http://www.dailykos.com/...>What The Hell Does A Clown Know About Guns?
part 2
So we got out on the road and heard on NPR there was a shooting at an elementary school in CT. Casualty numbers were not certain, but it looked like multiple casualties, students and teachers.
I switched stations so I would not be upset driving. Got home and started watching the TV coverage, overhead video, kids crying, interviews with FBI profilers, etc. Then I got drunk.
Little kids. Making Christmas decorations. Brutally slaughtered. I imagined the smell, the loud bangs, the screams...what those kids must have felt...then the stories of bravery...the woman principal running straight at the shooter to protect her kids...the little boy who told others to run when the gun jammed...as brave as any Medal of Honor winner…
The only salvageable piece of humanity was the thought that finally, after this horrendous spectacle, maybe something will get done about gun safety. But days went by. Then Wayne LaPierre made his defiant statement about good guys with guns. I became obsessed and read everything I could find about Adam Lanza, his mom, their guns, etc.
The excuses “He stole his mom’s guns!” “ It’s nobody’s fault except the shooter!” etc. made me physically ill. The kid was forcibly medicated. He was OCD. So when those two guys delivered the gun safe, the OCD kid just said “Put it wherever you want”...no way. His mom bought the guns. Please. You know that kid went with her and pointed to the guns he wanted. The seller knew what was going on. There was an uncancelled check for his next gun! Everybody involved in arming and teaching that kid to shoot should have gone to prison. But nothing. There was nobody even to sue. It was like the whole thing was a tornado or an earthquake. I thought I was losing my mind.
So I started to read about guns and mass shootings. The first book was Lethal Passage by Erik Larson the guy who wrote Devil In The White City . It gives a good explanation of how the NRA was taken over in the 1970’s when Jimmy Carter (and the Police Unions) wanted a database of guns to help solve crimes faster. It explains the loopholes of selling kits and parts of guns to get around the law and how gun shops in VA would get around background checks and how students could use their VA college ID to buy guns and sell them in private sales without background checks.
Another great book was Columbine by Dave Cullen. The shooters got a girl they knew, who was 18, to go to a gun show and straw purchase a gun for them.
JP Stevens book on Six Amendments and how we should change them to be more precise has a section on the 2nd Amendment.
I read how gun sales were going way down in the early 70’s...everybody was handing down granddad’s hunting rifle instead of buying a new rifle...gun shops were going out of business...then came the AR-15! Sales were slow at first, then the idea that shooting was a fun hobby instead of a deadly responsibility started to take hold. The whole idea of the AR-15 being just like the rifle soldiers at war use, so you are just like a real soldier! infused the marketing. “Consider your man card reissued!” etc. Sales went through the roof, especially after the Iraq War started.
I Googled and studied the AR-15 and all the terminology...the NRA guys will say “There is no such thing as an assault rifle!” The only problem is gun magazines use to run ads in them for “assault rifles” with nice pictures. The California AR-15 (California outlawed easily detachable magazines as part of a definition of assault rifle) is just a regular AR-15 that has a little button lock (easily disabled) for the magazines. Break the button, and you are back to a regular AR-15...that’s what they used in San Bernardino.
Default Proceed — The Charleston loophole — if the FBI background check doesn’t come back within 3 business days, the seller can sell the gun with no liability at all. Walmart will not sell a gun until the background check comes back either yay or nay. Walmart takes the high road!
There is so much information about how the NRA knowingly promotes skirting the law that I was amazed no smart lawyer has found a way to RICO those guys. The best example: bump stocks are an in your face end around to violate the 1934 Firearms Act — which outlawed machine guns and sawed off shotguns. It is so obvious it is breathtaking!
It’s like we are the young fish in David Foster Wallace’s Kenyon College speech joke. We are swimming in so much blatantly unconstitutional gun rights law, it makes you ask “What is the Constitution?”
So my plan, if we can’t just ban all semi-auto technology in guns except for police, military, etc., is to make AR’s (and semi-auto pistols) just like cars, a title, insurance, and liability that attaches to the serial number. That way, an insurance company is on the hook for damage from each specific gun they insure. The estimated cost of Sandy Hook was close to 200 million dollars. (rebuilding the school, damage, lives lost, first responders’ medical treatment, etc.) If an insurance company got nailed for 200 million, wouldn’t you think they would make damn sure somebody like Adam Lanza never got near a gun. My car insurance is like $900 a year. If every AR-15 owner had to pay that, I bet things would change and fast! The other analogy to AR-15s is drones. Right now, almost completely unregulated. That is changing. Security experts are sounding the alarm about drones. Ask a gun owner if he thinks drones should be regulated, do they see the terrorism risk to football stadiums, etc. with drones...maybe that’s a good place to start a dialogue…
(I tried to link to part 1, not sure if it was successful)