Paris terror attack

Sweeping away the real risks of guns

commongunsense, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 3 Comments

vacuumIt should not be surprising that we are sweeping some of our more serious problems under the rug. For example, the many incidents involving legal gun owners that occur every day. Why aren’t we talking about the true risk of guns in the home or in public places? We know the answer. The gun lobby doesn’t want us to know about this stuff. They just want us to know that if we aren’t all armed, we will be attacked by zombies, or God forbid, terrorists. And so the hyperbole and paranoia continues. I wrote in my last two posts about the foolishness of politicians and presidential candidates regarding the Paris attacks. Many opined that things would have gone so much better if only those folks had been armed.

But they don’t want to talk about the real dangers of guns carried by people who, even in situations that don’t involve terrorism, can’t handle their legal guns. And so the carnage continues.

Only in America can we read about incidents like the those I am listing below:

A man shot a woman in a “freaky sex” incident and killed her. He forgot to take the bullet out of the chamber. Really? I thought gun owners knew better. They are supposed to make themselves and the rest of us safer. Guns and sex don’t mix.

Do you need to be carrying your gun while vacuuming? It turns out that it could be dangerous. Who knew? I guess those dust bunnies are pretty scary after all. Guns and vacuuming don’t mix.

Speaking of sweeping our real problems under the rug, only in America can a white gun extremist who threatened on Twitter to kill Jews and school kids get released to his parents by a Montana judge. From the article:

Lenio’s defense team managed to have his trial postponed earlier this year and has been working on a plea deal with prosecutors. Hutson noted, however, that when he was released on the condition that he not use social media at all, Lenio immediately reactivated his Twitter account under the name @PsychicDogTalk3 and proceeded to retweet anti-Israel propaganda and musings on how to satisfy the “urge to kill.”

“He has violated the court’s order and shown contempt for the judge 348 times,” Hutson told Strickland. “He is unfit for release into his parent’s custody in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I question if he would be getting such preferential treatment if he weren’t white and the son of an investment banker.”

A Native American or Muslim man would be treated very differently under Montana law, Hutson said.

Brant Getty, the public defender assigned to represent Lenio declined to comment for the DailyInterLake article.

This article, written by Jonathan Hutson, the man who reported the extremists’ tweets, resulting in his arrest, says this about the case:

My concern now, shared by many others, is that justice may not be served by the backroom deal apparently in the works, in which a young man who may be a danger to himself and to others could be released without having been held to account for his online threats against the Kalispell community, and without the court ensuring that Lenio receive appropriate mental health care which he apparently needs and deserves.

The prosecutor, County Attorney Ed Corrigan, is considering a possible plea bargain which could result in the felony charge of intimidation being reduced to a misdemeanor, or a deferred prosecution, which would mean that eventually, the felony charge would be dismissed, and Lenio would one day get his arsenal back. Imagine David Lenio, reloaded, courtesy of the State of Montana. That could happen.

We have our own home grown terrorists with guns:

But the breakdown of extremist ideologies behind those attacks may come as a surprise. Since Sept. 11, 2001, nearly twice as many people have been killed by white supremacists, antigovernment fanatics and other non-Muslim extremists than by radical Muslims: 48 have been killed by extremists who are not Muslim, including the recent mass killing in Charleston, S.C., compared with 26 by self-proclaimed jihadists, according to a count by New America, a Washington research center. (…)

Non-Muslim extremists have carried out 19 such attacks since Sept. 11, according to the latest count, compiled by David Sterman, a New America program associate, and overseen by Peter Bergen, a terrorism expert. By comparison, seven lethal attacks by Islamic militants have taken place in the same period.

If such numbers are new to the public, they are familiar to police officers. A survey to be published this week asked 382 police and sheriff’s departments nationwide to rank the three biggest threats from violent extremism in their jurisdiction. About 74 percent listed antigovernment violence, while 39 percent listed “Al Qaeda-inspired” violence, according to the researchers, Charles Kurzman of the University of North Carolina and David Schanzer of Duke University.

We have our own problems with terrorists at home. The Montana case represents our nation’s willingness to let people who shouldn’t have guns get them anyway because….. rights.

Sigh.

With the latest terror attack and all of the talk of radical Muslims attacking people in the Western world, we absolutely must join together to do whatever it takes.

We also do need to deal with young white angry bigoted men here at home. The young man arrested for his threats to Jews and children  may get away with his threats. Where else does this happen? Are his gun rights more important than the potential damage he can do once released? I think not. And what could possibly go wrong if he gets his guns back?

We have a double standard in our country. I have written before about mass shootings being committed by mostly young white angry men with (mostly) legally purchased guns. And yet the evidence is in about young black men becoming the majority of the homicide victims in our country. They are also incarcerated at a higher rate than white people.

We have some pretty serious problems that we are not addressing in America. Yes, there was a terror attack in Paris. There was a terror attack in Lebanon. We have serious problems with violence all over the globe. Ours is with gun violence not seen in any other civilized country not at war.

Today we are alarmed and talking 24/7 about the latest terror attack. And we should be talking about that in a reasonable thoughtful manner that will result in a plan to stop the terror and the violence. But the conversation is dumbed down by those who are speaking before engaging their brains or getting the facts.

Shameful.

And when this terror attack fades from constant public attention in a few weeks as it inevitably will, will we then pay attention to our own serious public health and safety epidemic? And will we, at the least, stop people on the terror watch list from buying guns legally in our own country? From the article:

And, as the GAO found, a number of them do: Between 2004 and 2014, suspected terrorists attempted to purchase guns from American dealers at least 2,233 times. And in 2,043 of those cases — 91 percent of the time — they succeeded. There are about 700,000 people on the watch-list — a point that civil libertarians have made to underscore that many on the list may be family members or acquaintances of people with potential terrorist connections. (…)

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Rep. Peter T. King (R-N.Y.) introduced a bill to do that earlier this year. The “Denying Firearms and Explosives to Dangerous Terrorists Act of 2015” would prevent several hundred gun purchases by suspected terrorists each year, and it includes provisions to let people challenge a denial if they believe they were placed on the watchlist in error.

But these bills have rarely made it out of committee, in part due to vehement opposition from the National Rifle Association and its allies in Congress. The NRA objected to earlier versions of the bill, saying they were “aimed primarily at law-abiding American gun owners,” that “prohibiting the possession of firearms doesn’t stop criminals from illegally acquiring them,” and that the bills were “sponsored by gun control extremists.”

The NRA doesn’t want us to know about this or talk about it. Why not?

And will we sign on to the UN Small Arms Treaty as the country that is providing the most small arms to the rest of the world? Will we do our part in stopping the terror in our own country and in the world at large? From the linked article about the gun lobby deceptions that keep the US from signing the treaty:

In 2013, after nearly a decade of effort (and opposition from the Bush administration), the U.N. adopted an Arms Trade Treaty to curtail illicit sales of war weapons, including tanks, fighter jets, warships, missiles, artillery, and small arms, chiefly to keep them out of the hands of rogue governments and militant groups. But that last category of weapons riles Second Amendment activists, who are concerned that the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) is part of a secret globalist agenda to winnow away their constitutional right.

Under President Obama, American leadership helped the treaty get enough signatures to enter into force — as much force as the U.N. can muster, anyway — late last year. This week’s meetings in Mexico are when the 72 ratifying states will discuss amendments to and enforcement of the agreement. Notably, the U.S. will not be among them. It’s signed the treaty, but Congress has yet to ratify it and is unlikely to anytime soon. (…)

And it’s here that the real shenanigans begin, as the rest of the treaty text makes it clear that opponents are warping its intent to suit their own purposes. It is true that the ATT aims to keep guns (and tanks, and anti-aircraft missiles) out of the hands of “unauthorized… end users.” But contrary to the NRA’s interpretation, no one is required to provide small arms makers or their governments with specific identifying info on a gun’s ultimate owner. As the treaty now reads, exporting countries “may include end use or end user documentation” in the info they share with other treaty nations, when deemed “appropriate.” On top of that, the treaty also permits a participating country to tailor that arms-trade data “pursuant to its own legal or constitutional system.” In other words, if U.S. courts see reporting “end user” information as a violation of Second Amendment rights, the U.S. won’t be able to provide that info to exporters abroad.

More importantly, guns imported to the U.S. already get registered. With very few exceptions, all firearms brought into the country have to go through a firearm dealer licensed by the ATF, and a Form 6 for the deal must be filled out in detail and filed with ATF and Customs and Border Protection. Your individual sportsman can get a special permit to directly import sporting-gun parts and ammunition for personal use — but even then, there’s a record of the importation. In all likelihood, treaty parties will treat gun stores and dealers who receive imports as the “end user” for record-keeping purposes, rather than individual customers who may buy the weapon at a point of sale months or years later.

So in a broad sense, the specter of “registration” that the NRA raises has already been the law of the land for some time. The more specific fear — that foreign governments and UN lackeys will gain lists of every Tom, Dick, and Harry who owns a Beretta — is the absurd product of scaremongering.

I suggest you read more of this article. The scare mongering and paranoia exhibited by the American gun lobby are hampering efforts to try to control the trafficking of weapons world wide that inevitably end up in the hands of terrorists.

So again I ask, what are we doing about terror in our own country and our own failures to help with anti terrorism at home and abroad?

We can actually deal with the concerns about with the terror watch list and the UN Small Arms Treaty by the way. If we can send people to the moon, we can figure this out as well. It takes resolve and common sense which sometimes we have little of.

And why do so many Americans believe the hype about guns for self defense? The guys who were involved in the shooting while having sex and while vacuuming apparently believed nothing could possibly go wrong with a gun in their own hands. I am guessing these are the same folks who are thinking that the citizens of Paris should have been armed during the terror attack. What could possibly go wrong?

The real problems cannot be swept away.  As long as the gun lobby holds sway over our politicians, the house cleaning of our weak gun laws to save lives won’t happen. Let’s dust off our reluctance to attack the problem and get to work.

I would like to add an article to my post. I like this one about how the NRA and the corporate gun lobby are actually arming criminals because of their insistence that stronger gun laws won’t work. From the article:

Through all of this, the National Rifle Association has been resolute in its mission to protect Americans’ access to guns. Their success extends far beyond protecting Second Amendment rights.

They have been so effective at limiting or weakening gun violence prevention laws that they can legitimately be accused of helping to arm many of the United States’ criminals. And while they do this they cynically claim that there are plenty of laws on the books if you just enforce them.

Before you fire off angry letters and comments, please read just a few ways how the NRA’s mission has strayed from protecting law abiding gun owner’s rights to keeping the flow of arms to crooks steady.

And then the writer gets to my point from this post:

If you were wondering how out of touch the NRA has become, think about this – they strongly oppose legislation to prohibit the sale of guns to people on the terrorist watch list. Is any comment even needed here?

We need an honest debate about gun laws and how to reduce violence, balancing the protection of Second Amendment rights with realistic measures to keep guns away from lawbreakers. But the NRA, through scare tactics, exaggeration, lying and appeal to paranoia has shown they are not capable of participating in an honest debate.

Through their tactics, they make it easy for criminals to keep getting guns. And if you support the NRA, so do you.

No further comment.

 

 

Is there a right or reasonable response to terror?

commongunsense, , , , , , , , , ,

pray for ParisWe all weep for Paris. We all weep for the victims. We can’t avoid the continuous news of the Paris terror attacks. Just like what happened in America on September 11, 2001, we become paralyzed by the news and feel helpless in the face of the horror.

Terror attacks have again frightened and shocked the world. That is what the attackers want. Of course, the ultimate goal is to accomplish a political agenda involving power, control, religious intolerance and ideology, revenge and violence. What is achieved? It’s baffling actually and always has been. What is it about the Western world that so bothers the radicals who want to inflict damage to innocent people? I’m asking because I don’t understand it really and I don’t know if anyone really does.

Sometimes it has been the opposite. The Eastern world has experienced its’ fair share of attacks as well. But then, historically we have all attacked each other everywhere since humans have walked the earth. It defies explanation and yet, somehow we can understand it when we think about human nature and the propensity to violence and to harm others for a cause or a misunderstanding or something else. And we seem to want to resolve our differences with violence rather than peaceful solutions.

Two days ago I wrote my blog post about the Paris attacks. I wrote from own point of view of course from the vantage point of guns and gun violence. And then I read this New York Times editorial written by Frank Bruni about the immediate politicization of the attacks. Bruni is right. Immediately blame is laid at the feet of others and the event is used to further a cause. I’m guilty. I admit it.

Bruni says this, from the article:

Or must we instantly bootstrap obliquely related agendas and utterly unconnected grievances to the carnage in Paris, responding to it with an unsavory opportunism instead of a respectful grief? (…)

That’s how it works in this era of Internet preening, out-of-control partisanship and press-a-button punditry, when anything and everything becomes prompt for a plaint, a rant, a riff.

It all happens in the click of a mouse, its metabolism too furious to allow for decorum or real perspective.

I woke Saturday morning to Paris-pegged commentary about not just gun control and free speech on American campuses but also climate change—yes, climate change—and of course immigration, albeit to the United States, not France.

The editorial ends with these words:

On Saturday morning I read that Paris was going to be good for Republicans. I read that Paris was going to be good for Democrats.

I felt sick. For a few hours, even a few days, I’d like to focus on the pain of Parisians and how that magnificent city reclaims any sense of order, any semblance of safety. I’d like not to wonder if Hillary Clinton’s odds of election just ticked upward or downward or if Donald Trump’s chest-thumping bluster suddenly became more seductive.

I’d like not to be told, fewer than 18 hours after the shots rang out, how they demonstrate that Americans must crack down on illegal immigration to our own country. I read that and was galled, and not because of my feelings about immigration, but because of my feelings about the automatic, indiscriminate politicization of tragedy.

It’s such a disrespectful impulse.

And it’s such an ugly one.

It’s ugly. There are real people who are affected by this terrible tragedy. There are real faces to the carnage. Lives were taken violently and quickly leaving behind the devastation to the families and friends.

One response we don’t want, though, is the response suggested by the far right politicians, candidates and gun extremists. And that is that arming the people of the world will stop terror attacks. An article from the Washington Post highlights why that is a terrible idea:

There is also little evidence that more guns—especially in the possession of regular citizens—would do much to change the outcome when gun-bearing terrorists, bombs strapped to their chests, barrel through concert halls, sporting events, restaurants, and other public spaces.

In the United States, where the National Rifle Association has capitalized on an uptick in mass shootings to argue for putting guns in the hands of as many people as possible, most evidence suggests just the opposite: armed citizenseither don’t try to stop shooters, or fail when they do. Guns have also been shown to lead to more violence. And they’re rarely used in self-defense. (…) In other words, it’s not clear that more people with guns would have done anything other than get themselves killed, too. Especially given the military-grade firearms, like the Kalashnikov automatic rifles that have been flooding the black market in France, and were reportedly used by the terrorists in Friday’s attack.

Can we just finally get this straight? Armed citizens will not stop or prevent terror attacks and/or mass shootings. The evidence points in the opposite direction. But yet, there are foolish people spreading this nonsense around for their own agenda. Of course, arming more people will mean increased gun sales and increased influence of the corporate gun lobby all over the world.

But really, where is common sense?

I write about common sense where it concerns gun violence and gun violence prevention. I write from the perspective of someone whose sister’s life was taken violently and suddenly by bullets. I know how that phone call feels. Life will never be the same for me and for too many.

Life will not be the same in Paris or France or Europe either. But it won’t be permanently ruined. Life will resume, maybe somewhat differently. But we will move on. The U.S. saw many changes to intelligence, travel, security, and yes, even giving up some of our freedoms after 9/11. But we were not destroyed.

Living in the world of terror attacks and every day violence is apparently the new normal. What will our response be?

The bottom line is that we all need to come together to solve the problems before us instead of shouting past each other with our political agendas. Why can’t that happen? I believe it can but the hyper partisanship so on display in our own country of late makes it almost impossible. We are in the “silly season” of a Presidential election. Everything is fodder for both sides to attack the other.

This not the world we deserve or the world we want to leave to our children and grandchildren.

Let’s get to work to solve the serious problems in our own country and the problems of the world around us. We can’t separate them. With instant communication we are all connected to each other. One mother’s grief over the loss of her American daughter in the Paris attacks is also ours. It could be our child next or our sister, brother, father, mother, child. We can’t separate ourselves from the violence.

It’s easier to go about our daily business because thinking about the terror and violence is too awful to contemplate. We might have to think harder or get involved or cry or react in some way. It’s easier not to.

Some people want to pray. Praying is a nice idea but it won’t change anything. Praying for reasonable solutions that will address the violence and the carnage is what we need. Praying for a reasonable response from our leaders and our candidates may help. Making sure talking heads, politicians and candidates engage their minds before speaking would also help.

I don’t know about you but I remember after the 9/11 that it was considered unpatriotic to criticize President Bush or his policies in response to the terror attacks that hit our own country. We rallied around our President- Democrats and Republicans alike. Several years later we learned the truth about some of those policies which did deserve the bipartisan criticism they received. In today’s hyper partisan world the blame is going everywhere and everyone has an opinion- many of them attacking President Obama openly. What happened to getting behind the President and showing our patriotism?

We need to have considerate and reasonable responses to terror attacks. What they are we are still deciding and it will take a while to get it right. Maybe we won’t get it right. But, as New York Times columnist Paul Krugman suggests, panic and impulsive responses will just not help:

Finally, terrorism is just one of many dangers in the world, and shouldn’t be allowed to divert our attention from other issues. Sorry, conservatives: when President Obama describes climate change as the greatest threat we face, he’s exactly right. Terrorism can’t and won’t destroy our civilization, but global warming could and might.

So what can we say about how to respond to terrorism? Before the atrocities in Paris, the West’s general response involved a mix of policing, precaution, and military action. All involved difficult tradeoffs: surveillance versus privacy, protection versus freedom of movement, denying terrorists safe havens versus the costs and dangers of waging war abroad. And it was always obvious that sometimes a terrorist attack would slip through.

Paris may have changed that calculus a bit, especially when it comes to Europe’s handling of refugees, an agonizing issue that has now gotten even more fraught. And there will have to be a post-mortem on why such an elaborate plot wasn’t spotted. But do you remember all the pronouncements that 9/11 would change everything? Well, it didn’t — and neither will this atrocity.