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This week on CounterSpin: CBS News‘ website featured a story about the “grim task” of planning funerals for 19 children—shot dead, along with two teachers, in a Texas elementary school on May 24—right next to a story about Oklahoma’s governor signing the country’s strictest abortion ban, the prominent sign behind him declaring “life is a human right.” Welcome, as they say, to America—where these ideas are presented as somehow of a piece, where news media tell us day after day how exceptionally good and worthy we are, the world’s policeman and a global beacon for human rights and the good life.
Meanwhile, the rest of the world looks on in horror. BBC‘s North America editor explained to its audience that there is no expectation of anything being done to prevent things like the latest (as far as we know, as we record on May 26) mass murder in the US, because “the argument over guns has simply become too politically divisive and culturally entrenched to allow for meaningful change.”
Reporter Eoin Higgins interviewed teachers around the country, who reported the psychological toll of not only actual shootings, but constant drills and lockdowns, on children, who, they said, “have largely given up on a better future.” Teachers feel expendable and unvalued; it’s hardly lost on them that the same forces accusing them of poisoning children with curricula are also demanding they step between those children and a bullet.
That powers that be in this country have responded to school shootings not by toughening gun laws, but by loosening them, and responded to the failure of law enforcement to prevent such shootings by calling for more police. It’s a particularly demoralizing combination of devastating and unsurprising—from a country that promotes and perpetrates violence around the globe. As a response to violence, we try violence time after time.
There doesn’t seem to be anything new to say right now about gun violence in the US. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t keep saying the things we know—more loudly, more unapologetically and in more places.
As we record, we hear that students at schools across the country are walking out, in an effort to say simply, “We refuse to go on like this.” We owe them our action and effort, no matter how tired or disgusted or defeated we feel.
We revisit some conversations about gun violence and gun culture this week on the show. In March of last year we spoke with Igor Volsky, executive director of Guns Down America, and author of the book Guns Down: How to Defeat the NRA and Build a Safer Future With Fewer Guns, about the possibility of passing common-sense legislation and misunderstandings about the power of the gun lobby.
Transcript: ‘More Guns, More Gun Deaths—That’s Really It’
And then: There are always multiple issues involved in a mass murder; elite media use the complexity as an excuse to simply trade accusatory explanations, and determine that in the interest of balance, nothing can be done. But if we’re concerned about young people getting high-grade weaponry and thinking it’d be cool to use it, maybe one thing to consider would be the government-sponsored program that gives young people high-grade weapons and tells them it’d be cool to use it? We spoke in 2018 about Junior ROTC—a feature at my high school, and maybe yours too—with Pat Elder, director of the National Coalition to Protect Student Privacy, which resists the militarization of schools, and author of Military Recruiting in the United States.
Transcript: ‘More Guns, More Gun Deaths—That’s Really It’
My experience in high schools here (northeast) is that there are
NO “high grade weapons”. More like wooden stocks.
And he forgot to mention many of these students already learned how to shot at home.
And he forgot to mention this is a viable job option for those whose families don’t have the funds.
I think all of our problems with gun violence boil down to a collective lack of philosophical imagination. A hole in our thinking that has us stuck on stupid, unwilling, and maybe even unable to think beyond what is imaginable in terms of real world, in-principle solutions to a lot of our current problems. Our disorganization, sedentary political leadership, and petulant attitudes about guns may also be to blame for America’s gun violence problems.
We can’t have both a “well regulated militia” while simultaneously adhering to a wide-open, unregulated, laissez faire firearms industrial complex, police state, and system of perpetually bloated spending on the military.
The current way we think about the 2A needs to be rewired, it needs to be expanded, and more carefully examined. We need to do something about all of the disorganization, unregulated systemic biases about guns, and the idea that being an armed State is intrinsic to nihilistically accepting that mass shootings and all other gun violence is simply something we have to live with.
There is no reason why, in principle, we cannot accomplish both a more secure state while also having everyone be “armed.” The two are not truly incommensurable as some would argue. The problem has all to do with ignoring the first half of, or opening declaration of, the Second Amendment.
If everyone were issued a rifle at birth, and the serial number of it were to be the same as their SSN, these rifles could be a solution to at least some of our problems….Your rifle, your arm to bear could be a part of a robust fourth branch of government to include a public free press, publicly run free community armories, and maybe we could have our lead and safely fire it too? Or not.
Such a system that “issues” rifles automatically could hypothetically include a public armory run by each community where the rifles are stored and “kept.” This would do two things:
1) Insulate the owners of the rifles against incursions of and by the other three branches.
2) Give the community a heads up or at least sone accountability of the whereabouts of weapons in the community.
Public armories would give each community the control over how they want to run and organize the arming of their community’s population. Why we do not currently mandate that firearms be kept in a secure compound like a armory, as they do in the military, has always been a point of bewilderment to me….people who try to assert the question begging trope of “you would only make criminals more lethal,” are ignoring the current data about the drastically reduced number of gun deaths on base, along with the higher gun safety in general on military bases. People who assert the normal trope pretend there is no such thing as a criminal on base, when yes there is, criminals still operate within the military sector of society, the decreased level of criminal violence on base is because of the presence of a system of more accountability of firearms on base.
A military base is a fairly secure place, they don’t have all of the problems with mass shootings, and rampant gun violence that we have out here off base in the “civilian” world.
If military bases can do it, why can’t we? Military bases have every element of society that we have in the civilian sector (including criminal elements, a black market, and even an underworld.) The difference is that on base there are armories where weapons are stored, there is regulation and organization of firearms possession. We have nothing like that that out here in the civilian world which is weird don’t you think?
The reason I am using military bases as an example or comparison is for anyone who tries to refute the public armory idea based only on the fallacious claim that if we organize the public ownership of guns, then only the criminal element will be armed. Such a claim is not true, it is a question begging assertion, that presumes the same kind of violent world we live in now would still be in place if less guns in general were circulating unaccounted through the public sector.
To presume that only criminals would have guns is to ignore the empirical evidence of the military base example. To ignore the glaring empirical evidence that we have right now, which shows that in places where guns are more controlled even with everyone technically “armed,” there is less chance of random gun violence in general, is to stay stuck on stupid.
To keep insisting that if we were to regulate and empower communities to control the whereabouts of their population’s weapons would be a giveaway to the criminal element of that community, is to deny the world we have now; one with way more incidents of gun violence.
The evidence is there, wherever we have less organization and regulation over the accountability of firearms in a given community the more likely there will be a gun violence incident in that community. Less community regulation and no armories means there will be an increase of the armed lethality of the criminal element too, not a decrease of it.
These are just simple ideas, not meant to be exhaustive “cure alls” or miracle fixes….but we need to “have a think” on this idea of public armories, no? Maybe along with a fourth branch of government, it could be a stop gap, better than what we have now? Or maybe it would at least be an attempt to do something that instantiates the opening language of the Second Amendment:
“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State,….”
We the People need some way to usurp the morass, corruption, and complacency of the other three branches of government, the establishment of our own branch of government where the Bill of Rights has a safe harbor might be one way.
The problem is that such a fourth branch of government would still need to be established within our current system, and of course our current system is totally disincentivized to establish such a branch. To give us more democracy and freedom even seems to be the thing they work against. The current system (as is) totally thrives on its own largesse, and illogical tail-chasing circularity…it is a nihilistic self-fulfilling ball of dung being pushed around by corporate racketeers.
A lot of what Igor said presupposes something to be true that actually isn’t. His claims all rely on the idea that the underlying conditions in those other countries were identical to the underlying conditions here in the U.S. when in fact they are not even a close comparison or equal analog of each other. What he failed to address or acknowledge is that none of those other countries started with an unbridgeable fundamental right to keep and bear arms to begin with. Why he chose to talk around this is weird.
The US didn’t start with an “unbridgeable” fundamental right to bear arms.
In fact that part of the 2nd Amendment was very careful to couch this right in the language and ideas of a well regulated militia.
You 2A people always seem to talk around that part.
To Tom_Q_Collins,
Yes indeed, there is no such thing as an “unbridgeable” right, that faux pas was totally my fault. It was an honest but ignorant typographical error. One that resulted from an attempt to say ‘a right that cannot be abridged.’
Is it true or false that our fundamental rights cannot be abridged? I seriously don’t know…so I checked the ‘goo goo machine’ (made for 2A cry babies and other mental midgets like me who aren’t but may as well be) by searching the phrase “everything needed to repeal a constitutional amendment,” and here’s what came back –
“Can Amendments Be Repealed? Any existing constitutional amendment can be repealed but only by the ratification of another amendment. Because repealing amendments must be proposed and ratified by one of the same two methods of regular amendments, they are very rare. Sep 4, 2021”
Maybe in principle it is true that the Second Amendment can be repealed, but what do you think Tom? Wouldn’t it at least take 2/3 of both houses and basically the Presidency all three controlled by one wing of our two party right wing system to even begin to do so? Is that not akin to an act of G O D or what?
By the way, I am no 2A nutter, just a dweeb whose served and noticed how seamless (and safe) things were on base when it came to firearms accountability is all.
In the battalion we were in, we were encouraged to think outside of the box. I’m a civilian now, and you are probably correct, time to stop pretending that the gun issue is some sort of a tiny or something that is small enough for me to think outside of.
As far as the (alleged) left owning the “what to do about gun violence” narrative, I think if more regulations, more licensing, and more limits over who can and cannot own a gun actually worked, then why hasn’t it yet? Are we, or are we not, a nation of more gun laws today than we were ten years ago? Maybe I need to go get one of those home drug tests but I could of swore the last time I checked, passing more so-called “gun control laws” did diddly to lower the likelihood of a mass shooting. Things (seem to) have actually gotten worse not better (or maybe they’ve even stayed about the same?) Of the two, whether things have gotten worse or stayed the same, which do you think would be a bigger betrayal of the empirical facts? Who knows?
I don’t know you Tom, or why you would think that simply suggesting we be more well-regulated at the community level about our personally owned firearms, by adopting some of the same protocols for weapons handling, accountability, and storage they use on base; should mean that I am all nut-job pro-gun?
Whatever, go on and keep assuming things you can’t possibly know about other people, and we’ll keep arguing past each other shall we?
Part of me is just breaking balls, part of me knows it doesn’t matter, because hardly anyone reads these comments.
guns don’t kill people .. USA kills people.
Guns don’t fetishize delusional people, delusional people fetishize guns.
To Bradley Grower,
You said – “Guns don’t fetishize delusional people, delusional people fetishize guns.”
One would have to know your frame of reference before they could know who you are referring to. As it stands your comment is so broadly stated that it could be referring to anyone who talks about guns or anyone who uses a gun, and everyone who owns a gun, which is of course a delusional claim in itself.
You can never really tell where other people are coming from based only on what they are saying online. Whether or not they are being rhetorical is (usually) a complete unknown. With you Bradley, it is crystal clear that you are mired in rhetorical thinking. I highly urge you to head over to Bernardo Kastrup’s blog and read his latest piece about “Hidden Implication Creep.”
Either you are trivializing the entire point in contention*, by asserting with no evidence that gun owners of all kinds are simply delusional people, or you are referring to this entire topic** and anyone who attempts to crack it open and say something about it. Or not, like I said it isn’t clear who you are referring to.
* By “the entire point in contention” I mean things we can do to cut down on gun violence.
** By “this entire topic” I mean the issue of gun violence in general within the U.S.
So either you are being deluded yourself or you are saying nothing, which is it.?
The whole problem Bradley is that people like you who constantly hallucinate something that no one comes anywhere near saying are suffering from some form of delusion themselves (delusions of grandeur are a very common disposition online, even a “tell” of when we are dealing with know-it-alls, armchair experts, and rhetoricians who pretend to be saying something reasonable.)
Unless you can show where anyone said “Guns fetishize delusional people” you are building a straw man and then burning it down by saying “(no it is ) delusional people who fetishize guns.”
Do you have a time stamp in the interview where anyone said this? If not then my point stands.
There was nowhere in any of the comments where this was said. Again, it is you who are what you try to say others are being. It is you who are hearing, reading, and seeing things that only you seem to be able to see. Could it be that it is you who is the deluded person? I say “Yes”
To Bradley,
Here we go. I made a mistake and misquoted the title of an article or blogpost I was hoping you’d read.
Even I am not beyond misremembering something because of my own misapprehension about its meaning. The title of the Bernardo Kastrup piece is “Hallucinated Implications Creep,” not “Hidden Implication Creep’ as quoted above.
Anyways check out the article, it may or may not resonate with you.
To fetishize, is to have an excessive and irrational commitment to or obsession with something. It’s sort of like your weird fixation on me.
If you had actually looked up the terminology, before launching a verbal attack on a humorous turn of phrase, then it is entirely possible this might have become a valuable exchange of ideas. That is NOT what it has been.
You’ve chosen to hide behind multiple fake screen names and throw verbal stones, while performing your own grandiose mental gymnastics in order to rebut the statement: “delusional people fetishize guns.”
My comment was follow-up to what mijj posted. So sorry you didn’t get it.
Okay “Bradley,”
Does this mean you did not read the article “Hallucinated Implications Creep?”
Then I guess there sure are a LOT of “delusional people” in the USA. I can’t count on all my fingers and toes the number of individuals I know personally who don’t fetishize guns and ammo.
So what’s your solution?
I apologize if this question was not addressed to me: my answer involves the statutory requirement for ALL prospective gun owners (including those employed by government agencies), to be subjected to appropriate testing such as the MMPI (or other more effective regimens), to determine whether the individual tested displays known symptoms of any psycopathology.
I know that science is out of fashion in the current Moronathon known as ‘Merica2022, but it has proven itself to be of considerable value in the course of the four previous centuries. Who knows, maybe Conservatives might even begin to consider adopting “proven knowledge” as part of their philosophy?
The segment on JROTC was valuable. But there’s a lot more Pat Elder has included
in Military Recruiting In The United States on that subject of protecting student privacy in the in the book. I read it cover to cover from the local library copy but it’s hard to get the kind of interest in this subject needed. I may have made the library request myself from hearing Elder the first time on KPFA Flashpoints program and have encouraged them to renew interviews with Pat Elder but that was a few years ago..
Rutger Bregman, in “Humankind”, has a discussion about some of the things Elder speaks of. His story about how among the more than 12,000 rifles that were picked off the field, after the Battle of Gettysburg, over 90 percent of them remained loaded was revealing. There were sets of these rifles that were loaded two times, and three time, and some barrels remained full of with balls and powder. Historians began to think that these soldiers didn’t want to kill, and they chose instead to keep reloading their weapons in combat. Its leaves you imagining them loading their weapons over an over again until they were killed themselves. There is also the story about a WWII officer, and later military historian, who discovered that many of his soldiers refused to shoot during an island battle with the Japanese. During the Korean War, and again with the Vietnam War, there was an attempt to get more soldiers to use there weapons on people. Bregman writes about how our natural resistance to killing can be overcome by training.
DOD first-person shooter video games have been used to recruit teens for decades.
How to reduce gun terrorism in the USA? How about take a page from the Israeli Zionists’ book and immediately issue orders to raze to the ground any property owned by the family of a gun terrorist and stealing the land for settlement by a ‘preferred’ class of people?
https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/idf-issues-demolition-order-for-west-bank-home-of-one-elad-terrorist/
“The Israel Defense Forces has informed the family of a Palestinian terrorist that their home in the northern West Bank village of Rummanah is slated for demolition.
Yousef As’ad al-Rifa’i’s family is given the chance to appeal the demolition order.
Al-Rifa’i is one of two Palestinians who are accused of carrying out a deadly axe attack in the central city of Elad earlier this month, in which three people were killed, and several others seriously hurt.
During the Palestinians’ arrest, al-Rifa’i confessed to committing the attack.
The family of the second terrorist, Subhi Emad Sbeihat, will receive a similar notice in the coming days.”