Gun violence …

I don’t own a gun. 

Well, actually I do – it’s a BB gun I bought to ding the squirrels that mugged my bird feeder years ago.  Once I discovered a truly squirrel-proof feeder I didn’t need it any more.  But I kept it. 

So I don’t own a firearm. Nor do I feel a pressing need to have one. I don’t hunt. I’m not into target shooting. I’m not too worried about violent criminals or wild animal attacks where I live. 

That said, I have nothing against law-abiding people who own guns. The gun owners I know are respectable citizens who bought their guns legally, maintain them properly, and know how to use them. They learned in the military, in law enforcement, or were taught by a family member how to safely and responsibly handle a gun.   

Not everyone should have a gun, however. Criminals, for example. The mentally unstable shouldn’t, either. Nor should the average person get their hands on weapons designed specifically for the military to kill a lot of other people quickly – like a .50 cal machine gun.  Or a tank. Or an RPG launcher. No good from come from that. 

Some people believe nobody should be allowed to have any kind of firearm, whether that’s a .22 handgun or rifle, a .357 magnum, or an AR-15. They believe if you take away all the guns you’ll eliminate mass murders such as the Newtown, Orlando and San Bernardino massacres.

Every time one of these horrifying incidents happens they push to tighten restrictions on guns. As I write this there’s a sit-in in Congress to protest the lack of new gun laws. The media love this type of stuff – legislators pounding the table over the need to ban “assault weapons” while Mothers Against Gun Violence and other anti-gun groups march in the streets, coupled with tearful clips of families who’ve lost loved ones through gang shootings or accidents.

The problem is that they are all addressing the wrong cause. There are plenty of restrictions on gun purchases and laws about guns on the books already. The problem is not the types of guns or the laws – it’s the simple fact that when someone is a criminal, or mentally deranged, and they decide to kill people they will, with or without a gun.

Timothy McVeigh killed 168 people with a home-made truck bomb of fuel oil and fertilizer. We didn’t ban fuel oil, fertilizer or trucks in the aftermath, because McVeigh was the lunatic monster who killed all those people. Those were his tools. 

When the 911 hijackers killed 3000 people in New York they didn’t use guns, they used planes they commandeered by brandishing box cutters.  We didn’t ban planes as a result, but we tightened restrictions on what objects people could carry on a plane.  Did that make air travel safer? Nobody knows but it hasn’t stopped terrorists from blowing up planes.     

Banning all guns will accomplish nothing. Taking violent criminals and terrorist wannabes off the street will. So will keeping violent mentally unstable people from getting dangerous weapons.

None of which is politically correct. The same people who want to ban guns are usually the same people opposed to lengthy sentences for violent criminals, despise any form of profiling or pro-active law enforcement, and almost always oppose to the death penalty. 

No one in that same group wants to admit it, but the “mainstreaming” into society of the mentally ill in the 1970s and beyond, and the desire to consider all forms of mental illness as “treatable” diseases controllable through medications, opened the floodgates as well. That ignored the fact that this only works if someone voluntarily sticks to their medication regimen; it’s entirely up to the patient, and not everybody will take their meds as prescribed once they’re on the street.    

In the three most recent massacres, many people recognized in advance that the perpetrators were unstable.  But they were afraid to say anything for fear of seeming insensitive. In the Newtown case, the mother of the killer knew he was off his meds, but did nothing.  In Orlando there were warning flags all over the place – the FBI even interviewed the killer twice before that based on tips. And in San Bernardino neighbors hesitated to call police because they didn’t want to seem to be racial profiling. 

The lesson: Bad things happen when good people do nothing. 

I blame political correctness more so than guns for these events. All three of these slaughters could have been prevented if only someone had the courage to simply report what they knew, instead of worrying about hurting someone’s feelings.   

I won’t bother to rehash the usual arguments about the 2^nd Amendment and why it’s really in the Constitution.  The anti-gun extremists keep parsing the words to support a flawed premise that it was never intended to allow individual citizens – rather than “militia” – to own guns.  And that it only applied to muskets, not modern firearms. Their arguments are ridiculous. 

Nor will I take the other extreme’s position that every citizen can have whatever firearm they desire, be that a .22 or a bazooka. That’s equally ridiculous.   

I concede we have a problem with “gun violence.” We always have as long as I can remember. Growing up in Miami it was mainly bad guys killing other bad guys – much as it is in Chicago now – or good guys killing bad guys, so nobody really cared that much.  It’s only when innocent civilians get gunned down that it grabs the public’s attention.  And truthfully, that doesn’t happen all that often outside the bad parts of major U.S. cities.

The majority of deaths attributed to “gun violence” in this country are suicides (61%), which is rarely noted when gun-control advocates throw around how many people are killed by guns every year.  Gun involved murders are a fraction of that.  Mass shootings, however horrific, are extremely rare and an even smaller fraction of gun deaths each year.

That doesn’t mean we should accept mass shootings as a part of life.  We should do everything in our power to prevent them – the key word being “prevent.” And that means removing from society those people who are most likely to commit such acts.  Making it harder or even impossible for them to legally buy a gun won’t prevent them from getting one, if that’s their weapon of choice; it will only delay them or raise their cost. If someone is Hell-bent on killing lots of people for whatever crazy and/or ideological reason, you have to stop the person, not the weapon. 

Gun violence doesn’t come from the gun, but from the person wielding the gun.  Nobody wants to deal with the people behind the guns until they’ve killed people with those guns. 

All the political theater surrounding the issue is just that – political theater. Democrats in particular see this as a big issue heading into November elections; something they can use to bludgeon Republicans and paint them as uncaring, unfeeling pawns of the NRA. Democrats are counting on the ignorance of the public – and their friends in the media – to associate the tragedy in Orlando with the lack of stricter restrictions on access to guns.

I’m afraid they’ll succeed. Even though what happened in Orlando had nothing to do with lax restrictions on access to guns. Or even with the gun used -- which the media instantly tagged, erroneously, as an “assault” weapon, which implies an automatic weapon to most – but was in fact a fairly ordinary AR-15-style .223 caliber hunting rifle. And yes, someone has to pull the trigger each and every time to fire every shot using that rifle.    

If they do succeed that’s too bad because another law, another regulation, another ban on certain types of guns would not have prevented the massacres in Newtown, San Bernardino, or Orlando, nor would those prevent something just as heinous happening again. 

We need to step up and recognize that we need to stop the people intent on doing harm, not the weapons.  That means keeping violent criminals in jail.  Getting terrorist wannabes off our streets. And taking a hard look at how much latitude we give the mentally ill to manage themselves.

Until we do all that, as politically incorrect that will be, we’re begging for a repeat.        

The coming civil war …

The nation is weirdly divided right now. 

One faction believes in the power of big government to right all wrongs and provide whatever anyone wants.  One faction believes the government should only provide for the common defense and support for those who are truly in need, with the emphasis on “truly.”

Then there’s a sizable faction that works in government, or largely depends on government for a living – everybody from bureaucrats, politicians, defense contractors, mega-multinational companies and others.  Small businesses that are not part of that faction tend to view the same government with suspicion at best and fear at worst. 

There are the ultra-rich, the ultra-poor, the middle class, the well-educated and the uneducated. A growing number of people live mostly or entirely on public assistance, including those who do so not out of necessity but preference, which really annoys a fairly large segment of the public.

We have the military haters, the one-world types, anti-gun and anti-death penalty folks. We also have the pro-gun, pro-military, anti-immigrant, law & order, leave-us-alone, America-first people. The former think we can earn the love of the world – and that actually matters – if we give up being a world super power and act more like Europe; the latter doesn’t give a rat’s ass what the rest of the world thinks of us and believe the only way we can protect ourselves and our rights is a big, bad-ass military and a well-armed citizenry not willing to take crap from whomever is serving it up, foreign or domestic. 

Republicans vs. Democrats, or conservatives vs. liberals doesn’t really matter. That’s because all of the groups and factions I’ve mentioned – and I’ve left out many more – aren’t monolithic, despite what politicians and media talking heads and bloggers promote. 

Just because you think there should be controls on gun purchases doesn’t make you anti-gun.  You can be opposed to abortion depending on the circumstances and pro-choice under other circumstances.  It’s easy to be against war yet still want to have the biggest, bad-ass military in the world so no one is ever tempted to go to war with you. The whole issue of entitlements – who should or shouldn’t get them – is again dependent on circumstances for most people; almost no one thinks we shouldn’t provide aid to those in need – the difference is deciding who is in need and who isn’t.

The real divide is on how much power the government should have, who pulls the strings, and how and where the government spends your money. 

Everything else is a matter of degrees. 

The Trump phenomenon illustrates this. 

Certainly, there are rabid elements in both the Hillary and Trump camps. However, the real debate is between business as usual and something different. Hillary is by far the more experienced at government the way it is; Trump is a wild card who scares the crap out of the political establishments of both the Republican and Democrat parties.

And me, too, at times. 

Once you get past the hyperbole, Trump is something no one has seen in a while – a cross between a liberal Republican and a conservative Democrat. 

There’s another factor, too, perhaps even more important: Hillary and most current politicians in either party are money-grubbing whores beholden to whatever special interest group or lobbyists that give them the most money and support. Frankly, Trump doesn’t need the money, nor is he apparently afraid to toss traditional sources of money and support under the bus. 

He just did that with the NRA and extreme gun-rights groups (not the same thing, BTW) by indicating he’d be willing to listen to arguments for reasonable controls on access to guns. He’s also said while he’s personally opposed to abortion in general, he believes the Federal government shouldn’t be deciding who can and can’t obtain abortions – a traditional pro-choice stance.  On taxes he’s said he’s not totally opposed to raising taxes on the rich. Nor is he interested in cutting Social Security or disability benefits – and he concedes that we need to help the poor.  

Ah, but what about immigration?  Trump supports legal immigration – which most Americans do – but is against illegal immigration, again which most Americans also oppose. His talk about building a wall between us and Mexico chills some, but is actually a popular sentiment, as is his thing about banning all Muslims for a while.

In relatively short order he’s managed to piss off the U.S. Chamber of Commerce (which supports open borders); major multinationals like Apple and Ford (which outsource jobs); radical conservatives and radical liberals; Grover Norquist and Elizabeth Warren; the NRA and gun-control fanatics; extreme anti-abortion and extreme abortion rights advocates, and a host of other single-issue groups that would normally be on opposite sides.

The only people he hasn’t pissed off are all those who are tired of being caught in the interminable tug of war between diametrically opposed special interests. The members of that group don’t really care that much about safe spaces, microaggressions, gender identity politics, income inequality, bailing out student loan deadbeats, racial or sexual preferences, the war on women, and whose race/gender turn it is to be President.

They really only care about a few things – none of which are on that list. Among these are the economy, decent-paying jobs, and terror. Everything else isn’t that important      

They blame politicians in general and big-money donors who control them for wasting time and resources on things that don’t matter much if you don’t have a good job with a future, and are worried about your safety. Nobody in DC seems to care what’s happening to them, preferring to focus on appeasing the politically connected and deep-pocketed special interest groups. 

All the posturing and finger-pointing is just useless background noise to them, designed to hide what they fear is complete and utter contempt for them and their values by media and political elites who have absolutely no idea what everyday life is like for them.

Unlike the elites, their kids go to public or parochial schools. They don’t have private drivers to whisk them and their kids here and there. No private security firm polices their neighborhood. They can’t afford to ski in the Swiss Alps, travel to Spain for shopping, or take a private jet wherever they wish. They shop at Walmart, Target, Costco, Sams and BJs, not on Rodeo Drive or Fifth Avenue. Their clothes and shoes are off-the-rack, not custom made for them.  They buy most of their groceries and produce at their local supermarket.

In essence, they are typical middle to lower income Americans. They aren’t rich; they aren’t poor.  They worry more about paying their bills, taking care of their families, and keeping safe, than whether transgendered people should be allowed to use the restrooms of their choice.

Most of all they worry that there’s nobody in government helping them get or keep a decent job, or protecting them from violent criminals or home-grown or foreign terrorists.  Or even realizes that these are the most pressing issues they should be dealing with. 

Over the decades they’ve seen nothing change, except for the worse. More wars. More mass shootings. More jobs being outsourced to foreign countries. More illegal immigrants entering our country with apparent impunity. More ridiculous edicts from DC about what they can do in their private lives or businesses. More government spending on things that don’t matter to them.  More political polarization.  More racial and gender divisiveness. 

More of everything except a good economy, decent jobs, and safety.   

The civil war is here.  It’s between the status quo and anything different than that. 

This November, every incumbent – regardless of party – is vulnerable. Years of political experience are no longer an asset. Endorsement by the political establishment of either party could be the kiss of death. 

A significant part of the public is furious with business as usual.  And they’ll vote.   

The new Brownshirts …

Love him or hate him, Trump has a right to speak. And his supporters have a reasonable expectation they will be able to attend his events and be safe. 

However, a loud and often violent group doesn’t agree. 

They’ve taken to protesting every Trump event, which is their right – the same right Trump has to air his views.  They’ve also taken to physically attacking Trump supporters, which is not their right. Waving Mexican flags, throwing eggs, rocks, and bottles at Trump event-goers and even police has become the new standard for Trump opponents.

Not an event goes by that they do not step up the violence.  Just watch the national news on any network – OTA or cable – and you’ll see the mob in action. Spitting, screaming obscenities, and physically assaulting anyone who disagrees with them. 

They are the new Brownshirts, only this time the uniform is the dark t-shirt, and often a bandanna over the face. But the goal is the same: to intimidate. 

While they hold signs calling Trump a fascist and worse, and burn American flags and those red Make America Great Again hats, they claim they are doing this in the name of freedom and defending American values. 

Nothing could be further from the truth. 

Their idea of freedom is the right to do whatever they want, to shut down anyone with whom they disagree, and to physically assault anyone they wish.  That’s not freedom; that’s anarchy.  Nor is it consistent with American values.

Like it or not, most Americans find comfort in law and order.  The media on all sides may find the violence directed toward Trump supporters at Trump rallies makes for great TV, but the American public is generally turned off by this violence.  If anything, it swings more people over to Trump’s side – not because they like him or agree with him – but because they abhor his opponents.   

The myth that Trump supporters cause the violence is evaporating under the bright lights of all the media coverage. It’s clear from news clips that it’s the protestors who are starting the mayhem, and that the Trump supporters they assault are the real victims. 

That’s a major “aha” moment even the media can’t ignore.  Every time the protestors attack, Trump’s support rises, and I think I know why. 

I don’t like Donald Trump. I don’t like much of what he proposes he’ll do.

But I dislike the protestors and their chaos far more.  If it’s a choice between Trump and the forces aligned against him, who tacitly endorse what the protestors are doing, I’ll go for Trump. 

Don’t be surprised if a lot of other Americans feel the same.