The time it took most Americans to get over the shock of the news crew being gunned down on national TV last week could probably have been measured in pico seconds. As in, “Wow, that’s horrible. (Pause) How’s the traffic on the Interstate?”
Statistically speaking, it really wasn’t that big a deal. On the average, nearly 300 people get shot every damn day in America. Eighty-six will die, including 32 who are murdered. So, if it was an average day, another 30 people were murdered by guns on August 26. Just another day in Gunville.
I remember reading a chapter in a book that listed all of the people in the U.S. who were shot to death on the same day President Kennedy was assassinated. One guy was killed because he had thrown a snowball at somebody. A small child was killed by his Coke-bottle eyeglass wearing brother who mistook his sibling for a squirrel. A guy who came home from a day of hunting and fishing put his shotgun on the kitchen counter next to the fish he had caught and was killed when one of the fish twitched and triggered the shotgun.
Thus the famous bumper sticker: “Guns Don’t Kill People; People Kill People … and Occasionally Fish Kill People With a Gun.”
To underscore the ho-hum nature of it all, both Channel 4 and Channel 13 opened their respective late-night newscasts on August 26 with stories about some local guy who left some dogs in a hot car. I agree that it sucks for those dogs (which all survived), but REALLY?!
Some other random thoughts on the topic:
I used to be a nearly rabid supporter of strict gun control. When I was young, I didn’t know one responsible person who owned a gun, and that included the members of the Los Angeles Police Department who patrolled the projects.
Now, I know lots of responsible gun owners. My friend Ian and his dad, Richard, are both salt-of-the-earth guys. They take me and my son out to the Gun Club west of town to shoot skeet and trap. When we first went, Ian was scrupulous in preaching and teaching safety at all times. They own a crapload of guns and nobody should ever have any reason to try to take their guns away from them.
I know guys who own guns for hunting and other guys who own guns as collectors. There is no reason to take their guns either. But then there are people who own guns so they can kill other people. The problem lies in the fact that the aforementioned gun owners don’t seem to want to do anything about the killers because some of the political blowback might land on them. They convince themselves that the Second Amendment is absolute (no amendment is) and in order to protect their own gun rights, they have to spread the tent wide enough to include the would-be killers, as well.
I pretty much gave up any hope of political progress a couple years ago after a couple dozen school children were mowed down in their classrooms right before Christmas and the gun lobby saw to it that Congress did NOTHING!
People complain about the ineffectiveness of Congress, but it’s got to be pretty hard to get anything done when you have to walk around all day with an NRA vice clamped down on your scrotum (and/or lady parts).
Speaking of the NRA, how much do you want to bet that they put out some kind of recruitment letter the day of the news crew shooting? Knowing tone-deaf Wayne LaPierre, it probably had something in it about “fighting the liberal media.”
I’m afraid that it’s going to take untold generations for the United States to reach a level of sophistication and civilization that is currently enjoyed in most other First World countries.
There are encouraging signs. The percentage of American households that have guns is just over 30 percent, an all-time low in U.S. history, and is trending downward. At the same time, the actual number of guns in circulation in this country continues to rise, so it’s not all good news.
I wish I had a time machine so I could go back in time, pick up James Madison (who wrote the Second Amendment) and bring him to the present day. He would take one look at the gun violence and say, “Oh, hell no!” (Or maybe “Oh, hell-eth no”). After being dropped off back in 1789, he would mutter to himself, “Do these people not understand the meaning of the word ‘militia’? I put it up front.”
In a yucky coincidence, Aug. 26 was also the day that Wal-Mart announced it would stop selling assault rifles. Apparently, the ad campaign that touted “AR-15: The Gun of Choice For Schoolyard Massacres” had only limited success.
With next year being an election year, I would like reporters to ask pro-gun politicians to recite (correctly!) the Second Amendment. They’ll claim that they would die to uphold it, but they can’t even tell you what it says.
Finally, I saw an NRA mouthpiece on TV the other night and he trotted out the old line about “When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.” Well, a whole lot of outlaws have guns now. What do you propose we do about them?
This article appears in Sep 3-9, 2015.
Laws against murder has not stopped murder. Outlawing guns will force killers to use knives, cars, fertilizer, bombs, chemicals, ropes,….you get the picture. Don’t you?
So you’re saying we should get rid of laws against murder?
Pretty hard to massacre a whole movie theater with a rope.
the real issue here is our kindness towards criminals, people flee here from all over the world even if it means jail, why? because our jails are better than where they live, and they have rights in jail. Murderers get paroled, sometimes more than once. We have created a sub-culture that strives in prison, they sell drugs from there, run gangs and make money, all the while protected safe and sound in prison, I mean correctional facility costing an average of 50K per year for each inmate. You want to curb violence, punish the offenders, if you are caught on tape, or there is irrefutable forensic evidence after having killed someone you should be put to death within 5 working days, no phone calls, no goodbyes, no last meals…you just get what you have given period. I own guns, i take my kids and grand-kids shooting, we have a blast, ans as a retired military member I live and preach safety, as well as self defense. At this point in our history removing guns would only remove all doubt from the minds of the criminals, they would no longer second guess about coming into your home fearing you might have a gun. The bottom line here is, if we do not make our correctional facilities into prisons, a place where even the hardest of criminals fear, and no nonsense laws about the disposition of murderers, gun restrictions only apply to those that follow the law.
“if you are caught on tape, or there is irrefutable forensic evidence after having killed someone you should be put to death within 5 working days, no phone calls, no goodbyes, no last meals…you just get what you have given period.”
If you agree to apply this same concept to police and other law enforcement who gun down unarmed civilians, I MIGHT support it…
“or the United States to reach a level of sophistication and civilization that is currently enjoyed in most other First World countries” I am afraid that unfortunately we are moving in the other direction at 80 mph my friend.
As far as 30% of the households owning guns, I think that is only 30% of households legally registering the guns they own. If you include the illegal guns I bet we are at an all time high of households with guns. Many people who are not murderers purposely have unregistered guns so that the authorities cannot come for them.
Politicians are not serious about gun-control because the public is not serious. The great majority of people on all sides want symbolic action so as to avoid the actual work of building community and improving individuals and families. The words “well-regulated” in the Second Amendment, as in teaching responsibility, are slighted. Many gun-sellers and owners preach owning guns instead of proper handling and safety, instead of training in gray-area scenarios dealing with social interactions and lack of good information, and instead of preventative measures such as volunteering time in getting kids and adults to grow up [I suggest that those alarmed by guns and violence would do better with a different approach to talking with gun advocates.] Gun owners could follow the actions of people who shout for gun-control and … they already are, as all sorts of social and community activists specialize in sloganeering and posturing. I know Tom Danehy and everyone else has to have continually seen the struggles of all sorts of volunteer groups to get people to join and put in hours. I suggest that everybody and Mr. Danehy advocate and actually get people to solve problems.
“Finally, I saw an NRA mouthpiece on TV the other night and he trotted out the old line about “When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.” Well, a whole lot of outlaws have guns now. What do you propose we do about them?”
When we move beyond reacting to the spectacular mass shootings which represent a tiny percentage of those killed by gunfire by mentally ill men using legally purchased weapons, we will make a start toward a reasonable discussion. Columbine, Tucson, Sandy Hook, Virginia Tech et. al. are terrible tragedies that could have been prevented with intervention by a team of mental health professionals and law enforcement.
But it is the less spectacular daily murders that may be less newsworthy but account for the vast majority of deaths by criminal gunfire. Where do the guns used by gangsters in Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, Washington and Los Angeles come from? They are predominately stolen weapons sold on the black market. So the NRA mouthpiece, despicable as he might be, has a point. The genie is out of the bottle and new laws won’t change that fact.
Laws that would make sense in addressing the daily, “unremarkable” murders would make the use of a gun in any crime subject to mandatory, draconian prison sentences without parole. This could be the perfect time to free prisoners of the war on drugs and other non-violent crimes and replace them with violent criminals who brandish a weapon, shoot it during the commission of a crime, wound or kill an innocent victim. I have to believe even the NRA would support that sort of gun control.
Still waiting to see why the government allowed the mentally ill killer of the Houston officer to possess a firearm.
Nobody is talking. There’s laws against that.
Rat,
Don’t know about Houston but in most locales a mentally ill person can purchase a gun legally if they have not been involuntarily committed to a psychiatric facility. That explains why so many of the notorious mass shooters were able to buy guns legally. Couple that with tracking systems that don’t communicate effectively and voila.
True, but I thought he had been committed to a mental institution.
This was all I could find:
“Joe Frederick, a prosecutor with the Travis County District Attorney’s Office, said Miles was found to be mentally incompetent in October 2012 after being charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. He was sent to North Texas State Hospital in Vernon, Texas.
Frederick says Miles was declared competent in February 2013, but the charge was dropped against Miles after the victim could not be located.” CBS News
So in four months he was all better? Looks like not. Even I don’t think he should have had a gun, and that’s not hindsight, that’s straight up…uh uh. No firearms.
Guns have been a significant part of the American cultural scene since its pioneer days. Many who own guns (and I have a .22 caliber revolver for target shooting and plinking) are responsible citizens who bought guns and went through the process of a background verification.
What we need is a verification process without any loopholes, like that currently existing in private sales of guns at gun shows. Transfer of ownership of guns should also be required to be conducted at a licensed firearms dealer. This certainly would be an inconvenience, but it would ensure that guns legally purchased are not then transferred to a person who would not pass the background verification process.
Finally, it’s abundantly clear that the NRA is a shill for the gun manufacturing industry. The NRA used to be an organization committed to firearms training and promotion of gun safety. The organization now shrilly promotes the fallacy that any responsible gun controls will lead to confiscation of all guns and the installation of a tyrannical all-powerful government.
Slaughter in Chicago Continues
http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/Deadl…
This is what I am talking about. Any bets on how many of the weapons used were stolen and bought on the black market by gangsters? This made the news today only because the record for most gun related deaths was broken! Otherwise, no big deal and you would not have heard a thing.
After the Virginia Tech shooting, the NRA agreed we need to do something, but not in the heat of the moment. We needed, he said, at least six months to cool off from it. Fortunately, there was another mass shooting within a month (and every month since), which reset the six-month clock, I guess.
What can the government do??? It is the people behind the gun, not the gun it self.It has been proven that registration does nothing but cost money to do. It doesn’t help catch the bad guy or girl. The laws in place doesn’t stop the bad guy from getting guns or using them. the insane still seem to get guns. So what do you want the Government to do???? I support the right to bear arms Responsibility.
All I want to know is if the author of the article–Tom Danehy–is the same Tom Danehy who was Sports Editor of the Douglas Daily Dispatch in 1975. Anyone have the answer?….
Tom, would you also consider mention of the “hidden” funding expansion of gun activities in the upcoming Pima County Bond election (part of section 428)?
Over 2 million dollars in tax money is proposed to expand the Pima shooting range so more people will be encouraged to own and use guns.
SLB, NW Tucson
slb Expanding the shooting range does not encourage to own and use guns. It simply provides a facility for the legal use of firearm practice and safety. It is especially needed since shutting down all the old shooting sites in the county.
Regardless of the tool, killers will kill. We also went soft on punishment. Any connection?