The 0.003% Solution

The entirely too painful to watch gun control debate continues in Washington, D.C. and on a cable television news channel near you.  I am beginning to fear that virtually nothing will actually come of any of this.

There are three reasons for this.  First, in spite of the histrionics from Democratic Party stalwarts, there simply is no national will to make this happen.  There is no groundswell of support for gun control as outlined by the President.

Second, the N.R.A. has again proven to be well organized, logical in their arguments and powerful in their lobbying.  It really, really helps them that they are technically correct and often morally correct in many arguments they make.

Lastly, gun control will fail because our leaders, from President Obama on down, lack the courage to address the real issues of violence in our country.

Let's analyze the facts. There are about 30,000 gun deaths in our country every year.  But the facts are that 2/3rds of them are self inflicted gunshots, usually suicides, not gun violence or murder.

Of the remaining 1/3rd the largest chunk comes from gang violence, drug violence and domestic violence.  Virtually all of these deaths are caused by handguns and simple rifles, not so called "assault weapons."

Although Newtown, Connecticut and Aurora, Colorado get all the television coverage and politician's outrage, they account for only 0.003% of the total.  That's not three percent, but three one-thousandths of one percent.  And yet President Obama and the gun control advocates are attempting to push their ill conceived legislation to reduce this tiny percentage of the problem. They ignore the real problems of gun violence and death because it's politically inconvenient.  It would take genuine courage.

No one wants a Sandy Hook to ever happen again, Not Ever.  But the solution to that event is already thoroughly outlined, understood and being implemented.  Wayne LaPierre and the N.R.A. had that one right on day one and everybody knew it.

The tragedy is that no one has the courage to address the really big problem of black on black gang violence.  Our very own national genocide continues every day in Chicago, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles and nearly every major metropolitan area in America: Death... after Death... after unreported and ignored Death.

The most unlikely of activists, economist and conservative firebrand Ben Stein, addressed this lack of leadership in this week's American Spectator in his article   He’s the Biggest Celebrity in the World Below are some of Ben's key points. Please read his entire article.

...deaths by firearms are wildly heavily concentrated in the African-American population of this country. The rate of firearms deaths per 100,000 population is about four times higher in the black population than in the white population. Gang-related killings account for much of this difference. In large cities with mostly black populations — such as Newark, Detroit, New Orleans — the rate of firearms deaths is almost unbelievably high compared with the rate in the mostly white suburbs.

In any given week, on any given weekend, dozens of black youths are gunned down by other blacks in America’s cities. This is a horror show happening in real life. The total number of deaths from this ongoing disaster far outpaces the deaths in mass killings in Aurora or Newtown.

Now, in no way should either of these grim phenomena be used to minimize the other. But it amazes me that the whole country, the whole world, goes berserk about the killings in a charming town in Connecticut, as we should — while the daily slaughter of black youths by other black youths is just part of the wallpaper of modern life.

Obviously, we would like to stop as much gun homicide in any area as we can. But I have not seen any proposal from the White House that would make it a national priority to seriously crack down on gang activity, drug sales turf activity, just plain macho g-thing activity and to take the Glocks out of the inner city.

Guns don’t kill people. People kill people. And we pay very little attention to it when the people on both ends of the barrel are black. The national shame of gun violence is not coming from gun shows or guns that look like military weapons. It’s not coming from Idaho or Montana or Wyoming or the duck blinds of Talbot County, Maryland. It’s coming from people who live in a culture of violence and death that we as a nation sometimes worship and more often ignore. Something’s very wrong here.

Us Versus Them

Politics has always been a team sport.  We divide into teams, Republicans versus Democrats or Conservatives versus Liberals.  There are smaller teams, too, Libertarians, Environmentalists, Communists and even more.  We self identify and, often, belong to more than one team.

Many don't join a team, at least not officially.  But we often side with one team or another with regularity.

Catering to this political division, our television news networks have recently become voices for "primarily" one team.  Fox News is often seen as a "Republican" voice.  More recently MSNBC has become a "Democratic Party" voice.

We trust and read and listen to people we perceive are on our team.  They have credibility.  They are seen as honest, intelligent, articulate, wise.  People who are seen as members of the "other team" are foolish, gullible, doctrinaire, duplicitous and, generally, just plain stupid.

Hence Liberals tend to fawn over the writings of Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman, giving him nearly unlimited credibility, regardless of what he writes and on what subject.  Meanwhile Conservatives see him as foolish and much worse.

On the issue of gun control, Conservatives love Wayne LaPierre, chairman of the NRA, while Progressives regard him a paid lackey for the gun industry who cares nothing about the death of innocent children.

Us versus Them.

Then along comes Pulitzer Prize Winning Playwright David Mamet, author of Glenarry Glen Ross, Speed the Plow and other great plays.  He's an Oscar nominated screenwriter for The Verdict and Wag the Dog and more.  Generally his movies and plays are clearly anti big business anti Capitalist tomes.  As a Liberal and Progressive, surely he's one of us. Isn't he?

I mean he's sure as hell no Wayne LaPierre, is he?  Well, Huffington Post readers who actually pay attention already know he is a Hollywood misfit, a conservative is a big liberal pond.  But nearly the rest of the world is shocked by his cover story in this week's Newsweek: Gun Laws and the Fools of Chelm

I want to encourage you all to read the Newsweek essay linked above and below.  It's stunningly brilliant.  And Manet, just like Wayne LaPierre is completely correct.  Here's a tiny snippet or two:

My grandmother came from Russian Poland, near the Polish city of Chelm. Chelm was celebrated, by the Ashkenazi Jews, as the place where the fools dwelt. And my grandmother loved to tell the traditional stories of Chelm.

Its residents, for example, once decided that there was no point in having the sun shine during the day, when it was light out—it would be better should it shine at night, when it was dark. 

Similarly, we modern Solons delight in passing gun laws that, in their entirety, amount to “making crime illegal.” What possible purpose in declaring schools “gun-free zones”?

Who bringing a gun, with evil intent, into a school would be deterred by the sign?

Violence by firearms is most prevalent in big cities with the strictest gun laws. In Chicago and Washington, D.C., for example, it is only the criminals who have guns, the law-abiding populace having been disarmed, and so crime runs riot. 

Cities of similar size in Texas, Florida, Arizona, and elsewhere, which leave the citizen the right to keep and bear arms, guaranteed in the Constitution, typically are much safer. More legal guns equal less crime.

Read his entire essay here: Gun Laws and the Fools of Chelm