Target Practice for the Chicago Olympics

Chicago's bid for getting the 2016 Olympic Summer Games took a sour turn last night as there was a gun death reported at the annual Taste of Chicago.

It's too bad because Chicago really is a great city and it'd be a hoot to have the Games there. At the risk of making light of the sad violence situation in the City of Broad shoulders, I'm hoping maybe Daley can muster up one of his famous outbursts.

I'm tempted to go off on a gun rant here, but the argument has gotten kind of tiresome for me.

Looking Forward to Reading This One

Tomorrow, the SCOTUS is expected to hand down its decision on the constitutionality of Washington DC's law which prohibits ownership of handguns in the District.

I don't come down purely for or against the NRA...while I think they are an honorable civil rights group, both poles in this debate practice a certain amount of other- and self-deception when it comes to their public arguments.

As I believe I've posted here before, the whole 'sportsmen' argument, made by people residing on many parts of the spectrum, is one of the phoniest crocks of shit I've ever heard taken seriously and I'm disappointed that it's not scrutinized more by the mainstream press.

The founders were not talking about duck hunters or target shooters when they inserted this language into the Constitution so let's stop pretending that protecting the Elmer Fudds of this world is some kind of Gandhi-like mission worthy of our attention, let alone admiration.

It's a damned shame that the press lets the NRA as well as those who offer hunter-protection provisions as some kind of compromise to the restrictions they'd like to place on gun ownership off the hook.

While we're never going to unanimously settle whether the founders intended the right as an individual or collective one, it's high time someone treated the Constitution as a living document and had an honest discussion about the costs and benefits of honoring it as written today. You might decide that it's worth keeping, but you might also find, when pressed, that the cost of honoring it as some interpret it makes gas look cheap.

Here's the wiki entry on District of Columbia v Heller.

Doh!

The Hillary campaign made a funny blunder today. The thing is that only the people it's probably meant to impress or persuade are those likely to find its error.

The mailer you can see below seems to be some kind of mirror image of the real gun, making it appear to be a left-handed model. Something that does not exist in the real world, apparently.

Politico's Ben Smith gets the nod on this one.

Timing is Everything

In New York City the other day, a jury acquitted the cops who shot an unarmed man 50 times outside a club, just prior to his wedding.

Today, Al Sharpton threatened to "shut down" the city and, for one of the first times, I don't quite blame the guy.

I'm all for the cops, but there has to be a point at which we say, "yeah, you have to protect yourself first and foremost, but you also have to exercise at least some self-control."

This brings us to our next story a few miles to the west.

Chicago's Mayor, Richard M. Daley, who just celebrated a birthday the other day, is proposing that his rank and file cops get to start carrying semi-automatic weapons because they're sometimes out-gunned on the streets.

Sooner or later, someone's going to have to pull their collective head out of wherever it's residing and have a sensible discussion about this. I don't blame the cops for wanting to be able to come home alive after their shift, but it's a shame that in a country with this many smart people, we're stuck in a situation like this because of people's refusal to look beyond themselves when it comes to an appreciation of the Constitution.

Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics

On the first day of my intro to statistics class at Loyola, Dr. Bryant told us that statistics are like a lamppost for a drunk...used more for support than illumination.

Ramesh Ponnuru over at NRO's Corner takes issue with commonly-cited statistics on what exactly guns in the home are often used to do as well as the deterrent function they can serve without ever having been shot.   

The gist his argument is that when we say that XX% of the firings result in killing of a household member, that includes suicides (where the 'victim' may have just found another means to accomplish the same end were a gun not available) and doesn't speak to the times when the presence of a gun could deter a would-be criminal.

These distinctions, on their own, don't sway me either way on where exactly the right ground is on the issue of individual gun ownership in this country, but it's always good to call people on their $hit.

Moron Guns

Article in today's LA Times speaks to an earlier posting on the gun debate.

The Democratic party, by and large, is far too wimpy on this issue to pursue what they believe is right.

From the article:

One presidential candidate, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), on Thursday told a
radio interviewer that he supported changing laws to better ensure that mentally
ill people cannot buy guns. But he added, "I'm respectful of people who want to hunt or sportsmen, somebody who might want to have a gun in the house to protect their home."

The Junior Illinois Senator's statement illustrates the insanity on at least one side of this debate.

If you, for one moment, think that the Framers put this protection in the Constitution to protect your god-given right to go quail hunting, then you have a screw loose. But time and time again, they get away with this patronizing argument about protecting the rights of sportsmen, as if that somehow matters in in a historic or contemporary sense.

What's next, a Fifth Amendment case to protect the rights of croquet players?!

You Might Be a Gun Nut If.....

The first group of gun nuts lack the cajones to say what they really think...that the second amendment is a historical artifact no longer relevant in today's world. They choose to pussy-foot around this by constantly trying to chip away at it, neutering the protection a little at a time.

The other gun nuts prefer to live with their collective head in the sand...or tucked somewhere else.

"The NRA promotes gun safety programs" and "I need my guns to prevent government tyranny" are two statements that, while not demonstrably false, accomplish practically nothing in the real world.

• If you believe that more laws, holding all else constant, would have prevented this massacre, you might be a gun nut.
  
• If you think that a Saturday morning NRA-sponsored gun safety event would have prevented this individual from shooting his targets as intended, you might be a gun nut.
• If you think that packing a pistol is the way you're going to avoid government tyranny in the 21st century, then you really are a gun nut.

Societies, just like people, don't make big changes until they feel enough pain from their current ways.

We can talk all we want about band-aid solutions that sound good to the idiots who eat this kind of crap out of CNN's hands, but small laws, safety classes and acting as if we still live out on the frontier don't solve a goddamned thing. They demean both the speaker and the listener.

Both sides need to finally get honest and talk about the modern meaning of the second amendment and not hide behind things that simply act to rile people up without illuminating anything.

Or, those who like to lead the nation in talking about guns constantly, can continue to flap their gums with all their high-minded talk and act as if these things are an aberration or someone else's fault.

If you want to know my opinion, I think we'd better buckle up our government-mandated seatbelts, kids. We still have some rough road to cover before we get to the point where people want to be honest about all of this.