Respectfully submitted by Lawrence E. Rafferty (rafflaw)- Guest Blogger
I was struck by a news story earlier this week, not only because of its importance, but because of how little air time it received in the mass media. Earlier this week, the victims of the 2011 mass shooting in Tucson, Arizona had a chance to speak to the man responsible for those hideous acts. One statement was especially powerful and it was from the husband of Gabby Giffords, now a former Congresswoman from Arizona. I apologize for the length of the following quotations, but I think it is important to read most of what Gabby’s husband said to Mr. Jared Loughner, who perpetrated the crime.
“Mr. Loughner, for the first and last time, you are going to hear directly from Gabby and me about what you took away on January 8th, 2011 and, just as important, what you did not. So pay attention. That bright and chilly Saturday morning, you killed six innocent people. Daughters and sons. Mothers and fathers. Grandparents and friends. They were devoted to their families, their communities, their places of worship.
Gabby would trade her own life to bring back any one of those you savagely murdered on that day. Especially young Christina-Taylor Green, whose high-minded ideas about service and democracy deserved a full life committed to advancing them. Especially 30-year old Gabe Zimmerman, whom Gabby knew well and cherished, and whose love for his family and his fiancee and service to his country were as deep as his loss is tragic. Especially Judge John Roll whom Gabby was honored to call a colleague and friend and from whose interminable dedication to our community and country she gained enormous inspiration. Gabby would give anything to take away the grief you visited upon the Morrises, the Schnecks, and the Stoddards – anything to heal the bodies and psyches of your other victims.
And then there is what you took from Gabby. Her life has been forever changed. Plans she had for our family and her career have been immeasurably altered. Every day is a continuous struggle to do those things she was once so very good at. Gabby is a people person: she exudes kindness, creativity, and compassion. If she were not born with the name – “Gabby” – someone would have given it to her. Now she struggles to deliver each and every sentence. Her gift for language can now only be seen in Internet videos from a more innocent time.
Gabby was an outdoor enthusiast. She was often seen rollerblading with her friend Raoul in Reed Park, hiking in Sabino Canyon, or careening down Rillito Wash Trail on her bike, as she was the night before you tried and failed to murder her. She hasn’t been to any of those places since, and I don’t know when she’ll return. There’s more. Gabby struggles to walk. Her right arm is paralyzed. She is partially blind. Gabby works harder in one minute of an hour – fighting to make each individual moment count for something – than most of us work in an entire day.
Mr. Loughner, by making death and producing tragedy, you sought to extinguish the beauty of life. To diminish potential. To strain love. And to cancel ideas. You tried to create for all of us a world as dark and evil as your own. But know this, and remember it always: You failed. Your decision to commit cold-blooded mass murder also begs of us to look in the mirror. This horrific act warns us to hold our leaders and ourselves responsible for coming up short when we do, for not having the courage to act when it’s hard, even for possessing the wrong values.” CNN
It was hard for me to read the full statement without shedding a tear. Not just for Giffords and her husband, but for all of the families who suffered at the hands of a man who should not have been able to obtain the weapons and the ammunition that he had that fateful day. I am not advocating the rescinding of our Second Amendment rights, but I am pleading for common sense in how we turn a blind eye to the damage guns do, without ever caring about what we need to do to prevent these kinds of weapons and the size of the magazines that allow a mentally disturbed individual like a Jared Loughner, to kill and maim so many innocents.
Mr. Mark Kelly, the former Astronaut who is Gabrielle Gifford’s husband, did not stop with the perpetrator of the violence, he also took all of us to task for allowing our society and our politicians to ignore the violence and death that are brought every day to this country by people carrying guns. “Your decision to commit cold-blooded mass murder also begs of us to look in the mirror. This horrific act warns us to hold our leaders and ourselves responsible for coming up short when we do, for not having the courage to act when it’s hard, even for possessing the wrong values. We are a people who can watch a young man like you spiral into murderous rampage without choosing to intervene before it is too late.
We have a political class that is afraid to do something as simple as have a meaningful debate about our gun laws and how they are being enforced. We have representatives who look at gun violence, not as a problem to solve, but as the white elephant in the room to ignore. As a nation we have repeatedly passed up the opportunity to address this issue. After Columbine; after Virginia Tech; after Tucson and after Aurora we have done nothing.
In this state we have elected officials so feckless in their leadership that they would say, as in the case of Governor Jan Brewer, “I don’t think it has anything to do with the size of the magazine or the caliber of the gun.” She went on and said, “Even if the shooter’s weapon had held fewer bullets, he’d have another gun, maybe. He could have three guns in his pocket” – she said this just one week after a high capacity magazine allowed you to kill six and wound 19 others, before being wrestled to the ground while attempting to reload. Or a state legislature that thought it appropriate to busy itself naming an official Arizona state gun just weeks after this tragedy occurred, instead of doing the work it was elected to do: encourage economic growth, help our returning veterans and fix our education system.” CNN
The idea that any politician of any stripe could downplay the destructive magnitude of these high-capacity magazines and the weapons they feed is disgusting and sad. Without all of us taking a stand against allowing people with mental disorders from owning guns and without all of us saying it is not necessary in our society to allow these high-capacity magazines, how will the violence ever end?
Is it necessary to our Freedom as a society to allow unfettered access to guns and ammunition that is only meant to be used against innocents? Can’t common sense restrictions be put into place without the NRA and politicians crying foul? Recently in Cook County, Illinois which has seen more than its share of gun violence, the President of the County Board recently attempted to stem the gun violence by advocating a tax on bullets. It may not be the best idea, but it was an attempt to find a way to stop our youth from killing each other and her efforts were met with derision and she had to drop her ammo tax idea. Chicago Tribune
It is far past time for our society to wake up and agree that not everyone should have access to guns and high-capacity magazines, isn’t it? How many more killings will our country have to endure before We decide to put an end to it. The NRA and gun manufacturers have made a great living demonizing anyone who might suggest that common sense restrictions on gun ownership are necessary and they have made sure that guns sales are going through the roof. Will it take gun violence impacting our own families before we do anything? What can be done to stem the tide of violence with guns? It is a debate that we must have! Isn’t it? Don’t we owe it to the victims and the victim’s families to finally do something to stop the killings?
Tomorrow may be too late!
Maybe “Malisha’s Report on the Malicious” would be better.
The Malicious Malisha Report????
No, you are not malicious, but you sure bust balls effectively—-and thus deserve a byline, you know one of those TV -thingys.
“How about motor vehicles and the lives they take?”
We have a lot more regulation about owning motor vehicles than we do about owning guns. We have a lot more police out there checking you while you drive than checking you while you carry. And I will bet that if you got into your vehicle and ran over some pedestrian in Sanford, Florida some drizzly evening because you thought he was suspicious, but then claimed you had to run him over and it wasn’t your fault, you’d be arrested on the spot. AND you wouldn’t be allowed to drive home, either.
Even if Birdhot spreads out wide and hits someone it is not collateral damage. A sprain in the wrist from a high powered pistol after it goes off is collateral damage. Those incidents are few and far between. Learn to shoot from the hip and engage in dead reckoning.
Richard: “How about motor vehicles and the lives they take ….”
***
From my quick searching I found a couple of interesting #’s:
% of households that own a gun- 41-51% (NRA # is up to 51%)
% of households that own cars/passenger vehicles- 89%
death rate per 100,000 by firearms- 10.1
death rate per 100,000 by motor vehicles- 11.7
The rate is about the same but there are a lot more cars than guns. I think those are interesting numbers, but I don’t do maths, I could be wrong.
http://www.statehealthfacts.org/comparemaptable.jsp?ind=113&cat=2
Excellent article Raff, as always.
Why not a post on Alcohol and all the damage it does? How about motor vehicles and the lives they take and the property damage they cause? How about all the lives lost to medical error? Any one of these will take more lives than guns. And how about a post on the million or more home robberies that are stopped by armed home owners? How about what up the 27,000 laws on the books that purport to control fire arms. The real reason politicians want to control fire arms is if law-abing citizens don’t have firearms, then the politicians can become dictators.
Oh, and to add to RWL’s post above, How about a post on our guv supplying arms to naro-terrorist groups?
Interesting article, but it fails to get to the root of weapons or Second Amendment debate. A few years ago, the tv program dateline did a report about how the US Government & Corporations (Boeing, Lockheed Martin, etc.), beginning as early as the 1930s, supplies every country in the world with weapons, including middle east and communist countries (there is also an article about it too). These same weapons, as one US soldier discovered after he detained ‘islamic terrorists in Iraq’, are being used to kill American soldiers. Should we be surprised about the ‘chickens coming home to roost?’
Sorry, wrong thread. Found out which keycomb NOT to touch!
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“Mike Spindell
1, November 11, 2012 at 11:34 pm
Good article Mark. As others have already said though, they’re crazy and they’ve got guns. They have proved with this outburst that they’re not in favor of Democracy and they really could be persuaded to revolt. Sounds like treason to me.”
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Having lots of guns does not mean you have the courage to use them. Some stats on Republican volunteers for
military service might be interesting.
Putting your body where your mouth is proof of who is a pudding.
The victims of gun violence are stirring, speaking out about guns, gangs and crime: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saYPtnf2KZc
Now that I thought about it…. I have a friend who owns a few Russian Fighter Jets…. I had forgotten all about that… he is selling them….
Mike Spindell: “Tanks also perhaps would meet the same pleasurable criteria, why not?”
***
Not being snarky but Bill Koch owns himself some tanks. This is one of his, he had 2 or 3 in the parade.
Jason, I am bone tired from driving a third of the way across the country non stop last night. I know the differences. I was thinking of a Class III FFL, which is different from being vetted by the Feds. That was what I meant. You cannot just sell your Thompson or other full auto weapon to anyone unless they have all their required paperwork, or both seller and buyer would…..let’s say….fall into disfavor with various Federal agencies.
Now with that, I think I am going to go collapse. I have a full day tomorrow and I am in the Eastern time zone…it is almost 2:00 AM here. G’night all.
OS-
No problem! That would rank pretty low on my list of mistakes, tired or not. 🙂
rafflaw-
“Jason,
The assault weapons ban wasn’t based on cosmetics. It took a dangerous weapon off the streets. How is that not effective?”
No, it was based on cosmetics, things such as bayonet lugs, pistol grips, flash hiders, etc. Gun manufacturers were able to get around most of the restrictions by making slight cosmetic changes that had no effect on the functioning of the weapon. Only a handful of specific weapons were banned. Also, there is no evidence that the AWB had any effect on crime.
rafflaw-
“Jason,
The tracking can and should be done by following the guns. One weapons are purchased legally, the system could be set up to track the person purchasing them. Especially when you have someone purchasing the high capacity magazines or ammo in large quantities.”
Again, why “high capacity” magazines when we know they are rarely used in crime? What is the definition of high capacity? And what does buying a large amount of ammo have to do with anything? People who are into the hobby buy in bulk because you save a ton of money. The amounts of ammo purchased by the Colorado theater idiot aren’t indicative of criminal intent, he couldn’t carry that much to the crime if he wanted to. Recreational shooters can easily blow through 1000 or more rounds in an afternoon. Get some friends together and it can go way up from there.
“All i keep reading in most of the responses is that it would be too tough to do. Of course, we will never see if it can be done, if we never try.”
Aside from how tough, it won’t work. You are proposing things that won’t affect crime in any measurable sense.
justagurlinseattle-
“You are talking PRO Shooters…. Your average citizen is not even going to be able to do what these guys can do….”
An average citizen is not going to do what Jerry Miculek does, no. But an average citizen can easily reload enough times to fire far far more than the 30 rounds per minute that was cited earlier
Mike Spindell-
“Jason,
I imagine for some people a rocket launcher would be fun to play with, collectible and potentially profitable so should their puchase be legal?”
That wasn’t the issue. She asked what possible reason could any sane person have to want automatic weapons. I gave several. And their legality is academic. They’re legal and aren’t a problem.
“Tanks also perhaps would meet the same pleasurable criteria, why not?”
Tanks are legal to own.
Otteray Scribe-
“First of all, a true assault weapon has a fire selector switch which converts the weapon from a single shot (one shot with each trigger pull) to fully automatic that continues to fire as long as the trigger is held down. Those have been illegal since 1934.”
I’m confused, because that’s not correct, but you seem to correct yourself next….
“Private citizens can own a fully auto weapon, but they are rare, horrendously expensive, require a deep background check by the FBI and there is a tax stamp. They are not transferable”
Not true. They are transferable, it’s just another round of pain in the ass bureaucracy.
“and cannot be sold unless the buyer has qualified for a Class III license as well.”
Again, not true.
Mike,
With all the proper paperwork you can own a fully operational tank, and there are several people who have huge collections of tanks and tracked vehicles they restore and play with. You can also own a cannon or rocket launcher.
By the same token, you can own a fighter plane. Some guy up in the Midwest has acquired a Mig-29, which is one of the most advanced fighter planes in the world. Just keeping that thing in fuel would require one to have a lot of spare change around. There are a number of P-51 Mustangs in private hands, as well as jet fighters.
justagurl.
The secret is practice. The difference between Travis Tomasie and an ordinary person is that Travis spends hours practicing. I can do what he does and so can my daughter. Perhaps I am a fraction of a second slower, but then I do everything slower these days. My daughter has the eye hand coordination of a safecracker and is blinding fast in all kinds of tasks that require speed with the hands and fingers.
Mike,
I was thinking about people who live in the mountains when I wrote what I did. Despite the best efforts of the government, there are meth labs and moonshine stills all in these hills. The government has not been able to eradicate them despite the expenditure of vast sums of money and resources. Too many hiding places. Practically everybody up here hunts. My daughter in law’s nephew just killed a six point buck with a .270 deer rifle. He is six years old. People who live in the mountains of Alaska and western USA would also pose a real problem for law enforcement and the military in case of an insurgency. They would not be sitting ducks.
“I was thinking about people who live in the mountains when I wrote what I did. Despite the best efforts of the government, there are meth labs and moonshine stills all in these hills.”
OS,
I know you were I was just extending the point. I was rather tired myself last night, but I know how bone tired you must have been. For old folks like us, no matter what our driving skills, 12 hours is a nice chunk of driving. I extended the point because while I think a popular revolution that succeeds is impossible due to the overwhelming power of our military, that doesn’t mean that it can’t continue for many years in guerrilla mode in places like your home and the other parts of the country you mentioned. It would come down to how much wholesale destruction the government being revolted against is willing to inflict. However, the lessons of WWII regarding the ability of air power alone to turn the tide are oft forgotten. It always comes down to soldiers on the ground and the terrain they’re fighting in.
This brings me though to why I believe in the need for the Second Amendment being interpreted as it has been. I think the interpretation is valid and that the Founding Fathers actually meant that individuals should be allowed weaponry. The context of their time and the state of armament was such that rebelling against tyranny was feasible. They had the foresight to understand that any governmental system could turn tyrannic and believed the people should have the means to overthrow it. It would have been impossible for them to envision how far technology would advance in the following hundreds of years. With that technology rebellion becomes far less achievable. Just think of a country where there are cameras everywhere monitoring the actions of its citizens. Listening devices that can hear through walls. The technological ability to monitor a citizenry and thus put down rebellion is probably not even fully know to us.
As I said though, in rural areas, a guerrilla insurrection could last indefinitely and there are many rural areas in the U.S. I am firmly against the idea of violent revolution because my sense of them is as Gene said always ending up at the same place, which is tyranny, o matter which side wins. Yet the possibility of such needs to be on the minds of any government lest it become too oppressive. This is why I support the Second Amendment. At the same time I personally don’t see any use for such toys as are represented by heavy weaponry. That the examples people gave of private tank and jet fighter ownership do persuade me that the regulation of extreme weaponry is nearly impossible in a relatively free society.
I think of the Father whose eight year old son was killed firing an UZI at a Connecticut Gun Exposition practice range for children and I realize that peoples ability to act crazily is infinite, even for sane people. My sense is that even though regulation of advanced weapons is probably impossible perhaps it would be helpful to have some laws on the books against them to add some sobriety to people’s actions, even if their enforcement would be a joke. If I lived in a relatively rural area I too would be a gun owner of a variety of weaponry, simply because the actions of crazy people in such an environment would need to be protected against. Understanding that, it’s hard for me not to support gun ownership
It still mystifies me as to why someone would want to own such powerful weapons. The shooting I’ve done with both pistol and 22 caliber rifles at impromptu targets does give satisfaction, especially when I was young. I even have an aged cousin who recently started shooting at a target range, I can appreciate his interest in this diversion, while not wanting to add it to my mix of life’s amusements in my retirement.
raff, you say, “The assault weapons ban wasn’t based on cosmetics. It took a dangerous weapon off the streets. How is that not effective?”
**************************************
First of all, a true assault weapon has a fire selector switch which converts the weapon from a single shot (one shot with each trigger pull) to fully automatic that continues to fire as long as the trigger is held down. Those have been illegal since 1934. Private citizens can own a fully auto weapon, but they are rare, horrendously expensive, require a deep background check by the FBI and there is a tax stamp. They are not transferable and cannot be sold unless the buyer has qualified for a Class III license as well.
What is called an “assault weapon” is purely cosmetic. The heart and soul of any firearm is the receiver. That is the part that accepts a round from the magazine, puts it in the chamber and also contains the trigger, hammer and firing pin. Here is a short video which demonstrates there is no difference at all between an ordinary deer rifle and a so-called assault rifle. You might want to fast forward to about 6:02.
and here is a woman that can hang upside down on a pole and defy gravity…. That does not mean anyone here could….
http://youtu.be/waIuhfoTMv8
and for your enjoyment as well…. 🙂
Warning the first minute is slow…
Jason,
The tracking can and should be done by following the guns. One weapons are purchased legally, the system could be set up to track the person purchasing them. Especially when you have someone purchasing the high capacity magazines or ammo in large quantities. All i keep reading in most of the responses is that it would be too tough to do. Of course, we will never see if it can be done, if we never try.
OS,
Amazing demonstrations! Thankfully most civilians can’t reload that quickly and efficiently. Time to hit the hay. Buenos Noches.
OK, we have seen Travis with his semi-automatic. How about a revolver. They are slower to reload, right? Wrong! Here is a demonstration by Smith & Wesson demonstration shooter Jerry Miculek.
You are talking PRO Shooters…. Your average citizen is not even going to be able to do what these guys can do….
That is a ridiculous comparison…..