Eric Liu founder of Citizen University and a former speechwriter for President Clinton, has written a rather compelling article on CNN concerning the 2nd Amendment, school shootings, and Open Carry advocates.
Here are some of the highlights:
A child was killed Friday because that child went to school.
The shooting Friday at a high school in Marysville, Washington -- just miles from my home in Seattle -- is a tragedy on two levels. First, most profoundly, two people are dead, four others wounded, and the parents, relatives, friends, teachers and classmates of the shooter and his victims have had their lives grievously changed.
But this is not the first school shooting in America this year. It is the 50th. It is the 87th since Sandy Hook, according to data compiled by the gun reform group Everytown For Safety. The other tragedy, then, is that gun violence -- in schools, in workplaces and across our communities -- has become virtually normal in America.
It should not be. It cannot be. It is not normal, in a civilized nation, to have over 30,000 gun deaths a year. It is not normal, in a civilized nation, to expect educators and parents and first responders to have plans at the ready for a shooting at their school. It is not normal, in a civilized nation, to assert that the best solution to gun violence is for more people to have more access to more guns.
Liu goes on to discuss the epidemic of gun violence in this country and how simple laws such as mandatory background checks could have a significant impact on the number of people killed each year and that a growing number of Americans are starting to see that.
However it was his description of the Open Carry advocates that really caught my eye:
When middle-aged "open-carry" activists walk into Kroger with semi-automatic rifles slung over their shoulders, they aren't exercising their rights with an ethic of responsibility. They're trying to intimidate their way to respect and esteem. They're acting out, demanding attention and rejecting curbs on their desires. That's not being a citizen. It's being a toddler.
We the people get to decide whether that's normal. Whether it's acceptable or laughable to brandish firearms in the produce aisle. Whether it's tolerable or disgraceful that we average more than one school shooting a week now. Laws like background checks can help set a tone for what's OK. But ultimately, with our family and friends and neighbors, each one of us must decide what kind of civilization we expect in the United States.
In my opinion that is not only well written but it is also spot on in identifying the fact that Americans now accept as normal behaviors, and policies, that are in fact teetering on the edge of lunacy.
The idea that we should all be armed, and that the solution to dangerous people having guns is to make sure that supposedly non-dangerous people have guns as well, is madness.
And yet thanks to the NRA and Ammosexuals that has now become a normal, and widely accepted, way to view life in America.
This has to stop, and it has to stop now.
The 800lb. takeaway here is that America is hardly a civilized nation, or, at least, as "civilized" as she professes to be under the oft- (and in some circles, chronically) tortured interpretation of the 2nd Amendment.
ReplyDeleteYes. It's merely excessive paranoia masquerading as 'exceptionalism', a bunch of girly men who apparently still fear the bad, bad monster hiding under their beds. By refusing to go anywhere unarmed, they admit to the world that they are incapable of winning even a simple fist fight with anyone they encounter. Guns: Red America's new and approved version of allowing grown men to impersonate small boys who use bikes with training wheels.
DeleteTrack Palin "knows his Second Amendment rights."
ReplyDeleteTrack Palin gave up his daughter in a divorce, but got to keep his guns.
Last month, Track Palin crashed a party when he was so drunk and/or drugged that he didn't know where he was. He was spoiling for a fight. He got into several, causing physical injury to himself and others.
If it had been another night, when he was so high he couldn't even spell his name, he might have been carrying one of his
guns, the one James Madison said he should be allowed to have multiples of, anytime, anywhere.
Track Palin will, someday, tragically, combine his addictions and mental illness with his guns.
How many Track Palins are there in our country?
For the first time I think I have an inkling of what maybe going on with all this craziness. I've been wondering for so long...plastics, toxins, contaminated air or water? What causing so many brains to go haywire.
ReplyDeleteYesterday I read a whole raft of scientific studies that say handling ammunition, firing firearms, etc., leads to actual, very serious lead poisoning, which has severely toxic and permanent effects on every system of the body, but in particularly in the brain, where it can manifest as confusion. psychosis, inability to control impulses, and on and on.
All the gun mania now, literally creating craziness in people with guns. Would that they could in these serial killers who then either shoot themselves or are shot, address possible lead poisoning in the autopsy. There had to be a reason these supposedly okay people go suddenly berserk. This might be one of them.
Yes, and even tiny (parts per billion) lead exposures lower IQ levels. Lead: right-wing America's approved version of combining angry with stupid, and calling the final result 'Patriotism'.
DeleteThis is major news, and ought to be part of the national conversation:
DeleteMany active gun-users are brain damaged due to their handling of firearms.
I wonder how many LEO's are similarly affected.
It won't stop, because too many legislators are chickenshits, they're terrified of pissing off the NRA and having the NRA campaign against them and pour money into the campaign coffers of their opponents. In case you haven't noticed, Republicans LOOOOOVE guns and the NRA, so that means it's the Democrats who are fucking chickenshits, waaaaaaaaaay too many of them. They will NEVER change the dialogue on guns, or support in any meaningful way the ones who try to.
ReplyDelete"They're trying to intimidate their way to respect and esteem."
ReplyDeleteSo they have small penises - literally and figuratively.
"They're acting out, demanding attention and rejecting curbs on their desires. That's not being a citizen. It's being a toddler."
We're arming children now - literally and figuratively.
Will the nation grow up?
This may take a few decades for a new generation with some sanity to bring about change.
The gun people will lose power eventually the same way the churches are losing power.
Unfortunately, many will perish in that time - including actual children and those who didn't grow up.
So a gun in the bleach aisle? What is the message that they're supposed to send. I can clean and shoot?
ReplyDeleteWhat the hell?!?
I agree with Anon 2:57p. Until we get some folks that are not millionaire lawyers that are only for getting rich quick and start voting in a better mix of people (including community organizers), then nothings going to change.
We definitely need another party and we need to be able to vote on issues rather than people (party line). If it were me, every major issue each candidate supports needs to be on display on the ballet like a survey so we can see (line by line) how much each candidate has in favor with our own view.
Also, we need to do away with gerrymandering, and porking bills with irrelevant laws that have nothing to do with the issue. We need limitations on terms with a mandatory break in between terms.
Transparency, clarity, accountability and a required number of laws passed in a year to ensure progress. It's what I expect out of my employees.
Something's going to change. I believe we're about to make history again in these next two elections. This whole turn of events on the Palin family is a good sign that the powers that be are losing their biggest (and dumbest) voices that have made the willful masses look the other way.
It's just sad it has taken "them" this long to realize that the shift in society has become sizable enough to overcome their cheating ways and selfish, childish desires to take over the world.
The frightening thing is that, even if we got all the changes you listed here, the elections are only as good as the people voting.
DeleteSo few people vote in the first place that you have a very tiny minority making life-altering decisions for the entire country. In addition, far too many people vote by letter - R or D. They pay no attention to what that particular candidate stands for or will do once in office. As long as the person on the ballot has the right letter after their name, that's who they'll vote for.
After all of the devastation that the Republican party has wreaked on this country, it confounds and infuriates me that so many GOP candidates are expected to win this election.
I believe the only thing that will save our political system is campaign finance reform and getting the corporate money out of elections. Unfortunately, the only people who can make that happen are the very politicians (on both sides) who benefit the most.
The local Lions Club is having their annual fund raiser - a gun show. My husband used to be in this Lions Club. He volunteered at the gun show, even bought some guns. Now days, he will not even go to the show to look around. He said its full of nuts and he doesn't want to be associated with them any more. He's not anti gun, he's anti gun nut.
ReplyDeleteWhat a shame the Lions Club has stooped so low.
DeleteI am both anti-gun and anti-gun nut. I think anyone who buys guns is nuts. Sorry.
If I saw assholes like that where I shopped, I'd turn around and walk out, but not before stopping at the manager's office and telling them why I would never shop there again. When I got home I'd write to the store HQ with the same statement.
Delete5:45 -
DeleteI am certainly not a gun lover, but I do understand the need for some people to have them. My sister used to live in a fairly remote part of southern CO and regularly had mountain lions and coyotes on her property. Her husband worked shifts and she was alone many nights, knowing that any support from law enforcement was at least 20 minutes away. Another member of my extended family also travels to remote areas for work and hunts for meat for the winter. They are all extremely careful about their weapons, keep them securely locked, and have tremendous respect for the danger those weapons could present.
What I cannot understand is people who need to have large collections of high-powered weapons that serve no purpose outside of the military except to prove that you are some kind of idiot to be feared.
What if Korey Klingenmeyer had invoked the Castle Doctrine, and the other partygoers the Palins attacked had "stood their ground?"
ReplyDeleteLast spring a man took his gun to the local school board meeting. He did it because it is legal to do in Michigan. What is wrong with his doing this was simply the fact that it gravely inhibited the free speech and the free exchange of ideas among the school board members and the other members of the community who were in attendance. It seems to me that anyone who walks around armed with a weapon is automatically violating the freedom of every person within range of his bullets. It also seems to me that the First Amendment should trump the mistaken interpretation of the Second Amendment every time.
ReplyDeleteBeaglemom
We won the "Defective Airbag Lottery" (Woo Hoo!) for my husband's truck. The "solution" that Nissan sent to him? Don't have anyone sit in the front seat, we've included this snazzy warning sticker to place on the dashboard. We're sorry for any inconvenience, but have the passengers sit in the rear seats until the part is replaced". It's a truck, nimrods, are you saying we should put the passenger in a dog kennel and strap them to the roof? We're against guns in general unless you live in a place where wild animals can and do attack humans, your job necessitates carrying one, or you're an avid hunter. And even then, how many guns does one need?
ReplyDeleteI'm telling you this because some gun nut is going to get the same warning and go ballistic at a car dealer, it IS unnerving, but not enough to play "shoot em ups". A simple call to the dealer, and they offered a vehicle not on the list as a loaner until ours gets fixed. Someone else won't make that call.