Gun Nuts is Nuts and Open Thread

 

"Blues from a Gun" - Jesus and Mary Chain

It seems that nearly every day now since Newtown some fresh evidence of the insanity of our gun culture comes our way.  I can only conclude that we share our country with a lot of truly pathetic, deluded individuals, people who live in the grip of overwhelming fear, hatred, and paranoia that would seem to make life a living hell.  Think about what it must be like to be a civilian who carries every day, someone who basically feels like they need to be able to deal death as part of their daily routine.  How fucking sick and sad is that?

Even seemingly sane and "liberal" proponents of gun culture strike me as sad and fearful.  This piece in the Times a few weeks ago, "Confessions of a Liberal Gun Owner" made me shake my head.    Basically the author decided he needed a gun following the somewhat chaotic (and unnecessary) evacuation of Houston for Hurricane Rita during which nothing happened to him but some nasty traffic.  But the "experience" made him feel like he needed a gun.  Jesus, I'm glad this guy didn't live in DC in the 80s and early 90s -- he would have bought a tank.  This was followed by a piece by Walter Kirn in the New Republic in much the same tone -- a man needs guns to face danger and believe me I've faced danger so shut up you liberals who don't understand things.  Kirn once nursed a shotgun all night while a teenager, holed up in his family home while an escaped convict was on the loose.  (No the ex-con did not show up at his house.  No Kirn did not heroically save his family by blowing away the con.  Nope -- nothing happened.)  But then a number of years later a meth-addled fellow in Montana hissed that he was going top kill Kirn, who in turn showed him his concealed .22 and the tweaker ran away.  Here's Kirn's version of events:

I also know the opposite feeling, of outmanning someone else, because I pulled a gun on a guy once. It happened outside of the building where I live in downtown Livingston, Montana, a town of 7,000 that I moved to from New York City 23 years ago, back when New York was still considered dangerous. I was in the cab of my Ford pickup after a trip to a mini-storage locker with my two children, who were nine and six. Right across the street was the Mint Bar, a cavernous old brick hideout for midday tipplers in front of which was standing a lean young man who'd glared at me with a manic, feral focus the moment I'd parked and opened the truck door. He seemed high, not just drunk, with that toxic aura of meth, and when our eyes met, he bared his teeth and hissed that he was going to kill me, that I was dead, shifting his weight toward the curb at the same time. Somehow my kids didn't hear him as they climbed out, nor did they see my reaction to his threat: I opened the glove compartment and removed a long-barreled .22 target pistol that was there by chance, as part of the move. Its rubber grip met my hand and melded with it in a smooth, reflexive motion. I held the gun across my belt line, displaying its silver profile as I turned. The scary young man was about ten yards away by then, but when he saw the gun, his body rocked backward as though in a cartoon. I watched his flushed face drain pale as he backed off, one shoe untied and dragging a long, loose lace. He vanished around the bar's corner, a full retreat that left me presiding over a total victory that no one, because the street was empty, had witnessed.

Wow.  That's some high drama.  I am sure but for the firearm, the unarmed meth head would have no doubt killed Kirn and his whole family with his bare hands.

These "scary" stories make me laugh a bit.  I lived through years in DC where there was better than a murder a day -- I lived for a while two blocks from an open air drug market and a block from where a quadruple homicide occurred in 1989.  I later lived in another neighborhood a few blocks from a crack house and where another murder occurred early in my residency.  It just never occurred to me though that getting a gun was any answer to this sort of thing -- what was I going to do, carry it around loaded every day just waiting for menace to befall me?  As it turns out, I was never victimized in any of the marginal places I've lived -- although I suppose in my posher surroundings I could always be surprised.  The bottom line though is that one has to put fear into reasonable perspective and live life with a certain level of fatalism.  (Like a man, I'm tempted to add but won't.)  The truth is that "stranger" murders remain rare even in highly violent places.  The overwhelming majority of killings here were due to the drug trade.  That, and, of course, crimes of passion.  The world is, generally speaking, not out to get you. 

- Speaking of paranoia and stories that make clear that being extraordinarily proficient in firearms is no guarantee of safety, this story of the murder of former Navy Seal sniper Chris Kyle is a chilling one.  I would submit that if a weapon didn't make Chris Kyle safe, it isn't going to do much for anyone else's sorry ass.  Seriously though -- take a few minutes to read the comments to this story, most of which center on the claim that Kyle was obviously killed by the Obama Administration for some nefarious reason.  These are your fellow citizens, friends.  (Especially you bbw. :-) ) 

What's up? 

 

Comments

[kathy a.]

me, i don't do guns. but i am for any and all measures to make things safer. obama's proposals are completely non-controversial with anybody but the nuts.

gun news: a young artist who would have graduated HS this year, shot after a popular art event. (by someone who was supposedly a facebook friend.)

[Bill H]

I'm not sure people even know what they aretalking about when they speak of "gun owners." I have a rifle, caliber .25-06 that I have not fired in many years. I would not part with that thing at any price, even though I have no intention of ever firing it again. Why would I not? Because I built it. I rebarreled an Enfield .30-06 to a .25 caliver, and I hand carved the stock out of the most lovely blank of wavy dark Walnut I've ever seen, hand rubbed with 30 coats of Linseed oil.

I have several other guns and I may yet buy another piece or two if I find any I really like. They are finely crafted pieces of machinery and I admire the craftmanship and the way that form fits function.

Does the AR-15 fit such a description? Of course it does. It was designed to perform a ceratin function, and it performs that function superbly.

Gun owners are not wild-eyed maniacs who get their rocks off going out and shooting off the countryside. Not all of them anyway, and in my experience that type is a very small minority.

[Crissa]

I was in Austin the year of the evacuation from the hurricane, and walked the mean streets downtown, off schedule, alone, while AGC was going on. I saw lots of dispossessed people standing around, waiting for.. Well, for their homes to be declared at least safe to go stand there and try to fix them.

I was wearing my dusty steel-toes - straight back from Burning Man - because they matched my 'nice clothes' best, and got some smiles at my shoes.

I didn't feel like I needed a gun. If I had enough money for a gun, I'd have rather given the money out on the street so these poor folk would at least have had a nice dinner or night in a hotel instead of sleeping in the back of the convention center with doled out bottles of water.

[Crissa]

PS, Art Walk generally has /less crime/ than the area when it's empty.

But don't tell those white folks that, who want to shut the thing down.

Damnit.

[nancy]

Guns-- gotta think lots more about the entire argument. The smarter conservatives I read: here they are with the gun discussion: their thoughts .

Big fat sigh. I don't get it, but I do think it's urban places and the *other places* mis-understandings. Miss. Understandings.

[oddjob]

I can only conclude that we share our country with a lot of truly pathetic, deluded individuals, people who live in the grip of overwhelming fear, hatred, and paranoia that would seem to make life a living hell. Think about what it must be like to be a civilian who carries every day, someone who basically feels like they need to be able to deal death as part of their daily routine. How fucking sick and sad is that?

"As Barack Obama begins his second term in office, trust in the federal government remains mired near a historic low, while frustration with government remains high. And for the first time, a majority of the public says that the federal government threatens their personal rights and freedoms.

...

The growing view that the federal government threatens personal rights and freedoms has been led by conservative Republicans. Currently 76% of conservative Republicans say that the federal government threatens their personal rights and freedoms and 54% describe the government as a “major” threat. Three years ago, 62% of conservative Republicans said the government was a threat to their freedom; 47% said it was a major threat.

By comparison, there has been little change in opinions among Democrats; 38% say the government poses a threat to personal rights and freedoms and just 16% view it as a major threat...."

Recently released Pew survey.

[oddjob]

Gun owners are not wild-eyed maniacs who get their rocks off going out and shooting off the countryside. Not all of them anyway, and in my experience that type is a very small minority.

Unfortunately that minority appears to dominate the NRA. I know decades ago it wasn't that way, but it is now.

[oddjob]

In local news (possibly of interest to Sir C. & bbw, if no one else), Boston Globe columnist Adrian Walker wrote an interesting column yesterday:

State Senate seat may slip from Southie

To the best of my recollection he's writing about Billy Bulger's old seat.

[Bill H]

Oddjob, the NRA has 4.5 million members. How many have you actually heard speak? A miniscule minority can give an appearance of domination, because the majority are at work or at home taking care of their families. Don't rush to judgement.

[Sir Charles]

oddjob,

South Boston just isn't South Boston anymore. I'm not sure that's such a bad thing.

Bill H,

I probably should have been more precise -- when I say "gun nuts" I mean precisely that -- not everybody who owns a firearm. I have lots of clients who are dear friends and are gun owners and hunting enthusiasts. These are not people who fetishize gun ownership as a kind of talisman against bad things happening to them.

I do invite you to read the comments to the Navy Seal story to give you an illustration of what I am talking about.

[kathy a.]

only a few of the NRA people do the speaking for the organization. i'm not saying all members agree with the speakers, but this is their public face. the organization has lobbied very hard to defeat any and all gun restrictions, and even to reduce the collection of data about gun deaths and injuries.

if NRA members disagree with the leadership, they have choices. they can demand changes internally; they can quit. staying on anyway is a choice; and it is a choice that indicates approval of the organization's very public statements. this is a voluntary organization. bush the elder quit decades ago, when he stopped agreeing with the NRA's policies.

bill, i personally will never have a gun. but nobody is talking about gathering up everybody's guns.

in the face of this public health hazard, i find it hard to understand objections to registration, background checks, and limits on very high-powered weapons and high-capacity magazines. and i believe responsible gun owners favor safety measures, to cut down on accidents, on theft of weapons, on some family member losing it and grabbing a weapon.

i am really hopeful that we can work on safety measures -- including improving safety in the homes that have guns. i see a lot of this as changing the culture to think more about safety; there are a lot of different ways that cars have been made safer, for example, and none of those involved taking everybody's cars away.

nancy -- i understand the point about the needs of owners in rural settings differing from circumstances in urban settings. surely we can work with that? somebody might have horses and tractors on a farm, and those would be inappropriate (and illegal) for city use.

[kathy a.]

crissa, i haven't been to art walk, but one of my friends goes with her family and loves it! and you are right, all those happy people in the streets makes the area safer than normal.

young people with handguns, thinking that makes them superheros or something; it's a bad mix. there was a shooting on the BART greenway in EC a couple weeks ago -- no deaths, one bad injury, one minor injury, and the bandits escaped. it reportedly involved sneakers -- possibly like those craigslist sales gone bad, where the "seller" decides to get the money and not give over the goods. gah.

it is easy for kids to think that guns make them powerful; that just waving one means you win. also easy to pull the trigger in the heat of the moment (even accidentally), turning a small-time robbery attempt into a big-time assault or homicide. worked up kids do not have a lot of careful reasoning going on, as every parent (and every former teenager) should know.

so, i really want to find out where these guns are coming from. the pat answer is "criminals buy them on the street." (that may not be the real answer in any given case; kids know where things are. some of these guns are "borrowed" from a family member who considers his closet or bedside drawer to be a totally secret hiding place.)

but assuming the guns come from a sale on the street, where did the guns come from before that? some were stolen from legal owners (see above, re secret hiding places.) and others were bought for the purpose of re-selling on the street. if i decided to become a handgun middle-man, i'd go to one of those gun shows that does not require much beyond cash. even the internet sites are fairly safe for the street gun entrepreneur, because nobody is checking. and the seller can always claim their gun was stolen in a breakin or something -- there isn't any requirement to report such things.

i actually do think we could cut down on a lot of the gun violence by requiring background checks, requiring guns to be registered, and requiring owners to carry liability insurance. and, if guns used in crimes can be traced, that would make a whole lot of owners take more care in securing their guns.

like cars. if you lend your car to someone you know is unfit to drive, you are liable. if your car is stolen and then is involved in an accident, you are not liable -- although somebody's insurance company will try to get you to pay anyway. (true story.)

[oddjob]

Oddjob, the NRA has 4.5 million members. How many have you actually heard speak?

I stand corrected. I was thinking of its vocal leaders, and the ones who lobby Congress for an agenda way out of touch with the rest of us (sometimes including most gun owners).

[low-tech cyclist]

the NRA has 4.5 million members. How many have you actually heard speak?

Wayne LaPierre.

If someone is an NRA member, this is where their dues are going: to spread the deranged gun gospel according to LaPierre.

If gun owners feel LaPierre is crazy as a bedbug, then they should stop paying his salary.

I'm not sure people even know what they aretalking about when they speak of "gun owners." I have a rifle, caliber .25-06 that I have not fired in many years. I would not part with that thing at any price, even though I have no intention of ever firing it again. Why would I not? Because I built it. I rebarreled an Enfield .30-06 to a .25 caliver, and I hand carved the stock out of the most lovely blank of wavy dark Walnut I've ever seen, hand rubbed with 30 coats of Linseed oil.

I have several other guns and I may yet buy another piece or two if I find any I really like. They are finely crafted pieces of machinery and I admire the craftmanship and the way that form fits function.

We all have our hobbies, and I appreciate craftsmanship as much as the next guy. But I'm afraid an appreciation of the craftsmanship of killing machines doesn't make sense to me.

If I collected guillotines, people would think I was one sick puppy, and rightfully so. Fuck-all if I can understand why guns are any different.

[kathy a.]

so, this is at least a step forward. cops also want to know where those guns come from. i am less interested in the prosecution angle than the prevention angle -- but it does not seem out of line to me to call street sales of guns "trafficking." there will still be legal ways to sell the damned things.

[nancy]

Wayne LaPierre, well-paid paranoid shill. Ted Nugent, nut. Bookends. Keep talking fellas. Derangement syndrome is making its case with the general public. How the NRA is Helping to Pass Gun Control. Paul Waldman at 'The American Prospect'.

What kathy and lt-c said. Gun lobby money is what has been so intimidating/helpful to our politicians. Well, all those paid NRA memberships add up to many dollars too. What does keeping one's dues paid up now announce? No innocuous exercise is writing that annual check anymore.

[kathy a.]

good link, nancy!

But now that Wayne LaPierre has been appearing on television shows, the whole country has gotten to see just what a maniac he is, and how extreme the organization has become. And now that there are concrete proposals on the table, voters can see that the NRA will oppose even universal background checks, which every opinion poll taken in the last couple of months has shown are supported by an astonishing 90 percent of the public. When even the host of Fox News Sunday is calling your arguments "ridiculous" and "nonsense," you've got a problem.

this really is where we are now. NRA has shape-shifted (under the direction of LaPierre and his ilk) from a sportsmanship organization to complete batshit insanity. they no longer stand for safe gun ownership; they will use any argument they can muster for MORE gun ownership and NO restrictions, a full no-stop symphony of crazy stuff.

[big bad wolf]

well, they are closer to me, although i don't consider myself a citizen of texas. more a prisoner of circumstances. i may only get out by having my ashes scattered elsewhere, but this will never be home.

[nancy]

bbw, not to worry. I'm guessing that many of us live in *greater Texas*. When I look at newspaper comments at a place like the Seattle Times, e.g. of all liberal places, it's pretty darned clear> goddamned librul fools don't know nothin when it comes to gun rights or particular gun descriptions. Comments are from greater King County and slightly beyond into the mountain enclaves. RW 2nd amendment absolutism at work. They wish to spend lots of time discussing what liberals do not know about the details of specific guns, specs, capacities, uses, etc.

I don't care. Bullets kill. But some gun's bullets use add up more rapidly than others.

Why that's hard to accept beats me.

[low-tech cyclist]

NPR:

An internal coup at the NRA's annual meeting in 1977 in Cincinnati forced out old-school shooters and hunters who did not want the group deeply engaged in politics and ushered in new leadership that reshaped the NRA into the lobbying powerhouse it has become.

Don't have the link handy now, but a couple of weeks ago I read a more detailed piece on how the gun nuts took over the NRA at that meeting.

At any rate, the NRA as primarily a sportsmen's organization hasn't existed for over 1/3 of a century. This didn't happen recently enough that anyone paying their dues nowadays was taken by surprise.

[kathy a.]

here is an account of the coup by the violence policy center.

this is a news story from last summer, after the movie theater massacre, recounting the NRA's hard turn to the right in 1977.

and here is an interesting piece by jeffrey toobin, explaining that the current interpretation of the second amendment was invented and advanced by the NRA in recent years.

[nancy]

Test time. Two comments not posted after the captcha nod. :(

Maybe tomorrow a reconstruct. Best y'all.

[low-tech cyclist]

On another subject, the USPS is cutting Saturday delivery, and it's pretty much the fault of the Republicans in Congress: the USPS has a plan to fix their problems, but the GOP won't give it the time of day.

The question is, will the Dems have the sense God gave a mollusk to publicly stick the GOP with the blame for this one? This is particularly important, because the people who depend most on snail mail are the GOP's base constituency: older people, rural people. The Dems have to prepare the ground so that if Saturday service comes to an end, the oldsters know who to blame.

[kathy a.]

we'll live through the end of saturday mail delivery, but it is one more blow to an essential service that treats everybody equally.

i love USPS! should the operation be privatized, the vendor(s) will charge whatever they want -- and that means people in distant/rural areas will pay more (or those who wish to mail to them will), and get less service. USPS is affordable, reliable, and it reaches everywhere. i love their flat-rate packages and boxes! i love getting mail. even the bills -- nice to have them printed out for my records.

a commenter on my local online paper said this: "Much of the problem is due to a law that Congress passed in 2006 requiring the postal service to pre-fund 75 years of health insurance benefits over a period of 10 years. No other agency is required to do this. A large proportion of postal service revenues have been diverted by this requirement. We'd be getting better service at a lower cost without this ill-conceived mandate."

[kathy a.]

guess i did not explain: i suspect this is a step toward privatization. USPS is reasonably self-supporting; it gets little if any money from congress. but as a government entity, it is not for-profit and it is highly regulated.

for me to send a 1.6 oz. envelope to the next county via fed-x (without a special bulk deal) ranges from $7.45 (end of next business day) to $62.10 (for priority next-day). this same envelope via USPS costs 2 stamps [actually a bit less with a postage machine], and usually will be delivered in 1 day. to send the same envelope cross-country, the rates are $9.08-$99.06; and the cheap one will take 5 business days. fed-x only calculates in tenths of a pound; these would be the rates for sending a birthday card or paying a bill, using your own envelope; under one oz. is just one stamp with USPS.

anyway -- private for-profit companies doing the same service are not affordable. and i worry about dismantling a lifeline that basically everybody relies upon.

[kathy a.]

ltc -- the nation calls out the end of saturday USPS service as austerity on steroids. sir charles -- this article happens to include some cogent comments from the postal carrier union.

[kathy a.]

back to the fucking guns. if you have 13.5 minutes, go see maddow on gun stuff since sandy hook. just a timeline; all factual.

[Sir Charles]

I have been living in airports and fighting wifi problems.

Sitting in Savannah right now on my way to Charlotte and on to NYC. Hopefully the weather will not thwart me.

And hopefully can post in Charlotte. I kn

[low-tech cyclist]

SC - if winter storm Nemo traps you in NYC, well, there are worse places in the world to be trapped.

(In the Northeast, Nemo finds YOU!)

[Sir Charles]

l-t c,

That is so true. I would only be bummed out for Stanley, who is being boarded this evening. Otherwise, NYC is about as good a place to be snowed is as any I can think of.

[oddjob]

Can I just say that I find it beyond stupid to name winter storms?

They're weekly occurences for Chrissakes!

[paula]

OJ---this was on Twitter this morning:
pourmecoffee ‏@pourmecoffee
If you let Weather Channel name storms, just know this will lead to Dorito's ® Cool Ranch Blizzard of 2014 next year.

No snow here yet. How about you, OJ? Did they call it off?

[Prup (aka Jim Benton)]

To repeat from the other thread, oddjob, just say hello, we're worried about you.

[kathy a.]

more on guns: a snapshot of gun violence over one weekend, which runs the entire gamut. but the 91 deaths are only what the reporters could find; suicides are not often reported, some gun deaths are not reported, and there are no comprehensive reliable statistics.

[oddjob]

I'm not sure how much snow Lynn got as a matter of record. I think it was probably somewhere around 2' where I live. The sidewalk in front of my townhouse is still blocked with 3'-5' drifts.

Today it's going to rain on that....

:(

[oddjob]

If you let Weather Channel name storms, just know this will lead to Dorito's ® Cool Ranch Blizzard of 2014 next year.

BRAVO! :)