California Free Press

Off the Top of My Head

"Spare me the bullshit about mental illness"

by John Lawrence

In sane countries abortions are legal and assault rifles are illegal just the opposite of the US. Italian women are eligible to request an abortion for health, economic or social reasons, including the circumstances under which conception occurred. Abortions are performed free of charge in public hospitals or in private structures authorized by the regional health authorities. Assault weapons are not legal in Italy, nor are any fully automatic rifles or handguns. Noise suppressors, or silencers, are also illegal, along with any kind of military or police-grade weapons. Abortion in the United Kingdom is de facto available through the Abortion Act 1967 in Great Britain, and the Abortion (Northern Ireland) (No. 2) Regulations 2020.The following are generally prohibited: Fully automatic or burst-fire weapons, which may include some air guns. Semi-automatic or pump-action rifles that fire centre-fire ammunition (e.g. Ruger Mini-14, L1A1). The Swedish Abortion Act came into force in 1974, giving women the right to decide for themselves whether they wanted to end a pregnancy in the first eighteen weeks. Since then, abortion procedures have become more effective, safe, accepted and accessible. Current Norwegian legislation and public health policy provides for abortion on request in the first 12 weeks of gestation, by application up to the 18th week, and thereafter only under special circumstances until the fetus is viable, which is usually presumed at 21 weeks and 6 days. In Norway there is a total ban on automatic firearms for civilians, unless they fall into the collector category. Modification of semi-automatic guns into fully automatic without the consent of the police is a felony crime. The EU already bans all automatic weapons, plus some semi-automatic guns widely available in the United States.

Apart from the very few European nations that retain highly restrictive laws on abortion — Andorra, Lichtenstein, Malta, Monaco and Poland — no other European country “bans” abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy. Instead, almost all European countries allow abortion throughout pregnancy on a range of grounds, including where there are risks to a patient’s physical or mental health, and in situations involving severe or fatal fetal impairment. According to the Center for Reproductive Rights, 95% of European women of reproductive age live in a country where abortion services are available on demand.

NBC reported:

[Connecticut Senator] Murphy said the shooting deaths of 19 students and two teachers in Uvalde, Texas, on Tuesday was a uniquely American problem.

"This only happens in this country and nowhere else. Nowhere else do little kids go to school thinking that they might be shot that day. Nowhere else do parents have to talk to their kids as I have had to do about why they got locked into a bathroom and told to be quiet for five minutes just in case a bad man entered that building. Nowhere else does that happen except here in the United States of America. And it is a choice. It is our choice to let it continue," Murphy said.

In comments to reporters afterward, Murphy took aim at the Republican talking point that mass shootings are a problem of mental illness, not easy access to guns.

"Spare me the bullshit about mental illness. We don’t have any more mental illness than any other country in the world. You cannot explain this through a prism of mental illness, because we don’t — we’re not an outlier on mental illness. We’re an outlier when it comes to access to firearms and the ability of criminals and very sick people to get their hands on firearms. That’s what makes America different,” he said.

There are only three countries that have a constitutional right to keep and bear arms: Mexico, Guatemala, and the United States. The US quibbles while the earth burns and floods due to global warming. Nations are immersed in conflict while they need to be cooperating if the human species, despite all its vaunted high technology, is to survive. Earth itself will survive. The survival of the human species is doubtful unless every nation goes all out to prevent global warming which is not happening. What is happening is that nations are trying to prevent the release of greenhouse gasses on the margins without interfering with economic growth. It's a recipe for disaster.

Off the Top of My Head

Another Day, Another Mass Shooting. What Else Is New?

by John Lawrence

Einstein said, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” The US' inaction with respect to gun control is doing the same thing over and over and expecting the same results. We just got used to the same results, and rather than doing what needs to be done to get different results, we are content with doing the same thing over and over and getting the same results. Rather than changing anything, Americans are willing to get the same results rather than doing anything in the hopes of getting better results. I'll call this sclerotic insanity. What needs to be done for starters is very simple: get assault rifles off the streets. In the long run the US needs a new Constitution sans the Second Amendment. Other countries change or revise their constitutions when it is beneficial and/or advantageous to do so. Human lives and the quality thereof is more important than a piece of paper. But not according to gun toting Republicans. They will exploit every loophole in our vaunted "rule of law" in order to impose mass insanity on the American public. Witness the fact that one judge can withdraw an FDA approved drug from the market!

So far there have been 146 mass shootings in the US this year, more than one a day. In France there have been 8. In Germany there have been 5. In Italy there have been 2. In the Netherlands there have been 2. In the UK there has been one, injuring 6, killing none. One in Norway, One in China. One in Australia. Even in Russia there have been only 21, 7 times fewer than in the US. Only in the US is there sclerotic, resolute and unwavering insanity. And we brag to the rest of the world about what a great country we are and how they all should emulate us! Now the spectacle of mass shootings, the details of which are duly reported by the media, are an ever present form of entertainment as we are treated to mass shooting porn on a daily basis. Each instance becomes the inspiration for the next mass shooter as he (isn't it always a "he") sees how much publicity he will get after he goes out and "legally" purchases an AK-15 and opens fire. It's just a continuation of the video games he has been playing at home. It's a real life video game, and obviously we all will recover very nicely because just as soon as the next mass shooting materializes (we shouldn't have to wait more than a day), the previous one is totally forgotten. Sometimes even the spectacle of the last one is cut off prematurely as the next one takes precedence.

The International Bar Association reported:

"[New Zealand] has introduced swift and sweeping reforms of gun laws following the mass shooting in Christchurch in March [2019] – a move that highlights the continuing lack of action to tackle gun violence in the United States.

"‘One of New Zealand’s darkest days,’ was how the country’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern described the mass shooting in Christchurch on 15 March. Fifty-one people were killed and 50 others wounded when a lone gunman opened fire at two mosques in the city, in the country’s worst peacetime shooting. The gunman livestreamed his actions on Facebook.

"Less than a month later, New Zealand’s Parliament voted 119-1 to introduce a nationwide ban on semi-automatic weapons and assault rifles. In addition to the sweeping reform of gun laws, a special commission is being set up to explore broader issues around accessibility of weapons and the role of social media.

"The rapid response to the Christchurch attack is in stark contrast to that of the United States. America has the highest rate of murder and manslaughter by firearms in the developed world and a high rate of mass shootings, yet even moderate reform of gun laws has been blocked for 25 years. Not even last year’s March for Our Lives (MFOL) demonstration in support of legislation to prevent gun violence – one of the largest protests in American history – could trigger political will for reform."

There are cracks in the armor of the US Constitution and rule of law that have appeared relatively recently due to the intransigency of one party in a two party system. Other countries have demonstrated that there really is a better way of doing some things. But the US stubbornly goes on its way stuck in the sludge of its own hubris.

Off the Top of My Head

Why Not Go State by State for Stricter Gun Laws?

by John Lawrence

Recently, with the overturning of Roe v Wade, red states are going one by one in enacting tougher abortion laws. Why not go the same route in blue states with regard to stricter gun laws? Forget the national Congress. They're dysfunctional and next to useless as long as Republicans control the House. But states in which Democrats control the state legislature and the Governorship should be able to implement assault weapon bans as well as many other severe gun control restrictions. States such as California and Michigan, in which this is the case, should go ahead with this legislation. Make it illegal to own an AR-15. Confiscate existing AR-15s. CNN reported: "A study published in January by a leading non-profit organization that focuses on gun violence prevention found that there is a direct correlation in states with weaker gun laws and higher rates of gun deaths, including homicides, suicides and accidental killings. The study by Everytown for Gun Safety determined that California had the strongest gun laws in the country. Hawaii topped the list with the lowest rate of gun deaths in the country while Mississippi led the country with both the weakest gun laws and highest rate of gun deaths. “What this project does, is show what we’ve been saying for years: Gun laws save lives,” said Nick Suplina, senior vice president of law and policy at Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund. “We think this is going to be a really important tool for lawmakers, reporters and advocates that have been looking for the kind of visual tool that can make that case clearly.”

State government trifecta is a term to describe single-party government, when one political party holds the governorship and majorities in both chambers of the state legislature. One political party holds the governorship, a majority in the state senate, and a majority in the state house in a state's government. As of March 30, 2023, there are 17 Democratic trifectas,The following states represent Democratic trifectas: California, Oregon, Washington, New Mexico, Colorado, Minnesota, Illinois, Michigan, Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Maine. These states should get together or go singly one by one to pass stricter gun laws just as red states have passed stricter abortion laws. Then anyone who wants a gun can move to a red state and anyone who wants an abortion can move to a blue state. Ha! As ridiculous as that sounds, it's emblematic of the reality that we are not, contrary to Obama's statement, really one United States of America.

California is the state with the strictest gun laws, and it also has the seventh-lowest rate of deaths by gun violence. In addition to regulation on who can purchase a gun and what kinds of firearms may be legally obtained, California gun laws allow for funding to community programs that have reduced gun-related violence. Other states with strict gun laws include Illinois, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, Hawaii, Maryland, and Massachusetts. Some of these states require background checks and a waiting period before someone is allowed to purchase a gun; some require that they undergo training first. New York recently passed more restrictive gun laws:

"Governor Kathy Hochul today signed a landmark legislative package to immediately strengthen the state's gun laws, close critical loopholes exposed by shooters in Buffalo and Uvalde and protect New Yorkers from the scourge of gun violence that continues to infect our nation and endanger our communities. Governor Hochul signed the bills at the Northeast Bronx YMCA flanked by Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, Speaker Carl Heastie, partners in the legislature, Attorney General Letitia James and victims and survivors of gun violence.  

"Gun violence is an epidemic that is tearing our country apart. Thoughts and prayers won't fix this, but taking strong action will," Governor Hochul said. "In New York, we're taking bold steps to protect the people of our state. I am proud to sign a comprehensive bill package that prohibits the sale of semiautomatic weapons to people under 21, bans body armor sales outside of people in select professions, closes critical gun law loopholes and strengthens our Red Flag Law to keep guns away from dangerous people—new measures that I believe will save lives."

Time magazine reported on March 12, 2023:

"Michigan lawmakers are aiming to pass an 11-bill gun safety package across the state this week, considering provisions that would require background checks on gun purchases, create safe storage laws, and establish extreme risk protection orders—also known as red flag laws. Democrats, who have control of the state government for the first time in some 40 years, hope to deliver on the promise of advancing gun safety following a Michigan State University mass shooting last month that left three dead and five wounded."

In Colorado:

State of play: Five major gun control measures are under consideration as the Democratic-dominated Legislature hits the halfway mark this week in the 120-day session.

Details: Three measures advanced through a Senate committee Wednesday after a day-long hearing and party-line vote. The legislation would:

• Expand the state's "red flag" law to allow psychologists, teachers and others to ask a judge to temporarily seize a person's firearms if they pose a threat.
• Repeal current limits to allow civil lawsuits — including from the attorney general — seeking damages against firearm makers and sellers.
• Increase the minimum age to purchase a firearm in certain cases to age 21, up from 18.

Meanwhile, earlier this week, a House panel approved a measure to require a three-day waiting period for firearm purchases.

In Illinois:

"State lawmakers in January passed and Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed into law a measure that would ban assault-style rifles and high-capacity magazines. Those who already own such rifles would face limitations on their sale and transfer, and would have to register them with the Illinois State Police by 2024. But that law – which came about six months after the Highland Park shooting – faced immediate lawsuits in state and federal court, arguing it violated the Illinois and US constitutions. A Macon County judge found earlier this month that exemptions to the law, including for law enforcement officers and armed guards at federally supervised nuclear sites, violated the equal protection clause of the state’s constitution. The Illinois Supreme Court agreed to fast-track the state’s appeal, slating oral arguments for May."

So fight these bastards all the way to whatever Supreme Court has jurisdiction. Keep on fighting them. Pass very creative laws. Tie them up in court. Do whatever it takes to get AR-15s off the streets. Gun violence is ruining this country. Nowhere else in the world do people have to put up with this type of situation.

Off the Top of My Head

Mass Murderers Get Much More Than Their 15 Minutes of Fame

by John Lawrence

The perpetrator of the recent mass murder in the Q night club wants to be addressed as "they" and "them" because he is "non-binary." How about if we address him as "you sonofabitch." Barely, have we gotten done with one mass murder in the news cycle than another one comes along to take precedence. The news these days consists mainly of covering one mass murder after another. Mass murderers are lining up. Next? Better make sure the news cycle is clear so that your atrocity takes over the headlines. Then we hear all about the perpetrator's messed up childhood, and, if there is a court trial, the news media dutifully covers it giving the murderer another 15 minutes of fame at least. Recently, families of the victims were upset when a mass murderer was given a sentence of free room and board for life with no possibility of ever having to make a living for himself rather than the death penalty. The news media and a coterie of lawyers, not to mention gun manufacturers and merchandisers are making a small fortune off of the mass murder business. Here's an idea; mass murderers caught in the act should immediately be taken out and shot thus avoiding the news cycle, numerous lawyers, pundits pontificating, authors hawking books and displays of grieving and mourning. It's all become a predictable big business. Yes, the GDP would decrease slightly, but who cares. We have become a mass culture of mass murder spectacles.

So the Second Amendment says: "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." What is well-regulated, much less militia-like about individuals going out and buying an AK-47 and committing mass murder over some real or perceived grievance? By the way, the news media informs us that "the police have not yet discovered a motive." They never do. What possible motive could there be for mass murder that would justify it? The motive is the fact that the mass murderer is fucked up. Saying that he - and it always is a "he" - is mentally ill, is a means of evoking sympathy for someone who deserves none. But if individual mass murderers are fucked up, so is the Second Amendment. The Supreme Court decided in the Heller case that the Second Amendment gave individuals the right to own (and use) guns. What about the "well regulated militia" bullshit? The Supreme Court basically backed the rights of mass murderers. Now according to recent reports: Six million Americans carried guns daily in 2019, twice as many as in 2015. And this: "The trend is expected to continue, after the supreme court ruling earlier this year overturning strict limits on public gun-carrying." Whose side is the Supreme Court on? 

Pogo said: "We have met the enemy and he is us." True. The enemy is not "out there." It is the very wonderful American people themselves and the very vaunted Supreme Court which is so concerned about preserving life in the womb and so unconcerned about preserving life once it's outside the womb. After spending a trillion dollars a year on our military and military-industrial complex, it seems we as a nation are powerless to stop Americans from self immolating. So Americans have to come to expect one mass killing after another in assembly line like fashion. Next? They are already getting in line. Fame and fortune and a free meal ticket for life awaits. Meanwhile, the rest of us are reminded of John Milton's poem: "we also serve who only stand and wait." The rest of us go to our boring jobs, take care of our traumatized families and hope for a better life for us and our children if the world doesn't burn up due to global warming. Please, President Biden, do something about assault rifles.

Off the Top of My Head

The Problem With Climate and Gun Disasters: They're One Offs

by John Lawrence

Instead of attributing a climate disaster to global warming, victims will say, "I've never seen anything like this, and I've lived here all my life. Gun disaster victims will say, "I didn't think it could ever happen here." If they said instead, when interviewed, "I think guns should be gotten off the streets" or "Climate change destroyed my house and we're not doing enough to deal with it", then maybe there would be a general awareness growing among the population. There is not enough of a groundswell among the public to change anything because most of the public is not affected by any particular incident. If a particular climate or gun disaster raised the price of gas, then maybe something would be done of a preventative measure. The latest gun legislation is a total joke. It will do nothing to prevent mass shootings. One off climate disasters will do nothing to raise the national consciousness especially among conservatives who don't even believe in global warming. Instead they will call a flood a 500 year event, one that will only occur every 500 years. But then it occurs again tomorrow. Floods and fires are an almost daily occurrence somewhere in the world. If they happen outside the country, no attention at all is paid to the event although climate change is a problem for the whole world not just for any particular nation. It is not just restricted to national borders. Gun violence, on the other hand, is just restricted pretty much to the US. Every other country has sane gun laws.

Politicians, especially Republicans, are in it for the money and not necessarily to do any good for the general public which can't pay for lobbyists to bombard them with their point of view backed up with generous campaign contributions. The more a country is run by politicians profiting by virtue of their positions, the less democratic it is because they are representing their own interests which often means catering to the interests of lobbyists and not catering to the interests of the general public, not to mention the interests of nature or the environment. Many politicians, especially the Republican party as it's constituted today, are guided only by self interest in the same way as corporations are required by law to maximize profits for their shareholders singlemindedly without any other considerations like taking into account what is equitable ao far as society is concerned. The only way to defeat this pernicious aspect of democracy is to take the money out of politics and provide incentives in such a way that a politician finds it in his best interests to represent the interests of his or her constituents and not the interests of the entity which is lobbying him or her. Perhaps an advocate for the people should be paid for out of tax money.

Obviously, it's not in the interests of the victims of gum violence to have the proliferation of guns especially assault rifles on the streets. However, since those that have not been affected by gun violence don't see it as a problem, nothing major is being done. As far as they're concerned, it's a problem that only happens to other people. Unless they identify strongly with the victims of gun violence or start to think that it is something that very likely might happen to them, nothing will be done since it only affects a minority of people and democracies supposedly are run by the majority of the people. Since empathy is a relatively weak emotion compared to self-interest, especially in the US where people have been groomed to seek their self-interest regardless of the effect it has on others, seriously restricting the use and proliferation of guns goes out the window.

What is happening to the human race as a result of climate change is happening at such a slow pace that most people would rather maximize their profits now rather than setting aside some of them because they might benefit people in the future when they might not even be an inhabitant of the planet at that time. Again the manifestation of climate change so far has been one offs only affecting a small group in any one incidence of a natural disaster. When climate change gets to the point where sea level rise is affecting a large number of major cities in the world simultaneously, then something might be done only it will be too late. At that point the only thing will be to react defensively rather than having taken action in the past that would have forestalled the present event. People would rather eat their cake right now rather than saving it for the future when they might not even be around to eat it.

Off the Top of My Head

Guns: The Last Vestige of Male Dominance

by John Lawrence

When females run the world, hopefully soon, assault rifles will be off the streets in a New York minute. Toxic masculinity has been responsible for war and conflict resolution by violence since the world began. Gun manufacturers advertise, "Get your man card." Mamas don't want their babies to grow up to be mass murderers or the victims of mass murderers. They don't want their babies to go through life with PTSD from having participated in that primordial male occupation - war. Sure there are some masculinized females who have adopted a male consciousness and support war and dominance as a means of conflict resolution, but there are more who support diplomacy, understanding and empathy. Even Hillary Clinton had to prove she was "tough" by supporting the Iraq war because she wanted to run for President. There will be no peace and no love as long as men are in charge. Witness some of the nations on earth where females run things. New Zealand, Sweden and Denmark have female presidents or prime ministers. These ladies reside over relatively peaceful and enlightened nations. Nobody in their right mind would refer to the US as an "enlightened" nation although the enlightenment was supposedly over 200 years ago. At that time the US Constitution was written in such a way to "secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity" for white male property owners only. The Constitution excluded African Americans and women who didn't get to vote till the 1920s. African Americans are still suffering generational effects from being excluded first by slavery, then by Jim Crow laws and later by red lining.

Jacinda Ardern, prime minister of New Zealand got assault rifles off the streets in short order after a mass murder in new zealand. Ardern describes herself as a social democrat and a progressive. The Sixth Labour Government has faced challenges from the New Zealand housing crisis, child poverty, and social inequality. In March 2019, in the aftermath of the Christchurch mosque shootings, Ardern reacted with empathy and rapidly introduced strict gun laws, winning her wide recognition. Throughout 2020 she led New Zealand's response to the COVID-19 pandemic, for which she won praise for New Zealand being one of the few Western nations to successfully contain the virus. Ardern led the Labour Party to victory in the 2020 general election, gaining an overall majority of 65 seats in Parliament, the first time this has happened since the introduction of proportional representation in 1996.

Less than one month after a gunman killed 50 people in an attack on two mosques in Christchurch, the New Zealand Parliament voted to ban most semi-automatic and military-style weapons. The law makes it illegal to possess the prohibited weapons in New Zealand. Current owners of the now-banned firearms had a short period of time to return their weapons for compensation under a buyback program. If they didn't return them, they would face up to five years in prison. Speaking before lawmakers, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said she knew her country would approve a ban after the police commissioner described the deadly nature of the guns used in the attack, which had been obtained legally and easily modified to hold more than 60 bullets per magazine. "I could not fathom how weapons that could cause such destruction and large-scale death could have been obtained legally in this country," Ardern said. She described visits to hospitals where dozens of victims were still recovering. "I struggle to recall any single gunshot wounds," she said. "In every case they spoke of multiple injuries. Multiple debilitating injuries that deemed it impossible for them to recover in days, let alone weeks. They will carry disabilities for a lifetime, and that's before you consider the psychological impact."

So now the Supreme Court is in the process of reverting the US to the Constitution as originally written where only white male property owners were in charge, the "Age of Enlightenment." Male dominance means that the only means of conflict resolution is by war or the threat of war. There is no such thing as peace. Power and strength is what prevents your neighbor from conquering you so why bother to empathize with your neighbor? The end of the Cold War was the biggest opportunity for bringing about a peaceful world. Gorbachev and Reagan hit it off and actually reduced nuclear weapons with the INF treaty. But their initiatives were never extended and capitalized on. Instead the US and the world reverted to hostility with Russia by extending NATO to Russia's border. It was an opportunity to create peace between the western world and Russia, but no a stance of power based containment ensued so that the Reagan-Gorbachev peace initiative ended up being almost entirely worthless with power politics becoming the operative policy as it always has been, and war is the culmination and outworking of power politics.

Off the Top of My Head

What the Future Holds: Even More Mass Shootings

by John Lawrence

The US is the only nation that has embedded the seeds of its own destruction in its Constitution. What we can expect is an accelerating rate of mass shootings unless assault rifles are gotten off the streets which is something Republicans have refused to do. So now there are only 3 or 4 mass shootings a day. Pretty soon there will be so many that they will crowd out all other news on the news channels. They will need multiple split screens showing mass shootings in multiple areas. The mass shooting response industry will become big business. There will need to be more law enforcement, more investigators, more prosecutors, more pundits wondering about the motives of the shooter. This is what we should expect: increased numbers of mass shootings. Six months into 2022, there have been at least 309 mass shootings in the US, according to the Gun Violence Archive. Shooting incidents in 2022 are rivaling last year’s record-breaking numbers. Right now there are almost two mass shootings a day. By the end of the year we can expect three or four a day. The only effective thing that could change this trajectory would be to outlaw assault weapons and get them off the streets, but there is little likelihood that this will be done so we can expect more of the same.

So now that mass shooting has become almost an industry, we can expect to see mass shooters vying to set records, vying to be the one with the record of the most victims. So the planning in their minds will consist of trying to kill a number of victims at least in the double digits. Less than that number of deaths will be seen in their own minds as a failure. The Las Vegas killer took out 60 people and wounded over 400. These are the numbers that future mass killers will be shooting for. They not only want to join the club of mass murderers, they want to do so in a leadership position. Unfortunately, the gun industry and Republican politicians are enablers. The courts that have interpreted the Second Amendment to mean anything goes as far as gun purchases are concerned are the enablers of mass murder. Other countries have outlawed assault rifles as soon as one mass murder occurred. Less than one month after a gunman killed 50 people in an attack on two mosques in Christchurch, the New Zealand Parliament voted to ban most semi-automatic and military-style weapons. Ditto for Australia. The US, however, will go down fighting to preserve the rights of mass murderers.

It's unthinkable in the US that assault rifles could be outlawed. Witness the current toothless "gun safety" law that was just passed by Congress. It will do nothing to prevent mass murder to accelerate since it does nothing to get guns off the street. The confiscation of guns is the only thing that will put a stop to the continuation of these events, and they will only get more horrible as time goes on. This is what America has to look forward to. This is America's dystopian future. American culture supports and encourages mass murder. Video games consist almost entirely of people committing mass murders. American movies almost always feature guns and murder. The current shooter was listening to rap lyrics. The situation favors mass killers. They can choose the time and place. They can choose any gathering of people be it a religious congregation, a parade, a grocery store or a school. The police are helpless. Mass killers use the tactic of surprise to their advantage the same way the Japanese used the tactic of surprise to bomb Pearl Harbor. The advantage is always on the side of the mass killer who uses the military tactic of surprise. So while those in power twiddles their thumbs over gun violence and are paid off by the gun industry, America will continue to be terrorized by its own people. Geez, Usama bin Laden must be laughing in his watery grave.

Off the Top of My Head

What Mass Shootings and Global Warming Have in Common

by John Lawrence

Even if sales of AK-15s were banned today, there would still be enough AK-15s on the streets for mass shootings to continue for decades. Even if no more carbon dioxide goes into the atmosphere starting today, there is enough already there to provide weather disasters for decades. Meanwhile, gun sales and carbon dioxide generation are continuing apace. There will be no diminution of gun violence nor will there be any diminution of carbon dioxide entering the atmosphere. If there were zero gun sales tomorrow and zero carbon dioxide generation tomorrow, there might be a chance for recovery from both travesties, but, no, those travesties will continue along predictable lines. There will be even more mass shootings and assorted other gun violence while gas powered vehicles and power generating plants will continue to pump out carbon dioxide using the atmosphere as a waste dump. Plastic will continue to pollute the oceans. Chemical fertilizer and pest control chemicals will continue to pollute waterways. People pursuing the American Dream will continue consuming products to the point of commercial gluttony and beyond.

The production of steel and cement produces large amounts of carbon dioxide that goes directly into the atmosphere. It's a matter of sheer chemistry. Steelmaking is one of the most carbon emission intensive industries in the world. As of 2020, steelmaking is estimated to be responsible for 7 to 9 per cent of all direct fossil fuel greenhouse gas emissions. In order to mitigate global warming, the industry will need to find reductions in emissions. In 2020, McKinsey identified a number of technologies for decarbonization including hydrogen usage, carbon capture and reuse, and maximizing use of electric arc furnaces powered by clean energy. A Swedish company has developed a way of making carbon dioxide emission free steel. The Guardian reported:

The world’s first customer delivery of “green steel” produced without using coal is taking place in Sweden, according to its manufacturer.

The Swedish venture Hybrit said it was delivering the steel to truck-maker Volvo AB as a trial run before full commercial production in 2026. Volvo has said it will start production in 2021 of prototype vehicles and components from the green steel.

Steel production using coal accounts for around 8% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Hybrit started test operations at its pilot plant for green steel in Lulea, northern Sweden, a year ago. It aims to replace coking coal, traditionally needed for ore-based steel making, with renewable electricity and hydrogen. Hydrogen is a key part of the EU’s plan to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

So the chemistry is being changed so that water H₂O is produced as a by product instead of carbon dioxide, CO².

CNBC reported:

Cars and electricity get a lot of attention in conversations about decarbonization, and they should. But building materials like cement and steel also need to be scrutinized.

The production of cement is responsible for about 8% of global carbon dioxide emissions and 5.5% of total global greenhouse gas emissions.

On [April 28, 2022], Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Bill Gates’ climate finance firm, and DCVC, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm, announced they led a $55 million funding round in Brimstone Energy, a start-up aiming to commercialize carbon-negative cement.

“We need to recognize that cement is a massive problem for climate and that nobody has figured out how to address it at scale without dramatically increasing costs or moving away from the regulated materials that the construction industry knows and loves,” Breakthrough partner Carmichael Roberts told CNBC.

So it is not enough to get gas guzzlers off the roads. Gas prices going up is a good thing. It will guarantee that more new car purchases will be hybrid or all electric vehicles. But the world is not changing over to non-polluting forms of energy quick enough. Major climate related disasters are already occurring and will continue to occur. Since we are still adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, these disasters will only get worse as time goes by. Meanwhile, all kinds of other ecological disasters are taking place including the insane and greedy pursuit of insatiable profits in the gun production industry and the buildup of military hardware. In 2019, a report released by Durham and Lancaster University found the US military to be “one of the largest climate polluters in history, consuming more liquid fuels and emitting more CO2e (carbon-dioxide equivalent) than most countries”. In addition to climate pollution the military is responsible for the development of assault rifles like the AR-15 which was first developed for combat operations. Very conveniently, it is now a profit center for US gun corporations, and in addition to killing combatants on the field of battle, it has brought war time slaughter into children's schools, people's super markets and night clubs. We've come full circle. And in addition the production of steel weapons results in increased carbon emissions.

Off the Top of My Head

Why None of the Proposed Federal Legislation Will Stop Gun Violence

by John Lawrence

The proposed legislation is little more than a farce even if it passes. When the most radical item is raising the legal age to 21 for purchasing an AR-15, the whole context of gun control is rendered risible. There will still be 120.5 guns in circulation for every American. None of the proposed legislation will limit the number of gun sales let alone getting guns out of circulation and off the streets. The only effective legislation would be to outlaw the sale of AR-15s completely and initiate a mandatory buy back program to get rid of these guns. This is not even thinkable in terms of the rationality of American lawmakers. The proposed legislation is just skirting around the edges, and it will do nothing to curb gun violence.

After a mass shooting in Australia in 1996, Australia not only banned the sale of AR-15 type guns, it initiated a mandatory buy back program to get these guns off the streets. New Zealand did the same thing after a mass shooting in 2019. In both cases mass shootings and gun deaths in general plummeted. These two countries have demonstrated that the only effective way to counter the American culture of gun violence is to take the drastic step of banning assault rifles and getting the ones already in circulation off the streets by initiating a buy back program. The US, of course, will not take these "radical" steps, and so mass shootings and huge numbers of gun deaths will continue unabated. In a sense legislators are facilitating by means of their inaction the next slaughter of innocent school children. These people who are supposedly running this country fail to realize that gun violence is systemic now in American culture and their "solutions" will do little or nothing to eradicate it. Thank God my parents who were educators never had to even imagine this problem.

BBC News reported:

Firearms deaths are a fixture in American life.

There were 1.5 million of them between 1968 and 2017 - that's higher than the number of soldiers killed in every US conflict since the American War for Independence in 1775.

In 2020 alone, more than 45,000 Americans died at the end of a barrel of a gun, whether by homicide or suicide, more than any other year on record. The figure represents a 25% increase from five years prior, and a 43% increase from 2010.

I for one advocate getting rid of the Second Amendment to the Constitution. No country should enshrine in its Constitution any language which can be interpreted, as these words have been, to give any citizen the absolute right to own a gun. It has been pointed out again and again that there are more restrictive laws for car ownership than there are for gun ownership. The framers of the US Constitution made a big mistake when they didn't qualify the Second Amendment. They could have saved a lot of innocent people being killed if they had. The same thing applies to the First Amendment, but that is a subject for another day. Even the legal shooting of guns is no more than a "hobby" if you want to call the slaying of innocent animals a hobby. This is a hobby that has been elevated, unfortunately, to a Constitutional right with totally devastating results. Any other hobby that killed people would be legislated out of existence. The US needs to follow the example of countries like Australia and New Zealand which have treated gun violence in a sensible manner with the result that gun deaths in those countries have drastically diminished. But this is just another Problem of American Democracy which is putting the US on a downhill slide.

Financing Gunmakers

How to make big banks like JPMorgan choose whether to be socially responsible

by Robert Reich

June 2, 2022

After a mass shooting in Parkland, Florida in February 2018, that left 17 people dead, JPMorgan Chase — America’s largest bank — publicly distanced itself from the firearm industry. Its chief financial officer reassured the media that the bank’s relationships with gunmakers “have come down significantly and are pretty limited.”

That was then. This past September, a new Texas law went into effect that bans state agencies from working with any firm that “discriminates” against companies or individuals in the gun industry. The law requires banks and other professional service firms submit written affirmations to the Texas attorney general that they comply with the law.

What was JPMorgan to do? Sticking with its high-minded policy of “significantly” reducing business with gun manufacturers would result in exclusion from Texas’s lucrative bond market. Texas sold more than $58 billion of bonds in 2020, and is currently the second largest bond market after California. (I’ll come back to California in a moment.)

JPMorgan Chase had been among the top bond underwriters for Texas. Between 2015 and 2020, the bank underwrote 138 Texas bond deals, raising $19 billion for the state, and generating nearly $80 million in fees for JPMorgan, according to Bloomberg. Yet since the new Texas law went into effect in September, the bank has been shut out of working for the state.

JPMorgan’s dilemma since Texas enacted its law has been particularly delicate because its chairman and CEO, Jamie Dimon, has been preaching the doctrine of corporate social responsibility — repeatedly telling the media that big banks like JPMorgan Chase have social duties to the communities they serve.

So what did JPMorgan decide to do about financing gun manufacturers, in light of the new Texas law? It caved to Texas. (Never mind that last year, the bank’s board granted Dimon a special $52.6-million award — which is almost three-quarters of the fees the bank received from underwriting Texas bonds between 2015 and 2020.)

On May 13 — one day before the Buffalo mass shooting and less than two weeks before the Texas shooting — JPMorgan sent a letter to the attorney general of Texas, declaring that the bank’s policy “does not discriminate against or prevent” it from doing business “with any firearm entity or firearm trade association based solely on its status as a firearm entity or firearm trade association,” adding that “these commercial relationships are important and valuable.”

The Texas law barring the state from doing business with any firm that discriminates against the gun industry is the first of its kind in the country. But similar laws — described by gun industry lobbyists as “FIND” laws, or firearm industry nondiscriminatory legislation — are now working their way through at least 10 statehouses, according to the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. This year, Wyoming passed a law that allows gun companies to sue banks and other firms that refuse to do business with them.

The lesson here is twofold.

First, pay no attention to assertions by big banks or any other large corporations about their “social responsibilities” to their communities. When social responsibility requires sacrificing profits, it magically disappears — even when it entails financing gunmakers.

But secondly, no firm should be penalized by pro-gun states like Texas for trying to be socially responsible. How to counter Texas’s law? Lawmakers in progressive states like California (whose bond market is even larger than Texas’s) should immediately enact legislation that bars the state from dealing with any firm that finances the gun industry.

In other words: Big banks like JPMorgan should have to choose: either finance gunmakers and get access to the Texas bond market, or don’t finance them and gain access to the even larger California bond market.

What do you think?

Off the Top of My Head

And whosoever shall offend one of these little ones that believe in me, it is better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he were cast into the sea. Mark 9:42

by John Lawrence

We're going to need quite a few millstones for all the Republicans (and a couple of Democrats) who won't vote to get rid of assault rifles because they are the facilitators of the next school shooting. Whoever thinks gun ownership is more important than childrens' lives is a sick, sad sack of shit. Nobody except the police needs to own a gun. Forget "sport shooting." Is that more important than a child's life? Is deer hunting or the killing of other wild animals more important than childrens' lives. There is no existential need for hunting or target shooting or any other activities involving guns that at all compares with the prevention of the destruction of childrens' lives and the lives of their families. A lot of these conservative Republicans are Christians, so they say. Well, do they give lip service to the above quote from the Bible? Do they take that literally that, if they support the sale of assault rifles, they should have a millstone hung around their neck and deposited in the depths of the ocean. Probably more than half of them don't even know what a millstone is. Well it was something used to grind wheat into flour back in the day, back in the day when water power was used instead of fossil fuel to process food.

So now in addition to the gun culture in America there is a "school shoot-em-up" culture. These people, like the gunman in Uvalde, post all their upcoming deeds on social media. Yet the authorities, who evidently can follow all the intentions of foreign countries who might do something nefarious, are incapable of following the social media explicit intentions of Americans themselves. The problem isn't with foreign terrorists. It's American terrorists who are the problem. As it turns out, the police in Uvalde weren't capable of following protocol and putting their own lives at risk. But that's what they are sworn to do - put their own lives at risk to save childrens' lives. It's a sad commentary on the courage of the 19 policemen who stood outside the classroom door for an hour while the shooter was free to wreak the destruction of childrens' lives inside the classroom. They were all cowards, plain and simple, especially the "commander" in charge. They deserve to go to jail for their dereliction of duty. None of them wanted to put their own lives at risk to save children.

Other countries have said no to guns after a mass shooting even those that had a gun culture. Well, they don't have one any more. Australia confiscated 650,000 guns. Murders and suicides plummeted. It was one of the largest mandatory gun buyback programs in recent history. So today is Memorial Day. We need to memorialize the lives of fallen children in mass shootings. Teachers don't need to carry guns. School doors just need to be locked at all times. If a teacher hadn't propped open the door through which the shooter entered, presumably, he never would have gained access to the school. In addition the school resource officer, presumably armed, was missing in action. He was supposed to be on campus, and he wasn't. Is he going to be prosecuted for dereliction of duty? There is nothing to memorialize this Memorial Day. The US is in an epidemic of gun violence and the elected leaders don't want to do anything about it because gun ownership, to them, is more important than childrens' lives, than the Grandmas' lives shot at Tops supermarket, There have been more than one mass shooting per day so far this year. Yet America, the lone outlier among nations in this regard, continues on its downward spiral of violence and destruction while it criticizes other nations for their lack of democracy.

Off the Top of My Head

Uvalde: A Good Guy With a Gun Was Not Able to Stop a Bad Guy With a Gun

by John Lawrence

Yesterday Texas Gov. Abbott held a farcical press conference in which he demonstrated he didn't even know how to pronounce Uvalde. About a dozen white men and one white woman stood up there while Abbott blathered about the tragic Uvalde mass shooting involving 20 Mexican-American children and 2 Mexican-American teachers. So it was up to a bunch of white men to cover up what actually happened in a Mexican-American community. First the school district police officer encountered the shooter outside the building. Here was a guy with an unconcealed (obviously) AK-47 on school property. Why didn't the police officer just take out his gun and shoot him right there? What did he do - try to reason with him? Second, the shooter enters through an unlocked door. Why isn't every school door locked? They are here where I live. No one can just walk into a school. You press a button and announce yourself and your business and then and only then does the door get unlocked so you can enter.

Then the loony school superintendent gets to speak. He couldn't imagine such a thing happening. What planet has he been living on? This event was "extraordinary." No, it happens every day. That makes it ordinary. As it turns out, local police officers were on the scene outside the door where the carnage took place for 40 minutes to an hour before someone went in and shot the guy. Their excuse? The door was locked. You mean to tell me they couldn't shoot off the lock? It happens all the time. A locked door shouldn't stop a good guy with a gun. Instead the gunman was free to shoot probably all the kids in the classroom plus the two teachers. Law enforcement was a total failure at the scene of a horrific crime. But Gov. Abbott wanted to talk about mental health and the fact that this guy was pure evil. Yes, let's religify the situation and ignore the fact that law enforcement (the good guys with guns) totally failed at their job. And prayer it seems won't stop the next mass shooting. It seems that God has delegated that task to the human race which is totally failing to do its job. C'est La Vie! And then Abbott was going to get all kinds of mental health down there after the one who really needed it was dead!

It took Beto O'Rourck to confront all these white men, trying to cover up a crime in a Mexican-American community, to confront them about gun control something Abbott had recently loosened up in favor of gun owners even more. This gunman who had just turned 18 got to legally by 2 AK-47s and 350 rounds of ammunition at a gun store at a price of $3500. which made the gun store owner very happy and profitable. It was a good day for him, a bad day for everybody else. But then that's what the lack of gun control is all about - profit for the gun industry and campaign donations to Republicans from their lobbyists. So gun advocates want the teachers armed? What good would that do when armed police officers who were in a position to prevent this crime weren't able to do it or chickened out, one or the other. And why in the hell didn't they simply lock their frickin doors? Thank you Mr. School Superintendant, Hal Harrell, for your supervision.

Off the Top of My Head

Another Day, Another Mass Shooting

by John Lawrence

And all because there are 2 Democratic Senators in Washington and all 50 Republicans who won't vote for comprehensive gun control legislation or voting rights or anything else on Joe Biden's agenda for that matter. Those 2 Democratic Senators, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, won't vote to suspend the filibuster even just on the single issue of gun control. Republicans had no problem suspending the filibuster so Trump could appoint 3 nominees to the Supreme Court which will probably overturn Roe v. Wade. So it's seemingly more important to get rid of a woman's right to choose than it is to get rid of assault rifles in the hands of every unbalanced male in the society. There have been numerous carve-outs of the filibuster to get important legislation passed. But I guess getting gun control legislation passed is just not as important as getting a certain President's nominees on the Supreme Court. In other words childrens' lives are not as important as politics.

So why did hundreds of law enforcement officers and elected officials descend on the school in Uvalde, Texas after the massacre had already taken place and the shooter was dead? It was over for Christ's sake; there was no need for yellow crime scene tape at that point. Why are they wasting their money performing an exhaustive examination of the crime scene? And it's a very lame statement when media spokespeople say, "They will try to figure out a motive." Who gives a fuck about the motive? How many motives have they never figured out so why do they keep talking about a motive. That guy will never come back on the air and say, "Remember that school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. Well they've finally figured out a motive and here it is ..." All the commentary in the aftermath is so lame. The only sane response is to hold elected officials' feet to the fire to get rid of assault rifles and other guns whose only purpose is to kill people.

Well, here is my prediction for the future: another mass shooting will occur within a couple of days. And then another and then another. And the American elected officials will do nothing about it. Hundreds of law enforcement people, FBI agents and media people will descend on the place after the fact. They were powerless to to do anything to prevent the mass shooting in the first place, but they will conduct an exhaustive examination of the crime scene. It's all entirely futile and insane. In fact American gun control is an oxymoronic exercise in futile insanity. The Second Amendment was never intended by the Founders to give unlimited rights to individual gun owners. When they talked about "a well regulated Militia" they were talking about the 18th century equivalent of the National Guard, which was more or less a voluntary organization sort of like a volunteer fire department. And yet people talk about the Second Amendment with reverence like it's a bulwark of freedom or something. It's not. It's the worst piece of shit ever perpetrated on any national society. No other nation has the equivalent of it. Most nations have sane gun control laws.

There have been more than one mass shootings per day in this Land of the Free in this year of our Lord 2022. And yet gun manufacturer's profits are more important than childrens' lives. Some 70% of Americans want gun control, but the American undemocracy is more concerned about filibuster rights and campaign donations than protecting childrens' lives. The way the Constitution has been interpreted in regards to the Second Amendment is sick. It's a manifestation of a sick society. For all intents and purposes, the Republican Senators' attitude is that murdered school children is the price we have to pay for honoring the Second Amendment.

Off the Top of My Head

Guns Don't Kill People. Too Many People With Too Many Guns Kill People

by John Lawrence

The tragedy in Buffalo represented less than 10% of the people shot by guns last weekend, but media wants to talk about everything else except gun control. Gun control is the only issue that should be talked about and done something about, but politicians and pundits have given up on the topic. The American ideal seems to be that every American should buy several guns and be fully armed to the teeth, but never harm another person. If they do, they will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Meanwhile, several families will be mourning the deaths of their loved ones. But don't be upset. The shooter will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. That's the American way. And please nobody say that we shouuld get rid of all the guns. That would be unAmerican. After all, the right to own, carry and shoot guns is guaranteed to us by the Second Amendment of the Constitution. Don't anybody go around demonizing the very ownership of guns.

The Guardian reported:

"In Chicago, Mayor Lori Lightfoot enacted a weekend curfew for unaccompanied minors at a city park after a 16-year-old boy was killed there. At least 33 people were shot, five fatally, in weekend violence across the city, police said.

The shootings, each horrific in their own way, punctuated the weekend’s main horror: an 18-year-old espousing white supremacist ideology who went to an African American neighborhood in Buffalo, New York, on Saturday and – in less than two minutes – gunned down 13 people at a grocery, killing 10.

That shooting – one of the deadliest racist massacres in recent memory – has renewed scrutiny on internet-promulgated hate speech, access to assault-style guns and body armor, and the inability of law enforcement authorities, elected politicians, religious leaders and the commercial sector to stop such violence from recurring.

A grocery store, a park, a church and a flea market were among the locations where gunfire erupted over the weekend in eight U.S. cities, leaving at least 65 people shot, 17 fatally.

The shootings came over a violent 72-hour stretch and included multiple victims in all of the episodes, prompting elected leaders in two of the cities to impose new curfews.

Gendron, the Buffalo police commissioner Gramaglia said, planned to continue his assault in the surrounding neighborhood. But he was apprehended outside the grocery after removing his body armor and setting down his Bushmaster rifle with an extended 70-round magazine.

“This individual came here with the express purpose of taking as many Black lives as he possibly could,” the Buffalo mayor, Byron Brown, said on Sunday.

It also emerged on Monday that Gendron wrote as far back as November about staging a live-streamed attack on African Americans, practiced shooting from his car and traveled hours from his home in March to scout out the store, according to detailed diary entries he appears to have posted online.

The diary entries, taken from the chat platform Discord and reviewed by several media outlets including the Associated Press and Bloomberg, included hand-drawn maps of the grocery store along with tallies of the number of Black people he counted there, and recounted how a Black security guard at the supermarket confronted him that day to ask what he was up to. A Black security guard was among those killed in Saturday’s rampage."

The planning that went into the Buffalo attack was impressive. The research, the reconnoitering, the acquisition of data and equipment - more time and energy went into this than go into most college dissertations. Nevertheless, the results, though impressive, were not up to he level that the shooter had hoped for. It's only a matter of time until the next shooter comes along who does even more thorough research and planning. He will analyze where this shooter went wrong in carrying out an even more impressive attack. He will be determined to not make the same errors. The aftermath will be the same - a lot of grieving mourners talking about everything except getting guns off the streets and pretty much out of the hands of everyone. That's the only way the US will solve its gun violence problem, but don't hold your breath until this happens. The earth will probably burn up first. Well, that's a possibility too if nothing is done about global warming.

 

 

 

In the Buffalo shooting at Tops Friendly grocery, white suspect Payton Gendron is accused of specifically targeting a Black neighborhood and taking aim at Black victims – shoppers, grocery workers and a security guard.

Off the Top of My Head

The Shortcomings of Democracy

by John Lawrence

What other countries are concerned about is the specter of Trump coming back in 2024 and reversing everything Biden will have accomplished specially with regard to climate change. An American government no matter how well intentioned and competent cannot maintain itself in power for a long time. It can be replaced by a malevolent and incompetent one in relatively short order. It almost makes you look on other forms of government with envy. Angela Merkel was in power in Germany for 16 years. She was a steady hand on the tiller. Trump tried to rip the tiller out of the ship and he may come back to try and do it again. It's not only China which has long term stability, but China has been pretty consistent in delivering for the Chinese people over a fairly long term. Their government is stable no matter what else you want to say about it. They also promote the best and the brightest to high positions in the government. Trump put in place agency heads that were dedicated to destroying the agencies they were in charge of and many were incompetent political cronies to boot.

Coherence, cohesion - these are values that do not apply to the American people. The American people are freedom fanatics, freedomaholics. In most other advanced societies the value of freedom is balanced by the value of social responsibility. When freedom is way out of proportion with other values, you have a society that can come apart at the seams which is what is happening to American society. The American system engenders a two party system by its very nature, and almost inevitably it develops into two parties which are diametrically opposed to each other. A parliamentary system of government gives rise to  many parties, and that is less likely to devolve into a major societal divisions.

The other thing that contributes to the divisiveness of American society is the American predilection for guns. The supposed right of every American to own and use a gun creates a situation where angry people with a penchant for freedom are more likely to use their gun if they don't get their own way. If they sense that some people are on the other side of a divided society, they feel justified and entitled to use their guns to demand that society conform to their values much in the some way that a divided society resorted eventually to a civil war in America's past. Right now militias and paramilitary units roam the streets similar to the situation in Germany that predated World War II. If a society can't control or prohibit the private accumulation of guns, if it even encourages it, nothing good can come from this situation. All the preliminary conditions are in play for eventual uprisings which, if organized and controlled from above, can have disastrous consequences for civil society.

Off the Top of My Head

A Miasma of Misinformation

by John Lawrence

This is how Fareed Zakaria characterized the current state of vaccination rhetoric. 12 people on Facebook are pushing anti Vax information, and making money doing it. Needless to say, Facebook is making money sponsoring their "free speech." The question is does government have the right to effectively censor Facebook and tell them to get these 12 people off their social media. Guess not according to our Constitution. Rephrased the question might be does the government have the right to tell Facebook to diminish their profits by getting these 12 people off their social media. Unwritten rule: government doesn't have the right to tell any private company to diminish their profits by making changes to their business model. So we are in a quandary. A pandemic is raging and killing Americans. Yet the government is powerless to do things that would bring the pandemic to an end, and Facebook has financial incentives not to get the anti vaxxers off their social media. Let's be clear. If they wanted to do so, it could be accomplished in a nano second. Technology has the capability to identify and terminate any account espousing anti vaxxing.

So is there something wrong with our Constitution that it prevents government from doing much about the twin pandemics of anti vaxxing speech and gun violence. I guess the courts are supposed to clarify that, but so far they haven't or they haven't done so in a way that has solved these twin problems. So these twin pandemics could stymy us in perpetuity. This is so much wasted energy. How can our society successfully recover from the pandemic and get back to work full steam ahead if we are being retarded in perpetuity by COVID despite having miraculously developed an effective vaccine against it? How can our society get on with the business of healing the sick, alleviating poverty, educating the masses and saving the planet from the ravages of climate change if we have to perpetually deal with foolishness and ignorance on the part of people who assert their right of free speech even if that speech represents misinformation? How can we get on with business if a certain segment of society is proliferating and utilizing firearms to kill one another? We can't. We're stuck. Stupidity and ignorance rule the day.

Just 12 People Are Behind Most Vaccine Hoaxes On Social Media, Research Shows. This article on on NPR goes on:

"Researchers have found just 12 people are responsible for the bulk of the misleading claims and outright lies about COVID-19 vaccines that proliferate on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

"The 'Disinformation Dozen' produce 65% of the shares of anti-vaccine misinformation on social media platforms," said Imran Ahmed, chief executive officer of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, which identified the accounts.

"Now the vaccine rollout is reaching a critical stage in which most adults who want the vaccine have gotten it, but many others are holding out, these 12 influential social media users stand to have an outsize impact on the outcome.

"After this story published on Thursday, Facebook said it had taken down more of the accounts run by these 12 individuals.

"These figures are well-known to both researchers and the social networks. They include anti-vaccine activists, alternative health entrepreneurs and physicians. Some of them run multiple accounts across the different platforms. They often promote "natural health." Some even sell supplements and books.

"Many of the messages about the COVID-19 vaccines being widely spread online mirror what's been said in the past about other vaccines by peddlers of health misinformation."

Sending children back to school unvaccinated is a disaster waiting to happen. COVID is watching and waiting. While other countries beg for the vaccine, in the good ole US, where there is a vaccine glut, people are saying "No thank you. I just don't feel I want to do it. My feeling is it's not in my best interests." People are feeling too much and not thinking. So what did they learn in school? Not much I guess.

Off the Top of My Head

Should We Hold Them Down Kicking and Screaming While We Jab Their Arms?

by John Lawrence

Oh, I forgot. We're not an autocracy. We are free to infect others, free to not get vaccinated, free to die and cause others to die. That's what makes us so great. We're not like one of these autocratic countries where they can mandate that everyone get vaccinated ... or else. Freedom has reached its rational limit and become toxic. We are also free to shoot people. We are not an autocratic country where they can mandate that with a few exceptions no one can own a gun. So we are free to kill each other, commit mass murder, assemble an arsenal in our parents' basement or read up on the internet about how to build a ghost gun or a bomb. Then Joe Biden wonders why autocrats laugh at the US' version of democracy. It's not about democracy, Joe. It's about too much freedom. We have created a nation of spoiled brats. America has forgotten the concept of community responsibility. Other democracies limit freedom, limit guns and limit the freedom to infect other. We have also let the virus be free to mutate to more virulent strains which might escape the vaccines that we have painstakingly developed.

There was just too much hoopla around having everyone mask free by July 4. Even Joe Biden was promoting that. Oh we'll all be free to hug Grandma and Grandpa, but wait a minute. No sooner had we hugged Grandma and Grandpa than we did a switchroonie and woke up to the fact that only 48% of the people had been vaccinated and the Delta variant had arrived on our shores. Now we are starting to realize that fully vaccinated people are getting COVID and even suffering quite severe symptoms. However, they are not dying so that's a good thing. The lesson is don't just go about living normally even if you're fully vaccinated especially if you're a senior citizen. The few fully vaccinated people who have died were over 65. So now we are having to pay people to get vaccinated? Just like we have to pay them to join the military? It's because we are too free. We are fee to ignore what's best for the community. We are free to think only of ourselves.

So what is public health? What is public anything? Ronald Reagan said the 9 most feared words in the English language are, "We're from the government, and we're here to help." Translation: Don't trust the government. The government can't do anything to help you so why should you do anything to help the government, including but not limited to, paying taxes. So everyone who can hire a financial advisor to tell them how to avoid paying taxes, which includes most rich people, proceeds to not do so. Not paying taxes is endemic among rich people who then have more money to spend on space ships. They give lip service to helping those of us who are earthbound after they have seen the curvature of the earth as if that triggered a moral awakening which they never had an inkling of before.

So Joe Biden, who I think is doing a fantastic job (but he can't do everything all at once), thinks that American democracy has the wherewithal to compete against his friends Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin who are openly skeptical about it. When it comes to vaccinations and guns, he may be wrong. Like Yogi Berra sid, "It ain't over till it's over" Truer words have never been said when it comes to COVID. The virus has one up on us with the Delta variant, and it may have others up its sleeve. Celebrating on July 4th like everything was back to normal was just a little bit premature.

Off the Top of My Head

As an American, You Are Free to Be Stupid AND Carry a Gun

by John Lawrence

The definition of a rational person is one who would not go out of his way to increase the chances of his own death. The definition of a stupid person is one who would do the opposite. Right now the Republican party is advising its adherents to not get a vaccination that could save their life. Forget about protecting those around them as well which is not even on their radar. Many in the Trump wing of the Republican party are swallowing the Kool-Aid reminiscent of Jim Jones who convinced 900 Americans to commit mass suicide. Until the September 11th attacks, the tragedy in Jonestown on November 18th, 1978 represented the largest number of American civilian casualties in a single non-natural event. It is unfathomable now, as it was then, that members of a San Francisco-based religious group called the Peoples Temple died after drinking poison at the urging of their leader, the Reverend Jim Jones, in a secluded South American jungle settlement. The same thing is happening today due to Trump and his conspiracy minded followers in the Republican party like Wayne Dupree openly urging their followers not to get vaccinated after COVID has killed more than 600,000 of their fellow Americans. However, Trump evidently told his followers at CPAC half heartedly to go and get vaccinated. Let's see if that has any effect.

The Jonestown phenomenon demonstrates how a charismatic leader who holds his followers in total sway can convince them to do anything including even killing themselves. Trump has this kind of sway over his followers. They will believe and do whatever he tells them including invading the Capitol on January 6. The only thing I don't understand about that insurrection is why the insurrectionists weren't openly carrying AK-47s which evidently is their Constitutional right. Maybe next time they will be. So the Republican party has become similar to the followers of Jim Jones who believed anything he told them regardless of whether it was in their self interest or not. This is pretty close to the Trump followers who will believe anything he tells them regardless of whether or not it bears any resemblance to the factual truth or whether or not its in their self interest. You might think that Trump followers would put their self interest in preserving their own lives ahead of their interest in demonstrating their allegiance to the Republican party. The followers of Jim Jones demonstrated the opposite. People who have loyalty to a strong leader will believe anything he tells them regardless of the verifiability of his pronouncements. They don't need any verification, only belief. Even Ronald Reagan said, "Trust, but verify."

This is a problem of religious fanatics as well. Religious fanatics such as the Jonestown crew place more stock in their beliefs than they do in verifiable facts. Time after time religious pronouncements have had to give way, at least among rational people, to verifiable facts. The Catholic church used to persuade people that the sun went around the earth. Gallileo proved the opposite yet had to renounce his proof to save his own life. The matter was investigated by the Roman Inquisition in 1615, which concluded that the fact that the earth went around the sun was foolish, absurd, and heretical since it contradicted Holy Scripture. Galileo later defended his views in Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (1632), which appeared to attack Pope Urban VIII and thus alienated both the Pope and the Jesuits, who had both supported Galileo up until this point. He was tried by the Inquisition, found "vehemently suspect of heresy", and forced to recant. He spent the rest of his life under house arrest. The Catholic church did not officially admit Gallileo was right until 1992!

The lesson here is not to believe anything that isn't subject to verification especially if it would lead you to harm yourself or others. Right now Republicans are urging their followers to harm themselves by not getting vaccinated just because Joe Biden, a Democrat, wants them to. This freedom to be contentious, of course, is allowed by the Constitution and, apparently, is endemic to the human race! Utter nonsense is allowed by the right of free speech. Ironically, in the US, which has a glut of life saving vaccines, some people are dying because of their freedom to refuse to get vaccinated while people in other countries are begging for vaccines in order to save lives. A country like China, if they had enough vaccine for every citizen, would mandate that they all get vaccinated. In America no mandate is possible because of the First Amendment. This is where a country like China will outcompete a country like the US because it will not stand for this nonsense. The US has to place limits on both the First and Second Amendments in order not only to compete with other countries but in order to just hold our own with other countries. In the mean time, the only alternative is for private companies and local governments to insist or "mandate" that people get vaccinated.

Off the Top of My Head

The Militarization of the American Mind

by John Lawrence

From seemingly rational thought processes that would make it impossible to end the war in Afghanistan to the insurrection at the Capitol to the "American movie" chock full of violence to the "well regulated militia" justification of gun proliferation, there is no end of rationalizations for the American military-industrial complex and gun culture on every level. Why does it come as a surprise to some journalists that many participants in the January 6 insurrection were current or ex military or police officers? They are exactly the ones with the mind set that believes Trump won the election, and that it was OK to do what their leader commanded them to do - invade the Capitol. The Generals who say that Biden shouldn't end the Afghanistan war on the grounds that the Kabul government will collapse are exactly the ones that argued we shouldn't end the Vietnam war because the South Vietnam government would collapse. Sure when the US sets up a puppet government and then props it up with money and a military presence, it probably will collapse when the US leaves that country which it never should have invaded in the first place. Afghanistan is Vietnam all over again or as Yogi Berra would say deja vu all over again.

The division among Americans into two tribes can be understood in terms of the two paths Americans take after high school graduation. There are those who go to college and there are those who go into the military. Those are basically the two choices high school graduates have. Those who go to college are taught to think critically to some extent, while those who go into the military are taught to obey orders. Unfortunately, Trump, as their Commander-in-Chief gave them the order to invade the Capitol, and they felt justified in following it because that is what their training led them to do. The choice to go into the Peace Corps or AmeriCorp is not really viable for most high school graduates because the perks of going into the military greatly exceed the perks of going into more peaceful pursuits, and they are less glorious. This is also a characteristic of the militarization of the American civilian mind. The military-industrial complex including, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman, profits greatly from ongoing militarization and military thought processes, employs most of the college graduates and provides debate ending rationalizations for American military preparedness despite the fact that their extremely expensive hardware doesn't work half the time, and the threats to America are primarily cyber in nature as well as domestic terrorism.

The divide and contrast between high school graduates who go into the military and are taught to follow orders and those who go to college is reflected in the political divide between those on the right and those on the left.The military is all about symbolism including snappy uniforms, medals for valor in combat, saluting the flag and honoring themselves for their patriotism. On the left results in the improvement of the lives of the American people - and not just the elite civilian Officer's Corps - are more important than symbols of glory. They are more likely to question authority rather than unquestionably following orders. The January 6 insurrectionists were following Trump's orders at least that's what they were thinking in their own minds and by their own admission. I would like to see the FBI release to the public the number of insurrectionists who were military or former military. I bet that would be most of them, especially the males. A lot of ex military go into police work because of the familiarity with weaponry which they gained in the military. Since guns are a familiar way of life for them, naturally they become arch supporters of the Second Amendment, "well regulated" or not. They are used to classifying groups of people as either friendly or the enemy, and this mind set lends itself to police work.

In the final analysis, America is so used to being the world's policeman and profiting in various ways therefrom, that it is unthinkable that we should cooperate with our supposed adversaries to forestall global warming or to thwart future pandemics let alone the current one. We must always have an enemy or at least an adversary to justify our existence. A peaceful world in which everyone gets along and cooperates to solve the problems we earthlings face and have to deal with is unthinkable. Even though the US has a glut of vaccines while the rest of the world is begging for them, Americans feel free not to have their arms jabbed because after all they are free - free to be stupid, free to ignore the safety of other Americans and free to get infected with the virus and die taking others with them.. They just want to get back to normal entertaining themselves to death and ignoring totally any responsibility to their fellow citizens not to mention fellow citizens of the world, many of which they would like to maintain in their necessary roles as the enemy.

Dr. Fauci wondered why we couldn't all unite to fight the common enemy  - COVID - instead of fighting among ourselves about taking the vaccine. Uniting to fight a common enemy like COVID or climate change just isn't the way Americans and maybe humanity in general do things. We need to disagree even about things that are crucial for our continued existence as a species. As a nation we need an enemy whether it be Russia or China seemingly to justify our existence.

Off the Top of My Head

Without Majority Rule Is The US Still a Democracy?

by John Lawrence

The US Senate is not ruled by a majority. Arguably that makes the US not a democracy or a democracy in name only. The filibuster is an artificial rule that precludes majority rule in the Senate, and, therefore, in the US since the Senate is a representative body of the people. A majority of the people want gun control, but, because the Senate is not a democratic institution, there is no gun control. A Pew Research Center survey conducted in 2019 found that 60% of Americans say gun laws should be tougher. Conclusion: the US is no longer a democracy. Strong majorities of voters across party lines view access to clean water, a quality public education, adequate food, and housing as basic human rights that should be secured by the federal government. A survey by Harvard University found the following: "The right to clean air and water, for example, was considered important by 93 percent of those surveyed; protection of personal data, by 93 percent; the right to a quality education, by 92 percent; racial equality, by 92 percent; affordable health care, by 89 percent; and the right to a job, by 85 percent."

The filibuster precludes democracy. It is not in the Constitution. Neither is the right to own a gun. The Second Amendment states: "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." At the time of the American Revolutionary War, militias were groups of able-bodied men who protected their towns, colonies, and eventually states. They were state based armed groups that later became the National Guard. It was these groups that were allowed by the Constitution to bear arms, not every idiot who came down the pike. Other more mature societies regulate gun ownership the way the US regulates drivers.

NPR reports:

"It's illegal for Russian citizens to own automatic and semi-automatic guns. It's possible to apply for a handgun or shotgun license, though citizens are required to provide reasons such as hunting or target shooting. Applicants face strict background checks, including criminal history, a full psychological evaluation and a medical exam. They must pass a test on firearm laws and safety. Each weapon is then registered by the police during a home visit. Police take bullet patterns, test bullets and cartridges so bullets can be matched if the gun is used in a crime. A license lasts five years, after which applicants must go through the whole process again."

The US is falling apart because groups with lots of money are lobbying Congress to perpetuate their income stream from gun sales regardless of what the majority of US citizens want. Yet the US lectures other countries about human rights. Is it a human right to own a gun? I don't see it listed in the UN Declaration of Human Rights. What is listed is the following:

1. Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.
2. Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.

The controlling interests of US society are not the majority of the people. US society is controlled by wealthy interests which lobby Congress providing them with financial incentives to do their bidding. One of the main reason companies lobby Congress is to preserve their rights not to have to pay for externalities. Externalities are byproducts of the production process that pollute the environment. It would lower their profits if they had to pay for them. William D Nordhaus writes in The Spirit of Green:

"One prominent example is the activities associated with the Koch brothers and their companies. Koch Industries is a privately owned company holding companies with major environmental impacts and with revenues of around $115 billion in 2017. As reported by the Center for Public Integrity, one of Koch's holdings, Georgia-Pacific, is significantly impacted by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) decision on dioxin. They write that Koch has intervened 'in various regulatory proceedings to dilute or halt tighter federal regulation of several toxic by products that could affect its bottom line, including dioxin, asbestos and formaldehyde, all of which have been linked to cancer.' According to Greenpeace, 'Koch Family Foundations have spent $145,555,197 directly financing 90 groups that have attacked climate change science and policy solutions, from 1997 - 2018.'"

So it's understandable why Republicans especially don't want Joe Biden's climate change agenda to pass even though a majority (actually two thirds!) of Americans want the government to do something about climate change according to a Pew poll. "A majority of Americans continue to say they see the effects of climate change in their own communities and believe that the federal government falls short in its efforts to reduce the impacts of climate change." But since the Koch brothers and others like them have the Republican party in their pockets, the filibuster assures them that nothing will get done. And this is happening in a democracy where democracy rule supposedly prevails? The US, sadly to say, is no longer a democracy if it ever was.

Off the Top of My Head

Can Too Much Freedom Be Toxic?

by John Lawrence

When liberty isn't balance by responsibility or concern for others, it can quickly get toxic. There can be too much liberty in a society, and that is taking place when a super market cashier gets murdered over her request for a customer to wear a mask. The non-maskers and non-vaxxers who say that their liberty trumps any responsibility to society have demonstrated that the US has emphasized liberty to the exclusion of anything else. What are reasonable limits to liberty?

Justin Holt writes in an article "What are reasonable limits to liberty?": "in the absence of a political order, our liberty is boundless, but a limitless liberty is self-canceling. If we can do anything, so can everyone else; thus, nothing can be done which is enduring and dependable. Second, in order to have enduring and dependable liberties, our range of action must be limited. For example, in order for property to exist, the actions of others to use this particular property must be limited. Third, these limitations on our actions provide a liberty that is fruitful, because our actions can be guaranteed to be enduring and dependable."

The general idea is that there is a private sphere in which full liberty is appropriate and a public sphere in which a citizen should defer to what is appropriate for the benefit of society. Where does a society draw this line? The US may draw it in one place and a society like China or Russia may draw it in a different place. The US has been verging on chaos while China values stability and continuity and draws the line in a different place. Even Russia draws the line differently. How much chaos is supported by free speech is almost out of control in the US. Free speech in the US makes possible what other countries might consider sedition. Clearly, what happened on January 6 was seditious. Sedition is defined as overt conduct, such as speech and organization, that tends toward rebellion against the established order. Speech on social media by organized right wing groups such as the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys was clearly seditious prior to the Januray 6 insurrection as was Trump's incitement to riot on that day. The US is very lenient on these issues as no one in that riot is being charged with sedition which is a more serious crime than mere trespassing.

What most people don't understand is that China and Russia as well as other societies draw the line in a much stricter place regarding sedition. What the US would call human rights, another society might call sedition. Other societies value stability and continuity a lot more than the US does. And then the US criticizes those societies based on its own values of free speech which resulted in a resurrection on January 6. Seditious speech on social media was tolerated by the US when it should have been sanctioned. While Joe Biden can call Putin a killer, according to public opinion surveys conducted by NGO Levada Center, Putin's approval rating was 60% in July 2020, and the highest of any leader in the world. This is not taken into account by US politicians and media. Clearly, the majority of the Russian people are very pleased with Putin's job performance. Also, while the US considers that Navalny has a human right to free speech, Russia draws the line on what is free speech and what is seditious speech in a different place. So while Joe Biden criticizes Russia on its treatment of Navalny, Putin has every right in the world to point out how free speech in the US led to the January 6 insurrection. According to Pew Research: "Russians are as satisfied with their country’s overall direction as they have been since Pew Research Center began polling Russia in 2002. A majority (58%) of Russians are satisfied with the way things are going in their country, while 37% report being dissatisfied." As for gun crime in Russia, NPR reports:

"It's illegal for Russian citizens to own automatic and semi-automatic guns. It's possible to apply for a handgun or shotgun license, though citizens are required to provide reasons such as hunting or target shooting. Applicants face strict background checks, including criminal history, a full psychological evaluation and a medical exam. They must pass a test on firearm laws and safety. Each weapon is then registered by the police during a home visit. Police take bullet patterns, test bullets and cartridges so bullets can be matched if the gun is used in a crime. A license lasts five years, after which applicants must go through the whole process again."

Pew Research reports similar approval ratings in China: "A broad majority of Chinese (89%) think things are going well with their economy, making them the happiest on this measure compared with all other 43 countries surveyed this year. And they believe things will only get better. Eight-in-ten say the economy will continue to improve over the next 12 months. And 85% think the younger generation will be better off financially than their parents. This optimism stands in stark contrast to findings in Europe and the U.S., where widespread majorities believe their children will be worse off going forward." Is everything perfect there? No, but a majority of Chinese value stability and continuity above free speech. Furthermore, in the People's Republic of China, access by the general public to firearms is subject to some of the strictest control measures in the world. With the exception of individuals with hunting permits and some ethnic minorities, civilian firearm ownership is restricted to non-individual entities. The result is a very low incidence of gun deaths although stabbings make up some of the difference. Still one can do a lot more damage with an AK-47 than they can with a knife.

Societies and governments survive by virtue of the approval of a majority of its citizens. Isn't that what democracy is all about - majority rule? Or at least majority approval of whatever form of government is ruling? The US interpretation of free speech led us to the January 6 insurrection because seditious speech was tolerated as free speech. Freedom gets toxic when citizens think they have free rein to do whatever they want without regard for others. At that point a society loses its cohesiveness and becomes unstable. The US has almost gotten to that point both in terms of the toleration of seditious speech combined with a toleration of gun violence based on the Second Amendment. The founders meant this amendment to apply to militias which were a well defined entity in the founders' day. They later became the National Guard so that the meaning of militia was lost with the result of misinterpretation of the Second Amendment and the uncontrolled proliferation of guns. So, in my opinion, the First and Second Amendments have both become toxic and need to be reformed and redefined.

Off the Top of My Head

Our Grandchildren Won't Have to Pay Back Money Spent on a Green New Deal, But They Will Pay With Their Lives if We Don't Do It Now

by John Lawrence

It's a myth that a sovereign country with a sovereign currency and a floating exchange rate has to borrow money to pay its bills. The US can just issue the money. It doesn't need to tax in order to spend. So why isn't the US as well as all the other nations with sovereign currencies such as Japan, Britain and China going all out to supply as much money as necessary to prevent global warming from "going viral" as they say? The only restraint is the question of whether the human and physical resources to do the work are available. In a society such as China, if the government wanted its people to stop whatever they were doing and become part of the work force to forestall global warming, it would be done. In the US it would not be so easy to commandeer workers to leave their jobs as servers, bartenders, chefs, dealers, workers at Disneyland, workers on cruise ships etc to leave their jobs and go to work in Joe Biden's global warming and infrastructure rebuilding work force. The businesses large and small would have a conniption fit like they're having now getting these workers back to work because their pandemic unemployment has not run out.

The only time when workers went all out to solve a major global problem was World War II. Rosie the Riveter and all the others joined the work force to defeat Hitler. They even were willing to defer consumption so that the financial and material resources that were necessary weren't spent in the consumption market thus letting the necessary physical resources be available for the war effort. Today we have a nation consisting of a bunch of spoiled brats who wouldn't do anything the government asked them to do crying that their "freedom" to do whatever they wanted was paramount. We live in a society composed of consumers who demand to be endlessly entertained by movies, TV, theme parks cruise ships, athletes, restaurants, social media and Las Vegas. Half the country works as servers, baristas, bartenders, housekeepers, actors, athletes, dealers, entertainers and such like jobs to entertain the top half. Some of these are highly paid; most are not. Such was the nature of the "full employment" society before COVID hit. It was a full employment society consisting of trivial jobs at minimum wages for the most part. Biden will have to persuade workers to leave their jobs in the "entertainment" industry in order to create actual results in the real world such as building green infrastructure. The entertainment industry will not be pleased nor will the upper half of society which demands to be continually entertained. 70% of US GNP is consumption and a lot of what people want to consume is encompassed by sports bars, travel and tourism, the leisure and hospitality industry in general. The spoiled brats think its their birthright to have such services available, and the last thing they want to do is to roll up their sleeves and join a union.

Together with the presumed right to be entertained, we have a large percentage of the country that has been processed through the military and developed this consciousness that military prerogatives should prevail uber alles. These are the insurrectionists and Trump supporters that want civilian society to reinforce military values such as command and control. They want an autocrat for President. Freedom is the only value that counts for them. Democracy, equality, fraternity, social equity don't matter. They want to preserve the American way of life which, in addition to a right to be entertained wherever and whenever they have the resources to consume, includes also the right to exclude the prerogatives of minorities for social justice. Is it any wonder that the insurrectionists in January 6 contained a large number of current and former members of the military and police forces? Their attitude is that whatever is good for the military is good for American society in general. The military has become a way of life and consciousness for them. They think that, because they served, they are entitled. Spoiled brat militarists I'll call them. The endless wars, bloated military-industrial complex budget and the military bases in practically every country in the world provides the economic and job base of the nation unfortunately.

Biden thinks he is out to prove that American democracy can compete in the civilian world on an equally competent basis with other countries. That will be a hard nut to crack. The US is dooming itself in two ways: the First and Second Amendments to the Constitution. Let's take the Second Amendment first. In no other major country in the world do citizens have a right to unlimited uncontrolled gun ownership including military style weapons. This is producing news cycles when, hardly is one mass murder out of the way, than another one comes along to dominate the news. The news channels can hardly keep up with them all. No other society including The US' major competitors would tolerate such a situation. The Second Amendment has become toxic and perverted, and in and of itself is enough to doom the US to second class status. In addition to that the First Amendment has become toxic and perverted, and the major reason for that is social media. Social media makes possible the vicious spread of toxic lies and untruths. Witness Trump's use of Twitter to corral and consolidate his followers around the thesis that he, not Biden, actually won the election. Social media allowed him to rally his supporters based on angry themes and memes connected with white supremacy and a return to the good old days when white, Protestant Anglo Saxons ran the country, the good old days when Negroes knew their place in society, the good old days when you didn't have multiple nationalities and religious groups asserting their rights under the Constitution to live freely and enjoy all the perquisites of American society, the good old days when gas guzzlers were the only vehicles in town and no one need be concerned about anything except maximizing their profits and living the American Dream, where the American Dream consisted of having more stuff than your parents did.

Joe Biden's first 100 days have been remarkable in that he has been able to get as much accomplished with slim majorities in both Houses of Congress. Is this enough though to move America forward at the pace that China, for instance, is moving? China is a more or less unified society. 99% or more of Chinese citizens are on the same page as the Chinese government. China is winning friends and allies all over the world with its Belt and Road initiative while the US withers away its resources on endless wars and confuses its allies with the possibility of radical swings with each change of administrations. China's military budget of $183.5 billion is dwarfed by a US military budget 5 times that amount. The US is a divided country where one of the major parties base their appeal on lies and deception, and its supporters are only too willing to eat it up because it's entertaining and represents military values of command and control. Good government, as Biden has illustrated, is somewhat boring because it is based on solving real human problems. Let's hope that Biden's version of reality based on truth and problem solving wins out over the lies based reality of the other side, and the US, even if it doesn't remain the world's dominant power, can become a constructive member of the world community helping to solve problems at home and abroad.

Off the Top of My Head

The Solution to Gun Violence in America

by John Lawrence

The government should simply buy out the gun industry. According to Fortune Business Insights: "The global guns and accessories market size was $6.14 billion in 2019 and is projected to reach $9.33 billion by 2027." So for just $10 billion or so, the US government could buy out the gun industry and shut it down except for those guns that are needed by police and the military. Without lobbying and campaign donations to Republican Congressmen, political support for guns would quickly dry up, and gun sales could be carefully controlled by the government. Throw in another $10 billion to buy back guns that are already on the street, and for a measly $20 billion the government could buy up the gun industry and get guns off the street. Or a billionaire could do it. With the government spending trillions of dollars on an annual basis, $20 billion is peanuts in order to solve the gun violence epidemic in America. It would also be peanuts for a consortium of billionaires. Bill Gates is an advocate for global health and eliminating global disease. He could singlehandedly eliminate this one.

Other countries are capable of controlling the sale, distribution and licensing of guns in rational manners. Only in the US is there a literal fury about the right to own a gun as if it were a sine qua non more precious than food or water. There have been 47 mass murders in the last month, and it will only be getting worse without control of gun distribution. Why not replace the right to gun ownership by the right to health care and the right to adequate housing? We have the world's worst and most expensive health care system with the pharmaceutical industry along with the car industry practically supporting network television with ads. It would be better to eliminate pharmaceutical ads like they used to be disallowed before Republicans made them legal. These ads have been generating a nation of hypochondriacs. Sickness is becoming a booming entrepreneurial industry. Better to encourage the American population to have more healthy lifestyles.

Sad to say but the US is becoming a second rate nation incapable of maintaining public order. Liberty has gotten out of hand. There can be too much of anything, and Republicans have doubled down on the Second Amendment despite mass violence which is draining the life and security out of the American people. No one is safe and secure any more as long as mentally disturbed people have the right to buy guns. Republican demands for liberty are also affecting the pandemic response as they demand that Americans go about their business in any way they freely choose despite the best advice from responsible experts on pandemics. Rights should be balanced with responsibilities but in the US there are no responsibilities expected of citizens. Compulsory voting, also called mandatory voting, is the requirement in some countries that eligible citizens register and vote in elections. Penalties might be imposed on those who fail to do so without a valid reason. According to the CIA World Factbook, 21 countries, including 10 Latin American countries, officially had compulsory voting as of December 2017. Instead the US is doing its best to restrict voting. It is a country getting out of whack with the rest of the world yet pretending it has the right to control the world. Even the vaunted US dollar is losing ground as other countries find workarounds to avoid US sanctions.

Compulsory public service should be required as an alternative to military service. This could be in return for free public education. The US has been turned into an exploiter's dream where everything must be paid for or people have to go into debt or people have to do without the necessities of life if they can't pay. Money talks and shit walks. Instead of a rational public order, we get sold a bill of goods about the need for a bloated military and the right to own guns when the biggest threat to the security of American lives is domestic terrorism and random nuts with guns. In short unless some things are changed, America will lose whatever moral authority it ever had. This is a fast track to second ratedness and moral bankruptcy.

Off the Top of My Head

Sadness for a Good Man Leaving After a Life Well Lived Contrasted With the Sadness for Victims of Mass Murders Gone Before Their Time

by John Lawrence

Prince Philip lived a good, successful and honorable life to the age of 99. It is sad to see him go, but that is tempered by the nobility of his life and the fact that we all have to go at some time. On the other hand, the US is in the throes of mass murders on a daily basis killing people senselessly before their time on earth was up. Is there nostalgia for a monarchy to replace the chaos that the descendants of the rebels against the British monarchy have created? Did the emphasis on liberty and the Second Amendment make this inevitable? Now we have politicians whose sole purpose in life is to fund raise off the chaos that they themselves have created. The First and Second Amendments are killing us. That includes the "peaceful protests" that turn into rioting and looting when the sum goes down. God save the queen.

The US is alone in the civilized world with an unrestricted right to gun ownership. The only other countries which have a right to bear arms written into their Constitution are Mexico and Guatemala, Six other countries used to have a constitutional right to bear arms, but they've since repealed those laws. The US should do the same. The US is the only country with a right to keep and bear arms with no constitutional restrictions. Americans own nearly half of all the civilian-owned guns in the world, and on a per capita basis, the US has far more guns than any other nation.

Just south of the US border, the Mexican government has a strict hold over civilian gun ownership. Although Mexicans have a right to buy a gun, bureaucratic hurdles, long delays, and narrow restrictions make it extremely difficult to do so. Article 10 of the 1857 Mexican Constitution guaranteed that "every man has the right to keep and to carry arms for his security and legitimate defense." But 60 years later in 1917, lawmakers amended it following Mexico's bloody revolution. During the rewriting of the constitution, the government placed more severe restrictions on the right to buy guns. The law precluded citizens from buying firearms "reserved for use by the military" and forbid them from carrying "arms within inhabited places without complying with police regulations." Today, Mexicans still have a right to buy guns, but they must contend with a vague federal law that determines "the cases, conditions, requirements, and places in which the carrying of arms will be authorized."

In Guatemala individuals who want to purchase a gun for private security purposes need approval from the government. They are also limited in how much ammunition they can own, and they must re-apply and re-qualify for their firearm licenses every one to three years, according to GunPolicy.org. A license also requires proof that the applicant has a clean police record, does not suffer from mental illness, and has not deserted the army or police. Although Guatemalans are not allowed to own fully automatic weapons, they are allowed to buy semi-automatic weapons, handguns, rifles, and shotguns if they obtain a permit. Still, that can be difficult.

Although Mexico and Guatemala both have a constitutional right to bear arms, the US is in a league of its own, because it is the only country without any restrictions on gun ownership in its Constitution. The US makes up 4.4 percent of the world’s population but has almost half of the civilian-owned guns around the world. The horror show of mass violence will continue until there is gun control at the Federal level or gun restrictions are written into the Constitution. The latter is probably not possible. The Second Amendment to the Constitution in and of itself is probably enough to doom the US to the fate of a second class nation or worse. In the People's Republic of China, access by the general public to firearms is subject to some of the strictest control measures in the world. With the exception of individuals with hunting permits and some ethnic minorities, civilian firearm ownership is restricted to non-individual entities. China is surging ahead of the US economically and doesn't have to deal on a daily basis with the spectacle of mass violence committed by its citizens on other citizens. As Joe Biden said, mass murders are a national embarrassment.

The conclusion is that most of the world's nations are much more sensible about gun control. The US is the outlier, and it's turning the US into a police state not because police own all the weapons but because the citizens own so many of them and are using them on fellow citizens with increasing frequency. This is having a destabilizing effect on the whole citizenry because no one knows who may be next to suffer a random act of mass violence. Lenin once famously remarked that businessmen would happily sell for a profit the rope that would later be used to hang them. American businessmen who sell guns and ammunition are now happily selling American citizens the guns with which on a daily basis they are slaughtering each other senselessly and for no reason at all. The US is degenerating into a nation dragging itself down and destabilizing itself into a black hole that seemingly it can't recover from.

Off the Top of My Head

If Republican Voters Want the Infrastructure Bill, Why Don't Republican Lawmakers?

by John Lawrence, April 12, 2021

Is this a failure of representative democracy? Polls show that a majority of Republican voters support Biden's infrastructure plan including the "care" components thereof. Yet Republican Senators are dead set against it, and the bill will probably not garner one Republican vote. It can still pass the Senate based on budget reconciliation which only requires a majority vote as long as all Democrats vote for it. Other Biden proposals involving voter's rights and gun control would require at least 10 Republican votes in the Senate under the current rules which involve the filibuster for non-budgetary items. In a representative democracy, a party should represent its voters. Otherwise, you don't really have a representative democracy which the US purports itself to be. So at present the US is in the position of being a government swerving back and forth from a representative democracy as long as Democrats control both Houses of Congress and the Presidency and a dictatorship of an elite when Republicans control either party or the Presidency.

The same applies to other issues like gun control, voter's rights and immigration which aren't subject to budgetary reconciliation and must garner 60 votes in the Senate. One of the minimum elements of democracy is majority rule. Because the filibuster is anti-majoritarian, this leaves the American democracy in the position of not really being a democracy at all in terms of non-budgetary items. So the US is on its way to being an authoritarian regime if Republicans control the Presidency and both Houses of Congress. All that would be necessary is a President like Trump with authoritarian tendencies. Then the US government becomes a government that's all about the use of power to get its way internationally and domestically, not about making the world a better place. Unfortunately, this leaves the US in the eyes of other nations as being untrustworthy since there is no consistent policy going forward. Other countries have more consistent leadership and hence are considered more trustworthy.

China, on the other hand, has very consistent policies going far into the future. China isn't perfect but most of the Chinese people and the leadership are on the same wavelength. US leadership likes to make a big deal of the plight of the Uyghurs, a Chinese minority that represents less than 1% of the Chinese population. So it's pretty remarkable that the only problem China seems to have with a minority that resents Chinese leadership  is with a minority that composes 0.31% of the population. The US should be so lucky yet the US harps on the Chinese over this situation of which little is actually know by the western world. China has pilled 800 million people out of poverty since 1990, one of the outstanding feats in human history, yet the US leadership continues to harp about the Uyghurs while giving no credit to China on poverty reduction. During the same time period the wages of US workers has stagnated. Kishore Mahbubani, author of the book, "Has China Won" writes: "In contrast to America's stagnation, China's culture, self-concept, and morale are being transformed at a rapid pace - mostly for the better." Rather than China's recent success being an assessment of the comparative values of Marxist-Leninist doctrines vis a vis American democracy, The Chinese Communist Party could more appropriately be called the Chinese Civilization Party since it reflects the 2000 year history of China more than it does Communist ideology.

So the response of the US to the progress of China in the last 30 years, instead of congratulating them on their remarkable accomplishments, is to be fearful that China is getting ahead of us. Well, duh, if you compare a society that is mostly all on the same wavelength and making remarkable steps forward with one that is divided and experienced a certain segment almost accomplishing a coup d'etat in a recent insurrection which threatened the lives of lawmakers in the seat of democracy itself. However, rather than viewing the world situation as a competition between the US and China, a more fruitful approach would be to cooperate with China with regard to climate change and pandemics, two things that affect the whole world and which require fast action, not a lackadaisical approach in which maybe we'll cooperate down the road, but in the meantime we have to compete. There's no time for that. The planet earth has almost passed an inflection point after which there will be no more time available.

Off the Top of My Head

The Second Amendment Doesn't Preclude Strict Licensing Requirements for Guns

by John Lawrence, March 24, 2020

The "right to keep and bear arms" should be conditioned on strict licensing requirements just as the right to drive an automobile is. Licensing and training in the proper use of firearms should come before an individual is allowed to own one. An individual who passes a training course in the use of a particular firearm would then be authorized to own and bear just that firearm. The type of firearms that can be owned should be severely restricted which would not infringe on the Second Amendment which doesn't say that an individual has a right to own and bear any or all types of firearms. The type of firearms available should be just those necessary for hunting or self defense. Even animals should have a right not to be slaughtered by an assault rifle. Military style assault weapons should be banned altogether, and a buy back program for guns of all types should be implemented at the Federal level. Not everyone is allowed to drive an automobile. By the same token not everyone should be allowed to own or possess a gun.

I'm also in favor of expedited justice for mass murderers caught in the act like the Boulder killer. Why should they be housed, fed and kept alive for years while the wheels of justice slowly grind away and countless lawyers and judges not to mention media pundits make money off of the tragedy. They should be promptly shot within a few days using the same means by which they took the lives of others. They should not be allowed to become notorious on social media. Nothing that has been learned from questioning these murderers about their motives has ever become relevant or information that can be used to prevent such crimes in the future, and any relevant information can be found out after their deaths. Why should FBI and police resources be wasted on finding out stuff that hasn't prevented mass murders from continuing? We already know what is obvious and that is that most of them are mentally ill or have a political agenda.

I wrote on this blog in January 2020:

It seems like the conclusion of every news report about another senseless killing. Why are the police even figuring? It won't do anything to prevent another senseless killing. If only we could figure out a motive, they think, it would prevent another gun nut with an arsenal from going berserk? Or a mentally ill person from gunning down innocents? Basically it comes down to one thing: we live in a sick society, a society which glamorizes guns and criminal activities. While we spend a trillion dollars a year fighting foreign terrorism, we spent nothing on fighting domestic terrorism. Domestic terrorists have been responsible for more American deaths than foreign terrorists in recent years.

At the root of the problem is the proliferation of guns, guns that are accessible to the average nutcase in his [and it's usually his, hmmm] quest to prove something to himself or society or to gain his 15 minutes of fame in an otherwise dull, uneventful and uninteresting life devoid of any constructive activity, a life that needs an act of violence in order to stand out from the crowd, a life fueled by a fantasy life filled with violence made to seem normal by movies, TV and video games.

While the FBI claims to have stepped up its efforts to combat domestic terrorism attacks in recent years and months, evidence suggests that these efforts are falling short. The FBI’s most recent hate crimes report indicates that while hate crimes dipped slightly in 2018, violent hate crimes reached a 16-year high. The US is not spending its money where it needs to to create a more sane and violence free society. Many of the perpetrators have come out of the military where violence is the norm. Spending less money on military activities and more to end poverty and combat mental illness might help to end the senseless violence that the US is in the grip of. Especially in schools and places of worship, where people are most vulnerable, the perpetrators, knowing this, step up their targeting opportunities.

But even more important is the elimination of guns from our society, especially high power, military style guns. They should be outlawed as well as large capacity ammunition magazines. There will still be nuts around attempting to hurt or kill other people, but if these guns were eliminated, they would just not be able to do as much damage. Reducing the size of our military and spending the money on more peaceful pursuits would also help to set a different tone in society than the militaristic one being set now.

Off the Top of My Head

Instead of Sanctioning Foreign Actors Sanction Domestic Terrorists

by John Lawrence, January 12, 2021

The best development so far post insurrection is taking away Trump's twitter account permanently. The FBI, CIA and other law enforcement are rounding up the insurrectionists and they should get lengthy jail sentences and sanctions. The biggest threat to American democracy is not out there; it's in here. Their gathering places on social media such as Parler have been taken down or will be taken down soon. If the terrorists can't meet to spout their vitriol as well as plan future insurrections, we'll be making progress. Rush Limbaugh and other domestic terrorists should be sanctioned. Anyone egging on, benefiting from, taking advantage of the poor mental health or encouraging hatred and violence of the American people needs to be sanctioned. The fact that these terrorists could overwhelm the Capitol Police was a huge security failure. The fact that it took the Pentagon three hours to supply troops shows the fact that we are wasting huge amounts of money on a worthless military establishment that does not confront the real threats to this country. Perhaps these domestic terrorists need to be reeducated. We don't have the moral authority to mock China any more for doing this with its domestic terrorists.

Right now security forces in the US are on high alert. The National Guard is out in force. There are more forces on the streets of Washington, DC now than there are in Afghanistan. They should stay on high alert for the time being. I think the situation will get under control. Massive arrests and the total deplatforming and isolation of Donald Trump and domestic terrorist social media sites needs to be carried out. If they don't have gathering places on social media, they won't be able to organize. That's important. There needs to be a recognition that the militarization of the mindsets of young Americans which happens in the military and the glorification and seeming ubiquity of war as the only way to deal with other nations is a cause of the recent problems. Instead of funneling all non-college bound youth into the military, there needs to be an upsurge in funding and encouragement for young people to go into the Peace Corps and AmeriCorps. We need to demilitarize the mindsets of the American people.

Terrorist and threatening phone calls need to be traced and the perpetrators brought to justice. No public official should have to live in fear for their lives and their family's lives because of death threats on phone calls or on social media. Social media is a big problem. They have gotten rich off the fact that their algorithms have encouraged, aided and abetted the domestic terrorists. Their business model showed that there was a lot of profit in encouraging conspiracy theories and other activities detached from reality. It's good that it has become evident by reporting on legitimate news outlets that social media is not subject to the First Amendment because that only applies to government hindrance of free speech. Social media platforms are private entities and they do not have to honor so-called free speech. Private entities also don't have to honor the Second Amendment so that there is space to restrict guns on private property which is probably 99% of the property in the US.

The next administration has its work cut out for them. Good leaders and good people will prevail. Deplatforming all right wing media and groups that espouse conspiracy theories and outright lies will be an important step. Sober analysis and critical thinking must replace narcissistic fantasy and entertainment values. This starts with children in school. They need to taught how to distinguish truth from lies. They need to be taught the value of peace and harmony not only in their daily lives but in the pursuit of that status among and between nations. They should be taught that the US has not always been but should aspire to moral and ethical behavior with regard to other nations and within its own country.

Money must be drained from the military establishment which is oriented towards either non-existant or phony threats and reoriented towards the real threats and funded at appropriate levels rather than be treated to carte blanche amounts of superfluous cash. Budgets both military and domestic need to be appropriate to their realistic needs. Right now the greatest need is in overcoming the pandemic and responding to the economic needs of the lower half of the population. Also eliminating energy production from fossil fuels needs to proceed post haste. It's obvious that the private economy can not do this at the rate necessary to save the planet from the ravages of global warming. Only big government programs in conjunction with the programs of other countries can possibly achieve the reality of zero carbon emissions by 2030.

The last word is that Trump must be denied any post Presidential influence or following by any and all legal means. This is the greatest thing that can be done to heal and deradicalize the country. America also will pay a heavy price if it doesn't get its promotion of gun culture under control.

Off the Top of My Head

Congressional Republicans That Supported Insurrection Should Be Censured

by John Lawrence, January 10, 2021

Although it takes a two thirds majority to expel someone from the House or Senate, it only takes a majority to censure. Therefore, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley and Kevin McCarthy at the very least should be censured. They will lose their committee chairs and be publicly shamed because the politician must stand before his peers to listen to the censure resolution. Meanwhile, Trump should be impeached in the House, but there should be no trial in the Senate because that would be a media circus of which Trump would be the star, and this would steal Joe Biden's thunder just as he assumes the office of President of the United States. The page needs to be turned and Trump should be blacklisted from every form of media exposure. Twitter, Facebook and others have already banned him for life which is the best thing that could have happened. Right wing app Parler has been deplatformed. Rudy Giuliani and Don Junior need to be prosecuted for inciting to riot for the words they spoke at Trump's Save America rally that preceded the insurrection. "Trial by combat"? Indeed. Long story short, Trump should be denied any media exposure whatsoever. The focus should be on Joe Biden's Presidency and the reckonings of those that have committed prosecutorial crimes needs to be done offstage, so to speak.

We need a breath of fresh air come January 20 while in the background those who have committed crimes connected with the insurrection need to be brought to justice. Every one of the rioters need to serve jail time or be fined - even those who crossed the barriers but did not go inside the Capitol. Those who went inside the Capitol need to be dealt more severe penalties. None of these rioters should be left off the hook. The myth that these assholes are Patriots needs to be dispelled. The only ones who are innocent in my opinion are those who didn't cross the line that the barriers represented. I'm sure that over time they all will be penalized in one form or other because there is so much video and social media evidence including their own bragging on social media. The FBI has their work cut out for them. In the meantime security needs to be ramped up at state Capitals all across the country, and gun laws need to be augmented and strengthened. Probably the only thing that saved the Capitol from an armed insurrection was the fact that so many of them flew to Trump's event and weren't allowed to bring guns on the plane. You can't have people with machine guns threatening state Capitals or office holders of a party they disagree with. We've seen too much of that already. Security around Joe Biden and Kamala Harris needs to be extremely tight. We don't want what happened to Abraham Lincoln happening to either of them.

At the same time Joe Biden and his Democratic allies in Congress have to get a humungus aid package passed and into the hands of the American people - all of them - so that there are tangible benefits for all to see and benefit from including Trump, hopefully former, supporters. The coronavirus must be brought under control. The ineffective US intelligence agencies have a budget of about $75 billion and yet they had no intelligence relating to what an average American could plainly size up: a Trump rally attracting tens of thousands on the same day that Congress certified the election results. I wrote previously how like James Bond's arch villains, Trump would show up January 6 for one last stand even when we all thought the election was finally, after repeated certifications at multiple levels, over. Bond's villains do not give up and neither did Trump after he had tried every other trick in the book to overturn the election. I'm sure he had plans for the inauguration on January 20 as well. That's why security at the inauguration needs to be extremely tight.

Social media by and large has finally done the right thing banning Trump and right wing wack jobs and conspiracy theorists. But it is obviously too late. They should have done this long ago. There are much needed reforms that need to be undertaken regarding social media. They have in fact aided and abetted the worst impulses of American society as their algorithms favored conspiracy theories and other fantastic falsehoods as they brought more eyeballs to the platforms than did the plain unvarnished truth. We have to reckon with a model in the media that is basically centered on entertainment including the news. Bringing eyeballs to the media - all media - is what advertising is all about. Advertisers won't pay and media corporations won't make any money from sober analysis because it's not entertaining enough and people demand to be entertained. Although Trump's lies are being finally called out all over the media, let us not forget that lies perpetrated via the media are nothing new. The Willie Horton ads promulgated for George H W Bush's 1988 Presidential campaign typify the lying that political candidates have always partaken of with Trump just being the latest purveyor.

"Horton, an African-American man, was a convicted murderer who raped a white woman and stabbed her partner while furloughed from prison under a Massachusetts program in place when Dukakis, the Democratic nominee, was governor. The TV ad is now considered one of the most racially divisive in modern political history because it played into white fear and African-American stereotypes. In it, an off-screen narrator tells the story of Horton’s crimes while pictures of Bush and Dukakis and a menacing mug shot of Horton flash across the screen. The narrator notes that Bush supports the death penalty for murderers."

Clearly, there should be thought given to bringing about truth in media and what can be done to insure that the American people aren't sold a pack of lies by politicians or in any other kind of advertising. American culture has also been brutalized and vulgarized because this has been shown by advertisers to attract the most eyeballs. Violence in media runs rampant. It's almost like you have to watch movies from Europe to see something which doesn't contain violence and usually gun violence of the most graphic sort which pervades US entertainment. This is the stuff that media corporations produce because they think it's the most lucrative. Politicians supported Trump's lies because they thought it was the best way to get elected or reelected. Other societies have not put up with this crap. Violence and lies, although they may be entertaining, need to be restrained if America is ever to attain some degree of collective mental health. I for one will send up a cheer for sober analysis.

Off the Top of My Head

My Horse, My Horse, My Kingdom for a Horse

by John Lawrence, January 9, 2021

Only in Trump's case: My Twitter Account, My Twitter Account, My Kingdom for a Twitter Account. Trump has been emasculated. He's been banned from Twitter, Facebook, Shopify and God knows what else. As well he should be. This guy was not so much a President as he was a Tweeter-in-Chief and rabble rouser. He roused a lot of rabble a few days ago when he almost had Congress persons killed and taken hostage. Who thought it was a good idea to have a rally on the day the votes for the next President were to be certified? Well, Donald Trump of course. He knew what he was doing. It's just that his doofus supporters were inept at coup planning or the outcome might have been entirely different. Trump, Rudy Giuliani ("trial by combat"? he was wrong and, according to his own words, has been made a fool of and should go to jail) and Don Jr should be criminally implicated for inspiring to riot. Trump should be criminally implicated also for not calling out the National Guard till it might have been too late. It seems that only he had the authority to do so, and he was allowing sufficient time for his acolytes to do their dirty work.

Joe Biden definitely has his work cut out for him. He has to deal with a global pandemic which may be mutating. He has to deal with 40 years of neoliberal economic policies which have made the rich richer and the poor homeless. And he has to deal with a cult of domestic terrorists. To those who think that China, Russia and Iran are the problems, I've got news for you: the American people, a huge contingent of them, are the problem. Gun violence is the problem. Trillions of dollars wasted on a sitting military, on the grounds that we have enemies who justify this, is the problem. The policies of George W Bush who caused millions of deaths in the Middle East with the result of ongoing chaos is the problem. It's enough to make your head spin. While the US is in chaos as a society, the rest of the world is moving forward. While Joe Biden must play catch up, the rest of the world is moving ahead. While much of the US citizenry is composed of cultish dingbats, the rest of the world are very clear eyed by comparison. While the US culture and militarization of mindset is descending into a cesspool of self indulgence, people in the rest of the world are using their brains and feelings of compassion for their fellow inhabitants of earth to move ahead. While religious bigots use Jesus as an excuse to do dastardly deeds in the same way that the Ku Klux Klan has always done, the rest of the world is coming from a more enlightened attitude toward ethics and morality, religion or no religion.

The result is that the US has become the equivalent of a Third World country with an outsized and bloated military. Pride goeth before a fall, and the US, if it cannot get its act together, will go the way of the Roman Empire when it descended into chaos. The best the US can hope for coming out of the putrefaction of the Trump era is to be a good partner with the rest of the world as we solve enormous problems including climate change and poverty. No more yelling "We're Number One" when clearly a significant number of us are spoiled brats and worse. Let's turn the military culture into a peace culture. Let's take megaphones away from demagogues the way Twitter has denied Trump his Twitter account. Let's police social media.

Social media has not ennobled the American people; instead it has allowed a large number of Americans to be turned into a cult the way radio allowed Hitler in the 1930s to encultify, to coin a word, the German people. Cults demand that people pay obeisance to a leader. Kim Jong Un is sitting there thinking that the US is just as big a cult as North Korea. The remedy for this is that people have to be educated to think critically and not to follow some powerful figure with a huge megaphone whether it be Hitler, Mussolini or Donald Trump. Trump's megaphone has been taken away the way a parent takes away a child's favorite toy if he or she misbehaves. Trump's following have a militarized mindset. I would lay dollars to doughnuts that most of them have served in the military the way Ashli Babbit, the rioter who was shot, did. Perhaps if young Americans were required to do two years of national service or service in the Peace Corps instead of being incentivized to become Marines, sailors and airmen, attitudes would change. Instead of their minds being molded to taking commands from superior officers, they might develop an alternative mindset in which serving the poor and unfortunate of the world would be their highest priority.

The US has become a degenerate society, composed of unthinking followers of a strongman who had promised them that they're number one, Americans are number one and we're the greatest society and nation on earth. This is misguided thinking doomed to failure. This is the fall of the Roman Empire, the people of which had become a bunch of degenerate spoiled brats. There are good people here of course. The new administration represents a great many of them. There are many changes that need to be made in US society that they will try to change. It will be a sisyphean effort. Much of what has been seen as essential to American culture will have to be discarded and we will have to join the rest of the world's nations humbly in a cooperative effort to combat global warming and create a culture of love, peace and compassion.

Off the Top of My Head

What Would Happen if a Gun Toting Black Man Tried to Make a Citizen's Arrest of a White Man?

by John Lawrence, May 10, 2020

In another senseless tragedy Ahmaud Arbery, a black man, was gunned down by 2 white men while out jogging. The white men were trying to make a citizen's arrest supposedly. What could possibly have gone wrong? People have a right to openly carry guns in Georgia, and they have the right to make a citizen's arrest. However, to make a citizen's arrest, they have to apprehend someone during the commission of a felony, not while he is jogging down the street. These 2 white men deserve to rot in prison for murdering an innocent man. There are two many stupid men carrying guns who don't know the law about when they can use them including cops themselves. The other day in San Diego an unarmed white man got away from a deputy who was taking him to jail and started running down the street. The deputy shot and killed him in violation of the law. If the man would have been a threat to the deputies or the community in general, he could have been shot legally. The man was obviously not a threat so that deputy should go to prison for murder.

The main problem is a proliferation of guns and a history of cops as well as citizens killing innocent black men and women as well as some white folks too. The Arnaud Arberry case is similar to the Trayvon Martin case. Trayvon, who was black, was killed by a a white man, George Zimmerman,  who was in charge of the neighborhood watch program. The police chief said that there was no evidence to refute Zimmerman's claim of having acted in self-defense, and that under Florida's Stand Your Ground statute, the police were prohibited by law from making an arrest. The police chief also said that Zimmerman had a right to defend himself with lethal force. The fact of the matter is that Zimmerman would have no call to stand his ground or use lethal force if he had never tangled with Trayvon in the first place. There is no doubt a struggle ensued, but Trayvon was minding his own business. Zimmerman wasn't. It shouldn't have mattered who was winning the fight when Trayvon was shot. Evidently, according to witnesses, Trayvon  was, but so what. Do you deserve to be shot because you are winning a fight caused by a man who was following you? Also who threw the first punch shouldn't have mattered either. Zimmerman could say anything he wanted because Trayvon wasn't there to say anythting different. But in the final analysis, Zimmerman was definitely following Trayvon which provoked the encounter. If he had followed directions from the 911 dispatcher, he would have not done that.

Of course the difference between the Trayvon Martin case and the Ahmaud Arbery case is that there was no video in the Trayvon case, but there is one in the Ahmaud  Arbery case. That makes all the difference. Still the Georgia prosecutor argued that Arbery had initiated the fight so the McMichaels were not arrested at first. Sure the McMichaels effectively blocked the road so Arbery could not get past them. They each had a gun. When the fight started both Arbery and Travid McMichael were out of view of the video. So how does the prosecutor know that Arbery initiated the fight? Is it because the McMichaels told him so just like George Zimmerman told law enforcement that Trayvon Martin initiated that fight. In both cases the only people interviewed were the white survivors of the fight. Dead men tell no tales. Obviously, the McMichaels provoked the incident by blocking Arbery's path. Joe Biden said  that Mr. Arbery had essentially been “lynched before our very eyes” and that “these vicious acts call to mind the darkest chapters of our history.”

Surely, a lynching it was. The elder McMichael, a retired police officer, should have known better. There have been many other cases, mainly involving black victims, but some involving whites, where police officers have shot and either killed or paralyzed for life someone who was running away from them and didn't have a gun or any other weapon. Walter Scott was shot and killed after being stopped for a non-functioning brake light. This occurred on April 4, 2015, in North Charleston, South Carolina.  Scott, who was an unarmed, didn't have a gun and was no threat to the police officer who shot him, nor was he a threat to the community at large. The cop, Michael Slager, was charged with murder after a video surfaced that showed him shooting Scott from behind while Scott was fleeing, and that contradicted his police report. How many other times have blacks been shot by white policemen, and there were no videos to contradict the cop's word about the incident?

Philando Castile was shot in his car after a traffic stop for a busted tail light while his girlfriend sat in the car and her child was in the back seat. The girlfriend live streamed the incident on Facebook. She said, "The police just shot my boyfriend for no apparent reason." She said that her boyfriend was licensed to carry a gun and was trying to get his ID and wallet when the officer shot him. It's one thing when a white man has a gun which is legal in so many states, and another thing when a black man is legally carrying a gun. Was there confusion as to what Philando was reaching for? So what. Philando told the officer that he had a gun. The officer should have handled the incident differently and had Philando step out of the car with his hands up and not asked for his ID right away until he had located the gun. The officer should have gone to jail for murder; instead he was acquitted.  I guess the legal carry law only applies to white men. God help you if you're black and are stopped by a cop for a traffic violation with a gun in the car. You're assumed to be a criminal.

Off the Top of My Head

The Police Are Trying to Figure Out a Motive

by John Lawrence, January 4, 2020

It seems like the conclusion of every news report about another senseless killing. Why are the police even figuring? It won't do anything to prevent another senseless killing. If only we could figure out a motive, they think, it would prevent another gun nut with an arsenal from going berserk? Or a mentally ill person from gunning down innocents? Basically it comes down to one thing: we live in a sick society, a society which glamorizes guns and criminal activities. While we spend a trillion dollars a year fighting foreign terrorism, we spent nothing on fighting domestic terrorism. Domestic terrorists have been responsible for more American deaths than foreign terrorists in recent years.

In an article entitled "The Enemy Within: Why Domestic Terrorism Poses a Greater Threat than Foreign Terrorism," David Chipman writes:

Americans are much, much more likely to lose their lives to gun violence, which kills 36,000 people in the United States each year, than foreign terrorism. Despite the outsized fear of foreign terrorism in our post-9/11 world, you’re twice as likely to be shot and killed by a toddler than you are to be murdered by a terrorist. And despite the rhetoric we often hear from President Trump, Muslim Americans are more likely to be victims of terrorism than perpetrators.

[FBI Director Christopher] Wray’s statement highlights a dangerous trend—one that requires immediate action. In attacks like the bombing in Oklahoma City and the mass shooting at a concert in Las Vegas, shooters targeted their neighbors for slaughter. As this administration continues to focus its rhetoric and resources on enemies abroad, we must recognize that more frequently, the enemy is one of us.

...

We make it far too easy for hateful people to acquire weaponry they can use to hurt others. Investing more resources in ATF would help keep guns out of the hands of domestic terrorists. Its agents need further support to face the threats we face. ATF’s annual budget is only $1.2 billion, while the last aircraft carrier purchased for the Navy cost $13 billion. We have only 2,600 ATF agents to defend this nation against gun violence but 28,500 troops in South Korea alone.

At the root of the problem is the proliferation of guns, guns that are accessible to the average nutcase in his [and it's usually his, hmmm] quest to prove something to himself or society or to gain his 15 minutes of fame in an otherwise dull, uneventful and uninteresting life devoid of any constructive activity, a life that needs an act of violence in order to stand out from the crowd, a life fueled by a fantasy life filled with violence made to seem normal by movies, TV and video games.

While the FBI claims to have stepped up its efforts to combat domestic terrorism attacks in recent years and months, evidence suggests that these efforts are falling short. The FBI’s most recent hate crimes report indicates that while hate crimes dipped slightly in 2018, violent hate crimes reached a 16-year high. The US is not spending its money where it needs to to create a more sane and violence free society. Many of the perpetrators have come out of the military where violence is the norm. Spending less money on military activities and more to end poverty and combat mental illness might help to end the senseless violence that the US is in the grip of. Especially in schools and places of worship, where people are most vulnerable, the perpetrators, knowing this, step up their targeting opportunities.

But even more important is the elimination of guns from our society, especially high power, military style guns. They should be outlawed as well as large capacity ammunition magazines. There will still be nuts around attempting to hurt or kill other people, but if these guns were eliminated, they would just not be able to do as much damage. Reducing the size of our military and spending the money on more peaceful pursuits would also help to set a different tone in society than the militaristic one being set now.

Off the Top of My Head

You Can't Open Carry at Walmart Any More

by John Lawrence, September 10, 2019

After 2 mass shootings at Walmarts in El Paso, Texas, and Southaven, Mississippi, Walmart has decided not to sell handguns or ammunition for handguns in any of its stores. It also has stopped selling some types of rifle ammunition, the kind that can be used in high capacity magazines. In addition to that Walmart has banned open carry of firearms in all its stores. CVS, Walgreen's and Kroger have also followed suit. If you carry a weapon into a Walmart store, they will politely ask you to leave and escort you to your car where they will secure the weapon. It's all very gentlemanly or gentlewomanly as the case may be. Walmart, we thank you for your service.

This brings up an interesting point. The Second Amendment only applies on public property. Most stores in America are privately owned so there's no reason why they can't ban guns on their premises. So it's theoretically possible that, although the Federal government refuses to act on this issue, owners of private property will refuse to put up with guns on their property. Even some public areas such as public schools may outright ban guns on their property except for police or security guards. Churches definitely should put up huge signs: "No Guns Allowed on Church Property." The Second Amendment rights have turned into a fiasco where anyone with a grievance can take it out on society by seeing how many people they can kill before they are stopped.

Some jurisdictions have taken to not mentioning the gunman's name or showing his picture thus denying him his 15 minutes of fame. This is also a step in the right direction. Why should anyone have to know his name, and I say "his" advisedly since so far there have been few if any mass shooters that have been women or girls. It's a man's deadly game. They probabaly think they are demonstrating how manly they are by killing innocent men, women and children. The widespread proliferation of guns is a harbinger of the militarization of American society. Just as the US flaunts its military and its military budget which sucks the air out of the room of any humanitarian activities, American men think it's manly to own and use an arsenal of guns. If someone pisses them off, they can then take revenge by using them.

In China, gun ownership is subject to strict regulation. Generally, private citizens are not allowed to possess firearms. They don't fool around. While the US Congress dithers with respect to any gun control legislation, most mature countries have already handled this issue by strictly controlling who can and who can't have a gun. Most European countries also have strict gun control laws. You should have to prove first that you're competent and a good citizen before you're even allowed to own one rather than the other way around which is you have to demonstrate that you're a threat to society before your guns are taken away.

Let praise be bestowed on Dick’s Sporting Goods which said it would stop selling firearms and ammunition at 125 of its 700-plus locations. Meanwhile, Starbucks, Target and Wendy’s  have also asked customers not to openly carry guns when visiting their stores. Hooah! Let the record show that there are a few bastions of safety and security left in the US where decent citizens can go about their daily activities in freedom - freedom from gun violence and the assholes who use the Second Amendment to demonstrate their uselessness to society.

Off the Top of My Head

Is It Really Necessary To Discuss Jeffrey Epstein Ad Infinitum?

by John Lawrence, August 20, 2019

The American media is consumed with Jeffrey Epstein. They've talked about him for days. Meanwhile, this pushes all other news of any consequence out of the picture. It is not hard to understand why. The mainstream media news exists so that advertisers can sell products during numerous commercials. In fact there is more time devoted to commercials than so-called news. So the producers of "news" are mostly concerned about what type of news will bring the maximum number of eyeballs to their screens. This type of news, of course, is the news that is most titillating and scandalous. Enter Jeffrey Epstein, the perfect candidate for filling up "news" time for days if not weeks. Then we also had the plane crash of Dale Earnhardt Jr. which occupied the news for a few days also. There were also a few other isolated plane crashes for which, fortunately, there was some video footage.

Meanwhile, news that is of great concern or should be of great concern is hardly mentioned. The news that is actually presented is pablum, news designed so that viewers don't have to actually think, news that is escapist and voyeuristic, news designed to get viewers to buy the sponsors' products. If you want any actual news, you have to tune into one of the foreign media channels although you won't find any news there that is actually critical of the countries that are providing these channels. Most other news though is far more authentic than anything found on American commercial media. American news is not exactly "fake" news. That is a misnomer. It is news that is inconsequential relative to anything that really affects the American people. The fact that Jeffrey Epstein liked to have sex with underage albeit sexually mature girls is of no consequence to whether or not the US will go to war with Iran or whether or not the economy will go into recession or whether or not climate change will inundate major American cities. These are real issues.

Of course mass murders are purveyed relentlessly. This is one reason why they are being perpetuated. It seems that every white nationalist wants to get in on the act and garner his 15 minutes of fame. 15 minutes may be an understatement. They should not show the faces or mention the names of the mass murderers so that they don't get famous. Hate speech at social media sites should be taken down. Should their be censorship of hate speech? You betcha. These websites are where these guys congregate and egg each other on. So what does the mass media convey after one of these increasingly common attacks? Any discussion of gun control? Nah, that's too wonky, too intellectual, too political. What we get instead is the fact that there are so many good people in the world who are leaving lots of teddy bears and other remembrances at the murder site. We get interviews with bystanders and onlookers who state that "they couldn't believe that something like this could happen here." We get pablum. I know that there are good people in the world. I don't have to be told that. There is no discussion of mental illness or how the IRA puts profits above people or how the politicians know that after the furor dies down they won't have to pass any gun control legislation nor do they intend to do so.

It may be cynical, but it's true that the only thing that might shift the gun control debate is the fact that Michael Bloomberg has the assets to lobby Congress that rival the NRA's. The Guardian reports:

Guns are big(ish) business. Gun and ammunition manufacturers will have revenues of $13.3bn and profits of $1bn in 2017, according to IBISWorld. Gun and ammunition stores this year will have revenues of $85.bn and profits of $256m....

There are, however, problems on the horizon for the NRA. For one, the gun control lobby is growing. Billionaire Michael Bloomberg’s gun control group Everytown for Gun Safety is threatening to spend more than $25m in 2018 races. Americans for Responsible Solutions, a gun control political action committee set up by Gabrielle Giffords, a former Democratic congresswoman whose career was ended when she was shot along with 18 others in an Arizona suburb, spent $13.4m in 2016

So, of couse it's all about lobbying and profits. If the gun control groups can put more money in politicians' pockets than can the NRA, then maybe gun control legislation will be passed. It's pretty cynical, but then that's the way Congress operates. Profits and lobbying determine outcomes in the American political system. It is not predicated on doing the right thing for the American people, but only on what increases profits. I know, there are many Americans who are "good people". It's just that profits over people is how the system operates.

The U.S. Culture of Violence is Killing Us All

Published on

Wednesday, August 07, 2019

by

Common Dreams

The U.S. has the most guns per capita and the weakest gun control laws of any developed country.

 

 

by 

César Chelala

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Nearly 40,000 Americans who died of gun-related injuries in 2017 represent a 19 percent increase from 2012 and the highest annual total since the mid-1990s. (Photo: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

The two recent mass shooting incidents in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, in which more than 30 people were killed and dozens injured, are one more manifestation of a culture of violence that threatens not only people’s lives but also our future as a civilized society.

Although violent incidents occur in other countries, they are not as frequent — or as deadly — as in the United States, which has the highest homicide-by-firearms rate among the world’s most developed nations. Civilians in America own over 300 million guns, making Americans the most heavily armed people in the world on a per capita basis. As a contrast, the police own approximately one million guns.

The U.S. has the most guns per capita and the weakest gun control laws of any developed country. It is estimated that at least 30 percent of American adults own a gun, and an additional 11 percent lives with someone who does. Nearly 48 percent of U.S. adults grew up in a household with guns. Nearly two-thirds of Americans who own guns own more than one. 

The National Rifle Association (NRA) has been unrelenting in its efforts to influence lawmakers.

The National Rifle Association (NRA) has been unrelenting in its efforts to influence lawmakers. Although the majority of Americans say that gun laws should be more restrictive than what they are today lawmakers, to a large extent, are deaf to these demands.

To make matters even worse for gun control advocates, landmark Supreme Court rulings in 2008 and 2010 dramatically curtailed the authority of state and local governments to limit gun ownership. In a banal show of macho posturing, almost half of the 50 states in the U.S. have adopted laws that allow gun owners to carry their guns openly in most public places.

Although self-defense is often cited to justify the people’s right to bear arms, research has shown that a gun kept in a home is 43 times more likely to kill a member of the household or a friend than an intruder. The number of teenagers who die from gunshot wounds in the U.S. is greater than those who died from all other causes combined.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2017 saw more gun deaths in the U.S. than in any previous year in decades. Nearly 40,000 Americans who died of gun-related injuries in 2017 represent a 19 percent increase from 2012 and the highest annual total since the mid-1990s.

Although many Americans claim that guns are necessary for security, experiences such as in Japan and Australia show that this is not true. In Japan, which has adopted very strict gun-control laws and where –unlike in the U.S. - people who purchase guns have several background checks that include mental health, drug use, and a relative or a colleague’s perception of the applicant. A result of these policies is that there were 10 fatalities for a population of 128 million. Australia, which implemented a program against the use of firearms in 1996, saw the fatalities reduced by 40 percent.

Americans are exposed to violence since they are children. It is estimated that when a child becomes an adult he will have seen 16,000 assassinations and 200,000 acts of violence in television. Children tend to imitate what they see on television and in the movies, and see violence as the normal way of solving conflicts.

Andrew Exum, who was a soldier in Iraq and in Afghanistan, wrote about his dismay when, on returning to the U.S., he noticed the number of billboards on the side of the highways, advertising guns. “And not just guns –these were not .30-06 hunting rifles or shotguns, but rather, the kind of tactical firearms, including assault rifles that I had carried in Iraq and Afghanistan. Why in the world, I thought then, would anyone have a need for such weapons?”

Arno Michaelis, a former white supremacist turned anti-hate activist, called on President Donald Trump to stop using fear to motivate people to commit violent acts. He also said that the government needs to take ownership of guns more seriously, saying that there need to be federal laws in place to “stop people who are unbalanced from obtaining assault rifles.” Michaelis also blames Trump for using a kind of rhetoric that increases the possibility for this kind of incidents to take place.

Princeton Professor Eddie Glaude goes one step further in its criticism of the situation. As he commented to a reporter on MSNBC, “America is not unique in its sins as a country. We are not unique in our evils, to be honest with you. I think where we may be singular is our refusal to acknowledge them—and the legends and myths we tell about our inherent goodness to hide and cover and conceal so we can maintain a kind of willful ignorance that protects our innocence.”

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Off the Top of My Head

Movie, "The Hunt," Loaded with Gun Violence. That's Why It Wasn't Released After 3 Mass Shootings.

by John Lawrence, August 13, 2019

Hollywood movies are getting more and more violent. In particular they are filled with gun violence. Is there a connection between this aspect of American culture and what is happening in real life? One might think so. Universal Pictures has pulled the release of The Hunt, which was scheduled to come out September 27. In a statement on the movie’s website, the studio said that this is not “the right time” for the film to be released, especially considering the recent mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio. Marketing for the film had already been suspended due to the gun violence depicted in it.

The movie is about two groups of people: the liberals and the deplorables. Does this ring a bell? The liberals set out to hunt down and kill the deplorables. It is set in a world where “liberal elites” hunt Trump voter types for sport, having selected their prey based on the horrible opinions the targets shared on social media.This is all depicted as completely normal, even sporting. It normalizes violence, in particular gun violence.Such a treat to see people gunned down for the sport of it. It is really, really enjoyable. We can laugh as another one bites the dust, especially all those Trump voters.

However, in the movie the Trump voters take out their revenge on the "liberal elites" as well so both sides get to cheer when one of their opposite number gets gunned down. Is it any wonder there are mass shootings? Reality imitating culture? Gun violence in movies and in real life is totally normal? It gives the media something to convey which will raise their ratings. If it bleeds it leads, and the more blood the better. Meanwhile, nothing of importance concerning America or the world gets talked about. The Romans distracted their populace with bread and circuses. American culture distracts its constituents with blood and circuses.

Take any action movie. The guns in it are a whole lot bigger and more destructive than AK-47s. By comparison AK-47s seem like BB guns. You can't watch an American TV show or movie without gun violence being portrayed in it. That's why I mainly go to foreign produced movies. They are still capable of telling a story and formulating a plot line instead of relying on pyrotechnics to amuse and titillate the audience. "The Hunt" will probably be released at a later date in between the mass shootings if such a convenient time can be guessed at. They've spent too much money making it not to release it so that the American audience can be treated to another movie emphasizing gun violence.

The movie, Hobbs and Shaw is also incredibly violent, but it was released anyway amidst the mass shootings. Vox reported:

While the current iteration of Bond films, as well as other contenders to the action franchise throne like Mission: Impossible, frequently become mired in their own self-importance, Fast and Furious manages to float perpetually above such petty concerns as “plot” and “consequences.” Rather than giving a toss about elevating the action genre through serious themes, angsty heroes, and trope subversion, The Fast and The Furious instead consistently focuses on found family, homoerotic male bonding, and blowing shit up. What else, these films perpetually ask, do you really need?

Yes, what else do you need other than a lot of guns and "blowing shit up"?

WATCH: To Combat Hate and Gun Violence, Ocasio-Cortez Urges US to 'Go Deep' and 'Love Bigger' to Break Grip of White Supremacy

Published on Wednesday, August 07, 2019

by Common Dreams

"We will always be here and hold space for you to come back," AOC said directly to those now mired in racist ideologies. "We will love you back. You are not too far gone."

by Jake Johnson, staff writer

 

1 Comments

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) speaks during a vigil for the victims of the recent mass shootings in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio in Grand Army Plaza on August 5, 2019 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. (Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

In now viral footage of remarks from a Monday night vigil for victims of mass shootings in Texas and Ohio this past weekend, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez appealed directly to the growing number of Americans who are "falling into the grips of white supremacy" in an effort to combat divisiveness and hatred with a message of love.

"What I have to say to the young men and increasingly some of the young women in this country... that find themselves getting radicalized in a funnel of vitriol towards Latinos, towards immigrants, towards African Americans, towards all people black, towards all people Jewish, towards all people of different faiths, what I have to say to you is, come back," said Ocasio-Cortez. "Because there is a mother waiting for you. I know it."

"I know there's a teacher waiting for you, saying, 'What happened to my kid? What happened to my friend?'" the New York congresswoman continued. "And we will always be here and hold space for you to come back. We will love you back. You are not too far gone."

Ocasio-Cortez's speech spread quickly online, with nearly two million people viewing the clip since it was posted Tuesday.

The New York Democrat also spoke bluntly about President Donald Trump's hate-filled rhetoric, saying there is no reason to ask whether the president is a racist.

"When we allude to people as an invasion, as an infestation, we are directly pulling from the language of white supremacy," said Ocasio-Cortez. "So I don't want to hear the question, 'Is this president racist?' anymore. He is."

Watch:

‘I don’t want to hear the question ‘is this president racist?’ anymore. He is.’ — @AOC held nothing back while condemning Trump for using the language of white supremacy pic.twitter.com/3rWCkdYq6n

— NowThis (@nowthisnews) August 6, 2019

Ocasio-Cortez's direct confrontation of the threat of white supremacy in the United States contrasted sharply with the message of Fox News host and Trump favorite Tucker Carlson, who said Tuesday night that white supremacy is a "hoax," a "conspiracy theory," and "actually not a real problem in America."

"This is a hoax, just like the Russia hoax," Carlson said just days after a white supremacist gunman opened fire in an El Paso Walmart, killing 22 people. "It's a conspiracy theory used to divide the country and keep a hold on power. That's exactly what's going on."

During the vigil in Brooklyn Monday, Ocasio-Cortez said the United States needs to "go deep" to solve the nation's gun violence crisis.

"This is not just about assault weapons," said the congresswoman. "This is about gun violence in all of our communities. So whether it's from misogyny or whether it's from racism, you're not more of a man with a gun. You're not more of a man if you are capable of violence."

"You are not stronger if you tear another life down. We have to make sure we address that in our culture," she continued. "Fixing this is about fixing the laws, but it's about addressing our culture. We're gonna have to go deep. We need to go deep. Because it's not just those that have succumbed to hate that have to change. We need to learn to love bigger, to bring them back."

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Some Factual Gun Statistics – Part 2 of A Cultural Comparison: Gun Violence In The US And Europe

January 9, 2013 by Source

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Editor’s note: Originally published on Jan. 8, the San Diego Free Press is republishing this three-part series in honor of the one year anniversary of the Newtown school shooting, which claimed the lives of 20 children and six adults.

By Frank Thomas and John Lawrence

Continued from Part 1

Photo:Wikipedia

In almost every measurable statistic whether it be gun ownership, gun homicide rate or total firearm-related deaths including suicides and accidents, the US leads the world in deadly gun violence. Although statistics show that a firearm in the household is more likely to be used on a family member than an intruder, the NRA promotes gun ownership as a means of self-protection and as a crime deterrent.

Britain has a much stricter gun control culture with relatively few guns in households. You couldn´t get a more murder free society than Britain or Japan which has banned practically all guns. In contrast, America has as many firearms as there are people – a situation made irreversibly dangerous knowing that guns have at least a 100-year life cycle.

While the original primary motivation for an armed populace under the 2^nd Amendment was to defend against tyrants and invaders, America´s last 60 years of an accelerating gun ownership dynamic –legal and illegal – is  now perceived and promoted as an absolute necessity to defend ourselves against outrageous, multiple crime subcultures and misfits. The fact that there are so many guns out there seems to justify the rationale that even more guns are necessary in an ever expanding feedback loop. If it is correct that the size of the national gun collection is directly related and proportional to gun violence levels in the U.S., then, as the total number of guns in the hands of the American people continues to grow, so will the level of gun violence.

In 2010, roughly 70% of US homicides were by gun whereas in Britain including Northern Ireland only 9% were by gun. In the US in 2012 the total firearm-related death rate including both suicides and homicides was 10.2 per 100,000; in France the comparative figure was 3.0;  in Britain, 0.25 . So the US firearms-related death rate was about 40 times that of Britain!

The US has the highest gun ownership rate in the world – at 89 guns for every 100 Americans compared to 6 in Britain, 31 for Canada and Norway. And the gun murder figures themselves are equally astounding. While there were 9,960 U.S. gun homicides in 2010, there were only 58 in Britain. Britain´s population is one-fifth of the US population. When adjusted for this, British gun murders are equivalent to 290 US gun murders.

Thus, versus Britain, the US had 34 times more gun homicides. In 2010, there were  total of only 1,164 EU-17 gun homicides vs. 9,960 U.S. gun homicides making the U.S. homicide rate higher by a factor of 11 on an equivalent population basis. In the years 2010 and 2011, homicides by guns as a percentage of total homicides were about 28% in the EU-17 vs. 70% in the US.  In 2011 there were 12,664 murders in the US. Of those, 8,583 were caused by firearms. In 2012, there were over 500 gun murders in Chicago alone – almost half the total of the EU-17 countries. Contrary to propaganda by the NRA, these figures show that smaller levels of gun possession lead to smaller numbers of gun homicides.

Obviously, European social and cultural factors play a major role along with much more restrictive, broadly accepted gun controls. In fact, Britain’s strict gun controls led to record low gun homicides in 2011 and to its lowest intentional (gun and non/gun) homicide level ever.

Statistics show that when there is a gun in a home, that gun is more likely to be used on a member of the household than on an intruder. Indeed, Adam Lanza´s mother´s legally purchased semi-automatic guns were first used on her before they were used on 20 children and 6 adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School, and later on Adam Lanza himself. Approximately 30,000 people every year die from gunshot wounds – the second leading cause of death from injury after motor vehicle crashes. This includes but is not limited to gun murders. Only a small number of these deaths are due to accidents.

There are far more suicides than there are homicides. Guns kept in the home for self-protection are 43 times more likely to kill a family member, friend or acquaintance than to kill an intruder, according to a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Guns on the street or in the house make us less safe. According to the FBI, for every justifiable handgun homicide, there are more than 50 handgun murders.

The correlation of gun availability and violence is an unending chicken and egg debate. Is the U.S. dilemma of extreme levels of violent crime due mostly to easy gun availability and an exceptionally high ownership level or to other intractable societal factors? For example, England and Norway had achieved low gun homicide rates even prior to having strict gun controls.

Clearly, many confounding societal mechanisms – mental illness, uncensored violent TV films and video games, racial divides, alcohol/drug abuse, self-destruction, income inequality, jealousy, anger, physical abuse, youth gangs in urban cities – all are contributing root causes of gun injuries and homicide rates – much more so in America than in Europe.

Sweden censors movies more harshly for violence than it does for sex although if you really want to see the cut scenes you can request a private showing. In the US movies are only rated for sexual content. According to current regulations, the Swedish film censoring agency can censor any film which depicts events “in such a manner and in such a context as to have a brutalizing effect” and is judged to have “explicit or protracted scenes of severe violence to people or animals or depicts sexual violence or coercion or presents children in pornographic situations.” Evidently, no violence or horror is too graphic that children shouldn’t be able to see it in the U.S.

The day after the mass murders in Newtown I [John] passed a movie billboard featuring a man aiming down the sights of a rifle. The name of the movie: “Killing Them Softly.” You’d think out of decency and respect for what had just happened they would have taken the billboard down, but violence sells obviously and no time out from money making is ever taken including the money making from selling guns whose sales rose rapidly immediately following the Sandy Hook killings.

The popular TV show Crime Scene Investigation features cops solving grisly murders depicted graphically. It has spawned a host of other spin-offs: CSI: Miami, CSI: NY etc. Shoot-em-ups and cops and robbers shows are staples on TV and in the movies.

Video games are almost entirely dramas in which a shooter blows the bad guys away. A Connecticut town is burning violent video games, CDs and DVDs in the wake of the Newtown shootings. A dumpster is being provided where folks can turn them in. Los Angeles recently had a successful gun buyback which netted 2,037 firearms including 75 assault rifles. The irony is that LA gun stores are selling that many guns in a single day!

A similar gun buyback in San Diego netted 360 more guns than the buyback a year ago. If the American people really want to get rid of violent weapons and media, they should replicate these efforts in every town and city throughout the country. In addition to legislation banning the sales of assault weapons and high capacity gun clips, there should be legislation defining a new movie and TV rating code which takes depictions of violence and particularly gun violence into account.

If Americans really want to get rid of gun violence and change the gun culture, they need to step up to the plate and start demanding these kinds of limitations on cultural violence on a local level. Support Mayors Against Illegal Guns, for example, and Demand a Plan to End Gun Violence. What is more important – that Americans be able to play with their favorite toys or that needless murders of innocent children and adults be prevented? And as far as hunting goes, is the pleasure derived from shooting innocent animals worth the misery caused by the loss of innocent children? Expanding our global vision a bit, today in Africa elephants and rhinoceros are being illegally slaughtered to the point of extinction with assault rifles just for their tusks which are worth a lot of money in Asia.

Switzerland’s low gun homicide rate seems a contradiction upon first glance. Here’s a country with one of the highest gun ownership levels in Europe that also has a relatively low gun homicide rate! Same applies to Norway.

In contrast, Britain has exceptionally low gun ownership levels and gun homicide rates. The Swiss, Norwegian and even Canadian firearms experience refutes the belief that very low gun homicide rates are due to strict controls on ownership levels of firearms … while British and most other EU country experience confirms that belief. However, even Switzerland has half the gun ownership rate and Norway, a third that of the US which has the highest gun ownership rate of any country in the world. Furthermore, Switzerland and Norway, while having high gun ownership rates, also have extensive training, certification requirements and strict gun controls … and are not permeated by violent cultural values.

But despite all the certification and training it is always possible for a deranged person determined to carry out a mass murder to do it. On January 3, 2013 a gunman murdered 3 people in the Swiss town of Daillon. Scotland’s Dunblane massacre in March 1996, in which 16 children and one adult were shot dead by Thomas Hamilton who walked into a school armed with a range of handguns and opened fire, resulted in the banning of all cartridge ammunition handguns, with the exception of .22 calibre single-shot weapons, in Britain.

One month after Dunblane, Australia experienced its worse mass murder in a Tasmanian seaside resort, where a gunman killed 35 and wounded 23, Prime Minister John Howard tightened gun control legislation and implemented a mass buyback of about one-fifth of all the firearms in circulation. Australia has not had a mass shooting ever since.

What happened in Scotland and Australia was that a mass murder was followed by a tightening of gun laws. The Australian government bought back more than 630,000 weapons, and the British government took tens of thousands of guns off the streets with a similar program. This makes the buyback programs in LA and San Diego pale by comparison.

The result was less gun violence in general which is a good thing although a determined mass murderer could probably do the same thing again despite increased gun control. This is the lesson I [John] draw from what happened in Scotland and Australia and now in Switzerland where these acts of mass murder are really an anomaly in terms of the overall level of gun violence which is really low. The lesson for the U.S. is the same. Increased gun control may not prevent the next mass murder although it should make it less likely, but it should decrease total gun violence in general.

Spain enforces strict controls over firearms. Their constitution clearly states: “The State shall have exclusive competence over … the regime for the production, trading, holding, and use of weapons.”  In Finland, citizens must have a valid reason for a gun license such as hunting, recreation, or gun exhibitions. An amendment to the 1997 Scotland Firearms Act banned private possession of all modern pistols, even for competitive sporting purposes. Small bore rifles are not limited. Many types of rifles, shotguns, and black powder pistols and long arms may be privately owned. Luxembourg has a complete ban on guns.

In the Netherlands, assault rifles, silencers, and short-barreled shotguns as well as any kind of high capacity magazine are banned for civilian possession unless authorized by the Minister of Justice. Our neighbor, Canada, has no constitutional right to bear arms. Gun ownership is strictly regulated and certain gun models are prohibited by the Firearms Act. Canada’s crime rate is lower than that of the U.S.

Despite the Supreme Court interpretation of the 2^nd Amendment which gives American citizens the right to bear arms, that right does not necessarily preclude strict gun controls including a mandate for training, certification and other precautionary measures. In fact, some states have rather restrictive firearms laws including assault weapon bans. However, many state firearms laws are less restrictive than federal firearms laws.

Complicating harmonization and reciprocity of gun control regulations among all 50 states is the fact that firearm owners are subject to the laws of the state they are in. Also, in the Supreme Court vs. Printz  case, the Supreme Court held that state and local police departments are not obligated to enforce federal gun law. The Supreme Court decision in McDonald vs. City of Chicago merely says that the protections of the 2^nd Amendment apply to state and local governments. Although we have a broad hodgepodge of gun laws regulating the sale, possession, and use of firearms among the 50 states, 44 states have a provision in their state constitutions that is similar to the US 2^nd Amendment.

The Red/Blue split among states is likely to engender a similar split when it comes to gun control laws with the northern and west coastal states having more restrictive laws and the southern states being less restrictive.

Continued in Part 3 – Some WHY Questions

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We Have Studied Every Mass Shooting Since 1966. Here’s What We’ve Learned About the Shooters

Published on Monday, August 05, 2019

by Los Angeles Times

Instead of simply rehearsing for the inevitable, we need to use that data to drive effective prevention strategies.

by Jillian Peterson, James Densley

 

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Family members of 13-year-old Gilroy shooting victim Keyla Salazar console each other before a San Jose vigil. (Photo: Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times)

In the last week, more than 30 people have died in three separate mass shootings in Gilroy, El Paso and Dayton, Ohio. We believe that analyzing and understanding data about who commits such massacres can help prevent more lives being lost.

For two years, we’ve been studying the life histories of mass shooters in the United States for a project funded by the National Institute of Justice, the research arm of the U.S. Department of Justice. We’ve built a database dating back to 1966 of every mass shooter who shot and killed four or more people in a public place, and every shooting incident at schools, workplaces, and places of worship since 1999. We’ve interviewed incarcerated perpetrators and their families, shooting survivors and first responders. We’ve read media and social media, manifestos, suicide notes, trial transcripts and medical records.

Our goal has been to find new, data-driven pathways for preventing such shootings. Although we haven’t found that mass shooters are all alike, our data do reveal four commonalities among the perpetrators of nearly all the mass shootings we studied.

First, the vast majority of mass shooters in our study experienced early childhood trauma and exposure to violence at a young age. The nature of their exposure included parental suicide, physical or sexual abuse, neglect, domestic violence, and/or severe bullying. The trauma was often a precursor to mental health concerns, including depression, anxiety, thought disorders or suicidality.

Second, practically every mass shooter we studied had reached an identifiable crisis point in the weeks or months leading up to the shooting. They often had become angry and despondent because of a specific grievance. For workplace shooters, a change in job status was frequently the trigger. For shooters in other contexts, relationship rejection or loss often played a role. Such crises were, in many cases, communicated to others through a marked change in behavior, an expression of suicidal thoughts or plans, or specific threats of violence.

Third, most of the shooters had studied the actions of other shooters and sought validation for their motives. People in crisis have always existed. But in the age of 24-hour rolling news and social media, there are scripts to follow that promise notoriety in death. Societal fear and fascination with mass shootings partly drives the motivation to commit them. Hence, as we have seen in the last week, mass shootings tend to come in clusters. They are socially contagious. Perpetrators study other perpetrators and model their acts after previous shootings. Many are radicalized online in their search for validation from others that their will to murder is justified.

 

Fourth, the shooters all had the means to carry out their plans. Once someone decides life is no longer worth living and that murdering others would be a proper revenge, only means and opportunity stand in the way of another mass shooting. Is an appropriate shooting site accessible? Can the would-be shooter obtain firearms? In 80% of school shootings, perpetrators got their weapons from family members, according to our data. Workplace shooters tended to use handguns they legally owned. Other public shooters were more likely to acquire them illegally.

So what do these commonalities tell us about how to prevent future shootings?

One step needs to be depriving potential shooters of the means to carry out their plans. Potential shooting sites can be made less accessible with visible security measures such as metal detectors and police officers. And weapons need to be better controlled, through age restrictions, permit-to-purchase licensing, universal background checks, safe storage campaigns and red-flag laws — measures that help control firearm access for vulnerable individuals or people in crisis.

Another step is to try to make it more difficult for potential perpetrators to find validation for their planned actions. Media campaigns like #nonotoriety are helping starve perpetrators of the oxygen of publicity, and technology companies are increasingly being held accountable for facilitating mass violence. But we all can slow the spread of mass shootings by changing how we consume, produce, and distribute violent content on media and social media. Don’t like or share violent content. Don’t read or share killers’ manifestos and other hate screeds posted on the internet. We also need to study our current approaches. For example, do lockdown and active shooter drills help children prepare for the worst or hand potential shooters the script for mass violence by normalizing or rehearsing it?

We also need to, as a society, be more proactive. Most mass public shooters are suicidal, and their crises are often well known to others before the shooting occurs. The vast majority of mass shooters leak their plans ahead of time. People who see or sense something is wrong, however, may not always say something to someone owing to the absence of clear reporting protocols or fear of overreaction and unduly labeling a person as a potential threat. Proactive violence prevention starts with schools, colleges, churches and employers initiating conversations about mental health and establishing systems for identifying individuals in crisis, reporting concerns and reaching out — not with punitive measures but with resources and long-term intervention. Everyone should be trained to recognize the signs of a crisis.

Proactivity needs to extend also to the traumas in early life that are common to so many mass shooters. Those early exposures to violence need addressing when they happen with ready access to social services and high-quality, affordable mental health treatment in the community. School counselors and social workers, employee wellness programs, projects that teach resilience and social emotional learning, and policies and practices that decrease the stigma around mental illness will not just help prevent mass shootings, but will also help promote the social and emotional success of all Americans.

Our data show that mass shooters have much in common. Instead of simply rehearsing for the inevitable, we need to use that data to drive effective prevention strategies.

© 2019 Los Angeles Times

Why Isn't Hate Group Website Taken Down?

by John Lawrence

The creator of the website 8chan is where all the haters and white supremacists post their manifestos. Even the creator of the site who doesn't own it any more wants it taken down. It exemplifies the problem that social media is bringing to the fore which is is there a limit to free speech? Should some types of speech, namely hate speech, be banned? The US is stuck with two freedoms which are increasingly problematical: free speech and right to own a gun, any gun. These two "freedoms" should not be absolute as most societies would concur. Hate speech on social media should not be tolerated. Is this censorship? You betcha. Should ownership of an assault rifle like the AK-47 be banned? You betcha although the gun nuts would disagree. They don't want any limits on gun ownership nor do they want any limits on their free hate speech.

The US Constitution is coming up against limits which are actually destroying the country unless those limits are acknowledged and action taken. The US Constitution is reaching its limits of usefulness and should be revised like many other countries have done without creating a crisis. Gun control is essential unless the US wants to have a mass murder a day or more than one a day. Gun ownership needs to be cracked down on. There are too many angry men out there with toxic agendas. Their "cells" need to be taken down. They are as evil as Ku Klux Klan cells or any other terrorist cell or organization. The web needs to be monitored and hate sites taken down, but is Facebook doing this? Facebook can't be trusted because they are a private entity not really beholden to the government. Their objective is to make as much money as possible for their shareholders, and taking down a site eliminates all the money they would be making from that site.

TPM reported:

The founder of the site 8chan, where a shooter may have posted a racist, anti-immigrant screed before killing 20 people at a Walmart in El Paso, called for the messaging board to be shut down on Sunday.

Fredrick Brennan, who created the site in 2013, told the New York Times that the current owner of the unmoderated, often hate-filled chat site needs to shutter it.

“Shut the site down,” Brennan said. “It’s not doing the world any good. It’s a complete negative to everybody except the users that are there.”

“And you know what? It’s a negative to them, too,” he added. “They just don’t realize it.”

Investigators believe that Patrick Crusius, the suspected gunman, may be behind a hate-filled manifesto that was posted on 8chan shortly before he allegedly began shooting up the Walmart.

8chan was also where the New Zealand mosque shooter and the San Diego synagogue shooter posted their plans for violence earlier this year.

I speculate that China wouldn't hesitate to take down hate oriented websites. There's no absolute right of free speech there, and the government has the last word, not some private corporation. They wouldn't stand for it one minute, and the perpetrator of hate speech would be in jail no fooling around with protecting his or her rights. So how many hate filled websites will go up in the next election mainly targeting Democrats? Should a website which espouses "Lock Her Up" be tolerated? Be legal? There is no government censorship in America so anything goes no matter how untrue, no matter how hateful, no matter how far removed from the issues. And can anyone anywhere in the world contribute to Facebook posts. In particular who is in charge of distinguishing whether or not a Russian entity would put up an ad or a post like "Lock Her Up" or "Send Her Back" or whether it was put up by an American? Does it make any difference? Is Facebook policing this? I don't think so. So it's the wild west and anyone anywhere in the world is free to join in.

Some ‘Why?’ Questions – Part 3 of a Cultural Comparison: Gun Violence in the US and Europe

JANUARY 10, 2013 BY SOURCE

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From the San Diego Free Press

 

Continued from Part 2 

By Frank Thomas and John Lawrence

WHY does America’s weakly regulated gun culture vs. that in Europe correlate to out-of-sight gun homicide rates in the U.S.? One WHY answer is that there are higher levels of U.S. criminality compared to England, Switzerland, Norway, and other EU countries … illustrated by the number of U.S. citizens in prison per 100,000 population of  750 ± vs. 100 ± in the EU! (see European Institute for Crime Prevention & Control, “International Statistics on Crime and Justice,” 2010).

Our sub-cultures of violent and less violent crime justify for many Americans the constitutional argument of self-defense, thus allowing high cartridge capacity, semi-automatic firearms of all sorts to roll off gun manufacturers’ production lines. We are at a crossroads … where it’s not only the high gun ownership level that contributes to high homicide rates but also the high level of crime and military-style killings by the emotionally unbalanced (as occurred in Newtown) that motivate more people to acquire guns for self-defense.

“Since there are so many guns, we need more guns.”  This NRA promoted endless feedback loop only opens up more opportunities for homicidal maniacs to go on indiscriminate shooting sprees …  killing children, adolescents and adults. In the end, what it all seems to come down to is that we are by nature a violent nation … and have always been so.

Studies by the National Institute of Justice conclude that greater gun availability increases the rates of murder and felony gun use, but does NOT appear to affect the general U.S. violence level. In other words, the fact the U.S. is a violent society does not have so much to do with guns. The fact that our violent crime is so DEADLY has much to do with guns … e.g., resort to AR-15s!

Research I [Frank] have examined makes a case that homicides are tied to the willingness and ability to resort to violence as an attacker or defender, not just to the mere existence of firearms. Studies show that our already horrendously high U.S. total gun homicide rates would be even higher it weren’t for right-to-concealed-carry state laws allowing individuals properly licensed to carry firearms for protection against crime. In right-to-carry states, studies reveal that violent crime rates compared to other states are approximately 25% lower, murder rates 50% lower, and robbery rates 50% lower.

I [John] disagree with Frank on this. I think the proliferation and super-saturation of the populace with guns leads to the settling of disputes by a resorting to gun violence much more likely. Disputes are settled in a variety of ways – some civilized, some uncivilized. Even the old-fashioned fistfight rarely left anyone dead.

Today a gunfight will usually ensue instead of a fistfight if one of the participants has a gun handy. In China on the same day as the Newtown mass murders, a deranged man entered a school and injured 20 childen with a knife. They all survived. The outcome was completely different in Newtown.

Control of guns to reduce our tendency to violence remains critical. But complex social factors already noted cannot be brushed aside as they are also a powerful cause of violence. Why does Switzerland or Norway, for example, have such low absolute levels of violent crime and gun homicides despite being among the most armed household nations in the world?  Solving our violence dilemma lies in the social, cultural and psychological determinants of violence as much as it does in the widespread ownership of guns. The enemy is US and the battlefield is mostly in the urban areas.

Another WHY answer most people sense is that America has gone nuts producing and selling semi-automatic pistols and rifles that release dozens of bullets in seconds. Some rifles on the open market are capable of firing 100 bullets in a second. Military-style assault weapons are really great for our soldiers in Afghanistan … but insane as everyday household defense products for the general public.

Here’s where guns are indeed the major precipitator of a culture of violence. I [Frank] can’t believe that General Wingate, founder of the NRA, had in mind a population armed with such deadly automatic, big-cartridge weaponry that can be purchased almost at will by the teenager, the novice, the mentally ill and the emotionally unstable. As pointed out, when guns are used, they are almost always used for murder or suicide … this particularly applies to automatic weapons.

Another WHY answer explaining Europe’s very low intentional homicide, gun homicide, and crime rates is that guns are generally viewed in Europe as anathema after so many centuries of human killing. That is why European countries do not see ownership of firearms as a constitutional right … as embraced in our 2^nd Amendment. It is also because European countries have updated their Constitutions much more recently than has the U.S. Although the U.S. is a newer country than any country in the EU-17, it has an older Constitution than any of them.

In Europe, one hears little of the facile pro-gun arguments that “gun control disarms law-abiding citizens” that one hears in the U.S. Controls are in place and enforced to limit the availability of firearms manufactured or obtained illegally. Strict selling, permit, and safety training regulations are constantly being improved. England and Switzerland are two of the safest places to be although each has an entirely different approach to gun control.

I [John] think that gun ownership should only be allowed if the gun purchaser has completed a very thorough training program and has been certified as qualified to possess a gun. I think this training should be as rigorous and as expensive as that required to become a private pilot, for example. While you see gun ownership to be pretty widespread among Swiss and Israeli males for the purpose of defending their respective countries, it’s only after being thoroughly trained and certified by those countries.

As it is, in the U.S. unlike Europe there are extremely lax controls over gun usage  An owner can pick up a gun and use it whenever or wherever he damn well pleases. And no training or certification is required. I also think that shooting ranges should keep track of people using their facilities, do a quick computer database background check and report any suspicious behavior. Most mass murderers have utilized shooting ranges.

Although Norway has generally a low level of gun violence and free access to mental health care, it had its first mass murder last year perpetrated by Anders Breivik. In this otherwise peaceful country, Breivik perpetrated the largest mass murder in history killing 69 people. Norway still was not protected from a determined mass murderer who obtained his weapons, ammunition and explosives legally. Perhaps the relatively high availability of guns in Norway compared to other European countries played a part. Breivik played violent video games, but had no previous criminal or psychiatric record. However, this event was a total anomaly in Norway, not so in America where mass murders are becoming commonplace.

Another WHY answer is how the original meaning of the 2^nd Amendment has evolved and changed. The 2^nd Amendment is one long sentence with some key phrases that are a lawyer´s hell or paradise … depending on which side he or she is on. It says:

“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.”

State courts and the Supreme Court have generally upheld the right of citizens to keep and bear arms for individual protection against harm doers. This does not prevent a Supreme Court – perhaps with a Democratic majority – to rule in favor of a very narrow and limited interpretation of the 2^nd Amendment concerning, for example, the kinds of weapons and ammunition cartridges that can be sold to individuals for self-defense. Going further and repealing the 2^nd Amendment may someday be possible but highly unlikely given the 300 million guns now in the system and past Supreme Court decisions. Amending the 2^nd Amendment to get tighter control of weapons sales rather than killing it completely may hold more promise.

However, states and municipalities can implement gun control and then dare the Supreme Court and the Justice Department to prevent them from doing it just as states have legalized marijuana in conflict with Federal law. When it comes down to it, the U.S. is still a democracy and eventually the people will get what they want.

The problem is that at the present time what the people seem to want is more guns. How many more mass murders of innocents must we have before the U.S. gun culture will be truly chastened? Perhaps it will be when there are a majority of women and mothers in Congress many of whom will have lost children to gun violence.

It is of little wonder the NRA and other pro-gun lobbying groups tenaciously support the 2^ndAmendment on the basis that guns are the best deterrent of crime against individuals … under their facile philosophy: “As guns increase, we are safer. As guns decrease, there are more murders.”  But the NRA after all is simply more of a lobbyist for gun manufacturers than anything else.

So, argues the NRA president, “arm the school teachers and guards!” Of course maniac killer(s) can always go for these people first with the advantage of planning, surprise, and initiative. I [Frank] hope this article effectively argues the utter falsehood and incredibly dangerous social implications of this kind of thinking.

When you put it all together it seems to me (John) that the availability and proliferation of guns, particularly assault rifles with high capacity clips, is the main reason why the US has such a large amount of gun violence compared to other societies. A secondary reason is a violent culture as the amount of gun violence on TV, movies and video games desensitizes and accustoms the public and especially sensitive minds to the fact that gun violence is “normal.”

What one sees and hears and experiences on a daily basis comes to be seen as a mundane and inevitable part of life. A tertiary reason is the fact that a significant portion of our population has mental health issues. Another issue is desperation and poverty. Neighborhoods in which there is a lot of poverty have greater levels of gun violence.

Guns need to be taken off the streets and out of households. Buyback programs have been massive in other countries and not just tokenism as they have so far amounted to in the U.S. In Britain and Australia after mass murders there, gun laws were strengthened and tightened. The result has been that not only have there been no more mass murders, but the everyday mundane use of guns to kill people one at a time has been greatly reduced.

While I believe that no amount of gun control will prevent a determined mass murderer, we know from historical precedent that prudent gun control laws can and will, in general, reduce the amount of gun violence both homicides and suicides.

There needs to be an effort to rate movies and TV programs in terms of their violence, and not just their sexual, content. While we supposedly protect young people from sex in the media, we don’t protect them from violence in the media. As for mental health, it needs to be free on demand as, hopefully, it will be under the Affordable Care Act.

As I [John] wrote recently in the San Diego Free Press:

Terrorists have only been able to kill 17 people in the US since 9/11, but 88,000 Americans have died in gun violence from 2003 to 2010. Britain, which has very strict gun laws, had 41 gun murders in 2010 while the US had around 10,000. 6,626 Americans have died in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. About 3000 died in the tragedy of 9/11. The cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan so far is around $4 trillion.

At the same time no money has been spent on the war on gun violence in the US in which about the same number of people die every year from gun homicides as the total of those who died on 9/11 plus those who have died in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. About 30,000 Americans die every year from gun violence when you add in suicides. Does this make any sense? As Pogo said, “We have met the enemy and the enemy is us.”

The bottom line is gun ownership should be a privilege and not a right.

A Cultural Comparison: Gun Violence In The US And Europe (Part 1)

JANUARY 8, 2013 BY SOURCE

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From the San Diego Free Press

 

Editor’s note: Originally published on Jan. 8, the San Diego Free Press is republishing this three-part series in honor of the one year anniversary of the Newtown school shooting, which claimed the lives of 20 children and six adults.

By Frank Thomas and John Lawrence

While US gun crime and all crime levels are slowly but almost imperceptibly declining, they still remain relatively astronomically high compared with Europe. In this article, we compare US and European levels of gun violence and gun control to see if we can make any sense of the gun debate in the wake of the increasing frequency of mass murders as well as the almost mundane everyday killings in urban areas like Chicago and Detroit. Frank is an ex-pat who has lived in Europe for over 30 years. John has lived in San Diego for over 40 years.

It’s time to get serious on prohibiting gun acquisition or possession by people with a history of mental illness and by high risk groups such as felons, drug addicts or alcoholics. It’s time to get serious on limiting civilian gun sales to one shot at a time pistols and rifles with cartridge or chamber capacities of no more than six bullets. It’s time to get serious on conducting thorough criminal and mental health background checks and having waiting periods for high risk people and first-time buyers seeking gun permits. 

Complicating matters, in my (John’s) view, is that most mass murderers have no prior record of mental illness nor have they obtained their guns illegally. The main problem, we believe, is that so many legal and illegal guns are out there, particularly powerful high bullet capacity semi-automatic weapons and assault type pistols and rifles, that only an all-out effort to get them off the street and out of households is going to do any good. It’s the easy availability and sheer number of guns that creates our unique climate of gun violence.

Part 1 – The 2^nd Amendment Right to Keep and Bear Arms           

Unlike Europe, America’s 2^nd Amendment has given constitutional support to a culture where the gun is designed, worshiped, and elevated to a sacred, very efficient killing status.

While our nation has had a somewhat constant, but international-wise very high, level of homicide violence, gun proliferation has enabled a greater portion of that violence to become deadly in sharp contrast to Europe. Pro-gun advocates like to say that violent crime rates are far higher in Europe as a result of restrictive gun controls. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Clearly, the original intent of the 2^nd Amendment was to create a militia of citizens to protect the country from foreign invaders, especially the British who had just been beaten in the War of Independence and would have had another try at it in the War of 1812. The militia concept took the place of a standing army.

The English Bill of Rights of 1689, which predates our Bill of Rights by 100 years, codified an ancient self-protection right with the words, …  “subjects who are Protestants may have arms for their defense suitable to their conditions and as allowed by law.”  This gave birth to the English common law right to keep and bear arms for self-defense, but the vague wording is a far cry from the absolute wording of our 2^nd Amendment: “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.”

In the 18^th century, the Swiss “citizens militia” model was cited in support of passage of the 2^ndAmendment to our Constitution on the rights of citizens to keep and bear firearms. Since its founding in 1291, Switzerland has allowed and even required its citizens to arm as a defense against Europe’s despots. For centuries a well-armed Swiss populace has kept its independence by defeating the mighty armies of European monarchs. The Swiss learned early that tyrannical invading foreign forces kill more people than do criminals or the deranged. The Swiss militia took the place of a standing army as did American citizen militias in the 18^th and early 19^th centuries.

Thomas Jefferson was the first to suggest we should not have a standing army and wrote a series of letters in 1787 urging James Madison and others to write this into the Constitution. The idea was that, instead of a standing army, every able-bodied man in the nation should be required to be a member of a local militia, under local control, with a gun in his house. If the nation were invaded, word would come down to the local level and every man in the country would take arms and constitute a de facto army (following the Swiss model).

Militias were clearly meant by the Founding Fathers to take the place of a standing army. However, a permanently standing US army was established in WWII. As such, it took the place of militias making them unnecessary and also to a certain extent making the basic intention of the 2^nd Amendment superfluous.

In 1791, US Representative Andrew Jackson acknowledged the Swiss influence on the right to bear arms when he said: “The inhabitants of Switzerland emancipated themselves by the establishment of a militia which finally delivered them from the tyranny of the lords.” Similarly, the right to bear arms as part of a “well regulated militia”  formed the original basis for our 2^nd Amendment. General Wingate, founder of the NRA, heaped praise on the Swiss militia model as being the ideal model for securing the country’s security.

First came a legal challenge in Aymette v. State (1840) where the court held that, “citizens have an unqualified right to keep and bear arms.” The court held this right is not just for those individuals who are members of the militia.

Then came the vague, poorly arrived at and seeming contradictory decision in U.S. v. Miller (1939) where the court held that the 2nd Amendment “protects the right to bear arms only if the arms in question are those that would be useful as part of a civilian militia.”

Finally, Justice Scalia in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) held that the 2^nd Amendment “protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in the militia.”

Then came a landmark case McDonald v. Chicago (2010) where the Supreme Court held the right to “keep and bear arms” under the 2^nd Amendment applies also to the states. The District of Columbia v. Heller ruling was vague on the scope of gun rights in regard to states.

However, under the banner of linking “freedom” to personal armed “readiness,” the NRA has long adopted the position that efforts to restrict gun sales – whether semi-automatics, AR-15s, AK-47s, machine guns, or hunting rifles – are an “assault” on our constitutional rights under the 2^ndAmendment. In truth, the 2^nd Amendment does NOT sanction the individual right to semi-automatic and automatic firearms.

Further, the NRA propagandizes that inadequate gun control laws have nothing to do with the epidemic of gun-related killings. “People kill, not guns”´  is the NRA’s motto … rather than “People kill with guns.” According to the NRA, the way to make people safer is MORE semi-automatic guns and better background checks on society´s psychiatrically disabled.

GunPolicy.org

In Europe today, there is no absolute right to own a gun. The British strictly control the possession of most types of arms for the common good. Criminals, children, and the mentally ill are not allowed to be armed. The UK Firearm Acts of 1968 and 1998 setrigid requirements for a firearms certificate. Firearms such as rifles and shotguns as well as ammunition must be stored and locked securely – preferably in specially manufactured firearms cabinets. This is to prevent to the extent possible any “unauthorized” person from taking or using them. An “unauthorized” person is someone who does not have a firearm or shotgun certificate.

Ad hoc inspections control this regulation, including regulations regarding carrying a gun on the street. Violations result in serious fines plus up to six months in prison (and possible loss of firearm certification). Center-fire, self-loading, and pump action rifles are banned as well as automatic weapons. Gun rights and strict rules have culturally evolved to a point where today Britain has one of the lowest gun ownership levels and gun homicide rates in the world. Further, this has not resulted in high non-gun homicides or a high violent crime culture as purist anti-gun control believers like to say.

Switzerland also has no constitutional guarantee of an individual´s right to bear arms. The national legislature could ban gun ownership anytime if it wished. But today Switzerland is a heavily armed nation (but at half the rate of gun ownership as the US). This reflects a centuries old Swiss culture of having arms to resist possible invaders or despotic tyrants, for example, Hitler in WWII.

The country’s high gun ownership level comes with a very low gun homicide rate compared to the US. All males at 18 must join the military and can take their military assault weapon home with them when they leave the army. Thus, up to 500,000 military assault weapons (or approximately 6 guns per 100 population) are estimated to be in Swiss households today. These weapons must be locked up and ammunition is kept in central arsenals. However, there is a movement afoot to relocate these military weapons out of the home and into depots.

The government supplies bullets for shooting festivals. Canton police may issue special permits for civilians to own assault rifles – typically as licensed collectors – and such weapons may not be fired in full automatic mode. While gun ownership laws have tightened on handguns and non-military weapons, it is still relatively easy to get a hand gun. But, it is illegal to carry guns in public.

Switzerland has many guns but few murders … thanks to strict gun control laws and a popular recreational shooting culture. The country hosts some of the largest rifle shooting events in the world. Swiss households use firearms mainly as a peaceful, sport-shooting family occupation at contest festivals where eating, drinking, socializing abound. Shooting-range festivals have come to be recognized as a wholesome community activity. Well-enforced rules apply to permits, safety training, and gun/ammunition handling. Ammunition sold at ranges must be used there. Males 20 to 42 must keep their rifles and pistols at home. This culture fosters gun safety. Over time, these social attitudes have helped to keep Swiss total gun and non-gun homicide rates far below those of the U.S.!

Continued in Part 2: Some Factual Gun Statistics (Tomorrow)

Guns, Angry People and Mass Murders: The Cycle Continues Until We Stop It

OCTOBER 20, 2015 BY JOHN LAWRENCE

Reposted from the San Diego Free Press

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By John Lawrence

We live in a sick society where little kids play violent video games, you can’t flip through the channels on a TV without seeing drawn handguns, and hunters use automatic weapons to kill innocent animals. It’s a culture of violence in movies and TV, a culture of violence in video games and a culture of violence in terms of unending wars and people blown to smithereens every night on the nightly news.

It was disheartening to me to see a few days after the horrific mass murder at Umpqua Community College, pro gun demonstrators protesting the American President as he landed there to give comfort to the families who had lost loved ones. Where were the anti gun protesters? Where were the ones who protested the taking of innocent lives by sick minds who are bolstered every day of their lives by a sick culture, a culture which glorifies and celebrates gun violence. It’s ubiquitous. It’s celebrated and it’s done in order to make money from “entertainment.”

That’s right. We’re entertained by people killing each other with guns. Is there an action movie in which there are no guns? I don’t think so. How many video games don’t involve the player or shooter not pulling a trigger. We train them up young with hand/eye coordination. Then we send them to schools in which there is no recess so that their energy and anger builds to the point that they feel justified in blowing people away for no justifiable reason.

Let’s face it folks. We’re more in danger from Americans with sick minds blowing children away than we are from terrorists. Yet we spend hundreds of billions of dollars a year defending ourselves from terrorists and hardly anything defending ourselves from ourselves.  As Pogo said, “We have met the enemy and the enemy is us.”

Why wasn’t the FBI monitoring websites for the “involuntarily celibate”? These are the websites that Elliot Roger and Christopher Harper-Mercer telegraphed their intentions on. Why wasn’t the FBI tracking them? And why are violent young men, who willingly state online their murderous intentions, allowed to purchase guns regardless of the fact that they’ve never before been convicted of a crime?

In a recent post on Love-shy.com, a forum for the dateless and sexless, a man wrote, “I am seriously thinking about just getting a gun and shooting everything up. I fantasize about it everyday … that’s how fucked up my mind is.” The truly “fucked up” thing is that this isn’t another newly discovered online posting from Elliot Rodger, the 22-year-old who went on a shooting rampage in Isla Vista, killing six people. These are just the words of yet another angry man on the internet expressing rage at society — especially women — over his own celibacy.

President Obama should have had a hundred anti-gun demonstrators waiting for him when he got off that helicopter in Roseburg. Instead he was met by a bunch of yahoos who all they can think about is their freakin guns. These people are a bunch of angry a-holes who have nothing better to do than to be worried about their guns right after 10 people from their own community, Roseburg, have just been rubbed out, their young lives lost forever, in a hail of bullets. Their answer is to arm everyone?

Preachers in pulpits are now carrying guns. Principals in schools are now carrying guns. Anger and guns. They now characterize American society. Oregon is one of seven states with provisions, either from state legislation or court rulings, that allow the carrying of concealed weapons on public postsecondary campuses. How friggin convenient for Harper-Mercer!

Photo by nordique 

Do I have to detail all the tragedies perpetrated by sick individuals who not only had possession of but were even encouraged by their parents to possess guns? There was Adam Lanza at Sandy Hook who fatally shot 20 children and 6 adult staff members. Surely he was affected by a culture of violence which makes it seem “routine” to off people. President Obama has said that mass killing of Americans by Americans has become routine. “Somehow this has become routine. The reporting is routine. My response here at this podium ends up being routine, the conversation in the aftermath of it … We have become numb to this,” he complained. During his presidency, President Barack Obama has had to deliver statements on gun violence 15 times.

No longer can we “wonder at the gunman’s motives” or think this is a”rare occurence.” It’s routine, folks; it’s happening every day. Get ready for the next one. Your children could be next. In fact it already happened just 8 days after the shootings in Roseburg. Gunmen opened fire on campuses in Texas and Arizona. Copycats? Perhaps. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold got the ball rolling at Columbine. They paved the way for the others. That’s their legacy. They were first.

The others: Dylan Roof, who killed 9 people at a black church in Charleston, SC; Elliot Rodger, who killed 6 people in Isla Vista, CA; Aaron Alexis, a Navy contractor and former Navy enlisted man, who killed 12 people in Washington, DC; John Zawahri, who killed 5 people in Santa Monica, CA; Radcliffe Haughton, a 45-year-old former Marine, who killed 3 people in Brookfield, WI; Wade Michael Page, an Army veteran, who killed 6 people at a Sikh Temple in Oak Creek, WI; James Holmes, who killed 12 people and injured 58 others in Aurora, CO; One L. Goh, who killed 7 in Oakland, CA; Scott Dekraai, who killed 8 in Seal Beach, CA; Jared Lee Loughner, who killed 6 in Tucson, AZ including the attempted killing of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords; Omar S. Thornton, who killed 8 in Manchester, CT; Amy Bishop, a neurobiologist and assistant professor at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, who killed 3; Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, who killed 13 and injured 32 at Fort Hood, TX; Jiverly Voong, who killed 13 in Binghamton, NY; Steven Kazmierczak,who killed 5 in a geology class at Northern Illinois University in Dekalb, IL; Robert Hawkins,who killed 8 at a shopping center in Omaha, NE; Seung-hui Cho ,who killed 32 on the Virginia Tech campus; Sulejman Talovic, who killed 5 at a Salt Lake City shopping mall …. And the list goes on.

A rather long sentence, isn’t it, the preceding? Many of the perpetrators were students, many were former Marines or Army vets.

They all had grudges; they all had violent uncontrollable anger. They all had access to guns. They all purchased their guns legally. They all had Intermittent Explosive Disorder.

According to Wikipedia: “Intermittent explosive disorder (sometimes abbreviated as IED [what an apt acronym!]) is a behavioral disorder characterized by explosive outbursts of anger, often to the point of rage, that are disproportionate to the situation at hand…” There is no need to probe these people’s minds any further, to ask ad nauseum “what was the gunman’s motive.” They were all sick and they all had legally purchased arsenals at their disposal. They all planned their killing sprees. Most of them telegraphed their intentions on social media. Some were even cheered on.

Can we learn nothing from other countries which have strict gun control and far fewer gun deaths than the US? Why is there even a debate as to whether more guns or less guns is the solution?

Does the FBI even read the Washington Post, which had a really informative article: “Incels, 4chan and the Beta Uprising: making sense of one of the Internet’s most-reviled subcultures”? Incels are INvoluntarily CELibateS by the way. Maybe society should just get them all girlfriends or sex workers. It might just solve a lot of problems.

The following is from the website, dailymail.com in the UK:

Chris Harper-Mercer wrote the anonymous message on bulletin board 4chan: ‘Don’t go to school tomorrow if you are in the northwest’ 9 hours before the killing began. It was written at 1.19 AM yesterday morning and the first shots were fired at Umpqua Community College at 10.38 AM.

Under the disturbing message, many users encouraged the person to go ahead with their threat and even advised the poster on the best ways to kill people. One user wrote: ‘I suggest you enter a classroom and tell people that you will take them as hostages. Make everyone get in one corner and then open fire.

‘Make sure that there is no way that someone can disarm you as it is possible. I suggest you carry a knife on your belt as last resort if someone is holding your gun.’ While another user wrote: ‘You might want to target a girls school which is safer because there are no beta males throwing themselves for their rescue. ‘Do not use a shotgun. I would suggest a powerful assault rifle and a pistol or 2x pistols. Possibly the type of pistols who have 15+ ammo.’ ‘If you are suicidal and hate people, then do it. If not then stay away from what will ruin your life,’ another user wrote.

A user wrote: ‘In this very clearly hypothetical situation you actually shoot people in your high school or college, try to aim for s***** people at least. Spare the kind fools, humdrum druggies, and churchies and go for he whom really terrorises the populous: Chads and Stacies who have scorned many and yourself. The post continued: ‘You’ll do the world a favour by purging part of the population that only exists to consume resources and act for themselves.’  In 2013, 18-year-old student Neil Allan Macinnis shot dead two women at a Virginia college – before the killing he posted on 4chan asking users to ‘wish him luck.’ 

Some of the posters on the site even tried to contact the FBI tip line. Evidently, they were asleep at the switch. I guess they’re only interested in foreign terrorists, not domestic ones. They better wake up that this is a phenomenon that is not going away. Prevention is the only alternative at this point in a nation that is locked and loaded and ready to pull the trigger over the slightest grievance especially at schools and on campuses.

How many remember San Diego’s own mass shooting on campus in 1996? Next year will be the twentieth anniversary of the killing that took the lives of three San Diego State professors.

Wikipedia sums it up nicely:

The San Diego State University shootingwas a school shooting that occurred at the San Diego State University (SDSU) engineering building on August 15, 1996 in San Diego, CA. Three professors were killed by master’s degree student Frederick Martin Davidson. Three months later, a copycat threat flier was sent, with threats against professors and racial insults.

Davidson, the three faculty members, and three other engineering students assembled in the classroom shortly before 2:00 p.m. The three students were there to support Davidson, and to witness a Master’s thesis defense. Liang stood, formally introduced Davidson, stated the purpose of the meeting, and sat back down. Davidson then handed Liang a printout of an e-mail, from a prospective employer who was interested in hiring Davidson, that stated that his future employment with the company hinged on a successful Master’s thesis defense.

Without time for comment from Liang, and without saying anything himself, Davidson turned to the first aid box on the wall, removed a 9 mm handgun, and immediately started firing. He hit Liang first, killing him while he was still seated at the faculty table. Lowrey and Lyrintzis were also hit. However, Lowrey tried to escape out the only main access door to the room. There were other doors in the room, but only one door led out to the hallway, and other parts of the third floor of the Engineering building.

Davidson was between the main door and the faculty table, and shot Lowrey several times; he died on the floor in the main doorway. Lyrintzis fled from the main door and Davidson, into an adjoining classroom, and hid under a table. After killing Lowrey, Davidson reloaded another magazine into the handgun, and pursued Lyrintzis into the other room. There, he shot and killed Lyrintzis while the latter was still under the desk. Overall, Davidson fired 23 rounds, with 16 rounds hitting the professors.

The three students attending the thesis defense were not shot, and escaped without injury. One of the students made it out through the main doorway, and notified the third-floor students and faculty to evacuate. Davidson later commented that he was not angry at the students, and had no intention of killing them.

After the shooting, Davidson himself called 911. Police arrived to find Davidson in the third-floor hallway still holding the handgun. He was reportedly sobbing and begging for police to kill him. He soon surrendered to police without further incident. Davidson had intended to kill himself after the shootings, but could not due to “pure cowardice”. Davidson had left a murder-suicide note in the hallway for the police to find, detailing the location of evidence and computer files in his house.

Guns and angry people. To say they have no impulse control would be an erroneous statement. They had to purchase guns in the first place, laying the groundwork for future misdeeds. They had to work up a head of steam about some real or perceived mistreatment or grievance, and, finally, they had to load up the guns and take them to the killing field. At any point in time along the way, they could have turned back. They not only had a preconceived plan; they probably fantasized about it for months.

Many Americans are so obsessed with the Second Amendment that they can’t even imagine that other societies might be doing things differently with much better outcomes. See A Cultural Comparison: Gun Violence in the US and Europe in 3 parts by Frank Thomas and myself for alternatives to the violence and gun-ridden society of Amerika and for some alternatives that actually work, that is if we can give up our love affair with guns.

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John Lawrence

John Lawrence graduated from Georgia Tech, Stanford and University of California at San Diego. While at UCSD, he was one of the original writer/workers on the San Diego Free Press in the late 1960s. He founded the San Diego Jazz Society in 1984 which had grants from the San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture and presented both local and nationally known jazz artists. John received a Society of Professional Journalists, San Diego chapter, 2014 award. His website is Social Choice and Beyond which exemplifies his interest in Economic Democracy. His book is East West Synthesis. He also blogs at Will Blog For Food. He can be reached at [email protected].

'What Real Action to Stop Gun Violence Looks Like': New Zealand PM Announces Ban on Assault Rifles After Christchurch Massacre

Published on Thursday, March 21, 2019 by Common Dreams

"On 15 March, our history changed forever. Now, our laws will, too," said New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern

by Jake Johnson, staff writer

 

53 Comments

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern speaks to media during a press conference at Parliament on March 15, 2019 in Wellington, New Zealand. (Photo: Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images)

Just six days after a white supremacist gunman killed 50 people and injured dozens more at two mosques in the city of Christchurch, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced Thursday that the country will ban all military-style semi-automatic weapons, assault rifles, and high-capacity magazines.

"We are announcing action today on behalf of all New Zealanders to strengthen our gun laws and make our country a safer place."
—Jacinda Ardern, New Zealand Prime Minister

"Cabinet agreed to overhaul the law when it met on Monday, 72 hours after the horrific terrorism act in Christchurch. Now... we are announcing a ban on all military-style semi-automatics and assault rifles in New Zealand," Ardern said at a press conference. "Every semi-automatic weapon used in the terrorist attack on Friday will be banned in this country."

"On 15 March, our history changed forever. Now, our laws will, too," she added. "We are announcing action today on behalf of all New Zealanders to strengthen our gun laws and make our country a safer place."

New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern moves to ban all military style weapons, effective immediately: "Every semi-automatic weapon used in the [Christchurch] terrorist attack will be banned in this country." Via BBC pic.twitter.com/S6xE2vKy0C

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) March 21, 2019

Ardern's quick and decisive action following the Christchurch attack was praised by progressives in the United States, where even the most modest proposals to change America's gun laws following frequent mass shootings are met with fervid opposition from the Republican Party and the powerful gun lobby.

"This is what real action to stop gun violence looks like," tweeted U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a 2020 presidential candidate. "We must follow New Zealand's lead, take on the NRA, and ban the sale and distribution of assault weapons in the United States."

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) added:

Sandy Hook happened 6 years ago and we can’t even get the Senate to hold a vote on universal background checks w/ #HR8.

Christchurch happened, and within days New Zealand acted to get weapons of war out of the consumer market.

This is what leadership looks like ⬇️ https://t.co/TcdR63anBt

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) March 21, 2019

New Zealand's new reforms—which are supported by the leader of the country's opposition National Party—will officially take effect in three weeks, and interim measures are expected to stop a flood of assault rifle purchases in the meantime.

"I can assure you that'd be a fairly pointless exercise," Ardern said of attempts to buy assault weapons before the new legislation takes effect.

As for assault rifles and semi-automatic weapons already in circulation, Ardern announced a gun buyback program that resembles the plan Australia implemented following the Port Arthur massacre in 1996.

In addition to taking the lead on bold gun law reforms, Ardern issued a "global call" to fight white nationalism in the aftermath of last week's terrorist attack, which appears to have been motivated by Islamophobic ideas and rhetoric.

Addressing other world leaders in an interview this week, Ardern said white nationalism must be confronted "where it exists," and nations must make sure they "never create an environment where it can flourish."

"If we want to make sure globally that we are a safe and tolerant and inclusive world, we cannot think about this in terms of boundaries," she said.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License

Off the Top of My Head

New Zealand Does the Right Thing: Bans Assault Rifles and High Capacity Cartridges

by John Lawrence, March 21, 2019

After the horrific mass shooting, New Zealand has banned military style weapons in short order. Guess there's no NRA there! They followed the lead of Australia which did the same thing under similar circumstance. Now gun owners are required to turn in their guns. Authorities in Australia destroyed over a million guns. The US should follow suit and get these guns off the street and out of the hands of mass murderers. The licensing procedure for owning a gun should be harder than the licensing procedure for driving a car. It should consist of a thorough background check, a written and oral exam, a year's worth of classes and a demonstration of safe firearms usage. In short it should be harder to own and shoot a gun than it is to drive a car.

CNN reported:

All military-style semi-automatic weapons, assault rifles and high-capacity magazines will be banned in New Zealand following the mass shootings at two Christchurch mosques that killed 50 people, New Zealand's Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced on Thursday.

"On 15 March our history changed forever. Now our laws will too. We are announcing action today on behalf of all New Zealanders to strengthen our gun laws and make our country a safer place," Ardern said at a press conference in the capital Wellington. The announcement came after the country's cabinet agreed to overhaul the law and ban military-style semi-automatics and assault rifles 72 hours after the Christchurch attacks. "Every semi-automatic weapon used in the terror attack on Friday will be banned," Ardern continued, adding that she hoped the law would be in place by April 11. "This legislation will be drafted and introduced in urgency."

 

An estimated 1.2 million guns are in circulation in the country, according to New Zealand Police -- one for every three people. Ardern said the buyback scheme could cost between $100 million to $200 million. Later on Thursday, New Zealand Police announced all 50 bodies from the shootings had been identified. "This means that all victims are now able to be released to their families," Police Commissioner Mike Bush said in a statement. Arden said a "nationwide reflection" for the dead would be held on Friday -- one week after the attack. ...

 

In the wake of the reforms, mass shootings in Australia dropped to zero, gun suicides declined by an average of 4.8% per year, and gun-related homicides declined by an average of 5.5% per year. Philip Alpers, founding director of GunPolicy.org and a University of Sydney academic, said the buyback "has a good chance of delivering the same life-saving public health benefit as that which followed the 1996 Australian buyback."

 

It has been well known that the reduction of guns in society reduces the number of suicides and homicides as the Australian statistics show. Now will the gun capital of the world - the US - do the same? It would be well within the bounds of the Second Amendment to institute strict gun laws in the US requiring all gun owners to pass strict background checks and licensing procedures while eliminating military style weapons. It would also be within the Second Amendment to limit the number of guns a person could own to, say, two. Let's hope people in the US come to their senses or the US will end up being the only society where mass shootings occur.

 

Please see A Cultural Comparison: Gun Violence In The US And Europe

by Frank Thomas and John Lawrence in the San Diego Free Press

Off the Top of My Head

Killing of Innocents Reprehensible Whether by Random Individuals or US Military

by John Lawrence, March 19, 2019

Brenton Tarrant, who murdered 50 innocent civilians in New Zealand, was fighting a war just as much as any nation that has murdered innocents anywhere. There is always an outpouring of emotion - candles, flowers and notes - and media coverage. When innocent civilians are killed by US bombs, however, there is no similar outpouring or media coverage. Such was the case for the wedding party on July 6, 2008 in Haska Meyna, Afghanistan when 47 innocents were killed. This was a similar tragic event but was just considered collateral damage by the US military. There is no similar outpouring as thousands of innocent children are killed and starved to death in Yemen either. Thank God, the US Democrat controlled House of Representatives has voted to end US involvement in that travesty. But it won't stop until the Democrats control the Senate as well.

White nationalist attacks like the one in New Zealand are terrorism pure and simple. However, they are not talked about in the same way as attacks by Muslims. President Trump is all too eager to talk about Muslim terrorists, but not so eager to talk about white supremacist terrorists like the one who carried out the attack in New Zealand even referring to Trump by name in his manifesto. The Washington Post reported:

The White House’s response to the New Zealand attack more broadly fits into a by-now expected pattern. When an apparent terrorist or hate attack has been committed by a Muslim, Trump is quick to draw attention to it. When it targets Muslims, however, Trump’s responses are slower and tonally different. That pattern itself helps bolster questions about Trump’s willingness to condemn violence against Muslims.

The murder of innocent civilians should be condemned wherever it happens and whoever is the perpetrator including the US military. It just can't be written off as collateral damage as Timothy McVeigh did after killing innocent children in the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. That blast killed at least 168 people, injured more than 680 others, and destroyed one-third of the building. The blast destroyed or damaged 324 other buildings within a 16-block radius, shattered glass in 258 nearby buildings, and destroyed or burned 86 cars, causing an estimated $652 million worth of damage.

It's obvious that terrorist attacks can occur anywhere and can be perpetrated by people with widely varying motives. However, since Trump took office, more Americans have been killed by white American men with no connection to Islam than by Muslim terrorists or foreigners. The International Criminal Court also wants to look into US war crimes in Afghanistan, but the US is doing whatever it can to impede them. The Wall Street Journal reported that "Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the U.S. is imposing visa restrictions against International Criminal Court officials, citing investigations by the ICC into the activities of Americans and their allies in Afghanistan." The slaughtering of innocents by the US military is just as much a threat to peace and civility in the world as the random acts of terrorists like religious or ethnic bigots. Therefore, an investigation into US war crimes is completely warranted. Pompeo is not only threatening visa restrictions. He's threatening sanctions as well as the US ramps up the sanctions war against anyone and everyone who disagrees with it.

The Guardian reported:

“I’m announcing a policy of US visa restrictions on those individuals directly responsible for any ICC investigation of US personnel,” [Pompeo] said.

This would include anyone who takes, or has taken, action to request or further an investigation, he told reporters.

“If you’re responsible for the proposed ICC investigation of US personnel in connection with the situation in Afghanistan you should not assume that you still have, or will get, a visa or that you will permitted to enter the United States,” Pompeo added.

The secretary of state said visas could also be withheld from ICC personnel involved in conducting probes of US allies, specifically Israel.

Pompeo said “implementation” of the policy has already begun but he did not provide any details, citing confidentiality surrounding visa applications.

“These visa restrictions will not be the end of our efforts,” Pompeo said. “We’re prepared to take additional steps, including economic sanctions, if the ICC does not change its course.”

So the US isn't to be held accountable for its crimes including supporting the Saudi war effort that has killed and starved thousands of children in Yemen which is going on today. And the US needs to broaden its outlook on terrorism within the US to include white nationalist and white supremicist murderers. When innocents are murdered either by random individuals or by the US military, the perpetrators need to be held accountable. As for Brenton Tarrant, the New Zealand murderer, since New Zealand doesn't have the death penalty, perhaps he should be extradited to Saudi Arabia where he will rue the day he ever became a white supremicist.

New Zealand's prime minister has promised to change the gun laws. Let's hope she sets an example by outlawing military style weapons and instituting a strict licensing procedure that would make it 100 times more difficult to own a gun than to drive a car. In my opinion that would still be within Second Amendment rights in the US.

Off the Top of My Head

The Three Greatest Problems Facing America

by John Lawrence

1. Climate Change
2. Homelessness
3. Gun Violence

And the solutions:

1:

From the Right: Burn more coal

From the Left: Convert to Renewables ASAP

2:

From the Right: Take away whatever benefits or social programs homeless may have; reduce taxes

From the Left: Tax supported housing and social services

3.

From the Right: Increase the sales of guns

From the Left: Restrict the sales of guns

The mental health of Americans is deteriorating and this affects both homelessness and gun violence. This means that more resources should be allocated to mental health programs, and this means that the taxes of those lucky enough not to be affected by a lack of mental health need to pay for those that are. There's no getting around it. Otherwise, we all get to live in a society where at any minute ourselves or our loved ones could be killed by a mass murderer.

You may think that the majority of people are not affected by homelessness. These are the lucky ones, but even they have to walk through the feces and urine infected streets to get to the baseball or football stadium in their favorite city. They have to be confronted by the crazy homeless when they attend a convention in some otherwise beautiful city like San Diego.

Americans need to lower their consumption oriented lifestyles voluntarily or Mother Nature will do it for them. Smart phones are wonderful inventions, but they don't work in the midst of a climate calamity like a hurricane or wildfire. We need to set an example for the rest of the world of how to live simply and sustainably because, if the rest of the developing world lived like Americans, there wouldn't be enough resources on the planet to support all of them and us. We must reduce our consumption, and, consequently, our demand for energy or Mother Nature will do it for us.

ANOTHER WARNING GOING UNHEEDED

From the NY Times, December 11, 2018:

The Arctic has been warmer over the last five years than at any time since records began in 1900, and the region is warming at twice the rate as the rest of the planet, scientists said Tuesday.

The rising air temperatures are having profound effects on sea ice, and on life on land and in the ocean, the scientists said. The changes can be felt far beyond the region, especially since the changing Arctic climate may be influencing extreme weather events around the world.

Those assessments were part of the latest “Arctic Report Card,” issued by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a federal agency, and presented Tuesday at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in Washington.

“We’re seeing this continued increase of warmth pervading across the entire Arctic system,” said Emily Osborne, lead editor of the report and manager of NOAA’s Arctic Research Program. “That’s having implications for both ocean and terrestrial systems.”

Susan M. Natali, an Arctic scientist at Woods Hole Research Center in Massachusetts who was not involved in the research, said the report was another warning going unheeded. “Every time you see a report, things get worse, and we’re still not taking any action,” she said. “It adds support that these changes are happening, that they are observable.”

 

Off the Top of My Head

The Dumbing Down of America

by John Lawrence, November 13, 2018

People need to start wrapping their heads around two facts: (1) Climate change is directly responsible for weather disasters like the Paradise fire which killed at least 31 people and destroyed over 7000 houses and (2) the proliferation of guns is directly responsible for the mass murders that are happening on a daily basis. In general businesses and corporations are responsible for the despoliation of the environment because its more profitable for them to dump their waste products in the environment than to dispose of them in a responsible manner. These are called externalities. An externality is a side effect or consequence of an industrial or commercial activity that affects other parties without this being reflected in the cost of the goods or services involved.

Whoever thought it was a good idea to use gasoline to power cars and dump its waste product, carbon dioxide into the environment? People should have thought of the consequences of this from the very beginning of automobile production. Henry Ford was a smart guy, but he had no clue that his brainchild would be responsible for altering the chemical composition of the atmosphere and this would lead to sinking cities in New York, Miami, Tokyo and London among other places. He had no idea that his invention would cause massive hurricanes and tornadoes as well as giant rainstorms which would cause flash flooding wiping out towns and cities in a single event.

So today, echoing George W Bush's exhortation to "just go shopping" after the 9/11 tragedy, we have Trump's denial of climate change and as much as saying 'just go out and buy another gas guzzler'. Who cares about the consequences to the environment? We want to live the way our Grandpappy lived and not worry about the environment the way he didn't have to worry about the environment. Americans just want their stuff, and they want it now. They don't worry about their grandchildren.

The educational system is failing if its not concerning itself with two things: global warming or climate change and the consequences of the proliferation of guns which cause about as many deaths each year as do car accidents. Does anyone in America check out the way they do business in other advanced countries where they have recognized climate change and gun proliferation as problems? These societies have gotten much better results not to mention the single payer systems for health care. From the Washington Post:

"For the first time in more than  60 years, firearms and automobiles are killing Americans at an identical rate, according to new mortality data released this month by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). In 2014, the age-adjusted death rate for both firearms (including homicides, suicides and accidental deaths) and motor vehicle events (car crashes, collisions between cars and pedestrians, etc) stood at 10.3 deaths per 100,000 people."

California Shooting Victim's Mother Issues Powerful Demand for Action: "I Don't Want Prayers. I Don't Want Thoughts. I Want Gun Control."

Published on Friday, November 09, 2018 by Common Dreams

"I have two words: gun control. Now, now, now, now."

by Jake Johnson, staff writer

  

32 Comments

"I have two words: gun control," Susan Orfanos said in an interview with BuzzFeed on Thursday. "Now, now, now, now. No more NRA. No more money. Gun control now." (Photo: ABC7/Screengrab)

"I don't want prayers. I don't want thoughts. I want gun control."

That was the powerful emotional demand from Susan Orfanos after her 27-year-old son Telemachus was killed in the mass shooting Wednesday night in Thousand Oaks, California that left more than a dozen dead and many more wounded.

Offering a horrifying illustration of just how pervasive gun violence is in America, Susan Orfanos said her son survived the Las Vegas festival shooting last October that left over 50 people dead—making it the deadlist mass shooting in modern U.S. history.

"My son was in Las Vegas with a lot of his friends and he came home," Orfanos said in an interview with ABC7. "He didn't come home last night."

"I have two words: gun control," Orfanos added in an interview with BuzzFeed on Thursday. "Now, now, now, now. No more NRA. No more money. Gun control now."

“I hope to God no one sends me anymore prayers. I want gun control. No more guns!” - mother of shooting victim Telemachus Orfanos. She says he survived the #LasVegasShooting but did not survive the #ThousandOaksMassacre. @ABC7 @ABCNewsLive pic.twitter.com/UMqTY1RATK

— Veronica Miracle (@ABC7Veronica) November 8, 2018

Echoing Orfanos' plea for action from U.S. lawmakers who have for far too long allowed the gun lobby to restrain meaningful steps against America's uniquely deadly gun problem, one woman from Thousand Oaks asked a question on the mind of every concerned citizen: "How many more times is this going to happen?"

“How many more times is this going to happen?" a woman in Thousand Oaks asks on behalf of every American.

Our lawmakers have the power to stop this. Demand it.

pic.twitter.com/n5X2ZZ3dJB

— Shannon Watts (@shannonrwatts) November 9, 2018

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License

Off the Top of My Head

Doctors Take on the NRA Over Gun Control

by John Lawrence, November 10, 2018

Now doctors fed up with mass killings are expressing the fact that they are tired of treating victims of gun violence. One doctor said she was tired of pulling bullets out of corpses. The NRA said words to the effect that doctors should tend to their own business and not say anything about a subject - guns - that they know nothing about. They told doctors "stay in your own lane." According to the NRA, doctors shouldn't speak out on a subject they know nothing about. As if the NRA knew everything there was to know about guns.

The Daily Beast reported:

Immediately after 12 people were killed in a mass shooting in  Thousand Oaks, California on Thursday, doctors and medical professionals posted on social media their experiences treating victims of gun violence.

It continued a trend that started the night before after a tweet by the NRA mocked the medical community’s call for the reduction of firearms, telling “anti-gun doctors to stay in their own lane.”

Here is what the NRA's tweet said:

"Someone should tell self-important anti-gun doctors to stay in their lane. Half of the articles in Annals of Internal Medicine are pushing for gun control. Most upsetting, however, the medical community seems to have consulted NO ONE but themselves."

Here is what Jay W Lee, MD tweeted back:

"@NRA We’ll give you our 1st amendment right to discuss gun safety with our patients and the communities we serve when you pry it from our cold, dead hands.#TrustUs #WeAreAmericasDoctors #MakeHealthPrimary #GunViolence #PublicHealth #SwimmingInOurLane #FMRevolution"

Dana Bussing, MD tweeted:

"After treating countless patients with life altering spinal cord injuries and brain injuries secondary to gun shot wounds, I would have to say this is my lane."

David Gorski, MD, PhD tweeted:

"Firearms take a similar number of lives per year as automobile crashes (guns: ~32,000/yr; cars: ~35,000 to 40,000/yr) and are thus a huge public health problem. Doctors and public health officials are obligated to try to reduce the death toll from such causes."

So the point is that you don't have a Constitutional right to drive a car. Why should you have one to own a gun? You have to be licensed to drive a car. Why shouldn't you have to be licensed to shoot a gun? The problem is that gun rights freaks are too dumb to consider statistics that show that gun violence in other civilized countries where they do have gun control is way down compared to the US. Americans have more to fear from domestic mass murderers than they do from terrorists. One lady whose son was killed in the latest mass murder in California said, "I don't want any more of your damn prayers. I want gun control." Amen to that!

 

Off the Top of My Head

Gun Violence in America: "I Wonder When This Will Ever End"

by John Lawrence, November 9, 2018

NBC news anchor Luther Holt said something like this at the end of his newscast last night. I've got news for you Mr. Holt, IT AIN'T NEVER GOING TO END as long as there is a gun culture in America. You want to get to the root cause of this problem? It's simple: GUNS. No need to keep wondering. No need to check the shooter's social media and try to figure out what his motive was. As long as there is a proliferation of guns, there will be gun violence.

The militarization of the US also contributes to the gun culture. The California shooter was a retired Marine. No thank you for your service, sir. This meme that, if you could only find out what is bothering these shooters and then correct that, we would all be free of gun violence and free to enjoy our Second Amendment rights. Sorry, but that is not the solution. All these mass shooters have purchased their guns legally, and very few have criminal records that amount to anything.

Mental health is certainly an issue, but what is the good old USA doing about mental health? Why making any kind of health care including mental health care prohibitively expensive, that's what. All these shooters had preexisting conditions, preexisting conditions of anger and rage. Nobody seems to give a damn until they go out and shoot somebody or a lot of somebodies. Those shooters that survive the shootings themselves go on to bask in tons of media and legal attention, go to jail, get 3 squares a day and an hour of exercise plus in some cases marriage proposals from infatuous women who never gave them the time of day before they shot up some joint. Guys caught redhanded in the act of shooting people should just be taken out and shot themselves without further ado like they would probably do in most countries in the world. Why waste legal resources on them? Why waste prison resources which purportedly cost $60K per inmate on them?

The other source of American violence is that condoned and glamorized by movies and television. You can't even channel surf without seeing someone draw a gun and shoot someone. No wonder English sitcoms are gaining in popularity. They don't have the gun violence that American sitcoms do, and not every American wants to sit there and watch people murdering each other and the glorification of criminality. Some impressionable souls who hate their fellow man, have no morals or scruples and hate themselves figure they have nothing to lose in engaging in suicide in the course of mass murdering others. This is a product of American culture and will continue unabated until the culture changes.

There have been over 300 mass murders this year alone, a little over one a day. Why is anyone surprised any more? This is a mundane, prosaic feature of American life at this time. Wasting time on it on the evening news sucks all the oxygen out of the room for more important matters like what the US is doing to Yemeni women and children. In case you haven't heard, in a nutshell, bombing them and starving them to death.