DON'T SHOOT THE MESSENGER
The Average Man is no fan of the NRA. I try not to think about them too much, because it just makes me so angry. But that horrible Virginia Tech shooting last week has reignited the debate, and I can't help but jump into the middle of it. I will do so by pondering the question many are asking recently: is the NRA responsible for the deaths of those students? Let's come back to that.
I have to be honest and say that I am very much puzzled as to how the NRA became so powerful. How did this extreme fringe organization gain so much clout that politicians -- who have no particular interest in guns -- have to run around in Elmer Fudd costumes and shoot little woodland creatures to get elected (Mitt Romney and John Kerry come to mind)? The NRA, in fact, wields so much power that they've managed to pretty much shut down the whole gun debate all together. I love how Washington has no problem aggressively attacking movies, television, music, and video games; but god forbid they talk about guns. On a related note, I think I saw every Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, Jean Claude Van Damme, and Steven Segal movie when I was a kid; none of them made me want to pickup bad acting skills and go break somebody's face.
As tends to be the case with me, I think I have a different angle than most on many political issues, and the NRA is no exception. In my opinion, it's a mistake to argue with them on a case-by-case basis (like the Virgina Tech incident for example). This is pointless as they are just too good at stifling any criticism. I mean, didn't Bush even say something to the effect of he felt bad about the shootings but that the Second Amendment was still important or some such nonsense? We just won't get anywhere with this approach. Instead, we should change the debate and ask a different question ... Why are guns a value to us as a nation? No matter how you feel about abortion or the environment, for example, I think we can agree that they are "value" arguments. We have strong feelings about these things because they deal with the well being of people and the planet. So, I guess I'm wondering why guns need protection like a person or a polar bear might.
If you are a sane, responsible person, and you want a gun; fine, I have no problem with that. In fact, I'll go out on a limb and say that very few people have a problem with that. So, isn't that good enough? You want a gun, you can have one ... period .. end of story ... happy now? But no, that is never enough for the NRA. They have stop EVERYTHING that even hints at anti-gun.
If you are a pro-gun advocate who wants to hunt or protect your family or whatever ...
why do you care that you can't have a semi-automatic weapon?
why do you care that you have to wait 3 days to get a gun?
why do you care that they have to run a background check on you?
why do you care if the bullets can be traced back to the gun owner?
why do you care if they won't give a gun to felons or the mentally ill?
These are all things meant to make you and me safer. For god's sake, what is wrong with that!? Why is it of value to you to fight this every ... single ... time?!
Okay, back to Virginia Tech. Do I think the NRA is responsible? Damn right I do. "But he got the gun legally," you might say. Yes, he legally obtained a semi-automatic weapon with a lame instant background check, because the NRA has made it virtually impossible to prevent bad people from legally getting guns (oh, and he bought the clips on eBay). The NRA is responsible for the culture that you, me, and Cho Seung-Hui live in.
I'm a member of Stop The NRA. Maybe you should be, too.
Labels: guns, nra, virginia tech
posted by Trekking Left @ 7:05 PM
27 comments
27 Comments:
Trekking Left--
Be careful--it might be safer challenging Wendy McCaw to a fight than the NRA (they are armed, after all, and and all she has is a gold-digger boyfriend who is either a Baron or a Nipper).
The amazing thing about the background checks is part of it is self-reportage--if you say you've never been locked up for mental health reasons, that's good enough. But somehow in this country we can instantly adjust the no-fly list so that an esteemed professor from Princeton who gave a speech critical of Bush can be kept off an airplane.
Thanks, BushCo. for making the U.S. so much safer.
Can't agree with you on this one. The anti-gun nuts just take, take, take. Give them an inch and they'll take a mile. You don't have to worry though, I won't advocate anyone else's rights to anything with my guns. I will watch them rounded up by the PTB and I won't even care.
I have long said that I would stand first in line to give up my right to own a gun... but I have to disagree with you on one point:
No matter how you feel about abortion or the environment, for example, I think we can agree that they are "value" arguments.
NO! the arguments on abortion are WAY more than "value" arguments. We're talking WOMEN'S RIGHTS and that's got nothing to do with "values" it is all about the ERA! Kennedy's opinion was one that women are too feeble minded to be able to make such choices.
George - I think I'd rather confront the NRA. At least I could see my attacker coming :)
Mort - I had a feeling you might disagree with me here :) ... I would just say that your "give them an inch" statement is the classic slippery slope argument always put forth by the NRA. Again, I just don't think putting safety controls on guns and gun ownership is a step towards saying you can't ever have a gun. To me, it's like saying that putting safety controls on automobiles means that someday you can't have a car.
Amy - I totally agree with your position. I'm just saying that I don't think the gun debate is worthy of the same passion Americans have for other more important issues like abortion, the environment, and the ERA.
Unfortunately, slippery slopes are a part of the political terrain.
A little ban is the first step to a complete ban. The NRA fights bans on assault rifles for the same reason abortion-rights groups resist the ban on "partial birth abortions"--because it opens the doors of judicial interpretation and legislation.
Yeah, the NRA is guilty. Let's also indict the automobile companies for building and selling dangerous vehicles that kill people -- especially the fast ones that go too fast and -- oh my gosh -- they burn too much fuel, which will cause us surely to perish
Actually, cars are actually a great analogy, Anonymous -- one needs to pass a test and obtain a license and insurance to legally drive one. And if you mess up and cause others harm (i.e. drive drunk), the right is taken away from you for a period of time. Driving is treated as a privilege, not a right, yet the rules don't stop anyone who wants to own a car and drive it responsibly from doing so. We should treat guns the same way.
There is a "real" reason for the 2nd Amendment. If the citizens of this country could be disarmed (which, cannot happen because there are an estimated 2 million + guns in the US), the disarming of the citizenry provides the opportunity for someone to take over the country by force -- as Hitler (an elected official) did in the 1930's. An unfortunate byproduct of having an armed citizenry is that occasionally someone kills another -- just like a licensed driver (who has taken the tests and has the right to drive) sometimes get drunk, does something foolish or recklessly or in angst, and also kills someone.
I am old enough that I am not worried about the future. Neither am I an NRA nut, nor do I own an assault rifle or Glock. I only know that gun registration has led to gun confiscation in Nazi Germany and Soviet Georgia. Cars kill many times more people than guns, even though a drivers license is required. Like I say, this country is going down the crapper in any event, and the erosion of the second amendment will without question lead to the erosion of the rest. I don't really care though, I'm 44, with no kids, and I plan to watch the deterioration of society on cable television. Like my dad told me 40 years ago: "When guns are outlawed only outlaws will have guns."
Certainly that was the reason for the second amendment at the time, but do you really think it's relevant today? The idea that having guns is going to protect us from someone taking us over is preposterous. It's a fake argument that's really just being used to divide people (rural and urban) for political purposes.
And really, for all intents and purposes, America was "conquered" during the last century, not by force, but by big businesses that buy & sell our elected officials, loot our treasury, write our laws to suit their needs, and provide entertainment to keep us distracted from what they're up to.
Rent "The Corporation" -- it'll open your eyes big time.
One of the many lessons from Hurricane Katrina is we CANNOT expect the police or National Guard or even the Red Cross to take care of us. The official response was a lethal blend of police state, incompetence, disorganization, and abandonment. No electricity, no running water, no phones, no open stores for MONTHS (I did relief work in April, and this was still true in many areas). Welcome to life without infrastructure. It all falls apart in a hurry.
So, is the 2nd amendment is still valid?
Absolutely.
The idea that having guns is going to protect us from someone taking us over is preposterous.
I know you are a liberal, but I have several liberal internet friends. I haven't used a gun in years. I hunted years ago. I sleep better at night with my shotgun in the closet because I can defend myself against burglars and other assorted riff raff.
I am not going to start a heated debate over this, because I really don't care what happens to the people of this country. They are for the most part worthless, and deserve their fate. Besides, by the time they get around to taking my shotgun things will be really ugly, and hopefully I'll be long since gone.
The US public arsenal, according to the Small Arms Survey, an independent research group based in Switzerland, "is comparable or even greater than the total firearms of all the armed forces in the entire world."
Iraq Body Count estimates that between 62,000 and 68,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed since the invasion of 2003. In that same time period, according to the Centers for Disease Control, at least 116,000 have died from gunfire in the U.S.
As long as we're quoting the CDC....
2001 was the first year I could find all the data for, and here it is:
There were about 30K firearms deaths in the US, 57% of which were suicide, 40% murder, and the rest, accidents.
Should we outlaw something that causes this much death, in this case, guns?
Keep the same standards and consider this:
There were 75K deaths related to excessive alcohol consumption in the same time period. Are you willing to give up alcohol which caused more than TWICE as many deaths?
You have to be 21 and show ID to buy alcohol, you know! Well, theoretically at least. But in many states you can go to a gun show and buy a gun with no checks whatsoever.
Sensible rules are nowhere near the same thing as giving them up.
And just think of all the people who have died of old age--should we give up growing old?
These comparisons make no sense, folks. The point of a car is to get from place to palce. The point of alcohol is to have a good dinner with a bit of a buzz. The point of a gun is BOOM.
The point of a gun is BOOM? C'mon...
We can argue about what place guns have in our society, but I imagine that most people feel there is some place for guns.
Hunting, for example. Maybe you don't find a lot of hunters in Santa Barbara, but in other areas hunting is common. I personally find hunting for food much less offensive than factory farming on environmental and ethical terms, but I digress...
Protection of person and property is another. There's a lot of room for debate with this one: does that mean keeping a shotgun in case coyotes come after your sheep, or does that mean keeping a glock in the glovebox? Or does it mean only law enforcement has guns? Folks could debate this forever, but there is a place on that spectrum for guns as protection.
The right of citizens to bear arms is part of the right to protection. Trekking mentioned the Patriot Act in an earlier post--a good reminder that the boundry between goverment and individual rights is never solid.
The "person" trying to take over your home or force you out may be the police. This is not conspiracy theory; this happened in New Orleans, where people were forced from their homes at gunpoint. Some people refused to evacuate becasue they were not allowed to bring their pets along. In many cases, police shot these people's dogs before forcing them out. It's hard to imagine this happening here, but it could.
Ideally, if one has a gun for protection, one never has to shoot it. The advantage is a level playing field with anyone else that has a gun: for example, the police. It makes it damn hard for the police/government to round up an armed citizenry. That's the point of the second amendment--the right to bear the tools of resistance.
What is really frightening is the new Active Denial System (or "pain ray") that inflicts excruciating pain "without causing [physical] injury." Wow. Crowd control made simple--people can be immobilized with impunity. Public demonstrations just got a lot more complicated...
http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/03/inside_the_navy.html
Gosh... this is a lot of rant before 9 a.m.!
This article challenges your blithe assertion that we can consume violence as a pleasurable commodity without responsibility for actual violence.
Wow, a lot of great comments on this one. I'm very tempted to give my take on the 2nd Amendment(I do have one, of course), but I want to go back to my original premise ... Why are guns so important to us as a society that they need this kind of protection?
I'm not a fan of guns, but I'm also not advocating that we ban them. What upsets me is that we're not allowed to put limits on them. We are a country of limits. Nothing is a free-for-all. As was pointed out, we need ID's to buy alcohol and have to take tests to drive cars. We accept these things as necessary to keep us as safe as possible.
What makes no sense to me is why this same standard is not applied to guns, which no matter how you spin it, are designed to inflict damage. If anything needs limits, it's guns. Finger printing bullets, safety locks, waiting periods ... these are all sensible.
I just don't get why the NRA fights these things to the bitter end and why we let them.
There already are limits on guns, so it's not accurate to say we're not allowing to have any limits....
Of course the NRA takes the EXTREME pro-gun position--that's kinda their job. They're fighting against the slippery slope.
Some of the real problems that have come up in terms of the VaTech shooting are not gun control issues; they're patient privacy issues, mental health care issues, emergency response issues, and other things as well.... Should gun shop owners have access to our medical records? Should doctors report to law enforcement? etc. Those are the real question, in my opinion, and they're outside the realm of the NRA.
Though I think we have a different viewpoint on the subject in general, I agree with most of what you say here Trekkie.
There SHOULD be some concern with who gets to buy guns. The problem comes up that some go berserk in trying to outlaw them all, and then you get the knee-jerk on the other side that says don't outlaw anything and you end up with the two vocal extremes. Meet HCI and NRA!
Being a political issue, things like ID checks and tests seem to get corrupted. In California, you do have to take a test... a test which has (or at least HAD) more political related questions than firearm safety questions. Having a REAL test of a person's competence, and ability to deal with a potentially dangerous tool safely would be WONDERFUL. But here at least, it got turned into a political tool.
As far as ID checks, you really DO have to show ID any time you buy from a licensed gun dealer. In some places you might be able to buy a gun from a PRIVATE PARTY without the paperwork, but how often have you been to a friends house for a beer and not had your ID checked? Legislating transactions between private parties is practically impossible.
As concerns the NRA, when the Brady Bill was being debated, the bill required a background check to be done that required 5 days... but if the check wasn't completed in those 5 days... you got your gun anyway!
At the same time, the NRA DID endorse some sort of competing legislation which would have used an INSTANT record check...though I'm too lazy to track down the details at the moment.
And as far as Cho/Virginia is concerned, in 2005 a judge apparently DID rule that Cho "presents an imminent danger to himself as a result of mental illness." So according to the laws in place, he should NOT have been allowed to purchase guns- it was against the law.
We do already have most of the laws we need, we just need to be sure they get followed.
Fingerprinting bullets of new guns has been tried, was hideously expensive and didn't result in any crimes being solved, much less prevented. As a forensic tool, it's excellent, as a preventive tool, law enforcement agencies have abandoned it.
Safety locks- people should ABSOLUTELY store their guns safely, and away from children.
Waiting periods- I see arguments for and against this one.
One thing I've learned from this debate is not to piss-off Queen Whackamole as it could lead to whackatrekkie ... just kidding :)
Actually, I think you've kind of made my point when you say that the NRA has the extreme pro-gun position. If they have an "extreme" position, why does their view carry so much weight with politicians? It's certainly not the view shared by the majority of Americans.
Interestingly enough, a great New York Times editorial came out today about this very issue. You can read it here ==> http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/26/opinion/26thu4.html?th&emc=th
If you don't want to read the entire thing, however, here are a couple of quotes I liked ...
"The National Rifle Association and the gun lobby have silenced every legislature in this country. Instead of stricter laws, tighter controls and better background checks, the gun lobby proposes more guns. And what the gun lobby proposes, lawmakers deliver."
And this ...
"Those gun advocates who believe that the Second Amendment confers the right to carry a gun in public are quick to point out that they are law-abiding, decent citizens trying to protect themselves and their families in a world gone mad. But, of course, the guns can’t tell the difference. Arming more people would be a recipe for disaster."
And finally ...
"True safety lies in the civility of society, in laws that publicly protect all of our rights and in having law-enforcement officers who are trained in the use of deadly force, then authorized to apply it in rationally defined situations. It is the gun lobby’s incessant efforts to weaken the gun laws that makes a tragedy like the one at Virginia Tech possible."
I guess I should have just had the New York Times write my blog entry.
Crow - Well argued. One point I would like to make, however, is that you yourself state fingerprinting is an "excellent" forensic tool. I agree ... and so do people trying to solve crimes. Why then does the NRA adamantly oppose this?
The NRA in no way opposes the use of ballistic fingerprinting in forensic police work. The thing the NRA is against is this: The anti-gun lobby has tried, and in two states, succeeded, to mandate ballistic fingerprinting of every gun before it was sold. As of 2005, Maryland had spent $2.6 million and New York was spending $4 million annually on ballistic fingerprinting, and neither program has yet managed to solve a single crime. But the program did drain millions away from other law enforcement departments very effectively.
Ballistic fingerprinting is a great way to help solve crimes, but as a deterrent, it mostly just drains law enforcement funding.
In that first NY Times quote, the idea that the NRA has "silenced every legislature in this country," is simply hogwash! The laws in this state and many others have been piling on so fast that even the gun stores have a very difficult time keeping track of what is still legal and what isn't. National laws have swung back and forth recently. It's a perfect example of the extremes playing tug-o-war with our representatives and our laws.
About that last quote, I completely agree with the first line: "True safety lies in the civility of society, in laws that publicly protect all of our rights and in having law-enforcement officers who are trained in the use of deadly force, then authorized to apply it in rationally defined situations." No problem with this at all the way it stands. When I first read it, my mind jumped to the next step which is that only law-enforcement officers would have firearms, but it doesn't actually say that, so my mistake.
The second line however... is HOGWASH!
Here it is: "It is the gun lobby’s incessant efforts to weaken the gun laws that makes a tragedy like the one at Virginia Tech possible."
Compare it with this, from the executive vice president of the NRA: ' “Our position on this is crystal clear: If you are adjudicated by a court to be mentally defective, suicidal, a danger to yourself or to others, you should be prohibited from buying a firearm,” said LaPierre, who oversees the powerful gun lobby’s political operations. “The federal law is pretty clear on this. He [Cho] should have been in the [FBI] data base.”'
The NRA probably does take some stances that are more extreme than is usual for California, but they haven't fought this one.
And in response to George, I, for one, am doing my very best trying to avoid growing old! (But with only limited success.)
Awww... don't worry, Trekkie. I'm here to protect you. ;-)
Crow - You've obviously done your homework, so I won't attempt to debate your facts. I guess the problem I have, though, is that you make the NRA out to be so altruistic.
The NRA doesn't care about the pains of law enforcement. If they did, they wouldn't fight the ban on automatic weapons (something law enforcement really wants). And in regards to the fingerprinting, they fought the IDEA of fingerprinting long before it proved to be too expensive. I know this, because I saw them debate the issue on the teevee.
I think you have to look at the NRA's motives here. Their goal is to get more guns to more people, period. They give lip service to existing gun laws, but make no mistake, they aggressively fight any new ones. And their defense is always the same ... just enforce the laws that are already on the books. Well, those laws that are already on the books are there because the NRA lost those battles. If the NRA really cared about the feelings of the public, they wouldn't hold rallies at places that just had a gun tragedy (see Bowling for Columbine if you want to know what I'm talking about).
Yes, there are extreme positions on both sides, but consider that their extreme position is motivated by selling a lot of guns to a lot of people. My "extreme" postion is motivated by protecting the public.
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