The New Republic

THANK you.

- WandreyCer

November 13, 2009 at 4:54pm

Thank you for an amsuing parody of liberal stupidity.

- bulbman1066

November 14, 2009 at 12:28am

bulbman1066 - thank YOU for being willing to expose your own stupidity. Just because gun control is politically unpopular at the moment doesn't mean it wouldn't save lives and spare grieving families like those at Fort Hood.

- JackR

November 14, 2009 at 9:42am

Let's be honest, bulbman, there are only two types of people among the general public who have any interest in owning these types of firearms: 1. Violent crackpots, criminals and terrorists. 2. Those who use guns as toys -- and will brook no limits to their right to own the biggest, baddest toy they can find. Other countries have high rates of gun ownership without such high rates of gun violence. Why? Because those cultures take firearms seriously, as weapons and tools, rather than treating them as just another recreational consumer good. In the US, guns, including semi-automatics, are consistently referred to as "recreational" devices -- and have been agressively marketed as such for more than a century. There really is no earthly, practical reason for a person who doesn't have mass murder in mind to possess the weapon used in the Fort Hood attack. Other than play. I'm not arguing for gun control. Only for a little bit of honesty about the real reason we will never adopt useful, practical policies toward guns in this country -- a reason that has nothing to do with the phoney, melodramatic political and safety arguments put forward by the gun industry and its clientele. Those arguments are marketing strategies at heart -- aimed at stroking the egos of potential consumers. The industry knows that selling guns based on need, as weapons, could never provide the sales volume they have enjoyed by marketing them as status-conferring, ego-stroking, endlessly collectable, recreational toys. A culture that doesn't have a useful, practical attitude toward guns, will never have a useful, practical attitude toward gun safety.

- esmense

November 14, 2009 at 12:12pm

Bulbman is totally right and the rest of you are just full of Liberal Commie Fascist hate for God-fearing Folks who want to EXERCISE their God-Given Second Amendment rights. Has a single Liberal Anti-Gun Anti-Constitution activist ever EVER argued for Machete or Samurai Sword control? No, because you are all for Illegal Immigrant rights like your Illegal Immigrant President and AGAINST good old-fashioned American GUNS like the Berreta and the Mauser. As for mass-murder types, the Rwandan genocide was perpetrated with machetes and everyone know how many people Uma Thurman killed in Kill Bill with a single sword. If everyONE on that army base had guns, none of this would have happened. There would have been a good clean shoot out, like the basement bar in Inglorious Basterds, and all the Nazi badguys would have been wiped out. But NOOOO. Gun control - a real true Liberal Commie Parody.

- icarusr

November 14, 2009 at 12:31pm

A few months ago I was out in the aviary feeding the parrots when I came within a foot of stepping on a five-foot rattlesnake. The big fella was evidently napping after consuming one of the less mindful of the ground squirrels that have taken to burrowing into the aviary to scavenge for nuts and fruit dropped by the parrots. I froze in mid-stride, carefully backpedalled while somehow maintaining sphincter control, and went over to the other side of the aviary where I yelled out for the Mrs. to call Paul. Paul is our next-door neighbor, a rancher, a generous and prudent man wise to the land in which our little ranchero abides, and a hunter. On the phone my wife said, essentially, "big rattler" and within a couple minutes Paul was headed over the hill from his place in his ATV. He brought with him a pistol of some sort with some special shells that looked like miniature shotgun shells: the business end contained shot that was meant to disperse on the targer. Perfect for dispatching a snake too narrow and too dangerous to get close enough to to kill with the usual bullet. While I watched, grateful for my neighbor and for a moment thinking maybe I should get one or more of those gizmos that go Bang! and that seem to appear in three-quarters of films these days, Paul rendered the snake as unfortunate as its recent lunch. We counted the rattles (12, so we figured 12 years old, right?), chopped off and buried the head, and that was that. Rattlesnakes are common in our valley--Paul's seen a dozen or so over the last couple years--and the wifey and I being animals lovers first thought we'd adopt a live and let live approach. However, there are productive domestic animals running around everyone's place like chickens and goats and dogs, not to mention unproductive ones like children, and the consensus among the neighbors is to send the reptiles into the Great Beyond, turn around and walk away. I'm the only property owner here who doesn't own a gun. The main thing keeping me buying one is that I trust myself far less than I trust my neighbors: I get depressed sometimes, out of my head, and I do not want to become a victim of a crime of opportunity at my own hand. I like the fact that my neighbors are apparently mature, reasonable gun owners. I don't like the fact that, as esmense succinctly listed, the "crackpots, criminals, and terrorists" are not. I'm not clear why society can't discern between the two.

- williamyard

November 14, 2009 at 1:23pm

Off-topic, FWIW, a footnote to the snake-in-the-aviary story. We have 35 parrots in an 800-square-foot aviary. Aside from those that are part of a bonded pair, the parrots are solitary, territorial, and don't particularly like one another. Normally they will disperse themselves equidistantly around the dozens of perches we've hung throughout their home. What I failed to notice until after I'd backed away from the rattler was that all the parrots had taken up positions in the far end of the aviary where they silently clutched the exterior wall, as high up as they could get, while keeping an eye on the big snake at the other end. We're aware of most of our birds' histories--they've been discarded by breeders or given up by families whose fingers they bit--and we're pretty sure most if not all of them never saw a rattlesnake before they ended up here. And we've seen them ignore lizards, wild birds, squirrels, rats, mice, and virtually every other critter that's come into or near the aviary. Which means that "Big snake bad!" is apparently hard-wired in their DNA.

- williamyard

November 14, 2009 at 1:38pm

Strange but I assumed he used standard issue weaponry available on the base. Yard, at least you got winter and hibernation, down in the Oaxacan desert we got some really nasty little vipers. I simply no longer trudge through the grass anywhere, I stick to the paths at all times. And I never get the students who wear sandals, it is not just snakes but scorpions, fire ants, spiders, killer bees, etc. I had a tarantula that kept finding its way into my home, and I live in an apartment on the second floor. I didn't kill it because I know it is not poisonous. The fauna down here is really amazing, so I can understand why you live where you do.

- blackton

November 14, 2009 at 4:19pm

Sorry folks. There is no practical way to solve this problem by restricting gun ownership. Yugoslavia had comprehensive gun control, which resulted in a situation in which people were totally at the mercy of renegade militias. The same situation has played out, more or less, in dozens of other post-communist and other devolving societies. The problem at Ft. Hood, as at Columbine and etc., was not too many guns, but not enough. If the army had armed security personnel in place this would have been settled with much less loss of innocent life.

- Robert Powell

November 14, 2009 at 5:38pm

It is not that we are unable to discern, Mr. Yard, it is that we are unwilling, as to which, see, esmense and bulbman, above, for the poles of explanation. The army did have armed security personnel in place, Mr. Powell. That's who shot Hasan. Why isn't the UK overrun with renegade militia despite gun control? These generalizations about impossibility make no sense given that there exist societies with rigorous gun control and societies without. One wonders in how many it is possible to buy easily concealed automatic pistols with 20-round magazines.

- roidubouloi

November 14, 2009 at 6:05pm

Robert Powell -- Are you saying we are a "devolving" society? Whether you genuinely think that or not, I'd ask you to consider that the former Soviet satellites, dealing with the power vacuum created in the wake of the break up of the Soviet union, had other, very serious problems that more logically explain free-lancing militias. Is it reasonable to put restrictions on certain types of very lethal weaponry? Of course it is. Is it possible to do so without restricting legitimate gun use -- by hunters, citizens desiring reasonable protection in their homes and businesses, rural farmers dealing with the occasional destructive critter? Of course it is. But it is not really these reasonable gun uses that the gun industry is anxious to protect -- after all, those uses aren't, and have never been, under threat. It is the "recreational" sale of lethal weapons like those used at Fort Hood and others more lethal still -- that serve no real, practical purpose in every day life and therefore do not have much of a natural, non-military market -- that they really want to encourage and protect. Their reasons for doing so are monetary. Not patriotic. Have you ever wondered why private gun ownership in the US has increased over the centuries at the same time hunting has decreased, and continues to decrease, dramatically and the country has become increasingly urbanized and well-policed? Marketing, my friend, marketing. Have you ever stop to consider how self-serving many of the arguments made, and fears encouraged, by the gun lobby really are? Again, I'm not arguing for gun control. I'm just arguing for a little honesty -- and a better understanding of the real bill of goods being sold.

- esmense

November 14, 2009 at 8:04pm

Bob - just so I understand - you are making the claim that there are insufficient weapons on a Military base? The supposition that if everyone carries a weapon we'll all be much safer doesn't seem to be well supported by the overwhelming greater chance of being shot by a) your own weapon or b) by someone you know rather than by a stranger. As for rampaging militias, as Roi noted, somehow most of the the rest of the developed world gets along just fine without being armed. Apparently their police and military forces manage to keep that problem under control. The same applies to the machete argument. It is true that an unarmed populace will be more vulnerable if the national government somehow dissolves, but in the scheme of things, that would appear to be somewhat unlikely. And the idea that being armed will allow you do defend yourself against the government doesn't have the best of track records.

- Nari224

November 14, 2009 at 8:04pm

As to the facts of the Ft. Hood case, it is my understanding that there were not armed security personnel at the scene. The female police officer wasn't even on duty, and responded in her private car after hearing the call on her police radio scanner. Although there are lots of weapons at Ft. Hood, nearly all of them are under lock and key most of the time. But then of course, everything can't be guarded all the time; it is virtually impossible to prevent nutbags like Hasan who have no criminal or mental health record from arming themselves; and although Hasan picked a particularly deadly weapon, it's unlikely that the results would have been much different if he was armed with any one of dozens of possible alternatives--the variety of deadly weapons available is sufficiently vast to make tinkering with the laws' details an exercise in attempting to sweep back the tide. It's truly depressing, but I think we are unlikely to develop any consistently effective way to deal with this kind of thing. One fact that has been demonstrated with actual police data is that in areas where citizens are allowed to carry concealed weapons, violent crime declines significantly. That may be counter-intuitive for folks who think every problem has a solution in some kind of new regulation, but not to those of us who have had extensive contact with violent criminals.

- Robert Powell

November 15, 2009 at 5:24am

Robert Powell -- Citizens are allowed to carry concealed weapons in 48 out of 50 states, including everyone of the states that top the list in terms of violent crime. I certainly wouldn't suggest that something as long-standing and wide-spread as concealed carry contributes to high crime rates, but I also see absolutely no logical reason for you to attribute any decreases in crime that parts of this country have experienced in recent decades to this very long standing gun right either. But concealed carry isn't what excites today's gun players. They are mostly determined to destroy any public wish or right to be free of the threat posed by people of questionable judgement and unserious purpose, like themselves, openly brandishing an armory of lethal weapons at public political events, public playgrounds, public malls, places of worship, the campus of schools and universities, etc. In Seattle at the moment there's a deeply unserious man suing for the right to pack heat at the kiddie pool. The yearly number of US gun deaths demonstrates clearly enough the consequences of allowing people like this -- not hunters, not people seeking reasonable protection in their homes and businesses, not farmers putting down destructive animals, but self-aggrandizing, attention seeking fools living deep in fantasyland -- to dominate the debate on guns and public safety. It’s first and foremost for THEIR right to amuse themselves (and publicly bully the rest of us) that we Americans have been asked to, and have demonstrated we are willing to, sacrifice countless lives – in our workplaces, places of worship, schools, national parks, public squares -- to defend. As I said earlier, "A culture that doesn't have a useful, practical attitude toward guns will never have a useful, practical attitude toward gun safety." And therefore there's no need for gun players to worry -- we can all expect to continue to enjoy the kind of spectacular displays of public violence that have long been a mainstay of American life.

- esmense

November 15, 2009 at 11:01am

I'm not sure I've made my argument clear here. I'm not arguing for more "gun control." I'm arguing that while it is clear that guns kill people, it is also clear that in some cultures (ours, for instance) they kill many more people than in others. Reasonable gun laws are not likely to do much to prevent gun violence in a nation or community that enjoys an unreasonable, careless, whacked out attitude toward guns. (And our attitude appears to be becoming more whacked out over time rather than less so). So what I'm arguing for is more honesty -- about those attitudes, about the genuine levels of and reasons for the violence, about how guns are used and what they represent in this culture, about the motivation of those who promote their use and exploit those attitudes, and, of course, I'm arguing for a change in attitude. Ironically, adopting more serious, less destructive cultural attitudes toward guns could, and I believe would naturally, without much controversy, lead to better, more effective laws -- but laws can't change or mitigate deeply destructive cultural attitudes. What I'd like Americans to do is sober up. To stop seeing and encouraging the use of guns as play things, personal drama devices, ego strokers and life style choices and, perhaps most important, to stop obscenely romanticizing gun ownership and gun violence as symbols and acts of potency, patriotism, individualism and freedom on the one hand, while tolerating the promotion of deranged levels of political and personal paranoia on the other (often for self-serving reasons). The first funeral I ever attended, as a child, was for a family friend who had been killed accidently by a stray bullet when she entered her backyard to tell her husband, who was practicing for a competitive "quick draw" event, that dinner was ready. Since then I've gone to the funerals of two professional collegues and a very close friend from college, all suicides by gun. Several childhood friends suffered gun injuries of various levels of seriousness, and in more recent years I've worked with two co-workers who, non-lethally, shot themselves while playing with their guns. A casual social acquaintance, who dealt guns as a sideline, accidentally killed a customer. It was late at night and much drinking was indulged in by both the victim and the shooter. When I was a newly wed and my husband a ranger in one of our western National Parks, I endured the agony of waiting for the outcome of a many hours long stand off, in a nearly full but remote campsite approachable only by boat and helicopter, between park personel and a sniper intent on killing as many others as he could before killing himself. That incident, fortunately, ended with only the sniper dead (by his own hand). More recently my sister in law, a nurse working that evening in the emergency room of her small town's hospital, and her husband who had stopped off at the hospital briefly before departing on a trip out of town, were seriously injured, by sniper fire, when they went to the aid of a fallen hospital volunteer -- shot as it turned out -- in the parking lot. The hospital volunteer, a mother of four, was dead. The shooter, a "loner" with no connection to any of the victims or to the hospital itself, was later shot by police. No motive for why he chose to lie in wait to pick off victims in the hospital parking lot will ever be known, other than perhaps, in such a small community, the hospital made for the largest, most accessible location for him to play out his stand against authority. I'm a pretty conventional middle aged woman. Who has never been the victim of a crime, or lived in a high crime area. And yet, an awful lot of gun violence has touched my life. Mr. Powell could argue correctly that everyone of those incidences of violence and injury took place in spite of existing gun laws. But I believe I am just as correct in arguing that the easy availability of guns and the carelessness, anger, paranoia, arrogance, lack of respect and concern for community and others that contribute to that easy availability and characterize our attitudes toward and debate about guns played a part in every event.

- esmense

November 15, 2009 at 1:38pm

The advent of widespread concealed carry laws is relatively recent, in practice still not as widespread as "48 out of 50 states", and the data on the effects of changing the existing laws in a number of states which had previously maintained drastic restrictions on concealed carry is a matter of public record. We live in a violent society. Much of what esmense reports about the pathology surrounding guns is accurate. But this is not a problem that will be solved by legislation, any more than the drug problem which contributes a great deal to larger issue of gun violence will be.

- Robert Powell

November 15, 2009 at 4:42pm

"...And he stopped off in Tushka at that 'Pop's Knife and Gun' place Bought a SKS rifle and a couple full cases of that steelcore ammo With the Berdan primers from some East bloc nation that no longer needs 'em And a Desert Eagle that's one great big ol' pistol I mean .50 caliber made by badass Hebrews And some surplus tracers for that old BAR of Slayton's Soon as it gets dark we're gonna have us a time We're gonna have us a time..." James McMurtry, "Choctaw Bingo"

- williamyard

November 15, 2009 at 7:24pm

Saw the remake of "The Prisoner" last night. Robert has a point: if everyone in the Village had a gun, Number 2 would not last too long. Don't know about the white bubble thingy, though ...

- icarusr

November 16, 2009 at 3:27pm