As you may recall, there was in the summer of 2009, a disturbing tendency for various disaffected right wingers to show up at political events openly carrying fire arms. When some of us on the left voiced concern about this trend, geniuses like Megan McArdle made the case for gun toting as a form of protest, entitled to protection.
I remember writing about this trend with alarm at the time; it didn't seem to require an abundance of prescience to see that this was all going to lead to no good end. Quoting myself is a bit crass, but a couple of things I wrote were said about as well as I can express them. First, with respect to McArdle and others mischaracterizing carrying guns as a form of politcal speech:
Let me explain the issue so even McArdle can understand it. The guns that people bring to these events are designed to kill people -- that is their sole purpose. When I strap one on and wear it to an event I am saying to my fellow citizens "if you fuck with me, I am willing to kill you." The gun is not designed to stimulate debate, it is designed to end it. It is not a symbol of civil liberty, it is an instrument of solipsistic incivility saying rather clearly that I intend to have the last word -- and not in the way that Megan imperiously proclaims from her perch on high in her blog post.
As for the dangerous interplay of guns, the fringe characters attracted to the tea party ethos, and their right wing cheerleaders, here was my impression from 16 months ago of what we were probably going to see:
What you see here is a lumpen mass whose inherent sense of resentment and suspicion has been turned up to eleven by right wing manipulators like Fox, NRO, Malkin, Instapundit, and their fellow traveling cretins. It's all well and good until one one or two or more of these armed rubes snaps and we have carnage on our hands. Then despite the inevitable protestations of shocked innocence on the part of the aforementioned shit stirrers, they will truly have blood on their hands.
I wish I had been wrong.
I remember those superb posts.
I wish you had been wrong, too, C. We all would wish to have egg on our faces instead of blood all over our country. All of us, at various times--before the presidential election, during the runup to the healthcare vote; and over the course of several domestic terror incidents--have been expressing deepening concern. We have repeatedly condemned the Usual Suspects for their craven, opportunistic whipping-up of the disaffected, the ideology-spewing, the sadistically violent, and the generally unhinged, all of which reptiles tend to slither into that nasty Big Tent of theirs.
You really called it when you said the rightwing mouthpieces would all deny their involvement in the carnage that would surely ensue at any given moment. That's exactly what they've been doing all day, sometimes engaging in logic so warped--or resorting to false equivalencies so risible and so pathetically ramshackle in their construction--they once again outdo themselves and in the process manage to shock me anew.
Posted by: litbrit | January 10, 2011 at 11:25 PM
I just saw the mugshot. Via Sully, here it is. Warning: it is really, really disturbing.
Posted by: Corvus | January 10, 2011 at 11:31 PM
Sir C, you were right.
E. J. Dionne also warned about this back in 2009:
. . . This is not about the politics of populism. It’s about the politics of the jackboot. It’s not about an opposition that has every right to free expression. It’s about an angry minority engaging in intimidation backed by the threat of violence.
There is a philosophical issue here that gets buried under the fear that so many politicians and media-types have of seeming to be out of touch with the so-called American heartland.
The simple fact is that an armed citizenry is not the basis for our freedoms. Our freedoms rest on a moral consensus, enshrined in law, that in a democratic republic we work out our differences through reasoned, and sometimes raucous, argument. Free elections and open debate are not rooted in violence or the threat of violence. They are precisely the alternative to violence, and guns have no place in them . . . .
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090819_the_politics_of_the_jackboot/
Posted by: Lisa Simeone | January 11, 2011 at 12:08 AM
Dionne's column today is a pretty good one. I particularly liked this:
It is not partisan to observe that there are cycles to violent rhetoric in our politics. In the late 1960s, violent talk (and sometimes violence itself) was more common on the far left. But since President Obama's election, it is incontestable that significant parts of the American far right have adopted a language of revolutionary violence in the name of overthrowing "tyranny."
I've seen a couple of instances of the "Both Sides" crew struggling to find examples of left-wing violence and reaching back to the 1960's. Um, no, sorry. Not relevant to this political moment, or to any moment in the last thirty years for that matter. Violence has been the province of the American right for my adult lifetime.
Posted by: Toast | January 11, 2011 at 08:35 AM
It's getting a bit off topic, but I'd even question Dionne's recollection that "[i]n the late 1960s, violent talk (and sometimes violence itself) was more common on the far left." It was perfectly OK for cops and construction workers to beat up antiwar protesters (an activity publicly endorsed by President Nixon), or even shoot them.
The 'far right' didn't need to engage in violence during that period because the violence they would have sought was being handled by more mainstream players.
Posted by: low-tech cyclist | January 11, 2011 at 09:30 AM
It would probably be more accurate to say that the last time violent speech & action from the left was noticeable was in the 1960's. Putting it that way wouldn't deny that there was right wing violence then as well, rather it would simply acknowledge the truth of Toast's observation that for the last thirty years or so the violent part of American left wing politics has been virtually nonexistent, and that can't be said of the violent part of American right wing politics.
Posted by: oddjob | January 11, 2011 at 10:10 AM
(Well, if you include the assassination attempts on Pres. Ford then you would have to say the mid-1970's rather than the 1960's, but that doesn't change the point that for the last thirty years or so when talking about violence in American politics one was unavoidably talking about American right wing politics.)
Posted by: oddjob | January 11, 2011 at 10:12 AM
This is only slightly OT, but it is always good to have a bucket of common sense thrown on a cliche you've held and watching it melt. It's a shock, at first, but in the long runbit's good, even if that cliche has been very comforting. That happened to me with one single post tangential to the shooting that appeared on The Rachel Maddow Blog.
The cli8che, and I'd bet we've all said it, is "We need stricter gun control to keep guns out of the hands of mentally unstable persons.
Still sounds very sensible, doesn't it? Until you ask "How?" It's easy to keep guns out of the hands of 'criminals' -- meaning not those who engage in criminal pursuits, but those who have been convicted of crimes. There are databases that hold the relevant fingerprints of convicted criminals. 'Run the prints' and you can turn them down.
But there's no "Database of Unstable People" nor could there be. It would be possible to check an applicant to see if he is on Social Security Disability for mental/emotional problems -- though my own experience -- including being married to someone who would fail that check, as well as 'friends of friends' and even one blog comentator -- is that these people are no more dangerous than the average person despite trheir mental problems. And I suppose there is or could be a database of people who were committed involuntarily, since that is a legal proceeding and thus a public record. And i don't suppose anyone but the NRA would challenge such a list being compiled and used to deny applications.
But those two groups are a small fraction of one percent of 'mentally unstable' people. What about people who realize they have a problem and commit themselves to get help -- or just rest -- as I did in the 80s? Should those records be made available? (We've just gone through a series of threads on 'privacy invasion' but that would seem to be another variety.)
But what about those who merely seek treatment for a problem? There is a question on the form that asks a person if he has a 'mental disability' and is taking medication for it, but no way of checking if the answer is true.
Should there be? Should there be a National Registry of Psychiatric Patients, listing all medicines they have been prescribed, available to be consulted by any gun dealer, or even by any state or local official that is in charge of issuing gun licenses?
I think asking the question answers it.
But what about the 'unbalanced people' who don't know they are unbalanced and seek treatment? Who is going to judge them when they come asking for a gun license? Okay, if someone comes wearing a pith helmet, talking about his hunting trip to Africa he'll take 'after leaving office,' insists on being called "Mr. President" and runs up the stairs blowing a bugle and yelling "CHARGE!!! you might consider denying him a license. (And now you know one movie I watched over the weekend.)
But apart from that, who will make the determination that a person is or is not too unstable to get a gun? The dealer? Forget 'cinflict of interest'; forget that many gun dealers -- judging from interviews I've seen -- would be glad for the opportunity to deny anyone with dark skin or a "Semitic" nose (whether 'kosher' or 'halal'). A gun dealer, even one as committed as we are to 'keeping guns out of the hands of the unstable' simply isn't trained to make such judgments, particularly in the rushed few minutes a transaction takes. (He might spot an obvious schizophrenic, but the truly dangerous ones are those who have learned to hide their disability from casual sight -- and psychopaths in particular are good at masking themselves.)
So do we require a gun purchaser to bring a report from his psychiatrist? But a majority of people, sane or other wise, aren't in treatment. And of course we'd have to work around most medical privacy laws.
Do we require every gun licensing agency to have a number of staff psychiatrists on hand? Runs into an awful lot of money even at 'civil service salary' range, and a lot of the people who would accept such positions would be 'beginners and failures' and others would be 'idealistic true believers' (but in what. I could see both a Brady Bill crusader and a 'Second Amendment absolutist' seeking such a position, and either one might be considered unfair.).
Any such system, to have a chance of being even slightly effecive, would require both relicensing interviews for current gun owners and at least decennial relicensing. Even after the initial relicensing period is overm this means that a jurisdiction with 250,000 gun owners needs to be able to process 100 applications a working day (figuring 250 working days a year). That's an awful lot of psychiatrists or other MHPs, unless the 'examinations' are cursory.
Okay, maybe I am wrong. Maybe it is possible to design a form of gun licensing -- other than a complete Bristish style restriction on private gun ownership -- that would 'keep guns out of than hands of the mentally unstable.' Maybe we can draw up a law and a set of procedures for implimenting that law that would not be prohibitively expensive, would be fair, and would actually accomplish the goal. (And would not require lawsuits over every denied application.)
Anybody want to try? I'd really like to be proven wrong on this one.
Posted by: Prup (aka Jim Benton) | January 11, 2011 at 11:31 AM
Arizona's answer to the deadly shooting at a constituent event for Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) Saturday will likely be more guns at political rallies, not less. That's the word from Democrats and Republicans in this mourning desert city still reeling from this weekend's mass shooting that left six dead and 14 injured, including Giffords, who remains in critical condition after being shot in the head....
Posted by: oddjob | January 11, 2011 at 11:41 AM
Oddjob,
Sadly, I don't think this is surprising. There'll be a lot of hand-wringing in the coming days or weeks, but it'll blow over. We won't have gun control in this country, not in my lifetime.
Posted by: Lisa Simeone | January 11, 2011 at 11:45 AM
By Arizona Republic columnist E. J. Montini:
In the aftermath of the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and 18 others, local politicians, members of the clergy, law enforcement officials and community leaders called upon all of us to ratchet down the nasty political rhetoric.
And the people of Arizona (as we knew they would) responded.
By ratcheting UP the rhetoric.
. . . But Dupnik's remarks, and those like it, did nothing to tone down people like state Rep. Jack Harper, who wants to allow college teachers to carry weapons into the classroom.
Harper told USA Today, "If he (Dupnik) would have done his job, maybe this doesn't happen,'' adding “When everyone is carrying a firearm, nobody is going to be a victim. The socialists of today are only one gun confiscation away from being the communists of tomorrow."
http://www.azcentral.com/members/Blog/EJMontini/
Posted by: Lisa Simeone | January 11, 2011 at 11:51 AM
The above screed, btw, should not be taken as an opposition to most types of strong gun control, including some ideas I'll float later iigac. And Steve Benen has an interesting story just up:
Still unlikely to pass, but at least a step, given it is Peter King, of all people.
Posted by: Prup (aka Jim Benton) | January 11, 2011 at 11:55 AM
Still Trapped, Trapped! on Eagle Top. We've only got snow, and not much more, no ice yet. ATL is badly screwed up (the ABC affiliate is doing 24 storm coverage) and the Northeast looks like it'll get clocked. The mid-Atlantic seems to have missed the worst...
I've been listening to the Right responses to the Tuscon tragedy, and what comes to mind is the homely old saying "A hit dog hollers." The response ('Not responsible', 'how dare the Sherrif of Pima Co. say those things!', 'the left says/does violent things too') are all expression of a defensive nature.
One of the NYTimes commenters on David ("I never met Republican talking point I didn't work into a media appearance") Brooks' piece where he claimed the insanity of Loughner was not in any way political (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/11/opinion/11brooks.html?ref=opinion), George Jackson, of Tuscon wrote:
"While all these facts may be true, they are incomplete David.
The most foundational fact, is this: Jared Laughner shot a politician. Jared Laughner did not shoot and kill incoherently. He did not shoot the taxi driver. He do not shoot the clerks inside the Safeway.....
Jared Laughner, deliberately planned and tried to assassinate a very prominent United States Congresswoman. A Politician.
To believe that his act did not stem from the root of some political causation, is illogical based on these facts. It is also a fact, that Jared Laughner held strong anti-government, anti-authority/establishment beliefs.
He needed a tipping point to go over the top in a negative way. The proverbial straw that broke the camels' back. For such an unstable person, that tipping point, in my opinion, and many people's opinion, very likely was provided by the political vitriol, hate-speech, and direct and indirect, not-subtle targeted "call to action". The political climate, the political environment on talk-radio, and TV. Words heard have shaped man's history. Jared Laughner became a weapon of hate, stemming from the word-environment around him. He needed pointing and a push, to take action....
Absent this political radio/TV/Internet environment and their invectives, Jared Laughner, might still tragically, have chosen another non-political target. He might have also delayed his tipping point event."
Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D, NY) who's husband was murdered in the 'Subway Rampage' of 1994, has introduced legislation to reestablish the ban on large clips like Loughner used (and posted pics of) and that the Republican congress allowed to sunset in 2004 at the behest of the NRA.
How long will it take for the NRA to have a press release calling this measure "an intrusion by the Federal Government into a basic American Liberty"?
Since Nixon, the NRA has been convincing the poorly informed (and mostly Southern and/or Rural) that evil Libruls/Commies/UN/Neworldorder/etc. are plotting to take away their penises, I mean, Guns. I've nearly gotten into fights with idiots sayin' "no, Obama (or Al Gore or Clinton) aren't coming to take your guns. How would they? Would the Military back such a move?" I mean, any attempt at a rational gun policy is seen as an attack on their manliess, I mean, freedoms.
I\ve been a gun owner. I see them as a dangerous tool of my rural life. I sure don't want to shoot anybody, even in self defense. I don't fetishize the pistol and the rifle, and regret the times I've had to put an animal down when the vet was hours away, or shoot a rabid raccoon. And I understand the need for some rational gun laws.
There are plenty of folks who are so fearful that only a weapon gives them a sense of security, and live in a paranoid bubble waiting for some big outside enemy to take it away. A rational gun policy (consistent with historic understandings of the Second Amendment) would at least permit some of the regulation needed to have that 'well-regulated Militia' it mentions.
But we don't have that.
Thus it's possible to have mentally ill folks get serious weaponry. In a political environment where the crazy get the message its time to use it.
Posted by: MR Bill | January 11, 2011 at 11:58 AM
i lost a comment, so count me as cranky, and this one as possibly not as thoughtful.
i hate guns; said it before, i'll say it again. and the reason is the amount of destruction that can be done with just a pull of a trigger. that destruction might be caused by a kid playing around with his buddies, by a suicidal person looking for a fast way out, by a kid on the street who got a weapon "for protection" [which, by the way, is why a lot of regular citizens get them], by a householder who mistook a family member for a burglar, and etc. the glorification of weapons as a solution, and the wide availability of ever-so-much-more firepower, is a real problem. it is ever so much more of a problem when violent, gun-oriented rhetoric is accepted as political discourse.
it is insane that we do not have any kind of sensible gun control policies. it is insane that attempts at such are met by a wall of opposition. do these NRA people even read the papers?
i. hate. guns. now, i'm willing to make some reasonable concessions. MRBill can have a gun to shoot rabid wildlife. MHB can have a manual-load rifle to hunt for food. they are both trained and experienced at the use of their particular weapons for particular purposes. but why is there no line between those weapons and purposes, and the wide availability to any person of semi-automatic weapons with extended clips?
prup brought up some serious questions about mental health, privacy, how to screen for mental illness. i know that at least in california, people who have been involuntarily committed ("5150," meaning the person was judged to be a danger to self or others; this is a 3 day commitment that can be extended) cannot legally own weapons for 5 years. there must be database on those people. but involuntary commitment is a blunt tool for sorting out who might be violent.
someone else with whom i'm speaking lately suggests another way at this problem -- advocating better mental health services, better care, better ways to help people who are unstable before it reaches a crisis point. there is a lot of stigma to mental problems; and seriously ill people tend to [as a feature of their illness] not understand they have a problem. insurance companies do their best to minimize coverage and deny claims. but surely we can do better on this front. this guy apparently had very visible problems the past few years. and if he couldn't have been forced into treatment, maybe if there were trained resources, he could have been persuaded.
Posted by: kathy a. | January 11, 2011 at 02:12 PM
i'd really like to hear becky57's thoughts on how we might be smarter, from a mental health perspective. everyone else's, too, of course.
Posted by: kathy a. | January 11, 2011 at 04:05 PM
Speaking of threatened penises:
Posted by: oddjob | January 11, 2011 at 04:58 PM
And in that Oddjob link, we have this bit of unintended irony:
Pajamas Media appreciates your comments that abide by the following guidelines:
1. Avoid profanities or foul language unless it is contained in a necessary quote or is relevant to the comment.
2. Stay on topic.
3. Disagree, but avoid ad hominem attacks.
4. Threats are treated seriously and reported to law enforcement.
Posted by: Lisa Simeone | January 11, 2011 at 05:18 PM
kathy: As usual, a dose of sense from California, and basically my position. I merely -- taking my cue from Rachel's blog -- pointed out the problems with screening out people with mental problems. But I entirely agree that automatic or semi-automatic weapons with extended clips should be banned, just as a start. (My position was and is much like yours, but we seem both to have come to a realization that not everyone lives in urban areas, and that some people view guns differently because of that. The question is whether a 'local option' policy that would let NYC ban guns would also let Texas allow them to be provided in 'back to school' packages for third graders.)
As for my own gun control ideas, besides ruling out the magnum weapons we've already discussed:
I believe this combination of laws would at least be useful in forcing responsibility on gun owners.
Posted by: Prup (aka Jim Benton) | January 11, 2011 at 05:20 PM
The only purpose for an extended clip is to engage in mass killing. There is literally no other purpose that can be ascribed to it.
How is it possible that we live in a society where banning such clips is a politically impossible lift?
Posted by: Sir Charles | January 11, 2011 at 05:35 PM
Prup, the other proactive measure I can conceive involves a requirement for basic training: Since the Roberts Supreme court has decided (contra judicial history as I understand it) that have a right to personal sidearms, regulations must be 'reasonable'.
Thus, jurisdictions ought to be able to require some registration and training.
It's in the training that I think you might be able to catch the mentally ill.
This won't happen in much of Georgia, sadly, but I can see it flying, perhaps in DC.
And:
"We inflame wild beasts with the smell of blood, and then innocently wonder at the wave of brutal appetite that sweeps the land as a consequence."
- Mark Twain
Posted by: MR Bill | January 11, 2011 at 05:38 PM
we have to register our cars, pass a proficiency test, buy insurance, and hold current licenses to drive an automobile. no idea why things should be less stringent for guns. i don't know why responsible gun owners would object to some basic safety measures that are no different from those used for cars.
those are certainly some ideas, prup.
on another level, i think that changing attitudes is really important -- important to getting some real safety regulations in place. this isn't just a legislative battle, but changing the gun culture.
Posted by: kathy a. | January 11, 2011 at 05:42 PM
SC and MR's comments went up while i was writing. great minds.... :)
Posted by: kathy a. | January 11, 2011 at 05:44 PM
Kathy, we won't change the gun culture until we get guns out of much of culture.
Timmy the BF likes 'action' movies, which are increasingly brutal shoot 'em ups. I had systematically avoided most violent movies for decades, and having seen "the Expendables" or "From Paris with Love" or the loathsome "Repo Men", hell, anything from Tarentino, it's what some guy, some reviewer called 'Carnography, a pornography of violence," back in the '70s. And I see no sign its growing less.
It is in no way realistic, but increasingly loathsome.
Chekov always worried about "if you have a gun on stage in act one, you must use it in act 3" (in one version).
He needn't have worried. The gun seems to be the universal plot element, guaranteed to produce excitement.
I got to see the Dalai Lama at Emory some years back, and what I most remember was him saying something to the effect of "I saw a movie last night. It was very exciting, but I do not want to live in the sort of excitement I saw. Why would you want to? One must be careful about what you watch."
I'm afraid we are as a nation somewhat addicted to visual violence, and mistake it for the real thing.
I'm a First Amendment Maximalist, generally...
And maybe the violence in public art mirrors the implicit violence of much of Late Capitalism. I just don't think it's making things for Americans or anyone better.
Posted by: MR Bill | January 11, 2011 at 06:08 PM
why why why? why is that violence considered entertainment? that kind of violence on the street has everybody calling for the death penalty -- which by the way, doesn't stem the violence.
my dad had guns; his dad was a collector. and i know exactly what turned me against guns in the first instance -- it was when a classmate accidentally shot and nearly killed another classmate in 9th grade, when they were horsing around with a police pistol they thought was unloaded.
and then there are the crimes, things you and i glance over in the news each day. guns can kill or damage fast. and often. you definitely don't want to see the autopsy photos, or even read in depth about the horrors of the moment or the long-lingering pain after. those folks don't get re-takes on film; they often don't die instantly and w/o pain, and don't miraculously recover in a couple weeks. the shooters may not have even thought before shooting, but there it is: all that destruction, wrought in an instant. one thoughtless or reckless or stupid instant: bam.
Posted by: kathy a. | January 11, 2011 at 07:03 PM
MR Bill: I sympathize with your snow problems, because you aren't used to the white stuff, but we've been getting it bad here in Brooklyn. To show you, last Thhursday they finally picked up the regular garbage (that I had put out again on Tuesday) for the first time since the morning of Christmas Eve. Last night I put out the recyclables, scheduled for the first pick up since the Tuesday before Christmas.
Unfortunately, it is still out there. No pickups today at all. Seems like we're due for another 8-12" overnight -- and it's already started.
Have I ever mentioned I hate Winter!
Posted by: Prup (aka Jim Benton) | January 11, 2011 at 09:48 PM
i know it is shameful, but i read slate and sometimes even the annoying-to-infuriating saletan. this one is quite interesting: http://www.slate.com/id/2280794/
Posted by: big bad wolf | January 11, 2011 at 10:09 PM
Splitter!
Posted by: Sir Charles | January 11, 2011 at 10:23 PM
BBW, that is a really, really good piece. i'm linking it just to make it easier for others to read.
Posted by: kathy a. | January 11, 2011 at 10:26 PM
thanks kathy. next life, or perhaps even sooner, i will learn to embed. last time i tried i ended up in an endless loop to cogitamus. not that there is anything wrong with that.
Posted by: big bad wolf | January 11, 2011 at 10:32 PM
I lost a comment. Damn it.
I was going to comment, appropos of Saletan's piece, that people who think that armed citizens are a proper defense force have no conception of 1) what it takes to make a wise decision with a gun; and 2) the impact of killing someone, even in a "good shoot."
My Dad, who was a cop and a firearms instructor, hated guns; he saw the damage that they did and not just in the hands of criminals. He saw guys who were shattered by shooting people in the line of duty, even though they did the "right" thing. He had people under him commit suicide with their service revolvers. He had guys get shot in the line of duty. In short, he saw guns primarily cause destruction and sadness.
When he retired he dismantled all of his guns and dumped them in the ocean.
Our national festish for guns is symptomatic of a deeply troubled society -- and it's not getting better.
Posted by: Sir Charles | January 11, 2011 at 11:00 PM