Fuck the Massacre-Enablers of the NRA

 

First, a thought and a quiet prayer for the parents of the 20 children gunned down today.  If I were one of them, I would feel like my world had just ended.  I don't know how you console the inconsolable, but I can only hope that they each eventually find their own way through the pain.

But now we have to talk about why this keeps on happening.  How many gun massacres have there been just since Aurora, less than five months ago?  I've lost count.

You know, I'm no gun expert, but surely there have to be ways to reduce the amount of carnage one can do with guns in the space of a few minutes, that wouldn't involve taking away anyone's gun, and wouldn't make it more difficult to defend oneself from the marauding horde that gun nuts are always secretly hoping will show up at the doors of their suburban split-levels.  (And when no gangbangers show up, they kill a trick-or-treater or something.) 

Maybe reduce the capacity of a semi-automatic's clip?*  No, not even the slightest imposition on gun rights is acceptable to the gun crowd, no matter how many people have to die as a result.  In order that their gun rights remain uninfringed, of course, the unlimited right of every crazy person ready to go postal to obtain the latest and greatest in semi-automatic technology must also be preserved.

Their 'rights' to have no restrictions at all on the characteristics of the guns they own are more important, in their eyes, than the right that the victims of a shooting like today's had to keep on living.  That's the sort of everyday amorality and sociopathy that ensures that when someone flips out completely, he can take a whole batch of people with him.

I understand that there are total crazies in this world.  I don't understand the moral calculus of people who think the lives of the total crazies' victims are less important than the least imposition on the sort of guns they can carry.  I guess this is what the banality of evil looks like: tens of millions of people who put the slightest imposition on what they perceive as their rights ahead of the lives of thousands of their fellow citizens.

I don't understand their moral calculus, but I'm done with it.  Fuck 'em.

 

*What I've heard today is that since it only takes a second to change an ammo clip, that wouldn't do any good anyway.  Well, fuck, can't we try?  No, we can't, they say.  Not that I buy their argument anyway: today's killer shot 26 people at that elementary school.  Suppose there were a max of 6 bullets in a clip: he'd be on his fifth clip by the time he was done.  What's he going to do, juggle his reserve clips while he shoots?  If not, he's got to fumble for them as he pulls them out of his pocket, his tote bag, whatever, unless he's the most dextrous man in the world.  Every little bit helps - or would, if the gun nuts of America were doing their damnedest to block efforts at massacre prevention.

Comments

[kathy a.]

fuck allowing civilian use of automatic weapons. i'm sorry, but there is no legitimate civilian use. smaller clips are not going to do it for me.

also: gun crime stats for the US, via balloon juice. the rate is actually going down, but we still have close to 9000 gun murders per year -- that is not including the gun robberies, or the gun assaults. or the accidental shootings.

[Sir Charles]

I concur in the sentiment.

Good God, we live in a country where we have allowed moral monsters to dictate policy in this arena -- I don't really know what we can do at this point, but it surely is a sad statement regarding our society that this sort of thing can happen again and again and again and virtually nothing is done.

[TFitz]

I suppose if I wanted to go Scalia-originalist on their asses I'd say private citizens could only possess muzzle-loaders. But as an interim step, no semi-auto rifles or pistols. Bolt-action and six-shooters only. And a limit on how many you can own, strict registration (and mental health screening) and gun safe requirements, plus liability insurance. Plenty of toys for the fetists and legitimate hunters, less scope for the crazies to wreak havoc.

[big bad wolf]

fuck them fuck them fuck them.

and whether richard posner's opinion for the seventh circuit this week was an intellectual provocation to make a point or an actually sincere interpretation of the second amendment, fuck him too.

days like these are the days i want to beleive i karma or hell

[Prup (aka Jim Benton)]

"Amendment #__

I: Nothing in the Second Amendment shall be construed as limiting the right of states or of the United States to establish reasonable rules in a non-militia situation as to the number and type of weapons that may be owned by individuals, or conditions in which such weapons, even if legally owned, may not be carried, or other such reasonable restrictions on weapons and arms as shall be deemed necessary for the protection and safety of the citizenry as a whole.

II: 'Militia' shall refer only to the National Guard of the various states and territories, or other forces called into existence by the legislatures of such states and under the command of the Governor of such states or state officials he shall so designate.

III: "Full faith and credence' shall not require a state to accept other states' licenses or regulations as far as weapons carrying, even as regards to citizens of that state."

Well, it's a start. Now somebody do a better job, please, and then start getting it circulated.

[low-tech cyclist]

smaller clips are not going to do it for me.

I guess the point I was trying to make (probably badly) wasn't so much that this or that measure might make a difference, so much that there is no fraction, no sliver of their 'gun rights', no matter how small, that these people are willing to give up in order to save some lives.

That's the part that has me questioning whether they're viable human beings, or some sort of pod people in our midst.

[Prup (aka Jim Benton)]

TFitz (who is new to me since he apparently showed up during one of my chaos-caused silences) has come up with an idea I have literally not heard suggested before. "Liability insurance.' Simple, brilliant, and it would probably do more to lower the homicide rate than any other single step I've heard suggested. This is one case where the 'free market' -- with its greed, self-protectiveness, unfairness, and hatred of paying money -- might do a better job of keeping guns out of the hands of the unsuitable than any political solution.

On the other hand, 'better mental health screening' is a very dangerous can of worms -- or snakes. Some changes are obviously desireable, mostly stopping prohibitions on sharing information. But others? It isn't just privacy concerns -- though they are very important, certainly -- or questions about the overall judgment of therapists and mental health professionals (Do you really want Michelle Bachman's husband to decide whether you are suitable for getting a gun -- or other psychologists who have yet to accept that gays are not 'inherently unstable' or those who see the most important 'sign of sanity' the embracing of Chrsitianity?)

The main problem, though, is that we are lookig at the incidents in retrospect, with '20-20 Hindsight.' We know this particular person's insanity -- if visible -- had fatal results, so we go 'he never should have been allowed to have a gun.' But I wonder -- and would have to analyze all 61 cases -- how often these so-called 'signs' were pretty common and only become significant in retrospect.

Personally, afaik I have never directly, physically injured another human being in my life -- even as a kid I didn't get into fights -- and I hope to die with that still being true. (I have, sadly, been less successful at avoiding economic and emotional injuries, but I have tried.) And yet I could make a very good case that I -- and several people I've known and am totally unafraid of -- fit the profile very well, and that, in retrospect, if we ever did snap, most of our friends would argue that 'they should have seen it coming.'

In short, how do you rule out the 'false positives' unless you start from a default strict control policy -- which seems unobtainable?

[low-tech cyclist]

Prup - a requirement that gun owners carry liability insurance would be great, but universal gun registration (good luck with that) would have to be a precondition. Because if you don't have to tell the state that you own a gun, then there's nobody to make you buy insurance.

[kathy a.]

what is wrong with universal gun registration? we require cars to be registered, and their owners to carry insurance -- and we require drivers to be licensed. we require permits to build structures, and for the structures to be up to safety codes. we require airline travelers to have photo ID and go through screening. we require sex offenders to register as such, and their neighbors can find out about that status, too.

some 30,000 people are killed by guns every year in the US; another 66,000+ survive shootings. see, stats from the brady campaign to prevent gun violence. guns are not a small problem. look at all the post-9/11 measures, and compare our response to 3,000 deaths vs. our lack of response to 10 times as many every year.

so tell me, what is the rationale for not requiring universal gun registration?

[kathy a.]

i know somebody's going to look at the stats, and say, well, most of the gun deaths are suicides. (this week's 2 mass shootings were also suicides, by the way. my doctor and her babies were murdered by her husband, who then suicided himself.)

the next thing they'll say is, suicidal people will kill themselves anyway. that may be true sometimes, but in many instances it is not. guns make killin' super-easy, and effective. and many people who consider or try suicide but survive find that they don't so much want to be dead, a while later. a reason we have suicide hotlines is to work on what we know is true: that for many or most people, that lowest moment in their lives is not a permanent state.

i'd also like to point out that suicide is not a very clean way to exit, for those left behind. and i'm not just talking about cleaning up the blood and brain matter -- suicide is the ultimate "fuck you," and surviving friends and family members are left with the torment of wishing they had done something differently. why should we make it easier for someone to leave that destruction behind?