Thursday, January 31, 2013

More Guns, More Crime

On November 24th, 2004, at a hunting range in northwest Wisconsin, a hunter named Chai Vang was involved in a dispute with 15 other hunters. The dispute resulted in a firefight, in which Vang fired his 7.62x39 Saiga semi-automatic rifle, which killed six and injured two. The names of the dead were: Robert Crotteau, Joey Crotteau, Alan Laski, Mark Roidt,  Jessica Willers, and Denny Drew. Each of them had one thing in common: they were all carrying a gun.

On Apri 4th, 2009, in the Stanton Heights Neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Richard Poplawski opened fire with a WASR-10 semi-automatic rifle on a group of police officers, killing three and wounding two. The names of the dead police officers were: Eric Kelly, Steven Mayhle, and Paul Sciullio. All of the officers were armed.


On February 24th, 2005, in at a courthouse in Tyler Texas, David Hernandez Arroyo carried a MAK-90 semi-automatic into a courtroom and opened fire. His ex-wife, Mirabel Estrada, was killed. Also killed was a local resident, Mark Alan Wilson. Wilson had a concealed carry permit. And a gun.

The formula is simple: More guns, more crime. The lawless individual who cares not for gun laws also cares not as to whether his victims have guns. Or police protection. Columbine High School had an armed police officer when Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris killed 13 people before committing suicide. Virginia Tech, like most colleges and universities, had an entire in-house police force.

Unfettered access to guns is killing us, and in each of these aforementioned massacres, the guns were purchased legally. We have heard the arguments from the gun enthusiast crowd over and over again. The criminal would have gotten the gun anyway. Guns make us safer. Common sense, and statistics, do prove otherwise.

And we intend to prove it.

Sunday, January 27, 2013

The Right and Wrong Way of Kicking the Brits Out.

An unwanted, imperial British government exercised its rule over a foreign land. Protesters against the government were fired upon in a bloody massacre. The people took up arms to send a clear message: Kick the British out!
Is this the best way to achieve independence from Britain?

And, um, they were not successful.

Dolours Price, an unrepentant member of the Irish Republican Army got her own write-up in the New York Times this weekend after she passed away this Thursday. Price participated in and later served prison time for a London bombing that injured one and left one person dead from a heart attack. 

What happened to Ms. Price, and the movement of which she was a part of, is perhaps best e summarized in her New York Times obituary:


Ms. Price spoke often of the personal toll of her terrorist activities: years of depression, alcohol and drug abuse, and post-traumatic stress disorder. Among the suspected informers she drove to their executions, she said, was a longtime family friend. In prison, she staged a 203-day hunger strike in which her jailers force-fed her every day through rubber tubing.
Suffering from tuberculosis and other ailments, Ms. Price was released from prison on humanitarian grounds in 1981 after serving seven years of a life sentence.
Ms. Price told interviewers that she might have spared herself and her victims had she known that the struggle would end with a peace that left Northern Ireland’s Catholic majority, in her view, where it had started: under British rule.
“When we starved together on hunger strike,” she wrote in a 2004 essay in Fortnight, an Irish journal, “it was not to ‘move the process forward,’ it was not for seats in a British government.” It was, she said, “to rid this land of any British interference.”
Her life and death serve should serve as a reminder that the American Revolution was not a band of "minuteman" waging guerrilla warfare against the British. On the contrary, most members of the militia were veterans of the French and Indian War. The battles of the American Revolution were fought with contemporary military tactics. And it wasn't until the French were kind enough to supplement General Washington with 6,500 soldiers that the Continental Army was able to deliver a decisive enough defeat to end the war.
Fighting on a battlefield between soldiers is far, far different than the car bombings, kidnappings and forced executions that Belfaster's refer to "the troubles" that plagued Northern Ireland from the 1970s to the 1990s. Although the Good Friday agrement in 1998 failed to address once and for all whether or not Belfast would remain under British rule or finally join the rest of Ireland, the condition of peace was better than the condition of war.
That should be the bottom line. Public disputes are best resolved through the political process. Saying that any person, anywhere, should have whatever gun they choose to keep the government from doing things they dislike essentially advocates domestic terrorism.

Sunday, January 20, 2013

Gun advocates really aren't helping their cause.

The truth comes out. Five weeks after Adam Lanza killed 20 first graders in less than three minutes, a merry band of delusional gun-toters declared that the AR-15 was not to blame.


"It's not an assault rifle," said Elizabeth Mais, of Prospect, Connecticut. "It's a modern-day musket."
Right. I say it's horrifying that Adam Lanza was able to kill an entire first-grade class in less than a minute, you say po-tah-to.

Normally, after a mass shooting, the NRA's strategy has been to keep quiet, lest somebody point out the host of logical inconsistencies in their mantra. How many people normally get shot at a gun show? I don't know, because normally, accidental shootings don't make the news. Then again, yesterday was "Gun Appreciation Day." In that case, it tends to grab the headlines.

At Dixie Gun and Knife Show in Raleigh North Carolina, Gary Lynn Wilson accidentally fired a round from his shotgun as he tried to unzip from it's shotgun case, injuring three people. Real smart Gary. You might want to do a better packing job next time.
I guess Stanley McChrystal is no expert guns. Or maybe he is.
In Ohio, a proud owner of a new semi-automatic handgun was displaying he recent purchase to a friend. According to police reports, the owner of said handgun had removed the magazine, and then, upon further examining the gun, accidentally pulled the trigger. The bullet ricocheted off the floor, injuring the friend in the arm and leg. Quite and acrobatic bullet.


Perhaps the best of the three stooges routine belongs to a man named Emory Cozee, who accidentally shot himself in the hand as he was leaving the Indy 1500 Gun and Knife Show, according to state police.  Why was he loading the gun after he left the gun show? Apparently, loaded personal firearms are not allowed at the Indy 1500 Gun and Knife Show! I guess the organizers realize that guns are inherently dangerous, and it would be ill-advised to let just anyone walk around with a loaded gun.

This would be funny if not for the fact that a man was shot and injured a Martin Luther King Day parade in Jackson Mississippi, yesterday. And in New Mexico, a teenager shot and killed two adults and three children. The weapon of choice? An AR-15.

We don't have all the horrific details from the New Mexico shooting, but it wouldn't surprise me if this was a case of domestic violence, and that the parents were killed by a gun they purchased to protect them from the home invasion that never happened. If so, do you think Wayne LaPierre is going to use his influence to warn families about the potential danger of owning an Assault Rifle? I wouldn't bet on it. 

Then again, he might unwittingly say something really stupid and really comical that might provide comic relief in the face of the bloodshed. Apparently, "law-abiding citizens" are quite proud of their less-than professional use of firearms.





Saturday, January 19, 2013

Speak up against ignorance and misconception.


Freedom doesn't come from the barrel of a gun. It stems from a mutual agreement among people.

The next time your Congressman, Senator, State Representative, or any elected official says otherwise,

Call them on it!

There is a difference between a “loophole,” a technical term that derives its name from the narrow slits in castle towers of the Middle Ages, and a giant gaping hole in legislation that allows roughly half of all gun sales to be conducted without a background check.

"Good guys with guns" did not deter John Hinckley
Call them on it!

There is a difference between a legitimate, gun safety organization that advocates for all owners of such weapons to use them responsibly, and an organization that calls for guns in the hands of virtually everyone, anyplace, anywhere. The percentage of Americans who believe that all gun sales should be subject to a background check is the same across party lines. With little margin, nearly 90 percent of Republicans, Democrats, and unaffiliated voters support universal background checks. Oh, and among NRA members, it's nearly 90 percent, too! Can the same be said by NRA leadership?

Call them on it!

Even Antonin Scalia does not believe that the Second Amendment should serve as anything more than an adjunct to law enforcement. If you raise your gun at a police officer, a U.S. Marshall, or any other “Jack-booted thug,” no one is going to pry a gun from your cold, dead hands. Instead, your corpse will still be warm when the forensics team arrives on the scene.

Call them on it!

If Ford makes a faulty car, the purchaser of said car can sue the manufacturer for selling shoddy product. If Cerberus Capital Management manufacturers a faulty gun, the purchaser of said gun has no legal recourse against the manufacturer. Why?

Call them on it!

Trying to overthrow one's government, against the will of the majority, through violent means does not make one a person into a patriot. It makes him a terrorist.

Call them on it!

Elected officials should be able to make decisions based on the consensus of a majority, not out fear of assassination. People should have the right to go to work, or school, or any public place without having to worry about guns or bombs going off.

Call them on it!

Inanimate objects, be they guns, swords, or toasters are not human beings, and thus, not entitled to “rights.” Only people are entitled to human rights. It is self-evident.

Call them on it!

Every time Wayne LaPierre opens his mouth at a press conference or on TV news, he turns himself into a strawman. LaPierre figuratively puts his own fallacious logic in the cross, and invites anybody with good reason to figuratively shoot him down.

Yes, figuratively. Only someone with a severe case of schizophrenia would take such rhetoric literally. And how do you stop a schizophrenic from going on a shooting spree? Is it with concealed carry permits, powerful handguns, and hollow-point bullets?

No, no, and no. The correct answer is thirty milligrams of Thorazine, give or take.

Call them on it!

Tanks, fighter jets, and nuclear missiles are all prohibited from civilian use. Yet these are all “arms.” Why are they restricted, or to put it differently, “infringed?” Because they don't belong to you if you are not in a militia!

The list is endless. There is much more to be said. This conversation must go on. And go on it shall. This time, we as a people, as a nation, must not let a small band of dangerous extremists and trade industry lobbyists enable the next mass murderer. We are capable of being better people. We can do this. But only if we speak.