I live on the other side of the world, literally twelve hours ahead of the East Coast of the US, so I woke up to this headline:
Multiple people shot near Kentucky highway, ‘armed and dangerous’ person of interest ID’d
Thankfully, no one was killed, all of the injured are being treated at hospital, and none of the injuries are serious. However, someone showed up at a random spot on I-75 outside of London, Kentucky and started shooting people. Real live people.
Four days ago, this headline graced our computer screens:
4 dead, at least 9 injured in Apalachee High School shooting, 14-year-old suspect arrested: police
We live in a country where 48,000 people died in 2022 from gun-related violence. And, when you suggest on your social media that maybe we might could regulate guns in some sort of way that might could reduce the carnage, we’re greeted with, but guns are a protected right in the Constitution, just like religious liberty to refuse services to those we deem unholy.
And, just like the religious bigots that want the same right to banish those who don’t love Jesus right as the Pilgrims had when they came to America, these folks are really saying, that we have the Constitutionally protected right to be murdered by a gun.
What both the religious bigots and gun nuts are saying is that we all have the right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness as long as it conforms to their narrow beliefs about what constitutes Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. We should all be happy to be murdered by a gun for their Constitutional right to carry one. It’s just the price of their interpretation of the Constitution.
Your means are your ends. What you’re doing is what you want to have happen. If it ain’t, why are you doing it? If you don’t want 50,000 real live Americans to die from gun violence every year, why aren’t you doing anything to stop it and, worse, why are you actively preventing people from stopping it?
Judge people by their actions and not their pretty words because if there’s a silver lining from the Old FART, it is that people lie. Look at what they do, not what they say.
Convince me that I’m wrong! Or give me some support for the contention that we can regulate guns without impinging on the Second Amendment right to have a well-regulated militia.
Image Attribution
This image was found on Login Tekno using a DuckDuckGo Creative Commons License search.
The Psy of Life 
Late to the party, but I can give support for sensible gun regulation, because we’ve done it before, and it made a positive difference without taking anyone’s rights or weapons away. The gun/ammo contingent have taken “slippery slope” way too far. Actually, some of their slippery slope concerns ought to be applied elsewhere, like “religious freedom” and “presidential immunity,” so there’s that.
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Howdy Ali!
Every study comparing gun violence by state and correlating it with gun laws shows that stricter gun laws means lower rates of gun violence. The really crazy thing is that it is gun suicides that account for about two-thirds to three-quarters of all gun deaths in the US. These suicides are predominately rural white men. That’s MAGA. What kind of cognitive dissonance do you need to keep running on that treadmill?
The slippery slope is a feature, not the bug, in all of the other rulings. They are trying hard to push us out of being a democracy and allowing minority rule.
Keep on working for the vote, Ali, cuz I know you are. You’re one of the true heroes in our fight to keep our democracy.
Blog on Sibling!
Jack
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–blush– Well, thank you, in regard to my current work. I am working on it; I’m not sure about the hero part, but thank you for encouraging my efforts! 😀
I wish it worked as well on the gun issue. And state execution of convicts. Ah, well; another day, another step!
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You know, I’m serious Ali. About all I do is write a blog post now and again that gets read by 20 to 100 people. You’re registering people to vote and working on voter education. That’s making a real difference. Keep up the good work.
If we can win this election by a wide enough margin, we just might have a shot on guns and executions in the next two years.
Huzzah!
Jack
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That’s the hope!
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The rights are only valid, if it, benefits ME, and, MY rights are, way MORE important than yours, because, YOU don’t matter to me! That is how the U.S , operates, and, with the Congress, being, SPONSORED by the, NRA, people can, expect that there will be, NO gun control amendment being passed, and, there will be more, “accidental” and/or, RANDOM misfiring of guns and rifles to come, NOT to mention the increase number of MASS SCALE massacres, as, guns are, too easily accessible, too easy to, own in the, U.S. right now.
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Howdy Taurus!
You’re information on the NRA is a little dated. The NRA has nearly completely collapsed because of the corruption of its top leaders and charges by the State of New York. But, you are right that the availability of guns and laws that actually promote shootings (stand your ground laws) are one of the chief causes of our high gun death and injury rate.
I will remind you again that Biden did pass one of the strictest gun bills in the history of the US. The greatest impediment to doing more to curb our gun violence is the Constitution which favors rural states through the election of Senators and the President through the Electoral College. Additionally, the SCOTUS’ refusal to disallow political gerrymandering has allowed a minority of Republican voters to dominate state legislatures and the House of Representatives. If we could ever fix those issues — that is going to be difficult — we might could actually reduce the annual carnage.
Huzzah!
Jack
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In the course of several debates/arguments with the pro-gun crowd, I am forced to believe that some of them take the idea of ‘watering the tree of liberty with blood’ quite literally.
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Howdy Ben!
Not only do they seem to take it quite literally, they seem to have a bit too much enthusiasm for the blood letting that it implies, suggesting a nearly sadistic psychopathic desire to physically and emotionally harm those who do not agree with them.
Huzzah!
Jack
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We just have to remember that inconvenient clause ‘well-regulated militia‘ which the SCROTUS has happily elided over in all of their Guns Are God rulings. Start enforcing that bit and we can start to rein back some of the absurdities, like the execrable Bruen ruling.
Another one of Alito’s conveniently and selectively amnesiac rulings based on ‘consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition’ like Dobbs. (Alito defined our ‘consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition’ time frame to conveniently exclude our actual and extensive historical tradition of regulating firearms in this country.)
They’ve now teed up a case for SCROTUS to declare the 1934 NFA as unconstitutional . I guess 90 years of our ‘history’ isn’t ‘traditional’ enough.
And just to be all nit-picky about it 😎 technically the ‘Right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness‘ has no legal standing, as those were just flowery words in our ‘Fuck off and die‘ letter to George III, I mean our revered Declaration of Independence.
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Howdy Bruce!
Far be it from any of us to actually expect to have an actual right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Authoritarianism requires a chaotic society in order to justify turning away from democracy. There is no quicker way to chaos than having armed citizenry engaging in running gun battles in the streets. Who could argue with the need for goose-stepping jack-booted uniformed thugs to be busting down doors and dragging people away kicking and screaming in the middle of the night when society seems to be coming apart at the seams, especially when it is THEM and OTHERS who are being drug away?
The Republican Party has been plotting the demise of our democracy since well before Barry Goldwater warned us about what would happen if the Birchers and Evangelicals got leadership of the party.
Hopefully, the rest of us have cottoned onto just how much of a threat they are and will vote accordingly. Hopefully.
Huzzah!
Jack
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ya know…we USED TO HAVE a rather good gun control act in place…but the Republican Party asshats refused to codify it back during Dubya’s reign. Gun violence was reduced by a whopping 45% back then during the first year of the act….and continued to drop a bit each year it was in place. then it came up for renewal (codification) and lo and behold the far right decided the would block it…so we’re now worse off than ever before. Add in 3d printers and all it takes is one gun to make many many more. I wish we would follow Britain and Australia’s lead and ban all the suckers, with the only exception being one per household that HUNTS for food.
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Howdy Suze!
We are the source of guns for much of the criminal element of the world, especially Mexico. It is our liberal gun laws that allow the cartels to destabilize Mexico with gun violence. It is our appetite for illegal drugs that makes it worth their while to keep the country reeling in chaos.
Our liberal gun laws and regulations are far too beneficial for too many groups. It is well past time for those of us who believe strongly in gun regulation and the right to a safe and legal abortion and to many other common sense laws, like a national minimum living wage, affordable housing, and universal early childcare to start voting like it.
The only way to destabilize a democracy is through violence. The only way to promote enough violence in a society to destabilize a democracy is to make sure every wingnut who wants one can have a gun and oodles of ammunition. This is a plan that has been unfolding since Barry Goldwater’s run for the presidency and his warning about what would happen if the Birchers and Evangelicals ever took over the Republican Party.
Huzzah!
Jack
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Once upon a time there was an organization, a tax exempt non-profit association of traditional gun owners like hunters, target sport shooters, collectors, and some people in professions at risk of robbery and such, that taught gun safety and responsibility. It was called the National Rifle Association. Then something happened. The gun industry contributions to it began to grow and to grow larger than the dues of those traditional members. And wealthy libertarian authoritarians (a strange logical paradox, but real) who wanted to have private armies, and would be revolutionaries they encouraged added more money to the pot, enough to corrupt not only the leaders of the NRA, but judges and Supreme Court justices as well, along with lots of politicians. But at the root of all that was the greed of the gun industry to sell as many guns as possible to as many people as possible by instilling fear, even paranoia, so that people with no rational reason to think they must have guns (as many as they could afford) to buy them.
The result was that an amendment to the Constitution written to guarantee to the states the right to maintain their “well regulated” state militias (mainly to suppress slave rebellions and fight native people and steal their land), and not be dependent for defense on a distant federal army, was misread as a blanket personal right.
I submit that that misreading flies in the face of a fundamental reality of government. Throughout recorded history, the definition of a government has been that it is that part of a social system which holds in so far as possible a monopoly on legitimized lethal violence. That is why the Second Amendment speaks of that well regulated militia, not individual rights. The regulation and control of the means of lethal violence is central to any functional government, particularly one which expects not to be overthrown.
The current official interpretation of the Second Amendment is simply wrong and a danger to the existing system of government and civil order.
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Now, Bob, let’s not go telling stories out of turn. Chief Justice John Roberts has already ruled that money does not corrupt, so any idea that the unfettered financial contributions of gun manufacturers and anyone wanting their own private army or anyone with any other desire to see unregulated gun ownership in this country is completely and utterly wrong. Those monetary contributions and in kind gifts haven’t corrupted the SCOTUS or anyone else. We all know that money is not the root of all evil, just ask John Roberts he’ll tell you.
We all know that if we want to understand someone’s motivations, we don’t listen to what they say, we watch what they do. In this case, what they’re doing is destabilizing our society with gun violence. They want the danger and threat to our government and civil order so that the average white person, especially, middle class and up white person, feels like we need a strong police state to maintain law and order over the poor and non-white population. The white middle class will believer we are a democracy if they get to vote in every election.
Huzzah!
Jack
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How silly of me to suggest that Chief Justice Roberts [who is, of course not the same as The Dread Pirate Roberts] in his great wisdom might be mistaken.
As always, the fear of loss trumps [no pun intended?] the hope of profit. And, profiting from others’ fear of loss never goes out of style among the predators.
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Howdy Bob!
It’ll be interesting to see if the cats-and-dogs story has enough traction to inflame white racial animus enough for a Trump win. Listening to the interviews with “undecided” voters was unsettling given their repetition of MAGA talking points. It was a reminder that (a) we’ve normalized Trump’s fascism and (b) the for-profit media doesn’t mind being played. If I hear one more person say, “I just don’t know enough about Harris to decide between the two,” I think I’ll be reduced to a blubbering pile of mess. You know Harris isn’t a fascist, so what else do you need?
Huzzah!
Jack
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I have to consider that, given the bomb threats and at least one school shooting threat against both the Haitian community and the city administration (accusations of a cover up), that there is a probability significantly greater than zero that some Lone Wolf type will elect himself the avenging angel of the moment and carry out or attempt a mass casualty attack in Springfield. In that case, both Trump and Vance have to be confronted with the demand that they admit the story is false and call off the trolls, preferably on live TV.
There’s another process that must be going on in that town. The MAGAs are confronted with seeing people out walking their dogs without thinking they need an AR-15 to protect their pet, the ducks and geese are still on the ponds, none of their friends and neighbors are reporting their pets missing, and so on. Their cognitive dissonance can only be resolved by deciding who is lying to them. Some will realize it is Trump.
The undecided voters have to be at the far edges of “low information” and disengaged. They really have not been paying attention, in fact never have until the last weeks before an election, if then. Still, it is mind blowing to hear them.
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Howdy Bob!
There could easily be another Comet Ping Pong style shooting or worse from all of this. Trump is hoping for, relying on more violence that he can blame on immigrants and the Democrats. People may demand it of him, but I doubt Trump will ever admit that he is wrong about Haitian immigrants eating the pets of people in Springfield. He’ll just double down on it.
A reporter asked him about the bomb threats in Springfield. He said he didn’t know anything about it. The next question from the reporter should’ve been, why not. How could he be so poorly informed? That in itself is disqualifying.
The low information peripheral voter is who Trump is pinning his hopes on. He’s hoping that stories like this somehow appeal to them and get them to the polls. I don’t know the mad alchemy of that trick, but that is the strategy from what I’ve heard in the media lately. That and nullifying the votes from Democratic leaning precincts and throwing it all to the courts and the House.
You know that’s the real strategy: make enough smoke, claim fire, and get it into court.
Blog on Sibling!
Jack
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One thing of which we can be sure is that Trump will never admit to being wrong about anything. The closest he can come is to say he never said that thing.
As for being poorly informed as a disqualification, he has passed that line long ago. The subjects about which he is ignorant, deluded, misled by those who use him, or simply making things up and lying are almost beyond counting.
This interview today on Fresh Air is amazing in regard to his incompetence: https://www.npr.org/2024/09/17/g-s1-23396/lucky-loser-dispels-the-myth-of-trump-as-a-self-made-billionaire
We need a big enough victory to negate that strategy, and some judges and secretaries of state and governors to stand in the way.
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Howdy Bob!
I literally laughed out loud during the debate when Trump was asked whether he was admitting he lost the 2020 election when he said he had lost by a whisker and Trump responded with, “I said that?” You can’t make this stuff up, can you?
As for the people who have the patience and fortitude to wade through whatever information is available about Trump’s money, my hat is off to them. I couldn’t do it, but I’m not surprised by their conclusions. We had all guessed it, but like Galileo’s balls, it is nice to have it confirmed.
I think that this election is going to be the hardest to predict ever. We’ve got so many effects going on: reified polarization, the first woman president, the first woman of color president, another Trump term, abortion, populism, assassination attempts — that’s multiple — voter roll purges in the millions, new voter registration in the 100,000’s, under polled rural working class white voters. Who can predict how this will turn out?
Blog on Sibling!
Jack
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Nevertheless, the professional and amateur predictors will try all the way to the counting of the last vote and perhaps beyond.
And don’t forget the speculations to come about an October Surprise, the what, where, by which side (if not both) or some third actor (Russia, Iran, Israel, China, Musk or some other tech billionaire, etc.
All we really can do is vote and get as many others as we can to turn out.
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Howdy Bob!
While I’m confident that we will know who won the election, even though that person may not be the one awarded the victory, I have no doubt that the outcome will be disputed for the rest of our lives. Trump is definitely hoping for a 2000 Gore v Bush outcome. I also think his internal polling probably shows that that is the only route to victory that he has. Probably one reason he is so panicked now.
There will no doubt be an October surprise and maybe even another black swan event. Whatever Trump tries to engineer, though, will probably fall as flat as everything else he’s done. Musk has shown himself to be fairly inept at such things as well. Russia, however, may have something more effective up their sleeve.
I’m hoping that all the spikes in registrations reflect the enthusiasm for voting that we’ll need to win and win big. Don’t be surprised if Georgia and Florida report one final big purging of their voter rolls, though.
Blog on Sibling!
Jack
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Trump will continue to double down on his lies and fantasies. He doesn’t do planning. Others will be left trying to engineer the steal. Musk is a brilliant engineer and nearly clueless about people.
Everybody wants to find or do the October surprise that will get the outcome they want. They don’t all want the same thing. They don’t all understand the situation the same way. And then, there are things like hurricanes and floods, and other countries just doing their thing on each other in ways that effect us. I think that a continuing resolution to keep the government open will get done, but it may cost Johnson his Speakership, throwing the House into chaos right before the election.
Everybody check you registration early and often.
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Howdy Bob!
Trump thrives on chaos. It is the smokescreen he uses to cover his incompetence and his illegal activities. As long as everything is confused and everyone is frantic, he’s free to do as he pleases.And, chaos is something you can be opportunistic about and not have to plan.
He’s also the master manipulator willing to use people’s desires and ambitions against them to get what he wants, and there’s always somebody willing to be used.
We’ve already had our fill of unanticipated events this election cycle. Statistically, any more are unlikely, but we are sure to have at least one more big hurricane and a good chance at weather gone awry in the fall. And with Netanyahu and Putin getting more desperate in their wars, there’s likely to be a surprise brewing there, too.
Huzzah!
Jack
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I’m remembering that much of the attraction for many people of the strong man taking charge is chaos and unpredictability, a craving for order. In this election, that craving can cut either way. In 2020, Biden won in part as a response to Trump’s chaos, and much of the support for Harris is from those who correctly see Trump as an agent of chaos [I just remembered that the evil enemy organization in the “The Man From UNCLE” series was “CHAOS”.] rather than order. Trump, of course, presents himself as the cure for the disorder he has created.
We’ve been having too many unprecedented events coming too fast on too many fronts. I’m thinking that “Future Shock” might need another look.
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Howdy Bob!
“Future Shock” had quite an influence on me. It set me on the road to the social sciences. I haven’t thought about it in years.
And CHAOS was a stand in for the KGB, the Eastern Block, and communism in general, which isn’t too far off the mark for Trump and MAGA being useful idiots and Russian stooges. Life imitates art.
That’s one of things I’ve been pondering these last few weeks, how can this race be characterized? 2020 was the return to normalcy and stability. In some ways, Obama’s success set up Trump. We had regained our footing after the Republican induced Great Recession of 2008 and were ready to take a chance… and the Black thing. But, now what. We’re not out of the economic woods that Trump got us lost in by his tax cuts to billionaires and mismanagement of #COVID19, so we’re not necessarily feeling like continuing the Biden-Harris policies, but “most” of us don’t want to go back to the Trump admin, either. Is Harris enough of a change to satisfy that itch for change? That’s the question.
Huzzah!
Jack
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I’m thinking that the itch is more complicated. It is for both stability and change, for return to a better past and a different future. Maybe that is part of what’s going on for the undecided voters. Both candidates can be seen as agents of stability or change (even though one would sow mostly chaos rather than constructive change).
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Howdy Bob!
I think you’re right, but our perceptions have been so skewed by mass psychosis that we don’t perceive the Trump years accurately or the potential disaster that a second round of Trump would be accurately. But, we also aren’t perceiving the prosperity of the present accurately, either. The only way Trump looks like a better choice is if the current situation looks like it is a disaster. Clearly, we’re not in a disaster. This shouldn’t be a close contest at all.
Huzzah!
Jack
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Narrative trumps reality. There also is a general amnesia of the fact that Trump got a free ride economically from the Obama recovery. And, Biden got blamed for the economic troubles that Trump set in motion. The economy is one of those huge ships that don’t change direction easily or quickly.
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Narrative is set by the availability heuristic and the mere exposure effect. Trump saying he had the best economy the world has ever known didn’t make it true, but it made many believe because it took on the thin veneer of truthiness by dent of repetition. Some things are more resistant to the effect, like “I’ve been the best president for the Blacks.” That’s because racism has been reified in our very souls and institutions. We know intuitively that it isn’t true and no amount of repetition will gild that steaming pile of horse hockey. But the economy is complicated and easily forgotten like what you had for breakfast on the first Tuesday after the first Monday of November in 2020. It just all blurs together after awhile.
Jack
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The economy is also defined in our national narrative as always a most important issue and never as good as we want it to be in the present, so especially vulnerable to nostalgia and rose colored hopes. And most people are poorly educated about this very complex system and the whole field of statistics that appear in almost all news stories about it.
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Because thr NRA is what funded the U.S. Congress, no matter how many people DIED from the random shootings or massacres, there will NEVER be a gun control billl getting close to a FIRST reading, because, whoever propoosed a gun control bill, is, committing, political, SUICIDE, because nobody close to the members of the American Congress had DIED, in all of these, random shootings, and, NOBODY on Capitol Hill gives a SHIT, all they care about is, keeping their, asses in those, Congressional, seats, and, the Congress is funded by special interest groups like the, N.R.A., and, proposing of passing a gun control bill, the lawmakers are, signing that “end-of-contract” to their, elections.
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Howdy Taurus!
The funny thing is that Biden and the narrow majorities that the Dems had in Congress were able to pass gun control legislation in his first two years. It had bipartisan support. Fortunately, the NRA has imploded under the weight of its own corruption and the pressure from the Mothers Demand Action and other gun legislation groups that rose up after Sandy Hook, Gabby Giffords shooting, and Parkland.
It isn’t that nobody on Capitol Hill gives a shit, it is that the people on Capitol Hill from rural states or from very gerrymandered states are insulated enough from being voted out of office that they don’t have to care about what their constituents want and can do what their funders pay them to do. It is the fundamental flaw with US democracy.
Huzzah!
Jack
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We put restrictions on constitutional rights all the time. Under certain circumstances our rights can be removed entirely. You have the right to free speech, for example, but only as long as your speech does not directly threaten the safety and welfare of someone else. Try uttering threats of physical violence against a prominent politician in a public forum and see what happens, for example. Even your right to vote can be taken away under certain circumstances.
Why should the second amendment be any different? It should be subject to the same kinds of restrictions when it is necessary to protect the lives of others.
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Howdy Grouchy!
I think, I hope, that the message is starting to break through to the “independent” “occasional” “low information” “swing” voter. The correlation between Republican held seats, government, disastrous domestic policy (healthcare, guns, housing, debt and deficit), and divisive social issues may finally be becoming apparent to even the most casual observer. It may even be becoming evident to those folks that if they want safe and legal abortion, gun control legislation, and affordable housing, then they’ll vote Democratic. The Republicans have become so transparent in their authoritarianism that only the thickest cognitive dissonance will keep voters from knowing what they’re voting for.
Huzzah!
Jack
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