Can Gun Laws and Gun Ownership Coexist? Yes, and I Can Prove It

Wisconsin is a gun-owning state. All you need to do to prove that to yourself is show up around November. The woods are crawling with guys in orange snowsuits and hats, in search of whitetail deer. Or ask about wild turkeys when you stop in a roadside tavern. It's like asking about the Packers -- everyone's an expert. It's not at all unusual for people to be extremely familiar and comfortable around firearms and stories about hunting trips are part of many family get-togethers. In fact, we're number twelve in the top twenty gun-owning states. In the latest available figures from 2007, our percentage of gun owners was 44.4%. That means we beat out rootin'-tootin' shootin' Texas -- by a country mile. The Lone Star state's percentage of gun ownership was a measly 35.9%. We also beat out other southern states -- i.e., those supposedly immersed in "gun culture" -- such as Georgia (40%), North Carolina (41.3%), South Carolina (42.3%), Arizona (31.1%), and Florida (24.5%). Don't talk to us about your "gun culture" -- we've got a culture. You've got a hobby.

Now take a look at this map from a study on state gun deaths. In 2010 we were one of the states with the fewest gun deaths per capita. How can this be? Simple. All it takes is common sense gun laws.


[Reuters:]

States that have more laws restricting gun ownership have lower rates of death from shootings, both suicides and homicides, a study by researchers at Boston Children's Hospital and Harvard University found.

States with the most laws on gun ownership, including Massachusetts and New Jersey, have 42 percent lower rates of death from guns than those with the least restrictions, including Utah and Oklahoma, according to the study, published on Wednesday in the online edition of JAMA Internal Medicine.

The study was released as a Senate committee approved new gun-control measures backed by President Barack Obama to crack down on illegal trafficking in firearms in the wake of the December massacre at a Connecticut elementary school.

Based on data from 2007 through 2010, the study looked at the relationship between the number of restrictions states placed on gun ownership -- from background checks on gun buyers to bans on military-style assault weapons -- and the number of gun-related homicides and suicides reported.


Prior to 2010, Wisconsin didn't allow concealed carry. Then Gov. Scott Walker was elected, decided that what was working needed fixing, and passed a concealed carry law. We also have a 48 hour waiting period. In 2010, we didn't have a Castle Doctrine, which is similar to "stand your ground" laws in that it allows someone to shoot people trespassing on their property, no questions asked. Also after 2010, it became legal to carry a loaded weapon in your vehicle. Gov. Walker and state Republicans seem to have spent a lot of time fixing things that no one knew were problems. Unless we reverse these idiotic and unnecessary laws, we can't expect to do as well in the next study.

But imagine what Wisconsin was like when the data in this study was collected: common sense gun laws increasing public safety and a high percentage of gun ownership. Kind of looks like pretty much everything the blood lobby tells you about gun regulation is not so awfully true, doesn't it? No one came and took anyone's guns away. Crime didn't run rampant as citizens were helpless to defend themselves. Joseph Adolph Hitlerstalin didn't rise up and run a ruthless and brutal dictatorship out of his villa on the shores of Lake Michigan. No zombie apocalypse, no Road Warrior, no Red Dawn. It's just a quiet northern state dotted with barns, cheesemakers, bait shops, and hunters. All this Chicken Little crap about guns being the only thing propping up the sky is all paranoid horsecrap, meant to fool gullible cowards into supporting laws who's only real purpose is to scare them into buying more guns. And, as the gun ownership levels in the states show, those laws fail to do even that. Texas, one of the most conservative states in the union, has hardly any guns at all compared to Wisconsin (although, to be fair, their screwed up policies creates such economic inequality that few can probably afford the luxury of a firearm. Texas, like all conservative economies, is a merely support-system for the wealthy elite).

Want a gun and sane, effective firearms regulations? Turns out we can do it. I grew up where it was done. It's not about grabbing anyone's guns -- in fact, that's completely unnecessary. It's about passing laws against stupidity, because the nature of stupidity is that it's too stupid to recognize itself as stupidity. Stupid needs to be stopped from being stupid.

It really is that simple.

-Wisco

[photo via Tobyotter]

Why Republicans are Terrified -- And Why That Should Worry You

Last month, Nate Silver took a look at Republican chances to win a majority in the Senate. The verdict: maybe, but probably not. Of course, it really is hard to say with any certainty this far in advance, but this assessment does not say good things about the party overall. If all things were equal, Republicans would be the clear favorites. The vast majority of Senate seats being contested in 2014 are held by Democrats -- 21 of 35 -- meaning the Republican Party can use most of their resources working to gain seats, while Democrats will be forced to spend mostly on holding them. And out of all those 21, Republicans need a mere 6. In other words, they could lose all those races at a rate in the neighborhood of 3:1 and still come out on top -- but they probably won't even reach that paltry level of success.

Today Republicans get more 2014 bad news. Political analyst Stuart Rothenberg writes that Democrats will likely pick off a few governorships that cycle.


While the fight for the House of Representatives will take center stage next year, another battle could be almost as important for the two parties: control of a handful of big-state governorships.

Republicans like to point out that while they lost the presidency and seats in both chambers of Congress in 2012, their party continues to hold governorships in 30 states, including nine of the country’s 12 largest states.

But most of those governors — 23 to be exact — were elected in 2010, a great GOP year that doesn’t reflect the nation’s (or many states’) political fundamentals. (That number includes Utah’s Gary R. Herbert, who ran in a special election in 2010 and again in 2012.)


In congress, the big Tea Party wave turned into the one term Tea Party anomaly. And it's looking like that will likely hold true at the state level, as well. It's at this point that Democrats and liberals will need to pay close attention. You'll notice that these races where Republicans are expected to do poorly -- governorships and the senate -- are all statewide races. That means these races can't be rigged by gerrymandering. Not only is that why Republicans can expect to have a bad year, but it's why it's the year Republicans are most likely pull out the stops on dirty tricks to win elections. You see, if things turn out as predicted, the GOP will be royally screwed.

"If Democrats can win a number of these big-state governorships, even if they don’t take back the U.S. House, it could well bolster the narrative of Democratic momentum leading up to the 2016 elections," Rothenberg writes. "It also would put Democrats in the position to retain those governorships four years later, in 2018, when states will select governors who will play a role in the next round of congressional redistricting."

And it's that last point that dumps ice water down Republican spines. The only real power they have left in the elected branches of government is the House of Representatives, the only one they can (and have) won through gerrymandering. If they lose governorships -- and with them, the ability to draw unfair district boundaries -- things can go very, very badly for them very, very quickly. They could easily see Democratic majorities in both the House and the Senate, a Democrat in the White House, and the likelihood of at least one appointment to the Supreme Court under these conditions. That would mean a level of liberal control in Washington unheard of for decades -- House, Senate, White House, and a Supreme Court majority. For conservatives, it's the perfect storm.

so, for Republicans interested in being something other than an ineffective crank minority party, there are only two choices: cheat or reform. Every day we're seeing more and more evidence that reform is nearly impossible. The insane partisans are just becoming more deeply entrenched and all efforts at change are quickly becoming nothing more than cosmetic. So that leaves cheating. Republicans are very comfortable doing that. Especially the base.

You see, it's the base that makes it impossible to change the GOP and it's the base who believes all the insane crackpottery they're told. They really do believe that Democrats are secret Soviets and terrorist-sympathizers bent on taking away everyone's guns, putting everyone in FEMA camps, and destroying America from within -- at least, when we aren't agents of Satan here to turn America from Jesus with gay rights, feminism, and Sharia law. They're willing to cheat for the same reason a terrorist is willing to use a roadside bomb -- asymmetrical warfare.

And that base is what became the Tea Party caucus. Those people aren't just at home listening to Rush Limbaugh spout nonsense on their radios, they're in congress, they're in governors' mansions, and they're in statehouses around the country. They see this coming and they are terrified. So they'll do whatever they can, up to (and perhaps including) out-and-out election fraud. They'll push their voter ID laws, cut back on early voting hours, and make it more difficult to register voters. What do you think this whole Voting Right Act case in the Supreme Court is about?

It's about the need to steal elections, because of the inability to win them fairly. Republicans aren't just on the verge of losing a few elections, they're on the verge of losing everything.

So they're desperate and willing to do anything

-Wisco

[photo via DonkeyHotey]

Making it Easy for Terrorists to Arm Themselves

Most times, sweeping efforts at change have unintended consequences. When a thread is deeply woven into our society, pulling it out will almost inevitably unravel parts of the tapestry we didn't intend to. But rarely does that unintended consequence demonstrate the need for the change that caused it in the first place. A new report demonstrates this phenomenon.


[The Guardian:]

The number of anti-government, far-right extremist groups has soared to record levels since 2008 and they are becoming increasingly militant, according to a report by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

It says the number of groups in the “Patriot” movement stood at 1,360 in 2012, up from 149 in 2008 when Barack Obama was first elected president, an increase of 813%. The report said the rise was driven by opposition to Obama and the “spluttering rage” over federal attempts at gun control.

Those who were identified as “militia” groups or the paramilitary wing of the Patriot movement, numbered 321, up from 42 in 2008, the SPLC said in its report.

Concern over a “truly explosive growth” of groups on the radical right, along with a rise in domestic terrorist plots, has prompted the SPLC to write to US attorney general Eric Holder and Homeland Security secretary Janet Napolitano, warning of the potential for domestic terrorism and urging them create a new, inter-agency task force to assess whether it has adequate resources to deal with it.


So here's the thing: because of our insanely loose gun laws, we're pretty much arming the very terrorists who want to kill us. If that strikes you as flabbergastingly stupid, that's because it is.

This sort of soft on crime idiocy is nothing new. After 9/11, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft banned the use of a federal database to find out if people detained on suspicion of terrorism had purchased guns in the United States.

"I'm a little befuddled," Sen. Charles Schumer said at the time. "We're looking for new tools in every direction. I support most of those. But when it comes to the area of even illegal immigrants getting guns and finding out if they did, this administration becomes weak as a wet noodle."

Keep in mind, this was an administration who had no problem violating American's rights when it came to secret and warrantless wiretapping. But start poking around in suspected terrorists' gun purchases and suddenly we're all worried about their freedom. Since the Bush administration was torturing these same people, it seems pretty safe to assume that concerns about their Second Amendment liberties were horsecrap. The truth is that the administration was avoiding headlines like "Federal records show lots of suspected terrorists buying lots of guns in US."

It's one thing to overreact and make air travel a nightmare, wiretap people's phones and read their emails, torture them, kidnap them from countries where we have no jurisdiction, lock them up in concentration camps, and invade a country that had nothing to do with 9/11 -- but it's quite another to react rationally and start keeping terrorists from buying guns in the US. That would be the dreaded "gun control" and, although it would've been the most obvious and sane thing in the world, the Bush administration was Republican to the core. That meant they were the NRA's pet monkey. And the NRA is about selling as many guns as possible. They don't care who buys them. A terrorist's money is a green as anyone else's.

So we were, then as now, in a situation where the unstated argument was that the 2nd Amendment protects the right of America's enemies to buy the weapons they'll use to kill Americans in America. I guess because having to smuggle guns in would be too inconvenient. I'm sure that's exactly what the founders had in mind.

It really is long past time to stop being so damned stupid about guns. When terrorists are buying guns in large numbers, it's time to put a stop to that. Obviously. How anyone can argue otherwise is beyond me. As is so often the case when talking about the gobsmacked right, we leave the realm of logic and enter the shrine of religion. Guns are sacred to the Cult of the Gun Fetishist and that makes them exempt from sanity, rationality, and reality.

As I said, the unintended consequence of the push for gun regulation demonstrates the need for that regulation extremely well. The only people who'd disagree are soulless NRA tools, gun fetishists, blind partisans -- and those terrorists themselves.

-Wisco

[chart via Southern Poverty Law Center]

Old Jim Crow, Back for an Encore

Take a moment and consider how unlikely this headline would be:

WEALTHY WHITE VOTERS FORCED TO STAND IN LINES FOR HOURS TO VOTE.

Doesn't seem like much of a danger, does it? And that tells you all you need to know about the continuing necessity of the Voting Rights Act, currently under attack by the right and the conservative members of the Supreme Court. America has moved on, they argue. There is no polling place discrimination anymore. Racism has been solved.

Yet in Florida, early voting lines were hours long in many places. And for many, early voting isn't a luxury, it's a necessity. Contrary to conservative rhetoric, minority voters work. And most workers don't get to set their own hours. Being able to vote when they have the time off is the only way they can vote. The crooked Governor of Florida, Rick Scott, refused to reverse changes he'd made to election rules and, when told of the long lines, tried to spin it as the consequence of a vibrant democracy; "People are getting out to vote," he said. "That's what's very good."

People having to wait hours to vote is not "what's very good," it's what's very bad. And -- surprise! -- my headline about the travails faced by the intrepid with rich fella doesn't apply here. Reality is pretty much the opposite case.


[New York Times:]

...A Massachusetts Institute of Technology analysis determined that blacks and Hispanics waited nearly twice as long in line to vote on average than whites. Florida had the nation’s longest lines, at 45 minutes, followed by the District of Columbia, Maryland, South Carolina and Virginia, according to Charles Stewart III, the political science professor who conducted the analysis.

A separate analysis, by an Ohio State University professor and The Orlando Sentinel, concluded that more than 200,000 voters in Florida “gave up in frustration” without voting.

“When I got there, the line was around the building,” said Jonathan Piccolo, 33, who said he had waited nearly eight hours to cast a ballot in Miami-Dade County the Monday before Election Day.


When lines are so long and so slow that people walk away without voting, those votes have been stolen. Those people have been disenfranchised. When it happens to minorities instead of whites at a ratio of two to one, it's not coincidence or a statistical anomaly. Minority voters are deliberately being discouraged from voting -- exactly the problem that the Voting Rights Act was meant to address. Florida is not fully covered under the Voting Rights Act -- only five counties must clear changes with the Justice Department. Clearly, the Voting Rights Act needs to be expanded, not gutted. When you look at the plain facts, you see it's needed more than ever.

Which is why plain facts have been banished from this debate -- as they have been with so many issues conservatives decide to take on. The data showing -- not suggesting, showing -- that minority voters were discriminated against at the polls just months ago isn't a point worth talking about, because it doesn't support their predetermined conclusion. What supports those conclusions is bad math.


[National Public Radio:]

At the voting rights argument in the Supreme Court on Wednesday, Chief Justice John Roberts tore into Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, grilling him on his knowledge of voting statistics.

The point the chief justice was trying to make was that Massachusetts, which is not covered by the preclearance section of the Voting Rights Act, has a far worse record in black voter registration and turnout than Mississippi, which is covered by Section 5 of the act.

But a close look at census statistics indicates the chief justice was wrong, or at least that he did not look at the totality of the numbers.


Roberts' argument was that Massachusetts had a lower black voter turnout than Mississippi -- a "fact" he got from a minority dissent in a lower court decision. According to NPR, those numbers come from the census and are the result of statistical sampling. The sample is meant to be representative of the nation as a whole, not of the individual states. And this means numbers from different states have vastly different margins for error.


The number of black citizens eligible to vote in Massachusetts is 236,000, while it is 721,000 in Mississippi, more than three times that number. Therefore, according to Census officials, when looking at the estimated turnout rate in Massachusetts, the voting percentage for African-Americans at first blush is estimated at 39.3 percent. But the margin of error is 11.5 percentage points, meaning that the black voter turnout actually could be as high as 50.8 percent (or, conversely, as low as 27.8 percent).

Now, look at Mississippi, where black turnout is listed at 48.7 percent. But because of the large size of the African-American population that was sampled, the margin of error is only 5.4 percentage points.

That means that factoring in the margin of error, the black turnout rate in Mississippi could be as high as 54.1 percent, or as low as 43.3 percent.


So, if you figure in the margins for error -- which both Chief Justice Roberts and the lower court selectively did not -- the numbers could just as easily show that "Mississippi could have had a black voter turnout rate that was 7.5 percentage points lower than Massachusetts."

In other words, since the numbers are being applied in a way they were never meant to be, they're meaningless, incomplete, and malleable as clay. To hang the fate of the voting rights of millions on this lousy math would be insane. Yet that's what Roberts seems to have in mind.

Striking down the Voting Rights Act and denying millions of Democratic voters their right to vote may be the only way Republicans can win national office going forward. Of course, they could always just be less racist in their policies, but that would mean progressive change. The only time a conservative talks about "change" is when they want to change something back; i.e., regressive change. So the conservative members of the Supreme Court -- through transparent judicial activism and bad math -- want to change voting laws back to the bad old days of Jim Crow, when America's wealthy white elites were safe from democracy.

And Republicans wonder why they have so much trouble attracting minority voters.

-Wisco

[photo via Michael Fleshman]

Sequestration, the March Hare, and the Mad Tea Party

It's Sequester Day, America. The worst holiday so far this year. Still, we should make the best of it. Other special days have mascots -- Santa Claus, pilgrims, Jack-O'-Lanterns, etc. -- so I propose that Sequester Day be celebrated under the lunatic grin of the March Hare. The mascot is pretty perfect; a participant in the Mad Tea Party, completely insane, and -- of course -- it's March.

You see, there's nothing sane about any of this. The last time we celebrated this holiday was not a year ago, but just back in January, when it was known by a different name: the fiscal cliff. We went over the cliff a little bit, Republicans lost their nerve, and the crisis was avoided... Well, not avoided so much as kicked down the road until today. The crisis was very much not avoided, as the mad March Hare reminds us. We merely banned the nickname "fiscal cliff" from our national vocabulary, cut some deals to reschedule the whole thing, and now we refer to it by it's more formal name, sequestration. It the same stupid self-laid trap, we've just all agreed to pretend it's a new one. It's mad, mad I say -- frantabulousy, craptastically, thingdubitably, deliciously mad!

And no one better embodies the true spirit of the March Hare better than the House Republican caucus. Left is right, up is down, right is wrong, and Washington has a spending problem, not a revenue problem.


[CBS News:]

...House Speaker John Boehner has said he's done negotiating. The House, Boehner says, has twice passed legislation that would undo the sequester, and should not have pass a third bill before the Democrat-controlled Senate "gets off their ass and passes it once." He has also stated that Republicans will not play ball on new tax revenue, telling the president, "You got your tax increase; it's time to cut spending here in Washington."

In a statement this morning, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., added: "We promised the American people that we would cut Washington spending, and the President signed those cuts into law. Republicans have offered the President numerous solutions, including the flexibility he needs to secure those reductions more intelligently. I'm happy to discuss other ideas to keep our commitment to reducing Washington spending at today's meeting. But there will be no last-minute, back-room deal and absolutely no agreement to increase taxes."


Yes, Barack Obama got his one tax increase (well, part of one anyway), Republicans have gotten spending cut after spending cut, so it only makes Mad Tea Party sense that it's now Obama's turn to give things away again. Because the opposite of truth is Tea Party sense; which means the opposite of parity is a fair deal. Barack Obama gets his one lump of sugar, then Republicans get a pile of sugar lumps -- and that means it's Republicans turn to get their sugar again. Because Mad Tea Party reasoning, if you'll remember your Lewis Carroll, is backwards, contrary, and splendidly wrong.

Under that definition, cutting spending to plug a deficit hole makes perfect Tea Party sense, as reality reminds us. Dylan Matthews of Washington Post's Wonkblog illustrates that reality -- by way of a familiar chart, now updated:


As you can see, that big, fat sandy-colored stripe is the biggest culprit in driving deficits. And that big stripe represents the Bush tax cuts. Washington doesn't have a spending problem, Washington obviously has a revenue problem. But recognizing that is not playing by the mad Tea Party rules and the March Hare will have none of it. President Obama was reelected on a promise to raise taxes on the wealthy? Pshaw and fiddlesticks!

It's so much more fun to be mad!

-Wisco

[photo via Newtown grafitti]