Charles C.W. Cooke of the National Review provides us with an interesting exercise in logic. He notes in somewhat of a relieved tone that the suspect in the Las Vegas shooting “wasn’t a felon — or, at least, that there was nothing in the federal database that would have prevented him from buying weapons.” This is apparently good news because it means that “universal background checks” would not have prevented him from carrying out the massacre. And if more expanded background checks would not have saved any lives in Las Vegas, then there shouldn’t be any compelling reason to implement them in response.
Does that seem like an airtight argument to you? We shouldn’t have a system that prevents felons from purchasing guns because non-felons will still be able to purchase guns? Maybe we shouldn’t put convicted murderers in prison because some people who haven’t yet been convicted of murder may become murderers in the future?
Cooke isn’t making a logical argument at all. He’s making a political appraisal. And he’s making the same mistake that liberals too often make, which is thinking that facts trump emotion. Just because a political response to the massacre might include measures that wouldn’t have prevented that specific tragedy doesn’t mean that there won’t be massive sentiment in favor of them. And if the sole reed you’re clinging to is that only felons would be negatively impacted, that’s not much of an argument from either a substantive or an emotional point of view.
A better political appraisal is attempted by Jonathan Swan who contacted more than twenty people close to Donald Trump to try to get an assessment of whether he’d be open to some gun control measures. Steve Bannon was an emphatic ‘no.’
I asked Steve Bannon whether he could imagine Trump pivoting to the left on guns after the Las Vegas massacre. “Impossible: will be the end of everything,” Bannon texted. When asked whether Trump’s base would react worse to this than they would if he supported an immigration amnesty bill, Bannon replied: “as hard as it is to believe actually worse.”
Roger Stone agreed, saying, “Base would go insane and [Trump] knows it.”
While some noted that Trump used to show concern about semiautomatic weapons in his previous life, the dominant sentiment was that Trump is now a fully owned subsidiary of the National Rifle Association.
“POTUS (correctly) believes he doesn’t owe anything to most traditional Republican outside groups, because they didn’t lift a finger to help him in the election,” said a Trump administration source. “NRA is very much the exception. They stayed loyal through it all and kept spending.” We’re told Trump feels a personal connection to the NRA and is close to the NRA’s top lobbyist, Chris Cox.
Now, some of these folks think they are very clever and they’ve come up with a way for Trump to do something without really doing anything. The NRA has been pushing a law that would make it easier to buy silencers. This is supposedly so gun enthusiasts can protect their hearing. The bill had some momentum prior to the Las Vegas massacre, but now no one thinks it will reach the floor in Congress anytime soon. Trump could come out against this bill and get credit for taking on the NRA.
Trump could make a modest concession to gun control advocates by opposing a controversial bill, backed by the NRA, to relax restrictions on the purchasing of gun silencers…
…Trump could get out in front of it, get a slap from the NRA on an issue that’s not nearly so radioactive as gun ownership, and move on without considering more substantial gun control actions.
You don’t need to be attending the funeral of a loved one this week to find this kind of political calculation repulsive.
One source who talked to Swan considered it possible that Trump would go further because he might be genuinely affected by the video footage of the massacre.
“The rational route to take would be to let the investigation play out to see if any new laws could’ve prevented this. I’m 100 percent Second Amendment but … people who had their brains blown out is enough to make anyone with a heart consider anything to prevent this.”
I’d add to this that if Trump travels to Las Vegas and talks to the families of the victims, he could at least conceivably be motivated to doing something more than oppose a bill that’s currently dead in the water. He is known, after all, for wanting to pander to whatever crowd he’s in.
At least in theory, he’d have a better chance of getting some gun violence legislation passed than Obama ever had, if only because he could provide some cover for a few Republicans to cross the aisle. The people who know him best doubt that he’ll go that route, however, and I see no reason to think that they’re wrong.
Many people have argued that if two classrooms full of butchered first-graders couldn’t convince Republicans to buck the NRA, it’s hard to conceive of anything that would. I’d add to this that the GOP paid no price and were arguably rewarded politically for their decision to ignore the tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut and stick with the NRA. And this was despite polling in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook massacre that showed overwhelming support for stronger gun restrictions. This is because of the shape of the electorate more than because of the raw vote. Trump won despite losing the popular vote by millions because he stomped Clinton in the gun-toting areas of states like Pennsylvania and Michigan.
For Trump and the Republicans, they obviously need to be concerned about their growing weakness in the suburbs, but they won that trade in the last election and it’s hard to argue that Trump can rely on doing better in the suburbs next time regardless of what he does on guns. Their political calculation is most likely going to be the same as Bannon and Stone’s. Trump can’t afford to disappoint his hardline opponents of any gun violence legislation.
For all the people out there wondering why the government will not do anything to attempt to put an end to these mass shootings, I’ve just provided you with the reasons. If people want something done, they’re going to have to defeat not just a few Republicans, but hordes of them. In fact, sadly, it would probably be easier to convince Trump to do something than it would be get big enough Democratic majorities to overcome Republican obstruction.
The situation is basically so hopeless that our political leadership should begin considering what happens when people feel that the political process is a dead end. They become radicalized and stop respecting the law. That’s where we’re headed on gun violence. That’s where we’re headed on a whole lot of things.
Are there non-legislative ways to impose ‘gun control’? I’m talking about any parallels to how the anti-choice movement has severely restricted access to abortion services while Roe v Wade is still on the books.
Good question! And a good idea. I don’t have any ideas, but this seems like something worth pursuing.
One way to approach would be to require liability insurance for purchase of certain types of firearms or purchase of extended magazines. like having a 500HP road car vs a 150 HP car. Insurance rates differ for the two basically same item. No one says you can’t have one, just have to pay the extra for it.
That would in no way limited one’s 2nd Amend rights, just as the requirement of insurance for car purchase, doesn’t limit one’s right of free movement.
Everyone talks about banning this or that. Problem is, most firearm technology is stuck in the early 1900’s. The ARs and AKs everyone is afraid of are based on principals from the 1920/30s. Designs fully used in civilian hunting arms of the time.
The real question is, “why do you want one?”
That will have to be addressed before you reduce the demand for those types of weapons. I think its fear ginned up by political and commercial interests.
R
Another way is to go after bullets, not guns.
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Problem is, there are cross purposes for ammunition. A Nato 7.62mm rifle round is a .308 hunting round. 5.56mm AR round is a .223 light game round. More or less (dimensions can be the same but chamber pressures could differ). .30-06 is the same round used for over 100 yrs in both hunting and military weapons. Same with East European rounds. Tough to distinguish. High tax on one could limit legitimate hunting with the other.
R
The GOP never suffer any consequences for their intransigence on gun control or the lack thereof. This is what their base has been brainwashed into believing is their bounden right, and that’s the end of it. Trump isn’t going to cross that line. No way.
Yesterday I had a conversation with someone whom I used to think was reasonably sane. Without going into any details, this person said straight out to me: “There’s not that many incidents like this one.”
Not “that many”??? So, it’s OK with you that 59 people died and over 500 people were injured I asked?
“Well, no. Of course I’m not “Happy” about it, but it just doesn’t happen that often.”
I have no idea how this person votes, but THIS is what we’re up against.
It doesn’t happen “that often.”
It’s the price we pay for our FreeDUMBS.
GAH.
I feel like I’m always blathering on about the New White Identity here, that I think there’s an emergent ethnicity that we haven’t really seen fully expressed before, that’s, for want of a better term, White. It’s not Swedish or Polish or Italian or Scots-Irish, it’s white–and they’re beginning to vote as monolithically as other strongly-bound identity groups: blacks and Jews and gays.
Identity groups need in-group markers, cultural touchstones that are anathema to the out-group. Never occurred to me before, but I’m wondering if gun ownership and ‘rights’ aren’t the purest expression of this.
With that in mind, I kind of almost sorta agree with your acquaintance. I just don’t think that gun control is a productive place to focus our political efforts in terms of ‘work to lives spared’. Wikipedia tells me that these are the leading causes of preventable death in the US:
Smoking tobacco-435,000
Preventable medical errors in hospitals-210,000 to 448,000 (estimates vary, significant numbers of preventable deaths also result from errors outside of hospitals.)
Being overweight and obesity-111,909
Alcohol-85,000
Infectious diseases-75,000
Toxic agents including toxins, particulates and radon-55,000
Traffic collisions-43,000
Preventable colorectal cancers-41,400 (About 80 percent of colorectal cancers begin as benign growths, commonly called polyps, which can be easily detected and removed during a colonoscopy. Accordingly, the tabulated figure assumes that 80% of the fatal cancers could have been prevented.)
Firearms deaths-31,940 (Suicide: 19,766; homicide: 11,101; Accidents: 852; Unknown: 822)
Sexually transmitted infections-20,000
Drug abuse-17,000
Obviously, there’s something uniquely horrific about a mass murder. However, speaking like a Vulcan, focusing on medical errors, say, or infectious disease, might make more sense in terms of saving lives. Obviously, obviously, we should attempt to address all of these things. Still, I wonder.
There is something about deliberately caused harm that really gets to people. Crime, terrorism, things like that. You look at the stats and see that the odds and numbers suggest you spend money on something boring, like car safety. But it doesn’t happen, because deliberate human caused tragedy is always what is focused on.
Very true. I guess it’s fine to say ‘speaking like a Vulcan,’ but people aren’t.
That’s the toll, not the (relatively “minor”) hundred or two from mass murders.
Note that only about a third are (non-suicide) homicides.
That’s the Reality of a country awash in guns — nearly one for every person, despite that (guessing, here) a majority own none at all, and a significant proportion of the population are children.
That’s where we live.
We are one fucked-up nation.
Jews do not vote monolithically. 25 to 30 percent regularly vote Republican, and that has not changed as the GOP has gone crazy.
70-75% is pretty monolithic when it comes to voting, no? The Latino vote goes for Dems in the same numbers, and we consider them a bloc. Mormons go Republican to about that degree, too, I believe.
Especially if we ignore outlier wingnut subcultures like Cubans and the Orthodox. Which I am extremely happy to do.
I don’t think anybody expects Trump to do anything. He will waffle for a bit, then people will increasingly criticize him for doing nothing. Then he will lash out at the critics on Twitter.
The problem is that the victims were country music fans. In short, Real Merkins. The ones who voted for Trump, and Romney, and McCain and Bush, and Bush. . . So, it’s going to be difficult to do the normal polarization routine where he blames the victims.
Also, the fact that the shooter isn’t a Muslim Terrorist and not a Scary Black Dude(tm)is also a problem. It makes it impossible to blame “the other” -Mexican immigrants for instance, and then pivot to blaming Obama and liberal Democrats for being soft on them. Etc.
Also, since the shooter wasn’t black, it’s impossible to blame Colin Kaepernick or Black Lives Matter as a “terrorist organization.” Antifas weren’t to blame here either.
In short the normal playbook that worked with Pulse Nightclub (God hates gays) won’t work here. Does God hate country music fans? All the normal people the rabid diseased base of the Republican party have been trained to hate and blame and secretly enjoy seeing killed – none of them were to blame!
This means that the only thing to do is breath a sigh of relief that no obvious mechanism would have helped.
The problem is law abiding gun owners owning multiple automatic weapons. Nearly 20 in this case.
Thus, the only thing to do is ignore the problem until it goes away. Until the normal political reaction is – liberals and Democrats attacking Trump and the Republicans, Conservatives rallying behind Trump and the NRA. Nothing happens.
“Your dead child does not trump my constitutional rights.” — That quote was pretty clear and sums up the entire political right wing. The subtext was “I know how outrageous and offensive that sounds, and I said it deliberately to provoke everybody whom I hate, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
Well, if we assume that passing immediate gun control measures prior to the 2018 election is the objective, then no.
But, we can chip away at reactionary control over all levels of government and this can be a rallying cry among many others.
Because of course, the next time will inevitably be worse. The question of course, is whether the next shooter will be conveniently black or Muslim, so they can blame “Islamic terrorism” and say the the problem is weak border control or something. But, at some point, the death toll is going to be in the thousands. It’s only lucky that this shooter didn’t get to kill even more people.
This problem does have a solution, but it’s definitely a long term solution. We have to destroy the GOP and drive them into the wilderness, for this as well as a thousand other reasons. It won’t be easy or quick, but it is necessary and the killings will continue until morale improves, because we’ve succeeded.
There’s little that is logical about these people. They will shamelessly find ways to blame Obama, democrats, Hillary, Kaepernick, the NFL and just about anything they hate for this.
It won’t make sense, but how much of anything they say does?
We spend more time and money making sure we are prepared to respond to mass murder and do nothing when it comes to prevention. The LV killer inflected as much pain as the truck killer in Nice and close to accomplishing the pain McVeigh inflicted on OK. All we get from the GOP is debate about using the terrorist label and they are prepping their base to accept this mass murder as God’s plan or the work of the devil. Time to go back to the question…Why can’t we track gun purchases of people on the terror watch list? It’s time to aggressively put them on the wrong side of the gun issue.
All those things would help lower the overall gun fatality statistics. But, the gun-nuts are right about this tragedy: nothing that has been proposed, from assault weapon bans, to gun registration would have helped.
The ONLY thing that would have prevented this tragedy, and the future worse tragedies to come would be to BAN all firearms, except shotguns and single shot hunting rifles. When guns are illegal, only criminals will have guns. . . . and we can lock them all up.
But, this requires tackling the biggest problem: that “law abiding gun owners” are the problem.
We have a Vietnam wall
I think Democratic members of congress should suggest a NRA 2nd amendment wall in DC
>>Trump won despite losing the popular vote by millions because he stomped Clinton in the gun-toting areas of states like Pennsylvania and Michigan.
This is why the Repubs won’t do anything and the Dems shouldn’t. I cant’ imagine a better way of hastening and strengthening the “southification” of the rural parts of those states than for Dems to go all in on gun control.
>>our political leadership should begin considering what happens when people feel that the political process is a dead end
this.
ReEgarding “what happens when people feel that the political process is a dead end. They become radicalized and stop respecting the law.” I’m afraid that’s where we heading if the conservatives dominate on some cases now before the Supreme Court.
I don’t know why you say that it would be next to impossible to get big enough Democratic majorities to overcome Republican obstruction.
First of all, the GOP is coming apart before our very eyes. They might cease to function as an intact political party in the not-too-distant future. Once that happens, who knows what kind of majority Dems could conceivably get, and for how long.
Second, I think there’s a pretty good chance that Dems could wind up with the trifecta (White House, House, Senate) after the 2020 elections. If that’s the case, then all you’d need to pass some common sense gun laws is to get rid of the filibuster — which they will asbolutely need to do in the first place.
Now, I grant that it might be challenging to get every Dem on board. But hell, if we could get 60 Dem Senate votes to pass the ACA, which is at least as difficult an issue as gun control, if not harder, then we could certainly manage 51 Senate votes to pass a Sensible Gun Ownership Act. It won’t be easy, but it sure as hell is possible.
The Senate is not getting rid of the legislative filibuster. It would cease to have any purpose and just be a redundancy.
Trump is right that the filibuster right now is acting as a “Republican suicide pact.” I’m amazed they haven’t gotten rid of it already. That way they could ram through all their ideas: Obamacare repeal, tax cuts for billionaires, ban Planned Parenthood, eliminate the EPA, etc. Then they could cash all that lobbyist money and slink out of town. Job well done.
If Trump succeeds in replacing Mitch McConnell in the Senate with some hard-liner (increasingly probable) and especially if, after the 2018 elections Republicans can see the hand-writing on the wall, that they are about to lose total control over government to some leftist like Bernie Sanders or Eliz. Warren in 2020, then they will move at light speed to eliminate the filibuster.
That move would be wildly popular in the country as a whole. Democrats are in favour of it in principle, and the GOP base would see it as a means to eliminate Democratic obstructionism.
They don’t even have 50 votes! The filibuster isn’t doing anything to hold them back- they don’t have a governing majority in favor of their batshittery.
Man, that Overton Window’s a bitch — been moving right like a TGV if that’s accurate.
The Dems only real opportunity to break us out of this current cycle is to get rid of the filibuster. Without it, McConnell’s obstructionist playbook gets used again and again, with no relief in sight. That means no accomplishments of any kind, frustration from the base, and continual swapping of government control between Republicans and Democrats.
The purpose of the Senate is to ensure that small states don’t get bulldozed by large ones. It also provides for people with long terms who are not always subject to immediate political whims and do not have to spend ALL of their time fundraising for their next campaign constantly. It would certainly have a purpose without the filibuster.
That’s the purpose of the Senate? I thought it was to induce The Slave Power to join the Union in the first place.
To what degree did it induce the Union to join the Slave Power?
Yet another illustration of how our political system has been distorted and broken by a combination of unlimited big money, gerrymandering, voter suppression and, most of all, apathy. Sometime between the assassination of Bobby Kennedy and the end of Watergate, people gave up. I witnessed it and remember it well. We live in a different culture from the one of my early childhood.
That more than anything is what needs to be addressed. We are our own worst enemy because, with a little teamwork and sense of purpose, we could bury the fat cats and schysters. It’s not Pollyanna to say we could take our country back. Perhaps some leader will come along and galvanize the left. Obama could have been that person, he had all the tools, but was lacking the impulse. He was so supremely rational and it got in his way. I often wonder if it wasn’t a deeply ingrained reaction to being black in a white society borne of a fear of being misunderstood as aggressive and destructive. Not that it prevented those accusations from being made from on high. But it did allow him to be elected twice, and he accomplished a great deal despite his limitations. He’s just not the guy who was able to take us all the way.
If states and feds can regulate the # of opioid pills a doctor can prescribe, if they can sue drug makers and distributors, why can’t they regulate guns? Why are they so blind to the problem? Even when someone shoots them in parking lots or balls fields? How many automatic or semi-automatic guns does someone need to “protect themselves.” And how “well regulated” is that anyhow?
The right to own “arms” is already restricted. Folks can’t own grenade launchers or atomic weapons. That’s military stuff. Why are AK’s different than that? Naive question, I guess.
I’m hoping that some of those country music fans will be the locus of the change — or the performers. But I’m not holding my breath.
I know I’m stating the obvious, but the problem is the NRA. The influence peddling racket it runs has enormous control over state and federal legislators. A solid majority of voters on both the left and right are for stronger gun laws, and yet legislators consistently vote against that.
And what’s the NRA’s motivation? They say its the 2nd Amendment. They’ve even perversely called themselves a “civil rights organization.” Which is made even more perverse by the fact that when black gun owners are violated in some way that would have them outraged if they were white, they remain silent.
The NRA is really a trade association. One aim of trade associations is to help expand the market for their members products and promote business opportunities. When the NRA lobbies congress to allow persons who have been deemed to be suffering from some mental illness to have guns, as practically insane as that is, when the legislation passes, as it has, then they have expanded the market for their members. The NRA’s goal is to obliterate every law that might prevent them gaining more customers. And they have been very successful at that.
A start
The effect of the arguments described by Swan and Cooke is essentially the same, that there is nothing that can be done. The most devastating result of that is it depresses voters into thinking that this is something to be lived with, no point in expecting our representatives in congress to do anything. So “gun control” is rarely on the minds of those who might vote in support of some solution, like reinstating the assault weapons ban, which would have at least prevented Paddock from having the use of machine guns and would have limited if not altogether negated the death toll.
Polls show that something like 90% of democrats and 77% of republicans want tougher gun laws, including registration. These people obviously don’t vote that way, otherwise we wouldn’t be here. And that’s because the effect the arguments have on the voters is one of hopelessness, when in theory, at least, if a change in gun laws would made as important at the polls as it is in the opinions of voters, we’d see some change.
In the aftermath of these shootings, the right says any discussion of guns is “political” when in fact its a rational response to a public safety issue. They also say things like “wait a day before saying anything about guns” or as O’Reilly, surfacing from under his musty rock, sickly said, “these deaths are the price we pay for freedom.
Does anyone in Congress have the courage to just start asking the question, that if we agree that lives lost in these massacres are unnecessary, then is this loss of life a worthy price to pay for some Americans owning killing machines that serve no other purpose? And start putting those in favor of the blood money they receive from the NRA on notice that they have a responsibility to go on the record for their positions that cost so many lives.
There is the traditional enthusiasm gap there too. Plenty of people are for more gun control, but it isn’t their top priority. For those against it, it’s everything. And in politics, the motivated group gets things done.
I’m heartbroken. I’m sick at my stomach and I have never experienced any period in my life like this, where our government seems determined, with every dollar and every day, to quite literally destroy us. We are under attack from all sides. If we are not left shattered and homeless in the wake of natural disasters and abandoned, we are watching our families, friends, and neighbors be gunned down like animals.
Now our late night TV hosts, who used to be comedians, are faced every week with delivering a sobering monologue about a tragedy. Who can laugh anymore? Jimmy Kimmel is more poignant and heartfelt in his pleas for health care and gun control than any fucking politician I have heard. Stephen Colbert calls Trump and the Republican bastards out on a nightly basis. It’s the only way I can still feel like there’s someone out there who is not completely insane.
I’m pretty active in terms of calling and emailing my state representatives. But I gotta say, I’m bone-weary. I cried when I watched coverage of the Puerto Ricans and I cried when I watched Jimmy Kimmel talk about his baby son and again when he spoke about Las Vegas. I never felt like crying this often and I feel just worn down.
I guess the Republican party sees our exhaustion as a positive sign. They want the poor and the minorities out of the picture and they won’t be satisifed until there’s an automatic weapon in every white hand. They’re making it easy for us to be killed. And I am bone tired.
Just want to chime in to say Booman’s final point
“The situation is basically so hopeless that our political leadership should begin considering what happens when people feel that the political process is a dead end. They become radicalized and stop respecting the law. That’s where we’re headed on gun violence. That’s where we’re headed on a whole lot of things.”
is true, chilling,and also damn fine writing.
The political process has been turning into a dead end at the same time as major structural changes have occurred in our economy: I think of the loss of labor-union power as a very important factor here. LBJ’s Great Society was the last time that labor played a powerful political role. Then LBJ had to go piss it all away with his nosedive into Vietnam. Labor support for Dems splintered accordingly as the white working class saw war protestors as dirtbags. Increasing globalization undercut unionized industries. With unions withering, the Dems turned to wealthy donors the way that the GOP had been doing all along. It took awhile for that dynamic to gel, but it certainly had done so by the time Bill Clinton was elected.
And neither party wants to offend its donors.
The scary thing about the form that the political dead end takes now is the determination by the GOP to never compromise. And that’s not just a determination by the congressional leadership but by the grassroots as well.
I don’t know the details of antebellum politics well enough to be sure, but “the political process is a dead end” was surely the attitude of many in the 1850s, in both North and South. Abolitionists were radicalized as well as were supporters of slavery. Are we in a similar moment now?
I think you are right about Labor being a counterbalance to Corporatism. I’ve seen it on a small scale in WV. Without Labor protecting the rights of workers and their communities, State Govt is just an extension of those who pay for their campaigns.
In the loud extreme, you get Don Blankenship. On a more effective level, you get Jim Justice.
On a national level, you are going to have to have effective campaign finance regulation. My take, you can’t contribute to a campaign you can’t vote in. No corporate/pac money. No out of state/district money bags. If you local billionaire wants to buy a Congressman, OK. Just can’t buy the one in the neighboring district.
R
At some point the tourism industry will decide it needs to take on the NRA. But not yet.