The NRA Can Go To Hell: Why The Connecticut Tragedy Should Be The 911 For Gun Control

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Friday December 14, 2012 · 9:41 PM PST

2012/12/14 · 21:41

At least 20 schoolchildren and six adults are dead in Connecticut at the hands of still another monster with still another assault weapon.

If I may speak as a father who dropped off his children at an elementary school today, this story did not happen 1,000 miles away. It is as local as local gets, and it is as personal as personal gets.

I am not rational about this today, nor do I care to be, because what happened today cries out for raw emotion and rage. I am as sad and angry about what happened in Connecticut as I have ever been about any news story ever, and that includes the September 11 tragedy, which prompted me to write a ranting tirade for The Riverfront Times.

Let this be the September 11 moment for gun control in the United States of America.

This is not the time for calm and patience and understanding and introspection. This is a time for action about the scourge of assault weaponry in this country.

We of course should pray and cry for the victims, and for the families whose lives have been permanently shattered, and we do. But something tells me that all those prayers and tears are not really going to do much for those poor souls today. Nothing will.

But we need to do something now. We need to do more than grieve for the victims and their families.

We need to legislate for them.

With no apology, I write these words without full possession of the details. I’m happy to indict assault weaponry on the purely speculative assumption that the monster in Newtown, Conn. didn’t perpetrate his evil with a hunting rifle alone. And if it turns out that the weaponry that could discharge so many rounds so quickly doesn’t fit the technical definition of assault weaponry, then that definition needs to be expanded, and the weapons outlawed.

In expressing President Obama’s sympathy and prayers for the victims, Press Secretary Jay Carney made the obligatory statement that “today is not the day” to discuss renewing the federal assault weapons ban, which Obama has said he supports. I understand that position, and it is the appropriate message to for the President to put forth out of respect for the victims and the horror that has occurred.

But today is the day that has a lot of us raging, and today is as good a day as any to demand that the nation turn its anger on the National Rifle Association (NRA) and anyone else responsible for perpetrating the spread and easy availability of assault weaponry.

The NRA can go to hell.

If NRA honcho Wayne LaPierre was a real man, he’d make his way to Connecticut to explain to those grieving parents that the guns didn’t kill their children, the shooter did. Or maybe he could tell them that the tragedy could have been avoided if only the teachers had been armed, or perhaps the children were themselves. Or maybe he could tell them about how precious the Second Amendment is.

Then he could go on to attack people like me in the liberal media for exploiting this tragedy for an anti-gun agenda. He could make it clear on Fox News that the real victim here, in the end, is the Second Amendment and those who so heroically defend it.

I’m honored to plead guilty as charged. I’m all for the rights of hunters to have their hunting weapons, and all for the rights of Americans to own basic weapons for their self-defense, but none of that has anything to do with assault weaponry. Not even a little bit.

Congress should act immediately—maybe today—to reinstate the Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act of 1994, the one that was allowed to expire in 2004. Were it not for the NRA, and the politicians who have prostituted themselves for its favor—or out of fear of its political wrath—that simple piece of legislation would be the law today.

If there is a one-in-a-million chance that today’s tragedy might have been avoided had that ban still been on the books, it would have been worth it. Make that one-in-a-billion.

And I think there are plenty of other gun-control measures that the U.S. should enact to make the acquisition of guns more difficult than, say, getting registered to vote. We should have longer waiting periods for gun purchases. We should prevent gun shows from circumventing reasonable gun laws. We should register guns, just like cars.

Yes, gun ownership should be legal, but it’s not a civil liberty that must be uniquely protected from any form of regulation. Freedom of speech doesn’t mean you can threaten to kill people. Freedom of religion doesn’t mean you can perform ritual sacrifices. Freedom of assembly doesn’t mean you never need a parade permit. America can regulate the Second Amendment without destroying it. It can enact sane gun-control policies designed to made the country safer for its citizens without compromising their liberty.

That’s my anti-gun agenda, and I’m proud of it.

The burden of proof isn’t on the likes of me to prove positive that today’s tragedy would not have happened if assault weapons had been banned. The burden is on the NRA to prove why we need to be content to shake our heads in sadness about some isolated madman’s madness, and then go back to making sure that his weapons might be there for the next madman.

If that makes me crazy, so be it. If you’re a loyal NRA member, and I have offended you today—and I know it offends you even that I’m writing this today—then let me offend you a little more with this bit of craziness:

Those poor little children in Connecticut were a lot more precious than your Second Amendment rights could ever be.

(This was posted at stlmag.com earlier today)

White power and Missouri politics

rhartmann52

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Thursday November 08, 2012 · 8:14 AM PST

2012/11/08 · 08:14

Missouri is not a red state. It’s not a blue state.

It’s a white state.

That’s the arithmetic message of the 2012 elections. Five of the six statewide Democratic candidates won their races—three by landslide margins—on the same ballot on which President Barack Obama, their standard-bearer, was crushed by nearly 264,000 votes, or 9.6 percent.

If one glances at the divided national map, it would be natural to categorize Missouri as a “red state,” and a solid one at that. The president lost the state by more than he lost Georgia. And voters sent ridiculous majorities of Republicans—in every sense of the word—to the state legislature.

But that doesn’t account for the vast disparity between the performance of five of the Democrats who won statewide office and the man who was reelected by a landslide electoral margin. Yes, it can be argued that the reelection of Sen. Claire McCaskill—a longtime Obama ally—was aided by having run against an unhinged person. Write off her 15.5 percent victory margin as an outlier.

But that still leaves Gov. Jay Nixon winning reelection by 12.1 percent and Attorney General Chris Koster winning by 15.1 percent. And the number of ballots cast for McCaskill, Nixon, and Koster was almost identical: In an election in which more than 2.7 million Missourians voted, the three were separated by less than 3,000 votes (or one-tenth of 1 percent). That’s remarkable.

Obama, on the other hand, received roughly 270,000 fewer votes that the candidates below him on his own ticket. Literally 10 percent of the electorate supported three major statewide candidates while opposing their standard-bearer, a man with whom they were constantly linked, and with whom they expressed no serious disagreement.

How do you explain those incongruous outcomes? I have a theory:

It’s racial. Missouri doesn’t do the diversity thing in statewide elections.

Before you send in the Reverse-Political-Correctness Police, here are the customary disclaimers: No, everyone who voted against Obama is not a racist, and yes, the people who voted against the president (while supporting the rest of his ticket) surely had many reasons that weren’t race-related.

I’m not calling anybody anything.

But here’s the bottom line: In its nearly two-century history, Missouri has never elected a person of color to any statewide office. Not one. In fact, only one African-American has even made it onto the ballot. That was Rep. Alan Wheat, the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in 1994. He lost to John Ashcroft by 25 points.

Part of this is demographic. U.S. Census Bureau population estimates for 2011 find that Missouri has a non-Hispanic white population of 80.8 percent, as compared to a national average of just 63.4 percent. That’s a whopping difference.

But it really doesn’t explain the historic ballot results in this week’s election. More than a quarter of a million voters in this state wouldn’t elect a black man at the same moment they were giving landslide wins to white candidates in his own party.

I’m not seeing red about that.

I’m seeing white.

(This was also posted at Stlmag.com)

A history lesson on presidential debates

rhartmann52

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Thursday October 04, 2012 · 9:17 AM PDT

2012/10/04 · 09:17

Journalist Britt Hume had a good line about how good it felt for the challenger to defeat an incumbent president in their first October national debate.

"(He) flew into New York today, but the way he was feeling after last night's debate, he probably didn't need the plane."

Before you dismiss this as Fox News bias, consider this detail: Hume made the statement for ABC News, 28 years ago, and he was speaking about Democratic challenger Walter Mondale, who had just trounced President Ronald Reagan on October 7 of that year, pretty much with the same widespread acclaim that Mitt Romney garnered for his obvious victory over President Obama.

It may be a little early for the Republicans to celebrate. Two weeks after losing the debate to Mondale, Reagan turned the tables with his own debate triumph, best remembered for his classic response to questions about his age: "I refuse to make an issue of my opponent's youth and inexperience."

Interestingly, the age question was in part prompted by Reagan's apparent confusion in the first debate. Most important, Reagan went on to a landslide victory in November.

Assuming Obama recovers his footing and actually debates Romney in their next two encounters (rather than falling asleep in his talking points about what he did four years ago), the president has a decent chance of history repeating itself.

Why Todd Akin probably won't drop from the race

rhartmann52

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Tuesday August 21, 2012 · 8:22 AM PDT

2012/08/21 · 08:22

Those of us who live in St. Louis and know Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO) are a little less shocked than the rest of the nation by his bizarre comments about "legitimate rape" and pregnancy. This isn't his first brush with intellectual creepiness and won't be his last.

Unlike so many others who use claims of piety to bolster their image, Akin is the real deal when it comes to holy rolling. Throughout his career, he has repeatedly stated that God called upon him to run for public office. Really.

So in Akin's self-righteous mind, this may well come down to a choice between listening to God or listening to Ann Coulter. Now there's a choice for you.

Why not make "pro-lifers" explain the rape exception?

rhartmann52

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Monday August 20, 2012 · 6:22 PM PDT

2012/08/20 · 18:22

Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO) made national news Sunday by coining the macabre phrase "legitimate rape," then doubling down with the still-stranger assertion that the bodies of rape victims mystically could ward off pregnancy. But Akin's real contribution to the nation's political discourse was to advance a truly consistent anti-abortion view: If abortion is the taking of life, then of course there can be no exception made in the case of a rape victim. (Or the victim of "legitimate rape," in now-famous Akin-speak).

The Romney-Ryan team lost no time rushing out a statement assuring Americans that its administration "would not oppose abortion in instances of rape." National Review Online, calling for Akin to "step aside," opined that "only a small minority of Americans opposes abortion in cases of rape."

Really? Can somehow please explain the logic in this? If it's undeniable fact that human life begins at conception and thus abortion is murder -- as "pro-lifers" argue so passionately -- then why on earth should an innocent unborn child lose its life merely because of the circumstance of his or her conception? If a fetus is a person, how can those who cherish life countenance its "slaughter" simply because its creation was the result of a rape?

The answer to those questions is that there is no answer, at least not a rational one. Were this the subject of legitimate inquiry -- say, at a presidential debate -- there is simply no way to square the unforgiving rhetoric of "life" and "murder" with the reality that pro-lifers (in large numbers) can live with exceptions to their own absolutes. Even a cursory discussion would reveal that the vast majority of Americans who are troubled by abortion simply feel it's wrong, not that it's the taking of human life. That's a big difference, because if this is not truly about life (and it isn't), the entire abortion issue is just a matter of opinion. And if it's just a matter of opinion, it should be a matter of choice for women.

The subject would become still murkier if "pro-life" advocates such as Romney and Ryan were asked to explain how their laws against abortion would actually be carried out. Who would determine if a rape had occurred, and how? Such an adjudication could hardly wait until the outcome of a rape trial, so approval of an exception -- most lethal to the unborn child -- would by necessity be made quite hastily. Again, the rhetoric cannot withstand even a cursory level of intellectual challenge.

So hats off to Todd Akin for bringing the issue to the fore. Now all the nation needs is a pro-choice side willing to carry the fight, and a national media willing to ask even a handful of simple questions. Politicians who indulge in the harsh rhetoric of "life" should be expected to back up their incendiary language with consistency, just like Akin did.

Without exceptions.

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