F#@% Thoughts and Prayers

Hey, GOP congresspeople, Fuck your thoughts and prayers. They are meaningless and most likely, not even heartfelt. Every time there is another mass shooting, that is the only thing presented by these folks (I wanted to use a harsher word) for those effected by the shooting.

On many occasions, I’ve blogged about mass shootings and gun violence. I’ve even pointed out that the 2^nd Amendment was not designed to help gun ownership, but to help arm militias/slave patrols. In fact, it wasn’t until the 1970s that the idea that the 2^nd was all about gun ownership took shape.

Before that time, the NRA was mainly a sporting organization (not a gun lobby) and supported gun control and the courts largely believed that guns could be highly regulated.

Who can forget how quickly politicians enacted regulations when one of the scariest events (to white people) in US history happened: The Black Panthers marched around a city with guns!

Yeah, didn’t take long to take those guns away. But that was in the 60s. It began to change in the 70s when the NRA realized they could make big bucks by lobbying for gun manufacturers. Sharing that loot with politicians quickly followed and of course, legislation to control weapons became impossible. Even if the majority of Americans supported regulation.

In the past, I’ve suggested some simple things to start curbing possible mass shootings.

• Universal background checks. This should cover every single gun purchase.

• Liability insurance for gun owners. Just imagine how much influence the insurance industry would exert for gun control after they began to pay out huge insurance claims after a shooting.

These are simple examples, but there are more that could happen. Other countries require mandatory training. Some include license requirements for every gun. Japan has an extensive psychiatric interview for prospective buyers.

None of these will happen though because the GOP is so completely owned by the gun lobby.

So, I’ve included numerous memes that you can share if you decide to encounter said politicians or even your gun nut Uncle Joe when he visits you during the holidays.

I wish the best to the people of Nashville who have had to experience our latest mass shooting and I’m sorry that we as a nation cannot get a small contingent of right-wing politicians to do what is needed.

Ahh, James Thurber

 The Thurber Brigade apologizes for yet another sidestep about a mass shooting. We seem to do this quite often, and it's because mass shootings happen so often.  There have been over 100 this year already and we're only three months into the year. The Brigade can't enact legislation, congress-folk don't listen to us or anybody (but the gun lobbies), so we're left with writing about it and hope that said politicians will begin to feel the disdain we all hold for them on this and maybe, maybe they'll do something for once.

 

 

Déjà vu All Over Again

Orlando: Yet Another Thurber Brigade Sidestep

 

This is insane.  The Thurber Brigade began as a way to talk about the War Between Men and Women.  However, over the past four years when something disturbed my soul I’ve taken a sidestep to rant about it. Almost every month there is some incident that involves someone killing many people or killing them for crazy reasons.  The massacre in Orlando is just the latest.

If you don't want to believe that the 2nd Amendment was to placate slave owners fearful of slaves rising up and killing them and therefore wanting to have the government permission to have a group of armed citizens ready to react, even though this is the case, what (?), you have not studied history (?), you don't understand that back in those days they stopped all sorts of people from having guns, are you completely incoherent to the fear they had of slaves with weapons, even today people are scared to death of blacks with guns (aka Black Panthers, et al), have you forgotten that no one wants felons of any sort to have guns so some regulation appears to be okay, then surely you understand that The Founders wanted some regulation.

Whew, I had to get that out.

Some say that we can't get gun regulation because the GOP is owned by the NRA (an organization originally founded to improve Yankees' marksmanship). Well, this is obviously the case just judging by campaign contributions and vacations, excuse me, investigative junkets to exotic locales.  However, maybe there is something else.  Maybe they are secretly working for ISIS.

Note how they want suspected terrorists to only wait three days to get an assault weapon?  Did you also note that they want to ban women and children who are fleeing the terrorists?

Not only that, they do everything they can to assure suspected terrorists may buy any weapon or ammo they want.  Meanwhile they work to restrict voters from participating in a democratic process (election)?  Aren't these the same ideals ISIS would want?

Yes, suspicious.

Okay, maybe that is too far over the top (although how many times have you heard right-wingers use a Hitler reference about some liberal?).  Satire, guilt and blaming may not convince the GOP (yes, it’s really only them) to stop coddling killers and bowing to their overlords the NRA.  We have to keep trying though.  My hope is that these losers get voted out of office.  We may have to wait for that because somehow they keep getting people to vote against their economic and cultural interests and vote for them.  Let’s keep trying to change that though.  Lets keep trying to get common sense gun laws on the books.  Let’s keep trying.

James Thurber! (this is from his "The Last Flower")

**The Thurber Brigade apologizes for yet again veering off the road of The War Between Men and Women and assures everyone that it will return to the straight and narrow soon. Maybe. Well, you know from the above how likely there will be another. Sorry.

The Oregon Mass Shooting: Another Thurber Brigade Sidestep

Did you know that the NRA was founded by a handful of Northern Civil War veterans who wanted to make sure their fellow Yankees could shoot as well as their Southern counterparts?

Believe it.  In fact, their stated purpose was “Firearms Safety Education, Marksmanship Training, Shooting for Recreation.” 

I bring this up because every time a madman kills a large number of people in the United States, the gun nuts—excuse me—enthusiasts, rush to the airwaves to stress how it’s every citizen’s 2^nd Amendment right to carry a gun. 

But it’s not.

The 2nd Amendment got added to our Bill of Rights because many of the Founding Fathers owned slaves and they feared that the Federal Government would disarm the state militias.  Those state militias were an important tool used by slavers to quell slave rebellions and hunt down runaway slaves. If you took away the guns of the militia, well, as Leonardo DiCaprio in Django Unchained  asks, "Why don't the slaves just rise up and kill the whites?"

Yeah, the slavers feared that.

Individual gun ownership was not really a concern of the founders. I think this is largely because they believed the country was a wild frontier and so it went without saying that people would own guns. Of course, in colonial days running around with guns (open carry) was frowned upon by just about everyone unless absolutely necessary, but that’s a different story.

The NRA changed its tune in the 1970s and grasped the 2^nd Amendment as its own useful tool for controlling populations.  Populations of people who wanted to have more strict control on guns. 

It hasn’t really worked.  When I say that, I mean it hasn’t changed peoples’ minds. Most people still want more regulations of firearms. Things like background checks, etc.

The NRA has been very good at impressing congress though. Although the regular populaton supports more gun regulations and there is always a large public outcry after the latest mass killing event, congress refuses to do anything.

To further pound home the reason why congress SHOULD do something, let’s compare the number of deaths caused by firearms versus congress’ big PR fear target—terrorism:

So just in case congress and the president decide to really do something about gun violence, here’s my 2¢ or actually, two ideas that would help.

• Universal background checks.  Admittedly, this is a small step and would only reduce gun deaths a bit, but we have to start someplace. It would need to be a bit more thorough then the current method, and get all the states to buy in by reporting all information that would be useful. Information such as time spent in a mental institution. Right now, that is barely reported and seldom reported if it was voluntary.

• Require liability insurance for all guns. That’s right, just like those other killer machines, cars, we need to require gun owners to be willing to pay to protect us from wrongful use of their weapon. 

This would be a big boon for the insurance companies of course, but the reason this would work is because sooner or later those same companies would have to start paying out massive amounts of money for violent acts. And they’d hate that.

So once insurance companies begin to get really angry about having to pay out all that money, it means they’d also begin to put the hammer down on congress and get them to do even more gun control regulation. Once insurance companies begin lobbying as extensively for gun control as the NRA currently does to stop it, well, I think we might get something done.

So there are solutions out there for America’s penchant to have a mass shooting just about every two weeks. We just need to get Big Money behind the initiatives to actually have those solutions happen.

This picture has nothing to do with the issue of this blog. It's just that I've been to Oregon quite a few times and believe it's a beautiful state.  So although there is no way to forget that horrible incident in Roseburg, OR, I thought I'd leave you a more picturesque image of the state (that's Mt. Hood).

**The Thurber Brigade apologizes for yet again veering off the road of the War Between Men and Women and assures everyone that it will return to the straight and narrow soon. Maybe. 

James Thurber!