Showing posts with label NRA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label NRA. Show all posts

11 October 2017

The Devil Loads Empty Guns


Back in the late Bronze Age, when I was a kid going to summer camp, the NRA was a sportsmen's organization. They taught firearms safety, and sponsored marksmanship competitions, and published The American Rifleman, which was pretty much the only gun magazine available, aside from maybe Shotgun News, which was basically classified ads. I learned to shoot at Camp Chewonki - I was ten or eleven, if memory serves - and I was awarded the NRA pins and patches for whichever level I got to.  I think Sharpshooter, that first year. We shot prone, sitting, kneeling, standing. Single-shot .22 bolt actions. Paper targets at fifty feet. Ten rounds. You needed to score in the black. I want to emphasize, though, that riflery was one of a mix of activities, swimming, canoeing, lanyard-weaving, woodcraft. They wanted to keep us busy, that critical mass of boys.
My dad let me buy my own .22 when I was fourteen. He was from Ohio, he'd served in the war, and like a lot of people his age, it seemed perfectly natural for kids to learn basic shooting skills. How not? He and I shot up a lot of tin cans.

I went in the military, then, with a little preparation, and qualified Expert on the .30 caliber carbine. Now, the .30 carbine is a lightweight compared to the M-14 the Marines were still being issued at the time, or the M-16 the Army had transitioned to, and they were shooting at distances out to three hundred yards, but still. Iron sights on a little gun that fired what wasn't all that much more than a pistol load? I thought I did okay.

In the years since that first .22, I've had a few other guns, a couple of single-actions, cowboy guns, a couple of auto-loaders. One of the things I've always liked about guns is their simplicity of function. I'm no good at working on cars, I couldn't take a carburetor apart, but guns are straightforward, mechanically, like a watch. The single-action Army, for example, a design that dates to 1873, has six moving parts, with three springs. There aren't that many more in a .45 auto, the 1911. Guns you can drop in sand, or salt water, and they'll still operate. That's why they were military-issue.

This is prologue. I'm telling you so you know where my sympathies lie. It's a familiar story. Anybody of a certain generation, or anybody with a certain background, is going to say more or less the same thing. They grew up in a culture where hunting and shooting were part of the metric. It didn't make you a nut. Of course, this is also a culture where military service was often the norm. So, it depends on your attitude toward that. If you can't see yourself in uniform, you might be unsympathetic. Same with guns. Or broccoli.

But my actual question here is, What the heck happened to the NRA? How did they shape-shift from a generic bunch of hunters and recreational shooters, back in the day, into this pack of rabid crazies? (Exaggeration for effect, of course, but that's how they're perceived by many.) The answer is that there was a coup, at the national meeting in Cincinnati, in 1977.

Forty years ago, a dissident group led by Harlon Carter waged a floor fight, and voted the NRA board of directors out of office. Carter's platform was simple: on 2nd Amendment issues, there's no room for compromise. Compromise means erosion, and the end result of gun control can only be confiscation and tyranny.

This is how the argument continues to be framed. If the gun-control advocates suggest banning high-cap mags, to take an example, 2nd Amendment absolutists say this is gradualism, a wolf in sheep's clothing. They've got a point. Once you start loosening the bricks in the wall, you hasten its collapse, and gun rights people simply don't believe it, when you tell them these are just common-sense measures. They know your real agenda is getting rid of guns, period. And when you come right down to it, there are people whose real agenda is getting rid of guns, period. It flies in the face of reason and experience to say that isn't true. So the problem isn't just the gun guys. The problem is that both sides believe themselves to possess the True Cross, and Satan rules their adversaries.

Where do I stand, personally? Like more than a few gun guys, I'm for gun control. But the dialogue, if you can call it that, is owned by the extremes, and what's in short supply is trust.

The perfect is the enemy of the good.

29 September 2016

Treason's True Bed


I don't know how many of you have heard of Marissa Alexander, of Florida. She was sentenced to 20 years in 2012 after firing a single gunshot at the ceiling of her home in an attempt to scare her estranged husband, Rico Gray.  Right before she did this, Alexander had locked herself in the bathroom; Gray broke through, grabbed her by the neck, and shoved her into the broken door.  She tried to escape through the garage, but the garage door wouldn't open.  She grabbed her gun from the car and went back in the house.  When Gray saw Alexander with a gun, he “charged her ‘in a rage,’ saying, ‘Bitch, I'll kill you.’”  She shot the gun at the ceiling, he backed off, no one was harmed.

"Safe enough for babies" - I know, irrelevant,
but I couldn't resist.  
Now before this incident, Gray had previously tried to choke her, strangle her, regularly threatened to kill her, shoved her around, and hospitalized her.  She'd gotten a restraining order against him.  She was charged with 3 counts of aggravated assault, and claimed immunity under Florida's "Stand Your Ground" (SYG) law.  But judge denied her immunity, and a jury sentenced her to TWENTY YEARS IN PRISON.  She appealed and was granted a new trial due to erroneous jury instructions; she is currently freed; but throughout, the court reaffirmed that she couldn't claim SYG as a defense.

You may be wondering, what the hell????

Back in 2005, Florida became the first state to adopt a SYG law.  Based on British common law on self-defense, SYG eliminates the duty to retreat when using self-defense and expands the “Castle Doctrine.”  BUT SYG specifically denies people prosecutorial immunity under SYG if “[t]he person against whom the defensive force is used or threatened has the right to be in or is a lawful resident of the dwelling, [or] residence . . . such as an owner, lessee, or titleholder, and there is not an injunction for protection from domestic violence or a written pretrial supervision of no contact order against that person.”   (Much of this comes from the American Criminal Review.)

In case you're wondering, the NRA helped write Florida’s SYG law; and most SYG laws are based on Florida's.  (See - We Helped Draft It" here)  Now the NRA will tell you that SYG allows women to protect themselves from rapists, etc.  But that's only from rapists who are strangers.  If you know them - well, you're gonna have to figure something else out.  
NERD NOTE:  82% of women who have been raped were raped by someone they knew; only 18% by a stranger.  (See Rape Statistics here)
So, despite the fact that women are more likely to be victims of domestic violence than of stranger-danger, 82% v. 18%, those violent partners are the specific people women are not allowed to defend themselves against under SYG.  BTW, the NRA specifically helped write it this way.  

So, okay, you might say, all they have to do is get a protective order.  Yeah, well, only 28% of female victims get one.  Most victims of domestic violence are afraid, desperately afraid.  And rightly so. I've seen cases where the man waited until the woman came out of the courthouse and either killed her in the parking lot and/or followed her to her next destination and beat the crap out of her and/or killed her.  (Marissa Alexander HAD a protective order, and was STILL denied SYG.)

And it's not just Marissa Alexander.  Take a gander at this blog from Patheos listing dozens of horrendous but true examples of women trying to defend themselves and/or their families, and ending up in prison:  http://www.patheos.com/blogs/lovejoyfeminism/2016/08/why-is-the-nra-ignoring-this-14-year-old-girl-jailed-for-shooting-her-abusive-father.html

What in the holy hell is going on?  Well, for one thing, the NRA has consistently opposed revoking a person's 2nd Amendment Rights (i.e., the right to own a gun) just because they have been convicted of domestic violence, no matter how heinous and disturbing.  And most people who have been convicted of domestic violence and/or have protection orders against them are, sadly, male.  
Clarence Thomas official SCOTUS portrait.jpg
SCJ Clarence Thomas
NOTE 1:  To be fair, the NRA is beginning to walk back a tiny, tiny, tiny bit on the issue of convicted domestic abusers, mostly because (1) Women have been raising holy hell about it; and   (2) women vote; and (3) a high-profile executive of the NRA was in a high-profile domestic abuse case, and the publicity fall-out was bad.  BUT - it's still only a little walking back - the NRA still opposes expanded background checks, opposes including things like stalking under "domestic abuse", and opposes giving abused women SYG rights.  (It also depends on the state) 
NOTE 2: It also depends on the judge:  In February, 2016, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas spoke for the first time in 10 years from the bench - to protest against making a “misdemeanor violation of domestic conduct... result in a lifetime ban on possession of a gun, which, at least as of now, is still a constitutional right.”  (See here)  
So what is going on?  Why don't women have the same rights to SYG when their lives are threatened, even if it is a domestic partner?  

I think it all goes back to the olden days, when British common law said that acts of petty treason were: 
  • a wife killing her husband, (no matter what the reason)
  • a clergyman killing his prelate (i.e., superior)
  • a servant killing his master or mistress, or his master's wife
And notice this little detail:

A man (clergyman/servant) convicted of petty treason was punished with hanging.
A woman convicted of petty treason was punished by being burned at the stake.

A significant difference in punishment level even back then, wouldn't you agree?

This significant difference in punishment level still holds true:

"The average prison sentence for men who kill their intimate partners is 2 to 6 years. Women who kill their partners are sentenced, on average, to 15 years." (University of Michigan study here)  

Stand your ground?  If only they could...