It’s prediction time. Republicans are revolting (pun intended), Democrats are in disarray, and Elon Musk is doing a great job (at destroying his brand).
Here’s one prediction that won’t –but should– be making the front pages of America’s newspapers: the number of murders and suicides attributable to firearms will increase.
While eleven states have laws concerning firearm safety going into effect in the new year, half the states have eliminated licensing requirements for carrying a firearm in public. A decade ago only two states (Vermont and Alaska) gave residents the unrestricted right to carry a gun.
Many of the existing laws concerning guns will be declared null and void starting soon, thanks to the Supreme Court decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen.
A conservative supermajority overturned New York’s licensing requirement and completely reset the ground rules for adjudicating future conflicts between government entities and the Second Amendment.
Here’s Ryan Busse at The Atlantic:
For public safety and gun policy, the Bruen opinion is proving nothing short of seismic. Even as the nation struggles with yet another series of mass shootings, courts across the country are rushing to deal with a spate of lawsuits and motions that will create regulatory chaos over firearms. Many of these cases are tailored to produce appeals that may ultimately go up to a Supreme Court predisposed to the broadest possible interpretations of Second Amendment rights.
In the Bruen opinion, Thomas made clear that, henceforth, the Court’s conservative majority would judge all firearms regulations by a new originalist standard: If there is no historical proof of a gun law linked to 1791 or 1868—the years when the Second and Fourteenth Amendments, respectively, were ratified—then any modern law restricting firearms is liable to be ruled unconstitutional. Never mind that any teenager with a modern AR-15 rifle can fire several times every second, whereas a well-trained 18th-century soldier could fire a musket, at best, three or four times a minute.
The federal law requiring serial numbers on guns has already been declared unconstitutional in a West Virginia court. In Texas, domestic abusers are now free to own guns, because, according to the court, domestic abuse wasn't a crime in 1791. Teenagers are allowed to carry pistols in the Lone Star State because no such law existed at the time of the country’s founding.
In New York, guns are now okay as part of the ensemble of church goers.
The already weak laws requiring background checks (no computers in 1791) for gun purchasers are set to be overturned, as are laws regulating the sale of assault rifles. Sawed-off shotguns, machine guns, and silencers will be allowed back into the marketplace for the first time since 1934.
In California, the NRA-types are actively targeting recently signed legislation restricting gun company advertising aimed at youth.
The only thing you need to know about this household arm race is that where there are more guns, there are more gun deaths; states with weaker gun laws have higher rates of gun deaths, including homicides, suicides and accidental killings. The NRA and their ilk try to deflect/deny this truth by citing total numbers, whereas the true measure is the ratio of guns to population.
Here’s the baseline we’re starting from:
The US gun homicide rate is 26 times that of other high-income countries.
Firearms are the leading cause of death for American children and teens.
The U.S. experienced more than 600 mass shootings in 2022, nearly double the number recorded four years ago when there were 336, according to the Washington-based Gun Violence Archive.
Busse, who spent more than 25 years as a sales executive in the firearms industry, concludes:
The justices will be forced to decide whether we are to be a country that must allow armed citizens in every grocery store, church, or park. They will be forced to decide whether we must expand the right of open carry to every state in the nation, including its largest metropolises, with all the potential for mayhem that portends. They will be forced to decide whether we must abandon laws that prohibit abusers from buying guns and killing their spouses or that prevent troubled teenagers from arming themselves with AR-15s. Given the gravity of it all, perhaps the NRA is right about this much—more than any other part of the Constitution, it is the Second Amendment that determines whether we are to govern ourselves or not.
If we were a civil society, one where “otherism” is an accepted political strategy, perhaps arming the population wouldn’t be all bad. We could have non-profit benefits & celebrations, beauty pageants, school dances, and more, all including a diverse collection of citizens showing off their collections. It would be as common as the antique cars we see at holiday processions.
But… we’re not that kind of country. Ownership of firearms as a cause has become a fetish, one central to the belief systems of extremist groups. As these radicals and the ideas have become enveloped by the Republican party, once unthinkable displays incorporating implicit violence have moved into the mainstream.
From the New York Times:
… in the most recent midterm elections, Republican politicians ran more than 100 ads featuring guns and more than a dozen that featured semiautomatic military-style rifles.
In one of the most violent of those ads, Eric Greitens, a Republican candidate for Senate in Missouri and a former Navy SEAL, kicks in the door of a house and barges in with a group of men dressed in tactical gear and holding assault rifles. Mr. Greitens boasts that the group is hunting RINOs — a derogatory term for “Republicans in name only.” The ad continues, “Get a RINO hunting permit. There’s no bagging limit, no tagging limit, and it doesn’t expire until we save our country.”
Twitter flagged the ad, Facebook banned it for violating its terms of service, and Mr. Greitens lost his race for office. He may have been playacting in the ad, but many other heavily armed people with far-right political views are not. Openly carried assault rifles have become an all too common feature of political events around the country and are having a chilling effect on the exercise of political speech.
This isn’t a “both sides” issue. Right wing thugs are regularly wrapping themselves in the Second Amendment while waving weaponry at unarmed civilians exercising their First Amendment rights.
What’s sickening about this behavior is the lack of condemnation and even tacit support from individuals and institutions once thought of as pillars of society.
A March 2021 assessment by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence found that domestic violent extremists motivated by white supremacy and antigovernmental ideology are the most lethal threats facing this country.
If we’ve learned anything from the January 6th House Select hearings, it’s that too many safety and security personnel in agencies paid for with everybody’s tax dollars were willing to abide by a coup attempt. The overlap between sworn personnel and extremist groups isn’t new, and attempts by honest authorities to stem this tide have been beaten back by politicians who use their respectability to claim that political discrimination is taking place.
This weekend’s release of Jan 6 documents includes the nugget that the Pentagon sent security personnel to protect high ranking officers homes while denying assistance in response to desperate calls from Capitol Hill police.
Here in San Diego, high ranking Sheriff's Deputies were caught selling illegal weapons to civilians as a political favor. Officials with the AFT division of the Treasury Department have sent memos to police throughout California claiming that officers are buying hundreds of guns and then reselling them to the public who cannot legally own the gun.
On a positive note there are two developments heading into 2023 that should find themselves outside of the Supreme Court’s new standard for adjudicating weapons cases.
California’s AB 1594 gives victims of gun violence, along with local prosecutors and the state attorney general, the right to sue firearms manufacturers for the damage their weapons caused.
In San Jose, gun owners are now required to have proof of insurance covering accidents involving their firearms.
Historical note: Exactly zero people were killed by pronouns, wokeness or drag queen brunches in 2022.
Email me at WritetoDougPorter@Gmail.com