It will be one year ago tomorrow that Anders Breivik went on a mass shooting spree in Norway.
He has been arrested, and tried; we are awaiting the decision of the court as to what basis he will be under arrest for the foreseeable decades - insane, confined to a prison hospital cell; or sane, confined to a jail cell.
In either case it appears he will be in the same special facility, well away from the prison population. A few appropriately trained and skilled men will be hired to interact with him, men who have the training to defend themselves against unarmed physical attacks, should Breivik become hostile and aggressive.
The lack of a willingness to discuss the issues of mass shootings and guns, and the very different ways we look at Islamic terrorist activity with zero tolerance, while the right in particular is willing to look past domestic mass shootings of any other variety, or effectively to ignore the totality of individual deaths and injuries is a stunning example of emotion rather than intellect in action.
We should have the same opposition to each of these kinds of killings - mass shootings under cover of ANY justification, or the cumulative individual killings in similar numbers. The figures I am hearing in the media are that we average 80 killings every day, and 87 injuries, from firearms.
Those who are pro-gun will often be islamophobic, like our Minnesota horror Michele Bachmann, willing to be intolerant of anyone that can be characterized in any way as foreign, not extreme right wing, not Christian (or occasionally on short sufferance Jewish). But those same people who see jihadists hiding under every bed, including in the State Department, or in our military, turn a completely blind eye to the kind of mass shootings we have seen this week here in the U.S. in Aurora, Colorado, or in Tuscaloosa, Alabama ( a mass shooting that has fallen off the media radar) or over the border in Toronto, Canada.
We have walking, talking dumb-asses like Louis Gohmert claiming the mass shooting is because we have attacks on our Christian Judeo beliefs.
No, we don't. There are no religious attacks, nothing at all along the lines of past Anti-semitism where there were incidence of active violence, or the more passive form of attack, discrimination. We don't have mass shootings because of a lack of conformity to fundies' freaky religious obsessions and superstition passing under guise of faith.
We have these shootings, both individual and mass shootings, because we have people who have guns who then go out and, in the mistaken belief they are somehow in the right and others are somehow in the wrong and deserve to be punished, SHOOT people.
We see this in the murder suicides that occur on the average of 3 times a week or more. We see this in the gang related gun violence, where someone feels justified in killing others, both targeted and innocent bystanders, because of some rivalry or conflict.
NO. Wrong. Bad.
The reality is that we let too many people who should not have guns gain access to guns. We let people stockpile weapons and ammunition, and dangerous accessories -- as we have seen in Aurora Colorado where dangerous assault-style weapons, bullet proof/bullet resistant body armor, 6,000 rounds of ammunition, multiple magazines including a high volume drum magazine, and tear gas/pepper gas and explosives were accumulated over a period of a few weeks.
The reality is that we have seen more violence, far more violence from the extreme right -- like Timothy McVeigh in the Oklahoma City bombing, and from Anders Breivik in Norway who shot up fellow white Christian Norwegians "for their own good, so they wouldn't become multicultural", and from the pro-more-gun policies of the right. Those anti-regulation pro-easy gun access policies allowed Jarrod Loughner to get a gun, easily, as well as the ammo.
At least Anders Breivik had to work at acquiring HIS weapons and ammunition.
There is NO outrage expressed whatsoever when someone like the Tea Party bimbo, Sharron Angle makes statements about people getting their way with bullets if they don't get their way with ballots.
The right routinely quotes Thomas Jefferson's ill-advised and highly criticized statement about revolution and blood being a good thing. Those words were written from Paris during the earliest days of the French Revolution. Jefferson left France before that revolution got really bloody. The reality is that Jefferson called the turnover in political parties where he was elected the "1800 Revolution". The other Founding Fathers did NOT support insurrection, but ONLY change at the ballot box; evidence for that were the suppression of Shay's Rebellion and the Whiskey Rebellion.
The notion that personal firearms are in any way realistic opposition as a last resort against government forces is stupid in an age where we have tanks,stealth bombers and drones, and air craft carriers, and AWACs. What we do have are crazy dangerous right wing militias who use our lax gun laws to stockpile ammunition and weapons, and who engage in paramilitary training exercises and dangerously foolish and ill-informed, largely right wing political ideas that would be disastrous should they ever follow through on them. This includes the right wing white supremacists, etc., embraced by the right at events like CPAC.
These people want guns because like the lone gunman in the mass shootings, or the individuals in the frequent murder/ suicides, they believe they will right some ill-conceived and ill-informed wrong, taking the issue of force into their own hands. The same hold true for the increased not really justified homicides under the shoot first laws. In nearly every instance, the incident would have been better handled by law enforcement, and would have been with only a small amount of patience by the shooter. In the few genuine, valid, legitimate justifiable homicide shootings, our prior law would have better addressed the incidents. Instead we have a huge increase in the shootings of unarmed teens, or adult neighbors, or other innocent members of the public, who pose no real threat to anyone.
Other nations act with greater sanity and greater rationality, and certainly with a more consistent attitude towards violence than we do. They have less gun violence than we do as a result.
We are not safer with all these guns and gun violence; we are definitely not more free either.
It is past time for us to stop looking the other way, to stop making excuses for gun violence, and instead to put an end to it. It can be done. It means taking a clear-eyed, clear-headed, far less emotional look at the terrible failure of our gun culture, and the systematic dismantling of it.
Otherwise every damned time someone runs their mouth or their keyboard about how bad those islamo-terrorist extremists are, those people should go look in the mirror. Because it is their policies and politics they endorse that are killing far more American citizens than any foreign extremist.
Gun deaths are gun deaths. Look at the right, look at Breivik, Loughner, and McVeigh. Look at this Insurrection timeline --- all from the right. Whether a gang banger, a crazy person with a gun, or the perpetrators of domestic violence, there is one thing they have in common. They all believe it is acceptable and even proper to shoot other people; they believe they are justified when they are not.
The ONLY solution to this problem of false belief is the sane and sensible reduction and restriction of firearms to protect ourselves and our larger society from these people.
Here are a few recent examples of right wing 2nd Amendment advocates for gun violence against peaceful, innocent, law-abiding Americans:
May 2012—The Daily Caller initiates a program to give away a free handgun each week until Election Day to someone subscribed to its email lists. The handguns are "engraved with the Bill of Rights" and manufactured by Jim Pontillo of FMK Firearms. Pontillo has a history of extreme politics, having warned, "I can't imagine how much more insult the American people are willing to endure under the 'enterprises of ambition' by our politicians, but I do know, gun ownership and an understanding of our American Founders' vision will have positive and deliberate effect on the psyche of our populace and can subdue the overzealous and prejudicial effect of this ambition. When law is abused to achieve political ends where do the gallant citizens turn? Quite possibly to their guns." Pontillo also claimed that those who advocate for secession are acting "in the Founding tradition."
June 18, 2012—Samuel Wurzelbacher (AKA "Joe The Plumber"), a Republican candidate for the House of Representatives in Ohio's 9th congressional district, uploads a campaign video to YouTube in which he is shown loading and firing a shotgun while a narrator says, "In 1911, Turkey established gun control. From 1915 to 1917, 1.5 million Armenians, unable to defend themselves, were exterminated. In 1939, Germany established gun control. From 1939 to 1945, six million Jews and seven million others, unable to defend themselves, were exterminated." "I love America," Wurzelbacher then says, smiling. A caption on the video page states, "History also tells us [the Second Amendment is] our last line of defense in the face of an out-of-control government."
June 28, 2012—Moments after the U.S. Supreme Court rules to uphold the provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, former Michigan Republican Party spokesman Matthew Davis sends an email to colleagues entitled, "Is Armed Rebellion Now Justified?" The email reads, in part, "In 2008, we the people elected Barack Obama as president, and the 100-year progressive trek to tyranny begun in 1912 with Woodrow Wilson's election was complete ... If government can mandate that I pay for something I don't want, then what is beyond its power? If the Supreme Court's decision Thursday paves the way for unprecedented intrusion into personal decisions, then has the Republic all but ceased to exist? If so, then is armed rebellion today justified? God willing, this oppression will be lifted and America free again before the first shot is fired." Davis explains his email by saying, "You can't have people walking with lattes and signs and think the object of your opposition is going to take you seriously. Armed rebellion is the end point of that physical confrontation."
June 28, 2012—Former Alabama militia leader Mike Vanderboegh responds to a Supreme Court ruling validating the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act by threatening violent insurrection on his blog, "Sipsey Street Irregulars." In the blog, entitled "Black Thursday," Vanderboegh writes, "You may call tyranny a mandate or you may call it a tax, but it still is tyranny and invites the same response ... If we refuse to obey, we will be fined. If we refuse to pay the fine, we will in time be jailed. If we refuse to report meekly to jail, we will be sent for by armed men. And if we refuse their violent invitation at the doorsteps of our own homes we will be killed--unless we kill them first. ... I am on record as advocating the right of defensive violence against a tyrannical regime." Vanderboegh was the subject of national headlines in 2010 when he urged readers at his blog to respond to the passage of the Affordable Care Act by vandalizing Democratic offices. He then took credit after vandals struck several offices, including that of Arizona Congresswoman Gabby Giffords.
June 29, 2012—The day after the Supreme Court issues a ruling upholding the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Mississippi Tea Party Chairman Roy Nicholson issues the following statement: "When a gang of criminals subvert legitimate government offices and seize all power to themselves without the real consent of the governed their every act and edict is of itself illegal and is outside the bounds of the Rule of Law. In such cases submission is treason. Treason against the Constitution and the valid legitimate government of the nation to which we have pledged our allegiance for years. To resist by all means that are right in the eyes of God is not rebellion or insurrection, it is patriotic resistance to invasion. May all of us fall on our faces before the Heavenly Judge, repent of our sins, and humbly cry out to Him for mercy on our country. And, may godly courageous leaders rise up in His wisdom and power to lead us in displacing the criminal invaders from their seats and restore our constitutional republic."
May 2012—The Daily Caller initiates a program to give away a free handgun each week until Election Day to someone subscribed to its email lists. The handguns are "engraved with the Bill of Rights" and manufactured by Jim Pontillo of FMK Firearms. Pontillo has a history of extreme politics, having warned, "I can't imagine how much more insult the American people are willing to endure under the 'enterprises of ambition' by our politicians, but I do know, gun ownership and an understanding of our American Founders' vision will have positive and deliberate effect on the psyche of our populace and can subdue the overzealous and prejudicial effect of this ambition. When law is abused to achieve political ends where do the gallant citizens turn? Quite possibly to their guns." Pontillo also claimed that those who advocate for secession are acting "in the Founding tradition."
June 18, 2012—Samuel Wurzelbacher (AKA "Joe The Plumber"), a Republican candidate for the House of Representatives in Ohio's 9th congressional district, uploads a campaign video to YouTube in which he is shown loading and firing a shotgun while a narrator says, "In 1911, Turkey established gun control. From 1915 to 1917, 1.5 million Armenians, unable to defend themselves, were exterminated. In 1939, Germany established gun control. From 1939 to 1945, six million Jews and seven million others, unable to defend themselves, were exterminated." "I love America," Wurzelbacher then says, smiling. A caption on the video page states, "History also tells us [the Second Amendment is] our last line of defense in the face of an out-of-control government."
June 28, 2012—Moments after the U.S. Supreme Court rules to uphold the provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, former Michigan Republican Party spokesman Matthew Davis sends an email to colleagues entitled, "Is Armed Rebellion Now Justified?" The email reads, in part, "In 2008, we the people elected Barack Obama as president, and the 100-year progressive trek to tyranny begun in 1912 with Woodrow Wilson's election was complete ... If government can mandate that I pay for something I don't want, then what is beyond its power? If the Supreme Court's decision Thursday paves the way for unprecedented intrusion into personal decisions, then has the Republic all but ceased to exist? If so, then is armed rebellion today justified? God willing, this oppression will be lifted and America free again before the first shot is fired." Davis explains his email by saying, "You can't have people walking with lattes and signs and think the object of your opposition is going to take you seriously. Armed rebellion is the end point of that physical confrontation."
June 28, 2012—Former Alabama militia leader Mike Vanderboegh responds to a Supreme Court ruling validating the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act by threatening violent insurrection on his blog, "Sipsey Street Irregulars." In the blog, entitled "Black Thursday," Vanderboegh writes, "You may call tyranny a mandate or you may call it a tax, but it still is tyranny and invites the same response ... If we refuse to obey, we will be fined. If we refuse to pay the fine, we will in time be jailed. If we refuse to report meekly to jail, we will be sent for by armed men. And if we refuse their violent invitation at the doorsteps of our own homes we will be killed--unless we kill them first. ... I am on record as advocating the right of defensive violence against a tyrannical regime." Vanderboegh was the subject of national headlines in 2010 when he urged readers at his blog to respond to the passage of the Affordable Care Act by vandalizing Democratic offices. He then took credit after vandals struck several offices, including that of Arizona Congresswoman Gabby Giffords.
June 29, 2012—The day after the Supreme Court issues a ruling upholding the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Mississippi Tea Party Chairman Roy Nicholson issues the following statement: "When a gang of criminals subvert legitimate government offices and seize all power to themselves without the real consent of the governed their every act and edict is of itself illegal and is outside the bounds of the Rule of Law. In such cases submission is treason. Treason against the Constitution and the valid legitimate government of the nation to which we have pledged our allegiance for years. To resist by all means that are right in the eyes of God is not rebellion or insurrection, it is patriotic resistance to invasion. May all of us fall on our faces before the Heavenly Judge, repent of our sins, and humbly cry out to Him for mercy on our country. And, may godly courageous leaders rise up in His wisdom and power to lead us in displacing the criminal invaders from their seats and restore our constitutional republic."
