.
.
Alex Koppelman asks, in the New Yorker, “Can Biden Stop the Shooting?“:
… A final decision may not have been made, but the broad strokes of what President Obama would do with only the powers of his office, and without congressional approval, have been made fairly clear, both in Biden’s own statements and in the positions taken by some of the major gun-control advocacy groups that took part in the meetings.
One of the things that Obama is likely to do on his own is to work to shore up the database that is used to conduct background checks on prospective gun buyers. The law already requires federal agencies to submit records that contain information about people who are, for various reasons, prohibited from owning firearms, but at least some of those agencies haven’t been complying fully. In a letter to Obama sent shortly after Newtown, Mayors Against Illegal Guns, the organization co-chaired by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, called on Obama to “issue an executive order requiring all federal agency heads to certify twice annually, in writing, to the U.S. Attorney General that their agency has submitted all relevant records to NICS.” (There are other steps Obama could take in this area as well, some of which Biden discussed in his public remarks on Thursday.)…
Failure now would be more than a short-term setback for gun control; it would also mean wasting the best opportunity its supporters have to keep from losing the debate altogether. In recent years, Republicans have worked to make it very difficult, if not impossible, for the federal government to do research on guns and violent crime, or to fund any such research. Without that kind of scientific data to bolster their arguments, advocates for new restrictions on guns are at a significant disadvantage. On Thursday, Biden made it clear that he recognizes this, drawing a lengthy analogy to the auto industry’s fight against similar research on car-safety data, and the improvements like collapsible steering wheels and air bags that were only made after the government won the fight over that data. The Administration can fix parts of this problem on its own, but others require congressional action, and that’s a fight that will be hard for Democrats to win. But if Obama and Biden want to do more than just make small changes, if they want to make a real dent, they’ll have to.
Joanna Weiss, at the Boston Globe, talks to some doctors who are arguing the public health angle:
… Back in the 1950s, he said, when people fretted about car-crash deaths, car manufacturers fell back on the fault argument: Cars don’t kill people; bad drivers do, by speeding or driving drunk or blowing through stop signs.
So doctors tried a different tactic: assuming that accidents were going to happen and focusing instead on the injuries they caused. It turned out that people were being slammed into non-collapsible steering wheels, lacerated by non-shatterproof windshields, crushed when they ran into trees and lampposts on the sides of roads.
Public safety programs — many of them government-imposed — changed the environment in which bad drivers drove. Some required change from car manufacturers: collapsible steering wheels, safety glass on windshields. Some required change from drivers themselves: wearing seat belts, naming designated drivers. There was no single solution. But since 1950, car deaths per mile driven have fallen by 90 percent.In a commentary in last week’s Journal of the American Medical Association, Ludwig, Hemenway, and Mozaffarian list a number of public health analogies that could easily apply to guns. Just as childproof safety caps have helped reduce the number of kids poisoned by medicines, a new generation of smart gun safety locks — perhaps triggered by fingerprints — could keep guns from discharging in the wrong hands. Just as speed limits have lessened the impact of accidents, reduced-capacity magazines could limit the effects of a shooting spree. Just as taxing tobacco has raised money for smoking cessation, taxing guns could provide a funding stream for gun safety programs….
Better that we keep those old public health victories in mind — remember that they came with a measure of personal sacrifice, but also that we accepted the burden and moved on. People didn’t much like wearing seat belts, at the start. But once we had to wear seat belts, it’s turned out to be fine. Better than fine. Because now, there are plenty more of us alive.
gogol's wife
Nice ad.
BGinCHI
I still think this is really simple.
“Guns don’t kill people, people kill people. That’s why we have to regulate people’s access to the most dangerous and destructive firearms.”
How can anyone argue with that?
/becuz freedums
gogol's wife
@BGinCHI:
It seems obvious to me, but then I’m sane.
Maude
New York passed gun control Cuomo expected to sign it.
nellcote
A question for gun owners…Is it a public safety issue for people to be storing large amounts, cases in some instances, of ammunition in private homes? I don’t know but it seems like the volume would make it the equivilant of storing explosives and dangerous particularly for fire fighters.
Shinobi
My issue with pretty much any safety analogy being used for gun control is that it totally ignores what the primary purpose of a gun actually is.
Guns were designed to wound and or kill people or animals. That is the only purpose of a gun. Assault rifles in particular were designed to injure a large number of people in as short amount of time as possible.
Yes, guns do have sport uses like target practice. However, target practice is essentially practicing to wound and or kill people or animals. It’s just an offshoot of a gun’s purpose.
Any analogy to cars, medicine caps, or other public safety issues ignores that cars and medicine have a primary purpose that is not hurting people. I can’t open a can with a gun very effectively, or even a door lock (thanks mythbusters) it can’t help me travel from place to place or cure my pain. A Gun has no alternate use. It can be used to wound and or kill or practice for future wounding and or killing, and that’s pretty much it. (Paperweight? I’ll take suggestions.)
When guns hurt or kill people they are doing the thing that they are designed to do. It is not a safety issue, it is the gun doing its job. It’s not an accidental byproduct of misuse.
And yes, they are dependent on the user, which then begs the question, why do people own a thing that is intended to wound and or kill people or animals if they have no intention of doing so?
(I say this as someone who was raised shooting and is just paranoid enough to want her own gun. Just because I find them interesting and cool doesn’t change their primary purpose, which is violent and horrible.)
El Caganer
But the winklebrains don’t care if you’re alive – they care about having their guns.
I’d love to see some major regulation, but I think what can be accomplished by executive order is about all that’s going to happen. If the Republicans don’t care about blowing up the country’s economy just to make a point, and if they’ve defunded research on firearm injuries and deaths because they know they won’t like the results, there is no way in hell that they’ll even go along with cosmetic changes.
gogol's wife
@Shinobi:
You’re right in theory, but in practice I find that when I use the car analogy (not even talking so much about safety, as registration, licensing, and insurance), people’s eyes light up as if they’d never thought of it before. It’s so ingrained in us that we have to jump through all these hoops to have a car, that we don’t even think of how ridiculous it is that people don’t have to do the same in order to have a gun.
gogol's wife
@El Caganer:
Short term, you’re right, but those on our side of the issue have to start thinking both short- and long-term. The NRA sure does.
Shinobi
@gogol’s wife: I guess I just know who many nuts who respond with the fact that there is no amendment guaranteeing our right to own any form of transportation.
gogol's wife
@Shinobi:
Yes, but they’re the nuts. The majority of people don’t see it that way.
cmorenc
As British comedian Eddie Izzard said: “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people. Well I think the gun helps. If you just stood there and yelled BANG, I don’t think you’d kill too many…”
MattR
@Shinobi: I agree with you which is why I think the better approach is to point out that we have placed restrictions on the 1st Ammendment to protect society and therefore we should be able to place similar, reasonable restrictions on the 2nd.
Certified Mutant Enemy
@MattR:
The typical gun not probably believes he has the right to yell fire in a crowded theater…
hoodie
@BGinCHI: Their response to “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people” is “then get more guns to kill all the bad people.” The gun fetish is consistent with a Manichean world view. Maybe this is behind the particularly obsessive attachment to guns, the ultimate expression of the wingnuts’ frustration with their inability to make the world conform to their wishes. The gun gives the most inconsequential fuck the ability to play god.
roc
Sounds to me like they negotiated themselves down to actually making an effective background check process and getting gun safety research funded.
Which is, perhaps, all that’s politically feasible. And maybe even that is eleven-dimensional chess/matador cape-waving.
Make an inarguable assertion — effectively run what we already have, do research on whether other changes work or not — and rely on the crazies to make the story all about their unbridled insanity.
But how’s that work when the Press can’t print anything outside the “both sides” template? And how’s that look when the inevitable *next* rampage occurs and the only politicians theoretically pushing for change have nothing to point at but a political scoreboard?
Spaghetti Lee
I’m all for keeping up the fight on gun safety. Just to remind everyone, this is what we’re up against: http://wonkette.com/497022/newtown-truthers-approach-center-of-conspiracy-old-man-dog-walker
Monsters.
nellcote
@MattR:
Isn’t there already something about a “well regulated” militia in there already? Has the SCOTUS ever had an opinion on that part of it?
Ruckus
@Shinobi:
Remind them that the amendment has the words “Well Regulated” in it. They may be able to debate what those regulations might be, but there is no removing those two words from the discussion.
We have been losing the debate for a long while now by ignoring some of the words and allowing the gun advocates to effectively rewrite the amendment. I have written before that I believe that the only real way to fix this is to create a replacement amendment, something I don’t expect to see in my lifetime.
Ash Can
@Shinobi: Something tells me that if any of the Founding Fathers were allowed by the FSM’s Great Beyond to visit us today, they’d gape in disbelief at how we’ve come to interpret the Second Amendment, and say, “You idiots, what the hell is the matter with you? We gave you this document to preserve this nation, not to shoot it full of holes. Why the hell do you think we gave you the power to change the fucking thing — just like we did ourselves, when we wrote the damned Bill of Rights? Do we have to draw you a fucking picture?“
Mnemosyne
@Shinobi:
As others have said, the words “well-regulated” are right in the amendment. Make the gun nuts explain to you why “well-regulated” doesn’t really mean well regulated and, in fact, secretly means, “no restrictions at all.” It’s sometimes entertaining to watch them tie themselves into knots trying to “explain” the discrepancy.
Ruckus
@Ash Can:
This.
xian
@Ruckus: they will say it meant “well drilled”
MattR
@nellcote: @Ruckus: Actually, from the Supreme Court decision in District of Columbia v Heller they basically said you should throw out the “well regulated militia” part since it does not affect how the ammendment should be interpreted. Wikipedia quotes the intro to the court’s decision:
(there are more subclauses other than (a) but I think that one is sufficient to prove the point. Full opinion is here if you want to reference it)
scav
And now are we to be also gifted with the priviledge of watching thm pivot and shriek to high heaven about the overreach of having regulations already on the books be actually enforced? None of the if you’re innocent you have nothing to fear, why is it onerous to produce identification in order to excercise a right blah blah blah. Their moral vacuity and distain for even the veneer ofmcoherent positions isweet.
@xian: Well drilled? Well, do we drag out the augers or insist they use their tool of choice for the drilling?
Maude
Yahoo News, there’s been a shooting in Saint Louis.
ranchandsyrup
@scav: re: “drilled”, see here: http://constitution.org/cons/wellregu.htm
I think that’s wrong. I more go with the conclusions reached here: http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/Law/ConstitutionalLaw/~~/dmlldz11c2EmY2k9OTc4MDE5NTM0MTAzNA==
El Caganer
@MattR: Sounds like the Court pretty much read what it wanted to read. For ‘originalists,’ they sure don’t seem to know much about language at the time the Constitution was written.
http://www.english.illinois.edu/-people-/faculty/debaron/402/402media/2nd%20amendment.pdf
scav
@ranchandsyrup: also in re: drill Here, 2a. Although now I wonder what could be done with the cloth and the marine snail. . .
MikeJ
@Maude: Not a mass shooting, thank goodness. Gunman shot the financial aid officer and then himself.
ranchandsyrup
@scav: lolz. Too much parsing. Can George Carlin send Sad Keaunu Reeves and that other guy back to fetch some founders please?
gene108
@BGinCHI:
Because of the slippery slope you are starting on toward the outright ban and confiscation of privately owned fire arms in the country.
When they made steering wheels collapsible, I did nothing;
When they made us wear seat belts, I said nothing;
When they made driver and passenger side airbags mandatory, I could not speak out;
They had taken all the cars away
I think you get the picture now about how the slippery slope’ll play out.
The slippery slope is real.
The slippery slope happened before.
Vigilance is needed to defend freedom.
The prophet Nostradumbass
I’d just like to point out that The Taliban is a Thriving and Vibrant Political Movement.
mdblanche
@El Caganer: We were originally at war with Eastasia. We have always been originally at war with Eastasia.
BGinCHI
@gene108: The NRA’s motto should be “slippery slope” in Latin.
It is their only argument. Giving one iota on regulating guns in any way is the beginning of the end.
Think about that.
What does your argument have to assume for you to argue this way? That regulation will become more restrictive as soon as it’s allowed. Why? Two choices.
NRA: Because government wants in all cases to have all the guns while leaving the people with none.
Common Sense Society: Great killing technology and availability need to come with restrictions on this destructive force.
The NRA is not a sane partner in this discussion.
Maude
@MikeJ:
Can you believe that we are glad it wasn’t a mass shooting?
This has to stop. The New York law seems to be a good one.
The NRA isn’t going to be happy.
karen
My parents live on Long Island and told me about the law Cuomo is signing and said it was great. I agree but I also told them that if you think you’re not getting Sandy Aid now just wait until the law is passed and the NRA screeches at their puppets. Also wait until someone brings guns in from another state and is prosecuted for it. The NRA will snap their fingers, the GOP in NY will jump and will suddenly be against the law they’d been for.
GOP is now threatening to file articles of impeachment if Obama does any executive action with guns without going through Congress first.
Alex Jones is threatening armed insurrection if guns are taken away. Since his groupies have all the ammo and they’re as loony as he is, that’s the thing I’m most afraid of to be honest.
scav
@Maude: It’s not the repeated actions of gun wielders such as these that desensitize a culture to violence, it’s all those other things.
Calouste
@Ash Can:
The US Constitution is pretty much unchangeable at the moment. No Amendment has been proposed and passed in the last 40 years (the 27th was proposed in 17-something), and of the 10 amendments ratified in the last century, 2 cancelled each other out, 3 expanded voting rights (the 3 actual important ones in 100 years), and the other 5 were minor changes to electoral or office holder issues.
You just know that actually relevant amendments, like equal right, non-discrimination, turning the Senate into a democratic body or changing the 2nd, are just not going to happen.
gsim
@MattR:
Not to mention the fact that many people seem have no problems “restricting” the 4th or 5th amendments …
/delurk
Peregrinus
@BGinCHI:
Or Cum manuballistae proscriptae erunt, soli proscripti manuballistas habebunt.
(“When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.”)
BGinCHI
@Peregrinus: Most of these fuckwads want guns to be outlawed so they can live out their shooting/Red Dawn fantasies instead of painting their faces for NFL games and pretending that being fat and stupid are virtues.
trollhattan
Fewer guns. Now. Period.
http://blogs.sacbee.com/crime/archives/2013/01/sheriffs-department-galt-police-officer-reportedly-shot-condition-unknown.html#storylink=cpy
Peregrinus
@BGinCHI:
I’m in the part of New York where everyone and their mother owns a gun. (“Farmers. Farmers’ mums.”) The general sentiment around here is that while some gun owners are irresponsible fuckwits who ruin it for everyone else, the grand majority of gun owners (whom, they assume, are exactly like them) are upstanding citizens who lock their ammo separately from their guns, always remember gun safety rules, and would never, ever use it except in a possible home defense scenario (which, y’know, goes against the first part of this, but whatever).
I find that you can reason with them to a limited extent, but it always comes back to “gun control is bad because it is bad and crime will go up if you take away our guns.” They’re not Red Dawn fantasists so much as people who think that a gun exerts this mystical aura that makes you a) a better person and b) a special deputy New York State Trooper.
dmsilev
Good to see that the NRA has backed off its stance of advocating for virtual guns for 4-year-olds. Baby steps folks, baby steps.
Jamey
@gogol’s wife: Or they complain about seat-belt and helmet laws, too.
BGinCHI
@Peregrinus: I come from hat culture and I get it. I don’t have a problem with guns. I just have a problem with idiots who aren’t making arguments that make any sense and then pretend there are no consequences.
Every time I go back to my rural home town (county, actually), I get why people see themselves as isolated and therefore not a threat. But they aren’t thinking about guns that are around lots of people, handled by people who want to kill.
People who stand in the way of sensible regulation are asking for extreme measures. They’d be better off being part of the solution.
Dick Woodcock
Just because it’s in the bill of rights doesn’t mean that there can’t be any restrictions. You can’t yell fire in a crowded theatre. If your religion demands you marry children, there’s gonna be a problem. So there’s no reason there can’t be any restrictions on guns.
My answer for “Guns don’t kill people…” is that people kill people a lot easier with guns. Point & squeeze the trigger. Just about any other way to kill a person in a fit of rage or mind losing will take a little more hands on effort from you.
Davis X. Machina
I don’t want to give Mark Harmon all that power.
lou
Right now, my rage is burning over this.
Sandy Hook conspiracy theorists harassing the guy who took in those six kids.
Peregrinus
@BGinCHI:
The wonderful part is that I’m in the Rochester area, so you get people who come from rural areas or the suburbs but work or have spent time living in the city. So they think they know everything about gun problems, no matter the environment.
I went to a safety & permit class about a year and a half ago now where the guy (a senior NRA rifle instructor) talked about how you have to work within the system and not rock the boat, and there were these two guys there who were so clearly nutty that even he was shooting them down.
That same guy just sent me an email talking about this new NY gun law. (Honestly, even I find some parts of it to be total bullshit, in the sense that I think it’ll piss off gun owners and make the rest of Cuomo’s agenda harder to pass without giving him a legislative victory in return.) Apparently the entire thing is, of course, extraconstitutional because it was passed overnight, takes away previously bought property (it rescinds a grandfather clause), and the definition of “assault weapons” makes no sense argle bargle. At this point I just don’t even want to know.
BGinCHI
@Peregrinus: I agree that sometimes the laws and lawmakers fuck things up by being tin-eared when they craft this legislation.
But if they had a sane partner to work with (an org who repped gun owners in a smart way and not a money-grubbing, paranoid way (NRA)) they could probably make better progress.
So much partisan ideological ignorant bullshit going around in this debate.
We have to stop letting fear rule discourse in this country.
the Conster
@Ash Can:
Peregrinus
@the Conster:
John Adams usually gets short shrift with people like gun advocates precisely because he was one of the more clearly anti-democratic Founders, from what I remember of his writings and thoughts.
(That is to say, he’s a perfect example of the “no true Founder” fallacy.)
@BGinCHI:
I agree with that.
I do find that there are a few gun owners I know in the area who aren’t NRA. They espouse a lot of the same viewpoints but they’re not as given to automatically believing the gun lobby’s crap.
My students know I’m a Democrat and a leftist (I’ve pointed out, more than once, that my grandfather is a Cuban exile and is still a hardcore lefty) so sometimes they’ll bring it up out of curiosity or because they want a chance to try out NRA stuff on me. I usually just point out that I think the NRA is throwing gun owners under the bus to sell more guns. They don’t necessarily believe me, but they also don’t reject it out of hand that I might have a point . . . unlike, I suspect, their parents would.
e.a.f.
If guns protected “liberty” than you would think some of those countries where there is constant civil war would have a whole lot more liberty. The U.S.A. has a fine armed forces. They are quite capable of defending the country. I don’t expect the American government to attack its own citizens any time in the next millenium. If your politicians scare you that much, vote them out of office.
Don’t blame video games, movies, etc. on gun violence. It doesn’t help but Canada, the country just north of you, well all our children watch the same movies, t.v. shows, play the same games, etc. and we aren’t shooting each other up like the Americans. Why? Because we have gun control.
No one needs one of those AK whatevers to go hunt deer or even bear. Assault weapons in civilian hands, no need. People don’t need cases of ammo to “defend” themselves.
If this is an argument about the constitution, perhaps people should think about that line about life, liberty, & the pursuit of happiness. There is nothing which makes a child happier than to know they won’t be killed at school. Same for the parental units. Turning schools into armed camps isn’t going to work. It will simply produce a generation of children who are constantly afraid. The nutbar politicians who think armed guards, etc. will make schools safer might want to invest in a little mental health therapy, for themselves & those who are mentally ill.
We don’t find this level of gun violence in Europe or Japan. They all have gun control. Yes we know Switzerland has a lot of guns but they are also a much more civilized country with a much higher standard of living & not the amount of poverty the U.S.A. has. Poverty breeds violence. Lack of mental health care leads to violence.
The state of New York did the right thing. Now lets see Obama & the rest of the politicians do the same. Who has more rights the gun owners of assault rifles or a child’s right not to be murdered at school?
S. cerevisiae
If restrictions on fully automatic weapons have survived 70 years of constitutional challenges then regulations on certain firing mechanisms should stand up in court. Since I don’t remember reading about the Tommy Gun lobby in history class I don’t think it was that controversial.
BGinCHI
@Peregrinus: For the record I taught at Cortland briefly and did my PhD at Buffalo, and also taught in Ithaca before moving here.
Upstate NY is a really interesting place that has a lot of clashing viewpoints. It’s extremely poor and rural and then really wealthy. The Finger Lakes region especially.
In any state with a big city that makes a lot of the law (IL, NY) you get these big disconnects.
Feudalism Now!
There is a lot of bs in the New York State law. Hand gun owners permits are now exempt from FoIA requests, so no more publishing addresses of gun owners. No buyback programs for larger magazines. The no tracking of gun sales between family members is a big loophole. I can see Adam and Eve Gun Show/ Family Reunion springing up at the State Fair Grounds.
There is a lot of good. Banning internet sales and closing most of the owner to owner sales loopholes are a great start.
Peregrinus
@BGinCHI:
Yes. And I teach the kids of those really wealthy people, after going to school at UR. I get to hear Wayne LaPierre in the mouths of babes.
jefft452
@Ruckus: “Remind them that the amendment has the words “Well Regulated” in it.”
No
Remind them that the words “…being necessary to the security of a free State” are in it
Not self defense, not protection from the State, not overthrowing tyranny –
It clearly says that the State should be secure
Government by consent of the governed = Liberty
Government by consent of a loud mouth asshole with a gun = Tyranny
Peregrinus
A dude I know who works at my undergrad institution is now bitching on FB about how he’s being “censored” by people of different beliefs (though he “vocally supported” them when they were the ones being censored and “was able to speak to [them] about all things”) and how he’s decided he needs to become politically active and, since the government tried to take away his guns, he is now a libertarian.
This is among complaints that New York state didn’t ask the government, the old “this isn’t a republic, this is a democracy” canard, and a number of other bullshit basically coming down to “They wanted to take away my toys.”
Yes, the NY state legislature was fairly tin-eared here, but goddamn I’m going to want to break my foot off in someone’s ass before this settles down.
rikyrah
HOLD THE FUCK UP!!!
The NRA used SASHA AND MALIA in an ad?
RaflW
@Maude:
The Cuomo law, if it’s the psycotherapist-has-to-report-you law, sounds flawed, rushed and likely to be easy for NRA types to point at as an utter failure in a few years.
So I hope Biden is working up some good, useful policy.