Why Have We Stopped Talking about Guns? (Guest Voice)
Why Have We Stopped Talking about Guns?
by Bill Moyers and Michael Winship
You know by now that in Washington, DC, on Wednesday, an elderly white supremacist and anti-Semite named James W. von Brunn allegedly walked into the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum with a .22-caliber rifle and killed a security guard before being brought down himself. He’s 88 years old, with a long record of hatred and paranoid fantasies about the Illuminati and a Global Zionist state. How bitter the bile that has curdled for so many decades.
You will know, too, of the recent killing, while ushering at his local church, of Dr. George Tiller, one of the few doctors in the country still performing late term abortions. Sadly, this case was proof that fatal violence works. His family has announced that his Wichita, Kansas, clinic will not be reopened.
You may be less familiar with the June 1st shootings in an army recruiting office in Little Rock that killed one soldier and wounded another. The suspect in question is an African-American Muslim convert who says he acted in retaliation for US military activity in the Middle East
Soon, however, these terrible deeds will be forgotten, as are already the three policemen killed by an assault weapon in Pittsburgh; the four policemen killed in Oakland, California; the 13 people gunned down in Binghamton, New York; the 10 in an Alabama shooting spree; five in Santa Clara, California; the eight dead in a North Carolina, nursing home. All during this year alone.
There is much talk about hate talk; hate crimes against blacks, whites, immigrants, Muslims, Jews; about violence committed in the name of bigotry or religion.
But why don’t we talk about guns?
We’re arming ourselves to death. Even as gunshots ricocheted around the country, an amendment allowing concealed weapons in national parks snuck into the popular credit card reform bill. Another victory for the gun lobby, to sounds of silence from the White House.
Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, wrote – just days before the Holocaust Museum incident – that “rather than propose concrete action that makes it harder for dangerous people to get firearms – while still respecting the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding gun owners – all Washington can seem to muster after high-profile shootings are ‘thoughts and prayers’ for the victims and their families.
“For his part, the President has also included sincere expressions of ‘deep sadness’ at these tragic losses – though without any call to change any of our policies to prevent those losses.”
Yet, as a presidential candidate, Obama pledged “our determination to do whatever it takes to eradicate this violence from our streets, from our schools, from our neighborhoods and our cities. That is our duty as Americans.”
The fact is, neither party will stand up to the National Rifle Association, the best known front group for the arms merchants. In Virginia, just across the Potomac River from the Holocaust Museum, this week’s Democratic primary for governor was won by state legislator R. Creigh Deeds, a man who supports allowing concealed weapons in restaurants that serve alcohol and opposes limiting handgun purchases to one a month.
After Wednesday’s shooting, a conservative organization immediately offered those of us in the media a chance to interview the founder of “Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership,” whose expertise, it was said, is in helping people understand why gun control doesn’t belong in a civilized society.
The e-mail went on to say, “Your audience will appreciate [his] non nonsense common sense talk that will make them wonder why anyone wants to ban guns in the first place.”
Thanks, but no thanks. And no thanks to his counterparts among Christians and Muslims who use every violent shedding of blood to try to promote the worship of guns. Guns don’t kill people, they say. People kill people. True. People kill people – with guns.
So let the faithful of every persuasion keep their guns for hunting and skeet, for trap and target practice, for collecting. They can even have a permit for a gun to protect their business or home, even though it’s 22 times more likely to shoot a member of the family (including suicides) than an intruder.
But please, there are already some 200 million, privately owned firearms in America. Every year there are 30,000 gun deaths and in some years more than 400,000 non-fatal, gun-related assaults. The next time someone wades through a pool of blood to sidle up and champion the preservation of firearms, can’t we just say, no thanks?
Enough’s enough.
Bill Moyers is managing editor and Michael Winship is senior writer of the weekly public affairs program Bill Moyers Journal, which airs Friday night on PBS. Check local airtimes or comment at The Moyers Blog at www.pbs.org/moyers.
The cartoon by Mike Keefe, The Denver Post, is copyrighted and licensed to appear on TMV. All Rights Reserved. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.
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7 Responses to “Why Have We Stopped Talking about Guns? (Guest Voice)”
Like nearly all law enforcement officials, I'd like to see some limits, especially on assault weapons and cheap handguns, but since the DC incident involved neither of these, I don't see gun control working. I believe this was a hunting rifle, right?
GreenDreams — Not only did I read it was a hunting rifle (a 22, I think), but increased limits on guns wouldn't have made any difference in DC whatsoever. He was a convicted federal felon, and any weapon he possessed was acquired via the black market anyway.
Green Dreams — yes, it was a rifle, probably a “hunting” as in an ordinary-looking rifle (not an assault-style gun, not a special competitive target-shooting rifle). I believe it was .22 Long Rifle (the news so far has not distinguished between this little rimfire cartridge and the centerfire .223 Rem.). It's a relief that there is next to no whiny rehashing of gun-control garbage here (with Moyers it was likely to be eventual, admittedly — he resembles Walter Brasch here in style — ugh). I suspect even most liberals in favor of gun controls are concentrating on the _real_ issue here, which was that this was a rare right-wing fringy extremist motivated by ill will. He used the most innocent, low-powered-pop-gun kind of weapon.
Now if the left wing of the Dems gets bold enough (like Rush out of Chicago metro) we could yet have inane gun control attempts, possibly the resurgence of the trick a few elitists try once in a while, the famous 10,000 per cent tax on ammunition. To me the more intelligent gun-rights-related issue will be what Sotomayor has to contribute to the debate (which largely is settled as a matter of fact, obviously, but which never ends given the motives and nature of the anti-gun crowd) once she's on the Supreme Court (I assume she will be). Note that she has made the fine, intelligent note that the Second Amendment is absolute indeed, but was intended specifically to apply to the federal government (she could explain things more, perhaps to say it was a condition demanded before entry into the Union), but not to state and local governments, who are by this argument free to legislate on this subject as they see fit and as their state constitutions allow. (Were the Roe idiot-crusaders to someday become so intelligent and grown up about abortion and abortion rights — that would be a relief as well as true progress.)
DLS, Sotomayor makes no difference on the SC. She replaces a liberal judge, and is likely less liberal. If she was replacing one of the reliable votes for the right it would matter. It doesn't.
US Holocaust Museum Guard Shot by Security Guards: CNN
http://www.stormfront.org/forum/showthread.php?…
The problem with claiming that the Second Amendment doesn't apply to states is that it requires a great deal of mental gymnastics to figure out exactly how that would work. Basically, it is saying that the states have the power to take away a right granted by the US Constitution. It also overlooks a little thing called the Fourteenth Amendment that says: “No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States…” This effectively binds the states to guarantee federal rights, even if common sense did not dictate this were so.
The Second Amendment was passed during a time when the United States was not supposed to have a standing army, and it was intended to create an armed populace that could respond to invasion quickly and effectively. The US Army renders this moot. And anyone who argues that the state should be afraid of its citizens just isn't dealing with the fact that the Army has a whole host of weapons that are not – and should not – be available to the general public.
“Sotomayor makes no difference on the SC”
I believe she does, as would anyone going onto the Court. And will she or won't she be activist? (We probably have to settle for “not too activist” but overall I have a good view of her, despite her wackier political statements.)
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“… This effectively binds the states to guarantee federal rights, even if common sense did not dictate this were so.”
Common sense says this, but what comes first is the intent at the time the original law was written and approved (ratified). That is the correct meaning and only clarifications or extensions to modern times are legitimate additions or derivations. Was it or wasn't it a guarantee that the feds would not infringe on what is known by honest people to be an individual right? Yes, there is a complication in that we later were given formally US (federal) citizenship as well as state citizenship. (That still does not establish federal superiority rather than duality.)
“The Second Amendment was passed during a time …”
It remains the law to this day. If it is obsolete, the law itself needs to be changed via the legitimate, i.e., the legislative means, for doing this. Many want the courts illegitimately to arrogate legislative power (as they so often have since the New Deal) to do this instead, often because the seekers can't get what they want through the legitimate process (often because they can't win elections to be in a position to do this).
In addition to the toughness with which repealing the Second Amendment (and if federal gun control were sought, granting power to Congress to regulate arms, in order to be [fully] constitutional) would face, there is another issue here that is similar to the experience we've had with Prohibition and alcohol, plus what we have done from time to time about tobacco and restricting its use. Many who look at guns and don't like what is the same problem as with nuclear weapons in the hands of the wrong people potentially, the problem of proliferation (here, of guns, elsewhere, small arms traffic, incidentally), need to understand that one reason it would be tough to get the Second Amendment repealed and a gun control amendment passed would not just be distrust of government and its motives, but also (as with alcohol and with some parts of society with tobacco) that guns have a long history in our nation and our society. While shooting for recreation and hunting seem to me to be dying in many places (not only social-sentiment change but for other reasons, including increased housing and commercial development in many places and limitations on the ability to shoot a firearm because of this development), gun culture is still alive and well in this country. It has little to do with the scummy hype and dishonest portrayal of “typical” gun owners that you encounter by left-activists. It has everything to do with a history in this country of gun ownership and shooting for recreation or pleasure by many (it's actually fun to do, if you haven't done it) and this is not something that people in this country can be expected to casually end or reject any more than with alcohol. (The tobacco analogy is useful in that not everyone likes guns and shooting and laying aside legal issues, there are some that wouldn't mind more restrictions on guns; surely few object in practice to bans on taking them into court houses, for example.) Changing the law (the legitimate way) will be hard because of not only distrust by so many in government, but because of the gun culture in this country (which of itself is in no way bad, despite what some activists may insist).