Capitol Hill Blue Forums Capitol Hill Blue Opinions CHB Columnists Time for serious control of guns and those who promote their sale, illegal use

By Doug Thompson

As a gun owner, longtime hunter, and supporter of the Second Amendment, I feel it is time to ban the sale and ownership of assault-style rifles. However, it is too late to do so. Our society is riddled with military-style weapons, and stopping the flow now is too little, too late.

I’ve owned AR weapons in the past. Bought them on sale when a gun store was going out of business. Even then, it was a waste of money and I donated them to a museum, along with some other weapons that are more suited for military use.

When I served as chief of staff for a member of Congress in the 1980s, I knew and dealt with the lobbyists of the National Rifle Association. Over drinks at the Capitol Hill Club one night, NRA lobbyist Terri O’Grady told me that what she and others do were “a sham on Congress and America.”

“We serve the gun manufacturers, not the owners of firearms,” she said. “Our sole goal is to help them sell more firearms to more people and block any legislation that gets in the way of that goal.”

NRA executive vice-president Wayne LaPierre padded his personal finances with NRA money, embezzling millions, yet remains on the job because the gun manufacturers feel he is “one of us.”

In other words, a crook. Over the weekend in Houston, at NRA’s annual meeting, the board re-elected LaPierre. As the New York Post reported: “Scandal-scarred Wayne LaPierre re-elected as NRA CEO.”

Reuters reports:

The National Rifle Association board reappointed Wayne LaPierre as executive vice president on Monday, turning back the latest leadership challenge amid corruption allegations and flat membership for the still-powerful gun lobby.

The board vote came as the NRA held its annual meeting in Houston, about 280 miles (450 km) east of the site of a mass shooting on Tuesday, when an 18-year-old armed with an AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle killed 19 children and two teachers at a Texas elementary school.

New York Attorney General Letitia James sued the NRA in 2020, saying the organization paid for family trips to the Bahamas, private jets, and expensive meals and clothes that contributed to a $64 million reduction in the NRA’s balance sheet in three years, turning a surplus into a deficit.

The organization claims LaPierre is “reimbursing” them for his lavish spending and embezzlement.

“The N.R.A. is now mainly a media company, promoting a lifestyle built around loving guns and hating anyone who might take them away, ” writes Mike Spies in the New Yorker.

He adds:

Marc Owens, who served for ten years as the head of the Internal Revenue Service division that oversees tax-exempt enterprises, recently reviewed these records. “The litany of red flags is just extraordinary,” he said. “The materials reflect one of the broadest arrays of likely transgressions that I’ve ever seen. There is a tremendous range of what appears to be the misuse of assets for the benefit of certain vendors and people in control.” Owens added, “Those facts, if confirmed, could lead to the revocation of the N.R.A.’s tax-exempt status”—without which the organization could likely not survive.

But the NRA, and LaPierre, survive to fleece its members and America while promoting the sale of dangerous weapons that are used far too often to kill people, including the 19 fourth graders in Texas this month.

It is time for serious gun control and prosecution of those who facilitate the use of dangerous weapons to massacre children.

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Doug, like you I’ve been a gun owner from a very early age. My dad gave me my first gun, a .410 when I was 12 or 13 and I have owned guns ever since. I remember riding my bike 8 miles into town to buy shells for it at the Western Auto. Too young to drive. Now I never owned any semi-automatic. I never had use for them. I had an M-14, then an M-16 and later a M-203 assigned to me while I was on active duty, the 203 is nothing more than an M-16 with a grenade launcher on the bottom, the old M-79.

I also never belonged to the NRA. I’ve always been turned off by them. Neither did my dad or grandpa. I never saw a reason for any civilian to own a semi-automatic rifle, pistol or whatever. I also carried a .45 while in the army. I loved the .45. But once I retired, I thought about getting one. But what would I use it for? I never did get one.

I look at gun control differently than most, regardless of which side of the issue one is on. We’ve been talking mass school shootings. A mass school shooting I would classify as 3 or more deaths. The first mass school shooting occurred in 1968, the UT Texas tower shooting. That one was followed up by 2 in the 1970’s, 2 in the 1980’s, 10 in the 1990’s, 7 in the 2000’s, 13 in the 2010’s and 2 so far counting Texas for the 2020’s.

Which brings me to my point, I believe banning all semi-automatics would limit the damage done in each mass school shooting incidence. But not eliminate them. That the incidences of mass school shootings along with mass shootings in general will increase. Because we have left the cause, the root problem alone. We haven’t gone looking for it. We’re putting a bandaid on a sucking chest wound so to speak. I suggest while we ban semi-automatics, we also delve deep into our society. Compare our society to the society when there was no mass school shootings, pre-1968 to post 1968 when mass school shootings along with mass shootings in general have become a normal part of our lives. In other words, go looking for the cause, the reason that all of a sudden mass school shootings went from zero to many. Banning semi-automatics isn’t about to give us the cause or reason. It’s nothing more than a limiting factor. That cause and or reason remains alive and well. Even with no guns at all, mass killings will continue only by other means, bombs, arson, chemicals etc. because we have done nothing to find the cause, to eliminate it.

Most gun control folks think I’m nuts. I think they’re nuts in expecting banning AR-15’s or even all semi-automatics will stop the killings. Maybe we’re all nuts. My 2 cents.

Banning assault-style rifles and high-capacity magazines would go a long way toward reducing the number of children killed in any given school shooting.

Even in video games, lower-level players are not allowed access to arms like these. You've got to earn the upgrades.

But just as Doug says above, there are too many of them already in circulation...you can't put the genie back in the bottle.

But you can make it much harder for an angry psychotic Mexican kid to get his hands on them. He'll be limited to deer rifles, shotguns, and some entry-level handguns.

Licenses, fees, and continuing education can earn him the right to own more potent weaponry.

If I was going into a building of relatively close quarters, no semi-automatics available. I’d opt for a pump shotgun. They can contain anywhere from 8 to 41 shells. Although the shotgun available for 41 shells holds the mini shotgun shell or 24 regular shotgun shells. No accurate aiming required. The spread of a 12- or 16-gauge shell can be huge. The difference between firing a civil war cannon with a solid iron ball or grapeshot or in more modern terms, the difference between an iron bomb or a cluster bomb.

Maybe we’re too interested in what a weapon looks like instead of the lethal aspects. Then again, we’re more interested in finding ways to limit the damage than searching for the root cause or reasons why these mass school shootings take place now whereas in the past, they didn’t. It seems to me, a possible cure which may lie in comparing our society of pre-1968 when the first mass school shooting occurred to the post 1968 society where these mass school shootings have become routine.

What I don’t understand in all of this, why is no one interested in finding out what went wrong so we can fix it? Or at least try. I guess I’ve said enough. It is what it is and if no one wants to find out the reasons, the cause, that’s life.

You can't fix stupid pero.

it seems to me that many of the mass shooting are being done by teens. I thought I would google "mental health for teens". I got about 301,000,000 replies. This is a LOT of replies. When I google for something and get a return like that I think that it probably indicates that the subject is being looked at by a LOT of people! It also seems that these kids can be helped if you can get to them they can be helped, I am assuming whoever gets to them are shrinks and also suspect that they are easily led by bad if given a chance. There are also literally millions of these kids in trouble and there is international concern about this as well.

I suspect what it all means that we are going to have to figure out a way to help these kids to actually save an entire generation.

Interesting times..............

From guns to knives.

Witness describes 'bloodbath' at Encino hospital, says bystanders shut stabbing suspect in storage room


https://www.yahoo.com/news/witness-describes-bloodbath-encino-hospital-203838059.html

Some food for thought:
Just for the record:
Memorial Day Weekend Numbers [prelim] From 5pm Friday until 5am Tuesday.
Killed: 156
Injured: 412
Mass Shootings: 14
That was in the United States. Nowhere else.

There are approximately 400 million firearms in the United States. The military only controls 4.2 million of them, and law enforcement only 1.2 million. Of those, fewer than 5% are assault-style weapons. It is a manageable problem. Semi-auto handguns are another matter.

Over time, I've been all over the map regarding the Second Amendment and regulation. I've been persuaded one way, and then another. I'm neither a gun-nut nor a gun-hater, and mostly libertarian on the issue. I just want workable, legal solutions. We're in a very bad place, nationally, and much of the reason is bad faith actors.

The 1994 assault weapons ban was effective. I was a firm skeptic at the time (and an Army Captain), but data has overcome that skepticism. I was issued M-16s and M-4s, and I know how devastating they can be. The ban worked to reduce a particular kind of violence. But, the politics of 2004 killed the ban and all hell has broken loose.

Gun marketers/NRA pushed AR ownership as if it were sliced bread and Christ's return rolled into one. They've repeatedly made false claims about their versatility and popularity, and pushed paranoid fantasies about self-defense as a marketing ploy. This is not the NRA of my youth. That NRA promoted the 1968 Act, pushed the 1934 NFA, and was dedicated to gun safety and the public interest. Then Wayne Lapierre took the reins and it's been nutjob city, and the marketing arm of the gun industry, ever since.

Then the dishonest Heller and McDonald decisions gave gun nut world a veneer of legitimacy and it's been off to the races. After Sandy Hook, I thought reason might prevail. But, it became a culture-war political tool. It has been ever since, despite repeated incidents since.

The sophistry, dishonesty and bad faith behavior by so many has made me a gun control advocate. I still support gun ownership and even think the "reason" one wants to own a gun is immaterial. But, I think it is well past time to consider the public's interest in legislation, rather than personal interests and financial gain.

Yes...yes...knives kill people, obviously. But, not at 60 different incidences every, single, day in America. Mebbe once or twice a year at best? BIG difference and silly comparison.

I say have a cash for assault rifles program, and also a ban on future assault ammo purchases. For guns, cap them at levels we have now and only allow new ones to be sold when an equal amount of destroyed.