Arizona's WMD gun show
Posted on Sunday, January 16, 2011 at 08:48 AM
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Despite President Obama's grandly unifying speech this week, Arizona is still one of the most divided states in the nation - an epicenter of the kind of overheated partisan bickering that is tearing the fabric of the nation.
That some of this is actually their own fault doesn't help matters. Just a week after the horrific shooting of Gabby Giffords and 18 other innocent citizens in Tucson, in their wisdom a group called Crossroads of the West went ahead with a scheduled gun show and a crowd of 4,000 showed up.
Reports say the mood was less upbeat than usual. Perhaps that's because they could sense most of the nation's incredulity.
Just think of it: in Arizona a man with noticeable mental problems can go into almost any gun shop, buy a semi automatic and enough ammunition to kill scores of his neighbors, then strap it to his thigh and stroll out into the public street and no one will say a damn word.
You're kidding yourself if you suppose that Jared Loughner is the only psychopath with a grudge left in Arizona.
"People see it as either guns are going to get banned, or I'm going to get shot," a buyer at the Tuscon gun show told the press yesterday. "Either way, it drives sales."
A loophole in the state law allows all gun show attendees to buy guns without a background check. Business was said to be brisk yesterday.
In Europe, where it is much harder to legally obtain guns they have one-tenth as many killings per capita as in the United States. The implication is clear cut. It's not rocket science. You work it out.
Of course I understand why some people want to own firearms. And if the legal means for doing so is carefully screened and monitored I'm not against it. But can you please explain to me why any law-abiding citizen needs a semi-automatic? Are we facing scores of undead zombies, who'll attack our homes day and night?
This is the part I don't get. There's no sense of proportion amongst the pro-gun crowd anymore. They sell more and more deadly firepower to ordinary citizens and lethal mayhem is the most common result.
There's reason to be fearful about the future. When U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton put on hold key provisions of the anti-immigrant SB 1070 bill last year she received hundreds of death threats at her court offices within hours of her ruling. In fact, she was inundated with them.
In Arizona, where even the most mentally unbalanced person can very easily obtain weapons of mass destruction, shouldn't we be concerned about that still?
53 Comments
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eiriamach | Jan 20, 2011, 05:23 AM EST
Ajreaper, if US law enforcement succeeds in indicting only 1 in 1,000 drug dealers, should we repeal the laws that prohibit the sale of illegal drugs? I think we have to keep trying to deal with the problem until we can do better. The same goes for illegal weapons. There are no quick or easy solutions, but that does not mean we should stop looking for solutions.
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Ajreaper | Jan 19, 2011, 01:31 PM EST
Good lord look at prisons- people are locked up, under constant supervision day and night, they and their cell regularly searched and access to the prison and the immates tightly controled and drugs find there way in and in the absence of guns they manufacture weapons that are very deadly (which they manage to hide very well). If we cannot keep a tightly controled population free of weapons and drugs how will we manage to do that outside of prisons? So many of you believe there are quick and easy solutions to very complicated matters- it defies logic how some of you think.
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eiriamach | Jan 18, 2011, 06:02 PM EST
Thanks for the good wishes, Ephraim and Michaelidaho. I really enjoyed this discussion, thanks! I'll miss having time for back-and-forth discussions when work begins again tomorrow. Best of the new year to all!
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EphraimKibbey | Jan 18, 2011, 12:17 PM EST
Last time - I need to read some of the other stimulating articles in Irish Central - I think our efforts are better directed at the roots of our violence than at the leaves. Michael Moore was on Rachael Maddow last night and explained his surprise at getting Kmart to stop selling ammunition when asked to do so by two of the Columbine shooting victims. I greatly respect Mr. Moore and his skill at shining a light on the ills of our society but the ammunition was not the problem at Columbine, it was the mental state of the shooters. I respect your opinions, your skill in arguing them and wish us all luck in creating a more peaceful world.
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michaelidaho | Jan 18, 2011, 09:33 AM EST
eiriamach,
You made some good points that I agree with. However, I was criticizing Cahir's original article for simple explanations to complex problems.
As for as the rancher analogy that works in rural areas. However, Boise is a medium-sized city about the same size of Rochester, NY and of course neither city has ranches within their limits. Finally, nobody was killed in Boise in several different years during the past decade because of host of different reasons that had nothing to do with gun ownership rates. Again, the original point I was making. Making a direct correlation between gun ownership rates and crime is a seriously flawed way of analyzing this problem.
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eiriamach | Jan 18, 2011, 06:22 AM EST
In a further effort to be conciliatory, I'll mention that I live a couple of blocks from my town's police station. The police have a practice range, which is available to local residents as well as to officers. Many an evening, I try to dine or read to the sound of residents' gunfire that lasts for hours. I haven't complained to the town council because I support the entire Constitution, and I recognize that other people's exercise of their constitutional liberties may impose some burden on the rest of us. But we need to draw a line somewhere, and I draw it at assault weapons and their equivalent in extended magazines and enhancements that maximize killing power. You know, of course, that the first thing a burglar will steal is your weapon, and about a third of homeowners killed by burglars are killed with their own weapons.
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eiriamach | Jan 18, 2011, 05:52 AM EST
Michaelidaho and others who cite statistics should give some thought to the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy: "after this, therefore because of this." In some sparsely populated areas, people own more guns--because such areas have more ranchers who use weapons to drive off non-human threats to livestock, etc. Where ever population density is low, we expect lower crime rates, so the correlation between high gun-ownership levels and crime rates does not mean that gun ownership deters crime. And whenever crime rates spike in an area, media and citizens demand more law enforcement officers and better surveillance, so the fact that a drop in crime rates coincides with lifting a weapons ban does not mean that lifting the weapons ban caused the drop in crime rates; more likely, increased enforcement caused it. For a different perspective on crime epidemics, read Malcolm Gladwell's "The Tipping Point." (I do not think that Gladwell has a complete analysis either, but he clarifies some of pitfalls in interpreting crime data.)
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eiriamach | Jan 18, 2011, 05:39 AM EST
If the majority of assault weapon owners do not keep their guns for self-defense, then we're talking about hobbies, which the second amendment was not written to protect. Why not legislate to regulate such ownership? When the benefit to some imposes a burden on others, we have a conflict of rights for the Supreme Court to resolve, and if I recall, the Court did not find the previous ban on assault weapons unconstitutional. I'm not unsympathetic to your argument. For some years I had possession of my great-grandfather's hand-crafted pistol, engraved with Celtic scrolls (even the screw heads) and fitted with a polished wooden handle. The firing pin had long ago been removed, and I would have needed also to fill it with black powder to fire it. But when I compare today's assault weapons with that beautiful artifact, I cannot comprehend a fondness for collecting modern weapons. To outweigh the risks to public safety, I'd need to hear a more compelling reason than marksmanship (a bow and arrow pose greater challenges for marksmen), historians' or investors' interests (they should be collecting non-functional weapons), or hunting (for which real sportsmen use rifles). Yes, I would ask all those gun owners to vote to regulate their hobbies for the greater good (safety and security) of all of us.
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EphraimKibbey | Jan 17, 2011, 11:13 PM EST
Why do you limit gun owners to such monolithic motivation? Some own guns because they enjoy the challenge of marksmanship just as some enjoy perfecting their ability to run a slalom course. Others enjoy the mechanics of the devices and work to improve the smoothness with which they operate. Some are collectors who enjoy holding a piece of history in their hands and even actually firing it. Some aspire to join the military and serve their country. Some are returning service men and women who may be called back to active duty in the near future and wish to maintain their readiness. Some are investors who wish to put their money into a tangible asset which has an excellent record of appreciation. Some ARE hunters and some hunters choose to use unusual firearms to hunt with such as handguns or assault rifles. One bullet can be as deadly regardless of its source. Some ARE afraid of real and imagined dangers in their environment. If owning a firearm brings them peace of mind, why chastise them for it? As one previous commenter noted, violent crime rates in the US were worse during the ban on assault weapons and have continued to decline after its repeal. All of these side issues wear us out leaving us with less energy to fight the very real problems of domestic and social violence. They also alienate many of the very people that we need to enlist in our struggle for a safer country.
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michaelidaho | Jan 17, 2011, 10:02 PM EST
"It's not rocket science. You work it out."
Actually, strict control laws do not = less crime. Look at the states with the strictest gun control laws and you will see that they also have the highest crime rates. In Boise, Idaho, a city with a population at around 200,000, there is very little gun control. But guess what. In the past decade there were actually some years where they had ZERO murders. I bet you there are plenty of European cities of a comparable size that can not claim the same low murder rate.
You see Cahir when you are a blind, ideologue you resort to simple explanations for complex problems.
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eiriamach | Jan 17, 2011, 07:55 PM EST
Besides target practice, what legitimate use does a civilian have for an automatic weapon? It would be seriously unsportsmanlike to use it for hunting. Its only real purpose is to kill as many people as possible in the shortest possible time. Felons are not going to break into your home in teams or attack you on the street by the dozens. If the only legitimate use for such weapons is target practice, and the purpose of target practice is learning how to use the weapon effectively, and if the only purpose for using the weapon effectively is to kill as many people as possible--- You see where I'm going with this? A person who thinks that an assault weapon is necessary for self-defense is suffering from a seriously overblown need for security. By contrast, my concern about the tens of millions of assault weapons already in private hands seems rather realistic, I think. I agree with you that we need to work on the underlying problems of mental health and poverty, but we're more likely to make progress on these when owning terminator-type weapons is not the norm. The warrior tribe is just not a mentally-healthy environment.
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EphraimKibbey | Jan 17, 2011, 07:29 PM EST
As I have said several times, my point is not to mislead ourselves into a false sense of security by placing restrictions on this type of firearm or that type of magazine when the real danger is who has the weapon and what they intend to use it for. It does not even bother me that someone has paid the tax on a fully automatic machinegun and is using it to destroy targets at a legal target range. Unlike a machinegun, when you fire a semi-automatic weapon, a new cartridge is readied for fire each time the trigger is pulled and a round fired until the magazine is empty. A revolver likewise places a new cartridge ready for firing each time one is fired until the cylinder is empty. The method of cycling in the new round is different but the result is the same, another bullet is ready each time you pull the trigger. Revolvers have been used in many of this nations tragic shootings. In the wrong hands semi-automatic weapons and revolvers are equally dangerous. At the Tucson tragedy, one of the men who responded to the shots was carrying a concealed weapon. By the time he got there, the subject was already being subdued and he judisciously chose to keep his weapon holstered. Two men with similar semiautomatic weapons but totally different results because of their mental states. The faults are within ourselves not our guns and can only be successfully corrected by solutions that deal with us and not the guns.
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eiriamach | Jan 17, 2011, 06:02 PM EST
Your owning one handgun does not bother me (I assume you are of age, rational, not addicted, keep the gun away from children, etc.). But the thought of anyone stockpiling assault weapons bothers me a lot. I believe that it infringes on my right to a basic sense of security or what I called "public safety," which is necessary for other forms of freedom. I agree that the ban on high capacity weapons should not have been allowed to lapse. Those who seek out unlawful weapons are usually criminally-minded, and as I said earlier, I accept the fact that there can be a criminal on any street corner in America--that's enough risk, however, for me to tolerate.
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Ajreaper | Jan 17, 2011, 04:52 PM EST
How does my owning a gun infringe upon any rights you have? A gun is no diffent then a car, a baseball bat or a golf club- none infringe upon anyones rights until they are used inappropriatly. Perhaps we should blame our government which had outlawed the high capacity magazines then allowed the law to lapse but truthfully what has government ever banned or made unlawful that was not available to those who sought it out?
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