Category Archives: Guns

Yelling “Fire” On Radio And TV.

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Many years ago, the Supreme Court made it a crime to falsely yell “fire” in a crowded room. It was deemed to be a threat to public safety and, therefore, not covered under the First Amendment protection of free speech.

At the time (1919), the Supreme Court decision could not have foreseen an even greater threat that would be amplified by electronic media.

Since the end of the FCC’s Fairness Doctrine in 1987, thousands of media outlets and dozens of radio and TV hosts have routinely committed equivalent acts by creating fear of our own government and of each other. Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly and many other conservative hosts routinely cause panic over a variety of falsehoods such as proposed regulations against gun violence, tax fairness, voter fraud, the Black Panther(s), Fast & Furious, Solyndra…even the national deficit and debt.

The paranoia they foment has made millions of Americans suspicious of our president, federal agencies, law enforcement…even each other. Their evil rhetoric has led to massive increases in right wing militias, racist groups, gun collectors and doomsday preppers.

What punishment do these nitwits face for creating such panic? None.

Instead, they are rewarded with higher ratings and higher incomes. Their ratings bring in more advertisements for gold, silver and guns. They have become the defacto leaders of the Teapublican Party, having helped drive away most of the Republican moderates. And officials who are elected as the result of their media-driven fear carry their fear-mongering messages into state legislatures and Congress.

As long as they continue to have unfettered access to their electronic megaphones, there will be more political anger, more deadlocks in government, more fear and bickering, more stockpiling of guns, more mass shootings and more unnecessary wars. Of course, we can’t censor what these people say. But we can demand that they stop yelling “fire” and begin to act in the public interest.

It’s time to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine. Tell your Senators and Representatives that you would like to see a return of civility, honesty and trust in our media. We can afford nothing less!

Contrary To NRA Claims, More Guns Equal More Violence.

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As Vice-President Joe Biden’s Commission examines ways to prevent another Newtown massacre, the NRA has continued to spew lies about guns. For example, the organization’s leader, Wayne LaPierre, stated that “only answer to a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” He wants us to believe that we should all be armed.

To make the point, gun nuts often cite Switzerland as an example. Since virtually every able-bodied Swiss man is required to serve in the citizen militia, nearly every Swiss household has a gun. This, say the gun nuts, has resulted in the lowest incidence of gun violence in the world.

They couldn’t be more wrong.

As Switzerland’s gun ownership has increased so, too has its gun violence. Not only have gun murders increased, so have gun suicides. In fact, Switzerland’s murder rate from guns now ranks 4th in the world! And the country recently experienced its own mass shooting.

If that’s the NRA’s vision for America, get ready for even more mass murders and an explosion in gun violence. (As if an average of 32 gun murders a day and 34 mass shootings over the past year isn’t bad enough.)

A better example for ending gun violence in America is what has happened in Australia. After a mass shooting, the conservative government of Australia passed laws banning semi-automatic weapons. The government conducted gun buybacks and made it very difficult to purchase ammunition for semi-automatics. Yet Australians still have access to guns for hunting, target shooting and home defense. They simply no longer have access to weapons designed for mass shootings.

The result?

Gun violence in Australia has dropped dramatically and it’s still falling. Similar measures could work in the US, too. All we need to do is convince our elected officials to listen to us. Not the NRA.

To NRA, Guns Are More Valuable Than People.

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Literally! On the anniversary of the Tucson shooting which claimed the lives of six people and seriously wounded others, including Congresswoman “Gabby” Giffords, the City of Tucson conducted a gun buyback. The National Rifle Association not only objected. It vehemently opposed the destruction of the weapons collected. The NRA has even threatened to sue the city based on an AZ state law which has made it illegal to destroy guns that have been confiscated by law enforcement agencies.

Promoted by the NRA, this state law was recently passed by the nitwits in the AZ State Legislature to protect guns – even those used in crimes. The law directs law enforcement agencies to sell the guns to licensed firearms dealers within the state.

In other words, in Arizona, guns now have more rights than people!

If a person commits a deadly crime, he or she may be subject to the death penalty. But the gun used to commit the crime can live on to kill again. Does this make any sense to anyone outside the NRA leadership?

Since Tucson went ahead to destroy the guns collected in its buyback program, saying that they were not confiscated, the NRA has vowed to close the “loophole” in its state law so that no guns may be destroyed by law enforcement. This should tell you everything you need to know about the lunatics running the NRA.

The NRA leadership refuses to entertain any changes in our laws to protect people, like the 6-year-olds who were killed at Sandy Hook. Yet its leaders get their camoflauge panties in a bunch as soon as a gun meets a premature end.

Amazing!!!

NRA Exposed!

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The National Rifle Association began as an organization dedicated to preserving hunting and to support target shooting as a wholesome activity for young people. Its origins go back to a time when our nation was largely rural and hunting was more than a sport. It was a way to put food on the family table.

That NRA no longer exists.

Today’s NRA is merely an ideological lobbying group for gun manufacturers. The NRA’s opposition to a proposed international arms treaty is proof. The United Nations’ Arms Trade Treaty is designed to control the illicit trade of small arms to international terrorist groups and drug cartels. The text of the proposed treaty reaffirms the right and responsibility of any State to control the transfer of conventional weapons within its territory.

The treaty would have no affect on the sale of guns in the US or our 2nd Amendment right to own guns.

Yet the NRA is vehemently opposed to the treaty. In an attempt to block it, the NRA leadership has lied to its membership, saying the treaty is a “stealth attempt to circumvent the 2nd Amendment.” The NRA claims that it will result in black-shirted thugs breaking in your doors in order to confiscate your guns. According to NRA leaders, the treaty is the first step in allowing the new black Hitler (Obama) to take away all of your freedoms.

You may ask, “Why would the NRA make such outrageous lies?”

The answer is simple. The proposed treaty could conceivably limit the sale of expensive assault weapons around the globe. Of course, that would be bad for the large gun manufacturers that pay the salaries of NRA leadership.

While that may seem cynical, it’s nothing compared to the arms industry following mass murders in the US. Rather than view events such as Columbine, Virginia Tech, Tucson, Aurora, and Newtown as tragedies, the gun industry sees them as opportunities. Each massacre results in dramatic increases in gun sales…particularly for the type of weapons used for the killings.

After Tucson, the sale of 9mm Glock handguns soared. After Aurora, the gun sales in Colorado spiked. And after Newtown, gun sales are off the charts. The makers of high-capacity magazines for AR-15 assault rifles sold 3.5 years worth of clips in just 3 days following the massacre! And in 2012, Ruger broke its annual sales record by early August.

With its sponsors cashing in on every tragedy, is it really any wonder the NRA’s answer to gun violence is for more people to buy guns? With so much money at stake, and so many assault rifles and semi-automatic handguns already in the hands of Americans, any form of common sense gun control will be nothing short of a miracle.

NRA Living In Fantasy World.

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Showing a willful failure to grasp reality, the NRA today called for armed guards at every school in America. It’s an attempt to set the way-back machine to the 19th century – a time when “justice” came from the end of a gun.

It simply doesn’t work in the 21st century.

Armed guards at schools won’t be able to deal with body armor-clad lunatics armed with semi-automatic weapons and high-capacity magazines who have the element of surprise in their favor.

Arming teachers is an even worse idea. Teachers should be focused on one thing: educating our children. Untrained people with guns are more likely to add to the chaos of an attack than to end it. Of course, there’s also the question of access to guns. If the teachers keep guns readily available to use against a potential intruder, the guns are too likely to fall into the hands of inquisitive children. And if the guns are locked away in safes, they will be inaccessible when they’re needed most.

So in answer to Wayne LaPierre and the rest of his cowboy wannabes:  No, the answer to gun violence is not more guns. The only realistic answer is to diminish the paranoia that has led ordinary people to arm themselves against criminals, their neighbors, and their government. We also need to carefully limit access to those weapons that allow the criminally insane to shoot large numbers of innocent people easily and quickly without even having to stop to reload.

Who’s Really Behind Gun Violence?

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Certainly the NRA and other gun rights groups deserve a lot of the blame. Over the past 30 years, they’ve evolved from organizations intended to preserve hunting and to promote gun safety into lobbyists for gun manufacturers.

But the real blame for increased violence belongs to those who have fostered paranoia. Paranoia about crime. Paranoia about minorities and immigrants. Paranoia about a potential financial crisis. Paranoia about non-Christians. Paranoia about a world catastrophe. Even paranoia about our own government.

The loudmouths on Fox News Channel and right wing radio have convinced the weak-minded that non-white, welfare-abusing “takers” are out to get them and the fruits of their labor. In their little minds, Democrats and liberals are destroying the United States. They believe that our nation is headed toward bankruptcy and socialism or worse.

The result has been a dramatic spike in sales of “tactical” weapons (aka military-style assault rifles and shotguns) and semi-automatic handguns since 2009. There has also been a six-fold increase in non-Islamic domestic terrorist groups since 2009. And we now have thousands (maybe tens of thousands) of “preppers” who are stashing food, water, weapons and ammunition in preparation for what they consider the inevitable failure of our nation.

Moreover, the vast majority of gun sales and paranoid activity has taken place in the Southern US, mostly since the election of our first black president.

Coincidence? I think not.

With Each Mass Shooting, The NRA Has More Blood On Its Hands.

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The National Rifle Association is fond of saying that increased gun ownership reduces gun violence. Indeed, on the day of the Newtown tragedy, the lead story on the NRA website was headed “More Guns, Less Crime in Virginia.” The story quoted statistics from a Virginia Commonwealth professor that show gun sales in Virginia have climbed 73 percent since 2006, while the number of violent crimes involving guns have dropped by 27 percent over the same period.

Assuming those numbers are accurate, they don’t provide a true picture of gun violence in the United States. In 2007, the US ranked number one in gun ownership with 88.8 guns per hundred people. The next closest country was Serbia with 58.2 guns per hundred people. Our closest neighbor, Canada, ranked 13 with only 30.8 per hundred. And Mexico ranked 42nd with 15 guns per hundred people.

If more guns equals less gun violence as the NRA suggests, why then do we rank among the world’s leaders for gun violence, with more gun deaths than every European nation and Canada?

In the last decade approximately 270,000 people were shot and killed in the US. Moreover, according to FBI statistics, 8,583 of 12,664 murder victims in 2011 were killed by firearms.

True, gun deaths in the US have been dropping since the 1980s and 90s when crack cocaine turned our cities into virtual war zones, but the US has few peers when it comes to gun ownership or gun violence.

We have the NRA to thank for that.

Since the 1980s, the NRA has spent millions for lobbyists to liberalize gun laws. It has rewritten conceal and carry laws making it easier to carry a concealed weapon. It helped end the Clinton-era ban on assault weapons. It has mounted legal challenges to every single gun control law. It has fought background checks and gun registration. It has helped promote ever more lethal guns and ammunition. It has even pushed to legalize silencers for “hunting.”

One has to ask the question, who are the NRA members planning on hunting?

Is It Finally Time To Talk About Guns?

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Every time there is a mass shooting, the National Rifle Association, Fox News Channel, right wing radio loudmouths and the GOP say, “Now is not the time to talk about gun control.” They claim that doing so would be disrespectful to the victims.

Seriously? Talking about measures to prevent more victims is disrespectful?

Given that we’ve just experienced yet another mass shooting, this time in an elementary school, I think any reasonable person will now admit that the time to talk about guns is finally here! When small children, teachers and school administrators are targeted, we must finally examine the role of guns in a civilized society.

To start the conversation, allow me to make a few observations:

1 – Outside our military, no one in the US needs a military-style assault rifle. These weapons have no purpose other than to kill people.

2 – Almost no one needs to carry a handgun. Handguns are virtually useless as a means of defense. If an attacker is armed, and has his weapon drawn, it’s already too late to draw your own weapon. Moreover, if you’re carrying a handgun, you may be all too tempted to use it; in a fit of anger; in a personal crisis; or in a moment of fear.

3 – Guns in the home are only useful for defense if they are readily accessible. However, if they are easily available for the adults who own them, they are also available to children in the home.

4 – Guns are far too easily obtained by the criminally insane. Any non-felon can walk into a gun shop and purchase as many guns and as much ammunition as he can afford. The only regulation is that the buyer pass a quick background check. Worse yet, anyone can purchase guns and ammunition at one of thousands of gun shows without any restriction at all! (40 percent of guns are purchased this way.) It’s time to change the gun show exemption.

5 – A national registry of the owners of handguns and assault weapons is not a threat to anyone’s freedom, except those intent on causing harm. There are far too many guns in the hands of US citizens for any “black-shirted anti-second amendment thugs” to take them away from us. The benefits of being able to quickly and easily track guns used in the commission of a crime far outweighs any potential inconvenience to the gun owners.

6 – Dramatically reducing the sale of handguns, assault weapons and large capacity magazines will eventually be rewarded with fewer mass shootings. It may take a while, but it will gradually take these weapons of choice out of the hands of the criminally insane.

As important as reducing the availability of weapons that have no purpose other than to kill people is the need to moderate our national paranoia. Despite claims by the far right, the UN is not going to take away our freedoms. And given our enormous military budget, we have no one to fear but ourselves.

Race And Politics In America.

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When Barack Obama was elected the 44th President of the United States in a veritable landslide, many Americans believed it signified a post-racist US.  But instead of marking the end of racism, Obama’s election revealed it.

Look at what’s happened over the past four years.

Even before the election results were counted, white right-wingers questioned Obama’s citizenship and, thus, his right to be president.  They claimed that the election was stolen through voter fraud by minorities with the help of ACORN. The Southern Law Poverty Center, Homeland Security and the FBI noted a spike in the number of racist domestic terrorism groups.  Gun sales soared on baseless fears that our first black president would take away our guns.  And an all white group of Republican politicians made it their priority to block every Obama-backed bill and nomination in order to make him a one-term president.

And that was only the beginning.  The racist assault on this president was carried out in many other ways.

For example, during the 2009 State of the Union speech, a white congressman broke protocol to shout “you lie.”  White parents and politicians tried to block the president’s address to schoolchildren for fear their kids would be “indoctrinated.”

When President Obama authorized loans to US automakers, an almost entirely white group of angry citizens demonstrated with undeniably racist signs portraying our president as the Joker, calling him a communist, a socialist, a fascist and even a racist.  The focus of their wrath allegedly was that they were overtaxed, despite the fact that their taxes were the lowest in 60 years.  They called themselves the TEA (Taxed Enough Already) Party and threatened to “exercise their Second Amendment” rights.  They called themselves “patriots” and the President a “Kenyan.”

Backed by the billionaire Koch brothers, the Tea Party verbally assaulted President Obama’s healthcare plan (a plan originated by Republicans and signed into law by former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney).  Much of the anger was directed against non-existent “death panels” and fear that illegal immigrants might be helped by the plan.

In the 2010 mid-term elections, many Tea Party members were elected to Congress, mostly from southern states that once had been part of the Confederacy.  Undeniably, race played a very large part in their elections.  Tea Party candidates won by creating fear of our “illegitimate, un-American” president and of anyone who looks like a Latino immigrant.

There have been videos of racists, including some cops, taking target practice with photos of President Obama as the target.  Racists have regularly flown the Confederate battle flag from the back of their pickups to show their hatred of our president.  There have been a host of racist bumper stickers and T-shirts attacking our president.  Republicans even ridiculed First Lady Michelle Obama’s efforts to improve the health of children through exercise and better nutrition.  Not because it’s a bad idea, but likely because she’s not white.

Leading up to November 6, race continues to play a large role in the 2012 elections.  Republicans have passed voter ID laws in order to suppress Democratic votes in minority-dominated areas.  There have been attempts to intimidate and mislead minority voters.  Republicans have tried to limit poll hours to make it more difficult for working minorities to vote.  At the same time, Republicans have resurrected anti-gay marriage propositions in states in order to excite their most highly-prejudiced base.

Throughout many parts of the nation, yard signs and campaign materials for President Obama’s re-election have been stolen or vandalized with increasing frequency.  Opponents shout racist threats and obscenities at those who display their support for the president.  A racist was admitted to a rally for Mitt Romney with a T-shirt reading “Put the White back in the White House.”  And, in the most telling example of racism, Colin Powell’s thoughtful endorsement of President Obama was ridiculed merely because they’re both of African-American heritage.

Think about that.  Should we then dismiss any Romney endorsements made by white people?

A License To Sin.

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As I passed by a church recently, I spotted the following on its bulletin board:  “It is by grace that you will be saved.  Not by works, but by faith.”

This highly questionable translation of Ephesians 2:8 is a great excuse for people to do whatever they want.

Want to steal from someone?  Go ahead.  Want to lie, cheat and steal to win an election?   That’s okay.  Want to fabricate evidence to take your nation to war?  You can simply pray your sins away.  Have faith and ye will be saved.

What ever happened to the 10 Commandments?  And the Golden Rule?

If this is what many of our Christian brethern now believe, is it any wonder that there is so much anger and violence in the world?  Is it any wonder that much of the Christian right is now armed to the teeth?  Is it any wonder that so many Christian televangelists have run off with their congregation’s hard-earned money? Is it any wonder the Bible is being used to justify the denial of rights to gays, lesbians and others?  Is it any wonder that the so-called faithful have memorized Bible verses to justify their own narrow-minded agenda. 

In doing so, they’ve overlooked the core teachings of their savior.

That’s the very convenient thing about the Bible.  You can find a verse to justify almost anything you want to do or believe.