Thursday, December 20, 2012

Curing America's Gun Addiction

From yesterday's post, "Conservatism's Gun Fetish Revealed":



From Jeffrey Sachs, an essay on the Second Amendment and the Constitution that dispels the right-wing arguments:




"Though Justice Antonin Scalia tried in the majority opinion to use the Second Amendment to defend gun rights, the many sources that he cited are clear that the purpose of the amendment was to protect state militias. One source, for example, declares, that the purpose of the Second Amendment is "to secure a well-armed militia... ." Another source Scalia cited indicates that the amendment covers only arms that "have some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia."

"Therefore, Scalia acknowledges that the Second Amendment -- even in his pro-gun interpretation -- only protects arms that would be used in a militia, not the weapons of a formal army. He makes clear that 'M-16 rifles and the like' have no Second Amendment protection and may be banned.




"In the name of the children, let us wake from the trap of ancient history and the gun-manufacturers.

And from Bob Cesca, another piece at Huffington Post:


"REALITY: Nope. Not true. I'll let conservative analyst and former Bush speechwriter David Frumtake this one:

"A gun in the house minimally doubles the risk that a household member will kill himself or herself. (Some studies put the increase in suicide risk as high as 10 times.) An American is50% more likely to be shot dead by his or her own hand than to be shot dead by a criminal assailant. More than 30,000 Americans injure themselves with guns every year.

"And here's Science Daily:


Need more? Here's the American Journal of Lifestyle:

"Author David Hemenway studied the various risks of having a gun in the home, including accidents, suicide, homicide, and intimidation. Additionally, the benefits of having a firearm in a household were also examined and those benefits included deterrence, and thwarting crimes (self-defense). From this in-depth look, it was concluded that homes with guns were not safer or deter more crime than those that do not. In fact, it was found that in homes with children or women, the health risks were even greater. 'Whereas most men are murdered away from home,' wrote Hemenway. 'Most children, older adults, and women are murdered at home. A gun in the home is a particularly strong risk factor for female homicide victimization.'"

And from Will Bunch, also at, a piece called, "How to Marginalize an Extreme Fringe Group Called the NRA," all about a ground roots solution:

"...leading gun-control activist Sarah Brady called for radical action against the pro-gun lobby and when the editors of Mother Jones published this, which I could not agree with more:

"What would such a movement look like, arising out of Newtown? Would it be mothers -- of those slain children, or those who never want to find themselves in their place--donning black and holding candlelight vigils each Friday night? Would it be fathers, siblings, loved ones of children murdered in schools and shopping malls and their own living rooms across the nation, taking to Facebook and to the National Mall? Would it look like Argentina's Madres de la Plaza de Mayo, who dared the world to forget their disappeared kids? Would such a movement take a page from Mary Harris 'Mother' Jones, who led 200 children, some missing limbs from mining accidents, in a march on Teddy Roosevelt's home? Instead of 'We Want to Go to School and Not the Mines,' would the placards read 'We Want to Be Safe at School'? Yes, it might sometimes appear corny, sometimes crude, sometimes cringe-worthy, but movements that make a difference are sometimes all those things. They engage the gut as well as the brain. They batter down cynicism and conventional wisdom and groupthink, and they take on the merchants of doom.


But the sort of power and money to enforce that power by the notorious ALEC, a propaganda/legislative Conservative broker, is what the People have to contend with, according to Lisa Graves at in a piece titled,"Big Money, ALEC and the Gun Agenda":




"Also around that time, ALEC pushed a variety of legislation to require reciprocity between states for 'concealed carry' laws, laws that result in more people carrying concealed firearms in public places, as CMD has noted.



"As CMD has shown, ALEC also strongly opposed the 1994 'Assault Weapons Ban,' which sought to expand the long-standing federal bar on fully automatic machine guns by preventing the purchase of rapid-firing 'semi-automatic' assault-style weapons. Certain military-style firearms -- such as the .223 Bushmaster rifle reportedly found at the scene of the Connecticut school massacre and similar to the one used in the sniper shootings that terrorized D.C. in 2003 -- include versions for sale in the U.S. that were modified by manufacturers for the civilian market along with versions that allow three-shot bursts of fire with each pull of the trigger for law enforcement rather than their faster-firing military-style kind like the M4 or AK-47, in light of the federal assault weapons ban. The ban was allowed to expire during the George W. Bush administration, which had very close ties to the NRA.

"The NRA's gun agenda helps protect and expand the market for the firearms sold by the weapons companies that bankroll its multi-million dollar lobbying and influence operations. Although ALEC's crime task force no longer officially exists, ALEC is doing nothing to undo the damage done through its many years of advancing the wish list of the gun industry through laws like 'Stand Your Ground'/'Shoot First,' pushing for guns on college campuses, and even opposing government purchasers from rewarding codes of conduct by gun makers and sellers.

And here are some solutions:

In an editorial at USA Today, "Editorial: Australian gun control holds lessons for U.S.," we see that "Since a 1996 law, there has been no mass shooting there."  Read on:

"...(W)hen a gunman killed 35 people in 1996 with a semiautomatic rifle in the tourist town of Port Arthur, on the island of Tasmania, the Australian people decided it was time for a change.




"The overall firearm homicide rate dropped from 0.43 per 100,000 in the seven years before the law to 0.25 in the seven years after. By 2009, the rate had dropped further, to just 0.1 per 100,000, or one per million.

"In the USA, the 2009 firearm homicide rate was 3.3 per 100,000, some 33 times higher than Australia's.

"There are, to be sure, some significant differences between Australia and the United States. Australia has 3million guns; America has roughly 300 million. The U.S. has greater constitutional protections for keeping and bearing arms. And the gun lobby in Australia is nowhere near as powerful as the National Rifle Association is in the U.S.

"But the Australian experience demonstrates what can be accomplished if a people gets serious about gun violence.

"The key is not merely to adopt new gun laws, but to undergo a cultural shift. Similar shifts have occurred around such issues as smoking and excessive drinking, especially when driving is involved.

"The early signs are that the massacre in Newtown, Conn., will cause a significant push for tighter gun restrictions, which the White House endorsed on Tuesday.

"As the debate takes shape in coming weeks, lawmakers would do well to focus on the successes in Australia. That country has shown how tighter gun laws, and sensible attitudes about the role of guns in society, can make a real difference.

"We could learn much from our friends down under."

And from Max Fisher at The Atlantic, an essay, "A Land Without Guns: How Japan Has Virtually Eliminated Shooting Deaths," explaining that, "In part by forbidding almost all forms of firearm ownership, Japan has as few as two gun-related homicides a year," surely another object lesson for us:


"Almost no one in Japan owns a gun. Most kinds are illegal, with onerous restrictions on buying and maintaining the few that are allowed. Even the country's infamous, mafia-like Yakuza tend to forgoguns; the few exceptions tend to become big national news stories.





"Of course, Japan and the U.S. are separated by a number of cultural and historical difference much wider than their gun policies. Kopel explains that, for whatever reason, Japanese tend to be more tolerant of the broad search and seizure police powers necessary to enforce the ban. 'Japanese, both criminals and ordinary citizens, are much more willing than their American counterparts to consent to searches and to answer questions from the police,' he writes. But even the police did not carry firearms themselves until, in 1946, the American occupation authority ordered them to. Now, Japanese police receive more hours of training than their American counterparts, are forbidden from carrying off-duty, and invest hours in studying martial arts in part because they 'are expected to use [firearms] in only the rarest of circumstances,' according to Kopel."

"Real social change only comes through courage, and never from compromise. And so who will be the Freedom Riders of gun sanity?"  And who will be the first to acknowledge that Conservatism and the policies that have led to innumerable deaths and suffering must be criminalized?

