Do you feel any differently about the politics of guns than you did 48 hours ago?
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
From last weekend in Philly:
about a half hour ago, I heard two pops.
Southwest Philly.
I’ll be frank. Your neighborhood is straight-up sketchy. Your block is okay, but nearby blocks are zombieville.
The farther west you go, the uglier it gets. The 5100 block of Chester ain’t bad, but Kingsessing is a shitshow. Why do you think I wanna move?
What the numbers show is how useless the GOP is. They have been content to let their pundits blame the deaths of 6 years olds on God, liberals, lack of armed guns in schools, and by the Sunday news shows someone will blame Obama.
Wonder if the total dead in the US this weekend would equal the number of deaths in Syria…a real war zone?
Chicago Tribune: 10 shot, including 4 teens, Friday afternoon and night
The question you asked was about the politics of guns.
I do feel differently than I did 48 hours ago. The reaction is making me think gun control might no longer be a massive political loser, the way it was a decade ago.
Meaning, the right has long used the politics of guns as a culture-war wedge issue. If they could get the country to split in half along pro- and anti-gun control lines, they got the bigger half.
I’m not sure that’s true anymore. If the country was split in half along those lines right now, which side would suburban, blue-collar white women in Ohio go?
The Connecticut massacre was more horrific than the last one, which followed and preceded by others. It is beyond insane, and I think it forces many Americans to face some fundamental questions. The answers, however, are difficult and complex. So many guns are out there that new laws would barely scratch the surface of keeping them out of the wrong hands. And would restrictions – that would be watered down to get approved – have prevented these killings? What elements of our culture seem to most contribute to what sometimes feels like an epidemic? Who can predict which alienated, socially awkward person will commit acts of violence? What actions can we take that will be meaningful?
would this work? ban all the old ammunition – in order to buy legal ammunition one would have to buy new highly regulated guns that would use the new ammunition.
really interesting thought. it may be naive to think so, but maybe it could work if you combined that with a gun buy-back program.
on this issue, i’d be willing to try almost anything. no, make that everything. i’d like to see us go at this on a number of fronts at the same time.
I think I had too many justifications for why it wasn’t possible to do something about gun violence. I felt awful every time I read about someone who died because of a gun. And yet I didn’t do anything. Isn’t that acceptance?
Today I feel more responsible.
.
I was looking at chart yesterday (WHO 2012) to find incomplete data, as in certain countries the guns are primarily used in suicides.
Astounding differences in rates per 100,000 – must be culture/religion and living circumstances (economics/healthcare) causing this:
Country homicide / suicide
Brazil 18.10 / 0.73
Mexico 10.00 / 0.67
USA 2.98 / 5.75
Switzerland 0.58 / 5.61
Canada 0.76 / 3.72
Finland 0.26 / 3.34
Serbia 0.62 / 2.81
France 0.22 / 2.33
Norway 0.04 / 1.72
Germany 0.06 / 0.94
Italy 0.36 / 0.81
Israel 0.94 / 0.71
Spain 0.15 / 0.42
UK 0.04 / 0.17
Poland 0.02 / 0.12
Japan 0.02 / 0.04
[More violent than Brazil are: El Salvador, Jamaica, Honduras, Guatamala, Swaziland and Columbia]
.
(Statistically speaking) Pushing the suicide rate in the red states above the birth rate, wouldn’t that imply in a few centuries we’ll all be blue?
If you would extrapolate that into the absurd yes, like the anti-islam crows extrapolates the higher birthrate of muslims into “they are taking over”.
I have to admit… I didn’t have a bigger personal reaction to this tragedy than I did to Columbine, or the Batman shootings, or to Virginia Tech, or to any of the other recent mass shootings in this country. They’re all tragedies.
However, if this one strikes a nerve with a public and causes the politics to shift then I’ll be relieved that some revision is in sight.
Free gun ownership is like the free market… nice in theory but tragic without good regulation.
I don’t have a bigger response. I have hit my limit, however. I am pissed as hell, and I’m not going to listen to gunsuck crap anymore.
I’ve been reluctant to comment on this latest tragedy in the long stream of them of late because I really didn’t feel much different about it than any of the others. Another one, huh? What to do? When will we ever learn?
The one that did it for me was the 101 California Street shootings in 1993. That was close to home for me and it was terrifying personally. It was what led to the assault weapons ban – the one that expired after its ten-year sunset provision. When that happened, I just sort of went numb to the whole issue.
But a few hours ago I heard the list of names and ages read off and the ages really got to me. I kept hearing the number six. Six years old! When my nieces were six years old, I used to drive them to and from school a couple days a week… Then it affected me.
Something has to be done. I’m not sure what, but people need to keep talking about this until something is done.
I’m less willing to abide stupid gun fans responses.
You mean gunsuck responses. It’s time to call them by the right name.
I’m not entirely sure what you mean by gunsuck responses.
No
Well, I think we have hit some tipping point. No NRA/RightWing/WingNut/NutJob/Fox BS is going to have any moral suasion.
If someone proposed a law that said ‘No crazy people can own guns’ how could someone argue with that?
-rms
how could someone argue with that?
I spent years as the liberal opposition at a libertarian site, and I can answer that question. Ahem:
“Do you want there to be a federal database of people with mental health issues, deciding who gets what rights? Big, scary federal government booga booga!”
Did you ever make headway? I spent 2-3 years on Ron Paul forums and I convinced a lot of them that global warming was real. Unfortunately, they still decided that the free market could deal with it better than the government.
Hmm, well my main point is that a tipping point has happened, a phase change, an epiphany. I predict that there will now be a concerted effort, on cultural, legal, moral, legislative, judicial grounds to start reducing this type of event, through restricting gun availability. Sadly, at the moment when the pro-gun types seemingly have the most influence they have lost the argument.
Really the way to counter arguments of any pro-gun person now is NOT to argue facts, but to simply say ‘Shame on you” This is how to handle it. Not to argue 2nd amendment BS, or whatever, just to say SHAME. Forcefully, and with the moral certititude that is demanded by our humanity. Really, I think deep down, inside somewhere, gun-nuts know they are wrong, but the momentum of their own cognitive dissonance prevents them from admitting it. Don’t bother with facts, Shame them, and work at undoing their damage.
I really don’t feel differently. I do feel very sad, though.
These two contrasting, but nonetheless consistent, facts still matter:
I’m not convinced there is a policy solution to this tragedy or that any policy change would lead to better outcomes. The policies appear to be in place now to deal with it adequately, if not satisfactorily. Given the number of firearms available in this country and the historical cleavage over this issue since the founding of the nation, any further ban could be only symbolic in nature — on the books but impossible to implement universally, just like bans on marijuana or immigration have been, or bans on abortion used to be. They might be, or have been, illegal but it doesn’t stop the activity because most of the activity is truly legitimate in the eyes of too many people.
I can’t think of worse outcome for this tragedy than another attempt to ban ownership of semi-automatic rifles. At best it would be a wedge issue for Democrats, and at worst it could cause incidents of further violence like the Waco incident where otherwise innocent people get into violent conflict with law enforcement over gun ownership. Sometimes we just have to accept who we are and move on without making more laws about it.
You’re totally wrong. We need to ban all semi-automatics. We need a gun-buyback program. We need to get rid of military weapons in private hands.
Yeah, and with over 200 million weapons in private hands, a large portion of them semi-automatics, how do you propose to do that without putting a few million otherwise law-abiding and innocent people on the opposite side of the law with potentially violent consequences resulting. Despite the recent tragedy, violence is already way down without more of such gun bans, so what is the real argument for its urgency today?
Almost 20x the rate of the 22nd ranked OECD country (the US being 23 of 23)?
Yeah, but there are some things which can be changed with deft policy actions, and some which can’t. America’s addiction to violence is one of those which cannot. It’ not like the other OECD countries had really high rates of crime at some point in their recent history and did something to reduce it by implementing gun control. Instead they’ve been doing such things for centuries. We’re not at that place, and it would be a quagmire to try to go there and expect any positive outcomes from it.
Simple: make it shameful, creepy, and sick to own a gun. It worked on smoking, it can work on guns.
We need a name.
I suggest a re-branding campaign.
I don’t want to talk about guns, but about massacres.
I am anti-massacre. If you are pro-massacre, you need to justify WHY you are pro-massacre.
ANTI-MASSACRE.
Any new legislation…call it Gun Safety Law.
No. I don’t mean to sound callous, but does it really matter that a classroom full of first graders got gunned down this time? If a first grader dies, that changes how we see things, but if we let that same first grader age ten years and she gets shot down trying to watch the new Batman movie, it’s more acceptable? Will it be more acceptable when (and I do mean when) a nursing home gets blown up?
48 hours ago, I thought this country was completely and irrevocably fucked when it comes to gun violence. Now? My thoughts are unchanged.
Agreed. The cake is baked, and any effort that would be truly successful in preventing more tragedies is way beyond politically impossible.
yes – first graders or other people who can’t do a damn thing about protecting themselves need society to protect them – yes it does make a difference that it was a group of people who were depending on being protected by someone else.
The reason why this person did this is because they could do it.
We’ll have to make our schools like our airports or get rid of the guns which are not for killing animals that we may or may not eat. And we have now learned that the best way to protect ourselves from intrusive government is to elect the right people not have an arsenal of firearms.
Yes. The argument is over for me. I don’t give a damn about the Second Amendment. If this country can not keep weapons of mass destruction out of the hands of the mentally ill, then we do not deserve to have them at all. The right to keep and bear arms can not outweigh the right to bear and keep children.
No. The problem is we are a sick society. We glorify all things violence related: football, television shows (Game of Thrones, The Wire), games, music lyrics, war vets. Yes, I said war vets. We have fetisized (sp?) anything that is remotely related to the military and glory of war. It is all that matters in our society, besides conspicuous consumption.
Unless we are willing to teach our children that each and everyone of us is dependent on the other and that fear should not rule our world, we won’t stop these events.
We need to ask ourselves, who are we and what kind of society do we want to be.
More idiocy with automatic weapons. I felt in the past that automatic weapons had no place in the hands of regular folks and still do. But this incident, resulting in the deaths of mostly 6 year olds, only a few miles from where I live, has struck particularly hard.
It does feel somewhat different.
Obama’s reaction seems more authentically determined. There is a global recoil. Little kids dead a week before Xmas. Close to the NYC media. Gun rights advocates response has been nothing or pathetic. The GOP was already leaderless and lost. Their response shows that.
The conversation seems different but I am still not optimistic that much will actually change. 300 million guns is a lot. A broken mental health system is really broken and the science of mental health is poor.
Also close to the financial services industry. They may just have more pull in the political universe than the NRA does.
If the leaders in this industry were to tell the Republicans (and many Democrats) to sit back, not fight and to vote their conscience on serious gun control and mental health screening initiatives right now, could real change finally occur?
Personally, I doubt it. But it may be possible.
No. Total revocation of the 2nd Amendment.
All of the killing at the school in Newtown was done in less than 10 minutes. It should take a really long time to load the second bullet in a gun. I don’t know anywhere in the Constitution where the kind of arms that a person has a right to bear is at all mentioned.
As for using personal weapons to defend ourselves against an out-of-control government, you’d have to witness for yourself something like the phalanx of police in Oakland advancing on Occupy protesters to understand the ludicrousness of the idea.
Here’s a serious question: do you think Obama would have the nerve to take on the NRA after the voluntary ass-whipping he just took from that impotent, spineless, worthless piece of crap Lindsay Graham?
And in answer to your question – no – I feel exactly the same: automatic weapons should be banned – and I shake my head in disbelief at anyone who requires two dozen execution-style murdered children to arrive at that conclusion. It’s a complete no-brainer – their only use is mass murder – that’s why the military designed them. Hundreds of thousands of violently-deranged people with mental illness look at these events and are driven to copy them. Add to that the many people who aren’t actually insane but take enough drugs and alcohol to make them behave as if they are. It’s insane not to do everything possible to make it harder for these people to get mass murder weapons.
I know it’s too soon for the families, but it would be a powerful picture having POTUS &/or Dems having a hearing &/or putting forth legislation & having all 26 parents & family of the adults as one united front against the gun nuts in the NRA & GOP.
–No–
The horror in Newtown will fade in the next few days and weeks just as all the other gun violent horrors in the past as faded. The NRA has been an effective political actor in the US since as least the days of Richard Nixon. The shooting of Ronald Reagan and Jim Brady didn’t even slow it down.
I am not one to knee-jerk changes in analysis, but this has moved me from Responsible Regulation, and to Take The Damn Things Away, Today If Not Yesterday. I want to single-handedly move the overton window from a discussion presently focused on “how many places can how many people be allowed to keep how many sorts of guns?” and into a discussion on “who should we carve out exceptions for as we start to take away guns?”
Well, I think repeal of the 2nd Amendment is a no-go with today’s electorate but the time is now to build a citizen’s movement to get there piecemeal. Start with focused legislation like the Brady Bill or restricting huge purchases of ammunition. Make guns or ammo more expensive to buy.
I think we can make alliances with hunters and sport shooters and moderate political voters against the fetishization of tactical firearms that should probably be limited to law enforcement and military. This requires nuance and not a blanket contempt for all gun owners.
And this morning we had another shooting at a hospital in Alabama.
and a shooting at a mall in California
Not really, but it reconfirms my long held belief that the gun mania represents the primal patriarchal anxiety at the core of the right-wing. That the gun nuts are the base of the base, the most zombified of the zombies, if not in strict political terms than in ideological terms.
The right wing is entirely built on lies. It’s all one big lie, which comes in various forms. But the lie that gun violence is best addressed with more guns has to be one of the biggest and most shameful lies in the history of mankind.
Nope. Nothing will be done. SOS.
The right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. So, keep them at the armory, where you can use them every weekend as part of that well-regulated militia.
Hoping CT, perhaps with NY and NJ proposes some legislation and it eventually reaches Pres. Obama’s desk. Hoping they have a real discussion in congress en route to the presidents desk
Yes, I do, as a matter of fact. I feel that all my arguments in favor of gun control that I made in August were for naught.
It is, in fact, impossible to convince people who are more attached to their right to own a gun than they are to the lives of innocent citizens of their country that those rights could, and should, be infringed.
I refuse to engage in any more arguments. Let them kill each other, then pretend to mourn the victims by placing pretty images of candles on their facebook wall. Let our politicians say pretty words, and then duck out of arguments they could win, when cowardice and fear of backlash tempers their words. Let them put Jesus back in their hearts, their schools, wherever they goddamn want, because they need all the help they can get, even the imaginary kind.
I have never felt such hopeless rage, and such a determination to do exactly nothing. I’ve given up on America. I hope I never have to go back.
Hate ’em and the arguments about why they’re necessary – the militia is the key word in the second amendment – no founding father ever dreamed of allowing assault rifles for home protection….having a gun in the home is asking for trouble and if a person has a gun in the home they had better keep it in parts separated and locked with different combinations that only the owner knows-or guess what, your grown child might just get them and use them on you and who ever else bothers them…I’m considering moving – my niece has declared its too dangerous to live in the USA and I think she may be right- so I guess the answer is yes, I’m more prone to finding a place where getting a gun is as least as difficult as getting and keeping a drivers license.
The point’s already been made by a few others here, but I feel quite different about the possibilities of getting meaningful reform accomplished.
A couple days ago I assumed without question that there would be nothing done for at least the next 2 major election cycles.
Reading the internet tea leaves from abroad is dicey at best, but I feel like I’m witnessing a major shift in public opinion. I don’t know if minds are changing from supporting gun rights to supporting control, but it sure seems like those who have favored reasonable controls have changed significantly from the “can’t get it done” camp to “we have to do something NOW.”
That attitude shift, along with President Obama’s remarks, makes me think a real political shift in the possible has occurred.
So, guarded optimism. That’s more or less been the watch word for me during the Obama administration so far, but now it extends to legislative reform for guns, whereas 48 hours ago it absolutely did not.
We certainly didn’t need another week of simmering in rage at the profiteers that are killing our fellow citizens. This event has rearranged my enemies list for as long as I can maintain this anger.
And, hopefully it has provoked some more effective action.
NOPE; I feel/think the same.
THE problem is our more or less worthless CONGRESS. In case some of you have forgotten; Congress is responsible for the safety and well being of our nation.
They are totally failing this responsibility in numerous major policy areas.
Our hideous gun death/violence problem is just one area– and it’s a prime example of what happens when congress doesn’t have the intelligence and spine to stand up to just one lobby/front group: the NRA.
Until congress grows a spine and starts behaving like the adults in the room– we’re going down the toilet as a high quality of life nation. it’s over.
Differently? I guess a little.
It’s a difficult political question. Changes related to civil rights, especially Constitutional rights, are difficult and take a long time. But it’s a compelling public-safety question independent of the politics.
I just created a White House petition that reflects my views at the moment. Submitted for your consideration:
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/immediately-create-compelling-voluntary-incentives-reduce-
number-guns-homes-and-enhance-their-safety/ftm80lrX?utm_source=wh.gov&utm_medium=shorturl&ut
m_campaign=shorturl
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
I got to the white house site with your link, but I got a 404 error.
Thanks.
I guess I didn’t read the instructions correctly. :-/
Try this one:
http://wh.gov/RFTH
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
Thanks. Signed it!