The Tennessee Waltz

Tennessee, the adopted state of imperialist President James K. Polk and racist President Andrew Johnson, the birthplace of the Ku Klux Klan, and the site of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination, expelled two black state legislators named Justin - Justin Jones and Justin Pearson - for peacefully protesting for gun control in the well of the state House of Representatives in Nashville in the aftermath of a school shooting in the city over a week earlier.  A third representative, a white female Democrat named Gloria Johnson, who also protested against guns, was also up for expulsion but kept her seat.  And not because she wasn't a man named Justin.

American state legislatures have done a lot of dumb things, such as criminalizing abortion after six weeks of pregnancy, restricting the teaching of black history, banning gender-affirming care for transsexual children, and banning the playing of Randy Newman's "Short People" on the radio  (the last one is a law in Maryland - really), but this is the topper.  The Republican supermajority, beholden to the gun lobby and refusing to do anything about it, has just punished two black men in the Tennessee legislature for calling them on it by throwing them out.  They've sent a message to anyone opposed to them that there is a price to pay for expressing opposition to their agenda.  The Tennessee House Republicans may have let Gloria Johnson off the hook now, but the expulsion of Jones and Pearson has made it clear to her that she'll be next if she pulls this stunt next time.

This has happened even as an untold number of demonstrators - many if not most of them young people - descended on the Tennessee legislature demanding action on assault weapons because it made more sense than writing their legistors a bunch of e-mails.  Not only are Tennessee Republicans refusing to listen to them, they're likely to have them arrested  and cleared out just like the young people of the now-forgotten Occupy Wall Street movement who were cleared out of Lower Manhattan.  Once they're out of the way, life will go on and no one will care.

Lawrence O'Donnell says that, while it may not look like it, the forces of good are winning.   Not likely, not in this lifetime; every time America looks like it's making progress, a long, dark period of backsliding is inevitable.

How To Get Gun-Rights Activists To Support an Assault Weapons Ban

It's quite simple, really.

If you want to get a ban on assault weapons like the AR-15 pictured below passed, just tell anyone who supports legal assault weapons this.

Just tell them that they were likely the weapons used by extremists to shoot up a North Carolina power substation that knocked out the electricity for everyone in Moore County, North Carolina for five days.

And if that doesn't convince them, tell them that a militant black Marxist group could use them for a similar attack on the power grid.

They'll change their position so fast, they'll get whiplash!

Something to think about, 42 years to the day after John Lennon's murder.

Fighting Fire With Fire

California governor Gavin Newsom is taking the opportunity to nullify national law as seriously as Greg Abbott has done in Texas.

Taking a cue from the anti-abortion law in Texas that allows private citizens to sue to enforce it, Governor Newsom, who clearly wants to run for President someday and is feeling his oats after surviving a recall attempt back in September, is proposing legislation to allow California residents to sue "anyone who manufactures, distributes, or sells an assault weapon" in California and allow up to $10,000 in damages for this who sue successfully.  This is wen though the band on assault weapons in California is being litigated in federal court.

The idea is that, if the U.S. Supreme Court lets the anti-abortion law in Texas stand while litigation against that goes through the federal courts, it can have no complaints against a similar gun-control law in California.  Sorry, but I'm one of those cynics who think that the Supreme Court will apply a double standard and strike down such a California law outright. And they'll it with this reasoning.  Where does it say "right of the people to keep and bear arms" mentioned in the Constitution?  The Second Amendment, of course.  Now . . . where does it say "right to an abortion in the Constitution?

They conservatives on the Court aren't called "strict constructionists" for nothing.

Sometimes, when you fight fire with fire, you can expect to get burned.

Virginia Is For . . .

At this point, it's hard to tell.

The Virginia State Senate recently passed three bills that would ban guns in public spaces, limit monthly purchases of firearms, and and require background checks for transfers of firearms.  If the House of Delegates passes these bills - and both houses of the General Assembly are controlled by Democrats - Governor Ralph Northam, a Democrat, will most certainly sign them.  However, the House of Delegates got a big wake-up call on Monday from gun-rights activists.

About twenty-two thousand Second Amendment supporters descended on the State Capitol in Richmond to demonstrate against the new bills, with many of them coming from out of the state.  Northam declared a state of emergency in Richmond in recognition of the violence that gripped Charlottesville over racially charged demonstrations there in 2017, but the demonstration in Richmond was peaceful.  Maybe that's because many gun-control activists didn't bother to show up.

Despite widespread support for the gun-control legislation passed by the Senate, gun rights activists  in Virginia have made it clear that they are not amused and they are not going anywhere.  I wouldn't be surprised if the House of Delegates fails to pass any of these bills out of fear of reprisals. And even if they do pass, expect them to be challenged in court.

Another court challenge could come against the Virginia General Assembly for its other major vote - ratifying the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA).  Virginia became the 38th state to do so, thus allowing the amendment denying restrictions to equal rights n the basis of sex to become part of the Constitution.  There's just one thing wrong - the amendment had a federal ratification deadline that came and went in 1982.  Virginia is the third state to ratify it after the deadline, but as long as the deadline is on the books, demanding that the ERA become the Twenty-Eighth Amendment to the Constitution at this point is comparable to winning a raffle and reporting to claim the prize a week later despite the ticket's printed requirement that the prize must be claimed within twenty-four hours.

The Justice Department - headed by a patriarchal Attorney General - is already planning to nullify Virginia's action, saying that the law is the law and the amendment cannot be added to the Constitution, and the Democrats lack the support in Congress and from the White House to negate the 1982 deadline.  Don't expect the ERA to be considered anything but DOA until and unless a long, drawn-out legal battle ends in its favor.  Sadly, though, a forty-year-old woman - that is, a woman born the year the ERA deadline passed - likely won't live to see this amendment be inserted into the Constitution even if she lives to be a hundred.

Virginia has been hostile to such liberal reform in the past.  But while Virginia may have changed, America, just as assuredly, cannot. :-(

249

Remember that number.

That's the number of mass shootings in the United States so far in 2019 . . . before the twin mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton.  And you can expect the number to go higher still before December 31.  I would guess that the the numbers in Canada and Mexico will remain unchanged.  As will America's gun laws - there is no incentive under America's current governmental system to limit the sale of guns in this country.

Trump went on TV to decry the mist recent violence and he finally admitted what everyone already knew - that most of the mas shootings in this country are linked to right-wing extremism and anti-immigrant sentiment, which he had more than a small role in stirring up.  He made a few proposals of his own to deal with gun violence, such policing social media, discouraging violent video games, mental health reform, and keeping guns out of the hands of dangerous people, but his remarks were so rote and pablum-laden that he sounded like a robot.  And he said nothing about reducing the number of available guns.  He says that hate has no place in America, something that doesn't ring true in light of his own rallies.  He has no problem with getting the most reactionary elements of his base activated, and he never tries to quell them until and unless he has no choice.  That's not leadership; that's cowardice.  

Frankly, I wasn't going to comment on El Paso or last week's Gilroy massacre - because what can say other than that they were very bad things? - until Dayton happened within 24 hours after El Paso. As the press has said, when you mention this past weekend's shooting, you have to specify which one.  

Mass shootings are just one of the many unbearable problems with this country that cannot and will not be solved.  Now they're talking about bringing tighter security to the big-box shopping complex where the El Paso shootings took place.  And there's another thing wrong with this country - we're so dehumanized that we build these scary big-box shopping complexes that further dehumanize the simple act of living one's life.  I'm not surprised that such shootings take place in nightmarish landscapes that dehumanize everyone and everything around it.  The architecture of Columbine High School and the Century multiplex movie theater - both in Colorado, both the scenes of mass shootings (and 1999 and 2012, respectively) - are prefect examples.  Columbine looks like a warehouse, as it if it were designed to merely store children in, and the Century theater has a a warehouse design as well - merely a place to store moviegoers while they take in some entertainment.

I'm ready to just quit the United States - leave this country and never come back.  The laundry list of everything wrong with America and reasons why nothing ever changes is too damn long.  

Plastic Handguns - Oh Baby, Now You're Such a Drag!

Donald Trump finally said something logical.  He said he would have to look into the proliferation of a blueprint for plastic handguns that can be manufactured with 3-D printers by a shady group called Defense Distributed, which planned to release it online this past Wednesday.  He said he would talk to the relevant party that advises them on this.  There are two things wrong, though:

• The relevant party is the National Rifle Association, not Congress.
• The blueprint distribution was approved by his own State Department -  shortly after Mike Pompeo took over.

Awk-ward!

Why is Trump checking with the leadership of an unelected group before he acts? Why didn't he know that his own administration let this approval happen?  And how was it the State Department that let it happen?

Allowing plastic guns to be 3-D-printed would allow anyone who shouldn't have a gun - minors, people with criminal records, terrorists - to make one at home and use it at will.  Also, because they're plastic, they can't be caught by metal detectors at, say, airports.  And, they can't be traced.  In a twisted way, it's good that Trump is consulting the NRA about this.  See, allowing plastic guns to proliferate through the Internet would severely cut into sales of guns by legitimate firearms manufacturers and eat into their profits.  That is, exactly what the NRA does not want.         

Did I happen to mention that Defense Distributed was started by an anarchist?

Eight state attorneys general - including the attorney general of New Jersey - have filed suit to stop release of these blueprints, and a federal judge in Seattle this past week blocked the distribution of  said blueprints to make them.  So hopefully cooler heads will prevail.  I hope that guns will never be a product of plasticity.

In America, life ain't so fun when you're living under the gun.     

Guns and Trains

Two things America does not handle well.

The marches against school gun violence in the schools in Washington and elsewhere drew hundreds of thousands of high school students and adults yesterday, and I'm certain many people across the country were impressed. Except the people who run Washington.  None of them were in town anyway; they'd gone home after approving a dismayingly bipartisan spending bill that gives lots of money to the military to buy . . . destructive weapons.  Because Milk Mustache Man needs his toys.

The spending bill that was passed gives money for the Gateway passenger-rail tunnel under the Hudson River, between New York and New Jersey, but it doesn't specifically mention it; it just makes sure that there's money there, but, as House Speaker Paul Ryan explained that it gives the White House the decision on Gateway. Trump wants to cut off funding for the tunnel and make both states pay more for it, which political analysts explain as part of a grudge match between Trump and Chuck Schumer and a way for Trump to punish states that went Democratic in the 2016 presidential election.  Apart from that, no one can give a reason why Trump would oppose an infrastructure project.  News flash: Republicans hate passenger trains. (Well, except for Tri-State Republicans, and one of those exceptions is retiring House Appropriations Committee Chairman Rodney Frelinghuysen, who has made Gateway a priority.)  If this were a third automobile tunnel that New York and New Jersey wanted to build under the Hudson, it would have been built already.

Those of us who live in the Greater New York City area should get used to finding alternatives to rail travel to cross the Hudson, like, say, the ferry.  Me, I'm ready to take a boat that crosses something a little wider than the Hudson . . . and I want to buy a one-way ticket for it. >:-(             

Walk Right Out

Today was the day that school students all across America walked out of class to protest gun violence and the government's inability or unwillingness to do anything about it.  Not every school district in the country approved of the walkout - in some of them, students were threatened with disciplinary action if they took part in it - but the walkout went ahead as intended, and some students banned from taking part did so anyway despite threats of detention and even expulsion.

I'd like to think that this will lead to positive change as far as the easy purchase of guns in America , and in some cases it already has.  Many companies offering discounts to National Rifle Association members have severed ties with the NRA, including Atlanta-based Delta Airlines, which was punished with a bill passed by the Georgia state legislature to repeal its tax exemption on jet fuel. But the airline is sticking to its . . . jets.  Dick's Sporting Goods also stopped selling assault-style riffles, its CEO saying he could no longer offer them in his stores in good conscience.

This is all good and fine, but no one in Washington is getting the message, and even the White House, which initially proposed background checks for prospective gun buyers and  an increase in the minimum age to buy a gun from 18 to 21, seems to have backed off.  But then, this is nothing new in the U.S.  Just when you think things are finally moving forward in this country, it suddenly resumes backsliding into inertia.

Is a Change Gonna Come?

I don't want to come right out and try to make any predictions, but the National Rifle Association may finally have met its match.  When Congress refused to even consider new restrictions on firearms, those teenagers in Florida, the ones affected by the mass shooting that took place in their school, refused to stand by and do nothing. They've been spearheading a movement to get common-sense gun regulations passed and they have made it clear that they won't be happy until they get them, and they won't stop fighting for them.  

The gun-control crowd won a minor victory in Florida itself, where a new school-safety bill was just signed into law by Governor Rick Scott.  With one eye on the students and another on a possible U.S. Senate run, Scott approved a bill that will allow some teachers to be armed per approval from local school districts and county sheriffs (none of whom may be crazy about the idea, so I don't see too many armed teachers in Florida in the near or even far future) but will also raise the minimum age for purchasing a rifle to 21 and appropriate $69 for mental health assistance in the schools and $98 million for increased school security.

Not surprisingly, the NRA is planing to sue Florida for placing age restrictions on firearm purchases.  This is only the first step in doing something about guns in America, and even though these teenagers are amazing in their commitment to righting a serious wrong in These States, I can't help but be skeptical about any real change.  Is this really the beginning of new movement that will recognize that guns ought to be under tighter controls and that the Second Amendment is about keeping well-regulated militias - i.e., the National Guard - and not about allowing any ol' citizen to have a gun? Or will this merely be Occupy Wall Street Mark Two?  

And the idea of Rick Scott - Rick Scott! - suddenly being on the side of gun control is like Donald Trump singing "We Shall Overcome" . . .

You Can't Please Anybody

The school shooting in Florida this past week - on February 14, 89 years to the day after the St. Valentine's Day Massacre in Chicago, which only goes to show you how mass shootings in this country are nothing new - have politicians demanding that something be done about gun control.  Martin O'Malley has been demanding that something be done for years.

I'm not going to comment on the Parkland shootings per se because I can't say any more about school shootings that I haven't already said.  But I would like to look at O'Malley's position on guns, if only to remind voters that we could have had a President who would have addressed the issues.  O'Malley promoted in the 2016 presidential campaign a plan to expand safeguards to all gun purchases, require a background check for every individual gun purchase, require fingerprint-based licenses for transfers and purchases, and mandate safety training and waiting periods for gun purchases. He also advocated an assault weapons ban (which he pushed through as governor of Maryland), a program for the government to work with gun manufacturers to stop the illegal trafficking of firearms, and stronger incentives for law enforcement to  uphold such measures.

It's this stand on firearms that has made O'Malley Public Enemy Number One with the National Rifle Association.

You'd think O'Malley would get plaudits for his gun policy from his fellow Democrats.  Well, he probably would - if he could only get past questions about his public-safety record as mayor of Baltimore. 

Jayne Miller of Baltimore TV station WBAL-TV has reported that two members the Baltimore Police Department's  Gun Trace Task Force, who were supposed to get illegal guns off the street, would steal money and drugs from drug dealers targeted by the force.   They were convicted on charges of racketeering and robbery.  Although this corruption has been going on since O'Malley left the mayor's office in Baltimore to become governor of Maryland in 2007, and although the Baltimore police were already one of the most corrupt police departments in urban America before O'Malley became mayor in 1999, this story simply gives O'Malley's critics more opportunities to go after his criminal-justice record - and how his failure to reform the Baltimore Police Department has led to the lawlessness in the city that disproportionally affects people of color.  

In other words, the NRA hates him, but the people whom O'Malley should have as allies don't think too much of him either.

Again, Martin O'Malley has devoted his life of public service to making his city and his state as safe and as free of violence as possible, but he was only able to do so much as mayor of Baltimore and than as governor of Maryland.  He pursued his policies in the interest of the greater good, but some problems, especially in urban America, can't be solved in a single year or even in a single tenure of office.  And while he did what he thought was right when it came to public safety, knowing that his policies weren't going to be popular with everyone, he was somehow unable to satisfy anyone. 

Martin O'Malley knows what to do about gun violence, but if he were President today, he couldn't do it alone . . . which is pretty much what he is now.  So why do I continue to support him for President in 2020 when not too many people seem to be interested in the idea?  I think of O'Malley as someone who's ahead of his time, and I'm hoping that by the 2020 presidential campaign, his time will catch up with him.   

I Gotta Get a Grip

You know all of those times on this blog that I accused Hillary Clinton of telling Martin O'Malley to "get a grip" when he went off a tirade about gun control in a Democratic presidential debate?  Well it turns out that I misremembered what was said.

In the Democratic 2016 presidential debate that took place in December 2015, O'Malley blamed the federal government's failure to pass gun legislation, an action he achieved in Maryland as that state's governor, on the "flip-flopping political approach in Washington that both of my two colleagues on this stage have represented there for the last forty years."

At that point, Sanders replied, "Whoa, whoa, whoa.  Calm down a little bit, Martin."  Hillary Clinton then said, "Let's tell the truth, Martin." 

"I am telling the truth," O'Malley replied.

Clinton and Sanders then responded by saying that O'Malley had misrepresented their records on gun control, but O'Malley refused to concede the point.  Whether he was telling the truth about his primary opponents' positions on guns or not, though, Hillary Clinton did not say to O'Malley, "Get a grip, Martin."

The funny thing is, I watched that debate myself, and I could have sworn remembering that she did tell him to "get a grip."  But the transcript of the debate shows otherwise, and a USA Today article about that very moment in the debate concurs with the transcript.  But then, there have been times when I can't even remember what I had for lunch the day before, and there were a couple of times when I distinctly remembered things that could never have happened, as I explained in this blog entry from a few years ago.  So, no, Hillary did not go nasty on O'Malley and tell him to get a grip, and I apologize for having said - here and elsewhere - that she did.

I also apologize for the sore-thumb typos in my since-fixed post about what happened in Las Vegas. :-O

However, I maintain that when Bernie and Hillary descended on O'Malley in that moment during that debate, Bernie acted like he was O'Malley's dad and Hillary acted like the aunt you can't stand but tolerate because she's married to your mom's brother.

Ugh.  I think I need a vacation.  I've been having a tough time lately . . .. :-( 

Goodbye, Gabby

It should have become apparent to anyone who realized just how badly wounded Arizona congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was in the January 2011 shooting in Tucson that she would eventually have to resign her seat. So it was no surprise when Giffords announced that would in fact quit the House of Representatives this week to concentrate on her ongoing recovery. She was able to put the announcement in her own words, literally - she made the announcement in a video release - so the woman who has been an inspiration to many has a very good chance of recovering fully. And she's vowed to remain active in politics regardless.

Alas, she won't be an inspiration to pass meaningful gun control legislation, which has a very good chance of getting defeated in Congress - if anyone has the gall to even bring it up. (Every time a horrendous shooting occurs in this country - which happens frequently enough to feel like an everyday occurrence - Chris Matthews asks the panelists on his Sunday broadcast show if gun control legislation has a chance of even getting considered, and his panelists respond with an imitation of Marcel Marceau in Mel Brooks' Silent Movie - "No!") This isn't so much a partisan condition as it is an American condition - a peculiarly and insufferably American love of firearms.

Am I suggesting that Americans are peculiar and insufferable? You can draw your own conclusion.

On the other hand . . .. Sarah Palin - one of the most peculiar and most insufferable Americans in recent memory - has seen her stature reduced a result of the Giffords shooting. In the 2010 midterm election campaign, Palin posted a map of Democratic House districts targeted by Republicans, depicting the districts with rifle crosshairs over them - one of them was Giffords' district. After the shooting, she gave such a mean-spirited defense of her actions in the wake of charges that she incited violence that her rising star dimmed quickly. So some taste survives here, enough to not only lessen Palin's visibility but to also eliminate the Minnesota Twins (Tim Pawlenty and Michele Bachmann) from the Republican presidential nomination contest early.

Armed and Dangerous

The shooting of Arizona congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords has renewed the debate over guns in America and the need for stricter gun control. Jared Lee Loughner, the suspect in the Tucson shooting, had tried to enlist in the military but was barred, he was asked to leave school, and former classmates of his said he appeared to be "very disturbed." But he still got his hands on a gun.

Gun control has been an issue President Obama has tried to skirt, as he's been preoccupied with so many other issues. Ironically, right-wing demonstrators have shown up at presidential events with guns, paranoiacs have insisted Obama's ready to confiscate their guns, and Obama happily signed a credit card regulation bill to which Oklahoma Republican senator Tom Coburn - just as happily - added an irrelevant amendment to allow carrying firearms in our national parks. Obama may have to tackle the issue head-on and face the fact that we need tougher gun regulations, even though he's done less to initiate curbs on firearms than any President in recent memory.

I'm not optimistic about the regulation of guns in America in the future. Guns are as American as apple pie and stock car racing. And even if we controlled guns, it wouldn't necessarily make America a less violent place. Canada has a gun for every one of its citizens the same as we do, if we can believe Michael Moore, but its firearm homicide rate is much lower. Moore concluded that Americans may be more fearful of each other than Canadians are of each other - and Americans certainly fear their government. The violent rhetoric coming from the American right in the past two years makes me wonder if Jared Lee Loughner could have found a way to discharge his own paranoia without a gun. I doubt there were any weapons at the town hall meeting on the health care bill that I attended in September 2009, but the debate was anything but civil or reasonable. I was a little scared to be there.

Which begs the obvious question: If health care reform could generate such violent, hateful, and incendiary rhetoric, what kind of rhetoric would gun control generate?

The biggest reason I don't see any change in gun laws is twofold. First, violent crime rates tend to be higher in cities than in rural and suburban areas, where more people live and are largely unaffected by gun violence. I can think of only one shooting in my own suburban community in all the time I've lived here - a carjacking. Second, we've had several high-profile shootings in America in the past fifty years. If the shooting of Presidents and pop stars can't get people to wise up about guns and violence, how could a shooting of a U.S. House member do so?

Except - and this is the bit of hope in this Pandora's box - a change in our gun laws and a discussion about violence may yet be possible because of the circumstances surrounding this incident. After all, the attack on Gabrielle Giffords and others in that shopping center most likely wouldn't have happened - and several others would still be alive - if we didn't have the violent rhetoric to inspire the shooting and the easy access to guns to make it possible. Maybe people will think about that for awhile.