Article From A Friend

THE POLITICAL SCENE

Members of Congress should pay more attention to what police officers have to say rather than the NRA. Jon Barney points out that governments don’t want to spend money on hospitalization for the mentally ill and too many end up in prison, costing us more in many cases. Not that money is the most important factor.

Jon does suggest that the kinds of incidents we have experienced such as Newtown two weeks ago occur around the world. That is true, but in the past decade eleven of the 20 worst mass murders have occurred in the USA. We have only 6% of the world’s population.

Some of you know Rick Sarre, an Australian who teaches criminal law at the University of South Australia. He points out that before 1996, Australia had 13 multiple shootings in the preceding 18 years. After a tragic incident in 1996, they outlawed the ownership or sales of semi-automatic firearms. In the 16 years since, there have been no multiple shootings in Australia.

In a recent email Rick wrote, “The research evidence shows a highly significant association between firearm availability and homicide rates in the USA….The sad reality is that the USA, many years ago, went past the point of no return. Americans will have to live with the ever-present threat of mass shootings for at least another twenty or thirty years until such time as a future generation, of its own accord, exercises the responsible stewardship that is so desperately needed.”

Rick notes that in Australia there are 0.1% gun homicides per 100,000 population, while in the USA there are 3.3 gun homicides per 100,000 population. We have 33 times the rate of gun homicides!

One Connecticut man, James N. Rascati of Woodbridge, Connecticut, suggested six policies that would help:

There should be a waiting period to purchase any gun or rifle.

There should be a background check on all potential gun purchasers. (Meaning, an end to the loophole in the law which allows people to buy guns at gun shows without a background check. This makes it easy for criminals and the mentally ill to obtain guns.)

The mentally ill and convicted criminals should not be allowed to purchase or have weapons.

AK-47s and other automatic weapons should not be sold (with exceptions for the military and law enforcement). High-capacity magazines and Teflon bullets should not be sold.

Guns should not be bought over the Internet.

I would add that we should have a gun buy-back option, which was very successful in Australia in 1996 and is being used in some communities in the USA now.

One of my heroes is Carolyn McCarthy. In 1993 her husband and others were killed in a New York subway. She was a registered Republican at the time. Soon she was involved in lobbying for gun safety at the state level in New York. (I don’t like the term “gun control,” because NRA type people make it sound like we are trying to take away their freedom. What we are trying to protect is our freedom from being shot by some lunatic.

Soon she got a call from Dick Gephardt, the leader of the U. S. House Democrats, asking her to run for Congress. She had never heard of him. Then she got a call from Emily’s List – she had never heard of this organization – offering help if she decided to run. Finally someone asked her directly to run for Congress, and she immediately said “Okay.”

She had no expectation of winning. Some people choose to run for office knowing they will not win, but use the campaign to promote an issue they feel strongly about. She wanted to campaign on gun safety. To her surprise, she won and has been in Congress ever since.

I saw her interviewed about twelve hours after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. These tragic events hit her especially hard. “I have been crying all day,” she told her interviewer.

It has often been pointed out that while the NRA takes extreme positions, about three-fourths of their members support measures like those Mr. Rascoti proposed. After any gun control measure is proposed, inevitably they cry, “They want to take away all of your guns.” But that’s a lie.

Majorities of NRA members support many of these proposals that their leaders oppose. But in the early 1990s the elite leadership of the organization has been taken over by a radical wing of the organization, with the position that “no gun restrictions should be allowed, no matter how reasonable.”

Political science research has concluded that often the elites that lead a pressure group (interest group) take positions that a majority of their members disagree with. I assume this has become more true for the NRA in the last couple of decades since the leadership became so extreme. As former U. S. Senator David Durenburger (R-Minnesota) has said, before about 1990 you could work with the NRA in finding reasonable solutions. But then they became extreme and opposed all regulations, no matter how reasonable.

One recent example of the extreme positions the NRA has taken comes from Florida. Medical doctors, especially pediatricians, were asking patients with children if they had guns in the house, and if they were keeping them safe from the reach of their children. This is clearly a health issue. It is certainly unhealthy for your child when he accidentally kills a friend or himself. Well, some NRA guy was asked that question and he was offended, and told the NRA. So they used their power to get the Florida legislature to pass a bill banning doctors from asking their patients that question! I don’t know how any legislator or executive could be so foolish as to legislate what a doctor can ask their patients. But the legislature passed their absolutely crazy bill and Republican Governor Rick Scott signed it. Doesn’t a highly trained professional have a free speech right to ask a patient a question that is relevant to the health of the patient and his or her family?

Will this kind of insanity cease in the wake of twenty children – all six and seven-year olds murdered in a few minutes by a madman who had the capability of killing more than one-hundred children?

Let us hope that in the wake of the madness in Connecticut, President Obama and Congress will summon the courage to ignore the NRA and pass the kind of measures that of policies that Mr. Rascati proposed.