In Foreign Policy this past Sunday, David Rothkopf asked, "How can a gun-crazed society lead the world?" The answer, of course, is that it can't. And anyone who doesn't realize that just hasn't been paying attention since 9/11. Bin Laden's still out there. We haven't laid a glove on him. But he's enlisted us in his war to destroy America's basic liberties--and we're doing him one better as we prepare to take a meat-ax to the social welfare state that for seven decades created the greatest mass middle-class the world had ever known. Leading the world? You've got to be kidding. But Rothkopf's not just some blogger, so he tries to strike a more dignified tone:
According to a 2007 survey, the United States leads the world in gun ownership: 90 guns per 100 people. We are a country with five percent of the world's people and between 35 and 50 percent of its civilian-owned guns. That's something like 270 million weapons.
Repeated studies have shown that the United States is far and away the leader among the world's developed countries in gun violence and gun deaths. There is no other developed country that is even close. Over 30,000 Americans die every year from gun violence. Most of these are suicides but in excess of 12,000 a year are homicides. Another 200,000 Americans are estimated to be injured each year due to guns.
In 2009, Bob Herbert of the New York Times wrote a compelling column noting that since 9/11 over 120,000 people have died in the United States as a result of gun violence. By now, the number is in excess of 140,000.
That's right folks. 9/11 is just a blip compared to your decade-long accumulation of everyday gun violence, which--except for rare occurances like just happened--we take completely for granted.
Below is a piece I wrote for The Huffington Post not long ago, which sums up the situation we knew we were dealing with after a deranged man tried to kill members of a Panama City, Florida School Board (and really well before that).
Clearly, there's a lot of anger in America right now.
Much of it justified, as some can afford shower curtain rings that would dwarf others' weekly wages (and the latter are the ones who are lucky enough to have jobs). When you take this fact, combine it with the Orwellian "Newspeak" so pervasive in our media (which David Neiwert has written so articulately about), and multiply that by the NRA's mission to fight for the rights of criminals, the mentally ill and even terrorists to have access to guns, you have a toxic stew, ready to erupt.
And that does not even begin to discuss the lack of mental health services we provide, which has only gotten worse since the onset of The Great Recession
Scene: Panama City, Florida. A school board meeting is interrupted by a man with a criminal record of assault (with a gun) waving a gun, and furious that his wife lost her job, his benefits have run out and the board members were unwilling to raise sales taxes so she and others like her wouldn't be fired (it should be noted that reports are still sketchy, so not all of what he says about his wife and himself during the five minutes when the board members try and talk him down can be confirmed yet).
We don't yet know where he got his gun -- but we do know his criminal record and history of mental illness made it illegal for him obtain a gun of any kind. We also know that you can walk into a gun show in many states, such as Virginia, and buy any weapon, no background check necessary. The Governor of Virginia thinks that this is a-ok. No matter that everyone from members of Hezbollah to the Columbine killers to the Pentagon shooter got their guns in this manner.
Apparently, to make an omelette, you have to shoot a few eggs.
So the gun lobby marches on: Much harm, no foul.
The NRA has spent years trying to destroy and delegitimize the ATF, such that nobody has been leading this important law enforcement agency for the past 4 years. Why? Because they try and track where guns come from when they kill people. Crazy. right?
And of course we know that we are creating our very own Bonus Army, as millions are filled with despair and anxiety as we give them a pittance while extending tax cuts for people who make Richie Rich look like Oliver Twist.
So is this our future? Videos of killers wielding illegal guns and holding innocent people hostage -- or worse. Reality TV, gone very, very wrong.
Unless/until we decide that gun safety, economic equality, and preventing pundits from inciting riot/slandering whole groups of people on air are reforms worth fighting for. Stay tuned on this one. In the meantime, sadly, I can promise you one thing: Many mini-revolutions such as this will be televised.
And it will be ugly.
One more prediction after yesterday's' evil occurrence. There will be more, sadly, much more, unless we address these issues. A whole lot of mentally unstable & criminal minds just got a new idea from yesterday..
Now the Washington Post has published a 3,000 word article, "As Mexico drug violence runs rampant, U.S. guns tied to crime south of border", which tells the same general story, but does a very good job of laying things out in a newspaper-style fashion, connecting the broader story with the particular. It's one of two stories published this week as part of the Post's year-long investigation collected on its website as a package of stories and features, "The Hidden Life of Guns", which highlights the patterns of gun violence, the role of a small number of problem dealers, the difficulties faced by law-enforcement, and the role of the NRA in creating those difficulties.
What struck me more forcefully than ever, in light of my recent blogging about the role of oligolopies in running up our federal debt, among other things, was the degree to which our gun violence problem in America can be seen as a classic problem of oligolopy, in which a powerful, concentrated industry (the manufacturers, not the dealers) makes obscene profits, while externalizing enormous hidden costs--in this instance, the premature deaths of thousands upon thousands of people every year, and the debilitating injuries of many, many more. Below, I'll list a number of the stories in the series with some highlights from them. But I'd like to begin with the opening paragraphs of the Post's new story that caught my eye. This is the sort of work that shows that serious journalism is still being done--yes, even by the Washington Post--and that shames so much that passes as journalism today.
The Post's new story began thus:
No other state has produced more guns seized by police in the brutal Mexican drug wars than Texas. In the Lone Star State, no other city has more guns linked to Mexican crime scenes than Houston. And in the Texas oil town, no single independent dealer stands out more for selling guns traced from south of the border than Bill Carter.
Carter, 76, has operated four Carter's Country stores in the Houston metropolitan area over the past half-century. In the past two years, more than 115 guns from his stores have been seized by the police and military in Mexico.
As an unprecedented number of American guns flows to the murderous drug cartels across the border, the identities of U.S. dealers that sell guns seized at Mexican crime scenes remain confidential under a law passed by Congress in 2003.
Eight of the top 12 dealers are in Texas, three are in Arizona, and one is in California. In Texas, two of the four Houston area Carter's Country stores are on the list, along with four gun retailers in the Rio Grande Valley at the southern tip of the state. There are 3,800 gun retailers in Texas, 300 in Houston alone....
