A Week of Gun Violence Does Nothing to Change the N.R.A.’s MessageBy Evan Osnos , July 8, 2016

The Violence Policy Center, a gun-safety group, noted that, in 2014, the most recent year for which information is available, “one in five law enforcement officers slain in the line of duty were killed with an assault weapon.” The center’s executive director, Josh Sugarmann, said in a statement, “Responsibility for this lethal assault falls directly at the feet of the gun industry, which designs, markets, and sells the military-bred weapons necessary for such attacks. They must finally be held accountable.”

The Dallas ambush has also exposed an uncomfortable fact for the gun-rights movement: for decades, even as it maintains its abstract tributes to law enforcement, it has embraced a strain of insurrectionist rhetoric, overtly anti-government activism that endorses the notion that civilians should have guns for use against American police and military. In a 1995 fund-raising letter, the executive vice-president of the N.R.A., Wayne LaPierre, called federal law-enforcement agents “jack-booted thugs,” and suggested that “in Clinton’s administration, if you have a badge, you have the government’s go-ahead to harass, intimidate, even murder law-abiding citizens.” In Texas, where the police ambush occurred, an open-carry advocate last year urged the killing of state legislators if they do not approve a more relaxed policy. (“They better start giving us our rights or this peaceful non-cooperation stuff is gonna be gamed up . . . We should be demanding [Texas legislators] give us our rights back, or it’s punishable by death. Treason.”) At the annual N.R.A. convention last year, the board member Ted Nugent said, “Our government has turned on us.” Stopping short of calling for violence, he urged members to focus their ire on “the bad and the ugly.” He said, “It’s a target-rich environment. If it was duck season, there’d be so many ducks, you could just close your eyes and shoot ’em.” …

More than a hundred million Americans live in households with guns, but many remain largely uninvolved in gun politics. The N.R.A. has between three and five million members, which means it represents only a sliver of American gun owners. Moreover, even among its members, many are unconvinced, I and others have found, by the belligerent rhetoric; they own and love guns for a variety of reasons—from sports to hunting to self-defense—and they overwhelmingly support reasonable steps to prevent innocent people, civilians or police, from being killed by gunfire.

We must do more than cry and scream. We must do something to stop the war the police wage against US citizens. We are becoming an occupied nation in which the police don’t trust the citizens they serve. That lack of trust leads the police to murder innocent people.

In one sense, it doesn’t matter what the color, gender, etc, is of those who are murdered. On the other hand, it is clear that people of color, especially black males, are suspects at all times, while white people, especially older white males, get a pass. Even well-armed crazy white males. This has to stop NOW … TODAY.

Yet, I have no doubt that by the time you read this, another person will have been murdered by the police.

It’s time to disarm the cop on the beat. If a police officer travels alone, he cannot carry a gun. Wrap him head to toe in Kevlar and arm him to the teeth with non-lethal weapons. The only cops with guns will be those who operate as a group of 3 or more and have been very carefully vetted to have earned the right.

The NRA is working on a time machine. They plan to go back in time to arm oppressed people everywhere. (And to arm their oppressors, too — that’s just smart business and only fair.) They’ll start with automatic rifles for the apostles.

If Africans had had firepower, they wouldn’t have been enslaved. (After all, the slavers did have guns.) If the Slaves had had guns, the Civil War would have ended sooner. (Slave holders had guns.)

If women had had machine guns, they wouldn’t have been beaten and imprisoned for demanding the right to vote.

The only thing standing between good and evil is a time traveler with a gun. See you at Little Big Horn. (Wait! No! Everyone had guns there.)

Meet Jon Stokes: Former editor at Wired, founder of Ars Technica, and a man who really, really loves his AR-15. It’s a gun he hastens to explain is “technically a Sig Sauer MCX,” in case you were worried that his piece at Medium defending his beloved weapon would be anything but a tone-deaf temper tantrum by a man who appears to love things more than people.

“If, for you, my AR-15 ownership is prima facie evidence of my mental instability, sexual inadequacy, lack of a conscience, or what-have-you, then I honestly don’t care what you think about this issue,” Stokes scoffs, before writing his loving, erotic ode to this gun in a fashion that does very little to dissuade the reader from concerns regarding lack of conscience or sexual inadequacy.

It’s a little unclear why Stokes felt this week, of all weeks was the proper time to write his engorged tribute to his favorite toy. I realize that he really wants the world to know that his precious is imbued with awesome stopping power, but the grim fact of the matter is that the news cycle this week has done more to show off the dazzling kill abilities of the AR-15 than anything Stokes could write. If you are in doubt, here is a point-by-point comparison.

“This is all part of the reason why I, a civilian, ‘need’ a military-grade combat weapon,” Stokes explains. “I don’t want to shoot and miss; I don’t want the gun to jam because it’s dirty or cold; and I don’t want to hit my target and then have it run off into the woods and die lost and wounded because I didn’t ‘bring enough gun’.”
– – – – –

Read the whole thing. It’s a brilliant juxtaposition of the selfish gun loon against the chaos and death his weapon of choice caused in Orlando. These guys drive the profits of the industry.

NBC News Tony Dokoupil

“Our father, Eugene Stoner, designed the AR-15 and subsequent M-16 as a military weapon to give our soldiers an advantage over the AK-47,” the Stoner family told NBC News late Wednesday. “He died long before any mass shootings occurred. But, we do think he would have been horrified and sickened as anyone, if not more by these events.” …

The ex-Marine and “avid sportsman, hunter and skeet shooter” never used his invention for sport. He also never kept it around the house for personal defense. In fact, he never even owned one. …

“What has happened, good or bad, since his patents have expired is a result of our free market system,” Stoner’s family said. “Currently, a more interesting question is ‘Who now is benefiting from the manufacturing and sales of AR-15s, and for what uses?'”

That’s the question for the rest of us.
– – – – –

See the following for the answer to who gets rich off of mass murder:

Fully Loaded: Inside the Shadowy World of America’s 10 Biggest Gunmakers

They’ve kept their fingerprints off laws designed to protect their businesses — especially one that shields them from liability for crimes committed with their products.

By Josh Harkinson | June 17, 2016