You might want to click over to Civil Beat for my column that appears this morning, “Hawaii Monitor: Paying The Price For Being A Gun-Crazy Country.”
Why is it that attempts to discuss public ?rearm policies seem to quickly bring the craziness of American society into such high relief?
Farthest out on the crazy scale may be total whack-jobs like the so-called Sandy Hook Truthers, conspiracy nutters who are convinced the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School was faked by the government using actors as part of a vast plot to manipulate public opinion in favor of strict gun-control measures. Some of the more vocal have called for prosecution of relatives of the Newtown victims for taking part in what they say was really a government-sponsored hoax….
In any case, I expect it will kick up a fuss in response, but we’ll see.
Great column Ian. While I have many hunters in my family, I think they would agree too that banning the sale of high-powered military weapons with clips that allow 30 shots or more before reloading does not infringe upon the Second Amendment.
The bobbing and weaving and obfuscations and diversions and distortions by these crazies is sickening … and I say that as someone who at one time had an extensive collection of functioning but antique firearms. The time has come to roll right over these loonies.
I remain enraged at the Sandy Hook massacre and have zero patience with NRA’s stupid diversional responses since then.
Surely if I am legally required to acquire an insurance policy — and holding a card at all times to prove it — to own and operate a vehicle so should a dedicated home gun owner or responsible sportsman!
Wonder what that policy would cost after Sandy Hook?
This echo chamber gets a little loud at times so I’ll bite. Your reliance on straw men and mischaracterizations contributed nothing to what is a serious issue and what should be an informed discourse. (I very much like your objective reporting; this piece reeks of advocacy and as a result the quality clearly diminishes.) I find it interesting that you don’t address the “crazies” on the left who advocate the complete removal of all handguns and rifles, or those who propose legislation without knowledge of guns. But then this is an agenda-driven piece so I assume objectivity was never really considered. Have you considered talking with the guys in line at HPD who are there to register their guns? You might find that a lot of people can’t be pigeonholed into your stereotypes (in fact a lot of gun owners are “hard-working”) and a lot of gun owners are regular people who simply have different hobbies and different tools than you.
Personally I find the large number of people who fatefully feel that nothing can be done about the unregulated firearm industry. Who feel the lobbyists with their bribes and threats to elected politicaians have the upper hand. They feel terrible and actually suffer with a form of Post Traumatic Stress every time an incident like the Sandy Hook Massacre occurs. The laws can be changed. The mentally ill and career criminals can be prevented from obtaining guns. But people must wake up and line up their ducks. It is not a battle of semantics regarding words like assault or magazine or clip size. It is a situation that the founders of this Nation would frown at that we are putting ourselves through. Its frickin’ nuts that we don’t get control of this problem.
Study up on the history of the 2nd amendment and the history of the NRA. An honest study may change your paradigm. The Sandy Hook murderers Mother owned 3 guns, a lot of good it did for her.
A WELL REGULATED MILITIA being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed…………..
As always, America loves spending decades miscommunicating and dreaming up outlandish arguments for suckers to buy.
Otherwise, we wouldn’t have 1.2 million lawyers to waste time, lives and money.
My feeling is that any attempt to focus on the hardware is doomed to failure. Limiting the size of magazines which can be sold is a loser since any competent machine shop can extend a magazine or manufacture one from scratch. You can make them illegal to possess but how do you find them. Restricting military type assault rifles is also a loser. Defining what is and is not an assault rifle is not as easy as it sounds. It was tried once and was not very successful. Any competent gunsmith can take a semi-auto “hunting” rifle, modify the stock, add a pistol grip, shorten the barrel, convert it to full auto, add a high capacity black market magazine, so what is it then? As far as anyone is concerned you own a perfectly legal “hunting” rifle. Will people do this? You bet your bippy.
My opinion is that the only viable solution is to focus on the people not the hardware. Find a way to identify the “crazies” who will engage in this type of violence. You can restrict the availability of guns, but if someone decides to kill a bunch of school kids he could just as easily mow them down with his car as they wait to cross the street.
I don’t see a lunatic with a 10 round magazine as a significant improvement over a lunatic with a 30 round magazine. The largest mass murders in recent U.S. histpry were perpetuated with commercial airliners and a rental truck full of fertilizer, not firearms. We need more effective intervention on the criminally insane mind not the arbitrary instrument of their destructive rage.
My goodness, remember Auroa times two in less than 12 months,Virginia Tech or Sandy Hook and hundreds of other gun deaths,. Is our memory that imperfect?
As the your 30 v 10 equation , I project 20 potentially fewer dead folks, depending on marksmanship of your crazed gunman. I am all for a muzzle loader.
One shot a time is sufficient, providing you have been insured to have such a weapon and have a certificate to show the neighborhood cop.
What will the political repercussions for Hawaii be if significant attempts at gun control are pushed, especially if they are successful?
Let’s look to the past.
In 1994, the Brady Bill went into effect.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brady_Handgun_Violence_Prevention_Act#Opposition_by_National_Rifle_Association
Even Ronald Reagan praised this bill.
Then President Clinton went further, trying to ban assault rifles.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_control_policy_of_the_Clinton_Administration#Assault_weapons_ban
This time, there were great political repercussions.
In midterm Congressional elections in 1994, Republicans swept both houses in Congress and many governorships in what is known as the Republican Revolution. From the wiki:
At the time, Hillary Clinton publicly complained that she did “not know what was going on in this country” with the Republican takeover. The next day, President Clinton said that he understood: “We blew it.” He went too far, too fast with the assault rifle ban, he claimed.
Could this same thing happen again? If Obama pushes for what is perceived as a dramatic form of gun control rather than something that is perceived as reasonable and incremental, could the Republicans take both chambers of Congress?
The key word is “perceived”. After the recent shootings, even staunchly pro-gun Republican politicians were disgusted, and expressed the sentiment that “enough is enough” with all the relatively easy gun availability. There had been massacres in the past, but this time the reactions are different. It is as if over time something has crossed over inside the collective unconscious of the general public, even within conservatives. At a glacial pace, the American general public, even conservatives, seem to have caught up to where Bill Clinton was in 1994 with the assault weapons ban. So there might not be the big reaction that happened in 1994 — if Obama is careful and does not go too far. But the question is, what is too far? What does the general public consider to be “too far” with guns? If a political genius like Bill Clinton could not accurately gauge public sentiment in the 1990s, who can?
So the question is: Is this like 1993, with conservatives divided on the Brady Bill, but ultimately accepting the outcome? Or is it like 1994, with a huge landslide of disapproval of the assault rifle ban?
Now, as for the practical fallout for Hawaii of a conservative reaction….
If the Senate goes Republican, that will affect the power of Hawaii’s delegation. And if it does, it might stay Republican for quite a while.