CVille Dem's picture

    National Rifle Association Meeting -- We're Under Attack -- Our Response -- Talking Points

    By CVille Dem on Sun, 01/09/2011 - 8:47pm |

    OK, we all know that the NRA is crafting a response to this latest example of GUNS RUN AMOK in the USA.  We have dismissed the horrific murders in Mexico of untold thousands, because they are in Mexico, even though the guns (and more) were supplied by US.  Whew!  Dodged THAT bullet -  hahahahahahahaha!

    But this Giffords thing -- we need a real strategy.  OK, this dude bought the gun legally.  Been there, done that.  VA Tech?  We skated, as usual.  But people are really pissed about this one.  Who has suggestions?  Yes?

    If everyone in the Safeway had a gun like the NRA would like, this guy could have been taken out by somebody in the parking lot at the Safeway!

    That is what the NRA's philosophy is:  If everyone in the Safeway Parking Lot had been packing, this would have been LESS tragic!  Right!  How many people would be dead or wounded if there had been a wild-west shoot-out at the Safeway?

    I have no doubt that the NRA is meeting at this very moment to figure out how to fight the obvious.  How do they do it?  Through the rhetoric of fear.  Expect it to come very soon.

    It is time to acknowledge that guns are not the answer; they are the problem, but the NRA, with its very deep pockets, will be there for lemmings.

    Comments

    Firearms are an answer in a wild or dangerous area, or for protection, hunting, or recreation. Many people handle their weapons very responsibly, but others see the gun as the hammer for every nail. I see the eventual result of urging everyone to carry weapons to be an armed camp. I don't object to responsible people owning guns, but I don't want to live in an armed camp. The problem is how to decide who is responsible.

    I know some people who think everyone should be required to own a gun, because More Guns = Less Crime. I tend to think some of that talk is stirred up by corporate interests. My own view is that beyond a certain point, more guns invariably will lead to more regrettable shooting.


    by Donal on Sun, 01/09/2011 - 9:14pm

    Donal:

    I personally know you to be a gentle man -- one who cares about humane issues: one who, for example, favors cycling instead of driving, one who supports the growth and sale of organic foods and -- last but certainly not least -- one who offers a hand, a potentially beneficial hand, to those he identifies as being in some sort of trouble.

    Therefore, I am confused by what I perceive as a disconnect between that Donal and the Donal who can say: 

    "Firearms are an answer in a wild or dangerous area, or for protection, hunting, or recreation ....  I don't object to responsible people owning guns, but ..."

    Donal: imo, your "but" is dangerous. It's the thin edge of the wedge, imo,  that results in mayhem, step by rationalized step.

    I learned this caution from my father who, like you, was also a gentle man. Who, like you, thought guns had a place. But. Despite the fact that he was a serial national skeet champion, he never confused or conflated the "recreational" use of guns -- particularly by an individual -- with the more sobering presumption of right by an individual to own a gun for the purposes of "protection" or even "hunting".

     Rather, he drew a clear line that I am sure was important, then, and I believe to be even more important, now: as a skeet champion who was also a WWII marksman instructor, he returned to civilian life and, thereafter : a) refused to have a gun in the house; b) refused to teach his children to shoot; and, c) refused to kill a living creature ever again even within the context of "hunting." 

    This determination proved to be problematic for him, professionally. His corporate employers --eager to gain some sort of macho marketing acclaim via his marksman prowess -- eagerly gave him memberships in various shooting clubs where it was his mandate to entertain clients and dazzle them with his skill.  

    My father temporized, caught between a rock and a hard corporate place. So he settled for refusing to shoot himself, although he did coach his clients in what he knew. (Regularly returning home with the carcasses of birds shot by his city slicker clients, much to the horror of my mother. But that's another story)

    The point I am trying to make is that, in his world -- a world in which wildlife was still abundant (before incursion of habitat) and long-term worldwide political peace seemed to be assured or at least in the air -- he could tell himself that the stand he took was enough.

    But that was before the assassinations of JFK and RFK and Martin Luther King. Before Columbine, VMI and the most recent shootings in Arizona.

    So my sincere question to you, Donal, is this: if YOU, and men like you, do not lay down your guns and publicly say that you are doing so to stop the mayhem -- if you do not say that, on balance, it is the better choice -- then what hope is there that less balanced, more lethal people will lay down their guns, when you have not?

    Please answer. 


    by wws on Mon, 01/10/2011 - 6:11pm

    I don't actually own a firearm. I have thought about getting one but there are several complications. First, this city requires a long, expensive and by no means certain permit process. Second, I have no expertise with shooting, and have no interest in driving to the countryside to find a shooting range. Third, both public transit and my employers object to the carrying of weapons. So even if I could get a gun here, I could only keep it at home for the unlikely event that someone breaks in while I am home.

    I can't even do that, though, because my wife had a bad experience with a gun in her first marriage. Her husband was a veteran and much handier with tools and machinery than I am. He was tinkering with a rifle in the house, and accidentally discharged it into the floor just after she walked past him. The bullet missed her and struck just below where her sister and brother-in-law were sitting. So she has banned guns in the house. I can be very absent-minded, so I'd probably be even more dangerous than he was.

    But I don't see any value in citizens symbolically disarming themselves. If I had a safe place to keep it, and a gun range handy, and time to practice, I'd probably buy a .22 revolver and learn to shoot. While most of us no longer live in the wilderness, we are not absolutely safe, and I don't object to responsible people owning firearms for defense or hunting. I do cringe when I see people plinking round after round as recreation, but then I also cringe at the fuel wasted in auto racing.

    While there are rural places where openly carrying guns makes sense, I do object to the idea that every community must legislate open carry laws. That seems to me to be asking that society return to being a wilderness, or an openly armed camp, which would be great for arms dealers but tragic for the rest of us.


    by Donal on Mon, 01/10/2011 - 7:13pm

    I'm surprised to learn you don't own a gun -- given the views you've expressed more than once -- but I'm really glad you don't.  Not only because every person who owns a gun represents a potential tragedy (of which you gave an example, yourself)  but more particularly because there is, imo, an inherent disconnect between that up-close-and-personal recitation of potential mayhem and saying that:

    1) you don't see any value in citizens disarming themselves (really? after the experience your wife had in real life?); and,

    2) you don't see anything wrong with "responsible people owning firearms for defense and hunting" (both circumstances in which innocent people can and do die) .... but you object (by cringing) to "people plinking round after round as recreation" ...likening that practice to "fuel wasted in auto racing."

    Er, ummm, Donal?  Are you saying, then, that:

    a) a profligate waste of bullets (on say, clay pigeons) is, actually, a "green" concern, consistent with your worry over wasted gasoline ..... and that that is, to you, a greater worry than real people being "wasted"? For, unless I am missing something, that is what you just implied and maybe said outright.  And,

    b) If you are really worried about personal security for yourself and your family, does your house have an armed alarm? Do you have a reinforced closet designated as a "safe" room in which you keep a cell phone programmed for 911?  Do you have, if all else fails, a tranquilizer dart gun? Or, as a last resort, a taser? Because all of these precautions, Donal -- as over the top as they may be seen -- are less potentially lethal than owning a gun for "protection." 

    Americans frequently talk about what principles are worth dying for. Much less frequently -- if at all -- do we talk about what principles are worth killing for. Maybe thatl's why we have become a nation of killers?


    by wws on Mon, 01/10/2011 - 8:05pm

    1) Yes, really. We have the right to bear arms, and I don't discard rights too easily.

    2) Innocent people can and do die without guns, too. Just on tonight's news some woman had two pistols at home and used them to repel a man with an AK-47 from in front of her home. Without those pistols, she'd probably be dead now.

    2a) I don't like that people get killed, period.

    2b) We rent in a fairly safe area. I do believe that an alarm is a prerequisite for home defense, if only to avoid panicked shooting.

    I'm sorry we disagree, but I think my position is fairly moderate. I consider people that think we can either eliminate all guns or that we should arm everyone to be unrealistic.


    by Donal on Mon, 01/10/2011 - 9:06pm

    I agree that it is unrealistic to think that we can eliminate all guns  -- at least in our lifetime, and perhaps for generations to come. But if we say and do nothing, if we shrug our shoulders and turn away from the issue, isn't the "realistic" outcome more carnage caused by more people having and depending on guns as a means of settling problems? 


    by wws on Tue, 01/11/2011 - 12:21pm

    I haven't been shrugging, I've been writing about my sense that pushing for open carry and more gun ownership is misguided.


    by Donal on Tue, 01/11/2011 - 12:24pm

    I wasn't suggesting that you, personally, have been or are shrugging, Donal; I was speaking of general avoidance of the issue by lots and lots of people. Opposing concealed carry permitting is certainly an immediate, practical cause on which great numbers of people will presumably agree. It's a start.


    by wws on Tue, 01/11/2011 - 12:57pm

    I don't claim to be particularly peaceful, as I can't always control my thoughts or my dreams, but as I said below, we own a rifle.  It's only been used to kill suffering animals, especially deer, who periodically get tangled in fences.  They often break limbs struggling to get out, or bleed profusely, or get struck by cars n the road, but not killed outright.  I used to have nightmares that I'd have to use my Swiss Army knife to cut their jugulars to hasten their deaths.

    Over the years, we've extricated many deer and a few Great-horned owls from wire-fence entangling, but the rifle can be a valuable tool when that's not possible.  Some animals hurt you when you try to release them.  Bears are a big concern, too, in years where the acorns and berries in the mountains are scarce, they come down to raid anything edible.  They are powerful; one took his paw and took the hasp and lock and several boards off a shed that held our recyclables.  Another tore right through the thick lid of a trash barrel we stored bird seed in.  Some enter houses at will; seriously.  You might not get to a gun, but then again, you might.  All in all, I'd rather not be a bear's meal.

    I would have to honestly say that although we have resident deer here that have names by now, if we were hungry enough, i can at least imagine that I could shoot one; my spouse, too.  The DOW has so mismanaged the herds, there are too many for the land to support, really, and few predators, save for the odd and magnificent mountain lion.

    Neither of us would shoot a person who came to steal from us, even the food we have stashed for hard times; I'd rather be given a chance to share with them.  (It's a Mormon canyon we live in, so food stores are common, and commonly known to townspeople.)

    I don't guess I think that the world will be safer if we give up our gun; it's stashed safely, and even though we respect it, but don't particularly care for it, we'll keep it.  Just in case.  I'll even promise not to shoot Tom deLay if he stops by.   ;o)


    by we are stardust on Mon, 01/10/2011 - 8:00pm

    Stardust -- I can't say I agree with you, without thinking about it more carefully, but I can say that the circumstance you cite of "mercy killing" injured animals does not fit the categories Donal and I have been discussing -- those of "protection, hunting and recreation." Putting an animal out of its agony is, I suppose, justifiable if the nearest vet/ranger is miles away and unlikely to arrive in time to be helpful to man or beast.

    So, imo, what you have cited, then, is more a tangent than a consideration of what is at issue to the general population -- whether any particular person is pro or con gun control. 


    by wws on Mon, 01/10/2011 - 8:21pm

    It's fine if you don't agree, wws, but I did also mention hunger-hunting.  So there's that.  The only reason I wrote this at all is because so many people equate 'guns' to 'handguns', and assume if you own a gun, you love it.  Believe me, many gun owners scare me, and those in my neighborhood who shoot at targets with semi-automatics after dark make me a little crazy.  But it turns out, it's legal here, even to the sheriff's dismay.

    I'll leave it at that, I guess, rather than talking about the sometimes desirability of hunting for food, and overpopulation of species due to the eradication of natural predators, etc., lest you might want to categorize me as a gun-lover.  ;o)


    by we are stardust on Mon, 01/10/2011 - 9:29pm

    One tea bagging leader already is calling the shooter a liberal lunatic.

    Sure that beckerhead and rush and the rest will follow suit as they have in the past.

    Curly rand is already saying that guns don't kill people...

    Same shite I have listened to for fifty years.

    This will never end.

    NOTHING IS REVEALED.


    by Richard Day on Sun, 01/09/2011 - 9:16pm

    AOL News has an article just out that says THE ONLY CHECK ON WHETHER THE WEAPON BUYER IS MENTALLY ILL IS A QUESTION THEY ANSWER ON THE FORM THE DAY THEY BUY IT!

    Dr. Park Dietz, a forensics psychiatrist, told AOL News today that gun control laws make it difficult to determine whether someone is mentally stable enough to purchase a gun.

    "He's old enough to buy it on his own because there was no way to determine this was a mentally ill person," Dietz said. "The only thing the existing law does about that is quite absurd. The ATF form asks if you have ever been adjudicated mentally ill," he said in reference to the federal Bureau of Acohol Tobacco and Firearms.

    Dietz noted that he once had law students visit 25 people on a ward for the criminally insane who had been adjudicated dangerously mentally ill, asking them whether they had been adjudicated dangerously mentally ill.

    "They all said no, while sitting on the ward," Dietz told AOL News.

    Chalk it up to American exceptionalism, as you bury the dead.


    by NCD on Mon, 01/10/2011 - 12:03am

    I was pretty sure that the kind of flagrant psychosis that Loughner seems to exhibit would have to manifest in some metabolites or other traceable in a simple blood test. Nope, says google.

    by jollyroger on Mon, 01/10/2011 - 1:21am

    It won't ever happen. Guns are partof the American culture that no one could or can remove. It may end up being the death of us all, but it's our cross to bear because those who demand to exercise their right will do so at the point of a gun if need be.

    Even if everyone at the Safeway were packing, the shootout would still have lead to innocent people being shot or killed. Just think. You hear gunshots so you pull out your weapon and move in the direction of the shooting. As you approach the area, someone sees you with a gun and suspects you are the bad guy and shoots you. Someone else with a gun see the person who shot you so they shoot him. And that person gets shot by the one who started it all. And it escalates from there.


    by Beetlejuice on Mon, 01/10/2011 - 12:58am

    You make an interesting point, Beetlejuice. Perhaps I will show up at the next NRA convention with an M-80 firecracker or two. By the time this exercise in "trickle down, right-to-carry gun control" is over (weeks, maybe? months?), we will probably have slimmed the NRA ranks by a few legions, eh? Sounds almost Darwinian. ;O)


    by SleepinJeezus on Mon, 01/10/2011 - 7:28am

    Okay, I just spit out my morning coffee.  Funny!


    by Ramona on Mon, 01/10/2011 - 7:33am

    "Didja' see the shooter?" he asks in passing, running while trying to slip the magazine into his assault rifle.

    "Yeah!" I say. "He's wearing camo!"

    That oughta' get the party started, eh?


    by SleepinJeezus on Mon, 01/10/2011 - 7:53am

    And again! STOP! :)


    by Ramona on Mon, 01/10/2011 - 8:14am

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=KyUQamT33vk


    by A Guy Called LULU on Mon, 01/10/2011 - 8:22am

    I heard a radio host point out that fewer people were killed at the OK corral. Not long until the NRA makes the link that all of the men there were armed.


    by The Decider on Mon, 01/10/2011 - 10:34am

    "Carolyn McCarthy readies gun control bill"

    http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0111/47338.html

    McCarthy’s spokesman confirmed the legislation will target the high-capacity ammunition clips the Arizona gunman allegedly used in the shooting, but neither he or the congresswoman offered any further details.

    “Again, we need to look at how this is going to work, to protect people, certainly citizens, and we have to look at what I can pass,” McCarthy said. “I don’t want to give the NRA – excuse the pun – the ammunition to come at me either.”  (bold mine)


    Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0111/47338.html#ixzz1AeBmrzAN


    by we are stardust on Mon, 01/10/2011 - 10:38am

    I hope someone has the good sense to give that woman plenty of security.  In these parlous times that's bravery beyond the call. . .


    by Ramona on Mon, 01/10/2011 - 10:52am

    In these parlous times

    Except I imagine she doesn't find the times any more perilous now than in 1993 when her husband was killed (along with 5 others) and son injured (along with 18 others) by crazy Colin Ferguson on the Long Island Railroad commuter train.

    I remember the circa 1993 zeitgeist rather well. Rather than defend the obviously mentally ill Ferguson as simply mentally ill, leftist William Kunstler politicized it by cooking up the defense of "black rage" driving him mentally ill (Ferguson ended up firing him and other lawyers and defending himself, quite incredibly,) and that did not sit well with lots of NYC residents.  Guiliani won his race for mayor as the tough on crime and tough on guns former Dem against "aw c'mon, we can all get along" Dinkins, and mho, against leftists like Bill Kunstler, because previously they had elected Dinkins over Guiliani. (It is interesting to be reminded by the last wikipedia link that in NYC at the time, besides the high crime rate, we had a higher unemployment rate in NYC then than the U.S. does now.) Bill Clinton won the presidency partly running on "tough on crime, not like your average liberal" (and he did follow through with the promise of more police on the streets.) The Michael Douglas movie Falling Down came  out in 1993, where a conservative white guy gets "white rage" and shoots up a lot of people across L.A.  New Yorkers didn't really need that reminder, they already had experienced Bernhard Goetz in 1984 and many years of high crime rates.  Carolyn Maloney back then was the lifelong Republican Long Island widowed nurse who was becoming educated about and outraged by the NRA and by the access of the mentally ill to firearms. I’m known for education. I’m known for district work. But I am the gun lady,


    by artappraiser on Mon, 01/10/2011 - 2:20pm

    The NRA says you can't protect yourself unless you can put at least as much lead in the air as occured during the Battle of Gettysburg.


    by NCD on Mon, 01/10/2011 - 11:05am

    I admit I think new laws would be almost futile at this point.  What?  there are so many guns in the US that it translates into four for every citizen in the country or something obscene.  Ban a 31-round clip?  Hell, you can buy those mail-order gizmos to turn a semi-automatic into an automatic in three minutes. 

    Mental health restrictions for handgun purchases?  How many in need aren't diagnosed because of health care costs?  Jolly Roger mentioned undergoing DNA tests for mental illness (if there were one, and there isn't).  Do we want to go there?  How many returning vets will come home with their weapons, and also PTSD and TBI, brains a-scramble?

    And I really hate the idea that if projected 'civil unrest' becomes reality, it's gonna be those folks with all the guns, except rural Lefties like me, who have a rifle for dispatching dying wildlife in emergencies.


    by we are stardust on Mon, 01/10/2011 - 11:26am

    Y'all are batsh!t crazy. 

    Just like, you know, those weren't really crosshairs from a gun sight that Palin used on her targeting map. Noooo, they were actually surveyors symbols. Really. According to a Palin adviser.

    Rand Paul learned how to put 2 + 2 together while he was involved with Aqua Buddha. He got -400 as an answer, because, he's positive Arizona's liberal gun laws had nothing to do with anything. Certainly not this tragedy that recently took place in Arizona.

    Paul said that though Arizona is only one of three states that allows people to carry concealed weapons without a permit, "I don't think that that plays into this at all. Really, I think they're unrelated."

    What's unrelated is this entire group and any form of truth and/or reality.


    by seashell on Mon, 01/10/2011 - 11:29am

    There's several knotty problems that people often ignore in this discussion. Writing on Carolyn Maloney upthread reminded me of some of them.

    First, anyone that knows someone who likes guns but has a reasonable attitude toward them knows that many gun owners are not NRA absolutists and would probably accept a lot more restrictions on gun ownership. But they also see too many of the anti-gun crowd as absolutist and not understanding their interpretation of the right to bear arms in the U.S. So they are quiet about what they might normally find objectionable in NRA stances, because no one else is out there to hold the line. And no, saying people can own hunting rifles is not enough for these folks, i.e., a hunting rifle is not much use for that 24-hour shopkeeper in a high crime area.

    We are also in the situation that lots of people already have firearms in this country and they are not going to give them up easily. You can outlaw them, but they will not disappear and you will have a black market in them, to get them you have the search and seizure problem. I've seen lots of liberals object with outrage when NYC started its random search procedure on the subways. If you are for outlawing guns but against lots of searches, how would you go about collecting them from people who want to hide them in order to get the number of them down on the streets if you don't like police having much search power in public areas?

    Then there's the problem of the mentally ill having access. Seeing as we don't have testing for mental health to drive a two-ton automobile around the streets, I don't have much hopes that we will ever do it in an effective manner for guns. I doubt that any testing they would come up with would do much good at filtering out the mentally ill (even the vision test for a driver's license is a joke.) However (as I saw the Arizona sheriff raise in one of his press conferences) we do have a lot of de-institutionalized severely mentally ill walking around on the streets since laws about committment were changed to be more libertarian. Do we want our severely mentally ill to have the same rights as everyone else or not? Or should they be forced into treatment?

    The random search when in public places is the real knotty one, mho. Given that we have guns out there, like it or not. Seems to me most liberals are very ok with the Secret Service demanding screening of every single person attending a public event for VIP's like the president or judges in a courthouse. But they don't like it at all when that principle is applied to protecting your average subway or train rider or visitor to a government building. To me, that means Rep. Carolyn Maloney's husband doesnt' deserve the same protection as Carolyn Maloney, because he's not a VIP, so the rest of you can have your freedom against search in public places.

    That one, that's not just about guns. The civil liberties issue really struck me way back in the early days after the Iraq invasion, when I was seeing blogosphere arguments against searching woman in Iraq for weapons or bombs before they were allowed to get in food lines, because of cultural sensitivties. Heck, I think if you are in a war zone everyone in public should be made to subject to search or stay inside or wear a bathing suit, fuck the cultural sensitivities and privacy rights when innocent people are being blown to bits waiting in line for cooking oil.

    To carry that to guns and gun laws in the U.S., you have to ask yourself, if you support restrictions, are you ready to do what it takes to be "at war" with the people that already own them? They are already out there, and they won't just decompose in a few years time, and all types will continue to be manufactured and sold in a globalized world.


    by artappraiser on Mon, 01/10/2011 - 2:14pm

    Those are all good points, AA, but don't you have anything better to do than sit around trying to be reasonable?


    by A Guy Called LULU on Mon, 01/10/2011 - 2:21pm

    Interesting thoughts here, aa.  My idea of "restrictions" goes not much farther than licensing.  Every vehicle on the road has to display a valid license that every cop on the road can scan and, within seconds, know whether or not the it's legit.

    It would be hard to make every gun carrier wear his or her license in a visible place on his/her person, but just as I have to carry a driver's license and show it when asked, so should a gun owner understand the necessity for that kind of identifier.  The NRA fights such an obvious fix and the reasons they fight it are not obvious to me.

    We live in a society full of restrictions.  We all have to drive on the right side of the road.  We can't drive naked or drunk or high, or get on an airplane that way, either.   We have to cross at the light and we have to pay for things with checks that don't bounce and we can't go around bopping people we don't like.

    I know plenty of people who own guns and if I took a poll I'm guessing some of them would hate the idea of more restrictions and some of them would say fine and dandy, and they all would think their reasoning was sound.

    I frankly don't know anybody who actually is proposing an outright ban on guns, but, as with anything that affects the public, certain reasonable restrictions have to apply.

    I've always wondered why guns, as dangerous as they are, are the one thing that so many people want to exempt.


    by Ramona on Mon, 01/10/2011 - 2:57pm

    I've always wondered why guns, as dangerous as they are, are the one thing that so many people want to exempt.

    Because far more propose outlawing all ownerhsip of all fireams than propose outlawing all driving of automobiles.

    A side thought: the whole macho thing that goes along with fireams which many of them enjoy, including the responsible ones, ironically works against them there. I do happen to think they should fear wimmins being in charge of the world, for despite the Sarah Palin outliers, I believe most feminine-type minds don't get the extreme appeal. Smile

    Back to topic. I think it's the same with as with many lobbying causes. If there was somone with the power and money to grow a lobbying group as powerful as the NRA that still promoted the right to own but was less crazy than them about regulation, I think many more would support it.

    Look at someone like Guiliani, many gun loving types don't seem to hate him for being pro-regulation, rather they like his tough law and order talk. There is a disconnect with the right wing crazies within the NRA, the ones  where when you bring up law and order they have to come up wih "if you outlaw guns, only criminals will have them." like their local police would welcome seeing every hot head in town running around with guns, r-r-r-ight. Hellooo, law and order does not mean totally unregulated mass ownership  and carry of all firearms, it means the sheriff making the cowboys hang their guns up at his office before they head over to the saloon. The moderates fear the slippery slope should anti-all-guns crazies get their way and stand with the NRA because there isn't a equally strong voice to support their view.

    Like with a lot of things we're talking about these days, stopping the hate rhetoric (gun owners hating peaceniks and peaceniks hating gun owners) might do a lot of good. After all, many of us probably know examples of the two different types (gun-lovers and gun haters) who have managed to stay married to each other.


    by artappraiser on Mon, 01/10/2011 - 8:36pm

    Don't get mad at 'em for having a talking points response. You wouldn't like their preferred solution.


    by The Decider on Mon, 01/10/2011 - 2:31pm

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