Arming School Teachers: Trump's Dumbest Idea Dumber As He Doubled Down

 What an NRA whore - president looks like.

"The proposal to arm teachers is a sign of civilizational failure."  - Jeffrey Goldberg, Editor of The Atlantic

On watching Trump's recent photo op at the White House - where he's listening to the victims of school shootings, including those who lost friends or relatives at Stoneman Douglas last week  -  it was easy to be teased into thinking this POS would actually do something. That hope was dashed yesterday when he recycled the wacko idea of arming hundreds of thousands of  teachers, a  fool's errand properly shot down by most of those at the listening session.  This A-hole is actually contemplating finding funds to "train and arm one million teachers."

At the White House press briefing on Thursday afternoon, Raj Shah, deputy press secretary, was asked if it was practical to expect teachers to carry concealed handguns to protect their students from shooters.  The half wit imp replied:

“When you have a horrific situation, what you think and do not think is practical can change,” Shah said.

Proving neither he nor anyone else in the Trump White House has the mental capacity to do a full practical thinking exercise on likely outcomes. They just blow this effluent out their asses and believe it's a solution.

Two major teachers’ unions rightly expressed shock and skepticism that any such plan could be feasible or effective.

On Thursday, Trump tweeted: “20% of teachers, a lot, would now be able to … immediately fire back if a savage sicko came to a school with bad intentions. Highly trained teachers would also serve as a deterrent to the cowards that do this.  They know they come into our schools they're gonna be dead."

Dead? THEY'RE going to be dead? "THEY" having possession of a military assault weapon that can unleash 30 rounds in a couple minutes facing off against a likely female teacher (76 % of teachers are female) with only a standard handgun? Are you out of your effing mind?   What? Are you taking LSD and coke with your MickeyD burgers at night?

This is a fantasy that in the olden days, (1950s) - growing up in Milwaukee -  we'd call beer talk.  Big talk from some loopy guy too tanked up on fifteen Schlitz beers to even walk a straight line, but able to spout bollocks.

Let's put it more bluntly in case any starry eyed, wannabe gun heroes think this is a grand idea.  That arming 20 or 40 percent of teachers at each school means no bad guy in his right mind would want to take any chances in that school. Just like the would be burglar who spots a "Beware of the Dog" sign in a front yard and figures it's best to go try the next place.

For Trump, low IQ ignoramus that he is, it's all very simple:  "The teacher's there with the gun - concealed carry of course - then pulls it out and shoots the guy."

But this is fantasy bullshit and ignores the fact that an armed deputy was actually just outside of Bldg. 12 at Stoneman Douglas High while the AR-15 was firing.  As teacher Sean Simpson put it: "Armed with only a handgun he'd have been a fool to confront the madman with an AR-15".

He's correct.   This explains why the school deputy (Scot Peterson)  didn't step toward the firing scene  for a full four minutes.  This was according to Sheriff Scott Israel - who also, by the way -  doesn't believe it's a capital idea to have armed teachers, e.g.

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/375003-florida-sheriff-comes-out-against-arming-teachers-teachers


Excerpt:

“I don't believe teachers should be armed. I believe teachers should teach,” Israel said.

Adding:

“But that's exactly what's wrong with this country. We have people in Washington, D.C., representatives, senators and legislators telling teachers what they should do without asking teachers, 'what do you want to do?"

He also went on to say no 18 year old should be able to purchase such a weapon, and their numbers - the AR-15s and dozens of other assault models- need to be controlled.  As he put it, "when you keep doing the same thing over and over and it doesn't work, that's insanity"

I do hope all the "gunnies" that quoted Israel before in a different context also take time to quote him now, because he is spot on correct. It is not a teacher's place to carry a concealed weapon, for potential use against a far better armed active shooter  who in most cases will be using a military assault rifle like an AR-15. Besides, as Columbine teacher Paula Reid put it when interviewed on MSNBC two nights ago: "If a troubled student knows that I'm armed - because I don't wear those clothes that make concealed carry easy - he can literally take my weapon away and use it against others."

Good point, and this could even apply to an alleged "trained teacher."

Now, let's get more into the  fine details of why arming 700,000 odd teachers is a dumbo idea, although it might sound plausible and do-able to those who entertain fantasies a la the vigilante Paul Kersey - in the movie  "Death Wish".

Start with the fact that if a trained school deputy armed with only a handgun didn't feel competent  to take on the shooter, why the hell would a teacher? Especially if an assault rifle -armed shooter already has the advantage in being able to empty a whole magazine before you're likely to get the safety off  your handgun.  If deputy  Scot Peterson didn't feel able to  take on Nikolas Cruz what would make anyone believe a teacher could?

That deputy likely didn't respond because he heard the rapid shots fired and the screams as he visualized the carnage It paralyzed him and I promise it would be no different for an educator forced to suddenly take on the fantasy role of "Rambo" with an inadequate weapon.

Could a well -trained teacher armed with only a handgun bring down the bad guy with an AR-15?  Uh, yeah, IF..... the time is available to stand there and aim his-her handgun at the shooter.....

AND.... the shooter obliges by standing there frozen like a deer in the headlights,  allowing the teacher to do it.   In addition, the shooter - even if standing still as a statue - would have to further  cooperate by deciding not to fire his assault weapon at the teacher with the handgun.

Pause now, collect your breath, and seriously tell me how you rate the probabilities for any of these to materialize.  Let's also add for completeness, that even if all these conditions are met, the teacher would have to have a clear firing line - no students in the intervening space.  Ideally, this would have to take place outside in a hallway, not inside a classroom where any number of students could become collateral damage.

Hell, the teacher herself - if holding a gun - can become collateral damage if law enforcement rushes onto the scene, guns drawn, and spots her as the only one wielding a weapon. As security specialist Malcolm Nance noted, given law enforcement officers are trained to react at the first sign of danger, the teacher would be shot on the spot.  He emphasized all the loopy nonsense about arming teachers omits a key factor in any confrontation: target identification, which can become damned difficult amidst chaos and gunfire.

When you dissect the scenario the notion of arming teachers it clearly doesn't appear so easy or straightforward.  But see, simple minds, e.g. simpletons like  Dotard Donnie Trump, always imagine an ideal scenario for their fantasy to unfold. Say like placing their handgun hero in hallways in a school, to take down a suicidal shooter .

Even given these hare- brained fantasies,  there  is another fact the Trumptard purveyors of this idiocy don't want you to know: most bullets fired by even trained police officers miss their targets.  The most frequent reason is the target isn't cooperating with being shot, he's on the move and maybe firing his own weapon.

One more thing, there is NO  - I repeat NO form of training -  that replicates the experience of going up against a real assault weapon that has already blown off the faces, arms, and legs of kids who were alive just minutes ago. There is no freaking training that duplicates the emotional, psychological experience that a teacher would encounter in an actual bloodbath scenario that is rapidly unfolding and in which the shooter has every advantage with his assault rifle.  And what pray tell does the teacher do -  now confronted with the shooter -  who's already killed his students while the teacher himself is only armed with a handgun? (Note here for another set of fools: Even a Glock 9mm would be no match against an AR-15, and oh btw, I seriously doubt Trump and his gov't will cough up the $ for 700,000 Glocks!)

I'll give you one clue: it doesn't end well for the teacher.  Indeed, the deputy armed with only a handgun at Stoneman Douglas may have processed the same, which is why he didn't engage the shooter, Nikolas Cruz. And make no mistake, no teacher this side of reality is going to be more accurate than a trained deputy or policeman will.

Idiot Trump meanwhile, with his demented fantasies, would put teachers in the position of  using a handgun under unimaginable pressure and possibly killing one or more of their own students in the process by mistake.  Oh, and do you believe if there are accidental killings of a teacher's students, the Trumptard government will rush to pay off liabilities? If so you are eating way more MJ candy than the users here in Colorado.

This is what you find when the bullshit is stripped away from these imbecilic armed teacher fantasies. Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers union said in a statement: “Anyone who wants guns in schools has no understanding of what goes on inside them – or worse, doesn’t care.”

To top off yesterday's bravura performance of idiocy and ideology there was NRA honcho Wayne LaPierre squawking at CPAC about "losing liberty" and accusing the activist students and teachers, parents of exploiting the tragedy. This foul piece of ambulatory excrement barked:

"What they want are more restrictions on the law abiding. Think about that. Their solution is to make all of you less free."

Of course, he's a total moron as well as ideologue. He is also totally ignorant of 2nd amendment limits, which I cited before in the case of District of Columbia vs. Heller, e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2018/02/sorry-you-have-no-constitutional-right.html

This case and Scalia's ruling makes it abundantly clear there is no unregulated, 2nd amendment right to own any assault type weapon. No one's "freedom" depends on it, and as Stoneman teacher Sean Simpson put it:   "That's absolutely stupid to believe you and some neighbors  armed with AR-15s could even handle a battle ready company with machine gun choppers, tanks, and RPGs firing!"

The Right's screechy ideologues - like LaPierre -  also appear more obsessed about "crazies" and "Baker acting" them than the facts.Which are that not all active shooters are crazy, just mad - as in angry enough to get an assault weapon and exact vengeance. Thus, the Columbine killers, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, weren't sick or crazy just enraged after months being bullied by the school's football jocks who also took turns stuffing them into lockers and dipping their heads into toilet bowls. (This,according to one of Harris' few pals interviewed on a '60 Minutes'  episode.).  Andrew Carneal, who carried out the West Paducah, KY school shooting,  also wasn't nuts. He was just tired of being forced to run a daily gauntlet which entailed being smacked on the head with King James Bibles by hyper  Xtian classmates..

While WSJ  resident right wing harpy Kimberley Strassel, predictably wailed today (p. A11) about Democrats "willing to capitalize on dead teens" and "empty posturing"  she said nary a word about the one thing that can change the equation: doing what Australia did after the Port Arthur tourist massacre in 1996. To jog memories, the Aussies banned all automatic and semiautomatic weapons and adopted new, more rigorous licensing requirements. They also bought back and destroyed more than 600,000 civilian owned firearms of the military -style, most lethal type. Result?  Incidents in which a gunman killed 5 or more dropped from 13 in the 18-year period before 1996 to zero after. As I said before the proof is in the pudding. It's a cliche but it applies here.

Meanwhile, Donnie Dotard doubles down on this screwball solution (something only a screwball dope would do given 2 x a bad idea doesn't make it better) and  calls the NRA lobby "patriots" when the only thing patriotic they want to do is make as much money as possible for the corporate weapons industry -which is why both the NRA and Dotard love the idea of arming teachers. It adds millions more gun sales to the profit margins..

See:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/kali-holloway/77917/is-the-armed-teacher-debate-americas-lowest-stupidest-media-moment

Update (2/26):

"For him to insert himself into that grief, that if only Trump were there your child would have been safe, is totally vile.  Using this ugly fantasy -  in my view -  is such a vile violation of the grieving that's going on in Florida. This is something of which only Donald Trump is capable."
-  Lawrence O'Donnell on 'Last Word'

"He's  afraid of life, afraid of sharks, afraid of blood....  He's always trying to be the hero, but he never can, because he isn't made of  stuff. He's an empty, damaged soul and a coward at heart. We don't ask him as president to run unarmed into a building with an active shooter, but to do his damned job and govern!"  - Jennifer Rubin on 'Last Word'


In another boffo display of idiocy and braggadocio - bravado, Trump insisted at a meeting with governors today that if he'd been on the premises of that school shooting he'd have barged in -even without a weapon - and taken the shooter on.  See e,g,

https://www.salon.com/2018/02/26/trump-claims-he-would-have-fought-off-parkland-shooter-without-weapon/

Can anyone say "dead man walking"?  Because that is what this asshole would have been - and likely with about 15 AR -driven holes - compliments of Nikolas Cruz. That's assuming he' d actually have attempted such an obvious (to sane people) suicide mission. Which, when you strip away the beer talk  and grasp Dotard's MO, was simply intended to shame the deputy (Scot Peterson) and any others who may have been on the scene but didn't place themselves in the line of fire of bullets traveling at 2800 ft/ sec. .  Indeed, he prefaced his bold claim by saying about the Broward deputies  "those guys weren't exactly medal of honor winners".  This from a POS who used bone spurs to secure 5 deferments from military service in the Vietnam era.

In other words what Donnie Dotard would REALLY have done is maybe approached within 20 yards  of Bldg. 12 at Stoneman Douglas, then -  on hearing the deafening rounds  - pissed his panties, then shit them up before running away at lightning speed.   Don't believe me? Then reference these comments made about himself in a Howard Stern interview:

"I'm not good for medical stuff, you know. So in other words, like if you cut your finger and there's blood pouring out...I'm like gone."

Wowser! Big, fuckin' tough guy hero to be!  See, e.g.

• That time Trump watched a man bleed to death and did nothing but run away
  

See also:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/23/opinion/brian-mast-assault-weapons-ban.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-left-region&region=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region


And:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/feb/22/wayne-la-pierre-nra-cpac-hate-bingo

And:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/robert-c-koehler/77849/the-cheapening-of-human-life

Brussels Attacks Fear? You're Still More Likely To Be Killed By An NRA -Backing Terrorist With An AR-15

Bwaaaaa! Daddy Reepo pwotekt me fwum dem bad guys! Bwaaaahahah

"Those who would sacrifice an essential liberty for the purpose of a temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin

Here we go again, another brutal ISIS attack, this time in Brussels - horrific scenes unfolding after one scumball detonated a suitcase bomb at the airport, and another POS blew himself up with his suitcase at a subway station. And what is the response from too many in the "land of the free and the home of the brave"? Well, to summarize a headline from salon.com: "panic, hysteria and Trumpism". 

How manifested? To take an example we beheld Ted Cruz in the hours after the attacks knee-jerk spouting that we "need to empower law enforcement to patrol in Muslim neighborhoods before they become radicalized". To which NYPD chief Bill Bratton on CBS this a.m. fairly spat: "He doesn't know what the hell he is talking about! I have 1,000 Muslim officers on my force and all are dedicated. The last thing we want is alienating law abiding Muslims because once they do become radicalized it's much harder to de-radicalize them."  But Cruz' stupid take was echoed by Trump and the Trumpkin brigade.

Seriously, it is depressing to witness these types of fearful reaction - especially by someone who lived through the Cuban Missile crisis when the entire world was threatened with vaporization and we had only the good sense and judgment of JFK to rely on. Thankfully, he rejected the Joint Chiefs'  demand to bomb and invade Cuba which would certainly have caused Castro to unleash at least 93 Russian made IRBMs on the eastern U.S., followed by a massive U.S. counter strike then a Soviet counter counter strike. Total nuclear exchange within 8 hours? About 690 megatons with 400 million dead and the rest of the world wishing they were. 

THAT was something real to be terrified about because it affected directly the existence of every man, woman and child on Earth. All stood to lose their lives either in the initial exchanges or from radiation sickness later. Today, in the wake of an isolated Brussels terror attack? Not so much. It barely makes the higher alert register - or should. Hence, I was glad to see Obama attending a baseball game in Cuba yesterday instead of rushing home in a panic, reinforcing the panicked portrayals and endless loops of Brussels' bedlam by the sensation-sotted U.S. media.

Well, there are some media exceptions. A Dec. 5, 2015 NY Times editorial in the wake of the San Bernardino killings noted, for example:

"The death toll from jihadist terrorism on American soil since the Sept. 11 attacks -- 45 people -- is about the same as the 48 killed in terrorist attacks motivated by white supremacist and other right-wing extremist ideologies.... And both tolls are tiny compared with the tally of conventional murders, more than 200,000 over the same period.”

Now, any dumbo even with zero math background can surely see that 200,000 >> 45! I mean, how hard can this be? And that greater number was accomplished by high powered weapons and handguns, almost all purchased legally with the benediction of the NRA.  In other words, we're killing each other at a rate more than 4,400 times that which the terrorists are!

So why isn't this being processed? There are two possible reasons: 1) Americans are prevented from knowing the facts, the stats and hence don't process the ridiculous difference in threat, and 2) their reptilian brains over react to isolated terror events - magnifying them as proximate threats when they are distant ones. In such cases, the TV scenes have taken control of their amygdalas and viewers are then ruled by atavistic emotions more than reason.

 The unholy truth is that most shootings are  NOT ideological 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' 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.

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/william-rivers-pitt/65051/what-rough-beast-slaughter-is-the-standard-in-the-us

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.
In this light, and as the NY Daily News back in December featured on its headline, it is the NRA's Wayne LaPierre who qualifies as the real terrorist because it is HE who has made available the millions of lethal weapons to kill so many Americans (many more than ISIS could) by refusing to implement sane gun laws.

The purpose of all this? To show the relative risk of an American being killed in a terrorist attack here in the States is vanishingly small. Small enough not to lose sleep over, cancel plans for an outing - say to a cinema or ball game, and certainly so small that one would not wish to suspend civil liberties for any demographic in our population. Because to do so would be to play directly into the hands of the ISIS vermin and their zombie lackeys.

Be alert and aware, of course, but in an intelligent as opposed to paranoid and hysterical sense. Note things unusual and report them, but don't go off the rails seeking to expunge the basic principles embodied in the Bill of Rights, especially the fourth amendment. If we give in to fear we cease to be who we are and mutate instead into a fear-governed caricature unworthy of liberty.

As for the Brussels' news, tune in to get the occasional update but don't stay glued to the tube and this kind of news on an endless loop. It just feeds fear, and more panic and hysteria.

And besides, you risk becoming a Trumpkin.

Can We Agree That Ben Carson Is A Moron?

The clueless, idiotic look on this bozo's mug is not coincidence.

I've said before that Reeptardo prez candidate Ben Carson, "neurosurgeon" from Johns Hopkins, is not truly a brainiac, but more a moron. He's made numerous stupid comments including the most recent (in response to the latest gun massacre) that he'd "arm kindergarten teachers" allowing them to have a loaded gun in the classroom. When pressed on one talk show how he'd assure the gun was secure from the kids, he replied he'd "lock it away until it is needed". 

When then pressed on how much time he thought he'd need before he could get the gun if a gunman with an AK-47 burst through the door, he wiped the drool from his lips, babbled some more and assured the inquisitor he was sure he could get to it in time. Is he serious? The screwball would be riddled with bullets before he could put a pinky finger on the locked closet.

In another jackass response he bellowed that "guns don't kill people" but people (presumably psychotic nuts) "kill people". Hmmm.....if this is so how explain the case some years back when a pet dog accidentally stepped on a loaded shotgun placed on a couch and killed its owner seated on one side. Did the little doggie do it, or did shells unleashed from the weapon do it?

Carson then went on to proclaim that when confronted by any would-be mass shooter, the response is simple: "Hey guys! Everybody attack him! He may shoot me but he can't get us all!". Oh yeah? Check out the AR-15 in the last gun post I did (on the Umpqua massacre) I guarantee you anyone wielding that weapon could take down all of Carson's rushees before he can say "gun control". HOWEVER, IF the most the guy could get in terms of a weapon was a large knife, he'd likely be correct. (See also the last link below on how Carson, when actually confronted with a similar situation of a gunman at a Popeye's in Baltimore, turned chicken and fobbed the gunman off on the teenage counter guy. Real tough guy that Ben!)

What part of guns as lethal weapons doesn't this dope understand?  He claims he'd seen bullet wounds in his practice but evidently that means nothing to Uncle Ben.

His other babbling bollocks in recent interviews that the Jews and other Germans might have resisted Hitler and the Nazis if they had guns is also unmitigated claptrap. Recall all Jewish gun ownership effectively ended on Nov. 11, 1938, when a new law was declared, prohibiting Jews from owning weapons of any kind, including swords, which many Jewish army veterans had kept as mementos from World War I.

The failure of Jews to mount an effective defense against the Waffen-SS in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943 provides a good example of what happens when ordinary citizens with small arms go up against a well-equipped force. The uprising in the ghetto possesses enduring symbolic significance, as an instance of Jews’ determination to resist their oppression. But the uprising saved few Jewish lives and had little to no impact on the course of either World War II or the Holocaust.

The idea that other Germans would have come to the Jews defense is also malarkey that only a poorly educated (on history) moron could spout. Non-Jewish Germans knew full well the eyes of the Gestapo were on them 24/7 and one mistake - one neighbor's testimony - and they be in the torture chambers, getting minced 'bratwurst' enemas and nails ripped out.


But let's leave Carson's babbling insanity for now.  The fact is, other nations HAVE implemented sane gun laws and had major success. As noted in a recent slate.com report, for example:

"On April 28, 1996, a gunman opened fire on tourists in a seaside resort in Port Arthur, Tasmania. By the time he was finished, he had killed 35 people and wounded 23 more. It was the worst mass murder in Australia’s history.

Twelve days later, Australia’s government did something remarkable. Led by newly elected conservative Prime Minister John Howard, it announced a bipartisan deal with state and local governments to enact sweeping gun-control measures. A decade and a half hence, the results of these policy changes are clear: They worked really, really well.

At the heart of the push was a massive buyback of more than 600,000 semi-automatic shotguns and rifles, or about one-fifth of all firearms in circulation in Australia. The country’s new gun laws prohibited private sales, required that all weapons be individually registered to their owners, and required that gun buyers present a “genuine reason” for needing each weapon at the time of the purchase. (Self-defense did not count.) In the wake of the tragedy, polls showed public support for these measures at upwards of 90 percent."

All of which is eminently reasonable, and I can't see how any person of any rational bearing could possible have any serious objections.  The only one that enters remotely would be that the U.S. has many more people than Australia so how could tracking and enforcement be successfully implemented on the scale needed?

But we already have a mass surveillance state that gets nearly $25b a year,  most of it via "black budgets".  I say that if they can track all manner of terrorists, including wannabe ISIS followers, they can also track gun scofflaws as well as gun sellers including those operating outside the bounds of the law- mainly at gun shows. (Gun aficionados shouldn't mind as they clearly care more about the 2nd amendment than the 4th.)

There is no rational reason to object to this, but never mind, the gun nuts including NRA guy Wayne LaPierre will likely go ballistic. Can't have "Bambi" walking about without the ability to shoot her with an AK -47!

See also:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/crime/2012/12/16/gun_control_after_connecticut_shooting_could_australia_s_laws_provide_a.html

http://www.salon.com/2015/10/08/what_happened_when_brave_gunman_charger_ben_carson_was_actually_held_up_at_gunpoint/

With the Recent Mass Killings Let's Clear the Air on the Gun Ownership B.S.

In Murdock, FL, ca. May, 1986, with an AR-15. Make no mistake these rifles are not for squirrel hunting!

"The idea that the 2nd amendment granted every man the right to keep and bear arms on his own is one of the greatest pieces of fraud on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime."- Chief Justice Warren Burger

In the wake of the recent mass shootings, at the D.C. Navy yard, and then in Chicago, 25 people killed in all, the NRA and its gun mavens are all hyper -reactive. Once more they're paranoid the "libtards" want to take their substitute cocks away from them, but the truth is we only seek regulation. So this attitude of the hyper-'any' gun Right needs to be addressed.

Once more I am not an anti-gun lib. 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 automatic, with multicapacity clips!

Unlike the whacko contingent of gun owners, I 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. They'd have thrown up their hands and yelled: "Wait! We intended that amendment for state militias, which were the extent of military at the time, and then to only own the type of rifles used then.....the musket! WTF are you doing?"

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 30.06 as a right, because it's a legit rifle with which to go out hunting. You can own a .22 as a right, and it does a nice job of killing small game especially if you use hollow points.  But you don't need the other semi-automatic weapons, or AK 47s. Their main purpose is mass killing of enemies, such as one might face in Afghanistan - with the Taliban.  The same applies to rapid firing smaller arms, such as Glocks. (The type used by the Virginia Tech killer).

 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 cow 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. I believe no sane or sensible person can argue against such measures. These include regulating the use- say by demanding nationwide background checks as well as limiting  magazine capacity to a rational standard. In other words, IF you really are a hunter, you don't require an AK-47 or an UZI!  A true hunter, out for deer say, can get by very nicely with a good, old -fashioned Remington 30.06, the tried and true standard. If you need a weapon for protection, you do not need a Glock 9 or a Glock 19, you can get a .38 revolver and with enough shooting practice be just fine.

In other words, I am arguing for rational standards on gun ownership, not anything goes. I argue by similar analogy for rational pet ownership. No, you shouldn't  be able to own as many jaguars, anacondas, Burmese pythons, or tigers as your little heart desires! THAT is irrational, and moreover those WILD animals can't be contained properly in captivity. That is also why so many pythons (estimated at 30,000) have now made their home in the Florida Everglades, not to mention hundreds of monitor lizards, because pet owners couldn't control them once they grew too large, or too feisty. (I won't even go into the character in Colo. whose pet python ate him while he was sleeping with the snake still in his queen bed digesting him when the cops arrived.)

 In the same way, zealot gun crazies have upset rational gun ownership "ecology" and culture in this country by their extreme demands and desires. They make the rest of us appear also like crazies, because of their inordinate demands for weapons which do not fit any normal use for citizens.

What these gun nut Americans are really doing, or would be doing, is effectively placing higher gravitas on 2nd amendment rights than 4th amendment.  This is what causes me to scratch my head: Why so much zealotry in the name of the 2nd amendment, and so little for the 4th - even while NSA spooks are scooping up every thing in sight?


In a previous blog post I observed that intangible rights (such as enshrined in the 4th amendment)  don't carry the same import in the minds of a somnolent or detached populace as rights which have attached to them actual material implements, weapons (AR-15s, Glocks) . In other words, the very fact of a rifle  - say an AR-15 - being a physical object that can be physically possessed,  is what makes it real to the 2nd amendment rights defender. If it is physical, touchable and real then it CAN be taken away, hence Charlton Heston's famous zinger: "You'll have to pry this rifle from my cold, dead hands!"

But what about privacy,  the right at the core of the 4th amendment? To the average gun owner it sounds way too airy-fairy. "Privacy? Don't need it, ah got mah gun!"  The fourth's problem is that it is completely intangible. You don't really know whether or when it's being taken from you (like your gun), or not.  A gun seizure is therefore viewed as far more serious and substantial because it entails a physical taking away, removing the object from one's possession. Privacy, not so much!

 The problem for the gun nut culture is just this: by dissing or diminishing the 4th amendment in favor of the misinterpreted 2nd, they are actually making it easier for a future administration (say with continued lack of habeas corpus and a toughened 'continuity of government' clause in the Patriot Act)  to actually seize their guns....every one of them!  After all, the NSA spying already means the feds likely know exactly where these owners live and exactly how many arms they own, and the type. A simple Posse Comitatus perversion could send National Guardsmen and Army in every state barging into homes in the dead of night to seize them, and the gun nuts wouldn't know what hit them until too late. While they express much bravado this would never occur, they are fooling themselves.

Indeed, their reasoning skills leave them open for exploitation and yes, one day being led like sheep to the slaughter. Some of the codswallop I've beheld to defend their weapon ownership is positively bizarre. It demonstrates "logic" at about the third grade level. But again, that's also about the level of the NRA's PR.

One common argument, is: "Hey, it ain't the guns and taking 'em ain't gonna work. I got 45 big knives including Bowie knives! I can kill anyone with them!"

Yes, Sparky, but you miss the larger point: It's much, MUCH harder to mass- kill using knives. Much more difficult than opening up on a crowd with an AR-15 or Bushmaster .223 or Glock!  Maybe you will manage to kill, or seriously wound three - maybe four,  with one or more knives - but by then any bystanders will be all over you and any cops will shoot to kill. It takes TIME and much more effort to kill with a knife than with a semi-automatic rifle.

But let's not let facts get in the way.

Another tactic is deflection from the real cause. This was employed some months ago by the NRA's Wayne LaPierre who blamed the "violent video games" and that mentally unstable people who use them will be affected and besides they contribute to a culture of violence. He named several, including 'Grand Theft Auto'. I do agree these games are violent and hence may trigger aggressive impulses, but the fact that millions of people play them and aren't affected shows that Wayne's solution of banning or regulating them is as whacky as his "pseudo-cop" solution (i.e. placing thousands of hired guns in schools across the country to act as ersartz "police" and discourage would be shooters). One more fact: Japan has more violent video game addicts per capita than any other country but barely any homicides, especially by gun. Why?  The Japanese are a less violent people and they own fewer guns!

The lamest arguments entail attempts to turn the mass shootings against "libtards" and "registered Dems".  The misfits who resort to this tactic typically trot out singleton anecdotal examples of killers as  "registered democrats" -  but of course never provide the evidence to back it up (i.e. that the shooters really are "registered Democrats").  Even if it were so, it does not constitute proof that "Liberals are mass killers". Indeed, those who invoke this bunkum  commit the classical logical error of the fallacy of distribution, or arguing from the specific to the general.. An analogous case of such shoddy reasoning would be:

"Barbie was raped by Jack"

"Jack  happens to be a man"

"Therefore all men are rapists"

And, from the gun nuts:

 "The Aurora, Newton and D.C. Shipyard mass murderers were all  registered Democrats"

"Therefore, all registered Democrats are mass murderers"

Note the converse of the last statement, i.e. "all mass murderers are registered democrats" is equally fallacious, because a selective sample is employed  to argue to a general conclusion applicable to a whole class.

 What will it take to finally get our congress critters to pass legislation to regulate military -style weapons and staunch the mass killings? The other night, after watching the news of the D.C. ship yard killings, I suggested to Janice it would be something like a madmen barging into a hospital pediatrics section and shooting dozens of infants with an AK-47.  But my wife disagreed, asserting even that wouldn't change the sick gun culture and the NRA would have legislators quaking in their boots, pointing to the recent recalls (here in Colo.) of John Morse and Angela Giron.

If that is true, and it might well be, we truly are sick and .....well, fucked. We will continue to witness many much more slaughter, and no political will to halt it.   Until our legislators finally get some balls, as opposed to kowtowing to the NRA and kissing their butts, we can expect to see more tragedies like those in D.C. and Chicago. And that is a damned tragedy!

Gun Kook Wayne La Pierre's "Solution" = A Moronic JOKE!

Even while Caleb Medley, victim of the July Aurora mass shooting is recovering from his head wounds - and facing massive medical costs - the Newtown, CT massacre erupted with 20 first graders mowed down and 6 adults who taught at the school.

Within a week of that we beheld the spectacle of NRA honcho Wayne LaPierre (yesterday) proposing his own solutions to massacres like Newtown: "Bring in more guns!" as in "Let's have 'good guys' with guns instead of 'bad guys'"! Or at least many more. He wants "armed cops" at every single school in the nation, which number about 100,000 according to a Denver Post Editorial today which also tosses the NRA solution into the dumpster. Is he serious? According to cost estimates cited last night on ABC, a minimum of $6.7 billion would be needed to effect such a plan. Where the HELL is the money going to come from when a penny-pinching GOP House won't even fully fund the recovery of the Sandy storm victims and this same House has: a) defunded state programs across the nation, causing police numbers to be whittled down, and b) defunded Embassy budgets - including security, which led directly to the Benghazi episode, though they want to now blame the State Dept. Don't buy it!

Next, even if a cop could be posted at all 100,000 schools in the nation, that wouldn't make a dime's worth of difference! Everyone except those of us here in Colo. seems to forget that Columbine High in Littleton, CO had a number of armed police on the day that Eric Harris and Dylan Kliebold opened up on students and teachers. All Harris and Kliebold did is stake out the police comings and goings by time before they made their move, including moving explosives into the school. Any other would-be shooters with half a brain would do the same ....ANYWHERE!  Besides, for a 1-2 acre typical H.S. campus and all the buildings you'd need (practically) something like 20 cops per school not just one! And they'd have to be on moving patrol ALL the time.   That would launch the cost into the stratosphere, at over $135 billion a year!

Oh, Wayne assures us if the police solution is too much, maybe the schools could have "volunteers". Oh, you mean like maybe having 100,000 George Zimmermans - the guy that took out Trayvon Martin in Sanford, FL? I don't think so, Wayne!

Wayne then goes on to blame the "violent video games" and that mentally unstable people who watch them will be affected and besides they contribute to a culture of violence. He named several, including 'Grand Theft Auto'. I do agree these games are violent and hence may trigger aggressive impulses, but the fact that millions of people play them and aren't affected shows that Wayne's solution of banning or regulating them is as whacky as his cop solution.  Besides, if you're going to do that, then the next thing is getting rid of all the violent TV movies. Have you seen some of them, including one that features a kid donning a SWAT helmet, uniform and kevlar vest while sporting ten automatic weapons (and multiple clip magazines)  who shoots up a town killing about 60 people?

Lastly, Wayne advocates for launching a "national database for the mentally ill". While this sounds reasonable at first blush, actual statistics for all past mass shooters disclose it wouldn't work. While the Virginia Tech shooter Seung -Hui Cho, and  Aurora shooter James Eagan Holmes might have been picked up, neither Eric Harris, Dylan Kliebold, or most of the others would have. The reason is that most of the killers were visibly normal kids or adults who didn't configure to any Diagnostic and Statistical Manual criteria. It was only immediately near the time of the killings that they suddenly experienced a stress melt down precipitating their actions. Only by the most persistent observation would any anomalies have been detected, as Dylan Kliebold's mother noted after Columbine. The only way to detect these guys then, would have been via suddenly out of character actions as disclosed by a constant monitoring database - say as used by the National Counter-Terrorism Center (see below) or the private monitor "Life Linear".

The true source of the problem, however, isn't violent video games or TV videos, but rather the proliferation of powerful automatic and semi-automatic weapons along with muliple clip magazines. This morning on MSNBC a tally was done of recent mass shootings. The data showed 68 mass shooters used semi-automatic weapons, 35 used automatic weapons. The remaining 26 used revolvers or ordinary single shot rifles. Thus, the need to control the automatic and semi-automatic weapons is clear, if we truly wish to see an end to these massacres.

Someone asked me yesterday if I believed it would all finally stop, and our legislators would act if someone went into a nursery and killed all the infants there, like Lanza did the 1st graders at Sandy Hook. I said I didn't believe so, because the gun culture is so entrenched in this country and has become so irrational that the abnormal has been adopted as the new normal. Every clown, jackass and Johnny Reb Obama-hater now believes that he has a right to own as many Bushmaster .223s or other AR-15s as he wants, as well as the mega-clip magazines to go with them. These whackos will cite "Second amendment" rights despite the fact the Second days NOTHING about owning such weapons. As well, the Second historically has been in the context of being a member of a state MILITIA,  not individual ownership, but judicial mutation has widely expanded the original meaning.

In a worthwhile book entitled 'Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right To Bear Arms in America', a professor of constitutional law at UCLA - Adam Winkler- has masterfully documented how guns were regulated from the earliest days of our Republic. As an example: laws that banned the carrying of concealed weapons were passed in Kentucky and Louisiana in 1813, in Indiana in 1820 and in Tennessee and Virginia in 1838. Similar laws were later also passed in Texas, Florida and Oklahoma. The then governor of Texas in 1893 was heard to proclaim:

The mission of the concealed weapon is murder. To check it is the duty of every self-respecting, law abiding man".


WOW! How times have changed! Now, thanks to NRA pressure on spineless lawmakers, concealed weapons can be carried into National Parks and Colorado allows them to be carried into university classrooms! Anyone know how to spell T-R-O-U-B-L-E?

Meanwhile, Winkler showed that congress passed the first set of laws regulating, licensing and taxing guns in 1934. Though the law was challenged and wound up in the Supreme Court, in 1939, the crazies lost. FDR's Solicitor General framed the argument correctly 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. The decision remains settled law. While this sane and sober take prevailed for several more decades, it started to unravel by the 1970s as various Right wing (wouldn't you know?) groups coalesced to challenge gun control based on spurious "private gun ownership" interpretations, and successively overturned laws in state legislatures - much like the abortion opponents are now doing (as in Virginia, where its AG Cuchinelli 'read the riot act' to state health clinic adminsitrators ordering them to cooperate with a new state edict to limit safe abortions, "or else"). But we need to know this is how these vipers succeed.


Undissuaded by the gun crazies' arguments, especially that the 2nd amendment granted every man the right to keep and bear arms on his own, Chief Justice Warren Burger responded that this 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 so long as to see the arrival of automatic weapons and the claim that the 2nd amendment provided for the ownership of those too!


So WHAT can be done that can stop this nonsense in the shortest time? I believe the only clear solution, also incidentally the boldest, is an Executive Order! No, this Executive Order would emphatically not take away anyone's guns or rifles - even automatic or semi-automatic. The Executive Order would instead mandate simply that  "No multiple clip magazines are allowed for anyone who is not serving in a combat area in the active military".

The Exec. Order would apply to ALL gun -ammo sellers, including online. It would be enforced by the full strength and power of the Security government arm we already know exists.

The most likely one would be the National Counter-Terror Center (cf. 'U.S. Terror Agency to Tap Citizen Files', The Wall Street Journal, Dec. 13, p. A1). As the article notes:

“The rules  now allow the little known National Counter-Terrorism Center to examine the Government files of all U.S. citizens for possible criminal behavior, even if there is no reason to suspect them…….The NCTC can copy entire government databases – flight records, casino employee lists, names of Americans hosting foreign exchange students and many others. The agency has new authority to keep data about innocent U.S. citizens for up to five years, and to analyze suspicions patterns of  behavior”

Of course, such “suspicious patterns of behavior” would include – in the wake of an executive order such as I noted – anyone trying to sell or purchase multiple clip magazines for weapons! Then – if detected – as this agency would surely do- the full hammer would be brought down on the violators.

Some may question whether an Executive Order can go this far. I say it can, and I can even cite an historical example:   Executive Order 11,110,  issued on June 4, 1963 by John Fitzgerald Kennedy, to issue U.S. Notes outside the Federal Reserve (see e.g. http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2012/07/yes-those-us-notes-were-real.html)  JFK at the time believed the Fed went too far and the actual money-creation powers rested with the Treasury not an outside private concern. He knew he couldn't issue an order to "repeal" the Fed or limit its money creation powers directly, so he did it in an incremental fashion by releasing $4.2 billion of such notes, about equal to $30 billion in today's dollars.

This would be analogous say, for Obama issuing an executive order limiting access to multiple clip magazines. Let's get straight on this that Lanza was using clips with 30 rounds in each! It was because of these multiple -loaded clips he was able to pump up to 11 high velocity bullets into each child so they didn't stand a chance. Removing the high capacity clips, therefore is the solution, but I do admit (as in the case of JFK with his release of U.S. notes outside the Fed) it would require titanium balls.  The President would have to have them to not only go up against the NRA minions, but all the freakazoids, mainly in the South, who are convinced their automatics and mega-clips are as sacred as their bibles. They will yelp about "infringing their 2nd amendment rights" but again, Obama wouldn't be doing anything of the sort. They could keep all the guns they want, even automatics-- they'd just not be able to have high capacity clips too. If a court challenge is forthcoming let it come.

Originally, I had considered the solution might be stock or mutual fund disinvestment, say such as California teachers threatened Cerberus Capital Management with (threatening to pull out $750b in pension funds) and Cerberus then ceasing ownership in Bushmaster. But then I realized this could only work if all other teachers' pension funds acted too, and they clearly aren't.

We need to also dispel the fairy tale that more guns is the answer to getting more security. None of the other OECD nations have this, and they all show 2-4 times fewer gun deaths. The REAL un-Americans are those who have twisted the meaning of the 2nd Amendment to their own ends, with the result that the fallout has created a never-ending sea of maimed, crippled and murdered gun victims. It is time now to stop this insanity, but I am afraid it will take enormous courage on the part of Obama to do so.

Relying on congress is a non-starter, especially when the Reepos won't even allow an agency head for the ATF. Nor will they ever vote to limit high capacity clips. The ball then is in Obama's court as per issuing an executive order such as I noted. He can do so, and moreover, he has the NCTC to back him up in detecting any flouters! Make no mistake the NCTC is here to stay. It is far better to employ them full time to catch and nail violators of an Executive Order such as I described, than to merely be on endless "fishing expeditions" of innocent citizens.