The Logical Result of Idiotic Policy
Yesterday, a 17 year old boy was arrested in Illinois for the shooting of three people, two fatally, at the protests in Kenosha Wisconsin over police shooting Jacob Blake in the back. He used an assault rifle. The boy has appeared in several videos in altercations with protestors and people chasing him after the shootings, shouting at police that he was the shooter, which they ignored. In a video shot earlier that evening, the shooter claimed to be there to protect a car dealership with other armed vigilantes. His social media pages are full of gun videos and pro-police posts, as well of one of him with a ringside seat at a Trump rally in January. Of course.
Where a goddam kid put his hands on an assault rifle is as yet unknown. It’s illegal for a 17 year old to possess or open carry an assault rifle in Wisconsin or Illinois. Unregulated private gun sales are legal in Wisconsin and open carry is legal for those 18 and over. The Gifford’s Law Center rates Wisconsin gun laws at a C-. In Illinois, rated A- by the Giffords Law Center, it is illegal for anyone under the age of 21 to purchase or own a long gun, even with parental consent. We’ll likely find out that the assault weapon the shooter used in these murders either belonged to the shooter’s parents OR was purchased in Wisconsin in an unregulated sale. This is a textbook example of why state and local gun laws simply don’t work. Common sense, strict gun laws at the federal level is the only way we can even hope to reduce widespread gun violence.
On the other side of the country, armed radical right wing gun nuts pushed past Idaho state police officers at the state capitol in Boise, broke down the state house gallery door and stormed into the chamber to protest common sense public health policy. Fearing violence, the police and the house majority leader allowed said gun nuts to fill the entire gallery ignoring social distancing rules and essentially commandeering state property that had been cordoned off to allow the senators to social distance as they debated health policy legislation. They also filled committee rooms and an auditorium. There were only a few arrests, but one included Ammon Bundy, son of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, who has successfully commandeered federal land for his own private use for grazing his cattle. It appears the younger Bundy was the leader of the Idaho protest. One other note – this incident happened in the very same building where, in 2014, state police arrested dozens of protestors standing silently in the hallways to protest for LGBTQ rights.
The lessons here aren’t complicated. The simple truth is that white guys carrying assault rifles literally get away with murder, violence, and threats of violence when other people, including lawmakers, are doing anything they hate. Put even more simply, armed white guys have more rights than disarmed peaceful black people. Carrying of weapons emboldens people to violate our laws and destroy societal norms. Police allow, and sometimes even condone, such behavior, and the presence of guns during protests always confuses the situation and increases violence. Self appointed “militia”, which are illegal, commandeer public property, and insert themselves into protests to “protect” private property, but their effect is universally destabilizing. We have seen that many times, including the violence at the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, and at other protests from New Mexico to Dallas.
Allowing guns anywhere near political speech is nothing short of terrible public policy, period. State and local gun laws don’t work, period. Gun safety laws must be federal. Guns in state capitols and municipal buildings threatens to destroy what’s left of our political system in America. NO OTHER DEVELOPED COUNTRY HAS THIS PROBLEM. The rest of the world understands that guns increase violence and death all the time, every time. Only strong federal laws have a prayer of reducing the violence and threat of violence that now permeates our society.
Sorry gun-nuts but guns DO KILL people!! This 17yr-old coward would never have done as much damage with a knife. The knife requires you to get into my face and look in my eyes while you use it. Getting this close could cause a reversal of who wins! The gun allows you to distance yourself from the act making it easy to do and also allows you to kill many in seconds. BAN ALL assault or automatic weapons!!! Yes, people being what they are will still kill using knives and rocks. But it is a LOT HARDER to do! And in this case…fire the cops!!! They are incompetent!
1No other country . . . right there you have nailed the problem. American exceptionalism will kill this country deader than a doornail. Those other countries and their laws and their lack of mass murders and countries that in the exceptionalist’s mind not only do not matter but really do not exist.The U.S. is on such a higher plane that it cannot be compared to anything either good, bad or indifferent. In this country we can do anything we want even if it is immoral and illegal and get away with it. Exhibit A: Donald Trump and his hatchlings Old saying: Pride goeth before a fall. The “fall” in this country will be flaming.
2Yup … 17 years old and he totally f**ked up the rest of his so-called life!
3A black 17-year-old would be dead! This jerk-off .. well … you saw what he did and how he was dealt with! There is no goddamned comparison!
Will be interesting to meet this young man’s parents. This is beyond my understanding.
4Truly makes me sick. Where the hell were the cops? Cowering somewhere?
What was visible was the fact that a 17 y.o. kid, stupid, wet-behind-the-ears, and encouraged to believe hateful rhetoric, panicked and took two lives.
Time for the “militias” to stand down.
5I don’t even know where to begin. Armed vigilantes in state legislative chambers. Armed vigilantes shooting political protesters. What the Hell happened to my country?
6NO OTHER DEVELOPED COUNTRY HAS THIS PROBLEM.
Sooooo, we’re #1, then?
7I gave up hunting as a teenager when it occurred to me that all of the other people who were out in the field with me were drunk and that could be a problem. That was over 50 years ago. I have never encountered a use of a gun that has been beneficial to anybody.
Except, to some ways of thinking, the first homicide I covered as a cub reporter. a man was chasing his wife around the house and their 13-year-old son got the family shootin’ arn and gave him both barrels.
The entire gun culture is pure myth.
8to mimic a 1980 campain statement: trump is not the solution, trump is the problem…
9The same Ammon Bundy (and probably several of his cohorts) also took over the Malheur Wildlife Refuge in E Oregon using assault rifles. They did it to protest the legal efforts against 2 ranchers for setting fire to public lands (the 2 ranchers did not want their interference). Ultimately many of the militia members plead guilty and/or were prosecuted including Bundy (one died). One Donald Trump pardoned them giving them back their ability to harass whatever they want using, guess what, assault rifles. Bundy’s also been at the Oregon statehouse recently with his armed militia protesting Covid restrictions.
10He’s now been banned from Idaho’s capital for a year, so look for even more brazen actions by he and his militia. Surprised he was invited to speak at the GOP CONvention.
Isn’t allowing your 17 year old child to posses an AK47 a kind of child endangerment?
11Heard an interview yesterday w a GOP TX Lege member, cheerfully repeating that Beto was coming for your guns, b/c he had one emotional moment after the nightmarish El Paso shootings. Only way it will ever happen is when the solid GOP voter base gets old and dies, otherwise it’s an instant win for the right anytime a word is said about gun laws.
12@Harry Eagar, #8: I’ve never hunted, but I once went into a shed filled with dozens of dead, gunshot deer. I think that disabused me of “romance” with guns, and limited my interest to target shooting.
And one of my father’s “cute” stories was of a coworker who while hunting exposed his naked foot. Which was shot by another hunter who mistook it for some kind of small game. Drunk or not, anyone who lives in deer hunting regions that doesn’t wear red or orange outdoors during the season is a fool.
13El Jefe, over 70% of Americans want solid sane national gun policy. For the second time the NRA has been reported as financially dead. Gun safety, affordable health care and several other items fill out a list of desires (feel free to complete the top ten list of demands) by a majority of we the people. That seems to indicate a few bi-partisan points of agreement amongst us.
Yet for decades Republicon politicians and the voters who vote for them against their own interests have created a logjam of obstruction in which nothing happens legislatively at the national level. If we should be so fortunate to regain Democratic control of the Senate and retain the House, this could be the final opportunity to “get it right” and demand our “Top Ten,” or more priorities.
Momentum. If we do win big electorally, we cannot rest. More than ever we’ll need Ms. Juanita Jean Herownself, you and other kindred spirits to pelt Democratic members of Congress with encouragement to adhere to the mandate, while communicating with Republicons that “now is the time for the civility they demanded and bi-partisanship.” We’re game to work with you on a coordinated plan to communicate with our elected representatives and bring others into the effort to make our voices loud and clear.
14I would like to see gun laws that mimic driving laws. You must pass a test proving that you understand gun laws, a test to prove you can fire and hit a target, and be over 18 to get a license. If you want to actually use a gun (rent or own) you must carry liability insurance to cover damage to a person and part to cover police/court costs. I am sure I could kill someone with my car – I have four wheel drive and could chase them thru a field if I had to. Why would we let just anyone with enough money to buy a gun have one?
15Old Fart @13
I once counted up all of my friends whose fathers had died in “hunting accidents”: 7.
I now live adjoining a hunting preserve. So far the hunters have stayed away from this edge of the preserve.My bigger problem is people who poison “varmints.”
It’s a death cult.
16@Grandma Ada,
The vast majority of states used to have those types of laws on the books, then the terrorist support organization, NRA, starting claiming that since “criminals” don’t follow those laws, we shouldn’t have them on the books. Besides, those laws “infringed” on their legal right to bare arms.
Now, in way too many states, it is a free for all, reminding everyone of the Wild West. Just yesterday, the Missouri Legislature passed a law allowing anyone to give a minor a firearm, even without parental consent.
17The hypocrisy of the rhetoric being espoused by the GOP this week about lawlessness in democratic cities is laughable but not funny. Thinking ahead to November, the lawlessness of the gun toting GOP will be even scarier than today.
18The Right is casting this idiot as a hero. Tucker Carlson and Ann Coulter are both praising his killing of BLM protesters. There has to be Karma for this; I’d love to see protesters drive Carlson out of his hidey-hole in Maine.
This is an article from a progressive site in Wisconsin about the man who called in his fellow white supremacists. Note the police were handing out water to white supremacists while tear gassing protesters.
https://wisconsinexaminer.com/2020/08/27/a-call-to-arms-that-filled-kenosha-with-combat-weapons/
19His mother drove him there. With the gun. And dropped him off.
20Elm Creek, ten to one she knew there was an absurdly high risk that he would not come home alive. In that case, let’s observe her motives! Sick and tired of a selfish stupid maybe evne lazy teenager? Hmmmm!!!
21https://www.facebook.com/public/Kyle-Rittenhouse
His Facebook page. His Mommy is on there arguing with people. sounds like she drove him to Kenosha.
22@Harry Eagar, #16: I support the right to bear arms for 1 reason;
23Where we lived in the Catskills there were some families which relied upon deer as an important part of their food for the Winter. It may be less of a problem now than the early ’70s, but it *was* necessary. And they weren’t the drunken fools from downstate who shot themselves/others…
@Grandma Ada
Since 1954 in California, you can’t get a hunting license until you earn a training certificate. However, if you don’t hunt, no training is required. I think you’re right. Gun owners should be trained, tested, licensed and insured just like vehicle drivers. There should also be different classes of licenses, depending on what kind of firearm you own. When I see the St. Louis gun couple, I see people who shouldn’t be allowed to own weapons. They were even pointing them at each other with their fingers on the trigger.
24“No other *civilized* country*? BS, lady. Britain, with the most draconian gun-laws in the world, has a violent-crime, burglary and vandalism rate twice as high as ours, with one-sixth the population. Evil-evil guns-guns aren’t the problem; lack of training and responsibility is the problem. Never mind demanding this or that as qualification to own guns; *teach every school child*, from kindergarten on up, the basics of gun safety and gun competence so that every student who gets through high school can qualify for a concealed-carry permit upon graduation. That, as the Swiss can tell you, will make all the difference in the world.
25“His mother drove him there. With the gun. And dropped him off.”
if this is true, sounds like she might be in a wee bit of trouble herself. of course, that would be in a rational world…
26#25: I respectfully disagree, strongly. All the gun training in the world won’t keep some people with assault rifles from doing what they do. And training won’t keep some 17 year old from having an assault rifle and using it. The lack of laws allowed this kid to get the gun no questions asked and kill 2 people, and sounds like with the help of his parents. I don’t buy that training is all that is needed. I also don’t buy that assault rifles have any legitimate purpose outside of the military.
27People like Ammon Bundy use assault rifles to intimidate people that don’t agree with him. That should be illegal too.
I support the right to own guns, but there needs to be some limits.
@Leslie 25 – Uh, no. You’re not even close. The recent gun death rate (that means deaths per 100,000 people) in the US was 4.43. The UK? .06. Using arithmetic, that means the US has a gun death rate over SEVENTY TIMES that of the UK. As a percentage of all homicides, the US has 73% by gun. The UK? 3%. Using recent overall homicide rates, the US is 5.3. The UK? 1.2. Using arithmetic again, that’s 4.41 times the UK. Stop repeating NRA bullshit. That doesn’t fly here.
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