How to Spot a Hypocrite in the Gun Debate and Other Reflections on Newtown

Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a law-breaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.
- Justice Louis D. Brandeis
How to Spot a Hypocrite in the Gun Debate and Other Reflections on Newtown
For those of you that follow me on Facebook, some of the statements and themes you will read in this blog will sound familiar.  What happened on December 14, 2012 was obviously a horrific tragedy that my simple mind can’t possibly wrap itself around, but what I can do is send my deepest thoughts, prayers and sympathies to all of those affected.  I can’t imagine the level of pain and suffering you are all experiencing.  This article; however, isn’t directed at you.  There is nothing I can do to ease your pain.  This article is for the rest of us who weren’t directly affected by the incident, but may be indirectly affected by certain parties’ emotional response to it and by those that will exploit it to justify agendas.
One of the key lessons from all of human history is that the easy way to deal with any tragedy is to scapegoat.  In some cases, like in Nazi Germany, the scapegoat proved to be unpopular minorities, especially Jews.  These days, many Americans have fallen into the trap of scapegoasting Muslims and the Islamic religion for all the bad things that happen on the planet.  The key similarity I see in these sorts of situations is that the population affected by some trauma (hyperinflation and economic collapse in Germany and 9/11 in the United States) tends to resort to the knee-jerk reaction of scapegoating an easy target rather than diving into the complexities of the issue and engaging in societal self-reflection.  This is extraordinarily dangerous.
From what I can tell, some of the most ridiculous polices are the direct result of a trauma, people getting emotional, and then begging for a response. In my own lifetime, 9/11 is the perfect example.  Our national response to a gruesome attack that killed thousands of innocent civilians was to tear up the Constitution, specifically the cherished Bill of Rights, with insane Big Brother type legislation like the “Patriot” Act.  We basically launched the war on terror by waving a white flag.  Truly defeating terrorists wouldn’t have consisted of running to the mall and shopping, as George W. Bush insisted, or giving up the freedoms that made America the most attractive country to move to for the last two hundred years.  The way to judge victory or defeat in the ”war on terror” eleven years later is not to check the statistics on terrorist attacks.  The way to judge victory or defeat is to look at the nation economically, socially and politically and ask yourself are we better off or worse off?  I think the verdict is clear on that front, and I do in large part blame our childish and emotionally charged reaction to the national tragedy of 9/11.
Well here we stand in mid-December 2012, just days from the Mayan end of the world and another national tragedy has been unleashed on the land.  Most of the victims were innocent, helpless six and seven year old children that never even had the chance to fulfill their potential on this planet.  Unfortunately, just as Ron Paul told us, key parts of the Patriot Act were written and desired by certain factions well before 9/11, there is a powerful faction in the highest echelons of the elite that have wanted and continue to want to remove guns from the hands of innocent American citizens.  These people are not interested in easing violence; these folks want to disarm the public before the mathematically inevitable economic collapse occurs.  While many of these folks claim publicly that there is an “economic recovery” and happy days are just over the horizon, they know better and privately want to get all their ducks in a row before the final and horrific collapse occurs.  This is why the surveillance state is making such aggressive strides at the moment. It is also why there is a panic to remove firearms from the public.
The person who bothers me the most on this entire topic is Mayor Michael Bloomberg, of New York City.  You can tell when someone is disingenuous if they freak out over gun violence like it is the biggest issue in America today and at the same time protect the banksters and their “too big to fail” culture, which has and continues to systemically steal trillions of dollars from the poor.  This is Michael Bloomberg to a tee, so this man should have no credibility on any moral subject when he protects and coddles the most dangerous criminal organizations on this planet.  I guess there is something “liberal” about white collar crime.
 The other way to spot a hypocrite is to see whether they ever speak out about other acts of violence, or if they only open their mouths when it comes to gun incidents.  I see this attitude all over the “fake left” landscape. If someone you know, or someone in the media never decries American drone strikes that kill children regularly in the forgotten parts of the globe, yet jumps at every gun incident like it is the end of the world, that person has an agenda. That person hates guns, not necessarily violence.  They do not have a clear head in this argument.
Zerohedge.com put together an excellent article called Newtown Shooter Had Asperger Syndrome, And Some US Gun Facts, which I suggest everyone read.  They go into the fact that mental illness seems to be the determining factor in most of these shooting incidents and also points out that the deadliest school massacre in U.S. history was The Bath School Disaster, which was carried out with dynamite, not firearms.  From justfacts.com we learn that:
In 2007, there were 613 fatal firearm accidents in the United States, constituting 0.5% of 123,706 fatal accidents that year.
These emergency room visits for non-fatal firearm accidents resulted in 5,045 hospitalizations, constituting 0.4% of 1.4 million non-fatal accident hospitalizations that year.
During the years in which the D.C. handgun ban and trigger lock law was in effect, the Washington, D.C. murder rate averaged 73% higher than it was at the outset of the law, while the U.S. murder rate averaged 11% lower.
The homicide rate in England and Wales has averaged 52% higher since the outset of the 1968 gun control law and 15% higher since the outset of the 1997 handgun ban.
Since the outset of the Chicago handgun ban, the Chicago murder rate has averaged 17% lower than it was before the law took effect, while the U.S. murder rate has averaged 25% lower.
Since the outset of the Chicago handgun ban, the percentage of Chicago murders committed with handguns has averaged about 40% higher than it was before the law took effect.
The interesting thing about all of this is because of differentiated gun laws in these United States we can see how effective gun bans really are in the places where they are in effect.  The answer seems to be not very effective.  This shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, as what ends up happening with gun bans is that only criminals end up with guns.  A criminal will not obey the law, and even in the Newtown shooting case, these weren’t Adam Lanza’s guns.  He stole them from his own mother.
For the record, I’d love a world without gun violence, but as long as criminal governments have them and start wars, the people have the right as well.  The actions of one or several mentally ill people should not lead to the restriction of a Constitutionally enshrined right for the hundreds of millions of law abiding, honest citizens that use firearms responsibly.  In fact, with an estimated 300 million firearms within these United States, I’d say it’s somewhat impressive how little gun violence there is.
Unfortunately, going forward, I expect gun violence to escalate.  I don’t think this is a result of the number of guns as much the result of increased poverty and societal marginalization as a result of the economic catastrophe we are witnessing.  A direct result of criminal theft by the "too big to fail" financial institutions that gun haters like Michael Bloomberg protect and serve.  It is also the result of the increasingly sick culture that has developed in America.   One that is in many ways a reflection of the sickness and depravity at the very top of U.S. society emanating from the political and economic oligarchs.  It reminds me of the anti-drug commercial from the 1980′s where the son says to the father “from you dad, I learned it by watching you.”  It’s the same with violence in America. Our own government leads by example.
Recall the words of Justice Brandeis before jumping to emotional conclusions on the gun debate.  We already made that tragic mistake once this millennium.
Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a law-breaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.