Guns, guns, guns...

I haven't been blogging for a while, as you may have noticed. My car is down (no brakes) and I don't have the money to have them fixed professionally but I've got an old friend of my brother's working on them, as and when he can, so they're coming along slowly. In the mean time, I am going stir-crazy just sitting in the house staring at the TV all day. Or sleeping all day, which is what I've been doing since noon. I didn't hear about the President's proposed gun-control measures until just now (almost midnight) so I only just saw what he'd proposed. (Thanks to Chris Simmons for posting to Facebook a piece from the Wall Street Journal outlining what Obama has called for.) (Damn, that was an awkward sentence...)

I haven't heard any comment on this, from either side, but here's a couple of thoughts. (The synopsis of any of the President's proposals comes directly from the Wall Street Journal article.)

Mostly, it's nothing much beyond common sense, and centered mostly on making background checks easier and more uniform. I don't have a problem with background checks, but most of the Right seems to. They believe that any background checking will only lead to more information in their secret government file, which will be used eventually to take their guns away. Oddly, the Right has called for keeping guns out of the hands of the mentally ill; how they expect us to identify the mentally ill without checking the mental health background of gun buyers I haven't heard explained.

This I like: "Launch a national safe and responsible gun ownership campaign." I remember when I was a boy (nine or ten I think) I attended a gun safety course held at a local high school. It centered on resoponsibility, both for the gun user and the gun owner (though everyone in the class was far too young to buy a gun). It was informative, fun and not in the least anti-gun. Doing something like this on a national scale strikes me as a very good idea. I expect the Right to scream, "Political indoctrination!" at this proposal, but having been through such a class I don't feel the least bit politically indoctrinated. Since the idea has only just been proposed, their fears are as yet unjustified. It seems to me that the best way for the Right to keep this campaign from becoming overly political would be for them to become involved in the process, having some say in what the proposed campaign eventually becomes, but they appear to be more interested in knee-jerk condemnation than participation.

Something that I also expect the Right to object to: "Issue a Presidential Memorandum to require federal law enforcement to trace guns recovered in criminal investigations." I expect the Right to object to increased Police interest in their guns' histories. Even if the government is only interested in the guns recovered after they've been used in a crime; I think that the Right will claim that we should all fear what the government will learn about the movement of guns in our society. They're right, of course; that's the whole point. I don't have a problem with that.

One thing is sure to cause problems: "Nominate an ATF director." Even with the Republicans blocking every Presidential appointment as a matter of policy, blocking the appointment of an ATF director at this juncture will be hard to justify. The matter is made worse by the general distrust of the ATF that exists in the public mind (and that distrust has been well and truly earned, it must be admitted). But it seems to me that the ATF cannot be controlled without a director who can be held accountable to the legislature and the people; how can the lack of a director possible accomplish that kind of control?

This brings us to the most interesting point: "Provide incentives for schools to hire resource officers." I'm expect one of two things to happen because of this; either the Right will rise up in defiance over this unwarranted intrusion of the government into the lives of our children, or they'll rise up in celebration of their winning this point since armed-guards-in-schools was what they wanted all along. But rather than embrace their victory, I expect most of them to adopt the former stance. They're like that.

(While we're on the subject of the Right, does it bother anyone that I seem to be increasingly referring to the Right--and note the capitol R--as a monolithic entity? It bothers me.)

There's also a lot in this about mental health. I don't really have a problem with any of this; I think that mental health, like the mentally ill themselves, is a topic too much ignored by American society and I applaud the effort to alter this.

But the elephant in the room is the call to return the assault weapons ban to American law (also large capacity magazines and such). This is the thing that the Right seems most afraid of. They claim all sorts of evil and frightening things that this ban will bring on. But we had such a ban from 1994 until 2004; essentially the same ban Obama is now supporting but with a few more enforcement teeth. What I have to ask the Right is this: which of those "evils" came about after the 1994 ban? How was the nation damaged by it? Didn't the previous ban prove that such a thing is something we can live with? Until the Right addresses these questions, I don't see how their position can be taken seriously.

(On an historically correct note, it must be said that the previous assault weapons ban, while not as terrible as the Right claims, wasn't terribly effective either. It didn't do all that much to make such weapons unavailable, and it didn't do all that much to stem crime, according to most sources. That's why I don't much care if this part of the bill doesn't get through the House, as it may not. I think the rest of Obama's proposals are far more important. I do support such a ban, as I don't see any legitimate reason for ownership of them, but realistically I cannot expect great wonders to be performed buy it.)

One item that I have a problem with: "Issue a Presidential Memorandum directing the Centers for Disease Control to research the causes and prevention of gun violence." I'm not sure that this is a proper  use for the CDC. I'm not sure that the CDC's resources should be expended in this fashion. Nor do I think that they're the proper entity to perform such a task.

What I really do like is the speed of all this. Obama had originally called for a report from Vice President Biden outlining the situation and position options, to be delivered no later than the end of January; last week Biden promised something no later than the fifteenth. This took the Right by surprise; their anti-Obama media blitz was barely rolling. But then Biden beat that new deadline and delivered his report yesterday. The Right was caught off guard again. Obama could have taken a few days to mull it over, but he didn't. He delivered his position today.

Predictably, the Right is fuming, screaming "Tyranny!" to anyone who'll listen. But since most of this screaming is being done through their standard media outlets, Fox News and their legion of bloggers and paranoid web sites, they're mostly screaming at each other and not acheiving much. Most of the rest of us are saying, "Look at those people screaming!" without taking much note of what they're screaming about.

Like I said, I expect the reaction to the President's gun proposals to be downright nasty and not a little unreasonable. I have come to expect this of any gun proposal, and of any proposal made by Obama. I do note that every Right-wing site or blog that I've checked says that the more "controversial" of these proposals, like the assault weapons ban, will never get through the Republican-controlled House. But these are the same people who said Obama would never win a second term, so they can hardly be considered authoritative. In spite of my doubts, however, they may be right. In any case, it's going to be a fight.

The Blues Viking
The opinions here expressed are mine and if you don't like them you can get your own damn blog.


List: Obama's 23 Executive Actions on Gun Violence (Wall Street Journal)

Why gun groups say 'no way' to assault weapons ban (U.S. News)

Pushback on Obama's plan to stem gun violence (CNN)

Was the last assault weapons ban effective? (U.S. News)

The Big Lie of the Assault Weapons Ban (Los Angeles Times, 2005)

Some truth from the Right, some inflammatory rhetoric from the Left...

...and yes, I just said that.

As some of you may know, I'm in the habit of fact-checking articles that other people post to Facebook.  Mostly Right-leaning articles, I'll grant, but that's just because most of the people I know hereabout are Conservatives and that's what Conservatives post.

So when a conservative friend of mine posted a link to a blog called Guns Save Lives, I was expecting more of the same. Which I got...and which I didn't get.

The article was titled Iowa Columnist Says NRA Should Be Labeled Terrorist Organization an Its Membership Killed; I just assumed that it was more Right-wing exaggeration and didn't take it seriously. But I looked into it.

The article was far better than most of its ilk, being well supported with full in-context quotes from the Liberal anti-gun piece in question, even if it started out a bit colorfully. (Well, it's a blog post after all; what else did I expect?) It also linked back to the original article in The Des Moines Register.

So I looked at the article in The Des Moines Register.

There I found a piece by Donald Kaul, a semi-retired former regular columnist at the Register. I read his piece carefully, and compared his piece to what had been written (uncredited - no author was given) at Guns Save Lives. I used Google to try to find other opinions, and while I got numerous other hits that merely repeated what Guns Save Lives had posted (usually verbatim) I also found an link to this story at MSN.

(I also read the original source on the Right, which was of course Fox News. While I found the Guns Save Lives blog post to be well supported and mostly free of inflammatory rhetoric, exaggerations and standard criticism of the "Liberal Left-wing media," I cannot say the same of the article from Fox. The blog post read more like a news story than the piece from Fox, supposedly a news agency, which read more like a typical Right-wing blog post. Fox: if you're going to expect to be taken seriously as a news source, we expect better of you.)

(That was the obligatory Fox-bashing that I am required to do as a Left-wing blogger.)

To be frank, I expected to find what I usually find when fact-checking articles from the far Right: crap. I expected to find that the Right-wing blog post was yet another example of the Right being long on rhetoric but short on facts, as most such far-Right blogs tend to be. What I found was unexpected: Donald Kaul really did say those absurd things, really did call for the NRA to be labeled a terrorist organization, really did call for the NRA to be outlawed, and as for calling for the killing of NRA members...well, I'm going to give Kaul the benefit of the doubt and assume that he didn't actually mean what he said, but that's what he said.

(Here's a choice cut or three from what Kaul actually wrote, quoted directly from The Des Moines Register: "...I would tie Mitch McConnell and John Boehner...to the back of a Chevy pickup truck and drag them around a parking lot until they saw the light....If people refused to give up their guns, that 'prying the guns from their cold dead hands' thing works for me....And if that didn't work, I'd adopt radical measures." I shudder to think what Kaul would call a "radical measure.")

Yes, there is a point that I'm trying to make here, and this is it: Extremists ultimately serve no one but themselves. Whatever your cause, it isn't helped by pandering to the extremists who happen to share your values. Calling for murder or mayhem isn't going to endear anyone to your cause. (No one you want to endear to your cause, anyway.) I'm talking about Liberal extremists, Conservative extremists, Muslim extremists, NRA extremists, and anti-Muslim or anti-Liberal or anti-Conservative or anti-NRA extremists. All extremists. But wait, there's a catch...

I could say that it's time to expunge the extremists from the national debate, but this is a free country and extreme opinions, like all opinions, are protected by our Constitution. And rightly so. Like it or not, even extremists have a voice in the national debate and I am not going to advocate taking it away from them. Our country prides itself on the fact that everyone has a voice; that's free speech. But calling for murder (if that's what Kaul was doing) isn't free speech, it's suborning murder. And no one has a Constitutional right to suborn murder.

Free speech is a tricky thing. On the one hand you can say anything you like, but on the other you can't use speech that is intended to cause deliberate harm. The rule-of-thumb is: You can't yell "Fire!" in a crowded theater, just to cause a disturbance.

And that's the problem: you could argue, to use the right-to-bear-arms issue as an example, that the violence in our society constitutes a "burning theater" and you have a right to shake people up by yelling "Fire!" But the law says otherwise: It's how a reasonable person would interpret your actions that determines whether you are within your rights to yell "Fire!" And I don't see a reasonable person saying that the theater is burning.

And I don't see a reasonable person saying that Kaul's remarks are themselves in any way reasonable.

Just to let you know where I'm coming from: I'm not anti-gun by any means. I come from a long line of hunters. I've owned rifles, shotguns, an automatic pistol, a black powder revolver, and even an assault weapon. (Depending on how you define "assault weapon;" it was a semi-automatic 5.56-caliber Valmet M56, built on the venerable AK-47 pattern and capable of taking 30-round magazines as well as a drum. I sold it to a postal worker.) I do support reasonable restrictions on the ownership of some weapons, including what are generally called "assault weapons." I don't consider such restrictions as the first step on the slippery slope that will have us all sliding inexorably toward banning all guns. If we are on that slope, the first step was when Og told Grunt that Grunt couldn't bring that club into Og's cave.

It's as a card-carrying Liberal that I write this: Donald Kaul is an extremist, and his extremist writings came awfully damn close to breaking that shouting-"Fire"-in-a-theater rule; the article in question was ill-considered, ill-worded and, frankly, made me ill.

In this case, a Right-wing blog was absolutely right.

The Blues Viking

The opinions here expressed are mine and if you don’t like them you can get your own damn blog.

Kaul's original article: Kaul: Nation needs a new agenda on guns (Des Moines Register)

The pro-gun blog post in question: Iowa Columnist Says NRA Should Be Labeled Terrorist Organization and its Members Killed (Guns Save Lives)

Their source article from Fox: Des Moines Register publishes gun-ban column advocating dewadly violence against NRA, GOP leaders (Fox News) (Well, be fair: they did.)

Columnist calls for repeal of 2nd amendment, razing NRA (msnNOW)