New Zealand Acts To Implement Assault Rifle Ban - Why Not The U.S.?

The late SC Justice Antonin Scalia - your total conservative - asserted in the Heller case that no citizen has the right to own an assault-style weapon.  New Zealand PM Jacinda Ahern announcing the assault weapons ban proposal.

"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" - Alexandra Ocasio -Cortez this morning

The real question, now that New Zealand has acted to have an assault rifle ban within 6 days of the Christchurch massacre   (which saw 50 Muslims slain by a white nationalist nut) is: What is taking the U.S. so long to implement a similar ban?    

For those behind the news curve- understandable in the Trump era with its endless histrionics, BS and daily flouting of laws and norms -  assault rifles and military-style semi-automatics are on track to be banned in New Zealand.  This is after Jacinda Ardern, the prime minister, announced sweeping and immediate changes to gun laws following the Christchurch mosque shootings.  Ardern yesterday said point blank:

“I absolutely believe there will be a common view amongst New Zealanders, those who use guns for legitimate purposes, and those who have never touched one, that the time for the mass and easy availability of these weapons must end. And today they will,”   

Adding: "In short, every semi-automatic weapon used in the terrorist attack on Friday will be banned in this country,”

And wonder of wonders, even the gun sellers there seem to get it. In a text this a.m. - from the CEO of New Zealand Hunting & Fishing Co. (one of the island nation's largest gun retailers) we saw:

 "Any government measure to permanently ban such weapons merits support. Weapons of war have no place in our business or our country."

How far do the new regs go?  Parts that are used to convert guns into military-style semi-automatics (MSSAs) have also being banned, along with high-capacity magazines and parts that cause a firearm to generate semi-automatic, automatic or close-to-automatic gunfire.  

P.M.  Ardern also directed officials to develop a gun buyback scheme for those who already own such weapons. She said “fair and reasonable compensation” would be paid.  This is analogous to an Australia scheme implemented after the infamous Port Arthur massacre in 1996.

On April 28, 1996, a 28-year-old Australian,  Martin Bryant,  ate lunch at Broad Arrow Cafe in Port Arthur, Tasmania, a historic penal colony and popular tourist resort. After his meal, Bryant returned his tray, removed a semiautomatic rifle from his bag, and opened fire. By the time Bryant was caught a day later, 35 people were dead and 23 wounded in what became the worst mass shooting in Australian history.

Unlike the U.S., the Aussies got serious about controlling their military-style weapons. Among other things, the Australian government banned automatic and semiautomatic firearms, adopted new licensing requirements, established a national firearms registry, and instituted a 28-day waiting period for gun purchases. It also bought and destroyed more than 600,000 civilian-owned firearms, in a scheme that cost half a billion dollars and was funded by raising taxes. The entire overhaul took just months to implement.

The  New Zealand buyback scheme is estimated to cost between $100m and $200m. P.M. Ardern said the government was still working out how to fund it.

New Zealand, a country of less than 5 million people, has an estimated 1.2-1.5m firearms. The number of MSSA weapons is not known, but there are 13,500 firearms which require the owner to have an E-Cat licence, which the government is using to estimate the number of MSSAs.

We also know, as reported also this a.m. (CBS) that New Zealand has no constitutional right to bear arms.  But technically, neither does the U.S.  A point I've belabored in multiple earlier posts. And given the U.S. has some 400 million guns in circulation, and has had 1,988 mass shootings since Sandy Hook in 2012, there is a need for the nation to get its collective head straight.  

What does that mean? Let's go through the salient points again.  I begin with the claim anyone has the "right" to own an AR-15 or any other military-style assault weapon.

In 2008, then Justice Antonin Scalia, writing the majority opinion in District of Columbia v. Heller, delivered a dual opinion still not absorbed by most gun owners. The court said the District’s ban on handguns in private homes went too far, but that regulation of gun ownership was compatible with the Second Amendment:

Scalia wrote at the time:

"It may be objected that if weapons that are most useful in military service — M-16 rifles and the like — may be banned, then the Second Amendment right is completely detached from the prefatory clause. But as we have said, the conception of the militia at the time of the Second Amendment’s ratification was the body of all citizens capable of military service, who would bring the sorts of lawful weapons that they possessed at home to militia duty. It may well be true today that a militia, to be as effective as militias in the 18th century, would require sophisticated arms that are highly unusual in society at large. Indeed, it may be true that no amount of small arms could be useful against modern-day bombers and tanks. But the fact that modern developments have limited the degree of fit between the prefatory clause and the protected right cannot change our interpretation of the right.”

To get the language straight, and in Scalia's terms, it is useful to replace "assault weapons,”  with  the phrase:  “the kinds of weapons that Justice Antonin Scalia has defined as ‘dangerous and unusual’ and subject to regulation or an outright ban under the Second Amendment.”  And, if these weapons are subject to regulation, then they do not make for a "constitutional right".

As Joe Scarborough put it the morning of Feb. 21, 2018, just after the Parkland massacre:

 "Some say this is embedded in the constitution. It is not!"

Adding:

"Go back and read Heller, 2008, what Scalia and the Supreme Court said. You're right, you can have handguns in your home, and shotguns to protect your family. But the court has allowed states  - like Maryland (2017)  to ban assault style weapons.  They let this and other laws stand   - without challenge - as constitutional "

Scarborough went on to further clarify, which I can't render any more transparent:

"If you want to make the argument that the Supreme Court should protect your rights to have military style weapons, that's legitimate.  But if you say it is your God-given constitutional right to have an AR-15 that is not what the second amendment says. And it's not what Justice Scalia says or the Supreme Court says."

Now let's get to the core of the matter, the wording of the Second Amendment itself:

"A self-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."

If one claims to be an "originalist" - which most of the Right does in terms of constitutional interpretation  -  it ought not take an astrophysics degree to comprehend the amendment.   At the time this was written, muskets were the primary weapon, and no major organized standing army existed such as we have today. Indeed, the Continental Army of Washington, though it prevailed over the British, had massive war debts to pay off. There was no way to keep thousands of men under arms for sustained periods, as well as clothing and feeding them - far less recycling them with newer equipment each year!

It therefore became necessary to authorize the basis for a non-centralized force or "Militia" in order to supplement any governmentally- organized army called up. This "Militia" originated in the countryside, from citizens living across the land in various villages, towns and states. In effect, the 2nd amendment drafters were asserting the necessity for a subsidiary people's army to assist the main one. Citizens then became in effect, necessary to the security of the nation. One could then describe the state militias as "adjunct armies".

Indeed, some interpreters of the amendment believed the original content was even more diluted than I portrayed. They see the "well regulated militia" provision as actually devised as protections from any marauding, "loose cannons". These interpreters insist the framers would never in a million years have envisaged people (individuals) possessing permanent private weapons in their own homes.  And the notion of individuals owning military-style weapons like the AR-15 would have been as foreign to them as Moon rockets.

In  a controversial 1939 case, FDR's Solicitor General framed the argument to the Court:

"The Second Amendment grants people a right that is not one which may be utilized for private purposes but only exists where the arms are borne in a militia or some other military organization provided by law and intended for protection of the State."

The SC decision was unanimous.  This was barely 79 years ago, so what happened in the interim to debase the amendment to be unrecognizable today?

While the Court's decision prevailed for several more decades, it started to unravel by the 1970s as various Right wing extremist groups coalesced to challenge "gun control"  based on spurious private gun ownership  interpretations. By virtue of the infusion of millions of bucks  into state legislative campaigns they successively overturned laws in legislatures - much like the abortion opponents are now doing in many red states.

Chief Justice Warren Burger himself was adamant that  the claim of a right to keep special weapons on one's own was bogus. writing:

"This is one of the greatest pieces of fraud on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime."

Alas, as the strength and political power of the NRA metastasized, it was just a matter of time before more and more state legislatures (like in Florida) were bought out and their NRA political slaves passed laws contravening Justice Burger's and the earlier 1939 ruling. This is why the only way things will change is to vote out the NRA political slaves, as David Hogg and the other Parkland school massacre survivors have maintained.

In the meanwhile, this nation can only dream of  having a leader like Jacinda Ardern, who had the courage to act as opposed to letting the bodies pile up from cowardice and offering mere "hope 
and prayers".

See also:

Conservatives and the Right

White Nationalism, Born in the USA, Is Now a Global Terror Threat

Why The AR-15 Owner's Arguments Are Fallaciious

Our AR-15 Owner writes:

First off, comparing MA with Fla or any other large state is a smokescreen to obscure the real facts. MA has a population of 6,811,779 compared to Fla’s population of 20,612,439!


Actually, it is precisely the use of comparative ratios (e.g. incidents per 100,100 or similar) that makes comparing events in two or more states legitimate. You take every 100,000 people in FL and every 100,000 in MA and compare the respective incidents per that block.  Then since the frequencies are set to  a defined baseline (e.g. per 100,000) this  corrects for any disparity in scale  say for population size  Once one does that,  one is effectively comparing "apples to applies" in terms of event frequency. So it is not a "smokescreen" at all.

Secondly, although he may be correct in the “gun death rate” comparisons, he fails to cite the cause of those gun deaths. Well, maybe I can help him out here....

The cause of said gun deaths is subsumed in the statistics for "gun deaths", i.e. whether for homicide, by accident or suicide. Since there can only be three possible  causes, then the incidence per 100,000 for gun deaths  (i.e. covering all) already takes these 3 causes into account.  Whether there are 2 suicides to every homicide and 1 accidental shooting to every 100 suicides is immaterial once we are talking about "gun deaths" in toto.   I suspect he may be placing overt emphasis on "intent" - say for homicides- but let us agree suicides and accidents (say a 4 -year old accidentally discharging a loaded weapon at his mom in a Walmart as happened in Colo. three yrs. ago) are just as tragic.  This is why the role of guns in whatever scenario must be weighed and factored in.

If he says “yes,” then I would ask him to explain how the states that have rolled back gun regulations and have a low number of laws on the books have also seen declines in gun homicide rates

This is a false interpretation which has been circulated in right wing media, e.g. The National Review, but doesn't hold ballast. A  study from 2013, led by the Boston University School of Public Health found that homicides that didn't involve guns didn't significantly increase as gun ownership did. In other words, more guns meant more homicides, particularly gun homicides.: After controlling for multiple variables, the study found that a 1 percent increase in gun ownership correlated with a roughly 0.9 percent rise in the firearm homicide rate at the state level.  That is about as close to a perfect Pearson product -moment correlation coefficient as one can get. This also  holds up around the world.


States with low gun-homicide rates also tend to rank high in other quality-of-life rankings, like per-capita income and educational attainment, while states with the most gun homicides, like Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, also rank near the bottom in such measures


This is actually a perfect example of the "No true Scotsman" fallacy first highlighted by Antony Flew in his book, Thinking About Thinking.  Flew's No True Scotsman  Suppose A says, "No Scotsman puts sugar in his porridge." B replies, "But my uncle Angus puts sugar in his porridge." A then responds, "Then your Uncle Angus is no true Scotsman!" In other words, the artificial stipulation is made that to be a genuine Scotsman (person of Scottish descent) one must conform to the rubric of  "no sugar in the porridge".

Now we frame his answer in similar terms:  "No True Gun-using Murderer Lives In A High Life  Quality state."   But, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama etc. are low life quality states and have the most gun homicides.  Conclusion: You cannot compare the former to the latter in terms of incidence, because the only "true" gun homicides, i.e. worth measuring from the stipulated basis,   occur in low life quality states.   Of course, as Flew would point out, this doesn't wash. He is in fact resorting to  a stipulative definition that artificially discriminates between states with high and low homicide rates   In this way he's able to argue one is disallowed from comparing the two gun homicide rates for differing life quality index states.   But as  Flew would argue 'Not so fast!' - if that was true than no strict gun regulations would ever be able to be enacted in such states  because their low quality of life prohibits it.

This is a red herring because he introduces an irrelevant topic in an argument to divert readers’ attention from the original issue – which is new gun control laws as well as the AR-15’s.

Not so!  Since the Journal Of Health Affairs study bears directly on the incidence of gun homicides in different nations, it is totally relevant, i.e it provides a crucial glimpse on how our nation is handling these homicides compared to other rich nations.   The original issue then is not strictly gun control per se, but in the context of how the prevalence of guns in the U.S. compared to other wealthy nations impacts health statistics.   So it is not intended to divert at all, only to force gun aficionados to reckon in these health factors into gun ownership and hence control

According to the U.S. Department of Justice, the rate of violent crime dropped from 79.8 to 18.6 victims per 1,000 people age 12 and older from 1993 to 2015.

These statistics do not support the opinion that more guns lead to more crimes!

But this is a non sequitur .  The purported decrease in violent crimes overall does not show that more guns do not lead to more homicides..  When we isolate homicide from the constellation of violent crimes we see nearly a 1: 1 correlation, Refer to the Boston University study cited earlier. Also, these sort of stats disregard science, namely the CDC finding from the early 90s that there are three times more homicides in families that own  guns than those that don't.Such stats have been suppressed since the N.R.A.-backed Dickey Amendment, was passed in 1996- named for the man who sponsored it, former Representative Jay Dickey, an Arkansas Republican. It reads: “None of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may be used to advocate or promote gun control.”. In other words, actual research is to be suppressed in the interest of the NRA gun lobby and culture.  Reinforcing this, reporter Sam Roberts wrote last year in The Times, that the legislation “stripped $2.6 million from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — the precise amount budgeted for a study of the health effects of shootings.”

How is this being honest in the gun debate? How is it respecting either actual statistics or science?

The more concerning issue is that Massachusetts is one of the worst states for submitting the names of people deemed mentally insufficient by the state into the NICS database. While MA legislators seek more and more gun control, they don’t follow the laws already in place; laws that all law-abiding, safety-conscious gun owners believe should be followed.

 As I already pointed out (in my original post) the MA law subsumes the mental health issues-problems  by the fact so many formidable barriers are incorporated into the law, e.g. having to pass a state approved  gun safety course, getting licensed and fingerprinted. These would arguably be obstacles too insurmountable for a mentally deranged or debilitated person, but not for a healthy, law abiding John  Q.  Citisen.  My point is that since the barriers to mental cases owning are so formidable in MA it doesn't really matter if they don't cross every t and dot every i in submit all the names of mental cases. Those mental cases would not likely get through to gun  ownership anyway!

Further research shows that since the assault weapons ban ended in 2004, violent crime has actually decreased by 16.6 percent from 2004 to 2016, according to FBI statistics

Ahhhh...but NOT the mass shootings using assault weapons, including school shootings - which have only inreased.

Rifles accounted for only 1.9 percent of all murders in 2015. You were more than twice as likely to be killed from someone kicking or punching you to death than to be shot by a rifle.

Maybe! But I'd rather take my chances against someone coming at me with fist, "flying"  feet  or knife than with an AR-15. Just sayin'.

Judging by these numbers, rifles are not the problem the left make it out to be.

But assault rifles ARE the problem in all the mass shootings. I guarandamn- tee you if Islamic extremists  were doing these mass shootings you'd see action taken fast enough to control access to these weapons.
.

Well, yes I do. Why? Because it reeks of Nazism! 

Please, this is pure hyperbole and false analogy, Nazism was a specific political ideology predicated on National Socialism, which consciously incorporates racial eugenics and anti-Semitism linking it to a one party, militarized state. This is absolutely NOT the state of Massachusetts  whose laws - like other state laws - are still based on our U.S. Constitution. Since the latter disallows Nazism, the state laws - including gun laws of whatever form -must as well.

My friend, you are an educated man, so you must concede that the Weimar Republic’s well-intentioned gun registry became a tool for evil.The same arguments for and against were made in the 1920s in the chaos of Germany’s Weimar Republic, which opted for gun registration. Law-abiding persons complied with the law, but the Commies and Nazis committing acts of political violence did not.

Politifact checked similar claims when Ben Carson made them during the 2016 campaign. It turns out that as the Nazi Party rose to power in Germany, it inherited a 1928 gun registration law that had replaced a total ban on gun ownership imposed on a defeated Germany after World War I. The 1928 law created a permit system to own and sell firearms and ammunition. According to Dagmar Ellerbrock, an expert on German gun policies at the Dresden Technical University.:


"This order was followed quite rarely, so that largely, only newly bought weapons became registered.  At that time, most men, and many women, still owned the weapons they acquired before or during the first World War."


When the Nazis did come to power, they used whatever gun records they had to seize weapons from their enemies, but Ellerbock  has noted the files included very few of the firearms in circulation. According to him:

"In my records, I found many Jews who well into the late 1930s possessed guns,"


This was confirmed by three former Wehrmacht troops I had occasion to speak with about the war and the Hitler era, when I traveled to Bielefeld with Janice in 1985.  Hans Borchers, the oldest of the former German troops,  affirmed he "knew many Jews who possessed rifles and pistols long after Hitler attained the Chancellorship in 1933".

The Nazis DID adopt a new gun law in 1938. According to an analysis by Bernard Harcourt, a professor at Columbia University School of Law, it loosened gun ownership rules in several ways:

1) It deregulated the buying and selling of rifles, shotguns and ammunition.

2) It made handguns easier to own by allowing anyone with a hunting license to buy, sell or carry one at any time. (i.e. You didn’t need to be hunting.)

3) It extended the permit period from one year to three and gave local officials more discretion in letting people under 18 get a gun.

The regulations to implement this law, rather than the law itself, did impose new limits on one group: Jews.

On Nov. 11, 1938, the German minister of the interior issued the Regulations Against Jews Possession of Weapons. Not only were Jews forbidden to own guns and ammunition, they couldn’t own "truncheons or stabbing weapons."   In addition to these restrictions, confiscation was also present, thus the Nazis had already been raiding Jewish homes and seizing weapons. But according to Ellerbrock, also confirmed by Dieter - another Wehrmacht soldier I met in 1985:

"The gun policy of the Nazis can hardly be compared to the democratic procedures of gun regulations by law.  It was a kind of special administrative practice (Sonderrecht), which treated people in different ways according to their political opinion or according to ‘racial identity’ in Nazi terms."

In short, Nazi-era Germany imposed greater gun restrictions for Jews (and other perceived enemies) at the same time it loosened gun restrictions for other groups.  German citizens as a whole were not disarmed by the Nazis. Jews and other supposed enemies of the state were subject to having their weapons seized. But for most German citizens, the Nazi period was one in which gun regulations were loosened, not tightened.

Second, a lack of guns was not the issue. If the majority of Germans had wanted to use these guns to fight the Nazis, they could have. But they didn’t. Carson  (and our AR-15 owner) ignored the fact  that the Nazis enjoyed significant popular support, or at least, broad acquiescence.  Given that popular support they had no reason at all to fear a popular revolt or uprising.  As for the Jews, the ones that had the most weapons and most likely would have fought, had all left by  Nov. 11, 1938 when the most severe  weapons regulations were enacted.

Now, what would I change if I could.....

I actually agree with all of your proposed changes. I also acknowledge they would not be a "panacea".  We  don't seek a panacea per se just some movement on curbing access to powerful assault weapons from those   criminals and psychos  - who might inflict the most harm.

Lastly, as for you stating that I should “hear the cry” of Parkland student “Sarah”... I’d like to hear what other “gun control” laws that she has in mind to “prevent it from happening again.”

Interesting you mention that! There is now a movement, begun in Parkland, to march into the FLA legislature in  Tallahassee tomorrow  to demand legislative changes including: 1) firmer control on all assault- type weapons,  including licensing and fingerprinting, 2) allowing  individual communities (like Parkland)  to impose their own regulations such as for age of purchase, and limiting magazines and the sale of ammunition.  These kids are also dispatching a retinue to meet Trump on  Feb. 24th and demand federal gun law changes.

Yet, now…they do a complete 360 and blame the prez and the NRA, etc. And, btw, I challenge my friend here – or anyone – to show me where any member of the NRA has committed any of these atrocities!

This is a true strawman argument given no one is asserting the NRA committed any atrocities. What we are saying is that the NRA was responsible for altering the original 2nd amendment interpretation  i.e. as a collective right (acknowledged by the Supreme Court in 1934)  then pushing ever more aggressive gun ownership memes and laws, state by state  - until we have the situation today when 1.5 million assault rifles are sold each year.

Again, the proof is in the pudding. Australia had problems with mass shootings until the Port Arthur massacre in 1996 .  The sheer magnitude of this tragedy spurred laws whereby Aussie assault weapon owners had to turn them in. and strict licensing - registry applies..   There have been NO mass shootings since,

I know you won’t agree with me here, friend – but as I said, we can agree to disagree.

Well, let me say I can agree with a number of your suggestions on how things might be changed for the better. I definitely disagree on a number of other aspects which were discussed above.


And may I respectfully suggest that the left stop politicizing these incidents and exploiting the victims for their own political purposes.


Sorry, I don't see the 'left" doing that at all. The students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas are  organizing mass student marches and gun control activism all on their own - there are no lefties sneaking into their rallies and whispering in their ears on what  to do. If anyone is guilty of politicizing the latest incident it is Trump - tying it to the Russia probe - and blaming the FBI for 'wasting too much time on it'.  (see my next post).

Meanwhile, the kids at Stoneman Douglas - who have been most affected-  are the ones who plan to head off to Tallahassee and demand change from lawmakers, they are the ones organizing a national student march, and THEY are the ones who plan to meet with Trump and demand change  One of their reps  Emma Gonzalez - is also organizing parents, many others and students in a number of states to vote out all NRA backed lackeys and yes men. Granted, she and her group may not succeed  but it won't be for lack of trying!  Let me also hasten to point out there is no constitutional right to own an AR-15 or any other assault style rifle, e.g.


http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/miles-mogulescu/77940/gun-control-legislation-is-constitutional



From The Washington Post lead story yesterday:

Students at the Florida school where 17 people died last week said Sunday they will organize nationwide marches for gun control next month and try to create a “badge of shame” for politicians who take money from the National Rifle Association and other gun rights groups.
“We are losing our lives while the adults are playing around,” Cameron Kasky said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” 

Kasky, a junior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., has been part of an outpouring of anger from students who survived the shooting, many of whom have publicly blamed President Trump and NRA-supported politicians for creating the conditions that led to the shooting.

Jon Caldara Tries To Use Skewed "Gun Math" To Defend AR-15s And Other Semi-Automatics

Jon Caldara is at it again, in his recent (Nov. 12) Denver Post op-ed ('The Assault Weapon Attack On Math') in which he attempts to diminish the impact of semi-automatic weapons based on the much more prolific stats of killings by other means.

He first cites the 374 "killed by rifle" last year -but points out it is only a small fraction of the 11,004 total killed by "firearms". In other words, 10, 630 were killed by handgun - not rifle So his argument is the media attention to semi-automatic weapons is skewed. He then goes on with:

"Shouldn’t there be over four times the media coverage on the 1,604 people killed with knives last year? Some 472 were killed with blunt instruments like clubs and hammers, some of which had polymer, not wood, handles. And nearly twice as many people were killed with hands, fists and feet?"

Err no, because you are mixing chalk and cheese. Human homicides - given the variety of circumstances (and potential weapons available)-  will always show a diversity of usage, of instrument. But that diversity of assorted killing instruments does not refute the fact that semi-automatic (and  automatic) rifles are an anomaly in terms of the Second Amendment.  By that I mean the authors could no more have imagined such weapons than they could imagine Space Shuttles.

The informal fallacy employed by Caldara is the ignoratio elenchi fallacy also known as irrelevant conclusion. This is the informal fallacy of presenting an argument that may or may not be logically valid, but fails nonetheless to address the issue in question. The issue in question here before us is whether semi-automatic or automatic rifles are truly allowed under the provisions of the 2nd amendment as originally interpreted.  More on this later.

Even on its own logical terms, Caldara's arguments can be challenged, say in terms of  "the proportion of the mode of killing dictates media and legal attention."  Hence, if the proportion of kills by an assault rifle is low - say compared to other modes of killing - it should receive less attention (including legal) and the others more. Never mind more people can be killed at one time, as we beheld in Vegas.  But if this argument were solid, then - in the arena of air accidents- the FAA would do little or nothing in the way of investigation after plane crashes in which 50 - 60 were killed (say matching the numbers mowed down in the Orlando and Las Vegas mass shootings.)  But the fact is they take such plane crashes very seriously and go over everything - including recovering black boxes. This despite the fact that in the tragic sphere of accidental deaths many more people (37,000) are killed in auto crashes each year., or lightning strikes - as Caldara references.

The takeaway is that single events in which many dozens of people are killed bespeak such anomaly that they cannot be ignored or minimized. This is even more crucial when human motivation is behind the mass killing, i.e. in the case of use of semi-automatic or automatic rifles -  weapons putatively allowed under the 2nd amendment. This is exactly why Australia, after its April 1996  Port Arthur, Tasmania massacre, bought and destroyed more than 600,000 civilian-owned firearms. This was in a scheme that cost half a billion dollars and was funded by raising Aussie taxes.  In other words,  they took this mass shooting deadly seriously. They didn't diminish its import by false analogy or conflating with other types of killing, e.g. by knives, fists, etc.

Recall that  FDR's Solicitor General framed the argument to the Supreme Court thusly:

"The Second Amendment grants people a right that is not one which may be utilized for private purposes but only exists where the arms are borne in a militia or some other military organization provided by law and intended for protection of the State."

The SC decision was unanimous in agreeing with that take..

While this sane interpretation prevailed for several more decades, it started to unravel by the 1970s. Then various Right wing groups coalesced to challenge gun control based on spurious "private gun ownership" interpretations, and successively overturned laws in state legislatures.  This despite the fact then Justice Warren Burger had clearly stated this later interpretation was "one of the greatest pieces of fraud on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime."

Well, it's good Justice Burger didn't live to see the arrival of semi-automatic weapons, bump stocks and the claim that the 2nd amendment provides for the ownership of those too! A cockeyed notion that has been pumped by the NRA ever since, more recently with the batshit crazy ad that "your man card is reissued". If you need an AR- 15 to be a man, then decidedly you've a long way to go to reach that phase.

Caldara also tries to muddy the waters regarding the use of semi-automatics vs. automatics  as when he writes:

"There’s no better example of the media’s ability to emotionally bait an issue out of all mathematical proportion than that of “assault rifles". Lett’s clarify again what most reporters don’t, likely since it runs counter to their anti-gun bias. Very, very few people own assault rifles. They are nearly impossible to get due to the limited supply and regulatory burden to get one. An assault weapon is capable of firing several rounds of ammunition with one pull of the trigger. What is falsely reported as an assault rifle is just an average semi-automatic rifle, where only one round is fired with every trigger pull. "

This bit of sophistry ignores a number of hard facts, and hence makes it easy for those not rifle savvy to gloss over his claims. For reference let me quote part of a WSJ article dealing with the AR-15 (Caldara's semi-automatic rifle) published on 12/9/15. It noted:

"The AR-15 re-cocks itself immediately after firing. The only thing keeping the gun from firing again on its own is a sear, a piece inserted in the gun that stops the cycle from continuing. By replacing the sear and a few other key components, an AR-15 can be made fully automatic."

Note then that although Caldara glosses over it, the AR-15 is not any old  single shot rifle, certainly not like the bolt action rifle I used to own and fire when I lived in New Orleans. In other words, it took time - measured in seconds - to work the bolt action to fire again, it did not "immediately re-cock itself after firing"  There IS a qualitative difference. My argument is that if any Founders could be brought back to inspect either type of rifle - and how it works - they'd more surely side with my old bolt action as the one allowed under their  2nd amendment, but not the AR-15.

In Murdock, FL, ca. May, 1986, with an AR-15. 

Once more I am not an anti-gun nut. I have owned and used rifles and fired off shotguns as well in target practice.  (Including in 1968 in New Orleans when testing the "jet effect" nonsense peddled by JFK conspiracy deniers). However, I've never owned anything semi-automatic, or with multi-capacity clips.  This is all by way of full disclosure.  My sticking point here is how the Founders themselves would have interpreted semi-automatics like the AR 15 under the 2nd amendment.

Unlike the whacko contingent of gun owners, I also don't believe the 2nd amendment gives people the "right" to own rocket propelled launchers, bazookas, .50 caliber anti-aircraft guns, or military assault type weapons - capable of mass slaughter. The Second Amendment authors - inhabiting a world where single load muskets were the rule - would have been flabbergasted to see the extent to which their amendment had been misconstrued today, such as by the NRA and their denizens.

As for Caldara's nitpicking about the difference between semi-automatics and automatics, let's just say it is tweedledum vs. tweedledee. As Stephen Paddock showed, one only needs to include a LEGAL bump stock to effectively transform a semi-automatic into a functional automatic. One doesn't  need to be a genius or legal guru to understand the enhanced efficiency and lethality when a bump stock is affixed to a normal semi-automatic.

The argument that the new high powered rifles - such as AR-15s, and Bushmaster .223s are entitled to be owned as a "right" is just plain bollocks. No, you can own a true single shot 30.06  bolt action as a right, because it's a legit rifle with which to go out hunting. You can own a .22  bolt action as a right, and it does a nice job of killing small game especially if you use hollow points.  But you don't need semi-automatic weapons, or AK 47s

Even  though I don't believe the 2nd justifies such powerful weapons, I do acknowledge our laws have been distorted over decades and realize that  - once the horse has escaped the barn- it is difficult if not impossible to get it back in. Thus, I am not for banning such guns, but properly regulating them, using a national registry system such as adopted in Australia and similar to what we already have for auto vehicle ownership. Thus you receive your gun owner ID with photo, and registration number (with serial nos., of all weapons) entered in a national (or state) database and computer -connected to the Homeland Security fusion centers across the country.

Once any mass shooting then occurs, the fusion centers will instantly be able to pick up on the serial number(s) of the weapon(s)  used, the perp and his background. No fuck ups as with the military not reporting certified psychos to the FBI for the current national database.  At that point of infraction in the new system,  the perp is facing justice - if not meted out at the scene - and his gun license permanently revoked.  I would also assert licenses need to be revoked for reckless actions, such as target practicing on trees  (near camp sites) as occurred near Pike National Forest several years ago.

That father, shot in the head, would still be alive today with his family had stringent registration requirements been in effect. Those would have deterred the gun crazy lunatics from firing their Bushmasters in a forest- near camping grounds.


See also: 'What Jon Caldara Gets Wrong About Assault Weapons':

http://www.denverpost.com/2017/11/17/what-jon-caldara-gets-wrong-about-assault-weapons/

After The Latest Gun Terror Are We NOW Ready To Act Like The Aussies- Or Like The Proverbial Ostrich?

Sutherland First Baptist Church, in Sutherland Springs, TX where 26 were slaughtered by a psycho yesterday.

The church carnage wrought yesterday in Texas, with 26 lives wiped out by a lone gunman dressed in black ought to be defined as domestic terror - but I doubt it will be.  For reference, while Donnie Dotard was quick to call the NYC truck attack killer an "animal" he didn't use any similar parlance to describe Devin Patrick Kelley, the killer of more than 3 times as many people yesterday. WTF? Are white boy  mass killers  just "deranged" while Islamics are all "animals"? Double standard much.

Dotard compounded his idiocy by insisting (in Tokyo): this was a "mental health problem, not a gun problem" adding it was "too soon to go into gun control'". No,  you asshole, it's exactly the right time to go into gun control, as it was after the Las Vegas massacre by older white guy Steven Paddock. So the question becomes are we just going to sit on our asses until the next white, 'Murican terrorist snaps and slaughters innocents?

As I've written before, the mental health argument is just a copout, a red herring. Firmer gun control, namely registration - including psychological testing to qualify to own a firearm (similar to tests would be drivers have to go through to get a license),  would solve a lot of the problems. Government  buying up all the military assault rifles like the Aussies did after their Port Arthur, Tasmania massacre (see more below), would also go a long way to limiting supply of the deadliest weapons.

After all, the Second Amendment was never intended to be a national suicide pact.

Meanwhile, we have the likes of Texas Governor Greg Abbott proffering the usual empty platitudes like "Let us ask for God's help healing and prayers".  Last I was involved in any religion I seem to recall the saying:  "God helps those who help themselves".  We can help ourselves by limiting the supply of deadly weapons like Australia did after its worst massacre. That is, if we have the will and the balls to do so, as opposed to just shrugging shoulders and surrendering to the NRA.

Yet in dodging questions on TX gun regs this a.m. on CBS Early Show, Abbott preferred to go into the nebulous area of stopping all "evil" from truck killers, knife wielders and the like - without noting that gun slaughter has led to dozens of times more deaths.  The unholy truth is that most shootings are  NOT ideological, terror-based or random but rather domestic (in people's homes) - either suicides or one spouse (usually male) killing the other after a fiery argument.  

Assaying all mass shootings between 2009 and 2015, The Huffington Post found that 70 percent occurred in the home. Of these, 57 percent involved a family member or current or former intimate partner. 81 percent of the victims were women and children. These killings were not done by 'crazies'  or Islamic terrorists but usually normal people who simply lost it in the midst of a heated argument and reached for the weapon nearest and dearest - a gun. (See, e.g. the book: 'Why We Snap', by R. Douglas Fields, showing how the right confluence of circumstances, triggers can send anyone into a rage and precipitous action. You don't have to be a psycho to be a mass murderer!)

Further, no sane or reasonable person can deny if there weren't so many military- style assault weapons available then even a mentally ill person (like Adam Lanza who committed the Sandy Hook massacre) wouldn't be able to get their mitts on them to commit MASS atrocities.

But sadly, the cojones of much of the nation are still locked down by the NRA especially those of our representatives who only choose to talk about "prayers"  for the deceased. But no thought to actually DO something to halt this bullshit.  Thus,  Sen. Chris Murphy's apt statement yesterday:

"No one is safe so long as congress chooses to do absolutely nothing in the face of this epidemic".

So true, and it IS an epidemic, every bit as virulent as an Avian flu epidemic would be and the level of slaughter - deaths (including suicides), attests to that.

And let me make this clear one time, I am - despite being an atheist - appalled that a particular species of slime ball would choose a house of worship to carry out his malevolent act. Though an atheist, I am not about to deprive anyone of  expressing their faith any way they want, or worship however they desire. They can do any of that, in any form they wish, because that is their choice. As Jefferson once put it: "It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg" . So believe what you will, whether in talking snakes,  virgin birth resurrections or reincarnations. As long as you don't inveigh on my individual liberties you can do what you will.

In the current case, the gunman was identified as Devin Patrick Kelley, 26, according to two law enforcement officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation was continuing. Kelley, who lived in New Braunfels, Tex., died shortly after the attack. He'd served in the Air Force at a base (Holloman)  in New Mexico but was court-martialed in 2012 on charges of assaulting his wife and child. He was sentenced to 12 months’ confinement and received a “bad conduct” discharge in 2014, according to Ann Stefanek, the chief of Air Force media operations.

Kelley started firing at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs not long after the Sunday morning service began at 11 a.m., officials said. He was armed with a Ruger military-style rifle, and within minutes, many of those inside the small church were either dead or wounded. The victims ranged in age from 5 to 72, and among the dead were several children, a pregnant woman and the pastor’s 14-year-old daughter. It was the deadliest mass shooting in the state’s history. At least 20 more were wounded.

When Kelley emerged from the church, an armed neighbor exchanged gunfire with him, hitting Mr. Kelley, who fled in his vehicle. Neighbors apparently followed him, chasing him into the next county, Guadalupe County, where Mr. Kelley crashed his car. Mr. Kelley was found dead in his vehicle. Officials said it was unclear how Mr. Kelley had died. At the church, he left behind a scene of carnage. Of the 26 fatalities, 23 people were found dead inside the church, two were found outside, and one died later at a hospital.

Isn't it about damned time we call this what it is, unadorned, straight out domestic terror? Isn't it time to stop being coy and for a minority of super collector gun owners to be dictating rules for the rest of us?  The key to acting, to doing something proactive and positive to halt this nonsense, is to first accept that the security and needs of the many outweigh those of the few. That means  a minority of gun obsessives and collectors - especially of military assault rifles - can no longer be allowed to dictate gun laws via the NRA to the rest of us.

And IF this is accepted then we need to act like Australia did in the wake of its worst massacre in 1996. On April 28, 1996, a 28-year-old Australian,  Martin Bryant,  ate lunch at Broad Arrow Cafe in Port Arthur, Tasmania, a historic penal colony and popular tourist resort. After his meal, Bryant returned his tray, removed a semiautomatic rifle from his bag, and opened fire. By the time Bryant was caught a day later, 35 people were dead and 23 wounded in what became the worst mass shooting in Australian history.

What did the Aussies do that made their country safer? Among other things, the Australian government banned automatic and semiautomatic firearms, adopted new licensing requirements, established a national firearms registry, and instituted a 28-day waiting period for gun purchases. It also bought and destroyed more than 600,000 civilian-owned firearms, in a scheme that cost half a billion dollars and was funded by raising taxes. The entire overhaul took just months to implement.

Oh yes, there were the usual howls in the wake but the Aussie legislators showed they were not Milquetoasts and were not going to buckle. Predictably, the NRA  worked with gun-rights groups in the country to oppose any legislation that would make owning guns more difficult. Arguments against gun control ranged from the familiar “guns don’t kill people” to calling the legislation an insult to the vast majority of law-abiding gun owners. But proponents of gun control, who had long before the Port Arthur massacre called for restrictions on firearms ownership, pointed out that in Australia most people who committed gun violence had no criminal or psychiatric record. They added that it was pointless to compare the impact of an attacker with a semiautomatic gun with one brandishing a knife.

As Simon Chapman, an Australian academic who was co-convener of the Australian Coalition for Gun Control from 1992 to 1997, wrote last year about the group’s successful advocacy for a gun registry: “One day during a TV interview in 1995, we said as we always did ‘We register cars. We register boats.’ But this time he added ‘We even register dogs. So what’s the problem in registering guns?"

Indeed there ought to be NO freaking problem! If ANY entity or device has a life impact it ought to be worthy of registration. Do you lose freedom because of registering your car or dog ? Of course not!

The first step then to halt domestic terror is to regulate and register all those weapons with which it is most likely carried out - assault rifle.

Two questions for the ardent gun obsessive follow:

Without invoking any paranoid ideations or beliefs, why would you not want gun registration like in Australia? 

Why would you not want high powered military assault weapons out of circulation- using a method similar to the Aussies?

Don't give me any balderdash doing so "takes away my freedom". No it does not!  Your "freedom" doesn't depend on owning or firing military grade weapons (designed specifically for mass killing)  that the Founders could no more have conceived of than space ships!

See also:

U.S. Military Failed to Send Texas Gunman's Conviction Record to FBI And:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/celisa-calacal/76101/lax-texas-gun-laws-the-nra-and-another-horrendous-deadly-mass-shooting

Excerpt: "A database by Slate of gun regulations state-by-state gives Texas an "F" rating. Texas currently has no laws requiring background checks for private sales, no regulating of firearm registration and no ban on the purchase of assault weapons. The state does not have any restrictions on magazine capacity, nor does it have any restrictions on firearm ownership for the mentally ill. Texas also allows open carry with a permit and concealed carry on college campuses.

Texas’ relaxed gun control laws are the result of a majority-Republican legislature that shares views with the NRA on guns and gun regulation. Donations from the powerful gun lobby to these Republicans suggest that opposition to any type of gun control came with persistent nudges and bankrolling from the NRA itself."

Update:  As per the first link above, the Air Force failed to convey the gunman's record of violence and imprisonment to the FBI for entry in the national database. This again argues for a separate, local registration office (i.e. for each state or municipality)  to minimize the chance of such snafus such as occurred with Kelley. Also, a measure of redundancy is introduced.