignored or downplayed in favor of the quick fix and the emotional appeal. We are better than this. We have a chance to be better than this, to stop this terrified grasping at half-assed and poorly-thought-out solutions. I’m just afraid that not enough people are interested in that.
I look forward to speaking with you further about this and I do appreciate your indulgence. Please do let me know if you would like me to put you in touch with someone from the community I mentioned as the administrators are far more eloquent and knowledgeable than myself.
Also I apologize for the wall of text. Brevity is not one of my strong points. :/
2) “will do nothing to address the root causes of gun violence. ”
So let’s look at “gun violence” Two words “gun” and “violence” So we are trying to do something about the gun part, because without guns it would just be “violence”. And this is where the gun enthusiasts would say, “You can kill someone with a hammer, car or knife!” True, but I can’t kill multiple people easily from a distance with a hammer.” That takes a gun. And as Joe Biden has said, “Just because we can’t solve everything doesn’t mean we don’t try to solve some things.” I would be surprised if the hammer related deaths soar to 30,000+ a year after we bought back 100 million guns.
Which leads us to your second comment the root cause, that is where broad cultural issues need to be addressed. As many have pointed out Canada has plenty of guns, but not as many gun deaths. I love Canada, and they are doing something right in this area.
I agree we need to have a change in attitudes in the long term. In the short term we can help identify and treat the problem, like mental health. You know for all the talk about people with violent mental illness, depression and suicide is a big part of the gun deaths. Yes, people can kill themselves in other fashions, but why are they killing themselves in the first place?
Maybe they are killing themselves and others because they are depressed and angry and can’t get treatment. Canada has health care for all (Thanks Tommy Douglas!) we don’t. And when the conservatives had a chance to get universal health care were they pushing for that? Nope. Cut, cut, cut. You want health care? Buy insurance with you McJob and and then maybe get some care for catastrophic stuff. This is not preventive mental health care. We barely have triage for the really sick.
The good news is that in the proposals in place we want to get people who we know have a history of mental health problems into the data base to stop for easy legal purchase of guns.
This is important because the NRA has tried to remove the guns from the equation after each mass shooting. And with no guns people might turn to bombs. Would I be anti-bomb? Yes. But I would also be pro-mental health care and that doesn’t invalidate my position as pro-public safety. Might the shooters steal from their mother or borrow a gun? Yes. But every step we take to make it harder is a good thing.
Other broad cultural issues, economic despair and income disparity. Who shoots whom and why has lots to do with factors of money and power. Would having a better economy with chances for jobs reduce gun violence? It might. You don’t need to rob a liquor store when you have a job.
I see that while I was writing my follow on you were writing yours. I see that I addressed some of the issues you addressed too. Good.
As I’ve said for some time I’m pro-public safety. It gives me the ability to show I care about things like better mental health care. Also I do understand that the guns you mention are just as lethal as an AR-15. I also know that most of the deaths aren’t from weapons that deliver multiple rounds quickly from a distance. (Note how I didn’t even name the kind of weapon, number of rounds or cartridge size? This avoids the issue of cosmetic differences and deals with functionality)
These days I don’t throw out the standard credentials about my background, but I come from a family with lots of hunters. But also a family that worked with law enforcement in a big city. So I get both the urban and rural perspective. What I hope to connect with people is in solving problems. And part of solving the problem is knowing who you are talking to and what the problems really are, both deep and surface.
Remember how back in the early days of the Iraq war people were saying that the moderate Muslims needed to reign in the radicals?
Well moderate gun owners need to reign in the radicals. And if they don’t then there will be a backlash against everyone. Can people in your group come out and condemn the extreme voices in the NRA?
One thing I know is that we often see things in a stronger light based on what we read, look at and listen too. I talked to someone who owns multiple guns, likes to shoot them and has a conceal carry permit. He also is former military. We talked about guns on campuses and he explained why it is a terrible idea. He is a firm believer in extensive training. It turned out that he was on a campus with his gun when there was a mass shooting. I asked him. “So, when you heard, did you run toward the shooting so that you could stop the shooter?” (Now remember this is a well trained, ex-military man, just the kind of person that the NRA extremists believe will save the day.) “Hell no!” he said. “I didn’t know what was going on, I could have just as easily made things worse!”
He is the kind of person I want to enlist to increase public safety.
I asked him, “What can I do to make the campus safer?” I want his help. It is the moderates who know guns, know combat, know hunting, know how things work and who can help. It does me no good to alienate him if he has good solutions.
But just like I am not part of the crowd who will say, “NO Guns” I’m not going to create a straw man for people who have guns, and I don’t appreciate it when people do it to me. (BTW, I can see that you are not doing that to me, but you obviously picked up on people who have said no guns.)
The funny thing is that I work with a lot of groups trying to deal with violence and gun violence and 8 out of 10 of them are not saying “Get rid of all guns” Two of them do want a much more robust solution and I’m proud to know that they understand they are trying to move the conversation ideologically and the practicality of this it a long shot.
Teddy Partridge mentioned this last week. He said that if he can be to the far left on this issue and say “I want to get rid of the majority of guns” then that allows others to be seen as more moderate.
So maybe you are seeing those voices and reacting. My friends who are working on universal background checks, better integration of records for guns into multiple databases understand there are multiple fronts to work on.
I have a background in PR and communications. I know what drives the media. When I was working on Food Safety I spoke to Dick Durbin’s legislative aide. He said that they had been preparing food safety bills for years, but that the industry push back and lobbying was intense. But they kept developing the bills to address the deep issues, then when there was a big out break of E.coli or other food borne illness they were ready. Did they take advantage of the tragedy? Yes, because that was the only time they could get traction. What they didn’t do is sit on their hands between deaths.
This is a function of our 24/7 media and short attention span. As I said in my article, we are going to continue to have multiple shootings (individual shootings and mass shootings) and people who care can use these shootings as a reminder that work needs to be done.
I think about all the people who are touched by a gun related death, suicides, homicides or via negligent handling or storage of a firearm. Each one of those had a stake in what happens in the future because of what happened in the past. Can these people be public safety enthusiasts? Can your friends in your group be these people? If you were, what would you fight for? Greater training for conceal carry permits? (Not just sit in a class room, but extensive range work, realistic live fire situations and re certification yearly?)
These are things that I would like to know, because without your help people will only hear from the radicals who want guns everywhere. People who want to arm teachers. I hear these people too. I listen to their radio shows, pod casts and read their forums.
But I want to hear your voice, so that proposals can be made on things that I hadn’t thought of. You might have suggestions to make us safer that I wouldn’t have considered. And I’d rather be educated on the issues from people who agree with me on a lot of stuff than the radicals.
As a wordy Vulcan I hear ya. :-)
So we are trying to do something about the gun part, because without guns it would just be “violence”.
If we somehow had the ability to buy back 100 million guns that would leave approximately 200 million guns in circulation, not including illegally-owned firearms which would probably push it back up to at least 200 million. Regular small-scale buybacks don’t even get that many guns; on a national scale the only way you’d get even close to that number would be to offer owners more than what they’d paid for them originally. I also don’t even want to think about what would happen if it were a full amnesty where the people turning them in didn’t necessarily have to be the legal owners. I’m not going to use the hammer or knife analogies because I despise that kind of bumper-sticker logic. An analogy that I’ve seen someone else use that’s better though is this: guns are not hothouse tomatoes, they’re twinkies. As per my old bolt-action rifle, even with the most rudimentary care taken in storage the vast majority of them will still work 50, 60, possibly even 100 years from now. Many of the more far-Right inclined gun owners are very clear about the fact that even if a full ban were instituted, they would happily report every single gun they owned had been lost in an unfortunate boating accident. After that point it starts going into talk from the Left about SWAT teams, the National Guard and drone strikes, talk from the Right about “civil war” and “Molon Labe” with neither side truly comprehending what any of that would do to this country. Once it graduates to that point it’s going to be a little late for anyone to say, “Hey, I was just talking shit, this is not what I wanted!”.
As many have pointed out Canada has plenty of guns, but not as many gun deaths.
As well, there are nations that have more guns than Canada yet have vastly lower violent crime rates overall, not just gun-related crime. What are they doing right that’s having such a great effect on violence, even greater than gun restrictions? As you say, “You don’t need to rob a liquor store when you have a job.” and you’ve got the right of it. People with alternatives don’t turn to violence. More than that, the healthier a society’s safety net is, the less often we see these sudden outbursts of destructive violence and sometimes we don’t see them at all no matter what kind of firearms people have access to. What I’m saying is, treat the illness first and the symptoms second if it’s even necessary to do so.
I am absolutely all for the proposals that would prevent people with a history of violence from purchasing firearms. This is just one area where the NRA and their membership has gone completely wrong. They see these restrictions as a first step towards confiscation; I say that National Firearms Act items like select-fire firearms, suppressors and short-barrel rifles and shotguns have required an extensive background check and registration since the 1930s and there has been no such confiscation.
This is important because the NRA has tried to remove the guns from the equation after each mass shooting. And with no guns people might turn to bombs.
It’s a bit more certain than “might”. James Holmes had his apartment wired with enough improvised explosives that it took trained experts days to clear it. And I will tell you right now there is not a single firearm on the market than can match the lethality of what people have been able to assemble using information that is widely available. I understand that your intent is to try and make such murders more difficult to pull off. But what you’re doing is the equivalent of trying to play chess against someone you don’t know, whose moves you can’t see until after they happen and who is not bound by the same set of rules you are. As long as the impulse is present for them to want to do harm to others so badly that they do not even care whether they die in the process or not, as long as they see no other way to deal with that impulse, they will continue to try and they will adapt to whatever tools they have to work with. Seung-Hui Cho used a pair of handguns that would be exempt from all pending legislation. He also killed more people than any other spree shooter before or since. I do not think your position as pro-public safety is invalid at all, but I think you might be being a little overconfident in your ability to throw obstacles in the path of people that determined as well as the effect those obstacles will have on preventing future tragedies. These may not be people who have a whole lot of practical firearms knowledge but they’re not idiots either and some of them have been smart enough that they could have caused a great deal more harm if they’d chosen to (ie. Holmes making the decision to inform the police that his apartment was booby trapped instead of simply letting them find out in the worst way possible).
Other broad cultural issues, economic despair and income disparity. Who shoots whom and why has lots to do with factors of money and power. Would having a better economy with chances for jobs reduce gun violence? It might.
Again, there’s no “might” there. It would. Quality of life goes up, incidence of violence goes down. The Right would like to debate that or make a lot of noise about evul soshulizm but facts are facts. We also need to get our society farther away from this idea that “real men” are supposed to be emotionless (unless that emotion is anger), can only solve their problems with force instead of words and should never show compassion or kindness without being seen as weak. The NRA and the Right have contributed to making this attitude part of American firearms culture (ie. the Bushmaster “man card” advertisement) but there also really hasn’t been any other significant voice in the culture to oppose them.
IMO, I think this is a large part of what has driven these spree shooters. So far without exception, they’ve all been white males, reasonably well-educated but also under tremendous pressure and/or dealing with mental or emotional issues that are normally construed as a sign of weakness or as character flaws. What causes them to lash out so destructively is of far greater importance than what tools they reach for when they do lash out.
I do appreciate your response and I thank you for being open to dialogue. I’ll be heading out for the weekend to spend some time with my partner in a few minutes so I won’t be able to see any responses until probably Monday but I will be sure to respond then. I welcome any questions you or anyone else might have.
One more thing that I’d like your thoughts on. I am planning to ask this of extremists and expect to get a non-answer. But it is a very serious question.
Let’s say I need to confiscate someone’s guns. How do you suggest I go about doing it?
If I describe the situation you would most likely agree with me that the guns should be confiscated. But for me to even bring it up could flip people out, yet someone needs to do it. So instead of me talking about how I’m going to confiscate this gun I want to know how you and your friends would do it.
The concept and need for this discussion comes from two examples, first the shooting at the Race Cafe in Seattle. The shooter had a concerned father who didn’t know what to do with him, he was clearly a threat to himself and others. The father, Walt Stawicki, talked to the police and they said, “There’s nothing we can do.” He ended up killing 5 people.
The second example is the Bolivar, MO a failed shooting where the person had a history of violent mental illness. (96 hour hold) He legally bought two automatic weapons and talked about shooting up the Twilight movie theater to his mother. She got the sheriff to talk to him and that ended up foiling the shooting.
There needs to be guns confiscated I’d like legal good guy gun owners to describe how to do it. I’ve been reading the laws Washington, CA and other states and I’ve talked to a former sheriff in Missouri, so I have some ideas how it’s done, but I want to hear from people who are willing to acknowledge this need and not freak out about a slippery slope and that black helicopters are going to come to your house next when you meet NONE of the criteria.
spocko, I can definitely see we’re close to being on the same page here and I am glad I posed here. Ended up making it home a bit earlier than I planned, so here I am again. :)
“Well moderate gun owners need to reign in the radicals. And if they don’t then there will be a backlash against everyone. Can people in your group come out and condemn the extreme voices in the NRA?”
Absolutely yes. Definitely yes. This is actually a pretty regular topic of conversation on the board, especially when Nugent or LaPierre decide to open their noise-holes and say something so phenomenally stupid it causes everyone in a 50 yard radius to temporarily lose IQ points. This is by and large why the majority of the people in my community have either left the NRA, not joined in the first place, or only joined because it was necessary for range membership or trainer credentials. That is one of the problems with the NRA is that despite their divisiveness they are very deeply entrenched in many aspects of American firearms culture.
The person that you mentioned talking to about the situation with an active shooter is exactly the kind of responsible, level-headed firearms owner that is typically not focused on. He assessed the situation and correctly determined that he was not in a position to take direct action without further complicating the situation and/or possibly putting himself and others at risk.
“Teddy Partridge mentioned this last week. He said that if he can be to the far left on this issue and say ‘I want to get rid of the majority of guns’ then that allows others to be seen as more moderate. So maybe you are seeing those voices and reacting. My friends who are working on universal background checks, better integration of records for guns into multiple databases understand there are multiple fronts to work on. ”
Yeah, I read that post. I’ll be honest, it’s a terrible idea and I’ll try to explain why the best I can.
First, well, it’s dishonest. It’s a tactic the Right established a long time ago, this bait-and-switch of nominating someone with horribly extreme views or proposing some legislation that is incredibly draconian in order to make some other person or some other idea look less extreme. This is not a tactic that somehow becomes more noble or honest because we’re doing it instead of them. It also treats people as if they are all fairly stupid and must be tricked or coerced into doing the right thing; again, this is how the Right treats people, not us.
Secondly, as with most extreme viewpoints, it can and will be refuted by people who take the time to look into the facts. For every ten people that respond to the extreme position with “But you can kill people with hammers/cars/pointed sticks”, there’s going to be at least one who is going to devastate the extreme viewpoint with a reasoned use of facts and logic.
Thirdly, and this is the one I see as the most important, this idea is potentially very dangerous. There have all ready been several incidents in the past few years or so where people have opened fire on law enforcement officers they believed were coming for their guns before any of these recent shootings and without any talk whatsoever of bans or regulations. These are people who saw verification for their paranoia where none existed. What happens when you take a delusional person who is possibly predisposed to violence and you start giving them information that suggests their delusions might have a basis in fact? This is one of the things I’ve been greatly worried about since the rhetoric started amping up on both sides: like I said previously, many of these “from my cold, dead hands” people aren’t ready to throw down with law enforcement but “many” is not “all”. Like any other potential terrorists, confirming whatever views they may have that predispose them towards violent action is NOT a good idea.
“I think about all the people who are touched by a gun related death, suicides, homicides or via negligent handling or storage of a firearm. Each one of those had a stake in what happens in the future because of what happened in the past. Can these people be public safety enthusiasts? Can your friends in your group be these people? If you were, what would you fight for? Greater training for conceal carry permits? (Not just sit in a class room, but extensive range work, realistic live fire situations and re certification yearly?)”
Absolutely agree with all of this and this is an area where the NRA can be forced to either put up or shut up. If they are serious about safety, about training, then let’s talk safety and training being mandatory instead of “if you get around to it or if you can afford it”, especially if you expect to be carrying a weapon in public. We have training for drivers ranging from private to commercial trucking all over the country employing hundreds of thousands of people. Why should we not do the same with firearms training? Right now all we have are private schools that are far too expensive for the average person and in many cases are run by instructors who alienate the hell out of anyone left-of-center. This limited access to proper training is directly contributing to injuries and fatalities related to unsafe storage of firearms, negligent discharges of firearms and untrained/unprepared shooters. As with the person you mentioned earlier, it is just as important if not more important to know when not to shoot as it is to be able to shoot.
“One more thing that I’d like your thoughts on. I am planning to ask this of extremists and expect to get a non-answer. But it is a very serious question. Let’s say I need to confiscate someone’s guns. How do you suggest I go about doing it?”
This is a serious question and a tricky one and yes, you’re likely to get either a non-answer or a hostile answer from extremists. But sometimes it absolutely does need to happen.
With the examples given I will say that the Bolivar one is the best-case scenario. Family members took the responsible approach, realized there was a potential problem and from the sound of it managed to get the person involved in a place where he did not feel threatened and did not have access to the firearms he purchased. Law enforcement didn’t blow them off and took them seriously enough to intervene without escalating directly to use of force. I would say the primary focus should not be confiscation first but contact and interview first, preferably in a fashion that does not make the subject feel trapped or attacked, with the idea being to remove the person from proximity to the firearms and not try to directly remove the firearms from that person’s possession. If someone’s on a roof ledge, you don’t rush them and try to grab them. You talk to them, either to try and get them to voluntarily stand down or so you can occupy their attention while you take other measures to make sure they’re not going to be able to hurt themselves. Direct confrontation is unsafe for everyone involved.
Obviously the Seattle example is pretty close to worst-case scenario; law enforcement refusing to get involved and family members/friends/etc. who continually downplayed violent incidents or recanted witnessing those incidents. While they obviously meant no harm in doing so they still enabled the shooter to make it through background checks and retain his firearms even when he should not have been allowed to. They thought they were doing the right thing. Unfortunately they were very badly mistaken. From what I’ve read about the case, they erred the way they did because they were worried about him carrying the stigma of being reported plus they did not understand that it can still be a very serious problem even if the person involved is not threatening to harm themselves.
I hope the information I’ve given has been helpful. Is it okay if I add you as a friend on here? I do have some other information I’d like to pass on to you, such as other contacts in the community I mentioned, but I’d prefer not to do so publicly if that’s all right with you.
Great conversation. Thanks! “Is it okay if I add you as a friend on here?” You bet. I haven’t figured out how to message friends on this system, but maybe you have. Otherwise you can email me.
spockosemail atsign gmail . com
Thanks. BTW, I mentioned the interesting conversation we had on the Nicole Sandler show today. I don’t know when the archive will be up, but I was on from 7:30 – 8:00 am PST
http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/28879267 30 minutes in.