The NRA Admits The Truth About How Often We Actually Use Guns To Protect Ourselves From Crime.

October 23, 2024

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So my man Colion, he of the prancing around with his cute little AR, has just stuck up a new video on the NRA website, and it is simply a remarkable commentary on the Big Lie that the NRA has been spreading around for the last thirty years. And the lie I am referring to is the idea that armed citizens carrying their own guns are an effective response to crime. In the old days they had real personalities like Charlton Heston drumming up the ‘guns protect us from crime’ doggerel, now it’s left to made-for-video characters like Colion Noir or AM Talk Radio hamsters like John Lott to spread this nonsensical and dangerous line around. Why is it nonsensical? Because it’s based on data which (I’m being polite) doesn’t exist. Why is it dangerous? Because it diverts attention from the fact that guns create risk. Notice that I have bolded, underlined and italicized the word ‘fact.’ Get it?

Anyway, so Colion has this new video in which he’s up on a stage and with lots of canned applause, ooohs and aaahs, performs a card trick in which it appears as though he is laying out 52 cards in a certain order and then tries to do it again. And the odds of anyone being able to perform such a trick, he admits, are somewhere above a gezillion to one. Which he then says – are you ready, are you ready? – that these are about the odds of an American getting attacked and, in their moment of peril, needing to use a gun.

What? A spokesperson for the NRA actually coming out and saying that we aren’t all facing an immediate and continuous threat to our lives from the you-know-who’s that are stalking us down every street? No. Play it again Colion, play it again. And here it is: “The odds of you or me needing a gun to protect our lives is not that much better than Colion the Incredible putting these cards back in the exact order.” Then he drops the other shoe: “But the odds of someone needing a gun to protect their life with is a hundred percent.”

So what he’s saying in a somewhat scrambled way is that even though guns are the best way to defend yourself, the chances that you will ever have to defend yourself are a gazillion to one. And this segues into the usual nonsense about how people who are anti-gun have no right to tell anyone else how they should defend themselves, and nobody has the ‘right’ to tell someone else that they don’t have the ‘right’ to do something. I’m actually quoting our man Colion word for word and maybe he’s decided that if Donald Trump can get a big following by talking to his audience on a third-grade level, then Colion will get an even bigger response if he ratchets his language down to second grade. I don’t really know whether he’s dumb, playing dumb or figuring his audience is dumb, or all three. But I do know this: I never imagined I would ever hear anyone connected to the NRA admitting that the odds of ever using a gun in self-defense were about the same as bumping into a rhinoceros while you were taking Fido for his evening walk.

But come to think of it, that’s not really the reason why Wayne-o and the other NRA noisemakers tell us over and over again that we should be carrying guns. What the NRA has really been saying is that you shouldn’t be carrying a gun just to protect yourself, you should be carrying it to protect everyone else! Remember the ‘only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun?’

Colion my man, it’s refreshing to see someone from the ‘other side’ of the gun debate actually saying something that’s based on a bit of the truth. But don’t push the truth too far or you might find yourself looking for a job.

The GVP Wins A Big One In Milwaukee And There’s More To Come.

October 14, 2024

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Remember the NRA’s favorite slogan? The one that goes, “Gun don’t kill people, people kill people?” Well a jury in Milwaukee decided that it was the gun, in this case a gun sold to one jerk who actually bought it for another jerk who then pulled it out and shot two Milwaukee cops back in 2009. Luckily the cops lived, even though they sustained serious injuries; the shooter’s sitting in a cage for the next eighty years or so. As for the guy who bought the gun, he got two years for participating in a ‘straw sale.’ The Brady Campaign helped the cops bring the suit.

trump2 Coincidentally, the very same day of the verdict, the Democratic Presidential candidates spent nine minutes of their first debate sparring about gun control, and I noticed that Shlump Trump didn’t mention this segment of the debate at all in the snarky comments he tweeting to his infantile fan club. The nation’s Number One Clown may “love” the 2nd Amendment, but the Milwaukee verdict tells a much different tale when it comes to how the average American thinks about guns.

I wasn’t in the courtroom so what I know about the trial is second-hand, but the charge against the gun shop, Badger Guns, was that the store was ‘negligent’ in selling the gun to someone who was buying it for someone else, and this negligence then led to the shooting of the cops. Prosecutors charged that the shop employee should have known that he was engaging in a ‘straw’ sale because the buyer kept making mistakes as he filled out the 4473, even at first stating that he was not the ‘actual’ buyer of the gun, and that no attempt was made to verify the straw buyer’s real address.

The defense claimed, on the other hand, that the gun shop was ‘set up’ because the straw buyer and the real buyer had conspired to deceive the store regarding the true identity of the person who would ultimately receive the gun. In effect, the store was duped; hence, no negligence on its part in the later shooting of the cops. This gun shop, incidentally, has been on the radar screen for a long time, having been the source of more than 500 crime guns in one year alone.

The bottom line in the Milwaukee case is that the average American jury is no longer enamored of the NRA and no more forgiving when it comes to violence caused by guns. There have just been too many shootings and too much pro-gun belligerence from the NRA and other gun-nut groups like the bunch in Texas who go marching around in public showing off their guns. Alex Yablon summed it up nicely in today’s article in The Trace: “The NRA has a group of reliable single-issue voters who can be counted on to show up to the ballot box. The thing is, they’re always there.” And it’s not as if the next mass shooting will motivate more people to join the NRA.

Gun rights voters have become this year’s favorite morality play for the Republicans who can’t win national elections unless they find a niche, social issue to motivate their base. They used to have gay marriage but that’s disappeared. They can still gin up anger over illegal immigration but new immigrants now represent too many votes. And as for abortion, Republicans have been sitting in the White House for 23 of the 42 years since Rio v. Wade in 1973 and a woman’s right to choose is still law of the land.

When it comes to social issues, the Republicans talk big and act small. And I think this is exactly what will happen going forward in the debate over guns. Because once Democratic politicians realize that the NRA can’t stop background checks at the state level or lawsuits against guys who sell guns, you’ll see gun control inexorably moving forward in state after state. Remember that 37 states already declared gay marriage lawful before the SCOTUS agreed.

Is There A Connection Between Gun Violence And Mental Illness? That’s Not The Right Question To Ask.

October 13, 2024

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Over the last several months, the intersection of horrific shootings and Presidential politics has once again ignited the debate over mental illness and guns. After Sandy Hook, the pro-gun forces took the position that mass shootings could be stopped if we ‘fixed’ the mental health system. In the wake of Roseburg, however, even that tepid (and meaningless) strategy has been abandoned by the gun gang and their Republican allies with Shlump Trump advising us that too many mentally-ill people “slip through the cracks.” Meanwhile, mental health professionals and researchers continue to hold to the belief that, with the exception of suicide, that there is little, if any connection between mental illness and violent behavior involving guns.

What both sides seem to be saying is there’s no real solution to the problem of gun violence from a mental health perspective, because either there are too many crazies walking around or there’s no necessary connection between being mentally ill and using a gun in a violent way . But deciding that a certain kind of behavior does or doesn’t reflect mental illness is one thing; understanding the behavior itself is something else.

If the evidence about gun violence tells us anything, it’s that using a gun to hurt yourself or someone else is an overwhelmingly impulsive act. It is impulsive because in perhaps 90% of all gun violence, the shooter and victim not only knew each other before the gun was pulled out, but there had been continuous and angry or abusive contact between the two parties often for a lengthy period of time. Obviously this is the case in gun suicides, which comprises two-thirds of all gun mortality; it’s true in most gun homicides, particularly for every gun homicide that grows out of a domestic dispute. As for gun morbidity, which is so noticeable between the ages 15 and 25, most of the young men who present themselves in ERs and clinics with gun violence injuries previously sought medical assistance for other, less lethal injuries committed by the same assailants again and again.

Gun violence is not the usual way in which disputes are settled. In situations where two people get involved in a continuous dispute, four out of five of these arguments are eventually resolved violently or not – and here’s the critical point – without anyone pulling out a gun. As Lester Adelson says in what remains the most brilliant article ever written about gun violence: “With its peculiar lethality a gun converts a spat into a slaying and an argument into a killing.” But for every act of gun violence there are hundreds, no doubt thousands of spats and arguments that do not end up with someone being shot with a gun. And for the 20,000 law-abiding gun owners who use a gun to end their own lives each year, there are tens of thousands of seriously-depressed men and women who obtain counseling and assistance without ever thinking of taking out a gun.

Gun violence, particularly mass shootings, tears deep wounds in our cultural and emotional frameworks and shouldn’t be the subject of nonsensical and cynical sloganeering by entertainers masquerading as Presidential candidates who spend a few months on the national media circuit shamelessly promoting their names. By the same token, those who are genuinely trying to do something to eliminate gun violence need to understand what is really at issue when it comes to defining a response to this national shame.

The word ‘impulsive’ means that someone engages in behavior without first spending one second considering the consequences of the act. The good news is that nearly all of us learn how to express anger, even rage, without yanking out a gun. Pardon the pun, but we still don’t know have a good fix on the trigger mechanism that turns violent behavior into gun-violent behavior. And if you want to yank out a piece, believe me, it will be there to yank out. Believe me.

Follow The Money Said Deep Throat. And You Can Follow The NRA’s Money With This New Website.

October 9, 2024

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There’s a new website in town called NRACONGRESS.COM and it’s one you should check out. Based on data from the Center for Responsive Politics, along with some other resources, the site gives a dollar-and-cents breakdown for every penny the NRA has delivered to current members of Congress during their tenures in DC, along with their NRA rating and recent votes on key bills.

What a surprise to learn that of the 241 Congressional members who have ever received any money at all from the NRA, 234 are Republicans. But the 114th Congress counts 301 red members, which means that 60 Republicans in the House and Senate have never received any NRA money at all. I find this somewhat puzzling because the Republicans hold a 4-seat majority in the Senate and a 30-seat margin in the House. If all the Democrats supported a gun-control measure, they could get it to Obama’s desk if they only picked up half of the Republicans who don’t receive any dough from the NRA. I thought that when it comes to gun issues, money buys votes.

On the other hand, maybe there are other reasons why the NRA wins more than it loses on Capitol Hill. For example, the last several days have witnessed one heckuva political firestorm in the House chamber with the open rebellion of the Tea Party’s ‘liberty caucus’ which resulted not only in the resignation of Speaker John Boehner, but then the quick self-elimination of his supposed successor, Kevin McCarthy, who quit even before his candidacy was put to a vote. You would think that the most conservative members of the House Republicans would benefit from NRA largesse, but only 25 of the 40 liberty caucus members have ever received NRA support, and their totals average about half of what other House and Senate members have received from the NRA. I can’t imagine that any of these ultra-right politicians vote against the NRA; yet 40% of them, according to the NRACONGRESS website, have never received a dime.

What the list of NRA recipients seems to show, more than anything else, is that what really counts in DC when it comes to picking up cash is seniority. For example, the Number One NRA money hog is Rep. Don Young from Alaska, who has received $104,650, the only member with a tab in excess of 100 grand. But Young has been sitting in the House since 1973, which means he has been re-elected 21 times. And that works out to just under $5 grand each time the election rolls around. Hell, they’re getting him cheap. Ken Calvert, who represents the 42nd C.D. in California has been on the take to the tune of fifty big ones, but he’s rolled through 11 electoral contests which also works out to less than five grand each time. Hal Rogers from Kentucky has been re-elected 16 times, so the $59,200 that he’s bankrolled from the NRA looks like chump-change to me.

One thing that’s clear from the website is that, with a couple of exceptions, there’s no love lost between the Democratic Party and the NRA. And while the total amount of cash that the NRA spreads around at the Federal level is peanuts when compared to what comes in from lobbies representing lawyers, bankers and insurance agents, the pro-gun money floating around Congress is ten times as much as what is spent by the other side.

But I’m not so sure that the imbalance between NRA versus GVP money means all that much when it comes to counting votes. A quick back-and-forth between NRACONGRESS.COM and the 2014 election results shows that of the 18 ‘swing’ House races won by Republicans, only 2 of those candidates received any money from the NRA. Which means the NRA was not a real player when it came to deciding the contests that moved the House from blue to red. Is a national fundraising effort by the GVP community to re-establish a 2016 Democratic House majority within reach?

Want To End Gun Violence? Go To The Source.

October 5, 2024

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Ever notice how the chief culprits are never identified or even mentioned in the great blame game that breaks out after every horrendous shooting? Now don’t me wrong. The unintended injury or death of any human being is horrendous, but we don’t register the daily, humdrum gun violence affairs; we wait until a really bestial, mass murder takes place to which we then assign terms like’ horrible,’ ‘unthinkable,’ ‘tragic’ and the like. Then we play the great blame game.

For Republicans, the blame is now squarely fixed on something called “very’ very sick people.” Or at least this is how Donald Trump began his contribution to the blame game after the Oregon massacre last week. It was basically what he and other Presidential wannabes said after the August 26 gunning down of two television journalists in Virginia; funny how these guys (and a gal) all agree that we should do a better job of collecting information about the crazies among us but, at the same time, we don’t need to extend background checks. So what should we do with all this new information that we’ll get when we ‘fix’ the mental health system?

Smith & Wesson

Everybody’s getting down on Jeb Bush for his cogent “stuff happens” response to the blame game, but maybe he’s decided that given his standing in the polls, he’d be better off not blaming anyone or anything at all. And when all is said and done, I give Baby Bro a high-five for at least having the honesty to come right out and say what the words of the other red-meat candidates really mean, namely, that when it comes to gun violence, they don’t want to do anything at all.

But I’m not so sure that the blame game is generating anything more credible from the other side. What was Hilary’s line? “Sensible gun control measures,” whatever that means. And from the woods of Vermont, Bernie Sanders issued a statement which began, “We need sensible gun-control legislation.” Wait a minute. I thought that Hilary owns ‘sensible.’ Joe, who hasn’t decided yet whether he can afford to be unemployed after January 20, 2016, pushed back on the ‘sensible’ argument to remind us that the 2nd Amendment didn’t protect the rights of someone who wanted to own a “bazooka or an F-15.” I like Joe and I’d vote for him if I had the chance. But what the hell was he thinking?

If you want the official blame-game entry you have to turn to Nick Kristof’s op-ed in The New York Times. And what we get here is a remarkable and novel approach to gun violence, namely, that guns aren’t safe. He comes right out and says it! After all, the British cut suicide rates by switching from coal to gas, the latter much less lethal, hence ovens in England are safer. “We need to do the same with guns.” Want to make guns safer Nickie-boy? Design them so that when you pull the trigger, out comes a squirt of H2O.

So that’s where things stand in today’s great blame game. Everybody’s got a way to fix the problem but nobody’s saying anything reality-based at all. But recall I said in the very first sentence that the real culprits of gun violence are never named. So I’m going to name them now and it goes like this: Beretta, Charter, Colt, Glock, H&K, Kahr, Sig, Smith&Wesson, Springfield, Walther - I’m probably missing one or two more. These crummy little companies make the products that kill and injure 100,000 Americans every year. Want to tell me that guns don’t kill people, people kill people? Go lay brick.

It’s not about background checks, it’s not about mental health, it’s not even about ‘stuff.’ It’s about a lethal consumer product being cynically and dishonestly promoted as the most effective protection from violence and crime. It’s not true, the gun makers know it’s not true, and it’s time we stopped looking elsewhere for something to blame.

On December 10-14 You’ll See Why The Gun Lobby Is No Match For The Cross Lobby.

September 28, 2024

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I have published nearly 400 op-ed pieces on guns, which adds up to more than 240,000 words. But until two weeks ago, when I posted a column about the November 3rd gun violence event at Washington’s National Cathedral, I hadn’t written a single word about the question of gun violence and religious faith, which the more I think about it, deserves a central place in the gun debate.

The Very Rev. Gary Hall

The Very Rev. Gary Hall

Part of my reluctance to write about guns and religion stems from the fact that I’m not particularly religious. So I don’t instinctively think about religion or faith when I’m constructing an argument about guns or anything else. But the good folks at the National Cathedral just sent me a notice about the Gun Violence Sabbath Weekend taking place on December 10-14, and the scope and depth of this remarkable event needs to be recognized and considered even by a non-religious sort like myself.

The event is actually designed to inject the issue of gun violence into the religious services of Christians, Jews, Islam, Hindus, Sikhs, Universalists and Buddhists – I hope I have them all. Similar events took place in 2014 engaging more than 1,200 congregations and worship sites forming a virtual coalition between the National Cathedral, the Newtown Foundation, Faiths United To Prevent Gun Violence and other faith-based and anti-violence groups.

I’m going to assume that if 1,000 congregations of different faiths choose to dedicate a Sabbath observance to gun violence that easily a million people could be involved in thinking about this issue over the four-day period beginning December 10th. But it occurs to me that there’s one national organization that is somewhat conspicuous by its absence from the event, and that organization happens to be the NRA. And the reason I say that is because the annual NRA fest, which will be held next year in Louisville, always includes a prayer breakfast which, according to the 2016 program, will present speakers “who will challenge you with stirring words of freedom and faith.” So if religious belief can be used both to invoke the Lord’s guidance for those who want to end gun violence, as well as to invoke God’s blessing over those whose devotion to their guns ultimately results in 30,000+ deaths each year, how do we reconcile these two seemingly-contradictory views of faith?

I found an answer to that question in the sermon preached by The Very Reverend Gary Hall who will retire as Dean of the National Cathedral shortly after the December GVP event. Reverend Hall preached this message on December 16, 2012, just two days after the Sandy Hook massacre that took the lives of 20 first-graders plus 6 adults. After recounting his own reaction and the reactions of others to the horrifying event, Dr. Hall turned to the question that had to be answered: “What are we, as people of faith, to do?” And to answer that question, he reminded the Congregation of their sacred duty: “As Christians, we are obligated to heal the wounded, protect the vulnerable, and stand for peace. “

But if, as Reverend Hall went on to say, the gun lobby is no match for the cross lobby, then shouldn’t people who devote themselves to the cross also be out there talking to people who devote themselves to guns? I’ve never attended the NRA prayer breakfast, but I’m sure the audience considers themselves to be persons of deep faith. And don’t ask me how, don’t ask me why, but the religious ‘faith’ of those Republican Presidential candidates always seems to go hand-in-hand with their unwavering support for 2nd-Amendment ‘rights.’

Don’t get me wrong. Reverend Hall’s post-Newtown uplifting sermon was a powerful antidote to Wayne LaPierre’s fear-mongering rant which constituted the NRA’s response to Sandy Hook. But there are plenty of people out there who still want to cling both to their religion and their guns. The faith-based coalition that will come together around the country on December 10-14 might consider ways to reach those folks as well.

 

Does It Matter Whether Guns Protect Us From Crime? Not If You Want To Sell Guns.

September 27, 2024

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Last week the pro-gun gang received a shot in the arm from a story out of Detroit where a legally-armed private citizen yanked out a gun and shot a man who was running away from a bank with a pile of cash. Actually, the armed citizen shot the bank robber in both arms, as well as the leg, shooter and robber doing just fine; the latter in the hospital under arrest, the former no doubt on his way to Fairfax, VA to be congratulated by Wayne-o for reminding us all about the true value of our 2nd Amendment rights.

Granted I’m indulging in a bit of hyperbole, but you would think that since groups like Everytown and Brady post interviews with victims of gun violence on their websites, the NRA would want to run stories about citizen-defenders to promote their point of view. Actually, the NRA has been running such stories since 1978. It’s something called the Armed Citizen, which is a monthly collection of press reports about good guys stopping the bad guys; for the current month there are four reports, including the incident in Detroit, which is slightly less than the average 6-7 reports published each month.

Glock 21

Wait a minute! Hold the presses! In a country of 319 million people, in a country where civilians own more than 300 million guns, in a country in which at least 12 million good guys have concealed weapons permits, how in God’s name is it possible that only six or seven people use a gun each month to defend themselves or others from a crime?

To try to answer this vexing question, the first thing I did was turn to the Armed Citizen website, which bills itself as the place that “provides you with the news and resources you need to remain informed and active.” One of their latest examples of the work of an armed citizen has the following headline: “Car fleeing from police goes through park, nearly hits children.” So I guess this website collects stories about citizens armed with cars.

Then there’s another outfit called GunPitt – Guns Saves Lives, which advertises itself as the “secure way to trade guns online” although the link is broken, also produces a series of gun podcasts, including a series called God and Guns, The Responsible Christian Gun Owners Interests (they must have been pretty busy this week given what Pope Francis told the Congress), and also collects stories about defensive gun uses which now totals 1,360 anecdotes about the work of armed citizens, although it’s not clear how many years are covered by this report. In any case, I took a look at the latest DGU story out of my neighboring state of Connecticut, and here’s what the website says: “A woman in Waterbury, Connecticut had to grab a gun in order to capture a naked man who was allegedly raping the woman’s dog in her backyard.”

Here’s the bottom line: If the same bunch which assures us that guns are used to stop crimes “millions” of times each year tries to prove it by publishing stories about cars driving through playgrounds or man rapes dog, then the argument about good guys stopping bad guys bears no relationship to the truth. And maybe it’s time to stop advancing cogent, reasoned and researched arguments against gun fantasists like Gary Kleck and John Lott, and step back to take another look.

Take a look, for example, at the marketing message of a company like Glock. Under personal defense products, the website shows a tough, executive-type strapping on his gun: “Defense is personal, and it should be, it’s about invading your space.” Then off he runs to catch the 7:15, armed with his G42 pistol and the Wall Street Journal to confront another harrowing day. Marketing isn’t reality; it’s about merging a product with a fantasy, in this case a lethal weapon which makes you feel that you’ll come out ahead. Sells guns, doesn’t it?

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