The matter with Kansas is that it's run by a bunch of Republican gun fetishists

By Michael J.W. Stickings

This is truly fucked up:

Kansans soon can carry concealed weapons without permits or training under a bill signed by Gov. Sam Brownback on Thursday.

The new law, which kicks in July 1, makes Kansas the sixth state to allow "constitutional carry." It will allow Kansans 21 and older to carry concealed firearms regardless of whether they have obtained a permit.

*****

Asked why he did not think training should be required if it is valuable, Brownback said carrying a gun is a constitutional right.

"We're saying that if you want to do that in this state, then you don't have to get the permission slip from the government," Brownback said. "It is a constitutional right, and we're removing a barrier to that right."

A more or less unrestricted gun "right" is bad enough. The "right" to carry a concealed weapon just makes it worse. And when you don't even need to get a permit...

Once again, the authors of the Constitution, who enshrined the right to bear arms strictly within the context of the need, at the time, for a well-regulated militia, would be appalled, not least given that these crazy gun fetishists claim to acting in their name.

God, guns and Hitler

By Capt. Fogg

I have certain misgivings about hate crime laws, but we're reminded this morning -- the eve of Pesach or The Passover and a week before Hitler's birthday, that people who belong to hate-based organizations and creeds, who post virulent hate messages and calls for extermination on-line, need their constitutional right to keep and bear arms infringed.

I feel quite protective of our guaranteed right to free speech and our right to think what we think, but speech that incites to violence, that creates a mortal danger to the public, is something else and that's been established for a long time. Frazier Glenn Miller is a founding member of the Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and the White Patriot Party. That's not a crime, more's the pity, nor is shouting "Heil Hitler" from the back of a police car, but perhaps we ought to consider making it a felony to belong to groups who advocate murder because as far as I know, it's illegal for felons to own firearms.

I know -- penalties and restrictions don't prevent criminals and especially psychopathic criminals from committing crimes, but there's something wrong with Mr. Miller or Mr. Cross as he often calls himself, to own weapons. There's something wrong if the targets of hate groups need to arm themselves or to hire armed guards or to go about in fear because we elevate and protect a right to be armed above the right to remain alive. We shouldn't have to wait for people like that to run amok before we do anything. Threatening violence against groups or individuals should be sufficient to disarm someone.

Lest one think that being a white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant is protection and a reason not to worry, Methodists were shot in this tragedy as well.

(Cross posted at Human-Voices)

Hitler, Newton, and Barnum

By Capt. Fogg

I. Every object in a state of uniform motion tends to remain in that state of motion unless an external force is applied to it. 

That's true for things above the level where quantum physics makes hash of such laws, but for things which are not things but lies, it has no bearing. Promoters of things for which there is no evidence whatever and promoters of lies, hoaxes, and propaganda rely on the fact that no external force will impede, delay, or arrest the appointed rounds of lies while truth often demands too much of us. Every day a new crop of gullible witlings and angry little twits is born to be deluded. Call it Barnum's Law.

I saw this once again the other day. It's been defaming anyone with any intention and a great number of people without the intention of  modifying the national policies on private ownership of firearms.

One might expect that anyone trying to equate Hitler with liberal philosophy isn't dealing with words as we generally accept them and is using definitions of terms like "liberal" that steer us away from rational dialogue and into the corral to be fleeced, and like all humans those who don't like liberals and don't want any interference with gun ownership will simply latch on to anything that seems internally cohesive in some blurry way without further question. We're all guilty of it to one degree or another, but in this case it's more likely to be questioned by the people it's directed against and, guess what, there isn't a germ of truth to it. There is no evidence that Hitler ever said it and the history of post-WWI German gun laws contradicts it. Hitler in fact made guns much more available (except to Jews) in 1938. The Weimar Republic required registration but that was only some time after the victorious allies forbade Germans to have guns at all. Someone made this up, probably during the Clinton years, and no opposing force has been able to stop it. Facts don't matter. Barnum's Law prevails.

Fact is never the test of belief. If it were, this thing wouldn't keep appearing all over the place. I've been seeing it for years and so far it seems more ridiculous every day, but as long as the need for Obama to be scandalous exceeds the supply of scandals, it might as well be a perpetual motion machine.

There's as little evidence that it will cease to orbit and burn up in the atmosphere as there is for any actual scandal to have occurred, but it doesn't matter in a nation where half of us are so greedy for scandal, desperate for outrage, and hungry for something, anything to anchor our prejudice and feed our greedy need to feel superior by knowing things we don't care enough about to research.

So sure, Hitler will always have said what he didn't say and the Obama scandal will always be quickly approaching and your God and your Guns and your freedom to ignore decency, the law, and the tenets of both Capitalism and Christianity will continue to make a stink that no fact will diminish and no test of logic impair.

(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)

The new gun-control movement, post-Newtown

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I wasn't terribly disappointed when the Manchin-Toomey gun bill was defeated in the Senate (even though it got well more than 50 votes, because of a Republican filibuster), because it was a bad bill. But it did include an expanded background checks provision, along with various pro-gun provisions, and so in the end it was probably better than nothing.

And yet in defeat that bill did more for the gun-control movement that it would have done had it ever become law, and in that sense a lot of good may come from what at the time seemed like a serious, embarrassing, and revealing setback.

Actually, though, it started not on April 17, 2013, but on December 14, 2012, when 20-year-old Adam Lanza, armed with a semi-automatic rifle, killed 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. There had been many other mass shootings previously in America, including recently at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, but Newtown was different. It was a brutal attack on a school, where parents leave their children and expect them to be safe, and the fact that so many children were killed in cold blood was simply too shocking, too powerful, too overwhelming, to ignore. (And there was a cultural/racial element to it as well. This wasn't inner-city Detroit. This was a part of America with which more Americans, including the political and media elites who shape public opinion, could identify. It's easy, sadly so, for many to ignore the plight of a city like Detroit. But if it could happen in Newtown, it could happen anywhere.)

This is not to say that the country was suddenly ready for significant gun control. That will take time. No, if not that, it was at least ready for something meaningful to be done to curb gun violence, to put a stop if at all possible to a mostly unregulated gun market that has resulted in guns, including weapons of mass destruction for which there is no reasonable justification for private ownership, falling into the wrong hands way too many times.

President Obama himself took the lead. In an incredibly moving vigil in Newtown a few days after the shooting, he said:

We can't tolerate this anymore. These tragedies must end. And to end them, we must change.

And this: 

Charlotte, Daniel, Olivia, Josephine, Ana, Dylan, Madeline, Catherine, Chase, Jesse, James, Grace, Emilie, Jack, Noah, Caroline, Jessica, Benjamin, Avielle, Allison, God has called them all home. 

For those of us who remain, let us find the strength to carry on and make our country worthy of their memory.

Yes, the country was finally ready, at least for expanded background checks, and perhaps for much more, and they overwhelmingly expressed that in poll after poll. 

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"A pretty shameful day for Washington": Republicans block highly popular gun control measure to expand background checks

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Well, it was a bad bill (Manchin-Toomey, a bipartisan "compromise" that only a few Republicans supported), but it was something (expanded background checks mixed with various gun-"rights" provisions approved by the gun lobby (not the NRA, though, which is opposed to any and all gun control), and I suppose it was better than nothing (or maybe not), but it failed yesterday because of the Republican filibuster and the ongoing Republican demand that anything Republicans don't like requires a 60-vote supermajority in the Senate (to hell with democracy):

It failed by a vote of 54 to 46, with five Democrats voting against it. Only four Republicans supported it.

Democratic Sens. Mark Pryor (Ark.), Max Baucus (Mont.), Heidi Heitkamp (N.D.), Mark Begich (Alaska) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (Nev.) voted against it. Reid supported the measure but voted against it to preserve his ability to bring the measure up again.

GOP Sens. John McCain (Ariz.), Susan Collins (Maine), Pat Toomey (Pa.) and Mark Kirk (Ill.) voted "yes."

Some are saying it's a major blow for President Obama, who of course, post-Sandy Hook, has made gun control a central policy commitment of his second term. I'm not so sure. Expanded background checks have overwhelming public support (even most Republicans support them), even if the country remains divided on more comprehensive reform.

Even this limited measure only failed because the extremist, NRA-indebted Republican Party used the filibuster and benefitted from the disproportionate representation of small, rural states in the Senate to block it. And, really, that's the story here -- so much so that the president can continue to take his case directly to the people while further isolating the Republican Party way out on the far right.

Obama called yesterday "a pretty shameful day for Washington," and that, too, is part of the story. The president's approval ratings aren't great, but they're way higher than Congress's, and he can now make the case that a Congress no one likes won't even pass a hugely popular measure that is pretty much the least that ought to be done in the wake of the Newtown massacre (not to mention every other instance, day after day, of the appalling gun violence that plagues the country).

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Gun bill could be worse than nothing

By Frank Moraes 

(Ed. note: I take a similar view of Manchin-Toomey, supposedly a wonderful bipartisan compromise, in a post I put up this morning -- see here. -- MJWS)

Have you seen the opening to this past weekend's Saturday Night Live? (You can also watch it here.) The skit makes fun of what I wrote about last week: "The Great Liberal Gun Policy Victory." In the end, I argued, what we would get is a law that is almost useless. I'm never one to avoid accountability, so let me lay it on the line: I was wrong.

The law would be worse than useless.

Karen Tumulty and Ed O'Keefe reported at The Washington Post, "Gun Debate in Senate Likely to Feature Amendments to Weaken or Strengthen Laws." They pointed out that the gun lobby and their pals "are working on a series of amendments that could have the opposite effect -- loosening many of the restrictions that exist in current law."

What kind of amendments? Things that far outweigh anything positive in the bill:

Most worrisome to those who advocate new gun limits is an expected amendment that would achieve one of the National Rifle Association's biggest goals: a "national reciprocity" arrangement, in which a gun owner who receives a permit to carry a concealed weapon in any one state would then be allowed to do that anywhere in the country. Other pro-gun proposals would make it easier for dealers to sell their merchandise between states or let certain people who had been treated for mental illness regain the right to buy weapons.

You may be wondering, what are those amendments that could "strengthen" the law that the title of the article refers to. Well, in the article, they only mentioned one: the assault weapons ban. And they noted that it has effectively no chance of passing. But that concealed carry reciprocity? Last time the Senate voted on it, it got 58 votes.

Things are not quite as bad as it seems, however. Everyone thinks that if these amendments get passed, it will just kill the bill. And maybe that is for the best. As Jonathan Chait noted this morning, "Any real effort to address the plague of mass gun violence will require not a catalyzing event, or even a string of them, but years of organizing and effort." I would only add that the liberals have to stop meeting conservatives 90% of the way. The worse case scenario, as we see with concealed carry reciprocity, is much worse than 100% failure.

Wouldn't it be sad if our response to Sandy Hook was to make such tragedies more likely.

(Cross-posted at Frankly Curious.)

Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy slams NRA, Wayne LaPierre: "reminds me of clowns at the circus."

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy, fresh off signing the nation's toughest gun restrictions into law, was on CNN yesterday advocating for gun control and taking on the NRA and its main mouthpiece, Wayne LaPierre: "Wayne reminds me of the clowns at the circus. They get the most attention." He continued:

This guy is so out of whack, it's unbelievable. 92% of the american people want universal background checks. I can't get on a plane as the governor of the State of Connecticut without somebody running a background check on me. Why should you be able to buy a gun? Or buy armor-piercing munitions? It doesn't make any sense. He doesn't make any sense. Thus my reference to the circus...

Bring it back to reality. Why are they against universal background checks when 92% of the American public is in favor of them? If they can't answer that question — and they can't, Candy — What this is about is the ability of the gun industry to sell as many guns to as many people as possible even if they're deranged, even if they're mentally ill, evening if they have a criminal background, they don't care. They want to sell guns.

The clown/circus quip is amusing but also putting it lightly. Otherwise, though, Malloy's explanation of the NRA's priorities is right on. It's not just that the NRA is insanely pro-gun (and insane in its general gun nuttery), it's that it's the chief lobbyist for the gun industry. It will stop at nothing to stop anything that might limit the gun industry's ability to make enormous profits, and that means the sale of assault weapons that serve no other (non-military) purpose than mass killing (and the fetishism of enthusiasts, if you can call them that), as well as armor-piercing bullets, and so on.

LaPierre is indeed a clown, of sorts, but he's a very dangerous one given the power and influence of his vile organization.

(I would also note that LaPierre made what has become a key conservative argument against any and all gun control: Criminals won't abide by gun laws, so why bother? But this is basically an argument against all criminal law. Why have laws against murder, or rape, or breaking and entering, or fraud? Like I said, these gun nuts are insane.)

Connecticut enacts tough new gun law

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I used to think of Connecticut as that mildly pleasant but largely forgettable parcel of land that you drove through to get from New York to Boston and vice versa, back when my family lived in New Jersey and I went to college in the Boston area.

Okay, I still think of it that way sometimes, but, then, it's also the state where Sandy Hook happened, and now it's the state that has enacted serious new gun control legislation in response to that horrific event:

After more than 13 hours of debate that was at moments impassioned and agonized, the General Assembly early Thursday approved an historic and far-reaching gun-control bill that proponents said was their toughest-in-the-nation response to the Dec. 14 Newtown school massacre.

A majority of Republicans in both the House and Senate voted against the bill, shame be upon them, but it's nonetheless a solidly bipartisan piece of legislation.

Governor Malloy, a Democrat, signed the bill into law at noon today.

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Strong gun control laws reduce gun violence

By Michael J.W. Stickings

That's stating the obvious, but of course the obvious is anything but obvious not just to the gun nuts but to the rest of America's gun-obsessed culture. And even if it were obvious to them -- the nuts, their supporters, and all their various enablers -- they'd deny it because they live not in reality but in a dystopia of denialism.

Via ThinkProgress, here's the key finding in a new report from the Center for American Progress:

While many factors contribute to the rates of gun violence in any state, our research clearly demonstrates a significant correlation between the strength of a state's gun laws and the prevalence of gun violence in the state. Across the key indicators of gun violence that we analyzed, the 10 states with the weakest gun laws collectively have a level of gun violence that is more than twice as high -- 104 percent higher -- than the 10 states with the strongest gun laws.

Of course, when you're dealing with people for whom the facts mean nothing, this report will mean nothing. And so the denialism, and the violence, will continue. Not even Sandy Hook could do anything about that.

Worst Democrat of the Day: Mark Pryor

By Michael J.W. Stickings

ThinkProgress:

Sen. Mark Pryor (D-AR) hinted on Tuesday that he would oppose a Democratic initiative to expand background checks to all gun purchases, but reiterated his support for an NRA-backed measure that would permit individuals deemed mentally ill or incompetent to purchase firearms more freely. Pryor is part of small group of Democrats in red states who have not endorsed universal background checks, even though the measure is supported by a majority of residents.

"You know, I'm a Second Amendment guy, everybody knows that. People in our state are very strong believers in the Second Amendment and the right to gun ownership," Pryor told "The Alice Stewart Show," which airs on KHTE 96.5 The Voice. The conservative Democrat then highlighted his co-sponsorship of an NRA concocted proposal that would reduce the number of records in the existing background check system by removing prohibitions against individuals who were involuntarily committed to mental institutions. 

This is insane. The problem isn't that some people "got their name wrongly in the first place or they've gone through some issue or whatever and that's behind them and they need to get their name out of the database," as Pryor put it, as if it's all about rectifying unfortunate mistakes and administrative errors, it's that, as TP explains, "[t]he bipartisan NICS Reporting Improvement Act would allow these people [those "ordered by a court into involuntary treatment, found to pose a danger to themselves or others, or lack the mental capacity to enter into legal contracts from buying weapons"] to purchase weapons immediately after being released, unless it can be proven that they pose an 'imminent' danger."

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Stupidest Shithole in America: Nelson, Georgia

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Do I smell another series about to start? I mean, America's full of stupid shitholes, right? Well, maybe. Let's just start with this gem in the Peach State, a very small "city" 80 miles north of Atlanta:

Every homeowner in a local town could soon have to own a gun or break the law. It's a controversial new plan for the city of Nelson.

Leaders told Channel 2's John Bachman the reason they need the law is because the city straddles Cherokee county to the south and Pickens County to the north.

That, they said, can lead to slower response times.

One police officer patrols Nelson, Georgia for eight hours during the day. That leaves 16 hours overnight when the city is basically unguarded.

"When he's not here we rely on county sheriffs -- however it takes a while for them to get here," said Nelson City Councilman Duane Cronic.

That's why Cronic proposed the ordinance.

"Every head of household will own and maintain a firearm," he said. 

Yes! Armed rednecks "policing" themselves! What could possibly go wrong?

Guns and Christianity, reductio ad absurdum

By Michael J.W. Stickings

CNN Breaking News (@cnnbrk) tweeted at 3:17 PM on Tue, Feb 05, 2013:

Arkansas Legislature approves bill to allow concealed guns in churches. (link)

(https://twitter.com/cnnbrk/status/298888180273381377)

And it all comes together...

The final merger of a bloodthirsty gun culture and an enslaving religion based on a grotesque blood sacrifice.

Welcome again to the death throes of the American Empire -- from the NRA-GOP alliance to Columbine to Aurora to Sandy Hook to the streets of any major city to the redneck countryside to the churches of Arkansas.

Land of the "free," home of the "brave."
And truly insane.

Disarming talk

By Mustang Bobby

Via Steve M, we see that Fox News is all over the news about the OBAMA BLUEPRINT FOR DISARMING AMERICA: 

The blueprint for how Americans would be disarmed during a declared civil emergency is contained in an Army manual that outlines a plan to confiscate firearms to prevent them falling into the hands of rioters or dissidents.

Given the imminent introduction of Senator Dianne Feinstein's draconian gun control legislation, which would instantly criminalize millions of gun owners in the United States if passed, concerns that the Obama administration could launch a massive gun confiscation effort have never been greater.

In July 2012, the process by which this could take place was made clear in a leaked US Army Military Police training manual for "Civil Disturbance Operations" (PDF) dating from 2006.

So Barack Obama wrote the U.S. Army Military Police training manual two years before he became president? How diabolically clever of him.

Fox sources this earth-shattering revelation to World Net Daily, which, as we all know, is never wrong. 

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

Worst Democrat of the Day: Heidi Heitkamp, pro-NRA gun nut

By Michael J.W. Stickings

When it comes to elections to legislative bodies, partisans often just count the numbers: Do we have more they they do? In a way, that's all that matters.

And so it was for Democrats back in November. We wanted to keep the Senate, and perhaps even to pick up a seat or two, and that meant supporting Democrats who weren't exactly progressive. It was the party affiliation that mattered, just like it is for sports fans rooting for the jersey.

Heidi Heitkamp, running to keep retiring Byron Dorgan's North Dakota seat on our side of the ledger, was one of those Democrats. She won, and we cheered her victory if only because it meant another Democratic seat, and even if she wasn't all that great, at least the Republicans didn't take it.

Now, to be sure, you have to put up with less progressive Democrats, or even anti-progressive ones, if you want to win in solidly red states like North Dakota. And furthermore, Heitkamp was preferable by far to her Republican opponent, the far-right Rick Berg -- I suppose even a generally conservative Democrat like Heitkamp is (usually) better than a Republican.

But that really doesn't make it all okay, and her comments about, and against, gun control this morning only serve to prove the point that there are some awful Democrats out there.

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Thanks, NRA cowards, for the Connecticut bloodbath

By Marc McDonald

Thanks, NRA, for fighting any meaningful regulations that could help keep guns out of the hands of the violent and mentally ill. Thanks to you, guns can be bought in America as easily as a loaf of bread.

We also appreciate your work on ferociously opposing the Brady Act (which Ronald Reagan, by the way, supported). Rest assured, though, despite your crazy, paranoid fantasies, NO meaningful action will be taken on guns in the aftermath of this latest horrible bloodbath.

Thanks to you, dozens, if not hundreds of more children will be brutally slaughtered in the decades to come.

The NRA truly is a cowardly organization. For example, they cowered under a rock and waited nearly five days to offer any kind of response to the Connecticut bloodbath. How chickenshit is that? If they had the courage of their convictions, they would have spoken up sooner.

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Getting it

By Mustang Bobby

Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder has decided to veto a bill that would have allowed concealed weapons in such places as schools, day care centers, sports arenas, bars, places of worship, hospitals, dorms, and casinos. The bill had been passed by the legislature the night before the massacre in Connecticut.

That might have had something to do with his decision to back away from the bill.

So might this:

The approval rating of Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R) is in the gutter, according to a poll released Tuesday, the strongest evidence yet of the political perils associated with the right-to-work legislation he signed into law last week.

According to the latest automated survey from Democratic-leaning Public Policy Polling, only 38 percent of Michigan voters approve of the job Snyder is doing, compared with 56 percent who disapprove. In PPP's previous survey of Michigan in November, Snyder's approval rating was 10 points above water: 47 percent of voters approved of his performance as governor, while 37 percent disapproved.

The right-to-work bill, signed by Snyder amid mass protests, appears to have changed the political climate in the Great Lake State. Fifty-one percent of Michigan voters oppose the bill, which made Michigan the country's 24th right-to-work state, while 41 percent support the legislation. Moreover, Snyder trails every Democrat in hypothetical matchups of the 2014 gubernatorial election.

To paraphrase Samuel Johnson, nothing focuses the mind like impending political oblivion. 

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

Maybe now

By Capt. Fogg

Maybe now's the time. The NRA has taken a serious body blow and in general, the American public is losing faith in the extremists of the GOP and its ability to solve our problems. A CNN poll shows that a majority, albeit a small one, thinks the GOP is too extreme and I don't think we need a poll to show that the National Rifle Association, its frequent unindicted conspirator, is aware that it has blood on its hands. The nation's largest and loudest gun lobby all but turned out the lights and pulled down the shades for 4 days after the Newtown incident and had nothing to say as 300 protesters arrived at their headquarters on Monday.

They have scheduled a news conference for tomorrow and have announced that:

The NRA is prepared to offer meaningful contributions to help make sure this never happens again.

Wouldn't that be nice, but while that remains to be seen, I'm given to wonder if the changes they propose and proposed by others will be meaningful as well, or as is often the case, haphazard, oblivious to facts and doomed to be ineffective at best.

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America's gun lunacy

By Frank Moraes

There is something very much wrong with us. You've probably seen the graph above. The green line at the top is the murder rate in the United States over the last 50 years. The red lines at the bottom are the murder rates in the other OECD countries. It really makes you wonder. I don't have any answers except that there is something fundamentally wrong with us -- and we have a lot of guns.

Dylan Matthews, who normally writes about economics issues (we are all of us a little distracted), wrote an article at Wonk Blog today that is half comedy and half tragedy, "The 6 Craziest State Gun Laws." There are a few surprises in it.

One thing that surprised me is that four states allow concealed carry without any licensing at all. One of the states, Vermont, allows people as young as 16 to do so without their parents' permission. But before you start dumping on Vermont, it would appear that they just have a strong libertarian streak in them. They also allow young women to get abortions without parental consent. (And yes, I do think that they're not at all the same, but I was expecting some major hypocrisy.)

There is one bit of gun-rights wackiness that I'd heard about before: employees bringing guns to work. The workplace is the employer's property. In most cases, that settles the issue. But not when it comes to guns. Let's suppose that you park on your boss' property and you want to keep a gun in the car. You know, you might need it. Some one may dis you one time too many! Anyway, thankfully in 17 liberty loving states, you can just go to your car, get your gun, and put an end to that.

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Now. Not tomorrow. Not next week. Now.

By Carl 

The assault weapons ban must be put back in place, immediately. If President Obama has to risk looking like "He's comin' fer our gunz," then so be it. We shouldn't have to explain to the parents of the next school shooting, "It wasn't the right time to talk about banning assault rifles and semi-automatic pistols."

Because if this incident doesn't immediately make it clear that a) there is no wrong time to talk about the ban and b) assault weapons have no place in society, period, I can't imagine what the hell a gun nut could possibly want to convince him.

There is absolutely no need for any civilian, not even an off-duty cop, to own an assault weapon. Period. Here we have a case of legally owned guns being used to slaughter dozens of innocent people. These guns were employed by someone who had authorization to use them, having fired them any number of times at gun ranges under the auspices of his mother.

As Michael Moore so deftly tweeted this weekend: "If only Nancy Lanza had more guns, none of this would have happened." The Lanzas clearly had too many guns.

The answer, clearly, is not more guns. Indeed, no civilian in the past 30 years has stopped a mass shooting. Ever. Not once. Indeed, another gun tends to incite more gun violence, as anyone who lives in a deep urban area can attest. Or you merely have to look at this past summer's incident at the Empire State Building, where nine bystanders were injured by police firing upon the assailant. And they're trained in the use of firearms to the point they are warned not to draw unless its absolutely necessary.

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Lawyers, guns, and money

By Capt. Fogg

This is the title of the song, and as the song goes, the shit has hit the fan, at least for John Hammar, an ex-Marine from Ft. Pierce, Florida, a town just a few miles north of me. I'm sure you've heard that he's been jailed under one of Mexico's tough and comically ineffective gun control laws. Of course, your sense of comedy may differ on this point.

Seems Hammer and his friend had planned to drive across the Mexican border near Matamoros in a Winnebago filled with surfboards and camping gear -- and an old shotgun he'd inherited from his great grandfather which, as purchased from Sears, has a 24" barrel -- an inch too short for Mexico, although just fine in Florida. U.S. officials told him that all he had to do was to file some papers with the Mexican authorities and it would be legal, but they were wrong and Mr. Hammar now sits chained to a cot in a Mexican jail cell hoping at least for lawyers and money. No more guns please.

Fox News of course is running around screaming and yelling about "trumped up charges," which seems strange, U.S. laws about barrel length being just as arbitrary as Mexico's and carrying punishments at least as severe. In fact, U.S. laws require gun owners to know more than you'd expect the average lawyer knows and are just as arbitrary as concerns lengths and dates of manufacture and type of stock. It's possible in fact for a gun to be quite legal to send through the mail and an identical one with a one digit serial number difference to be felonious. It's possible to own a handgun to which fitting a folding stock can put you in jail for being below a certain arbitrary barrel length. Mexican law, unbeknownst to Hammar and his advisors, classifies a nearly antique relic from Sears Roebuck as a military weapon, a practice quite akin to the U.S. classification of an ordinary rifle as being an assault rifle because of the shape of the stock or the country of manufacture. 

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