Guns Over the People (G.O.P.)

   According to an article in the Huffington Post today, the daughter of the Sandy Hook Elementary School principal who died in last December's mass shooting confronted Senator Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) over her vote against allowing debate on expanding background checks for firearm purchases.

   Reading the article, it occured to me that this was an odd and uniquely American debate between those who demand the continued ease of access to guns to protect themselves from a perceived threat of violence and those who seek to restrict that accessibility to guns because they or someone they care for have suffered from real gun violence.

   Sadly, it's often those on the side of further loosening restrictions who win the debate. They're the ones with the guns, after all.

   And if you thought the NRA was over the top, a rival gun rights organization called the Gun Owners of America (GOA) has criticized the NRA for (heaven forbid) compromising on gun rights issues and selling out the gun rights movement.

   I pledge allegience to the Guns of the United States of America and to the Freedom for which they stand, one Nation under Guns, Guns, and more Guns, unrestrictable, unrelinquishable, uninfringible, with assault weapons and ammo for all.

   In his response to the Sandy Hook mass shooting, LaPierre LaPyoo had this, among other malarkey, to say:

   "And here’s another dirty little truth that the media try their best to conceal. There exists in this country, sadly, a callous, corrupt and corrupting shadow industry that sells and stows violence against its own people. Through vicious, violent video games with names like Bullet Storm, Grand Theft Auto, Mortal Combat, and Splatterhouse.

   "And here’s one, it’s called Kindergarten Killers. It’s been online for 10 years. How come my research staff can find it, and all of yours couldn’t? Or didn’t want anyone to know you had found it? Add another hurricane, add another natural disaster. I mean we have blood-soaked films out there, like American Psycho, Natural Born Killers. They’re aired like propaganda loops on Splatterdays and every single day."

   So, LaPierre's answer to gun violence is to not restrict access to guns which would be a violation of the Second Amendment, but he's all for restricting freedom of speech because (what?) James Madison was only kidding when he wrote the First Amendment?

   Click this, for a reminder of what the Founding Fathers had in mind when they wrote the Second Amendment.

   There's a lot of freedom-luvin' patriots out there who are arming themselves to the teeth out of a fear that the gu'mint is going get 'em and they hell as ain't goin' without a fight. But, even if these crackers had Bradley tanks and RPGs in their arsenals, the government would still kick their arses. 

Profiles That Discourage

   On Wednesday, while the nation was focused on news about a possible arrest of a suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing, several amendments to the gun control bill, including the so-called Manchin-Toomey amendment which would require universal background checks--the lowest hanging fruit of a bill that was already modest in scope--were defeated. The amendment, which has public support of 92%, received only 54 votes in favor, 46 against, meaning it failed to clear the 60-vote hurdle needed to move ahead. Four Democrats (Baucus of Montana, Begich of Alaska, Heitkamp of N.Dakota, and Harry Reid of Nevada) voted no. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, it should be noted, voted against the amendment for procedural reasons, in order to preserve the right to bring the measure back up for another vote.

   According to The Washington Post, "A number of other amendments also failed to earn the 60 votes necessary to pass: A GOP proposal including a number of changes, 52 to 48; a bipartisan amendment to stiffen penalties for 'straw purchasers,' 58 to 42; a GOP-backed amendment that would have permitted 'national reciprocity' of state-issued concealed carry permits, 57 to 43; a GOP plan to extend gun rights for veterans, including those deemed unable to manage their financial affairs, 56-44; and a Democratic amendment to limit the size of ammunition magazines, 54-46."

   All in all, it was a dark day for advocates of comprehensive gun control, but hardly surprising. In spite of its waning influence over the electorate, the NRA still has such a firm hold on politicians in Washington that policies even a majority of its four and a half million members support can't get passed, let alone voted upon. You might as well give the NRA naming rights to the U.S. Capitol Building.

   Monday's bomb attack which killed three people and injured more than 180 reminded Americans that public safety cannot be taken for granted. I strongly feel, however, that the greatest threat to Americans today is not a terrorist with a home-made bomb, but rather the feckless politicans in D.C. who are unable to stand up to the gun industry's lobby and do the right thing. Shame on them.

   28,840 people have been shot so far this year in the goold ol' United States. In a normal country, a fraction of that dismal statistic would be more than enough to prompt action on gun violence. Not in America, though, where not even the massacre of twenty innocent school children was enough to move Senators to vote for modest changes in our gun laws. It makes me sick.

   In 1955, then Senator John F. Kennedy published Profiles in Courage, a Pulitzer Prize-winning biography describing the accounts of eight senators who had crossed party lines or defied the opinion of their constituents to do what they believed was right. A new edition of the work is scheduled to be published later this year. Working title: Profiles That Discourage.

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!

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[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.)

Second Amendment Lite

   On December 15, 1791, the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution was adopted, along with the other nine amendments that constitute the Bill of Rights. It stated, “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed”.

   Considering that James Holmes, who shot fifty-two people at a movie theater on Saturday night, 12 of whom died, reportedly bought all four[1] of his weapons, ammunition and ballistic gear legally[2], it seems to me that now is as good a time as ever to remind Americans what the Founding Fathers had in mind when it came to arms and a well-regulated militia.

   At the time the constitution was written, the most common rifle was the flintlock musket, a muzzle-loaded five-foot long rifle. The gun fired a single lead ball about 3/4 of an inch in diameter. Between each shot, gunpowder and lead had to be dropped down the barrel. A flint struck the part called the frizzen, which caused the gunpowder in the barrel to ignite, propelling the lead ball. Muskets had an effective range of about 100 yards, but because it took so long to reload, many soldiers would have to rely on the bayonet once the enemy got too close.

   Another fairly common weapon at the time was the flintlock pistol. A good soldier could only get off two or three rounds a minute. These pistols, which were used primarily by officers, had a reliable accuracy of only about fifteen feet. According to the Revolutionary War Antiques website, “Pistols were also used as a dueling weapon during early American History. Duels relied on the inaccuracy of these flintlock pistols for survival.”

   As for the “well-regulated militia”, the Economist magazine published an entertaining and enlightening article on July 1^st, 1999, featuring the findings of Michael Bellesiles, a professor at Emory University.   

   According to the article, “Most militias were a joke. Describing a shooting competition at a militia muster in Pennsylvania, one newspaper wrote cruelly: ‘The size of the target is known accurately, having been carefully measured. It was precisely the size and shape of a barn door.’ The soldiery could not hit even this; the winner was the one who missed by the smallest margin. No wonder the militias of Oxford, Massachusetts, voted in 1823 to stop their annual target practice to avoid public humiliation . . .

A well-tailored militia    "Militias, it seems, were neither adept nor well-armed. In 1775 Captain Charles Johnson told the New Hampshire Provincial Congress that his company had ‘perhaps one pound of powder to 20 men and not one-half of our men have arms.’ The adjutant general of Massachusetts complained in 1834 that only ‘town paupers, idlers, vagrants, foreigners, itinerants, drunkards and the outcasts of society’ manned his militias . . . In the 1830s, General Winfield Scott discovered the Florida militia to be essentially unarmed—and this was during a war against the Seminole Indians.”

   The article is worth reading in its entirety.

   By the way, 55,846 people have been shot so far this year in the United States, 226 people have been shot today.[3]

   The NRA will argue, of course, that the solution to gun violence is to have more law-abiding citizens packing heat. As crazy as that sounds, the argument was convincing enough to the many Colorado residents who flocked to their local gun shop to purchase firearms.

   According to the Denver Post, “Background checks for people wanting to buy guns in Colorado jumped more than 41 percent after Friday morning’s shooting at an Aurora movie theater, and firearms instructors say they’re also seeing increased interest in the training required for a concealed-carry permit. ‘It’s been insane,’ Jake Meyers, an employee at Rocky Mountain guns and Ammo in Parker, said Monday.”

   It is insane.

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[1] “[Holmes] chose the [Remington 870] shotgun, which you know the expression the ‘shotgun effect’—it’s blasting out. That is one weapon, but he transitioned neatly from that to the AR-15 [semi-automatic assault rifle], which had that drum magazine of 100, which we believed jammed. And then he transitioned from that to the [two Glock] pistol[s] until he was out of that ammunition,” reported CBS News senior correspondent John Miller.

[2] There is currently no system in the U.S. tracking whether an individual is stockpiling weapons and ammunition. The only restriction in the U.S. is on the sale of armor-piercing bullets.

[3] For more gun facts visit the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.

Heartfelt Thanks

   The Undertakers and Funeral Directors Guild of America would like to extend their heartfelt thanks to the National Rifle Association.

   Their tireless efforts to preserve our sacred Second Amendment rights† have brought windfall profits to us over the years. On the occasion of your annual “Celebration of American Values” taking place in the beautiful city of St. Louis we are honored to show our appreciation for all the NRA has done for us. (Sales in small and mid-sized caskets have been particularly brisk, thanks in no small part to the policies of the NRA.)

   Thank you, again, gentlemen for your good work. May God continue to smile upon your endeavors.

   Tod Kaufmann

   President of the Undertakers and Funeral Directors Guild of America

† The right to not merely bear arms, but to bear more arms than human arms can physically bear; the right to purchase guns whenever and wherever good Patriots like without restrictions; the right to purchase a flame-thrower or bazooka if need be to protect one's Freedom from the tyranny of the state; the right to have as many bullets in a clip as a Patriot, not the Government, decides is necessary . . .