OBAMA WANTS TO TAKE AWAY OUR GUNS - MR. MARTINEZ

The recent tragedy in Santa Barbara reopened the moribund debate about gun control. The argument around guns, their easy availability, the gun culture, the deaths caused by them in the USA - 30,000 a year, America leading the field by miles in this arena in the civilized world, the NRA’s cynical murderous rationalizations, the furore with each mass killing, the President, Democrats and anti - gun lobbies’ efforts going nowhere, are all old hat. Then of course, there is intense focus on the lone “nut”. Implicit in the latter discourse that this is yet another freak instance that could not be avoided or should have been avoided and or can never be repeated!. Not forgetting, that of course, the chant the gun nuts rely on in the end when opposition begins to heat up - “Obama wants to take away our guns”. One is almost surprised that each of these mini holocausts, like Santa Barbara, even make the national news. 

Jay H. Ell has blogged again and again the  sombre statistics on the havoc guns reek in our society so he won’t repeat them. (Blogs; “The Tuscan Massacre and American Culture - Can There Be a Solution?”, “Guns, Obama, the NRA, GOP = Stalemate” and “Obama vs NRA = Political Win for Obama.)”

EVEN THE DEATHS OF TOTS IN NEWTOWN LED NO WHERE IN GUN CONTROL

After the savage attack in Newtown, when 20 kindergarden children and six of their teachers were brutally and senselessly murdered, the President pledged his full weight for change of this bedlam. “Can we say we are doing enough?”, he asked creating task forces and the like. Yet within a few weeks of Newtown over a 1,000 more were dead from gun violence. Nearly all of these are not of the national news making types involving one or two of someone’s father, mother, daughter, son, husband or wife. Never - the - less to each family and circle of friends and acquaintances the death represents a devastating disaster. Every two years there is another Vietnam’s worth of carnage with no national memorials erected only exhortations from the NRA to buy more guns, presumably to protect yourself from suicide or in an argument to enable the wife to shoot the husband first…. 

A DISTRAUGHT FATHER IN SANTA BARBARA TELLS IT ALL

Mr. Martinez, a bereaved father of the Santa Barbara massacre, over the body of his slain son, tearfully exclaimed, “Why did Chris die? Chris died because of craven, irresponsible politicians and the NRA,” he said. “They talk about gun rights. What about Chris’s right to live? When will this insanity stop? When will enough people say, ‘Stop this madness; we don’t have to live like this?” He responded to politicians who were sympathetic by telling them he didn’t want their sympathies he wanted action.

Mr. Martinez summed up in a few sentences the whole inexorable mess this country finds itself in a whole host of disparate issues from gun rights, to contraception, to taxation, to a minimum wage, to health care, to equal rights for women, immigration, the death penalty, paying twice as much for medicines made in America as in they do in Canada, to mention just a few of the “madnesses”. As he says, ‘Stop this madness; we don’t have to live like this’. 

FOLLOW THE MONEY NOT THE CARNAGE

What all these issues have in common are powerful pressure groups supporting them, inevitably these are associated with vast sums of money. Several of these like gun control, minimum wage and equal pay for women have 70% - 75% public support but the “craven irresponsible politicians” are not interested. (Remember the Republicans are banking on a low turn out of 40% in the November elections and don’t forget that 25% of the electorate are their base, who are in favor of “this madness”. (Blog: 2014: DEMS and GOP’S Conflicting Strategies). The situation has become immeasurably worse now that the whole country can be bought by a few miserable billion dollars by a few miserable plutocrats.

The only relatively good news is that some big money is now chasing change in gun laws. The billionaire former Mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg has already had some success backing candidates who do support reform over those who proudly wear the badge of the NRA. He has vowed to continue but has a long long long way to go. Former Congressman Gabby Gifford, herself a victim, is also on the stump with husband Astronaut Kelly and their circumstances and status have gained donations and interest. Jim Brady who was wounded with President Reagan in an assassination attempt has worked long and hard for reform. He was rewarded by the introduction of the Brady Handgun Prevention Hand Gun Act in 1993 that introduced the background checks that are so sadly easy to evade. Even the near death of Reagan the Republican icon did not influence the NRA. Jim and Sarah Brady will welcome this new found support in their quest “to stop this madness”:.

And one tiny ray of sunshine the House of Representatives with support of some Republicans added a paltry $20 million to help the States with their background checks in the wake of Santa Barbara. There are also attempts to improve the currently inadequate mental health system where they is simply a glaring paucity of services to meet the needs. 

However, this will not do enough to stem the overall death rate from guns because although the high profile mass murders are often perpetrated by mentally ill patients the total deaths from these sick sordid senseless incidents represent a small percentage of the 30,000 deaths. But it will make a dent by cutting down the deaths from suicide for example.

PROBLEMS OF FIXING GUN CONTROL PIECEMEAL

What the public does not realize that there is either a quick fix to problems like gun control or the path to unravelling it is long and arduous. The quick fix would be for the “craven irresponsible politicians” to pass comprehensive legislation that would cover every aspect of gun control and provide the finance and infrastructure to do it. Also they would have to frame the legislation in such a manner that the current Supreme Court would not deem it unconstitutional to deprive citizens of their unfettered democratic right to buy AK47s to hunt!.

Otherwise the reformers have in addition to Federal Law, 50 States to contend with, who appear to be more concerned with, in the words of Mr. Martinez, “They talk about gun rights. What about Chris’s right to live?”. 

 Let one take the State of California that have, to quote the NRA, the most “liberal” gun laws  and they mean by “liberal”, strict. What could they have done to prevent the death of Mr. Martinez’s beloved son? In fact the police visited Mr. Rodgers, who perpetrated the Santa Barbara massacre, a short while before he committed these heinous crimes. It was a welfare check ignited by a worried family. The family had noted disturbing videos that he had put on U Tube relating to killings and suicide.  Even if the police had found the guns they could have done nothing as Rodgers had never been committed to a psychiatric institution or had been reported to have been psychotic by a registered therapist. (Even if he had there is nowhere near the infrastructure available throughout the country to process these reports and then set about removing these guns). 

Jay H. Ell was working in the ER one night when the Emergency Medical Services brought in a patient who had threatened to shoot himself. Everyone had got there in time but the police had no legal right to confiscate the gun! In earlier blogs Jay H. Ell outlined the technical and financial problems the provision of actually stopping those with mental disease who had manifested suicidal and or homicidal tendencies to not have weapons. Currently gun control is a sick joke. Even if you are not legally supposed to have one you can buy one at a gun show, for example. 

The recent show of heavy weapons by the militia defending the rights of Cliven Bundy to defy the Federal Government is yet another example that the sale of guns has gotten out of control.

“CRAVEN IRRESPONSIBLE POLITICIANS” NEED TO CHANGE THE PARADIGM

Without going into too much detail the gun control issue requires a complete change of paradigm where the various legislatures regard the owning of a gun as a privilege rather than a right. Gun ownership should not be a right that allows one theoretically and in practice to commit wholesale murder. If this approach is not adopted the ongoing massacre of innocents akin to a war will continue. Unless there is a change gun rights advocates are going to continue trump “Chris’s right to live.”  

The current interpretation by the Supreme Court, of the second amendment is incorrect, Jay H. Ell believes. It could not have been the intent of the Founding Fathers to give the unconditional right of all and sundry to bear muskets without interpreting that right without taking note of the conditional provision of being in the Militia.  The Amendment reads, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State”, then follows, “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed”. This right was for the militia not all and sundry.

Thus what is needed is the registering of every gun in the USA and proof from those who have them that they are entitled to have them. The onus should not be on law enforcement that you should not have a gun rather the onus should be on the citizen as to why he or she is fit to have a gun. Then, even if the criteria that one can have a weapon are liberal, in the accepted sense of the word, the onus is on the individual to show proficiency and if necessary psychiatric proof that they are able to use it for the purpose it was intended and to store it safely. The penalty for having a gun without a permit and not having regular proficiency checks should be harsh. 

All the rest is shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic.

Jay H. Ell is not to optimistic about any real change because at the end of the day the entrenched gun nuts and their “craven irresponsible politicians” will say, “You see Mr. Martinez, all Obama wants to do is to take away our guns. Just think that if your Chris would have had an AK47 he could have blasted Elliot Rodger off the face of the earth before he let loose………” .

Apparently three hundred million guns in the community aren’t enough for the NRA and their “craven irresponsible  politician” backers who yearn for a rebirth of the Wild West where everyone needed guns and issues were resolved in a neighborly fashion with shoot outs. No need for big government rather settle problems locally.