#371 Musings Beyond the Bunker (Tuesday June 7)
Good morning,
SIMPLE THINGS TO DO ON GUN CONTROL
It is time to stand up for gun control. There are incremental actions that can be taken. None of them threatens the responsible ownership of guns. But the gun lobby continues to view any limitation on guns because they claim any change is just the first step toward taking away their guns. The New York Times this week proposed four things that can be done that would have saved people, looking at mass shootings since 1999.
Raise the age for ownership of guns from age 18 to age 21. If we allow them to wait to 21 to buy a beer, why not raise the age on guns? And it is a red herring to point to being able to serve in the military and use a gun. In the case of using a gun in military service, it is heavily regulated, subject to clear rules, and continual training. This change would have kept a gun out of the hands of four mass murderers in this period. Here is an extraordinary short video of a 13 year-old boy, trying to buy beer, cigarettes, porn, and lottery tickets—denied at each stop. Then he goes to a gun store and quickly can make a purchase:
Require detailed background checks on all sales of guns—whether at stores, gun shows or from others. Four mass murderers would have been stopped.
Prevent the legal purchase of large-capacity magazines. That would have stopped 20 assailants in this time frame.
Mandate clear rules for gun storage, so they can’t be stolen so easily or used inadvertently. Ten mass murderers used stolen guns in this time period. After the video of the 13 year-old is a story about Switzerland, a heavily-armed country with essentially no gun violence. The reason? Strict laws on the storage of guns.
And then there is the quite logical ban on the sale of military-sale semiautomatic weapons (which used to be the law). 30% of all shootings used these weapons. That’s an easy “fifth step” beyond those cited by the Times.
One recent Facebook post suggests that “The AR-15 has been around since the 1960s. So, to act as if it’s suddenly is a problem is a lie.” This is, of course, specious reasoning. It is a problem because there are so many more, they are generally available, and 18 year-olds have access.
Mark Schwartz suggests that we need sensible ammunition regulations (“SARs”):
“What SARs attempts to do is shift the debate away from “gun control,” much in the same way that the debate about abortion was framed as pro-choice and pro-life, not pro- / anti-abortion. Limit bullets, not guns. Let everyone have as many guns as they want, but not all the bullets they want. Don’t focus on taking guns away, just limit the amount of ammunition that a licensed gun owner can purchase. Have a separate registration process for bullet purchases. If you are going hunting and you need 100 rounds of ammo for your AR 15, you should probably spend more time at the shooting range to improve your skills.”
CONSTITUTIONAL INTERPRETATION AS AN EXPLANATION FOR JUDICIAL ACTIVISM
We are in an interesting period of judicial interpretation. On the one hand, it’s all about “states’ rights.” That means that voting rights is out the window (1,700 polling places closed since it was tossed, in 2013, along with other restrictions on voting, but don’t tell the Supreme Court…). And states should be able to legislate away abortion rights (as has already begun). For now states’ rights is king. But not for long.
Soon, I fear the courts will find that abortion is killing and it will preempt state law, thereby making abortion illegal throughout the country. Similarly, I believe the courts will say the Second Amendment, in its grossly expanded interpretation, preempts any reasonable State laws to limit open carry and limitations on ownership.
Peter Bain shares my concern about the ridiculous expansion of the “originalism” propounded by the Supreme Court, including the apparent ability to analogize the science of the 18th century to issues today:
“I would add my particular frustration with what appears to have evolved into completely bald faced intellectual dishonesty by the Republican Party’s approach to constitutional interpretation. Their fabricated construct of “originalism” has morphed into a jurisprudential crazy straw that is used in a deeply cynical way. To wit: anyone who has spent any time studying the document itself and the Convention which produced it knows that, if the Founding Fathers were anything, they were geniuses of compromise and balancing competing interests. Their entire approach to the creation of our government is rooted in finding ways to disperse power, check runaway mob mentality, and create decision making bodies that enable discussion, negotiation, compromise, and ultimately governmental action. The Constitution is a carefully calibrated scale that weighs competing social interests to produce a balanced outcome. If there is one thing the Constitution does NOT contain, it is absolutes.
Yet the Republican Party today stands against what the clear majority of Americans believe and barricades itself behind “Originalism.” They proclaim loudly that the Founders “intended” the Constitution to support whatever absolute position is at issue. They pretzel themselves into supporting both the idea that life begins at birth, and therefore the government can intrude into what may well be the most intimate decision a woman may ever have to make, while also asserting that guns are a “fundamental” right, and therefore the government has no right to insert itself into this most deadly equation. Or, as George Carlin so rightly nailed it decades ago, ‘The government cares about you without limit, right up until you’re born and then, baby, you’re on your own!’”
IS POWER THE ONLY OBJECTIVE?
Is the real fight over voting rights one of trying to make elections more precise and fair, or simply retaining power? Tony Canzonerri notes: “At the top level the debate is just another example of unscrupulous political divisiveness. Our menace is the very capable and wealthy core of Republican political and constituent leadership that would rather subvert rational democracy than see it continue to function in a way that doesn’t work for them. It doesn’t work for them because they no longer have the plurality of WASP votes to elect a President nor control the Country. And they are unwilling to modify their belief’s and power structure enough to legitimately appeal to a base that includes the better good for more than their traditional racially charged base.
The Republican insistence on maintaining power at any cost to our country and their own progeny is the root of this problem. They are merely seizing on the insane idea that the constitution inures the right of any individual to carry an AR 15, whether of that individual is of sound mind or not and whether or not that they are part of a responsibly organized State Militia………..
Tragic to imagine the suffering of those children and their families……. and another compelling reason to block vote out the Republican Party - said by one who voted for Ronald Reagan and other Republicans…”
Have a good day,
Glenn
From the archives: