Fear and Loathing in TV-Land

I peered up from the book I was reading yesterday and saw Wayne LaPierre’s face on the tube, and angrily grabbed the remote and shut TV off.  Having worked in a broadcast newsroom for nearly all my adult life, I always have CNN on in the background, very low volume, just as newsrooms always have the police scanner volume up 24/7.  News can break at any time. 

Scanner traffic and all-news 24/7 cable channels become part of your environment in this biz.
 

I thought about my initial reaction of anger at seeing LaPierre on the tube.  I am as tired of his “more-guns-more-guns-more-guns” rants as I am of the media constantly plastering his face on TV and broadcasting his rants.  The man is on every network every day!

A few hours later, on the local TV nooz, a reporterette was interviewing some local law enforcement guy who was saying they’re concerned about a possible shortage of bullets, and how they might have to cut back on their training activities if they can’t get enough bullets.

Then it clicked for me.

LaPierre is a genius.  An evil genius to be sure, but a genius nonetheless.  He has kept the cycle of fear and paranoia alive since December 14^th last year – well over three months since the mass murders at Sandy Hook.  Whatever the gun and ammo manufacturers are paying him can’t possibly be enough.

He has, pretty much singlehandedly, created the biggest business boom in history for gun and ammo manufacturers, and the boom is showing no signs of slowing down. He has engendered a bull market in the firearms industry the likes of which has never been seen, and every nooz story that airs telling of possible bullet shortages and empty shelves and racks at the gun store drives the boom another notch higher.

Every time LaPierre opens his mouth some TV camera records it.  This is a fairly recent phenomenon in the nooz biz, this rush to “balance” every gun-control advocate (or, name any issue or cause under the sun) with someone who has a different viewpoint.  Every time somebody like Joe Biden says “gun control”, something from Wayne LaPierre must be run alongside it to “balance” the story.

And please, don’t get me started on the concept of “false equivalency”.

But, you know what?  Of all the gun groups out there (and there are more than you might think) Wayne LaPierre is the least extreme national spokesman! Spend a few moments reading the stuff that Larry Pratt of Gun Owners of America has put out, and you’ll come away thinking LaPierre is a moderate.

By whipping up the fear that Barack Obama’s Secret Muslim Army is going to come in black helicopters to take your guns away, LaPierre gins up more and more business for the gun and ammo dealers. By constantly repeating his message of fear to “balance” their gun control stories, the media helps spread LaPierre’s paranoia.

Shortage of bullets?  “The Government” is buying up all of them so you can’t get them. Just ask LaPierre or any one of hundreds of right-wing bloggers.

Shortage of assault weapons?  Manufacturers can’t crank them out fast enough to meet the demand of those who STILL don’t own one, but know in their heart of hearts that if they don’t get one now, THE GOVERNMENT will soon shut down production and then they’ll have to pay an arm and a leg to get one on the black market.

Hitler’s first move was to disarm the populace?  The gun guys love saying that, but it’s complete BS.  The only people Hitler took guns from were the Jews. The average German household under Hitler was awash in firearms, many of them brought home after World War One.

The combination of crackpots like LaPierre, the media echo chamber, and native stupidity combined with ignorance of history and topped off by an inept congress have made gun and ammo manufacturers modern-day robber barons.

Yes, I own firearms. Yes, I’ve gone deer hunting with a high-powered rifle. 

No, I don’t have an AR-15 and no, I don’t own any high-capacity clips.

I don’t need them, nor do you.

Gun Control

Apparently, only people like Mike Bloomberg, a billionaire who doesn’t need anyone’s money and isn’t afraid to take on other blowhards like the NRA and Donald Trump, are able to say anything of substance about gun control.  President Obama, after Congresswoman Gabby Giffords and several others were shot in January of 2011 in Tucson, promised he’d champion stricter gun control laws.  He didn’t.  He can’t afford to have the NRA throw its incredible power against him in his run for re-election.

Mitt Romney didn’t have the courage to say anything of substance after the movie-house slaughter in Colorado a few days ago.  And Wisconsin’s developmentally disabled Senator, RoJo the Clown, was allowed by the Republican Party to come out of hiding long enough to give an interview with Fox News after the Colorado massacre, and embarrassed us ‘sconnies again by saying that owning a hundred-round clip was a Constitutional right.  (OK, he didn’t actually say that.  He said limits on the sale of things like hundred-round clips would be an infringement on our freedom.)

For the record:  I am trained in the use of firearms by a highly-decorated combat veteran (my late father); have hunted with both rifle and shotgun; don’t have a problem with people who own handguns or hunting weapons; and I don’t think “Obama is going to take my guns away” if this nation should ever have the courage to make some stricter rules about what citizens can possess in terms of firearms and associated equipment.  Like hundred-round clips.

Mobthink and hysteria take over with far too many people every time the topic comes up.  The “from my cold, dead hands” crowd has been led to believe that any reasonable move toward controlling automatic weapons or hundred-round clips is the beginning of the end of the second amendment and will certainly lead to government goons coming to their house and taking away all their guns.

Even the members of the NRA don’t believe in the stuff the NRA leadership espouses.  Nearly three-quarters of NRA members believe the gun show loophole should be closed.  82% of NRA members think people on the U.S. terror watch list should not be allowed to buy guns.  78% of NRA members think it should be mandatory to notify police if one of your guns is lost or has been stolen.  Yet NRA leadership fights these common-sense control elements whenever they’re discussed or suggested.

Many people of my acquaintance who otherwise demonstrate the ability to engage in cogent thought seem to lose that ability when someone says it might not be a good idea to have laws so lax that some insane person (or a certified genius, or anyone) can buy an assault weapon and a hundred-round clip and six thousand rounds of ammo.  They drag out that hackneyed bit of illogic that goes “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” and spout it as though it were some sort of brilliant thinking on a par with the Pythagorean Theorem.  And if challenged, they do the line-extension of the illogic by saying inane things like “cars kill people but we don’t ban cars”.

I believe the crux of the matter is their refusal to understand that reasonable restraints on the purchase of things like fully automatic weapons and high-capacity clips has nothing to do with their ownership of a Remington Wingmaster 870, their .30-06 Springfield, their Glock 19, their grandad’s M-1, their favorite varmint-eliminator, their target pistol, their skeet shooter, or any one of the thousands of other kinds of firearms commonly owned by everyone from sportsmen and hunters to urban women who feel more secure with a small handgun in their purse.

They continue to parrot trash-phrases like “if you outlaw guns only outlaws will have guns” and “tell me more about how criminals follow the law” – acting as if “banning guns” is an Obama plot just bubbling under the surface of his cool, disconnected, European-Socialist, intellectual elitism.  The NRA wants the sheeple to think that such a plot to “ban guns” is the hidden agenda of anyone who supports reasonable control.

As a nation, we don’t have the courage or capacity to talk about serious public policy at any level.  We’d rather talk about such crap as “defense of marriage” or “the war on Christmas” or what celebrity is cheating on what other celebrity.

Let’s change the topic from “gun control” to “fully-automatic weapon and high capacity clip control” and see what happens.