Slayings Sting But Stupid Hurts

It has a been a busy day with anti-gun screeds on submissions to Keep and Bear Arms. Lots of wonderful fisking material today.

I continue to be curious, albeit in that blood pressure raising kind of way, of why the media is anti-gun and chooses to distort, lie and omit information in their pursuit of so-called news. At least most anti-gun rants are filed as opinion pieces. Anti-gun opinion pieces are little more than temper tantrums on paper. I wish they were subject to some sort of editorial scrutiny that would actually have editors demanding that the writer do some research before making assertions of fact.

For round 1, I bring you this piece by Cynthia Tucker of the Atlanta-Journal Constitution.

Last Tuesday, a man followed a woman into a downtown Atlanta hotel — in the same complex as CNN's headquarters — and shot her in the face and upper body, leaving her fatally wounded.

He, in turn, was shot by a security guard and remained hospitalized late last week. The victim, Clara Riddles, worked at the hotel, but the rage that radiated from her assailant, Arthur Mann, was apparently personal. Family say the two had been dating, but Riddles had recently broken it off.

The only reason this got any attention at all on the national level was because it did happen close to CNN's headquarters. This random act of senseless violence happened a little too close to home for comfort for them. When blood begins to stain the ivory tower, those within tend to sit up and take notice.

It is a tragedy. There is no rhyme or reason for it. As you state, it was personal rage. How do you control or predict it? You can't. I wish we could.

Gun assaults are rising, but you're unlikely to hear anything from the top-tier presidential candidates about improving gun safety laws. Republicans, of course, are wholly owned by the National Rifle Association, which advocates a howitzer in every home. Democrats, meanwhile, have been persuaded that gun safety is the suicide bomb of domestic politics; mention the subject, and your campaign explodes.

What improved gun safety laws would have prevented the shooting mentioned above or others like it? What are the 20,000 odd gun laws on the books not accomplishing that these miraculous improvements will fix?

This is a constant, constant refrain from the media. A tragic shooting occurs and the immediate knee-jerk reaction is a cry for more legislation. It gets really tiring to hear this. How is a law against something going to stop an enraged man from killing an ex-girlfriend? The laws against murder didn't stop him so how would a "gun safety law" be any better? Ms. Tucker, do you believe that a would-be murderer will honestly care about a prohibition against a particular murder weapon if he was intending to kill anyway?

Republicans are wholly owned by the National Rifle Association? Ok, Ms. Tucker, prove it. You are making an assertion that you seem to believe should be obvious to me. I'm telling you now, it isn't.

The NRA wants everyone to have a howitzer in their home? That is the height of media ignorance right there. That is proof that this "reporter" is nothing of the sort. As a member of the NRA, I get their literature quite regularly and I have never seen a single stance that indicated that NRA backed the idea that individuals should own crew-served artillery. Not that they would need to for a very simple reason:

Citizens can own artillery!

Admittedly, the number of people who do is very small. The pieces and the shells they fire are both are considered "destructive devices" by the Government and can be owned (with very tight scrutiny and regulation) by private citizens willing to submit to the cost and the process. It can be done. But the NRA isn't advocating such a position because they don't have to. It's already law.

Lady, you make the NRA sound like this massive juggernaut threatening everything and everyone in this country? It isn't. First and foremost (and many will argue with me on this point), the NRA is a rights defense organization. They are, secondly, a promoter of civilian shooting sports, marksmanship and gun safety. If the NRA is so evil, why is it virtually every state considers their programs the standard to be met for everything from hunter safety to handgun proficiency for concealed carry? The lot of you in the media seem to ignore this.

If you would simply call the NRA, they would be happy to explain their history, background and positions to you. But that would require you to do research and would go against your agenda of objective truth and facts.

The reason gun control (or gun safety as you like to put it) is considered a suicide bomb to politicians, not just Democrats, is because it is. Gun control is seen by a lot of Americans as an infringement on their Rights and they will defend themselves very strongly via the ballot box. Gun owners are very suspicious of any regulation that hampers them and does nothing to curb or control crime, which is what gun control is touted to do and has miserably failed at.

That and the fact that citizens have never known the Government to repeal or relinquish power once taken. If a law fails, another is on its heels in an attempt to "clarify" or "improve" existing law. Often by passing more restrictions, controls and regulation. The Government has never been known to actually examine a law on its merits or by an objective measure of its effectiveness and repeal or modify it as dictated. Virtually no law has a "proof of effectiveness" clause tied to it to permit it to sunset if it is shown not to be so.

The Federal Assault Weapon Ban was a rare exception and the sunset provision was a compromise made to even allow it to pass and was seen as a mistake by the supporters of that miserable excuse for a law. A mistake they don't plan to make again.

Given the way laws are generally passed, "once passed, here forever" is the rule of the day and as a result, the distrust gun owners have in general of any gun control legislation.

I don't see gun control as a Democratic issue. Republicans support gun control too. Democrats are simply more apt and willing to pass gun control since it fits with their overall ideology of "big government, big controls". Can't let an individual citizen actually have a say in their safety and responsibility for taking charge of it! No, that is a job for the state. Gun control to me is a politician's issue and any politician who supports it should not be surprised at seeing themselves out of office in the next election.

That, Ms. Tucker, is the way representative democracy works. Sorry that you don't like it. Some of us actually do vote on issues rather than party. There are roughly 80 million gun owners in the USA. That is a lot of swing votes.

So this folly will continue, fueled by a perplexing cultural ethos that worships individual gun ownership. A century from now, anthropologists will look back and wonder what in the world this was all about. They'll sift through the ruins and the historical record, in much the same way anthropologists today puzzle over cannibalism and the sacrifice of virgins in long-dead civilizations. They'll wonder how a highly advanced and sophisticated culture allowed unchecked personal gun ownership, despite the carnage.

I hope they won't need to because the United States will still exist a century from now because of that unchecked personal gun ownership.

Part of what you see as folly was considered so important by the Founding Fathers that they made individual arms ownership second only to free speech and practice of religion in the Bill of Rights. They put the ownership of arms ahead of the right against self-incrimination and that of protection from illegal search and seizure.

Gun ownership in the USA is part of what makes us a truly free society. Many people don't realize it but deep down, they understand it because of what gun ownership represents in the grand scheme. The best words I have ever read on the subject are those of Judge Alex Kozinski:

My excellent colleagues have forgotten these bitter lessons of history. The prospect of tyranny may not grab the headlines the way vivid stories of gun crime routinely do. But few saw the Third Reich coming until it was too late. The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed for those exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have failed - where the government refuses to stand for reelection and silences those who protest; where courts have lost the courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees. However improbable these contingencies may seem today, facing them unprepared is a mistake a free people get to make only once (emphasis mine).

Ms. Tucker, why don't you dig down and think about where the road to gun control leads? Are you willing to bet the future of your grandchildren on the continued benevolence of the government and how the political wind is blowing at that time? Attitudes shift. Beliefs shift. The United States was constituted in such a way to allow for those short term shifts to have minimal impact long term on the values the country was founded upon. It is this foresight of the Founders that is one of the things that make the United States unique.

What you see as folly I see as strength. It is something I think cultural anthropologists will look as one of the greater successes in the history of human civilization.

A report released in March by the Police Executive Research Forum stated that the murder rate had jumped by more than 10 percent since 2004 in dozens of large cities across the country. Police attribute the increase to several factors, including an epidemic of methamphetamine, a casual acceptance of violence among a subset of aimless young men and a flood of illegal guns.

These factors are not separate but interrelated. It isn't law-abiding folks that are killing each other despite your implications in your article to the contrary. It is criminals. The drugs are fueling competition and lawlessness, which in turn is fueling the violence. Guns are a weapon in this fight, not the cause. What you don't mention is what percentage of these crimes use guns versus knives, blunt objects or just plain fists. Gun violence may be disproportionate in these groups but gun usage itself is in the minority overall. Knives are much more popular.

Since Sept. 11, the FBI has begun to devote more resources to terrorism and fewer to local crimes, including gun felonies. But the bigger problem is the influence of an irrational gun lobby that insists that there should be no laws regulating gun use.

Since before September 11, 2001, the FBI didn't prosecute gun felonies either. That is left to state and local jurisdictions to make a decision on prosecution and more often than not, they choose not to. This has nothing to do with terrorism, 9/11 or the FBI. The FBI focuses on other crimes.

I don't know what gun lobby you're referring to. The NRA you demonize so much represents only about five percent of the total gun owners in the USA. Whether you believe it or not, the "gun lobby" is actually the voices of those 80 million odd citizens making themselves heard. For every time you hear about the NRA involved in a fight somewhere, I guarantee there are three or four fights that are being fought by private citizens with minimal or no NRA involvement that never make the news.

The NRA is a convenient target. But they represent a very small fraction of the gun owners in this country. Gun politics is one issue where there is real grassroots, citizen lobbying going on.

Plus, you aren't talking about regulations on gun usage; you are talking about regulations on ownership when it is all said and done. If you can't own, usage kind of becomes a moot point. There are already lots and lots of laws covering that. We need less of them, not more.

In 2005, Congress handed firearms manufacturers a huge gift when it passed a law that shields the industry from virtually all liability lawsuits. It was intended to stave off a spate of court actions aimed at holding manufacturers responsible for some of the carnage that comes from the barrel of a gun.

This law was passed to prevent frivilous litigation against gun manufacturers for being held responsible for the illegal use of their products over which they have no control. The gun makers can still be sued but only for actual illegal acts (like selling guns to criminals out of the back of a truck) or for actual product defects that harm a user. A gun firing a bullet is not a product defect. It is what it is designed to do.

Do you feel it is ok for a car maker to be sued for the damage caused by a drunk driver? I would hope not. Because that is exactly the type of suit the law was designed to stop. The fact that it took a special law to do so where it wasn't needed in other areas of consumer product usage is a sad reflection on the state our legal system has gotten to in many places.

But the gun lobby is never satisfied. Now, its members are miffed that New York City authorities were able to prove that out-of-state gun dealers were flouting laws that mandate background checks and limit the number of firearms purchased by a single buyer. After New York's Republican mayor, Michael Bloomberg, took action against several Georgia gun shops, the NRA starting lobbying Congress to prevent the release of the gun trace information that helped New York police make their case. (Bloomberg was trying to stop illegal guns, many of which were traced to out-of-state shops, from flooding his city.)

Its members are miffed (of which I am one) because Mr. Bloomberg undertook a campaign that was illegal. It is against the law for someone who is not a law enforcement officer to engage in sting operations which is what he was doing. He has, in fact, been told as much by the Department of Justice and the BATFE, is under investigation for his actions, has jeopardized ongoing investigations as a result of his actions and I would hope he will be held responsible for them.

If I suspect a gun dealer is engaging in illegal conduct, I have a duty as a private citizen to report that dealer to law enforcement. I do not have the right or the authority to commit a crime in order to prove that illegal conduct. Mr. Bloomberg did the latter when he should have done the former. He and those who work for him are not above the law.

I am all for shutting down unscrupulous gun dealers. But they form a very tiny percentage of delaers. But I am not for engaging in entrapment and misrepresentation of oneself in the furtherance of an agenda as Bloomberg did. It is coming back to bite him and I hope it bites hard.

But it's not just illegal guns that kill the innocent, and it's not only hardened felons who pick up a gun and wreak havoc. A surfeit of guns gives gloomy adolescents a handy tool for suicide and turns harried fathers, angry and stressed over traffic, into road-rage killers.

Yes, about half of all suicides involve firearms. In fact, about half of all violent usage of a firearm involve sucide (a fact you in the media conveniently leave out in your oft-quoted 30,000 violent firearms usage statistics). But that isn't because of the presence of guns. They are merely, albeit tragically, the most convenient method available.

But if guns aren't readily available, other techniques are substituted. Overdose, slitting one's wrists and jumping off tall structures come to mind.

The fact a gun is used in a teenage suicide says more about the owner of the gun, the parents. It means they failed to be responsible in their ownership. Many states have strict rules for firearms storage where minor children are concerned. Teenagers are minors. Thus, the parents broke yet another law by failing to properly secure a weapon. (I personally take issue with safe storage laws but that is a discusion for another time).

As to the road rage, I would love to see the report on the commonality of this. I'm telling you now, the proportion of legal, law-abiding gun owners doing this is very, very, very low. To even get in that situation usually requires the gun owner to be licensed to carry a concealed handgun and virtually no one who is engages in such behavior. If anything, they strive to avoid it. In fact, when it does happen it is considered newsworthy by the nature of its rarity. It is so out of place as to warrant reporting. But reporting such does not make it a commonplace activity. It is not.

Stop inventing incidents that hardly ever take place. In many states that allow citizens to carry concealed weapons, the number of such incidents is zero.

If the individuals involved are not licensed to carry a concealed weapon and engage in a road rage shooting, what does that say about their respect for the law? Or the lack thereof. The law was no deterrent to them. A random act of murder with a gun is still murder. Don't cherry pick type, please. The tragedy is the act itself, not its means. I wish you would focus more on the acts rather than the mechanism. I think the media would be better off if they did.

Still, the cult of gun ownership remains strangely seductive. Despite opposition from police officers, the Legislature is considering a bill that would allow gun owners to tuck their firearms under the driver's seat. The Legislature may also ignore the concerns of business owners and overrule their right to prevent employees from keeping guns in vehicles parked on company property.

I am sure the bill for allowing a gun under the driver's seat only applies to those already licensed to carry a concealed weapon. Many areas have strange rules about what is considered "concealed".

As to the "right" of employers to prevent keeping guns in vehicles on company property, I have a simple question: When did employers get the right to search your vehicle without a warrant?

The parking lot the vehicle may be in may be company property but the vehicle itself isn't. Many states and jurisdictions consider your vehicle an extension of your home. What you choose to store in the privacy of your vehicle is none of your employer's business. What if an employee decided they didn't feel a display of a religious icon from your rear view mirror was inappropriate and banned it?

You argue that guns are different because they can be used to engage in workplace violence. Aren't there already laws against this?

Employers have a right to dictate what you can do at work, what to wear, etc. They can say you can't keep or display certain items on or in your desk. That is because the desk (and the space it occupies) belongs to them. Your car may occupy company property but the crucial difference is the car itself is not their space. It is your space. Their right of control should only extend as far as where you can park it.

Employers demanding rights over the contents of your private property sets a dangerous precedent. Because then it could allow other private entities who you have no business relationship with to do the same. It doesn't take a leap of imagination to see a suit by a business who prominently posts a "No Guns" sign on their window and who also owns the parking lot outside to demand the right to search your car for guns if you happen to be wearing an NRA shirt or cap. Think it is outlandish? I don't. All lawyers need is precedent and it doesn't have to be good precedent either.

If after all this you still feel that your car is subject to employer scrutiny then I hope your employer engages in a draconian daily search of your vehicle for items they consider contraband. Talk to me again in a few weeks and we'll see where you stand then (assuming you're still employed).

Sorting through this insanity will no doubt inspire reams of literature of anthropologists and social historians a century from now. Perhaps by then the American love affair with the gun will be a curious moment in history; for now, it's a lethal and inexplicable reality.

It is not inexplicable. Violent gun crime doesn't magically appear out of thin air. There are causes. Focus on the causes. But even if you do, it will never go away. There are dark sides to human nature that, no matter how enlightened, we cannot eliminate. What we can do is give those who hope for the best in people is the means to defend themselves when the worst comes out. The only one who should be lethally affected under those circumstances are those who would do the innocent harm.

That is reality, Ms. Tucker.