Memorial Day Musings

   Living as long as I have in Japan, I can no longer remember when certain holidays, such as Presidents’ Day or Columbus Day, are held. It usually isn’t until Tuesday or Wednesday morning when I can’t download my favorite podcasts that I realize that Monday had been a public holiday.

   The same is even true with Memorial Day and Labor Day which should be easy enough to remember. The former is, of course, the last Monday of May, while the latter is the first Monday of September. Four years ago, however, when I was vacationing in Hawaii, it puzzled me to find so few people on the beach, when only a day earlier the beach had been packed. Then it dawned on me: the Labor Day weekend had come to an end and all the kiddies were back in school.

   This year I came across the above cartoon on a friend’s Facebook wall and was reminded that the Memorial Day weekend was just around the corner. Not that it will mean much to most American expats living in Japan: there'll be no happy Monday for us.

   Anyway, I was struck by a number of things when I looked at that cartoon.

    First of all, it reminded me of something Kurt Vonnegut wrote in, I believe, his novel Hocus Pocus (1990), something to the effect that the more the U.S. started outfitting its soldiers to look like the Reichswehr with coal scuttle helmets and all, the better we got at winning wars.

   In Vonnegut's next and final novel, Timequake (1997), Kilgore Trout had this to say about the way American soldiers were dressed:

   “I wouldn't have missed the Great Depression or my part in World War Two for anything. Trout asserted at the clambake that our war would live forever in show biz, as other wars would not, because of the uniforms of the Nazis.

    “He commented unfavorably on the camouflage suits our own generals wear nowadays on TV, when they describe our blasting the bejesus out of some Third World country because of petroleum. ‘I can't imagine,’ he said, ‘any part of the world where such garish pajamas would make a soldier less rather than more visible. ‘We are evidently preparing,’ he said, ‘to fight World War Three in the midst of an enormous Spanish omelet.’” 

   The second thing that caught my attention was how much the weapons of warfare have changed.

   Today, the US Army uses among other rifles the M16, a semi-automatic that fires three-round burst of 5.56x45mm NATO cartridges. During WWII, however, your average grunt was accoutered with an M1 Garand or M1 carbine. Both were semi-automatics. The M1 Garand had an 8-round “en bloc” clip that let out a metallic “klang” as it was ejected. The carbine originally had a 15 round detachable box magazine. Both were big improvements over the bolt action Springfield. The rifle, which was equipped with a 5-round clip, remained a standard issue infantry rifle during the Second World War due to the shortage of M1s. While the M1903 Springfield could fire at a rate of only 10-15 rounds per minute, you could get as many as 50 rounds off a minute with a Garand. By comparison, today’s M16 can shoot at a rate of up to 950 rounds per minute.

   The point that I would like to make here is that the United States was able to defeat Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, and the Japanese Imperial Army armed with rifles that today’s gun nuts would not be comfortable with when and if they ever have to revolt against their own government, as 44% of Republicans now believe.

   And finally, why the hell is Ronnie's coup de grâce Grenada not included in the line-up???

The NRA's Gifts to America

On the twelfth day of Christmas,

t’NRA gave to us:

Twelve school shootings,[1]

Eleven assault weapons,

Ten armor piercing,

Nine million dollars,[2]

Eight men a-killing,[3]

Seven vigilantes,[4]

Six background checks,[5]

Five extended clips,

Four homicides,[6]

Three suicides,[7]

Two smoking barrels,

And pols in the lobby’s pocket!

---

[1] Of the sixty-two mass shootings that have occurred since 1982, 12 have taken place in schools. (See Mother Jones.)

[2] The NRA PAC spent over nine million dollars ($9,493,815 to be exact) on independent expenditures in the 2012 election. Another $7.5 million was spent by the NRA Institute for Legislative Action, and the National Rifle Association (501c) spent $682,595 on communication costs. 91.3%  of the $17.6 million the NRA spent was done so in the general election. $6 million was spent supporting Republicans and $11 million fighting Democrats. How successful was the NRA? Not very. Only 50.4% of NRA backed candidates won. And only 5.5% of the money the NRA spent resulted in their preferred candidate winning. Maybe there is a Santa, after all. (See Open Secrets.)

[3] 8 in 10 of firearm deaths among 23 populous, high-income countries occurred in the U.S. Homicide rate in America is 6.9 times higher than rates in 22 other populous high-income countries combined. (See Brady Campaign.)

[4] Seven out of ten defendants in Florida went free in the nearly 200 cases where the Stand Your Ground law has played a factor since going into effect in 2005. The law removes a person’s duty to retreat before using deadly force against another in any place he has the legally right to be so long as he reasonably believes he faces imminent death or great bodily harm. (See ProPublica.)

[5] An estimated forty percent of gun acquisitions occur in the “secondary market”, taking place without a Brady background check. Only six out of every ten guns are bought in the U.S. are done so with Brady background checks. (See Brady Campaign.)

[6] 4 out of 10 homicides. According to the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, “an estimated 41% of gun-related homicides and 94% of gun-related suicides would not have occurred under the same circumstances had no guns been present (Wiebe, p. 780.)” (See Brady Campaign.)

[7] There are about three suicides and attempted suicides a day in the U.S. involving guns. A gun owner is more likely to shoot and kill himself than shoot an intruder. According to the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence for So much for having a gun to protect oneself: ”A gun in the home is 22 times more likely to be used in a completed or attempted suicide (11x), criminal assault or homicide (7x), or unintentional shooting death or injury (4x) than to be used in a self-defense shooting. (Kellermann, 1998, p. 263).” (See Brady Campaign.)