Terrorism on American Soil

by Walter Brasch

      During this past week a three-year-old boy in Rock Hill, S.C., killed himself when he was playing with a loaded gun in his house.

      He wasn’t the only one in Rock Hill to die from a gunshot. In July, a man killed himself after shooting his wife, her son and the son’s girlfriend. The following month, someone killed a 30-year-old woman; someone else that same week killed a 27-year-old man.

      Rock Hill, a city of about 66,000 is not unique.

      About 2,700 children are killed every year from gunshot violence; about 60 percent of them are homicides, the rest are suicides or unintentional deaths, such as that of the three-year-old. Every year, another 15,000 youth are wounded from gun fire. Overall, about 33,000 die from gunshot violence; 76,000 are injured from gunshot violence, according to data compiled by the Brady Center. The names, faces, and lives of everyone killed or injured just blend into tables of statistics.

      Articles in the Journal of Trauma, Injury, Infection and Critical Care reveal an even greater problem. The rate of gun violence leading to death is about 20 times greater than the combined rates of the next highest 22 first world countries. More than 1.7 million American homes have unlocked and loaded guns; the probability that one of those guns will be used in a murder, suicide, domestic dispute, or unintentional shooting is about 22 times more likely than if there was no gun in the house, according to a study led by Dr. Arthur Kellerman, dean of the School of Medicine at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Science.

      The leadership of the NRA doesn’t want anyone anywhere for any reason to mess with its militant stand to allow Americans to own and use guns. They wrap themselves within the cloth of the Second Amendment to advance their arguments and pander to the masses, never understanding that there are limits and exceptions to most of the amendments.

      The paranoid conspiracy-clad leadership, along with their allies and followers, believe civilians need weapons to protect themselves against possible government invasions. That scenario is in the netherland of impossibility, but even if true, anyone with a semi-automatic rifle has little chance against an army of tanks, drones, and missiles.

      The NRA leadership says, apparently not recognizing the absurdity of their statements, that President Obama is coming for your guns. He hasn’t done so in seven years; he won’t do so in his last year in office. But the fear the NRA and its allies spew is more than just blustering rhetoric; it is based upon profits. Every time there is a mass shooting, the gun industry sends out that message. Dealers sell more guns to frightened Americans. This benefits the gun manufacturers, which create more guns to meet more demand, leading to more donations by manufacturers and the public to the NRA and fellow gun lobbyists, and which finds its way to politicians who puff out their chests, claim to believe the Second Amendment is absolute, develop acute panic attacks when all reasonable measures to limit guns are presented, and become part of the reason why there are so many guns and so many gun deaths in the United States.

      Technology exists to mass produce “smart guns” that won’t fire unless they’re in the possession of the owner. The NRA opposes this. Technology exists to code every bullet, which would help law enforcement to better identify who might have killed or wounded 110,000 people every year. The NRA also opposes this.

      The NRA leadership claims the solution to gun violence is better psychological evaluation. But, their paid-for politicians generally don’t like social service programs, especially those that are funded by the taxpayers. More important, the NRA leadership, all of them conservatives, can’t explain how mass psychological evaluations don’t violate the Constitution.

      However, 72 percent of NRA members want stronger background checks before anyone can legally buy a gun, according to a poll by the Center for American Progress. Overall, about 83 percent of Americans want stronger background checks.

After every mass shooting, whether in schools, malls, or theaters, Americans cry, and politicians send crocodile-tear condolences to the media, which then amplify their words, as if they all care about the victims. But, the gun manufacturers, the NRA, the politicians, and the media don’t care. They just go through the motions of pretending they do.

      In Texas, a paranoid state senator, proudly sporting a perfect score by NRA criteria, this past week said he opposed having Syrian refugees admitted into the United States because they might buy guns and commit acts of terrorism. He said it was too easy to get guns, but he has also spent his political career opposing responsible gun control measures.

      This past week in Minneapolis, police arrested three White supremacists who shot five Afro-Americans at a peaceful protest rally; each of the shooters was carrying a legally-purchased gun. In New Orleans, 17 people at a park were injured by gunfire; witnesses identified one of the shooters as having a silver-colored machine gun. In Biloxi, Miss., a man pulled a concealed 9 mm. gun and killed a waitress who had asked him not to smoke in the restaurant. In Colorado Springs, police arrested a 57-year-old man who used an AK-47 semi-automatic assault rifle to kill three people and wound nine others. One of those killed was a police officer; five of the wounded are police officers. (Three weeks earlier, in Colorado Springs, a man with a semi-automatic rifle killed three people before being killed by police.)

      Next year, when we gather with our families to celebrate Thanksgiving, those of us still alive might wish to give thanks that we weren’t killed intentionally or accidentally by someone wielding one of the 300 million guns that Americans cling to as if they were the essence of their own lives.

[Dr. Brasch is an award-winning journalist and the author of 20 books, most of which fuse history and contemporary social issues; his most recent book is Fracking Pennsylvania. He readily admits to being a mediocre trap shooter.]

Packing Heat in the Brothers’ ’Hood

by Walter Brasch

     A group of white gun-rights advocates plan to sling rifles, shotguns, and semi-automatic assault weapons onto their bodies, and walk through a Black neighborhood in Houston.

     What could possibly go wrong with that?!

     The march through Houston’s Fifth Ward is planned for August 16 to educate Texans about their rights to openly carry firearms.

     To deflect criticism that the march is racially-insensitive, the testosterone-enhanced group, apparently with straight faces to hide its freeze-dried minds, says all it wants is for racial equality.

     It says because the state charges $250 for a gun permit, it unfairly discriminates against Blacks who have twice the poverty rate as Whites, and that’s why the Whites are going to march in a Black neighborhood.

     Not only are these civil rights leaders going to “help” the Blacks, they even found a Black to march with them.

     That Black is Maurice Muhammad, who believes it’s acceptable to kill police officers, and who has openly called for a race war in the country.

     The leader of the march is C.J. Grisham, who won’t be carrying a concealed weapon. Whatever he carries will be out in the open. That’s because he has a criminal record that forbids him from carrying a concealed weapon. His conviction stems from an incident in 2013 when he carried an AR-15 on an urban hike with his teenage son—because, you never know when a herd of feral kittens will attack you. His hike occurred not far from Fort Hood where, in 2009, an Army officer launched an assault that left 13 dead and 30 wounded.

     A police officer stopped Grisham; he resisted. In Texas, it’s legal to openly carry semi-automatic assault weapons; it is not legal to resist arrest and attack police officers. Grisham was so upset that his most sacred of all rights—the right to openly be stupid—was violated that he created Open Carry Texas. A jury later found him guilty of interfering with the duties of a police officer. He was fined $2,000, the maximum penalty.

     Between arrest and conviction, he and his newly-formed posse decided that because Texas allows the open display of weapons of semi-mass destruction they would just go to a few department stores and restaurants, carrying their big boy toys. As expected, customers panicked, and store managers asked them not to take their guns to town. Naturally, CJ and his hole-in-the-head gang had to explain their rights under Texas law, leading to headlines and a PR disaster. A couple of months later, because sometimes it takes awhile to realize the implications of mental derangement, OCT announced it wouldn’t unleash its arsenal on Chuckie Cheese. Grisham told the Dallas News the reason was because “the gun-control extremists had hijacked our photos, and it was taking away from the focus of our mission.” Apparently, Grisham didn’t mind terrorizing Texas citizens; he did mind that liberals had pictures of what he was doing. Nevertheless, for those who miss being terrorized by nimrods showing off their phallic symbols, they can just show up at the Almeda or Galleria malls near Houston every Saturday morning.

     Grisham continued his somewhat uncivil protest at a Veteran’s Day celebration at the state capitol in Austin. The Texas legislature and the executive branch oppose all them gal-dang lib’ral gun control freaks who cite statistics like how the more than 330,000 Americans were killed in the first decade of the 21st century, more than 20 times greater than all the deaths in 22 countries that are closest to the U.S. in wealth and population. They dismiss statistics that reveal there is a 22 times greater possibility of death by firearms if a home has a gun as opposed to one that doesn’t have a gun. They sneer at the facts there are more pre-school children are killed by guns than police officers killed in the line of duty.

     These heavily-lobbied legislators believe everyone has a constitutional right to carry and shoot off their mouths or someone else’s legs. But, they also believe there shouldn’t be any guns in the Texas capitol. It’s a survival issue—if the press, visiting school children, and cantankerous legislators all had guns, within a few months there would have to be new elections to replace those who gave their lives for the cause of gun rights advocacy.

     The cost to taxpayers of interim elections is a problem for a state that has willingly accepted being under siege by the Tea Party whackadoodle brigade whose mantra of “no guvmint; no taxes” is its justification for whatever it’s trying to justify.

     Grisham was politely told three times by police to remove his handgun; three times he explained, in a way that family newspapers can’t reproduce exactly, how he had his rights. Grisham is now trying to convince the Texas legislature that openly carrying handguns, just like in the Wild West, is also the citizens’ rights.

     Would there be the same level of Second Amendment concern if a Black or Hispanic gang strapped on weapons and marched through white suburbia— just peaceful-like, y’know. Just to educate the folk about the right to carry guns.

     [Dr. Brasch, an award-winning journalist, is author of 20 books, including Fracking Pennsylvania, an overall view of the health, environmental, political, and economic issues.]

NRA Liars and Congressional Cowards

 by Walter Brasch

President Obama cast off his “No Drama Obama” garb, and became the fiery leader of hope and change that Americans first elected in 2008. At a speech in Hartford, Conn., the President, frustrated by Republican obstructionism, demanded of his audience, “If you believe that the families of Newtown and Aurora and Tucson and Virginia Tech and the thousands of Americans who have been gunned down in the last four months deserve a vote, we all have to stand up.” He demand, “If you want the people you send to Washington to have just an iota of the courage that the educators at Sandy Hook showed when danger arrived on their doorstep, then we’re all going to have to stand up.”

He wanted the people to let Congress know it was “time to require a background check for anyone who wants to buy a gun so that people who are dangerous to themselves and others cannot get their hands on a gun.” He wanted the people to let Congress know, “It’s time to crack down on gun trafficking so that folks will think twice before buying a gun as part of a scheme to arm someone who won’t pass a background check.” He asked the people “to tell Congress it’s time to restore the ban on military-style assault weapons, and a 10-round limit for magazines, to make it harder for a gunman to fire 154 bullets into his victims in less than five minutes.” He pleaded that the people “have to tell Congress it’s time to strengthen school safety and help people struggling with mental health problems get the treatment they need before it’s too late.”

But, what he really wanted was a vote. A simple up-or-down vote. The people, said the President, at the very least “deserve a vote” not more obstructionism. 

Smirking with NRA drool slathering his five-term Senate body, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) wasn’t about to let that happen. He didn’t want a vote, even a watered down version that would have all the ferocity of a baby canary.

McConnell said he would filibuster all proposed legislation.

The Senate Republicans, who believe they’re the “law and order party,” have rolled over and allowed the NRA to pet them on their pork-bellied tummies. For more than three decades, the NRA and explosives manufacturers successfully lobbied Congress the to prohibit the use of taggants in explosives. These taggants would identify bombs before detonation and enable agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and explosives (ATF) to trace manufacturer and sale of the explosives after explosion. For six years, the NRA blocked the appointment of any nominee to head the ATF. With NRA paranoia guiding their own actions, the Republicans have also forbidden the ATF from creating a computerized database to better analyze and evaluate applications for firearms, and have left the ATF underfunded and undermanned. This would be the same ATF that, with fewer resources, now plays a major role in the Boston Marathon murders.

Five weeks after the murders in Newtown, the McConnell for Senate campaign told the voters they were “literally surrounded” by those who want to take their guns away. In a robocall to his constituents, he parroted the NRA erroneous claim that, “President Obama and his team are doing everything in their power to restrict your constitutional right to keep and bear arms.”  This would be the same senator who, in 1991, supported Joe Biden’s bill that led to a 10 year ban on semi-automatic and automatic weapons. This is the same senator who, in 1998, voted to support Barbara Boxer’s bill that required trigger locks for the purchase of every hand gun. In less than a decade, McConnell turned to the extreme Right and became little more than an NRA lackey, willing to wrap himself in a faulty interpretation of the Second Amendment and block the will of 90 percent of the American people, including a majority of all NRA members and gun owners.

Republic political strategist Karl Rove told journalist FoxNews reporter Chris Wallace, “People want this issue to be discussed, they want it to be decided and we don’t need to block everything in the Senate.” By a 68–31 vote, with 16 Republicans joining 52 Democrats, the Senate agreed to allow discussion on proposed gun control bills.

The first of several Senate bills, Wednesday, resulted in a 54–46 vote to expand background checks for gun purchases to include all internet and gun show sales, strengthen penalties for gun trafficking, and help fund additional school security. The bill, known as a compromise proposal, was sponsored by Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), both of whom carry “A” ratings by the NRA. Five Democrats voted against the bill; four Republicans voted for it.  However, because of the 60-vote rule invoked by the NRA-fed obstructionist Republicans, and agreed to by the Democrats, it failed. The NRA, exercising its usual fear-mongering tactics, spread a $500,000 robocall campaign the day of the vote, and claimed the bill would lead to a national gun registry; provisions in the bill specifically excluded that possibility. President Obama would later say that the “gun lobby and its allies willfully lied about the bill.”

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, on behalf of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, representing more than 900 American cities, called out the 46 senators who voted against the bill. “Today's vote is a damning indictment of the stranglehold that special interests have on Washington,” said Bloomberg. “More than 40 U.S. senators would rather turn their backs on the 90 percent of Americans who support comprehensive background checks than buck the increasingly extremist wing of the gun lobby.” Gov. Dan Malloy (D-Conn.) said the minority “who voted against this proposal should be ashamed of themselves.” aid the Senate had “ignored the will of the American people,” adding that those senators who voted against the expanded background checks chose to “obey the leaders of the powerful corporate gun lobby, instead of their constituents.” Former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who has spent two years in recovery from an attempted assassination, said the failure to pass meaningful legislation was “based on political fear and on cold calculations about the money of special interests like the National Rifle Association.”

In rapid succession, a ban on assault weapons, a ban on high-capacity gun magazines and a bipartisan compromise to expand background checks for gun purchasers all failed to get the 60 votes needed. Even a bipartisan amendment to impose stiff penalties on gun traffickers was defeated, receiving 58 votes.

New York, Colorado, and Maryland have all recently passed common-sense gun safety reforms without violating anyone’s Second Amendment rights. The people of this democracy demand better controls over who can own guns. But until the members of Congress develop that one iota of courage that President Obama asked for, the United States will continue to have the highest number of guns per population of 178 countries—and also rank among the world’s top 10 countries in the rate of deaths per population from guns.