It’s been several days since the tragedy in Aurora, and the aftermath is proceeding as expected. We have already entered the “somebody should do something” stage of the healing process. (Of course “doing something” means doing everything except something about this country’s crazy-ass gun culture.)
Unlike the Arizona-Giffords shooting, the political discussion about the Aurora shooting seems more tepid, doesn’t it? It’s as if we are resigned to the fact that nothing is going to change. Headlines in the media reflect this sentiment:
A New York Daily News headline reads “The Unsolvable Problem of Gun Violence.” It’s unsolvable, people. Everyone pack up and go home!
A CNN headline reads “When will America wake up to gun violence?” As if we are not already aware that gun violence is widespread and seemingly, as the New York Daily News noted, “unsolvable.”
The Denver Post asks, “Will Aurora killings break the silence on guns?” while a New York Times headline reads, “We’ve Seen This Movie Before.”
We sure have.
We’ve been here before. We know how to react. We’ve got the routine down pat.
We’re biding our time, it seems, waiting for this tragedy to move out of the news cycle in favor of whatever Romney gaffe or Obama conspiracy will be on the media’s collective plate during the upcoming week. We’re waiting for something that will take our minds off the fact that twelve people were shot to death by a mad man on Thursday; twelve people with names and families; twelve people, some of whom died protecting their loved ones; twelve people who went to a late showing of a movie that they were excited to see and who are now just gone.
Until the media successfully distract us from this horror, however, we’re just going through the motions and asking the same old questions.
[full post at ABLC]
The prophet Nostradumbass
Nothing will come from this, unfortunately.
Richard
I read a fair amount of news off of yahoo.
Here are some common “points” being made by the gun nuts in the yahoo comments…
If only there was only ONE gun nut in the crowd, this carnage would never have happened!
Liberals want to take our guns away!
By the way, the shooter, Holmes, was a liberal!
This event was staged by Obama as part of a conspiracy! The UN has a vote about guns two days from now!
The AR 15 assault rifle is not an assault rifle!
hrprogressive
When your blood circulation gets cut off by your tinfoil hats the way these people have had happen to them, I almost wish the government with black helicopters WOULD come and “take their guns” already.
But seriously.
Until liberals all over get spines and start fighting the NRA and the John Wayne fetishizers, nothing will ever happen.
I’m happy to own my own pistol for personal defense and target shooting. You can argue with me on that, and I’ll defend it.
But the people that want to say we need more guns not less?
Unamerican Cesspools.
suzanne
Nothing will come from this. There is no amount of evidence that will change gun nuts’ minds. If gun laws are permissive, and crime goes down, they say it’s because everyone’s armed and that’s a deterrent. If gun laws are permissive, and crime goes up, they say it’s because we still aren’t armed enough. There’s no way to argue with those who have faith and don’t give a fuck about evidence.
And they’ve decided that they’re willing to sacrifice an unspecified number of their fellow citizens rather than reexamine any of those beliefs. Never forget that these people would prefer that you die than let go of their guns. That’s really what it comes to.
Spaghetti Lee
It’s hard for me to be optimistic about the issue, but as long as we’re playing with scenarios…
I think arguments about gun ownership itself have to be, at the least, carefully crafted. Too many people have the idea of ‘right to private gun ownership’ in their blood for it to have real legs. I personally think a good strategy would be to go after the NRA. Paint them as a cozy-with-the-government special interest. Play up their incestuous relationship with arms manufacturers. Talk about how they’ve got the government by the balls and everyone’s afraid to stand up to them. Find gun enthusiasts who don’t like the NRA-I know there are some of those. Hell, if you get enough of them maybe start an alternate organization. Talk about how they’re fine with guns and love gun ownership, but these NRA guys think they speak for all gun owners and who do they think they are, anyway? A big part of gun nut psychology is the idea that you can take down authority if you need to. Well, reverse engineer that. Then once you do that, get down to the business of more gun laws.
I don’t know whether this would work or not, but I think it’s a plan worth trying.
GxB
@suzanne: Guns cannot fail, guns can only be failed – where have I heard something like that before?
Wonder what it will take, since the last piece of meaningful legislation I recall was the Brady Bill, apparently only when important people meet their (near) end will anything be done.
Richard
I’m a Canadian living in the US, and I’ve always found that the American attitude towards guns is, to be generous, delusional.
It seems that a lot of people think that the only thing standing between them and a commie-muslim-liberal hordes is their guns. As if a bunch of fat-assed Joe Sixpacks with their penis substitutes are going to be an actual deterrent to invasion.
The answer to gun violence? More guns! We should all be packing heat all the time. What a wonderful prospect.
Brachiator
There is a high, persistent demand for drugs, prostitution and guns. Laws are not going to change this or lessen the demand.
Changing the way that we worship gun culture might be a step in the right direction.
Mnemosyne
This same argument has been going on literally since before I was born (forty-cough years ago) and I don’t expect to see a resolution anytime soon. I had always thought that the mad sniper in Targets (1968) was based on Charles Whitman, but IMDb.com claims it was based on the shootings by Michael Andrew Clark.
Silly me, not being able to keep two different spree killers from the 1960s straight. Almost like it’s something that has happened at least once every goddamned year in America since well before I was born.
Alison
@GxB:
I think a congresswoman from Arizona might beg to differ.
Fuck gun nuts. I don’t care if it does make me a liberal stereotype, I hate guns and mostly can’t stand people who like them. Wanting that kind of power in your hand and caring more about that than about the lives of other people makes you an asshole. Self-defense arguments are way overblown, and don’t even try to give me the hunting bullshit.
Grr. I’m glad that Lautenberg and Feinstein are at least going to try to put legislation forward, but it won’t go anywhere and more people will die and the fucking NRA and its enablers will continue to wreak their sickening havoc on innocent people. Fuck them all to hell.
piratedan
@GxB: hell.. for fucks sake a Congresswoman was gunned down with a semiautomatic pistol by a guy who had conveniently been dropping various red flags in various locations and AZ state lege REFUSED to even let any legislation reach the floor for debate, yet three months later passed legislation designating a state hand gun.
Until some brave legislator walks to the floor of some chamber and has a Network like moment on national TV and challenges some fucking gun nut fetishist to make a choice between the life of a sweet 9 year old girl and them having an AK 47 and watching them choose the gun because they don’t know the girl, will any of this change. Even then it may not change, because the feeling is “fuck them, I don’t know them”. because that’s their feeling about everything, a Hurricane in New Orleans, fuck those people, a Tornado in Indiana, fuck those people. It’s the same personification of what goes for current Republicanism, fuck those people, I don’t know them but if something happens bad in MY neighborhood, where the fuck are the FEDS!
Kane
We can’t have a discussion about responsible gun laws for the same reasons why we can’t have a serious discussion about addressing Global Warming. And we can’t have a discussion about enacting proper oversight of the financial industry to prevent another collapse from happening for the same reasons why we can’t have a discussion about the need for universal health coverage for all Americans. And we can’t have a discussion about compassionate immigration reform for the same reasons why we can’t have a discussion about trimming the defense budget. And we can’t have a discussion about addressing our infrastructure needs for the same reasons why we can’t have a discussion about eliminating tax-deductions for corporations that outsource jobs.
It’s not that we don’t have viable solutions to address the “unsolvable” challenges and problems that we face. It is the tyrannical corporate monied interests and political self-interest that is preventing us from moving forward.
Villago Delenda Est
The gun nuts are called gun nuts for a reason. They have no sense of sanity about their artificial dicks. It doesn’t matter how many kids are killed, unless the kids who die are their kids, and it’s at the hands of a fellow gun nut, they won’t realize that there is a problem.
And to be honest, I don’t think they will even then.
I mean, really. Who is the bad guy they’re going to shoot at? The guy with the gun. DUH! That means one of their fellow gun nuts, just as likely as the mentally ill person who started the whole thing. The mentally ill going after the mentally ill, basically.
Spaghetti Lee
@piratedan:
I don’t think a ‘Network moment’ would do much. That’s the sort of thing I imagine would get shoved to the end of the newscast, the congressperson in question would be denounced as a nut by their fellow Democrats (no Republican will do this, ever), that sort of thing.
I hate to be grim, but what I think would change things, what would make people stand up and demand that we rein in the gun lobby and get gun violence under control, is something like this shooting happening every week, in wealthy suburban commercial areas (It already is happening in places like the south side of Chicago, but no one seems to give a shit). It has to get to the point where people can’t abstract and rationalize and say ‘it won’t happen to me’, where regular Middle American people are scared to leave the house.
I don’t want that to happen-not even for a minute. I don’t believe in rooting for death and destruction for the advancement of a political cause. But I’m not sure what other than a significant and frightening increase in (already far too common) mass shootings would get us to tear the gun nut lobby from off our country’s back.
Ash Can
The guys who drew up America’s first documents were brilliant, but what has happened over the years to their Second Amendment is shameful. There was no way for them to know that it would become one of the worst things that ever happened to this country. We’re stuck with it now, though, and we’re stuck with the obscene religion that’s been built up around it and that permeates our culture.
piratedan
@Spaghetti Lee: you could very well be right, but it’s another one of those items that investigative journalism could expose how those folks are being used and how the gun lobby has no interests in the constitution other than a means to an end. Yet there is very little MSM journalism these days, just a parade of shit flowing downhill that is sprinkled with a few items of shiny to distract those that might notice the aroma.
Villago Delenda Est
What is needed to get past all this is a technology that renders firearms ineffective.
If that happens, the dynamic will change. Suddenly, returning fire won’t be the only option.
Until that happy happy day, the only “defense” against a gun is another gun, returning fire. Considering that odds are good that both sides will suffer, it’s not that great a “defense” after all.
LosGatosCA
It’s hard to realize that about half your fellow countrymen are simply psychotic. Nothing can be done about gun nuts because their fucking nuts AND they have guns, lots of them. Plus they have lots of fantasies about their guns – saving the world from SPECTRE, providing Death Wish/Bernie Goetz justice, heroically shooting that armed home invasion gang, etc., getting laid – by someone other than their shooting hand.
And the rest of the country tolerates it. That’s not a political problem, that’s a cultural problem.
Kane
When one side of the debate is portrayed as wanting government to “control” gun ownership, and the other side is portrayed as defenders of the Second Amendment, you know that one side has effectively poisoned the well.
The only issue that I can think of where government regulation is described as control is the issue of regulating firearms. And I’m sure that the N.R.A. likes it that way. I imagine the occasional mass killing is good for business for the N.R.A., as it allows for them to gin up the conspiracy theories and paranoia, which is always good for gun sales.
Richard
How do a bunch of gun loving loonies who play “weekend warrior” constitute a “well regulated militia”? I’ve never been able to figure that one out.
Moreover, if the NRA was really interested in the original intent of the 2nd amendment, to have a standing army of citizen soldiers to protect our country, they should be pushing for no arms regulation at all.
You want a supply of rocket propelled grenades to protect your abode from invasion by commie-muslim-liberals? You got it, patriot! Sarin gas sold online? You betcha! God bless America!
AT
I’ve seen bowling for columbine and Michael Moore is fat. Even fatter than Al Gore!
GxB
@Alison:
@piratedan:
Okay, point taken, and no offense meant (BTW my “important” referenced James Brady, or more accurately Reagan) but Gabby isn’t exactly a MotU is she? Female, Democrat, representing Tucson… those fuckers couldn’t care less. Now Boehner or Cantor (hell, most any R I’d argue) would get some rumbling going. Not that I’d expect much to come from it, but they’d give it more than a token glance anyway.
I’d like to think we could get something to change our culture – but it took 20+ years to get seat belts and get people to actually use them. I’m afraid it will take something quite drastic (9/11-esque), or something that affects the lizard people directly. Even then it’ll be a knock down, drag out – I know a couple of these types, and they are quite literal when they use the phrase “Outta may cold dead hands.”
fuckwit
It’s really not hard.
In rural areas, own guns. You need ’em, for killing deer and other critters that might be on your property. Including, perhaps even, human critters out in the middle of nowhere and the nearest cop might be an hour’s drive away.
But in densely-populated urban and suburban areas? You have got to be fucking kidding. Nobody needs guns in a city or suburb, except cops. There’s just too many people around. It’s not safe.
Alison
@GxB: Oh, to be clear, I didn’t take offense – I didn’t read you as implying she was “unimportant”, just thought maybe you’d forgotten about her while typing your comment.
The thing is – I feel like LaPierre himself could get gunned down and it wouldn’t change their minds. Gun nuts are so mindlessly devoted to their cause that it becomes very much a “my mind is made up, don’t confuse me with the facts” kind of thing. It’s pathetic really, and it’s morbidly amusing to me that these fuckers who want to act like the toughest, most macho, dick-swinging-est people around are nothing more than scared children hiding behind a gun instead of mommy’s skirt.
GxB
@Kane: Makes you really wonder how horrifying it will be when that whole house of cards goes up in flames.
Also, too FYWP Outta may… brother.
David Koch
We could solve this tomorrow, all we have to do is bring back prayer in school.
Jewish Steel
This won’t register as a crisis to the American public until it is happening daily and to the middle class. Until then it’s all just a bunch of theorizing and hypothesizing about freedoms. It would be hilarious if it wasn’t so gruesome, so lamentably tragic.
TenguPhule
Its time to nationalize the ammunition industry.
A serial on every bullet.
And Violeters will be shot, because Irony is King.
TenguPhule
Actually they are. They believe RPGS are an integral form of home defense.
Jewish Steel
I always hated guns. My father tried to teach me to shoot when I was young. The report from the riffle was so painfully loud it was like someone jamming a pencil in my ear. Everyone I’ve ever met with a gun collection seemed to be seeking approbation. Looking for approval in the saddest way. Shit, even junkies have more more pride than gun nuts. Ridiculous.
TenguPhule
Uh no. Considering the average accuracy of someone under pressure is somewhere between horseshit and pig dicks, adding another gun to the mess only increases the risk of casualties.
Plus, given how every damn bastard planning these things seems to have watched their cop shows and now comes to the part in body armor, perhaps the most effective way to neuter the NRA is to run ads showing valient gun owners trying to defend themselves from intruders coming at them in body armor and then having reality ensue as said gun owners explode in glorious CG as said intruder shrugs off the bullets and returns fire.
Kane
Meanwhile…
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/07/four-year-old-boy-killed-basketball-court-bronx.html
Since the shooting in Aurora, how many others have been shot and killed?
TheMightyTrowel
@Kane: On Friday night’s maddow, MHP said the stats come down to 3/hour in the USA.
karen marie
Bill Kristol is a diseased, scab covered dick.
Joey Maloney
There’s an idea I saw floated sometime in the past couple of days; it might even have been right here on this blog. It’s a possible strategy to get around the limitations of the 2nd amendment, even when not interpreted by the current crop of doofuses on the Supremes.
Rather than restricting gun ownership or any particular class of weapon or accessory or ammunition, instead require that the owner carry liability insurance. Let the (echoey stentoran voice) FREE MARKET decide how much the rider on a $10 million policy costs costs for one of those 100-round tommy gun magazines.
kay
I was an “OIC” (officer in charge) at a tiny rural post office for a time. “OIC is sort of a grand name for “substitute post master”. This PO was in the middle of nowhere so I was “in charge” of 40 PO boxes and a single 70 yr old rural carrier.
One week we got about 100 certified letters from the NRA. Certified letters are a pain in the ass for people on a rural route because they have to come in while the PO is open, during a work day, and sign for them.
Also, people assume a certified letter is bad news, which it usually is.
So, they all came dutifully in and signed for the letter and they were absolutely furious when they realized it was an “emergency! They’re coming for your guns!”. Fundraising appeal. Regular, bullshit, over the top scare letter from the NRA and they sent it certified.
None of them quit the NRA, though, as far as I know.
Lobbyists have done a real number on this country. A 6 year old slaughtered in a movie, a 9 year old slaughtered at a local political meet ‘n greet, and the NRA will be back in statehouses and Congress today, opposing any regulation of weapons or ammunition, and those 100 people on the rural route will be happily paying their salaries.
Nutella
But the freedom of every gun nut and every vicious and/or crazy person to be armed is so important. The freedom of those 12 people in Colorado to do anything at all — pfft. Trivial. To the gun nuts, that is.
Karounie
How about kevlar vests and helmets for every citizen as an economic stimulus? It could be part of the defense budget, since it will help keep that industry sector humming along.
I’ve never worn body armor so I don’t know if it’s too heavy for kids to manage while climbing trees.
Kimberly Smiths
Each person who says, “Somebody should DO something!”. We should think that this means that somebody [else] should do something. It’s the opposite of activism, right?
Kathy in St. Louis
I would say that the day that the average American realizes that the NRA is funded, in large part, by the gun manufacturers, whose business depends on people believing that it’s their constitutional right to own their own gun, grenade, howitzer, or atom bomb, then we’ll start making some progress. But until the day that the man in the street realizes that all the fear mongering about Obama and the gubmint consfiscating weapons is a bottom line scare that is probably in their books as part of their marketing budget, we’re not going to get anywhere.
Jay in Oregon
@Richard:
I was listening to Norman Goldman over the weekend, and he had a pretty good explanation.
The Amendments to the Constitution can and do embody multiple concepts; the First Amendment talks about freedom of speech AND freedom of religion AND freedom of the press.
The question of whether or not the Second Amendment put forth one principle (the freedom to form “well-regulated militias”, requiring the freedom to keep and bear arms as a consequence) or two principles (the ability to form militias AND the ability to keep and bear arms regardless of one’s status as a militia member) was apparently widely discussed among Constitutional scholars, but it wasn’t until a fairly recent Supreme Court decision that SCOTUS explicitly stated that they were two separate freedoms.
If I get a chance, I’ll poke around on Goldman’s web site; he’s supposedly pretty good about having references and source material.
Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God
@Kathy in St. Louis:
I’d go even further and say that the NRA is basically the Chamber of Commerce for gunmakers. Gunmakers who profit handsomely from gun-running operations to Mexico, BTW.
(Just in case anyone was wondering what going after Holder for Fast & Furious was really about).
JR in WV
As mentioned above, in rural homes guns are vital tools. I have used my wife’s revolver to put down our work horse, who was 28 and couldn’t make it through another sub-zero February, and to put down an 8-point deer who had been savaged by coyotes and was clearly suffering agony. And other pets with incurable disease that were struck with its effects on a weekend. Not fun, but part of our responsibility to our furry companions, the final and most difficult responsibility.
At the same time, we are 45 minutes from the nearest police station, assuming there was an officer present and able to leave at a moment’s notice, which is a big assumption. We do have sneak thieves and meth addicts in our rural paradise, and no one can protect us from those scum. It is our responsibility.
I have served on juries in our rural county and could tell stories (If it were legal to!) that would inform you that criminal horror is not an urban thing, it is all too human.
So I learned to shoot from my Grandma when I was something like 10, with her .22 single shot rifle, along with cousins from the big city visiting the country in the summertime. She grew up in a river-boat town in Kentucky, and almost all upright citizens carried guns in 1907.
She kept a general store during the Depression, and was never held up. I suspect it was at least partly because she carried a Colt .32 pistol, and everyone knew she was a good shot, as she often emptied the clip in the back yard on Sundays after church.
I enjoy target shooting, and am a CCW holder. I don’t often carry a gun, they are heavy and uncomfortable at first. But when I travel away from home, I inform myself about local gun law, and whether my CCW license is valid along our travels. It is valid in a surprising number of states, but the law varies quite a bit from place to place.
Guns are tools, small and complex machines. They are no more evil than a steam boiler; all the evil is in the shooter of innocents. If you look it up, steam boilers were responsible for as many deaths in their day as auto crashes are today. We try to make cars safer, but they are orders of magnitude more dangerous to the average person than terrorism or guns.
Every minute on the road you are trusting the other driver to be paying attention and to follow the rules to stay out of your way. Paying attention to your vehicle, not their Mom’s phone call.
Yesterday 13 people were killed and more injured in a single vehicle pickup truck wreck in rural Texas. Ban trucks? Don’t think so. Nor cell phones. Nor guns. Though it would be good if buyers were screened for stability, somehow. That would be a good trick, learning how to ID an unstable personality with enough accuracy for real use.
I have no use for the NRA, there are alternative hunter and shooter organizations, but I’m not much of a joiner myself. And no one should oppose keeping guns away from disturbed people.
‘nuf said!
JR
John Caelan
“Mostly, we are terrified of terror without cause. It feeds no agenda, it supports no doctrine, its takes no side. The pitiful attempt to assign it purpose reveals our darkest fears-that sometimes evil has no design. Sometimes, it has no rhyme or reason.”
Aurora: No Rhyme or Reason…What We Really Fear
http://johncaelan.quebb.net/2012/07/aurora-no-rhyme-or-reason-what-we-really-fear/