Another Mass Shooting
Is there anything more American than a firearm used in a mass murder?
Last week I wrote about American “bullshit” -the phenomenon of baseless conspiracy theories and other falsehoods promulgated by certain personalities and become gospel for large numbers of non-critical thinkers. In particular, in the wake of the mass murder of 10 persons by an 18-year-old white supremacist in a supermarket in a Black neighborhood of Buffalo, NY, I called BS on the 2008 decision of the US Supreme Court that extended the 2nd Amendment right to individuals:
… [I]n District of Columbia v. Heller… the right was interpreted as applying to individuals. Heller overturned the 132-year-old precedent (United States v. Cruikshank) that ruled that “the right to bear arms is not granted by the Constitution; neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence.“
You can get more historical detail from this thread posted on Twitter by author and lawyer Teri Kanefield. Whatever her personal leanings, Ms. Kanefield provides background about gun control laws in this country. She points out the most salient point- it mattered what person held the gun: from colonial times, laws were enacted to criminalize the possession of firearms by Native Americans, slaves or Blacks and mulattoes, and eventually even leaders of organized labor. .
She also gives a brief description of the transformation of the NRA from a gun safety organization to a powerful force in our politics:
What caused the NRA to change from a gun safety organization into what it is today? The Civil Rights movement changed everything… Before the 1970s, NRA members were members of both political parties who wanted training and marksmanship competitions. But there arose a radicalized faction that asserted (for the first time in our history) that the 2nd Amendment allowed for unfettered access to guns.
And “what it is today” is a powerful lobby tied to both firearms manufacturers and white militia groups. Numbers: The NRA reportedly contributed $30 million to Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign; in 2012, the organiztion contributed $13 million to Mitt Romney. According to the website Open Secrets, $30 million was“more than its combined spending in all races during the 2008 and 2012 presidential election cycles, which include 45 Senate and 145 House races.“
In one way or another, it’s always about the money. Do an online search of gun and ammunition manufacturers and you will find making weapons is a lucrative business. Since many of these companies are privately-owned, it is difficult to get precise numbers on industry wide profits. It is sufficient to note that the industry attracts a wide array of financial players- investment banks, hedge funds, private equity groups. These are not people seeking tax write-offs. Business is good- a reported 19 million guns were sold in 2021, a near-record number. Some of this money funds the NRA’s hefty lobbying effort.
American culture is gun culture
American society is built on a culture of rugged individualism, the myth of the cowboy and his Colt .45. We Americans, or more accurately, a large percentage of us, legally own guns. In 2020, Gallup reported polling results that “32% of U.S. adults say they personally own a gun, while a larger percentage, 44%, report living in a gun household”. This does not include illegally-owned guns. According to most sources, there are more guns in this country than people.
Contrast that with other countries. There are incidents of violence involving guns in many places, but we are unique among the so-called “first-world” nations. Here’s a comparison: In March, 1996, a gunman entered an elementary school in Dunblaine, Scotland and killed 16 pupils and a teacher before killing himself. The following year, the British Parliament passed two laws (the Firearms Acts) which banned private ownership of handguns with very few exceptions. There has not been another school shooting in Scotland since the Dunblaine Massacre.
There are other examples of using the law to curb gun violence. In Australia, which instituted voluntary surrenders and buybacks after a spate of mass shootings in the 1990s, firearm possession is handled by the various states in coordination with the national government. Gunowners must have a firearm license to possess or use a firearm, and must demonstrate a "genuine reason" (not including for self-defense) for being granted the license. All firearms must be registered by serial number to the owner, who must also hold a firearms license. New Zealand also has licensing requirements for gun ownership.
What is lacking here in the land of firearm fetishism is the political will to approach the issue in a reasonable way. I spent most of my life in New York, a state with some of the most restrictive gun laws in the nation. Permits are required to own handguns; there are stricter requirements for “concealed carry” permits. Outside of New York City, permits are not required for long guns (rifles and shotguns).
Compare this to states such as Texas, where no permit at all is required to carry a handgun. According to Everytown for Gun Safety, a nonprofit that advocates for gun law, Texas has “the 17th-weakest gun laws in the country. The same report ranks New York as the state with the third-strongest gun control laws. New York has 5.3 gun deaths per 100,000 residents, while Texas has 14.2 per 100,000 residents”.*
What is to be done? (Lenin’s burning question)
Let’s begin with the simple: Universal background checks. There should be no exceptions (such as gun show sales or private-party transfers). This is something that’s been loitering in Congressional limbo for years. (Hint for Democrats whose plans for this year’s mid-terms is apparently a combination of hope and magic: none of this will get done if the Republicans take either or both Houses. Have you all been sleeping the last 16 months?)
So, I will wave my imaginary magic wand and provide a wish-list action plan:
Training in the safe handling of firearms must be a prerequisite before owning a firearm. This would include life-fire qualification
Per the Australian model, all gun owners must be licensed (by their state) and all firearms registered to each licensed owner. We require beauticians to licensed and we need one to operate a motor vehicle. Gun ownership should not be different.
Liability insurance for gun owners should be developed and made a requirement for licensing.
Attack the industry’s money. Tax the manufacturers of guns and ammunition. Since not all the states would impose such a levy, make it a Federal tax but distribute the bulk of the revenue to the states proportionately. An industry that costs the nation so much in terms of lives lost should not be pocketing vast sums.
Allow the CDC to study gun violence as an epidemic. The NRA lobby got that blocked back in 1996. (See the Dickey Amendment.)
To be realistic, laws and regulations will not prevent criminals from obtaining guns and using them to commit crimes. They are by definition law-breakers. But it will cut down on mass slaughter of innocents that seems to be happening regularly.
If gun users such as hunters are removed from the calculation, firearms can be seen as an instrument of fear: if weilded by an assailant, they can install fear; or they can create a false sense on insulation from fear if kept for potential self-defense. And they can be marketed on the basis of fear. Nine years ago I wrote the following:
The NRA Task Force on School Safety issued its report yesterday, the core of which is their foregone conclusion that what schools need are armed personnel- security guards, or even teachers and administrators. I haven't read the report yet, but I wonder if they also called for issuing bullet-proof vests to all school children.
The concept of armed school guards got me to thinking about bank guards. There must be studies and statistics about incidents in which bank guards used their weapons, how many times they successfully prevented a robbery in doing so, and how many times an armed guard was killed or wounded. This is the best analogy to having armed guards in our schools.
Now that I think about it, will we arm school crossing guards, too?
I feel that thought has aged well. The NRA is still clinging to we need “more good guys with guns” theory of school safety. Our elected representatives still offer thoughts and prayers. Nothing changes.
So I offer this final suggestion as way of motivating our elected officials: Some of us should start a campaign that will purport to increase the number of minority gun owners. An advertising blitz aimed at black, Hispanic, Asian Americans and all other minorities would surely get the attention of the old white men in the Senate.
It’s worth a try. Having school kids gunned down in their classrooms isn’t working.
*Source: https://www.ksl.com/article/50411219/these-states-have-the-weakest-gun-control-laws-in-the-country
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Resurgence of the hard right in mainstream politics based on a literal interpretation of the Constitution should ordinarily be good news for individual rights regarding the 2nd Amendment. The Federalist association which provides that political-judicial base for selection conservative Supreme Court Justices should lead us to review the phrasing of this gun rights statement.
Amendment 2 starts with the phrase "A well-regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free state" historically referred to concepts like the citizen-soldiers of New England called "Minutemen", private citizens who assembled at a minutes notice to thwart actions by the British crown military in the Northeast. So the world of gun rights was limited from the start to those freedom-fighters who should be allowed to have guns for freedom's sake. We all read of the Minutemen assembled from the ride of Paul Revere who became infamous in Lexington and Concord confrontations with the British regulars via the "shot heard round the world" and sniping at the British on their trek to find an arsenal of powder and weapons collected by the Massachusetts irregular militiamen or minutemen. It's a limitation on the scope of guns. Today we have no minutemen in the corporate United States of America outside of the National Guard in each state.
Then the phrasing goes on to reflect the concept of minutemen from New England to the colonies at large by stating the " right of the people". So confused minds in the past have mistakenly equated a colonial national guard in minutemen with "all" people when this isn't the literal case from phrase one. There is no mandate for all people in this stated right of Americans, just a militia in each State.
Then the right is "keep and bear arms" in the phrasing. Literally it's limited by the preceding clauses to a "militia" not the population at large, to those affiliated with organized quasi-mililtary groups formed to guarantee the security of each State or its foundational colony, not to be generalized to a then incipient corporation of 13 States but to secure Massachusetts, for example, not the entire body of United States. Current extremist 2nd Amendment rights groups use mistaken logic and America precedents toward National Guards post-Constitution adoption to defend everybody's right to keep and bear arms, a too broad interpretation of this right. It's convenient to ignore prior phrasing or bastardize the words to expand meaning to every citizen instead of just a State militia. Words and phrases are given modern meanings at times and colonial meanings at other times to justify a general right to keep and bear arms for everybody.
Then the ending "shall not be infringed" leads the weak-minded or partisan hard right advocate to demand no gun controls, no laws limiting anything related to guns, a universal call to citizens to arm themselves for security of the United States. In fact of phrasing, they interpret this right far beyond a well-regulated militia to mean anybody can keep and bear arms. It flies in the face of any 'literal' interpretation of the Bill of Rights (Constitution) that they rely on so strongly in arguments, it belies the practices and precedents (legal and otherwise) of people that anybody can buy and keep guns, it expands meaning beyond muskets, powder and colonial tactics of warfare toward independence, it distorts word and phrase and paragraph statements in understanding, either colonial or post-Constitution times and language to justify the 2nd Amendment applying to everybody, particularly vets, posse comitatus, anarchists, antebellum rebels and others dissatisfied with today's United States. The aim was to secure and defend 13 United States from crown sympathizers, foreign troops on continental soil, and insurrectionists against a new nation's birthing.
We all know there were many compromises made to enact a Constitution in 1789 within its wording. We may not know there was no Bill of Rights or amendments forwarded from the Constitutional Convention by founding fathers until it was discovered there would be no ratification in some quarters until more than American corporate and States rights were stated plainly. So individual rights were assembled in the Addendum Bill of Rights including gun rights for a State's militia. No problem I see in New England; more problems in the South which depended on armed committees to keep the slaves in check. I'm not aware of any American citizens who were former crown loyalists who posed a threat to the new United States of America by force of arms or otherwise. So the 2nd amendment was aimed at State security, not American security and those demanding unfettered and universal gun possession are whistling Yankee Doodle to hide the inconsistency and misinterpretation of gun rights through the centuries. Let's have reasonable and well-phrased limits to ownership and usage of guns domestically, all Constitutional.