It is time to tell the conservatives in Congress and elsewhere that their backward reaching political program is no longer, if it ever was, relevant to the vast majority of Americans. We've moved on, and there is no returning to the failed policies that the conservatives espouse.
The lame duck congressional session is ending, and of course, the "Fiscal Cliff" is at the top of the agenda. As I write in the morning of December 31, 2012, nothing has yet been accomplished on this, and our congress seems as disfunctinal as it ever has in my 63 years on this Earth. Approximately one dozen of the most radical Republicans in Congress lost their seats, but the Republicans and Speaker John Boehner of Ohio, still hold a diminishedHouse majority in the new congress. But, the last gasp of the defeated radicals may be to once again, hold America hostage to their "Pledge" to Americans for Tax Reform's president, Mr. Grover Norquist. To those radicals, I say, We've moved on.
Below the fold, I will offer my observations and opinions on just how yesterday the Republicans are, and how I, and America have Moved On.
NOTE: I started writing this diary prior to the Newtown, Connecticut massacre of children and teachers, and partway down the page, rather than abandon my work, I simply added a new section concerning gun control and violence in our nation. I put a dozen proposals, none of them original to me out for discussion. Please excuse the somehwat disjointed organization of this piece.
To Mr. Wayne LaPierre, and his call to arm peaceful teachers of children, and to put armed vigilantes in our schools, this represents an unfunded mandate on our overstretched public school systems for additional security costs, which would inevitably come at the expense of our children in the form of less rich academic programs, and a sense of fear in the one place where they should feel most safe, I say to Mr. LaPierre, we've moved on, neither your proposal nor the status quo will stand. America has said, we've moved on.
Pay your bills
Any householder in America knows that when you run up debt, eventually, you have to pay it off, and the longer you choose not to, or simply pay the minimum, continuous rolling of the debt, the more you will pay for the privelege of having that credit, the longer it will take to pay it off, and the more desperate you will feel from the crushing pressure of that debt. Bottom line, just as an individual or family must pay its debt in order to own its assets, our nation has to pay its debt as well. We now pay hundreds of millions of dollars per year just in interest on this debt, and to what end? We need to, as a nation, raise enough revenue not just to balance the budget, but we need a plan to pay the debt off. We have moved on, past the point where just balancing the budget is enough. No, we have to pay this credit card off. We need to get government out of the credit market, which drives up the cost of money for families and small businesses.
The Republicans haven't seemed to catch on to this, however. America, however has moved on.
NEW TOPIC - Gun framing
Each time a mass gun killing takes place, the gun defenders always are in the position of saying that the existing gun laws didn't do the job, there are 20,000 gun laws, and they don't work. It goes without saying that the current laws didn't work in that instance, but this can no longer be an excuse for doing nothing preventive for the future.
The gun control side always starts out in this hole, and the gun lobby continues to rhetorically dig the hole deeper, leading to more inaction.
We have to change the frame. We need to come up with creative solutions that do not infringe the right to keep arms, but we need to find ways to reslope the demand curve for the Weapons of Mass Destruction on our streets, schools and public spaces. Using the taxing power seems to be a good place to start. How bad do you want this weapon, and its ammunition? Placing a financial responsibility requirement for damage caused by an owned weapon, and mandatory theft reporting seems reasonable. "Fingerprinting" the weapon, by mandatory ballistics testing when a weapon changes hands or from the factory, with the ballistics report filed by serial number and tied to a specific owner seems reasonable.
Each time there is a mass shooting incident in America, the pro-gun has a ready frame. The 20,000 existing gun regulations on the books in America didn't work, so more regulation is not the answer. Generally, the unbalanced person was able to obtain weapons and ammunition legally or to obtain them from someone else who obtained them legally, and that shoud be the end of the story, according to the gun lobby.
There is no justification to do anything because all that was done before failed to do what was intended, therefore, no additional measures of control are worth doing because regulation does not work. We as a so society have moved on from this circular reasoning, and it won't work anymore.
Here is a frame. The Bushmaster AR-15 semiautomatic .223 rifle has been used in the last four mass killing incidents in America. The Bushmaster AR-15 semiautomatic rifle is, in fact a Weapon of Mass Destruction, and hundreds of thousands, if not millions of them are on our streets and in our homes, and in the homes of unbalanced people who may find a provocation to use them. Because so many of them end their own lives at the end of their own killing sprees, we seldom find what the motivating factor, that item that pushed them over the edge is, it is all speculation at that point.
The Bushmaster AR-15 semiautomatic rifle is a
Weapon of Mass Destruction on our streets and in our homes, and deserves to be designated as such. Of course, the Bushmaster brand isn't the only brand of AR-15 WMD. In this New York Times article, it is estimated that since 1986, 3.3 millions AR-15 and similar semiautomatic rifles have been built in America and "not exported".
http://www.nytimes.com/...
Large magazines holding 10, 15, 20, 30 or 100 rounds make the Bushmaster AR-15 semiautomatic rifle an even more lethal Weapon of Mass Destruction than a Bushmaster AR-15 semiautomatic rifle with a 7 round clip or magazine. Large magazines that contribute to the lethality of these Weapons of Mass Destruction in our homes and on our streets, and in the hands of very poorly regulated militia organizations have no business being on our streets and homes.
Mental health. Nearly all mass shooters, from the Texas Tower shootings, to Virginia Tech, to Columbine, to Paducah, KY, to Tuscon to Aurora to Newtown. Almost all of the shooters are described after the fact as mentally or emotionally impaired in some fashion, and that makes sense, as most of us can agree that a person "in his right mind" wouldn't decide to find a soft target and shoot it up.
To say that our mental health system is deficient goes without saying. In the 1970's and 80's, states began to empty their assylums, many with good cause due to incidents of patient abuse and neglect, and to save money. Unfortunately, what replaced that system has led to other forms of mental illness being on our streets and homeless shelters, homeless hovels beneath bridges and elsewhere. And our prisons. I can recall a documentary a few years ago, and the head of the Ohio Bureau of Corrections said that he was in charge of one of the biggest mental health care systems in America. And we can surmise that many other state prison systems have become warehouses for the mentally ill. The current mental health care system is broken, likely it is broken as badly as our gun control system, and who will commit the resources necessary to fix this and help develop a system that can identify and prevent the most dangerous persons among us from gaining access to weapons of mass destruction and soft targets. The NRA and others say that we need to fix mental health in America, but who will allocate the resources to make it happen?
Make our schools an armed camp. This appears to be the NRA solution to violence in schools. What mother would send her child to a place where weapons are common, the users of the weapons are lightly trained or perhaps untrained, nonviolent people. Think about any kindergarten or first through sixth grade teacher or principal you know. Do you think any of these people who are trained to be gentle mentors have a switch that can make them a shooter, an armed defender against someone who is likely a trained and practiced shooter who is armed to the teeth and entering a building shooting everything in sight? What will it cost to arm and train teachers, administrators, more police or armed security guards in tens of thousands of schools and classrooms when school districts can't even find the funds to pay music teachers? It is likely that such a security protocol, when implemented would take thousands of teachers from our struggling school systems, and harm the very education that our school systems are intended to deliver to our children and grandchildren. Has Mr. LaPierre taken leave of his senses? America hasn't, we've moved on, past the time when we can stop legislation in the stinking sludge of our legislative process.
Against this background, I make the following proposals. Please read and comment on them. Add your own proposals. Complain about these if you wish, but if you don't like them, make a constructive proposal of you own. If you have nothing to contribute, and the only proposal is to claim an expansive Second Amendment that bars nothing or limits nothing in regard to arms that can be held please say so and move on. We as a nation have move on from the status quo that nothing can or will be done because is is frightfully apparent that something MUST be done. In a discussion or negotiation that is in good faith, then everything must be on the table, we must fear nothing in making proposals, brainstorms, and zapping or sapping ideas is not really welcome, at least in my diary. If a proposal goes too far, in your opinion, then by all means, tell us where too far ends, in your opinion. If you only have a single point that no control is the only control that you will condone, then state it and please leave, but don't troll the thread and say it a hundred times, just to waste hundreds of people's time.
My proposals for discussion are:
1. Reinstate the 1994 ban on Assualt Rifles. Include large capacity clips and magazines in the ban.
2. Eliminate the gun show loophole that allows buyers to avoid background checks, which have been proven to keep some of the wrong people from obtaiing guns.
3. Fix the loophole which allows persons on terrorist watch lists to legally obtain guns that can be used against Americans in terrorist attacks o agains our soldiers on some battlefield in the Middle East.
4. Fingerprint each new gun by having an ATF ballistics test for each weapon (rifle or handgun) at the end of the assembly line or at the point of importation. Match the ballistics report with the serial number of the weapon, and use this information to obtain traceability of weapons to source and original buyer. Note that this is fingerprinting the weapon, not the purchaser, and no constituitonal rights are violated, since guns don't have rights, people do.
5. Increase the cost of weapons and ammunition by imposing heavy taxes on the sale of weapons and amminition, particularly .223 and similar ammunition used in assualt rifles. I read a comment in a diary here recently where the diarist said that taxing weapons and ammunition was a violation of the Second Amendment. My opinion is that this is clearly incorrect, since nearly all states already tax the sale of guns and ammunition, and that is clearly a legal thing for any government to do. I also see nothing wrong with the federal government levying a tax or fee for the ballistics test mentioned above, the keeping of the records necesary to support this system, and the development of computer systems that will be available to all law enforcement agencies when gun crimes are committed and the ballistics testing is required. It is entirely consistent with existing tax law and policies to charge user fees for the maintenance of systems that are paid by the users, and don't unduly burden those people and companies that do not use that service. President Reagan had absolutlely no problem with user fees that didn't burden anyone but the user. It is known that stiff taxes on cigarettes cause a reduction in the demand for cigarettes in places where those taxes have been implemented. There is also a "border effect" where people may go to New Jersey to buy cigarettes when New York levies a high tax on them. This argues for the high tax on weapons to be a federal tax to reduce the border effect, although there should be no prohibition on states to levy their own taxes on weapons and ammunition.
The taxes can be selective in their application, meaning that shotgun shells and true hunting ammunition can be taxed at one level and assualt weapon ammunition can be taxed at a much higher level.
And we must remember, the Supreme Court is on record that "The power to tax is the power to destroy". I have no desire to destroy the gun industry, but I have no sympathy for the Weapons of Mass Destruction on our streets and in our homes, and would not care a bit if that segment of the gun industry was destroyed. Look at all the lives and families these weapons have destroyed.
6. Make the source of gunpower traceable by the use of chemical tags, which is already used for fertilizer, like what was used at Oklahoma City.
7. Reduce arsenal size over time by changing the formulation of gunpowder so it has a shelf life, say 4 years or less. Also make gunpowder sold to reloaders have a limited shelf life for the same reason. There are quite likely billions of rounds out there that will never expire. We should do something about that. Ammunition with an expiration date should have this date stamped into the bullet casing.
Most of these things have been proposed elsewhere, and likely I have missed some of those that have been put out that make sense on some level. Feel free to put them in the comments and I will be happy to add some to the list here. I want to start a real discussion built around real proposals so we can provide this thread to our congressional and state elected representatives who are charged with enacting laws to protect Americans.
8. Require that gun owners assume financial responsibility for the weapons they own. Let the actuaries determine the value of liability necessary for each weapon, and let the market determine the price of that liability insurance. A standard check box for homeowner's or renter's insurance should be, do you keep guns in the home? If yes, what kinds, and how many? This will provide the underwriters all the informaton they need to rate the risk and price the insurance. Note that this is a private market mechnaism to rate the risk, and does not infringe on any Second Amendment right. It does, however increase the cost of owning these Weapons of Mass Destruction, which is, in my own opinion, a good thing.
9. Institute federal registration by gun make and serial number. 50 differing requirements at the state level would not work. Registration, along with ballistics fingerprinting weapons establishes traceability on weapons used in crimes. Registration does not infringe on the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. There is not a word there that says you cannot own or lawfully use a weapon.
10. Lost, sold or stolen weapons need to be reported as such. This should be the only way a weapon can be can be removed from the insurance requirement, this also introduces a market mechanism to get the previous owner out from under the ongoing liability cost. De-registering and removing financial responsibility for a gun no longer owned does not infringe on the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms, and also has the police on the alert that weapons previously under control are now out in the control of criminals, in the event of stolen weapons and potential criminals in the event of lost weapons.
11. Fix the ATF. http://www.nytimes.com/... Neither Presidents George W. Bush nor Barack Obama have been able to get senate confirmation of an ATF head for the last 6 years. Part of this is caused by the need to fix the senate, but it really is caused by the influence of the NRA and the gun lobby. The ATF also needs to have its mission redefined to match the threats our society has, and be given the resources it needs to accomplish its mission. There is nothing involved in fixing the ATF (I believe it is now ATFE, since explosives has been added to its mission) that violates the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.
12. Change or repeal the Second Amendment. Get real. I consider each of the first 10 amendments as inviolable and without their addition, the constitution would never have been adopted by the states. There is no way to get the majorities in Congress nor three fourths of the states to support this so this proposal is a non starter, and although I have seen it proposed in recent weeks, this proposal will never go anywhere. That is the end of the story on this topic. We have to consider the Bill of Rights as part of the original Constitution. The meaning can only be modified by the application of case law and founder intent as interpreted by the Supreme Court, and there is nothing that can change the way this court has ruled in the immediately forseeable future. If President Obama and maybe a Democratic successor get some new appointments over the next 12 years something can change, but this seems unlikely, and who knows how a court that is not consituted yet will rule on anything?
The time to do nothing has passed. We've moved on.
Please comment and add your own suggestions. I may add some of the suggestions to the list in the diary if by a preponderance of the comments, the suggestion has merit. Please keep it civil and limit the donuts.