“not something that we have ever fully come to terms with”

In light of the horrible massacre by an admitted racist and terrorist, President Obama has issued a renewed call for gun control.

“Unfortunately, the grip of the NRA on Congress is extremely strong,” Obama said in a clip of the interview with “WTF with Marc Maron” posted by the New York Times.

It was not the first time Obama has railed against the NRA. After the Newtown, Connecticut school massacre in 2012, a tragedy that Obama has called his toughest time in office, he pushed for changes to gun laws.

He proposed more background checks for gun sales and pushed to ban more types of military-style assault weapons and limit the capacity of ammunition magazines.

But he failed to convince enough lawmakers to support the restrictions.

“I don’t foresee any legislative action being taken in this Congress. And I don’t foresee any real action being taken until the American public feels a sufficient sense of urgency and they say to themselves, ‘This is not normal, this is something that we can change, and we’re going to change it,’” he said in the interview with Maron.

The U.S. constitution protects the right to own guns. Obama acknowledged in the interview that guns are an important part of many Americans’ heritage.

“It’s part of how they grew up, part of the bonding they had with their dad,” Obama said in the interview.

“The question is just: is there a way of accommodating that legitimate set of traditions with some common-sense stuff that prevents a 21-year-old who is angry about something or confused about something or is racist or is deranged from going into a gun store,” Obama said.

“That is not something that we have ever fully come to terms with,” he said.

OK, I realize this is an exercise in the ridiculous (after all I am only writing a blog post in a 12-year-old-blog suffering from years of neglect), but I am willing to attempt to come to terms with the question the president has raised.

First, I think the president ought to recognize that gun ownership is not an exclusively male phenomenon. Far from gun ownership being grounded in male bonding, statistics show that 23% of all women own guns.

Second, out of simple fairness, I think the president ought to recognize that while there never were and probably never will be laws preventing suspicious characters (whether they are angry racist nutjobs or not) from merely entering gun stores, there are, and were, laws intended to prevent this particular angry racist nutjob from buying the handgun many media stories continue to insist he bought legally.

The fact is, the man was a prohibited purchaser under existing gun laws. For whatever reason, neither the news media nor the president want to recognize that simple fact. Instead, they clamor for more laws.

What possesses them to imagine that an angry 21-year-old who burns the US flag, wants to start a race war, sees himself as a twisted sort of “Rhodesian” martyr, and is actually willing to go into a church and murder worshipers, would even consider obeying whatever additional laws they propose?

 

 


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24 responses to ““not something that we have ever fully come to terms with””

  1. captain*arizona Avatar
    captain*arizona

    Obama should put the nra on the terrorist organization list and do drone strikes on wayne lapierre and other nra supporters in congress.

  2. Simon Avatar

    captain,

    Do you think all gun rights organizations deserve that treatment?

    And why stop with the NRA?

    How about gun owners?

    I estimate that you would only have to kill between 150 million and 200 million Americans to get the utopia you want.

    Would it be worth it?

    And just to make the obvious obvious : /sarc.

  3. Simon Avatar

    And captain,

    What is even more ironic is that every time the President makes one of these calls gun and ammunition sales shoot through the roof.

  4. Stan Avatar
    Stan

    Captain, you’re awfully quick to support giving such a terrible power to the president. I guess that means in principle, you’d support a rightwing president’s drone strikes on abortion clinics.

    Not my cup of tea, but I hear North Korea might be more to your liking.

  5. CapitalistRoader Avatar
    CapitalistRoader

    The Captain would have made a fine henchman for Stalin. He was born 80 years too late.

  6. c andrew Avatar
    c andrew

    Oh, I dunno Stan,

    I understand that the little squib in NoKo has come up with a medical miracle pill that will cure SARS, AIDS, motion sickness and erectile dysfunction. I’m surprised he didn’t include baldness or bad haircuts.

    It’s possible that he’s cured E.D. After all, he is the world’s biggest dick and he’s standing more or less upright.

    (Note that I said IS, not HAS. Given his antics, I’m sure he’s compensating for a male member that requires a tweezers to stimulate it. Or find it for that matter.)

  7. Sigivald Avatar
    Sigivald

    the grip of the NRA on Congress is extremely strong

    Yeah, because their position is legitimately popular and NRA members vote.

    Want to know who has an even more iron-clad grip on Congress?

    The AARP.

  8. captain*arizona Avatar
    captain*arizona

    The blood of the newtown children is on the hands of the nra and still goes un punished.

  9. Randy Avatar
    Randy

    Shorter captain*Arizona:

    People who disagree with me should be shot.

    — That seems to be his level of commitment to the democratic process.

  10. chocolatier Avatar
    chocolatier

    I have yet to hear a good argument against universal background checks for gun buyers. The argument that mandatory background checks might lead to something else doesn’t fly with me. Anything Congress does could lead to something else.

  11. Sigivald Avatar
    Sigivald

    Chocolatier: I have yet to hear a good argument for it.

    Who cannot legally buy guns? Criminals and the involuntarily committed (mostly, but they’re the relevant ones).

    Criminals are already buying guns on the black market far more than “person to person at the wicked gun-show or want ads”, per even the BATFE or DOJ numbers.

    The involuntarily committed aren’t a huge problem on the non-dealer market, either, simply because there are honestly so few of them.

    (Note that of the “crazies” who have shot up a bunch of people lately, few if any were in that category; to poke at Mr. Troll’s point, the Newtown shooter killed his mother and stole her guns.)

    So what problem does it actually solve? It won’t prevent jack all in terms of actual criminal misuse of crimes.

    And “universal background check laws”, as we’ve seen in WA and are starting to see in OR, mostly seem to make normal, utterly innocent and non-criminal “transfers” between friends into criminal acts, without even the excuse of improving public safety.

    And of course, recall that people in power keep calling for things like gun registration schemes, which do in fact, in reality have the annoying tendency to lead to confiscation.

    Why should anyone trust them to not keep transfer/sale records and enact a registry?

    “They say they won’t” isn’t an excuse people take for things that poke at free speech or due process or freedom from search and seizure.

  12. chocolatier Avatar
    chocolatier

    The argument that Congress should not require background checks because criminals will not abide by such a law and get guns anyway is irrational. Using that logic, nothing should be illegal. Bank robbery is illegal, but people rob banks anyway. The fact that people rob banks despite the fact that bank robbery is illegal is not a rational argument for decriminalizing bank robbery.

  13. c andrew Avatar
    c andrew

    Chocolatier,

    Maybe this will help.

    Owning a gun is not a rights violation. It is not an act of aggression.

    OTOH Bank robbery is a rights’ violation. It is an act of aggression.

    If you stop conflating acts of aggression with acts of voluntary exchange you may find that it will clarify the issue.

  14. Man Mountain Molehill Avatar
    Man Mountain Molehill

    Just to play devil’s advocate, a private sale of a used car requires a bill of sale, paying excise tax, registering it and insurance. Why should gun sales be any different?

    (because the best kind of gun is one nobody knows you have)

  15. Man Mountain Molehill Avatar
    Man Mountain Molehill

    zonetard, make sure that drone strike includes the pink pistols and jewish gun owners of america.

  16. chocolatier Avatar
    chocolatier

    I still haven’t heard a good argument against universal background checks.

  17. Man Mountain Molehill Avatar
    Man Mountain Molehill

    Check for what? “Are you now or have you ever been a psychotic mass killer?”

    Exactly what good would a “universal background check” do? “Good” in the sense of a general benefit, not another layer of bureaucratic crap and more government intrusion and control. And why should I expect it to even work? Next time something happens you’ll all be asking for even more “common sense” gun control

    Of course, if that’s what you want…

    The Nazis used gun registry information from earlier regimes to round up guns and gun owners. More recently the RCMP mass-confiscated guns from Albertans. I don’t want even the possibility of something like that happening here.

    The only good gun control is a steady aim.

  18. Man Mountain Molehill Avatar
    Man Mountain Molehill

    I’ve got it! All we need to do is confine every potential gun buyer for a two week psychological evaluation before any gun purchase.

  19. Man Mountain Molehill Avatar
    Man Mountain Molehill

    After they take your guns they can take anything else they want.

    The best defense against armed crazy people is armed sane people.

  20. c andrew Avatar
    c andrew

    I think that we should have universal background checks before sexual congress is permitted. After all, sexual congress puts a potential perpetrator into a position where they can do enormous damage. If one sexual participant is strangled, permanently maimed or contracts a sexually transmitted diseases, fatal or otherwise, because of the lack of universal background checks, then that is one too many.

    The safety of the Nation’s Sexual Congregants is far too important to take a back seat to some silly notion of Individual Responsibility, or, for that matter, Individual Rights, Freedom, Voluntary Exchange, Consenting Adults, or whatever other spurious excuses proffered for endangering the public-at-large.

    I, for one, blame the Libertarians.

  21. Man Mountain Molehill Avatar
    Man Mountain Molehill

    All pale penis persons, being the cause of all evil, should be required to go through their entire life strapped to a board and anesthetized.

  22. Eric Scheie Avatar

    http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/246314-obama-silence-on-guns-a-betrayal-to-memory-of-charleston-victims

    “30 precious lives are cut short by gun violence every single day.”

    Assuming every “life” is equally “precious,” this sounds like the abortion debate.

    Except the numbers are different.

  23. c andrew Avatar
    c andrew

    @3M,

    But the question is, can the 3P evade his fate if he uses a spray-on tan? Outside of Spokane, that is…