What Kind of Problem Do We Have? Pick One.

I've had lots of gun conversations in this blog, and with friends around the lunch table, with family at the dinner table, and with total strangers on comment boards and the like.

Generally, my positions and beliefs are as follows:

• I believe that having as many guns as people in America is a problem; I don't know who has 'my gun' but I've never met them, I have no idea what their intentions are, and I wish they had asked me first. 
• I believe in reasonable gun control, including background checks for all gun sales at gun shows, stores, and online.
• I believe you should have more magazines on your coffee table than bullets in your magazine. 
• I believe that, if  you have a family member with a mental illness, you should know better than to keep guns in your house. 
• I would not for a single moment feel more comfortable if every Tom, Dick and Harry was wandering around wearing a sidearm in plain sight, much less carrying it in their shorts or their socks or their shoes or wherever one conceals a weapon.

I don't like that people kill police officers. Ever.  I also believe that probably 99% of police officers would like to go through their entire career and never shoot, much less kill anyone - black or white, Christian or Muslim, child, teenager or adult, armed or unarmed, on drugs or stone cold sober.

I truly believe that some people are too foolish or stupid to be allowed anywhere near a firearm of any kind, and that we should have a way to weed them out and prevent them from owing guns.

• I think it's ridiculous that so many people get shot in or around Walmarts.
• I believe we have a problem when kids and parents accidentally kill children with guns. 
• When a person accidentally shoots himself in the leg, in the head, in the head, in the testicles, in the testicles, in the testicles, in the penis, in the foot, taking a selfie, defending a Muslim-free gun store, trying out his new holster, in the girlfriend, in the girlfriend, in the girlfriend, etc., I admit to less-than-charitable name-calling and a lack of compassion, as I shake my head.

So, if we don't have a 'gun problem' in America, what kind of problem do we have, that other civilized countries don't seem to have?

(1) I think the publicity we give people who commit heinous crimes like the Roanoke murders, the Houston police officer execution, the Sandy Hook shootings, the movie theater killing, and on and on, does more harm than good. If you're a wanna be famous nutjob, this is a surefire way to get what you're looking for.

I would prefer we never show the name or face of the person who committed the crime on television, in magazines, or anywhere else; instead, we should flood the airways and pages and the cloud with pictures and stories of the victims, whether police officers or television reporters or folks on dates or innocent children in school.

(2) Further, the lengths to which we go to 'define' these shootings, or the bastards who commit them, makes the situation worse.  Channeling Hillary Clinton here,

Was it racially motivated, or was it because the person was mad at his mother and father, or was it because of violent video games or television shows, or was it because the guy liked to play with guns, or had a mental illness, or thought the gun wasn't loaded, or had a grudge against his employer, or had a hatred for Muslims or Christians, or didn't like the military, or had a run-in before with one of the victims, or thought the best defense against a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun, or because of guys out for a walk one night and decided they'd go kill someone?

What difference - at this point, what difference does it make?

We struggle to determine whether we should call something terrorism, or a hate crime, or workplace violence, or domestic violence, or some other identifier. Who benefits from that? Not the victims, not their families and loved ones, and frankly not the rest of us. In reality, all it does is make excuses for people who have committed very bad acts.

(3) Even if we know, or think we know, or believe we have ascertained the 'reason' for the crime, we respond in ways guaranteed to inflame.

Case in point? The Charleston shootings.  The killer has racist tendencies, so the obvious answer, of course, is to remove the Confederate Flag from the grounds of the South Carolina statehouse. Because no one will ever shoot up a black church again, now that the offending flag is down.

Case in point?  New York's SAFE Act, after Sandy Hook. Some good ideas, some not so good - but crammed down everyone's throat, because Governor Andrew Cuomo knew there was no other way to get something passed. In the aftermath, we have calls for full repeal, even from people who agree with much of what's in the law, because of how it was done.

Case in point? The NRA declaring that the reason why people get killed in these horrific shootings is not because someone pulled a trigger, but because we have 'gun-free zones.' (Except, of course, when they thought it was OK that we had gun free zones.)

(4) We treat guns differently than anything else that threatens us. One person tries a shoe bomb, so everyone takes off their shoes before getting on a plane.  Heaven forbid we talk about closing loopholes in gun laws - because while we have no problem stripping in front of strangers at every airport, don't dare make us prove we're OK to purchase or own a gun.

(5) The Colorado movie theater killer was just sentenced, after what's been described as a parade of pain, to a term of life in prison for each of the 12 people he murdered, plus 3318 years in prison for wounding another 70 people.

The crime occurred three years ago; there was no doubt about his guilt, and whether he was sane or suffering from mental illness, there is no excuse for what he did, and he does not deserve rehabilitation. Should it take three years (sometimes longer) for the outcome to be known? Should we have an option for juries and defense attorneys, one that allows for a verdict or plea of 'guilty, but insane' which will guarantee the person never sees the light of day?  And does anyone really benefit from a sentence, and a sentencing production, like this, or does it just add to the murderer's fame?

(6) We have a huge 'us vs. them' mentality in America: rich vs poor, citizen vs. immigrant, Christian vs. everyone, state vs. federal government, black vs. white, this 'life' vs. that 'life', government vs. teacher, suburb vs urban, gun owner vs. non gun owner, pro-birth vs. pro-choice, reporter vs. interviewee, and so on. We seem to thrive on our differences, and forget our similarities.

Combine that mentality with our time where anyone, (like me, and this blog), can say anything we want, any time we want, and find an audience for whatever we say. This gives equal voice to ideas from the fringes as to those from the mainstream, and I think ultimately contributes to the general lack of respect and increased vitriol that we see these days.

What does all of this do? Individually we might be able to counter the effects of these issues, but when taken together, they paralyze us from actually doing anything about gun violence, or preventing the wrong people from getting guns, or doing anything about mental health, or about our frequently slow and prodding system of justice. In the end, is that what we really want? I honestly don't know.

Do we have a gun problem in America? We can, and will, continue to disagree on that, I'm sure. But one thing I do know is, no one has ever committed a similar mass murder with a bathtub.

The One in which We Agree...

As I mentioned the other day, a friend and I have carried on a lengthy conversation on gun control, some of which was admittedly emotional and reckless, some of which was argumentative and challenging. 

To be sure, we did not agree on everything -- there were many sticking points, among them whether or not we even need to do anything.  In the post which sparked our conversation, I tried to get my head around some of the key points raised by folks who do not support additional gun control legislation, including what Wayne LaPierre, the NRA's spokesman, put on the table after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings. 

I admitted that I'm not a gun lover, but also affirmed my belief that gun ownership is a right, albeit one that I believe can be reasonably 'controlled', just as our right to free speech is 'controlled' by legislation designed to protect me and others from irresponsible speech.

Here are a few of the areas where we struggled, at least initially:

• whether there's a need to respond to 'outliers' such as Newtown, Aurora, Tucson, VA Tech, Columbine and the like, given that they account for such a small percentage of gun crimes and deaths.
• what to call the weapon of choice in these mass shootings. I conceded the term 'assault weapon' was misunderstood, poorly defined in legislation, and inflammatory. I declared my preference for the term 'the gun that an evil sick bastard just used to kill a bunch of innocent people' which admittedly is more inflammatory but also more to the point and not as open to confusion.
• whether it was logical to include things such as death by high school sports injury, death by drowning, death by poisoning, etc. as more dangerous than guns because more people are killed by them each year. I thought this was silly; he thought it pointed out the need for a discussion on where we apply our limited resources.
• whether any legislation would have an impact on criminals, who ultimately are the ones who use guns for the wrong purpose. 
• whether it would be reasonable to put any restrictions on the news media, relative to how they report on crimes of this nature.  
• whether or not we could collectively rise to the challenge, assuming that agreement could be reached that something needed to be done.

In the end, we ended up agreeing, in large part, on a number of things that seem reasonable, not overly burdensome on current and prospective gun owners, and which might be achievable:

1. People choosing to exercise their right to bear arms need criminal and mental health clearance. Yes, this is background checks, and yes, it's intrusive to a certain degree, but it doesn't feel unreasonable to me. 
2. Registration of all gun purchases on a federal gun license. I'm okay with a federal license; I appreciate states having different tolerances for gun legislation and ownership, but certainly in the case of concealed carry permits, we need one law, not many.
3. Mandatory safety training for each type of firearm purchased. This is so simplistic it's ridiculous, and I'm not sure whether it's already the law of the land, but if not it certainly should be.
4. Yearly renewal of the federal gun license, including proficiency testing.  Again, not rocket science. He suggested not only proficiency, but also moral simulation, to gauge a person's decision-making ability, such as when to fire vs. when to de-escalate, which I think is a fascinating approach. 
5. Reducing the price of ammunition, thereby making it more readily available so people can practice with their weapons. I had a hard time with this one, but coupled with all of the other things we'd change, and a couple of qualifiers, I decided I could live with it. My qualifiers? Eliminating Internet ammunition purchasing and adding mandatory reporting of large volume ammo purchases, similar to how banks are required to report large cash deposits.
6. We agreed we need to eliminate black market gun sales, but neither of us offered anything here. I'm not sure how to do it, other than good old fashioned police work, finding out who's selling guns illegally and stopping them. It'll take quite a bit of effort, but coupled with other changes, it may be possible to make a dent.

I'll add a few other things to the list:

1. Require states to submit all necessary information into the background check system, so that it's truly viable and prevents criminals from getting guns.
2. Enforce gun laws already on the books, including prosecuting people who attempt to buy guns when they know they legally can't, and prosecuting people who have other people purchase their guns for them, regardless of the reason.
3. If a gun - handgun, rifle, 'gun that an evil sick bastard just used to kill a bunch of innocent people' or anything in between - is used during the commission of a crime, there needs to be a minimum mandatory sentence for using the gun.  And, that sentence gets served first, before the consecutive (not concurrent) sentence for the other crime. We need to make the criminal use of a gun very unattractive.
4. Gun legislation cannot have anything unrelated added to it. Politicians cannot attach a jobs bill or welfare benefit or unemployment changes or tax cuts or anything else to gun legislation. Period. If they try to do it, charge them with bribery.
5. People with family members with mental health problems should not be allowed to legally posses guns. If you buy into the theory that the reason Adam Lanza did what he did was because he had mental health issues, and his mother knew about them, you should be furious that she not only kept guns in the house, but taught him how to use them.

Reasonable? Unreasonable? Let me know what you think.

Justice Delayed



Bill Robles/REUTERS

.

After gut-wrenching testimony in a Colorado courtroom, a judge ruled that there was sufficient evidence for accused killer James Holmes to face trial on all 166 felony counts against him.

Holmes, you remember, is allegedly and undoubtedly the shooter at the midnight premiere of 'The Dark Knight Rises', the latest in the Batman franchise. Holmes, who had booby-trapped his apartment, went to the multiplex, where during his rampage, he killed twelve, and shot another 58. In the ensuing confusion, a dozen others were injured.

According to new reports, on one of the 911 calls played in court, 30 shots were heard - more than one per second. At least one police officer broke down on the stand when talking about finding a six year old girl dead in the theater. 

We also learned, according to this report:

Prosecution witnesses also testified that Holmes started assembling an arsenal in early May and by July 6 had two semi-automatic pistols, a shotgun, a semi-automatic rifle, 6,200 rounds of ammunition and high-capacity magazines that allow a shooter to fire more rounds without stopping to reload.

In late June he began equipping himself with a helmet, gas mask and body armor, the witnesses said.

In early July, they testified, he began buying fuses, gunpowder, chemicals and electronics to booby-trap his apartment in hopes of triggering an explosion and fire to divert police from the theater. The bombs never went off.

Also in early July, he took some interior and exterior photos of the theater, witnesses said.

Holmes' attorneys said he was not ready to enter a plea today, and the judge granted a delay; families of the victims - the dead and the wounded - will have to wait until March to find out what happens next.  It's assumed that there will be an insanity defense. One Colorado attorney suggested:

“The defense team has nowhere else to go, given the obvious premeditation and overwhelming evidence against Holmes,” Craig Silverman, a former Denver prosecutor now in private practice as a trial attorney, told Reuters.

I disagree - they do have somewhere else to go. 

It's called a guilty plea. It's called having your client accept responsibility for what was done. 

It's called doing the right thing.