No Bebop

So E.J. Dionne wants to know when — or if — Barack Obama will finally stand up to the gun lobby. As I mentioned earlier, there’s no real appetite among Democrats to take on our excessively permissive gun laws, even with today being the 10th anniversary of Columbine. Obama said during the campaign that he thinks we should reinstate the assault weapon ban, but when Attorney General Eric Holder said roughly the same thing — even in the context of American weapons fueling the Mexican drug massacres — the NRA fired a warning shot and, within days, Holder pulled back to the more NRA-friendly language of “enforcing the laws we already have.”

This is a time-honored talking point of the NRA. They battle every single common-sense law that is proposed, often successfully — bans on hollow-point bullets, assault weapons, requirements to report thefts of guns within 48 hours, one-gun-a-month laws, cracking down on gun show vendors who don’t report sales –  and then pretend we’re somehow awash in gun regulations that we “don’t enforce.”

Dionne notes that Holder received a letter from 65 Democrats demanding that the assault weapons ban not be revived, that these weapons were somehow demonized in the public eye, that the gun control advocates have “demonized” these guns, that they’re not automatic, that they only fire one bullet for each pull of the trigger. This was a group of 65 Democrats, mind you. Oh, I know there are a lot of Democrats representing rural areas and that the voters there are too easily gulled by the arguments of the NRA, not to mention the teabaggers and their overlords, that gun confiscation is just around the corner and that Democrats are the ones who will do it.

Can we agree that the Pittsburgh cop shooter had no business owning an AK-47 or a bulletproof vest, given his background as a prematurely discharged applicant (he assaulted a superior officer) for the Marine Corps? You do know that the AK is a weapon of war, right? And that somebody judged unfit for that line of work should have to demonstrate his responsibility with a Red Ryder air rifle before he’s allowed to graduate to an actual firearm.

The gun control argument has moved so far to the nutbar side that we’re seriously debating the right of college students to carry concealed weapons on campus. College campuses are already hotbeds of date rape, drug and alcohol abuse, and of course the emotional maturity of the kind of people who join fraternities is beyond reproach, so what could go wrong with this incredibly stupid idea, right?

Then there’s the demand for concealed carry rights in national parks — places where the need for self-defense is roughly on par with that of a preacher in the sanctuary conducting Sunday services. And don’t forget the Republicans are trying to strike down all of D.C.’s gun regulations by attaching an amendment to the D.C. voting rights law, because god forbid some idiot from Butte, Mont., be constrained from excercising his right to carry a concealed weapon into the U.S. Capitol visitors center.

Think of this — no gun regulations at all in the nation’s capital. Keep in mind that, in addition to the obvious — this being where the heads of the federal government conduct business — it’s also ground zero for international diplomats as well as a repository of large numbers of low-income people, a fair number of whom support themselves through illegal enterprises, from fencing stolen goods to selling drugs. And what the Republicans think is that we should make it easier for countries to litigate international disputes by kidnapping or killing each other’s ambassadors, for small-time criminals to harden their hold on poor neighborhoods, and for the kind of people too stupid to effectively organize a tea-party demonstration to walk around armed in the Capitol, White House and Supreme Court building.

Part of the problem is that gun advocates, who are quick to put cynical spin on scientific findings that show an armed society is less a polite society and more like Kabul, have a practically childlike view that armed citizens, pure of heart, can always repel armed criminals and everything will be hunky-dory. This is the sort of naivety that Second Amendment absolutists regularly attribute to gun control advocates. As any casual read of the literature will demonstrate, even people trained in the use of firearms do stupid things. It’s not rare, by any means, for off-duty police officers to be charged with abuses of their position involving firearms violations. Some of our mass killers are military veterans.

They also seem to think that possessing a gun somehow makes them invulnerable to an armed threat from a mugger, home invader or other disturbed person. The simple fact of the matter is that an armed aggressor will always get the drop on their victim because of the element of surprise. The person with a concealed carry on them might think they can turn the tables — it’s not unheard of, after all — but it’s far more likely any abrupt motion will cause the aggressor to shoot you.

Another of the gun advocate’s naive notions is demonstrated by this stupid notion, often contained in forwarded e-mails. It goes something like this: “I have a sign on my house that says ‘This house protected by Smith & Wesson.’ I challenge any liberal to put a sign on their house saying ‘There are no guns here.’”

The very first reason this is stupid is because police will tell you that the item most likely to be stolen in a burglary is a gun. And since some gun owners are stupid enough to leave their guns unsecured and loaded, burglars actually will be more dangerous coming out of the house than they were going in.

The second reason this is stupid is because a fair number of liberals own guns. Politics have little to do with whether people enjoy the various shooting sports, and just because someone grew up in a red state and went hunting twice a year doesn’t mean that person will automatically think the Iraq war was a good idea or that gay marriage somehow trivializes his own familial relationships. Also, being liberal doesn’t preclude someone carrying a handgun for self-defense — though it’s amazing that no mass shooter has ever left behind a written screed blaming Dick Cheney and Sean Hannity for destroying the country.

And the third reason the “protected by Smith & Wesson” trope is bullshit can be illustrated by this liberal’s well-considered reply. “Fine. I will put a sign on my house saying ‘No guns here,’ but only if your sign notes that you need a gun — or multiple guns — to defend your house because you have a home theatre system with a 50-inch plasma screen, two jewelry boxes filled with various diamonds and other precious stones, a pair of high-end laptop computers, a wall safe in which you keep large quantities of cash, and so on.”

The issues of whether there should be loopholes in the background check system, whether weapons of war should be available to any squack with a credit card, whether there should be stricter regulations on carrying firearms in a dense urban area than there are in the mountains of Idaho, are all perfectly reasonable concerns. They have nothing to do with “gun confiscation,” which nobody intends to do, and they are not inconsistent with the Second Amendment. The Bill of Rights is not absolute, as anybody who has ever studied the First Amendment knows. Freedom of speech does not protect a person who yells “fire” in a crowded theater, nor have libel and slander laws ever been found to violate the First Amendment. Similarly, freedom of religion did not prevent the state from forcing the Mormons into foreswearing polygamy, nor will your right to worship protect your indulgence in marijuana should you decide to join the Rastafarians.

So responsible exercise of Second Amendment rights is a valid concern of government, and the absolutist views of such folks as the NRA — to say nothing of the farther-right militia nuts whose views are hardened and encouraged by that organization — should be weighed against the preponderance of research and common sense.

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