Dana Milbank

Freedom from gun violence

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dove of freedomHappy July 4th. Today is, of course, the day we celebrate our independence from a tyrannical government. If we are not vigilant we could be there again. Freedom obviously means different things to different people. But universally it should mean that people ought to be free from violence; free from oppression; free to express opinions; free to live a life without fear of losing health care, a way to make a living, being able to make decisions about own’s own body, free from intolerance and racism, free from discrimination , losing the right to vote, the fear of not being able to marry who you love, the right to the rule of law, the right to live in society within reasonable and common sense rules and laws so that what is good for the most of us is good for all of us. For one never knows when those freedoms might unexpectedly be taken away by circumstances beyond our control or by despotic and self serving leaders.

This morning I read this column written by Dana Milbank, writer for the Washington Post ( the media outlet Trump loves to hate) about our freedoms. From his article:

This isn’t just a linguistic de-emphasis of freedom; Trump has made common cause with dictators and played down human rights abroad while starting a trade war with democratic allies. At home he has questioned due process for refugees, taken immigrant children from their parents, imposed a travel ban on several Muslim-majority nations and declared the media the enemy of the American people. He is now poised to shift the balance on the Supreme Court away from abortion rights and gay rights.

In a very real sense, the fight against Trump is a battle for freedom.

It’s 2018. We should not be a in a battle for our freedoms. But this is where we are right now. Some on the far lunatic right like Alex Jones ( conspiracy theorist and fear monger who Trump loves to love) has put out there that the Democrats are going to start a Civil War today:

The conspiracy theorist tweeted his prediction on Monday, accompanied by a video in which he claimed that “elite publications” were calling for a “civil emergency” using civil unrest and “racial strife” to force out President Trump.

We must be free of this anger, fear mongering and downright lunacy. The fact that our President is on board with this guy says it all.

The President had to relent and allow government buildings to lower their flags to half mast after the shooting of 5 journalists at the Capital Gazette office in Annapolis, Maryland. The fact that someone in the White House refused the original request by the Annapolis Mayor says it all. Why didn’t they intuitively do the right thing? They really don’t seem to care about the lives lost to gun violence. Or if they do, they have a strange way of showing it.

Who does this President stand with? Who does he stand up for? What does he stand up for? Thousands a year lose their lives to gun violence in America, the land of the free. And yet Senator Majority leader Mitch McConnell cynically and dangerously says that the federal government can’t do anything to stop school shootings:

McConnell delivered his remarks amid a push for tougher gun safety laws in America, after a school shooting in Parkland, Fla., claimed 17 lives.

Fred Guttenberg, whose 14-year-old daughter, Jaime, was killed in the Florida attack, said McConnell was full of it.

“Honestly, the man should resign. He either is intentionally useless or he’s just evil,” Guttenberg told the Daily News.

The outspoken activist insisted there’s plenty the federal government could do to combat violence in American schools.

“They could allow the CDC to study gun violence. They could strengthen background checks, ban high capacity magazines,” he said. “There’s a lot they can do, but they can’t do anything if they’re not allowed. Mitch McConnell is nothing more than a roadblock.”

The Kentucky Republican, who has a 93% rating from the NRA, has repeatedly blocked gun-control proposals.

This is what we’ve got right now in America. Lapdog politicians who are pushing to restrict many of our other freedoms but willing to ignore one of the most important freedoms- to live without gun violence.

STOP.

YES WE CAN STOP SHOOTINGS. YES, THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT CAN ACT TO PREVENT GUN VIOLENCE PASS A BRADY BACKGROUND CHECK LAW AND A RED FLAG LAW.

MR. MAJORITY LEADER- STOP THE STUFF AND NONSENSE.

And further, of course, is the hope on the right that any nominee for the Supreme Court open position will further erode the laws that have kept us free and safe from some of the gun violence. The far right and the corporate gun lobby have shown us they resent any restrictions on guns- the kind of guns, who can carry them, and where they can be carried. One of their favorite justices, Antonin Scalia, knew that there should be some restrictions and said so in the 2008 Heller decision– something the corporate gun lobby and Congress loves to conveniently forget. So we do have some constitutional rights to be safe from gun violence after all.

This line of reasoning posed by the corporate gun lobby and the far right extremists ( and even the current GOP party leaders) is dangerous and will lead to chaos and yes, Mr. Jones, even violence. Let’s hope that is not the case but the threat will not be coming from the Democrats who want to stop the violence. Look to those who believe in conspiracy theories, threaten journalists with violence, try to restrict basicl freedoms, rights to vote, and stockpile their weapons for a future war against their own government.

Let me just say that on this July Fourth holiday, what can be done is a commitment to changing the conversation about the causes and effects of gun violence, change the gun culture and change the laws so we can be safe and free from gun violence in our schools, our places of work, our shopping malls, our homes, our parks, our wherever we gather together as a community.

If we give up our freedoms such as freedom of speech and others without also challenging the idea that the misinterpreted meaning of the second amendment means freedom for anyone to purchase and own any kind of gun and carry it anywhere one pleases, we will be giving up our democracy.

Stay firm and strong and keep fighting attempts to take away our rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Happy Fourth. Stay safe out there everyone. There are some restrictions on fireworks and personal fireworks can lead to injuries. Celebratory shooting is simply not OK no matter what anyone says. What goes up must come down- a simple law of Physics not understood by some irresponsible gun owners.  Shooting off guns on the Fourth of July is dangerous business and not in the spirit of the celebration.

This is a great day to think about what you can do about our national public health epidemic and our national dilemma about freedoms and civil rights. The best thing you can do is to consider all of this and VOTE in your primaries and the November election.

Common sense is at stake. Lives are at stake. Freedoms are at stake.

Conspiracies and connections

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conspiracyA lunatic conspiracy theory promoted on the internet brought a North Carolina man with an AR-15 into a popular Washington DC pizza restaurant to check it out for himself. Naturally it didn’t go well.

 

 

 

Police say the conspiracy theory led to violence Sunday when a North Carolina man fired a rifle in the restaurant as he sought to investigate the accusations. No one was injured, and the man was arrested.

Flynn Jr., who has accompanied his father to presidential transition meetings inside Trump Tower and lists the presidential transition website as part of his Twitter bio, tweeted Sunday night that, “Until #Pizzagate proven to be false, it’ll remain a story.”

Trump’s team had no immediate response to questions about the conspiracy theory or the younger Flynn’s role in the presidential transition.

Hmmm. How is all of this connected? During the Presidential election there were more conspiracy theories appearing in fake news sights and shared on social media than in past elections. Is it a coincidence that most of them came from the right wing of our country? And is it a coincidence that some of President-elect Trump’s advisors have engaged in writing them, tweeting them, sharing them and promoting them to others?

It was just a matter of time before a lunatic with a gun would connect the dots and react to a fake news conspiracy theory. This could have been much much worse.

But what could possibly go wrong with a gun nut internet troll, a ridiculous and dangerous conspiracy theory pushed by even those in the “mainstream” and easy access to AR-15s? Let’s see what the latest is from this Washington Post article:

She understands freedom of speech, Ousmaal replied in an email, but “derogatory libelous and hateful blogs and emails should not and cannot qualify.”

The officer replied once more, suggesting she ask the other owners if they knew who was behind the “disruption.”

“I don’t have anymore options to give unfortunately,” he wrote.

Ousmaal couldn’t believe it. She feared her family or staff could be harmed.

“Literally,” she said, “death threats.”

This should not be the new normal. But I fear it is. The connection between the hateful election rhetoric, stirred up by the far right and their very own candidate and now President elect Donald Trump, is the connection. The gun lobby is connected to the far right and now to the Republican Congress and our next President. There is no mistaking that. If this is what they have in mind, get ready for a tumultuous and dangerous 4 years. It will not be pretty.

When the free press is threatened by people with guns whose anger is fomented by the man at the top and his advisors, we are not a democracy any longer. The connections are real. Subscribing to conspiracy theories is dangerous and they are not real. But when fact becomes fiction and fiction becomes fact as I wrote about in my last post, this is what we have. Is this what we want? I know I don’t and I know the majority does not. But the majority apparently didn’t care about this when voting for Donald Trump. Or did they even understand that this was the world we would inherit after Jan. 20, 2017? I doubt it.

Dana Milbank wrote this for the Washington Post this morning:

There was a time when threats against journalists, like threats of any sort of political violence, were exceedingly rare. But in Trump’s America, such threats are neither rare nor idle.

If you doubt that, consider the events in recent days at Comet Ping Pong, the family pizza place in Northwest Washington I’ve been frequenting with my daughter ever since she was a toddler a decade ago. Lately, the owner and staff at Comet — and those of other businesses on the block — have been getting death threats, spurred by radio host Alex Jones, a conspiracy theorist with close ties to the president-elect. (…)

Trump is not directly responsible for every violent word or action of his followers. But he foments violence. As The Post’s executive editor, Marty Baron, has noted, when Trump refers to journalists as “the lowest form of life,” “scum” and the enemy, “it is no wonder that some members of our staff [at The Post] and at other news organizations received vile insults and threats of personal harm so worrisome that extra security was required.”

Trump, during the campaign, fantasized about Clinton and her judicial nominees being assassinated. He boasted that “I bring rage out” in people, and his violent rallies proved it. Since the election, Trump has falsely accused the media of inciting violence. At his speech in Ohio last week he denounced the “dishonest” media no fewer than six times. (…)

Now we are beginning to see the consequences of the rage and paranoia Trump has encouraged: A disturbed man fires an assault weapon in a place where tots play ping-pong. The only “crime” of the owner, James Alefantis, was to be a Clinton supporter who had, the WikiLeaks hack exposed, discussed with Clinton aide John Podesta the possibility of hosting a Clinton fundraiser.

Frightening.  Dangerous.  Outrageous. Deplorable.

We are living in a new world full of guns, violence and threats by people with guns. It is not the world of our founding fathers who saw fit to add the Second Amendment to our Bill of Rights. Those founding fathers did not anticipate the types of weapons now on our streets. The connection between the meaning of the second amendment to the reality of everyday life has been hijacked by those who want profit and control.

Let’s take a look , for example, at the connection between the sale of high powered handguns and an increase in these kind of guns found at crime scenes?:

Data collected by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and obtained by The Trace, shows a sharp uptick in the number of high-caliber guns recovered by police in just the last few years. From 2012 to 2015, the number of 9mm and .40-caliber weapons found by police at crime scenes and during investigations grew by 30 and 39 percent respectively. Those were greater increases than any other commonly recovered kind of guns. While .22s are still the second most frequently recovered pistol, the quantity of these guns confiscated by police stayed virtually flat.

Criminals are obtaining powerful, higher capacity weapons in greater numbers for the same reason as police and legal buyers, says David Hureau, a SUNY-Albany sociologist who studies the illegal firearms market.

“Demand is shifting because supply is shifting,” Hureau says. “Bigger, badder guns are just more available on the secondary market.”

If you build them, they will buy them. Did the supply come first or the demand?

Why do we need “badder” guns again? Why did the man who walked into the DC pizza restaurant need that AR-15 again? Self protection? Insurrection? Lunacy? Intolerance of others? Taking care of business himself? Taking the law into his own hands?

And do I need to mention again that these type of guns and weaponry are available to anyone who wants them because we do not require Brady background checks on all gun sales?

This is the “new normal” in America. Is this what we bargained for when we left the corporate gun lobby to write our policy laws about guns and gun violence? There is a connection between the ties of the gun industry to the gun lobby and to lapdog politicians who did and do their bidding.

We are not safer now. We ought to be scared enough to be ever vigilant and to hold our leaders responsible when we see the connections to violence perpetrated by weakening gun laws, bad policy and a gun culture that is out of control.

If a free press is threatened by our leader at the top, the outcome will not be a good one. If a restaurant owner is threatened and harassed by gun nut trolls the outcome will not be a good one. When more and more high powered guns are encouraged in more and more public places, the outcome will not be a good one.

Join me and others who are working on gun violence prevention and who will remain vigilant and active in promoting common sense.

For surely what I have written about above flies in the face of common sense and of the public good. The American people have a right to be protected from insidious and dangerous people who would do them harm based on false conspiracy theories and dangerous rhetoric from the NRA and our leaders. If our own leaders will not keep us safe from devastating shootings and violence, who will?