Tag: Gun Control

America’s Gun Laws Have Always Been Racist — By Design

~ A L Katz ~ Leave a comment

America and Americans love guns like no other place on earth. That’s not a coincidence. On the surface, we argue that gun rights are personal freedoms but that’s not really what gun rights are about. The Constitution’s framers framed gun rights not as an absolute (“Hey, have all the guns ya want, ya crazy Americans!– it’s your damned right!”), but as a function of a well-regulated militia. The well-regulated militia (and that militia can be as well regulated as it likes — the option for an unregulated militia is NOT enumerated here!) has THE say about who shall “keep and bear” the arms in question. Note — the word “own” does not appear in the amendment. For the record, “own” was a perfectly good word back then; the framers chose “keep” and “bear” and avoided “own”. That suggests that the “well-regulated militia” actually owns the arms it allows citizens to “keep” and “bear”. That also suggests that, should the well regulated militia decide that someone should turn in the arms the militia up till then allowed them to keep and bear? They better turn in those arms.

Guns, by design, are death machines. The whole purpose of a gun is to send a ball of hot metal flying through air fast enough to kill a live target. Every part of a gun’s construction is meant to facilitate that happening. Same goes for ammo. No one ever designed a bullet that wasn’t meant to penetrate flesh. Some, as we know, have been designed to do more than that; they’re meant to reap as much tissue destruction as possible as they shred through a shooting victim’s body. Even ordinary guns with ordinary ordnance kill easily.

So, the first thing we have to ask ourselves as reasonable people is: why does any particular person need to have a death machine in their house or in their hand? Why do Americans feel so much more under personal threat than just about any other humans on the planet? Or is that, really the point? Is it actually that certain Americans feel like they’re under personal threat and therefore need a weapon as backup? The data says those “certain Americans” — the ones feeling scared — are white. The people they feel threatened by, aren’t.

Let’s be real: if the Americans obsessed with arming themselves to the teeth thought for two seconds that Black and brown people were doing the same thing? They’d rewrite the gun laws just like that.

WHO owns (most of) the guns is really the point and so long as it’s white people, our gun laws will stay as they are. While we’re on the subject: there’s no such thing as “Responsible gun ownership”. That is a myth invented by gun manufacturers to explain away the fact that NO ONE can “responsibly” own a death machine. “Responsible” gun owners may lock their guns away in gun safes — and it’s great that they do — but that’s not what their guns were designed to do. It’s like bragging about a car that gets great gas mileage — because you never use it and it sits in your garage. Well, of course it does!

What happens to a gun when its owner has it in hand — THAT is the measure of “responsible gun ownership”. And it can’t be summed up even by years of previous success — because every bit of that success can be undone by one act of carelessness. Nancy Lanza thought she was a responsible gun owner; by all accounts, she was. But, before her son Adam Lanza went and shot up the Sandy Hook Elementary School, first, he murdered his mom — using her gun. So much for being “responsible”. It’s just a stone cold fact about guns: each and every one is an accident or a tragedy that just hasn’t happened yet.

And our gun laws are even bigger accidents and tragedies just waiting to be set in motion. There’s a reason no other country has our attitude toward guns. But then, no one has our attitude toward race relations either.

That could be a good thing.

Why Do American Men Turn To Guns To Solve Their Emotional Problems?

~ A L Katz ~ Leave a comment
Adam Lanza

Another mass shooting in America — Eight murdered at a Fed Ex facility in Indianapolis — and the news media needs to know: “What’s the motive?” As if the gunman’s particular issue with the world would explain why he reacted exactly as he did. Our news media is good at wringing their hands and gnashing their teeth at these moments. But they’re guilty of giving credence to bullshit arguments. I’m old enough to remember when they’d regularly give climate science deniers equal time because, hey — they have a “point of view” so therefore because they have it, it must be valid. Here, as always, on one side is a majority of Americans who do not own guns and resent the fact that gun owners can’t keep their damned killing machines to themselves. On the other side are gun owners whose hair catches fire immediately because, damn it, as former NRA president Chuck Heston put it, we can try and pry their guns from their cold, dead fingers.

What is this mania to have guns in the first place? Yeah, sure — out in rural America, something or other. That seems to be the argument’s meat: we’re different. We’re threatened by neighbors who live miles away and by strangers we’ve never met. In case those zombie-people come, swarming by the dozens, those guns will be all that stands between us and the zombie apocalypse.

America’s gun problem is borderline intractable in large part because we’ve spent so long giving credence to bullshit arguments about guns. Rather than dismiss fears of marauders out of hand, we indulge this nonsense. We nod along to their white terror: “Oh, yes, of course it could happen — Black or brown people are probably plotting right this second to break into your house and eat your children for lunch. Have all the weaponry you want!” The data says that won’t happen. But — the data again — it could happen that one of those guns ends up killing someone who live in the house — by way of an accident or suicide or a moment of intra-familial rage.

That’s the other lie about guns that our news media happily propagates — that “responsible gun owners” don’t have these problems. There is no such thing as “responsible gun ownership”. Nancy Lanza thought she was a responsible gun owner until her son Adam shot her with her own legally purchased Bushmaster XM15 semi-automatic rifle before taking that weapon — and ten magazines with 30 rounds each to Sandy Hook Elementary School. Adam Lanza used a gun to resolve his emotional problems. Whatever was bothering him, he became convinced that the solution to it would spit from the muzzle of that Bushmaster.

Nobody turns a gun on other people — on strangers or on people they know — because they’re happy with them. You point a death machine — that’s what a gun is by design — at someone in order to threaten them. Do what they say or they’ll kill you with that gun. Gun violence killed 20,000 Americans last year. That’s a lot of anger. Another 24,000 Americans used guns to commit suicide. If the guns that were used to end those 44,000 lives hadn’t been available, how many of those people would still be here today? Most of them, that’s who — if not all of them.

Our gun laws all flow directly from our racism. If white people thought for two seconds that, say, Black people were arming themselves to the teeth the way white people already have? They’d re-write the gun laws just like that. Here’s my “let’s make a deal” to gun world: I’ll be honest if you will. Yes, in a perfect world, I admit it: I would insist that we carry out the Second Amendment to the letter. We’d arrange for a “well regulated militia” to formally take over the job of deciding who among the citizenry will be permitted to “keep” or “bear” the militia’s arms. The arms, you see, would BELONG to the militia; the word “own” doesn’t appear in the Second Amendment. Do you suppose that’s an accident? I don’t. The word “own” was perfectly good back then. Yet, strangely, they didn’t use that word to describe anyone’s relationship with a gun — as its “owner”.

Maybe the Constitution’s framers understood that some people couldn’t be trusted to have a gun in their hands. They might want to be in the militia but the militia wouldn’t want them; they’re nuts.

The whole tone of the gun rights argument smacks of emotional neediness. Virtually none of these people need their guns for “protection”. C’mon — I was honest — I said I’d take most guns. The other side needs to be honest, too: they need to confess why they REALLY feel threatened enough to “keep” a death machine within reach. What do they REALLY feel threatened by?

I write this as a suicide survivor. I tried to step in front of a bus. It seemed, in the moment, a sure thing. It wasn’t. Ah, but if I’d had a gun — I’d have been 2020’s suicide gun death number 24,001.

First, We Have To Admit To Ourselves: There Is No Such Thing As “Responsible Gun Ownership”

~ A L Katz ~ Leave a comment

Ten people died yesterday in Boulder, CO after a guy his own family thought was intensely paranoid and delusional attempted to use a military assault weapon to assuage his symptoms. A few days before, eight people (six of them women of Asian descent) were shot to death by a white guy who was “having a bad day”. Like a cliche, in the immediate aftermath of yet another gun-related tragedy, Texas Senator (and human coronavirus) Ted Cruz got up on the Senate floor and brayed about how horrible it would be if the Democrats were to use this (or any) shooting-related tragedy to try and take the legal guns from regular, law-abiding Americans — you know, the “RESPONSIBLE” gun owners. Why, THOSE PEOPLE would NEVER allow THEIR guns to do such terrible things — that’s cos they’re “RESPONSIBLE”! That’s the pitch. The bloodbath we endure in America isn’t because of all the responsible gun owners, it’s because of a handful of “bad apples”, mostly non-white so take their guns away, absolutely!

For starters, Ted Cruz is a stone cold traitor. But never mind that. He’s also a regular apologist for the fiction that “responsible” gun owners — like Ted — exist to begin with. Hey, remember Ted demonstrating just how responsible gun owners use their machine guns to cook bacon?

Yeah — that happened. Ted Cruz “keeps happening”…

I’ve fired guns. When I was a kid going to camp up in Maine in the 60’s, riflery was one of the activities. I enjoyed it though I really wasn’t very good at it (I’ve got an astygmatism in my right eye that messes with fine focus). Like I said — I enjoyed riflery. Hell, I even scored a few NRA gun safety awards. That was back when “gun safety” was what the NRA did. Before they turned into a political operation walking point for the gun manufacturers. Back before the NRA’s Wayne LaPierre-ification. Gun safety was the mantra.

Then, when riflery’s time was up — swimming was next — we campers moved on but not before the riflery counselor went through the whole ritual of putting the guns away, back in the locked gun shed where they were kept (the camp’s “gun locker”). To be honest? That’s really the only time a gun ever felt truly “safe” — when it was put away. But, let’s be real — sitting in a gun shed or a gun locker is NOT what the gun was designed to do. It was designed for a very specific purpose — to send a piece of hot metal speeding through the air at a living target, ideally in order to kill it. “Boom”. That’s it. That’s the gun’s entire purpose — to be a literal death machine. From the cutest-as-can-be single-shot derringer to an AK-47 burping death, the point of the exercise is lethality. You may only want to maim the person you just fired at, but, honestly, if there’s no way for you to control a bullet once you’ve fired it? You’ve already cast your vote.

Remember Nancy Lanza — mother to Adam Lanza, the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooter? Nancy Lanza bragged about being a “responsible gun owner”. And I’ve no doubt she was — up until the very second she wasn’t — when her son killed her in cold blood with one of her own legal guns. Just like that, Nancy Lanza went from being “responsible gun owner” to “crime statistic”, having been murdered using her own weapon. I wonder if the irony hurt worse than dying did.

See, the measure of whether or not any gun owner is “responsible” or not can’t be taken when their gun is safe inside its locker. The gun wasn’t designed for that. Go ahead — look at the design specs for any gun you like. Not a one was “designed” to sit in a safe or a locker. They were all designed to kill something. So, let’s dispense with the first fiction — that guns have any practical function beyond one thing: death. Guns are hand-held death machines.

That means the the question we’re asking to gage any gun owner’s level of responsibility is, how responsible are they when their weapon is out & about? To be fair, most gun owners will be passably responsible their entire lifetimes. They or their weapon won’t kill or maim anyone. They’ll call themselves “responsible”. The fact is, they were lucky. That’s all. WHY does anyone need to have a death machine in their house or in their hands? Fear of home invasion? Gosh, how “White Guy!” To protect the family? Even whiter as excuses go. The wonderful blogger and Twitter goddess Gabrielle Blair wrote a terrific Twitter thread about men using the “I’m protecting my family!” excuse for having guns in the house.

The thread goes on. Man doesn’t make any better arguments for guns. What’d ya expect? Clarity of vision from these pirates?

Every gun is an accident or a tragedy that just hasn’t happened yet. It might not ever happen — a good thing — but that doesn’t diminish its impact on the people guns do hurt or destroy. And it never, EVER means it “can’t” happen.

Look, I support the second amendment. That is, I support the amendment’s original intention, not the ludicrous monstrosity the gun lobby turned our reading of the amendment into. Usually, it starts with some horse shit about how the term “well regulated” meant “in good working order” back then which, apparently, is now code for “have all the damned guns ya want!” Bullshit. The second amendment’s language isn’t that tricky to parse unless you intend to parse it with bad intent.

“A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed”. That’s what it says. The amendment frames guns from the point of view of “a well regulated militia”. Yes, the militia plays a vital role — securing a free state. But, where guns are concerned, per the amendment, the militia must be “well regulated”. Regulated = rules. In fact, clearly, it’s the militia’s role here — among its regulations — to decide which people will get to “keep” and “bear” the arms in question. The amendment does not say “own” the arms — “own” being a perfectly good word back then. Yet the framers wrote “keep” and “bear”.

For the record, “keeping a thing” is not the same as “owning” it.

America’s gun policies all flow from a pool of racism, irrational fear and bullshit. The whole point is to arm as many white people as possible. To make this insane idea sound less insane, gun culture invented the idea of “the responsible gun owner”. White people therefore weren’t arming themselves to the teeth because they’re hopelessly racist, they were doing it because they were “incredibly responsible”!

Do you suppose it occurred to Nancy Lanza as her son Adam was drawing on her what a good and responsible gun owner she was? I don’t think so either.

“Responsible Gun Ownership” Is A Myth

~ A L Katz ~ Leave a comment

It seems the Robert Alan Long — the Atlanta shooter who claims his sex addiction, not his racism, motivated his killing spree — purchased the weapon he used to murder eight people, six of them Asian women, MERE HOURS BEFORE using it to commit murder.

I’m not arguing the second amendment here. It exists. What it actually says and intends us to do as a result — that’s an argument for another blog post. The fact that any discussion about guns in America automatically becomes a discussion about language shouts volumes. But then, Americans are good at putting lipstick on pigs, thinking “All men are created equal” while institutionalizing slavery, and selling utter nonsense as “religions” that other Americans gobble up as gospel truth. We’re culturally acclimated to seeing one thing as its opposite — take Manifest Destiny. WE still tell ourselves that was a “good thing”. It wasn’t. In fact, Manifest Destiny wasn’t even a legitimate idea based on legitimate thinking. It was a myth — invented by white people to justify their terrible behavior. “Responsible gun ownership” exists in that context — a myth invented to justify… well, in this instance, not “terrible behavior”. But, behavior that can lead to terrible things happening.

It all starts with people believing a myth is real.

I’ve fired a gun before. In fact, I really enjoyed riflery the six years I got to do it when I was a kid going to sleepaway camp. I got a few NRA badges to prove it! Back then (this was the mid 1960’s), the NRA was still a “gun safety organization” and the thing I remember most from my six years of riflery, aside from the fact that I wasn’t half bad at it, was the constant refrain of gun safety, gun safety, GUN SAFETY. More than anything, the NRA-backed training I got back then imprinted the idea that guns can kill you. Even if you do everything right, there’s always the possibility that you could ONE thing wrong and you or someone could get hurt. That’s why you have to be hyper vigilant. You can never let your guard down whenever a gun is out of its locker. You have to be “responsible”.

See, I was taught “gun responsibility”. I believed in it. Just like everyone else in America, I got it into my head that while some people will only ever use guns to do bad things, most people (who just so happen to be white), only every want to use their guns to do “good things” — like hunt (debatable as a “good thing” — it certainly isn’t good from the hunted animal’s point of view) or target shoot (a perfectly good thing!) or defend themselves (a perfectly dubious thing). It’s inside that last thing — “self defense” where most of the “responsible gun ownership” mythology lurks.

For starters, it assumes something very, very dark about the rest of America — outside that gun owner’s front door. Whereas, in most other countries, it’s assumed you don’t need a gun to protect yourself from your neighbors and fellow citizens, in America, it’s “normal thinking”. Of course danger awaits outside your front door! Of course you need a lethal weapon to defend yourself — the threat outside is hell bent on murdering you! That excuse gets played regardless of which direction crime statistics are headed. The urge to “defend one’s home and hearth” isn’t based on statistics. It’s based on fear. In America, that fear is based on racism. The whole “good guy with a gun” vs “bad guy with a gun” quietly casts the good guy as almost certainly white and the bad guy as almost certainly Black. Hmmmmmm… now where could such an idea have come from?

Racism touches or has touched almost every facet of American life. Guns are no different. The whole point of our gun laws, at present, is to feed racist fear. If we could magically remove racism from peoples’ brains, here in America almost every bit of the incentive to own a weapon would evaporate. My upper middle class Jewish family — politically very liberal — still succumbed to racist fear during the riots the followed Martin Luther King’s assassination. Though Pikesville — where I grew up — was miles and miles from the parts of Baltimore that erupted in violence, my parents (and others), went out and purchased guns. They were afraid of angry Black people (angry for a very legitimate reason) coming to our neighborhood and being violent. No such thing ever happened. Did it occur in any of the angry protestor’s heads to do such a thing? Probably — but, so what?

It’s a testament to how good white people are at diving and conquering everyone else that Blacks and Jews — two groups with way, way more in common than not — could be set against each other like that. The overwhelming majority of Jews arrived in America after slavery was gone. Jews were never considered “white people” in Europe. Jews occupied the first “ghetto” — in Venice, Italy — to which they were segregated starting 29 March 1516.

Quick side note — the “ghetto” (it’s an Italian word), was a swampy island connected to the rest of the city “…by two bridges that were only open during the day. Gates were opened in the morning at the ringing of the marangona, the largest bell in St. Mark’s Campanile, and locked in the evening. Permanent, round-the-clock surveillance of the gates occurred at the Jewish residents’ expense.[fn] Strict penalties were to be imposed on any Jewish resident caught outside after curfew.[fn] Areas of Ghetto Nuovo that were open to the canal were to be sealed off with walls, while outward facing quays were to be bricked over in order to make it impossible for unauthorized entry or exit.[fn]“

Jews fled Europe because of racism. They hoped for a better life here where (hopefully) racism wouldn’t constantly destroy their communities and steal their wealth. Fortunately for the Jews, America was already doing that to Black people by the time the Jews got here. And, while not considered white by most Europeans, Jews were just “white-adjacent” enough in America that white people didn’t make a point of taking their wealth as white people had historically in Europe. While Jews prospered, Black people struggled — as the Jews had in Europe — but also with the additional burden of slavery; Reconstruction’s failure kept slavery on the table.

You don’t have to dig down too far inside just about an gun law in America to find the fear it rests upon. And that fear is of former slaves getting guns and coming for payback. That’s the base justification. It’s irrational. It’s unspoken. But it’s there.

Ever notice how “normal” it is for right wingers and militia types to show up at right wing rallies armed to the teeth — even INSIDE government property where they’re using their arms to literally threaten legislators? Were those people all “responsible gun owners”? No one got shot that day. Good thing, I guess… are we then to measure the relative success of “responsibility” by lack of body count? No one died, all the gun owners acted “responsibly” this time. Is that it?

The difference between a “responsible” gun owner and an irresponsible one is the unexpected event. Take Nancy Lanza — mother of 20 year old Adam Lanza, the guy responsible for the Sandy Hook school shooting. By all accounts, prior to that event, Nancy Lanza was a “responsible gun owner”. I bet Nancy Lanza thought of herself as a “responsible gun owner”. Until the day she wasn’t — the day her son murdered her with her with one of her own weapons before heading out the door and murdering 26 MORE people at Sandy Hook Elementary School, 20 of them CHILDREN.

One moment Nancy Lanza was as responsible a gun owner as anyone and the next — a gun violence victim. Killed in her own home by her own gun. Trying to see how the “self defense” angle fits here. No one broke in to do this to her. She set herself up for failure — and then, she set up the very community she loved and was part of for even worse failure.

And pain.

The full measure of a gun owner’s “responsibility” doesn’t occur when their gun is sitting safely inside a gun safe. The gun was not designed to do that. If you really want to know how responsible a gun owner is, you have to measure their responsibility when the gun’s outside its safe and in their hands — where it always has the potential to do real damage just by operating within its design specs.

In their defense, most gun owners will never have happen to them what happened to Nancy Lanza. But none of them can guarantee that they won’t. They can’t.

And the second they tell you they can? They’re acting irresponsibly.

“Me” v “We”

~ A L Katz ~ Leave a comment

That, in a nutshell, is the argument we’re having in America today: the rights of “ME” v the rights of “WE”.

I hesitate to call anything “Republican thinking” anymore. That’s an oxymoron. Republicans don’t think, they perpetrate. They’re criminals engaged in a criminal enterprise — the overthrow of the legitimate American government by a devil’s brew of RW money (the Kochs & Mercers), corrupt Republican politicians (Mitch McConnell, Kevin McCarthy, Paul Ryan, Lindsey Graham) and Russian intelligence carrying out a literal plan of operation hatched by Putin himself.

Ask yourself — why are the Republicans doing this? They’re a minority — and getting “minority-ier”. They’re tossing the Constitution and rule of law overboard to hold onto power. What could be more “ME” than that?

What could be more “ME” than a dwindling white minority staring a diverse and diversifying majority in the eye and insisting “ME” while they insist “No, WE”?

Racism is an implied right to hate. No such right exists except in the racist’s mind. Racist thinking and contemporary conservative thinking are a horrifying conjoined twin. They both aspire either to keep America right where it is — a place still simmering in multi-faceted institutional racism or (better yet, to them) a place where nobody talks about racism because it’s that baked in. You, like in the good ol’ 50’s — the 1850’s.

Conservative thinking values property (theirs) over life (yours). Proudly Christian, it’s taken “Do unto others” and turned it into “Do what we say”.

The most glaring example of conservative thinking in our everyday life occurs any time someone walks into a hospital or doctor’s office needing health CARE. The first question we ask isn’t “How can we fix you?”, it’s “How’re you gonna pay for this?”

Before you can get well, we need to know that someone’s gonna make a buck.

That’s slavery thinking where everyone below “Boss Man” is expendable.

Conservatives will tell you all about how the “rugged individual” has any and every right he needs to do what he wants — even if that right tramples other peoples’ rights. When conservatives & libertarians picture that “rugged individual” in their minds? He’s as white as they are. Not only don’t conservatives believe “all men are created equal”, they don’t believe “all rights are created equal” either.

Their rights will always be able to “beat up” our rights (same way their imaginary friend can beat the snot out of yours).

Gun laws aren’t about “rights” per se, they’re about fear — that shrinking white-male-Christian minority legitimizing their bunker mentality. When they think of “people owning all the guns they want”, they aren’t including people of color in that. If they thought for two seconds that the black guy living cross town was arming himself with the same intensity? They’d shit-can that law in a heartbeat.

Donald Trump isn’t the only delusional male telling himself “I alone can fix it”. That disease afflicts plenty of Republicans. You know how pretty much every Republican takes every opportunity to tell us how “God-fearing” they are? Well, that’s bullshit. They don’t “fear” God, they think they “ARE” God. That’s why they alone can “fix it”.

How much more “ME” can ya get?

Progressives view the world through a more “socialized” lens. Having sampled crony capitalism now — and found it wanting — it’s long past time that we try a more legitimate form of capitalism. While we intuitively assume that the people with the most money are “the best capitalists” who know better than the rest of us how capitalism works, if that capitalist is corrupt (they are), they’re actually undermining capitalism, not nurturing it.

Capitalism relies on innovation to focus capital where it needs to go to 1) do the most good and 2) return the most on its investment while doing the most good. Smart capital knows that things that do the most good spread wealth around — which then puts that capital back into the system so it can continue to inspire new innovation. Progressive capitalism self-perpetuates the flow of capital.

Corrupt capital directs all available wealth to its own pocket. The only thing that trickles down is misery. Nothing gets innovated. Everything slowly grinds to a halt as the rich get richer and no one else can afford to buy anything.

“ME”, again.

It’s hard to have a consumer driven economy that depends on consumer confidence when the consumers have no confidence in the economy. But then, crony capitalists — like conservatives — never think that far into the future. That’s because the future is what they’re trying to avoid.

Progressives make better capitalists. Progressives also govern better — because they’re automatically more concerned with “WE” than “ME”. Progressives aren’t perfect. There’s no such thing. But progressives — because it’s how we think — naturally look for solutions that work for the greatest number of people over solutions that work for fewer people.

Progressives understand that “fair” needs to apply to everyone equally. It’s tricky. That’s why the rule of law is so important. Progressives stand by, behind and with the rule of law because it’s the very best way to assure “WE” are treated equally.

Progressives understand that as important as the rights of the individual are, they cannot supersede the rights of the group. A gun owner’s right to stand at his front door, beer in hand, blasting away at his neighbors just for fun cannot supersede his neighbors’ rights to not get shot at by a drunken yahoo.

Progressives really and truly believe that a rising tide lifts all boats.

That’s “all boats” as in “WE”.

America’s Gun Laws Are Racist

~ A L Katz ~ Leave a comment

That’s not a revelation. No one should read that headline and think “You know, I never thought of that.” They should think: “Damn right they are!”

That’s how obvious it is.

This is not virgin territory. Not even remotely. Plenty of ink — electronic or otherwise — has been spent on the subject.

Consider that policing in America began as “slave patrols”. Armed men rounding up runaways. Slaves — even ex-slaves — were prohibited from owning guns. “Slave Codes” they were called — then “Black Codes” after Emancipation. Only the name changed.

Gun control existed — in the sense that the gun laws controlled black people getting them. Brown people too. In fact, anyone who wasn’t white was the law’s target.

We just need to remind ourselves of the fact now — as we watch armed white militias enter statehouses — intent on intimidating lawmakers not with their ideas or passion but with their WEAPONS.

May 14, 2020 — White supremacist militias — unable to use their words — wave their dicks & guns around instead.

We need to remind ourselves how racist our gun laws are as we watch white supremacists confront peaceful protesters.

Charlottesville August 12, 2017 — White supremacist James Alex Fields, Jr drives his car into a crowd of peaceful protesters, killing Heather Heyer. How clever to use a car instead this time.

We need to remind ourselves as white looters attempt to co-opt legitimate rage.

Black Lives do not Matter to white looters there solely to cause chaos & get stuff for free.

We need to remind ourselves as white cops — and white guys in general — use their guns to hunt people of color.

Rednecks Travis McMichael & his father Gregory hunt black jogger Ahmaud Arbery while co-conspirator William “Roddie” Bryan videos.
Rayshard Brooks (r) is shot in the back by Atlanta PD Officer Garrett Rolfe – June 17, 2020

It’s not a coincidence that the same people who are most vociferous about clutching their guns to the bitter end are the same people who harass black and brown people in public spaces. Their lizard brains are on fire. They adore Donald Trump because his racism is their racism.

Where Jim Jones used kool-aid, Donald Trump uses violence. Each drop of bitter drink is replaced by a bullet.

Freedom Has NEVER Been “Free”; It ALWAYS Comes With Responsibilities

~ A L Katz ~ 1 Comment

“Freedom”, like “liberty”, is one of those words everyone thinks they understand. If I’m free, I get to do whatever I want. Anyone who tries to restrict my “liberties” is restricting my civil rights!

Horse shit. Horse shit on steroids.

Most Republicans have a 5 year old’s understanding of freedom. They think freedom means “you’re not the boss of me”. But then, plenty of Republicans believe THEY are rugged individuals, conquering heroes of the free market there to make themselves rich at everyone else’s expense. They believe they should be free to pollute to their heart’s content, own every weapon imaginable — which they can carry in public so as to intimidate everyone else. They believe their freedom is more important than your freedom — whatever you think your freedom is.

That — right there — is the problem.

“Freedom” on a personal level is more “self indulgence” than “freedom”. A person who thinks their freedom includes infecting me with their coronavirus conflicts with my freedom. My freedom, you see, doesn’t work that way. Which of our two freedoms gets to dominate here? They can’t co-exist.

That’s where the group’s freedom comes in. The group — American society — also is “free”. But our collective individual freedoms have to live together. If two freedoms can’t exist together then both have to compromise or cease to be considered “freedoms”. How can freedom benefit one person while harming another? Thinking that THAT is “freedom” is exactly what got us into this mess.

America pays lots of lip service to “freedom”. But we don’t know what it is. Perhaps if we educated our young people in exactly how our government works, we could fix that. The most basic freedom we need to teach future citizens is the importance of voting itself as the foundation for freedom. Voting — and the politics that result — are how we negotiate our freedoms — balancing my needs against your needs and our needs against the larger public’s needs.

The simple fact is, there’s no such thing as “complete freedom”. Want that? Go live by yourself on an island. You’ll soon begin to experience freedom’s practical imitations. You by yourself aren’t free. It’s like keeping a gun in a gun locker. Sure, it’s “safe” there — but the gun wasn’t designed to sit in a gun locker — it was designed (from the ground up) to send a hot piece of metal flying at great speed into a live target, killing it. “Responsible gun ownership” isn’t what happens when the gun’s not being used. A bad idea is just a bad idea until somebody tries to “do it”. Then it becomes something else entirely. Freedom isn’t what you do on your own, it’s how you interact with others: what are we free to do as individuals in a society and as that society?

If you don’t show up to vote even, you haven’t exercised your most basic freedom. If you’ve “chosen” not to vote, you’ve in essence voted to shrug off your freedom. What other people choose to do with their freedom is how you’ll deal with yours. That’s their freedom in play, not yours which means they’re free and you’re not. You’re just pretending to be free.

Like a child.

Freedom and democracy are way harder than they look. But — if we can manage the responsibilities and obligations, the self-government is superior to any other form of government. People, in general, are far happier living in democracies. They’re way more productive. Imagine how much happier more Americans would be — how much more productive we’d all be — if only we’d get better at being “free”.

If You Arm People As Part Of Their Job, You’re Inviting Them To Shoot People

~ A L Katz ~ Leave a comment

I’ve spent the bulk of my career in show biz. I’ve run TV shows. Written & produced feature films. I’ve cast thousands of actors.

After hiring them, I wardrobed those actors.

It’s amazing what happens when an actor goes into their trailer, takes off their street clothes and dons the outer layer of a person sorta like them but not them. They change. If the wardrobe is unlike their street clothes? They change even more.

When you outfit a person for their work in a uniform, something changes inside that person when that uniform goes on. You belong to something bigger than yourself. Even if you’re working at McDonald’s and you hate it — the uniform changes you. At the very least, it tames your rebellious streak. You’re still there working, wearing the uniform.

Now add a gun to the uniform. Yeah, sure, we’ve “trained” this uniform-wearer into “best practices” for using that gun but let’s be real: a gun is a death machine. It’s been designed from the ground up to send a piece of hot metal flying very fast into a live target, killing it. It’s not designed to sit in a holster (or gun safe). The holster (and gun safe) were designed around them. To put them somewhere when not being used.

A gun’s safety vs unsafety has to be measured against zero gun while the gun is in someone’s hand. No gun = zero chance anyone will get killed, maimed, wounded or disabled by the gun. Gun = yeah, all those things could happen. It’s a roll of the dice whether they do or not. And let’s be really, really real: “responsible gun ownership” is a myth gun owners (who want to be responsible) tell themselves.

Nancy Lanza — mother of Sandy Hook shooter Adam Lanza — thought she was a “responsible gun owner” right up to the very moment her son blew her brains out with one of her guns. We know what he did afterwards. With those “responsibly owned guns”.

I’m not arguing second amendment yes or no. If we’d just abide by the amendment — the words AS WRITTEN say “gun control” (the militia gets to decide who gets to “keep and bear” — not own — those arms). I’m just saying guns are damned dangerous. I have receipts.

And if you put a dangerous object at the hip of even a very well-trained person (a “responsible gun owner” type), the dangerous object remains dangerous and unpredictable. Putting literal Live & Death into anyone’s hands invites them to play with Life & Death. Throw emotions into it and it’s hyper volatile. Consider how racist a lot of those emotions are — of course there’s a killing spree. We set everyone up for that exact failure.

But then, policing began as a racist endeavor in America. The first police forces evolved from slave patrols formed in the 1820’s. They’ve always been armed — and those arms were meant to kill, maim or cower.

Nothing has changed.

If, inside your head, you’re a hammer, every problem becomes a nail.

Rayshard Brooks died because two Atlanta cops woke him (he was asleep, drunk, in his car outside a Wendy’s) then, when he ran, shot him. They shot him because he’d grabbed one of their tasers. He fired it — over his shoulder — as he ran at them. Tasers, even police have routinely argued in court, are not deadly weapons.

The Atlanta police returned a non-deadly (and wildly fired) taser shot with deadly fire. Into Rayshard’s BACK.

If you hand a racist a gun, the gun will find its way into the racist’s hand at the worst possible moment. And the racist — justified by his wardrobe — will use that gun to splatter another sidewalk with his racism’s result: more death, most of it black or brown.

Why on earth would the people being subjected to such horrific violence want to keep PAYING for it through their tax dollars? Why on earthy would anyone disgusted by such behavior be forced to pay for it — when it’s not the “policing” we want.

We need to (metaphorically) defund how we think about policing. That will cause us to de-fund the myriad ways we’ve militarized policing. That, in turn, will finally turn policing away from its racist roots in America and toward something genuinely fair, community-based and entirely productive. There are civilized countries where police walk among the people they’re policing without guns at their hips.

It’s do-able. It’s being done.

That needs to be us now.

“Responsible Gun Ownership” Is A Myth

~ A L Katz ~ Leave a comment

Let me burp up a cliche first: “the road to hell is paved with good intentions”. I believe you, 99.99% of gun owners (I’m trying to be super generous here): you want to own and handle your firearm responsibly. The last thing on earth you want is an accident or a tragedy happening because of you and your gun.

But, you see, the problem is — you HAVE that gun in your possession. Your right to have it isn’t being questioned here (though, frankly, the Militia needs to step up and do its damned job regulating (as per the second amendment) who gets to “keep & bear” (not own — it does not say “own”) arms. We’re starting from the proposition that (as per the current mis-reading of the second amendment’s pretty simple, straightforward words) hell, you can have as many guns as ya like!

The basic fact about any gun is that it has been designed to send a piece of hot metal flying through the air at great speed into a living target so as to kill it. That’s why it’s such a great war tool – and hunting tool. It sends pieces of hot metal into living targets so as to kill them, see?

They are literal death machines. I’m not passing judgment when I write that. I’m simply staring a fact. This is a machine designed to cause internal damage to living things. You can fire a gun at a tree as much as you like. It wasn’t designed to do that. Hell, you want that tree dead? Get a saw. It’s more appropriate.

You want a human being dead? They tend to move around. Guns work better on them than saws.

When you purchase or take possession of a gun, you are assuming ownership of a death machine. Own that fact, gun owners. Don’t get emotional about it. Just own it. FFS — if ya can’t be responsible enough to own “what you own”, you’re probably not responsible enough to have a death machine in your hands.

Anyone can be “responsible” when the death machine is not in their hands — when the death machine is locked up in a safe. Except, the death machine wasn’t designed to sit, locked up in a safe. It was designed to be taken out and fired.

Take the gun out of the safe and fire it — THEN let’s talk about whether or not you were responsible, responsible gun owner.

Hey, to repeat, I absolutely believe that 99.99% of the time, you ARE acting “responsibly” with your death machine — no one died. Good for you! You “dodged a bullet” that time.

Remember Nancy Lanza? Adam Lanza’s mom? Nancy Lanza, everyone thought — Nancy especially — that she was a “responsible gun owner”. And, by every definition that we use (“responsible gun ownership” being a created thing that we get to define ourselves), Nancy Lanza WAS a “responsible gun owner”.

Until she wasn’t. Prior to December 14, 2012, none of Nancy Lanza’s guns — and she owned lots of them; she collected them, prized them, treasured them — had ever killed anyone. As far as we know, they had never even hurt anyone. Until the morning of December 14, 2012, Nancy Lanza was “a responsible gun owner”.

And then her son Adam — who grew up in this “responsible gun owner’s” home — learning “responsible gun owner” culture and values — took several of his mom’s weapons, killed her as she slept and then went to the nearby Sandy Hook Elementary School where he — irresponsibly — murdered 26 people, most of them children.

“Responsible gun owner” until “not”. Nancy Lanza probably STILL doesn’t know how irresponsible a gun owner she was in reality.

That’s the bigger problem for those of us who DON’T own a gun — and don’t tell ourselves how responsible we are — we don’t know when the “responsible” gun owners will suddenly stop “being responsible”. We don’t know when they’ll fail — and neither do they, ya see.

We already have to live with the fact that there are PLENTY of “irresponsible” gun owners out there already — people who don’t care if, when, how, AT WHOM their guns are fired. We know we can be at the wrong place and wrong time at ANY time when our fellow citizens own firearms and suddenly decide to open fire at us without warning. Because they’re angry. Or broke. Or psychotic.

That’s why I avoid walking in dark places where irresponsible gun owners might lurk. I can’t do much about them hunting ME though. We can all relate to how animals feel when, suddenly, your day gets ruined by a human with a gun who — for some reason you can’t fathom — won’t be happy until you are dead.

Can’t do much about what I can’t anticipate. It’s the gun violence that can and does flare from the “responsible” gun owners that hurts most. That never has to happen. Those guns should never hurt or kill anyone. If those guns had stayed in their gun safes…

See what I’m saying?

The moment a gun owner took the gun into their hands — THAT’S when things got dicey. Children should never die because they found a hand gun in mommy’s handbag. People at the mercy of their own darkness should not have access to guns when therapy, love and perspective are their darkness’s enemy. A moment of intense (almost always male) rage shouldn’t find resolution by pulling a literal trigger.

We will never — ever — get rid of guns in America. That’s wishful thinking. Magical thinking even. The best we can hope for is actual “responsible” gun ownership.

That can’t begin though until “responsible gun owners” admit that there’s no such thing. They’re “gun owners” plain and simple. Whatever happens after that?

Nobody really knows.

A Thought Experiment: What If We “COULD” Sue Gun Manufacturers & The NRA?

~ A L Katz ~ Leave a comment

Buy literally any other product in America and it causes harm — you can sue the product’s manufacturer because of the harm that product caused. The one exception is GUNS. For real.

You cannot sue a gun manufacturer because their gun hurt someone. Or even something (and we know how much gun-loving conservatives value property over people). Gun manufacturers got in tight with the NRA and then used the NRA to squeeze Congress into giving guns the freest pass in the universe.

Not only did gun manufacturers get a free pass legally, they bamboozled us into thinking the second amendment says the diametric opposite of what it actually says. They now insist that “well regulated milita” was a purposefully obscure reference to an obscure usage of those words that meant “well working gun of whatever size you want”. That’s not hyperbole. Look at the history. We started getting massively crazy the moment we let the NRA bullshit us about what the “framers really meant”.

How many dead gunshot victims lie atop THAT pile of lies?

You CAN’T sue a gun manufacturer. But what if you could? What if you could lay out the evidence to a jury how a gun is designed from the ground up to send a hot metal fragment flying through the air at a live target with the absolute intention of killing it. Guns are designed to kill. A gun that hasn’t killed something is a gun that has not done what it was designed to do.

Similarly — a gun locked in a gun safe is not doing what it was designed to do. It’s nice that, while in the safe, theoretically it can’t hurt anyone but — it just takes one moment’s distraction to change a responsible gun owner into the participant in yet another American gun tragedy. Adam Lanza shot up Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012. But first, he shot his mother to death. Nancy Lanza was, by all accounts, A RESPONSIBLE GUN OWNER.

And then she wasn’t.

Responsible Gun Ownership is a myth.

Let’s add “Bullshitting the American Public With Fatal Consequences” to the law suit. Because that’s what the gun manufacturers and the NRA are truly guilty of — creating a monstrous lie that continues to kill us. Kill our children.

The NRA sold America a culture where men see guns as the most direct means of conflict resolution. Feeling really angry about something or someone? Get a gun and use it as a means to feel better.

That we have so many angry men — angry young men, too — speaks volumes about our culture. We’ve failed women horribly because we failed men. That is, we failed to rein men in. We failed to teach men that having a penis does not make you special — and penises don’t have the final say on where they go or what they do.

We’ve over-empowered penises in our culture. And now that men have to power share, they find their penises don’t know what to do. Confused penises are angry penises. And angry penises reach for a gun — because that’s what they’ve been taught to do. It’s not a coincidence that so much gun violence in America is men shooting their domestic partners, spouses, mothers or sisters.

Wow — this law suit’s getting massive. Gun manufacturers have sold us some pretty terrible things along with their guns.

If gun manufacturers could be held liable for what their guns do, they’d have done everything in their power to 1) make their guns as safe as possible, 2) as hard to abuse as possible (fingerprint access & palm ID), 3) much, much harder to get (cos who wants to get sued into bankruptcy by assholes?) and 4) share the cost of any potential damage costs by building their insurance into the cost of their guns.

The last part’s the kicker. If gun manufacturers built the cost of fixing what guns break into the cost of each gun? No one could afford to buy guns.

I guess THAT’S why you can’t sue gun manufacturers. Death merchants want to be free to continue selling us death.