We Need Reasonable Regulations on Gun Ownership and Use

Like most people, I'm heart sick at the horrible attack on Congresswoman Gabriel Giffords that wounded her, killed six innocent bystanders, and maimed thirteen more. The most heart rending was 9 year old Christina Taylor Green, born on 9-11, about whom much has been written and said. In the aftermath, we've seen predictable outrage from both the right and left about how the heated rhetoric of the other side laid the groundwork for the shooting. Much as I hate the current atmosphere of vitriol, there is simply no evidence that Jared Lee Loughner planned the attack after hearing Rush Limbaugh, Keith Olbermann, Glenn Beck or anybody else.

What we do know is that Loughner got his gun and high capacity bullet magazines after his repeated actions had shown him to be mentally ill. The college he was attending said he could not return until he had a mental health evaluation. Yet, that didn't stop him from buying a semi-automatic weapon and large ammo clips. He was only stopped by heroic individuals as he paused to put another big clip in.

I own guns, and I support the responsible use of them. I learned how to use a gun responsibly as a young boy while hunting small game and deer with my dad. But, why can't we use this horrible incident to enact a few reasonable safeguards that probably would have prevented this tragedy, or at least reduced its terrible toll? First, what responsible gun owner thinks that mentally ill people have a right to buy guns, especially automatic weapons? We need to move toward a mental background check for people wishing to buy handguns and automatic weapons.

Second, we should re-institute the ban on high capacity magazines that was in place for ten years as part of the assault weapons ban. There is simply no need for ordinary gun users to have these that isn't overridden by the danger when criminals and the mentally ill can get them. While Loughner could still have done some damage with an ordinary clip, there's no doubt he would have killed and maimed fewer and been easier to stop.

When it comes to reasonable limits on guns and ammunition, we have let the NRA and the rest of the gun lobby play a clever game. They would have us believe that anyone who supports the most minimal and reasonable gun restrictions really wants to take away all firearms and repeal the Second Amendment. Any legislator who proposes basic firearm regulation is promised an opponent with unlimited funding in the next election.

So far, the reasonable center has let them get away with this game. I think most folks are like me. We support gun rights, but also support reasonable regulations on firearms. In most places, you have to be licensed to perform potentially dangerous activities like driving a car, flying a plane, applying pesticides, or even much less dangerous pursuits like hairstylist or pedicurist. Why is it unreasonable to regulate and require thorough background checks before one can purchase a Glock 9 millimeter semi-automatic weapon with a huge clip which you then take to a shopping mall and fire thirty rounds at innocent citizens in around seven seconds?

It's time to call them out. Will the gun lobby really storm the barricades of the State Houses and Capitol Hill for the sacred cause of assault weapons and giant clips for the criminals and mentally ill? Does someone too mentally ill to attend college still have the right to take his loaded Glock to a legislator's meet and greet in a shopping mall? Will we continue to be the only western democracy without effective restrictions on deranged people wielding automatic weapons with high capacity magazines? Stay tuned.

A Measured Step Towards Health Care For All

Well, it’s finally happened. Congress has passed health care reform. Now what will happen? Truthfully, no one knows for sure. But that hasn’t stopped the right wing crazies and their enablers Fox News and Rush Limbaugh from telling us. They say that the passage of this socialist takeover of healthcare means we are on an inevitable path to communism. Uncle Sam will choose your doctor for you. The IRS will hunt you down and bankrupt you if you don’t sign up for health insurance. The American public will rise up in anger and throw out the Democratic majorities in the House and Senate.

Has Armageddon arrived? Hardly. The dirty little secret is that many on the left are as dissatisfied with this bill as the right. This legislation is nothing like the single payer programs that Canada and Britain have. Healthcare in this country will still be mostly provided by employers, and through private health insurance carriers. The major change is that most people who now don’t have access to health insurance will be able to get it. Folks will no longer be denied coverage due to having a preexisting medical condition. Young adults will be able to stay on their parents’ insurance until they get their own coverage. As for the penalties for not getting health insurance, many worry that the penalties in the bill are so SMALL that many will simply pay them rather than comply.

The Obama health care bill is a compromise first step in making sure everyone has access to affordable health care. This law is actually very similar to the Republican proposal offered as the alternative to “Hillarycare” in the 90s. The process of passing it was ugly and sometimes distasteful. But it is a tremendous step forward in providing a higher quality of life for all Americans. The same criticisms made of this process were made of other dramatic improvements like Medicare, Medicaid, Civil Rights and Womens Suffrage. Many of the legislators who voted against those landmarks later wished they hadn’t. I applaud the 219 brave souls who put their careers on the line to vote in favor of real progress. Some of them may suffer at the polls this fall. But history will see them as visionaries.

Supreme Court Ruling on Campaign Spending by Corporations

In my view the recent Supreme Court decision on campaign spending by corporations is based on two false premises. One is that corporations are entitled to the same first amendment rights as actual persons. The second is that money equals speech. One cannot find support for either proposition in the Constitution or its Amendments. Can you possibly imagine Jefferson or Madison supporting giving artificial constucts like corporations full First Amendment rights? Any argument that the current majority are strict constructionists has gone out the window with this recent decision. Instead, we saw a wholesale abrogation of precedents in favor of one set of interests over others. Elections DO matter, for they result in this kind of outrageous miscarriage of justice. That whirring sound you hear are the founding fathers spinning in their graves. One day this decision will be overturned. May it be soon.

There's been a lot of theoretical talk about the impact this Supreme Court ruling may have. But, if you want a real life, actual example of how the system can be abused by this ruling, look at how the CEO of Massey Coal put $3 million into the race for a seat on the West Virginia Supreme Court. His candidate was elected and shortly afterwards voted in favor of Massey in an important case. Read all about it in Caperton v. A.T. Massey Coal Co.

Free speech is something we should all support. But that doesn't mean that everyone's opinion is entitled to equal weight. Brian Bolig's Jan. 17 letter to the Harrisburg Patriot-News says that climate change is a hoax. He cites as his proof the fact that Hannibal used a pass in the Alps that is snow covered today. He doesn't name any scientists who support this "proof" of a hoax.

As far as I know, there are none. According to Bolig, everything in this world is politicized.

It seems that way, if all you watch is Fox News Channel and MSNBC. If Mr. Bolig would widen his search a bit, he will discover that the overwhelming scientific consensus supports the position that man is responsible for a substantial portion of our gradually warming climate.

According to the World Meteorological Organization, seven of the warmest years on record have occurred in the last 10 years. The consensus prediction is that the Arctic Ocean will become navigable in about 30 years. The snows of Kilimanjaro will be gone in less than a decade.

Mr. Bolig and others such as Rush Limbaugh can always find a lone gadfly scientist who will support their silly position. Meanwhile our earth continues to warm and our window of time to act continues to close.

The Harrisburg Patriot-News just ran an article stating that eighty-three employees connected to the state legislature pulled in six-figure salaries last year.

I think some of in the media are being somewhat irresponsible in covering this issue. I spent my entire career in the private sector working for large corporations. When analyzing how much a particular position should be paid, we looked at industry studies. Why aren't you comparing what, say, an accounting manager in the private sector is making as compared to state government. That is the only fair comparison. When the media doesn't look at the issue this way, they are playing into the hands of the anti-government firebrands who, I guess, think that there shouldn't be any government employees at all.

Shoes and Praise

It’s a good thing I wasn’t in Carlisle the other day when President Bush visited there. There might have been another shoe throwing incident like the one that occurred in Iraq recently. Mr. Bush told the crowd there that he is proud that another attack like September 11 hasn’t occurred during his Presidency. The vile attacks that day were conducted by terrorists mostly from Saudi Arabia and trained in Afghanistan. Bush and his crowd responded by insisting that we had to retaliate immediately, not at Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan or even against the terrorists themselves, but by taking out a tinpot dictator who had nothing to do with 9/11. Even Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction turned out to be so much thin air. When people like Gen. Shinseki asked how much this adventure might cost, or how many troops we needed, or why it was even a good idea, they were called delusional defeatists. Bush bought off the rich by giving them tax cuts and the religious right by supporting their campaigns of terror and marginalization. Now we’re reaping the fruits of this folly. We’re stuck in a foolish war against the wrong enemy. Bush’s policies have played into the hands of Muslim extremists and marginalized the moderate voices there. Rather than building up surpluses in the good times to use in the hard times we are now in, his policies have resulted in record deficits.

We should be grateful to the brave men and women who have fought terrorism and perhaps kept them at bay over the last seven years. But Mr. Bush and his Administration should get no praise. Better keep your head down, sir. The shoes will keep coming.

The Race Card

I used to have a lot of respect for John McCain. During the 2000 campaign Karl Rove's buddies spread a vicious rumor in South Carolina that McCain had a biracial child out of wedlock. She is really his adoptive daughter. That slur probably cost McCain the SC primary in 2000.

How ironic that McCain and his supporters are now spreading the same sort of bile about his opponent. McCain is clearly allowing the race card to be played in his campaign. If he's not explicitly playing it himself, he is clearly allowing his surrogates and supporters to use race. All this stuff about "He not like us" and "He's really a Muslim" is code for one thing - "He's black." John McCain knows that and the McCain who ran in 2000 would never have allowed it.

Abe Lincoln, the Republican Party's first Presidential candidate, appealed to the better angels of our nature. Much has changed since then in the Grand Old Party.