From The Onion, America's Finest News Source, some seriously edgy satire on the UCSB shootings last Friday. But here is the real point of the piece: America is "a nation where over half of the world’s deadliest mass shootings have occurred in the past 50 years and whose citizens are 20 times more likely to die of gun violence than those of other developed nations."

And this:

At press time, residents of the only economically advanced nation in the world where roughly two mass shootings have occurred every month for the past five years were referring to themselves and their situation as “helpless.”

That's not funny, and yet no one talks very much about that - other than to lament that isolated, unstable, young men with weapons are increasingly likely to shoot a whole lot of people before committing suicide by cop.

Perhaps the reason Americans are 20 times more likely to die of gun violence than in other developed nations is because we have a national fetish for guns that no other developed country possesses. No matter how many of the slaughters take place, the fetishists of the NRA will never allow gun restrictions to become law.

‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens

ISSUE 50•21 • May 27, 2014

ISLA VISTA, CA—In the days following a violent rampage in southern California in which a lone attacker killed seven individuals, including himself, and seriously injured over a dozen others, citizens living in the only country where this kind of mass killing routinely occurs reportedly concluded Tuesday that there was no way to prevent the massacre from taking place. “This was a terrible tragedy, but sometimes these things just happen and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop them,” said North Carolina resident Samuel Wipper, echoing sentiments expressed by tens of millions of individuals who reside in a nation where over half of the world’s deadliest mass shootings have occurred in the past 50 years and whose citizens are 20 times more likely to die of gun violence than those of other developed nations. “It’s a shame, but what can we do? There really wasn’t anything that was going to keep this guy from snapping and killing a lot of people if that’s what he really wanted.” At press time, residents of the only economically advanced nation in the world where roughly two mass shootings have occurred every month for the past five years were referring to themselves and their situation as “helpless.”

Charles P. Pierce - There Is Nothing Random About The LAX Shooting

The NRA likes to say that these mass shootings are random events and have nothing to do with our right to have as many guns, of any type, that we want. After all the Second Amendment (which was designed to create a citizen soldier class [mostly farmers and other non-elites] in the time before a standing army), guarantees this right.

Over at Esquire, Charles Pierce outlines the reasons these events are NOT random - they are made possible by the NRA and the other gun rights advocates. He gets bonus points for the Moloch reference at the end.

There Is Nothing Random About The LAX Shooting

By Charles P. Pierce


People make phone calls on a curb at LAX following a shooting in which a gunman opened fire at a security checkpoint. - Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images
LOS ANGELES -- It appears the TSA agent shot this morning four terminals over has died. That was the word carried by dozens of people who had decided to walk out of LAX in search of rental cars and whiskey, whose number I will be joining shortly. (One report has the shooter, in custody, as "a white man in a white shirt." Investigation is ongoing.) Terminal 7 is gradually coming to life again; flights here will be delayed, but we are not a crime scene, so things likely will get back to normal by nightfall. There are bomb squads with dogs wandering about. The ticketing area is abuzz with low cellphone conversations reassuring loved ones that everything's okay, and that folks are likely going to be a little late going home. Every now and again, a person in a TSA uniform will wander by. They have the 1000-yard stare going. The shock waves are weaker, but you can still feel them moving through the place. A cop just ran by. Everybody turned and stared.


There already is some talk about this event being a "random" one. But it is not. These things are becoming as regular as rain, as predictable as the summer heat. The only thing "random" about it is the shooter. He could be anyone, and that's the point. There are people who spend money making sure that he could be anyone, and there's nothing "random" about how they do that. There is nothing "random" about this country's ludicrous disinclination to regulate its firearms. There is nothing "random" about the millions of dollars that the NRA spends to convince people that they should have the right to carry their assault weapon anywhere they want to carry it, including into an airport terminal, if they so desire. There is nothing "random" about the politicians who truckle and bow to this lucrative monetization of bloody mayhem. These are all deliberate acts with predictable consequences. There is nothing "random" about how we have armed ourselves, and there is nothing "random" about the filigree of high-flown rhetoric with which we justify arming ourselves, and there is nothing "random" about how we learn nothing every time someone who could be anyone decides to exercise his Second Amendment rights by opening fire. There is nothing random about how we got where we are today, here in Terminal 7, where people have sought refuge from the bloodshed, four terminals over. There is nothing "random" at all. We have chosen insanity over reason. We have done it with our eyes open. It is time for me to walk out of the airport now. I am leaving behind a terrible event. But I am not leaving behind something accidental. I am leaving behind what America has determined must happen from time to time, if we are to be a free people. I am leaving behind what America has determined is part of the cost of being an American. I am leaving behind the blood that I am told I must accept as part of the price of being a member of a free society. I am leaving behind a place of death, and I am joining my fellow citizens, as we make an odd pilgrimage out of a place that is now another altar of the blood sacrifice that I am told we must make, regularly, in order to be truly free. I am a free citizen, I am told, of the Republic of Murder, my rights guaranteed by the Constitution of Moloch. I am leaving.

Documentary - Guns, Culture, and Crime in the US

The debate about control in this country feels almost entirely irrational to me. No one is proposing the banning of all guns, but that is how the NRA types seems to respond. Banning assault rifles seems like common sense and imposing background checks and waiting periods also seem like common sense. For example, if you think you need a gun right now, we should have a right to delay that purchase. What possible reason can there be for needing a gun right this minute, other than a desire to use it impulsively?

Anyway, I like guns and I enjoy target shooting, but I am completely on board with making guns a little harder to obtain. This documentary comes from Top Documentary Films.

Guns, Culture, and Crime in the US

We look at why the debate over gun control is so polarized and travel to West Virginia – a place where shooting guns is a sport that has been passed down over generations – to find out what fuels the love for guns in this country.

Are American people as divided as their politicians? The Newtown shooting, which left 20 school children and six teachers dead, has dragged the issue of gun control back into the national agenda.

For the first time in years, US politicians are discussing serious gun control measures. But millions of people in the country’s inner cities live with the threat of gun violence on a daily basis.

In Baltimore, one of the most dangerous cities in the US, the police have re-framed their ‘war on drugs’ as a ‘war on guns’. We travel to Baltimore to meet those trying to stop gun crime and others who say owning a gun is sometimes a matter of survival.

Watch the full documentary now - (playlist - 56 min)

Gunsmoke: USA (i.e. Arizona)

Disturbing documentary about guns and gun mentality in my current state, Arizona. When we combine Tea Party racism with 2nd Amendment fanaticism, the mix is pretty volatile.

Gunsmoke: USA

An ongoing source of controversy in America, gun laws are increasingly polarizing the Southern states and Washington. In Arizona, Tea Party supporting, heavily armed, vigilante groups are taking over.

“The one thing we know about gun control is that it has never provided security”, argues former Arizona sheriff and local hero, Richard Mack.

Despite the recent massacres, the majority still support free gun laws. Heavily armed citizens take Mexican border security into their own hands in this “state with a frontier mentality”.

With over 100 new civilian militia groups forming in the last 2 years, it is fertile ground for Tea Party supporters. There is no doubt as to who is the real enemy here: “The greatest threat to our God-given American liberty is our own federal government”.

With the cultural divide between North and South looking dangerously wide, Arizona is becoming more than a state: it’s a state of mind.

Watch the full documentary now - 23 min

NRA - 1,000 Dead Children (in a Single Killing) Is the Threshold for Rethinking Our Positions

This is from last May (2012) in The Onion - more relevant today than it was then, which is probably why they re-posted it. Yes, it's satire, technically, but it's much more true than it should be.

NRA Sets 1,000 Killed In School Shooting As Amount It Would Take For Them To Reconsider Much Of Anything

'Yeah, Something Like 1,000 Dead Kids,' Reports Spokesperson

ISSUE 48•22 • May 25, 2012

NRA officials said the school would have to be "super, super bloody" after the shooting for the organization to question their pro-gun stance.

FAIRFAX, VA—National Rifle Association Executive Vice President and CEO Wayne LaPierre said Monday that somewhere around 1,000 kids would have to die in a school shooting in order for the organization to reconsider their longstanding opposition to gun control.

"Yeah, that's probably the only way we'd reassess much of anything at this point: 1,000 dead kids, shot up pretty good, lying face down in the school auditorium or something like that," LaPierre said, noting that anything less than 1,000 dead kids would not be enough for the NRA to stop urging Congress to pass pro-gun legislation. "I mean, that's just a ballpark number, but I imagine seeing 1,000 or so body bags being wheeled out of a school and a whole town of crying parents would probably make us reflect on our values for at least a little bit."

"So yeah, more or less 1,000 dead kids," LaPierre added. "Something around there. And teachers don't count."

In his 21st year leading the right-wing lobbying group, LaPierre reiterated that "350 or 470 dead kids or some low number like that" would have no impact on the NRA's belief that there should be more firearms on college campuses or that concealed carry laws should be more lax.

In order to reconsider their position on the Brady Bill, this amount of kids multiplied by 200 would have to be shot to death in school.

In addition, LaPierre added that while 800 dead kids in one school shooting would "certainly be a little closer to the number we're talking about here," ultimately that amount would, according to the NRA, constitute more of a society issue than a gun issue.

"For us to come anywhere close to reassessing our beliefs, it's gotta be one of those deals where a ton of kids get their heads blown off in school and there is one of those big, town-wide memorial services where they read off all the names of all the dead kids and you feel like, wow, that has to be somewhere around 1,000 names," said LaPierre, adding that seeing pictures of all the dead kids in front of the "pastor or whoever is doing the eulogies or whatever" might be a sobering enough visual for the NRA to reconsider whether it should be harder, not easier, to acquire firearms. "And I think the shooter would also have to use around 30 different types of guns in the shooting in order for us to rethink what the Founding Fathers intended when they wrote the Second Amendment."

The former member of the American Conservative Union's board of directors further qualified his statement, adding that the NRA's response to 1,000 or so kids being mowed down by a school shooter would more than likely vary based on the age of the students, the school's demographics, and the extenuating circumstances of the situation as a whole.

Though he didn't offer a reason why, LaPierre said 1,000 dead 14-year-olds is "not even close to the same thing" as 1,000 dead 18-year-olds.

"If we're talking about one of those big high schools with 4,000 students then 1,000 dead ones aren't really even a drop in the bucket, you know?" LaPierre said, explaining that if an uzi-carrying 16-year-old only kills 45 percent of a school's total population, the NRA would still be more inclined to blame the shooting on poor parenting, and wouldn't consider soft gun laws to be part of the problem. "Oh, and of course, if it's a giant state university or something like that then I'd imagine we'd need to see numbers closer to 8,000 dead kids before we really even begin to talk about potentially having a conversation about changing our philosophy."

"And for argument's sake, let's say it's a situation where 999 people die and the 1,000th person is just the school shooter blowing his brains out," LaPierre continued. "Do you honestly expect me to take that seriously? To me, that seems more like an isolated incident that shouldn't really impact everyone's rights, you know?"

While some believed that LaPierre's remarks finally indicated a slight loosening of the NRA's pro-gun stance, LaPierre was forced to clarify his comments after his membership criticized him for introducing the idea that a playground full of bullet-riddled dead kids might cause the NRA to reconsider their position on gun control if even for a second.

"At the end of the day, I want to make it very clear that the NRA is in absolutely no rush to change anything," LaPierre later said in a written statement. "One thousand dead kids would have very little impact on us. Now if 50,000 kids died in a school shooting that might be a different story. Something around 50,000 to 80,000 dead kids. You know what, forget that. Maybe something closer to 250,000. Yeah, 250,000 dead kids."

David Eagleman's Rational, Scientific Worldview

Earlier today I criticized Mike Huckabee's "we need more god in schools" approach to ending mass murders. Here I want to offer a commentary by neuroscientist David Eagleman (author of Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain) on Friday's tragedy in Connecticut, from his blog. David Eagleman directs the Initiative on Neuroscience and Law.

Being a neuroscientist, his worldview leans heavily on material causes - and in the case of mental illness and violent acts, he prefers to understand brain chemistry and hormone interactions as causes and not to assign blame from a moralistic perspective.

His view is nearly 180 degrees fro Huckabee's.

After Sandy Hook: Why mental illness matters

The tragic shootings at Sandy Hook have sparked debate ranging from gun control to bulletproof windows at elementary schools.

I suggest the more important issue is to prioritize our national discussion of mental illness.

There seem to be two problems with the discussion at present. The first is a lack of understanding about the terms and their meanings. To illustrate, here’s the complete text from a two-sentence article from Fox News:

Ryan Lanza, 24, brother of gunman Adam Lanza, 20, tells authorities that his younger brother is autistic, or has Asperger syndrome and a “personality disorder.” Neighbors described the younger man to ABC as “odd” and displaying characteristics associated with obsessive-compulsive disorder.

One might consider it impressive to embed so many problems into such a concise article.

First, the phrasing of the first sentence appears to suggest that autism is something like a sum of Asperger’s and a personality disorder. That’s incorrect. Asperger’s is simply a milder form of autism: both are different degrees on a single autistic disorder spectrum, a broad-ranging developmental disorder characterized by problems in relationships and communication. Importantly, there is no known link between autism and pre-meditated violence.

Let’s turn to the item at the end of the first sentence. A personality disorder is a pervasive and inflexible pattern of behavior that causes distress or limits social progress. Because the term personality disorder is standard clinical nomenclature, there is no reason for a reporter to put that term in quotation marks. Perhaps he was simply quoting Ryan? But we wouldn’t expect a reporter to write that Ryan’s “younger brother” is “autistic”. The quotation marks around personality disorder could suggest to the uninitiated reader that the concept is simply a colloquialism, which could—in the worst case—promote dismissal of the important issues around it.

Finally, let’s consider obsessive-compulsive disorder, in which people suffer anxiety from recurrent thoughts and compulsions toward repetitive behaviors. Is its mention in the article an important clue? Probably not: as with autism, there is no known relationship between obsessive-compulsive disorder and violence.

In sum, the two-sentence report uses four mental health terms, two of which are different degrees of the same disorder, one of which is wrapped in quotation marks, and most of which have no plausible bearing on the Sandy Hook shootings.

Did these problems arise from the brother’s misunderstanding, or the neighbors’, or the reporter’s? Whatever the case, the readership is given poor information (and potentially misinformation) about important mental health issues.

Does a public understanding of mental illness matter? Very much. A deeper understanding can fuel early detection, resources,prevention, rehabilitation, and cures. Adam Lanza is dead, and we may never know what pathologies were lurking in the patterns of his neural circuits. But he’s not the point anymore. It’s the next Adam Lanza, growing up now, lurking in the wings of the future.

I suggest we take this tragedy as a wake-up call about how we want to address mental illness in our society. Research and care programs for those with mental problems are continuously under-funded. And as we head for the fiscal cliff, scientists funded by the National Institutes of Health are bracing themselves for the plunge from an already tight budget.

Eagleman goes on to examine some of the comments on that article, and the three he quotes are actually quite in line with Huckabee's perspective - tough discipline and prayer in schools. Here is his response to this type of thinking:

These viewpoints represent a potentially disastrous misunderstanding about mental health illness. At the time of this writing, it is far from clear what was wrong with Adam Lanza—but his behavior alone is sufficient evidence that something was abnormal about his brain. Millions of 20-year-olds on this planet play video games, have divorced parents, are eccentric, have access to guns, and so on—but Lanza tops the news because his actions are so exceptionally rare. Such abnormal decision-making unmasks abnormalities in brain function. To assume that prayer in schools and tough-love parenting is a meaningful solution to brain abnormalities is to miss the boat entirely. It represents unfamiliarity with the long history of brain science. I’ve written about this issue before in Incognito, so I’ll take an excerpt here:

The study of brains and behaviors finds itself in the middle of a conceptual shift. As recently as a century ago, the prevailing attitude was to get psychiatric patients to “toughen up,” either by deprivation, pleading, or torture. The same attitude applied to many disorders; for example, some hundreds of years ago, epileptics were often abhorred because their seizures were understood as demonic possessions—perhaps in direct retribution for earlier behavior. Not surprisingly, this proved an unsuccessful approach.

Indeed, the past century has witnessed a shift from blame to biology. But why? Continuing the excerpt:

Perhaps the largest driving force is the effectiveness of the pharmaceutical treatments. No amount of beating will chase away depression, but a little pill called fluoxetine often does the trick. Schizophrenic symptoms cannot be overcome by exorcism, but can be controlled by risperidone. Mania responds not to talking or to ostracism, but to lithium.

I’m not a great fan of the purely pharmaceutical approach, but its successes underscore the idea that mental problems can be approached in the same clear-eyed manner with which we might approach diabetes, cancer, or an inflammation. More from Incognito:

The more we discover about the circuitry of the brain, the more the answers tip away from accusations of indulgence, lack of motivation, and poor discipline—and move toward the details of the biology. The shift from blame to science reflects our modern understanding that our perceptions and behaviors are controlled by inaccessible subroutines that can be easily perturbed.

In this light, consider this series of provocative questions from my neuroscience colleague Robert Sapolsky:

Is a loved one, sunk in a depression so severe that she cannot function, a case of a disease whose biochemical basis is as “real” as is the biochemistry of, say, diabetes, or is she merely indulging herself? Is a child doing poorly at school because he is unmotivated and slow, or because there is a neurobiologically based learning disability? Is a friend, edging towards a serious problem with substance abuse, displaying a simple lack of discipline, or suffering from problems with the neurochemistry of reward?

To the newsreaders who feel that mental illness is best viewed as an excuse, let me suggest instead that we might more effectually recognize it as a national priority for social policy. If we care to prevent the next mass shooting, we should concentrate our efforts on getting meaningful diagnoses and resources to the next Adam Lanza. There is no advantage in imagining that all brains are the same on the inside, because they’re not. There is no point in concluding that your own child did not perpetrate a school shooting solely because of your terrific parenting. This is not meant to diminish the importance of excellence in parenting—but mental illness is real, and online tips about parental discipline and school prayer will remain insufficient solutions.

Mike Huckabee's Ignorant Mythic Authoritarian Worldview

Now that Mike Huckabee is no longer a political animal, having to measure his words to appear sane and not offend potential voters or donors, he has come unhinged in his mythic authoritarian worldview. This is nowhere more apparent than in his comments about the tragic mass killing in Connecticut. CNN's Belief Blog posted his comments without much in the way of analysis, nor was there any analysis of the longer version posted on their Political Ticker blog.

Generally, I try to ignore people like him, but he has a national platform (Fox News) and there are significant numbers of people who share his (world)view to a greater or lesser extent.

Here is the story:

Huckabee: Lack of religion inclassroom leads to violence in schools

Posted by CNN Political Unit

(CNN) - Responding to the deadly mass shooting Friday in Newtown, Connecticut, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee said new laws regulating guns won't deter such shootings, linking a lack of religious discussion in the classroom to increased violence in schools.

"We ask why there's violence in our school but we've systematically removed God from our schools," Huckabee said on Fox News. "Should we be so surprised that schools have become such a place of carnage? Because we've made it a place where we don't want to talk about eternity, life, what responsibility means, accountability."

"That we're not just gonna have to be accountable to the police if they catch us but one day we stand before a holy God in judgment. If we don't believe that, then we don't fear that," he said.

"People are going to want to pass new laws," Huckabee continued. "This is a heart issue ... laws don't change this kind of thing."

Huckabee made similar comments following the mass shooting at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, earlier this year saying violent acts should not be a surprise considering the removal of religion from public forums.

"We don't have a crime problem, or a gun problem, or even a violence problem. What we have is a sin problem," he said after the July shooting on Fox News. "And since we've ordered God out of our schools and communities; the military and public conversations... we really shouldn't act so surprised when all hell breaks loose."

Friday morning a gunman entered Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, and opened fire killing 20 students and six adults before apparently killing himself. The tragedy has intensified the debate over gun laws in the U.S.

This tragedy is less about "violence in our schools," although in another sense it is (but not how Huckabee is framing it), and more about how we fail those disturbed young people in our families, our schools, and our communities. This was not Columbine, it was not bullied, disaffected students taking guns into the school and killing fellow students - this was a 20-year-old man who had not been in that school for many, many years.

We may never know what caused this young man to kill his mother and then drive her car to the school and kill 26 young students and faculty, and then himself. [For another perspective, check out the thoughts of neuroscientist David Eagleman.]

I do know that teaching children to fear judgment by an imaginary god is not going to deter mentally ill people from doing things we cannot fathom. [This is not to imply that all mentally ill people are prone to violence, however, people who commit acts such as this are mentally ill.]

We need to do a better job of identifying children who are at risk - those who are outsiders, who have few or no friends, who struggle with social roles, or who exhibit suicidal or homicidal ideation. We need to get them into counseling, into support groups, and, yes, even into spiritual communities and churches.

Children do not grow up to be mass murderers unless something has gone horribly, tragically wrong in their lives. This is where we need to focus our attention.

Bowling for Columbine (Revisited)

After yesterday's horrific killings in Connecticut, Open Culture re-posted the Michael Moore documentary, Bowling for Columbine, which is freely available on YouTube. In the years since that event, mass killings have become more common and even more troubling for the simple reason that we seem to learn nothing from these events. The gun lobby has succeeded in not only preventing more regulation of gun sales, but in many states, like Arizona, gun laws become more and more relaxed - to the point that we are a state that does not require ANY training or permits to carry a concealed weapon.

Bowling for Columbine Revisited

December 14th, 2012

In April 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold murdered 12 students and one teacher in Columbine, Colorado, while injuring 21 others. Michael Moore documented the tragedy in his 2002 film, Bowling for Columbine, which sits on YouTube, available for everyone to see. It’s heartbreaking to think that a decade later, students are no safer at their schools. If anything, gun control has slackened during the intervening years (thanks partly to the Supreme Court) and mass murders have become more commonplace, if not a monthly occurrence. 12 were killed and 52 injured in Aurora, CO in July. 10 killed in a Sikh temple shooting in Wisconsin this August. Five gunned down at Accent Signage Systems in Minnesota in October. Two shot dead at a mall in Portland, Oregon earlier this week. And now 20 youngsters and seven adults killed at an elementary school today in Connecticut. We’ve reached the point where it has become an exceptional American pathology and too much to bear. (If you’re counting, we’ve had 27 mass murders since Columbine, and exponentially more gun-related deaths than any other country in the developed world.) I sincerely hope this isn’t another instance where we breathlessly express outrage for a week, then turn back to the Kardashians, until the next shooting happens in February at best. Public spaces should be safe, schools all the more so. (Let’s not forget Virginia Tech, which left us with another 32 students dead.) It’s time to take some action. And it’s time for our leaders to stop worrying about lobbies and finally lead.

American Tragedy - Larry McMurtry

Larry McMurtry, the well-known novelist, lives here in Tucson. In this article for the New York Review of Books he makes some very cogent and important observations about Saturday's shooting tragedy in which six people died and Gabby Giffords was shot through the head.

The US flag flies at half-staff outside the US Supreme Court, January 9, 2011, in memory
of the victims of the January 8 shootings in Tucson, Arizona

Here is a quote from American Tragedy, and a response from me below the quote.

Ours is a culture in which shooting sprees have become almost commonplace. Hearing that the site and surrounding area was entirely sealed off I elected to try to learn about it by watching television. The people who were trapped at site stood around in small clumps, subdued; no doubt they were feeling lucky not to be on stretchers or in ambulances. Probably they were oppressed by the randomness of it all: a deranged kid walks up and blasts twenty people. Hello. The novelist Theodore Dreiser would have known how to handle such a scene.

Learning about a nearby massacre from television requires much channel surfing. Many talking heads brooded about the part our violence-tinged language might be playing in the behavior of our youth. Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik, elected eight times, spoke with considerable dignity, mentioning that in his view, there had been excessive language used in Arizona, both on radio and television. It may be free speech, he said, but it has consequences. Sheriff Dupnik went on to say that he feared Arizona had become “… a Mecca for prejudice and bigotry.” For this, he was roundly criticized, although I don’t see that he was off the mark. Ask the Indians.

Several references were made to an ad placed by Sarah Palin’s political action committee, in which crosshairs targeted, among others, Congresswoman Giffords’s district. (Sarah Palin has sent Congresswoman Giffords a letter of sympathy, and the crosshairs have now been removed.) Elsewhere among commentators Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post was good as always, pointing out:

The Second Amendment is a fact of life. But even recent Supreme Court rulings have left the door open to effective gun control measures. We must recognize the obvious distinction between rifles, shotguns and target pistols used for sport on the one hand, and semiautomatic handguns designed for killing people on the other. We must decide that allowing anyone to carry a concealed weapon, no questions asked, is just crazy. And for heaven’s sake, we must demand that laws designed to keep guns out of the hands of lunatics be enforced.

And it was reassuring to see that young Luke Russert, reporting on the scene as a correspondent for NBC, has the journalistic poise inherited from both his parents.

Meanwhile, the dead are dead, the wounded are wounded, and except for twenty families, some of them now broken, the violent stream of American life goes on absolutely unchanged. Arizona and indeed America continue to be packed with guns. I own several myself (none of them semi-automatic) and I have no intention of disposing of them, although I don’t feel I should conceal them and walk down urban streets.

And I don’t believe that language drawn from the hunt is likely to vanish from our political speech. Words such as “target” or “bulls eye” are deeply ingrained. We will be polite for a while but once the slugfest resumes—and politics is a slugfest—the old invective will slip back in.

Nothing will change. We are a gun culture, and we are a culture of violence and rage. And in that rage, candles are lit to soften the wounds, to remind us we have lost our way.

Eventually, probably sooner than later, some other troubled young man (they are nearly always young men) will buy a gun and in an act few of us can even begin to comprehend, will release his anger and frustration . . . will unleash steely projectiles . . . will kill people, maybe a lot of people, all innocent . . . will seek revenge or a warped and deranged sense of justice . . . will tear lives from this world . . . will smile back at us in our incomprehension.

And nothing will change . . . . for we are Americans.

Tags: violence, tragedy, guns, mental illness, American Tragedy, Larry McMurtry, New York Review of Books, Gabriel Giffords, Tucson, Arizona

National Geographic - Guns In America

Does an automatic pistol need a silencer?

Jami and I were browsing pawn shops this last weekend looking for an older stereo receiver that has a turntable input (harder to find than you may think). Anyway, we were in one store in a, uh, "lower income" part of town and in one display unit was a huge collection of guns for sale. That's cool, I'd expect that.

But among those guns were several the size of a 9mm pistol, but with clips that must have been at least 50 rounds (maybe 100 - I'm ignorant about these things), so they clearly were semi-automatics (or possibly automatics), but (and this is what seems outside the bounds of reason) they each had silencers on them.

Who the hell needs a semi-automatic pistol with a serious clip of bullets AND with a silencer? Gang members, that's who. And criminals.

There were two young minority men (more like kids, since they had to show ID to even look at them) shopping for a gun and asking about the wait period (there is none). There is also no permit or registration required. Arizona dealers do participate in the background check program (if they are federally licensed gun dealers), but I am not sure if pawn shops are included in that program.

In Arizona, if those boys were 21 years old, they can carry their new guns fully concealed - including bars and churches. No permit or training required.

I am not opposed to gun ownership - hell, there are so many guns on the street that prohibiting gun ownership would mean only the criminals have them. But does anyone need an automatic pistol with a monster clip? And a silencer? I don't think so - these guns are used only by criminals and right wing militia groups. That's effed up.

This National Geographic show looks at guns in America. I think the 2nd and 3rd parts of this are embedded and will come up when this part finishes.

United states of America the most heavily armed society in the world; nearly 80 million Americans own guns. Explore the gun culture in America, from a police officer to a young mother.

Tags: guns, violence, culture, society, National Geographic, Guns in America, documentary, gun culture, criminals, gun dealers, police, citizens, 2nd amendment, gangs, militias