After especially awful massacres, the public expects Congress to take meaningful steps to limit access to guns. Sandy Hook. No action. Marjory Stoneman Douglas HS in Parkland, Florida. No action. The Pulse Nightclub. No action. The Las Vegas music festival massacre. No action. Uvalde. No action. The recent massacres in California? What do you think? Why no action? The Republicans block every attempt to enact meaningful restrictions.
CNN posted a summary of where America stands internationally a day before the killing of 11 people in Monterrey Oark, California.
CNN) – Monterey Park. Atlanta. Orlando. Las Vegas. Newtown. Parkland. San Bernardino. Uvalde.
Ubiquitous gun violence in the United States has left few places unscathed over the decades. Still, many Americans hold their right to bear arms, enshrined in the US Constitution, as sacrosanct. But critics of the Second Amendment say that right threatens another: The right to life.
I insert here that my understanding of the Second Amendment is that it pertains not to the right of every individual to “bear arms,” but to the maintenance and arming of a “well-regulated militia.”
For a time in the 1990s, the Supreme Court agreed, and let stand a decade-long ban on assault weapons.
The 2nd Amendment says:
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
The CNN article continues:
There are 120 guns for every 100 Americans, according to the Switzerland-based Small Arms Survey (SAS). No other nation has more civilian guns than people.
More guns than people!
Read the article.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
It seems to be the same again and again…after each shooting all these condemnations, all the furor and when things have calmed down…same, old same…more guns, more shootings, more deaths. Why can’t politicians act? Or they rather look the other way to protect whom? The NRA? The weapons manufacturers? Is this freedom?
You should ask the most recent Russian general who died under “mysterious” circumstances. Oh, you can’t. He’s dead after all.
What country showered the NRA with dark money donations to flood our streets with guns? Hint: You extol their virtues every chance you get…
Maria Butina,
Oh have you seen huh?
No, she has fled
back to the Rodina.
My Senator Todd Young [R-IN] was given $2,896,732 by the NRA. [I wonder why he doesn’t support gun control.]
I do write protest letters to him saying, “Are you still enjoying the money the NRA gave you?”
The massacres will increase until something is done to correct the warped and historically ignorant interpretation of the Second Amendment by the BushWaco Supreme Court.
The Puritan Magistrate Extreme Court
“The massacres will increase until. . . ”
. . . we reign in the death and destruction machine that is the American Millitary/Industrial Complex (MIC).
2nd amendment issues pall in comparison to all the deadly issues that the MIC entail.
The headline says it all: Gun Culture.
It allows rationalizing that using a gun is ok.
It’s validation.
It normalizes gun violence.
It allows “let’s get a gun” to enter the conversation by teens or adults who 10 years ago would never have thought about it. No matter how irate or unprincipled one might be, anger and rage and acting on them is not new – – — breaking laws, car jackings, and robberies are nothing new.
“Get a gun” in the thinking and doing is and is skyrocketing.
And for the used-to-be-responsible NRA who love to talk about gun safety and hunting and nostalgia – – how about a few million on that?
Hundreds of thousands of guns (yes, even those bought legally) are unlocked in homes with children. More than ever.
Where’s your campaign on that? Where’s your legislation and candidate support on that?
Young men spend breathtaking amounts of their time playing first-person shooter games, and they spend enormous amounts of time in online communities talking to other young men about guns and ammo and other “cool stuff” from their games. Add to this the fact that young people in general have trading interaction IRL for interaction online, and you get a Petri dish for growing gun violence.
cx: Add to this the fact that young people in general have trading interaction IRL for interaction online and the ready availability of military-grade weapons and incredibly lax gun laws, and you get a Petri dish for growing gun violence.
“The headline says it all: Gun Culture.
It allows rationalizing that using a gun is ok.
It’s validation.
It normalizes gun violence.”
Using a gun is OK!
Those of us who ethically use firearms thoroughly understand the damage to flesh and bones that can occur when a bullet meets the bone. We’ve seen it firsthand in the deer, rabbits, ducks, squirrels, antelope, etc. . . that we have hunted. It isn’t “validation” by the ethical firearm user.
What isn’t OK is those who don’t understand that the problem of violence in America has little to do with the 2nd amendment but with the culture of death and destruction that is the U.S. Military/Industrial Complex. Eisenhower warned us of it. . .
. . .and we didn’t listen.
Again, another mis-identified root problem (that guns are the problem) that leads to faulty ‘solutions’. The root problem is the MIC and American’s love of all things military. (Man, did the Pentagon recover from the Vietnam malaise, even with the Iraq and Afghan war failures, continuing to deceive the public into thinking it is a force for positive in the world.)
Most Americans support common sense gun laws that include background checks and restricted access for people with a violent record or mental problems. Instead, we are living in a repeated cycle of mass murders because the gun lobby is backed by so much dirty, dark money. I watch some European TV shows, and America is often the butt of the joke in the civilized world because of our tolerance for gun violence. Shame on us! https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/23141651/gun-control-american-approval-polling
It is no accident that Russia was funding the NRA. Chaos in the US works to their advantage.https://www.npr.org/2019/09/27/764879242/nra-was-foreign-asset-to-russia-ahead-of-2016-new-senate-report-reveals
It ain’t the guns. . . it’s the American love affair with the death and destruction complex, the American Military/Industrial Complex.
An email letter from Senator Mike Braun [R-IN] states the following:
The Second Amendment guarantees that the right of the American people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. I am a strong believer that a person’s inherent right to self-defense and right to individual gun ownership must be preserved and defended….Still, legislators and law enforcement must continue to search for meaningful solutions that prevent instances of devastating gun violence from happening without subverting Americans’ right to keep and bear arms…I appreciate your input, and I will keep both your comments and the best interest of Hoosiers in mind when reviewing any legislation that affects the right to keep and bear arms…
………………………………………………………..
Here is part of a protest letter that I wrote to him.
Sent: 11/25/2022
Subject: Gunman killed 6 at Virginia Walmart; five people killed at a Colorado LGBTQ club; 22-year-old University of Virginia student killed three students during a school trip! This is acceptable?
Senator Braun, I hold you responsible for the killing of innocent
people. YOU continue to say that people have the right to possess a gun and
that those rights shouldn’t be taken away. How many people need to be killed before it even makes a dent your belief that it’s perfectly okay for people to die? Six victims in a Virginia Walmart obviously wasn’t enough. Five people at a Colorado LGBTQ club doesn’t count. Three people killed by a 22 year old University of Virginia student doesn’t matter one twit to you.
Perhaps those college students deserve to be shot because they wanted to go on a field trip. [Should all field trips now have hired gunmen to protect
them? I went on an excursion in Guatemala and that country is so dangerous a hired gunman came to ‘protect’ us tourists. Is the United States is now as
bad as Guatemala?}…
Senator Braun write you to say he will do nothing
Senator Braun always states that people have the right to keep and bear arms. He won’t do anything for gun control. Innocent children and adults don’t have the right to live. Gun lovers must have their guns.
There is no such thing as a ‘meaningful solution that will prevent gun violence’ but allows everyone to have a gun.
Braun is loyal to Trump
In the GOP primary, Braun competed against U.S. Reps. Luke Messer and Todd Rokita in a spirited contest to show who would be the biggest supporter of President Donald Trump’s agenda.
Braun: “I am a strong believer that a person’s inherent right to self-defense and right to individual gun ownership must be preserved and defended…Still, legislators and law enforcement must continue to search for meaningful solutions that prevent instances of devastating gun violence from happening without subverting Americans’ right to keep and bear arms.”
“. . .people have the right to possess a gun and
that those rights shouldn’t be taken away.”
Yes, we have that right.
It’s not gun ownership that is the problem. It is the underlying belief, fostered in this country that violent death and destruction as shown by this country’s obsequious and loving of all things military. That death and destruction machine is THE underlying reason for the gun violence that we see in America.
Congress has yet to enact an
“action” that would compel
lawbreakers to obey the law.
The blame game has yet
to end the dispossed,and
the irrational behaviors
that follow.
The afflictions of “our”
political system WON’T
be cured by another “dose”
of “our” political system.
Isn’t that obvious???
What is your recommendation as to how we should respond to and mitigrate gun violence, NoBrick?
As long as the Republican Party maintains control over state governments in RED states, or the White House, or Congress, or the US Supreme Court, there will never be meaningful firearms legislation except in BLUE state.
The theofascist Republican Party is drenched in the blood of our children and adults of all ages, and they do not care, because there are two things the GOP worships: power and greed.
To them, children being slaughtered in classrooms and people at concerts, theaters, shopping centers, churches and temples, is acceptable collateral damage.
To hold on to political party the GOP NEEDS the votes of rabid firearms owners as much as it needs the votes of anti-abortion freaks and Traitor Trump’s rabid MAGA lunatics.
These right wing extremists want us to spend public money making schools fortresses instead of enacting common sense gun laws. It is another example of the many being told they have to accommodate the insistence of the few.
“collateral damage”
Ahhh. . . collateral damage. . . one of the Military Industrial Complexes favorite terms. Let’s normalize it’s usage so that when we (MIC) use it, it doesn’t mean the death and destruction, maiming of innocents in war.
The next time I hear “motive” I think I might have to buy a gun. NRA has won the argument once that word comes out. Good way of avoiding saying, they had an effin gun.
Greg,
I do agree with you about the absurdity of searching for “motive.” Judge people by their actions, not their motives. Murder should be punished as murder. Why waste time on indeterminate motive? Like, I don’t care why the man who slaughtered 11 people in Monterrey did it. We may never know. He killed himself so he can’t be tried or punished.
nailed it, Greg
Dear gun lobby: Guns held by people shoot people.
No, the person shoots another person with a gun. The gun is an inanimate object with no capability of acting on its own. It is the person doing the shooting.
The gun is an inanimate object FOR THE PURPOSE OF SHOOTING THINGS–random wildlife AND PEOPLE.
THE SUPREME COURT HAS INVITED GUN REGULATION —
“Like most rights, THE RIGHT SECURED BY THE SECOND AMENDMENT IS NOT UNLIMITED…” [it is] “…not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.” Those are the words of the CONSERVATIVE MAJORITY of the U.S. Supreme Court justices in their Heller ruling that gun advocates hail as a victory.
Those gun advocates should take the time to read the rest of what the conservative justices wrote on pages 54-55 of the Heller ruling — for example, they declared:
“We also recognize another important limitation on the right to keep and carry arms. Miller [an earlier case decided by the Supreme Court] said, as we have explained, that the sorts of weapons protected were those ‘in common use at the time’ [when the 2nd Amendment was written]. We think that limitation is fairly supported by the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of ‘dangerous and unusual weapons’.” The Second Amendment became part of the Constitution more than 230 years ago in 1791. The very first semi-automatic gun was not invented until nearly a 100 years after that, in 1885. Most guns in use at the time that the Second Amendment was written were single-shot muzzle loaders.
And —
“Nothing in our [Heller] opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or on laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.”
The CONSERVATIVE majority DID NOT HAVE TO write these things into their ruling — but they did because they were INVITING Congress and state lawmakers to write laws that control the sale of guns in general and especially control and limit the sales of assault rifles and high-capacity magazine cases. But Congress doesn’t have the moral integrity or the decency to do that, even in the face of repeated slaughter of school children.
You can read the Court’s Heller ruling for yourself at:
Click to access 07-290.pdf
Heller struck down DC laws prohibiting the carrying or registering of handguns [licensing them only for special circumstances], and requiring lawfully registered [e.g. long gun] arms in the home to be kept unloaded and disassembled or trigger-locked, separate from ammunition….
Those were extraordinarily strict gun laws. Perhaps that’s why SCOTUS found it necessary to append a laundry list of gun restrictions that illustrated what they considered reasonable restrictions under the constitution– but gotta scroll way down for those.
The harm Heller did was all upfront, making the 2nd amendment read like a screed for all guns all the time. They did that by “disassembling” the amendment. They detached the first clause from the second, in a supposedly ”grammatical” and “originalist” analysis which is completely opposite 18thC AND current standard English grammar and ignores/ misquotes historical usage. Heller decision arbitrarily dismisses the phrase “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State” as “prefatory,” contending that the 2nd phrase “the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed” is “operative.”
Small wonder the gun-happy states ignore the subsequent suggestions. They have all the “ammunition” they need in section 1.
p.s. plenty of scholars have debunked that SCOTUS argument and even submitted amicus briefs (to no avail).
BEAUTIFULLY SAID, Ginny!!!!!!!!
❤
The precondition for this is a long-term, comfortable democratic majority in both houses of Congress. Not a one-seat majority, but a comfortable majority that lasts for generations. That requires finding ways to elect Democrats election after election in states like Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Texas, etc. We’re not close to that now.
Could be, or perhaps the fracture and collapse of the Republican Party is inevitable and already underway. Ayn Rand’s heroes have an Achilles heel. They go too far.
I wouldn’t hold my breath. People vote against parties as much as they vote for parties.
A side note here, related to the January shooting of a VA teacher by her 6yo 1st-grade student. 8 states + DC and some other cities have strong safe-storage laws with teeth. Many states are typical of VA: no safe storage law; a CAP [Child Access Prevention] law that relates only to children 14 & under, where violation is a misdemeanor [in VA, Class 1, punishable up to max 18mos in jail &/or fine up to max $2,500]. States with strong CAP laws [protecting 15-17yo’s as well, with violation a felony] have 25% fewer under-18 suicides & unintentional shootings. Strong safe gun storage laws show approximately the same reduction.
Important!!!!
And in some cases those people have more guns than they do teeth.
And???