Yet another person shot by a police officer. As of September 22, there have been 34 officer involved shootings in South Carolina, promising to beat last year's 42. I am thankful that my son and daughter are not police officers. And I hope that they are never in a potential conflict situation with one. Because shooting has become the default option for police.
And while I hold the individual officer responsible for shooting innocent members of the community they patrol, the situation they find themselves in is not their fault.
The NRA is happy to promote the need for more guns to defend ourselves from threats that are unlikely to materialize -- unless we allow more people to indiscriminately own and carry guns. They have made lemonade out of the blood of victims for years, increasing the profits of the arms manufacturers that they truly represent. They seem to be having a great time doing it, too, filling their own coffers and convincing our pols that it is the NRA that is really in charge.
Which leads us to the other group that has been bought off by the arms industry, our very own legislators. We can laugh at Lindsey Graham's hysterical wanderings, once again recently featured by Jon Stewart. When Graham suggests that mothers should be armed with assault rifles at home:
“One bullet in the hands of a homicidal maniac is one too many. But in the case of a young mother defending her children against a home invader — a real-life event which recently occurred near Atlanta — six bullets may not be enough. Criminals aren’t going to follow legislation limiting magazine capacity. However, a limit could put law-abiding citizens at a distinct disadvantage when confronting a criminal.”
it's fine to snicker, but we must also remind ourselves that he is one of the idiots that has the power to make our laws.
More locally, we have addressed the situation of gun violence with the bizarre legislation that allows those who feel naked without their guns to frequent bars and restaurants with their muzzles by their side. And in a partnership from hell, towns all over South Carolina and the nation have lined up for military gear, including tanks as well as assault rifles, from our own federal government, who despite all that talk about budget deficits just can't stop buying these things. And once you own a grenade launcher, doesn't your finger just itch to use it? The downside being the cost of training and practice, and, by the way, the lack of call for those particular services.
All the post 9-11 paranoia that has led to arming our local community governments for war naturally has resulted in a backlash of fear from citizens, with more and more instances cited of warrantless (and unwarranted) acts of violence against citizens. When you are all suited up for battle and have no terrorists to fight, it seems the next best thing is the local pot smoker or poker game, and sometimes the family dog becomes the collateral damage. In the case of the Texas German Shepherd Vinnie in 2013, the officers were at the wrong address in the wrong neighborhood, looking for someone wanted for god's sake for an expired vehicle registration.
Obviously, what happens next is we all need to get armed to protect ourselves from our own government, hence, all the phony fourth amendment nonsense. And when scared citizens get armed, and you have scared police wielding weapons, you have the daily barrage of unnecessary death in a war zone of our own invention.
On September 18, in Georgia, police shot a man who was handcuffed in their cruiser after being arrested, when they failed to find the gun he was carrying in their search.
And South Carolina made international headlines in March when a York County officer shot a 70-year-old man who was reaching into the back of his car for his cane at a traffic stop.
The community response to the shooting of Michael Brown in St. Louis is a reflection of the national fury over a country that encourages its citizens and its defenders to see each other as potential combatants.
So it's really a matter of who will be next. Police get shot at by fearful citizens, who are too quick to shoot at citizens for fear they will be shot.
And meanwhile we have the NRA cheering on fools like Lindsey Graham for stoking that fear, and our federal tax dollars buying so many military weapons that they are trickled down to our local governments. For our local police, it may seem like Christmas, but they may want to rethink the situation when faced with a frightened citizen. And we just might want to elect lawmakers who are less likely to want to fan the flames of distrust encouraging an armed citizenry and militarizing those whose mission should be to protect and defend.
I'm not really impressed with our dysfunctional Congress slowly coming around to background checks for gun purchases. For one thing, it's nowhere near enough to change the tragic increase in gun violence. For another thing, this is going to likely be an attack on that catchall category of people we call the "mentally ill."
The shooter at Sandy Hook took one of his mother's guns. Now, call me cynical but a woman who has had some problems with the school but maintains what sounds like an armory maybe was a contributing factor in this tragedy. After all, she did take her mentally ill son out to target practice as a way of attempting to bond. Either way, she would not have been affected by a background check law.
The Aurora shooter had apparently stolen a gun from a friend or acquaintance.
The Tucson shooter was allowed to buy a gun because his name did not appear when a background check was performed, although he had been suspended from college due to "mental health problems."
And this is where the right to own a semi-automatic weapon smacks into the right to be mentally ill.
Most people who are mentally ill, even those who are suspended from colleges, are not going to go on a shooting rampage. Their right to private medical records is being trashed so that we can continue to buy and sell assault weapons.
In a country that does not want to pay for mental health care, we are now branding a very large and diffuse group who also have constitutional rights.
And the reason has nothing to do with the right to bear arms. It has to do with the right of arms manufacturers to increase their profits.
And let's make no mistake about the NRA's position here. The NRA has no particular need to be rational, much less compromise. If the idiots in Congress can be hooked into supporting having armed guards in schools, that's easy profit for the NRA's constituency, the arms manufacturers. To hell with the deficit, war is war. And if we don't get armed guards, it doesn't matter. Because every time Wayne LaPierre or Lindsey Graham open their mouths about the Second Amendment, that small percentage of paranoid individuals who own all the guns in the country just head on out and buy a few more weapons, and a lot more ammunition.
So it's a win-win for the NRA and for our gun industry.
But I would like to get back to the slippery slope of identifying who is mentally ill. If you are going to keep arms out of the hands of irrational and aggressive people, we need to look at some of the crazier statements made by some with power and celebrity.
We have Senator Graham bragging on how fast he can reload as an argument against limiting gun capacity.
And then there is Louis Gohmert who equates gun deaths with death by hammer.
Of course, there is Wayne "bad guy with a gun" LaPierre, whose vision for American is one of everybody locked and loaded.
Please don't forget Alex Jones, who turns apoplectic at the thought of someone taking his gun.
There's a very large leap when you decide to add the mentally ill to the NICS Index. It's a fact that the dangerous mentally ill walk among us. It's also a fact that they have the right to privacy. They have the right to not take meds or get into therapy. And, in fact, it is more likely that the dangerous mentally ill will be far harder to identify than those who are not dangerous. So background checks will either be useless or a witch hunt. Or both.
Now doesn't it make far more sense to take assault weapons off the streets?
As always, nearly everyone is saying all the right things. Gun violence is bad, we have to do something about it. We can't let it happen again.
Of course, there are the wackos who contend that the answer is more guns. And that we should not go all hot-headed into talking about gun control right now.
Which has worked up till now. And, I hate to say it, could work again.
The NRA, which is more a lobbying organization for the arms industry than for gun owners, has gone silent. They know how to wait it out.
And too many gun control advocates are beginning in the middle. They are talking about "at least" passing laws of which the majority of NRA members approve. I actually heard someone suggest that if we only allowed guns with magazines half the size of the ones that were used Friday, then only half the children might have died.
I am hearing way too much reason in this debate and far too little outrage.
"Our friends on the other side of the aisle," as people who are not me like to call republicans, have shown more passion over preventing their taxes from going up. We should be at least as uncompromising over the matter of assault rifles.
In fact, it would be my preference to immediately make private ownership of all guns illegal, and then we can start from scratch figuring out who really needs to own a gun.
Horrified? Is that a worse solution than having one more innocent victim killed?
Honestly, that is a cliff that I really wouldn't mind seeing the NRA go over.
