This week, Jim Hines a Democratic congressman from CT. interrupted a moment of silence aimed at honoring the victims of the Orlando massacre and set out on a 15 hour filibuster trying to wake up the congress and have them actually do something about the carnage that takes place daily in this country. He failed thanks to the GOP members of the Senate. But before that he was interviewed, by a clueless Alex Witt, who babbled on about this check and that check, never understanding that these carnages would never happen if the participants were not armed to the teeth with weapons of war, weapons that have no place in a country that has not seen an active battlefield in about 150 years. What neither Witt not her brain dead compatriots seem to be able to process, is that Omar of Orlando, without his automatic weapon might have been able to kill or wound a couple of people but nowhere near the over 100 he counted as his victims. Yes, fix all these dumb laws, but first get the automatic weapons out of the hands of everyone.
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The gun issue was front and center again with the GOP leaders showing, as usual, that they have no idea what it is all about. Both Paul Ryan and Ted Cruz were on the podium ranting that the country doesn’t have a gun issue, it has a terrorist issue. It would seem silly to point out that these are two separate issues and that the terrorists would be much less of an issue if they didn’t have easy access to guns but both Ryan and Cruz are silly people and they probably wouldn’t get it anyhow.
But Ryan and Cruz aren’t the only clueless ones. The tube was filled with people who don’t want to admit what the real problem is. They want to blab about a dozen items that will never solve the gun problem. The Right doesn’t even want to admit we have a gun problem. They think it’s a terrorist problem even though most of the mass murders we have lived through have nothing to do with Islamic terrorists and everything to do with guns. All these so called experts are afraid to even see the real problem. They are afraid to utter the word Second Amendment, which is, after all, the real and mainproblem. We will never get any kind of real gun control as long as Americans think they have the uncontrolled right to own guns. Only when we redefine that right as a privilege will anything fruitful happen.
Let’s talk about the mass murderer, Omar Mateeen. Was he a terrorist or was he just a very sick individual looking for some acceptable institution to hook his hatred to? Wayne La Pierre and any number of Right wing, small minded, terrorist before gun user supporters would love you to believe that this guy was a straight arrow Muslim who was a strict follower of Bagdaddi and the ISIS philosophy, but the facts are leaking out of the investigation and the truth seems to be very far from that. Mateen, at different times, claimed allegiance to ISIS, al Qaeda and Hezbollah, all of which are vastly different in aims, origins and philosophy. Hezbollah is, in fact, a Shiite extremist group at war with ISIS. What conclusion does this lead to? That Mateen was an uninformed crackpot looking for a legitimate source on which to lay his hatred, a hatred born of sexual dysfunction that classically leads to self-hatred and violence.
This was a guy who was married twice, but hated women and who abused both wives even while he was drawn to gay hangouts. Was he homosexual? Who knows, but he displayed classic violent, anti-gay behavior that is attributed to men whose every fiber revolts against the gay attractions they feel but that disgust them. This would be especially true for someone with roots in the socially backward and religiously homophobic country of Afghanistan. Homosexuality is anathema in the Muslim world. It is typical, of men drawn to something as forbidden as other men, to react against that attraction by acting out with violence. The additional circumstance of his not being able to admit his attraction/hatred made him reach out to a scapegoat. In this case radical Islamic terrorist groups were his excuse for his other driven actions.
No I’m not a shrink and this is absolutely pop-psychology, but it also absolutely fits the situation and until someone comes up with a more reasonable, more logical, more factually driven theory, I’ll go with this one. The fact is the gun nuts need Mateen to be an Islamic terrorist so they can get the discussion off guns, but this column just ain’t buyin’ it.
Mike Morrell one of our most respected security experts extant, states that Mateen was unconnected to any real Muslim organization. He explains that Mateen’s lone wolf stature would make it even more difficult to stop him than someone who had close ties to terrorist groups’
Ruth Marcus, a lady that I respect greatly said today that there is no silver bullet solution to the Guns Versus terrorist battle but there is. The silver bullet is recognizing that nothing will ever be done unless we understand that in order to solve the problem we have to get guns out of the hands of potential murderers and in order to do that we must change the right to bear arms, to the privilege of owning a gun, and that leads us back to the current interpretation of the Second Amendment, which is dead wrong, ridiculous and a product of the desires of the death merchants; those ghouls that make a profit off the murder of our children.
One of the biggest problems with the gun issue is that even those against the proliferation of guns seem oblivious to the fact that the Second Amendment has been interpreted incorrectly by a Right leaning Supreme Court. This has t be revisited. We must also recognize the fact that the Amendments to the Constitution are not written in stone. Over the years, they have often been adjusted, according to any number of criteria, to make more sense.
But that aside, it must be understood that guns are the problem. Mental tests, background checks and all the other rigmarole that some in the fight have put all their faith in, are really only temporary palliatives for the real problem. They may work if we can whittle down the basic number and kinds of guns available or the number of people trying to obtain those guns but the way it stands now, the government seems incapable of making any of the much sought after tests work.
Let’s take another look at Omar Mateen, the Orlando killer, This is a guy who had a history of violence going all the way back to high school. This is a guy who had a history of domestic violence. This is a guy who went into a gun store in Florida and tried to buy body armor but who acted so suspiciously that the owner refused to sell to him and then reported his suspicious behavior to the FBI. This is a guy who was investigated by the FBI at least twice, one of those times having to do with Internet communication with ISIS. All these are signs that something was wrong with this guy and nothing happened to stop him from what he did.
But this isn’t surprising and it shouldn’t be. We are still, despite terrorism and our national security hierarchy, a nation that justly puts individual freedom above all else. And that’s as it should be. But that is also why the various attempts to investigate certain crimes before they happen is an impossible task for our law enforcement agencies. The laws in this country are set up to punish criminals not to criminalize behavior before a crime is committed. That is as it should be, but because of that we must often find other ways of stopping criminal acts before they are perpetrated. Removing the tool with which the potential criminal does his work, especially in this situation, is essential, because it is the only way to create safety for individual citizens.
In almost every mass murder case recently, Boston, San Diego and now in Orlando, the authorities had some information portending to show that the individuals who committed the crime, would or could possibly do so, and yet nothing happened to prevent a massacre. I am no cheerleader for the FBI but this is not the FBI’s fault. This is the way the laws of our country have been set up to protect the rights of the individual. It’s the right way.
So another way must be found. That way is to stop playing around with the absurd interpretation of what the Second Amendment actually says. Those in our government, all three areas, who have seem to have acted in good conscience have, absolutely, been guilty of dereliction of duty, because they have allowed those who have acted in self-interest to crush them into insignificance for the benefit of gun nuts and weapons manufacturers who have bought and paid for our government.
As I stated above we are asking the FBI to do exactly what our laws have been set up to prevent, in so far as personal freedom go. So let’s get rid of this dichotomy. First let’s get rid of the nonsense interpretations of the Second Amendment. Then let’s institute a process by which anyone who wants to buy a gun must prove a need and a history that would allow for that purchase to be made in as complete safety as is possible. In a sensible country, people do not have a right to bear arms. It should be a privilege, like a driver’s license.
Once the individual has proven that he is of stable demeanor, has no criminal or violent history and has a specific need, such as hunting, home protection or professional usage, a permit should be issued for a specific weapon that fit’s the usage. Automatic weapons, being weapons of war, would never be permitted.
So what do we do about all the weapons that are already out there? We create a law with draconian penalties for possessing any weapon not permitted. We must also create a buy-back program so as not to penalize those who legitimately purchased weapons that were legal at the time of purchase. Current gun owners should not be penalized financially because of the new law, but they must be made to live up to it. Leaving millions of guns lying around all over the country would undermine the purpose of any new legislation.
Australia did this and it worked. They have had no instance of what happens here every day since they rounded up their guns. That’s the way life should be. And if we’re making a lot of guys whose dicks are too small feel inadequate just because they can’t carry around a big gun anymore, that’s just too God Damned bad.