Tag Archives: mass shootings

Political Rants

House rules 2.0.

Spent some time this week watching Democrats in essence occupy the floor of the House of Representatives in what looks like an unprecedented effort to force a vote on modest gun control legislation. Pretty amazing demonstration in response to the latest gun-related atrocity in Orlando, to which the official response of the Republican majority in the House has been zero. The protesters’ chant of #NoBillNoBreak is a modest demand: bring three pieces of legislation to a vote, and let them stand or fall on their merits.

When he says "strike," I'm there.Now I’m not crazy about the legislative approach, particularly with regard to the expansion of the terror watch list – I just don’t think it’s the best way to deal with this issue – but I think it’s high time somebody occupied the freaking House. I tweeted my support to Barbara Lee and John Lewis on Wednesday night, attracting a flurry of ammo-sexual Twitter trolls. If these folks are willing to take direct action, the least I can do is give them some encouragement. (Elizabeth Warren brought donuts, after all.) That said, there’s a lot more to do, and it can’t all happen in Congress (though some of it must).

I think the core of the issue is the culture of fear and macho posturing that defines our nation’s gun obsession. The former is obvious, a pillar of American life since our earliest days, always available to be exploited by politicians, preachers, and other scoundrels. Be afraid, be afraid! You need a gun … or maybe five! Then there’s the gun as the sexual talisman, the ammo amulet that makes every little man a big one. Tough, dangerous, and hell, sexy, right? Strap on the old cannon and you’ll be fighting them off … perhaps literally. The phallic imagery finds its way into their rhetoric. I remember one gun nut decades ago telling me about people being “de-barrelled” – having their guns taken away. Not sure he got the sense that he was talking about castration with that odd term, but perhaps.

All I can say is that, with 300 million guns sold and rising, I’m not sure what good limiting the supply will do, but we should try anyway. The gun show loophole is another important issue. That guy who lived around the corner from me – the one who shot up the AT&T store because he didn’t like the service – probably got his gun from a secondary dealer or gun show (it had actually been stolen from someone’s car in South Carolina).

So, thanks, House Democrats, for at least trying to do something. A pity Eddie Munster holds the gavel, but that won’t change until we all get more involved in political life.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

The hobby lobby.

The sickening, sickening massacre in Orlando last weekend has had a range of effects on America’s national, multi-layered electronic conversation, from some truly inspiring expressions of love, sympathy, and defiance among the survivors to the sorry spectacle my gun-nut Facebook friends setting their hair on fire over the dim possibility of some Congressional action on arm sale restrictions.

Liability issues.God, I’m sick of this grisly movie, running over and over again – innocents cut down in large numbers by some psycho bastard with an easily obtainable assault rifle. The graves are not even filled in before AR-15s start flying off the shelves, hastily purchased by paranoid hobbyists who see black helicopters everywhere. One dealer in California, I believe, claimed that while he normally sells 15 of these death machines a day (!), that rose to 15 an hour after Orlando. Bonanza, in more ways than one.

Gun enthusiasts always speak to their constitutional rights, but what is this if not a hobby, really? None of these fuckers need a machine gun for self-defense – they just like to play with the thing, fire it off at targets, tote it around like a real soldier, fantasize over it five ways from Friday. It’s the industry (manufacturing and retail) that plays up the self-defense angle, most ardently through their lobbying group, the NRA. It’s a dangerous world! they warn. You have to protect your family, tough guy. (Of course, the manufacturers also emphasize the macho war-fighter image that an automatic weapon confers onto its purchaser.) All bullshit, of course, with respect to their core market. So … why do the rest of us – the vast majority of the country – have to pay such a high price to protect their hobby?

The short answer is, they have a good lobby. Very effective advocates, the NRA, and they can hold Congress’s feet to the fire like almost no one else. The fact is, it looks like legal action may be the only way to undermine the power of this industry. The families of victims need to sue the manufacturers. We need to find a way to make the manufacture, sale, and possession of assault weapons a prohibitively costly liability. Once the profit goes out of it, however that may be achieved, the air will go out of this tire. And maybe we’ll be able to get through a whole year without another Orlando.

Here’s hoping.

luv u,

j

Political Rants

Ban the bullet.

What is there to say about the Charleston shooting? Another three-foot creep with a four-foot gun. That’s the long of it. I notice most of what’s being talked about is this generic “pure” hatred, evil, etc. Most of the television commentators have been avoiding the “R” word. Hey, folks … it’s called racism. Combine a racist history with a birthday gun, and you’ve got the recipe for Charleston. School friends talk about racist jokes that nobody took seriously. He wore flag patches on his jacket for both Rhodesia and apartheid-era South Africa, Confederate flag license plates. No particular concern? We shall see.

Victim of racism. Say it, people.The sad fact is, racism is a default position in white society, south and north. I grew up in white society, and I have been surrounded by racism my entire life, at various levels of severity. I am certain that, had it not been for the guiding efforts of my mother and my older siblings, I might well have ended up as racist as some of my neighbors. It was, in many ways, the path of least resistance in ’60s middle America. And to this day, when I’m in a room with just white people, racism will occasionally join us in the form of a comment, a joke, etc.

So … that’s a thing. Then there’s the gun culture. The birthday pistol. How you can sell a pistol to someone who advocates race war is beyond me. As much as we have to examine our tendency to look upon black Americans as the “other”, we also have to ponder our devotion to uncle bang-bang. And yes, we’re very unlikely to do anything to slow down the proliferation of firearms. But there is one thing we can do without violating the extremist notion of the 2nd Amendment: ban bullets! You can have all the guns you want, but no freaking bullets. Guns don’t kill people … bullets do. Or adopt Chris Rock’s idea – make bullets cost $5,000 each. That might slow down the Jared Lee Loughners of the world.

Again – these are hard problems. That doesn’t mean we can’t do anything about them. If we are appalled by Charleston, it is incumbent upon us to act. And soon.

luv u,

jp