[Roger Slater]

Actually, more people voted for Democratic representatives than voted for Republican ones, but Republican gerrymandering and redistricting (what do you expect from a party that engaged in massive voter suppression efforts during the last election) caused the anomalous, undemocratic outcome of Republican's capturing a majority of seats. So the Republican victory was the result of underhanded tactics that succeeded in depriving the majority of their rightful democratic voice.

[Michael Cantor]

Roger, don't bother Tim with the facts.

[W.F. Lantry]

Originally Posted by Tim Murphy

Any demographic analysis will tell you the red states are gaining and the blue states losing in representation. Just look at the 2010 reapportionment. Of course blue staters far surpass us in murdering babies. Connecticut has some of the toughest gun laws in the nation, but would you like to compare their finances with the Dakotas? Or their homicide rate? I lived there for five years, so I'm not exactly a stranger. I'm out of this discussion. I'm glad I started it, and I got a good tripartite ode out of it. I'll be sure to let you know where it is published, so you vitriolic gun controllers can grind your collective teeth.

I'm sorry Tim feels this way, but this is exactly what I mean. The people who hold these positions don't hear rational arguments, syllogisms, or anything else. Since they see their positions as markers of identification, they see these discussions as attacks on themselves. Notice the terms of this response, essentially it's saying "I have value, and you don't."

There's the same level of denial Karl Rove showed on election night, the same epistemic closure. And the false comparisons: very few Americans would equate ending a pregnancy with pumping bullets into an eight year old. The technique I love the most is the accusation of vitriol, which they've gotten very good at indeed. You should hear the tea partiers in this town talk up the virtues of civility, while in the same paragraph they curse and demean all those who disagree with them.

Most reasonable people throw up their hands and turn away at this point. That's what the people who employ these techniques count on. But maybe things are different this time. Maybe people will say 'Yes, that's what those people are like, but we have to do something real, in spite of them.' One can always hope.

Peace,

Bill

[Nigel Mace]

I am so with absolutely everything you have posted on this Janice... and yet I am tempted to think that you are perhaps actually too tolerant of Tim Murphy's apparently appaling sense of values in saying that you do not care who publishes his latest trumpeted piece.

I think the only civilised and truthful response is to trust that there is nobody so crass as to publish an 'ode' - ye Gods the corruption of the term - which he has exulted in having "got out of it", meaning the discussion here of a simply unimaginable tragedy.

To which of the parents - if informed of his posted opinions - of 20 real dead children would he wish to read it? At which of the 6 dead teachers' obsequies would he wish it intoned?

His willingness in his past posts to advertise his publishing success has - for example when he was boasting of his slaughter of doves - seemed brazenly ill-chosen, but this is off any scale of sensitivity with which I have any contact. If Tim Murphy's posts are representative of the atmosphere and culture of the States on these matters then I fear that Andrew's gloomy predictions must be all to accurate.

The peerless Matt Frei's report on Britain's Channel 4 news tonight would have melted a heart of proverbial stone - and, by the way, I live just over an hour's drive from Dunblane where I have friends - so I do have some connection with how ghastly these things can be. The difference, apart from the relative rarety of the events, is that the man who supplied that killer with his guns has finally gone down for a long sentence just a few weeks ago - and, surprise surprise, the man who supplied Thomas Hamilton proved to be an international gun runner to Africa dealing in massive illegal arms shipments worth to him personally over 1 million dollars in commission.

I gather from my daughter and son-in-law in New York that both Bloomberg and Cuomo have come out in support of new gun controls. Now let us see some courage from the others - and some shame from the NRA and its deluded followers.

[Janice D. Soderling]

Most likely it is an ode to guns.

Mayor Bloomberg was interviewed in the most recent issue of the Atlantic Monthly. He has long been a spokesman for gun control. Bless his little ol' cotton-picking heart.

The NRA can't even spell shame.

Remember that empty-headed actor talking to that empty chair at the GOP convention.

[Janice D. Soderling]

I just want to add one last comment.

I don't understand the line of reasoning that it isn't meaningful to address gun control because that wouldn't solve anything when there are so many other problems: poverty, too many guns on the street already, drugs, etc.

Mike Cantor put it wisely in an early post. You have to start somewhere.

You have to start. Somewhere.

[Simon Hunt]

Hello Friends,

I've been away for a while and must be choosing this tormented thread for my first post in ages out of a combination of cussedness, grief, and optimism. I've been reading this thread pretty avidly, and it's gone about like I thought it would. I like it that this community--if such it is--keeps talking even when pissed off at each other...

A few thoughts:

Those of us who would like to see sensible gun control in the US--and I'm one (I can tend anarcho-lefty like Quincy--no offense intended--but on this issue I'm pretty much your standard effete urban coastal liberal...)--really need to reckon with the second amendment. I'm a big US Constitution fan, in general, but the main clause of that amendment says what it says (see Tim's post above...). Unless we were to amend the amendment--there's precedent, and I'd favor the change, but this isn't happening any time soon...--then any gun control needs to operate within that clause.

HOWEVER, the NRA and its supporters need to be made to reckon with the other clause, the weirdly dangling absolute (do I have my grammar right?) one about a "well regulated militia." We may ALL wish the thing had been written differently, but this clause also says what it says, and it pretty clearly indicates that the founding fathers anticipated sensible regulation of the people's rights--and that they did not believe such regulation constituted unconstitutional infringement.

So that's the territory in which the discussion should take place, right? And from where I sit, it's the gun-loving side of the argument that is obstructing the discussion by grandstanding about cold dead fingers and socialism instead of answering the hard questions. To take an example from this thread, I don't have the first freakin' clue about the difference between automatic and semiautomatic. There are lots of distinctions I don't get, but I don't think it makes me an "idiot." I would hope a gun-fan who thought the distinction crucial would educate me on it rather than calling names. But, then, I also thought Obama's brief speech about this awful event was note-perfect (I would, wouldn't I?). His opponents seem to have taken his vague suggestion of renewed discussions of gun control as all-out attack on the constitution.

I do think the idea of a pro-gun anti-NRA organization is an extraordinarily good one. Can I suggest SAFETY: Second Amendment Firearm Enthusiasts who Talk to You (or something like that; it's a first draft). The thing about the muskets is cute, but this is just another issue where the founding fathers can't possibly have imagined the place we find ourselves (abortion, gay marriage, race, etc, etc,), and yet their document must be interpreted in the light of present circumstances. That's a difficult, messy process, and it will take a serious, patient national discussion to make any progress.

There's much still unclear about the awful Connecticut case. It may turn out, for example,that all the weapons involved were scrupulously and legally registered. Leaving aside the question of why an exurban mini-mansion with two residents (one perhaps prone to violent outbursts--another open question...) would require such an arsenal, I hope that, even if they were all legal, this horrible event will nonetheless help us to keep talking...

Here's an analogy that may or may not have any value: there's no constitutional right to own an automobile ("wagon," the framers might've said...), but if there were would anybody contend that our system of regulation constitutes an infringement? We restrict certain vehicles from certain thoroughfares, tax and license vehicles, license drivers after mandated training (and restrict those who violate the law), and require insurance--and yet I don't feel hampered in my ability to own a car. Shouldn't firearms be regulated at least so carefully?

[John Whitworth]

I hope, Roger, you do not suppose that gerrymandering is the unique province of the right. Over here it is the left, Socialists and Liberals, who profit from gerrymandering, and the right, Conservatives, who are deprived of their democratic rights. We should have been governed, for the last two years, by a purely conservative administration, but were saddled with Liberal Democrats who now refuse to allow the boundaries of constituencies to be redrawn more in accordance with justice. In other words, all political parties are the same in this respect.

Our gun laws are extremely strict, perhaps the strictest in Europe, I don't know. It is quite impossible that I should legally own a gun, which suits me fine. Of course criminals of any age can and do own them. It appears that the young murderer of children used his mother's THREE guns - why on earth did she suppose that she needed three, why on earth was she allowed to possess three, so the responsibility for the massacre lies first with the boy and secondly with her. Why did she not keep them secure, as she is supposed to?

Of course, should President Obama bring in tougher gun laws there will still be 300 million guns floating about. That won't change. Hard drugs are, after all, illegal, both in the U.S.and the U.K. but people who want them have no trouble getting them.

[Pedro Poitevin]

John,

How did gerrymandering make its way into the U.K.? My son goes to Gerry school here in Marblehead, named after none other than Elbridge Gerry, responsible for the wicked thing, or so we're told! I'm curious to know how it made its way across the Atlantic.

Pedro.

[David Rosenthal]

Originally Posted by Janice D. Soderling

I just want to add one last comment.

I don't understand the line of reasoning that it isn't meaningful to address gun control because that wouldn't solve anything when there are so many other problems: poverty, too many guns on the street already, drugs, etc.

Mike Cantor put it wisely in an early post. You have to start somewhere.

You have to start. Somewhere.

Janice,

I am not sure if this in part refers to my post above, but to be clear, I do heartily, desperately, support gun control. And I support it to an incredibly strict degree -- I'd say hunting rifles, strictly defined and regulated, and nothing else. I support the repeal of the Second Amendment and have told my Congressional representatives so.

But I still believe social inequality is the biggest problem, and the one from which nearly all others stem. The ways in which it contributesnto the gun problem are numerous. It leads to money-motivated crime. It leads to drug traffic. It leads to unbearable stress, trauma, and psychological pressure. It leads to a lack of diagnosis and treatment mental illness. It leads to chronic, deep-seeded, pathological anger and resentment.

Violence is to be sure a special cultural sickness of our society -- along with racism and a pathological species of individualism -- but I am pretty well convinced that these pathologies are manifestations of social inequality more than they are causes of it or problems separate from it. So, what I said before -- that gun control is a stop gap -- is not to say it is not a measure to be desired, but just that there are deeper more powerful ills -- violence, inequality -- that need to be addressed if we hope for lasting solutions.

I am not sure if this post is particularly cogent (or any other of my posts in this thread for that matter) and I know I am asserting things without sufficient argument and evidence, but I will have to ask that you require better arguments from me at some later time. I need to stop participating in this thread because it is interfering with the delicately constructed "critical optimism" I have to maintain in order function without succumbing to nausea and depression.

Carry on the good fight.

David R.