A Broken Record

There are too many stories like this and far too often.

This story comes out of Miami.  Two children, 13 and 6, were left home alone.  Justin Latourrette had seen them outside earlier in the day and thought it was strange that he didn't see any adults around.  Later on, he heard a loud boom and police confirmed that it was a gunshot that he heard.

The 13-year-old had found the handgun and shot his sister in the chest, just above the heart.  Latourrette watched as paramedics carried her out.  He had this to say:

"Her shirt was bloody, and you could see through a piece of gauze that she had a hole in her chest above the heart. Her eyes were wide open in a blank stare, like she was in shock. I'll never forget that look."

She is currently in critical but stable condition.

Again, in Florida, a 3-year-old boy fatally shot himself after finding a loaded handgun in the backpack of his uncle.  The uncle, Jeffrey D. Walker, held a concealed carry permit.  Walker has been arrested and charged with culpable negligence.  The boy's parents were in their bedroom at the time of the shooting.

How many stories like this must there be before something is done?  What percentage of Americans need to support gun legislation before Congress will pass it?  Apparently, 90% is not enough.

According to the Children's Defense Fund, one-third of all households with children younger than 18 have a gun, and more than 40 percent of gun-owning households with children store their guns unlocked. 

The fund also reported that 22 percent of children with gun-owning parents handled guns in their homes without their parents' knowledge.

These types of statistics cannot be ignored forever.

Friday Shakedown

Dan Bidondi, an Infowars "reporter," went to Massachusetts and didn't plan on running into opposition like this.  An unnamed resident engaged him on Infowars' crazy conspiracy theories.

(NSFW)

I wish more people would confront wackos like this in this way.  It's just like the Westboro Baptist Church.  They do not respond to reason, reason, or facts, and they contribute nothing to the debate.  Having an argument with them is not a good use of your time.  You will walk away from the encounter feeling more frustrated than you were at the start and they will walk away thinking they've won.  The only thing they respond to is ridicule.  

North Carolina is trying to make it harder for students to vote.  Shocking, I know.  The bill, which was sponsored by six Republican Senators, would force the parents of out-of-state students to pay higher taxes if they claim their child as a dependent and the student is registered to vote in their college district.  If you are a student, you should be able to vote for the district that directly represents you where you live.  When I was a student at Ohio State, I petitioned the congresswoman for Ohio District 15, which was where the school sat.  For the time I was attending and living there, I considered her my voice in Congress.  I should have been able to vote in that district if there had been an election while I was there.  Speaking of Ohio... They're trying to do a similar thing there.  This is just another example Republicans trying to suppress the vote and change the rules of the game.  Instead of having a message that appeals to a majority of the country, or people in their districts, they try to keep opponents from voting.  That isn't how democracy is supposed to work.

In other news, Texas Senator Ted Cruz, famous for being one of the most hated members of the Senate on both the Left and Right, floated the notion of a presidential run.  This move was promptly met with laughter all around.

The NRA has a new president and he's possibly more to the right than the last one.  At a speech in New York, he referred to the Civil War as the "War of Northern Aggression."  There is so much wrong with that, I don't even know where to start.  The historian in my head is speechless at the moment.  

Maybe more along the lines of the Civil War tomorrow...

Cowardly Senate

Same old nonsense this past week with the Senate voting against universal background checks.  A policy that had 90% public support.  Well done, Senate.

Simple Thinking Conservatives

There is a lot going on that I could talk about.  

Semi-rocker and all chicken hawk, Ted Nugent, a man that has threatened the president multiple times was invited by a member of Congress to attend the State of the Union yesterday…nah, maybe later.

Wayne LaPierre is spouting some of the most paranoid nonsense we have heard so far in the current gun control debate, but that can wait for another day.

The NRA helped distribute a small newspaper that stokes the reactionary far right.  It feeds on their fear of government and strokes their infatuation with American myth.  Maybe another time.

The special education teacher that has been vocally supporting Indiana high school students in their quest to bar their homosexual classmates from attending prom has been called out over her claim that gay people have no purpose in life.  I’m just not feeling it right now.

But what do these all have in common? 

They all really demonstrate how separated from reality these conservatives are.  Whether they should be called spokesmen for the political right or not, I don't know, but they sure act like it.  There was a study that was released last year that stated that conservative thinking was "low effort" thinking.  They did not mean that as an insult, though unsurprisingly conservatives were upset.  I really don't blame them.

This just means that conservatives have a hard time seeing the "big picture" and thinking through what the end results of policies might be.  Some advocate deporting every undocumented immigrant in the country but they don't think it through.  These immigrants contribute to the economy and we would definitely feel it if they were all gone.

It is simple to fear those different than you, whether it is LGBT folks or other minorities.  Hate is simple.  Understanding that these people are just like you, with maybe a slight difference is not as simple.  They have similar goals and similar feelings.  Empathy, catch it.

Sometimes hearing all this ignorance and simple thinking makes me sad.  I'm sad because I don't know what the answer is.  Is it more education?  Is it simply exposing hateful people to what they hate in the hopes that they see similarities?  Do we simply ignore them?  I truly don't know.

These people vote, and elections have consequences  

Wayne LaPierre Plays Paranoia

NRA frontman, Wayne LaPierre, was on Fox News on Sunday stoking the paranoia of their base. This is what he said:

“I think what they’ll do is turn this universal check on the law-abiding into a universal registry of law-abiding people. And law-abiding people don’t want that. My God, that’s the last thing they want,”

He also argued that background checks are ineffective because criminals will not submit to them. As Anderson Cooper asked on his show last week, how do we know who is law-abiding or not without the background checks? There are many reasons why background checks are not as effective as they should be and that will be part of the conversation. The NRA is largely part of watering down the laws and making them ineffective.

He also said that background checks were "possibly part of a government plot against gun owners." Really? Stroke that paranoia. There is a man in Alabama in a bunker with a kidnapped child today. This is the constituency that he is speaking to with that comment. This is completely irresponsible and part of the problem. Wayne LaPierre and the NRA do not care about being part of the conversation, they are a large part of the problem. I was pretty upset when they complained that they were not going to be invited to the White House to be a part of the conversation with Joe Biden. Of course they were invited, but they can't possibly have brought anything to the table that was constructive. They are not interested in keeping people out of the morgue. They are only interested in expanding the gun culture in this country and feeding the paranoia of the extreme right-wing.

Gun Culture Run Amok

Rodrigo Diaz, 22, his girlfriend, and some friends were looking forward to an evening of ice skating and fun.  What they got was tragedy and heartache.

Diaz was driving the group to pick up another friend before going on to the ice skating rink.  They were using a GPS device that took them to the wrong house.  Whether they typed in the address of their friend wrong, or the device malfunctioned is irrelevant.  What they found when the pulled into the driveway is inexcusable.

69 year old Vietnam vet, Philip Sailors, came out of the house and saw the group of young, Hispanic, people in a car in his driveway and immediately felt he was under attack.  He rushed inside, presumably as fast as a 69 year old man can rush, and grabbed his gun.  He came back outside and fired the .22 caliber pistol in the air.

By this time it was very apparent to Diaz and his friends that this was not their friend's house.  Seeing an old man coming out waving a gun must have been terrifying.  They went out for a night of fun, but at this point they were just hoping to get out of that situation alive.

Diaz quickly threw the car in reverse and hit the accelerator.  Sailors lowered his gun and fired into the car, hitting Diaz in the head.

Where does the line between defending your property and common sense lie?  These people were not hurting Sailors, they were looking for their friend.  Once they realized their mistake they were leaving.  One report says Diaz rolled down the window to apologize to the man advancing toward them with his gun raised.  He tried to explain their mistake.  Sailors wasn't interested in his explanation.

Sailors has been arrested, of course, and maintains he is innocent due to self defense.  I would like to know how one can claim self defense when you shoot at a car driving away from you.

A lawyer for Sailors had this to say in defense of his client:

"He fired a warning shot and then when the car was accelerated to go in reverse he perceived it differently. He’s an elderly man, he perceived the car going towards his house, towards him."

If he cannot perceive if a car is coming towards him or moving away, he probably should not be pointing a gun at anyone, or maybe own it at all.  We would not let someone like that drive a car.  How is this different?

This speaks to the gun culture in this country.  There is a problem when people, Sailors undoubtably among them, believe they need to resort to tactics from the Old West in order to survive in the 21st century.  This culture that surrounds guns must be part of the conversation.  Bob Costas on the Daily Show this past week discussed the gun culture in America with Jon Stewart.  It is real, and people are less safe because of it.  More guns does not equal more safety, contrary to the NRA's position.

This will be an interesting story to follow.