Guns, part 2

Posted by on

Below are some of the ideas that have been put forward to deal with gun violence:

  1.  Background checks

There are several major bipartisan bills drawing renewed attention in the Senate at the moment, aiming to expand background checks for gun sales.

The Fix NICS Act corrects failures in the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, provides more funding to states to improve their background check systems, and “penalizes political appointees at federal agencies if they don’t take steps to maintain their records.” ( Hah!)

Since 22% of sales online and at gun shows are conducted without background checks, legislation would close the gap. A previous bill proposed by Sen. Susan Collins to do just this was opposed by the NRA and, amazingly, a bill restricting gun sales to people on a terror watchlist. (patriotic, eh?)
2. Raising the age to buy rifles from 18 to 21

Hand guns can only be purchased at 21, so why not rifles? Missing not a heartbeat the NRA opposes this, calling it “gratuitous gun control”.

3.  Assault weapons ban

One Republican politician, Rep. Brian Mast, R-FL, who lost both legs in Afghanistan, has said that the AR-15 and like weapons gave mass shooters “the best killing tool the Army could put in my hands.”

After a series of high-profile mass shootings, President Bill Clinton signed the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban, which restricted features on semi-automatic pistols, rifles and shotguns. It expired in 2004 and the odds of it being passed again in Congress are remote.

4.  Bumpstock ban

Bumpstocks increase the rate of fire to resemble an automatic weapon. Bi-partisan efforts to ban them were effectively nixed by the NRA, which wanted to “regulate” them, not ban them. What regulation actually meant is dubious. However, some state and local governments have advanced their own bump stock bans.

5.  “ Red flag” laws

This involves giving courts more authority to confiscate weapons from people who are considered a threat to themselves and others. Five states have “red flag” laws that allow a judge to issue an extreme risk protection order that temporarily restricts a person from owning a gun if family, household members and police can convince them they’re a danger. This could reduce suicide rates and contain potential violence early on.  Since this idea targets individual behavior rather than control firearms themselves, this proposal does have some bi- partisan support. But, guess what? the NRA thinks such a red flag laws  would “deprive people of their Second Amendment rights without due process of the law.”!   ( It’s o.k, lads – just go on killing!)

6.  Arming teachers

Possibly the most stupid proposal to do with guns in the last century .

7.   My take:  I have the dubious experience of having a .303 military rifle bullet fired at me by one of my own soldiers, carelessly cleaning his rifle with a round up the spout. The bullet grazed the top of my head, passed through my hair and lodged in the door behind me.  I have told this story before, but I repeat it because it explains why I believe that all guns should be licensed, locked away (when not being used for hunting), and that all gun owners should be trained and certified as safe owners.

This annual massacre of the mostly innocent is obscene and disgusting, not to mention contrary to all known christian teaching (except the unique type preached in the US).   It is certainly un-Epicurean. It also misunderstands the intentions of the Founders with regard to militias, but then so few people know any history and emascúlate what they do know.

 

Military-style guns – why do they need them?

Posted by on

”Hell, yes, we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47.”  So exclaimed Beto O’Rourke during the recent Democratic primary debate, endorsing the idea of mandatory buy-backs of assault weapons. It has become “the newest purity test” for Democratic candidates, but have they thought about the consequences of enforcing such a policy?

“There could be as many as ten million so-called assault weapons in private hands in the US, and moves to confiscate them would be fiercely opposed. At the very least it would require suspending Americans’ constitutional right to trial by jury, as it’s all too easy to imagine juries in, say, rural Montana refusing to convict firearms violators in the same way as “Massachusetts juries in the 1850s often refused to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act”. It could also lead to bloodshed.

“Gun control advocates scoff at the prospect of armed resistance, pointing out that defiant citizens would be vastly outgunned by the federal government. But remember the Waco siege in 1993, when the storming of a religious sect’s compound in Texas by the FBI led to the deaths of 82 people. Are the politicians advocating mass gun confiscations willing to be held “liable for the carnage that would result”?   (James Bovard, The American Conservative).

My comment:  We already have carnage, Mr. Bovard, without any attempt at confiscation, and the deaths are observed with indifference by the gun advocates, who care nothing for the bloodshed.  So much for Sunday church.

I was born in England. My father had a hunting gun (and a license for it) which was locked up when not in use.  Every three months a policeman visited to check that the weapon was under lock and key.  This rule never stopped my father from legal hunting. He was obeying a sensible safety law.

The foreign way allows reasonable people to have their hunting, and violent criminals and armed bullies cannot harm the public, which they do on a daily basis in America.  Tomorrow I will set out the actions needed to restore civilized life to America in so far as guns are concerned.

 

Anti-corona vaccine

Posted by on

The Trump administration has announced it is partnering with drugmaker AstraZeneca for at least 300 million doses of a corona virus vaccine developed by the University of Oxford, and is committing up to $1.2 billion to the effort.

As an alumnus of Oxford I am naturally proud that my alma mater is at the forefront of the fight against Covid 19.

But actually I am concerned (without knowing a thing about vaccine development) that this might turn out to be yet another problem that prolongs the crisis.  I gather that opinion polls are indicating that, apart from the nutcases who won’t be vaccinated at all, ever (!), respondents are expressing reservations about this new vaccine on the grounds that it has been developed too quickly and might cause more problems than it cures.  This attitude, very rational, emerges from repeated comments by experts that an effective vaccine is maybe as much as a year, eighteen months or even two years away, and that you cannot develop a cure this quickly.  Therefore , they will refuse to be treated with it, just in case.

Ouch!

Abortion: the ruthless scam connected with Roe v Wade

Posted by on

Norma McCorvey, who died in 2017, was the plaintiff known as Jane Roe in the 1973 landmark supreme court case Roe v Wade that led to abortion becoming legal in the United States, made, it turns out, a stunning deathbed confession.

In a new FX documentary McCorvey admits that her infamous reversal on abortion rights “was all an act”. Before she died at the age of 69, she revealed that her role as an anti-abortion advocate was largely funded by ultra-conservative groups such as Operation Rescue.

In 1969, a 22-year-old McCorvey was pregnant and scared. She’d had a difficult childhood, allegedly suffering sexual abuse from a family member. She’d been married at 16 but had left her husband. She had addiction issues. She’d had two children already and placed them for adoption. She was depressed. She was desperate for a safe and legal abortion. Texas, however, wouldn’t give her one. So she challenged the state laws and her case eventually went before the US supreme court, legalizing abortion across America.

After becoming the poster girl of the pro-choice movement, McCorvey performed a very public about-face in the 1990s. She found religion and became a vocal anti-abortion crusader.

As it turns out, it wasn’t God himself directing this new path. It was leaders from the evangelical Christian right. McCorvey received at least $456,911 in “benevolent gifts” from the the evangelical Christian right in exchange for her “conversion”.

“I took their money, McCorvey says in the documentary, and they’d put me out in front of the cameras and tell me what to say. It was all an act. I did it well, too. I am a good actress. Of course, I’m not acting now.”

The Rev Flip Benham, one of the evangelical leaders featured in the new documentary, has no moral qualms about how McCorvey, who was clearly vulnerable, was used. “She chose to be used,” he says. “That’s called work. That’s what you’re paid to be doing!” Ah yes, I remember reading that in the Bible: thou shalt pay others to cravenly lie.

The Rev Rob Schenck, another of the evangelical leaders featured, is rather more thoughtful. “For Christians like me, there is no more important or authoritative voice than Jesus,” he says. “And he said, ‘What does it profit in the end if he should gain the whole world and lose his soul?’ When you do what we did to Norma, you lose your soul.”

Sadly, it seems as though many anti-abortion extremists don’t have much of a soul to lose in the first place. While the right claims to stand for morality and family values they – as AKA Jane Roe makes very clear – are more than happy to lie and cheat in order to propagate their fringe beliefs.  Most Americans, on the other hand, have moderate views when it comes to abortion; according to a 2017 Pew study, 69% of Americans don’t think Roe v Wade should be overturned, only  a small but powerful group of hypocritical extremists with money who preyed on a vulnerable woman in the name of “family values”.  (Arwa Mahdawi, The Guardian, lightly edited for length).

My comment:  Forcing women to have unwanted babies is a grievous sin against humanity, potentially breeding yet more deeply unhappy, unloved human beings .  We need more happy, adjusted young people, not fewer.  And that is without the effects on the lives of the mothers.

 

 

Religious extremism in the US

Posted by on

Pastor Rich Vera, who runs a church in Florida, says he believes that faith can stop the coronavirus.  He is one of a vocal minority of Christians in America who feel it’s appropriate to gather to worship despite US federal advice to stay home, and who supports protests against the restrictions in place to try and limit the spread of coronavirus.

When asked whether he took responsibility at all for the increase in covid 19 cases,  he told a reporter “No, I don’t”.  (The Times 28 Apr 2020)

My comment:  A short while ago a woman was interviewed on television about attending a church service where there was no social distancing or masks worn.  Her reply to a journalist’s question about her vulnerability to the virus?

”I am protected by the blood of Jesus. No virus can affect me”.  (Yes, honestly!  I heard the woman say it with my own eyes). Me, I am covered by Aetna Insurance.

Seriously though, fools and fanatics are so sure of themselves and seem to care not a jot for others. They are the  self described “chosen people”, believing that science, and inoculations, are the work of the devil. The wise and intelligent are more self-aware, careful and un-selfish, that is the Epicurean way – respect the science and protect not only yourself but all around you, thoughtfully and kindly.