Wednesday, December 26, 2012

Good Guy with a Gun?

by muon

Yesterday another fatal shooting occurred not far from where I live. I don't know if the victim was a good guy or bad guy by the NRA's Wayne LaPierre's standards. I just know he was a 24 year-old man and left behind a family. The shooting took place in an alley surrounded by rowhouses that had children in them. At least 10 shell casings were found at the scene. We're talking Wild West here, with only house windows between the gunplay and innocent kids.

I'm certain George Zimmerman thought he was a good guy with a gun. He wasn't. He was a murderer. So was Michael Jock, who evoked the Stand Your Ground law after shooting an unarmed man in an argument about pizza.

The policemen I know (and I know quite a few) would all rather NOT have "good guys with guns" on the street. The only thing that separates a good gunslinger from a bad gunslinger is a quick judgment call before pulling the trigger. In that half second, they appoint themselves judge, jury and executioner.

With that thinking, in our society, they're ALL bad guys.

Wednesday, December 19, 2012

Quit Talking

by muon


After the last week, I'm sick of the word "meaningful." Everyone's saying we need to have a meaningful conversation about gun violence. That we need meaningful change. Meaningful action. The NRA says they'll make meaningful contributions.

So far, all most people in authority have done is to bandy the word "meaningful" around, as if that makes everything all better.

I was going to write this blog after my anger over the latest mass shooting died down a bit, but I realized today that I don't want to lose this anger. I don't want anyone in America to lose their outrage and frustration. I want us to outshout all the "meaningful" rhetoric and make sure that, this time, something gets done.

No one in this country needs to own a military grade rifle. No one needs ammunition clips that hold more than five bullets. Hunters wouldn't use these weapons any more than fisherman would use torpedoes. Anyone saying they need to own these types of weapons or that much ammo is mentally ill on some level.

All guns should be registered and their owners licensed for each class of weapon owned, just as we all have to do with our motor vehicles. The license should require a competency test, same as a driver's license does. Weapon insurance needs to be mandatory, as car insurance is. If a gun owner wants to sell a weapon, he and the new owner need to get their butts in to see a notary, to transfer the title legally. It ought to go without saying that background checks need to be done before licensing and registration. That means no gun shows and no internet sales of either weapons or ammo.

Sales of more than one gun a month and of suspiciously large amounts of ammo need to be tracked, just as we do drugs like Sudafed.  People who enable others to commit gun violence by providing firearms need to be held accountable, no matter whether we're talking about someone who buys guns to sell to felons, or parents of potentially violent mentally ill children, like Mrs. Lanza, who stupidly brought military grade weapons into her house.

We need to do more than prevent mass shootings. As horrific as they are, many more people become victims of gun violence every day. In the past two months in my hometown, we've had shootings or reports of gunfire nearly once a week. Another report just last night.

I'm sick of hearing all the excuses why we can't do anything to reduce incidences of gun violence. I'm sick of the whole American attitude that we can't do anything to stop the gun lobby. If you're going to spout insensitive nonsense about gun rights and Stand Your Ground and how none of this would happen if everyone carried guns, then you're part of the problem, and I for one will shout you down.

This week, Senator Feinstein was the only one I heard stand up and say, in effect, "This is what I'm going to do," when she promised to reintroduce her assault weapons ban. That's what's needed. Not platitudes about meaningful this or meaningful that. Not people who sit around waiting for everyone else to do something. We need people willing to get things started.

Call or email your elected officials and tell them to quit talking and start acting. Find your representatives here.

Saturday, December 8, 2012

Brains! (Liberal vs. Conservative)

by muon

I read an article a few months ago, the gist of which is just now hatching into share-able graphics on social media. The article told of 13 different scientific studies that show how people calling themselves liberals and people calling themselves conservatives have pathological difference in the brain. (You can read about the studies on the ABC News website.)

Liberals tend to have larger anterior cingulate cortexes, associated with tolerance to uncertainty. Conservatives have larger right amygdalas, the area that governs sensitivity to fear. Conservatives avoid self-harm. Liberals are usually more concerned with harm to their group. Liberals focus on progress and are more likely to take risks to find better ways of doing things. Conservatives will stick to the status quo if it's comfortable for them and poses no immediate danger.

What none of the studies showed was how these two different kinds of brains evolved (yes, I mean evolution. If your sensitivity to fear makes you tremble at that word, better stop reading now). My theory is that families who never had to find creative solutions for their problems probably developed conservative brains.

Say your family has had wealth for generation after generation. Your ancestors could always rely on money to feed, shelter and clothe. They could pay someone to fight enemies. They could buy immediate solutions to problems as they came along. Your family never had to figure a different way of doing anything, and they, of course, never wanted their way of dealing with life to change. But they became very fearful of having their wealth taken from them, because it was their only means of survival.

My family were always great jury-riggers. When you can't afford to buy the means of survival, you have to creatively adapt or die. Duct tape was invented for families like mine. And while our stop-gap measure was buying us more time, we could be planning how to fix the problem for the long-term, in the most cost-efficient way. We have less fear of uncertainty, because we've dealt with it on some level each day, for generations.

Now, I'm not saying that all rich people are conservative. I think that families who have taught creative thinking to their progeny, and passed the teaching down through the generations, are the ones who have developed liberal brains. But I believe ultra-conservatives, either now or at sometime in their families' past, have probably been the "haves" of society, in some way. If not by money, then by strength or charisma or whatever. They never needed to learn adaptation, and so became fearful of it, and fearful of losing their special "have" at any moment.

Then again, if you don't believe in evolution, I guess God simply created conservatives and liberals physically different. So get over it, and quit trying to inflict your fear-mongering right amygdala on society. Or some liberal is apt to get out his duct tape.