America is the violent coddled son protected and excused even in his savagery.
8
Revoke the NRA's tax exempt status: https://www.change.org/p/irs-revoke-the-nra-s-501-c-4-tax-exemption-as-a...
10
You want to repeal the Dicky Amendment huh? “None of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may be used to advocate or promote gun control.”
Because Government sponsored science has worked so well with the GloBull Warming debate no doubt.
Look Mr. Blow we know the Progressives want to repeal the second. If you want you can try, go ahead. But we aren't going to let you make it a right that is so hard to exercise that it might as well not exist. I am not going to have this conversation with liberals again. It is an individual protected right that predates the Constitution. So I am not listening anymore. Repeal it or go pound sand.
1
Shear speculation on my part. Perhaps the bag of NRA money Mr. Dicky received to stop research thus remain in the dark for 20+ years is running low. Now he regrets the passage, how very magnanimous of him, however late. Hope he has slept well all these years and with many body count dreams. Mr. Blow, your piece is at the usual level of perception, keep it up.
8
Great article!
6
Mr. Blow your columns always run between “Very bright” and “Brilliant.” I was a Probation Officer for 33 years. On one occasion we processed a case in which a fellow thought he was being burglarized.
After all, he had seen the perpetrator’s profile in the his bedroom window. Surreptitiously he pulled his handgun from his night stand, fired and in doing so blew off a big toe.
On another occasion two young men were after rival gang members when one asked the other for the handgun they were sharing. The weapon was accidentally dropped and Smith and Wesson provided a new hole in the young man’s kiester.
My point: there are some really dumb things that can happen when you put any form of firearm on the field
of play.
3
Does the second amendment truly apply to African Americans? I would say it does not
2
Chuck, you almost got through an entire article w/o interjected race, almost. Is there a Part II to this article? Waiting on the BIG idea. We’ll certainly get more changes than what your boy Barack was able to ‘lead’
Two combat marines in the Pacific facing further action against fanatical Japanese forces use a break in the heavy fighting to discuss their attitudes toward G-d.
One, the believer in G-d, asks the other “What do you believe in?”
The answer that comes back is “I believe in ammunition.”
These lines are from the 2010 HBO series “The Pacific.”
But they could just as well have been spoken today.
Except that the fanatics this time are the NRA and its supporters.
4
I sense America may have become gun cult. We worship the God of Guns who requires the sacrifice of 30,000 or so human lives each year as appeasement.
I try to stay positive, but am challenged to be hopeful that we will find our way off this gory trajectory.
Yet despair is not a solution, so I will do my part, persisting and resisting.
Thank you Charles for focusing our attention.
8
Thinking about all this, I finally found the silver lining. All those kids, and their co-victims over the years, did not die in vain. What is happening is that the rest of the world is recoiling in horror at America's embrace of guns as pets, and the consequences that naturally follow. Those countries will not adopt this particular element of American popular culture. These kids died so tens of thousands of people around the world will live. French, Germans, Japanese, Australians, New Zealanders, Croatians, Kenyans, Morroccans, Uruguayans, and Faroe Islanders,to name a few, thank you all for your sacrifice.
2
Surely it is obvious to all, that guns beget death; more guns beget more deaths.
The nonsense being spoken about arming teachers is just so illogical as a solution, it's not worth commenting on.
What are the Canadian murder statistics for death by gun? Surely this is a strong argument for control of either ownership or registration of firearms, or do you love murdering each other? Terrorism? - look at your local NRA for all the terrorism in your local community.
Get serious about the stopping of killing each other, otherwise you might just have to start looking at Russia using this as the next option for undermining your society.
5
You dismiss gun-rights advocates as "conspiracy-minded", and then move on...as if your (very much anti-gun) opinion alone settles the matter. Based on what evidence?
The overwhelming majority of governance in our world, both at the present time, and throughout history, has been some form or autocracy or outright tyranny. Within the last century, tens of millions of people died through the brutality of their governments. Within the last decade, we have seen a very clear distinction between revolutions in places where the people are not outgunned by their government (Egypt, Tunisia; either because the people had the means or because the soldiers wouldn't fire on them), and those that were (Libya, Syria). And, of course, our own country exists only because John Farmer went and got his gun and went out into the field to fight the redcoats.
The answer to "why does anyone need 'military-style' weaponry" is: because they might at some point need to engage in military-style activity. I don't argue it is likely or probably, only that it is possible. To dispute that, you either have to believe that tyranny could never happen here, would never happen here, or wouldn't be worth trying to fight. My only questions are: which is it, and why?
....and, oh, I hope you've spent every breath in your body skewering the tinfoil hat crowd who are convinced President Trump is on the brink of turning us into a fascist dictatorship.
1
Labeling all males as “bad”, and all females as “good”; claiming traits associated with boys “bad”, and traits associated with girls “good”; and creating schools to foster better outcomes for girls than boys; is a prescription for alienation and hopelessness.
When America stops making war against boys and men, that extraordinarily small percentage of boys and men unable to deal with their victimization will stop attacking back.
Problem solved.
2
America's romance with guns is a lethal fairy tale propagated by the NRA, the gun industry and more recently by the Republican Party, which has employed "gun rights" along with Law and Order as racist code for fear of Blacks, a powerful wedge issue to divide traditional Democratic constituencies.
It may be rhetorically convenient to say America is the gun. But it's a lie, a myth, a counterfeit paradigm intended to pervert history for essentially a commercial and ideological purpose.
The American Wild West, sensationalized as all cowboys and Indians, high noon, Wild Bill Hickock, OK Corral, etc., was in fact anything but. Guns were standard survival gear in the wilderness but nearly every town and city had strict prohibitions against the possession of firearms. Gunfights were rare and gun deaths uncommon.
If not for reoccuring war and attendant military market that developed for mass manufacture of rifles, the multi-billion American gun industry would have remained essentially a small boutique business.
Trafficking in gun mythology just consolidates the psychological effect of inevitability and hopelessness that the NRA and its bought and paid for politicians count on.
The vast majority of Americans aren't defined by love of guns. It's a commercial big lie, which happens to also be a potent political strategy for Republicans and their subsidiary PAC, the NRA.
5
i have lived a full life (70 years) here in amerika and there is this strange machoism streak that runs through our country. Guns? They're for killing. Killing is killing. It's not a sport.
7
Over and over and over again we see the destructive power of money on our political system. The wealthy buy politicians who then enact laws that grossly favor the wealthy. The fossil fuel industry buys politicians who then roll back regulations on fossil fuels. The gun manufacturers, through their lobbying arm the NRA, buys politicians who then enact laws that make it easier to by guns, which creates violence, which makes scared, foolish people want to buy more guns. And yet we have a Supreme Court that thinks companies are people and there should be no limits on money in politics, and a large swath of the population that is blind and dumb and unwilling or unable to look beyond the lies to see what is going on behind the curtain. Truly we are doomed.
5
I have two questions. If, as some seem to suggest, gun owners are paranoid about myth that the "libs are a commin fer their guns" why do so many of the comments on these stories insist on total confiscation? I don't see the rest of the "reasonable" commentators rushing to confront the "confiscators."
Given that, what should a "reasonable" gun owner think is the overall end game?
4
The country is the gun. Thank you, Charles Blow.
The country is being held hostage by the NRA. Even many of its members seem to be sane, but the organization's current leadership, not so much.
Not much has been said about one aspect of the ammunition that the AR-15 rifle used by the Florida killer was loaded with, but a current Atlantic article tells how even one hit from it can kill:
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/02/what-i-saw-treating...
Let's listen to the Stoneman Douglas survivors and honor the memory of those killed (and Sandy Hook, and Las Vegas, and the Pulse, and Aurora...) and have the courage of the Australians. Sensible gun legislation, please. No more "thoughts and prayers".
7
Imagine our schools as armed camps, where teachers are packing concealed handguns. Any day after you've dropped them off at school, your children may find themselves in the middle of a shootout. And once the psycho with the more powerful weapon (and no one to go home to) has neutralized the teacher, what happens then?
More guns lead to more shootings, not fewer. Fight the NRA and eject any politician who defends them and takes their money.
6
when you have the votes to undo the 2nd amendment let me know.. until then nothing will change.. Sensible gun laws, what the heck is that ? Why dont we enforce the laws we have. We have a systemic failure in the branches of government that are tasked with protecting us.. That is not a gun problem. There are 6 deputies guarding the home of the coward that sat outside while children were being gunned down. Where were those 6 deputies when we needed them.. Law enforcement has gotten lazy. They pick the low hanging fruit of harassing citizens over HOA disputes and code enforcement issues. Maybe its because they are tired of being called racist when it hits the fan.. Whatever the reason, it has nothing to do with guns..
1
Mr. Blow is correct - but I have given up! I have voted, write letters daily, signed petitions and marched. As a French (I believe) journalist wrote after “Las Vegas”, with no action after “Sandy Hook” we have collectively, as a nation, decided that mass murder is simply a fact of life here in America- so just adjust your expectations! Well - I’ve decided he was right. I surrender to a crazy, immoral and unhinged faction of my fellow Americans. For heaven’s sakes stop looking for AN ANSWER! This problem requires a multi pronged solution; no one’s rights need be infringed. One piece of legislation could do it - Congress writes way more complicated legislation all the time. I can’t believe what I hear on the radio from elected officials! It’s embarrassing. Such hollow self serving platitudes! The president is clueless. His enablers are cowards. Courage is in very short supply!! It’s past time to assess our nation’s soul and decide where we’re headed.
15
What's wrong isn't the cars, or guns, or knives, or large rocks used to kill people, but the culture of cheapened human values that we have immersed our young people in for decades. There is real money to be made if you disregard the structures of family, morality, and religiosity, and if you fix what has happened to our culture, these crazies won't have the urge to kill.
Plus, let's at LEAST get ALL 50 states to send in the names of convicted criminals and known mentally disabled people to the federal ID check site so gun retailers KNOW who not to sell guns to.
One more question: HOW does a teenager sneak a rifle into a supposedly secure school building? Where I live, school building ONLY have one door open to the outside.
3
America is the gun . . .
You can take away my affordable health care.
You can take away my economic opportunity.
You can take away my equal rights.
You can take away my voting rights.
You can take away my civil rights.
You can take away my quality teachers.
You can take away my democracy.
But don't you DARE take away my GUN(s).
20
As long as the GOP depends on the gun fanatics to vote to keep it in power and it remains in power, nothing will change. Nothing.
Everything else is just pure fantasy.
6
Let’s do what Australia did after their mass shooting incident: Abolish gun ownership.
After the gun ban, only criminals would have guns. What an expedient way to incarcerate the gun toting criminals.
5
And you actually think criminals would not use guns to rob and kill people who couldn't fight back??? http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2018/02/elderly-couple-shoots-home-invader/
1
The 2nd Amendment begins like this: " A well-regulated militia....."
Are the rules today "well-regulated"?? I don't think so!
4
It may begin that way, but if you read a little bit further, it says the right of the PEOPLE To keep and bear arms SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED. Not the "militia", not the army, not the government.
The people.
2
I am not a 'combat veteran'. After serving with the US Army in Europe I was sick and tired. I went hunting once, but the experience left me wondering if hunting game was much different from hunting adversaries. I never owned any weapon.
I believe 2nd Amendment advocates have altered the American peoples' understanding of the meaning of the sentence 'A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed'.
3
I am a subscriber to your newspaper and a Canadian, living in Canada, who has in the past lived in the USA. Like many other Canadians these days, I am following your politics with intense interest. I would like to comment though on this writer's words that the USA was founded on the barrel of a gun and that guns were present and crucial at the beginning of the nation. Of course. Many other nations too, look at France. The beginnings of every European nation were found in the weaponry of the times... it was war horses, clubs, swords, bows and arrows, and cannons and cannonballs in the beginning for Europe. For animal populations, it is often physical attacks, or eliminating the cubs or puppies of a new female mate. We all know that. The requirement for us all is to advance past that and find ways of transcending violence. It's not easy. Look around us. I guess that's what the Christian religion's founder tried to do, but look at what happened there historically, with various wars of religion and the Crusades, and the Northern Ireland troubles... We have a long way to go yet.
5
How about banning all firearms that take a clip?
5
Sorry to say but to the rest of the world, including many Canadians, America's gun culture has all the earmarks of a sick society. US gun ownership is about five times that of Canada.
For the ease of reference of Times readers, I have provided two links; a Wikipedia page on rates of gun ownership world wide (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_of_guns_per_capita_by_country) and a link to a Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) website describing the gun laws here (http://www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/cfp-pcaf/faq/index-eng.htm).
5
Simply ask yourself why America is the only Western country where mass shootings take place on a REGULAR basis? On an extremely regular basis even.
Fire arms should only be in the hands of well trained people, such as army and police. Yes, that well regulated militia.
How can anyone read that 2nd amendment and claim it says that every citizen has the right to bear arms? Problems with English? And putting things in the context of the time when it was written?
I am not speaking of hunters and hunting rifles, licensed and strictly kept under lock and key when not used. In Europe people hunt too.
Where I would be very alarmed if my neighbour had a gun in the house, possibly even call the police, many Americans would find this completely normal.
That is the root of the problem.
I sincerely hope those teenagers will change things, finally. And soon they'll be voting too.
6
"How can anyone read that 2nd amendment and claim it says that every citizen has the right to bear arms?"
Because it says in very plain language "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed". We are a revolutionary nation. A nation of people who always traded away the promise of sustenance for the opportunity to obtain more freedom or prosperity. In other countries, the government limits what kind of speech you can make in public, they take away half your income in taxes...that kind of thing, fortunately, would never fly here. At least not right now.
2
Take it up with SCOTUS.
The vast majority of guns sold are not for hunting or self-defense. They are used as toys to give the owners a juvenile thrill. I imagine it to be something akin to the rush a meth user gets.
Until we make it clear that seeking this kind of thrill is not socially acceptable, that it is rather contemptible, these thrill seekers will continue to spend the money that provides the profits for gun producers and sellers to donate to the NRA to buy our Congress.
The first part of the solution must be to create a sense of shame in the potential customer to overcome their urge to seek the thrill of pretending to kill other humans.
No addict quits until the pain exceeds the pleasure. No business stops producing if there is a demand for their product.
8
Mr. Blow you have so often hit the nail on the head and this piece has absolutely driven that nail deep into the heart of the matter . The NRA wields much too much power and influence over our bought and paid for cowardly representatives. Actually they really cannot be called OUR representatives as they hear only the NRA'S ludicrous arguments for guns , guns and more guns. Perhaps through articles such as yours the people will tire of the do nothing attitude and vote for candidates not bought and paid for by the NRA . I am for the second amendment , not for the NRA'S interpretation of it . Are they even slightly mindfull of the time and type of weaponry that the authors of our Constitution were aware of in 1787 ?
4
Following up on Daniel Patrick Moynihan's suggestion, I am in favor of banning the sale of and manufacture of ammunition for military-style weapons. I'm guessing that the existing supplies of it would be used up in about ten years
after this happens.
Gun nuts would then be forced to choose between manufacturing the ammo in their own basements, which entails the risk of blowing themselves and their houses up; or relying on ammo of uncertain safety and reliability smuggled into the country. There are no perfect solutions to this problem, but failing to limit the now-endless supply of ammunition for these weapons is certain to make our already disastrous gun problem much worse.
4
how do we repeal the dickey amendment? by guaranteeing no new gun control. i am not progun, but 300 million guns are impossible to control. better we should remove the dpg whistle pf "they are coming for our guns" and get pn with using science to help protect us.
1
Bravo Charles, this column expresses exactly what’s wrong and what is needed in this country. We must stop being a gun loving, violent society if we are to move forward to a more evolved and civilized future. The current madness must end.
3
I just can not fathom how as a country our “values” uphold guns over all else including children. Trump’s proposal to arm faculty at schools is laughable. Really? The solution is to make schools the sites of old western good guy/bad guy shootouts surrounded by children? It’s horrific.
At the end of the day NO ONE outside of the military should have access to military grade weapons, we should be able to study this topic as the public health crisis it is, and we must get rid of our government by lobby in exchange for a government of the people.
6
I agree with this. I have also debated people on both sides of this arguement that this should be treated as an national health issue, as we should with drug addictions.
Banning guns would not work, but having it scientifically studied for policy recommendations and evidence is the best solution at this point.
1
Not surprising that the most aptly named journalist in the world does not understand the constitutional issues involved. For the Left, the answer is always some grand executive action imposed upon law abiding citizens without any concern at all for anything other than their lust to win on political issues. Please, we have a constitution for a reason ---let's use it, so that when we finally reach an answer we will all be able to embrace it, whatever it is, rather than complain that it was the fevered authoritarian response of the Left reflecting their desire to control everyone.
3
To get the legislation we need to end gun violence, we must criminalize congressional bribery by lobbyists, and establish an organization that counters the NRA by stealing their members. An organization that focuses on gun safety, gun training, those gun owners who support background checks, and registration. Attack the NRA on the very issues they once known for.
5
Single measure, half fixes: even if they don't stop all problems, are important because they put a dent in our U.S. gun culture. Without advocating repealing the second amendment (although I recommend John Paul Steven's "Six Amendments"), I say that the U.S. effectively WORSHIPS guns. That juvenile shooter in Florida probably had the impression that he was completely within his God given rights, to shoot up a school. He probably thought society would scold him, but then give him a new machine gun and send him home. After all, wasn't he a 'rugged individualist'?
2
A related NYT opinion piece from about a week or two ago presented a chart showing the number of guns owned per 100,000 population. A second chart showed the incidents of gun violence per 100,000 population. Not surprisingly, the US was at the top of both lists.
But there was a far more surprising and interesting observation. It turns out that the second highest on the gun ownership list was Switzerland, about 50% as many guns per person. HOWEVER, Switzerland was not second on the other list or anywhere near the top 5! By merging the data from the two lists, it reveals that the number of incidents of gun violence PER GUN in Switzerland is a small fraction of what it is in the US!
In other words, something other than simply the presence of guns is resulting in gun violence, Said differently, there is something about Switzerland that results in far fewer incidents of gun violence than would be expected based upon their number of guns per person.
To Mr Blows point, isn’t it worth studying that fact, and others, to see what we can learn? Perhaps there is something we should and could do in the US, aside from the simplistic “gun control” suggestions being advocated, without predictive proof of their benefit. The resulting recommendation likely would include elements of gntrol. But being based upon fact and openminded analysis would greatly increase their chances of acceptance and support among gun owners and non gun owners alike. They all have kids in school to protect!
2
The controversy today is not about the Second Amendment. Nobody cares about the Second Amendment. The issue today is NOT about a "well-regulated militia."
The people who appeal TO the Second Amendment, can't stand the thought of ANY regulation, militia or not.
The biggest scandal is how a lobbying group can have so much control over Congress and the President. That is scarier than 17 dead students and teachers, as bad as that is. We now see that these elected officials are not living up to the oath of office that gave them the reins of power.
3
Guns, preemptive war, Militarized police, arms dealers, JROTC in schools teaching shooting and war/guns as an answer, military- funded research big on college campuses..
Some people but not all get good health care and education, income inequality rising,
Loneliness, mental health issues, lack of jobs
It will take more than banning automatic weapons to mitigate the violence of this country.
Charles — you forgot to mention another fix to stymie our fun mania: repeal the insane law that shields gun manufacturers from product liability civil actions. This abomination was passed by a Republican Congress during the second Bush Administration. Guess who lobbied for the bill full bore.
The law was largely forgotten until grieving Sandy Hook parents filed a civil action against the maker of the AR-15 assault rifle used to wipe out 26 souls, some of whom were 1st graders. Assault rifle used to slaughter innocents. The very definition of the misuse of a product.
9
All I know is, when you look at the DVD movie box covers at the local kiosk, many of the covers show actors either pointing or holding guns.
Its kind of disturbing, especially when the gun is pointed right at you.
Some of the stars pointing guns on DVD covers are actors who claim to be socially conscious. How do they square that with promoting/glamorizing guns?
Matt Damon comes to mind. He's on a cover right now holding a gun. But most of the time he seems to be pretty thoughtful, advocating progressing causes.
What's up Matt?
21
I grew up in Europe in a society generally without guns.
In America I am afraid going to the mall, movie theater, public events etc .
This is because beside the widespread presence of guns , I have the perception that there are many mentally ill and deranged persons allowed to carry firearms , and the mental “ militarization “ of Americans is terrifying, the arrogance, the superiority complex , the suspiciousness, the show of force that some regular American citizens display is for me mind boggling.
I have detected this change and it’s worsening after 9/11 , like a maddening state of mind has taken over the lives of Americans .
The changing mindset is also evident by the opioid crisis , the morbid obesity afflicting so many , the decreasing quality of education and quality of life .
All this is happening because American politicians together with various corporations have decided that this way the “ vulgus “ “ populus “ can easily be dominated.
31
"...Donald Trump’s asinine proposal to arm a fifth of all teachers,...."
I remember when these pages described the plan to "arm" pilots and the cabin crew after 9/11 as "asinine" and also way too expensive. Wouldn't want American planes to be like those of Israel.
You know how many Arabs have hijacked American planes with box cutters since 9/11, after the pilots were armed and the cabins 'hardened," wait for it....
None.
But if the above be "asinine," I got another "asinine" proposal for you, Mr. Blow, to stem the murder rate, at least in Chicago and related inner-city areas,
Stop Fourth Amendment "absolutism" and bring back "stop & frisk."
Sure worked in NYC. Which is one reason Times workers can enter and leave work in relative safety compared with 30 years ago.
I believe strongly in mutual disarmament, both in foreign affairs and domestically as well.
Thank you, Rudy Giuliani.
2
Charles Blow, I adore you, but how can you write about the Dickey Amendment and his recent op-ed reversing himself withput ASKing him why he wrote the amendment in the dirst place. What motivated him or who paid him?
1
The United Guns of America.
2
And as some point out here when you talk to some gun owners you are attacking their religion. As a religion it`s not very big, just 1.7 million more NRA members than there are Muslims and I feel safer with the Muslims. If Wayne is the head spokesman for the NRA then the poster child must be Charles Manson. It is a cult and we are all being forced to drink the NRA koolaid at gunpoint.
3
Let's face it - we do not need weapons of war flooding our country. The NRA has report card - a passing grade with the NRA is a failing grade with America. Vote against everyone who has a C or better with the NRA.
3
This really is a stupid country!
4
Perhaps the creeps who do these things are going to the wrong place. If they would only go to a federal or state legislature and kill a lot of the brave morons who make our laws, then the gun laws would change, THE NEXT DAY!
1
Given over 300 million guns already out there, I think its unlikely we can change that system. What can work is a systematic, comprehensive approach.
Develop & fund school physical safety standards
Fund school security guards
Fund random roving police patrols
Fund a comprehensive real-time automated emergency management system
Fund annual regional emergency exercises
Fund universal school and community first aid training (saves 20k lives per year)
(http://nationalacademies.org/hmd/reports/2016/a-national-trauma-care-sys...
Develop & fund emergency planning training programs (perhaps within Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers (FLETC)).
Cost a few billion. That's budget dust at the federal level.
1
I've had the privilege of familiarization with guns alongside other useful tools and technologies. If we should update our assessment of guns and how their use is beneficial or detrimental to citizens, the CDC has way too narrow a perspective to conduct such a study. They are uniformly biased by their single-minded focus on gun trauma
A carefully balanced, non-political, special Commission including civilian arms professionals, professional statisticians,trauma doctors, mental health professionals, LEO's, gun victims, people saved by guns, civil rights attorneys, recreational shooters, and non-gun owners should be recruited for this task. Get some adults into the room and sort it out with accurate and complete facts, not spin and propaganda.
The odds of this actually happening are less than 10% in today's divisive political environment.
3
Well, if you don't think that even these ideas will be accepted, why not go bigger?
1. BAN all assault-type weapons.
2. ABOLISH the Second Amendment. (Even Brett Stephens thinks so!)
I do have a few more radical ideas but I'll hold on to them for now....
5
We know how to reduce gun violence. We know how to reduce the number of abortions. All we need to do is look at policies of other countries. But that would be un-American. We prefer culture wars.
3
As with most of this president's proposals arming teachers would be a win win for the NRA. There would be the bump in gun sales and it would mean the president and the NRA would off the hook for doing anything to regulate the use and sale of semi-automatic weapons.
1
No matter how mentally ill a person is if they cannot get their hands on a weapon they cannot kill someone. If they cannot get their hands on an assault weapon they cannot murder large numbers of our children - it's about the guns!
4
"To say nothing of your wars", indeed. Guns are the means by which the entire continent was taken from the Native Americans (Cf: David J Silverman, Thundersticks); the Second Amendment is the Curse of Hiawatha.
3
a side quibble, Mr. Blow ... it was also by the barrel that the slave was liberated finally here in the US. Count me in for strict regulation of gun owners, particularly those who insist on possessing semi-automatic weapons.
1
There is a major difference between the research required to cure cancer or to control the HIV virus, which requires massive amounts of medical research, or the research required to lower car accidents, which requires studying traffic patterns and better designing of highways or signage, and the cause of firearm injuries.
And this is because while all of the former are caused by nature or accident, the cause of firearm injuries is pretty obvious and plain to all. And that is that people decide to deliberately inflict firearm injuries upon others. Its not that different than the cause of knife injuries in the vast majority of countries where they do not have firearms available to the public, and so they go about injuring each other with knives.
Another thing that guns and knives have in common is that if people are not careful with them, or if they play with them, they can end up causing serious injury or death. This applies both to people playing with themselves or play fighting with others.
The only difference between the injuries that guns and knifes can cause is that its alot easier to commit suicide with a gun than it is with a knife. And research has shown that the suicide rate in any given state is closely tied to the number of households with guns.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_States#Suicides
Other than that it is difficult to imagine what millions of dollars of research will tell us about how to prevent people from shooting each other.
1
Let's begin by repealing the second amendment and allow each state to enact gun laws.
I sometimes think that we don't do anything about guns because after the "oh my god" after a mass shooting, it becomes entertainment for their mundane lives. Americans love reality shows especially when they are real.
1
Here in Australia, we have mental illness, and yet we don't have mass shootings. We have broken families, and 'families without dads', and yet we don't have mass shootings. We have public schools with no religion, and yet we don't have mass shootings. We have violent video games, and yet we don't have mass shootings. We have violent films and media, and yet we don't have mass shootings. We have crime, and yet we don't have mass shootings.
Australia is not some kind of bizarre Utopia with a unicorn on every street corner; we are, in many ways, just like you, but with one important distinction - we possess the humility, and introspection, to understand as a society that we are ALL responsible for keeping people safe. Everyone. Even our 'good guys', who, unlike Americans, understand that sometimes you need to give something up in order to help the person next to you. America hasn't matured beyond the ego stage to understand that yet.
We are proud of our record of no mass shootings in 22 years. Shame you have nothing to show for your 'freedom' aside from the freedom to send your kids to school terrified that they won't make it out alive at the end of the day.
If that's American 'freedom', I will keep Australian oppression, thanks. That and going to the doctor for free... but that's another story...
11
Here's a crazy off-the-cuff idea: The only people who can own a military-style rifle are those who've served a tour of duty in a combat zone. It's not the returned vets who are terrorizing our schools -- it's young men with fantasies of power and revenge.
2
"It is by the barrel that the slave was subdued and his rebellions squashed."
Absolutely true but let us not overlook the role that religion has played in keeping people of color subdued. It is the very core beliefs of Christianity that have prevented a righteous rebellion from occurring.
1
Assault rifles ownership belongs to those who are in the armed forces, not to civilians. If one needs an assault weapon to hunt deer, s/he is not a good hunter and needs further training on using a single shot firearm or bow & arrow. When the 2nd amendment was adopted in 1791, the rifles were far less lethal & less accurate and, took a while to reload. I have a right to my life; my very existence is threatened by reportedly 40 million people with mental problems. That is in addition to millions of criminals, bad guys and drug dealers who own assault weapons. Limit to one gun per person. Confiscate the assault rifles and hand them over to law enforcement officers.
3
Everything being equal, the logic of a study on "the health effects of shooting" escapes me.
Why not study the effects of sky-diving without a 'chute?
1
archie bunker proposed giving pistols to passengers on airplanes to stop cuban hijacking and then collect the pistols at the end of the flight. that was many, many moons ago.
1
Bravo, Charles. But it's a sad, sobering history that has brought us our "Guns R Merica". No one outside the military needs the "tumbling" rounds that an M-16 or AR-15 fires, yet the land is awash in these weapons and their ammo. So we start locally ...? Nope, state legislatures like the one here in Ohio have made it impossible for municipalities to have their own gun laws, so whatever these mostly rural reps want, we are all forced to live (and die) with. Most fundamentally, perhaps, the 2nd Amendment has been so badly misread (especially by that late, great know-it-all "originalist" with his solipsistic take on "what words mean") that it will take an act of Congress to correct the majority's willfully stupid interpretation in D.C. v. Heller.
We must press our "representatives" (reminding them that they do represent *us*) to allocate to the CDC funding to investigate death by bun in America as the public health crisis that it is. Then we follow the science, and elect representatives to pay attention to, and follow, that science, and devise ways to better protect us all.
It can happen. It will be a long slog that requires patience and sustained attention, energy and imagination. That's perhaps a steep order in today's America. Are we up to it? Let us hope so.
3
Can someone please help me to understand something that has been bothering me lately?
The Second Amendment states: "A well regulated militia, being necessary for a free state, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."
Now from I've read, the Heller decision grouped all Americans under the term "militia", justifying the right of all Americans to keep and bear arms. What part does "well regulated" play in this discussion? Does this not mean that militia is to be regulated and if so, why can't that include the regulation of the weapons that militia uses?
A second question: Why did the NRA, which claims to be dedicated to the preservation of the Second Amendment, work to scuttle the U.N. arms trade treaty in 2011? Why does it continue to fund pro-gun movements in Canada and elsewhere? What does Canadian law and international arms treaties have to do with the rights of Americans to keep and bear arms?
The NRA seems more dedicated to preserving and growing the market for firearms, than they are to preserving the Second Amendment.
16
Make it illegal to buy an AR. What about the millions of them already in circulation? Require registration (illegal to own without registration). Implement a buy back system funded by a voluntary check box on your tax return that donates $200 of your refund to the buy back program. Take donations to state/federal buy back funds. Include an annual fee for registration where the collected fees go to the buy back fund. Get these war weapons out of the hands of civilians.
8
Sounds like reasonable ideas to me. I hope the students keep up the pressure on the politicians and get support across the US from high school and college students as well as parents. Plenty of hand guns and rifles will remain for hunters and those who feel they need protection. But semi automatic and automatic rifles aren’t need d. If the voting public can be motivated on this issue then change can occur. Hopefully things don’t have to get worse before they get better.
1
We have to refuse to elect anyone who isn't strong on gun control, anyone who doesn't want assault weapons banned and anyone who promotes war. Whenever a pro gun candidate announces, we have to write or call and tell them they won't be getting our vote. Ballots, not Bullets, are the strongest weapons we possess; the time has come has never been better to use them.
8
I agree. America is the gun. We are a violent culture and have identified ourselves with violence.
I don't have a gun and I'll admit I am biased: I have a beautiful son who teaches at the college level and I have a shining grandson, 2 1/2 years old. Plus, I love being alive.
America, please surrender your guns. Until we do, let's stop pretending that we're pro-life.
15
Mr Blow as a NYC resident who owns firearms, hunts and practices my marksmanship I can say without any equivocation that I totally agree all of the issues you raise and the suggested legislative amendments.
I have seen (as mentioned in this comment section and elsewhere) the NRA evolve from a organization that promoted proper safe handling of firearms and hunting to a lobbying firm completely owned by the firearms and munitions manufacturers. Who in turn have bought most (if not all) of the Republican legislators currently in office.
15
The as a matter of truth and fact, 2nd Amendment is dead. It's because the premise clause is a lie. A "well regulated militia" is NOT "necessary for the security of a free state". Can we get a sane court to rule that the premise is a lie, and therefore what follows is baseless? Like any structure with a faulty foundation, it collapses into dust. Militias haven't been used for well over a century, never have been truly necessary, and as a matter of military strategy or philosophy it is a recipe for failure in war:
We would be overrun by an invading army by the time we notified our militias to report for duty! Look at the consequences of reliance on militias at the start of the Civil War. Militias are of no use in protecting our security. An enemy knowing we relied upon them would have the advantage. Reliance on them would only make us much less secure, vulnerable to invasion and conquest. And massive gun ownership to support phantom militias have made us all much less secure and free.
Imagine the folly if the Founders also tried to enshrine some Economic Rights in the Constitution:
"Gravel paved roads, being necessary for a well functioning economy, the right of the citizens to own and operate horse drawn wagons shall not be infringed."
Making it possible for people forever to use horse drawn wagons everywhere in our society is raving nuts. It's even nuttier to allow to citizens to carry and use guns everywhere.
Can we get a sane court to dump the 2nd?
11
I think the most effective measure would be to repeal the special exemption from legal liability given to gun manufacturers and sellers. The normal tort system would quickly solve many of the most egregious problems.
8
For once, most of what Mr. Blow wrote I agree with. He did not address the difficulty of establishing what defines an "assault rifle", because those rifles he and the left describe as "assault rifles" are exactly the same in mechanism and firepower as other guns they would not define as "assault rifles". Do you suggest we outlaw innovation and anything that develops a weapon to become a semi-automatic weapon, because there are very few automatic weapons on the streets of America? The devil in this definition is in the details and that needs to be reconciled so that the left and right can actually agree and not propose policy which has no real impact or effect, simply because it sounds good, like "ban assault rifles". Second, despite what Mr. Blow writes, this country and the birth of democracy world wide was partly the result of "the gun". Nothing shameful in that history. Yes, guns have been used for bad Mr. Blow, but I dare say we wouldn't have rid the country of slavery without it; we wouldn't have saved Europe and Asia from Fascism without it and there are many innocent people alive today because of it. Our's is a unique history, but tell me Mr. Blow how we get there without citizen's rising up against tyranny with a gun in their hand? I agree on the rest of Mr. Blow's recommendations regarding registration, enforcement and search ability. Add public mental health reform and we have a proper road map.
2
You lost me at “tyranny.” Unless by tyranny you mean the tyranny of a minority. Since we are a representative democracy, to be more precise, why is the will of the vast majority of Americans polled who agree a policy of universal background checks to purchase a firearm is desirable, blocked? And by whom? By the well-financed representatives of a minority who disagrees and seek to obstruct any such policy from being enacted. And that’s just one example.
1
.... All this is to say that, as many have said, we need a multi-pronged approach to reducing gun deaths. There will be no one change that will make a dramatic impact. We must attack the problem from a number of angles.
Also, I personally don't like to see comments such as 'not much is going to change unfortunately' or 'this law or that is UNlikely to be enacted'. For to use language such as that, is to plant the idea in our minds that we should just ...give up...throw our hands up in the air. To use such language is to imply that we are powerless...that fighting the NRA is a futile, losing battle.
To make such comments is self-fulfilling. We cannot and must not internalize such messages. Together, we are more powerful than we know. Think of all the movements this country has had over the past century, and the changes we made. NOW is the time to enact meaningful gun reform. The time has finally arrived!
I've made plans to be in D.C. on March 24. Have all of you who are reading this, and who want to see true reform... are you planning to march? Have you urged others to do so? We must harness the conviction created by the Parkland students. We cannot lose steam and in fact must up the ante, in the weeks leading up to March 24. After all this, we cannot let the recent groundswell be for naught. It is NOT just a fight FOR students or BY students, but must be a fight by all individuals who want gun reform. While the students may lead, the onus must NOT be on them.
4
Over a thousand comments here against guns but not one call to properly amend the constitution through democratically elected officials representing we the people. Either change the law or respect the fact that the votes are not there to do so.
3
Blow has great suggestions. They ought to be demands. I would only add one more: mandatory gun insurancwith full coverage, no exceptions. Gun owners ought to bear the full cost of their hobby. Typically the argument among gun hobbyists is that most gun regulations only punish lawful citizens. However, with thousands of guns stolen every year, the robbery, murder, and mayhem committed with them is usually paid for by the victim or else by the tax payer. Likewise for the tens of thousands of gun accidents and suicides. With the right to own guns should come full responsibility. We expect nothing less of licensed and insured car owners, so why give a pass to gun hobbyists?
6
I'm 54 years old and have never owned a gun. Why is that we consider owning a weapon of choice as a "freedom"? I choose not to live a wild west paranoid delusion that carrying a weapon will make me safer. Yet I must live in a culture that is increasingly arming itself. Why doesn't my freedom matter? Why doesn't the freedom of all the unarmed matter?
72
Your freedom does matter
Really? Call for repeal of the Dickey Amendment? Of all the things that could be done about guns that is one of the most useless I can think of. Studies, data, facts do not work on the people who need to be moved. Moreover, we already know the answer. Less guns. Less guns of any kind, for anyone, by any means possible. Chip away at all levels of government. Take pages from the anti-abortion activists. Get to work.
5
30,000 or so people die each from guns, opioids, and cars. The response to these disasters is glacial. what would the reaction be if 30,000 people died on airplanes?
4
I'm sorry, but can you please reconsider this 'argument', which seems to be yet another NRA-sponsored 'retort' to any type of gun reform?
We 'control' cars by way of....registration. We require the passing of a road test before one can get a license to drive. Then there are the cars themselves, which must be inspected each year. Then there are the drivers as they are actively navigating said cars. They cannot drive drunk. If caught texting while driving, they will be given a ticket. All passengers must wear seatbelts. Most cars contain airbags. Then there are the roads on which these cars are driven. We have speed limits. We have traffic lights. These are all rules and laws that we have collectively agreed to. And why is this? Well because they 'make sense'.
Opiods. A known issue in this country. Which is why laws are in place that limit how much any one doctor is supposed to prescribe to any one person. We put a limit on how much Sudafed a person can purchase, in response to the meth problem. And so on. (I'm sure there are other laws..I just am not personally familiar with them all....)
Deaths via airplane crashes are very low. And guess why? Because the operation of planes and airspace are highly Regulated. There are protocols that pilots must follow. One cannot just pilot a plane anytime or anywhere.
Contrary to what the NRA would have their followers think, we don't want to 'take all guns away'. We simply ask for some common sense regulation.
My point is that if 30000 people died in one year on airplanes, the reaction would be immediate and severe. the airports would be closed until the problem was fixed. with 100000 people dying from guns, cars and opioids, there is essentially NO reaction. People just seem to accept it; nothing significant is done about it. the current regulations on all three are NOT working.
1
I have never owned a gun, and I will never own a gun. Statistically speaking, I am far safer than anybody who does own a gun.
5
I have never owned a boat, an airplane, a vacation house at the seashore, or a pet dog. Nor do I ever intend to.
I am not sure how that is relevant to people who want to own those things.
3
Maybe not relevant at all, but the odds of being killed by your own boat, airplane, vacation house at the seashore or pet dog are far slimmer than the odds of being killed by your own gun.
2
His point is that gun ownership makes one less safe. This is supported statistically and has nothing to do with boats, planes, dogs, etc. Owning a gun increases your likelihood of dying via gunshot. https://ww2.kqed.org/science/2017/10/05/does-gun-ownership-really-make-y...
There would be more research on the subject if it wasn't blocked by the NRA.
1
This is when I am glad I live in Canada. Not that we don’t have our own issues believe me. Most of us look aghast at your obsession with guns. I have rural relatives who are hunters. They do not use AK-15’s when they go out hunting for deer. I don’t know a single person who owns any kind of personal handgun. It would be like ‘what for?’ Yes there is city gang violence, but our reaction isn’t to personally arm up, it’s to, how do we get rid of these guns and destroy them. We are an open minded democracy with a charter of rights and freedoms. When something like this has ever happened here, our reaction wasn’t to arm our teachers, it was to enact as strict gun laws as we possibly can so that it will never happen again! I truly wish the people of the US hope in all of this, but I think you need to collectively look at the core issue of belief that your democracy doesn’t exist without guns and the ability to use them when and where you like, without any accountability for the consequences.
12
Until people finally recognise that gun violence is NOT a public health issue but a public safety issue. Since any one of us is capable of evil, is capable of killing if pushed far enough, then no amount of background checking will solve the problem of too many guns in too many places. As Pogo said, "I have seen the enemy and it is us." We are all in danger from ourselves. We should not have to fear the person passing by on the street, someone sitting at the bar, nor the person in the car beside us. Gun ownership is not the issue: gun presence and use is. There must be very strict regulation and control of who is fit to own a weapon, where and how guns are stored and conditions for carry, registration of all firearms, regulation of gun ownership transfer, and licensed hunting and shooting clubs. That is how civilised societies handle the problem.
4
Too many guns, too many deaths, too much power in the hands of the gun lobby. I have heard it said that this is not about just the money contributed by the gun lobby but about a gun culture. But that culture is sustained and given force with boatloads of money that comes from those that sell machines made to kill people. Weapons of war are now used to make war on our own children. The answer says the NRA and the gun manufacturers is to sell guns to school districts to arm teachers! Wow, what a proposal, spend money on weapons instead of books or computers!? My solution is do away with assualt weapons and give the money that you would have spent on weapons to teachers to better equip them to teach kids who will be having to work in a global economy along side people of all races, nationalties and religions. Teach them how to work and live alongside one another in peace. With all the weapons we already have in our society do we really need to push policies to pollute our society with more? We need to clean house and get rid of all the legislators that have been bought by the gun lobby. We need to become a culture that no longer glorifies guns. Guns are not cool they are dangerous and leathal. I am pleased to see our youth taking the lead and changing the culture so that someday being a member of the NRA will be a scarlet letter on the face of politicians like Trump, McConnell and Ryan.
7
This is why Trump is critical. He may be the only one trusted on the Second Amendment to find the right balance.
I just wish Blow had this anti-gun fervor during the 2016 Democratic primary. Certainly, Hillary was not the anti-gun candidate. Maybe Blow was saying that gun control is not the most important issue facing the nation.
1
As a gun owner who is not a member of the NRA, I am appalled at the reaction by that organization to the most recent school shooting in Florida.
For years now they have promoted the myth that liberals are coming for our guns. The reality is except for fringe elements on the extreme right
no one is concerned about this.
Wayne LaPierre and company continue to scream, (They don't seem capable of any other type of discourse) about the assault on 2nd amendment rights.
They position themselves as victims whose civil liberties are threatened. However, polls indicate a majority of Americans, including a majority of NRA members, favor gun control laws.
Guns are one of the few tools in life designed to kill. Our President and the NRA, seem to think the solution to the problem of mass shootings is throwing more guns into the mix, much like throwing gasoline on a fire.
The reality is the NRA is manufacturing the idea of a threat because its goal is to expand the market for gun ownership. They aren’t protecting the 2nd amendment so much as they are protecting the interests of gun manufacturers. Until the debate is reframed In that context, they are going to continue cloud the issue with confusion and fear.
Sensible gun regulations and accountability will keep guns out of the wrong hands. The NRA and gun manufacturers fear that will also cut down on sales.
7
When self driving cars become commonplace, will there be demands that people give up their right to drive their own cars down the streets and roads? After all, intoxicated drivers are responsible for tens of thousands of deaths annually. And other drivers, pushing cars beyond their capabilities and their own capabilities to control them, kill thousands more.
And when people are told to surrender their drivers licenses as relics of the past, how will they react?
3
With respect, do you have a license to drive a tank? Your argument is absurd. Your car was not designed to kill people, let alone vast numbers of people in very short order.
I would be more than happy to support more gun control - if I thought it was going to work. Unfortunately more gun control is not the answer. We've had guns in this country for hundreds of years - it's only in the last 20 to 30 years that mass shootings have been increasing. Violent movies and video games, mention of God banned from public life/schools (no ultimate accountability, basis for morals), abortion, fatherless families, etc.
John Adams stated "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."
1
I would be more than happy to support the proliferation of guns throughout society and a quiet tolerance of their misuse, if I thought it would work. However, that might lead to widespread gun ownership that exposes many people to unnecessary danger. Just as the widespread use of cars prompted massive political support to build roads, having all those guns could provide massive political support to allow people to carry loaded lethal weapons around with them, to the mall, to school, to work, to the local daycare, too the 7-11. As with other commonly-used products produced for profit, there is a chance that a powerful lobby would develop to assure further sale and use of guns, even trumped up by some ambiguous notion of patriotism. Then, this tolerance might lead to unbalanced people, even kids, with a chip on their shoulder, to resort to using guns to take out their anger on innocent people. No, I don't think it would work.
5
Your argument is dismembered by one word: Europe. The EU is arguably far more secular than the US, all while consuming the same violent video games and movies. And yet they don't have comparable gun violence. Could it be that they tightly regulate firearms? Surely nit, because then the NRA and GOP would be hilariously wrong and complicit in the gun violence that plagues America
22
AGREED...This is some kind of murderous FAD... In the past, before 1980, the United States perhaps, DID do a good job keeping guns under control…So let's tighten up GUN LAWS for a while and revisit these issues in a calmer future...
2
Aren't Americans supposed to be 'brave' and 'fearless'? Seems to me like a bunch of whiny whimps who can't go to the corner without their precious guns. Exactly what are these people so afraid of that they have to carry a weapon of mass destruction with them at all times? I grew up in NYC (way before gentrification), took the subway by the time I was 8 yet never felt any fear so great that I needed a weapon. Needless to say all the countries I've traveled to by myself as a woman (including South America and the Middle East), yet I never felt the need to arm myself. Land of free and home of the brave?! Really?? Make me laugh.
16
No, they're not. Gun people are really very small. The gun gives them a sense of importance and potency that they otherwise lack.
(I totally endorse your point. I grew up in Philadelphia about the same time, and traveled about by myself, too, at night, as well as in dodgy places around the world as an adult. Male not female - you were more vulnerable than me - so a little less risky. But as a kid my parents never had a problem with it. If there was today's danger, they would have. Today I have the confidence to meet the world as it comes. But I'm glad I don't live in the US. I wish you well, Betti. Or just come here!)
4
It is your right to let some thug bludgeon you to death, but other law abiding citizens should have the right to defend themselves if they want to. Why do you want to deprive them of that right? You enjoy it when home owners or convenience store clerks are shot bludgeoned or pistol whipped to death?
I have to say I agree with Charles on this. We have become the gun because of the clever marketing of it as a sign of masculinity and the push of the NRA.
We seem immune almost to its carnage. At least by the actions or inactions of our Congress.
There is no logic that says an automatic weapon that fires off rapid rounds of bullets designed to explode in a body can be excused as normal for everyday use. If it feeds the need to feel masculine then why not take up something like extreme skiing or bunging jumping or just build safe houses.
We have the stats on our side that most of us feel stronger gun control that keeps these weapons out of the wrong hands is wanted.
Before we cannot stop it all we have to do something about it.
Arming teachers is ridiculous. The thought that Trump is perpetuating that he would have rushed into that school unarmed is ludicrous.
If we are the adults then act like them and support sane legislation. I'm all for the 2nd Amendment. It is not meant as a license to do shoot 'em ups in schools and malls and theaters.
The number of guns you have doesn't always keep you safe. At some point it and they can turn against you. We already know this, why make it easier?
5
Unfortunately, I despair that America will ever come to her senses about guns, certainly not in my lifetime.
Yesterday I watched a YouTube video showing a young man from Utah demonstrating how a bump stock works. I was just curious about these things since they are so often in the news. To say that I was appalled would be an understatement. This was the man's 1st experience with a bump stock (bought LEGALLY, as was endlessly repeated) and when he got it working you could see a look of sublime joy on his face as he emptied his high-capacity magazine in a matter of seconds. "That's sixteen bucks worth of ammo gone in a flash!" he would crow. His presentation was sprinkled with interjections about the Constitution and how cars and such were equally deadly so guns are no big deal. What I saw was a VERY big deal. Now, this guy is probably fine and is not likely to go loco with his $1500 killing machine any time soon. However what I find fascinating and more than a bit horrifying was just how steeped the American myth is in guns and warfare. This is not going away any time soon. Maybe never. And you'll have to put up with the crazies.
Like I said... despair.
8
Plenty of us have never owned a gun in our lives. America has never been "the gun" for us.
4
Let us not mistakenly think that this is about protecting some ancient dangling participles written by TJ way back when. - this is a purely monetary fight. Gun and Ammo profiteers use the NRA as their lobbying/advertising/marketing arm. The NRA is masterful at using the same tactics as Comrade Putin to divide and separate.
This is about money - the only weapon that sane gun safety advocates have is money. We need the people need to stop buying from the Wamarts, Bass Pro Shops, ect - the purveyors of death weaponry. We need to instruct our financial advisors to get us out of any investments in companies that profit from the gun/ammo/death industry.
In the immortal words of Crazy Eddie - Money Talks, Nobody Walks.
5
Right. The Second Amendment has long been taken care of. It is expressed by the formation of the National Guard, under the control of the governors of the states. THAT is the "right to bear arms," not a citizenry armed to the teeth. The framers were thinking about flintlocks, not Kalashnikovs and AR15s.
3
What would happen if we banned bullets used for the AK15? Ban the bullets! What good would the gun be without the magazine cartridge of bullets......?
4
Mr. Blow we must indeed aim high!
Regarding a National Gun Registry, please allow me to remind your readers that this idea is baked into the Constitution! Yep. If you operated a "well-regulated militia", what is the first thing you would do? That's right, make a list of members and which weapons they own.
Very simple.
6
I sense that both the partisans and the responsible firearms owners are being trolled by the fringe lunatics within their ranks. That's a disservice to citizens and makes reasonable controls difficult.
3
That's the American way. We scrub our sidewalks during the day, but at night they're full of weary haggard men with graying Bambi eyes
2
Ageist and sexist
One of my hobbies is motorcycle touring. To be able to enjoy my hobby I must have a license, issued only after proper education and testing. My motorcycle must also be licensed and must be properly insured to obtain that license. Both of my licenses are entered into national databases and my insurance company maintains an insurance database of its own.
The operation of my motorcycle on public roads is subject to numerous regulations to insure safety. In many states I'm required to wear a helmet, for my safety not that of others. If I violate any of these rules I can be fined or jailed and my license may be subject to revocation.
I pay annual registration fees and taxes to defray much of the public cost of my hobby, roads, signals, enforcement, etc.
My license is subject to periodic review and renewal. If it lapses I may no longer ride. Likewise if my motorcycle has no insurance or its license lapses. In some states it is subject to periodic inspection.
I find none of this particularly oppressive. The system works well. By any practical measure I ride with a great deal of freedom. No reasonable rider would ask for repeal of this system.
Yet the NRA member down the street expects to indulge his hobby without any similar system to insure that gun ownership and use in the U.S. is as safe as possible. That is absurd.
If we were just to treat guns and their use the way we treat motor vehicles and their use, something we all accept, I think most of this conflict would go away.
10
Exactly. Just some common sense laws is all we are asking for.
Many of us have zero interest in guns, don't 'get' the allure, are scared of them, etc. However, most of us are also 'reasonable'. If folks want to have guns, fine. But we need to do more to ensure that they are not getting into the wrong hands, and in particular, assault weapons. In fact, No Private Citizen should have any 'right' to an assault weapon. Period. That is NOT what the Second A was getting at. I mean, how COULD it, when the only thing around at the time were....er... muskets?! You know, guns that could dispel 2-3 bullets per minute, MAX? Now we have AR-15s which, in the hands of a shooter with average skill, can dispel 60-90 bullets per MINUTE. Our forefathers must be rolling in their graves, to see how much the Second A has been twisted, and then ENABLED so many mass shootings to occur.
2
The money Charles weeps over was removed from that budget because the CDC, like the EPA and the misbegotten Consumer Finance Protection and Slush-Fund Bureau, decided to play partisan politics while working for the taxpayers.
If those staffers had wanted to play political games, they should have either quit and gone to work for the party or paid their own money to some advocacy group.
Charles, if you yearn to live in a country where the central gov't owns all the guns, you could simply move there and be much happier.
2
All possible gun owners should go through intensive month long courses, similar to getting a driver's license. If they pass the course they may purchase and use a gun in designated areas. The gun he/she buys should be licensed, tracked, linked to owner like a car is linked to an owner. Furthermore, anytime the owner uses the gun at a designated safe area, say a hunting ground or shooting range, it should be checked-scanned through digital imprint, approved for use. So along with knowing who owns guns and what types of guns, and along with requiring a license, I would argue we should also know how often and where it is being used. No more of this wild west archaic free-for-all. If you want to own and shoot guns it should be very difficult to do so -- it should be a rare privilege, a learned right, a hard earned license. And every time one uses it, a mini-vetting process occurs.
4
Sorry, Mr. Blow you missed it on this one. America is the gun, really? Please name me any country in the civilized world that was not born out of violence.
We do not lead the world in gun deaths per capita, or in violence. Yes we need gun regulations, and slavery was a tragedy but it is not necessary to denigrate America at every opportunity. America didn't invent guns or slavery. Both of these things are a scourge that has infected all of humanity.
5
Canada. There have been exactly 2 incidents of political violence in Canadian history. In 1868, Thomas D'Arcy McGee was murdered by an Irish extremist. And, in 1970, Quebec Labour Minister Pierre LaPorte was killed. That's it
1
Health professionals have been sassing this ad nausea. Gun Safety is a public health issue that needs a commission to review evidence based information and come up with evidence based solutions ..deadline end of November 2018 and interim ban AR-15
1
I'm all in favor of teachers being armed in class. Just think how much this would improve classroom behavior.
The US is controlled by people with money and power so they can get more money and power. The NRA makes gun manufacturers very wealthy and they don't care who dies at the hands of their weapons, this just means more scared people who will buy more guns, a win win for them and terrible loss and tragedy for everyone else.
The US is controlled by Robber Barrons in the form of the Koch Brother and trump's kleptocracy and until we change this we are doomed.
6
What is this "we" love guns? I grew up in a family that never owned a gun, none of the families on the street I grew up on had a gun and I never felt the need to own a gun. This country is being held hostage by a small minority with a powerful lobbying organization that sways the votes of corrupt, greedy politicians. Why is the minority allowed to dictate law on this matter? Didn't the United States use to be a democracy?
8
I was struck by a comment made to me by a Greek woman when I traveled there: she said, "We are prouder of culture than of our wars." I wish that we were prouder of our rich culture of ideas than of our guns and wars.
8
Not surprisingly Trump talks about mental health and committing people. Meanwhile politicians express regrets, etc., etc, talk about raising the minimum age to buy assault rifles. These are tokens, band-aids at best. It's about the availability of guns … and of course, money. Until something is done about buns we'll continue to hear politicians spout platitudes.
4
Your right to own a gun does not override my right to not live in fear of what you might do with your gun if you're having a bad day. That people are allowed to intimidate others by openly carrying assault weapons is beyond reason.
8
Once again Mr Blow has presented the problem in a thoughtful and clear manner. What is important here is that this article clearly outlines a reasonable and rational process to address the total problem of gun violence.
Until 2012, I did not know anyone who ha been murdered. Illness, suicide, old age, drunk drivers, war -yes- but murders, no. By the end of 2012 I was personally touched by the murders of two people. One, a woman who left her abusive husband & had a protective order to keep him away, was shot by him in front of her new residence, after walking back from taking their 6 year old son to school. Why was he allowed to keep a weapon when he had a long record of violence?? The second, a few months later, was a 6 year old boy killed in the Sandy Hook shootings by a violent, damaged teenager who also had a long history of psychological problems & who got the gun from his mother's gun arsenal. Why did this woman keep these guns where her son could easily access them? The answer died with her when he first killed her before heading off to the elementary school where he them killed 26 people, one who was the son of my son's best friend when they were chlldren.
There are many "reasons" why people kill and, yes, we do need to find a way to identify and intervene to stop them. But, regardless of these efforts, as long as GUNS are easily obtained, without safeguards and regulations to monitor the gun AND the owner, the situation will remain as is.
3
Reading this article, and reading the comments, I still see invective and hatred for the NRA, as if the NRA's sudden demise would usher in a new era of gun laws that would make the Australians blush. The truth is, anyone who believes the NRA is solely responsible for holding new gun laws at bay is badly mistaken and likely deceived by the activist media and Democrat politicians. The truth is the NRA were all that stood in the way of a total gun-ban and confiscations, we'd have beat Australia to the punch by a decade. There are upwards of 90 to 100,000,000 gun owners in this country, and many of us vote with religious-like zeal in every election to ensure that our 2nd Amendment Rights are maintained. We don't need the NRA to tell us who has voted how, because we watch Congress and the President closely. We carefully choose candidates during the primaries. This gun issue is truly one that divides America between urban and rural voters. We see all the hysteria and know that banning "assault rifles" will only benefit the criminal element in this country. As long as there is wind in my lungs, I'll continue to advocate for gun rights and against bans and confiscations.
3
Your source for these figures? The most recent and comprehensive studies of gun ownership in the United States show that about 30% of adults report owning a gun. That's not 100,000 gun owners. These studies also show that a small percentage of gun-owning adults own numerous guns, meaning that a the vast majority of the 300 million or so firearms in private hands in the U.S. are owned by a small minority of the population.
Furthermore, more than 70% of those who own a gun say their primary reason for owning a gun is "protection." Most of those owners have little or no training in gun use and have their firearm and ammunition stuffed in a drawer awaiting an 'emergency.' And statistics accumulated over the course of many years show that most of those "guns for protection" rarely offer protection in an 'emergency' - instead they ultimately wind up being used to commit suicide; in incidents of domestic violence; or in accidental shootings. You are far more likely to shoot and maim or kill your own spouse, children or neighbors than you are to successfully defend yourself against a criminal.
And that ain't myth. That's fact.
2
I did mean "that's not 100 million guns owners," not "100,000."
But until the last decade or so abundant guns in the USA and their "valorization" did not result in teens old enough to be in the military, to vote and get married to shoot a bunch of usually innocent strangers for a thrill and the fantasy of bad boy celebrity. That total lack of responsibility and accountability, and low expectations of young adults by our 1% and moral relativist media is what is wrong in our nation - not that guns are available in this nation as they have been for centuries. What the camera-hog high school students should be "demonstration" preaching now is for their classmates to start acting like responsible adults and stop acting like 3 year olds throwing tantrums to get attention.
W.S. is absolutely correct. Our entertainment-media culture has changed from promoting positive ideals to teens to fomenting hatred and anger - in music, in film, in video-games, and even on social media. There is big money to be made - by progressives, ironically enough - in turning teens into buyers of hate and anger.
You could try to seize every gun in the country and still see as many future mass shootings as we have already had. And the numbers of innocent crime victims would go through the roof.
I'm assuming that you live on a different planet than I do. A planet where school children who have been shot at in their classrooms and who saw their friends die because of it should just sit down and accept that as their normal. That's the only way your bizarre comment makes any sense at all.
5
Joan,
We now see that Mr. Obama came up with a program to keep the Nik Cruz's from being arrested for things they did as youthful offenders.
Had the old system been in place, he'd never have had a chance to guy that gun. I can't wait to see your message to Mr. Obama.
What "works to prevent firearm injuries"? Could it be no firearms?
Just asking.
It is not difficult to solve this problem if the political will was there.
But the NAR and most of Congress stands in the way of common sense gun reform. Just think of how many more guns could be sold if they arm 20% of our teachers. How much more insanity is going to come from the NAR and the politicians?
Thank God for the school children who are marching. They have more sense than all of our leaders combined.
How many more massacres is it going to take in this country before the Leaders of this country finally care?
November cannot come soon enough to get rid of most of them.
6
with regard to the dickey amendment, the gathering of gun related data should be a neutral exercise. after all its possible that the data will show that guns actually enhance public health and safety (its also possible pigs will fly one day). enactment of the dickey amendment was a clear admission on the part of gun advocates that guns are bad for public safety and health. i own an AR-15 and would not want to give it up. but the county could certainly live with and age limit, universal background checks, and mental health restrictions.
1
The first targets for new voters spurred on by the terrible school shooting in Florida should be anyone who panders to the NRA, seeking its support to get reelected. The do-nothing other-than-that-which-gets-me-elected members of Congress need to be replaced. In particular, those who deny or doubt that we have a public health issue need not apply. We need answers, and need them now. Thanks, Mr. Blow, for another well-written piece identifying the “big sick”.
Like this article a lot . The last couple of paragraphs touched on something. I'm trying to wrap my head around this. Could it be that the gun has become a God. Think about that one. It is worshiped by many with sacrifices by the innocents....It's followers unwavering.
2
I've always been fascinated by the different ways the left and right view guns and abortions. The left howls when states pass laws limiting abortion access, but the left has no problem seeking to limit gun access. The right believes in unfettered gun access but has no problem limiting abortion access. Both positions seem inconsistent to me.
I always thought the most sensible regulatory scheme was this: if you don't want a gun or an abortion, don't get one. But don't pass a law preventing others from getting one if they can safely do so.
I don't like coconuts. On that basis, I would never presume to advocate for a law banning everyone from eating coconuts. I would just make sure there were no coconuts in my house.
To me, American should be about maximizing the freedom and choices an individual has. Whether that is reproductive freedom, freedom to worship or speak, or even the freedom to own and use a gun in a safe and legal manner.
4
With reproductive freedom, we can maximize everyone's freedom: that is, my maximum freedom doesn't impinge on anyone else's. Your freedoms are not affected no matter how many contraceptives I take or how many pre viability abortions I have.
But easy available guns lead to the deprivation of the rest of us of the rights of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. At a minimum, we have to "harden" our schools, churches, public spaces and government buildings at considerable economic and social costs. That's why we have to balance freedoms; in the same way your right to swing your fist ends at my nose, your right to own a gun should end where it costs the rest of us.
3
Agree on the abortion choice. Do not agree on the gun. An abortion does not affect other people.
Having a gun just ready to be used by you or anyone else not so safe or legal is at latent threat to everyone and as we see all too often becomes an active one.
coconuts are not weapons
and it hard to kill people with coocnuts
Part of the problem is that from Westerns to Dirty Harry to Death Wish the movies have gloried the heroic use of guns. There is never a sense that firing a gun is not easy and aiming it at a person is even harder. If it was so easy why to police miss so often.
The other problem we allow, virtually unchallenged the notion that the government in Washington which we all can vote for or against, will because an authoritarian threat. Then only those with guns can rescue us. No sense that the private citizens with guns are a great threat to Americans than our elected government.
Yes, Mr Blow. America in many ways is the gun, part of our DNA, and gun control advocates would do well to pay mind to the tactics of anti-abortion groups who's intent is to make the process, though in effect legal, so difficult and onerous that it makes it near impossible to obtain. Gun owners know the drill well, one of the reasons for such obstinacy.
>We also must allow the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to track gun sales, and keep the data it collects electronically and also searchable. At present, it is prevented from doing so.<
Because as we all know, our information is always completely safe in the hands of the Government.
1
Ever hear of the "OK Corral"? Romanticized since the Western movies came to be...still is.
"The American idea is caught up in carnage. Its very beginning is rooted in gun
violence."
America has ruled much of the world with almost no accountability or responsibility for its own actions. There has never been a reckoning whereby we looked to ourselves and asked, what are we doing wrong, what can we do better, why might nations/individuals/factions be waging protest/war/terrorist acts against us? While there may never be true answers to those questions, this nation is not a self-reflecting one. No national reckoning or introspection has truly been made for the destruction of the Native American people, or the African American peoples whose descendants were brought here as slaves. In fact, great lengths are taken to fudge, re-write and ignore the great evils done in the name of America. So does it really surprise anyone that, in keeping with the founding nature of this nation, which IS great but IN SPITE of its actions, not because of them, hoards of masses wish to single-handedly be able to take life at their whim, with no responsibility or accountability whatsoever? No registration, no licensing, or insurance coverage, no training, nothing. These days America is like a rampaging teen drinking and driving without a license or seatbelt, wondering why other nations don't want to share the same roadway. Until we as a nation truly look at ourselves, and allow ourselves to truly see our flaws and crimes without cheering it away under our slogan of exceptionality, we will continue to erode our own development.
71
It couldn't be more clear. The path to more gun control requires removing the obstacles in the path, these being the predominantly Republican members of Congress and statehouses addicted to NRA soma. But that will only happen if we shut the tap on the business interests that pour unlimited money into encouraging their habit. So it looks like we're doomed.
4
Charles- you are making a big mistake with this article. I AM AMERICA. Most of the folks I know and love are "America". And I hate guns. AND I'm a "tough" guy. I'm a martial artist. My dad was a Holocaust Survivor. I'm a mountaineer and rock climber.
I don't need guns to prove I'm as tough as anyone. And my America doesn't need guns. My America needs tolerance and love and respect for our differences. My America is embarrassed and ashamed that we harbored slavery and my America knows that, as a white man, I can never know the pain the suffering and the hardship that has been leveled on generations of black Americans.
Indeed, Trump is the vomiting up of the goodness of Obama by (mostly) slightly closeted racists homophbes and xenophobes.
10
I think you are mistaken in saying that Charles has made a mistake. Just because we don't like or approve of the gun violence doesn't mean there is not a huge problem in addressing and correcting the Gun Epidemic and making laws to get rid of machine guns all together.
There is no time for self serving defensiveness. We have a problem and it needs to be corrected. Mr Blow has proposed a path towards doing so, while acknowledging that our America Of The Big Gun may never change. It's highly likely nothing will be done. Many many more children may die. And the powers that be will continue to turn another and another and another cheek. In endless mocking gestures of sympathy while still collecting NRAs cash.
Mr Blow has gotten it all right. I wish the Congressmen accepting money from the NRA would get it right. "Your America" is not real. Ask the dead kids.
2
Couldn't agree more. I hate guns and I was a boxing champion. I don't need a gun to protect me and I don't need a draft-dodging phony like Trump to protect me. People who claim they need a gun for "protection'' are either cowards or liars
The firearms industry, the NRA, just like the tobacco industry is a terrorist organization.
13
Trump and the NRA have something in common. Both are in power because the forces against that do not get out the vote. Do you remember the effect that kids had on their parents' views of Vietnam. Here come the kids, this time at the same time that people recognize that the president is a vile con man. With Trump's help, the representatives backed by NRA will be completely out-voted in 2018. That's what you get when you throw in with extreme hate and greed. Focus on getting out the vote.
6
couldn't agree more Mr Blow.
3
I am hating guns right now. I don't care if I never see another one in my life, lousy rotten tools that they are, and the picture with this article of a 15 year old shooting an AR15 with two scopes, one short range, and a long range, with a 30 round magazine, makes me outraged.
I served over a decade, Jimmy Carter was my first commander in chief, George HW Bush was my last, and I carried weapons that my hands will never forget doing lots of law enforcement, which, if you're astute, will tell you what service I was in.
I go to my service because there's no way gun ownership isn't connected with military service and vice versa. It's simply not there in the Constitution that the two are not linked.
Many people will not agree, but in my mind linking gun ownership with military service will cure many of our current ills. I wholeheartedly out loud screaming agree with Mr. Blow in what he recommends, and long for the day the NRA is history, past tense, over.
And, I'm the guy who pulled on the kevlar, strapped on the pistol with extra clips and handcuffs on the belt, and carried the AR15 (yes, we used AR's, not M16's) while working on the job downrange from a 50 caliber machine gun that watched over us for our security.
Sometimes I think we're still using the same concept, that our security will kill and maim a good part of us. But I was in the military then, and we're all civilians here now. We should be sending out SOS everywhere. This is nuts.
9
The logic of the good-guy-with-a-gun is the idea of deterrence and mutually assured destruction--the same rationale behind our nuclear arsenal.
The problem is, there's a serious difference in how violence escalates. With nuclear weapons, or even with conventional war, it's a review process with a minimum of several different people going through everything.
With a gun, only one person is on the trigger. Unfortunately, that one person is not subject to a review board. Whether it is planned in advance or just happens randomly, something snaps in the person who becomes the shooter. Snaps very often, societally speaking.
We need these people, these at-risk people, to stop looking at our fellow citizens as if they had targets painted on their backs.
1
"It is by the barrel that this land was acquired."
yes, but the problem is that those who know better took advantage of the acquired land and refuse to leave. I doubt any of the writers and readers of the NYT have returned the property that is obviously not theirs. And that it is then, it is useless to have empty debates with thieves.
I will be 80 on my birthday in a couple of months. The only time I was involved with a firearm was when I was in basic training in the Army. I received enough training with the M1 to qualify as a marksman of the lowest rank, and fortunately for the republic I never had to use one to defend the nation. I did learn two vey important lessons. If any weapon is to be of value you have to maintain it and you have to know how to use it. Maintaining it means a lot of cleaning and using it requires a lot of practice, neither of which I was willing to do, so after I was released from the Army in 1963, I never owned or wanted a gun of any kind. I have lived on the South Side of Chicago, and in the middle of Washington DC and spent time in the 70s and 80s in New York City. I have never felt like my fellow citizens have wanted to do me harm and they never have.
My question is about the people who support our current status quo on guns yet at the same time support the death penalty and a woman's right to decide she needs to abort a fetus she is carrying. These seem to me to be mutually exclusive positions.
Let's compare Vancouver (BC-Canada) and Seattle (WA-USA). They are 145 miles apart from each other. Vancouver has a population of about 647,500 people. Seattle has a population of about 704, 300. Both are Pacific Coast cities with similar crime rates EXCEPT for gun-related homicides. Take a wild guess which city has more gun-related homicides per year?
2
2nd-Amendment zealots revere all of its words but "well-regulated militia." They think it means "not really regulated at all except for Tommy-guns, bazookas, RPGs, and SAMs."
2
Charles, your recommendations are well intended but just complicate the issue. Lets narrow this down to a single action and be done with it. BAN ASSAULT RIFLES.
3
I grew up around guns. MY grandfathers were both fine marksmen; my father was a gundith with world records won with his guns; my brother was an NRA champion in the 50's; and I was a long-time member of the US Biathlon Team. None of us would consider owning or using a semi-automatic. WE all believed that if you can't kill your deer with one shot, you shouldn't pull the trigger. Nor did we feel the need for semi-automatics for defending our homes.
Gun fundamentalists should study their scriptures and return to carrying single-shot flintlocks and exercising their rights to a WELL-REGULATED militia. Who need these assault-type weapons?
6
In the US we live with a gun culture, that is sadly larger and more formidable than any new legislation.
Our culture fetishizes guns. A gun is a symbol of power, and represents an idealized prescription of masculinity that our culture unfortunately promotes.
Women also embrace this fetish....perceiving it as a sign of their 'liberation' and self assertion.
1
Handguns are used in 72.9% of mass shootings. The killer use handguns in the Virginia Tech shooting, which still ranks as the deadliest school shooting.
Rifles are used in 18.5% of mass shootings.
• Single-shot (bolt-action) rifles are used in 9.5 percent.
• Semiautomatic rifles (including “assault rifles”) are used in 8.6 percent.
• Automatic rifles are used in 0.4 percent.
Shotgun are used in 8.6 percent of mass shootings.
But this doesn’t mean that banning semiautomatic rifles like the AR-15 would reduce the number of mass shootings by 8.6 percent. Killers denied assault rifles would use other semiautomatic rifles, handguns, bolt-action rifles or shotguns.
http://www.gannett-cdn.com/GDContent/mass-killings/index.html#weapons
3
Guns ought to be treated like cars. Owners need a license and need to pay insurance on the type and number of guns they own.
4
Cars are not guns. Disputed or not there is a right to arms in The Bill of Rights. Regulating purchase and background checks are fine. Paying to exercise a right is not.
1
The NRA is responsible for pushing the laws concerning guns to the far right. The destruction those laws created has led to the inevitable backlash from the Left. This time is different, we've had enough. If this congress won't act, they will be replaced.
By all means, let's register every gun in this country, then confiscate them all.
I see one suggestion being repeated, having to do with insurance for gun owners. Thought experiment: I can buy insurance for specific risks. Maybe I don’t care about cancer, or elevator accidents, but I am concerned about bullets. What data would be valuable to the insurance company to assess my risk? Physical proximity to known bullets and guns might be one piece, so my questionnaire might include “do you or your immediate neighbors have guns?” They would want to confirm this, and if they had access to the right data, they could accurately assess risk to me of death by bullet. I have not seen or heard of any policies for bullet risk, but if there was one, what would it cost? Would it be less for a “Gun Free Zone”, or more?
Wouldn’t their prices identify the most gun dangerous places? Wouldn’t the data show if more guns meant safer places? Would not the Market then decide what the true cost of gun ownership should be?
This could be a huge boon to the gun advocate, if the NRA’s claim that more guns means less bullet death risk, that would be the end of it - everyone who wanted the lowest rates for bullet insurance would buy a gun or several, and encourage all his neighbors to buy as many as possible, thereby reducing their risk and so insurance premiums to near zero.
Except we don’t require insurance for gun buyers, and standalone policies for bullet risk cannot be made because we can’t treat guns like a disease and study the effects scientifically, like HIV, or heroin.
1
I disagree. I don't think America is the gun at all.
I do think forces in the world can harness good or they can harness evil and that both exist. Our current administration harnesses evil. The NRA is a domestic terrorist organization.
The NRA promotes weapons of mass destruction which some of these guns are. The NRA needs to be dismantled. It promotes evil by going for greed in people and bribing legislators to promote guns and stop gun control legislation.
I am not saying get rid of the 2nd amendment but it can have its wings clipped and restraints which is what gun control is.
I take issue with this statement America is violent, American is not violent. There is a virus that has infected the GOP, it is in the White House and it is a very deadly strain that is what needs to be stopped. The NRA is one of the propagators of this virus of violence and greed.
There are a lot of peaceful people in this country, they just are not in the White House or controlling the GOP at the moment.
5
How is that research into preventing death and injury caused by firearm has been conflated with firearm control?
If the Massey bill actually stipulates no such research then Massey should be a lot more than ashamed of how his bill is being used.
I mean the Dickey bill and Jay Dickey. Not sure where Massey came from...
It is clear that the militia was originally all able bodied men within certain ages. However,even this militia was regulated. For certain each militiaman was to have a musket or, later, a Pennsylvania long rifle, for example. The latter was much preferred during the Revolutionary War but they were scarce. It was this scarcity, among other considerations, that caused General Washington to create the Springfield Armory in 1799. This government run institution afterwards took on the mission to manufacture the Arms required by the military. At first this was not a big deal as the military was small because there was fear of a standing army right from the beginning, thus the Constitution allows only for a two year budget for the Army but no such requirement for the Navy. Armorys sprung up all over the new States and it was there that all but small arms was stored. Gradually, this changed and future militias would fight with Springfield Armory manufactured small arms. This service was used for the small regular Army also. This became the routine in our wars unti the Springfield Armory was closed because of budget problems, ostensibly.
Curiously, the private sector took over with the M14 then the M16 for combat and the M15 for civilian use. Obviously, the M15 subsidizes the private sector as the military purchases subside from time to time. It makes one wonder if the Pentagon and both political sides just stay quiet about this civilian market advantage.
3
As usual, Mr. Blow calls the balls and strikes correctly. There is one point on this subject I'd like to make regarding the NRA and the decisions being made by some companies to offer or to no longer offer members discounts. It's a fact that those who are not members of the NRA actually subsidize those that are when paying companies that offer such discounts to NRA members. For example, those who are not members of the NRA who seek services from FedEx are subsidizing NRA members and their memberships who receive discounts. That's an outrage. FedEx (and those companies that offer similar discounts) should not be demanding that non-NRA members subsidize the NRA members who belong to the organization. It's very unfair (and, frankly, underhanded) for FedEx and other companies offering such discounts to demand that those who are not members of the NRA pay the freight of those that are. Let's fix the problem by ending these discounts across the board instead of treating non-NRA members unfairly.
12
Our country born in violence - how do you escape it ? Create gun free regions ?
1
I believe gun laws are very strict in Chicago.
2
As they are in Massachusetts, which is one of the safest states in the union. Mississippi, conversely, has some of the most lax gun laws in the country, and is also one of the most violent states in the union.
1
Unfortunately, our neighbor, the great red state of Indiana, doesn't have very strict gun laws. And other red states don't either. They simply ship the awful things across the border.
There must be Federal gun laws.
1
Good article. The power of the gun to transform people. The gun is not an inanimate object. It has a message: "Pick me up. Shoot me." Why else would a three year old shoot himself to death with his police officer mother's gun? A gun makes it easy to kill. This country still thinks capital punishment is a solution to violence. And war is a solution to differences. Behind all this is the notion that it's okay to kill other people.
9
In Denmark, we also carried weapons in the Middle Ages.
18
An "Assault Rifle" is a weapon of war. It has a selector on its receiver that allows the user to opt for "Safe" (gun won't fire), "Semi" (gun fires one round with each trigger pull) and "Auto" (gun fires continuously with a single trigger hold". Some weapons also have a "Burst Fire" which produces a 3 round burst with each trigger pull. Civilian semi-automatic weapons have only two options: "Safe" and "Fire" (one round per trigger pull). Civilians can own full automatic "Assault Rifles" but must get permission from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms and pay a special tax. AR-15 style rifles are not Assault weapons anymore than is a Ruger Mimi-14, which shoots the same round as an AR-15.
1
Your distinction is arbitrary and a deliberate obfuscation of the issues. The AR-15 is a semi-auto version of the M16, made to squeeze more money out of the design beyond military contracts by appealing to civilians who enjoy playing with military-grade weapons. It is a combat rifle, engineered for the sole purpose of killing people. The same goes for the rest of the semi-autos built in the AR-15’s wake. They serve no practical purpose beyond human slaughter.
Anyone who hunts with an AR-15 is a joke. Anyone who owns one to satisfy their paranoid fantasies is a misanthrope.
You may as well tack on the rest of the NRA‘s tired sophistry to your comment. “Guns don’t kill people. People kill people,” right?
1
The AR-15 is a far superior assault weapon to the M-1 used by US soldiers in WW II.
If it can make defenders keep their heads down as their position is assaulted, it is an assault weapon.
1
It is a lesson in what government has become which is subordinates of the lobbyist class. The only "Americans" who wanted the Dickey Law was the NRA and since nobody else was paying attention it was passed. The NRA needs to be watched more closely than our worst enemies. They are driven by money not idealism.
4
That two people hold such sway over the votes of our "tepresentatives"has always mystified:
Wayne of the NRA
&
Grover Norquist of No New Taxes! ...EVER aka 'Americans for Tax Reform'
No one elected them.
Operating in the shadows they represent small, powerful, self-interested cabals.
Yet they are more powerful than the elected "representatives" of "the people".
Those "oaths" signed in blood?
Sign me,
Perpetually Perplexed
8
America is not the gun. America is the tail wagging the dog. America is 83% urban and 17% rural. America is 87% GDP growth in cities. America is rural states controlling the senate and Democrats living in cities and the 80% Democrat urban districts totally underrepresented in congress.
The second amendment is not about guns it is currently about 5 Republican lawyers paid to say the Bill of Rights does not say what it says about "the people's" right to a military to protect their nation's sovereignty.
America is about propaganda trumping truth. Guns are the key to understanding that what ails America is the absence of truth.
I am Canadian I first studied the American constitution 55 years ago, I read Jefferson, Franklin and Adams 55 years ago. Nothing has changed in 55 years the second amendment is still about militia (government military), arms (weapons of war) and the people's armed forces. Guns are not part of the second amendment and never were. Your courts are as honest as your executive and your legislatures. Guns are not the cause of your dysfunction, the absence of truth makes you as you are.
15
Until their identity is not entwined with and tied to gun ownership, a kind of "I own a gun therefore I am" this sickness will not abate but rather consume and destroy your nation. Your choice.
1
Where are the Democratic governors at this meeting of governors? Do they have no opinions on gun violence? They are sitting totally silent at Trump’s meeting of governors while the Republican governors sing the praises of Trump’s inane arm-teachers idea. If he isn’t calling on them that’s one thing. But if they don’t dare to open their mouths in a Republican room they are pathetic. They should be voted out along with the Republicans. They let Trump ramble on with his nonsense and present no opposing view on gun control or make demands on the federal government.
2
The Trump administration opposes "evidence-based" research because the results may conflict with their agenda. The only way to change this is for thinking people to vote.
2
There is a tear in the fabric of American society. Through it the terror screams of America's gun dead fall from the air mute, and the powerful silence of death prevails.
A "tool", a "Guns don't kill people, people kill people" inanimate object, which in a split second finger twitch of a three year old can end life, is not a trifle. Without such a "tool" no three year old can kill me. Guns kill people, full stop.
Freedom to own a firearm is a choice to be responsible with the power of death. There is no true liberty in endlessly amplifying this power, no freedom in a life spent in fear of this power, no justice for the victims of gun violence from the endless, senseless proliferation of such power, no comfort for grieving families whose losses are legion.
And yet with each gun sale, each pistol, each assault weapon, God like power is given to every and anyone. Efforts to prevent the unfit, the infirm of mind, even the simply sloppy, fail time and again, and again, and again...
It is a black heart that holds we are safer with more guns, a black heart that has a deaf ear to the screams rising from our mounting losses, a black heart that holds the freedom to take life with a twitch of a finger a greater right than the rights of the innocent to life itself. And there are black hearts that beat in the chests of those in power who can, but refuse to take sensible action to protect our children.
And there is but one country in the developed world where black hearts prevail...
3
"the Post estimates that this would put 718,000 guns in our schools and could put hundreds of millions into the coffers of gun makers."
Exactly. The gun industry no doubt is already drawing up blueprints for the uniform "Schoolhouse Special" that will be insisted upon, since a Gun Trained Teacher (GTT) will not want to learn a new firearm if they move or transfer to another school. That gun will have new "safe mechanisms" that will cost more than the discounted. It's the $10,000 toilet seat for Air Force One all over again, and they are loving the prospects. Trump knows that, and wants to move taxpayer money to gun makers.
NYT, you need to make this a pick so that people will see it, instead of burying my comments all the time.
2
Why aren't assault rifle owners flocking to the recruitment centers to join the always bipartisan policy of attacks on indigenous peoples around the globe? Yes, there are some terrible despots ruling far away nations and always have been. Yet, the domestic conspiracy theorists can be easily distracted from their home bound fear & anger to demonize people half a globe from our shores.
In my lifetime we had a president declaring that an undeveloped southeastern Asian nation was a crucial domino in the spread of world communism, requiring an invasion. Years later another president launched an attack on a middle eastern country to gain control of an essential resource.
It seems that the biggest fear directed at Trump is that he won't harness American aggression toward a distant enemy (discount nuclear armed N. Korea), but remains focused on an internal one, that is, the flood of third world immigration due to imperial meddling & neo-colonial policies.
When will this change?
2
The Dickey Amendment does not choke off funding for research. It says Federal money has to be spent on research, not advocacy. Researchers who want to advocate for gun control have to spend their own dime. The fact that Jay Dickey put it into an amendment was perhaps misguided, but I'm suspicious that some researchers were blurring the line. Plus statements hostile to gun owners such as those made by former CDC director Mark Rosenberg or Harvard Public Health faculty member David Hemenway raised hackles. But Congress separately cut the CDC budget by the amount it was spending on gun research. That could have been restored.
Mr. Blow is also wrong on having an "information vacuum". Anyone who reads the peer reviewed literature on gun violence knows there is no shortage of it, including some funded by the Federal government and a lot funded by private philanthropic organizations including research carried out at the Michael Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins.
The current stalemate on gun laws is not a matter of lacking information. Its a matter of lacking the will to act, the lack of trust between the two sides, and the fact that guns are not just guns but symbols of the cultural and political divide between red and blue America, as witnessed by the stark contrast in gun laws between red and blue states. With red Florida still reeling from the latest mass shooting, let's see if the "Gunshine State" changes.
The fact is that 70% of Americans DO NOT own guns, belying the NRA dogma that everyone needs a gun for "protection." At the same time over 70% of Americans have consistently made clear they are in favor of very strict gun control laws that make it difficult to get guns and limit the amount of guns we have. Even 70% of NRA members are in agreement that strict guns control laws are necessary (which begs the question...why are they still members of an organization that is in favor of NO gun control whatsoever?)
Add to that the sad fact that people who own guns or have guns in their households are 5-10 times more likely to be shot - homicide or suicide - than a person who does not own a gun or does not have one in their household. And very often the person being shot is shot by the gun in their house - domestic violence.
Until we finally stand up to the small minority of gun fetishists who have dominated the country with their paranoid delusions (we have not even discussed the idiotic "prevent tyranny" philosophy!) we will not be safer. We will only be more unsafe as this minority - prone to violence to solve their problems - builds larger and more powerful arsenals.
We can stop it. It just takes the courage of voters to get rid of politicians who do not consider our safety to be more important than that of a gun fetishists desire for more guns.
150
So you don't want law abiding citizens to be able to protect themselves from criminals invading their home. What about convenience store clerks? You think convenience store robberies never happen?
4
I want police to be able to protect people from criminals. That's what they're for.
If I have a gun in my house, period. That includes a home-invasion scenario, which without my owning a gun will likely not come to shots, and with me owning a gun almost certainly will.
But beyond the safety reality is a basic principle as well: somebody invading my home shouldn't be killed, by me or police. Arrested? Yes. Sent to prison? Almost certainly. Killed? No.
I don't think it's ethically valid to describe as "protect[ing] themselves" an act of killing, unless it's certain that the criminal is so committed to killing you that only killing him will stop that from happening.
A criminal who is trying to rob shouldn't be killed, period.
4
There are several realms of gun owners out there:
There are the hobbyists who hunt, collect and target shoot. They pay attention to gun laws and store their firearms safely. They have not been a problem for 250 years.
Then there are the paranoid who are able to function in life but feel they need weapons in the bedroom and under their shirt on the street to be "safe". They do not follow as many gun laws and they leave loaded weapons easily accessible around the house. They shoot themselves and others at an advanced rate. They need education, medication, and rehabilitation.
And finally there is the lunatic political fringe who have severe mental problems and who are a danger to themselves and others whether they have a firearm or not. These people can find others like them on the internet and form small militias that function as outlaw gangs. These people are largely beyond hope and break the laws of civilized society on a regular basis. As unbalanced and dangerous people they are easy to spot but our legal system lacks the ability to intercede before they commit their first shooting crime.
80% of gun owner are in the first group and 5% of gun owner are in the third group. All mass shooters have come from the third group. But we have no organized or legal process to identify or apprehend these people before they start shooting. Most other countries that have less guns also have a much more strict monitoring process based around acting on threats of violence.
2
Maybe what is needed is 10 million Americans to join the NRA and raise motions to oust La Pierre and his radical extremists posing as a political party and vote in sensible gun regulation such as banning assault rifles. Kick us out? We tie them up in lawsuits for a decade. Consume the beast from within.
7
Some of us are doing this now. I'm a life member. I can recall when the NRA was about shooting safety, training, and competition - before the hostile takeover by the La Pierre junta. I get a couple of calls a month asking for money to "help Wayne protect" my rights. My response is "No thanks. Wayne does nothing to "protect my" anything. What he and Chris Cox and the band of hyenas they brought with them have done is make the rest of us in the shooting community look like idiots." "The one thing I would like to help Wayne do, is to make a career change. If he and the entire pack of weasels he consorts with would resign from the NRA and be forever banned from future involvement with the organization, I'll donate $20,000."
The NRA and the GOA work very hard to scare gun owners. To some extent we in that community do have reason to be worried. I take the comments calling for the confiscation of firearms from some in the legislature and many on the Time's comment pages seriously. If we (that means you) on these pages insist on using the most incendiary of rhetoric it should come as no surprise that responsible people on the other side are drowned out by the baying of the fringe.
4
This is a very good strategy. Perhaps the NRA can return to its roots as a gun safety organization.
What does this say about us as a nation? Nothing good.
When one thinks of France or Italy or the brilliant cultures of Asia do we think of guns? I don't. I think of artful food, painting, poetry; gardens that express infinity in tiny spaces.
Are killing machines all we are? Is this truly the essence of America?
No - maybe we need to add willful ignorance to the guns.
Take a gander at the Trump Administration's budget and you'll see the priorities.
6
THERE HAVE been studies done on this subject but no one is paying attention.
https://www.aafp.org/about/policies/all/violence-media.html
He who lives by the sword will die by the sword... one can substitute gun here. Of all the inanities I have read in the past week(and there have been too many to count) rationalizing the AR-15 for wild boar hunting by a member of the Florida legislature (apparently with a straight face)really takes the cake ...
7
America has a magic word “gun control”. While it’s easier to buy a gun here than alcohol and to kill 20 kids than driving drunk the main problem is ignored.
America is the only country that have people mass killing kids in school. Not to mention it has the most mass killings but the schools is makes it even more unique.
Did ANYONE thought it’s a symptom of a culture that expects its citizens to suppress emotions and use “have a nice day” with hypocrite smile as a foundation to human relationships? Maybe it’s a country that killed mom and pop stores for the comfort of conglomerates like Walmart? Maybe it’s a county that public transportation considered a bad word? Maybe it’s a country that adores the capitalism god and treat socialism like a lighter form of communism? Maybe it’s a country that Thanks Giving is a substitute to real connection between family members? Maybe it’s a country with so many lonely people compared to others? Maybe it’s a country that is obsessed with privacy and tries to minimize any human connection. Example - drive through. Simple example to avoid any real human connection. Maybe it’s the only county Amazon could have become a country of itself that it’s main purpose is to eliminate any human contact? Maybe it’s a country neighbors don’t know how to have arguments without threatening with violence after 30 seconds? Maybe it’s a county that teaches kids it’s more important to tell on each other at school than trying to confront them?
4
Your second paragraph is simply not true.
The NRA has maybe 5 million members.
The Second Amendment makes no mention of any Individual Right to Bear Arms.
In D.C. v Heller 2008 the Supreme Court held 5-4 that Individuals had a Right to possess firearms unconnected with service in a militia for traditionally lawful purposes, and also clearly stated that the right to bear arms is not unlimited.
This past December the House of Representatives passed the Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act requiring all states to honor carry-permits from any other state - the Senate has not taken this up.
There was a National Institutes for Health (NIH) Gun Violence Research effort launched by Obama in response to Sandy Hook in 2013, which was shut down last year.
In 1996 the Dickey Amendment to an omnibus spending bill required that no funding for the NIH be used to research gun violence. This has continued.
The NRA now stridently advocates fortifying schools and arming teachers.
The NRA has maybe 5 million members.
We can NOT let the NRA dictate gun policy for all the rest of us.
10
"...U.S. scientists cannot answer the most basic question: What works to prevent firearm injuries?"
Questions like this are how we know common sense regarding gun control has been bound, gagged and is being held hostage in an abandoned NRA warehouse. Is this really something that requires $2.6MM to answer??
Lobbyists only own our government if we let them. Our vote has more power than any amount of bribe money if we are motivated to use it. We don't have to be held hostage by fringe activist groups.
Rise up, rational America!
1
We got to this place by letting money seize the day in Washington. Will Rogers put it succinctly in the 1920s: "We have the best government money can buy." Perhaps succeeding generations living with the poor decisions their parents made will overthrow today's "pay to play" system which is rife with waste. Get rid of the money in politics and the seniority system. Limit the time period for election ads to several months (they are OUR airwaves).
I have a Swiss friend who says he does not think much about politics. God how I envy him.
I hope that succeeding generations will bring a new focus to efficiency in Washington for the betterment of all Americans, particularly our poorest. The Second Amendment doesn't guarantee the right to buy any arm, or any number of arms. It does not prohibit gun registration, or gun safety training regulations and recertification. It does not prohibit concealed carry. It does not prohibit disqualification by virtue of mental illness.
As one of our founding fathers said: Beware the scoundrel who wraps himself in patriotism.
95
You are right about several things in this op-ed, the most noteworthy of which is the fact that we have a cluster of cowards in Congress. They are like Punxsutawney Phil, only much worse. They pop up momentarily after a mass murder, see their shadow, and then slither back into their holes to cower there until the next even bigger mass shooting, at which time they pop their heads out for a few moments to say how terrible the death and suffering is and then dive back in again. Best anyone can tell, there is not a single Republican in Congress who has the courage to even look in the mirror, let alone challenge the NRA. In Congress, that’s the definition of a coward.
7
I think there needs to be an outright ban on the possession, sale, and importation of semiautomatic rifles and handguns. There is no “need” for such weaponry in the civilian sector. Most of us serious hunters, target shooters, trap and skeet shooters, do not use semi-automatics. We pride ourselves needing only one shot, two at most. Most mass shootings are carried out with semi-automatic weapons. Many people “want”, them, but there is no real “need” - and to hell with conspiracy theories. Semi-automatic weapons are at the heart of our public health problem. We should have a government “buy-back” program, and get this menace out of our country. Such weaponry should be restricted to law enforcement and the military. The NRA and many gun “enthusiasts “ will put up a fight. The NRA is primarily a lobby for the firearms industry anyway, and is not interested in any solution to the problem that might have a negative impact on the manufacture and sale of any type of firearms. We, the people, must fight back. We are in the majority. The risks are not worth the reward. (BTW: I am an army veteran, have been a hunter all my life, am a firearms safety instructor, and have a permit to carry; also, as an ER doc in a Level One Trauma Center, I saw my share of gun violence).
8
Nor does anyone "need" a cell phone, or a widescreen TV or alcoholic beverages. All are "wants" and all carry with them a substantial social cost. I personally came within a small fraction of an inch of dying violently 4 years ago. The culprit was an idiot, talking on her cell phone who CHOSE to run a red light into the path of my motorcycle. Many of the luxuries we own today carry with them dangers and social costs. I submit we do not "need" many to any of them.
I'm not suggesting we give up the idea of reducing violence involving firearms, but to suggest that "need" is the standard by which to evaluate one's right to own or not own something and to restrict that to firearms is a cheat plain and simple. The woman who nearly killed me had her Tahoe repaired and was driving it again within 2 weeks. Her only other inconvenience was a fine for running the light and a slight increase in her insurance premium. Insurance that, by the way covered less than 3 percent of my post crash medical bills.
However you slice it, however the NRA phrases it, what has actually happened is that the Second Amendment has been taken violated.
Yes, you can build a serious case for its repeal, as you no longer live in the mostly rural late 18th century and the weapons it had in mind were muzzle loaded flintlocks. Would it stand a chance? Probably not.
But even without repeal or modification, surely one can argue that a well regulated militia, even if it is not formally called to arms or in any way pre-organized, would require as a precondition that any prospective member is of sound mind and can prove he or she does not him- or herself present a threat to the community said militia would be called upon to protect?
Furthermore, if we interpret he Second Amendment to allow for the creation of an embryonal militia, an unformed but potentially proto-militia, then surely those who are given the right to keep and bear arms should prove their ability to care for and use said arms?
Al this to say that, with the Second Amendment as it stands today, there is nothing that precludes the introduction of minimal background checks and of simple rules on the storage and maintenance of weapons or, indeed, that anyone who wants a weapons should take some training. The NRA is ideally placed to provide such training.
But what has happened, of course, is that the NRA no longer advocates for responsible gun ownership. It markets weapons, the more the better. And damn the onsequences...
2
"Dereliction of Duty" Donald does it again. This manipulative moron redirects discussion away from the plague of assault rifles onto his preposterous fantasy of armed teachers shooting bad guys.
We are in the middle of a public health epidemic and our leaders do nothing to stop the spread of this fatal disease. In fact they are fertilizing the country to spread the disease. All people who commit mass murder of innocent children or peaceful concert goers are either mentally ill or terrorists ( or both). The FBI and CIA are doing their best to mitigate Terrorists.
As a psychiatrist I can assure you we will never identify the majority of the mentally ill population who are about to snap and use assault weapons to massacre innocents. These people do not present seeking care for their disturbances. They seek the largest weapon they can get to do the most damage.
There is only one cure for the epidemic and that is denying the entire population at large access to weapons of modern warfare. If we do no do so we are as a country an extension of Derelict Donald and we are, like him, like the NRA, responsible for the hundreds of innocent lives that will be destroyed.
For our public health: Ban Assault Weapons Now!
RJ Neborsky MD LCDR MC, Ret
5
Recipe for Civil War: make available to public 10 million assault rifles. Create media silos where separate groups have no communication between them. Create massive distrust of government institutions by defunding them and by putting incompetents in charge. Import Russian propaganda expertise, Russian bots and Russian Trolls to motivate and energize extreme polarization. Encourage more people to own guns for "protection". Stir and wait until mixture ferments and rises.
7
What are they afraid of?
1
Outlaw all bullets. Problem solved. Next.
3
I am so sick of these crazy-eyed NRA spokespeople who scream "they're comin' for our guns!!!"
America overwhelming is demanding ONE style of firearm off the market... military-style assault weapons of mass slaughter.
The entire civilized world knows there is absolutely NO reason whatsoever that any civilian EVER needs an assault weapon.
Shame on us America! We voters have allowed this evil NRA to buy off our greedy, spineless legislators and dictate their gun legislation to promote the senseless maiming and killing of innocent american citizens on a daily basis.
Stop this nonsense immediately!
Vote out every politician who takes a cent from the NRA.
Do not patronize businesses which support or have agreements, discounts or alliances with this NRA killing-machine organization.
11
Behold, if the Indians and the black people began to arm themselves by the millions--maybe even thousands--we'd get gun control in 15 minutes! That's what happened during Reagan when the Black Panthers began to show up with guns.
5
If we interpreted the First Amendment the way that conservatives interpret the Second Amendment.......child pornography would be available on every street corner and churches would be allowed to conduct human sacrifice!
7
I follow the gun controversy in the US with great interest as an Australian living in Europe. These are gun safe countries with just as much 'freedom; as the US.
However, unfortunately there is a bogey man at play here and that is the American political system which has enabled the NRA to become its own member of the government where, by, virtue of aggressive financial support to the 'right' people and financial support against the 'wrong' people, it prevents the will of the American people from having any chance of being observed in a democratic manner. So lets limit magazine sizes (good only 7 dead, instead of 17). Let's raise the age of ownership to 21. The 600 odd people in Las Vegas will be delighted (Stephen Paddock was 64). Lets kill off bump stocks (rarely used in these crimes)...arm the teachers (a clock vs an AR15, oh and I didn't sign up for being linked, I signed up to teach) it is so sad, and we shake our head ...
Gun murders in the US in the last 20 years have killed over 200,000 people, without adding the suicides, yet still you are paralysed to act because of the NRA's tactics. The only way home is to truly disarm the NRA, not for guns but for the illegitimate hold they have over this issue in the US. You must find a way to vote against those preventing this issue being dealt with.
The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is to reduce his chance of getting one !!!!
7
I spent a few years riding a motorcycle as my only form of transportation. I had to take a rider's test to be licensed, wear a helmet, buy insurance. Why can't the same sort of thing be done with guns? You would have to know how to use it, you might, for instance, be required to have a locking device when not in use, and you sure as heck ought to be insured.
No one abrogated my right to own and ride a motorcycle, the state simply said there are rules, because motorcycles can be dangerous. Guns are dangerous, too.
9
Even my 85-year-old mother gets it. She says, "Those armed teachers will look for a reason to kill our black boys in the classroom. All they have to say is, 'He talked back, and I felt threatened.'"
So many ironies and hypocrises to address with our gun problem. First, trump and the GOP have excoriated law enforcement, both the FBI and the local sheriffs. Yet when Black Lives Matter or football players attempt to call attention to police killings of unarmed black people, they're attacked as unpatriotic terrorists. trump is vociferously anti-law enforcement and no one bats an eye.
Black children attend schools in communities saturated with gun violence. They create and belong to anti-violence groups. People like Erricka Bridgeford of Baltimore Ceasefire and hundreds of others work every day to create a nonviolent city. Where is their $1,000,000, Oprah and Clooney? The parents of the children who survived the horrific assault on their school could pull together $1 million with few phone calls.
So much concern has been expressed for signs overlooked and ignored regarding Nikolas Cruz's mental state and criminal tendencies. Because he's white and wealthy, I'll bet. So much care was taken to describe his wealthy community, the gated opulence, blah blah blah. Yet he was taken alive. As was Dylann Roof. Philando Castile. Dead. Tamir Rice. Dead. Black victims are criminalized. White criminals are romanticized.
Enough.
6
Guns are idolized in our country. Does that violate the commandments as well as common sense?
2
I am an American citizen. I am not the gun!
1
Our priority is to protect children and teenagers in school. Leaving them at the mercy of an active shooter, with the shooter having the only weapon in an active shooter event does NOT protect the kids. Quite the contrary Blow's approach just ensures maximum casualties.
Maybe maximum casualties is your goal Mr. Blow? More casualties = more victims and victims are currency for our "progressives" in general, and Blow in particular.
1
Really. You actually believe that arming teachers, janitors, principals, et al will either deter a shooter or reduce the number of casualties? You really believe that?
Have you ever been in a live fire setting where armed and unarmed combatants and non-combatants are present? I do not mean a training session, I mean an actual free fire zone in an urban setting. Have you ever dealt with a mentally compromised person who had a loaded gun? (You can talk with VA doctors and nurses who cared for Vets returning from Nam about this).
If you haven't, you might want to do a little research on such events.
3
It's funny how the 'good guys' think the government is going to confiscate their guns. If the government could possibly confiscate their guns, then the government could confiscate the 'bad guys' guns too. Then the . only people with guns would be the government and the illegal gun owners and they could have a shoot out and the rest of us could be rid of all of them.
2
Every gun owner is law-abiding until they're not.
5
Hollywood has a big hand in this. The film (and TV) industry has no problem pushing out films that glorify over the top gun violence and "heroes and heroines" that strap on personal arsenals. They too are making lots of $$$ glorifying guns. As long as gun ownership is equated with machismo, strength and independence, rather than what it actually is a direct means of lethal destruction, moving forward on resolving this epidemic in public discourse will continue to be political. Guns kill and maim. Plain and simple. Let's be direct in our words, just like weapons are direct in their intended action. Thank you Mr. Blow for keeping it real. This is a national crisis.
6
The whole gun rights crowd is dominated by a very small minority of paranoid delusional people who really, truly believe that they need as many guns as possible to fend off a "tyrannical government." This is the mental illness we need to cure.
5
hello
how about doing what Jeff Sachs suggested
confine AR 15s to gun ranges only.
you own your gun and go to the range to fire it.
you cant take it off the gun range.
just like a boat at a marina.
this way people can still enjoy firing their AR15s.
3
I, by Nationality, am 1/5th Scottish. I wish my America Home had the
Public Sanity of Scotland in its living with Guns.
3
If the NRA had its way, It would be only a matter of time until our American Flag included an Ak47.
1
I do not envy the men and a few women who spend a lot of time handling and carrying guns, reading gun magazines, shopping for guns and accessories, talking with friends about their guns, teaching their children to use guns. What an awful way to live, always thinking about threats to your life and preparing to kill somebody to defend your life and your loved ones or strangers, susceptible to wild conspiracy theories of government oppression and fantasies of re-fighting the American Revolution. Those people are not "gun owners." They are people owned by guns, instruments of death.
3
There are Americans who fetishize guns. Why? Guns are pretty cool---pick a Glock up, weigh it in your hand, aim it, feel the latent power, the menace.
An AR-15 is ever more intoxicating. It is stripped down to it's essential function---no cherry wood, no whorls or artistic devices. It is angular and ugly, a killing machine.
Most of these weapons are collected and traded, bought and sold among a minority of Americans---even a minority of gun owners. If we as a people choose to take them away, the owners will resent it, resist it, but in the end they'll turn them in. They won't, except for a few crazies, die for them.
It's time for us to grow up about guns. Give assault weapons a 30-day period for their owners to say goodbye, and have them turn them in to their local police station.
Yes, we can do this.
4
Here's how things look from outside the U.S.:
Americans will sacrifice anything - even children and a sane educational environment - to maintain the "right" to bear assault weapons.
Only one Republican in the Florida state legislature has endorsed a ban on assault rifles. The President and many federal legislators, Republicans and Democrats, favour arming teachers rather than ban assault rifles.
As the NYT has shown, the U.S. is the undisputed world leader in guns per capita and mass shootings, but it doesn't have an appreciably higher rate of mental health issues than other countries. Internationally, gun homicide rates mirror gun ownership rates.(https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/07/world/americas/mass-shootings-us-inte...
Duh, the problem is the number of guns. Period.
Things won't change until you, citizens and legislators, stop dancing around this reality. Talk of restrictions on assault rifles, bump stocks and magazine sizes is fine, but it doesn't deal with the fundamental issue of numbers. Start looking at how other countries track and limit gun ownership. Amend or re-interpret your constitutional "right to bear arms." It's out of whack with the rest of the civilized world. Just ask the students, teachers and families of Stoneman Douglas, Marshall County, Newtown, ...
4
So how come nobody ever mentions the controls that prevent 'private' sales of military-style long guns to agents for foreign drug cartels, terrorist groups and mercenary troops? Am I right to conclude that there are no such controls on these kinds of military weaponry? Are we effectively supplying bad guys all over the world with the best machine of death money can buy?
1
Mr. Blow it's too late. The NRA has polluted our nation with so many guns it will take generations to effectively change the gun environment in this country. And as you know we as a nation can't commit to anything that takes a month to accomplish let alone a generation.
Botttom line: get used to these mass murders because it's not going to change in our lifetime.
3
As far as I can tell, the NRA, GOA, and the Right in general are pushing a very real tyranny of ridiculously-overarmed wackos and wealthy corporations over the considerable majority of Americans, and justifying this state of permanent siege on the grounds that hey, government might someday turn tyrannical.
4
I was in combat with 101st airborne in Vietnam. Received the Bronze Star. Used the M-16 and saw plenty of death and destruction caused by guns. The M-16 has it's place as a military weapon, but doesn't belong in the hands of civilians. No semi or automatic weapons are justified in a civilan situation.
In my personal experience I have noticed a large number of the biggest gun activists were never in combat. Never heard a shot fired in anger. Want-a-be soldiers playing with guns. Essentially boys playing with dangerous toys.
I guess a lot of bone spurs kept them out of the military.
Why are we empowering these jerks? Stop Killing The Children.
13
A NYT 2012 op ed after a gun slaughter---“The NRA Protection Racket” by Richard Painter, ethics lawyer for Bush, said--- “GOP politicians must free themselves from the N.R.A. protection racket and others like it…..and to rid both parties of dependence on big money.”
Painter describes the racket: NRA--- “We will help you get elected and protect your seat from Democrats, spend millions on ads to make your opponent look worse than a holdup man robbing a liquor store.
In return, we expect you to oppose any laws that regulate guns--handgun registration, background checks, right to carry, semiautomatics or anything that would diminish the firepower available to anybody who wants it. And if you don’t comply, we will load our weapons and direct everything in our arsenal at you in the next GOP primary.”
“For decades, GOP politicians have gone along with this racket, some willingly and others because they know that resisting would be pointless.” Donors will run someone against them.
After Parkland, he wrote, “political hacks offer prayers & condolences while stuffing NRA blood money in their pockets.”
NRA spends millions on campaign ads. Contrast this to countries with safe gun laws. Per Wiki on campaign ads:
“Many EU countries don’t permit paid TV/radio ads for fear wealthy groups will gain control of airtime, making fair play impossible and distorting the political debate.”
Just imagine---distorting the political debate! We fear guns and political distortion.
5
I could not agree more - our gun policies should be driven by reasoned conclusions based on empirically supported information. In fact, this should be the norm for ALL our public policies. But Republicans long ago decided to pitch their appeals to the stupid, the ignorant, and the emotionally-driven, so that's nature of the policies we got from them.
1
We are a violent country and so far the NRA through its owned Congress shills has kept us from finding out just how many guns are out there, who owns them, and what death and destruction they cause every day. Even gun-loving Americans might be shocked at just what weapons people own and just what they are doing with them. It is past time that we found out. #neveragain
2
One lesson from Parkland is that the police WON'T protect you. So it's not surprising that the people don't want to be disarmed.
2
Finally.
Someone said it.
Thank You
The gun debate is a fascinating lens for examining so much of our culture. At the risk of having an incorrect opinion - my POV:
- Peggy Noonan recently wrote in WSJ that America has a nihilistic culture due to the fact that abortion is legal here - something to the effect that "if unborn babies don't matter, then neither do I and neither does anyone else" - so, naturally, the next step is to shoot up a school? Abortion in legal in many, many other countries and they don't have the same problem. What other countries don't have is a lot of guns.
- Despite this specific point I do agree that American culture certainly has a nihilistic aspect to it. Our culture is highly optimistic in personal outlook, but in aggregate is not kind to people that fall short - ESPECIALLY kids and teens. Our media, economy and government constantly end the message that nobody cares: Struggling? That's your problem. Sick? Might as well just die, then. Depressed? Get over it, wimp. Unlucky in love? You must be repulsive (or worse, gay!).
- Social mobility is at a low point; more and more people never leave their home towns. The planet is dying, and so are you! If you're already down this rabbit hole, is there any way out?
If you look at every one of these mass shooters you'll find some variation on this theme. These keep happening because public response to them only compounds the nihilism. "Thoughts and prayers..." "Now isn't the time to discuss policy..."
Maybe nobody cares after all.
I agree with your initial statement, that you have an incorrect point of view. Abortion and nihilism being linked to mass shootings? how about the vast quantities of guns available! Peggy Noonan is an NRA shill if you weren't aware.
3
@Just Deserts - Maybe this got lost in editing, but I disagree with Peggy's abortion point, and cite the availability of guns as a key driver of shootings. Abortion is legal in other countries, where they don't have guns, and they don' have shootings.
2
Really? When I see you guys funding adequate social safety nets, promoting excellent public education for everybody up to the BA level, and make it free/affordable for all; when I see you guys promoting workers' wages over company riches; when I see you protecting the lifeline we all rely upon, the environment; when I see you defending women's rights; when I see you backing universal health care, generous family leave and affordable housing for everybody so we don't have countless people struggling to keep a roof over their heads, then I will believe you're serious about protecting human life.
Meanwhile, forgetaboutit.
I find the proliferation of sociopaths as frightening as the proliferation of guns. Maybe, if we weren't so awash in weapons, these people would find a less lethal outlet for their hostility towards their neighbors, but maybe they wouldn't. The same nihilism that brings us Parkland, Las Vegas, Orlando and Sandy Hook, could bring could be a harbinger of worse things to come. How do we prevent the proliferation of more Nickolas Cruz's when so many, mostly but not only, young men, rightly see mass murder as a thing; a meme, a chance for immortality. Could these same people be the shock troops of a new but very old Nazism. Our political dysfunction and the cruelty/stupidity and mendacity of the current administration are pointing that way.
1
We need to see photos of shooting victims in all of their bloody gore. We need to see them over and over again. With 30,000 to 40,000 deaths a year and dead children over and over - something is very wrong in this country. It all leads to too many guns too easy to obtain and too many dead over and over again. Show us the bloody gore and perhaps we will wake up.
2
The solution to mass shootings at schools, usually done by young white males, may be quite different from the solution to shootings at home by children playing with guns, and that will be different than the solution to killings by street thugs doing crime and all that different from suicide death by gun.
The most recent Florida shooter was going to bury his gun in the backyard and that is the problem with guns--they are forever, if well sealed.
Large clip ammunition might reduce the number of casualties in any given shooting and forbidding sales to children my help, but with one gun for every man, woman in child currently out there in America, it is hard to imagine any one solution will work.
For all its manifest lunacy and evil, the NRA is not the only villain here; it is simply the vector transmitting the disease, not the disease itself. You don't solve the problem with Bubonic plague by simply killing the rats whose fleas carry plague--you have to kill the bacterium itself.
Whenever I try to explain to my European friends why America is violent and fascinated with guns, I always start and end my explanation by quoting D.H. Lawrence:
“The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted.”― D.H. Lawrence
Vote against politicians with high NRA ratings. Vote against politicians who take money from the NRA. Vote against politicians who have any connection with the NRA. None of this will happen because it would be a useless appeal to the dolts who elected Trump.
4
The NRA is merely symptom of a society that produces and consumes ultra-violent video games, movies and shows, NFL, MMA and other aberrations.
The sign for “America” in Egyptian sign language is the shape of two guns quickfiring at the hips. Quite literally, America is the gun.
1
The NRA and many of our representatives complain that if only law enforcement would enforce the existing laws these massacres would stop. But then they turn around and pass laws that make it darned near impossible to protect the citizens of this country. Denying the CDC funds to study gun violence is a pathetic and shameful act as is denying the government to establish a computerized gun registry and registry of offenders who are forbidden to own guns. All gun sales or trades need to be registered and any gun stolen needs to be reported immediately. Guns are deadly and and although law abiding citizens should be able to possess them for protection, target shooting and hunting there is no need for the possession of weapons designed to kill the maximum number of people in the shortest period of time.
74
The NRA rates politicians according to an unyielding scale of votes cast for or against their pro-agenda. They then spend big bucks campaigning for or against candidates based on those ratings.
How great it would be to see the Parkland High School students establish and promote their own ratings of politicians based on gun legislation positions. Time to hear from the future instead of the past all the time.
4
A reasonable start is to repeal the Dickey Amendment and reinstate fact-based federal research on gun violence. Jay Dickey himself regrets the amendment:
“We need to turn this over to science and take it away from politics." Why not look at facts and reasonable steps to solutions?
3
We in the United States are fed a diet of guns via the media, video games, and television and movie entertainment out of Hollywood from a young age. Over and over we are exposed to these stories of gun violence in the media, with the result that our perception of the danger to ourselves is out of proportion to reality. Similarly, there are numerous crime shows on tv, and movies that glorify the use of guns against people (not animals, as in a hunt) who are out to get us. Is it no wonder everyone feels the need to be armed to the teeth? They really do believe that someone is after them-because that is what they are exposed to all day, every day. Perhaps our legislators should consider enacting laws that forbid the display of guns in the media, tv shows, video games and in movies..
2
The NRA will not condone any laws they view as restricting gun ownership or making the process of owning & using a gun more thorough & challenging, like owning a driving & car in the United States, for example.
Many gun control advocates, myself included, don't believe the Parkland school shooting will change anything with respect to gun control legislation, in spite of the impassioned & articulate pleas of those surviving students. If history is any indication, gun sales should skyrocket & more gun ownership freedoms will be awarded in those areas of the country where guns are worshiped on the same level as God. The highly flawed "more good guys with guns needed to stop a bad guy with a gun" logic continues to resonate with just enough of the right people. The alarmist rhetoric from the NRA about Democrats secretly plotting to abolish the Second Amendment, now parroted by comrade Trump also hits the crazy button in enough Americans. Never mind, that precious few Democrats have even floated this idea or that abolishing, editing or even adding new Constitutional Amendments requires a near act God to occur in the US government.
Approaching gun control using a medical study angle outlined by Charles Blow is worth trying since nothing else has worked. However, repealing the Dickey legislation would require enough Congressional Republicans, along with the majority of Democrats to vote against the NRA. Until politicians are willing stand up to the NRA, NOTHING will change.
2
When was the last time Mr. Blow wrote about another cause of deaths that is cause by another potentially lethal weapon. According to the NHTSA every 50 minutes a person dies in an alcohol impaired vehicle crash. Where is Mr. Blows outrage about the lack of response of the FBI and local sheriff's office to the warnings about Cruz. One concerned person even said she though he might shoot up a school. This tragedy could have been prevented if those agencies we trust to protect us had not shirked their responsibilities. There is even a report that the FBI had been warned about the Orlando killer. We do know they had been warned by the Russians about one of the Boston Marathon bombers. In Colorado the authorities were warned about James Holmes. If the authorities do act responsibly, lives can be save. In Virginia and Maryland recently authorities did act and prevented lives being lost. The FBI says It failed to act after receiving tip. All of a sudden that is all it takes to deflect attention away from them. They should not get away with just saying they messed up. Who got fired? What new protocol has been instituted? That same concern should be directed at all the failed action buy law enforcement. Mr. Blows voice against guns is just another voice in a crowd. Maybe he could switch his focus on those who were warned and did nothing.
RE: "According to the NHTSA every 50 minutes a person dies in an alcohol impaired vehicle crash."
You know when I brought up the highway VS guns issue in a recent comment on how we try to make highways safer and the NRA makes it illegal to do so with guns a NRA member said it was always the anti-gun nuts who brought it up. I begged to differ saying the gun addicts who usually brought it up as a means to deflect. So, case in point.
The point is Ron, that while there are deaths on the highways from many causes we are actually DOING something about it. Not shrugging our shoulders. Not blaming someone else. And allowing the government to look at the problem. We have government agencies, highway safety systems manufactures, car makers, impaired driver programs and policing, insurance companies, and institutes working to make things better safer, and when necessary implementing new laws.
None of that is permitted by the NRA. It works to shut down dealers who try to sell smart guns. It made it illegal in the US to study gun violence by the CDC. It makes it illegal to keep information in a data base about guns and their owners.It shuts down any discussion.
While they point to deaths on the highways just tell them fine, at least they are working on it. "You would want the same level of effort applied to guns, wouldn't you?", you can ask. They answer is no. None. not even percentage of that effort.
2
yeah, ignore the elephant in the room - they had access to assault weapons.
4
There are plenty of people on the anti-gun ship. But there isn't one peep from that boat that shows rage at the authorities who ignored warning that would have prevented this tragedy. A pressure cooker can kill people and the same FBI that ignored the warnings about Cruz ignored the warnings the Russians gave them about the soon to be bombers in Boston.
Charles,
Nothing meaningful will get done until the republicans are voted out of office. Maybe in the meantime the age to buy an assault rifle will be raised from 18 to 21 and bump stocks outlawed, but unfortunately the carnage will still go on.
2
The dogma that everyone needs a gun, and as many as possible, to "protect" themselves, is belied by the sad statistics that simply owning a gun makes a person much more likely to be shot that one who does not own a gun. And that households with guns have a much higher homicide and suicide rate than those without guns. Statistics also show that for just about every state, the more lax the gun laws and/or the higher the gun ownership rate, the more homicides and suicides. Just facts.
Facts matter. As a society we have the ability to decide how we want to regulate guns and it is clear the stricter the laws, and the fewer the guns, the safer we are.
Lets stop allowing the very small minority of paranoid-delusional gun fetishists dictate our laws and makes some intelligent laws that make all of us safer.
1
Charles
Very few hunting rifles have removable, quick change magazines. A Google search found none holding more than 20 rounds. That would shred a deer.
Weld the magazine release locked onto a metal 20 round clip and the Assault "style" distinction goes away. Reload one bullet at atime.
Ignore features. Focus on function. End quick volume reloading for all without a Federal Firearms License.
2
If the NRA has a population of 5 million members and the United States has a population of somewhere around 323 million people, I don't understand why the other 318 million people let 1.5% of the population dictate the policy for the other 98.5 percent! I believe the only way things are going to make way towards sensible gun regulation are people getting involved and voting their way towards gun sanity. I am a ex-navy officer hand gun owner. I do not understand why assault rifles are allowed to be purchased in this country and I DO understand the second amendment. And I DO vote and I have written my legislators and stated that if they don't get off the NRA dole and if they don't start getting involved with this issue I will exercise my vote to do my small part to get them replaced. I might also add that I am very pleased to see how some in corporate America are treating this subject by cutting ties with the NRA. Money talks and the NRA walks!
2
Although I have joked plenty in the last 2 years about moving to Canada, your column today makes me seriously consider it. I do not want to live in a country where guns are the center of society. You create an image of our country that I will never be able to not see.
Even in the Old West where guns were worn by most Men and some women, there were towns that ordinances about No guns in Town. I understand the second Amendment. What I don't Understand is America's Love of something whose only purpose is to Kill. I understand someone wanting a gun for Hunting and maybe for protection. but this Passion. This intoxication of the Mighty Gun it becomes a kind of religious/sexual relationship with the Gun. What is it in Americans that brings them to this attachment. It's beyond the Second Amendment. People don't act as passionate about any other Amendment.
3
It indeed is a sexual relationship. Men see Arnold Schwarzenegger and Chuck Norris with BIG guns, and see that they do not get pushed around and that they get the women. Then they buy one and after shooting some wildlife in their backyard they feel POWERFUL. And then they want the next bigger “fix”: bigger guns, more guns, armor-piercing bullets. For heaven sakes, Tom Clancy put a tank in his yard!
So we fail our youth by not giving them something more constructive to aspire to; by not fixing lives broken by mental illness. And then we lay out a buffet of simple, pathetic quick-fix ointment of mine-is-bigger-then-yours gun one-upmanship. The gun lobby drinks up the cash, and the carnage perpetrated by the disaffected continues. The NRA – proof that there is no God!
3
What about the first half of the second amendment..."a well regulated militia"?
I would like all media to quote the entire sentence whenever anyone mentions "the right to bear arms". It could cause a jarring contrast. Maybe. I hope.
1
the members of the NRA need to take their organization back. it no longer represents the interests or beliefs of its membership. instead it's a lobbying firm representing the interests of gun manufacturers and maybe even the interests of russia (http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/article195231139.h... if all the members are getting for their $35 annual fee are more dead friends and neighbors, they need to fix it.
2
Thank you for this piece and your passionate writing. That said, I am curious why we never see images from these shootings in our media? I would expect even one photo of a couple of 6 year olds from Sandy Hook in their own pool of blood would put these silent and inactive politicians feet to the fire and possibly make them change their tune. Words obviously didn’t do it.
2
Mr. Blow is correct about this country's disastrous love affair with guns. But stopping the daily carnage is not rocket science and doesn't require research or even the repeal of the ludicrous Dickey Amendment. The research has already been done, although you don't hear much about it from the media or Congress, and the results are indisputable. The more guns around, the more people die from gun violence. Other, much more peaceful and level headed countries, such as Australian, New Zealand, Germany and others have already proven that the fix is straight forward. Less guns, less guns, less guns. Peaceful nations don't allow their citizens to own assault rifle, and they require vigorous background checks for any gun ownership. When after a mass shooting in the 1990s Australia passed strict gun control legislation, its homicide rate dropped by 50% and is now the lowest in the world. As long as the NRA keeps donating millions to members of congress, no real solution is possible here. The will of the majority again thwarted by big money politics.
119
"Peaceful nations don't allow their citizens to own assault rifle,"
Is Switzerland a peaceful nation? They not only allow their citizens to own military grade weapons, they require it in many cases. They have a gun ownership rate comparable to ours, but a murder rate much less. Why? Intensive training on the use of the guns is certainly part of the reason, Swiss culture another part, but without research, meaning the repeal of the Disastrous Amendment, we can never know the full picture.
They are the one of the reasons, however, why the simplistic "The more guns around, the more people die from gun violence." answer is wrong.
There are two issues here. One is gun control, which looks at the necessity of not only assault rifles, but armor piercing bullets and silencers.
The other is gun safety- which looks at the steps that can be taken to minimize gun deaths through trigger locks, gun safes, better gun handling training and many other steps that can no doubt be taken.
Getting rid of the Dickey Amendment would help bring attention to the depth of our gun problem that goes beyond the continuing school tragedies, and hopefully allow the country enact simple safety requirements for all gun owners, and all americans.
I went to the movie theater yesterday. There were about 5 previews for upcoming movies. Most of those had actors were carrying long semi-automatic rifles as part of the action. True enough, the enemies were fantastical beasts, but none the less, our movie industry glorifies the gun. It is such a pleasure watching British TV where rarely a gun seen.
13
Somebody should start a movement to repeal the Second Amendment. As you say, this is not likely to happen anytime soon. In fact it may be the least likely to happen now but having been through many campaigns on issues in my 13 years of Capitol Hill experience, I'm a strong believer in starting a movement to rescind the Second Amendment to the Constitution. This may seem the most far-fetched of any gun regulation proposal but marriage equality seemed far-fetched 20 years ago too. The point being that a movement like this may lead to unknown policy changes and eventual success – who knows? But you've got to start somewhere and it might as well be here. Think how different America would be if it did not have a constitutional right supporting guns and therefore violence.
11
Super idea. Let's start with the 2020 club. This is the club, whose members will vie for the Democrat presidential nomination. Hillary, Bernie, Warren, Biden, Booker, Kamala, one of the Castro brothers, Mcauliffe, Jerry Brown, a Cuomo and four more to be named at a later date.
Who will be the first one to stand and say, "I will work tirelessly to repeal the Second Amendment. Then confiscate all guns that are not good for hunting."
That person will skyrocket to the top of the list. The Chinese would support this, as well. I think Biden would have the most flexible interpretation, with the most nuanced language. Warren and Brown would have the most concise answer, delivered with the most fiery oratory.
The electorate must demand real and significant gun law reform. Any person running for political office on any level must stand first and foremost on that platform. The media has a role to play keeping the public focused on the goal and moving opinion towards that outcome. The electorate must not be distracted by the machinations of the powerful forces which feel otherwise.
7
I disagree with Blow most of the time, because he's so one-sided and melodramatic, and his pieces are so gloomy. That said, I commend him on this column. I hail from a family that has been in this country for 350 years, with veterans who fought in every -- most proudly the Revolutionary War. Never did the men in my family carry guns outside of their military service. They never romanticized guns, they certainly didn't teach that being a gun-owner was akin to being patriotic. As much as I love this country, I will assert its love affair with guns is rooted in violence. I only hope that more Americans will come to see guns for the harbingers of death that they are, and they will reject the absurd notion that gun ownership is a source of pride.
14
Absolutely the Dickey Amendment is shameful. Politicians have no business directing what the CDC or NIH may or may not study.
16
All of the non sensical comments and behavior that members of the NRA and GOP have said over these past 20 years or so, are starting to make sense, as the fog has cleared. We finally know for sure, the NRA, and the greater percentage of GOP campaigns have been funded by one source, and that is Russia. If we are to undo all the carnage, both physical and to our democratic system, wrought to upon us by NRA funding of campaigns..., and the oaths and dead on loyalty they got in return, it would be massively transformative, and it should happen. What the Russian backed NRA hath wrought upon us can be undone. We need to heal our minds of the misguided fear and hatred they have instilled in our heartland via a recipe of lies, mental manipulation propaganda, and buy back the machines of our own destruction, they have sprinkled among us. Yes we can, yes we will, imagine the world we want, and then build it.
7
Mr Blow,
I have long made it a practice to read columns and articles from across the political spectrum. Unfortunately, not once in all the many times I have read your columns have I found one that wasn’t so filled with bombastic extremist views as to be viable or helpful. Until today.
I must admit that when you began by saying “The current push for stricter gun control is aiming too low.....I’m convinced that we must think big and systemically.” I fully expected that you were about to go off the deep end, as you generally do, by arguing for something unrealistic such as a complete ban on guns. But instead you presented an articulate, well-reasoned and persuasive argument, with little of your normal political rhetoric. The result is a column that any openminded person should be able to embrace. Thank you.
I too believe that we need to shift the discussion away from “gun control” to “preventing gun violence”. The former suggests a broad knee-jerk reaction with no assurance that it will have the desired impact and so understandably threatens even openminded gun owners. The latter suggests meaningful study into gun violence, from which should emerge well-targeted recommendations with a far greater chance of being effective. These recommendations inevitably will include elements of gun control. But because they resulted from calm methodical study, they will earn the support of most people, including levelheaded gun owners, who after all also have children in schools.
3
We really don't need any "meaningful studies of gun violence". Who does not know that the ready availability of guns and ammo leads to murder.
Thank you Charles Blow. This is so true and so important. We really appreciate your ability to articulate these realities. A sincere thank you.
6
I am a gun owner.
I am not a NRA member.
When I was a boy scout I was offered a hunter gun safety class given by an NRA member. We lived in an area where hunting and fishing was a way of life for many of my neighbors and friends My family never had guns or ever even mentioned them so the class was foreign territory for me. I'm glad I took the class though I never hunted anything in my life except when a farmer asked a couple of us to shoot rats that where infesting his barn. I used a borrowed pellet gun.
I think of those days and all rifles and shotguns that I saw were bolt action, lever action or pump. Semiautomatic was not much of a thing then I guess, other than pistols.
I wish we could go back to the days of my youth when guns were practical tools for sportsmen and women. Any rifle had a 22 inch barrel or longer, like Canada as far as I knew. No one I knew had the money or the need for semi or automatic fire arms. Not sure why we really need them now.
The AR15 usually has a much shorter barrel than a hunting rifle though I hear people refer to them as rifles anyway. ARs are pretty modular so i'm sure you could get longer barrels but that might ruin the "Fun" of shooting one .
I'm just saying guns are looked at much diferently than they were in the 60s. There were accidents of course but mass killings of crowds of kids was not heard of. And the NRA is not the organization I knew then.
5
Just googled AR15 and they come stock with 16. 20 or 24 inch barrels. So much for me knowing what I'm talking about.
"U.S. scientists cannot answer the most basic question: What works to prevent firearm injuries?”
Got this one.
Don't pull the trigger.
5
better yet, don't allow the gun.
1
Another idea - repeal the law that gives gun manufacturers immunity from law suits.
21
If ArmeLite can be sued over the Parkland massacre, can Boeing be sued over 9/11?
In both cases, their product was used in the commission of a crime; in both cases there were modifications that the manufacturers could have made which would have made that act more difficult; in both cases a minuscule percentage of the items sold have been used in horrific crimes.
2
"repeal the law that gives gun manufacturers immunity from law suits."
The only immunity that law gives the manufacturers is against the numerous suits filed by people who want to blame the product for the result. It's like blaming GM or Ford when someone wrecks on of their cars and kills someone. There were so many of these frivolous suits that it threatened to bankrupt the manufacturers. Judges threw all the suits out.
The law does not relieve them of their responsibility in manufacturing a defective product which injures someone.
1
"The current push for stricter gun control is aiming too low..." amen.
"we must think big and systemically..." amen.
the dickey amendment repeal, alas, and all the other stuff that follows, alas, gets no amen....big is going back and reclaiming the entire second amendment...no "well-regulated milita" membership no right to bear arms.
no "half measure," no bigger "fix"...the guess here is that the prospect of that battle "doth make "cowards" of us all."
The 2nd Amendment is just fine and has little to do with rights to bear arms. After all, citizens are not allowed to have grenades, rocket-propelled grenades, anti-aircraft missiles, or the like. Simple add military assault rifles to what are not allowed.
7
While camping with my wife and infant son many years ago a motorcycle gang roared into the campground, took up residence at one end of the campground, built a large fire, and started chanting: "Evil...Evil..." (I'm serious). Then a group of them came to our tent while we were sleeping and told us to "get out" because they wanted our site.
My wife and I threw our tent on top of the car, put our infant son into it, and left. We reported this the next day, but never heard anything back.
We got out of there, but I wish I would have had a gun. There was nobody but us against a horde.
Five years ago someone broke into our house while our grandchildren were here. The alarm went off. It took the sheriff's deputy one hour to get to us because we live in a rural area. No gun as a backup in case he didn't leave.
Two years ago we were camping on BLM land when a deranged, drunk, and angry man demanded we leave our spot, yelling and spitting, because he wanted it. We left. Emailed the BLM because we had no phone reception. BLM officer arrived the next day. This time I had a gun as backup in case we needed it.
According to BOJ statistics there are 1/4 million burglaries each year where there is in addition a "violent victimization."
I have a gun. That "violent victimization" is no longer going to be my family. If Mr. Blow will agree to sit outside our home every night with a baseball bat to protect us I'll give it up.
1
Nobody's saying you can't own a gun to protect yourself and your family when threatened with bodily harm, sir.
3
And you want all the people in the incidents you listed to be heavily armed with assault rifles?
4
@abigail: Between 1/4 and 1/3 of Americans say they want to ban handguns, which are the basic method of personal protection, m'am. (http://news.gallup.com/poll/1645/guns.aspx). Also read comments sections of NYT and WaPO.
@Michael: Irrelevant issue. The people who we are afraid of with assault weapons are a completely different type than the people who you need protection for in your own home. The latter are not people willing to die for their cause. The school shooters have psychologically been kamikazes, not criminals. They are willing to die for their "cause," which is to even the score with a society they believe has wronged them. That's why arming teaching is so nutty. All that will result in will be more bullets flying, from a lot of people who have no clue about what they are doing.
For your run of the mill criminal type, whose motivation is completely different, just the sight of a potential victim with a gun will be enough to deter them. They are looking for the easiest way out of whatever situation they are in, which is why they are criminals. They are not willing to die for anything. And they know the homeowner is. Advantage: Homeowner.
That's why the idea that we can prevent mass deaths from banning assault weapons is a bad one. These kamikazes are dedicated, intense, focused, and willing to die. They will find other ways of killing, like the Boston Marathon Bombers did by building bombs on their kitchen table.
1
Even if the 2nd Amdt disappeared, that would do nothing to limit the rights of people to keep and bear arms in the U.S., contrary to what many people have suggested. The reason is that the federal government has only enumerated powers, and banning guns is not one of them. If the 2nd were eliminated, a state could bar ownership of guns, by vote or referendum or legislature, but that bar would only apply in that state. The next legislature could reverse that. A ban could also be written into a state's constitution, and that would be state law until the state constitution changed.
The right to arms was one of the "obvious" rights when the U.S. Constitution was being originally discussed, because limiting or even saying anything about arms was not an enumerated power of the federal government, and many saw no need to include a bill of obvious rights in the U.S. Constitution, or in fact feared that listing certain rights might imply the exclusion of thousands of other, unlisted, rights. That danger was eliminated, presumably, by the 9th Amendment.
Removing the 2nd Amdt will not eliminate gun rights. You would have to change federal power, or include an explicit prohibition on guns ratified in a Constitutional change by convention or legally otherwise.
This will never happen.
A reminder: people’s rights exist – they are not granted by government. They can only be curtailed by government. Today, the government will come for your guns, and tomorrow for your children.
3
I think they're already coming for people's children, a 'necessary' sacrifice to keep firearms profitable.
I wish you giys wouldn't keep trying to settle everything by bellowing.
First, a lot of the stuff you're claiming is "obvious," or "settled," is in fact the subject of honest, intelligent debate. Starting with the bit about "enumerated powers."
Second, five minutes lookng at Wkipedia would show you that in the English common law from which our laws largely developed, the right to bear arms is a SECONDARY, not a primary, right. It's not an end in itself; it's a way to assure the right to get food by hunting, to act as part of a milita, and if necessary to resist government craziness.
Third, the Second Amendment is counterbalanced, as everything in the Constitution is, by a system of checks and balances...like giving Cingress authority over those militias. If you're going to try an Original Intent Bigfoot everybody, well, the fact is that Jefferson et al NEVER intended "the people," to have unlimited power, or anybody else for that matter.
And last. Who came for the 17 dead kids in Florida? For the twenty dead kids at Sandy Hook? For the thousands of dead kids around the country?
That wasn't a tyrannical gov. That was YOU, and the corporations that put you up to these shenanigans.
5
What is the government planning on doing with my children?
Couldn't agree more. Americans are fine with the killing of children--if they are called "collateral damage" by a general and they are middle eastern. Even our Nobel-Prize-winning president was okay with an occasional Hellfire missile taking out innocents, children included. We are a warrior nation, led by such war mongers as Hillary Clinton, John McCain, and the whole Bush crowd. We claim to want to stop violence, but we keep electing people who are happy to use it. Blaming guns for our violent predispositions is not focusing on the problem.
2
Sad thing: gun control advocates do not state clearly what they want and are easily put off track with outrageous Trump/NRA "proposal" (arming teachers..)
Hammering and staying on a simple message such as "car regulations principles should apply to guns" (registration, insurance, test for permit,age limit, etc) would be much more effective.
Unify around a policy and stay on a clear message.
3
I still maintain that the way to get Congress to tackle gun control is to allow open carry of loaded weapons in the halls of Congress, the White Hourse, and the Supreme Court. Also we should do away with Secret Service protection for Congress, the president, and his family. They should be trained to use weapons and defend themselves.
5
The President and his family? Gun slingers? You did see the picture of Obama, shooting his shotgun, while wearing his mom jeans?
Nope. No guns for past and present Presidents.
Your strong voice helps. We face a strong force favoring guns everywhere and the solution will involve thinking bigger, more boldly, as this column does. We need to get serious and take the discussion up many notches.
2
I would amend the title to read "Masculinity is the Gun."
Americans, mostly men, are afraid that by losing their guns they are losing their masculinity.
The problem now is that in spite of decades of mass shootings Pandora's box remained wedged open by Republicans. It seemed unthinkable that there would be no action after Sandy Hook, Las Vegas, and all the rest.
No, Pandora's box is open and manufacturers will keep pouring out guns and ammo, which will be stockpiled by the paranoid and those waiting to sell them should they ever be banned. It's too late to control guns. Even if we do, we can't stop organizations like the Mexican cartels from smuggling them in.
2
OK OK ... I want no guns at all but I will settle for no assault automatic OR semi-auto rifles.
The ALTERNATIVE that no one has mentioned is to THROW the parents of any kid / young adult who commits such an act of murder in jail. THIS would effectively allow the guns to remain but force the PARENTS to take responsibility for the kids they made which likely means they would either take the guns away from those youngsters OR call the police themselves to have the guns found and confiscated.
Melt them down! Get rid of the weapons that are at the root of the violence and are common to all of these mass killings. Australia did it and it worked.
Paul Ryan, speaker of the house, is saying there was a failure in law enforcement. He is wrong. There is a failure in the US congress. Killing after killing. Politicians' jobs are more important to them than the lives of their constituents. It was true with tobacco and it's true with guns.
For a thought experiment, assume that people could make their own guns. Gun companies would be a fraction of what they are now. They make huge profits. They fund the NRA with those profits. The NRA attacks anyone that disagrees. This is all about money.
All of the "solutions" going around now are obfuscations. None of the suggested approaches address the one thing that is constant in every one of these shootings; guns that kill lots of people in a hurry. Arming schools will increase profits of the gun industry.
The Scalia opinion on the second amendment was a fraud that was perpetrated to enrich the gun industry and to create a bigger wedge for Republican politics. That opinion has cost the lives of thousands of Americans and destroyed families. The five Republican justices that approved that opinion have blood on their hands. The Scalia opinion
should be reversed, or the amendment itself should be repealed.
9
The younger generation has it right. They would like a ban on assault rifles but are willing to be adult enough to get the ball rolling with other options.
They don't care about bump stocks. What they'd like is a fighting chance. They want and should get a ban on magazine capacities.
Nothing can prevent these shootings. Not bullet-proof glass, not armed teachers, and not tracking every disgruntled violent person. We cannot arrest someone for thoughts and we don't have the capacity, financially or labor, to follow every wacky citizen in the country 24/7.
But we can lessen the carnage. How can anyone be against that?
The US government is the gun lobby's biggest client and is also arming the whole world. They could easily stand up for citizens and not with the NRA.
So the elected officials only motivation is personal. Shame and blood on them.
1
I think a lot of people are against reducing the carnage even if they don't say so. Carnage boosts sales.
The level of gun violence in this country, which goes far beyond what makes it into the national news coverage when large-scale mass shooting incidents take place, has become extreme. I will not vote for any candidate who bellows about "devotion to the Second Amendment." As if any of these pols care one whit for citizens' rights or the Constitution. This is a culture war, plain and simple.
3
One mass shooting a month, one mass shooting a week, one mass shooting a day, one mass shooting an hour....... some day it will end, as all reality denying situations end, with millions of deaths and violent conflict. The human condition continues.
1
"What works to prevent firearm injuries?”
Simple answer, get rid of automatic and semi-automatic weapons.
No need to spend billions on answers other countries have already found.
3
I don't realistically see gun control or purchase vetting passing, let alone working. I think the cost of living in America today is a sustained level of gun violence and death. We will have to adjust, just as we do with car accidents and cancer -- except in those cases, someone is actually working on solutions. The NRA has brought us to a new age of fear. The bullets will fly and people will die.
1
I am amazed that Jay Dickey "came to regret" his part in the legislation named after him. How is it that He could not foresee the consequences at the time he was pushing for the bill? The intent and effect of the bill are one and the same. He cannot argue that the consequences of the bill were unforeseeable. I am tired of politicians pushing through legislation that will clearly be detrimental to the public, during their time in office, when their actions have profound consequences, and then offering meek apologies (or not apologizing at all), when they have left office and the lasting damage is done. How about some accountability and moral integrity when it matters. I expect we will hear similar nonsense from the likes of Paul Ryan, 20 years from now, with respect to the damage they have facilitated during the Trump administration.
2
For many gun lovers the gun is more important than God or country. I think that somehow it makes them feel somewhat special or superior to have a weapon that they feel others do not have.
1
The 2nd Amendment was a mistake, as history has come to show. The NRA, with the complicity of legislatures and the judiciary, has totally distorted the amendment beyond recognition. Time for repeal. Failing that, well regulate the militia.
In any event, as applied, the 2nd Amendment and the resulting fetish for weapons of mass murder deprives the rest of the population of their constitutional right to liberty. The state has a duty to protect its citizens, or what else is it for? Our lives have been sold to a special interest group.
3
I’m going to a show at a music venue tonight where I doubt there will be any metal detectors . There will probably be a crowd of about 75 people . For about three years now , if possible , I try to get near an emergency exit or a window so if anyone starts blasting their WOMD I can egress as quickly as possible . Sad
2
Given what guns are capable of doing, no sane society should allow its members to buy a gun except under special conditions especially not a military grade assault rifle with unlimited ammunition.
If so, then why are there almost as many guns in our country as there are people? The answer is the same as it is in many other cases - it's the money! People do some incredible things enrich themselves. Do you really think Wayne LaPierre loves guns that much? Or is it the $1 million salary that he loves?
As long as gun manufacturers, ammunition makers, gun dealers, gun advocates, etc. can make a buck, no appeals to them for common sense controls will be successful. Perhaps the real solution is to place a tax on guns that would put the cost of a gun out of reach for most people. Just a thought.
1
Growing up in NYC, being neither a mobster, petty thief, irate lover, or a cop, guns were not a part of our everyday life. The fascination with firearms for most of us raised in the city is not only alarming but at times amusing, not because the topic was funny, but it just was odd and unusual in most working-class neighborhoods. If it wasn't for the fact that there have been, in my lifetime alone, so many mass shootings, even in my city, I would consider the gun issue a thing to be hashed out in the mid-west where guns seem to be so very important.
Clearly, the gun has infiltrated people all over the country. Friends in the five boroughs are obsessed with guns now as never before; they want to own AR-15s. They believe it is their second amendment right to bear arms. After all, they insist, there are criminals all over the city, with guns, and everyone needs to be prepared.
The argument. What if someone breaks into your house? The perpetrators could be mowed down in minutes, and they will provide a video on Facebook of a family in the mid-west living in rural areas, that was invaded, the prepared family indeed mowed down the intruders systematically with an AR-15. The right to bear arms!
Our relatives came from Europe, 100 years ago, never even read the Constitution. We live on city blocks, with tiny green lawns and alarm systems. In addition, many have a concealed weapon licenses and don’t know how to use them. This is incredibly dangerous. How did this happen?
3
The simplistic analysis regarding the upside of arming teachers to defend their students seems to be based on the theory that shooting an armed assailant is as easy as it appears on tv cop shows. The more likely scenario would probably copy the "fire fight" that occured after the terrorist drove his SUV on the sidewalk in NYC last year.In that situation the well trained NYC policeman fired more than a dozen times at the assailant and only managed to hit him once causing a superficial wound. I can only imagine the results of a fire fight between assailant and the school secretary.
1
The radio version of Gunsmoke, which starred William Conrad as Marshall Matt Dillon, began with the sound of a gun being fired and a voiceover that proclaimed that the series told the story of the violence that moved west with young America. Violence is the story of the United States I have come to conclude. We consume it through our sports, media and popular culture, we justify and export it through policy and the sale of commodities to other countries. Violence is our story and one that we often do not have the honesty to tell to ourselves or to others. Guns are just a manifestation of the untruth that we live with daily. Sadly, many of us find violence acceptable in one form if not another and yet, we refuse to acknowledge it.
1
The title of Charles M. Blow's OP-ED and the picture below is what we must keep in our minds: 'America Is the Gun'. That is it. Holding those words and that image in our minds is what will keep us focused when we vote, march, join hands with students and teachers of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and organize armies of citizens' to make our country safe. Millions upon millions of us will overcome the NRA, the Republican Party and the president. We the people are much more powerful than the gun.
2
We talk about evidence based research needing to be funded so that we can help prevent these tragedies and learn more about how to stop gun violence. All the evidence we need is in Australia where they had a terrible massacre and then banned the weapon used. And, low and behold, no more massacres have occurred. Sounds like all the evidence needed is clear.
2
The current debate on ways to reduce gun violence totally exemplifies Blow's excellent editorial: lacking science, lacking validity, lacking understanding, and basing much on myth. This is analogous to deciding that the cure for a massive epidemic of typhoid fever is a federal effort to recruit and train more undertakers, rather than to look at the water supply. The Dickey Amendment is perhaps the most destructive piece of active legislation that our Congress has passed.
4
The biggest overturn needs to be the fundamental right to file suit against pushers like the NRA. if we can easily sue tobacco companies, why can't we do the same with gun manufacturers and the forces who rep them?
Appeals to gun control more often than not derive from emotion, rather than reason. This is understandable because they almost always arise in reaction to a mass shooting or other related tragedy. Conversely, the NRA's opposition to any form of gun control, via registry or other form, is also not rooted in rational thinking. Indeed, the idea that any form of gun control represents creeping socialism, confiscation and the erosion of liberty is essentially nonsense.
Hailing from a rural background, I'll confess that I'm rather skeptical of gun control. My opposition to it doesn't derive from the view that it constitutes a transgression against property and liberty; instead, I oppose gun control on pragmatic grounds---it simply doesn't prevent mass shootings as recently witnessed in Florida.
That said, if America is serious about instituting gun control, she should not only look at Australia's successful model, but the debacle of the Canadian gun registry from 2001 to 2006. In the case of the latter, it, too, was born from tragedy, but was also cynically politicized by the govt of jean Chretien as a wedge issue to gain female and urban votes. Consequently, Canada wound up with an expensive and ineffective registry, which amounted to little more than an urban placebo giving many a false sense of security.
Finally, I think America needs to recognize, once and for all, that its "crazed" gun culture is symptomatic of something far worse than guns themselves.
1
Of course gun deaths need to be studied as a huge public health crisis.Mr. Trump is quick to wail about drugs crossing our borders and loudly condemning the "illegals" who bring them in.His extreme myopia does not allow him to realize that deaths from guns and deaths from drugs are both tragic and need public health solutions."Show us the money" that needs to be spent on these twin scourges.
1
Charles, maybe you can write about what Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama did to bring sensible gun control to the United States. Or maybe about what Joe Biden has done to further gun control. Or maybe how the Democratic majority in Congress, the majority that gave us Dodd-Frank and Obamacare, gave us strict gun control. I guess it would be a very short column.
1
"America... is the gun." That's what the NRA wants us to think. It is not true.
The gun is a powerful killing machine in the hands of dedicated users, but not as pernicious as the ideas that sustain those users' faith in it.
The ideas of guns as a necessity in civilian hands can't be killed, but they can be refuted, rejected, or replaced by wiser ones - *if* those dedicated to reducing violence in general, and gun violence in particular, have the perseverence to promote their case with a passion equal to that of the gun lobby.
For a long time, we haven't. The current grip of the gun lobby's ideas on American politics is a direct result of the refusal of gun control advocates to tackle these ideas head on and refute them. The result of our inability, either through arrogance, lack of will, or preoccupation with other issues, to go out into the country and advocate for the better ideas of how to defend against tyranny and crime, to convince people that guns are not the answer, but a big part of the problem, is what allows the gun lobby to enshrine their philosophy of the gun into legislation.
Mr. Blow is right that none of the terrible legislation pushed on this country by the gun lobby is likely to be repealed any time soon.
But not because America *actually* is the gun. It is because gun control advocates have allowed the gun pushers to persuade so many Americans to *believe* that this is so.
I've been re-reading Louis L'Amour's tales. What's interesting is his assumption that gun ownership is normal, but that skill with guns is not.
Things have changed. There were no assault rifles availableo to his characters. The assault rifle has deskilled killing. Just press the trigger, and wave the gun around. Without training, you can't actually aim it, for on full automatic it will climb. But while you are attempting to control the gun, it's spraying bullets. And those bullets are killing people.
I've also reread hard-boiled PI tales from the 40s, 50s, and 60s Every PI in them had a licence to carry a hand gun. If the US could live happliy with licencing guns a couple of generation ago, why can't it live with gun-licencing now?
2
In 2018 year to date, we've had 55 mass shootings or about one mass shooting every 1.6 days. So, as Congress continues to do nothing we are already overdue for another mass gun violence event. How can we say we are a powerful or 'exceptional' country when we can't even protect our own children? This is weakness.
2
But Charles, we are the most violent country in the world, without question. And that's despite the fact that there are no wars going on here; other than the covert civil war, becoming more overt daily, between the Insane (Trump, the GOP and their followers) vs. the Sane (the Dems). And we've always been the most violent. It's ingrained in our DNA. Ask the Native Americans.
The gun is the go-to solution to problems, rather than reasoning, discourse, diplomacy.
When I turned in my weapon at the end of my Vietnam tour as recon and infantry, I vowed never to pick up a weapon again in my lifetime. And I haven't. Which, I suppose, makes me an anomaly in America, a target. But I prefer the Sane and reasonable life to the world of war and chaos, of hatred and paranoia, fostered by the NRA and the GOP.
2
Violence in our society is a natural consequence of our massive military budget, veneration of our violent past, and a form of rabid patriotism in which the answer to every problem is carpet bombing and boots on the ground. To amplify militarism in schools by arming teachers is to double down on the fundamental problem.
Sportsmen do not need high capacity magazines or high rates of fire. Mass killers do. Why does the NRA behave as if the tools of mass killers belong in the hands of almost anyone? The meaning of the Second Amendment is confusing at best, but it certainly didn’t mean anything like the NRA promotes. It is disingenuous to imply the founders had any intention for Americans to kill each other randomly, capriciously, and en masse, or that they foresaw the lethality of high-capacity, rapid-fire weapons or the kind of restless evil that percolates in a large populace of disaffected people.
The pendulum will swing if our society doesn’t disintegrate first, and it behooves the NRA and true sportsmen to find enough sanity to lead the way toward removing the tools of mass murder voluntarily while they still have some say in the matter.
2
A better title might be America is Addiction. 64,000 die in 2016 from opioid overdose; young folks admitting without much concern their addiction to smartphones (much of it created by Facebook, Instagram, etc.); and, of course, addiction to guns which contributes to increased suicides, let alone mass murders. America is exceptional for these reasons. If it were exceptional for industriousness, innovation, and enlightened government, we wouldn't have these issues.
2
This is a very good commentary and reminds me of Gil Scott Heron's song "Gun."
It is a brilliant work and names the NRA as the pusher [not his lyric but it fits] and fear of the other" that fuels the addiction to guns--the reader who named guns as an addiction equal to heroin in its devastation is right on. Heron also points out the fascination with violent media and the fact that we both break and enforce laws by the gun. There is something fundamentally wrong, of course, at the core of our culture. Racism, neocapitalism that runs socioeconomic inequality, and a lack of connection to our basic humanity hark back to slavery, and that legacy is still here and disabling all of us.
1
At least 4 schools in NW Ohio were closed part of last week after copy cat gun violence threats.
We need to come down as hard on all individuals who make such threats as we did on threats made years ago to hijack airplanes.
1
Perhaps if we started treating the ownership of guns like we treat the ownership of cars and other toys, then perhaps this would put a dent into owning a gun.
Have all guns registered and that registration fee would only last a year to five years, like with driver's licenses.
All gun owners have to pay a fee or tax on that gun.
Have a tax on bullets.
In other words, a sin tax.
We have sin taxes on alcohol, cigarettes, why not guns.
Even more so on guns, because cigarettes and alcohol usually affect only the user or buyer.
I don't like proposing such a tax but with the many guns on the streets, it might become a necessary evil.
Sure there would be the 'bad guys' who get a hold of these gun, but an owner might be more careful if they have to buy insurance to own a gun.
That way if a gun is traced back to the original owner, and someone get hurt from using something they owned, then they might think twice about that gun ownership if it could/ might cost them their home in a lawsuit.
Attach to that insurance would be additional insurance if your weapon is stolen. It would protect you from possible liability.
For all of those folks who are multi-gun collectors, how much is one willing to pay for their collectibles?
In this capitalistic society, we have to have life insurance, health insurance, car insurance...why not gun insurance?
2
Lets get it crystal clear. There will not be any solution that will make things better in the short term. There are far too many guns and far too many individuals who have decided using guns against their fellow citizens or themselves is the answer for them. We have had no adequate system in place to help those folks like Mr. Cruz long before they turn to an AR 15 as the solution to their problems. So, get ready for it. The easily availability to obtain a weapon, coupled with resistance to limit access to guns will only result in more deaths by firearms in this country. Yes there are many deaths by hand guns, both on the street against others and self inflicted against self. But we either decide as a society that we will do whatever it takes to try and reduce the numbers in the short term with the goal of being a less violent people in the long term. As I sit here, I see only one real solution: Do everything possible to keep guns out of the hands of people who will use them for the wrong reason. If it means gun owners have to sacrifice assault weapons or wait longer for their purchase, is that such a terrible thing? The real question for me is: Unless we develop a good, universal, and easily mental health system quickly, can you live without an AR 15? Can you live without your children, friends, neighbors, and fellow citizens? America awaits the answer to that question.
1
One of the student survivors sees it differently. He said he goes to school every day with mentally disabled and psychologically treated kids, but insanity is not killing anyone. It wasn’t until they animated the senseless object that they themselves posed a threat. It’s not insanity, it’s the bullets ripping apart bones and organs that kills people. If you haven’t been keeping up, we don’t have an all purpose cure for the hundreds of disabling mental conditions we live with in our society, maybe we never will. But if Jesus came back tomorrow, did a little miracle and disappeared all of the bullets in the world, made them not work, gun deaths by insane people would drop to near zero - you could still bash someone’s brains out, but really, a hammer is cheaper, easier and more suited to the task. Bullet deaths likewise - you could choke on one, or have a full pallet drop on your head, or be buried in an avalanche of them, but injuries from metal projectiles flying through your body would be radically reduced.
Curing insanity is hard. Eliminating bullet deaths is easy, we know how to do it, and it is well within our ability to do so. We banned DDT once, we have placed restrictions on spray paint to reduce the horrible tagging death count (or graffiti), you and I cannot go out and buy a case of dynamite, cyanide is not on the drug shelves, arsenic and lead are tracked, identified and eliminated as we find them. Bullets are toxic when ingested at high speed - restrict access.
3
As usual Charles, you're spot on. All your recommendations are worthy. Your last paragraph is true. America IS the gun. I don't think it was ever intended to be this way but has evolved and my heart breaks thinking there may be no turning back. In the end, Charles, who in power is listening, or even trying to work out ways whereby the carnage is no longer a way of life? I hate feeling so hopeless but I sadly do.
1
Mr. Blow, I am so thankful that you are putting the Dickey amendment at the top of the gun agenda. The amendment has been a boon for gun right advocates. There is little reliable, comprehensive data on the impact of guns. Because of this, gun right advocates can hide behind the mirage of intuition or seemingly-reasonable arguments that doing A “will have no effect on mass shootings” or doing B “will not reduce gun violence”. How can we know unless we have actually looked into it? Our society needs real, reliable, comprehensive data to guide sensible policy. Let reality see the light of day. Reasoned, logical, scientific inquiry works. I still have to believe—however seemingly naive given present circumstances—that the truth will save us.
136
Mark: "The impact of guns"?! You still need data? The bloodbath and carnage are not enough evidence?! Thousands of people have died. Time is precious. Why waste time reinventing the wheel? Please be humble. And smart. Look at the evidence, look at the data which other countries are more than happy to share with you. Look at the proof: gun control. We have freedom and free speech. But we don't have people, everywhere, all the time, running around, toting weapons & mowing down other people. Time is precious. Please use OUR data. You're very welcome.
2
Is it even possible to solve the gun violence problem in America ?
What are the root causes of gun violence ?
YES, it "is" possible to solve the problem - however - a quick solution is NOT.
We need to separate the two main categories of gun violence;
CRIME - Whether from armed bank-robbers to drug deals gone bad, the easy access to guns in America makes it very handy for criminals.
PASSION - Or Crimes of Passion - When a person's emotions are driven beyond reason and the resulting violence is an act of last resort - ranging from killing a cheating partner of love or business to killing oneself as being the only road to take.
We do not like Crime Violence, but we can easily understand why it exists and that it is not going away - ever !
Passion Violence is very complicated, and yes there are strong mental illness and personality among other issues involved.
For whatever combination of reasons, the "shooter" feels wronged or is lost as an outcast of society with no path to re-enter their communities !
Guns pose as an EASY Solution for the crime to take place -
America has the most guns per capita by whole number factors than any other civilized countries.
Take away the guns - and the emotionally wounded person needs to find another means to make "their point" -
The simple fact is - Guns are the EASIEST SOLUTION for "getting even or making a point" -
Of course ALL guns need to be Nationally Registered -
Politicians who Support Assault Weapons need to be voted out
2
I'm going to be 80 in a couple of months, so I can remember when Americans were heroes. There were always problems, of course. The women's movement and civil rights protests were a long time coming, but even with all that, I don't remember the meanness and rage that I see now. Students were respectful of teachers, we didn't need guards in schools. Kids never got shot at. Most adults and children now don't even know how much we've changed. Maybe it was always just a veneer of decency, but I don't think people were afraid like now. What happened to us? Now if anyone even ventures an opinion about the slightest regulation of guns, they are viciously and hysterically attacked in the comment sections. This fact alone makes me feel is reason enough for gun safety laws. People this unhinged should never have a rapid-firing gun! Somehow we've all got to calm down or we'll never solve anything, and we'll lose everything about this country that we value.
4
Thanks for your comments Barbara. I believe overtime we have developed and adopted a warped and fatalistic definition of freedom. Instead of freedom from want, some clamor for freedom to do as they please. Instead of freedom to pursue dreams, some clamor for freedom to quash the dreams of others. Why does it seem as if more Americans today believe their success depends on someone else’s failure? Of course there is competition and there will be “winners” and “losers,” but should it lead to, literally, destroying your opponents? I hope the younger generation don’t follow along.
“No one has any idea how many assault rifles are in circulation. That’s intentional.”
And some think that raising the age of ownership from 18 to 21 will actually help.
The situation is depressing beyond hope. The Federal Government might realize this if researchers were allowed to take a poll of citizens. But once they realize that I'm depressed due to mass weapons ownership, they have to stop taking the data. Not being allowed to by the Dickey Amendment.
I believe people have the right to bear arms to protect themselves and their families. I also support having hunting rifles but I'm against having assault weapons in the hands of civilians.
After the shooting which killed 14 students and 3 adults at a high school in Parkland, Florida, students have been raising their voice for what’s right; demanding gun control; band the sale of assault weapons to civilians as well as a strict background check to anyone who wants to buy a gun and forbid the mentally ill from getting a hold of any. American teens and young people have become a strong force in this country fighting the N.R.A; their economic partnership with the Republican Party and corporations that benefit from the sale of all types of weapons. As to President Trump, he should be reminded his role is to protect the American people not to be in support of the present guns law.
For the first time there is a strong voice of young people ready to fight against all odds - they will prevail.
If all guns disappeared today, would we rush to replace them? If we had never invented them, and somehow found ourselves here in the 21st century with all of the other marvelous inventions intact - would we see a need to create highly efficient, portable and concealable, mass killing machines, for civilian use? Would people who enjoy stalking and killing animals with arrows or traps, demand and win the right to free manufacture and distribute the bullet and delivery systems we have today, to enhance their pleasure by not worrying about lost arrows, or the ease with which a kill can be made? Not having to carry that unwieldy bow, and to be able to fire 10 shots in as many seconds, would that be a persuasive argument to allow the spread of such devices into every neighborhood, to the extent that only in the most desolate regions, where no game exists, and in the middle of a non populated, human free zone, can one realistically be free of the risk of a bullet death?
The Japanese started with a similar philosophy, the opposite of our Second Amendment, that guns were abhorrent, and the starting position is that no one is entitled to own one. Their laws built on that, and the process of getting a firearm is lengthy and arduous, and the scrutiny is ongoing for as long as a person has that weapon, with regular inspections, training and testing, and evaluation of mental capacity and community commitment. It works.
Would we ask for the conditions we find ourselves in today?
1
Statistics on assault weapons are going to be very difficult to come by until there is a definition of just what an assault weapon is. There are versions of the AR-15 that look like "ordinary" rifles, but are operationally identical. Are these assault weapons? If by assault weapon you mean a semi-automatic rifle or a certain size of clip you should say so. Otherwise the term is meaningless.
Why do we not emphasize that a large proportion of fanatics about SACRED SECOND AMENDMENT RIGHTS are sexually insecure men? Perhaps if we do not forbid research on gun violence and remove the immunity of gun manufacturers from the consequences of their actions we may see some progress.
Schopenhauer said:
All Truth Passes through Three Stages-
1st It is ridiculed
2nd It is violently opposed
3rd It is accepted as being self-evident
Most countries are in stage three when it comes to gun control measures- let's hope the U.S. is on its way. Meanwhile, hate to single out one gender, but it looks like a lot of the men of this country need to find a way to have an identity that doesn't require guns to be manly. There are plenty of ways to be protective, powerful, strong without guns. Of course, guns and conspiracy theorists are another case entirely.
2
How sad to think that wee as a nation have become a weapon of mass destruction world wide. I had dinner with friends last evening who have a daughter, a senior in high school. She is very concerned that she and her classmates may very well become victims in a mass shooting. She said that she would refuse to attend a class where the teacher was armed. It is long past time to confront and to not back down from the gun industry, the NRA and the right wing gun nuts, our lives are at stake.
2
Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his AR-15 for his country.
5
See the list of states ranked according to the number of gun related deaths and you see that red states top the list, and most of the deaths are suicides. (USA Today February 21, 2018)
The gun fetish in the United States allows US to kill each other and to kill ourselves.
This is insane.
3
The only mental health issue associated with guns is the stupid thought that guns are not the problem but rather that mental health issues are the problem. Australia and the UK have proven it. You eliminate the guns, you eliminate the problem of people being shot by guns. It’s not complex.
Those who say that people kill people, guns don’t kill people are wrong. Here’s an idea. Let’s get rid of the guns and see how many people kill other people by stabbing them or beaning them on the head with a rock. I’m fairly confident that the statistics would be quite telling.
4
Yes, we are a violent warring nation. Perhaps the human animal is a warring animal. But, genetics is not destiny. We can develop social constructs to hold these tendencies in check. Other nations have. Our founding fathers created a constitution that is good framework for a civil society.
Even Wyatt Earp realized that guns and civilization don't mix. He required those entering Tombstone to leave their weapons at the city boundary.
Our problem is the greedy, evil Republican Party that continues to vote in favor of child murder and arms sales to our nation as well as anyone else who has the cash.
This can be changed by voting the evil ones out of office. Vote in 2018.
8
All firearms are for killing. There is no reason for a citizen to have that kind of power, whether they are sane, mentally disturbed, young or old. People need to get over this gun fetish, because that is what it is.
2
No, America has been land of the violent male ever since the floodgates opened in the 1840s.
1
I think the NRA should pay for Trump's big, beautiful border wall since Peña Nieto and the Mexican government will not.
2
Just as you don't take a knife to a gunfight, you you're not likely to stop a determined attacker bearing an assault rifle with a handgun. Ask any professional gun-bearing professional, be they in law enforcement or the military.
The NRA and spokesperson Trump are just blowing smoke when pushing for arming teachers, and advocating the production and sale of more semiautomatic handguns.
And gun manufacturers know exactly how many ARs have been manufactured in the united states. The NRA only has 'estimates'? What a joke. Practically every firearm manufactured since the civil war (and some during that war) have sequential serial numbers. These aren't cabbages.
We the people need to make more of a ruckus and get the measures of protection the majority deserves.
2
This is a violent society, the believe of might makes right is the law of the land and we are all victims. What to do, a little this, a little that won't work. This will, every sentence said on any topic, by all should end with, you don't like it vote!!!!!
Vote is the one right we have to make change. And while i am on it, vote, no restriction, no electronic machines, make it hard, voting is worth it, PAPER BALLOT and a pencil. Make it clear that voting is your right, is your responsibility, and if you don't like it move to Russia.
2
This column is overdue. All must prepare for the Nov 6 election, with the theme: "Gun violence must be brought under control". Vote out those supported by the NRA. The NYT has a list from Oct 4, 2017 by Leonhardt et al. Get this and vote against those on this list.
2
No one has mentioned the psychological implications of raising children in an atmosphere of guns and constant heightened awareness of possible harm. What does this do to their psyche? What is this doing to our society?
Are we all doomed to serender our quality of life for...what? The NRA is the problem! The organization has morphed into a sick society and we are being held hostage by sociopaths. What good does the NRA do anyway?? Who are these people who pull the strings in the USA? What is their agenda...it isn't my well-being, I can tell you that!
3
Dear Pam, this is foremost in my mind each time this horror is executed. I think of my daughter's elementary school 20 years ago, what a beautiful place it was, how I loved to volunteer in the library and be among angels for an hour. I'm sure that school is still doing it's best to remain a place of love and learning, but the fear is really growing in me now, for kids, teachers, all of us. The thought that so many citizens are foolish enough to risk these lives is staggering. Peace
"First, we must repeal the N.R.A.-backed Dickey Amendment"
No Charles, wrong approach.
I believe Bret Stephens approach is much better and more sound solution:
Repeal the Second Amendment
If not, then we must outlaw the NRA as a Terrorist Organization.
It's members should be arrested and prosecuted for promoting and selling WMD.
If ICE can raid homes looking for undoc immigrants, ATF should raid homes looking for mass killing weapons.
A super majority of Dems in Congress must make this priority #1.
6
The fact is not well known of what Mr. Blow speaks: That the guns of America are there to prevent what happened on the island of Haiti shortly after white America revolted against England for independence. The slaves of revolted, killed their French masters and proclaimed a black nation.
The gun are to ensure that never happens here.
United States of Assault Rifles.
Where is the surgeon general? Time to make an appearance.
2
We’re held hostage, not by the 2nd Amendment, nor by gun owners. It’s the gun manufacturers -⎌those for whom the NRA lobbies - that have a stranglehold on this country. It’s more insidious than the tobacco industry that lied for decades about their murderous product. We need an all out graphic campaign against the damage gun violence inflicts on the human body and soul. Flip the script on the Right to Life folks - we have the Right to Live. We need a campaign like that against apartheid - go straight for their wallets, I ain’t gonna play Sun City style.
1
News from the front lines--yes, my children go to school every day. Parents now worry every day if they will be shot and killed. The children, too, worry.
News to lawmakers: We will vote you out, vote you out, vote you out.
News to the NRA: your day of reckoning is here. It's over. We'd had enough.
2
Interesting that the government can't keep the records that you refer to, but I'll bet you that the likes of Google, Facebook and Amazon can come much closer to the actually number of assault rifles in the US (and who owns them) than the 8.5 to 15 M range given here. People who are so afraid of tyranny by their government, freely give away every aspect of their lives to unregulated industries because it is "convenient"--how stupid is that?
Instead of illustrating these articles with gun porn, how about using pictures of dead children? That would be a lot more accurate. I'm tired of looking at guns when I want to read about gun control or even about gun rights. I want to look at dead things -- dead animals, dead schoolchildren, dead old white guys who just shot themselves, their dead wives or girlfriends. I want to see pictures of people laughing while they pose with their guns and then pictures of parents crying when those same guns are used to kill someone they love. I want to see pictures of three year olds with guns and pictures of eight year olds killing five year olds -- because America makes that possible, it happens at least once a week. Guns kill things, that is what they are meant to do, so instead of sleek black machines, let's see some blood. Maybe if gun owners knew more about what guns do, they would be less confused about why we want them to use their guns responsibly.
One shakes one's head yet again. Do you really, really need a study to examine the "health effects of shooting"? Really?
2
But, Mr. Blow.... I, TOO, am America. And I am NOT "the gun". And there are millions like me. America is not a monolith. Or should not be allowed to become one. "Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness". Life comes first.
The Supreme Court would probably uphold the regulation of privately owned assault rifles as a public health hazard in order to prevent their use to massacre people in public places such as schools, churches, etc. since that use is unrelated to self-defense or to maintaining a defensive militia, as was the case with another health hazard, sawed-off shotguns. In US v. Miller, the Court found it constitutional to regulate that weapon: “[…] Prior to District of Columbia v. Heller, the last time the Supreme Court interpreted the Second Amendment was in United States v. Miller, 307 U.S. 174 (1939). The Supreme Court read the Second Amendment in conjunction with the Militia Clause in Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution, and concluded that “[i]n the absence of any evidence tending to show that possession or use of a [sawed-off] shotgun . . . has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument.” 307 U.S. at 178. The Court concluded that the district court erred in holding the National Firearms Act provisions unconstitutional. […] https://www.loc.gov/law/help/second-amendment.php
1
We could help fund this by eliminating all security in Washington DC. No armed guards in Congress, no armed guards in the Senate, no armed guards in the White house, no more gas-guzzling black SUVs ferrying the elites back and forth.
If teachers have to defend themselves why should elected officials not do the same?
My favorite from Wayne LaPierre:
"Banks are more heavily protected than our schools."
Banks have money. People go there to rob them. Duh.
117
So money, the paltry amounts that these days actually sit in banks as cash, is more important than schools with children in them? Duh.
1
@John Xavier III
You are missing the point.
We shouldn't have to arm schools like we arm banks.
No other first world country has the gun statistics that we have.
Why is that?
2
@John Xavier III
Your reaction is exactly the reaction that Wayne LaPierre wants rather than questioning why the US is the only first world country with these gun statistics.
1
Of course the gun is venerated. Muskets and flintlocks helped white people control a huge slave population. The Winchester rifle and the Gatling gun helped the kill thousands of indigenous people and take the continent. The gun is American history, and America is the gun.
1
Hey, Trump: Gun violence is the real “American carnage.”
2
America...a shining city on a hill? Hardly. More like an asylum ruled by the inmates...
5
Retire the jeremiad that oh, a gun is just a thing that lays there with no qualities whatsoever until a defective person stumbles upon a discarded AR-15 and realizes "hey, I could use this inanimate thing to murder many people quickly at a distance, what luck." Instead, it is a tool for a singular purpose that was conceived of by human beings, designed, manufactured, tested, refined in use, and now this tool for killing many people fast at a remove is available nationwide to those 18 and over who just really want a tool for killing people.
That's all it is Verminer. A tool for killing people. Users choice of which people.
2
Aim higher Charles. The second amendment.
2
How good of a shot is our draft-dodging Coward-in-Chief?
If he proposes arming teachers as his best fix, let's see his target skills.
1
The surest solution to the proliferation of guns and mass killings in America is to never vote for a Republican.
3
Suggestion for the President:
Sir: If you, personally strap on your hip the weapon of your choice, you could save millions of taxpayer dollars by dismissing your Secret Service detail, that is because you could defend yourself from any bad guy that shows up.
3
We certainly are a violent people. When you add too many guns and too much cheap ammunition, the result is ugly.
1
Well said, Charles. America IS the gun.
2
Until we breed a better human - gun violence remains.
1
If 10,000 black men went out and bought AR-15s tomorrow, these guns would be banned within a week.
7
Osama Bin Laden personally killed no one in America, but was the inspiration for those who did in his name. Wayne Lapierre is every bit as guilty. It is time to recognize the NRA for what it has become - a promoter and enabler domestic terrorism.
6
Unless the teens and NEW voters are mobilized. Remember these are digital natives, not digital immigrants. Not even the amoral, alliterate Twitter narcissist in the White House knows what has been unleashed.
1
Hopefully, if a mirror is available, Mr. Blow will look into it and ask himself if he's done his utmost, in his writings, to promote unity and harmony and amity between people. His utmost.
Or, has Mr. Blow promoted, week-in and week-out, divisiveness, resentment and old grudges? Maybe.
When the time comes, as it did on Friday, that LaPierre stands in front of CPAC and tells the world that the NRA is America's "biggest law enforcement agency" because FBI leadership is corrupt and the rank & file are socialist sheep who were incapable of turning on leadership, it's well past time to shut them down. You'll never be able to make any sane public policy decisions so long as the NRA calls all the shots.
2
Good Headline. Says it all...
Editor’s note: This comment has been anonymized in accordance with applicable law(s).
1
I can feel your pain, Charles! It's hopeless ...
1
Nations can be as immature as children. They must be protected from themselves.
Donald Trump wants to arm teachers, in order to protect children.
When shall he say: ‘Let’s provide atomic bombs to all nations in order to let them protect themselves?’
1
The USA is terrorized by 60000000 domestic inhabitants that cheer violence as the preferred problem solving and means of adjudicating power between humans. Most especially they cherish their perceived right to be armed with an instrument of death to ensure that they can utilize deadly violence to resolve conflicts. This is barbaric and insane. Through out the history of human kind our evolution has been to show our fellow humans that we are not armed, can be trusted and desire to live in peace in community and society. If merchants of death and their acolytes can not handle being "well regulated" they must be treated as the mental health threat they are. Practically this means no republicans in any position of any power over the life of humans. Vote them all out as soon as possible.
2
The NRA is the murder lobby. Politicians who take their blood money are pro death. It is time for Pro Life politicians who value children's lives over guns to destroy the NRA and the GOP. So that we can live.
4
America is sick, and dying. Republicans wallow in moral rot. No health care - just more guns. More guns mean more deaths.
And besotted with football, millions cheer the gladiators who are being killed by brain injuries before their very eyes.
The U.S. is suicidal.
The fraud in the White House shows all the signs of wanting to be a dictator. Unlike dictators of old, however, he is almost farcically inept and a pathetically weak, insecure bully.
But the Republicans are degenerates who embraced a credibly accused pedophile to hold high office - and clearly will stop at nothing to enrich themselves. Nothing,
The Democrats are so feckless that they have actually been shown up by a handful of high school kids from Florida. All the passion, moral outrage, and eloquence are coming from teenagers who were recently thought to be shallow and self-absorbed. But the Democrats
apparently are the ones who are shallow and self-absorbed.
Meanwhile, among adults, only Robert Mueller slowly and carefully works for justice. Without him, we would be morally extinct.
We have gone from electing George Washington, who could not tell a lie, to Donald Trump, who cannot tell the truth.
For shame, America.
6
The worst rate of gun violence by far is among black people killing black people.
Ironic that Blow, a supposed champion of racial justice, only seems to get exercised in the aftermath of the relatively exotic event of white kids killing white kids at suburban high schools.
Why doesn't Blow address the issue of the slaughter of black on black gun violence? Why are blacks choosing to shoot each other at such a relatively high rate?
I don't know the answer, but I doubt it has to do with the NRA, or a lack of funding to the CDC.
1
Meanwhile, our "President", who does Not know enough to Care or care
enough to Know....enacts by Mouth his daily intention to Control. His
Goal is Control. Example this week is the Mexican Wall, in which the
President of Mexico sites the opposition of his People. Our "President"
sites His Intention. We do not Need Congress anyway. We, the "People"
have the Mouth.
2
Since Americans love their guns so much maybe we should consider changing our national anthem to "Happiness Is A Warm Gun" written by John Lennon & Paul McCartney. John said that one day he walked into Abbey Road Studios and saw an NRA magazine that had the title of the song on the NRA magazine cover. He was stunned and his reaction was "a warm gun???!!! This means someone just got shot and maybe killed????!!" We all know that was how John met his demise.
1
NRA members claim that without the right to bear arms, true patriots can’t defend themselves against the tyranny of government. Yet they vilify the people who march in the street to protest—peacefully—the policies of the current administration.
NRA members claim that they, armed with their military-style weapons, are the ones who will stand up to a foreign invader. Yet how many of them spread the vitriol of Russian trolls during the last election?
1
The "well-regulated militia" of the 2nd Amendment doesn't exist. The NRA is a completely unregulated militia, if it can even be called that, one which long ago stopped representing American hunters and responsible gun owners and became a shill for firearms manufacturers. Personally, I wouldn't let a nut job like Wayne LaPierre anywhere near a gun.
1
Incredibly, more has to be said about President Less Thoughts (please). So much "crazy" in his CPAC word salad that it is easy to mistake all of it for your regular, garden-variety, Trump craziness.
"We’re going to look at that whole military base gun-free zone… A culture that condemns violence and never glorifies violence. We need to force the real human connections and turn classmates and colleagues into friends and neighbors that want to fight for us."
Programming to create Republicans - military stronger, cherish life more, keep your nut in its gun corral, and just really read that last sentence. Cuckoo.
Trump say more about “going to look at” changes to command and control regulations and carrying personal weapons. Essentially, 2nd Amendment 'enthusiasts', active duty & retired, have been suggesting to Installation Commanders to change official regulations. Alpha patriots of 2nd Amendment don’t want to understand why only the Garrison's security force is armed WITHIN the secure perimeter. Some are NRA stooges. Bottom line: public schools on post are in that gun-free zone and NRA has to change that. Trump plays the ultimate stooge.
On November 5, 2009, military police studied everyone leaving Fort Hood, questioned about any weapons, and searched vehicles looking for accomplices. The alpha patriots, now making themselves useful idiots, would end Command’s control of installation security! Scary.
2
I meant: Trump "says" more.. There are several more sentences after that first sentence which I provided from from the transcript. Did he say "command and control"? No, my words, he doesn't have any experience and my experience is as a proud supporter of Our Troops.
Clarified because - No -please don't say more.
Our 'well regulated militia' members are not doing to well. They keep killing us instead.
This boy pictured: is he the next mass murderer? Will his parents be held accountable for teaching such violence?
Why is our nation filled with so many cowards? I thought we were supposed to be the home of the brave, but instead, we are home to a bunch of cowards who can't defend themselves without weapons of war.
Shame, shame on the cowards who hold the rest of us hostage with their guns and blood money.
Vote out the tools who support mass murder. Vote them out.
By Brian Bilston (not me) @brian_bilston
“America Is A Gun
England is a cup of tea.
France, a wheel of ripened brie.
Greece, a short, squat olive tree.
America is a gun.
Brazil is football on the sand.
Argentina, Maradona's hand.
Germany, an oompah band.
America is a gun.
Holland is a wooden shoe.
Hungary, a goulash stew.
Australia, a kangaroo.
America is a gun.
Japan is a thermal spring.
Scotland is a highland fling.
Oh, better to be anything
than America as a gun.”
We love you America, but stop being that guy. Care for your kids, they are not just collateral damage, they are your future and soul of a nation that can be so wonderful and beautiful.
15
Amen. Amen. Keep going, Mr. Blow.
1
When fools are outlawed, only outlaws will be fools.
Charles, it’s the US of NRA.
3
If Black men started buying AR-15s,the weapon would be banned overnight.
29
And the other possibility, these Black men had become Republicans. That would scare a lot of Democrats.
Man, you've got that right!
1
"If Black men started buying AR-15s,the weapon would be banned overnight."
I'll pass that along to all the Black people I meet at the gun shows and the range I go to. Two of them bring their AR-15s and shotguns to the range during their lunch hour.
The parents of America are gun loving, violent people who shouldn't be having children. They have no interest in protecting them.
6
Which brings us to the awful stew American kids are in today: gun addicts, profiteers and warped fantasists who are willfully blind to the clear path to rational gun control that has been demonstrated by every civilized nation on earth; a party whose brand is fraud and enforced ignorance backed by the very suppliers of gun addiction; a public education system that has been gutted by the GOP, and now their brain trust figures guns are for teachers, not something I’d want a few teachers I’ve known to get their hands on; fraudulent, scavenging health care; climate change denial in the face of death and destruction; a traitorous con named Trump and his pathetic followers; racist, misogynistic cave dwellers running the show everywhere you look; a marketplace that rains death, mental illness and addiction upon them, not only in the form of guns, but drugs, porn and other screen-based mind rot, not to mention ‘smart phones’, toxic pop culture and ‘social’ media, but I wont go into that. The kids can’t help but think their country has gone insane. I agree, have no apologies to make for any of this and all sympathy as a parent. Individual ‘rights’ to an addiction can no longer trump community peace and safe haven for our children. It is time to bring down the Republican Party. It would be a service to the nation. Rally behind those kids. They can do it.
3
The Republigun Party ain't gonna pry its cold dying fingers from guns. It's a cult.
Voting them out is the only way for Democracy&Decency to heal the American sicknesses of racism, misogyny, & addiction to violence. Recovery is a long road. But Jung said, 'You can't heal unconscious contents until they become conscious.' Here we are. Crawl across burning coals to Vote. Vote or Die.
As Carville would remind us, "It's the guns, stupid!"
5
The only sane, logical response is to crush the NRA/GOP Party. It's the only thing they fear, and understand. Take a real stand: VOTE.
Gun Control or Dead Children. CHOOSE.
10
Has any of the 2020 club stood and made the repeal of the 2A a choice to vote for?
Congratulations. It has taken years, Charles. You have finally written an opinion that is, in fact, not "pandering to your flock". If only you could write more articles like this; less devisive.
1
I’m surprised Mr Blow didn’t bring up race. My view is that the most vocal and fanatical NRA members are stone cold racists. They cling to their guns out of fear of people of color who the NRA and Fox News conveniently demonize for them. Of course they find a welcome home for their racism in the confines of the all white Southern GOP.
Guns is yet another policy completely defined by the GOP’s racism.
1
Oh for heaven's sake. Blow says, "We have venerated the gun and valorized its usage. America is violent and the gun is a preferred instrument of that violence. America, in many ways, is the gun."
Equating a specific social ill (morons owning AR-15s) with some amorphous, ill-informed, partial, hasty take on history -- "America was born of the gun" -- is just plain silly.
This is the way that we liberals end up shooting ourselves in the foot.
1
None of this asks the question or even cares about why children want to murder their own classmates. Don't wave it off by saying the CDC would do that if only the NRA hadn't forced America to be stupid and refuse to even make an effort to find out.
Excellent column, Charles.
1
when rap brown advocated armed self defense for Black communities in 1967, he argued that violence is as American as cherry pie and was roundly condemned for that in much of the media. just sayin'
3
Think Dunblane. Then, do the obvious: scrap the Second Amendment.
2
Disagree. The NRA has won the gun debate, because the sane side capitulated. 25 years ago limiting hand guns sales were the central gun control issue...now that’s not even dreamed of....guns have become a sick identity for right wingers and red necks of all stripes. It’s absurd to have assault weapons in anyone’s hands but the military. The sane people are as smart as the gun lobby...they can beat sickos like Wayne la Pierre...the majority just doesn’t care enough..someday they will.
Conservatives say if you want less of something, tax it. Let’s tax ammo, bigly.
1
Disarm the militia.
1
Democrats and progressives need to realize that the real enemy to our well being is the right wing and the Republicans, not the Russians, not the Chinese, not the North Koreans, or the Mexicans coming over the wall. The Republicans, especially their legislators, have no regard for our lives, or the lives of our children. They don't care if we die as long as they can get NRA support. We might as well be cockroaches to them.
1
Omg. Reading this , imagining 15 million assault weapons unregistered is an abomination we register cats and dogs .
Just look at that picture. Isn't the gun just the ugliest thing anywhere? It's like a giant poisonous insect out of a nightmare.
Sounds like a good place to continue pushing back against the NRA and their insane desire for ways to kill our children.
Let's all keep pushing back.
1
Dear Wayne LaPierre: A well regulated militia would not slaughter our children with machine guns. A well regulated militia would serve to protect our community and would in turn be respected by our community. What we’ve been trying to tell you is that there is no respect in our community for your rag-tag mob of man-children playing “army” with military style assault weapons. It may take us a while longer, but we are going to exercise our right to protect our families from your militia, not with guns but with sensible legislation.
4
Cowards. The NRA is cowards, and greedy cowards at that.
5
Think bigger - get rid of the NRA! Yes, we can.
4
May Imsuggest that The NY Times change focus onto the following:
1. The CEO's of he specific manufacturers of the AR-15 and other similar "assault rifles" that have the purpose f doings nothing but killing lots of people quickly.
2. The bankers that finance them.
3. If publicly held, the investment funds that own them.
Expose them all. Tell us about them. Where they work, where they live. Provide that information for the Florida kids determined to end mass shootings.
Enough about nutcase Wayne LaPierre. He is nothing but an amoral high paid whack-job shill for the shadowy people The NY Times needs to shine disinfectant light on. The people who profit handsomely from the deaths of children and adult innocents. Put 'me on the spot. Embarrass them. Humiliate them. Interview their pastors. Interview their neighbors. Find out everything you can confirm about them. Let Americans know about these monsters.
4
Or as Concrete Blonde opined: God is a Bullet.
1
Did I read that right? This Dickey dude inserts his amendment into a bill that becomes the law of the land and then later publicly bemoans the lack of funding for studying gun violence. What is this guy, stupid?
Oh never mind, I think I got that one figured out.
1
Thank you, Mr. Blow. While the majority of our citizens want change, we are held hostage by greed and fear-mongering. Citizens United created the legislative brothel. Until we get rid of that nasty piece of law, we are in the grip of the beholden.
2
You ask where the hell are our priorities? Isn't it obvious? "To make a buck." We want to turn every incident into a money maker. Without enough wars overseas to satisfy our ever expanding military industrial complex, we must sell guns to use on each other. Now that the war on cannabis is winding down, we will use our tax dollars to harden our schools and buy flak jackets for kids and teachers. We must sell more and more ammunition in order that the companies continue their year over year growth.
Our priorities are not concerned with health, welfare, pursuit of education, civil discourse, or the safety of our children. Those pursuits will not feed the beast.
164
You are so right it's about making a buck and getting over.
1
This is so incredibly frank and honest, it cuts through to the heart of it in so few words, everyone deploring this situation should cut this out and tape it to their refrigerator or their wall. Thank you.
As a society we deal with each new separate incident in our national gun dilemma as some discrete issue or symptom while the cause goes untouched.
We need move away from the inclination to scrutinize a Dickey Amendment, a National Firearms Act, bump stock legislation, assault rifle bans, handguns-vs-long guns and such individually and deal with firearms in general. We need screw up the courage to acknowledge that it is the availability of firearms per se in any form is a privilege we can no longer permit ourselves.
The second amendment be damned: we have and continue to demonstrate we as a species are incapable of responsibly managing our access to firearms….in any form. We must acknowledge firearms are a right we can no longer indulge ourselves; we’re just no good at it!
Will this likely put us on the road to another Civil War? Just as surely as Buchanan and company certainly bungled the Slavery issue and sent us down that road, so too will Trump and his republicans controlling all branches of government certainly oppose this one and do likewise. But as with Slavery, it is a cause worth fighting (and if necessary dying) against. We will sooner or later anyway if we don’t.
Churchill said the definition of appeasement was feeding the alligator in the hope it will eat you last. And that’s what we have here.
Have the courage to state the obvious: the necessity of repealing the second amendment is upon us.
2
Charles M. Blow for president!
4
"Where the hell are our priorities?" Keep asking this question. Spend the money on guns but not on education. We should be helping kids who need help to address the problems social, financial or psychiatric problems that supposed adults either cause or ignore in this fragile teenage groups. If the schools cannot help these kids, redirect the anger and frustration then who stands for them? Certainly not their parents nor caretakers. All of the signals from this kid who did the latest shooting, were blaring and no one did anything except send him home, to a home with guns. The rabid gun rights side wants more guns in the foolish effort to have teachers and police become "Rambo" and save us when all they needed to do is take away this kid's access to guns of any kind or caliber. Restricting his access to guns would not even have to be forever, but could be conditional on helping him deal with the issues that seem to have been catastrophic on him. Lost his dad, lost his mom, failed by two other homes. The supposed adults failed all the way around, they contributed to what happened. More guns is not the answer, making the adults and the support system "grow up" is where to start.
1
I have to believe that most Americans see how evil this is. We must not let the bullies win. True, they have the guns. They have no remorse for what guns do. The violence is incomprehensible. Guns are not benign in any way.
It seems that children have to continue to be insistent and to protest the escalation of our gun culture. I feel shame as an adult that this is the case.
The 2nd amendment crap is taken out of context just as so many versions of the bible were to "keep the races separate" and to keep women down. It is so idiotic that I can hardly think about it.
And to blame the "mentally ill" for carrying guns...again, ludicrous. If that's the case, then the mostly white, home-grown, young men who shoot up large groups of people need to be institutionalized pro-actively. Why don't we just round up white boys 15-24 and keep them tucked away until they are unlikely to express their anger with such violence.
Finally, we're worried about immigrants who do harm?! Really?!
Bait and switch is the oldest game in the book. Perhaps we progressives need to get better at the game.
1
Thank you for once again naming the enemy and boldly stating its implications. Unless we cut through the rabbit-hole arguments and bs thrown around regarding guns, we miss the huge violent gorilla storming through the room. The "freedom" to possess as many guns, as many types of guns as one wishes is a freedom gone wild, one without limits on social and ethical responsibility. The result: death, maiming, and an outrageous acceptance of violence that is medieval in nature. We have to muster the courage to overcome this radical insult to our human nature.
718,000 guns in our schools. Just what the NRA and the gun manufacturers want: more gun sales and profits.
That will lead to the next round in the arms race. The mass shooters will study in advance which classrooms are the most vulnerable -- maybe gym classes with coaches often engaged and blowing whistles -- and they'll show up in twos like Columbine and augment their firepower.
"Where the hell are our priorities?" Somewhere between greed and the toilet.
6
Call home the troops. Stop being the bully on the block. Perhaps climb down off the greatest nation in the world hyperbole. Stop faking Christianity. Perhaps dial back on the greed. In short, seek help. You have lost the world so save yourselves from your fascists and financialists that live in your midst.
And leave the Cubans and Venezuelans alone. A war isn’t going to save you. Decency will.
15
So very well said...
I.e, become Norway.
Kate Irby writes “No one has any idea how many assault rifles are in circulation. That’s intentional.” She is also correct, but the best available estimates range between just under four million and north of ten million. These figures, however, miss the massive firepower that assault rifles can deliver at the rapidly repeated squeeze of a trigger.
The gun lobby, including all levels of elected officials, suggests that the problem of human-inflicted mass carnage centers on mental health, not the profusion of guns, as the core problem facing the nation. Although this claim is made while funds and programs for mental health care are gutted, the fact is that mental health and gun profusion are not mutually exclusive issues.
On mental health, the challenge is as much collective as it is individual. Citizens of other countries own guns to be used primarily for hunting game, not children. Assault rifles are rarely used for hunting. Here, however, these instruments of mass lethality fly off the shelves, accessible to anybody with cash to put on the barrel head. Assault weapons are manufactured and sold for the purpose of assaulting people.
Now, we propose arming teachers with firearms and paying them bonuses for packing heat in the presence of their pupils (academic outcomes be damned). Arming teachers with guns and ammo makes as much sense as equipping neurosurgeons with rakes and hoes. But, at least when used as sold and designed, rakes and hoes don't murder people in masses.
2
Please, media. Stop accepting accepting the NRA propaganda that they represent gunowners. Only 2 to 8% of gun owners even belong to the NRA, and even these overwhelmingly do not support the radical NRA agenda. They belong out of custom or because it is necessary or easier to have access to classes, products or shooting ranges.
The NRA was not always the monster it has become under LaPierre with his political agenda which seems to have eclipsed the original mission of promoting responsibility, safety and gun sports. Under LaPierre, the NRA is no better than a drug cartel, pushing product and not caring who it hurts. And they are slittting their own throats when it comes to the next generation of gun owners, because the only ones they will attract are people like the Parkland shooter.
4
America is, indeed, violent, even as it considers itself to be a civilized country...where maiming and killing by the widespread easy acquisition, and generous use, of guns, seems just 'business as usual', an atrocity of sorts really, where the systematic shooting is 'allowed' by our current republicans in congress, as ordered by the N.R.A.; how come is this latter money-grabbing enterprise above the law, dictating the rules of engagement? That the politicinas are willing to sell themselves is one thing; but the public, whose children are mowed down on a daily basis, don't count? The 'Trumps and Rubios' are despicable of course...but citizens in general may remain accomplices if they resolve to 'look the other way' instead of throwing those bums out of the public arena, so to stop the carnage. Those that love American football for it's violence, may need rethinking about the perfectly preventable violent killing with guns by stupid-go-lucky trigger enthusiasts.
2
The Dickey Amendment should be repealed. We need those studies of gun deaths that the NRA is so afraid of.
3
At last the recognition that America is the problem. Just look at the worship of guns on any Hollywood movie - every problem is solved in the end by killing.... we should ban the export of Hollywood movies too....
3
Am I right that in "Black Panther" the only people who use guns are the bad guys?
An older voice than the NRA tells us: "They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore."
3
It seems pretty obvious what the source of injury is from a gun, it comes straight out of the barrel. Spending money to study the obvious is all that Washington currently does, no need to waste anymore. Besides, the last thing Washington wants to find the problem for they haven't a clue to what to do about it which explains why all they want to do is study. They're like college kids who never want to leave the security of school to have to go out and earn a living.
I’m the co founder of a faith based gun violence organization, God Before Guns, in Cleveland, OH. I’ve used this poem a few times in our work. Thought you might be interested. America is a Gun. https://www.facebook.com/BrianBilston/photos/a.1011165745567209.10737418...
1
Extreme violence in Hollywood movies, TV and video games helps to glorify guns and desensitize people. I wish we would hear a #NoMoreGuns movement from actors and producers to pledge to reduce shooting scenes and violent images. We don’t see much smoking on screen these days.. Impressionable minds are watching and modeling what they see. And these terrifying video games help them practice! Is it any wonder..? Please Uma Thurman, Van Diesel, someone..?
3
"...we must think big and systemically. We must treat gun violence in this country as a public health crisis, because it is."
I don't disagree. And according to the CDC, alcohol kills triple the number of Americans that guns do every year. Since you're so logical and only out to enhance the public health, Charles, I eagerly await your next three articles on the need for common-sense alcohol control.
Of course, I'll await those alcohol articles in vain, because you, like most Americans, are motivated not by impartial logic, but by faddish hot-button political memes, and by fear.
For Republicans, the irrationally inflated bête noire is foreign terrorists; for Democrats, it's guns.
My right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is not infringed upon by individuals. choosing to destroy their lives with alcohol abuse. Unstable people in possession of forearms can infringe upon my right if I am in the wrong place at the wrong time. Two different issues.
1
This comment is preposterous, I'm sorry. Alcohol didn't facilitate the termination of 60 people from an upper-level room in Vegas, nor the slaughter of an entire congregation, nor the massacre of a classroom full of 6- and 7-year-olds, nor the deaths of 20 kids a few weeks ago. There are a lot of things that cause more deaths than guns, but it is absurd to pick them out randomly.
Yes, let's have another temperance movement, if you would like, or if Charles would like. Meanwhile, the weapons used in all of these mass-death shootings are AR-15s and AR-556s and M&P Sport II's and so forth. Can another weapon cause mass death? Not as easily. The reason such things don't happen in other civilized countries is simple: lack of availability of means.
Because you cannot stop all shootings by making such firearms unobtainable is no reason not to restrict them. Because you cannot stop all gun deaths doesn't mean you should not stop the ones you can. There is as little "need" for such weapons in the civilian population as there is for weapons, like automatics, that are already illegal. An honest look at the data from the rest of the world makes it clear that there is a gun problem in America, and that we should do something about it.
Trying to do something to stop these mass-casualty events isn't irrational. The opposite -- i.e., not doing something -- would be irrational. And mentioning alcohol (or falls at home or snakebites) is a red herring.
1
This is such a perfect example of the logical fallacy known as “what about-Ism”. More people die of cancer than in mass shootings; therefore we should not do anything about mass shootings until we cured cancer. Reading responses of gun nuts to the gun control discussion would be entertaining but for the realization that people who cannot think straight through a single sentence have access to weapons of mass destruction.
1
We need to protect humans like we do migratory game birds and ban any gun that can hold more than three shells/bullets.
4
Every incident is really very painful and i would pay tribute all them who lost their life and Allah bless their family with courage.
American authorities must review their policy to USE guns within America and OUTSIDE america. this makes the perception to use weapon easily for anything. if you use weapon most of the time ignoring human rights, peace, religious amity and social responsibility, then you make your people hardliner. thy will take decision like your policy in everything
2
And apart from the the NRA leaders and lobbyists, the role played by the folks at Fox, Breitbart, the likes of Alex Jones at Info Wars et al. in promoting “Deep State” conspiracy theories and stoking the fears of the weak-minded and deranged, cannot be understated. When you use your highly-paid media presence to condone the right to build up personal arsenals of assault weapons and munitions, and to be “locked and loaded” at all times and in every venue, you have blood on your hands whether you pulled the trigger or not.
5
I can see you throwing up your hands, Mr. Blow. Shrugging your shoulders. You and pretty much every other columnist end on a pessimistic note. Please don't say "none of this is likely to happen." Say: "This must happen. This will happen. We will not stop fighting and voting until it happens."
3
Have you ever had an addiction? To a person, a product, an idea? You couldn't think rationally just had to feed the need. Quelling the madness took incredible strength and pain. That is what the citizens of this country face. Choose life, not guns.
M. Scott Peck, M.D., author of The Road Less Traveled and People of the Lie had an anecdote about a troubled boy he was treating. His patient's brother had killed himself with a rifle. Peck worked with the boy and his parents. The next Christmas the parents gifted their troubled son with the rifle his brother has used to take his life. It illustrates the blindness about our weaponized society.
Give them up. Police set up gun surrender days and give, sometime, money in return for the surrender of weapons. They should be scheduled monthly.
2
I am still waiting for someone to explain how law abiding citizens would be able to protect themselves, even in their own homes, without a gun. Especially law abiding citizens are disabled or older. Without a gun, what chance does a 100 pound senior or disabled person have against a young and strong thug who breaks into their house intent on robbery and bludgeoning them to death? Someone please answer that question, or try to.
1
We've had three incidents where seniors used a firearm to defend themselves within 2 miles of me. In one case the man climbing in the window was warned to stop or he'd be shot. It was his second time robbing the same home. In one case a 68 y/o man was attacked in his driveway returning from shopping and was saved by his girlfriend who had seen what was happening and shot the men as they were dragging the man into the house. And this stuff is not happening in bad neighborhoods.
1
Is the United States really that scary? Do visitors need to arm themselves? My father lived alone into his 80's. Grandparents as well. None ever had to defend themselves with a gun. No one I know has ever had to defend themselves with a gun.
2
I am an older citizen. I keep my doors locked, I have Mace. I can call 911 and they will be here in minutes.
If I lived in the country where response time is long, I would own a shotgun.
But even at my advanced age, I feel that the guns used in mass killings would be, shall we say... over kill?
Please seek help in dealing with your inordinate fear. It must be crippling.
3
"America in many ways is the gun"
Ideolize the Wild West, cowboys and gun fighters, all wearing guns and using them and what do you expect?
When Wild Bill Hickok and the Earp Brothers and Billy the Kid and friends are national heroes, then what do you expect?
Even "cops and robbers" movies are all heavy gun violence.
Time for America to grow up.
1
Gun violence has never been treated as a public health crisis, Charles Blow. It is time to repeal the Dickey Amendment, And our demented President arguing for arming teachers in schools and paying them a little "money" for their gun-handling expertise is the nadir of this crisis. The Second Amendment to our Constitution - the yuge elephant in American's living room - must be repealed before the deathdance romance with guns in our sick society will be ended after 300 years. Repeal and replace is what our unfit and ignorant president harped on (re Obamacare). The Second Amendment must be repealed but not replaced. Can A.T.F. create electronic retrieval of gun owners IDs? Can they centralize records provided by gun-sellers, who are in the business of making moolah from selling guns to anyone who can pay whatever they ask for their assault-rifles? Reducing gun violence won't happen if all we do is bring data together from departments of HHS, Educstion, homeland security, etc. An unwieldy computerized octopus of federal commissions won't reduce death by guns. Guns have always been part and parcel of the American ethos. False democracy parading as true - Slavery, wars in faraway countries with strange-sounding names. Charles Blow, when you say "America ..is the gun", you aren't whistling Dixie. Truer words were never writ or spoken.
2
You had me through paragraph three. I thought to myself, "Finally, FINALLY, someone is going to say this out loud! Someone is going to give voice to what would REALLY work!!!" Then you, like everyone else, caved to the gun lobby. No amount of "research" and study is going to reduce or end the level of "firearms injuries" and the wanton slaughter of innocents in this country. What has created this travesty among developed nations is, uh, guns. A deliberate misreading of the 2nd amendment; a greedy, immoral gun industry; a vicious lobby embodied by the NRA and other "gun rights" groups; fear-mongering politicians with their hands out--all in the services of guns and more guns and more guns. To eliminate gun injuries and deaths, we have to eliminate guns. We have our well-regulated militias in droves--National Guard, police forces, county sheriff forces, state police, and our multi-pronged military. No matter how many guns the "cold dead hands" government-takeover conspiracy theorists stockpile, they will never be a match for the former. Time to repeal the 2nd amendment and get rid of guns. There. I said it for your, Charles.
9
It's a strange world we live in when all parties agree the 23 year old NAFTA agreement need updating. But when it comes to the US Constitution updates are not even on the agenda. Of course God didn't write the NAFTA agreement.
2
There is a poem by Brian Bilston on the internet, entitled America is a Gun. First stanza: England is a cup of tea./ France, a wheel of ripened Brie. /Greece, a short,squat olive tree. /America is a gun. 3 more sad stanzas follow.
1
My mother turned 85 years old today. A product of Catholic Schools she asked me today if I thought Catholic nuns would be willing/able to carry, aim, and fire guns at school shooters? Trump expects Catholic nuns, teaching school in Catholic schools across the country, to shoot teenagers (children themselves, really) with automatic weapons? Knowing how the Church feels about killing AND Capital Punishment? Trump compared immigrants to snakes? Trump is the snake the Republicans brought into the White House. Trump is the snake and the NRA is the snake charmer.
3
Would you "Make America Great Again!"? Were you to, it would certainly be a time when there were many fewer guns per person and many more restrictions on them.
The last two paragraphs of Charles Blow's column should be required reading for every American.
Very sensible. But is it true that none of these are likely to occur? Is there really no way for the rational majority to get a grip on the gun madness? Do the NRA, and the politicians it has bought and paid for, and the President who encourages hateful chants by screaming rioters, really control this country? Where is the statesman or stateswoman who will unite the country by standing up and saying "No more" and "Have you no shame?" to this cabal of 2nd Amendment paranoiacs, this nightmare of a president, and the captains of the gun industry who fund them all?
Guns that can shoot more than 1 shot per minute do not belong in the hands of civilians. If sold, they should carry a $5000 tax.
In addition, the NRA should be taxed out of existence.
Then, perhaps these mass shootings will end.
1
The NRA wants one thing: unlimited guns on demand with open carry 24/7, from churches to beaches.
Everything else the NRA talks about is window dressing. Never lose sight of its obsession. Your life is at stake.
2
If you watched the crazed Wayne La Pierre rant and rave at the CPAC convention and weren't disgusted there is something wrong with you.
If you can't hear the screams of children dying there's something wrong with you.
If you can't feel the terror the thousands suffered at a music concert or theater or a bar there's something wrong with you.
If you can't see the solution to stop this carnage there's something wrong with you.
3
How is how is it that a small minority of only 5 million people now control the the other 320,000,000?
The United States is no longer a democratic republic it is a dictatorship.
Young survivor David Hogg is correct. Our government is broken!
1
I just looked at the photos in the NYT of the big gun show in Tampa over the weekend where AR-15's are flying out the door. It's all white men buying this stuff up. I think a good way to get Republicans on board with gun control would be if a LOT of black people showed up at these events and started stocking up. That's gotten us gun control in the past. Nothing else seems to move them.
3
You formed that opinion off of one photograph?
I've been to lots of shows and have seen plenty of Black folks at them buying guns and black powder. When I go to the range there are Blacks who come in to practice. There's one group that comes in during lunch with one guy bringing in his shotgun.
The Second Amendment is race blind.
Here's something I don't understand. Perhaps someone could explain it to me. Republican conservatives are supposed to LOVE the police. When a white cop shoots an unarmed black kid the Repcons say, "What about Chicago? What about black on black crime? Maybe if they came from two parent families they wouldn't get shot." As if any of those excuses justify the shooting, but you can count on Repcons to make defenses and rationalizations.
Last week the governor of Colorado was interviewed on television. He said in the last 40 days THREE law enforcement officers had been killed by AR-15's. One of them was wearing a Kevlar vest. The gun is so powerful it penetrated the vest.
If they love the police so much, why do they adamantly support the right of Americans to own these weapons so that the police find themselves out-gunned? Aye, 'tis one of the great mysteries.
3
Dear Charles Blow, You've touched on the racist under-belly of gun violence. Trump's extolling the virtues of "some very fine people" among his white-supremacist supporters underscored this connection. Might you elaborate your address of the racism-guns-violence connection in one of your columns? Historical references would be welcome. Although saying so will invoke as much outrage as "America is violence," is it not also true that the "NRA is racism" ? Continue to fight the good fight, Charles. Thank you.
This gun owner is horrified by Th Cult of The Gun. It has become talismanic, not a tool for rural life. I am not alone among hunters and those who keep a handgun (and have tactical training to use it well) in hating AR-15s and the NRA.
Those of you looking for easy fixes, brace yourselves. It will take a generation. Maybe those Florida teens are it?
1
Mr. Blow, I'm a bit surprised you haven't brought up the historical root of the Second Amendment, which was to legally arm slave catchers. Additionally, the Second Amendment garnered support from those founders who were forward-looking expansionists. They wanted to arm the populace to conquer the indigenous people. To put it in a nutshell, there is nothing worth upholding about the Second Amendment. Here is one link to some of this history:
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/13890-the-second-amendment-was-ratifi...
I'd also recommend Lawrence Goldstone's book on the Constitutional Convention, "Dark Bargain." Goldstone documents as thoroughly as can be documented, that there was one over-riding fear in coming to agreement about Article III, which includes defining treason. That fear was slave revolts. Goldstone also notes that there was one name never spoken but which hung over the debate - that of Captain Daniel Shays, leader of Shays' Rebellion.
I'm bringing this up as I believe you can't effectively solve a problem unless you get to its roots. Those roots are in fact the roots of this country. To look at this history squarely, and then call this history "an experiment," or call slavery a "peculiar institution," is moral cowardice at best.
1
If the writer really wanted to get to the roots of the founders inclusion of the 2nd Amendment he'd go to the source: The Federalist Papers.
Hamilton, Madison and Jay wrote the papers as a means to convince the delegates and the people to ratify the Constitution. The states had balked at the Constitution and demanded further guarantees against a federal government that could raise an army that could be used against the people. The founder's response was the Federalist Papers.
One of the things that Goldstone documents in Dark Bargain is the difference between the philosophical professions of the delegates to the Constitutional Convention and what they actually fought for and fought against when they got down to an actual Constitution. What the slaveholders like Jefferson & Madison said and what they actually fought for were two widely different things. As for having a standing army, the War of 1812, or whatever name one wishes to call it, pretty much laid waste to the fairy tale notion of not having a standing army. Standing armies are used to protect power and property, not "the people."
1
I read the comments here and I just find myself exasperated. Can someone please explain to me why it is deemed permissible and progressive to demonize the NRA, and gun owners after every shooting, and yet, when this same behavior is displayed towards Islam, we, rightly, condemn it?
Is it not true that these spree shooters, make up a tiny minority of gun owners?
Is it not true that 0 spree shooters were found to be an NRA member?
Does the NRA not uniformly condemn the actions when they occur?
Are gun owners and NRA members not among those who support better background check measures?
If we say that its wrong to attack innocent Muslims for the acts of radicals, than how can one possibly justify refusing to extend the same to fellow citizens? Are they any less rigid in their principals and beliefs? If they had the political voice and numbers in the US that gun rights folks have, would they not pursuit these just the same?
If you support ones rights and hate the other, you are simply a hypocrite. There is no getting around it.
Jesus said, "A nation that lives by the sword will perish by the sword," and that is just what is happening in America. America's friends in Canada and elsewhere look on in dismay and horror as we see the United States floundering in a state of primitive barbarism. I have only one piece of advice for young Americans, especially those who would like to have children, and that is to leave America and start life over in a less violent and less vulgar country.
1
I believe that anyone in possession of any of the AR or AK assault rifles, and especially so of those who own multiple copies of them, deep down inside, want to kill a human being. These guns were designed for this purpose. That they can be used to kill destructive wild hogs is merely a convenient rationalization to paper over this desire, not a reason.
1
Guns were better controlled in the US even in the ‘Old West’ after the civil war. It is a fact that the gun industry jumped on the 2nd Amendment after WWI as a ploy to extend the war boom in armaments manufacture into peacetime. Guns in America are an addiction fed by myth, race fears and the psychopathology of greed.
1
Please explain how a law abiding senior citizen, convenience store clerk or disabled person will be able to defend themselves against a younger, stronger and probably armed thug in a home invasion or robbery without a gun. And please don't say that home invasions and robberies don't exist in the US.
Americans love guns. We are a nation in love with our myths and the gun is a large part of our obsession with the myth of rugged individualism and that frontier spirit. The gun is the ultimate expression of individualism, I get to decide if you live or die. My gun makes my life worth more than yours. Especially if you do not look, speak or believe as I do.
The NRA knows this all too well. They are merely the marketing arm of the gun manufacturers but they sell themselves as the real defenders of our rights.
They know that fear of the "other" drives Americans to defend their individualism. First it was fear of crime, then fear of immigrants, now the fear of "socialist liberals".
Gun sales are down now that the potential gun confiscating Black guy is out of office. Now the NRA is stirring up fear of your liberal neighbors.
Reasonable restrictions on guns will only come through voting Republicans out of office.
1
Exactly correct, Charles - these hideous things are interwoven into the fabric of this 'society' - the result is an inbred selfishness that is breathtaking, especially to those in other countries that deal with firearms in an adult manner.
I wonder if the Founders ever imagined what a scourge the 2nd Amendment would turn out to be. They assumed that we could recognize that the subordinate clause ..."the right to bear arms shall not be infringed" depends on "A well-regulated militia" I think they would be embarrassed for us.
3
Charles, you are bang on (pun intended)...America is The Gun without a doubt. I believe it's the defining difference between our two countries, Canada and the U.S.
Back in the early 80's, my grandmother used to tell me about her friends in Michigan. Little old ladies who slept with pistols in their night tables. Fast forward some thirty odd years and it's not just grannies packing handguns, but millions and millions of people with assault rifles.
I almost moved to the U.S. four years ago. My biggest concern then and now...and the reason why I haven't been Stateside for two years...is The Gun.
It would also be impérative to repeal the laws that immunize gun makers from liability for damage resulting from the gens. I can think of no other industry that on being haliez into court, can say "you cant get us no matter what we do." You can take away some of the guns but the makers currently have no fear of claims against them
And it is "by the barrel" that we are losing our children and will lose this country.
When I taught at a local university I regularly did a unit on the 2nd Amendment. The class was probably 95% pro-gun. My goal was for them to write research papers which you utilize solid arguments on both sides of the gun issue. One man, sixty-ish and usually wearing an NRA jacket walked out of class and never returned, late in the semester when he knew he would pass the class with a low grade--but certainly pass because I judged papers on the writing and research and not on whether they agreed with my views, and he was yelling at me all the way out the door because he had had to learn this liberal woman's lies. An 18-year-old girl in the back once stood up and yelled, "No one's gonna take my gun away from me."
I think we have already "lost" the country and are only now really dealing with the product of massacres, watching our children bleed to death from gunshot wounds. "By the barrel."
1
One thing that concerns me is the Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act. At least 12 states don’t even require a permit or any demonstration of safe proficiency and some don’t require background checks from unlicensed dealers. So what happens after purchase if the buyer drifts into drug addiction, unnoticed mental illness, evil intent, revenge thoughts, political hatred, careless carry, etc etc. The idea that almost anybody, could travel to any state, packing hidden heat is disturbing. You go into a rural cafe in a hard red state and wonder how many people at the counter have a Glock under their jacket or pants. You have no idea who they are, how their day is going, what grievances they’re nursing, etc etc. I’ve seen Trump supporters get REALLY HOT when engaged by a liberal. The real treat is when they openly carry, in a camo jumpsuit. You definitely don’t want to be wearing your “Impeach Trump” button when you sit down next to them. The old days of target shooting and duck and deer hunting have morphed into defensive militarism with “tactical” black weapons and tech add-ons. Oddly, since NRA-loving Trump was elected, gun sales have dropped 10% (no fear of confiscation) and arms icon Remington has filed for bankruptcy.
2
So, so tired of hearing this nonsense:
"A gun (rifle, pistol, or shotgun) is an inanimate object. It does not think, it will not move. A gun, in and of itself will not kill anyone."
Rocket launchers and pipe bombs are also inanimate and don't run around on their own, mass-killing people. Shall we also sell them as indiscriminately as AR-15's?
Mass shootings accomplished with high-efficiency killing machines are not the exclusive province of the mentally ill. All it takes is an angry, disaffected man, usually young (so far, no women but just wait). While most Americans were busy living their lives, the NRA was allowed to turn this country back into the Wild West. We can manage to bear arms without ubiquitous access to military-grade instruments of mass murder; all it takes is common sense.
2
And despite all the horrors we see-nothing will change for the better, perhaps only for the worse, as in the past.
So the NRA and its cult followers want guns so they can protect themselves when the "government" comes to take away their guns. Not only is this a "death wish" fantasy, it seems to be advocating the shooting of "government" representatives, which in this case would be, I guess, U.S. military or local police. I thought the NRA supported such groups. Oh well, logic has never been their strong suit. Buying congressmen with blood money is their real strength.
1
This is not a Second Amendment issue.
Guns are a religious icon, a fetish symbol of worship for the people who long for the days of the Confederacy. Just 3 percent of American adults own half of the nation's firearms, according to the results of a Harvard-Northeastern survey of gun owners.
Although many would like to juxtapose other elements of the Bill of Rights to the 2nd, it is a false equivalency, and it's time to take the Timothy McVeigh world view seriously. The racist and white supremacist groups tracked by the Southern Poverty Law Center are the source of most of the support for the NRA from the social side ( i.e., the 3%) , just as US and foreign gun manufacturers are the core of the NRA's funding.
Now - AR-15s are rarely used in crimes relative to handguns, and it is the rifle's military appearance that gives rise to an irrational response when it is used; most crimes and suicides occur with handguns.
Similarly, MS-13, the Crips and the Bloods, motorcycle gangs etc., are not NRA members, but seem to have no problem with getting weapons, legally and otherwise.
The NRA knows that net sales of weapons are helped along by ANY gun or ammo purchase in the US, whether the buyer is legal or illegal, and that gun freaks are just good cover to ensure that sales are unimpeded with the Second Amendment blather.
It just helps sell guns.
2
This column taught me something important about the Dickey Amendment: it is named for its sponsor, not for the foolishness and irresponsibility of the idea behind it. Thank you, Mr. Blow.
We do not need any research to know that the more guns are available the more gun deaths there will be.
The main problem is that the NRA controls the debate. They pretend to defend individual freedom, the Constitution, the rights of law abiding citizens, "the good guys against the bad guys"...
The anti-gun party responds with attempts to limit gun ownership: background checks; partial ban on specific widget, age limit ...
The proposed solutions are ineffective because they are designed to appease rather than confronting the problem, which is that the NRA is the forefront of an American fascist movement.
I know many are going to find this characterization extreme, but how would one qualify a movement that uses a weapon as a fetish, that is ready to see young men, young women, even kids sacrificed to foster fear and the militarization of society, and eventually the end of democracy as we know it?
1
It's a bit hard to understand how a lobbying act could actually succeed in making public commercialization of semi-automatic riffles legal in the first place, as if over 300 millions handguns wasn't weaponry enough. US school teacher and student unions should organize to make sure no semi-automatic firearms can be ever sold to the public again. Police unions should too and ask in addition limitations on handguns sales, that many guns in circulation isn't in their interests nor safety. No nation need taking gun ownership as a fundamental right as to alow it to exist, but doing so is making one nation acting like fools.
Charles, what if you invite every one of the students at Parkland, and arrange all that accept, to work as interns with you and colleagues at NYT for a semester. They are a new breed of journalist. They are re-inventing themselves and reinventing citizenship which expresses political power to make real, measurable, sustained change in the law, so as to end gun violence in schools. Their speeches and appearances after Feb 14th are the seeds of professional journalistic careers. They need a new mentor and community of mentors to have the life they say is their destiny.
Why consider the cost of providing teachers "glocks" - as insane as this proposal is - when in fact, they would have to carry assault weapon rifles in the classroom to equal the fire power of the assailants' AR-15 - which is even more insane. Further, is it not obsurd to "study" the health effects of gun-related violence when all we need to consider is that on 911, 3,000 people were tragically killed by terrorists - causing us to go to war. However, in 2017 "alone", over 30,000 Americans were killed by guns - yet purchasing weapons of war is as easy as buying an ice cream in many states. The first priority is to ban the sale of assault weapons. Freedom of speech is a constitutional right, but no one has the right to falsely shout "FIRE!" in a crowded theater due to the risk of hurting others. In like regard, the constitution does provide for the right to bear arms, as long as it does not infringe on our constitutional privilege of "life" liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The AR-15 used in this massacre was capable of shooting 6 bullets a second. No civilian should have a "right" to own one.
3
America is the worldwide gold medalist in mass murders, homicide rates and guns in the hands of private citizens. Each recent mass murder was a huge media event replete with prayers, recriminations and promises. So, esteemed fellow citizens, how many of these mass murders can you recall? My list stops after Las Vegas, Sandy Hook, Columbine...was there an Aurora? Like Trump legislative and verbal outrages, it's all overwhelmed by noise and inaction. Like planned obsolescence, the NRA and its GoP facilitators spin, promise, demean, wave the Second Amendment and voila....nothing happens. Not even bump stocks. Not even after Sandy Hook.
And whose fault is that? It is our fault, of course. The myopic, amnesiac American citizenry that Trump and the NRA wants to arm to 'harden' our schools. Sell more guns to fight the gun violence caused by selling people guns. We'd better either change our approach or buy those kelvar(?) vests because police and experts have testified extensively --putting more guns in the hands of untrained, unvetted, myopic, amnesiac citizenry is a recipe for chaos and murder. Duck, duck, goose. Like bird hunting where we all get to be the birds.
America's devotion to guns, coupled with our endless tolerance for gun violence, is a pathology which is destroying our society. We must all admit that.
4
Of course we are the gun. Our greatest export is guns. Cuba’s is doctors. We export war. We wage war everywhere. How many countries are we bombing now...7? We drop bombs on hospitals and schools and weddings in other countries and then we are shocked and horrified when these massacres are reflected in our own society? We are an economy of death. And even the Democrats vote for it. You want to end gun violence in this country for real? Let’s start with the Pentagon.
2
That the Republican Party chooses to remain in the dark on this issue is nothing new. The same mindset prevails with regard to data collection and analysis on climate change. Once the data proves there is a problem, then it becomes incumbent to take action on it.
When was the last time anyone can recall the GOP wanting to expand the role of government? Better for citizens to be ignorant and get sick, get shot or be flooded out than expand government. That head in the sand mentality is perhaps the most dangerous position taken by elected officials in our lifetimes.
I'm numb to it. I am sorry for the families, but I have stopped caring.
Although I believe we have a right to own a gun, that right has been taken way off the rails by the paranoid who think there is a deep conspiracy to take away the 2nd amendment.
So I don't care what happens.
Thank you republicans.
"And I wrote in disgust about President Barack Obama failing to marshal the L.B.J. mojo to push through a gun control bill after Sandy Hook ... And then I gave up." Maureen Dowd, February 18, 2018
Republicans, like malevolent fraternity pledges - vowed to block Obama's every initiative. Then, the horrendous 45th president - selected by the Electoral College - made sure mentally ill people can get guns.
We've set the bar far too low in seeking a solution to this heartbreaking situation. Assault weapons must be banned. Changing the age when one can buy such a weapon is not enough. We cannot give up.
"Aiming too low" is certainly on target. And the common sense technical improvements suggested would be clear tangible steps towards progress in finally really fighting back against the murder industry, its lobby, and its Congressional lackeys. Thank you Charles Blow!
Also: Does anyone know where to best post thank-yous to some of the many companies which have recently and publicly disassociated from the NRA (ending discount programs, etc)? This is another small but worthy step towards building momentum against the 5 million minority who have hijacked America's moral future in order to continually help damage it.
1
Its hard to say whether the NRA's volatile pro-gun propaganda is pointed at maximizing the sale of lethal weapons in the United States, or at arming a paranoid subculture of our population seemingly fantasizing about political change by any means necessary. Wayne LaPierre, the startling, at times chilling, leader of the National Rifle Association, certainly cuts the figure of a zealot on a mission to destroy that which he disagrees with. Gun sales are already at record levels, as are extrajudicial killings, so what is he so worked up about, really? If the Constitution and our fundamental rights mean that much to him, what about the lost lives and pursuit of happiness, which for so many has ended at the bitter crack of a gun?
1
I agree with you. We need facts about guns derived from well-designed studies. Not nonsense offered by the NRA and parroted by Trump about “good guys with guns” and arming teachers.
"Research" is a dirty word in the GOP vocabulary. They thrive on policies formulated from ideological bents, prejudices, and what a FOX expert proposes.
1
Congress will do nothing until individual Congressmen realize that they are not above the fray. I would reduce the police presence n the Capitol (and assorted office buildings) to that necessary for normal crowd control. I would eliminate security details for Congress and political appointees.
When we start having Steve Scalise incidents as frequently as school shootings, these bozos may figure out that they have created a monster, and they are the problem to control that monster.
2
I wonder if Great Britain, Canada, Australia are any less "free" because it's citizens can't buy weapons meant for battle-field mayhem? Mass shootings, especially of school children are a rarity in those countries. The reason is simple; there is no NRA there purchasing dapper, perfumed congressmen who perpetuate the carnage! Americans must find a less lethal way to fund campaigns, and not lose momentum at this critical juncture. BOYCOTTING all businesses that cater to the NRA, well as VOTING OUT their Armani clad agents in Congress, and elsewhere, might just do the trick. What a shame; It took Parkland High teens to wake up America!
1
As with to many editorials on "gun control," this one doesn't exclusively blame an inanimate object.
I believe research will show the big problem is keeping firearms out of the hands that shouldn't have them-kids, psychos, wife beaters to name a few.
Police departments should have cops doing security at schools that will actually do their job. Not marking time until they can collect a big pension.
To assume Trump would do anything reasonable on any issue, especially an issue that would take on one of his "sponsors", is a pipe dream. Trump only cares for Trump. The American people take a back seat hence his current 35% approval rating.
Inflammatory political rhetoric, such as Blow's, is part of the problem, not the solution.
His political agenda is disjointed when he advocates strict gun laws but complains of "mass incarceration" of law breakers.
He cannot restrain himself from attacking America's history while apparently oblivious to the history of conflict, violence, and wars throughout world history.
1
I think that folks from cities have a tough time understanding rural Americans and the self-sufficiency and cultural connectedness that gun ownership represents. Where we live it generally takes at least 30 minutes before one can expect police support. Threats from criminals are statistically rare, but we watch the same news as the rest of you and that fuels our perceptions.
If you were to say to us that there needed to be gun control in big cities we'd probably agree with you...but as far as we're concerned that would be stupid where we live, we have high-school trap teams for Pete's sake and most kids (girls and boys) start hunting deer and take pride in helping feed their families from around age 10...and don't tell about the barbarity of that...if you eat meat you have just as large a role in the killing and butchering of animals as they do, you just don't have to get your hands dirty.
Bernie Sanders has it right that gun ownership has incredibly divergent meanings in rural and urban settings and that any legislation (or approach to legislation) that doesn't take that American reality into account is doomed to fail. There's a lot of talk about "assault rifles", and many rural Americans have no interest in such weapons (though I'm pretty sure younger rural Americans are more interested in them)...but really...do you imagine a future in which such weapons are voluntarily surrendered?
This is a long row that must be carefully hoed, our nation is very divided...
Charles you speak the truth, but it is difficult to hear. As for republican Jay Dicke; he must have received millions from the NRA if he was persuaded to write that disgusting amendment. I also believe you are right that none of your suggestions will be heard or investigated. They believe that guns absolutely take precedent over children, religion or anything else in life that is worthwhile. It's quite apparent that republicans 'worship' the gun above anything else in life including God, children, anyone else's life. They would rather die before giving up their belief that every citizen has the right to own as many guns as they can afford to purchase. Funny thing is, with all these guns, they most probably will die from one of the guns they covet and own.
Fifteen sates that readily permit concealed carry of hand guns, have laws that make it illegal to concealed carry a switchblade knife. Florida, though one of the fifteen does, does have a way out for the switchblade aficionado. If he or she has a gun permit, then it's OK to conceal carry a switchblade. And some states that prohibit concealed switchblade carry, do permit open carry (how you open carry a pocket knife is beyond me).
Maybe the rationale for prohibition of switchblades can be dug up and used as a rationale for gun control. Nah! But it would be interesting to hear an NRA explanation on why switchblades are more dangerous than AR-15's.
Anyway....
1
LETTER TO MS. MARTIN
Dear Ms. Martin,
Freedom is not free.
As gun owners and patriotic Americans, we know that the price of our Second Amendment freedom is not free.
Our freedom to own guns, to own as many guns as we want, however we want, wherever we want, and whenever we want is not free.
We continue to fight and stand up to all those un-American who want to take those freedoms away.
Our solution to gun violence is good-guys with guns.
We know your son was going to buy something from 7-11 in the neighborhood where you own your home.
George Zimmerman was a good guy with a gun.
Somehow your son ended up dead. He is never coming back.
That is part of the price of freedom in this country, a price paid for our right to own guns.
Freedom is not free.
We are sorry for your loss.
Thoughts and prayers.
A gunowner and patriot.
The NRA will never say these words, but this is what their actions are saying.
Some students can anger our teachers by acting out once in a while so for our school's safety, let's take away the wooden rulers and give all of our teachers a Magnum 357.
This new plan will protect our students from "angry, upset people" and others.
This is the newest plan from our genius seated in the oval office.
"The American idea is caught up in carnage. Its very beginning is rooted in gun violence."
But -- you could say this about Australia, too. Australia chose to end the carnage, through public policy, through legislation, and through a few brave politicians who put human beings before politics and basically sacrificed their careers for the sake of ending mass shootings in Australia. (After sane legislation was put into place decades ago, they haven't had a single mass shooting since).
The real reason the teenagers of Parkland are so effective is because they don't believe that "the unconscionable is inevitable."
I am inspired by these teenagers. The look to the future, not the past. People said something as horrific as slavery was rooted in the American psyche, and couldn't be changed. Or something as stupid as smoking in restaurants: "deeply embedded in American culture." No change would be accepted.
We have been in the grip of one of the ugliest mass delusions that this planet has ever seen--the "guns make us safer" delusion, which every statistic and every fact refutes. And I don't believe that grip is iron, or that our fate to repeat this disgusting, tragic, horrifying storyline over and over again is inevitable.
I reject the idea that America's past controls the future. These teenagers ARE the future and change is here. I'm going to be marching in Washington on March 24, but I'm going to be in a supporting role, letting the kids lead.
#MarchForOurLives #NeverAgain
Even our National Anthem venerates and valorizes the gun. All my life a suggestion has bounced around the nation that our National Anthem should be dropped for a more musical one, such as "America the Beautiful." It won't happen because "America" lacks the violence to match our aspirations. the Anthem valorizes war itself, making it our musical national symbol: the perilous fight, the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air. Add another verse and assault weapons could be worked right in. Makes ya tear up with pride, don't it?
It won't happen because "America the Beautiful" refers to God.
Gun owners will only claim that any study or data collection is a vast left-wing deep-state secret-society new world order conspiracy by 'gun grabbers,' exhibiting the same disdain for science and their fellow man that they exhibit with climate change.
Surely muzzling the CDC is a breach of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution?
1
The insistence on arming the citizenry with weapons of war rests upon the assumption that citizens will need to rise up at some point against an illegitimate government. Since the now-ascendant far right has taught people that government is intrinsically illegitimate, the prophecy is self-fulfilling.
Never mind that the "original intent" of the Second Amendment was to keep the government from being caught flat-footed by insurrections -- you know, the kind that the NRA encourages us to fantasize about, the ones that the Bundys and their ilk have tried to foment.
Every effort to make citizens safe from other heavily-armed citizens is now really an effort to protect guns.
The principle of gun ownership has detached itself from its purpose and is running amok. Ironic, isn't it, that the gun nuts talk about government bureaucracy as the "deep state". Now we have the "deep Second Amendment".
1
Your articles are always perceptive and intelligent. I am from Canada, and although I think we should have even stronger anti gun legislation than we do, we are still better than the U.S. Both Canada and the United States should adopt Japan's gun legislation. Why does anyone need a gun? We no longer live in the wild west. Any gun is not part of a civilized society. The NRA members are despicable people. I say you should get rid of the second amendment, so sacrosanct to so many people. If gun ownership were frowned on, as it is in Australia, the world--and the US and Canada--would be better off.
Terminology is also important: we need to call these objects what they really are-- murder weapons. These are killing machines.
Why should thousands of Americans be killed every year-- just because 1)some people are paranoid and feel they need "protection," (realistically a statistical joke), and/or 2) they want to keep their fun "hobby."
Paranoia and hobby preservation for the few is not worth thousands of American deaths every year.
Americans are paying far too heavy of a price to preserve a now-harmful amendment.
Guns: the last refuge of the unfree.
1
Mr Blow,
I don't think the representatives in Congress are cowards, they are far worse. They know exactly what they are doing. Any of the campaign contributions dropped in the collection plates of the various houses of worship they attend are washed clean of the blood stains.
There is no way any of these venal men will change and unless money aka bribery is taken out of politics their replacements will fly the same bloody flag.
We may be considered a civilized people, but so long as we bar the door to reason we are not. It isn't the NRA it is our Congress.
The call for restrictions on gun ownership is politically balanced by those who see any restriction as a violation of the 2nd amendment and a curb on individual freedoms. No other country with a comparable standard of living has problems with restriction of fire arms, and the death rate due to guns is much lower in those countries.
There is no point in arguing about the why's. The gun people keep coming up with idiotic 'solutions' such as arming even more people, and saying even more idiotic things such as, "people, not guns, kill". It is probably too difficult, politically, to remedy the situation here.
The result is that we can expect a regular succession of mass shootings in the near future. I do not see this ending until we in the US curb the distribution of guns.
1
My father owned guns. He was a member of the NRA. As children we knew he had guns. We used to watch him making bullets in the workroom. He let us help him. Whenever he cleaned his guns or made bullets he talked to us about guns; they were not toys, they were dangerous and meant for adults, bullets could kill, you don't point a gun loaded or unloaded at anyone, etc. My father would not have subscribed to the notion that a good person with a gun can stop a bad person with a gun. Such an idea never crossed his mind.
That we are even discussing arming teachers is alarming. We are not being invaded by another country. We are not Israeli parents who have a real reason to fear their schools being invaded by terrorists. Yet because of fanatics like Wayne LaPierre people are panicking over the very idea that they might be forbidden to own a firearm originally designed for the army so soldiers can kill people. Note that the NRA doesn't allow guns in its headquarters. But we're expected to accept the idea that any good person should be allowed to carry a gun, concealed or otherwise, in a school, in a shopping mall, into a theatre, or anywhere else.
Perhaps we ought to look at the statistics and do some real studies on guns, gun ownership, etc., before we decide that the only answer is to arm more people. Law enforcement officials object to this. They want to shoot the bad guys, not the good guy with the gun and they may not be able to tell the difference.
2
Don't the knee-jerk gun advocates who oppose all studies and any restrictions notice a pattern and get fatigued from typing out their long-winded, unfounded, easily disproved notions about more safety and freedom with more guns? Do they notice a pattern that they have to be ready at their keyboards or "smart" phones more and more frequently to defend their precious guns, after each massacre?
2
You might say the same thing about the anti-gun commenters - always ready with the "repeal second amendment" garbage without having a clue as to what it takes to repeal an amendment.
By the way, I would ask our leaders to please finally enforce the Second Amendment: "A well-regulated militia..."
1
You missed my point -- these "debates" keep happening because massacres keep happening. The people against gun regulations are always ready to insist more guns make us safer even while there are more and more demands on them to fire away their angry comments because of the frequent violence from loose firearms.
Ted Cruz, Sarah Palin, Rick Santorum, and on and on believe that the Second Amendment guarantees the First Amendment. The idiocy behind that belief prevents gun registry, funding for ATF, modern technology that tracks every bullet fired back to the weapon it came from, etc. Now we have militia groups that show up at places like Charlottesville to "protect free speech". Meanwhile in Pennsylvania an entire elementary school student body is being relocated for safety reasons because a large marriage ceremony is being held at a Moon's Unification Church site where everyone is told to bring their 'rods of iron', which are AR-15's or make a donation of $700 at the local gun shop. We are living in an age of insanity. Where are the profiles in courage?
1
Why is it I never see anything in print regarding the enforcing of the 2nd amendment as it was originally written and still reads in our Constitution, namely:
“A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”
It seems clear to me that the right depends on:
1 - being part of a well-regulated militia.
(This right is clearly granted to a group and not to each and every individual, and a "well-regulated" group at that.)
2 - the militia's maintaining the security of a free state.
(The right granted to this group, the militia, is for a specific purpose and does not extend to any individual's arbitrary purpose.)
1
Perhaps you should read the interpretation from the Supreme Court to answer your own questions.
I am well aware that the Supreme Court's 2008 majority (5 to 4) opinion to essentially hobble the 2nd amendment was given by Antonin Scalia and reeks of NRA influence so I stand by my remarks.
For too many Americans, it seems as if the second amendment was brought down from the mountain by Moses himself. The USA is number one!... in mass shootings, but this crowd values guns over lives. Unless this ignorance can be defeated with facts and reason, the violence will only get worse.
208
Facts will be countered by 'alternative' facts, truth with lies, reason with irrationality.
In the current political climate, America has zero chance to have any intelligent, rational, fact based debate on any topic, let alone one as politically sensitive as guns.
It will take profound change, e.g. the emergence of a new political party, to change the picture, and in the duopoly of political power in America, this has as good a chance of happening as gun control does.
2
I'm an American living in Canada. I agree with you about the second amendment being viewed as "holy." However, I don't believe that facts and reason can defeat this kind of ignorance. As another reader from Canada mentioned above, "Reasonable arguments cannot prevail in such a climate." It is hoped that what's occurring now with the demonstrations, the coming together of like-minded citizens in protest, the organization of communities to get-out-the-vote, and the withdrawing of support for the NRA by companies and organizations, will encourage those who have not previously voiced their feelings to do so by participating in these efforts and by voting.
5
Well, at least we are #1 in something.
2
So not only are there 300 million guns in our country (say that aloud to yourself a few times, "there are 300 million guns in our country") - but we have pathetically little control and legislation over them. So not only are there 300 million guns in our country - but they are untracked, untraceable, and there are 300 million of them.
I'm tired of hearing from folks who "grew up with guns", are "law abiding gun-owners" and "just like to hunt": people, this is 2018 in the United States of America - you don't need to hunt, play frisbee instead of sport-shooting, and for crissakes, YOU DON"T NEED A GUN.
1
I doubt the Founding Fathers contemplated the possibility of a school shooting when they wrote the 2nd Amendment.
3
Because there were NO public schools?
1
Sadly, the only true fix is to get rid of all the guns. If I were leader of this (now) banana republic I would require everyone to surrender every single firearm. Then send in the police to make sure there was full compliance. Of course, just writing this shows how impossible the task would be.
Better yet, elect pro-gun control Democrats at the state and federal levels. Elect a Democrat to the WH who will appoint gun control supporters to SCOTUS. Repeal the Second Amendment and get 3/4 of the state legislatures to ratify. Again, an impossible dream. Sigh.
2
Elect pro-gun control Democrats? What a joke. How long have they controlled Maryland? Why didn't they do something when they controlled Congress?
I had my fill of weapons as a Marine in Vietnam. Most of these assault rifle owners have no idea what it's like to be in a fire fight, and then kill another human being. It's not a computer game. Even when you kill an enemy, and I never, never considered the Vietnamese my enemy, the pain lasts forever. Blow is right, we founded the country at the end of the barrel of a weapon, but few Americans really know what that means, and the NRA exploits it.
1
Mr. LaPierre's speech at the CPAC conference last week sounded
paranoid and conspiratorial, full of references to the evils of socialism.
and what would happen if AR's were taken off the market. The NRA,
are now the "Black Helicopter" people aiding and abetting our addiction
to guns by creating needless fear and anxiety in our day to day lives.
1
Sure it’s the guns and nobody need an automatic that’s strictly used for killing people. Now let’s think for one minute about copycat killers and the amount of press each killer gets after the crime has been committed. Is it the news or are we glorifying the horror with sensational journalism. Can we all do our part including the press.
Charles, everyone in this country knows guns are lethal.
Even the children in the last school shooting in Florida saw first hand with total panic what a handgun and a semi-automatic rifle which our soldiers use in the battlefields to kill our enemies which our leaders create deliberately to start a war and thus pocketing huge amounts of money from M.I.C. before those useless wars start which kill thousands of our brave men and women in uniform for nothing.
Talking about these AR-15 and other assault rifles which have no place in a civilized society but very easily available which this 'home grown terrorist', the term Trump will use only against the Muslims but not on this animal because he was a White Christian boy just like Timothy McVeigh, Dylann Roof and Stephen Paddock and other 'White Supremacists' or 'Nationalists' Americans who voted for him in the last election.
And the fact that none of Trump's family or the family members of the Republican politicians who sold their souls to N.R.A. and M.I.C. for huge amounts of contributions are not dying says a lot about when this "american Carnage' will stop.
Never.
Or not until their children die in gun violence.
And that's a sad chapter of our constitution which was supposed to grant us "Life,Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness" while also protecting our rights to carry guns under the 'Second Amendment'.
Unfortunately, Trump and the Republicans are protecting themselves while trashing our foremost desire : to live happily.
1
Often the most devastating commentary on gun violence and gun culture of this country is humor. It is disarming (no pun intended) to gun advocates and does not increase the level of heated retoric to the point of destroying any conversation. The best is Austraila's Jim Jefferies. His comparison of gun ownership to slavery, guns for teachers, and his debunking of guns for protection is hillarious because it is so true. I have yet to see the NRA counter this stand up piece.
Better this than the understandable but strident outrage of this piece
The current discussion promotes gun sales. Gun lovers without an assault rifle are going to want to snap one up on the remote chance they become unavailable, ditto for eighteen-year-olds who are now aware that the opportunity to buy a weapon of mass killing may be denied them until they turn 21. Gun sales skyrocket every time a discussion on gun control gains traction, making our streets, schools, public gatherings, and walks in the woods less safe, more frightening, and all because of rule by wackos.
2
Until we get action we need to become single issue voters and not vote for any politician that accepts NRA money.
1
Well that’s a cheery way to start the day.
"We have venerated the gun and valorized its usage." This pretty much sums it up for this country. It is a sick culture that prevents reasonable limits to these weapons. It is sick that we pay homage to a lethal device that can snuff out a human life forever in just a millisecond and with no effort whatsoever on the part of the cowardly user of such device. I will vote to put human life over and above the right of someone's desire to own an AR-15.
1
"The American idea is caught up in carnage. Its very beginning is rooted in gun violence. It is by the barrel that this land was acquired. It is by the barrel that the slave was subdued and his rebellions squashed. And that is to say nothing of our wars."
This passage betrays how Mr. Blow, and Left think about America.
Mr. Blow - this country is the greatest society the world has ever seen. We stand for liberty and freedom. We defeated the Nazis, we freed the slaves, we are a force for good throughout the world. I reject your disdain for our society.
1
How can we counter the rampant paranoia among right wingers who see gun possession as vital as water....even on the backs of human lives? They are blinded and cannot see themselves as aiding and abetting murderers. Each one of them who supports the ownership of assault rifles is an accessory before the fact. How do we counter such brain washed minds? Even bloody dead bodies do not sway them. This is a sign of a sick society. Corporations who are pulling support from the NRA is a start but it is terrifying to know many fellow Americans are so blind. The following is bone chilling: ‘ “No one has any idea how many assault rifles are in circulation. That’s intentional.” Knowing would require a registry, and the N.R.A. and conspiracy-minded anti-government groups see this as a step toward confiscation, or at least facilitating the possibility.”’. They see the confiscation of these weapons as a personal attack when in fact these weapons are akin to a grenade. How do we break through mind barriers to get to peace?
3
I believe that the NRA itself has also been taken hostage. Wayne LaPierre is the problem. After the recent shooting, the articulate students came forward, making sound arguments regarding firearms. Then, in response, Wayne erupts in a paranoid fear-mongering commentary that finally and clearly shows that this man should no longer be the leader of anything. It was desperate and disgusting. And corporate America finally has had enough too. They can no longer support the NRA, but I think it's that they can no longer support LaPierre and his venom. There are mostly fine people in the NRA. Wayne LaPierre needs to go, it's past time for this guy. The NRA needs to return to some level of civility and exit the trajectory of domestic terrorism that he has are set them on.
1
What what keeps me up at night are the hands, the minds, and the politics of these gun grippers who would, if Trump called for them to do so, use them in his defense. If he can have crowds maddened to yell, “Lock her up!” imagine if he inflames them to defend their second amendment rights. He bragged that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it. His gun toting followers believe that might makes right. They value their hard metal power war weapons over the sanctity of human life. First graders dead in Newton, ninth graders shot dead in Parkland, lives lost in Las Vegas, in churches, playgrounds,and yet we allow the NRA to wage war against our most vulnerable children. They have the sin of blood on their hands, but it is up to us to end this madness. Americans must stand up to the NRA and all those who think that the second amendment is more important than the lives of its citizens. We the people in order to form a more perfect union need to disarm the NRA of its power to kill us.
2
The combination of vicious hatred of the other, willful ignorance, and unfettered greed is a heady brew. Perhaps if we were all forced to actually see what gun violence looks like. smell like, and feels like enough political will could accrue to act. Ever since the Nation was mobilized by the scenes of carnage in the Vietnam War and consequently our newsfeed was scrubbed of reality we have been blind to the true horror our culture.
1
The problem is guns. too many to easily obtainable by people who
should not have them
unless youl ike shredded vension, they are not needed to hunt.
they are weapons of war designed to kill people.
1
The idea of arming teachers is incredibly foolish. It seems to depend on teachers having pistols in their desk drawers, ready to face off a murderer armed with an AR-15 or equivalent assault rifle. The AR-15 is *exponentially* more lethal than any hand gun. That's why the officer at Parkland and the security guard at the Pulse night club - just 5 blocks from my home - took cover. They knew they were hopelessly outgunned. We express admiration for first responders, but do we really expect them to be suicidal?
Walls in most schools are drywall over frame, a structure that an AR-15 round would hardly even notice. Arming teachers would - at best - result in TWO fields of fire, with a predictable outcome. The whole idea is stupid beyond expression.
Sad to say, if we want to protect our children in schools we'll have to adopt a bunker mentality: heavily armed guards with body armor and metal detectors at every entrance.
What a world. But it's come to that unless our politicians find the moral courage to reenact the assault weapons ban and further clamp down - hard! - on the sale and ownership of military-style firearms. They have no place in a civil society... *including* for "boar hunting", of all the nonsensical excuses.
The slaughter of children is something to get MAD about, people! So get mad and press hard against the Congressmen who weasel about strong controls of savage, vicious weapons! Please!
2
At one time America was Slave. The south encroached further and further and chipped away at the northern idea of democracy. The 3/5th clause, abrogation of laws and compromises, and returning of slaves to their rightful owners were all forced upon the north. In the end, God was invoked to hold another human being in bondage and civil war came at Sumter.
What is the list of NRA insane demands and beliefs? No background checks, Dickey amendment, high capacity magazines, AR-15s for all, government tyranny, stand your ground and castle laws, arming teachers with guns, mobs acting as militias. Wayne LaPierre invoked God the other day.
The greater the outcry the deeper the NRA digs a hole for America.
The civil war was capped by an amendment to the constitution to ban slavery in all the states.
A civil war is taking place right now and the NRA is waging it upon us. Count up the bullet-riddled bodies.
We have a long slog ahead of us because the end-game must be to rid the Constitution of the 2nd amendment. It is the reason for the perniciousness of groups like the NRA. Once it is removed we can then identify ourselves as Americans beyond and without ownership of guns. The government can then legislate ownership like they do in all other advanced western democracies.
1
Abolish the second Amendment and start all over again. No one should have the constitutional right to own a gun. And no one really knows what the founding fathers meant so we in 2918 should decide.
The gun industry is faced with a dilemma: guns are a pretty durable product. They have to be durable in order to perform their function and not harm their owners. Unlike cars and washing machines most guns, if well cared for, can last for decades. Some are even handed down within families and of course sold by private sellers, unsupervised in any way. There can be no "planned obsolescence" for guns. But in order for gun manufacturers to make a profit, they must increase the demand for their product. Capitalism is the creation of new and higher wants. How to increase the want, the demand? Simple: feed gun paranoia. You need a gun to protect yourself and your family because everything is dangerous! "Others" are dangerous! A secret global cabal may try to take over the word and you need to be ready! Your own government is plotting to take your guns! Add the lubricious application of gun lobby money to politicians, inject some foam-flecked Wayne LaPierre ravings about God and country and 'Murica, repear and re-apply after the occurance of every predictable atrocity. Ta-da! Increased demand. Minor overhead "costs" of innocent lives don't even make it their balance sheets.
2
Exactly right Mr. Blow. I wish it were not so, but we have always been a violent country. It's in our genes. We began with genocide and slavery and never owned up to it, and now we seem to be stuck in the quicksand of our own fatal flaws.
The only, yes the ONLY, way to stop murders of large numbers of citizens, is to ban the sale AND possession of assault rifles and all rapid fire weapons.
The NRA should be put on a list of groups that sponsor terrorists. That's the first step. The next step is to track all AR-15s and their ilk and make possession of a designed-for-mass-homicide firearm without a license a felony. Third, we need to only give licenses to law enforcement and other members of our modern militia.
This is me compromising. The other solution is to make the possession or manufacture of ammunition a felony.
What is more important: your hobby or our lives?
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America is the gun. It is the aspect of our national character I most dislike.