Motley Moose – Archive

Since 2008 – Progress Through Politics

The Public Conversation on Gun Violence

Tags:

As Vice President Biden continues his work in an attempt to move the gun issue forward and the NRA continues its work to arm teachers, the country as a whole is advancing the topic in small and large ways. Joe Scarborough on Morning Joe once again this morning provided, at least to the largely liberal MSNBC audience, an example of a very conservative former politician who understands the realities of the issue in America today.

Meanwhile, Moose Bill McGee (bam) was on the Ed Show on MSNBC representing the position of parents who would rather not have armed teachers in their children’s classrooms. Bill does a very Moosely job of respecting the other opinions but nonetheless providing well articulated reasons why armed teachers in classrooms is not a viable solution to gun violence. Bill’s interview begins right at the 6-minute mark in the video below.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

This issue is not going away, no matter what the NRA has to say about it. 85% of Americans today want to have universal background checks for gun purchases, 75% want restrictions on the size of magazines. Regardless of the mechanisms agreed to attempt to address the issue it seems apparent that the usual roadblocks to discourse are coming down.

What do you think, Moose and lurkers? Is this nothing more than the circular firing squad we are all so familiar with, where pies fly like (well, bullets) in any conversation anyone tries to have?

I don’t think so.

Gun debates are something I have long ago chosen not to engage in, other than for sheer entertainment purposes. But this time is different. It isn’t just Sandy Hook and Aurora and all the others. It isn’t just the NRAs move to move away from its roots as a membership organization to become in recent years the official marketing arm of weapons manufacturers. There is something very different about the debate this time, and in part I think it is related to the fact that today so many hundreds of millions of Americans have access to so much more information and such a different way to share it.

This time I think there will be change, and I think it will come with overwhelming support from not only liberals but from the vast bulk of the middle and a surprising slice of the Right who represent not Doomsday Preppers but hunters and other gun owners.

[Update] Below is a fairly large section of the conversation on Morning Joe this Friday. A very good watch to see the problems the GOP has with this issue. In my opinion, Joe Scarborough’s comments forecast the GOP we will see evolve in coming years. You can hold me to that later.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy


Categories: Uncategorized.

/ 49 Comments

49 comments

  1. fogiv

    …but you know what did it for me?

    But this time is different.

    When the POTUS read the names of those little children, and he said ‘Jack’.  Literally knocked the wind out of me.  My Jack is four.

    Photobucket

  2. Kysen

    another Moose does good! I think Bill did a great job articulating his opinion on the subject (if a teacher has access to a gun…then students have access to a gun).

    I commented in another diary recently on the need for (and support of) gun regulation.

    Rage had described how he, as a responsible gun owner, is able to see the need for more gun control regulations. He is supportive of national training and more stringent licensing. He is part of the majority (of non-gun owners and gun owners alike).

    Here my reply:

    The reality is that the VAST majority of gun owners are like you, Rage.

    The problem is that it is not REALITY that is controlling this issue….it is MONEY.

    As long as the NRA is as well-funded as it is (and is thereby able to well-fund politicians to keep them in their pockets)…I just don’t see much progress happening.

    Sadly, it does not matter what the MAJORITY wants as long as the MONEY wants something else.

    I am more confident now than I have been in a very long time that something may actually happen…but, I don’t know exactly how confident that is. I see the MONEY fighting tooth and nail in opposition…and I’m not so sure that the MONEY will be defeated.

    If something IS done…I hope it is not weak sauce that is touted as being some huge accomplishment (or, from the opposite end, vilified as being some huge attack on the Constitution).

    I think that we have the opportunity here to take huge steps in gun control. Background checks for ALL. More licensing. Closing the Gun Show loop holes on a National level. Stronger penalties for lack of responsible gun ownership.

    Let’s hope that the Obama Administration is able to wind its way through the firing squad that is sure to ensue. Let’s hope that something substantial makes its way into law…because if it does not happen now, I don’t know that it will ever happen (until, god forbid, something WORSE than the mowing down of 20 pre-schoolers happens).

    Sorry for the ramble.

    Carry on….

  3. princesspat

    The thought of armed teachers in their classrooms is horrifying to me, and would be to their parents as well.

    I grew up on a ranch in southern Nevada with a gun rack in nearly every pickup truck. I was always afraid….The only time I ever felt safe around guns was with my grandfather, a wise and cautious man who literally fed his family with his gun and his garden. After his passing his guns went to my brother, also a wise and cautious man. But his troubled stepson stole them and sold them…..so who knows where those guns are now. I pray they have caused no harm.

    I was at my grand children’s school on that horrible day last month, and as I watched them cross the street so carefully, keeping themselves safe just as they have been taught to do, I quietly and privately sobbed with grief…and then I cared for them, trying not share my fear.

  5. ragekage

    The Congress certainly isn’t going to get anything done. Too many folks in the pockets of the gun lobby- same with a number of other issues.

    I think that doing what he can- strengthening the mental health connections, etc- will actually help, luckily. I worked with the chairman of the Commonwealth of Virginia’s Virginia Tech Massacre task force, and that was probably the key thing- the folks in Fairfax, where Cho was from didn’t talk to the folks in Blacksburg, and nobody talked to the mental health facility Cho was committed to at one point.

    I say that as a gun owner who would absolutely be against things like restricting or trying to register ammunition and some other proposals I’ve heard of. I own several weapons, including the civilian version of the M-14 rifle the military still uses. But I bought that for practical reasons- unlike the M-16 knockoffs available, this is a marksmanship rifle you can use for sport shooting and hunting, the ammunition of of a caliber that allows me to do both. I’d be hard pressed to support a whole lot of aggressive actions beyond what the President could do right now.

    I’ve said it before, too, I would not be opposed to a national marksmanship or safety program one would have to undertake, much like getting a driver’s license to drive a car, for owning a gun. That would avoid registering guns and such, which would mollify many of my friends’ “they’re going to take our guns!” moans. I also would be in favor of a law where if your gun isn’t properly secured, and is stolen or you loan it to someone and they commit a crime/kill someone with it, you’re equally liable for the crime (or it’s a felony or some such thing). Darn well would be sure people would take locking up their firearms real serious-like.

  6. DTOzone

    85% of Americans today want to have universal background checks for gun purchases, 75% want restrictions on the size of magazines.

    And yet Republicans will win 45%-50% of the vote anyway.

    Incidently, i think the direction we’re going in is one where parts of the country go one way and other parts go another. New York is likely to pass some, if not all, of Gov. Cuomo’s gun reforms, while Ohio puts guns in the hands of school janitors (fucking geniuses).

    That’s also why I think ultimately the country will begin to break apart as regionalism sets in and in policy, we drift farther apart.

    In the meantime, we’re likely to continue having discussions like the one I had today;

    “No one gets murdered in Switzerland, that’s because everyone has a gun”

    “They don’t in England either, and no one has guns”

    “They also don’t have the animals we have in America”

    whatever the fuck that means.  

  7. Chris Blask

    I added an entire 23 minute section of today’s Morning Joe to the article above. There are so many pertinent sections to it that I think it is worth listening to in total, and I am likely to post a few subclips in the comments.

    Here is Joe Scarborough stating a very responsible Republican position, which I believe will be what the post-Tea Party politicians succeed with.

    Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

  8. JanF

    on my drive home tonight. He talked about how the automobile industry, back when he first went into Congress, were much like the gun industry now: heavily lobbied up and not even letting the government collect data on car accidents and what caused people to die in crashes. When Congress finally passed laws to enable the NTSB to collect statistics they found that most deaths were from steering wheels crushing people’s chests. So they implemented safety regulations which included collapsible steering columns and saved lives.

    Right now the NRA is not allowing the CDC to collect even the most basic data about gun deaths. There may be things that can be done to make firearms safer and the NRA will not even let the government collect information. I believe that is one of the areas that President Obama is talking about might be included in an executive order.

    So far what I hear makes me hopeful. To me it boils down to one thing: will the NRA membership, responsible gun owners, tell the NRA that they do not speak for them when they are against sensible policies. We already know that the people funding the NRA doesn’t want them to back down.

  9. kirbybruno

    if they are suggesting all kinds of batshit crazy stuff, so the status quo will revert back to being acceptable.  

    It’s good to see the beginnings of some productive and calm discussion happening though. I hope you are right.

  10. justme

    Earlier this evening, while browsing my FB, I saw with my own eyes the sexualization of guns in the form of a brilliant, talented, gorgeous, beautiful former student of mine now in grad school and bragging about her guns while multiple male posters lay in wait for her to finally dump that boyfriend of hers and run off with them.

    Such a talented, beautiful girl, and so, so smart, a young Native girl with so much promise, but so many issues with addiction and with coming to terms with her own beauty.

    I read her postings and found myself thinking that her gun-talk was a way of grabbing at externalized power instead of sitting down and doing the hard work of coming to terms with just how brilliant and beautiful and powerful she is in and of herself, and completely lacking the need for externalized power of any sort.

    I grew up with guns. The household I was raised in hunted regularly, and I’ll happily admit I benefited in many ways from that. While everyone else was eating macaroni and cheese, we were feasting on venison chili and prairie chickens, and it was a good way to eat.

    I’ve never shot a gun, however, and have been witness to the abuse of guns on personal, professional and general levels.

    I have extremely mixed feelings on the subject, iow. I would be more open to gun ownership, I suppose, if I didn’t see instances of guns used as a source of power in cases when the gun-owner was unable to own their own power, as is the case with my former student.

    Yes. This is a conversation we need to have. I can’t say much more right now, however, because my own feelings are a convoluted mess of much too strong and much too mixed.

  11. canadian gal

    Maybe it’s because I’m Canadian. Maybe it’s because I’m a urbanite. Maybe it’s because I’m a pacifist or because I’m sane. Why would anyone other than law enforcement need a gun? (Other than hunting rifles)

  12. melvin

    Guess what, I don’t preface it with this nonsense about the 2nd etc. The only thing I even relate to in the least is the hunting part, which I consider a revolting atavism, a sign of mental disorder in itself even though in the distorted reality in which I find myself I let people hunt on my land. I have to, since the predators have been extinguished.

    Guns have no more place in our world than buggy whips or whalebone corset stays. My starting position, from which we can possibly compromise, is seize them all and melt them all down. Fuck a bunch of second amendment reasonable discussion blah blah blah.

  13. hubiestubert

    Most is useless, because, ultimately, the discussion is not about guns, but rather is about crime. And in fairness, the discussion needs to be about crime. Violent crime. The difficulty is that the debate is framed around the tools, and that is where a serious discussion about the word of the nation get sort of derailed. They get derailed into a discussion not about the real issue–which is crime and safety–but into a discussion that spends a lot of time collating statistics and figures that are ultimately useless.

    Crime in Britain is not crime in the US. Or Sweden. Or Japan. In part because there are other issues at work. Health care, social safety net, demographics, social justice issues, economic mobility–all of these factor in beyond the tools. That, in fairness, is more the metric we need to be focusing on. Why folks turn to violent crime. What factors drive folks. These are far harder questions, with less than easy solutions, and certainly without easy catch phrases, and far harder to get folks fired up by.

    Both sides in most gun control debates are really talking about crime. And let themselves get derailed from substantively discussing the issue, by folks who want easy solutions. That is the myth at the heart of the gun control debate: that there is some sort of easy fix. And it’s systemic at this point, and exploited by various factions on both sides of the aisle that really would rather have a discussion on tools, than the harder discussion about fairness in our economy, drug and justice policy, mental and physical health care, because the real discussion is a LOT harder, and would derive far less in donations than a hot button discussion to drive campaigns.

    We need to, as a nation, frame this discussion better. Not simply a matter of guns, but why folks turn to crime, about mental health, about safety and simple licensing to insure that responsible folks have access to legal arms, and that folks with mental illness or felony records are kept from arms. We need to stop hot button “assault weapons” discussions that poorly define arms. We need to stop feeding the fantasy life of “patriots” who define their patriotism by their willingness to clutch arms, and instead focus efforts on real issues to reduce crime: education, social justice, economic mobility, and ending drug policy that fuels a prison industry that drains Federal and state coffers.

    Until we can better frame the debate, it only serves to distract from the real difficulties. It’s not about guns alone: it is a matter of crime, and allowing lobbyists to frame the debate is keeping us from having a real discussion–and instead only serves to distract and extract cash from pockets on both sides of the issue–and making it a issue of polarity as opposed to the complex issue it actually is.

Comments are closed.