Despite massacres, gun control is a pipe dream
An attendee looks at Smith & Wesson M&P15 MOE Mid rifles at the Smith & Wesson booth at the National Shooting Sports Foundation's 34th annual Shooting, Hunting, Outdoor Trade (SHOT) Show at the Sands Expo and Convention Center January 17, 2012, in Las Vegas, Nevada. The SHOT Show is the largest annual gathering of shooting professionals with more than 1,600 exhibitors and 30,000 attendees. / Getty Images
(The Nation) Why am I even bothering to write about gun control? That was going to be my opening sentence when this column was to be focused on the Aurora, Colorado, movie-theater massacre: twelve people murdered and fifty-eight wounded, some very severely, by James Holmes, demented neuroscience graduate student. Then came the massacre at the Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin: six killed and three wounded by Wade Michael Page, 40-year-old white supremacist and leader of a racist hardcore band called End Apathy. And even after this horrific crime, which the FBI is calling "domestic terrorism," my opening is the same: Why am I even bothering to write about gun control? End apathy? Fat chance. If even the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords, one of Congress's own, by Jared Loughner, another hyperarmed madman, didn't move her pro-gun colleagues or their constituents, nothing will.
Remember the Million Mom March? In May 2000, 750,000 women gathered on the National Mall to call for what are often referred to as "reasonable" controls on guns, like background checks at gun shows and handgun registration (as opposed to "unreasonable" curbs like making it illegal to buy weapons intended to kill people--for example, handguns or AK-47s, let alone 6,000 rounds of ammunition--on the Internet). Today you might as well stand on the Mall and sing "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?"
The Million Mom March was loosely tied to the Gore campaign, and Gore-Bush was the last election when Dems saw gun control as a potential vote winner. Once Gore lost (well, actually...), Democrats fled the issue. For Democratic Party leaders like Howard Dean (surprisingly, no friend to gun control) and Chuck Schumer, restrictions on gun ownership interfered with the party's strategy of winning races in red states by running macho pro-gun candidates like Jon Tester and Jim Webb for the Senate, Brian Schweitzer for governor of Montana, or the host of conservative Blue Dog types who briefly swelled the ranks of Congressional Democrats.
So here we are today. Hours after the Sikh temple shooting, Nancy Pelosi said she was "devastated" but foresaw no action on Capitol Hill. "The votes aren't there," she lamented. Even in a Democratic Congress, she acknowledged, they might not be there, "because it takes a lot of votes to go down that path." After the Aurora shooting, Obama spokesman Jay Carney emphasized controlling guns within the context of "existing law"--no easy task, given recent Supreme Court decisions upholding gun rights. Senator Frank Lautenberg, who has put forward a bill outlawing online ammunition sales--and recently refused to pull his amendment to the cybersecurity bill banning high-capacity ammunition clips--is the rare Dem on the national scene who hasn't given up. And Lautenberg is 88 years old.
In the absence of leadership at the national level, big-city police chiefs and mayors like Michael Bloomberg have tried to step into the breach. But with little support from the top and lacking an impassioned mass movement, to say nothing of money to combat the NRA's huge war chest, it's no wonder that gun control has shriveled into a Worthy Cause. According to Gallup, in 2011 only 26 percent of Americans favored a ban on handguns, down from a high of 60 percent way back in the dark ages of 1959. (Other polls show the country evenly divided but still unchanged by the recent mass murders.) Membership in the NRA has been increasing for decades and now stands at 4.3 million. As for the 30,000 annual gun deaths, 70,000 injuries and almost twenty mass murders a year? The ninety guns for every 100 Americans? It's something to wring your hands about, like sexting or obesity or plastic bags. Just another weird American thing.
Why is this? One reason is surely that guns have effectively become the emblem of the ongoing great white male right-wing freak-out. (Ladies might pack a pink pistol, but not an AK-47.) When Obama was elected, gun sales rose--quick, the Kenyan Muslim Communist is coming for our weapons! On NPR's Diane Rehm Show, John Velleco of Gun Owners of America seemed comfortable with the idea that someone might want an arsenal of assault weapons to protect his family from a home invasion. What home invasion would that be? And among the many foolish justifications for amassing high-powered weaponry is the delusion that you and your friends could outgun the government if you personally decided it had become a tyranny. That's almost as ridiculous as the notion that if everyone carried a gun, people would be safer. All those moviegoers in Aurora needed to make their misery complete was to have a bunch of armed freelancers shooting off their weapons in a dark theater.
The trouble is, as with so many aspects of conservatism--the anti-choice movement, the Tea Party, Ron Paul--"gun rights" supporters win on intensity and single-mindedness. We have common sense, but they have a master narrative: rugged individualism, patriotism and self-defense (which includes paranoid fantasies about threats from ordinary people in turbans whom they are too ignorant to realize are Sikhs, not Muslims...and obviously I'm not saying it would have been less horrific and more "understandable" if Page had attacked a mosque).
Of course, your average gun enthusiast is hardly tomorrow's Holmes or Loughner or Page--you have to be mentally ill to commit mass murder--but without a gun, it's difficult to kill and injure a whole crowd of people, no matter how much you'd like to. Gun advocates have devoted a great deal of ingenuity to trying to discredit this elementary point. And to the extent that gun-control supporters have become depressed and discouraged, they have succeeded.
Katha Pollitt's "Subject to Debate" column, which debuted in 1995, appears every other week in The Nation. She is also a fellow at The Nation Institute who lives and works in New York. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.
............EVERYONE IS SICK OF CBS, ABC, NBC, ETC.................
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ANYWHERE AND EVERYWHERE THE MURDERS KEEP COMING ..with knives!
NEW YORK CITY - Man Kills 4 with Knife, Time to Enact More Knife Control
http://forgottenliberty.com/nyc-man-kills-4-with-knife-time-to-enact-more-knife-control/
SOUTH CAROLINA - 14 year old kills most of his family with a butter knife and a small piece of twine
http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2011/01/18/14-year-old-kills-most-of-his/
CANADA - Man Kills Grizzly Bear with Knife - who needs a gun?
http://blog.kingsoutdoorworld.com/2007/08/17/man-kills-grizzly-bear-wtih-knife/
ENGLAND - Six people killed in Jersey knife attack
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/aug/14/five-killed-jersey-knife-attack
BELGIUM - three confirmed dead and 10 injured in frenzied attack at daycare centre
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/23/creche-killings-belgium
GERMANY - man allegedly kills family with ax, knife
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28839602/ns/world_news-europe/t/german-man-allegedly-kills-family-ax-knife/#.UCXXi6B8HfA
RUSSIA - Man stabs 3 invaders to protect family, may face life for murder
http://www.rt.com/news/man-stabs-invaders-tula-586/
NICARAGUA - Crazy Man with a Knife kills 2 police armed with AK's 7:20 mark
http://thebeerbarrel.net/threads/crazy-man-with-a-knife-kills-2-police-armed-with-aks-7-20-mark.7469/
CHINA - Teenager Kills 8 in China Knife Attack
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443687504577564512826406388.html
It seems to me that the lack of responsibility of parents in raising their children to function in society is a more potent issue than gun control here.
Because, that's the answer.
"No."
At this point, the effort to advance laws that penalize peaceable citizens and further infringe their rights because criminals and psychotics attack unarmed people must be stopped in its tracks, and the Katha's of the nation must be put on notice that this "debate" is OVER.
Over. Kaput. Done. Deceased.
If you don't stop them, they will most assuredly stop YOU. Don't give another inch - they've already taken miles.
Cancer advances in stages. When it gets to stage three, arresting it is virtually impossible. On gun laws, we are now at stage two.
Any questions?
Hey, how many time have you assisted the police by identifying criminals carrying concealed, ten thousand times, uh no, thousand times, uh no, hundred times, uh no, not even once.
Man that is truly pathetic. You are afraid of law abiding gun owners, when you cant even identify the bad guys carrying concealed. You are afraid of the mythical boogeyman, something not real, cant be seen, and cant be articulated in real world language. I thought only children were afraid of the mythical boogeyman, oh wait, that answers itself.
The government acknowledges in USDOJ National Gang Threat Assessment 2011, see pg 14, chart #8 for that massive number of violent crimes committed in the US each year committed by gang members.
For several decades, studies have been conducted on crime and causalities byvarious bodies including major universities, criminologists and even the U.S.Department of Justice. These studies have found that approximately 80% of allcrime is committed by 20% of all criminals. Some of the studies have providedslightly different numbers but all of them have found that a small group ofcriminals commit a vastly disproportionate number of crimes than their peers.(Wolfgang et al ., 1972; Petersilia et al ., 1978; Williams, 1979; Chaiken andChaiken, 1982; Greenwood with Abrahamse, 1982, and Martin and Sherman,1986).
Hence add in the career criminals.
http://www.justice.gov/ndic/pubs32/32146/index.htm
CDC -Suicidal people kinda speak for themselves as suicide is a felony.
Shall we review police studies in Chicago and NYC where between 76-80% of those involved in shootings, both shooter and injured were both involved in criminal activity at the time of the incident.
www.popcenter.org/problems/drive_by_shooting/PDFs/Block_and_Block_1993.pdf, www.nyc.gov/html/nypd/downloads/pdf/public_information/2007_firearms_discharge_report.pdf, www.nyclu.org/files/nypd_firearms_report_102207.pdf
So when are you going to address those three groups responsible for over 92% of all deaths using a firearm as frankly it is rather stupid not to address the largest reason for a problem, then again, we are talking about progressives here.
ATF Max 8 million CPL's US, approximately 186 million age 21 or older or 4.3% of the people licensed for CPL.
Possible deaths from CPL holders in 3 year time span from Violence Policy Center report 2009, 137 or 45 per year equals .00000562 per concealed license holder. You can also review Florida's data on CCW at http://licgweb.doacs.state.fl.us/stats/cw_monthly.html it says the same thing.
JAMA http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/286/4/415 700,000 doctors in US kill 44,000 to 98,000 by medical malpractice every year or .065 to.14 per physician.
Physician is .065 or .14 /.00000562 = 12,000 to 25,000 times more likely to harm you than a CPL holder.
So where is the risk from concealed carry holders and why aren't you antis crying to ban doctors?
Your unsubstantiated opinion is irrelevent in the sane drug free world.
You want to prove your pathological lie that law abiding gun owners are such a danger then prove it you insane twit.
I am truly sorry for what has happened to people because we have so many idiots running around but I am not so sorry as to let a bunch of sissy's take away my ability to defend myself from them or from tyranny. So you Gun Haters can kiss my A$$.
Living outside Detroit I hear of individuals being beaten with bats or stomped by gangs. The police, which are fewer at this time due to budgetary cut backs in the city, take anywhere from 5 to 30 minutes to arrive. Well, at least the victims only ended up with their skulls crushed and we can take heart that someday someone may step forward and reveal who the culprits were.
Of course the odds against that happening to anyone in particular are probably more than 100 to 1. That should be enough for anyone to say they feel safe. That is of course this doesn't apply to the 1.
So when in Detroit you can feel assured that when seconds count the police are just minutes away.
I understand that we had Muslims slaves before we became a country; they did not demand for a mosque and most converted to Christianity.
"America has prosper as a nation with one language and one religion, "That religion, or the duty which we owe to our Creator and the manner of discharging it, can be directed by reason and conviction, not by force or violence, and therefore, all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience, and that it is the mutual duty of all to practice Christian forbearance, love, and charity towards each other."
With the Immigration Act of 1965 has marked a radical break from the immigration policies of the past. The majority of who were opposed to the act, the legislation assured that the passage would not influence America's culture significantly only to be proven wildly inaccurate. The Asians and the Africans has displayed the unwillingness to assimilated into the American fabric. The American populace feels threaten with being forced to accept these imported religions that most had escape from only to have it follow them to the last refuge of religious freedom. Political Correctness group needs to be more enlightened in American history.
The police are great, but they cannot defend you when you are attacked. If you survive, you can provide a statement. If you don't survive, your story may end up on CSI. If you are armed, you have a chance to save yourself and others. Any of the servicemen and women who died (while unarmed)in these massacres, would have gladly engaged the mad man in combat to save everyone else.