Gunfight at the Do Nothing Corral

Calhoun's Cannons for April 15, 2013

O.K.  Now this is getting funny. The earnest, grieving parents of shot-to-pieces kids -- 20 of 'em at Sandy Hook.  The pontificating pols declaring that we must do something to stem this culture of violence.  The pro-gun Congressmen and Senators hiding under their desks when the grieving parents come to call to ask them to support legislation that would ban the type of guns that shot their children to pieces.  The media turning this all into some kind of horse race in order to goose their ratings. 

All for naught.  Whatever legislation that had been reasonably tough to begin with has already been gutted before it could even be debated -- no military style weapons ban, no high capacity magazine bans.  And what is now left -- increased registration requirements --- is being watered down even as I write.  And by the time the Senate finishes having it's debate -- if that even happens since several Republicans have vowed to filibuster it -- whatever bill survives being gummed to death, will arrive a weak, poor thing.

Which will be then turned over to the tender mercies of the Republican controlled House of Representatives, an august body wholly owned by the NRA, where it will be shot to pieces by amendments.

In short, Congress will do the least it can possibly do on the matter while quietly, behind the scenes, the NRA sits, like Penelope at her loom, weaving in legislative loopholes and booby-trapping whatever bill survives. Nothing will escape their tender ministrations.  After all, their job is to do everything they can to make sure that more guns get into more hands.  "Limit" or "restrict" are not in the NRA's vocabulary.  

Yet, nationwide, the furious debate rages on as if people actually think that this time -- surely, this time --something meaningful about gun control will be done. That 20 dead kids was finally some kind of tipping point.  Wasn't it?  Wouldn't twenty dead kids finally be enough?

Well, no.  Clearly, twenty wasn't the magic number.  And that's where it starts getting funny.  For some bizarre reason, Americans think of themselves as decent, law-abiding people who love their children and want to live in decent, safe communities where their kids don't get blown away while going to school. In addition, they also have this quaint notion that they live in a country governed by and for the people. And that their earnest, sincere, heart-felt efforts will result in their elected representative voting for some kind of sane, reasonable policy regarding guns.

Yet, at the same time, this national debate has brought into focus the undeniable fact that these same Americans truly, deeply, passionately love their guns. The bigger the better. The more lethal it is, the faster it sells.  The country is awash in guns, a gun for every day of the week and two on Sunday. Even people who've been shot in the head, like Congresswoman Gifford, will still go on TV to declare that having pieces of their skull blown away has not in any way diminished their love of guns.

And the sound of those two deeply felt passions colliding is the sound of a Whoopie cushion exploding.  Risible and ridiculous: An endless Monty Python "Dead Parrot" sketch played out with real dead kids and real bullets.  But this one will have no happy ending.  Except for the NRA and its master: The gun manufacturers of America. For them, happy days are always here again.    

Just Another Day

Calhoun’s Can(n)ons for January 14, 10

The shooting was nothing special. Just another unbalanced, angry young man with a gun. A rapid-fire Glock-9 with a 30-round clip that can kill a great many people in a very short amount of time. In this case, six people, including a 9 year-old girl. Nothing special in a country awash with gun deaths.

Except for Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. That was a bit unusual. But not enough to make a real change in how easy it is for unbalanced angry young men to get rapid-fire guns. This particular shooting took place in Arizona, the Tombstone state, a state with one of the most lax gun laws in the nation, a state where armed citizens no longer even need a permit to carry concealed weapons. And Arizona likes it that way. It has even proposed a law that would allow college students to carry weapons to school. And the Congresswoman herself had a Glock-9 and noted that she was “a pretty good shot.”

Since it was a Congresswoman who was shot, the talk turned immediately to the possibility that this unbalanced young man’s anger had been fueled by the angry political rhetoric sloshing around in our polarized, angry nation. Clips and sound bites of “reload,” and being “armed and ready,” “blood of patriots,” “the Second Amendment remedy,” “if ballots don’t work, bullets will,” and Sarah Palin’s now infamous web page showing gun-sight “targets” zeroing in on various contested congressional races, including the Arizona district where Congresswoman Giffords was running for election. Indeed, a few weeks before the shooting Ms. Giffords herself was on TV complaining about Ms. Palin’s “targets,” saying that rhetoric like that was likely to result in “consequences.”

For Congresswoman Giffords, it certainly may have. A bullet through the brain. And six dead.

But Americans love their toxic talk and both sides of the political spectrum got busy pointing fingers at the other, though by sheer sound-bite numbers, the right wing won that contest. You can’t beat TV clips of armed “tea-party” folks showing up at political rallies wearing weapons and carrying signs lauding blood-spilling “patriots.” And those targets on a map, about which, Palin’s spokespeople spent a great deal of time explaining they weren’t, uh, gun sights, no, they were just “target marks” like you would use on a survey map. Thereby illustrating that the Palin camp must think Americans are truly dumb because nobody with any sense was buying that story. Not from the Moose-shooting Mama with her own “reality” show featuring her blasting away at furry animals for her cook-pot. If a person knows what a gun sight looks like, it’s Palin.

So, no, it was a lock ‘n load gun sight and part of the “armed and dangerous” right-wing rhetorical meme: We’re angry, aggrieved and armed and we’re gonna target and take “our” country back from, well, all those people, and if we have to use bullets instead of ballots, so be it. But that didn’t stop our Sarah from going on Facebook to play the appalling inappropriate “blood libel” victim card in response to left wing finger pointing. Then everyone ran for cover, pretending they knew nothing about anything.

So that discussion will soon fade from the airwaves and it’ll be back to attack-dog business as usual. Toxic, poisonous, raging talk radio is both popular and highly profitable to the sponsors and stations that carry it, and to the stations’ corporate owners. Asking people like Limbaugh or Beck to “tone it down” might cut into the bottom line, so that won’t happen. Rage sells. Fear sells. And paranoia is the American Style.

Lost in much of the partisan rhetoric was the mentally unstable young man. Speaker of the House, John Boehner has stated that America has the finest health care in the world. But I suspect that the shooter, the unstable young man with voices in his head, found that in his America, his finest health care in the world likely didn’t cover treating mental illness. Few insurance policies do and state-run mental health facilities are under-funded, or broke and failing. This is in part because in finest-health-care-America, we have the odd notion that somehow the mentally ill “choose” to be mentally ill and while completely insane have the right to refuse treatment, have the right to live under bridges, and the right to starve in the streets while talking to non-existent people. And, of course, the right to buy guns.

So there it all was. The usual suspects. Guns. A toxic, angry culture. A mentally disturbed angry young man. Lousy mental health care. Nothing special. Nothing unusual. It was just another day in America. Nothing has changed and nothing will change.

Except for six people, including a 9 year- old girl.