DEAR GUN GUYS:
I suppose that, by now, the giddiness of watching the NRA use its Senate lackeys to smack around the parents of those dead first-graders is dying down a bit, but y’all are probably still pretty pleased with yourselves. In the words of Jefferson Smith, your powerful gun lobby reached into that hallowed chamber and grabbed 46 sycophants by the scruff of the neck and forbade them to vote for legislation that the NRA was all for just 10 years ago. Pretty neat trick, but then, mind control does work best on the weak-willed.
I would like to think that you guys could be gracious winners, but that’s never been your long suit. Oh, yeah, speaking of winners, you didn’t even do that. The background check bill passed the Senate by eight votes. It’s only because of some ridiculous Senate rule that makes even the most righteous person quake at the mere mention of a filibuster that the bill is dead. It needed 60 votes to keep Rand Paul’s skinny little butt in his seat and it fell six votes short of that. Everybody from Fox News to the Huffington Post reported that it got voted down, 54-46, when in fact it got voted up by that margin. (It would have been 55-45, but Harry Reid voted no for procedural reasons.)
Getting back to your being gracious winners … that never happens. Y’all strut around and convince each other that you’ve saved the Constitution from the godless hordes. I’ve got bad news for you. There are actually 27 amendments to the Constitution, not just one. Here’s even worse news for you: the Second Amendment is not even close to being the most important one. The one that gave black people their freedom or the one giving women the right to vote are both way more important than the one that allows you to turn your house into an armed fortress.
And, of course, the First Amendment is almost infinitely more important. We Americans have a national screw-you attitude that dates back centuries. I don’t need to be armed to speak my mind. I speak my mind because I’m an American. We don’t need to have a gun in one hand in order to flip somebody off with the other. And for the vast majority of Americans it will always be that way.
The outright lying by the people on your side actually got President Obama out of his comfort zone. And may I say, Mr. President, it’s about damned time. You can be Cool Breeze when you’re singing Al Green songs, but this is life-and-death stuff. You’ve got knuckleheads out there who see “b-a-c-k-g-r-o-u-n-d c-h-e-c-k” and read it as “gun registry.” Paranoia runs even deeper than Buffalo Springfield thought.
I hate dumb-ass arguments and you and your media allies used a bunch of them. Sean Hannity—often a bully, rarely a deep thinker—chose merely to repeat over and over (and over) again, “This bill would not have prevented what happened in Newtown.”
Really, Genius? Since when has any piece of legislation been designed to prevent something that has already happened? All any reasonable legislative body can do is to identify a problem and then try to nudge the country in the right direction. The background-check amendment (and it wasn’t even a universal background check)—had it been in place—may not have prevented the Sandy Hook killer’s mother from stockpiling an arsenal. But it just might, through some ripple effect, alter the circumstances around some future tragedy.
An even dumber-ass argument was “criminals won’t get background checks.” Yeah, that’s part of what makes them criminals. They don’t obey traffic signals, either, so should we get rid of red lights? Is a stop sign just a “feel-good measure?”
Traffic laws exist to help the vast majority of us function in a safe and responsible manner. They also serve to identify and punish those who would selfishly endanger the rest of us to further their own petty agendas. Traffic laws and background checks are both good ideas, even if they don’t work all the time.
Since some of you are apparently terrified of identifying yourselves as law-abiding citizens, I’ll go first: I declare that I’m not a convicted felon and I don’t have any severe mental illness. There, see? I’m not on any national registry.
Looking long term, this may have been a Pyrrhic victory for your side. It certainly hammered a couple of extra nails in the Republican Party’s coffin. The shortsighted gun vote might even embolden the Tea Party crazies to retreat to the self-deportation stance on immigration, dragging the Republicans with them, and in the process pretty much relegating the GOP to the status of regional party. We can only hope.
It’s really too bad. When Harry Reid wussed out by taking the assault rifle and ridiculously overstuffed ammo magazine bans off the table, you guys had already won. You could have dusted off Wayne LaPierre’s old plan for universal background checks and taken a step back from the Crackpot Precipice. But, no.
In 1999, Charlton Heston, speaking at a gun trade show said, “For a century, we have thrived independently. Now your fight has become our fight.” The transition is now complete. You guys might think that you’re the NRA, but the NRA is no longer you.
This article appears in Apr 25 – May 1, 2013.
One day in the not-too-distant future, we will all look back on this era and marvel at the idiocy that marks our current political discourse. Anarchists are being heralded as defenders of freedom, while those who cry out for common sense are being called socialists and Nazis — and the desires of a vast majority of 9 out of 10 Americans are ridiculed by sycophantic media whores who unabashedly pander to the powerful forces of greed and paranoia. It is all a shameful carnival of ignorance and egomania that completely contradicts our conviction that we are a civilized nation.
After decades of NRA membership and upon the NRA’s attack of the BLM’s proposed recreational shooting closure on the Ironwood National Monument, where shooters regularly mow down giant saguaro cacti with high powered long guns, I resigned. The NRA got one of their political lackeys, Arizona’s Jeff Flake, to introduce a bill that would require an act of Congress for a resource management agency to close an area to recreational shooting. Upon Gabby Gifford’s and Mark Kelly’s formation of Americans for Responsible Solutions (http://americansforresponsiblesolutions.or…) I sent money to begin offsetting my decades of regretable support for the NRA.
The equal rights amendment was introduced to congress in 1923. It passed the house and senate in 1972. That means it took 50 years just to get it through congress. The states failed to ratify it, even after congress extended the deadline. With that kind of conservative obstinacy, you can’t expect quick movement on any major policy change. Womens equality is still an issue, but we’ve come a long way, baby. The trick is to never give up, keep fighting, keep working for change. Any minor advance is an advance in the right direction. You may not get to the mountaintop, but just getting to the foothills is a major accomplishment.
We shall overcome, some decade.
How much did you drink before you started writing this article. You sound like a very sore loser. Why dont you put your energy into fighting for mental health issues now instead. By the way, is dumber ass a word
@Kentop Yeah, Danehy’s a sore loser. So are several hundred school children and maybe thousands of public employees who, over the last decade, were murdered by gun-toting bastards. So are the 50,000 people who off themselves each year using guns at home. So are the hundreds of thousands more killed, injured, mugged, or threatened and thus traumatized for life by people too easily armed and ready to pull the trigger at the slightest offense … or none at all.
You do raise one good point: non-job-related gun ownership itself as a mental health issue. Otherwise, why are those destructive little metal contraptions so important to their possessors except as fetish objects, limitless extensions of their power that otherwise only extends to the ends of their arms, a way to get off at hearing a loud noise and watching targets representing living things, and living things themselves, blasted as a result? Something to think about. (You do think?)
You have shown (once again) that you are capable of only linear thought. One of your many problems appears to be your lack of understanding of what the problems facing this country really are — and you, and most left leaning lemmings, follow only the left-owned and controlled mass media. WHere being a liberal once had very positive connotations (e.g., JFK), people like you have followed “nut cases” like Pelosi and Reid through the rabbit hole and into the downward spiral that is (in my opinion) leadinf to the destruction of the democratic process as the Constitution has defined it. Chicage, home of Obama, has one of the worst gun crime problems in the world — one would think that if the President has such a forward thinking and insightful philosophy that he would have cleaned up his home district to use as a model. Fact is (and I know that facts really disturb those on the left) the President has NOT lead through example — he pontificates vis TV based upon opinion poles. That, in my opinion, is neither leadership nor intelligent.
@ OldTucsonGrandpa You make the case: American society needs a Gun-Toters Anonymous.
To Ricardo Small…
Thank you for your rays of optimism in this quagmire. Congratulations and all the best to you.
9 of 10 Americans want more Background checks..Bla Bla Bla…what the “Media” does not tell you is that S.649, the Senate Bill just voted on, Would make me a Federal Felon for handing my friends grandson, my pistol to shoot on MY property. And in the Largest Survey Ever of Street Law enforcement officers, Assault Weapons Bans were not a needed, concealed carry permits were good, armed Citizens were not a problem, More Background checks were not needed. See the survey at..PoliceOne.com. It is a police only site, where officers speak their mind. Lets listen to the “Real Experts” on crime in the streets, NOT Politicians.
It wouldn’t have prevented Newtown even if it was passed 5 years ago. So much for reasoning.
Did you know it would have made a felon out of any pot smoker selling a gun? You might want to *read* the bill before going on a rant. And what’s up with all the “Y’all”s ??
Just in case all of you haven’t been paying attention, there is a background check system in existence and it did not solve anything. There was a assault weapon bad in effect during Colombine, what good did it do. Most folks missed the point that this bill would only affect law-abiding citizens. Law enforcement and the varied attorney generals across the country do not enforce the existing gun laws, and that is a fact. See Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse analysis. If asked for, I can give at least 8 laws that could have prevented many of the shootings, had the federal government decided to hold criminals for their actions. Gabby’s husband should be charged with a felony for lieing on form 4473, but because of his status, it will not happen.
Blah. Blah. Blah. When Sen. Manchin, who co-sponsored the back ground check amendment met with parents of some of the slain children he admitted that had it been in effect last year it wouldn’t have changed anything. Tells me something. I love how Obummer had his hissy fit and demonstrated to the whole world what an insecure child he really is. He was pissed because he wanted it to pass in the Senate so it could be defeated in the Republican House. Then he and his buddies in the press could point fingers and accuse the G.O.P. of wanting to mow down the children that they didn’t already starve to death. Just one more thought on gun control laws. Yesterday in Illinois ( home of some the strictest gun laws in the country ) a guy murdered 5 people. The strange part is that he did it with a gun. Guess we need more laws !!
One day, All people will be required to have a license to have a gun and possibly have to have a liability insurance to go with it, just like a car.
That will be a great day!
Old Man…. I will license my guns just after the last Criminal does….How bad do you want American Citizens disarmed…enough for a civil war? Really?
cempiremtn, Civil War? Really? Which side are you on? The second Amendment is so out of date it needs to be Amended.
The NRA is run by the “Gun Hole” Chapter. What are the “qualifications”, to belong? Well, the the first is a deep seated inferiority complex. The next is greed. The third is no sense of proportion. Just think of all the things you could spend $1500 dollars on. A vacation, food for your animals or children, a refrigerator, car repairs, martial arts training, clothes, donations to programs for Military amputees, wives and children of firemen, police, first responders, mental health evaluations for their own children, etc. etc. It is all about justification. Justification for all the wasted money spent on “Assault weapons’, that are useless in most excusable defense situations and which serve only to bolster a cowardly sense of inadequacy. Buy yourself a “golden Gun” for a golden future day of super heroic self delusion. Of course, there is the last and greatest group of “Gun Holes”. These are the people that make mass kill guns, buy the people that vote for their greed, and the people that pander to and sell to the selfishly deluded who feel that they can’t defend themselves with less than ten bullets. There you are, heroically mowing down the hordes of burglars, trespassers, neighbors dogs, teenagers, commies, tax collectors, immigrants, atheists, proctologists and all others who seek to invade the nether regions. What do mean honey, I’m a donkeyhole? If you had just bought those drum magazines we could have got em all!
Gee, ZKen thanks for telling me how I should spend the money that I earned by my own efforts. Perhaps you should spend your money on a visectomy. It could only help.
@cempiremtn would go to war against his/her neighbors to keep a gun.
Exactly. The madness of gun ownership: destructive power without a point.
Dear Editor: after reading your piece, and the posts above, I shall not attempt any civil discourse, none will get through. Everyone’s mind is deeply sunk in their own point of view, but I do offer some thoughts as I see it: Gun owners fear confiscation, fact. It will never be successful, fugheddaboutit. About as successful as the “war on drugs” I calculate. Passing more laws? Ok, but the idea is – effective”Will they CHANGE anything? Lastly, let’s say you kill one of the Bill of Rights – 2nd Amendment. If that happens, any thought to what’s next on the “slippery slope?” Like maybe – the First Amendment? Like your sacred right to “flip off” anybody you feel like? Then, you may be in danger if you do. Adolph took that away, mein fruend.
What a great editorial. I hope you’ve sent an enlarged laminated copy to the “FLAKE”.
Fun thing is guns are not the only thing that kill people. Idiots with an agenda do as well. IE Boston marathon. We spend more time trying to justify what is gun control. Here is a clue for all of us. Bombs, rocket, mines, fertilizer, poisons, guns, knives, rope, trains, bats, pillows, nails, rocks, cars, motorcycles, oh and my favorite, bare hands. They all can be used for murder. No matter what, a person wants you dead it will happen. Trying to use gun control to stop others from causing harm is just the tip of the iceberg. We live in a dangerous world. Americans need to wake up and realize that monsters are now adapted and so should we. I own one gun does that make me a gun fetish freak. By the way, if criminals want all the banned stuff, they would still find a way to get it.