Monday, December 17, 2012

What's wrong with us?

This is what I'm going to say about this and this is all I'm going to say. We have a lot of firearms in the USA. We always have had. For a few, hunting for food or furs or hides and protection from wild animals makes them necessary. For many, protecting the hen house, the livestock, the crops, might require a firearm.  For some a firearm is something you shoot at paper targets or clay pigeons with at the country club. For others, it puts meat on the table and for some, they can be relics of history prized for craftsmanship or beauty or historical value. For many, living in a violent and dangerous area, people who have to transport valuables, people who are a target for criminals for many reasons;  having a gun is peace of mind.  For such people, being associated with psychotics and terrorists and hit-men and bandits and deranged murderers is offensive and worthy of scornful denunciation. And don't we hear a lot of it?

We have a lot of people in this country who cannot conceive that any of the above will own one for any justifiable reason or that firearms exist for any other reason but to kill someone, and so these horrifying and otherwise useless pieces of metal must be made to disappear and right now and at all cost. If you don't agree with that, words will be placed in your mouth that prove how deranged you are so don't even try to explain. Many of those people, and  they are in the minority, refuse to discuss what needs to be done to protect us all from crime and the grotesque results of a madman with a gun or a bomb unless and only unless there's a prior agreement to reduce or eliminate or severely curtail the right to own one. For them it's guns and guns alone that explain the needless death of innocents and the notion that the murderer is more guilty than his weapon is offensive and well worthy of scorn and mockery. It's all about guns, guns, guns and guns alone and don't we hear a lot about it?

Welcome to American fear, American extremism and American intransigence. Neither side will talk to the other with the intent to understand, just as with so many things America concerns itself with. Neither side will brook any discussion of the complexity of human behavior and motivation, the cost of reducing risk, the efficacy of anything that has already been tried or proposed, the "other side" certainly being so far into a delusional state or simply so committed to brutality and mayhem that there is no middle ground between "we must trust the people" and "it's too dangerous ever to trust the people" and no point to looking for it.

What will never be discussed is the very reason discussion is futile. That reason is us.  What we don't want to talk about and what we cover up and distract from with epithets like Libtard or gun nut, with shibboleths like the NRA or the Brady Bunch or the Gungrabbers or the Gun Culture or even made up discussions is that it just may be that the enemy is not some piece of metal and explosive, some nefarious group of bogeymen, but something to do with who and what we Americans are and why we seem to be different, so angry, so afraid, so filled with self pity and lack of compassion.  It just may have something to do with the reason Switzerland with a widespread love of shooting and hunting; Switzerland where there are 46 guns per hundred residents has virtually no gun crime, nobody shooting up the schools and movie theaters -- and the US with about twice as many has vastly more than twice as much. What causes that difference is something we need to talk about.  Without doing that, all we will hear are rationalizations of prejudice and peremptory proclamations of belief  --  but that's up to you the people, because I'm too disgusted to give a damn any more. I'm not even going to read the comments.


10 comments:

  1. This:

    "Neither side will talk to the other with the intent to understand, just as with so many things America concerns itself with"

    is, when you're talking about guns, untrue.

    There is an entrenched special interest group, the NRA, which spends millions of dollars each year (and more in election years) to demonize the opposition. That opposition is any office seeker or currently serving office holder who has the temerity to SUGGEST that there should be some form of firearms regulation that is efficacious in terms of tracking purchases and keeping weapons out of the hands of people who are not competent or forbidden by statute from owning/using firearms. Such persons are deemed "enemies" of the NRA and spend money to try to oust that person or keep them from achieving office. These are single issue, special interest pogroms.

    I am quite concerned about the ubiquity of guns, especially considering that millions of them are "lost" and thus untraceable in the event that they are used in a crime.

    There ARE people who need to have a firearm but they are well south of the numbers that the NRA, John Lott and Gary Kleck throw around (with almost no way to find out how accurate either of the two, number of guns and number of gun owners is accurate.

    Your post is actually emblematic of the problem you allude to. You refuse to discuss anything with anyone who suggests that we need to regulate guns.

    You are aware, I'm sure, that mental health services in this country are unavailable to many who should have them. A lot of the problem is budget related. And a lot of the same people who are saying, "Guns aren't the problem, the problem is crazy people" are adamantly opposed to raising taxes to help those people who need it.

    Switzerland, according to everybody I know who's been there, is a great place to vacation (if you have plenty of cash) but not a place a lot of them would like to live.

    The Swiss, btw, are very conflicted on the issue of access to firearms. There has been an increase in shooting deaths in the last ten years that have both the people and the government of Switzerland making changes in that area. This is but one of several articles about what the situation was and is at present re: Swiss firearms ownership (http://www.ibtimes.com/us-gun-control-debate-what-can-we-learn-switzerland-732104).

    If firearms/firearms regulation is not part of the discussion there IS no discussion.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ok Show me where I said that I won't talk to anyone suggesting gun regulation. Are we proving my point here about arguing with categories rather than with people and their individual ideas? I'm in favor of gun regulation that isn't faith based, or fraudulent or with a record of failure. Seems to me, I'm hearing a great deal of misinformation with regard to existing or expired law. Seems to me people aren't listening and blaming that on the NRA or the "Gun Culture." That's what right wing loonies do when they can't argue from fact. I mean we wouldn't be in debt if we had no taxes at all and had borrowed more and you're a libtard if you don't agree. Is that what we're like now?

    Nobody wants to speculate that a metal detector might have worked better than some attempt to make a hundred million guns in private homes of decent citizens disappear -- and I get accused of refusing to talk about gun control. It's bullshit. It's dishonest.

    Nobody wants to hear about that "assault weapon ban" the media was crying for before anyone knew what had happened. If I would read the whole thing to you verbatim, why I'd just be a "gun nut" and beyond consideration. And you wonder why I'm pissed off and disappointed in people I respect?

    I do get annoyed trying to talk to people who keep shouting gun control and assault weapons without revealing what those terms mean and who seem little interested in any aspect of mental health or crime prevention or school safety other than to tell me hardly anyone needs a gun and so they should be taken away or that being of a minority who needs one should invalidate a right to have one. Screw freedom - all y'all are potential criminals!

    I'm tired of the absolute refusal to acknowledge the practicality or the possibility of making hundreds of millions of guns or gun parts vanish. I'm tired of the tired, discredited rhetoric I hear and the disinterest in looking at what hasn't worked and why it hasn't worked. I'm tired of labeling groups unfairly and tired of everything I'm reading here that I've long been accusing the right wing of indulging in.

    Someone from an Autism group today wrote that violence amongst Autistics is rare and I don't dispute that, but if I mention that explosive and suicidal mayhem is very rare amongst legal gun owners, it seems all I hear about is the NRA and various stereotypes designed mostly to insult and blame them and me for things I and they have nothing to do with.

    Yes, our unwillingness to spend money on mental health is a factor and I'm glad to finally hear someone mention that problems have multiple factors, even though it's so much easier to shout "gun control now!"

    I'm not against gun control. I'm against fake gun control, against pretending that we've banned something when we haven't or that we have no gun control when we do

    ReplyDelete
  3. It's not the NRA, it's America. It's a country that grew up with guns. Boy Scout magazines from my youth featured copious advertising for small caliber rifles and BB guns and articles about the benefits of citizen marksmanship through recreational shooting. Are you too young to remember when every boy should have a rifle? I did, I still have it and a BB gun too. I still can't bring myself to shoot the damned armadillos who tear up my garden every night and I'm not likely to shoot you either.


    Yes, I loathe the NRA and their paranoid fantasy, but they're not the cause or America's desire to own guns. They are the cause of hysteria that I can't chastise them for any more, because my own side is doing the same damned thing.

    I'm not at all opposed to paying for mental health care. I'm not at all opposed to requiring mental health care providers to report patients who may be dangerous to themselves or others. That alone would have prevented the bulk of such crimes -- but no, we pretend liberals would rather snark and snicker, put our hands over our eyes and ears and blather about "assault weapons" when they don't know a Gattling gun from a slingshot. I am not at all opposed to revising and improving gun control. It's my friends here who won't talk seriously about it.

    I have some family in Switzerland, BTW - they love it there, but no -- I do have the cash but a Liberal like me wouldn't live in such a police state, as beautiful as it is. The Swiss that I talk to and the Dutch too ( yes I have family there as well) blame the increase in crime to the freedom Europeans now have to travel and reside abroad and the influx of Eastern Europeans. I don't know if that's true. And of course they have gun control that's more effective than ours. But we shouldn't look at what they do -- just run in circles yelling for gun control.

    What is true is that complex problems aren't solved by a fixed and fanatic interest in examining only one factor thereof and insulting anyone who asks for calm and reason and looking at the whole picture and its history. It suggests that the pretense to be looking for a solution is more the child of a visceral fear -- a phobic view of guns and violence looking none too rationally for a rationalization for making the scary things go away.

    If there is no serious look at the spectrum of things that can be done to make mayhem more rare, there is no honest discussion, only another God damned American witch hunt.

    And I'm still waiting for someone willing actually to discuss the facts of gun control past, present and future from a practical standpoint with the idea of doing something that works for once.

    ReplyDelete
  4. And considering the sudden rash of weird shootings on the heels of the Newtown tragedy, isn't anyone willing to discuss the effect of all this relentless and content free media coverage on disturbed people looking to go out with a bang?

    Perish the thought! GUN CONTROL - ASSAULT WEAPONS - GUN CONTROL!!!

    ReplyDelete
  5. This is your comment in an earlier post:

    "Certainly none of the solutions we've so passionately offered and instituted and defended against criticism have done anything we can point to as having helped: the three day waiting period, the background checks, the late "assault weapon" ban, the ban on "Saturday Night Specials," the ban on sending guns through the mail without a Federal license, the ban on automatic weapons that's been here since 1937, the restrictions on how many guns you can buy in a year, how much ammunition. . ."

    NONE of those measures has received the full support of local and state goverments in many states. The feds have not been able to get congress to pass a set of laws that apply at the federal level and REQUIRE that every state play by the rules or lose funding. When the feds WANT to do something AND the congress WANTS it to, shit happens, otherwise, not.

    You say:

    "Nobody wants to speculate that a metal detector might have worked better than some attempt to make a hundred million guns in private homes of decent citizens disappear -- and I get accused of refusing to talk about gun control. It's bullshit. It's dishonest.'

    How do you even know this? Nobody wants to speculate? That's 0 out of 300M+ people?

    You say:

    "Yes, our unwillingness to spend money on mental health is a factor and I'm glad to finally hear someone mention that problems have multiple factors, even though it's so much easier to shout "gun control now!"

    I am not now, nor have I shouted "gun control now", ever. What I have shouted, A LOT, is we need to have some form of regulation. You think that is gun control? Is your automobile controlled? Is your house controlled? I am for a federal system of regulation, the details of which would have to be worked out, but since the thought of working towards a sane policy of regulation is called, "gun control" or "they're comin' to take our gunz!"--it has been a non-starter for the last 60 years.
    ----break--continued in second comment

    ReplyDelete
  6. ----continued from previous comment

    "It's not the NRA, it's America. It's a country that grew up with guns. Boy Scout magazines from my youth featured copious advertising for small caliber rifles and BB guns and articles about the benefits of citizen marksmanship through recreational shooting. Are you too young to remember when every boy should have a rifle? I did, I still have it and a BB gun too. I still can't bring myself to shoot the damned armadillos who tear up my garden every night and I'm not likely to shoot you either."

    I shot a rifle a few times when I was a kid and twice while I was in the AF. I've never really longed to own one, long or short. I understand the U.S. fascination with guns, I don't dislike guns. I dislike the attitude that just because somebody likes a lot of firepower they should be allowed to buy whatever the hell they want and do whatever they want with it, up to and including engaging in illegal behavior until they're caught and stopped. I have no problem with people using guns, to hunt, to trap/target shoot, to control nuisance wildlife or collecting them. I have a serious problem squaring the term "responsible gun owner" with the attitudes and behavior of the extremely vocal minority of gun owners who, along with the NRA are the drivers of the intransigence on the subject.

    The NRA is a major part of the problem. They are well funded, connected to people whose BUSINESS is making weapons, dishonest and allied with the GOP to an extent that they are almost a separate arm of that group. While the NRA has a pretty shitty record for getting their slate into office they are VERY good at lobbying to keep the cash flow going for the gun business (http://reporting.sunlightfoundation.com/2012/5-House-members-who-have-received-most-nra-money/).

    As originally constituted the NRA was essentially a marksmanship training organization, founded as a response to lack of decent marksmen on the union side--to the dismay of a couple of Union Civil War generals. What it is now is a bloated, obscene parody of what it was then. It's aims, if you'll excuse the pun, have less to do with ensuring that young americans become good shots and more to do with inculcating them with the idea that guns are not just desirabale but NECESSARY in their daily lives.

    With board members like Tedassclown Nugent (http://meetthenra.org/nra-member/ted%20nugent) Grover Norquist, Bob Barr, Larry Craig, John Bolton and Jay Prinz (http://meetthenra.org/nra-member/Jay%20Printz) this organization is the voice of U.S. gun owners--or pretty much the only voice anyone is listening to in the halls of congress. You may not like them but they speak for you and most other gun owners.

    The NRA is allied with ALEC, who helped to get "Stand your ground" laws and some other, truly odious legislation passed in a number of states. That alone would be enough to make me wary of them.

    You say you want to have a discussion but you fall into the same sort of demonizing of your opposition as that which you accuse them of doing.

    I am NOT interested in banning, confiscating or keeping sportsmen, collectors and legitimate users from enjoying the use and possession of their firearms. I am against people stockpiling ammo and arms--arms that have no other use than to kill people, in droves--especially when those people rather casually announce that they will use the bullet box instead of the ballot box, push comes to shove.

    How a sane set of rules might be crafted is not something I'm capable of figuring out--but I'm quite capable of counting and the bodies are piling up.












    ReplyDelete
  7. Mea Culpa, I'm not demonizing you and I should be much better at pointing out that I'm talking about the public at large.

    I agree with most all you say, and when I said "it's not the NRA, it's America" I mean America supports them enthusiastically and America is a big wide open country where people use and depend on guns for recreation, protection and food. Yes, the NRA harbors paranoids, liars and nutjobs like Nugent who somehow gets away with threatening the president and many others. I don't belong and don't support them and I recently filled a prepaid return envelope with a heavy piece of sheet metal. They've apparently taken me off the mailing list for it.

    "Stand your ground." I'm not quite in agreement with you there and it's much misunderstood I think. I think mandating that I run away from an armed intruder is odious too, the right to self preservation being hard to argue against, but this isn't a gun forum and I'm not promoting guns or the ownership thereof and am trying to look for a rational and effective way of keeping guns of all kinds out of hands and places where they don't belong. Not all that's being passionately proposed really meets those tests and much that has been passionately supported in the past has done what it was supposed to do. Some has made things worse but I feel hostility when I support an honest description of prior law, of weapons themselves and the complex nature of these crimes.

    I don't want to confine discussions of school or public safety to gun control which seems to be what's filling the blogs and the media and some are arguing loudly that we don't need to understand, we just need to ban, ban, ban without looking at the sad history of banning things or even at what they're trying to ban.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Capt. Fogg:

    Without getting into the specifics, I agree with you on the need for a comprehensive approach.

    FWIW, "Stand your ground" laws are NOT a license to kill, but they are certainly seen to be one, in the minds of a lot of people who think that shooting people is the FIRST thing that they should do when they are insulted, "threatened", robbed of material goods or burgled. That set of laws, "Castle Doctrine" and "Stand Your Ground" are, imo, badly written and unevenly applied. As is the "Assault Weapons Ban"; the original statute was so watered down and adulterated by the time it was passed as to be meaningless--and that is why it didn't and WON'T work.

    Intelligently crafted and universally applied statutes are required. Yeah, I know, I always wanted a pony, too.



    ReplyDelete
  9. Capt. Fogg:

    Without getting into the specifics, I agree with you on the need for a comprehensive approach.

    FWIW, "Stand your ground" laws are NOT a license to kill, but they are certainly seen to be one, in the minds of a lot of people who think that shooting people is the FIRST thing that they should do when they are insulted, "threatened", robbed of material goods or burgled. That set of laws, "Castle Doctrine" and "Stand Your Ground" are, imo, badly written and unevenly applied. As is the "Assault Weapons Ban"; the original statute was so watered down and adulterated by the time it was passed as to be meaningless--and that is why it didn't and WON'T work.

    Intelligently crafted and universally applied statutes are required. Yeah, I know, I always wanted a pony, too.



    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You can say that again! Oops, you did.

      But I agree about badly written laws and that's what we get when we want it NOW and when we listen to passionate groups on all sides. I found it sad that people were blaming that Trayvon Martin killing on the assailant's right to stand his ground when in fact the law was designed to protect the victim from being forcibly removed by an armed assailant from a place he had a right to be. It certainly wasn't designed to allow someone to attack him or to shoot an unarmed person who was trying to protect himself.

      But how many people bothered to look it up and just believed what the sensationalist media and anti-gun rights people were yelling?

      For my part I'm quite willing to talk about types of weapons that should be legal and not legal. Maybe more things should be added to the "Destructive weapons" category and we've been successful in keeping things like silencers and machine guns and rocket propelled grenades and the like away from the public which shows that if we try, we can do it.

      Delete

We welcome civil discourse from all people but express no obligation to allow contributors and readers to be trolled. Any comment that sinks to the level of bigotry, defamation, personal insults, off-topic rants, and profanity will be deleted without notice.