gun control

What GOP stands for these days

/ Christopher Cudworth / Leave a comment

I looked up the history of the acronym GOP as a shorthand for the Republican Party. The Wikipedia page on the Republican Party says this:

“The term “Grand Old Party” is a traditional nickname for the Republican Party and the abbreviation “GOP” is a commonly used designation. The term originated in 1875 in the Congressional Record, referring to the party associated with the successful military defense of the Union as “this gallant old party”.

I’d always thought it stood for Grand Old Party, which is just as lame. But these days, the Republican Party is anything but Grand or Gallant. So the old terminology is moot. I propose that we give the GOP a new set of more accurate terms to replace its traditional claims to grandness or gallantry.

GOP and dying wishes

The option I propose, given the Republican Party’s tactics over the last fifteen years or so, is a far more accurate description of how the GOP operates. We’ll get to that in a moment.

But first, we need to understand the nature of the most recent hypocrisy. That is the installation of a third Supreme Court justice by decree of Donald Trump. We all recall how Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell self-righteously claimed that no President up for election within the year should be granted the right to nominate a Supreme Court judge. So McConnell blocked Merrick Garland’s nomination, only to invite Trump’s last-minute nomination of a constitutional originalist to replace the recently deceased Ruth Bader Ginsburg, whose dying wish was that her replacement would not be named until after the election.

The GOP has for decades been whining about so-called “activist judges” on the Supreme Court. Their concerns have focused on the idea that supposedly “liberal” justices are legislating “from the bench” by voting in favor of civil rights, economic parity, corporate responsibility and environmental justice in America rather than dragging the nation back to an interpretation of the United States Constitution before slavery was outlawed, women had the right to vote and America was a population of just 2.5M people. But here’s a fact that matters: The country is 130 times larger today according to the United States Census Bureau. We have fifty states, not just a few. We are a diverse nation thanks to immigration over dozens of decades and a couple centuries. The Constitution as it was originally written was never sufficient to cover all that change. The Founders knew that, which is why the power to commend Amendments to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were implemented. To ignore that wisdom is to kick the Founder right in their constitutional nuts.

Yet that’s what some in the GOP love to do.

Changing America

The idea that America is the “same place” as it was 243 years ago is an example of the controlling, abusive notion that all the Amendments and beneficial changes in law and policy installed since that time are meaningless affectations adopted by a whimsically feckless population of liberals.

Ironically, this country would not even have the Second Amendment if things had stayed fixed in place as Constitutional originalists would have it. On that subject, perhaps they’re correct that amendments can be used for ill-suited purposes. After all, America does not seem capable of managing “A well-regulated militia, being necessary for the security of a free state…” Now we’re being gaslighted by vigilante militias and the GOP, both who claim to represent an originalist interpretation of the Second Amendment that ignores that opening phrase in favor of the latter, “…the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”

That is the gaslighting tactic (a lie by selective judgment) upon which activist interpretations of the Second Amendment now depend. As a result, Americans are literally being gaslighted to death by rampant gun violence in the streets, doctrinally motivated mass shooters armed to the teeth, and self-professed militia members playing soldier while claiming self-defense.

Why do all these people deep-down claim to want to arm themselves? Many claim that their armory is to prevent the government from having too much power. Here’s a sobering fact: more Americans have died from gun violence on American soil than all the soldiers killed in wars on foreign soils.

That means we are being gaslighted by the idea that guns are the path to safety in America. The people who make that claim (through the NRA, and other bodies) form one of the GOP’s pet voting blocs. Some equate even the idea of personal freedom with gun rights.

Yes, our country had to fight for its freedom to gain liberty from the rule of England. Guns are useful tools in war. That’s what they were invented for. That’s why a well-regulated militia truly is necessary for the security of a free state.

But it is principles, not guns, that form the true foundations of freedom.

Liberalism and democracy

It was liberalism and the determination that America should be independent from the rule of a king that established the country in the first place. There is also the issue that the nation’s Founders recognized the danger of establishing or enforcing a state religion, so the Separation Clause was written specifically to avoid the rule of one religion over the country.

These days the Christian evangelical community persists in claiming that the United States of America is a “Christian nation,” founded on “Christian principles” and therefore subject to the directives of theocratic directives from whatever source they might be issued. This is another form of gaslighting, a way to “manipulate (someone) by psychological means into questioning their own sanity.”

Crazy times

These are crazy times we live in. To perpetually insist that something is true that is not true, especially by accusing those most affected by that untruth of being wrong, is psychological abuse. So is being a bully over every issue that confronts you. That is what the President of the United States does every single day of the year.

That is also the central tactic of the GOP these days. Choose any principle; be it racism, feminism, gay rights, environmental protection, even the rights of an individual in comparison to a corporation, and the GOP finds a way to flip those concerns around as a means to gaslight people into submission. Crazy times indeed.

Racism and the GOP

When it comes to racism, the GOP inherited the originally vicious views of Southern Democrats and turned into a voting bloc first exploited in dog-whistle fashion by the grandfatherly visage of President Ronald Reagan. The Southern Strategy persists through the era of President Donald Trump, whose open appeal to racists to gain votes for his re-election includes patronage and Retweets bragging that there are “good people” on both sides of the debate over civil rights in America. He doesn’t bother to explain what kinds of “good people” want to persecute blacks and send American citizens “back to Africa” or whatever racist taunt they choose to exhort, but Trump doesn’t care about such details. He is happy to gaslight principled citizens into questioning their own good judgment by wondering what the President means by describing angry white citizens as “good people.”

Blacks and police brutality

The scourge of police brutality toward black people in America is so longstanding and frequent that movements such as Black Lives Matter emerged to heighten awareness of the problem. But conservatives gaslighted the issue by pumping out alternative slogans such as Blue Lives Matter and All Lives Matter. Rather than address and acknowledge that 200+ years of racial suppression continues in this nation, the opponents of full civil rights for people of color selfishly claim persecution for themselves.This is gaslighting at its worst.

The GOP encourages this attitude of denial with its support of Trump and the specious slogan Make America Great Again. Those words are a dog-whistle act of gaslighting unto themselves. They insinuate that the advances in civil rights, environmental protection and religious equanimity established by the Constitution are illegitimate.

Constitutional originalism is gaslighting

Now the Senate has installed yet another constitutional originalist in the Supreme Court. This is an outright act of the sort of judicial activism against which the GOP has railed for decades. It is gaslighting in its most extreme political form.

That is what the GOP stands for these days: Gaslighting Over Principle.

We’re stuck with it for the time being, but there will come a moment in history when the tables turn again. That may come sooner or later. But gaslighting does win the day on November 3, the country as we’ve known it for 243 years will cease to exist, and we’ll all be subject to the violent instincts and abusive advances of a highly conflicted man and his dysfunctionally self-absorbed family.

That’s the choice we’re making on November the third. We can let ourselves be gaslighted into insanity, or we can stand against the GOP and its lying tactics, sycophantic whorishness and cloying lust for power, black eyes and all.

Is it time to ditch the paramilitary structure of the police?

/ Christopher Cudworth / 2 Comments

A few years back while riding my bike in the country, I saw a green vehicle parked by the side of the road. The writing on the side said, “CONSERVATION POLICE.”

With an interest in the environment and especially our parks and natural areas, I stopped to talk with the officer at his vehicle. That probably doesn’t happen all that often. I noticed that he was a bit guarded in his demeanor. So I opened with a question, “Do people know what you do?”

He seemed to realize that I was either curious or genuinely knew the answer to that question. He smiled and said, “Between you and me, about seven out of ten people want to know what the Conversation Police do.”

Training and commissions

That speaks to a lack of knowledge and a level of paranoia that exists in society toward the police. As a writer I followed up on our talk by contacting the regional office for the State Conservation Police and wound up interviewing two officers, one a woman and the other a man, about the distinctive nature of their jobs.

What I learned is that State Conservation Police go through training to become fully commissioned state police officers. They also go through additional training for the specifics of their job in policing natural areas, parks and other situations in urban, suburban and country settings.

I learned that it’s not an easy job. I also learned that the police with whom I talked at the managerial level were open to the idea of communicating the breadth of the job handled by state conservation police officers. It’s true that many people do not understand the roles and challenges of police officers at the local, regional and state level.

Urban and exurban realities

After learning more about policing the wilder areas of our state and writing an article about it for a suburban lifestyle publication, I met a man that served as a police chief in a highly urban area west of Chicago. It was a tough town according to reputation. He’d spent many years rising through the ranks to become the Chief of Police. In classic police fashion, he was not overly communicative about the nature of his job. But after talking for an hour, I dared ask him a question that I’d long wanted to pose to a police officer in his position.

“What do police actually think about the problems of gun control?”

It was admittedly a question phrased in a liberal context. Yet he answered with sincerity. “We think it’s a mess,” he confided. “There are too many guns out there.”

One could immediately jump to a number of conclusions from that statement. Gun proponents might state that there are too many illegal guns in the urban environment where the officer was stationed. It is easy to ascribe patent gun violence to gang-bangers and such. That carries with it the implications of race. Yet the police officer with whom I spoke was himself African-American. He’d probably seen plenty of violence and law-breaking from people of all races and backgrounds.

Self-protection

But the culture of policing in America depends on guns as safety and protection for the officers. The result has been that as America’s volume and capacity of the weapons on the street has escalated, so has the need for police to arm up and defend themselves. When placed in circumstances where guns may be present or called into action, police are at risk in every situation from a traffic stop to breaking up a block party to watching prisoners in hospital settings.

So it’s really no surprise that people are being gunned down by the police. The sad, sick part of the equation is that the paramilitary structure of the police force with its hierarchy of command places police in a position of protecting their own as would any other form of unit committed to a battlefront. That’s what the United States of America has become. A nation at war with itself, and the police are supposed to act like the United Nations forces in blue helmets trying to keep the peace.

And frankly, it is too much to ask

Conflicting purposes

The police are clearly being asked to do too many types of things. From traffic control to domestic violence, handling mental illness in the public space to tracking down crime and violence, the police are expected to multitask like no one’s business. And frankly, no organization can handle that many options and be efficient and effective.

That’s especially true when the paramilitary structure demands loyalty, rigidity and compliance on the front end. Surely discipline is important to public and private policing. But discipline alone is too easily compromised when social or work pressures enter the picture. That’s when people become more concerned with covering their ass and keeping things quiet if things go wrong, rather than opening the subject to inquiry and consideration.

When political or racial bias further enters the picture, a paramilitary organization too easily becomes a tool of power and manipulation. When the culture of an organization adopts a prejudice of any kind, it conflicts with the assigned purposes of a police organization to serve and protect.

Tribalism and paramilitary mentality

That is how an officer decides to kneel on the neck of another human being long enough to kill them. And why fellow officers stand aside or even support that effort. There is too much tribalism built into the paramilitary model of the police forces of this country. That is not to say that the police are necessarily to blame. Who wants to risk their lives in a country where there are more guns than people? The perversion of the Second Amendment into a free-for-all of gun rights and vigilantism has turned policing into a losing proposition from the start.

The opening phrase of the Second Amendment holds the solution, too long ignored and debased by the likes of the NRA and its patsy politicians, that reminds us that, “A well-regulated militia, being necessary for the security of a free state…” should not be dismissed as an unnecessary burden on the nation. More people have died from gun violence in the United States than all the soldiers killed in American wars on foreign soil. The nation is in the long grip of a gun violence pandemic and mass shootings that only abated for a bit once a disease pandemic came along to force people off the streets and out of the cycle of blasting each other to bits.

The POTUS and domination

The worst part of all this vigilante addiction to guns and force, and the paramilitary approach to society, is that the President of the United States even views our nation’s military as his personal police force. In a fascist response to public protests over the killing of multiple black victims by police, Trump proposed sending tanks into Washington, DC and other cities to “dominate” those he considers out of order. It is no surprise where Trump likely got the idea, as he put in a call to Russia’s President Vladimir Putin before launching the idea of this proposed assault on American society to protect his own racist agenda. Trump’s murderous instincts have included instructing police not to be too soft and to knock heads when doing their jobs. This is not the message America needs to hear.

Cities across America are now considering “defunding the police” which is an unfortunate term at best. The real goal is to restructure the approach and obligations of America’s police forces. The best place to start is changing the system from a hierarchy of paramilitary command to a more collaborative model similar to organizations where decision-making is more effectively crowd-sourced and includes contributions from all levels of an organization to hold everyone accountable and provide support where needed from top to bottom for police everywhere. Of course, the “tough guys” mentality of police work would resist this model as impractical and too soft. But what’s the better alternative? Remaining at war with the public in fear for the lives of the officers on the front lines, or acting with conscience and proving the Blue Lives really do matter?

Source: https://leb.fbi.gov/articles/perspective/perspective-evaluating-the-paramilitary-structure-and-morale

Why Trump Haters are for the birds

/ Christopher Cudworth / Leave a comment

CedarWaxwing solo 3

Cedar Waxwing. Photo by Christopher Cudworth

Recently a long-ago classmate from high school showed up on Facebook. He Friended me and began complimenting bird photos that I posted to my wall. The connection for the first few weeks seemed genuine. He’d never been a nature guy to my knowledge but had lived next to a forest preserve back in the day. Perhaps his upbringing near the wilds had emerged as a deeper interest in his retirement.

He posted photos of his own, images of birds and such around his property. Then one day a cryptic post appeared on his wall. It was rife with jingoistic and politically flirtatious language that was all too familiar to me.

 

Bald Eagle Flight

Bald Eagle. Photograph by Christopher Cudworth.

He claimed at the moment to have a neutral stance on the state of the nation these days. Perhaps he was an Independent of sorts? Even a Libertarian? Over the years plenty of that cropped up in social media too.  And then there are the supposedly objective among us, who view all politics and government as the scourge of life. “They’re all crooks,” goes the line.

Meanwhile, the comments kept coming about nature and birds and such. He knew that I was a birder way back in middle school and high school, earning the not-so-complimentary sobriquet “Birdman” from friends who found the hobby ridiculous. So I continued our friendly repartee and helped him identify some species that showed up at his feeder from photos that he’d posted.

Trump shrug

Then came the Purple Post. My new-old-friend had decided to “lift the veil” on his political affiliations and made a statement to that effect with a closing statement: Vote Trump 2020.

I wasn’t shocked. But I was disturbed. My concerns were specific and real. If he claimed to love wildlife and the environment so much, how could he possibly support what Donald Trump has been doing to our country’s laws and regulations that protect clean air and water, conserve both common and endangered species, and honor key acts governing even archeological and paleontological resources?

The list of attacks on these protections is long. I call them the Trump Killers, because he’s presided over legal and political attempts to kill every one of these laws. Here are the major policies that Trump and the Republicans have set out to kill, or have killed already.

Trump KIllers

The point in posting this list is to help people connect the dots between the wildlife my supposed Facebook Friend loves to enjoy and the laws that provide protection and habitat for these living things to survive. That’s a simple enough concept, right?

Yet in Trumpian fashion, his love for Trump is so ardent yet so shallow that he likely has no idea that any of these actions are being taken. He lives near one of the few habitats where Kirtland’s warblers breed in Michigan. Birders have worked to help protect that and many other species. The Migratory Bird Treaty Act alone is designed to protect hundreds of species that travel to our country during spring and fall. Does he even know why such laws are important? Doubtful.

Too many Trump supporters appear to come from a background where science is considered a worthless opinion. Some of that stems from religious prejudice wrought from an evangelical mindset based on biblical literalism and its intellectually retarded offspring, creationism. Some 35% of Americans tend to abide in that worldview, and the consequence is that men like Trump and his greedy Republican allies grant carte balance to industrial polluters and environmental abusers because, it is claimed, the human race has dominion over the earth.

Bluebird 4

Eastern Bluebird. Photograph by Christopher Cudworth.

That is the absolute brand of cognitive dissonance at work in Trumpism. It aggressively fails to recognize the connection between these environmental and resource acts and our nation’s contribution to their survival. In other words, Trump supporters completely refuse to connect the dots between the things that actually make America great and the things Donald Trump does to destroy them. And if you question their passive-aggressive practice of posting provocative Pro-Trump memes and then whining when you challenge them, the first instinct is to gaslight all those with the gall to present evidence of the President’s own lies and contradictions of his own statements. They want to make you feel like it all never happened. “You must be crazy,” is the implication.

And sure enough, when I commented on my friend’s Purple Post, he immediately made a baiting statement that he “knew I’d be first to comment.” In other words, he was taunting me and others. Just as predictably, his Trump-loving friends chimed in with memes supporting Trump and ridiculing those who don’t “get it.”

And finally, one of those Trump Lovers branded me a Trump Hater.

Trump Maga Hat

That’s the “go-to” dismissal for all Trump supporters. It implies an irrational hatred for the President. It directly aligns with the so-called Trump Derangement Syndrome that Trump supporters use to paint those who oppose them as radical leftists who oppose true American virtues. But it’s interesting how many terms it actually takes to insult those who oppose Trump.

The hypocrisy in all this is quite evident. If a Trump supporter loves birds and wildlife but does not understand that the President is doing everything he can to gut laws protecting those resources, that’s plain stupid and irresponsible. And if a Trump supporter claims to value civil rights yet wants to deny those rights to gay people or people of color, that’s an insult to the entire notion of what civil rights mean. And if Trump supporters claim to love life yet refuse to limit access to weapons capable of slaughtering dozens of innocent people in minutes, then they are lying to us all.

That is the dynamic that exists across the entire spectrum of  Trump policies. Claims to virtue counteracted by repression of those whom the Trump world hates. And Trump himself is the most consistent lawbreaker. From breaching emolument laws on conflicts of interest to pressing foreign countries to interfere in our nation’s elections, Trump has flaunted our Constitution and its foundational premises. He refuses to respect the rule of law and at the same time uses it to punish those causes he considers his enemies. He is the most hateful acting of all Presidents, fueled especially by hatred for Barack Obama, whose legacy he has steadfastly and vengefully tried to erase.

bobolink

Bobolink. Photo by Christopher Cudworth

But it’s the birds that illustrate this whole hatred thing the best. Many of those laws listed above were actually implemented with collaborative approval by Republican Presidents and members of Congress and the Senate. But Trump hates them all. The real Trump Hater, in an active sense, is Trump himself.

So I’ll not abide the insults and the targeted claims that I’m somehow “deranged” for opposing the nasty things this President is imposing on our country. They are hateful in every respect, a testimony to the selfish and shallow fraud of a human being whose grasp of even the most simple concepts is at best questionable. Yet he calls himself a genius and brags about his intellect, all while gutting the purposes of our public education system, our civil rights and our heritage as a haven for the desperate and the poor. Donald Trump is the most hateful man on earth right now, and his supporters love him for it. Yet they call us Trump Haters.

Orange Donald

LAS VEGAS, NV – APRIL 28: Chairman and President of the Trump Organization Donald Trump yells ‘you’re fired’ after speaking to several GOP women’s groups at the Treasure Island Hotel & Casino April 28, 2011 in Las Vegas, Nevada. Trump has been testing the waters with stops across the nation in recent weeks and has created media waves by questioning whether President Barack Obama was born in the United States. (Photo by David Becker/Getty Images)

That’s a sickness of mind and an ugly testament to the twisted mentality required to vote and approve the actions of a President who is a bully, a despot, and a fascist in every aspect of his demeanor and conduct. In other words, he is a man genuinely worth of hate, but his supporters instead grant him a brand of worshipful love that resembles a cult.

Cardinal and Evil

So we supposed Trump Haters are for the birds, and many other good things in this world, including civil rights for all, a fair and equitable economy that does something other than shovel money to the wealthy, a foreign policy that respects rather than manipulates and brutalizes our allies, a nation free from religious oppression as guaranteed by the Bill of Rights, and a country where guns are not the final word on respect for law.

But those who love Trump apparently hate all these things, and hate the world as well, because they’re willingly glad to destroy it in order to keep their man in power.

The truth about Christianity and gun laws

/ Christopher Cudworth / Leave a comment

FlagWaiver

One of the most vexing aspects of America’s gun laws is the apparent belief by many Christians that guns are compatible with their religion. That’s an interesting contention because guns were originally invented for one purpose: that is killing. Yet one of the most famous of the 10 Commandments is “Thou shalt not kill.” 

Jesus was keen on the idea that our thoughts and even casual intentions can lead to evil actions. In Matthew 5: 27-29 Jesus addresses these issues:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Do not commit adultery.’ 28 But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman to lust after her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. 29 If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.”

So Christians face a real dilemma when it comes to owning or carrying a gun. Even the “self-defense” argument often made on behalf of gun ownership denies the principle of placing one’s trust in God for protection. Either you trust God to protect you, or you don’t. God only knows your true heart. 

Who lays claim to the flag in America?

Given the difficulty of parsing out the religious conundrums wrought by owning guns, a great many Americans take refuge behind laws supporting gun ownership. The claim to be a “law-abiding gun owner” appears rock solid when defending the right to own and bear arms. Yet even laws are no guarantee of a reasonable conscience.

The example of Jesus

We should recall that when Jesus embarked on his ministry by preaching in the country on the heels of John the Baptist, a real revolutionary by nature, the goal was to bring the grace of God to all. Yet Jesus and his disciples soon made a practice of breaking the laws set out by religious authorities bent on imposing tradition on the populace. Jesus spoke out against this brand of authority and the hypocrisy it inevitably produced. He even called the lawmakers defending their tradition a “brood of vipers” for their habit of lashing out at anyone who opposed their version of authority.

Jesus challenged even the nature of the laws laid out by religious authority. When a band of accusers threatened to stone a woman to death in the streets for the crime of adultery, Jesus turned to them and said, “Let he that is without sin cast the first stone.”

Questions of judgment

That was an indictment of those issuing personal judgment of others. But it also resonated all the way up the legalistic food chain to the religious authorities who implemented those laws in the first place. Jesus was challenging a system that had been corrupted by selfish aims and misguidedly self-righteous intentions. It was the literal and legalistic interpretation of scripture that had led to traditions concerned more with obeying the laws of religion than keeping with the true heart of God. Jesus considered this an abomination, especially as it led to the commodification of the temple itself, which had become a hall of commerce, not a house of prayer.

So Jesus fought the religious authorities and turned over the tables of commerce at the temple. Yet we all know how the story turned out. Rather than consider what Jesus had to say about the corrupt nature of tradition, the religious authorities reacted with anger toward him for questioning their practices. Ultimately they conspired to have him killed  and even got someone else to do the dirty work of crucifixion. Thus they protected their reputation as the “good guys” who were defending the wholesome halls and hallmarks of tradition.

Christianity today

This is much the same position in which legalistic Christians find themselves today. They have sided with the gun lobby and conservative politicians who calculatedly ignore the first part of the Second Amendment, “A well-regulated militia, being necessary for the protection of a free state…”  while emphasizing the more selfish part of the law in the “right to bear arms.”

This is better known as “cherry-picking,” the practice of taking the parts of scripture or the Constitution that support your personal aims while discarding or ignoring those that do not apply or actually contradict your selfish aims. This is the grand habit of legalistic Christians who conveniently ignore anachronistic laws in the Bible even while claiming its inerrancy and infallibility. This is the principle lie of Christian apologetics in this day and age. It also happens to be the principle lie of constitutional originalists as well. Thus it is no coincidence that we often find political and religious conservatives in allegiance to their parallel beliefs even to the point of claiming these worldviews trump all other forms of truth.

The gun lobby

FIREARM

The gun lobby in America certainly welcomes Christian support of its commercial and political aims. So does the NRA, which frequently presents itself as the chief authority on gun laws and rights in America.

But that leaves the rest of us to wonder about people who deny the truth of both their religion and the United States Constitution that clearly states guns must be well-regulated as part of a well-regulated militia.

The purposeful denial of this patently important introduction is executed in order to make the selfish claim that gun rights are by nature sacrosanct to American tradition and protect the very freedoms upon which America depends as a republic.

Yet how do we tell that to thousands of people that are mowed down by guns every year? Many of the guns used to conduct shootings are designed not just for killing, but for mass killing, sometimes taking multiple lives within 30 seconds of opening fire. And how do we tell that to the families to whom “thoughts and prayers” are so frequently directed…yet never really console them because their loved ones are the bloodied and dead victims of an extremely selfish interpretation of the Second Amendment that allows such events to happen.

Christians of conscience who actually know and understand the history of their religion should know better. But as we learned from the religious authorities who conspired against Jesus because he broke their laws and resisted their traditions, those in charge may claim to be on the right side of the law, but they are also frequently on the wrong side of history, and of God.

 

America has been sold a “bill of goods” on gun rights

/ Christopher Cudworth / Leave a comment

bill of goods

n.pl.bills of goods

1. A consignment of items for sale.
2. Informal A plan, promise, or offer, especially one that is dishonest or misleading
It is stunning to hear politicians in the wake of yet another mass shooting say that it is “too soon” after the tragedy to talk about the problem of guns in America.
But it is just as disturbing in the wakes of repeated mass shootings, including 26 dead and more wounded in a Texas church, for God’s Sake, to hear the likes of actor James Woods throwing around shallow opinions about what constitutes responsible gun control.
His defense of the NRA in the wake of these mass shootings was breathtakingly shortsighted.  Woods Tweeted that none of the mass shootings of the last few decades were conducted by a member of the NRA.
NRA shooters.jpg
What James Woods cites as “actual facts” about NRA members never having been involved in mass shootings may or may not be true. But that is hardly the central point in the current debate about gun proliferation in America.  The NRA as spent decades promoting the idea that gun rights should not be restricted in any way. person. Even President Donald Trump, a noted kiss-ass for the NRA and its constituents, favored the recent removal of a law that blocked access to gun ownership for people with mental health issues.
Yet after the Texas shooting, Trump rushed to claim that the shooter was mentally ill.
So which is it? Are we concerned about people with mental illness having access to guns with which they can murder two dozen people in minutes? Or is the NRA correct in asserting that no amount of gun control can prevent such wanton slaughter?
To hear James Woods tweet, the bloody massacre of 26 people in a Texas church is of not the concern to the NRA since no NRA member committed the crimes. At what point do we point out the massive case of cognitive dissonance at work on gun rights in America?
Public emergencies
Consider the fact that mass shootings constitute a public emergency. Cities and towns across America dread the day that violence comes to visit them. Police and government officials set up entire protocols to manage gun violence of any kind. The structure of these protocols is always designed to define who is in charge, and who has authority and responsibility to act in the fact of violence, terror attacks, and other public threats.
The reason why public agencies work so hard to define who is in charge is to avoid confusion during times of public emergency. The parallel goal is to prevent mistakes in the face of terror or violence and manage the risks of even greater harm taking place.
Friendly fire in America?
Even America’s military struggles at times to avoid gunfire from taking out their own personnel. The most famous case of so-called “friendly fire” was that of former NFL player Pat Tillman who died in action not from the bullets of the enemy, but from his own military.
Yet the NRA has been a big proponent of the idea that Concealed Carry laws can prevent crime. The idea behind Concealed Carry is that the presence of “good guys with guns” will somehow act as a deterrent to violent gun crimes. Some gun proponents think the law does not go far enough in that regard. Those gun advocates insist that only Open Carry does the real job of deterring violence. Which means, if you open the pages of that action-based manual, a completely militarized society in which everyone is allowed to visibly carry weapons anywhere they want to go.
False heroes
Gun proponents are jumping on the fact that a couple Texas yahoos chased down the killer of all those people the killer shot up in the church. One of them opened fire before the chase and may have wounded the killer before he got into his car and embarked on a 90-mile-an-hour escape attempt that ended in a crash and his death. Whether he died from gunshot or the crash is not fully apparent. But gun proponents seem eager to claim the heroics of the two gun-toting vigilantes.
Somehow, twenty-six people still died in that church. The killer was walking down the aisles shooting crying babies. Some people struck by gunfire played dead and avoided further attack by the assassin. Who was not, according to James Woods, an NRA member. And that makes it all okay?
The Bill of Goods
The cognitive dissonance at work in all this the Bill of Goods we’ve been sold by the NRA. There is absolutely no substance to the argument that because the NRA cannot be finger-pointed for these and other killings, the organization, its members and the politicians who vote against gun controls bear no responsibility for the wanton slaughter of Americans that goes on every day.
So let’s walk this through in a clear and simple fashion. What the NRA has proposed and still supports is the idea that Concealed Carry laws are a specific deterrent to gun crimes, and that everyday citizens bear the responsibility (therefore) of engaging with any form of aggression they may encounter. It remains the sole right of that individual citizen to determine what the nature and level of that threat may be. There is no call to a superior authority required under this system. It is, in a word, a free-for-all on the streets of America.
Protocols
This contrasts starkly with the protocols of emergency and terror management standards all across America. Police, fire and other paramilitary organizations involved in the protection of public safety all have well-established systems of authority and even processes firmly structured to share andr delegate authority in situations of true emergency or terror.
That means there’s a big hairy gap between what the NRA is advocating as the correct interpretation of the Second Amendment as it relates to the life and liberties of everyday Americans. The NRA conveniently ignores the first and qualifying phrase of the Second Amendment, “A well-regulated militia, being necessary for the security of a free state…” in favor of the more selfish and individualized interpretation of the second phrase, “The right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”
Lopsided interpretations
Constitutional originalists should be aghast at the destruction of that sentence as a wholly vested expression of law as it pertains to gun ownership. But the Supreme Court in its conservatively lopsided obsession with ‘personal rights’ has been an enabler to all people like James Woods who refuse to be held accountable for anything but their own selfish interests.
As a result, we do not have a “well-regulated militia” at all. That intention of the Founding Fathers has been tossed on a junk heap of Twitter-infused jingoism equating unrestricted gun rights with real freedom in America.
This lie has been exposed over and over, but it has been repeated so often the layers of gun fetishism cannot even be peeled back. This fetishism for guns is rampant as John Lennon pointed out more than forty years ago in his song Happiness is a Warm Gun:
When I hold you in my arms (oh, yeah)
And I feel my finger on your trigger (oh, yeah)
I know nobody can do me no harm (oh, yeah)
Because, (happiness) is a warm gun, mama (bang bang shoot shoot)
Happiness is a warm gun, yes it is (bang bang shoot shoot)
The security about which Lennon sang is, in reality, the massive insecurity of gun fetishists whose fearful worldview insists that only guns provide real protection from harm in this world. They must lie to themselves and even call the government itself a threat in order to sustain the pathetic lack of trust they have in fellow citizens.
Shallow concerns
In the end, this is what it’s all about. James Woods laid bare the shallow concerns of the selfish, insecure fears of an American populace that cannot manage to function without a finger on the trigger and while packing heat. But despite what James Woods says about NRA members, their fingers share the pressure of every trigger pulled in violent acts against fellow Americans. There is blood on their hands despite the fact that no supposed NRA member is doing the physical shooting. The NRA and its members have created, sponsored and supported the lack of accountability in the legal destruction of the first phrase of the Second Amendment in favor of a second, far more selfish interpretation that says bearing arms “shall not be infringed.”
Tell that to the thousands of first responders, the police and other emergency workers who do abide by the authority of a “well-regulated militia” in America. That’s how our public servants function, by the authority vested in the structure of a well-regulated militia.
But the NRA boldly ignores that fact, favoring instead the ugly vigilantism and unrestricted access to guns for those well-beyond the selfish political party we call the NRA. The organization and its supporters wash their hands of crimes every day in order to protect their supposed status as “pure” gun owners incapable of such violence. The fact of increasing violence by the police toward the public is is a direct result of the NRA’s wanton disregard for the safety of all citizens in America. The police are simply in the line of fire of the cognitive dissonance wrought by wanton disregard of the “well-regulated militia” phrase in the Second Amendment.
Moral perspective
For moral perspective, we can turn to the tenets of the Christian faith to debunk the seflish, deceitful lies of the NRA and its terror-driven impact on human life.
Jesus confronted all those that he perceived to ignoring the works of evil or worse, misleading the easily deceived into dreams of power and authority where it was not warranted. Jesus also condemned those who twisted the law to serve their own purposes, and who created stumbling blocks from legalistic ideology that prevented people from seeing or encountering the truth. All these are characteristic of the sins of the NRA.
Way back when, Jesus branded people like these “hypocrites” for lording themselves over others. He called them a “brood of vipers” for their calculating ways and chastised them for the offenses they imposed on the culture at large. Jesus would not, in other words, like the NRA or James Woods one bit.
James Woods and the NRA are selling America a hollow “bill of goods” on gun rights versus true freedoms in America. They have lied by method of exclusion, and they are avoided responsibility for gun violence by method of inclusion.
Hypocrites. Brood of Vipers. All of them.

Simple proof that America is at war with itself

/ Christopher Cudworth / Leave a comment

The Chicago Tribune news coverage following the Las Vegas mass shooting included a story quoting off-duty police officers trapped in the mayhem where 59 people were murdered and hundreds more were injured when the calculating gunman perched himself in a tall hotel to take aim with scopes and guns reconfigured as automatic weapons.

Some of the off-duty police officers had also served in the military. Those that had seen combat were still shocked by the scene of women shot through the head and people bleeding out as they lay on the ground wounded or dying from the effects of a man with plenty of ammo and deadly aim.

Combat statement.jpg“I have been in combat, but I have never seen this type of mass casualty,” said police Sgt. Michael Gonzalez.

The Las Vegas shooting may have been massive in scope, but it was just a bump in the pulse of bloody shootings taking place every day in America. There is no more denying the fact. The nation itself has become a combat zone. The United States of America is literally at war with itself.

The statistics of all the deaths caused by gun violence back this up. More Americans have now died from gun violence on home soil than all the soldiers ever killed in combat in foreign wars.

This is the direct product of the murderously blind activism of the conservative Supreme Court that wields its judgements like a weapon of the vigilante ideology favored by both the NRA and the politicians it has bought and sold. The inexcusable complaint that gun control measures are an infringement of the “right to bear arms” is disrespectful to the Constitution as a whole. When people own the right to steal the life of another human being in the blink of a trigger pull, there are no equal rights to that. There is no freedom in America.

Concealed Carry poison

The right to kill has bled into Concealed Carry laws that have poisoned the nature of freedom across the country. Think about it. The person standing next to you could well be packing the cold-hearted tool of your own demise. Say something wrong to them, or conduct some unintended slight that they judge to be a threat to their person, and they can claim the right to shoot you. Right in the head if they feel like it.

It is inconceivable that the Founding Fathers ever intended this to be the presiding scenario in America. In essence, we’ve been drawn back into an era when dueling was used to settle difference, or when gunman lined up in the street (supposedly) to draw weapons and fire. That’s what the NRA has promoted as the safest brand of citizenship in America.

Ignorant claims of so-called “responsible gun owners”

Don’t you see the ignorance of these claims? When laid bare, they have no constitutional foundation at all. They do have money behind them, and people selfish and angry enough at their plight in life to abide such foolishness. Meanwhile supposed “responsible” gun owners cower behind the controversy hoping the band of idiots at the forefront of the “more guns” debate will cover their fearful asses.

Because that’s what rampant gun ownership is all about. Fear. The United States is rife with chickenshits who feel like they can’t walk down the street or mingle with other human beings without carrying a gun on their person. This is the opposite of courageous. It is the parallel of insanity.

The bleeding and dying

That police officer who carried bleeding, dying people off the concert grounds knows now that America is a literal war zone. He saw it with his own eyes. He compared it to what he saw in actual combat, in real wars, and this was far worse.

The Second Amendment needs to be clarified. Re-balanced. We need a hard, strong definition of what a “well-regulated militia” looks like, and how it functions. We should no longer leave that to the addle-brained conservatives on the Supreme Court to decide. They have originalism blindness. They couldn’t muster their way out of a cardboard box if the writing on the inside mentioned guns in any way.

But our gutless Congress and Senate when run by Republicans is even worse. Their long term claim that government is the enemy of the people is the knife to the gut of common sense. If that’s the case, they should commit hari-kiri and get out of office. If you don’t believe in the merit of government, you have no right or ability to serve.

Cognitive dissonance

We live in a combat zone of cognitive dissonance. And innocent people are dying every day as a result. Screw the gun lobby. We don’t need any more evidence to re-write the Second Amendment, or repeal it altogether. The frightening reality is that we’ve seen  Presidents succumb to gun violence several times already. Even that conservative pet Ronald Reagan got blasted by a freeloading gunman back in the day. Gerald Ford was a target too. We lost JFK. His brother Bobby. We lost Martin Luther King, Jr. And we even lost John Lennon.

Imagine that. If Happiness is a Warm Gun, America has burn marks on its holster side.

What will it take for an admission of the combat zone that America has become? Does another President need to become a martyr for the nation to wise up? That might wake up the close-minded. The backwoods and front-office gun nuts, selfish and obsessed with weapons as a sub-culture.

It’s a sickness. An addiction. But like that soldier who comes home to find life at home too quiet, it seems the gun nuts of America fear the quietude they might face if they can’t wave a weapon in yours. That’s the worst angst they can imagine.

 

At least 50 dead, 400 wounded and what terrorist organization is to blame?

/ Christopher Cudworth / Leave a comment

Spilled bloodThis Las Vegas shooting was massive. Death and destruction. A lone shooter armed like a soldier and able to shoot dozens of people in an extremely short amount of time. He killed 47 more innocent lives than the Boston Marathon bombing. He traumatized literally thousands present at the concert as well as millions of people reading about the massacre right now.

At this stage in America’s history, the motivations for shootings no longer matter. They are all part of a long line of public murders that terrorize the nation for a moment and then sink into the lexicon of ‘business as usual in America.’

There will be police reports filed, but to what avail? There were even off-duty police officers killed. It would not have mattered if every citizen at the concert was armed. They were outgunned from the start and mayhem would have ensued if people started opening fire if some sort of martial law shootout had taken place.

There is only one terrorist organization to blame for this state of existence in America. That is the NRA. The constant effort to loosen gun laws and proliferate access to powerful weapons across America is an act of terrorism from within the system. The NRA has twisted and inflated the meaning of the Second Amendment to suit the profit motives of the guns and ammo industry. Millions of people have bought this perverse logic and turned our nation into a corrupt from of government in which the selfish rights and acts of a few dictate the public safety of all.

While conservatives wring their hands over Muslim influence in America and worry about the potential for Sharia law, they simultaneously ignore the massive carnage being perpetrated in America by gun owners, legal and otherwise. On average more than three times the number of people who died during the 9/11 attacks are killed by guns in the United States each year. That’s 152,000 Americans since 2001 that have died at the hands of the NRA. The complicit politicians across this nation who refuse to take responsibility for the in-house are also to blame. The terror manufactured and carried out is almost treated with a sense of pride by the false patriots who cower behind the supposed power of the Second Amendment.

The reason nothing is done about rampant gun violence is simple. The real cowards in America are those who refuse to admit they are scared for their own lives based on racial fears, gross insecurity toward their neighbors and their own government. They also fear looking stupid in the eyes of the bullies who run the NRA and its insidious tentacles. Thus the aggressive gun components in America are like captives exhibiting the Stockholm Syndrome. Cultlike. Sick and confused.

It’s time to call it what it is: the NRA is a domestic terror organization. And all those who support it, abide it or live without conscience by the lax laws it has created are accomplices in a plot against the sovereignty of this nation.

Is it time to take guns away from the police?

/ Christopher Cudworth / Leave a comment

FIREARMYet another shooting of an unarmed man by police has taken place in Florida. The incident heightens the fact that police are using their weapons too freely.

Which means that perhaps the police need to have their guns taken away. 

The police are stuck between a rock and a hard place. If they don’t have weapons, they’ll get shot by people who do. And if they use their weapons too quickly, they get blamed for using too much force. So let’s do the rational thing and protect the lives of police officers. Let’s take their weapons away.

This might seem counterintuitive to some. The police need guns to protect themselves, right? In fact, taking away guns from police holds real potential to illustrate just how far the nation has gone in granting gun liberties to so many people. The number of weapons with power and potential to kill has escalated, if not by number, then by meaning. It’s all escalated thanks to the unwillingness of gun advocates to limit the purchase of military-grade guns. And our police are paying the price of that judgement.

Aggression, fear and response

In Great Britain, most police do not carry guns. In situations where gun violence is threatened, police are forced to use patience and numbers to disarm gun offenders.

Somehow, it largely works. But in America, we’re so far out of balance the police are opening fire in some cases before they even ask questions of suspects. The police fear for their lives, so they shoot first and in many cases don’t even bother to ask questions later. Their subjects are in the hospital, or dead. That feels like a solution to gun crime, but’s only a solution to the threat of a gun. It belies the meme that “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” The mere threat of a gun on a person is enough to get police to shoot first. It’s the idea of guns that is causing police aggression and fear.

Concealed Carry lies

In America, the reason why Concealed Carry laws were installed was to give regular citizens the supposed power to defend themselves against whatever they perceive as threats. There are as many guns as citizens in America right now. So the problem of gun crime should be solved by now, correct?

Instead, the unpunished gun violence being perpetrated by police in America has our public servants increasingly viewed as a threat to public safety.

So let’s take the guns away from the police. Retrain them to rely less on guns. Makes sense.

And if violence and gun deaths escalate, we’ll know for sure the falsity in claims that Concealed Carry laws are a suitable solution to “maintain the peace.”

Changing expectations

We need police officers to carry out the law. But we need to change the expectations placed upon them by society. Heading out to enforce that law when they essentially expect to engage in gun battles in order to subdue suspects is causing many officers to operate under conditions so stressful they have resorted to a distorted view of reality in dealing with potential lawbreakers. That’s how racial profiling evolves as a tool for identifying suspects. It is a convenient and yet ignorant handle by which police feel they can gain control over their thankless jobs.

But the truth is sad. Profiling gives police a target more than it gives them insight.  

It’s really no different than the soldiers sent to Iraq with Rules of Engagement that prevented them from firing at will. Well, the enemies or terrorists or fearful everyday citizens they encountered did not have that playbook at hand, or abide by it. So our soldiers were not fighting a battle they could win.

And that’s because the war in Iraq should have been a police action reliant upon increased and aggressive diplomatic engagement. Not war.

So the parallels are evident in the manner in which we throw our police into situations where their lives are threatened by the proliferation of guns and the militarization of our society. They operate in what are essentially terror zones. These might be urban neighborhoods, but they also might be country farms where people obsessed with paramilitary psychology and hatred for the government consider police a tool of evil.

The NRA doesn’t care about police

The NRA has been no help in protecting the lives of our policeman. So let’s take the police completely out of the gun formula and bring them back into the realm of sanity. Let’s take away their guns.

What will this accomplish? It will illustrate the dangerous social imbalance created by our prevailing gun laws. Concealed Carry and Open Carry are nothing more than veiled attempts to install vigilante justice. They give license even to supposedly law-abiding citizens to take the law into their own hands. People get killed by those who determine for themselves what they consider a threat, and what the law means.

An unarmed police force

An unarmed police force will likely be converted into a considerably more cautious and respectful police mission. And if confronted by aggression with guns in the public, these situations must be 1) avoided until numbers can arrive 2) documented and 3) reported in full with the media. We’ll have real statistics on who is doing the shooting.

And what happens when mass shooters attack everyday citizens? That’s indeed a job for a militarized unit trained to confront terrorists and other heavily armed assassins. The regular police are generally unable and ineffective when confronted by mass shooters armed with machine guns and other military-grade weapons. Yet it’s become so common it is not hard to identify the need and level of force necessary to take out a crazed or determined shooter. Get the police out of harm’s way in those situations. Call in the weapons pros if need be. If citizens are going to militarize themselves and attack society, then we need to confront the enemy within our borders.

But we should also seek to disarm or prevent those unhinged from normal society by putting strict controls and measurements equal to attaining a driver’s license in society. All guns should be trackable, and any every gun, just like every car in America, is the responsibilty of the owner with legal consequences if weapons are stolen or used for insane purposes.

Accountability

Advocates of the current advocates of gun rights as they stand must be held accountable for each and every instance of gun threats against the police. If these outnumber a reasonable social balance in America, then the laws that govern the nation pertaining to gun rights must be changed. That is the only way to gain some sensible perspective on these issues.

And if police forces object to these standards in having their guns taken away, then it also illustrates the fact that our current gun standards are inadequate to provide civil protections.

Taking guns away from police will no doubt illustrate the insane idea that arming every citizen to the teeth is a protection for American society. We’ve known for too long that when both the police and the public are equally armed, the police will always be outnumbered.

Sold a bill of goods

 

Because honestly, according to the manner in which our Constitutional gun laws have been interpreted, it is the duty of regular citizens bearing weapons in Concealed Carry to mete out justice and protect themselves from other people with guns. That’s the narrative we’ve been sold by the NRA, and it has profited their constituents, the gun manufacturers and ammo dealers. So let’s force their hand. Take guns away from the police, and document how that goes. If the NRA is correct, peace will reign in America because millions of law-abiding gun owners will police the streets in place of our unarmed police.

So let’s force their hands and show them we care about the police. Take guns away from the police, and document how that goes. If the NRA is correct, peace will reign in America because millions of law-abiding gun owners will police the streets in place of our unarmed police.

Then let’s see how brave, intelligent and Constitutional our gun laws really are. Chaos has a way of pointing out the truth. Perhaps that’s what it will take to blast the truth into gun zealots and their militarized police buddies.

 

 

The patent neurosis of Concealed Carry

/ Christopher Cudworth / 1 Comment

Neurosis: a relatively mild mental illness that is not caused by organic disease, involving symptoms of stress (depression, anxiety, obsessive behavior, hypochondria) but not a radical loss of touch with reality.

Guns_1000Last night while listening to the Sam Roberts show on Sirius radio, the discussion centered around the latest killing of a black man by a cop in Minnesota. Roberts struggled to show respect to the nation’s police whose culture centers on protecting their own whenever a difficult choice or a public relations crisis hits an officer that has used excessive force. While discussing the issue with a New York state trooper who called into the show, Roberts stated, and I paraphrase: “You need to get the good cops to start saying they do not support this kind of behavior.”

To which the cop replied, “There were 50,000 black people stopped today, and this was the only incident of its type. The rest were all handled well and people went home.”

It should not be too difficult to see the imbalance in that arithmetic. Why are 50,000 black people per day being stopped by police? What type of profiling is going on that leads to that kind of suspicion? Doesn’t that level of interaction generate reasonable suspicion about the motivation of police, even resentment? And aren’t the odds actually in favor of the fact that something bad is eventually going to happen when that many people are essentially being haggled every day?

Acceleration

From a broken tail light to a murder. That’s how one of these police interventions just turned out. And the reason? That’s simple too. Cops are afraid for their lives. The New York state trooper admitted as much. “We don’t know what’s going to happen on any traffic stop,” he intoned.

The discussion then turned to the fact that when a driver has a gun in their vehicle, it is their responsibility to inform the office right away. “At that point,” the trooper explained (again in paraphrase)  “it is the responsibility of the Concealed Carry citizen to inform the officer and turn over their weapon to the police.”

Now we can actually see how dangerous the world has become because of laws like Concealed Carry. Combined with weapons carried illegally, Concealed Carry laws have upped the ante on the presence of guns all across America.

Self defense?

Concealed Carry advocates love to cite the right to carry weapons in case of the need for self-defense. But what about our police? To those chartered with enforcing the law, Concealed Carry adds an entirely new level to the fear of being gun-whipped at a normal traffic stop. So let’s stop for a moment and think about the term Concealed Carry. That literally means you can legally hide a weapon on your person. How are police supposed to know if a gun is legally or illegally carried? If everyone has the right to hide a weapon on their person, there is no safe place in America.

Concealed Carry has created an additional layer of legal burden and a threat to civil order on all of society. Which makes it quite ironic the law is so favored by conservatives, who purportedly hate regulations of any kind. Yet the unintended consequence of Concealed Carry is that law enforcement is now trapped in a situation where the power balance is exceedingly in the public’s favor. Concealed Carry has forced an entirely new layer of inquiry to every police stop in the country. But the real fact is even more disturbing: The police are literally outgunned, outmanned and out of control all across the nation.

Militarization

In response, the police have had to militarize to counteract the number of weapons now owned by Americans legally and illegally. They have also been forced to change their culture to one of patent aggression. That’s just to save their own lives. That’s why cops throw people to the ground, cuff them automatically or use tasers to subdue those who question their arrest. If you stood at risk of being shot by any citizen that you stop, wouldn’t you do the same thing?

The reason why Concealed Carry was passed, and why there are now more guns than citizens in the United States, is that the patent neurosis of gun ownership has been promoted in America by a selfish and well-funded minority that purposely confuses fear with freedom. The reason for that approach is that fostering fear is a highly profitable venture for gun manufacturers and politicians who get elected by backing the self-interest of those who chose to live in fear. The net result is that attitude has been forced on American society, which has succumbed to the collective neurosis with Concealed Carry laws. Just like slavery which was once a legal and supported aspect of American society, Concealed Carry is sold as beneficial to society and something the nation cannot do without. As a result, we are all slaves to the gun industry and its henchman.

But let’s step back and take a rational look at this dynamic that the idea that people have to carry weapons in order to enjoy the basic rights of American citizenship. That is plainly neurotic, and possibly manic. We thus live in a bipolar society created by those who are depressed by the idea of not having enough weapons. Yet there are more guns than people in the United States. Neurotic.

Mental illness

One of the excuses given for mass shootings by gun lobbyists is that most are committed by people that are mentally ill. Yet mental illness can be manifested in many ways. The structure of a fear-based society dependent on guns is a reflection of a collective neurosis. We know this because other societies in the world are able to function without such proliferation of guns. And in societies such as Australia where weapons such as assault rifles have been banned, the number of mass shootings has been greatly reduced. That leaves America standing alone in a global society, violent as a crazed and jealous cousin at a family reunion.

We also know there is mental illness afoot when gun advocates refuse any responsibility for the crimes perpetrated by other gun owners. Where is the remorse for those gunned down by police when those attacked are clearly innocent? Instead, gun proponents hide behind the shock of the event and say, “It’s too soon to talk about gun control in the wake of this tragedy. We need time to process and let cooler heads prevail.”

But now the shootings simply overlap from week to week and even day to day. Last night in Dallas, Texas, snipers opened fire on Dallas police and killed five officers in cold blood. And guns are not the problem?

Neurosis as a way of life

Organizations such as the NRA have shown no sincere commitment to this problem. Instead, they advocate even more guns as the solution to the problem.  NRA supporters speak in terms of fear to defend their position that Concealed Carry is a necessary layer of protection in America. And hidden behind those fears, but not very well, is the patent racism shown by both the police in their arrest methods and by society in blaming blacks for the majority of crime.

Yet the predominant number of mass shootings in America have been committed by neurotic and perhaps psychotic white males. The gun lobby absolutely refuses to connect its collective neurosis with the pattern of psychosis driving shooters to act on their imagined power by using weapons in the streets, at shopping malls, even public schools and theaters. But we’ll say it here: the collective neurosis of rife gun ownership simply becomes too powerful for some people to resist. They can kill easily using guns, and guns are easy to obtain, so they go do it. There’s nothing magical about that. The neurosis of our gun mentality creates a straight line equation.

Invented for killing

Guns were invented for killing. There is no getting around that fact. They would never have been invented had it not been the need to kill more efficiently in war. That history, and the collective neurosis that leads to all violent wars, is the reason why America is at war with itself.

“But I’m not neurotic!” you can hear the panicked voices of so-called law-abiding gun owners complain. And that may be true, to an extent. Yet the collective neurosis that led to Concealed Carry laws across the nation affects us all. It is plainly paranoid to need to carry a weapon around with you. It’s a sign of social stress when a person cannot deal with society on anything but defensively violent terms.

Fear rules

Mix that with racist fears, or fear of “the other” of any kind, and it is clear that America’s phobia about being gunless is a mental disorder of a national kind. The patent neurosis of Concealed Carry is an admission that fear rules. It is a symptom of an addiction to the idea that vigilante justice is heroic, and that the national character of America is formed through violence, and that shooting another person is a solution to a problem.

It is not. Instead, the neurosis of Concealed Carry reveals the fact that gun owners are, without exception, responsible for 1) the fear of cops both within the force and 2) fear of the cops from the citizenry at large. It’s a repeating cycle of a fearfully militarized society. In other words, a patent neurosis.

Fear creates war, which is why more Americans have died from gun violence (both by force and self-inflicted) than all the American soldiers ever killed in foreign wars. That, we must admit, is a sign of a neurosis that must be cured. Because too many of us are dying while trying to figure it all out.

Perhaps if we treat the nation’s gun obsession as a collective mental illness, we’ll be better able to assess its impact on society. That way we can get to the reasons why so many people feel so afraid in a nation that is supposed to stand for freedom, but instead has created a prison of its own paranoia.

 

The Florida killer had a knife, now why didn’t he use that?

/ Christopher Cudworth / Leave a comment

FIREARMOne of the arguments thrown out in defense of guns in America is that a knife can kill just as easily as a gun. “So it’s not the guns,” goes the supposed rationale. “It’s the people who are the killers.”

Well, that’s an interesting argument in context with a murderer who shot fifty people dead in a nightclub using an automatic weapon. He had a perfectly good knife on his person. Why didn’t he just use that?

Efficiencies

The answer is simple. Guns are a much more efficient method of killing people. Automatic weapons commodify the act of killing. They turn it into a commercial enterprise. Killing people wholesale without ever having to look them in the eye or have physical contact is made so much easier by the simple act of owning a weapon designed for mass shootings.

Automatic weapons have no place in civilized society. Australia banned them back in 1996 and there have been no mass shootings since. That’s the actual free market in practice, by the way. Just like chemicals that poison people, or medicines that cause dangerous or fatal side effects, some products are ultimately banned from public use. That’s what civilized societies do.

Uncivilized societies exonerate both manufacturers and sellers of such products by claiming the law protects them under the auspice of free enterprise. In the case of guns, the uncivilized society that America has become also promotes several brands of vigilante justice in response to the question of whether it is guns that kill people or people who kill people. The logic goes like this: “If you put enough guns on the street, the problem will fix itself.”

Death toll

Only that isn’t happening. There are still 30,000 people a year who die from various kinds of gun violence. More Americans have died from gun violence here at home than all the soldiers that have died in all wars fought on foreign soils. So the claim that the gun problem in America will fix itself is a massive lie. That lie is designed to do only one thing: sell more guns to enrich those who manufacture and sell them.

Blood for profit

The National Rifle Association is a commercial trade organization designed to sell guns. It claims to represent the Second Amendment as well, but that is nothing more than a ruse to do what its paymasters want it to do. Create more fear and sell more guns.

The NRA must cheer every time a mass murder takes place. Because that’s when their fearmongering constituency gets all riled up and worried the government is going to come take all their guns. So the NRA plays that game because it creates more profits for its association sponsors. It’s that simple. The NRA is the Chamber of Commerce for gun violence. Because it sells more guns.

Four types of gun owners

There are four kinds of gun owners in this world.

Erratic: People who own guns and act crazy.

Unintentional: People who own guns and accidentally shoot or kill others.

Intentional: People who purchase guns with the intent to harm or kill others, or themselves.

Responsible: People who own guns and abide by laws designed to manage their use.

That last category parallels the Second Amendment call for a “well-regulated” militia. Because without laws in place to govern how guns are sold, distributed and used, there can be no social order.

However, the first three categories typically have the most impact on American lives because gun violence is a vexation on the freedoms and liberties of all who live under the auspice of the United States Constitution.

Second rate ideas

The NRA and other gun proponents love to focus on the latter part of the Second Amendment rather than the former. That is, the focus on the “right to bear arms” supersedes all authority to regulate the type and use of guns in a free society.

But when erratic, unintentional and intentional people can still easily get their hands on murderous weapons and use them wholesale on the streets of America, the gun lobby is a massive failure of the Constitution and the citizens it is designed to protect and serve.

Even the police now fear for their lives on a daily basis in America. Do they fear knives? Sure, in close situations knives can be murderous. But what the police fear most is guns, and military-grade weapons in particular. Because the world is full of erratic, unintentional and intentional people with high-powered guns, rifles and automatic weapons. And there is no excusing the fact that America ignores that reality on a daily basis.

And people get killed as a result. Sometimes 50 at a time, and many more maimed, and lives devastated.

All because it makes someone, somewhere, very rich.

The Bible has something to say

The Bible says two important things about all of this. Thou Shalt Not Kill is one of the 10 Commandments. It specifically addresses the issue for which guns were designed, to kill.

The Bible also says that “the love of money is the root of all evil,” which covers the profit motive driving so much of America’s production and sale of high-powered weapons and guns in general. It seems sick to profit from the death of others, but that is exactly what the gun industry is all about in America. Case closed.