This Gun-Nut has had enough. Part 2
In case you missed it, part 1 can be read here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10021982971 I'd ask that you read that one first to see where I'm coming from.
This is going to be long, as I want to be detailed as I possibly can.
As many of you here, I had trouble sleeping last night. We are all juggling a huge mix of emotions, from despair and sadness, to anger and rage. All rightly so. Those emotions show that we feel, that we are human, and that we care. There are those (many here) who say we should not politicize this tragedy, that we should not discuss gun control right now. That we should wait for our emotions to settle before we have the discussion. Bullshit. There have been too many (1 is too many), incidents in the past few years that have happened where we did not have the discussion while our emotions were hot. Problem is, we never had the discussion. We moved on, we slowly filed it into the back of our minds and carried on like it did not happen. I can't stand for this any longer. The time is NOW to have the discussion. The time is NOW to begin taking action.
I have been thinking throughout the evening and this morning about what can be done. If I were king for a day, what would I do? I'll fully admit that I do not have all the answers. But, as with all of you, I know what happened, I know that something needs to be done and I know that the only way to get things done is to have the discussion. There is not going to be any one size fits all solution to the problem, but there are measures that we can take (some without even requiring legislation) that can be done today, or get the wheels rolling on tomorrow.
I'm sitting here with Chris Hayes on in the background. There are a lot of ideas being thrown out this morning. There are some that I wish they would bring up, but they are absent. But overall, what I feel is that all of these ideas should be examined. Now if you read my other post you would know that I am a gun owner. I'm more than aware that owning guns is not an unlimited right. There are several things that I feel would be reasonable that we as a nation could come up with that can help reduce gun violence in this nation. In my last sentence I used the word "reasonable". I rarely use that word as it is subjective, so to further define what I mean; I feel that reasonable is an agreement that is acceptable to all parties involved. So with every solution that I propose, I will make an honest attempt to show what the idea is, how I feel that it will have an effect on crime and how it does not violate anyone's civil rights.
I have been studying violence in the nation for some time, with an emphasis on gun violence. What I found is that there is not a one size fits all cause or solution to gun violence in this nation. There are many root causes to why people commit violence with a firearm. However, they all have one thing in common. They all used a gun. I have no illusions as to where criminals get guns. The vast majority of firearms work their way from the legal market to the black market. There are some guns that make their way here from overseas, and as of right now, I have no solutions for that.
For the legal market, there are controls that we could put in place that would, in my opinion, stem or greatly reduce the flow of firearms into the black market.
From the executive branch, I have an issue with the ATF. I feel that in the past this department was in ways misguided to say the least. With any agency, they are judged by their numbers. The volume of fines, arrests, etc. are the metric that is used to measure their performance. My issue with this, is that in my opinion it promotes the practice of picking as much low hanging fruit as possible. So what you had happening is thousands of guns every year finding their way to the black market, while the agency in charge of enforcement was focusing on paperwork not the illegal flow of firearms. Even ATF agents, these fine folks saw the issues, tried to take it up the chain of command, however were met with punishment. It got so bad that ATF agents had set up a website to fix the ATF and talk about all of the problems within the agency. You know its bad when you have so many agents putting their job on the line to put the truth out there. It got so bad that congress tried to castrate the department.
The majority of guns used in crime (30%) were never purchased legally. Either the gun shop or purchaser were engaged in illegal activity. This can be fixed tomorrow. Of the 30% of those guns that made their way into the criminal market, the vast majority come from only 8% of guns shops in the nation. So if you have a small minority selling the majority of illegal guns, you know where to focus your efforts. You know where to put your people. Give them different metrics to measure their performance and come down hard on those violating the law. Why do we allow time after time for a straw purchaser to walk? You may remember Mark Manes; he illegally purchased firearms that were used in the Columbine massacre. Straw purchasing has a sentence of up to 10 years in jail. He however spent only 19 months in jail. Yep... that's it. Just over a year and a half. This is completely unacceptable and needs to change. In my opinion 10 years is too nice. 20 years with a 15 minimum, plus accessory charges if the gun is used in a crime. This goes for the straw purchaser. For the dealer, up to life. Personally, I think you send enough folks away the message will get out. But the ATF needs some teeth and the resources to get it done.
Straw purchasing is a tough one. But I do have an idea on that one. All firearm sales have to accompany a background check. This works in my state, I know that it will be difficult in the larger states. But on this I really do not care. You want to buy a gun from your neighbor and you two live 200 miles away from the closest place to have a background check done. Tough shit. Gas is expensive, so you should carpool and use the HOV lane. It is not an undue burden.
To further on straw purchasing. Mandatory reporting of stolen firearms. I have been against this in the past, but my objections were were in the details, not the idea. Every time this bill comes up in my state, the language of the bill is destined to fail. For example: If a home is broken into, and a gun stolen while the family was out of town, the owner could face felony charges simply because they did not report the theft soon enough. In the bill that came through you had two days from the theft to report it. Simply I feel that it should be mandatory that you report it in a reasonable (as a court would view) period of time from when the theft was discovered. The major "out" that straw purchasers use is that the gun was "stolen". You report a stolen gun, the police investigate the theft. You report a second stolen gun, the police investigate you. I am cautious about a victims being investigated, but this is an easier and acceptable price to pay. This I feel will reduce the practice of straw purchasing.
Licensing for ownership. You want to own a gun, get a license. For that license you will seek education, you will be tested and will have to renew it. I know this is a tough one. How can I support licensing a right? I'm sure I'll hear about how we don't have a license or a test before we can vote. We don't have a license or test to speak in public. We spend our entire youth in school, learning political science, languages, civil rights, etc... Sure we don't have to pass a test to vote or speak, sure we don't need a license. But this license should act as your eligibility under current law, and should be the reference of your background check. That license is revoked instantly on a disqualifying conviction. Suspended instantly on a protective order. This license if you have one, is what law enforcement will use to remove your firearms stemming from a conviction or temporarily seized stemming from a protective order.
The assault weapons ban. In the old ban, the vast majority of the restrictions in my opinion were cosmetic. I'm willing to look at the issue of magazine size restrictions however. This was the one piece that I feel was not cosmetic. What that number should be or why I have no answer. Should it be the standard size of 30, or cut that in half to 15 or 10? I don't know. I have read tales of people defending themselves against someone on drugs where the bad guy was shot upwards of 10 times and was still coming. I read the story of a police officer who encountered a violent individual, who was not on drugs or alcohol yet this guy was shot with 17 rounds before he stopped. IIRC, he lived for another 4 minutes or so. So I don't know. Would limiting a firearm to 10 rounds (seems to be the number some states use), be appropriate action? Would this have helped in all mass shootings? No. Could it reduce the lethality of some, perhaps. I feel that the discussion needs to happen.
War on drugs... We need to have an open and honest discussion on our nation's drug policy. Up to 80% (according to the FBI) of violent crime in this nation is gang/drug related. America has spent $1.5 trillion dollars on the war on drugs. But today, the exact same percentage of Americans are addicted to drugs. Drugs are a $32billion industry in this nation. This industry exists solely in the illegal market. Those running this industry want to protect their money, their supply, their turf and their members. They will rob, steal, or kill to protect their piece of the industry. These gangs, are expanding their enterprises into human and gun trafficking. We should take away their money, we should cut off their funding, we should cut the head off this snake and end the fucking war on drugs. Take the budget for the war, cut it in half and use the funding to treat, educate and help those who need it. This one will be too hard for the Republicans. There is a lot of money to be made in gearing up for this war on drugs, and they prefer to declare war on someone rather than help them. 20% of every corner convenience store in this nation was robbed last year. Of those violent encounters the motive was money for drugs. Of those violent encounters the majority were high or drunk at the time. 65% of the deaths in those encounters were senseless. Meaning that the victim, gave up the money, cooperated with the robber, yet for reasons unknown they were still murdered. We need to take a long and hard look at our drug policy. I feel that we can cut murder in at least half if not more.
Mental health. This issue has been on the news all morning. I agree, that we need to remove the stigma that seems to hang over mental health issues. I'm not a psychiatrist, so I cannot speak on the issue, but there are people that need help and are afraid, or ashamed to seek it out. This is unacceptable, but I'm unsure how to fix it. If you look at all of the shootings recently, all of the shooters have had some form of mental illness. If we help them before they even want to pick up a weapon, then we will have saved lives. This would be an impossible metric to measure, but I feel that if we have the help available and the mechanisms to offer that help this would be my measure of success.
In this country we have to stop with our violent rhetoric. We have a problem... Instead of admitting we have a problem, we declare war on it. Like it is something that we can just kill. War on drugs, poverty, terror, illiteracy, every damn thing you can think of. Our drug problem, our poverty problem... A problem begs to be solved, a war begs to kill something. Sabrina 1 said it better than I could so I ask that you read this: http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=1981663
Existing laws. We have thousands of laws on the books in relation to firearms ownership, distribution and use. Laws have no teeth if they are never or rarely prosecuted. We as a country need to stop the practice of dropping gun charges, or failing to go after the supply. This needs to stop.
At the end of the day, I just want to have an adult conversation on this topic for once. These events are "rare" if you look at the whole, but when you look at the rest of the world, they are not so rare. Rare does not count in this or any case for that matter. The effect they have on all of our lives is too great to ignore. At this school, there are hundreds of people who have to bear an incredible and unnecessary burden. A burden that these people will have to carry with them to the grave. You have 26 lives that were stopped short, the students that survived, hundreds of family members of both victims and survivors, hundreds of police, investigators, medics, fire fighters, detectives, etc... All of these people will be irreparably effected by this event.
This is not a number, this is real.
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