12.16.12
On dealing with those who need to be dealt with
What the country faces in terms of dealing with national massacres is a WhiteManistan problem. Gun ownership in the US is decreasing. But the numbers of guns owned, the highest in the world, comes from a concentration of multiple gun ownership among a coterie and it is demographically primarily white. The Lanza massacre is a particularly egregious example. The murdered mother was a gun enthusiast, multiple owner, with a semi-automatic assault rifle taken and used in the slaughter. That AR-15 knock-offs have ridiculously become consumer items some white middle and upper middle class white people covet didn’t happen by itself.
“I am the NRA and I vote” is the belligerent banner slogan. Well, WhiteManistan just lost the vote numbers, and how it goes, so can go the modern NRA. I say the modern NRA is not representative of the country.
One looks at their current board members — all of them — white right wingers, people who for the last four years have campaigned to make their followers believe the president is a socialist Muslim not born in America and in league with the UN to impose tyranny through the taking of everyone’s guns. All of it, toxic mean-in-spirit messaging, completely rubbish, tin foil hat stuff. It is the work of monsters and they do it because it serves their interests. It has resulted in a well-documented explosion in sales of weapons. Indeed, I expect the Newtown massacre to result in yet another surge in stockpiling sales as the NRA further radicalizes its base with grass roots gossip along the lines of: “Now they’re really coming after your guns!”
On December 4, in a Richmond news publication (I cited an excerpt yesterday), a journalist published the reaction of an NRA representative on the question of ‘having the right to have an AR-15 regardless of whether they really need them.’
This was the reply: “It’s the Bill of Rights, not the Bill of Needs … jst because it’s someone’s opinion that someone doesn’t need it isn’t a legally viable reason to ban them.???
This is the pugnacious mentality of someone who cannot be reasoned with. And now, after years of pushing it, a horrible flock of birds of death have come home to roost and get in our faces.
What has kept change from happening in the US is cowardice and the lack of realization that the NRA, like the Republican Party of which it is part of the DNA, has lost its numbers when pitted against every other demographic it despises. So, politically — which is where this issue lies in its entirety — it is ready to be beaten. We lack only the courage to take it to them.
Chuck said,
December 16, 2012 at 2:02 pm
This isn’t going to win me any popularity contests, but here goes…
Adolescence (and I include the “getting out into the real world ages up to 24) is fertile ground in a person’s life for mental illnesses and instabilities.
Don’t take my word for it, have a look here and at about a thousand other papers:
http://nahic.ucsf.edu/downloads/MentalHealthBrief.pdf
Of course, the military (and, for that matter, the priesthood) is well aware of this, so finding alienated and troubled youth and putting a weapon in their hands to kill the enemy (or whoever) is very useful. It’s doubtful that they’d have the same success with 30 year olds.
What nobody wants to talk about is restricting the operation and possession of firearms to those older than, say, 25.
I think it might be a good step.
(My own “normal” brother didn’t begin to exhibit signs of paranoid schizophrenia until his early 20’s (it was very scary) and has spent the last 40-odd years on medication to control his illness.)
George Smith said,
December 16, 2012 at 2:26 pm
It’s a point well worth making. Of course, the reactionary retort is to say Adam Lanza didn’t have the guns, his mother did. Which also dodges the argument I made about the national environment, one that turned her into a consumer of a nonsensical number of weapons and corresponding quantities of ammunition. Well, in the ulitimate irony, she can’t be queried on it because her son used her Bushmaster to pump four rounds into her. I bet that looked good in the police photos.
So, in the end, what it always boils down is a series of increasingly loud, belligerent arguments for the case of doing nothing, keeping the status quo, and throwing up smoke screens about tyranny and infringing civil liberties. You must retain the FREEDOM, when what is really meant is just the retention of FREEDOM to shop for any guns and ammo.
Michael McCall said,
December 16, 2012 at 2:27 pm
The problem is that even if you raise the required age to purchase a gun to 25 it’s still to easy to get a hold of them. Keep in mind the man who killed all these children didn’t purchase these weapons himself; he stole them from his mother.
It also ignores the elephant in the room. Some kinds of weapons just shouldn’t be widely available. Automatic and semi-automatic rifles are unecessary for hunting, ditto for handguns.
What we need is a more general ban on these kinds of weapons.
Michael McCall said,
December 16, 2012 at 2:30 pm
Damn. George beat me to the first point. Second point is still valid though.
George Smith said,
December 16, 2012 at 2:33 pm
Yeah, like I said, unfortunately it can’t be determined why the lady had her arms stockpile. And friends are not shedding any light on the matter, so perhaps they do not know.
And I am sure that since the slaughter there have two thick books worth of comment written on how semi-automatic AR-15s are fun things, technically not even really the slightest difference makers. The stupefied, of course, sitting about, not knowing what to say to it or how to reply.
dan said,
December 17, 2012 at 3:29 am
Well, in the UK press – the Daily Telegraph, which is reasonably competent at getting its facts straight – they’re reporting that the murdered mother was a “prepper”. That might be a partial explanation for the range and number of weapons in her possession.
I wouldn’t take it as gospel – the characterisation of “prepper” was accurate, but not sufficiently robustly sourced at this stage in reference to Mrs Lanza for me to assert it as a solid fact.
Still, a suggestive line of inquiry, and a sickening irony to boot.
George Smith said,
December 17, 2012 at 7:37 am
Yes, here it is. Everyone seems to have picked it up this morning.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/9749217/Connecticut-school-shooting-Adam-Lanzas-mother-was-preparing-for-disaster.html
Agree that it’s fragmentary right now. Sickening irony is right.
Chuck said,
December 17, 2012 at 4:15 pm
If it’s true, it’s not ironic. It was to be expected.