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
eiriamach | Jan 17, 2011, 02:54 PM EST
EphraimK, please clarify: are you suggesting that the second amendment protects the right of ordinary citizens--civilians--to amass weapons of the kind used by law enforcement and military? Do we not have officers in law enforcement and military to defend the nation against invasion? What do you plan to have civilians with arsenals defending the nation against?
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olovely | Jan 17, 2011, 02:21 PM EST
Arizona is the new Mississippi. This is where the focus of the resurgence of right-wing hostility is located.
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EphraimKibbey | Jan 17, 2011, 02:15 PM EST
Please correct me if I am mistaken but the 2nd amendment is based on the founding father's belief that a free nation required a milita of individuals who were experienced in the use of the latest weapons of their period. To that end, they said that the right to bear arms should in no way be INFRINDGED upon. Were the individuals of today limited to experience with the weapons of 1789, the 1860's, the 1920's or even the 1990's, they would hardly be of value in defence of this country if it faced an enemy equiped with the latest in weaponry. When the government set up the civilian marksmanship program, they recognised that it is easier to train soldiers that already have a background in the use of combat weapons. While we are a strong country and at present the threats are more from financial mismanagement and corruption, it does not mean that dangers do not still exist in the world that require armed service by our citizens. Every Israeli citizen spends two years becoming a competent soldier, familiar with the LATEST weapons not flintlocks, ready to serve their country should the need arise. Gun laws are bandaids that our society tries to place on symtoms of much deeper problems. Just taking pain killers does not treat the cancer that is causing the pain and only allows it to cause more damage to the host and sometimes the pain killers cause new problems with the patient. Limiting the type of weapons available to our citizens to none combat types, by definition, would violate the intention of the 2nd amendment to populate the country with competent soldiers.
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eiriamach | Jan 17, 2011, 11:54 AM EST
Ajreaper, let's assume you are right that "to keep the bulk of guns out of the hands of criminals ... we must infringe upon the rights of" law-abiding citizens. Our legal system is built upon rights, obligations, benefits, and burdens. The right to gun ownership is a benefit to some, but unquestionably a burden to those who die by gunshot: robbery victims, inner-city teens, victims of domestic abuse and assassination, and all their grieving friends and relatives. And such an inordinate toll of killings is a burden to the nation as a whole. I agree that our culture is more gun-oriented than other cultures--but that is just the problem; it helps explain our higher rates of violent death. It must be possible for this culture to become more like Finland's or UK's with regard to guns. Rational adult non-felons should have the right to own handguns, but not to own weapons whose only use is mass slaughter. At that point, gun owners infringe upon our right to public safety. Because "innocent until proven guilty" is a cornerstone of our system, we already pay the price of knowing that criminals are among us (known drug dealers, for ex., who can't be convicted for lack of evidence). But knowing that 250,000,000 guns are in mostly private homes is too great a price to pay, too heavy a burden for the nation to bear for the right of some to firearms.
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Ajreaper | Jan 17, 2011, 10:47 AM EST
The simple fact is in order to keep the bulk of guns out of the hands of criminals (and only those who attempt to purchase guns legally) as well as others who are mentally questionable we must infringe upon the rights of those who can legally purchase guns- there is no way not to. Look at the ruckus raised over security checks at airports. In the U.S. the culture about guns is far different then it is in about any other country in the world so comparing gun deaths in Finland, for example, is way beyond apples and oranges. You know drinking and driving kills and injuries many more people then guns- do we not sell cars or seize those owned by those who have a known or suspected issue with alcohol or drugs? Do dealers do a background check or your bank when you request a loan for a car?
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eiriamach | Jan 17, 2011, 10:17 AM EST
Basically, Ajreaper, I agree with the NY Times editorial that followed the Supreme Court Ruling in McDonald vs. City of Chicago, July 2010:
"The court acknowledged, as it did in the District of Columbia case, that the [second] amendment did not confer 'a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose. [Justice Alito]' It cited a few examples of what it considered acceptable: limits on gun ownership by felons or the mentally ill, bans on carrying firearms in sensitive places like schools or government buildings, and conditions on gun sales."
"Mayors and state lawmakers will have to use all of that room and keep adopting the most restrictive possible gun laws—to protect the lives of Americans and aid the work of law enforcement officials. They should continue to impose background checks, limit bulk gun purchases, regulate dealers, and close gun-show loopholes." But unlike some on the Court, I think that the feds have the constitutional power to ban private sales of all forms of assault weapons, which are designed for military uses.
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eiriamach | Jan 17, 2011, 09:16 AM EST
No, probably the LA gang members do not care about gun laws, but the hands of LA police are tied with regard to gang violence simply because of current lack of gun regulation. The USA is in a unique position, and that position does have much to do with regional interests/polarized politics that other, smaller nations do not face. Yes, I think that the states have responsibility for most of the problems of poverty and crime in the US, and there must be regional considerations brought forward in trying to resolve such problems. But that means that our representatives must resist the power of wealthy NATION-WIDE lobbying organizations like the NRA, whose MONEY greatly overshadows the voting power of moms and dads, however many there are in the inner cities. Our failure to reduce these problems has an demoralizing effect on the nation as a whole. See the religious left law web site for these statistics, which can also be found elsewhere: "The US has well over 250 million guns in private hands according to the National Rifle Association. That is more, according to the BBC, than any country in the world. In one year, guns murdered 17 people in Finland, 35 in Australia, 39 in England and Wales, 60 in Spain, 194 in Germany, 200 in Canada, and 9,484 in the United States according to the Brady Campaign."
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Ajreaper | Jan 17, 2011, 08:45 AM EST
Eiriamach so you are saying there are no programs designed to address poverty and crime in the inner cities of the U.S.? Any "answers" we come up with cannot be one size fits all. Sometimes the the problem is those who govern us try to do that in the interest of being "fair". Should we address our safety concerns exactly the same on both our northern and southern borders or should we recognize there are different issues and specifically address them? If you think the problem is there are far more NRA supporters then mom's and dad's living in large American cities then you need to do a great deal more research. Do you really think the criminals and gangs in LA, for example, care what our gun laws are?
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eiriamach | Jan 17, 2011, 08:10 AM EST
Just as we saw on "The American Paradox ...," them that have political power do not give much of a dang about them that don't. The USA is a huge piece of geography, with sharply divergent regional interests. It is nearly impossible to get a rural Southerner to care about the inner-city youth who has a 10-times greater chance of dying by violence than rural or suburban children have. The rural guy, steeped in American tradition, wants to teach his sons how to hunt with rifles; the inner-city mom wants drugs, guns, and gang violence off the streets where she's trying to raise her kids. The inner-city mother has common sense, astronomically high urban crime rates to cite, and the power of her one vote; the gun owner has the powerful NRA lobby to support his unencumbered "right" to own guns. And NRA activism has spawned a new breed of delusional people, who keep arsenals of weapons to use against government agents who, they believe, will arrive some day soon to deprive them of all their liberties. There are ways for both the hunter and the inner-city parent to have what they need, but politicians lack the courage to enact the procedures into law, and that's our real problem. Why can't we find a common meeting ground on the problem of gun violence in the USA? Why can't we care enough about each other's problems to enact some safeguards at least?
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Watereskhill | Jan 16, 2011, 11:55 PM EST
Gun powder was not invented to bring down food in a forest to replace the bow and arrow. But to kill other human beings. The term 'fire-arm' itself evolved from native peoples: The outstretched arm that brought fire and death.
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Monsoonman | Jan 16, 2011, 11:35 PM EST
Lad, I said serial killer, not cereal killer. Maybe in your land you have a bowl of serial in the morning?
In that case, I understand.
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Ajreaper | Jan 16, 2011, 10:35 PM EST
"Violent crime continued to fall in 2009, even as gun sales reached an all-time high, according to statistics from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)."According to the FBI, the number of violent crimes of all types declined in 2009 by 5.3 percent and property crimes declined 4.6 percent. In fact, the rate of violent crime declined 6.1 percent below 2008 figures" Studying crime trends in every county in the U.S., John Lott and David Mustard concluded, “allowing citizens to carry concealed weapons deters violent crimes. . . . [W]hen state concealed handgun laws went into effect in a county, murders fell by 8.5 percent, and rapes and aggravated assaults fell by 5 and 7 percent." "There is also not a single academic study that claims Right to Carry laws have increased state crime rates. The debate among academics has been over how large the benefits have been.” Dang reality sucks when it completely contradicts the garbage some people wish to spread.
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seanomelbourne | Jan 16, 2011, 09:06 PM EST
Mman I hear the cops in Cal. have a roadside test to read one's level of paranoia,best be careful they may take your guns and the f250 ford,but not to worry they'll leave the butterfly net
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EphraimKibbey | Jan 16, 2011, 07:42 PM EST
Constitutional Rights are abridged regularly in the United States for felons, minors and for those deemed a danger to themselves or others. Children can not buy guns and must be under adult supervision while using them. Murders lose their right to liberty and sometimes life. As my high school social studies teacher put it - a citizen's rights end where the rights of others begin. You do not have the right to deny another their rights. If you kill someone, you lose your right to freedom because you can not be trusted not to deny the right of life to your fellow citizens. Likewise, a delusional person can not be trusted not to deny others that right to life if they exibit violent tendencies. That said, I agree that there are many people who are not yet diagnosed as being mentally ill, just as there are many people who act like children even though they are mature in years. My point is that instead of worrying whether a mentally ill person can buy a gun or if they should be able to purchase an extended magazine, we should be taking the proactive path of treating their illness so that they do not reach the point of destroying themselves and others.
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