#365 Musings Beyond the Bunker (Tuesday May 31)
Good morning,
Nineteen ten year-olds and two teachers this time.
The gun control/regulation debate continues, renewed again in light of the serial horrors of recent serial killings. Each such event is followed by the usual expression of outrage, “thoughts and prayers” and claims that it isn’t the proliferation of guns that is at the base of our problems, but evil people using guns. The issue of gun control can’t be examined too much or too often.
There is no issue since I started these Musings that has engendered so much response as the proliferation of guns and fatalities from guns. This is the first of two compilations this week (the usual Tuesday and Thursday potpourris of commentary) reflecting on the problem and possible legislation, from various people who wrote in (together with some of my responses/observations).
Some initial thoughts on the comments I’ve received:
Having read dozens of articles on the subject, from all sides, I am convinced even more now than ever that the intellectual, emotional, and moral arguments are disproportionately on the side of gun control. Surely America should be able to reduce the proliferation of guns to the developed nations with whom we would like to compare ourselves, and not Yemen and Serbia, which are in our current cohort.
Based upon the commentary of all of you, I am overwhelmed with the knowledge, empathy, intelligence, and thoughtfulness of my friends.
All the great ideas I’ve read, including those below, demonstrate there are many obvious (and some less obvious) things that can be done. This issue is not that difficult if people of good faith would work together at (to paraphrase Captain Kirk and the COVID vaccine effort) “warp speed.”
The gun lobby holds such sway over Congress is the most egregious example of what campaign finance has done to pollute our nation’s leaders.
MENTAL HEALTH, SUICIDE AND SIMPLE CHANGES
We tend to focus on gun violence after a mass shooting. But gun deaths are not exclusive to mass shootings. In fact, mass violence does not constitute the majority of deaths from guns. As Adam Torson notes, “The majority of gun deaths are suicides rather than homicides (by a significant margin). It gives the lie to the idea that this is a criminal justice problem. Interventions like waiting periods, higher age of majority, licensing, and mandatory gun locks (or “smart guns”) seem especially critical.”
Good points, all. So why, exactly, can’t this country institute requirements for gun ownership that more closely parallel licenses for motor vehicles—periodic proficiency exams, knowledge of the law, and limitations tied to mental stability and diminished capacity?
IF IT’S THE MENTALLY ILL, LET’S TREAT IT AND LIMIT THEIR ACCESS
As Adam notes, “The idea that committing gun violence against others is closely tied to mental illness is misguided, but if universal access to mental health care is an offer to save the lives of folks suffering from depression, we'll take it. Sadly, the fact that we all know it's not on offer from the folks who raise that argument shows it to be a cynical deflection.”
Amen. The gun lobby and its supporters on the right have evidenced no willingness to fund mental health programs. Curiously, the opposition to legislation to address mental illness is not the exclusive province of the right. The ACLU has lined up against Governor Newsom’s attempt to expand requiring mental health treatment for those within the homeless community who demonstrate the need.
Harvey Englander notes: “Among the critical questions that must be asked of every Republican lawmaker is some form of the following questions: ‘Are you saying that mental illness stops at our nation’s borders and that other (western) nations don’t have people who are mentally ill? Isn’t it true that the only difference between us and these other nations is that they don’t allow anyone to walk into a store and buy a gun, especially not an assault weapon? Wouldn’t it stand to reason that if we enacted laws like Canada, England, France, Germany, Japan and other industrialized nations that our gun violence would be reduced?”
TERRIBLE ENFORCEMENT OF THOSE FEW LAWS ON THE BOOKS
Harvey also notes that, “Another piece of the puzzle we hear less about is how badly regulated federally licensed firearms dealers are. A condition of that license is that they have to submit to annual inspection once a year, but most are actually inspected once every five years or so, and sometimes much longer, because ATF is so under-resourced. Violations are rarely punished and licenses are almost never revoked. There are sparse regulatory standards for how federal firearms licensees have to store guns, account for missing weapons, track sales, train or background check employees, etc. Even if we can close the private seller loophole and push those sales to gun stores, we've got [a lot of] distance to travel.”
THE SUPREME COURT
Many of our current problems are interconnected. One place of connection is in the Supreme Court, its Justices, and their tortured reading of the Second Amendment. Right now seemingly is no limit to the breadth of the reading of the Second Amendment in allowing nearly anything and restrict nearly nothing .
Mark DiMaria notes that, if the American people can summon up the political will, the Supreme Court should be increased in size in order to, as he says, “restore its majority to principled jurists, rather than right-wing ideologues.”
But Mark really hits the nail on the head: “As you note, the supposed Constitutional protection of individual rights to bear weapons is recent and simply wrong. If just reading the Second Amendment itself ("a well-regulated militia") is not enough, then the complete absence of any historical reference to the individual right to keep and use guns, or to intimidate, threaten, kill, and maim others, at the time of enacting the Bill of Rights, should carry the day. Remember, the context was the necessity to ensure the availability of a volunteer army, after having been required to face a foreign army when starting a new nation from scratch. Indeed, as I recall, no reported federal Constitutional decision found that there was any individual right to bear arms, independently from the context of a state militia, until the last 20 years or so. It is a recent and illegitimate line of so-called authority. Any appointment of future Supreme Court justices should be conditioned upon their concurrence in this, and their determination to extinguish this evil line of case authority, much as Taney's Dred Scott decision was chucked soundly into the historical dust bin of conceded illegitimacy.”
TAX IT AND USE THE REVENUE FOR MENTAL HEALTH
Bob Held, who favors gun legislation, feels there is an interim measure we should take now and that’s to impose an additional tax on gun sales and ammunition sales and to use the revenue for gun education and mental health services. I say let’s tax the hell out of both. It’s a start.
BALANCING RIGHTS AND CONSTITUTIONAL INTERPRETATION
The law is most complex when rights come in conflict with each other. When they do, something has to give. Brad Mindlin paraphrases a headline from The Onion, “19 elementary students ‘Freedom’d’ to death by an 18 year old armed with his freedom.” Which of these freedoms is more valuable to us—or to put a sharper point on it, which is more important to the Republican Senators—seemingly limitless gun rights or public safety? The Republican Senate has, through the perverse application of the filibuster, have repeatedly blocked any meaningful gun control legislation—despite overwhelming public support.
Ted Cruz thinks this problem is basically a school problem, last weekend pontificating how we just need to harden schools. Among his brilliant ideas are armed guards and a single entrance and exit from the school (the “no back doors” plan). Of course, with one entrance, how does one get out? But he misses the key problem with his “school hardening” plan. These attacks are not only at schools. They are at churches and markets and everywhere people hang out. How much “hardening” can our society stand, in order that we avoid meaningful gun regulation?
Then there’s the candidate for Senate in Arkansas, who proclaims, in big block letters in his campaign video, “Babies, Borders, Bullets.” I kid you not. I suppose he gets props for alliteration. But I have a better “B” response for him. How about Basic Human Decency?
Have we lost any sense of consistency, or is everything, running all the way up to the Supreme Court, simply a question of personal and political expediency? If you’re looking at the abortion issue through what the Founders’ intent “must have been” or what the words “precisely mean,” how can one not be baffled by these contradictions:
There is no mention of abortion or birth control in the Constitution. The 9th Amendment reserves all powers not specifically enumerated to the federal government to the people. Privacy, a libertarian ethic, and an anti-government guiding principle underlie the Constitution and the “old” Republican party. How does this get translated to the government’s interference with issues of conception and contraception? How does one reading of one religion’s dogma trump all other religious traditions?
Yet, in the same breath, these same people do not see the irony in ignoring the 2nd Amendment’s primary intent and limitation, that it exists to ensure a “well-organized militia.” Never could the Founders have intended for people to maintain arsenals of military-style weapons. The Founders had been dealing with muskets and flintlocks—weapons that could never have been used for mass killing.
Apparently, on the one hand we should look at the world at the time (abortions with the scientific knowledge, lack of female participation in government), while not look at the world at the time when the 2nd amendment was drafted (a world of unwieldy, inaccurate, single shot weapons)? A 30-second parody spot in support of gun legislation from a while back illustrates this point:
MARKETING WHAT SELLS
Governor Kay Ivey of Alabama boasts of her proficiency with guns and shows a pistol as one of the contents of her purse (along with her iPhone and lipstick). Over 100 such ads by Republican politicians are currently being shown around the country. Great modeling of behaviors for children, don’t you think?
We seem able to ban cigarettes on TV but not ads with guns. We ban ads for hard liquor but allow guns to be prominently featured in political ads. Interesting.
There is just so much to say. More later this week.
ERRATUM
Howard Kroll corrected my error of yesterday. James Garfield, spoke at the first nationally recognized Memorial Day, in 1866. He was a general then and would not be elected president until 1880, when he would serve six months before being shot by an assassin.
Have a great day,
Glenn
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