Crazy?

Tr*mp's teleprompter comments on the El Paso and Dayton mass shootings got a lot of air time — especially the parts where he suggested he might be open to some degree of gun control — but one line kept getting dropped off: "we must reform our mental health laws to better identify mentally disturbed individuals who may commit acts of violence and make sure those people not only get treatment, but, when necessary, involuntary confinement."

Thomas Szasz

The movement to deinstitutionalize psychiatric patients was kicked off by Thomas Szasz in the 1960s, beginning with his very influential book, The Myth of Mental Illness.  Granted, his arguments for the civil rights of psychiatric patients may have had less impact than the desire of states to close down the very costly state facilities where they were warehoused; but the process was a civil rights victory nonetheless.  Now, that victory may be undone.

Granted, the Tr*mp speechwriter's chief intent was yet another reiteration of the standard Republican line: guns don't kill people, crazy people (and minorities) do.  In the immediate aftermath of a mass shooting, it's normal to think the gunman "must have been crazy" — and people with psychiatric problems are "other" enough to fit the Republican template for victimhood quite readily.

It remains to be seen whether or not Tr*mp's call for involuntary confinement will become a major Republican talking point in a debate over how to deal with gun violence.  If the private corporations currently running so many of our prisons decide to get into the business, the likelihood will increase exponentially.

Teachers with Guns

I was doing a mental inventory of my colleagues over thirty years of teaching, considering which of them might be willing to pack heat in the classroom and which could be trusted to do so.  The categories don't intersect.  Granted, I didn't work in Idaho or Kentucky, but even in such gun-friendly places, I doubt the circles of the Venn diagram would overlap.

There will be volunteers, of course: some teachers will volunteer for anything that pays an additional stipend.  There will be training, probably by local sheriff's deputies — but even if the teacher volunteers refrain from grading papers during the PowerPoint presentations, the whole idea of turning educators into a sweater-vested SWAT team is absurd.

Given the suicidal nature of school shooters, arming teachers will have no deterrent effect: some shooters might welcome the "extra challenge."  We need to ask more questions about whom the "guardians" might end up shooting in a "combat" situation.  Do Our President and his NRA anticipate running gun battles?  Real life is neither an action movie nor a video game, and it is terrifying to think about what might happen in those states already enacting legislation to arm school personnel.

I have no problem with those who own guns for hunting or target shooting, but I'm sure they could manage quite nicely using bolt-action rifles and shotguns.  By contrast, people who own hand guns and semi-automatic rifles for "self-defense" all too often share a characteristic that should preclude gun ownership: unhealthy levels of fear.  It doesn't matter whether they fear home invasion, street crime, or a government imposition of shariah law: their fear inevitably makes them less rational.  We don't need people who are both armed and irrational in our schools.
 

Shorts

Gun politics
The manufacturers of the "Bumpstock" profited mightily from the free advertising provided by Stephen Paddock, the Las Vegas shooter; but now that sales have dropped off again, Our President is willing to consider a ban.  Whoopie.  Wayne LaPierre of the NRA says those who support gun control are "socialists" — but, apparently, not Maoists, who believe that "political power grows out of the barrel of a gun."  I don't believe those wonderfully articulate young socialists from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School will change any Republican votes on gun control, but I feel certain they are helping themselves by channeling their grief and trauma into activism.

Tsuris for Bibi
It looks like years of corruption accusations finally have caught up with Bibi Netanyahu as his co-conspirators prepare to turn state's evidence against him.  Nevertheless, an impending indictment won't interrupt his plans to attend the AIPAC conference in Washington starting March 4, and to meet with Tr*mp for the fifth time.  AIPAC, which always has represented not Israel but Likud, will greet Bibi with cheers.  Tr*mp and Netanyahu can commiserate, and nobody should be surprised if Tr*mp recycles the comment he made about Rob Porter: "He says he's innocent."

Guns again

It's no surprise that the NRA endorsed "regulating" the bump stock when you remember that the NRA doesn't lobby for "gun lovers" — it lobbies for gun manufacturers.  The bump stock isn't marketed by gun companies — it's an aftermarket add-on that provides no profits at all to the major players.

Don't feel sad for Slide Fire® or the other small businesses that produce these items, though.  Bump stocks were slow sellers until Stephen Paddock made them a must-have item for all the paranoids and toy soldiers who previously hadn't realized just how much they needed them.  Now they've sold out, and the aftermarket sellers have plenty of capital to invest in technology that legally can convert a shotgun into a bazooka.

Gun Control

I got a call from some gun control organization a couple of days ago, and decided my contributions would be better spent elsewhere.  The truth is, I think it's too late for gun control in the USofA.

After allowing some Senate Democrats to grandstand for a while, Republicans decided to permit a vote on a couple of "gun control" amendments to an unrelated bill: one that would stop individuals on the terrorism "watch list" from purchasing weapons, and one that would plug the gun show/internet sales loophole for background checks.  That second one will fail, of course.  The first, which makes a mockery of any idea of due process and probably is unconstitutional, will be replaced with a much watered down version acceptable to the NRA.

Some are calling for reinstitution of the assault weapons ban, but even if that happened (it won't), that leaves us with at least five million rapid-firing semi-automatic rifles already out there.  Buying them back at market value (as Australia did when it banned such weapons) would cost well upwards of $4 billion — and since rifles usually don't have to be registered, we wouldn't even know where to find them.

Are there more realistic ways to stop mass shootings?  If you think of any, let me know.

Guns

Many years ago, a woman sat in her car outside the apartment building where he ex-husband's parents lived.  Her only previous claim to fame was as president of an Engelbert Humperdinck fan club.  When the elderly couple emerges from the building, she ran them down, killing both.  It didn't occur to anybody to hold General Motors (nor Engelbert Humperdinck) responsible.

At around the same time, though, gun control advocates were suing gun makers because their products had been used to kill people.  It seemed illogical, but in the United States anybody is allowed to sue anybody about anything — and given the right juries, some of the suits might have been successful.  In 2005, Congress gave gun sellers immunity from most such lawsuits.

This does not provide total immunity.  If your gun, due to some manufacturing error, blows up in your hand when you are trying to kill somebody, you can sue the manufacturer.  If an individual goes to a gun dealer and says, "I want to buy a gun to kill my inlaws," the dealer is responsible.  Just lawfully providing a gun to somebody who later uses it to commit a crime is not punishable — and it seems to me that that is the way it should be.

Guns are designed to kill.  When a product does what it is designed to do, it's hard to fault the manufacturer or the seller.  If we want to eliminate gun deaths, the logical thing to do is eliminate guns —  but it's much too late to do that, if ever there was a time when it was possible.  It's probably too late, even, to reinstitute the expired ban on assault weapons.  Too many already are out there.

So what can be done?  I don't think background checks will do much good — but if all guns must be registered (including rifles and shotguns), and the last registered owner of the gun is held responsible for any crimes committed with that gun, people may be more careful with their weapons.  It also could help to limit the quantity of guns any individual can register, to reduce the problem of "straw buyers."

Of course, that won't ever happen.

San Bernadino

The San Bernadino massacre was an interesting combination of an ideologically motivated terrorist attack and a personally motivated case of workplace violence, and it suggests something nobody's really said out loud: they don't "hate our freedom;" they hate us.

The Farooks had a substantial arsenal in their town house, considerably more than they needed to shoot up a social services agency, and it may be that Nicholas Thalasinos, one of the victims, saved many lives by pissing off Syed Rizwan Farook in an argument a couple of days before the incident.  Thalasinos, a Jew (in his official "victim" photo, he's wearing a tallis) with an unlikely Greek name is said to have been extremely pro-Israel and, it seems safe to say, not favorably inclined towards Muslims.  We don't know the specifics of the argument yet, but we can easily imagine its tenor.  Were it not for Thalasinos, the Farooks might have selected a target where many more fatalities would have been possible.

We don't know if Thalasinos was a Republican, but we can be fairly certain he sounded like one.  You don't have to be a Republican to be virulently anti-Muslim these days, and Republican fear mongering cannot be without its effects.  American attitudes towards fellow Americans who are Muslims can only stoke more hatred, and generate more radicalization and criminal activity.  They have good reason to hate us — that is, to hate us back.

I don't believe stricter gun control laws, the Democratic response to domestic terrorism, would make much difference.  California has gun control laws that are as restrictive as any in the country, and it didn't help.  The kind of European-style gun control that might make a difference is politically impossible in the USofA.

As for the Republican approach to terrorism, it's just as hollow as that of the Democrats.  Sending troops to Iraq and Syria to "root out" the Islamist State can only make matters worse, especially since our nominal "ally," Haider al-Abadi, says he would consider it an act of war.  The idea is to have fewer enemies in the Middle East, not more.

Personally, I have no idea what policies the USofA should pursue at this time.  Obama's approach, just trying not to make matters worse, seems to be as good as we can manage at the moment.  Republican efforts to make matters worse as a means to win the 2016 election, sad to say, will not subside no matter what intellectual or moral appeals are made to them.

Given enough time, Islamist terrorism will be replaced by some other seemingly existential threat, but I'll probably be dead by then.  I hope future generations of Americans can do better than mine has.

Briefly...

The Democratic Debate
All the Democrats gave the impression of being more serious and sane than any of their Republican rivals, which was not hard.  Hillary came across as human, and held her own, especially with a little help from Bernie.  His endorsement of the fact that the Bengazi/email inquisition is purely political may have been the high point of the evening.  Bernie was on the defensive regarding gun control, even though everything he said made perfect sense.  I don't think it hurt him at all.

Palestinians with Knives
Netanyahu can't blame Hamas or any of his other boogeymen for the recent attacks on Israelis by young Palestinians who armed themselves from their kitchen drawers.  None of them even was particularly religious, so it's not "fundamentalist extremism."  The attackers are understandably frustrated to a point of hopelessness by the Israeli apartheid state, and only the rights and privileges of citizenship can make a difference.  The "two-state solution" is dead.

Tamir Rice
I watched the surveillance video, and listened to the 911 call.  Tamir's movements in the video are those of a boy playing a game, so I believe identifying him as a child from the much closer vantage point of the police should have been easy.  On the other hand, the pellet gun looked very real.  Most disturbing to me was the incompetence of the 911 operator, who seemingly failed to process what she was told by the caller, and failed to communicate to the police the caller's clear belief that the suspect was a child and that the gun "probably" was a fake.  I believe the district attorney should give a jury the opportunity to decide if the shooter was at fault.

Recently...

Another mass murder
As usual, Republicans are blaming crazy people and Democrats are calling for what would be essentially useless gun control measures even if they could be enacted, which they cannot.  The essential problem is that there are entirely too many guns floating around the USofA, and nobody, really, is "cummin' t' take yer guns."  They're just "cummin' t' flap ther gums."  I have no solutions to offer, and neither, I believe, does anybody else.

Russia in Syria
Weren't things already complicated enough?  I guess not.  Russia is bombing anybody opposed to Assad, and Iran, mainly through Hezbollah, is doing what it can to keep Assad in power.  The USofA sort of supports the Free Syrian Army, recently bombed by Russia, and halfheartedly supports the Kurds, currently being bombed by our "ally," Turkey.  Then we've got those five guys fighting IS but not Assad, even though we want Assad to step down.  France is fighting IS in Iraq, but not in Syria.  IS is fighting everybody, and not especially bothered that everybody is fighting everybody else.  You can't tell the players without a scorecard, and the scorecard keeps changing.

Arne Duncan resigns
It's about time, because Obama's Education Secretary has been a disaster, and through his support for charter schools has done as much as any Republican to advance the privatization of public education.  "Race to the Top" did it's bit to advance corporatist "data based" evaluation of schools and teachers, despite the fact that no useful data at all has been available — only scores on tests of no observable value designed by private contractors.  Happily, Duncan will not be replaced: his bureaucratic duties will be assumed by some bureaucratic lackey, and no further damage is likely to be done through the remainder of the Obama presidency.

Hate Crime?

Everybody is talking about how Craig Hicks, the man who gunned down the three Muslim students in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, is an atheist.  The family of the students, of course, is convinced that the shooting was a hate crime — as American Muslims, they've been living in an unquestionably hateful environment.  Just the same, I'm fairly certain that religion had little, if anything, to do with the murders.

Why would an atheist specially target Muslims?  If Hicks felt threatened as an atheist, you'd think he'd go out and shoot some Evangelicals.  Really, in the USofA it's the Christians who give atheists a hard time.  One of Hicks's neighbors characterized him as "an equal opportunity hater" — he was markedly unpleasant to everybody, especially those who used designated "visitor" parking spaces.

Less commented on than his atheism was his gun collection, an arsenal large and diverse enough to warm the heart of Wayne LaPierre of the NRA.  Quite a few of Hicks' guns were stored fully loaded, including the military style semi-automatic rifle.  Was he planning mayhem?

Probably not.  The arsenal was was far in excess of what he needed to kill a few dental students — but just the right size for a victim of severe paranoia.  The NRA will disagree, but I believe Hicks's gun collection indicates a serious psychological defect.

Okay, maybe he was paranoid about the threat of "Muslim extremists" mounting terror attacks against his condominium and its designated parking spots — but, if so, why kill dental students, two of them female.  If he was saving North Carolina from encroachment by the Islamic State, surely he could have found himself a group of scarier Muslims to shoot.

There well may be some real hate crimes being planned, and law enforcement should do its best to prevent them — but we'd all be a lot safer if the cops took a hard look at the owners of arsenals.  They don't call them gun "nuts" for nothing.

Some final thoughts for 2014

Guns don't kill people...
...two-year-olds who dip into their mothers' handbags while shopping at Wal-Mart kill people — well, one of them killed his duly licensed for concealed carry mother, at any rate.  I guess she thought putting the safety on was a violation of her Second Amendment rights.  Let's hope the kid never finds out what he did.

Syriza
Reading about the upcoming Greek elections, I was surprised to see the Times referring to Syriza as "radical."  Hey, NYT!  Being anti-austerity does not make a party radical.  It just makes it Keynesian and, hence, more likely to help the Greek people than "center-right" parties dedicated to kissing Angela Merkel's ass.

Scalise
Why is anybody surprised to learn that new House Republican Whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana delivered a speech to David Duke's white supremacist EURO organization?  He's a southern Republican, which means he has to pander to racists.  (It won't hurt him a bit.)

Palestinians and the ICC
Israel and the USofA have their knickers in a twist because the Palestinians want to join the International Criminal Court.  It's not just that the Palestinians may bring charges against the Israelis — the big problem is that they just might win.

Why only the SECOND amendment?

Second Amendment absolutists are out in force these days, insisting that the Constitution gives citizens the right to unrestricted ownership of any goddamned gun that makes the most money for the gun industry.  What the hell.  As I've noted before, I don't think any private citizen has to have a hand gun, and if all the super-popular Glocks disappeared tomorrow, it would be a great day for the USofA.

What I'm wondering about today, though, is why only the second amendment gets such special treatment.  Why not the first, or the fourth, or the sixth, or the eighth?  (Probably, you don have a clue what the sixth or the eighth  are about.  We former social studies teachers probably were less effective than we might have liked.)

In case you have forgotten what the fourth was about, it's the one on search and seizure — that is, the right to privacy.  Our President, in case you had not noticed, not only has supported the infringements on our rights in the Patriot Act, but expanded them.  If you really want online anonymity, for example, your best bet now is the Tor Project.  Is the whole thing run by the CIA or the FBI?  I don't think so, but who the hell knows?

The sixth amendment is trial by jury — speedy and public.  Ask the leftover Yemenis at Guantanamo how that right is holding up for them.  Ask the American citizens executed by drone strikes overseas.  The eighth amendment, which forbids cruel and unusual punishment, figures in here too.  Obama says torture is a thing of the past, but he won't prosecute any former torturers because it's all top secret, so who knows?

Oh, and by the way, FREE BRADLEY MANNING!

Guns

"Black guns" (aka paramilitary/assault weapons) have been getting most of the press lately, but the real killers in this USofA are hand guns.  Lots of people have them.  Most of the people they kill are suicides, and, hence, don't catch a lot of attention.  If you're not especially important, blowing your brains out will bring very little publicity.

There are three reasons to own a hand gun.  One, of course, is for criminal activity.  Hand guns are excellent tools for gang assassinations, convenience store stick-ups, and such like.  Another, as noted above, is self-annihilation — although that probably was not the original motive for buying the damned thing.

The third reason to own a hand gun is fear.  FDR thought all of us ought to enjoy "freedom from fear," but that never happened.  What if that other comes to my house, and wants to kill me.  Shouldn't I be prepared to blow him (possibly her) away?

Me, I'm not afraid.  The worst that might happen, unlikely as it seems, is that I get killed by somebody who thinks that my household "wealth" is worth a murder.  That somebody, for sure, is a total asshole.

Personally, I don't see any reason for hand guns to be legal.  Frankly, I'm not especially agitated about assault weapons.  If you want to plink at paper targets with a hand weapon, a pellet gun ought to do the trick.  Those beebees  will penetrate the paper every bit as well as as a much more expensive bullet.  A shotgun will discourage your home invader a whole lot better than your Glock will.

I'm tired of fear.  It's time for freedom from fear.  Screw the "assault rifles."  Let's get rid of hand guns.  All of them.

The Only Thing...

"The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun," we are told, "is a good guy with a gun."

Okay.  I've watched all the cowboy movies, so I know the story line, but I'm unsure.  Does a "good guy" with a Glock necessarily stop a "bad guy" with a Bushmaster?  Does a bored-out-of-his-mind, fifty pounds overweight retired cop stop a twenty-something psycho who knows the old fat man is kind of snoozing around the main entrance to the school building?  Give me a break!

It sure as hell won't work in any secondary school, where the numerous "safety" doors are popped open by the resident youth for the sake of a smoke or a toke, and then propped open to accommodate the next "bell."  Granted, the doors won't all be open at the elementary school, but, on a warm day, most of the windows will.  Air conditioning is too goddamned expensive for your ordinary school budget.

Give the principal her own semi-automatic, to stop the carnage "earlier?"  All the principals I ever worked for would have been pretty useless.  Mine all were kind of "manly" men (and one manly woman), but they still would have shit their pants before getting into a fucking firefight.  Okay, one or two would have tried the firefight even with the shit in their pants, but they still would have been useless.

I don't pretend to know the answer to gun violence in the USofA.  There are a shitload of guns out there already, and I suppose the Connecticut slaughter is inspiring more sales of AR15s, just in case  President Blackie Socialist tries to take away our Constitutional Right to buy them.

The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a fucking lunatic with an explosive vest.  Try to ignore the collateral damage.

If American gun manufacturers also produced cordite, you could be pretty sure the NRA would lobby for the Constitutional right to wear a suicide vest to your local mall, church, or youth group meeting. I mean, that's the meaning of the Second Amendment.  Isn't it?

Thank you, fucking NRA

The NRA probably will say that if those tiny dead children only had been armed with semi-automatic weapons, they would have wiped out the shooter before twenty of them were dead.

The children are dead.  The shooter is dead.  The NRA is alive.

Yes, the shooter was nuts.  A lot of people are nuts these days.  Why do so many of those fucking nuts have legal access to combat weapons?

(Answer: the second amendment, according to the NRA.  Hey, how are you supposed to overcome a socialist Muslim president without your fucking guns?  Before you know it, those commies will want our fucking pricks, and then what are we supposed to stroke if they take our fucking guns away?)

........

Yes, I'm angry... and I'm very sad.  Just like you, very, very sad.

Change? Yeah, right!

You know, I think people would think better of politicians if they actually tried running their own campaigns, instead of hiring consultants to do their thinking for them. (At this point, I suspect Hillary Clinton wishes she'd run her own campaign -- she was very poorly served.)

Yes, I know the strategists advise presidential hopefuls to run to their bases -- liberals for Democrats, conservatives for Republicans -- during the primaries, and then move to the center for the general election. It's a sensible strategy except for one thing: it leaves the candidate sounding just like a, well... like a politician -- a self-serving, pandering hypocrite.

Barack Obama had me gagging recently when he commented on a couple of Supreme Court decisions. Yes, Barack, nobody likes child rapists -- but when you suggested that the Court was wrong to deny states the right to execute them, you were criticizing exactly the sort of Justices you've pledged to appoint. Oh, right, your consultants were afraid the Republican attack machine would portray you as in favor of raping children! Or perhaps you genuinely believe states should have the right to execute people who haven't taken a life, but whose behavior the public finds especially distasteful. Well, just how distasteful does an act have to be? If we give up the "life for a life" standard, a very wide range of behaviors could put a person on death row. Is that what you want?

Then, after you pandered to the "kill anyone I don't like" crowd, you pandered to the "pry my gun from my cold dead fingers" crowd when you appeared to support the Court's rejection of Washington's hand gun ban. Come to think of it, they're really pretty much the same crowd -- and I don't see too many of them voting for you anyway. Hell, their alternative is a macho white war hero!

Face it -- you're not going to convince anybody you're a secret conservative. You're just starting to look less and less like an "agent of change," and more and more like the same old empty suit.