Just vote NO!

Here’s why I believe House Republicans are to blame for Congress’s latest failure to do their job and pass a budget:

As paid, elected representatives, just voting “no” is not an option.  It’s ok for the dirtbag whose sole participation in our representative democracy is paying taxes.  He’s allowed to come home from work, strip down to his boxers, crack open a Milwaukee’s Best, and watch TV all night in his recliner, isolated from, and not contributing to the outside world.  In fact, if he could squeeze in the occasional casting of a ballot among his commute and his beer runs, he’d be more involved than about half the population, and I’d be impressed, but our paid, elected, “professional” representatives have a slightly higher expectation of performance.  They can vote “no,” but they have to propose an alternative to that which they rejected.

So when it comes to this year’s version of Tea Party-induced debt ceiling hostage taking, the fault lies entirely with the House Republicans who have caved to this minority faction by submitting a budget they know won’t pass in an attempt to gain politically in the next election, mount at least the 42^nd failed attempt at blocking the Affordable Healthcare Act, and who offer up nothing in the way of real compromise or alternatives.  House Republicans have in effect just voted “no” by shutting down our government and they’ve failed to propose any alternative plan.  Again, acceptable for beer swilling recliner guy.  Unacceptable from paid elected officials.

You can say neither party is willing to compromise but the fact is, there’s a plan on the table.  The Affordable Healthcare Act is not only a compromise years in the making, it originated as a Republican idea.  It was passed by both houses of Congress and signed into law in 2010.  Regardless of what today’s House Republicans (influenced by a marginal group) think of it, (now that it’s too late to keep thinking about) they must either support it, work to improve it, or propose their own version that can be implemented in place of it.  Simply holding the nation hostage arguing over the routine approval of a debt ceiling increase isn’t living up to their responsibility.  It is the equivalent of holding their breath until they get their way.

To those of you who consider the status quo an alternative proposed by House Republicans, consider this:  America’s failed 60-year experiment in for-profit medicine will bankrupt us – individuals and the country – faster than the inevitable $1000 barrel of oil.  Medical care bankruptcy is a recognized specialty these days.  According to CDC and U.S. Court data compiled by NerdWallet.com, it’s the number one reason why individuals file for bankruptcy.  http://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/health/2013/06/19/nerdwallet-health-study-estimates-56-million-americans-65-struggle-medical-bills-2013/ 

Economic experts from varied political backgrounds agree individual bankruptcies are the least of our worries.  According to Forbes online U.S. healthcare costs rose 4% even during the worst economic downturn in several generations (2009) to 17.6% of our GDP.  This prompted the article to begin with “Health costs are by far the biggest threat to the nation’s fiscal health in the long run.”  http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2011/0314/health-care-recession-expenditure-bankrupt-america.html

We’re all prone to ignoring economists, but you can’t ignore this:  the U.S. spends twice as much of its GDP on healthcare as the next closest industrialized country but we’ve got very little to show for it.  Our longevity, chronic disease, and even infant mortality rates fall short of countries most Americans can’t find on a map.  The average American family spends $16,000.00 http://www.statisticbrain.com/health-insurance-cost-statistics/  on health insurance per year, but that number is deceptive.  First of all, the average American typically pays less than half of the total premium, while an employer pays the rest.  Second, there are about 47 million non-elderly, uninsured Americans, according to U.S. Census data compiled by the Kaiser Foundation, which means those folks paying that $16,000 per year (and their employers) for insurance are footing some of the bill for the uninsured as well.  Wait you say, that’s contradictory.  Nope. The under/uninsured only file for bankruptcy when they can’t pay the part we don’t already subsidize – talk about socialized medicine!

It comes down to this:  the cost of healthcare in the U.S. is higher than in any other country on Earth and it continues to rise.  The quality of healthcare in the U.S. remains embarrassingly lower than in countries who spend less than half what we do.  In other words, our free-market system is not working.  Unless you mean in terms of pure profit for the giant corporations who lobby Congress to maintain it.  When profit is what drives the healthcare industry, your health falls elsewhere on the priority list.  What’s worse, many of these Tea Party folks who inspired our current government shutdown stand to gain the most from full implementation of the Affordable Care Act.  (And once again, ACA began as a Republican plan that encourages participation in the free market healthcare industry.)  According to The Atlantic, “slightly more Republicans (107) than Democrats (99) represent districts where the uninsured percentage is above the national average.”  More than half of the most conservative Republicans represent districts who would benefit from ACA.  Ideology trumps reality every time.  Just as most Americans have no idea what we actually pay for healthcare, we’re too dumb to recognize any attempt at reigning those costs in as beneficial enough to outweigh the corporate lobbyist view. 

Regardless, just voting no and shutting down the entire government, at a cost of around $500 million per day, ain’t helpin’ the already struggling economy.  Just voting no without proposing a real alternative is not acceptable.  Holding the nation hostage in order to counteract a law you’ve already passed is not acceptable.  Waging political warfare while millions of Americans go without just to set yourself up as the ideologue some tiny fraction of the electorate wants to see in the next election is shameful. 

I sincerely hope we remember this longer than we did the last time Congress shut down our government because there’s only a few places where just voting no is acceptable.  Let your Representative know you’ll send him back to the recliner if he doesn’t earn his (or her) keep by ending this sand-kicking soon.

Luth
Out

Can o’ worms

7/31 edit:  Um...so... turns out Stand Your Ground didn't play a role in the trial at all.  The defense went with a straight self defense argument and created sufficient doubt with it to avoid conviction.  So there you go.  Justice is abstract.  Our legal system is concrete.  Zimmerman got his speedy trial and a jury of our peers decided he should walk.  I still have some questions, and the original post below still asks them, but I stand corrected when it comes to Florida's Stand Your Ground laws. (do I at least get a chit for posting my correction at THE TOP rather than burying it in the comments?!)


Does the trial of George Zimmerman suggest that Florida’s Stand Your Ground laws place too high a burden on the prosecution?

Under normal circumstances, doesn’t the prosecution “simply” have to demonstrate that the defendant committed the act in question beyond the shadow of a doubt?  And don’t we know this much beyond that shadow:  George Zimmerman shot and killed an unarmed Trayvon Martin?

Ah but then Zimmerman claims it was self defense!  Fair enough, but now, with one dude dead, and the other admitting to have shot him, shouldn’t the degree of certainty regarding the claim of self defense meet a similarly high standard?  One would think.  And I’d like to believe that it normally does.

Then comes the 911 call clearly demonstrating that Zimmerman PURSUED Martin.  Without the strange twist of Stand Your Ground, this is the kind of evidence that absolutely destroys any claim of self defense.  You do not pursue someone whom you mortally fear. You do not pursue someone you mortally fear when a law enforcement officer is telling you to stop.  If you do pursue them, and you continue to ignore the directive of the law enforcement officer, then you give up your claim of self defense and your presumed innocence.  If defense was truly your concern, you run the other direction.  If you don't listen to the dispatcher telling you not to chase down the guy you later claim you were deathly afraid of, then you absolutely have given up the assumption of innocence and taken on the burden of proving how these strange sounding circumstances justify your pursuit and killing of an unarmed man.

That is, until we wave the magic wand of Stand Your Ground over all of this.  Suddenly the prosecutor must prove more than that you pursued and killed an unarmed man.  Now the prosecutor must prove, in spite of the fact that you actively went after this guy, that you were NOT frightened for your life, while the jury, apparently, has to assume you were, even though you chased after him instead of running away.

I don’t get it.

One thing I do get: I’ve spent enough time in places where the local authority sanctions the chasing down and killing of people for reasons I never completely understood.  Those places are not pleasant. I won’t be visiting Florida again real soon.

Luth,

Out

Electing Sociopaths

Ohio Senator Rob Portman’s change of heart on gay marriage does in fact represent an admirable degree of open-mindedness, but why did it take him so long? (turns out he knew his son was gay and never mentioned it while he was being considered as a VP candidate) Of course I don’t know him, and it might be a tad presumptuous of me to speculate, but hey, that’s what we do here.

Here’s what I suspect of most Republicans and how Portman’s new perspective seems so representative of it:  prior to his son’s coming out, Portman, like many Republicans, was convinced he knew better than anyone else.  He was sure that being gay was just wrong, morally, legally, fundamentally wrong.  In his mind, prior to his son’s announcement, Portman’s beliefs had very little to do with anyone other than Rob Portman.  If your life didn’t look like his life, you were probably wrong. 

That probably sounds worse than it is, after all, we can only see the world through our own eyes and compare it to our own experience.  But at some point we have to grow up and accept the fact that just as we can ONLY see the world through our own eyes, every other individual in the world can only see it through his or her own eyes as well.  No one has our same experience nor do we have the exact same experience as anyone else.  In Senator Portman’s case, prior to his son’s epiphany, he apparently never considered that someone else’s experience might actually lead to a different perspective than the one he held.  Until it affected him personally, it was not an experience he was capable of or willing to accept or consider. I think it’s safe to say Dick Cheney’s experience was similar.  Ditto Mark Sanford whose Appalachian Trail lie covered up the kind of sin that he so loudly protested before he got caught.  That is, until it affected him personally, before it became part of his own experience. 

The problem as I see it is in this “growing up” part of the equation.  As mentioned, we all see the world from our own limited perspective, but as adults seeking to function in the larger world, we have the burden of acknowledging other perspectives exist, and accepting they may even have as much merit as our own.  I know this argument won’t convince some people that gay marriage should exist, but it is an argument far more basic than that.  It’s called empathy, and when adults don’t have it, we generally consider them sociopaths.  Even worse, adults who can’t or won’t (and what’s the difference?) acknowledge the merit of different ideas purposefully limit their own ability and experience in the world. They limit what contributions they make to the world and they limit what they can get from the world.  If you can’t imagine a world other than your own, it’s as if you’re admitting you are incapable of solving any problem that you personally have never encountered.  It’s closing yourself off to creativity or new ideas or discoveries.  After all, these things were not part of the past you experienced, and you won’t consider ideas, thoughts, concepts that aren’t already part of your past experience.  You have basically reduced yourself to a drone, plodding along, marching toward your own death.  No wonder so few Republicans are atheists!  I’d want to believe in an afterlife too if that’s how I lived this one.

This issue isn’t just an abstraction either.  In concrete terms, the inability to imagine a life other than our own plays out on a tactical level.  It’s hard to imagine that the ability to afford a car and insurance payment makes me richer than most of the people in the world.  (According to the CIA Factbook,  the worldwide average annual income is around $5500.) For even lower middle class Americans, this is simply unfathomable.  We can’t begin to imagine what that kind of life might be like.  So folks who cannot acknowledge something like that can’t possibly understand why those folks might not see college as a viable or even desirable option.  Folks who can only relate to their own experience fail to understand why these people can’t just pick themselves up by their bootstraps and build a business and end up millionaires because, after all, America is the land of opportunity. 

It’s hard for even lower middle class Americans to imagine growing up in a bad neighborhood where getting killed or going to prison before your 18^th birthday is 10 times more likely than graduating from high school.  For too many of us, such a life simply doesn’t exist, except, maybe, for people who CHOOSE to live it for some unknown reason.  When you can’t imagine those circumstances then you can’t understand why those people also don’t see college as an option..because baic survivial takes up all their philosophical thought time.  And when you can’t see that, you naturally blame them for the circumstances surrounding them.  You wonder, often aloud, why can’t these people just work harder and make something of themselves?  Wouldn’t they feel more self-respect from a minimum wage job than from public assistance?  You can’t imagine that some kind of public healthcare for their kids (since for-profit healthcare is neither affordable nor available to folks with minimum wage jobs) might be more important to them than their own self respect or resume building.

If you didn’t grow up in a town where everyone worked in the mill, or the steel plant, or the auto factory, or the farm, standing, using their hands and backs, heavy lifting, hard work, long days, for generations, where it has long been instilled that “real work” makes you sore and tired at the end of the day, then you probably can’t understand why the idea of a desk job NEVER factored in to their post high school plans, and thus you can’t possibly empathize with the fact that they simply don’t know where to turn now that the farm is a golf course, the mill, factory, plant have been moved to China or somewhere where worker safety and environmental stewardship have yet to figure into the cost of doing business.

Even if you worked in a clean, safe, well-lit American factory, you probably can’t understand why workers elsewhere might believe their ability to unite is a matter of life and death, rather than just whining for a raise (because whining for a raise is the only idea in your experience).

Until something happens to you personally, you can’t seem to wrap your brain around it.  It’s kind of childish or at least immature.  So forgive me for not celebrating Senator Portman’s sudden enlightenment.  My question remains:  if a person hasn’t matured enough to be able to consider the perspectives of others, what makes them think they’re capable of leading others?  And if people who lack empathy are considered sociopaths, then how are they even eligible for and how do they keep winning elections to public office?

Luth,

Out.

Lawyer Language: from "budget" to "sequester"

Ever wonder where the term “sequestration” as used by Congress these days came from?  What’s being sequestered, and why, and how?  The explanation serves as proof – as if we needed more – that lawyers in general (probably), but especially the ones who become politicians, are snake oil salesman who manipulate language, or even create it like J.R.R. Tolkien using it to lend credence to an imaginary world, in order to create a world in which they are required to interpret it back to the people it is supposed to serve.  Gotta give them credit for the ingenious approach to job security!

Sequestration refers to the legal act of holding property (not money; property) in trust, in order to prevent squabbling parties from destroying it while the real ownership is legally determined.  So far it makes perfect sense.  We can all imagine scenarios in which this seems like a reasonable action to take.  Picture your 5 year old little brother holding your Cal Ripken, Jr. rookie card over  a candle, claiming that it belongs to him because he found it (…in your shoebox, on the top shelf in your room).  Since it is in his possession, your claim to its ownership is in question.  It makes perfect sense for your parents to step in, rescue the card from the flame, and hold onto it until its true ownership can be worked out.  Did your brother really “find” it?  Had you, via gross neglect, legally abandoned your claim to it?  Everyone agrees the card is worthy of being rescued.  Likewise, most would agree that its owner should be allowed to burn it, or anything else the legal owner wants to do with it.  Sequestration is a good idea, and thus far, it’s even a good word to describe the process.  It is a word that matches a definition most humans can understand.

Here’s the problem with Congress (lawyers) adopting the term in their annual budget cat fight:  it no longer refers to property in any kind of jeopardy. It’s money.  In fact, it’s not even money, really; it’s a forecast of money.  Back in 1985, the Gramm Rudman Hollings Deficit Reduction Act tried to fix a flaw that had grown out of another lawyer-created process – the national budget.  The way the budget worked before Gramm Rudman Hollings was that various unrelated appropriations bills got added into the overall budget discussion thereby guaranteeing that the total proposed spending would exceed revenue because no one oversaw the big picture.  Each bill’s sponsor was focused solely on his or her own priorities, and they operated outside of the budget committees.  When all of these bills got lumped together into the budget, unsurprisingly, the checkbook didn’t balance.  So Gramm Rudman Hollings basically said from now on when this happens, if Congress can’t figure out how to make it work by a specified deadline, an amount equal to the deficit will be set aside – sequestered – until this extra deficit is cut OR until the debt limit is raised.  If no agreement is reached, this “sequestered amount” will be deducted from all programs across the board until the checkbook is “balanced.”  Except for the fact that Congress considers at least some deficit spending to be “balanced” and the fact that several budget areas (military, Social Security…) are exempt from these automatic cuts, leaving the remaining programs to share  far larger cuts, it’s kind of a good idea. Gramm Rudman Hollings certainly didn’t solve or prohibit deficit spending, but at least it forced Congress to look at it, and agree to the extent of it. 

That was then.

Before I continue down the trite “let’s kill all the lawyers” path, I should mention this:  Lawyers are English teachers at heart. (and I have a special place in my heart for English teachers)  They discuss, analyze, and interpret literature (stories, legal precedents, laws…same thing) in order to find meaning and guidance for the rest of us. Literature provides a discussion point from which we can debate and discuss the most important issues to mankind without the constraints of personal and emotional involvement – without having suffered the experiences ourselves.  With the personal and emotional removed, we can then apply logic to the discussion and arrive at a mutually agreed upon better understanding of what we’ve learned, how to apply it in our lives. It’s identical to the way religious people derive moral guidance from their various religious texts, only lawyers (and English teachers, Literature buffs, book club members, and atheists) do it without the cognitive dissonance resulting from literal belief in fictional tales.   Lawyers do this with stories and laws men have created, stories and laws which, with any luck, have been arrived at via similarly unemotional, rational discussion and debate.

This is now. 

Gramm Rudman Hollings remains a decent band aid to put on the bleeding wound of a budget process grown too big to be workable (lawyer-designed), but we seem to have forgotten that the use of the term “sequestration” was, and I’m giving Congress the benefit of the doubt here, metaphorical.  It was a nickname applied because of the vague similarity of the process to actual legal sequestration of property.  You don’t sequester money!  You can’t sequester forecast borrowed (and therefore imaginary) money.  This money doesn’t exist.  It’s not in a lock box and sequestration won’t protect it, nor will it take any actual money from even the non-exempt budget areas in order to stay below the debt ceiling… because it’s not money… it’s a budget outlining how money we haven’t borrowed yet might be appropriated.  Likewise the “debt ceiling” – that boundary line of borrowed money that sequestration intends to maintain – is also figurative.  These terms were used as shorthand to ease the discussion, simplify and expedite the explanation of how they work.  The amounts in question are rather arbitrarily created. The checkbook is never literally balanced.  The federal budget has always included borrowed money in its definition of “balanced checkbook.”  And that’s fine and dandy… until we start interpreting these figurative terms as literal or pretending the nicknames for these conceptual abstractions are the hard nouns identifying actual concrete things.

A literal perspective of an actual budget looks like this:  Money comes in.  Money goes out.  When those two pools of actual money are equal, that budget is literally balanced. Whether it’s a kid’s lemonade stand, Microsoft, or the USA, that is literally what we mean when we say budget.  Enter the lawyers who became politicians.  Rather than risking losing an election by administering literal budget practices and angering constituents when actual programs must be cut, they went the Tolkien route and created their own language.  This new language allows them to describe “balancing the budget” even when expenses far exceed revenue.  Obviously anyone with 6^th grade math skills knows that’s not possible and so the new language adds layers and layers of complexity so that the appearance of college math is require to understand it.  Few people who aren’t math teachers even remember the titles of college math courses and the problem is instantly solved.  Our budget process isn’t ridiculous and arbitrary, it’s complex, beyond a lehman’s grasp.

That’s not only bullshit, it’s also a little unfair on my part.  The budget of a nation of over 300 million people is a little more complex than that of a kid’s lemonade stand.  The depth and breadth of what that budget covers, from the security of a ready and well-equipped military to a single Head Start breakfast is massive by scale alone, even without considering the complex formulas by which it must be derived in pursuit of equity and fiscal responsibility.  But that’s just it.  The misuse of these mangled terms is specifically to avoid responsibility.  For Congressmen.

To have settled on the misnomer of “sequestration” was a handy expedient, but to have forgotten that it is merely a nickname, and to now hold the nation hostage over a process created by the same body who are now the hostage takers, and who suddenly believe the term is literal is irrational…the opposite of what we expect from lawyer language.

Luth,

Out

It's about our culture, not our laws

There’s a Sylvester Stallone movie coming out soon titled BULLET TO THE HEAD.  I haven’t seen it, but the trailers indicate it’s like every other action movie out there…glorified violence and revenge.  I don’t for one minute suspect that the niche market such movies serve actually plays any kind of direct connection to gun violence.  I don’t think such movies should be banned.  Hell, I might even like it, but the entire notion of a title like that getting green-lighted as a full budget endeavor featuring a major star is a perfect indicator of just how different our culture is from any other country with legal guns.

BULLET TO THE HEAD is based on a graphic novel, so its treatment of violence is a comic book’s treatment of violence – that of a two-dimensional, oversimplified world that only a child or someone whose capacities are severely limited would ever confuse with the real world.  One other fun fact is that the original graphic novel on which it is based is French!  (and everyone in the NRA knows the French are sissies!)

What’s any of this got to do with the NRA or gun laws?  Well, I’ve been thinking lately… for the first time in my life I might actually agree with something NRA President, Wayne LaPierre, said.  At least in part.

I don’t think it’s about our gun laws; it’s about our gun culture.

I’ve only recently arrived at this new conclusion and the realization that it means I agree with Mr. LaPierre. I’ve had guns in my household all my life, but I’ve never once been tempted to join the NRA.  During the years in which this opinion was formed, Charlton Heston represented that organization.  As I watched him slowly prove through frequent public tirades that he’d lost sight of the distinction between playing Moses in a movie and actually being Moses, I also saw signs that many of his followers were under similar delusions.  I was disheartened and embarrassed at my fellow gun owners for their inability to rationally discuss gun laws.  Even among close friends, and after taking pains to keep partisan politics out of the private discussions, folks I knew and trusted seemed to have drunk the Kool-Aid and refused to even consider that this nation might be able to come up with better gun laws than we have.  Period.  Not necessarily stricter, not necessarily banning any particular model or type, just better laws. I believe my countrymen are bright enough to take this on.  Many of my fellow gun owners, and the public sentiment of the NRA indicate otherwise.

For most of my life, the public face of the NRA seemed dead set against even having that conversation. Under President Heston, they proved themselves to be something far more frightening than an assault rifle. They helped create a culture of fear.  They established themselves as a giant, rich, and therefore powerful lobby 100% committed to NOT having a discussion. Nothing pushes a paranoid public toward their guns more than fear and a sense of powerlessness.  This was a brilliant strategy for the NRA. It’s a brilliant strategy for niche movies like the Charles Bronson franchises of the 80s, and just about every Sylvester Stallone movie.  It’s had terrible results on our nation and our political process.  There is little wiggle room in that kind of stance.  If you won’t discuss our disagreement, you are, by definition irrational, and you offer no contribution to a potential solution.  You ARE part of the problem.  In its own way, my own acquiescence to this stereotype (of the NRA and its members) distracted me from actually looking at the issue.  I was content to know (and I still KNOW this) that anyone not willing to talk is not rational, not worth talking to, and so went the NRA.

Sure, I knew the NRA sponsored and promoted safe gun handling and practices.  Though I’d had a hunting license long before the state of Ohio required completion of a hunter safety course to get one, I took the NRA course anyway and found it very well done.  But no good deed goes unpunished, and where your public face is clearly as insane as your refusal to talk, I had no use for such an organization outside of that classroom.  In fact, I simply couldn’t connect anything about the NRA with my experience in that classroom.  The class was good, sound, logical.  It didn’t in any way match with the NRA I‘d come to know.  Just like many of my smart, educated, logical friends who owned guns…I couldn’t connect what I knew about them in just about any other circumstance with how stupid they acted at the mere mention of the words “gun control.”  Suddenly they lost all critical thinking skills, listening skills, the ability to even have a conversation.  So I’m hoping this revelation of mine represents some kind of meeting at the crossroads.  That we’re finally ready to have this conversation.

That may not sound like I’ve reached any new conclusions, and as I sit back and think about it, maybe I haven’t.  Maybe I’ve agreed all along that the law doesn’t much matter. Gun laws really do only affect law abiding citizens.  But if that’s the case, then why does the NRA so fear any new or revised gun law?  It’s NEVER even been hinted at during my lifetime that anyone, even the most liberal presidential hopeful would EVER try to outlaw guns.  EVER.  Except by the NRA, which means their entire argument is fully encased in logical fallacy – the slippery slope.  And if you think the now expired definition of “assault rifle” is a tad ridiculous, like I do, then why won’t you help craft a better one instead of refusing to talk at all?

There I go again, getting distracted by the opposition’s weakness to the point that I’m blind or deaf to the rare, few valid points they make.  It’s not about the law; it’s about the culture.

On that note Wayne LaPierre and I completely agree. If only life were oversimplified and 2-dimensional enough to leave it at that. If only life were just a movie based on a French comic book. OR, if only we could work together and figure out a better way forward. Remember how cool smoking used to be?  Had we, as a nation tried to simply outlaw it, we NEVER would have reduced the health problems we have by reducing the number of smokers in our population. We’d still be arguing about it today.  We’d have polarized groups of tobacco manufacturers and consumers on one side and tree hugging health nuts (and some consumers too) on the other, even though the extremes of those groups only represent a tiny fraction of society.   Had we tried to ban a certain type of cigarette, such an effort would have failed from the start, and that tiny fraction would have held our nation hostage and prevented any progress. The tobacco shift was a cultural shift, not a legal shift.  Wayne and I would have been simpatico throughout it up to a point.  However, in order for that cultural shift to gain enough momentum to work, some laws had to change too. In order for our society to be able to weigh the importance of individual freedoms, the rights of industry, and the associated public costs, we had to have a conversation and leave laws on the table. Even if they squeeze out a few individual freedoms, or threaten some industry profits  That’s how law works in a country like ours. People (and corporations are people now) share individual sacrifice for the greater good.  But it can't happen if major players simply refuse to talk.

So we’re gonna have to talk about laws in order to talk about creating a similar shift in our values when it comes to guns.  Poll after poll tells us the NRA is just plain wrong when it comes to the public sentiment regarding gun regulation – the vast majority of Americans really do favor sensible gun law.  Too bad we haven’t been able to come up with any.  Too bad the NRA has made it its mission to prevent that very conversation.  At some point, even fence-riding NRA members are going to decide that one too many malls, movie theaters, or schools have been shot up.  At some point, things will become so extreme that the decision will get forced, and so it won’t be as a good a decision as our nation could actually make.

At some point, our gun laws will change and so will the NRA. Will it be forced, and will we take what we get, or will we participate responsibly in the planning for it?

Luth

Out