Oh, but we don’t know how many thousands of crimes were stopped by people armed with automatic weapons in just the past two months. And England hasn’t dared invade! peace, mjh

Gun debate should be about facts, not fantasy – Leonard Pitts Jr. – MiamiHerald.com

This “serious conversation,” remember, got started on December 14, with a massacre in a quiet little New England town. Since that day, the shooting has not stopped, nor even slowed.

In Miami Gardens on Jan. 17, a 15-year-old boy was shot and killed.

In Albuquerque on Jan. 19, a 15-year-old boy allegedly shot his parents and three of his siblings to death.

In Houston on Jan. 22, three people were shot on a community college campus.

In Chicago on Jan. 29, a 15-year-old girl who’d performed at President Obama’s inauguration was shot to death.

And in that same city, six days later, Shirley Chambers buried her last child. Ronnie Chambers, like all three of his siblings before him, was killed by gunfire. How must it feel to have lost all your children to guns? That is not hypothetical. It is one woman’s tragic reality.

Too many deranged or criminal people have access to too much firepower and we are paying the price in carnage and blood. This is the ordinary everyday of American life — and death. That’s what we should be talking about. Not LaPierre’s doomsday scenarios or Trotter’s old movie plots.

They ask us to consider what could happen. Better we consider what does.

Gun debate should be about facts, not fantasy – Leonard Pitts Jr. – MiamiHerald.com

I’ve never watched the Super Bowl. I loathe corporate sports. But, if you like it, I don’t hate you. I don’t hate you for driving a car, but I think Big Oil will destroy the earth for a profit. I don’t hate you for the products you consume and enjoy, but I’m certain the manufacturers would gladly poison you for more money.

I don’t hate responsible gun owners. Several of my friends have guns. I have fired a rifle more than once and wasn’t bad at target shooting, though I much prefer archery or throwing rocks.

I believe corporations exist for one reason above all others: to make a few people rich. They make the top executives rich while screwing labor. They make the board rich, while bribing the watchdogs. Corporations pretend to serve their customers, but they actually serve a few people at the top.

To my mind, the NRA is a corporation. Its board is the Gun Industry, which only profits by selling weapons of destruction — the more, the better. The NRA funnels vast amounts of money into a few hands. In the process, the NRA claims to represent the interests of all of its members, in theory, the interests of every single gun owner. The NRA does NOT represent the interests of reasonable people.

If you own a gun, if you like guns, if you love guns, peace unto you. If you are a member of the NRA, kick some sense into its leadership.

I have a rhetorical style that is less moderate than I am, taken in my entirety. I don’t apologize for my passion, but I do regret that my anger puts some people off. Sometimes, I agree that “if you’re not angry, you’re not paying attention.” People are dying. Other people are growing rich off of that death — why would they try to reduce it or tolerate anyone who did try?

Remember that the NRA was for expanded background checks before they were against them. Flip-floppers that turn whichever way the money flows. Cheap thugs who deserve lots of enemies.

The Strangest NRA Story Yet – The Daily Beast by Michael Tomasky

It virtually goes without saying that the keepers of such lists are always the bullies who survive by fomenting hatred and making sure that their constituents stay in a state of constant agitation. And so it was no surprise to learn over the weekend, via Josh Marshall, that the National Rifle Association has a little list of 497 people and organizations who are in some way, shape, or form anti-gun. It makes for hilarious reading, although it’s sort of frightening to think about the demented minds of the people who assembled it. …

It’s funny, isn’t it, how it’s always people on the right who keep these lists. … [T]he swamps in which these fevers have arisen in our history have been almost entirely right wing. …

The good news is that paranoid psychotics usually do themselves in. McCarthy and Nixon certainly did. I know everyone keeps talking about how powerful the NRA is, and that’s true. But the more they’re in the spotlight, the worse they look. …

The Strangest NRA Story Yet – The Daily Beast

On guns, conservatives rewrite, disrespect African-American history – Leonard Pitts Jr. – MiamiHerald.com

That distinction goes to one Larry Ward, who claimed in an appearance on CNN that Martin Luther King would have supported Ward’s call for a Gun Appreciation Day “if he were alive today.” In other words, the premiere American pacifist of the 20th century would be singing the praises of guns, except that he was shot in the face with one 45 years ago.

Thus do social conservatives continue to rewrite the inconvenient truths of African-American history, repurposing that tale of incandescent triumph and inconsolable woe to make it useful within the crabbed corners of their failed and discredited dogma.

On guns, conservatives rewrite, disrespect African-American history – Leonard Pitts Jr. – MiamiHerald.com

The NRA is a corporate shill.

Senator Catches NRA Head In Epic Flip Flop | ThinkProgress

While NRA leadership opposes universal background checks, its members back the change. A national survey conducted by Johns Hopkins University found that “89 percent of all respondents, and 75 percent of those identified as NRA members, support universal background checks for gun sales. Similar surveys by Pew Research Center and Gallup have also found background checks to be by far the most popular gun control proposal in the aftermath the school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut.”

Update

Here is a copy of the ad the NRA took out in 1999 saying, “We think it’s reasonable to provide for instant checks at gun shows just like at gun stores and pawn shops.”

Update

The NRA broke its commitment to support background checks for “every sale” and lobbied for a watered down provision in 1999.

Senator Catches NRA Head In Epic Flip Flop | ThinkProgress

 What We Don’t Know Is Killing Us – NYTimes.com

But that is precisely what the National Rifle Association and other opponents of firearms regulation do not want. In the absence of reliable data and data-driven policy recommendations, talk about guns inevitably lurches into the unknown, allowing abstractions, propaganda and ideology to fill the void and thwart change.

The research freeze began at a time when the C.D.C. was making strides in studying gun violence as a public health problem. Before that, the issue had been regarded mainly as a law enforcement challenge or as a problem of disparate acts by deranged offenders, an approach that remains in sync with the N.R.A. worldview.

Public health research emphasizes prevention of death, disability and injury. It focuses not only on the gun user, but on the gun, in much the same way that public health efforts to reduce motor vehicle deaths have long focused on both drivers and cars.

The goal is to understand a health threat and identify lifesaving interventions. At their most basic, gun policy recommendations would extend beyond buying and owning a gun (say, background checks and safe storage devices) to manufacturing (childproofing and other federal safety standards) and distribution (stronger antitrafficking laws), as well as educating and enlisting parents, physicians, teachers and other community leaders to talk about the risks and responsibilities of gun ownership. …

To understand and prevent motor vehicle deaths, for instance, the government tracks more than 100 variables per fatal crash, including the make, model and year of the vehicles, the speed and speed limit, the location of passengers, seat belt use and air bag deployment.

Guns deaths do not get such scrutiny. That does not mean we do not know enough to act. The evidence linking gun prevalence and violent death is strong and compelling; international comparisons are also instructive.

But we need more data to formulate, analyze and evaluate policy to focus on what works and to refine or reject what does not. How many guns are stolen? How do guns first get diverted into illegal hands? How many murderers would have passed today’s background checks? What percentage of criminal gun traces are accounted for by, say, the top 5 percent of gun dealers? How many households possess firearms: is it one-third as some surveys suggest, or one-half?

What We Don’t Know Is Killing Us – NYTimes.com