Disposal Day #172: Cases for gun control

STORY #1: Children

I don’t care if it’s part of Kentucky culture; any parent dumb enough to give a child a gun should not be a parent. And when I say “child,” I don’t mean “under 18″; I mean “under the age of knowing how their genitals work or how to spell ‘Kentucky.’” Yet, that’s what happened. Authorities are ruling this particular case an accident, which makes perfect sense when we’re talking about a rifle in the hands of a five-year-old. I look forward to hearing from anyone who wants to argue in favor of gun possession rights for kids. Should they be prepared to overthrow a tyrannical gym teacher?

That’s not to leave out the parents who don’t actually want their kids to access guns – as far as we know – but make it easy for them to do exactly that. Like this kid. And this kid. You wonder if their parents had any idea what proper gun storage is. Another case for mandatory firearms education for all adults hoping to get licensed. And, what the hell, let’s throw in some extra safety training for the kids in schools. We teach them how not to light fires and how to ride the bus properly (up until twelfth grade, in Manitobans’ cases); why not how to avoid guns?

STORY #2: Good guys

I would like to believe that most adults can be trusted with guns, with notable exceptions (see below). So does Iraq War veteran Brian Castner, who wrote extensively about this and recommended “profiling for aggression.” He’s got a good point there; if there is any way to detect a person who is prone to shoot when angered, it may be worth it to deny them a gun license. But you can’t always predict an ill-advised shooting, which makes the “good guy with a gun” argument slippery, even if they do exist.

Once again, some more stringent firearms education may be needed; it’s as important to know when not to shoot as it is to know how to shoot. But that wouldn’t be a sure thing, either. If you ever wonder why many cops and soldiers don’t trust civilians with guns, this should make it clear.

STORY #3: The mentally ill

Perhaps Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Pat Toomey (R-PA) should have focused their initial background-check legislation on the mentally ill, if only to achieve a little more political momentum. I defy you to name any senator who would disagree that there should be more communication on this matter between states and the federal government, in order to achieve compliance with a federal law barring the sale of firearms to those “adjudicated as a mental defective.” California and Florida are working on their own versions of those laws. Since the Tenth Amendment keeps the federal government from compelling compliance, more state laws may be the best we can do.

Disposal Day #169: Bullets over Beltway

STORY #1: Define “friends”

Compromise on the issue of universal background checks for gun purchases came down to Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Pat Toomey (R-PA), and this week they announced that they’d reached a deal:

• background checks now applied to purchases at gun shows and online, with records to present to police
• criminally penalizes anyone who “misuses” said records
• bans a national gun registry
• exempts “gun sales and transfers between friends and acquaintances”

So, those checks wouldn’t actually be universal. And what exactly do they mean by “friends and acquaintances?” I’ve never met at least 50 of my Facebook friends in person; would they count as friends? Could you count someone as an acquaintance if you’ve idly chatted a couple of times on the bus? Would you have to demonstrate that you knew each other a certain amount of time prior to the sale or transfer? These questions are going to come up the second the suspect in a shooting says his friend supplied the gun.

STORY #2: The First Lady finish

When the stakes are high enough, First Lady Michelle Obama is capable of rallying many people to President Obama’s side and her own. Knowing this, she joined Chicago mayor and ex-White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel at a local conference on youth violence, where she emphasized the need to reduce everyday gun deaths – wow, how sad is that phrase? – as well as mass shootings such as Newtown. This prompted the usual headlines about “activist” first ladies versus . . . is there a term for those who stay in the background and talk about “mom stuff?” “Passivist” first ladies?

Either way, as a lifelong Chicagoan, Obama’s role on a national scale is to put a different human face on the gun debate than that already provided by firsthand victims. She adds the perspective of a citizen who is painfully aware of the scourge of gun violence in American inner cities and, perhaps, has lived with the fear that she may one day end up in someone’s crossfire. For gun control proponents, that’s exactly the kind of voice they need in order to restore some emotion that may have faded over time. Let’s hope it results in legislation that actually works for a majority of people.

STORY #3: Oh, right . . .

Wasn’t it just last week that we were hailing the progress of comprehensive immigration reform legislation? It’s still on, just so everyone knows, but with the background check bill dominating the news cycle, the “Gang of Eight” behind the forthcoming bill may wait until next week to unveil their proposal.  You should be especially happy about this because this is the first time in what feels like forever that two bipartisan bills have been jockeying for attention.

“Silver bullet” is probably not the best term

The effects of the Newtown shooting were felt all the way to here in Winnipeg, where Councillor Paula Havixbeck – who, because of her opposition to stupid tax hikes, is the only respectable councillor we have left – proposed an expansion of the city’s School Resource Officer (SRO) program. The inner-city school where my mother teaches has such an officer, and they like having him around. But this support for cops in schools has a different rationale than support for cops in schools within Congress.

Freshman Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC), along with six other House Republicans, is proposing the Protect America’s Schools Act, which would restore funding to the Cops in Schools grant program that has gone unfunded since 2005. The grants would go to law enforcement agencies for the purpose of hiring armed officers to patrol schools. The $30 million price tag would come from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) operating funds that end up going unspent.

Despite the fact that everyone who has signed on to co-sponsor this bill is a Republican, it has bipartisan appeal. The program began during the Clinton administration, and one of President Obama’s non-tyrannical gun-related executive orders was to provide incentives to hire officers in schools. In addition, according to a Gallup poll taken in December, 53 percent of Americans believe an increased police presence in schools would be an effective way to prevent school shootings.

Except, as many people have pointed out, both Columbine High School and Virginia Tech had armed security on campus, and Fort Hood was full of armed military personnel. And for every example you can pick out of a police officer, on duty or off, or even a civilian stopping a violent criminal, someone else can pick out an example of someone mistaking an innocent bystander for a violent criminal. There are compelling arguments in favor of putting more cops in schools. The argument that mass shootings will disappear is not one of them.

Here’s the best reason to increase police presence in schools, especially in inner cities with longstanding problems with gang violence. A lot of kids in those schools grow up in an environment where cops are, at best, not trusted. (At worst . . . well, use your imagination.) Allowing cops to interact and build relationships with those kids could go a long way toward steering them away from violent lifestyles they might have pursued otherwise. Of course, the same can be said for better behavior among cops. (See yesterday’s post.)

If you want to stop a mass shooting before it starts, other ideas we’ve been kicking around – improved background checks and, yes, bans on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines – would go a much longer way there. The sooner we all accept it, the better.

Disposal Day #158: Ugh, more gun stuff

STORY #1: Weaksauce

That’s the only term I can assign to the 23 gun-related executive orders President Obama signed. Not that anything stronger would have been within the realm of executive action – and he is going bigger in terms of his demands for Congress – but, Jebus. But don’t tell that to these Republicans and their soundbites:

Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-KS): Obama has a “disdain for the Second Amendment.”

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL): He will “oppose the president’s attempts to undermine Americans’ constitutional right to bear arms.”

Republican National Committee (RNC) chairman Reince Priebus: The orders “amount to an executive power grab that may please his political base but will not solve the problems at hand.”

Well, at least part of that last one is true. Seriously, guys, save the Second Amendment talk for the assault weapons ban. And you might have some trouble there.

STORY #2: Culture war

Then there’s Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX), whose issue with the executive orders is that said nothing about violence in movies and television. (And speaking of television, if there were a sitcom about Congress, this is when everyone in the House would shrug comically and say “Here we go again!”) Why? Because Obama’s biggest funders are in Hollywood, of course, and he doesn’t want to risk losing any of that wonderful, wonderful dinero. Even though he’ll never run in another election. Just saying.

Brady is (mostly) correct to say that America’s hunters, sport shooters and gun collectors do not contribute to a “culture of violence.” But unless they have a dubious background, psychologically or criminally, none of Obama’s orders will amount to more than inconvenience for them. As for Hollywood, short of encouraging more education about how movies are not real life, there’s nothing Obama or Congress could do without stepping on the First Amendment. I would like to know why so many of my male friends watch violent movies and don’t kill people. It’s truly bewildering.

STORY #3: DUUUHHH

I can’t believe I’m even addressing this, but here we go: The National Rifle Association’s (NRA) decision to invoke Malia and Sasha Obama in one of its ads at all is disgusting enough. But do you honestly not understand why any president’s children get more security than everyone else’s children? Because their “nightmare scenario” is very, very different from yours. And what kind of intelligent copywriter says “he’s just another elitist hypocrite” in an ad and expects non-morons to take it seriously?

23 ways NOT to piss off America’s gun nuts

Commence condensed analysis of the 23 gun-related executive orders President Obama signed yesterday.

1. Requiring federal agencies to send “relevant data” to the federal background check system. Define “relevant.”

2. Address legal barriers that make it harder for states to send this data. Whatever.

3. Improve incentives for states to do this. They need incentives?

4. Order the Attorney General to review categories of individuals prevented from gun ownership. Filler.

5. Allow police to check an individual before returning a seized gun. Sure.

6. Send background check guidelines to gun sellers. Will they follow them?

7. Launch a responsible gun ownership campaign. You already are.

8. Review safety standards for gun locks and safes. More filler.

9. Require federal police to trace guns recovered in criminal investigations. Sure.

10. Release a report on lost/stolen guns to law enforcement. So carry out a plan?

11. Pick Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) director. See above.

12. Provide police, first responders and school officials with training for active shootings. Police don’t have that?

13. Maximize enforcement efforts. How?

14. Direct the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to research the causes of gun violence. OK, sure.

15. Look into the newest gun safety technologies and challenge the private sector to create more. Yawn.

16. Clarify that doctors can ask patients about guns in their homes. Pretty obvious when that’s a good question.

17. Remind health care providers they can report violent threats to police. Really?

18. Incentives for school resource officers. I like that.

19. Develop emergency response models for schools and houses of worship. Their job.

20. Clarify which mental illnesses must be covered by Medicaid. Too much clarification.

21-22. Finalize various regulations relating to health benefits and parity.

23. Launch a national dialogue on mental health. Well, someone has to.

In short, no tyranny here. Got it?

How the NRA can improve its rating

Well, if you’re going to let the National Rifle Association (NRA) do the legislating for you, it might as well come from the rank-and-file and not the leadership. That’s the middle ground from which Rep. Jim Moran (D-VA) delivers his bill, known as the NRA Members’ Gun Safety Act – I didn’t make that up – widely touted for its support among NRA members, as discovered by famed Republican pollster Frank Luntz:

• 74 percent of NRA members support background checks on all gun buyers, which would mean closing the gun-show loophole;
• 79 percent support background checks on all gun retailer employees;
• 71 percent support a ban on gun ownership by people on the FBI terror watch list (who wouldn’t?);
• 64 percent support mandatory police reports if a gun is lost or stolen;
• and 63 to 75 percent support some battery of minimum standards for concealed-carry permits.

Lest anyone worry that this poll was conducted solely in the service of this bill after the Newtown shooting – as if Luntz would do that for a Democrat, or as if one would ask him – this poll was conducted in July. Either Moran just found it out, or he was sitting on this bill for a while, waiting to break it out after the dust from the next high-profile shooting cleared. If the latter, that’s both brilliant timing and sad in terms of his expectations.

Using a Luntz poll is an equally brilliant strategy. The NRA brass may have been tragically out of step with its own membership until now. But why would they question his results? It should be noted that non-NRA gun owners were also included in the poll, which may be the only sufficient ground the leadership has for dismissal – unless they want more members. There are reasons some gun owners are turned off by the NRA, not the least of which is their “absolutism,” to paraphrase Moran.

However, Moran himself has an F rating from the NRA, which is still a ground for dismissal, albeit not even half as sufficient as the above one. To neutralize this, Moran can seek the help of Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), who despite his A rating has recently called for new gun control measures. At least for the next few months, people like him will be more politically influential than the “absolutists.” Given the NRA’s own safety training programs, their support of a bill like this wouldn’t be entirely inconsistent.

And that’s my final word on the NRA for this year. Now, a word about Fail of the Year, coming up this Saturday. With fiscal cliff talks in their final agonizing days, I’ve decided to skip the traditional voting process and write a brand-new FOTY column. You can probably guess what I’m going to say, but stay tuned anyway.

Guns don’t kill brain cells, the NRA does

It’s time once again for The Future American’s FAIL OF THE WEEK! Every Saturday, I name a person or group who has spent the past seven days behaving in a particularly idiotic way. Since it’s my belief that idiocy knows no politics, nobody is safe.

This week’s fail was brought to you by National Rifle Association (NRA) CEO Wayne LaPierre, that great defender of the second half of the Second Amendment, and whoever gives him communications advice. If you haven’t read the full text of the press conference he gave yesterday, it’s widely available online, and it’s ridiculous. For those who have a bad gag reflex or limited patience for reading, I will helpfully go through LaPierre’s blame list for you:

Not putting armed guards in schools. Yes, bring more guns into an environment mostly populated by children! What could possibly go wrong? And since we’ve had no trouble funding teachers, textbooks, lab equipment, computers, school repairs and extracurriculars, it’s going to be so easy to implement that an idiot could do it!

The media, for talking about this stuff. Compared to other shootings, they’ve done a better job focusing on the victims, specifically the heroic actions of teachers. But I’ll get back to you when they air the Adam Lanza Lifetime special.

No “active national database of the mentally ill.” You mean the mentally ill who have been determined by licensed medical professionals to have a high risk of violence, right, Wayne? . . . Right?

Unwillingness to prosecute gun crimes. He notes that federal gun prosecutions have decreased by 40 percent over a decade. Of course, most gun prosecutions happen at the state, county or local level.

Violent video games and movies. Just enough of that bullshit already.

Overall, the tone of the press conference can be summed up as “What are you looking at meeeeee for?” Of course, if LaPierre wanted to avoid excessive attention, he might have chosen not to call a press conference.

You know what would have worked for the NRA yesterday? The same thing that needs to work for the federal government: an exact definition of a responsible gun owner, and ways to keep guns out of the hands of anyone who doesn’t meet that definition. Occasionally an NRA official will talk up their firearms education programs. They could have emphasized that side of their operation yesterday. Instead they made the NRA look like a caricature of itself.

We need a second gun lobby willing to make that definition. I suggest Americans for Responsible Gun Ownership, or ARGO. Now that’s a sexy acronym.

Draw the line and draw it fast

I’m writing this in the poli-sci section of a bookstore, with a little over an hour to go before services start at our nearby synagogue. No doubt we’ll add the 27 victims of the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, to our prayer list. It’ll be a small comfort to us, I suppose. But it won’t make up for what I felt when I first read the news: disgust. Not surprise, not anger, not even much sadness. After five or six mass shootings this year, the genuine emotion begins to wear off.

It’s a horrible thing to say, I know. But the fact is that the absence of surprise at the shooting itself was the only surprising thing about it. And I have no doubt others felt the same way yesterday. They looked up, tweeted a thoughts-and-prayers message and went about their business. Another (presumably) crazy guy with a gun. Another 27 innocent people dead. Nothing new, really, just the ages of the victims.

How are we supposed to respond to something like this? Say how horrible it is and then . . . what? Few dare answer. As of this writing, President Obama hasn’t answered that question, which in his case is best for appearances; his speech yesterday afternoon was quite literally straight out of The West Wing. (See the episode “College Kids.”) Perhaps, in the coming days, he will declare war on senseless gun violence. But don’t count on it. When it comes to the growing need to reopen the gun debate, America has kicked the can down the road with a vigor normally reserved for the debt.

But not everyone who tries to reopen the debate does so wisely. Some have a nuanced view; others revert to “CONFISCATE ALL THE GUNS!” (Winnipeggers are big on that) or “ARM ALL THE TEACHERS!” Neither idea is worth the status box it’s typed into. But both extremes have pervaded the discourse to the point that it’s not a discourse – just a genital-measuring competition that the National Rifle Association (NRA) and their pals in Congress nearly always win.

We talk about taking care not to politicize tragedy. If that means avoiding the genital measurements, yes, let’s avoid those. They’re meaningless. But if we define exchanges of sensible, non-knee-jerk policy ideas as “politicizing,” I couldn’t disagree more. Instead, let’s wait until we know all the circumstances of this shooting, and then “politicize” the hell out of them. If it’s within the government’s power to reduce events like this, they should use it.

And so this week’s fail was brought to you by the so-called representatives who neglected to do that the last few times, and indirectly let those times build up. They could have drawn the line between responsible and reckless gun ownership. They could have made the big American militia, so necessary to the survival of a free state, a little more well-regulated. The militia is out of control. Let’s free the state of that problem.

The right to keep and bear balls

There are many ways American law has yet to catch up with modern technology. One of the latest examples of this is yet another result of the Colorado shooting. The Democratic solution to it could charitably be described as “a common sense response,” exactly the kind President Obama is seeking. So why has the reaction from his White House been consistently described as “cool?”

This bill, the Stop Online Ammunition Sales Act, drafted by Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) and Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY), would require four things of people on both ends of online ammunition sales:

• sellers must be licensed;
• if buyers are not licensed, they must present photo ID, effectively ending anonymous online transactions;
• sellers must maintain records of all purchases;
• and sellers must report any sales in excess of 1,000 rounds to an unlicensed buyer within five business days.

What the hell is wrong with that? The record-keeping would certainly be a hassle, but this is better than, for example, requiring gun owners to register their firearms with the federal government. (We’ve tried.) It’s not firm enough – why anyone would want someone without a license to get their hands on a gun is baffling – but it’s a good start. Gun control has a better shot at working if the burden is on those whose business depends on proper sales.

Now before any of you newcomers to this column go accusing me of opposing the Second Amendment – or individual gun rights, and I maintain that the full text of the Second Amendment has little to do with those – that is a) untrue, as you’ll see if you read further, and b) pejorative. Does supporting individual gun rights mean you have to support them for every individual? Some people can be trusted with guns and some cannot. James Holmes is a damn fine example of the latter.

So why can’t Obama and his people say that? Are they so afraid of retribution from the National Rifle Association (NRA), who can easily spend millions electing Republican candidates across the country? I doubt you’ll find a loved one of a Colorado victim who couldn’t produce one sentence powerful enough to render those millions ineffective. Instead they’re effectively passing off responsibility for national support to the blogosphere. We appreciate the extra work, but it won’t get the job done.

I would love to see a national gun lobby that emphasizes the word “responsible” in the phrase “responsible gun ownership.” No loudmouthed gun advocate already out there has bothered with that lately.

Collecting my thoughts about the Aurora shooting

It’s time once again for The Future American’s FAIL OF THE WEEK! Every Saturday, I name a person or group who has spent the past seven days behaving in a particularly idiotic way. Since it’s my belief that idiocy knows no politics, nobody is safe.

This week’s fail was brought to you by a legal system that allows an obviously disturbed individual to carry an AR-15, along with several other firearms and a couple of smoke bombs, into a movie theater in suburban Colorado. That was the reaction to yesterday’s terrible shooting in Aurora that has made the most sense to me. My instinct after a tragedy is to look for some public policy issue to connect with it. Lest any of you accuse me and other pundits of trying to politicize people’s deaths, let me ask you to consider this as a coping mechanism. This is what we do for a living; it’s how we operate.

After a high-profile mass shooting, the political discourse moves as follows: Do your damnedest to demonstrate how your thoughts and prayers are with the victims’ families → find an excuse to blame a person or group you generally blame for everything else → decline to recommend any actual changes → sit back and bask as absolutely nothing changes → rinse and repeat. I fully expect the same to transpire over this weekend and into next week. Former Gov. Mitt Romney’s (R-MA) state assault weapons ban will be of particular interest.

I would like someone to explain why any state hasn’t implemented a ban on assault weapons. Protection? Not unless you’re protecting yourself from Syrian militants. Possible need to overthrow the government? Sorry, I need a non-apocryphal reason. Unless they are intended for the purposes of hunting, sport shooting or personal defense, firearms have no purpose in the hands of civilians. And any civilian who wants one designed for assault, cannot be trusted with it. That’s where I draw the line on guns.

That’s about all I can say from a pundit’s perspective, at least for now. I’m writing this on Friday afternoon; I’m going to synagogue in a couple of hours, and maybe adding the Aurora victims to the list of people for whom we recite the Mourner’s Kaddish will calm me down. In the meantime, here’s a West Wing quote for inspiration:

The streets of heaven are too crowded with angels, but every time we think we have measured our capacity to meet a challenge, we look up and we’re reminded that that capacity may well be limitless. This is a time for American heroes. We will do what is hard. We will achieve what is great. This is a time for American heroes and we reach for the stars. God bless their memory . . . and God bless the United States of America.