Tag Archives: NRA

Department of Justice: Bump Stocks are Illegal

Posted on by
Reply

Saturday, March 10–The U. S. Department of Justice clarified today that guns outfitted with ‘bump stocks’ are illegal.

In a notice submitted for public release to the Office of Management and Budget, the DOJ issued the following statement:

Today the Department of Justice submitted to the Office of Management and Budget a notice of a proposed regulation to clarify that the definition of “machinegun” in the National Firearms Act and Gun Control Act includes bump stock type devices, and that federal law accordingly prohibits the possession, sale, or manufacture of such devices.

Thus weapons souped up in this way are against the law in the U. S.

This ruling seems to be definitive.

Remains to be seen how the National Rifle Association will try to fight against it, and whether the NRA can persuade any judges or justices to go along with their own redefinition of terms.

 

Another Psychologically Troubled Individual with a Gun, another Military Contractor with Security Clearance

Posted on by
Reply

Another Psychologically Troubled Individual with a Gun, another Military Contractor with Security Clearance

What does it add up to? –another mass shooting, another crime at a federal facility, this time the U.S. Navy Yard in Washington, D.C.

 

Alexis

No need for lengthy soul-searching. The shooter had already been identified as psychologically troubled, before Monday’s mass killing. Aaron Alexis was displaying symptoms often associated with schizophrenia and had sought help. Several police stations were already acquainted with him.

A former Navy Petty Officer, he had been disciplined repeatedly for misconduct, leaving the Navy though remaining on the list as a reservist–honorably discharged under early-release, the service unable to general-discharge.

He had had several scrapes with the law, including at least two incidents involving guns–using firearms without need, shooting out the cars of a tire in Washington state and shooting into an upstairs neighbor’s apartment in Fort Worth, Texas.

As often happens, Alexis purchased his most recent guns in Virginia, hub of weapons commerce on the East Coast.

Thirteen people dead, including the shooter. Mental disease or defect, a pattern of erratic behavior, violent incidents including altercations involving shooting guns, military experience and clearance giving him access to a U.S. armed forces facility.

A danger to self and others.

And what do we do, presented with an individual like this? –Why, under the guidance of the cartel-supporting National Rifle Association, we do the obvious: we let him buy all the weapons he wants. Then the led-by-the-nose-by-the-NRA GOP screams ‘Obama’, or ‘government’, or ‘bureaucracy’, or whatever feeble CouldaShouldaWoulda it will use this time, conveyed by the silk-stocking law-lobbying firms its sponsors fund, to the ever-accepting dues-paying ignorant and resentful. The party line is getting thinner by the month, thinner with wear from every drearily predictable incident–but not necessarily thin enough to defeat every well-funded and highly hyped recall effort in every remote area in the U.S.

The only mystery about this mass shooting is why any respectable media outlet in America would pretend that the NRA has any credibility.

George Zimmerman killed an unarmed teen and got off

Posted on by
4

George Zimmerman killed an unarmed teen and got away with it

This is not a proud moment for American justice. Notwithstanding every effort to obscure the facts of the George Zimmerman case, the facts remain: an armed man, George Zimmerman, shot and killed Trayvon Martin, an unarmed teenager. And for this he was not even convicted on a manslaughter charge. He is walking free.

Zimmerman in court

Even with the racial disparities with which our justice system is still rife, and has been rife for years, the Zimmerman case is one for the history books. However reluctant juries are to convict in general–and it is no easy matter to send someone to jail–generally, in a case where someone ends up dead, a jury will be willing to convict on something. One can only hope that civil lawsuits for wrongful death could go better for the Martin family. In most states, states other than Florida, if you had only shot someone by pure accident, you would receive more legal sanctions than George Zimmerman has received. A parent who accidentally causes a child’s death by leaving the child in a locked car in hot weather, purely unintentionally, receives more sanctions. (Admittedly Casey Anthony walked after the death of her child, but then that was also in Florida.) A motorist who accidentally kills or injures a cyclist or a pedestrian gets more sanctions. A swimming pool owner gets sanctioned if a neighbor gets hurt in the pool. For that matter, suing swimming pool manufacturers is a whole sub-industry in law. Et cetera.

Conversely, if Trayvon Martin had (actually) gotten George Zimmerman’s gun away from him–and there is absolutely no evidence that he tried to do so–and had injured Zimmerman, and Zimmerman had then sued Martin in a civil case, a jury would likely have thrown out the case. (That’s assuming, of course, that race would not have unduly influenced the outcome in a civil suit.) Any good lawyer could make the argument that Zimmerman’s own actions had led to the event. Conversely again, if Trayvon Martin had had the gun (and within a year, that will be the prevailing representation, if the Zimmermans have their way) and Zimmerman had gotten it away from him, but had been injured, and had sued Martin, he could still have lost. Again, any good lawyer could argue that his own actions had led to the event. “You could have stayed in your vehicle. You could have called the police. You could have left . . .”

Where were those lawyers for the prosecution? Even if Zimmerman had been beaten by Trayvon Martin–and again, there is absolutely no evidence that he was–any good lawyer could make the argument that Zimmerman’s own actions had led to the event. He was the one following the other guy. Trayvon Martin’s phone conversation–recorded AT THE TIME–clearly indicates that he was alarmed at being followed.

Yet, after a sequence of events in which Zimmerman was the aggressor, he gets to claim ‘self-defense’? And television networks and cable channels back him up on the claim, by posing it as a fifty-fifty possibility in a multiple-choice quiz?

Who pulled the trigger? Who shot the gun? Who HAD the gun in the first place?

At the substantial risk of seeming to belabor the obvious, one unassailable fact remains: had Zimmerman really been intent on self-protection, he could have stayed in his vehicle.

Instead, he tells a story–inconsistent, shifting, and contradicted by recordings–and gets off. That’s all he has to do; tell a story. The living trump the dead, every time. Trayvon Martin never got to tell his side of the story.

Comparisons to Simi Valley and the beating of the late Rodney King do come to mind, but this is not to say that race is the only major factor in the Zimmerman case. All these years after O. J. Simpson was acquitted in the killings of his former wife, Nicole Brown, and her friend Ronald Goldman, I still think that the factor of race was overemphasized in commentary and in reporting on that infamous case. In that one, the elephant in the room was domestic violence. If two men had been killed, or Ron Goldman alone, the defendant (Simpson) would have been convicted for something. What threw the monkey wrench into the works, in the Simpson prosecution, was not the race difference between defendant and victims–contrary to what you might think, the defendant’s being African-American did not make him a shoo-in for acquittal–but the fact that one of the victims was Simpson’s ex-wife. Even people who should know better put domestic violence into a separate category from other violent crimes. This salient fact was not evident in media coverage at the time, which harped on race race race race race race.

In this one, the elephant in the room was a thoroughly under-qualified man’s being allowed to drive around armed to the teeth. In fact, George Zimmerman was not only allowed to drive around armed, and repeatedly to try to coordinate with law enforcement as part of an unauthorized patrolling activity, part of his self-identification as wannabe law enforcement; Zimmerman was allowed to follow an unarmed teenager–in his vehicle–while armed; and then to get out of his vehicle and to follow the same unarmed teenager on foot, while armed. “Shit, he’s getting away.” –and a bored, ignorant, unachieving guy, frustrated at the idea that he’ll just have to go home to dinner and television, won’t be able to make his cop, decides for absolutely no good reason to get out of his vehicle and follow Trayvon Martin on foot. And yet, when Zimmerman fatally shoots the unarmed teen, a jury of six women lets him off on any culpability whatsoever.

In any state with responsible gun laws, Zimmerman–with his questionable track record including brushes with the law–would not have been given a permit to carry in the first place. He was not a good candidate for gun ownership. Events have placed this statement beyond reasonable doubt.

But in Florida, as said, Zimmerman not only had the gun but carried it, not only carried it but used it. Not only used it but killed someone. Not only killed someone, but killed an unarmed teenager. And the Zimmerman camp, in his defense, did not even try to claim that the gun went off by accident.

And he still got off. This is basically the National Rifle Association defense: anything you do with a gun is okay. In previous decades–years ago–the NRA used to represent itself as standing for responsible gun ownership and responsible gun handling. But nowadays, all you have to do is line up the gun lobbyists and the gun crowd, and your defense is set in motion. During the belated legal process leading up to the trial, Zimmerman’s relatives and defense team were out in front with the news media, representing Zimmerman as the victim in the case, claiming on television that he was going to end up a vegetable if he did not shoot the unarmed teen he himself had been following, and doing everything they could to discredit the seventeen-year-old fatally shot–who was, by all accounts, walking peaceably in the rain back to his father’s place, and minding his own business at the time Zimmerman caught sight of him and began following him. The Zimmerman camp has made more of Trayvon Martin’s supposedly taking some martial-arts/wrestling classes than of Zimmerman’s carrying a 9-mm semi-automatic. In the last few days, Zimmerman’s attorney has publicly suggested that Zimmerman will not be safe, and the Zimmerman camp and allied media have joined to exhort elements of the public not to riot or whatever after the verdict, not to turn to violence, you see. In psychology this is known as projecting.

In the NRA defense, furthermore, not only is it okay to do anything you like with a gun, as long as you have one–that being the important point. If you pursue someone while armed, and the other person hits you, then you can present yourself as the victim, even if the other person is unarmed.

This is the classic definition of tyrannous behavior–the exercise of power beyond right.

Last birthday

The reason this nonsense worked in the Florida justice system is that the Florida justice system has been knuckling under to the NRA for decades. For Trayvon Martin, justice delayed was justice denied. All signs are that the shooting was initially just not taken seriously. Even a non-expert in law enforcement can see the sloppy way this fatality was treated, a few of which include the following:

  • the scene at the shooting was not secured; among other problems, it was trampled on by too many people
  • there was no continuous video recording of law enforcement activity at the scene of the shooting
  • Trayvon Martin’s seventeen-year-old body was not carefully, minutely and scrupulously examined, with the details of the examination continuously recorded
  • the body was not protected, to keep its medical evidence protected from the elements, from handling, and from passage of time
  • George Zimmerman was not thoroughly examined by medical professionals under the auspices of law enforcement, with continuous recording of the details of examinations

Zimmerman’s father was connected with the justice system. All Zimmerman had to do was claim injuries suffered at Martin’s hands–and decline to go to a doctor. No medical records, no rebuttal evidence. No adequate rebuttal, no conviction. This in spite of the obvious discrepancies in Zimmerman’s narrative throughout: as prosecutors pointed out, if Zimmerman was in fear for his own safety, it was odd for him to get out of his vehicle in the first place.

This is a set-up that automatically works to the advantage of the living over the dead.

It is also a dilatory and lackadaisical mode of law enforcement. Racial complacencies, yes; but also a passive-aggressive mode of dealing with any neighborhood conflict involving guns but not involving gangs.

“I have always thought the actions of men the best interpreters of their thoughts.” –John Locke

Rest in peace, Trayvon Martin (1995-2012)

Trayvon Martin

“Well regulated,” part 2: Strict constructionism means paid lobbyists?

Posted on by
1

“Well regulated,” part 2: Strict constructionism means paid lobbyists?

Picking up where the previous post left off–

“Well regulated” was praise in this country at the time America was born. For eighteenth-century American colonists, well-regulated was everything the ridiculous Georges on the English throne were not. The Swiftian, satire-worthy courts under the British kings were repudiated in the law courts of the new United States, regulated rather than bought, in check rather than ruled by fear or favor. In the new country–or this was the aim–the king as sovereign in every courtroom was replaced by the people, sovereign in every courtroom. Neither judges nor testimony were to be either bought, or coerced. Unlike the English court, where according to reputation anything and anyone could be bought for a price or pushed around if not, in America no private citizen or public official, however understandable his motivations, was to impose his will unjustly on others by force or fraud. “Well regulated” was encomium, but it was more than just a compliment; it was the antidote to force and fraud, the two basic forms of all injustice according to Aristotle, Aquinas, Dante, Milton and the founders. “Well regulated” was the widely applied tag, applied especially to everything self-evidently in need of regulation–militias, governments, the passions of men; taverns, society, commerce. “Well regulated” incontrovertibly applied to individuals as well as to groups, self-governance being as important a principle as governance res publica.

 

Assault firepower

Funny how the gun nuts and their well-paid users on K Street always represent ‘regulation’ as the enemy. But then, our highly paid lobbyists and the politicians in their pockets–former politicians and future lobbyists, respectively–are no constitutional purists. You never see them out rallying against a standing army in peacetime, and in fact they tend to distance themselves from the diehards places like in rural Idaho who do oppose government military. Since they are to a man either Republicans or ‘blue dog’ Democrats committed to the wedge issues of McCarthyism, racism, and bloodshed-ism, you seldom see them even refer to  waste, fraud and abuse in the military-security-industrial complex. The last people to go to about billions in cost overruns by federal contractors are the protectors of quiet super-wealth masquerading as rugged-individualist loudmouths. Currently they do not even mouth off about foreign ownership of U.S. assets, a topic one might think tailor-made for the more-chauvinist-than-thou types.

It will be noted that the massive contradiction to the high principle outlined in the first paragraph above was slavery. Enslaved people did not, to put it nicely, have the full protection of the law and courts created by their enslavers. Predictably, this hideous part of U.S. history also gets exploited by K Street (name used here as metonymy). The gun lobby often reaches out to selected individuals of color, to be part of ‘the new face of gun rights’. The individuals thus selected often get their statements into print or on air, too, on the journalistic basis of man-bites-dog: After all, historically excluded groups have not benefited from the abuses of the weapons industry, so members speaking on its behalf tend to be exceptions. By the same token, the indigenous peoples of the new continent also did not enjoy equal protection under the law in colonial times, nor did women, nor did children, so the gun lobby has its female reps–although even the NRA has yet to argue that children should have the right to concealed carry. Interestingly, you also don’t see the NRA arguing that Native Americans should be carrying semi-automatics, although as with foreign ownership of American property, the topic might seem inviting; Native Americans with their bows and arrows were by all historical accounts ill-matched against the industrial advances of the Europeans. Perhaps for some reason the NRA is uncomfortable with the notion of standing up for primitive societies and indigenous peoples around the globe. Or perhaps defending American Indians just does not comport well with that cowboy image the gun lobby tries to project.

 

Guns Across the Border

UPDATE April 30–This just in:

This cannot be coincidence. The gun fanatics are running a billboard featuring Native Americans. Not subtle: A picture of three Native Americans in tribal dress is captioned in giant letters, top and bottom, TURN IN YOUR ARMS and THE GOVERNMENT WILL TAKE CARE OF YOU.

Native Americans targeted by gun fanatics

Are the NRA or its zombies reading this blog? I refuse to say, “I spoke too soon.”

[back to original post]

Speaking of cartoons, cowboys, and borders–

There is more than one falsehood in the ‘2nd Amendment’ catchphrase. Using the U.S. Constitution to justify military-style assault weapons is bogus, and there is more than one way to point it out. The following are a few:

  • One of the most blatant incongruities is NRA opposition even to sensible policy to reduce shipping arms to drug cartels and gangs in Mexico. Mexican drug cartels have a constitutional right to bear American guns? For reminder, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives revealed in 2012 that 68,000 guns traced in Mexico from 2007 to 2011 had been traced to the U.S. The ATF report is linked here.
  • The NRA has continued to oppose any move to keep guns off airline flights, although public opinion lopsidedly supports keeping guns off planes. In late 2011, Transportation Security Administration (TSA) security had found 800 firearms about to be carried on board during the year.
  • The NRA and gun extremists continue to oppose registration, licensing and tracing of firearms even while firearms continue to play a big part in the drug trade. There is a constitutional right to trade weapons for drugs? There is a constitutional right to conceal weapons sold  in drug commerce? Even while U.S. courts are prosecuting the drug trade and narco-terrorism, and are being funded by the public to do so?

Two final observations, quickly:

One is that the gun lobby’s opposition to common sense is itself opposition to the constitution. Our framers had a rooted belief in not putting unlimited power into human hands, any human hands. They knew the dangers too well. The entire U.S. Constitution embodies that belief. In respect to arms in particular, there are no statements of record legitimizing military-grade arsenals for individuals in peacetime.

The other is that, ludicrous as the above examples are, the gun lobby goes well beyond opposing particular (sensible) policies on firearms. In U.S. gun violence, some of the worst problems and many of the deaths occur in connection with 1) domestic disputes, 2) alcohol or other substance abuse, 3) depression or mental illness, and 4) crime. In U.S. politics, the gun lobby effectively overlaps with the Republican Party. What that means in practical terms is that

  • measures to protect women from domestic violence will always get opposed. The NRA, as we have seen, is all hot to trot on a disturbed man’s right to bear arms and shoot his wife or girlfriend, and children. GOP honchos, as we have seen, are always against better rules and enforcement on grounds of either ‘socialism’ or ‘higher taxes’. The taxes pay for the courts that issue restraining orders, for the child support agencies that supposedly enforce supporting children, and for law enforcement for follow-up to court orders. Thus the tragic finale of gun violence to so many domestic disputes.
  • by the same token, measures to protect children and minors, to try to maximize their chances of growing up safely to adulthood, will always get opposed. The NRA is less than zealous to keep guns out of the hands of minors–even when minors are used to run guns for gangs, for cartels, and for narco-terrorism. The GOP displays the same attitude toward safe schools, in general, that it displays toward safe homes, safe child-care facilities, and safe consumer products.
  • for the same reasons, mental health always gets short-changed.
  • crime prevention always gets short-changed.

 

Meanwhile, K Street–to use the popular eponym again–works overtime behind the scenes, to short-change the public and to justify short-changing the public.

The Colorado shootings: There were danger signs

Posted on by
1

Colorado shooter’s stockpiling an arsenal was a danger sign

As word got out about the high-tech arsenal and combat gear amassed by Aurora, Colo., shooter James Holmes, some elements on the right immediately seized on the factual news as basis for supposititious theories. Predictably the theories are being circulated by email.

 

‘NaturalNews’ guy

The main narrative runs as follows:

Holmes’ equipment is too good for ordinary people to acquire, and therefore he must have had help/been coached by someone behind the scenes.

“In other words, this guy was equipped with exotic gear by someone with connections to military equipment.
SWAT clothing, explosives, complex booby-traps… c’mon, this isn’t a “lone gunman.” This is somebody who was selected for a mission, given equipment to carry it out, then somehow brainwashed into getting it done.”

The shooter’s actions seem out of character for Holmes.

“The New York Times is now reporting:
Billy Kromka, a pre-med student at the University of Colorado, Boulder, worked with Mr. Holmes for three months last summer as a research assistant in a lab of at the Anschutz Medical Campus. Mr. Kromka said he was surprised to learn Mr. Holmes was the shooting suspect. “It was just shocking, because there was no way I thought he could have the capacity to do commit an atrocity like this,” he said. (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/21/us/colorado-mall-shooting.html?page…)

“He spent much of his time immersed in the computer, often participating in role-playing online games…”

There is already conjecture that James Holmes may have been involved in mind-altering neuroscience research and ended up becoming involved at a depth he never anticipated. His actions clearly show a strange detachment from reality, indicating he was not in his right mind. That can only typically be accomplished through drugs, hypnosis or trauma (and sometimes all three).”

His behavior is inconsistent–“his behavior doesn’t add up”:

“His behavior already reveals stark inconsistencies that question the mainstream explanation of events. For example, he opened fire on innocent people but then calmly surrendered to police without resistance. This is not consistent with the idea of “killing everyone.”

Furthermore, he then admitted to police that his apartment was booby-trapped with explosives. If you were really an evil-minded Joker trying to kill people (including cops), why would you warn them about the booby trap in advance? It doesn’t add up.”

What does it all add up to? –An operation, a “deliberate plot” by government, its purpose to make guns look bad or, as they put it, go after the Second Amendment:

“More and more, this shooting is looking like a *deliberate plot* staged by the government itself much like /Operation Fast and Furious/ pulled off by the ATF
(http://www.naturalnews.com/032934_ATF_illegal_firearms.html) which helped smuggle tens of thousands of guns into Mexico for the purpose of causing “gun violence” in the USA, then blaming the Second Amendment for it.”

The kicker? — Another purpose for this black op was to distract attention away from Rep. Michele Bachmann’s nut-stuff, McCarthyite accusations about a ‘Muslim Brotherhood’ in government. This one also has been transmitted by email:

” Please change: “has been successfully distracted”

To:  “has in effect been distracted from the Michele Bachmann, et al./Muslim Brotherhood issue, ” (plus additional edit):”

 

The foregoing is not the only misapplied rightwing conjecture about the Colorado shooter. Another web site, with singular nastiness, posits that he may be Jewish (spelled coyly). An early attempt via Facebook that ferreted out the wrong guy was widely reported–as was ABC News’ linking him briefly to the Tea Party.

These last two errors, however, are to some extent atypical. One thing the goofiest arguments tend to have in common is insisting falsely that the shooter was part of a group (wittingly or un-). As I wrote in my previous post on this sad topic, that is the key distortion. Incident after mass shooting incident involves a disturbed, loner-type guy–Littleton, Colo., Virginia Tech, Aurora, Colo.; the shootings at schools in Scotland and in China; the massacre of young people at a youth camp in Norway. Yet always the rightwing noise machine, the gun stockpilers, the NRA and the weapons-and-gear industry who market to them, and the political figures who pander to them continue to focus on and characterize, not him, but Them.

This is a classic example of what Freud called projection and denial.

Sometimes ordinary language hardly seems enough. We need a people’s mic here.

This shooting wasn’t an army against one individual.

THIS SHOOTING WASN’T AN ARMY AGAINST ONE INDIVIDUAL!

 

It was the other way around.

IT WAS THE OTHER WAY AROUND!

 

It wasn’t a whole troop against one innocent guy.

IT WASN’T A WHOLE TROOP AGAINST ONE INNOCENT GUY!

 

You.

YOU!

It was one guy, armed to the teeth, shooting randomly at a crowd of innocent people,

IT WAS ONE GUY, ARMED TO THE TEETH, SHOOTING RANDOMLY AT A CROWD OF INNOCENT PEOPLE!

Still might not work, of course–nothing seems to penetrate with these people. Also, they tend to have an entrepreneurial angle that could influence independent judgment, assuming independent judgment is still a desideratum. The ‘naturalnews’ web site quoted above, if you notice, is a big pusher of survivalist equipment–stock up now–including dietary/nutritional supplements. This is the dietary/etc equivalent of Glenn Beck’s pushing gold, urging listeners (if any) to hoard it up before the coming economic conflagration, yet unnamed. These are the spokespersons, if you notice, who tend not to be fans of government agencies like the FDA, the Federal Reserve and the FDIC. Again there might be a touch of the entrepreneurial in their outlook.

This entrepreneurial dimension is one thing the wing-nut sites have in common with corporate media outlets. They also have one story element in common with the largest media outlets, the insistence on Holmes as a ‘mystery man’ with ‘no background’. As posted previously, this one became an instant myth, conveyed here and here for example.

The right-wingers hype the supposed mystery angle to different effect than the larger outlets, of course. For the former, Holmes’ supposed lack of footprint makes him a shadow figure, a private-life version of the Manchurian candidate some of them–including some wealthy GOP donors–perceive President Obama to be. In this view, he is a deteriorated version of the Cary Grant character in Hitchcock’s brilliant North by Northwest, someone who can be grabbed and used by government agencies, sucked into some larger plot.

 

Cary Grant, heading for cornfield

‘Mainstream’ outlets touted Holmes’ supposed lack of footprint to more subtle and insidious effect.  The message embedded in that no-social-media-footprint meme? Simple:

  • We Can’t Tell what kind of person will just go off the rails next
  • So We Can’t Tell who will go out and shoot up a bunch of people
  • So There Is Nothing We Can Do About It
  • Therefore, There’s No Use trying for gun control.

This is not exaggeration, or not by much. This is nearly verbatim the line of thought voiced by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) on a Sunday morning talk show after the Colorado shootings. It is also a line suspiciously easy for media outlets, under fear of pressure from NRA-influenced advertisers, to fall into.

Holmes will almost undoubtedly turn out to have had more cyber presence than has yet been fully reported. Before recently, he often went by the nickname Jimmy, and social media sites turn up countless Jimmy Holmeses; he did much of his combat-gear purchasing online, something that generally leaves a trail; and he played complex and obscure games online, like many of his peers. As written previously, one of Holmes’ new usernames turns up on Twitter–with the line, “When life gives you lemons, shoot people.”

 

News reports have already indicated some of the purchase trail. From the transcript:

“BOB ORR (CBS News Justice Correspondent): Bob, first of all, the Chief was modest. I don’t think he really gave us all the details of what the great work that’s been done on the ground has produced. The police there along with the federal partners have amassed a substantial case of evidence already. That this was a premeditated act of murder and the planning goes back about four months. They’ve recovered things like shipping labels from a dumpster in front of Holmes’s apartment. They’ve got credit card records. They know he shopped at internet sites like BulkAmmo.com, TacticalGear.com. They have a surveillance tape of Holmes allegedly picking up a hundred and sixty pounds of ammunition at a FedEx counter in Colorado. And they also have talked to a UPS driver that says, “Oh, I remember this guy. He had ninety packages delivered to him in his work address.”

More importantly, the unconscious obfuscation in this representation of Holmes as no-footprint is a sign of the deeper problem we have in discerning signs of mental illness or extreme distress even in people we know.

Mentally ill people are still people, and up to a point their behavior is that of other people. This is especially complicated in young people, who even in the best lives are often trying out new versions of themselves, deciding which version of themselves they want to be. The transition from Jimmy to ClassicJimbo could have been one of those harmless personality reinventions that young people engage in–like changing hair color or hairstyle, getting body piercings or tattoos, going on dating sites, choosing to go by first name rather than by middle name or vice versa, or by full name rather than nickname. (Some of the Obama-haters have made a big deal about that, re Obama; they tend not to mention that the young Mitt Romney–who started out Billy Romney–did the same.) Relocating to a different town, starting at a new school, changing relationships–all of these are stressful events; they also often accompany other experimentation, again often harmless.

But given what Holmes was engaged in, we don’t actually have to dig too deep to see the danger signs. The no-danger-signs meme is as false as the no-footprint meme. Holmes’ stockpiling deadly weapons and combat gear was itself a danger sign and should have raised a flag. ‘Jimmy Holmes’ may or may not turn up in social media. Maybe–can’t tell. His secretiveness or privativeness in playing online games may or may not turn out to exceed that of other adolescents; we can’t tell yet. But as with Cho at Virginia Tech and the pair of shooters at Columbine, one fact indubitably clear is that he was stockpiling implements of war, weapons and gear for the use of deadly force. A partial inventory of his deadly arsenal is provided by Aurora Police Chief Dan Oates; video here. Holmes also got online enough to display a mind running more and more on violence–shooting people. To the list of weapons and other gear and the explosive or incendiary devices in his apartment another item may be added. It sounds as if Holmes also purchased some kind of voice-distortion device for his answering machine, on which he left a recording that spooked a local gun-range owner.

It has now been reported that Holmes also sent a letter, before the shootings, to a professor at the University of Colorado. The letter did not receive its intended recipient, because campus mail did its usual thing.*

Extreme acts often generate extreme responses. Fortunately the shootings at a movie theater in Colorado have not brought a concomitant reaction of deadly force. But they did, initially at least, generate an extreme throwing up of hands in a collective media act of learned helplessness.

Hint, for those in the news media who–in between asking helplessly, What can we do?–are wondering What were the signs? Here are the signs: A young guy, educated, a good student, with his life ahead of him, started stocking up on assault guns, a high-powered rifle, body armor including throat protector and groin protector, tear gas/irritant containers, components for home-made explosives.

 

Et cetera.

ET CETERA!

 

* I am well aware that I have offended pro-gun lobbyists before. Some day, in a lighter moment, I hope to start on campus mail.

[Update]

Dr. Lynne Fenton, the assistant professor to whom James Holmes wrote and sent a package, was also director of student mental health services at the University of Colorado medical school. Holmes was also one of her psychiatric patients.

Those pesky regulations and the empty threat of filibuster

Posted on by
1

Regulation, public policy and the hollow threat of filibuster

Family responsibilities and work have taken me in recent months to Louisville, Ky., Shreveport, La., and Houston, Texas. The changes of place did not change the big picture. In every place, local news stories and larger news stories–this is something one can count on–reconfirmed the need for what the GOP calls ‘job-killing regulations’. This phrase is quite the talking point, by the way, notwithstanding its lack of validity. The nonprofit web site Think Progress reported in April that use of “job-killing regulation” increased 17750 percent in U.S. newspapers between 2007 and 2011.

Orwell lives, and this is one of the big Orwellianisms. Repeat it often enough, and it starts to seem plausible? –Let’s hope not. There is no evidence that regulation kills jobs.

On the contrary, there is every indication that unregulated outsourcing, off-shoring, merger and consolidation do kill jobs, or at least U.S. jobs. This is one of the big reasons why the rightwing noise machine is so against what it characterizes as regulation: protection of jobs, like protection of public health and public safety, works to the advantage of the many, rather than just of the few.

There is also every indication that lack of regulation–genuine regulation, backed up by oversight and enforcement–kills people. Does any responsible person really want an Alzheimer’s facility, or any long-term care facility, to be unregulated and unmonitored? Unlikely, and the same goes for day care centers, private schools, and children’s camps. For that matter, the same goes for the athletic program at Penn State (State Penn).

Travel is a continuing reminder of the need to protect public safety and public health. From the interior space on an airplane–if any–to getting from airport to final destination, from questions like whether your luggage arrives to more essential questions like whether you do, our predominant business model tends to create a continuing tug-of-war between efforts to cut corners at the top (corporate management) and efforts to survive at the bottom (customers). The same goes for every other industry. There are some honorable exceptions, such as CREDO, and they deserve kudos. But exceptions do not disprove the general rule.

Among the local news stories in Kentucky:

  • Neighbors in one community gathered at an elementary school to hear about ground contamination from lead, arsenic and DDT from a 29-acre industrial site near their property.
  • Three day care centers in Louisville recently closed, after the driver of a van crashed, killing a woman passenger and sending 14 children to the hospital, three in intensive care. The company operating the centers had previously been cited by state agencies for dozens of safety violations; this is a perfect example of the kind of ‘small business’ where ‘job-killing regulations’ are bemoaned by Mitt Romney and his spokespersons including Ed Gillespie.
  • In other local news, an abandoned theme park has been getting only minimal maintenance, meaning that its structures will at some point just fall down. The company that owns it, Six Flags, was in bankruptcy reorganization, and the Kentucky State Fair Board faces its own budget constraints–like virtually all state and local agencies.

When we lose ‘government jobs’–another favorite Orwellianism–we lose independent oversight for dangerous occupations and sites.

Speaking of oversight and dangerous sites, word of fraud in the investment world also continually seeps out. A few familiar examples suffice:

  • Bernard Madoff’s brother Peter has pleaded guilty to fabricating compliance reports and deceiving the SEC. This case–the record-breaking Madoff Ponzi scheme–is another reminder of the need for good, honest record-keeping, and for someone to watch the custodians.
  • Houston can do you an Allen Stanford, investment scheme $8 billion.
  • An investment advisor in Glasgow, Ky., is indicted for allegedly defrauding investors in Kentucky and Indiana of $2.4 million. Having promised to invest customers’ money, the so-called advisor allegedly spent it on a shooting range he set up in an old rock quarry, and on himself.
  • Closer to home (D.C. region), the former CEO of Virginia’s Bank of the Commonwealth has been indicted for alleged fraud conspiracy in covering up the bank’s financial condition since 2008.
  • On a grander scale, we have august Barclays bank allegedly depressing its interest rate on lending–and thereby short-changing institutional investors including Baltimore City on returns they could have gotten. The city of Baltimore is suing. Time will tell whether Virginia Attorney General Ken (“Kooky”) Cuccinelli elects to do the same.

All of these problems are a function of privatizing gain, socializing risk; reserving gains for the few and shifting the burdens of compliance, taxation and monitoring to the general public, to the individual, and to state and local government. The pattern fits into a larger one: Over-all family wealth in the U.S. declined 39 percent from 2007 to 2010, while the wealthiest gained 2 percent.

No one talks about it this way, but the NRA and nut-right mantra that what everybody needs are bigger guns and more guns also fits into the same pattern. Why, when you think about it, should a private citizen be expected to go out and purchase ludicrously expensive semi-automatic weapons for protection? Why should the onus of acquiring combat gear and combat training be on private citizens in the first place? Socializing risk, privatizing gain–the big-time weapons commerce fills the bill, and our docile GOP lawmakers relentlessly forward this agenda by talking about it as a “right.” Funnily enough, they do not talk about purchasing health insurance the same way.

For self-defence, there is actually no evidence that bigger magazines and more clips mean more protection. Even at worst–firing a gun at someone–you need one good shot, not a spray of careless rounds. That’s if you really care about self-defense rather than aggression.

But our NRA, and the politicians hired by the NRA, have been intent for decades now on blurring the line between self-defense and aggression.

Again when you think about it, the sole use for automatic and semi-automatic multiple-shot firearms, as for big magazines that hold hundreds of rounds of ammo, would be to kill off a whole crowd or army of attackers. It happens in movies. In real life, armed attacks are generally perpetrated by–what’s that word again?–oh, yes!–loners. In reality, unlike in film, attacks with big-time weapons are more liable to come from one gunman or two, shooting into a crowd or a classroom, than from a crowd shooting at the one lone individual (you, in this paranoid view).

This fact could represent something of a hurdle for the guns-and-ammo industry, the NRA, and the GOP officeholders who support them, if they were to permit its transmission. So they prevent its getting out, as much as possible–no small feat, given that it surfaces again every time some disturbed young guy, heavily armed, commits a mass shooting. So what’s a guns-and-ammo industry to do? –Why, market to the paranoid and unstable, of course. What are the cartel-supporting NRA and the NRA-supporting GOP to do? –Why, vent as much hyperbolic us-and-them rhetoric into the air as possible (Michelle Bachmann’s nonsense about Huma Abedin is only the most recent example).

Anything to obfuscate the fact that mass shootings are committed by the lone off-base guy, against the masses, not the other way around.

James Holmes

This point should not be oversimplified, but it also should not be lost sight of. Back to ‘regulation’ again–that being the GOP word for providing for public safety and public health: Public safety and public health require decent regulation of indecent commerce. Multiple clips and magazines, body armor, automatic or so-called semi-automatic rifles, assault weapons, military-grade- and SWAT-team gear–there is no reason why unauthorized civilians should be allowed to buy them. We need regulation of the online commerce that gets around state and local attempts to protect public safety. We need for private gun sales, second-hand gun sales, straw purchases, auctions, and gun shows to operate under the same law as storefront owners who sell guns do.

The laws, furthermore,  need to be good.

Contrary to the thrust of some media representations, the situation is not hopeless. There is no such thing as perfect safety or perfected public safety, as there is no other perfection on earth. But the fact that we cannot do everything is not an argument for doing nothing. In public policy, some specific remedies are clear.

And in the politics that lead to policy changes, some highly specific small steps are also clear, and timely. There is no reason, for example, why strong public support for reasonable public safety measures should be contravened by a minority in the senate–by the mere threat of filibuster.

Calls to abolish the filibuster by amending the constitution are about as good an idea as most proposed constitutional amendments, which means not very. There is a simpler, cleaner and more legitimate means to address this ridiculous problem that never should have been allowed to arise in the first place: When our GOP minority in the U.S. Senate threatens to filibuster, make them actually filibuster. Let Mitch McConnell and Jim Inhofe and Dan Coats and the rest get up there and do like Jimmy Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, albeit with less idealism. Let them read aloud from the Bible they profess to love so much, read Shakespeare, read Little Women or Anne of Green Gables for that matter.

Mitch McConnell

Having the mere threat of filibuster substitute for putting in the time on the floor, preventing needed legislation, is unconstitutional.