Tag Archives: gun regulation

The gun floodgates open

27 Friday Jul 2018

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It’s hard to know how many guns are floating around  in the United States. Gun ownership is  not well-regulated so exact numbers are hard to come by. Various studies, however, put the number of guns at somewhere between 265 million – 300+ million.

There’s a  little more than 320 million people in the U.S.

That’s a lot of guns. Lots of guns produce consequences.

The U.S. has 5% of the world’s population, but 31% of global mass shooters. Murder by gun runs 25.2% higher in the U.S. than in comparable countries.

As an exercise, try reading  your city’s daily paper tomorrow and count the number of deaths by shooting that are described there. Better yet, do it for a week or a  month.

And it might just get worse:

Americans will soon be able to make 3D-printed guns from their homes, widening the door to do-it-yourself versions of firearms.

The choices will include the AR-15, the gun of choice in American mass shootings. All 3D-printed guns will be untraceable, and since you can make them yourself, no background check is required.

A settlement earlier this year between the State Department and Texas-based Defense Distributed will let the nonprofit release blueprints for guns online starting Aug. 1, a development hailed by the group as the death of gun control in the United States.

Gun-loving Missouri crack-pots are already trying to get in on the act:

Nearly a year after  he was temporarily booted by Facebook for raffling off an AR-15 rifle, a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate is giving away a machine capable of printing parts for a similar firearm.

Austin Petersen, who ran for president as a Libertarian in 2016, issued on Tuesday a press release and a letter to potential donors announcing the giveaway, saying that Republicans had not done enough to protect gun rights.

[…]

Petersen plans to give away the Ghost Gunner 2, which costs about $1,200. The machine is capable of milling parts for a firearm.

Brian Krassenstein of 3-DPrint.com observes that at this point guns manufactured in this manner are not especially durable, but that the technology does exist to print more durable guns and it is advancing regularly.

The floodgates will soon be wide open. Unless something is done, anyone will be able to print an undetectable gun and take it anywhere. And shoot anyone.

This development won’t be a victory for the good life Americans aspire to. It’s already scary to be exposed in public places in America. There’s lots of anger floating around. Lots of politicians using it to make hay. Resurgent racist thugs glorify force. Things may soon get much worse than we imagined they could.

Congress could push back against the court decision legislatively and Sen. Schumer and a handful of Democratic legislators are making sounds about doing something. But as long as Democrats are in the minority, “sounds” will probably be all that is forthcoming.

One thing for sure; if long-shot Austin Petersen were to make it to Washington, we couldn’t count on him to help us.

Maybe somebody should ask GOP senatorial primary front runner Josh Hawley how he feels about 3D gun printers.

 

Wagner and Hartzler insult those who died in Las Vegas

05 Thursday Oct 2017

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Okay. This is good. We have a gun massacre – more than fifty dead and nearly 500 wounded. A clean, white, gun “enthusiast” (authorities found more than 40 guns in his hotel room, car, etc.) goes bonkers and gears up multiple automatic weapons in his hotel room to shoot concert-goers from on-high like they’re fish in a barrel. Additionally, as far as mass shootings go, we have a twofer – three killed, two wounded in another shooting spree in Lawrence, Kansas on the same day. Of the two, only the first massacre elicits big news coverage – mass shootings have become so run-of-the-mill nowadays that there has to be a big body count before anyone notices.

Do these events possibly suggest that we’ve got a problem with guns in the U.S.? That maybe we shouldn’t be quite so permissive when it comes to what are, when all is said and done, potential instruments of death? And maybe our elected representatives should take some time to address this issue?

Well, if you said “yes” to these questions, you’d be all on your lonesome, at least if you were a member of the GOP Caucus of the U.S. House of Representatives. Not that these folks don’t care about life. Nosiree. They care so much about life that the use of guns to deprive so many of that state of being just shored up their resolve to enact even more restrictions on, wait for it, abortion:

As we mourn the lives lost in Las Vegas this week, and welcome Whip Scalise back to Capitol Hill, we are reminded just how precious life is. This message weighed heavily on the hearts of House Republicans as we spoke of the potential of life — especially lives cut short through abortion.

The House passed a so-called fetal-pain bill, Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act (H.R. 36), that, adhering to the best junk science ideology can compel, declares that a fetus can feel pain at 20 weeks – even though all major U.S. and international medical societies, such as the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, have gone on the record that, although a fetus can respond reflexively to stimulation much earlier, the essential components of the cerebral cortex have not developed sufficiently to permit the experience of pain until at least 26 weeks.

No surprise to Missourians, our local GOPers were among those so overcome by antics of a shooter in Las Vegas that they just had to put in jeopardy the lives of women who have potentially life-threatening, problematic, late term pregnancies – because the largest number of late term abortions, a procedure that is exceedingly rare to start with, is a due to just such complications. Among those Missourians who offered especially emotive support for the bill were Reps. Ann Wagner (R-2) and Vicky Hartzler (R-4).

Hartzler goes all the way with junk science declaring, in opposition to all reputable evidence, that “babies at this age are hypersensitive, feeling pain more acutely than you and me.” But, hey, this is the lady who thinks that our toasters are rigged by the Chinese to spy on us. Of course, this begs the question of why we allow someone incapable of evaluating evidence to make laws that depend on competent evaluation of evidence.

Wagner also embraced the dishonest crazy, but did so with real sophistic flair, detailing the developmental progress of her incipient grandchild, and slipping into the catalog the assumption that the stages of development she listed somehow entailed the capacity to feel pain at 20 weeks:

… Today, we know so much more. We know that, after 3 weeks, my granddaughter had a heartbeat. After 7 weeks, she began kicking her mother, like any good Wagner child would. By week 12, she could suck her thumb, and at week 20, my granddaughter knew the sound of her mother’s voice and could feel pain.

Somebody tell these ladies that guns cause pain and death too. And it’s real pain, the kind that hurts, as opposed to fantasy pain hypothesized by junk science quacks (or hacks who are in it for the money), who’ll pretend that reflexive stimulation equal pain and lie about the fact that the anesthesia used during fetal surgery prior to 26 weeks is strictly used to insure the comfort of the fully developed mother who can actually feel pain.

If these nice Republicans ladies are so concerned about pain and death, real pain, that is, there’s lots they can do about it. But somehow, I don’t think I’ll see either Wagner or Hartzler make a stand even for something as minor as an assault weapon ban. Indeed, I believe that both opposed renewing such a ban when the chance came up again in 2013. Both lawmakers also opposed legislation that would have blocked those on the terrorist watch-list or individuals certified mentally ill from buying guns.

They tell us that they are so concerned about, and so venerate life that murder by means of assault weapons – modified to perform like fully automatic guns – moved them to do nothing more than to restrict the right of women and their doctors to address their own, private reproductive health. And at the same time they can’t even manage to talk about the realities of gun violence. On top of that insult to both the dead and the survivors of the Las Vegas massacre, they insult the rest of us with lies, repeated over and over again in the face of contrary evidence, to justify banning so-called late-term abortions. And yet, both congresswomen have served multiple terms. What gives?

 

Got the gun-country blues yet?

01 Monday May 2017

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Recently, state Rep. Mike Moon (R-157), acting on the principle that if you can gain a few inches you’re a fool not to take a mile, has proposed making locations that prohibit guns on the premises legally liable when/if bad guys shoot at and injure unarmed good guys. As for the inches already taken, last September the Missouri legislature overrode then Governor Nixon’s veto and expanded the the scope of Missouri’s concealed carry law. They also loosened the “castle-doctrine” law to the extent that folks who “feel” threatened can now shoot first and think later. All of which prompted a St. Louis Post-Dispatch editorial writer to ask whether the outcome would be “more senseless mayhem or a greater sense of personal safety?” Recent events in Pikesville, Kentucky may give us a hint abut the answer to that question.

Given that it’s in Kentucky and that Kentucky is one of those red-states that have a loving relationship with the NRA’s all-or-nothing interpretation of the 2nd amendment, it’s probably a safe bet that many of the inhabitants of Pikesville are all for politicians who promise guns in every pot. It’s also probably a safe bet that some of those gun advocates got a taste of the result of such promises fulfilled this last weekend when the fact that every Tom, Dick, and Hairy yahoo can carry great big guns had townspeople “on edge.”

It seems that a group of Neo-Nazis had selected Pikesville as the site of a unity rally. A group of anti-fascists demonstrators decided to make the scene as well, while, for good measure, some armed militia members showed up, uninvited, to “prevent property damage and guard the town,” ostensibly from both groups. Nor should we fail to note the presence the “handful of neo-Confederates from the League of the South, a racist group that according to the Southern Poverty Law Center still favours Southern secession.” Talk about stirring the pot.

Pikesville citizens and city officials were quite properly upset that their city might be perceived as a stronghold of hate, and they were even more properly worried about the potential for violence, especially since “Kentucky gun laws, which permit the open carry of firearms, would make the protest even more volatile.” Turns out that the event was more mean-spirited high comedy than riot, but the potential was there along with enough guns to have created a blood bath.

There are, of course, those who will want to tell me that the reason nobody was killed is because good guys’ guns canceled out bad guys’ guns. To which I’d ask first off, “what good guys?” Pikesville likely got off easy because of good planning on the part of its leaders and police along with the fecklessness of the protestors. They also just straight-out got lucky.

We can’t count on luck, though, to come through for us in the long term, and, in our divided polity, there’s going to be more and more confrontations of this sort. You can only stir the pot so long before it boils over. It’s just too bad that so many folks jumping into these hot pots are heavy-duty 2nd amendment fanatics.

Of course, we don’t need armed extremist groups taking to the streets to see the damage that the gun culture works in our inner-cities every day, not to mention the lethal edge that guns in the home can lend run-of-the-mill suburban disputes. It is a fact, though, that the potential for damage only gets worse as more guns circulate, legally and illegally, among a racially and politically divided citizenry. In fact, during debate over Missouri’s new, looser gun laws, Democrats pointed out the risk to minorities; as State Sen. Maria Chappelle-Nadal (D-14)  observed:

The targets in our area are black boys, not pheasants […] What I don’t want to get to is the point where there is a trigger-happy police officer or bad Samaritan like Zimmerman who says, ‘Black boy in the hood. Skittles. Let’s shoot …

It’s a truism that it’s the violence that involves some permutation of black-on-black or black-on-white that solidifies the conviction of the white gun-hysterics who over-populate the GOP voter base that they need to arm themselves to the teeth. It’s going to be interesting to see how the NRA types spin it if shooting warfare breaks out among well-armed, predominantly white extremist groups like those in Pikesville. And what happens when the inevitable bystanders take a few bullets.

The NSSF wants us to thinks Roy Blunt is running against Hillary Clinton instead of Jason Kander

01 Saturday Oct 2016

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I got one of those big postcard-like, political advertisements in the mail a couple of days ago urging me to support Roy Blunt if I valued my Second Amendment rights. The National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), dubbed by The Atlantic the “other” gun lobby, paid for this mailer. It’s remarkable because it doesn’t even mention Blunt’s actual opponent, Jason Kander, by name. The NSSF wants us to vote for Blunt because Hillary is scary.

On the mailer a picture of a grimacing Hillary Clinton, pointing a disciplinary forefinger, mouth open in mid-shout, is positioned above a quote proclaiming her belief that “the Supreme Court is wrong on the Second Amendment,” and promising to pursue the issue “every chance I get.” Juxtaposed to that picture is one of a serene Roy Blunt, smiling in a way that manages to be both smarmy and evocative of a Howdy Doody doll at the same time. He is quoted to the effect that he will protect Second Amendment rights “by working to block anti-gun nominees to the Supreme Court.”

Is this true? And what about Jason Kander?

As far as the mailer’s claims about Hillary Clinton go, The Washington Post notes that:

… Ms. Clinton does not appear to be interested in pressing a radical re-interpretation of the Second Amendment. “Gun ownership is part of the fabric of many law-abiding communities,” her fact sheet on gun policy declares. She has endorsed a balance between upholding Americans’ constitutionally protected access to firearms and enacting rudimentary safety measures. What kinds of safety measures? The sorts that, polling indicates, most Americans support.

Would her Supreme Court nominees endorse a narrower interpretation of Second Amendment rights than the 2008 District of Columbia v. Heller ruling? Possibly. Possibly not. I doubt she would impose a “guns litmus test.” Nor would she need to do so in order to achieve her goals. The Heller ruling as it stands opens the door to the types of regulation that Clinton and many Americans support:

The Supreme Court stated, however, that the Second Amendment should not be understood as conferring a “right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.” The Court provided examples of laws it considered “presumptively lawful,” including those which:

  • Prohibit firearm possession by felons and the mentally ill;
  • Forbid firearm possession in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings; and
  • Impose conditions on the commercial sale of firearms.

The Court noted that this list is not exhaustive, and concluded that the Second Amendment is also consistent with laws banning “dangerous and unusual weapons” not in common use at the time, such as M-16 rifles and other firearms that are most useful in military service. In addition, the Court declared that its analysis should not be read to suggest “the invalidity of laws regulating the storage of firearms to prevent accidents.”

As for Jason Kander, Blunt’s actual opponent, to my knowledge he hasn’t spoken about whether or not he would impose any kind of guns-litmus test on Supreme Court nominees. But, in a recent TV commercial he established his gun bona fides, quickly assembling an AR-15 while blindfolded and asserting that:

Sen. Blunt has been attacking me on guns. Well, in the Army, I learned how to use and respect my rifle. In Afghanistan, I volunteered to be an extra gun in a convoy of unarmored SUVs. And in the State Legislature, I supported Second Amendment rights. I also believe in background checks, so the terrorists can’t get their hands on one of these.”

So what are we hearing from Kander? Support for Second Amendment rights along with a sprinkling of common sense? Sounds okay to me although perhaps a little too gun friendly  for my personal taste.

And what about Roy Blunt, the NSSF’s designated savior of an imaginary Second Amendment right to freedom from any and all regulation of potentially dangerous weapons? Would Roy Blunt vote only for Supreme Curt nominees that passed the gun lobby litmus test? Probably. He gets paid well by the lobby to do just that. He is, for example, the top congressional recipient of goodies from the NRA, and the mailer in my hands right now attests to the the support he is getting from the NSSF.

Gun regulation is a complex issue. Do you really trust a gun lobby shill to put your welfare first? And, if you really love guns, ask yourself, can Roy Blunt assemble an AR-15 blindfolded? At all? And does he really give a damn one way or another once he’s gotten his pay-check?

*1st paragraph slightly edited; last four words of last sentence deleted (10/1; 7:03 pm)..

Veto session post mortem

16 Friday Sep 2016

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You really should read this short article by The Political Animal‘s Martin Longman which discusses the implications of the Missouri legislature’s override of Governor Nixon’s veto of SB656 (deregulated “constitutional” carry)> and the Voter ID (voter suppression) bill. As Longman sees it, this type of legislation is dangerous in more than the obvious ways :

I could go into more detail on the merits and pitfalls of both bills, but I’d rather focus on the message they send. In making it much harder to vote at the same time that they make it much easier to carry a firearm, the Missouri GOP is inviting the conclusion that political disputes are best settled (and perhaps can only be settled) with violence.

That might sound extreme, but using the legislature and referendums to enact unconstitutional restrictions of your political opponents’ power is delegitimizing to representative government and therefore eats away at the consent of the governed. What you’re saying is that we need less democracy, less dissent, and more guns. It’s almost a recognition that, in undermining the legitimate governmental function of the state, you’ll need to arm yourself for protection.

I agree with Longman, and would suggest that what we see in this spate of increasingly extreme and weakly justified gun proliferation and voter suppression laws is part of the same phenomena that includes both the destructive, fantastical rhetoric and the hitherto unimaginable levels of legislative obstructionism on the part of Republican politicians.

These strategies are employed as tools by elected officials, often to further the goals of wealthy interests , the Citizens United crowd, who now expect to freely purchase government, and who saw the election of Barack Obama as antithetical to that end – and who view Hillary Clinton as the same type of threat. Combine that impetus with the latent racism stimulated by the election of the first black president, and you’ve got the situation that Longman describes, “when people lose faith in the ballot box and turn to the gun” in order to “arrest the march of history.”

Given the pervasive emphasis on guns in recent elections, there seems to be a lot of such people in Missouri. As we have seen, it has been fertile ground for the NRA. And, given recent state-level polls, not a bad place for growing Trumpkins.

SB656, the NRA and “bloodbath” politics

13 Tuesday Sep 2016

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I implied in an earlier post earlier today that havoc (or some related type of unpleasantness if you find “havoc” too hyperbolical) might ensue if our elected officials decide to ignore the preferences of most of their constituents and override Governor Nixon’s veto of SB656, legislation that would largely deregulate gun ownership as well as decriminalize impulsive gun violence via a stand-your-ground provision. I quoted reports that the NRA views this legislation as a big stakes issue, a reasonable stance since the organization’s purpose is to lobby for the gun industry’s bottom line and widespread adoption of legislation like SB656 would surely promote that goal.

But who else stands to gain? How does the NRA and their favored politicians get so many every day, never-gonna-get-rich-off-guns citizens to take the bait?

The key to that question might lie in a consideration of some jaw-dropping remarks that Kentucky’s Republican Governor, Matt Bevin, made yesterday. Bevin implied that, in the words of TPM’s Allegra Kirkland, “there will be a bloody clash between ‘tyrants’ and ‘patriots’ if Hillary Clinton wins this year’s presidential election”:

I want us to be able to fight ideologically, mentally, spiritually, economically, so that we don’t have to do it physically,” the tea party politician said in a Saturday speech at the Values Voters Summit, an annual gathering of religious conservatives. “But that may, in fact, be the case.”

Bevin said he was asked in a recent if the nation could “survive” a Clinton presidency, and he responded that it would be “possible” but at a great “price.”

“The roots of the tree of liberty are watered by what?” Bevin continued. “The blood, of who? The tyrants to be sure, but who else? The patriots. Whose blood will be shed? It may be that of those in this room. It might be that of our children and grandchildren.”

Bevin tried to soften the impact of these words later, but we’ve heard them before. They’re the meat and potatoes of much of the 2nd amendment crowd, especially the well-armed patriot militias – which have proliferated in Missouri as in many red states after the election of the first black president.

And if we are to believe reports, the image of violent revolution that these words elicit reflect the paranoia, anger and racial anxiety that fuels many  Trump supporters. Trump’s advisor, Roger Stone, echoed the theme as he reinforced a Trump campaign effort to delegitimize a potential Clinton presidency by suggesting a conspiracy to “rigg” the election:

“If there’s voter fraud, this election will be illegitimate, the election of the winner will be illegitimate, we will have a constitutional crisis, widespread civil disobedience, and the government will no longer be the government,” Stone said. He also promised a “bloodbath” if the Democrats attempt to “steal” the election.”

Another word for this projected bloodbath? “Civil war,” “treason,” “sedition,” “subversion,” “mutiny,” or just run of the mill “criminal,” as in the Bundys’ armed takeover of a nature preserve in Oregon – you choose.

Essential ingredient for such a bloodbath? Guns.

What kind of people poke at the sore spots of poorly informed rightwing hysterics for personal and political gain? Could they be deplorables?

The gun culture heats up

13 Tuesday Sep 2016

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A few hours ago The Missouri Times posted an article about how the NRA is working the upcoming “veto” session in the Missouri legislature:

The National Rifle Association will make the override of Senate Bill 656 their top priority in the country this week as the omnibus gun bill continues to gain momentum as the most high-profile legislation at stake on Wednesday.

The pro-gun group will launch a once-in-a-decade lobbying effort to override Gov. Jay Nixon’s veto of a bill that has drawn fervent support and opposition from all corners of the country.

As part of their efforts, the NRA has flown in several staffers to help lobby lawmakers, launched television ads, and sent mailers to key targeted districts. Whit O’Daniel, who lobbies on behalf of the NRA, said he’s been texting the entire Republican caucus to inform them that the NRA ranks SB 656 as the biggest priority in the country. It’s also their biggest priority in Missouri since 2003.

Imagine that! The NRA thinks that giving any and all Missourians unregulated rights to buy, own, sell guns and shoot their neighbors at will (as in stand-your-ground) is one of the biggest priorities in the nation. It’ll be good for NRA sponsors I suppose, as in the get-rich-quick kind of good.

Just to provide a little counterpoint,  I also want to share  this tidbit  from an article posted on the Turner Report:

A former Tarkio R-1 High School student who brought a loaded semi-automatic pistol to school, causing the school to be locked down, pleaded guilty in federal court today to illegally possessing a machine gun that was found at his residence.

[…]

According to court documents, Knoth – who came to school on Feb. 11, 2016, wearing military-style clothing, boots and ballistic body armor – displayed a fully loaded magazine to another student that day. That student alerted a teacher, and the school contacted the Tarkio, Mo., Police Department. School officials then discovered a loaded Glock 9mm semi-automatic pistol in Knoth’s backpack, along with four loaded 9mm pistol magazines, three loaded .223- or .556-caliber magazines, a spring-assisted knife, a seatbelt cutter and a window punch.

Knoth was arrested and handcuffed. The school was placed on lockdown.

Investigators searched Knoth’s vehicle, which was parked in the school parking lot. They found two loaded 9mm magazines and 15 loaded .223/.556-caliber magazines.

Investigators also searched Knoth’s residence. During a search of the southwest bedroom, investigators found a loaded machine gun in the closet – an AR-style .223/.556 pistol, containing no visible serial numbers or manufacturer stamp. They found a second machine gun, an UZI-style 9mm firearm (unknown manufacture), in the dresser. Investigators also found numerous rounds of ammunition and numerous loaded .223/.556 and 9mm magazines throughout the residence.

So are unstable young men with a fetish for guns and violence among the persons whose priorities the NRA is spending so much money to supprt? You  better bet they and their ilk will be among the beneficiaries.Of course, if the NRA gets its best-of-all-world druthers, teachers and administrators, along with each kid in Knoth’s school would all be sporting “good guy” guns in order to ward off attack. Possible outcomes? Draw  your own conclusions.

 

NRA candidate Chris Koster, wants to combat “urban” gun violence

11 Sunday Sep 2016

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Let me just say upfront, before I begin, that I’ll support a centrist, DINO Democrat any day over a full-fledged, rabid rightwing GOPer (and there is no other kind allowed in today’s GOP). They’ve all infuriated me, but I’ll still vote for coal-loving McCaskill, her balanced-budget pal, Jason Kander, and once-upon-a-time-Republican, born-again-sort-of-Democrat Chris Koster. That given, I’m still appalled by Missouri Democratic politicians’ efforts to pander to an almost imaginary center right demographic.

This personal emotional conflict was reactivated in spades when Chris Koster was endorsed by the red-meat, GOP base-baiting National Rifle Association (NRA) in a statement asserting that Koster has “a proven record of fighting to preserve the Second Amendment.” Given the way that the NRA has been trying to expand the scope of how we understand the 2nd amendment, that’s an endorsement that pretty much relegates Koster’s gun views into cray-cray territory. You remember the old Bob Dylan song, “Rainy Day Women,” where “everybody must get stoned”? In the NRA version, everybody must get armed. All the time. Everywhere. And shoot at will. It’s a damn scary world, they say.

But Koster’s not dumb. He knows that there are plenty of folks who believe that by their friends ye shall know them. So he has decided to try to let us know that while he’s not adverse to being identified with the NRA, given the 2nd amendment fetish of lots of mostly rural and suburban Missourians, he does plan to do something to combat gun violence. Urban, African-American gun-violence, that is.

Koster makes this clear in the following excerpt from a mass campaign email (paragraphs have been condensed):

I remember walking down Tucker Boulevard in St. Louis with my dad when I was a young boy. But, today, St. Louis is too often plagued by gunfire and killings, and it has become one of the most dangerous cities in the country. We cannot accept this.

As a prosecutor, I put many of Missouri’s worst criminals behind bars. As your next governor, I will fight urban gun violence head-on. [ …] Together, we can rebuild trust in our communities and give police the tools they need to keep us safe.

The email links to a video ad that spells it all out even more clearly, using all the appropriate code words and phrases. The video enumerates the steps Koster would take to combat “urban” crime in, specifically, St. Louis:

  1. Regain the trust of honest/innocent people by supplying witness protection.
  2. Give police the tools to fight urban violence.
  3. Deny bail to “criminals” caught carrying guns.
  4. Give felons who commit gun crimes long sentences with no chance for parole.

Whew! Tough enough for you!

First, I’m sure there are folks who would perhaps be willing to testify only if offered witness protection, but if Koster is really concerned with regaining the trust of “honest” folks (i.e., non-criminal African-Americans), he also needs to address what he proposes to do to insure police accountability.

Second, what tools is he proposing to give police? Bigger guns than those available to street criminals? That’s a lost cause given all the great big guns (many stolen from less than intrepid “good guys” with guns) in circulation. A policy of “broken windows” policing – let the would-be tough guys on the force run wild? Nothing like installing a police state to regain trust.

Third, Koster seems to be pushing for the retrograde type of sentencing laws that have over-crowed our prisons and destroyed communities , while ignoring the success of “gun courts” that substitute the use of social programs in lieu of prison sentences.

And not a word about the root problem. Guns.

There’s a reason we’re talking gun violence. One judge who is enthusiastic about gun courts explained their failure to cure the problem by noting that “there’s just too many guns out there. You can’t arrest your way out of the problem, you can’t confiscate your way out of the problem.”

Somebody tell that to Chris Koster. Please.

Good guys with a gun vs. bad guys with a gun fails the logic test

22 Monday Aug 2016

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One technique used by philosophers to evaluate an assertion is the search for counterexamples. If, for example, one encounters an individual who believes that all Labrador Retriever dogs are black, it is sufficient to show that this is not the case simply by producing the counterexample of a yellow Lab. The use of counterexamples can become vastly more complex, but you get the idea.

The reason I bring this up is that I think that Mark Kleiman, who posts at The Reality-Based Community Blog, has suggested the elements of an excellent counterexample that would demonstrate that the case for both unrestricted open and/or concealed-carry gun laws and extended “stand your ground” laws, which basically consists of one or another variant of “good guys with guns nullify bad guys with guns,” doesn’t stand up to close examination. This issue is especially relevant since it references anti-regulation legislation of the type that our Missouri GOP-controlled legislature wants to cram down our throats come the September legislative session wherein they hope to override Governor Nixon’s veto of SB656.

Kleiman’s starting point is a recent incident where a few “White Lives Matter” demonstrators gathered outside Houston’s NAACP headquarters to protest whatever gets white bile flowing. According to reports, members of the group were waving confederate flags and flourishing their – legal in Texas – firearms. Kleiman asks the following questions:

  1. Is it appropriate to come armed to a political demonstration?
  2. Would it be appropriate for counter-demonstrators also to come armed?
  3. When two groups of armed demonstrators confront one another and start shouting and shoving, and someone opens fire, how could a jury possibly find, beyond reasonable doubt, that whoever fired first was not in reasonable fear of his life from the actions of the armed people on the other side? Texas is “stand-your-ground” as well as “open-carry,” so there is no legal obligation on either side to back off.
  4. If the demonstration happened during business hours, would it be appropriate for NAACP staff to come armed?
  5. If one of them were to kill an armed Confederate, and testified that he saw the Confederate going for his gun and felt in reasonable fear of his life, how could a jury convict? Conversely, if one of the Confederates were to kill an armed NAACP staffer and gave the same testimony, how could a jury convict?

In order to show that this example is one-size-fits-all, Kleiman then asks us to imagine the same situation and ask the same questions except with anti-Trump demonstrators at a Trump rally. The unavoidable conclusion: maybe it’s not a really good idea to have lots of folks – of any ideological persuasion or varying degrees of goodness – running around fully armed and emboldened by stand-your-ground to shoot when “provoked.”

Kleiman’s musings suggest that when one considers the complicated nature of the real world, the good guys with guns argument might be a little too simplistic to use as a basis for policy, even if it had any specific situational applicability – which is another issue altogether. It certainly does not address all the pitfalls in the situation described by Kleiman and I bet that in a very short time anyone one of us could come up with lots more counterexamples that show the failure of the good guys with guns argument to address reality.

Republicans vs. the facts and nothing but the facts

08 Thursday May 2014

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Yesterday Missouri’s GOP engineered the passage of a draconian tax cut for wealthy Missourians. The justification? To promote growth.

Today the Los Angeles Times cites new research from the University of Wisconsin that radical taxcutting and similar “pro-business policies don’t really contribute to economic growth. They just make the rich richer, which is not the same thing at all.” Read the details here and weep. Of course, if you’re ready for the unabridged version, you can always purchase a copy of Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century and get the same message with massively more data to support the conclusions.

Two voter ID bills introduced in the Missouri House, HB1073 and HJR47, designed by Republicans to limit voting access by Democratic leaning citizens, have advanced to the Senate where Republicans, who are all hot and bothered by non-existent voter fraud, are very likely to send them on to the Governor for what is just as likely to be another veto.

However, as Henry Waters III notes in the Columbia Tribune, judges in Arkansas, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania have found similar voter ID laws unconstitutional on the grounds that “Photo ID laws are an interference with voters’ rights not warranted as protection against voter fraud.” Doesn’t deter our lawmakers from pressing on though. Missouri may be the show-me state, but it’s awful hard to show folks something if they aren’t capable of drawing the right conclusions from the display.

Both the Missouri House and Senate have okayed similar legislation that attempts to nullify federal gun laws (but only, as Brian Nieves insists, the unconstitutional laws), punish federal agents that attempt to enforce those laws, and permit open carry – even in jurisdictions that want to prohibit the open display of guns by armed yahoos.

Guess what? Sane folks know that state lawmakers don’t get to decide which federal laws are unconstitutional and if the final bill survives a guaranteed veto by the Governor, it’ll head straight for the courts – and cost Missouri a bundle in the process. In the District Of Columbia v. Heller decision of 2008, the Supreme Court reaffirmed that the 2nd amendment permits the regulation of firearms – a point articulated by even the über conservative activist judge, Antonin Scalia . On a more immediate level, the mayors of St. Louis and Kansas City are concerned about the potential of this law to endanger cooperative federal and state task forces working to combat gang and gun violence. As for open carry, apart from the disrespect the law shows for local self-determination, the oft-stated rationale, that more guns means less crime, has been shown to be essentially false.

Have you noticed a pattern here?  The Republicans who mostly run our state spend lots of time legislating from perspectives that can’t stand the the test of fact-based reality. The result? Counter-productive, costly, and even unconstitutional laws that have the potential to seriously harm Missourians, destabilize our civic and social life, and debase our democratic institutions. The folks who stand to gain? Members of the state’s oligarchy with money to burn and the politicians who want to help them burn it. Each of the examples above either constitutes a direct giveaway to Republican political patrons, or are useful in either directly (voter ID) or indirectly (pandering to gun-related paranoia) securing Republican power. We’re governed by power-mad, corrupt (what happened to those ethics bills?) fantasists. As a result we’re left to cope with what promises to be a consistently deteriorating reality.