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Focusing NRA Fight on Sandy Hook Could Lose the Battle for Sensible Gun Policy
Since the day it happened there has been a common thread in the endless discussions about Sandy Hook. Over and over people have said, “This time it feels different.” Yes it does but only as a matter of degree. It felt different after Columbine too.
Remember, by the time those children and their teacher were murdered we had already witnessed berserk gunmen in the UT tower, Luby’s Cafeteria, McDonalds, and a dozen other venues. Then Ft. Hood felt like a tipping point; America’s heroes gunned down on a military base for God’s sake, and it really did feel different after Virginia Tech because we could actually put a finger on the problem; a shooter with acknowledged mental problems and a gun show loophole. Of course nothing happened, the loophole still exists and mental health services remain a national disgrace.
Now we have this universal outpouring of grief and revulsion and we also have a problem. That beautiful little victims were killed in a particularly vile and horrifying manner has prompted an outrage unparalleled in its depth and intensity but at the same time the known facts about the event and the killer himself could mitigate against meaningful changes.
- The 20 year-old man who killed those children was obviously some form of insane. This doesn’t differentiate him from most mass shooters (perhaps we should stipulate that anyone who kills that many people, especially children, is by definition insane; it would save a lot of energy and ink). However, shielded by his mother and with no official intervention on record, his brand of crazy was operating well below any radar that would trigger concern in a background check.
- It appears that his weapons, while technically stolen by him, were purchased legally and by no method that most gun control measures could have prevented.
- The massacre occurred in the state the National Rifle Association (NRA) says has among the tightest gun laws in the nation and the terrifying weapon involved was legal under those laws.
- Contrary to early reports, the shooter was a devotee of video games although there was no clarity about whether it was Grand Theft Auto or Frogger.
- Finally, the attack took place in a school, and I will return to this in a minute.
While we have a sickening crime it is one unlikely to have been prevented by any solution that might find common ground with the “guns don’t kill people” crowd. Rather it gives them the “ammunition” as it were to fight more stringent changes.
The blowback started quickly. By the time I started this piece I had seen as many posts in social media about the necessity to curb video/movie/TV violence as I did about banning assault weapons and calls for improved services to the mentally ill were increasing in number. Then the NRA got up off the mat and started hitting back, twisting what is known about Sandy Hook into the heart of their arguments against action; especially that it happened in a school, a “gun free zone.” The new rationale for the NRA is not the Second Amendment but that the “only defense against a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”
The NRA also trotted out the golden oldies; violence in the media and the need for mental health care services (while the very politicians they spend millions to elect vote consistently against all social and health services). But it is obvious that gun-free schools and the need to arm principals and the lunch ladies are going to be the focus of, not their defense – the NRA doesn’t play defense – but a vicious new assault.
We can’t let them turn our revulsion about Sandy Hook to their own purposes. We will keep talking about those brave teachers, the precious children, and their devastated families in Connecticut but we have to broaden the debate. We have to bring back Columbine – where there was armed security – and Ft. Hood where 13 were killed in the midst of a trained army. When LaPierre says “crazy people” we will say “Virginia Tech” where a known crazy person was able to legally purchase two guns. Let’s remind the world and Wayne LaPierre about the armed witness in the Tucson parking lot who knew he could do more harm than good firing his weapon. For every asinine suggestion he makes we can make an argument culled from one or more of the mass killings we have endured in the last fifty years.
And let’s not forget the smaller horrors: Trevon Martin and Jordan Davis might be alive if the NRA had not enabled two supposedly sane individuals to act out their perpetual grievances and provided them a legal rationale for doing so. Jitka Vesel shot eleven times with a gun bought on-line by her stalker also didn’t need to die. Call out the name of every women shot in her home because the TRO she hoped might protect her was foiled by the gun show loophole.
Most of all don’t let Wayne LaPierre, Louie Gohmert, and hundreds of Republican congresspersons, governors, and legislators control this conversation. And don’t allow them to dishonor the memories of any of the million people killed by bullets since 1968 by bringing more guns into all of our, their survivors, lives.
A member of One Million Moms for Gun Control has provided a list of all of the members of the NRA board of directors; information which they apparently purged from their website I have put this information on a dedicated page for anyone who wishes to write an NRA Somebody who may or may not have more brains and empathy than LaPierre.
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11 Responses to Focusing NRA Fight on Sandy Hook Could Lose the Battle for Sensible Gun Policy
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Reynardine
Dec. 26th, 2012 at 6:42 pm
Already, the same weapon found its way into the hands of a convicted murderer of his own grandmother: he then plotted out the murder of his own sister and the arson of his own house, so that he could lure firefighters to their deaths and kill his neighbors with fire. Of course, he was not supposed to have a weapon. He got it, through purchase or theft, from someone who was allowed.
How many such weapons are stolen directly from arms factories or even government armories? Almost none. A veteran, whose benefits are delayed or denied, sells one to make the rent; a venal person sells one on the black market because he is venal; someone commissions a “clean” person to go buy weapons for buyers who aren’t so clean; they are taken in a burglary from some home or pawn shop or even poorly-secured police precinct and sold on the street. So long as these weapons aren’t confined to government armories and properly trained and secured police units, they’re going to find their way into the hands of those who want to use them for their one intended purpose: mass killing of human beings. And we won’t be safe anywhere at all.
Tim Floto
Dec. 26th, 2012 at 7:29 pm
Of course the NRA suggested more guns. To a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. To the NRA every problem looks like a showdown at high noon. Great, sure, trust the problem to look like the solution. We need to think out side of the ammunition box. We have high tech solutions available including better surveillance. Maybe with remote control tasers we could immobilize the perpetrator. Maybe lockdown of classrooms or panic rooms. I could go down a lot paths before it occurred to me to arm the teachers or put a cop at every door. We don’t need a showdown or shootout.
harris stein
Dec. 26th, 2012 at 7:53 pm
Remote controlled tasers? Why don’t we just enslave society. After all that is how its been done throughout history. Maybe if the south hadn’t attacked Fort Sumter in 1861, Lincoln wouldn’t have used force to keep the union tegether and the south could have pushed their disgusting slave society over the rest of the country minus a few northern states
Jim Hubbard
Dec. 27th, 2012 at 11:13 am
Argumentum ad absurdum. He never said anything about slavery. You can’t even draw a logical line from remote-control tasers to slavery.
YellowDogYankee
Dec. 26th, 2012 at 7:31 pm
Every one of these events provides a different argument against the NRA’s propaganda which is why we have to walk a fine line between balancing the raw emotion generated by Sandy Hook and the more practical lessons from other tragedies.
It is horrible to talk so clinically about all of this, but we are not fighting a sentimental enemy. We need to use every weapon we have no matter how ugly it feels.
Robert Chapman
Dec. 27th, 2012 at 1:06 pm
I agree with Yellow Dog, and in additon, I think it is important to get over teh liberal aversion to push through corrective legislation simply because the right raise objections.
Sometimes things come down to a matter of political power. The right has a long record of showing all the muscle on gun issues.
mathazar
Dec. 26th, 2012 at 9:27 pm
The solutions are fairly basic, and other nations have succeeded.
You’ll never totally stop the wackos from obtaining guns, but you can abate the carnage.
Outlaw all semis from non-LEO’s. If you can’t kill your game with the same bolt-action rifle that oswald used to get off 3 shots and murder JFK, then
you need to improve your marksmanship.
Other countries still have gun violence, but mass killings are rare.
Churchlady
Dec. 27th, 2012 at 12:38 am
My concern over labeling the CT shooter as “insane” is that IF we focus on keeping guns from those with known and treated mental health concerns, gun fanatics with major issues will avoid treatment precisely to stay eligible to buy guns.
More to the point, this is overlooking the Southern Poverty Law Center’s shocking data on the rise of hate groups – racist, homophobic, and anti-government among many others. NONE of these people will likely randomly shoot up shopping malls but have already gunned down law enforcement people and those whom they hate. Think of the men who’ve killed pro-choice doctors and others, the man who shot up the Unitarian Church, and those of that ilk – these are NOT mentally disturbed people. They are rational,cold, calculating purveyors of hate and the principle of “justifiable homicide”.
I agree that Sandy Hook can divert us, but I think it’s the rush to assumption that Lanza was mentally ill that is the danger. There is far more to US gun violence than that.
At the core of the problem lies a belief – one openly articulated in both anti-abortion “justifiable homicide” decrees AND in such things as “stand your ground” – that those whom we dislike are ripe targets for us to kill.
THAT assumption – a manifestation of hyper individualism and libertarianism run amok – is the core of our crisis. THAT is what we have to change. NOW.
Robert Chapman
Dec. 27th, 2012 at 1:03 pm
Let’s remind the world and Wayne LaPierre about the armed witness in the Tucson parking lot who knew he could do more harm than good firing his weapon.
The above is an incredibly important statement in this idiotic gun rights debate. More shooters, whether, they are good guys or bad guys means more lethal projectiles whizzing around confused and crowded spaces.
More shooters, good guys or bad guys, make it harder for responders to figure out the situation and make good tactical decisions.
The only remedy is for guns in fewer peoples’ possesion. If my neigbhor wants to put his glock in his glove compartment, drive to the range and spend his morning working on his marksmanship, that it his right.
But there is no way his adolescent son and said son’s companions should have access to that weapon just because.
Responsible attitudes and ACTIONS from gun owners would go a long way in helping to get past the discussion phase and doing something to reduce gun Violence in the USA.
bird
Dec. 29th, 2012 at 10:30 pm
Oh, the faults of the NRA. At some point, you have to take responsibility for your club/group/ect. For some reason, and I’m parphrasing, the NRA believes that armed persons in schools will help stop violence. While children killed in mass shootings is tragic, it makes up less then 1 percent of homocides via guns in the usa.
The idea that the NRA is ready to deploy an armed guard to each and every school is absurd!!!!!! The NRA will not tackle any problem, but is an organization that is ready to deploy armed guards to each school.
Does anyone else see anything wrong with this plan?
Shiva (Moderator)
Dec. 29th, 2012 at 10:39 pm
I see the NRA plan of armed people all over the country, in schools, government buildings and the eventual take over by the rich is going to fall flat