Letter to the Seattle Times about gun legislation

I am writing to provide some feedback about your opinion columns
about gun control this weekend, as well as the general tone of the
discussion. For your information, I am a moderate liberal Democrat in
most respects who also happens to be an NRA Life Member; I believe
that makes me a consistent liberal.

In general, I find the idea of firearms "discussion" in this country to be
an unfortunate oxymoron. Firearms owners possess the technical acumen
for real debate and a first person knowledge of the issues. Most gun control
advocates seem to fall more into the "guns are icky and we want all the
controls we can get" camp. Attempts to rebrand "gun control" to "gun safety"
will only have any veracity when the control side provides more data than
the equivalent of sex ed composed solely of "abstinence" instruction.
The firearms community reduced the fatal gun accident rate from 2500/year
around 1970 to about 600/year now, mostly through OUR initiative and
without significant legal requirements.

To reiterate and rephrase: we don't want to be talked at by those with no
knowledge any more than women wanted to be talked down to be
anti-choice extremists last year.

Having lived in 4 states and experienced a variety of gun controls first
hand, including their unintended consequences, I'd like to respond to
some editorials by Danny Westneat and Jenny Durkan in the Time,
this weekend.

I was most impressed by Danny Westneat's comments and I believe
that he and my representative Hope have a sincere interest in finding
intelligent discussion points. Where this breaks down is if HB 1588 includes
a requirement to record firearm type and serial numbers. A carefully
defined background check can be an excellent idea but legislation which
results in full firearms registration is unacceptable. That reading of
1588 would put it on par with California's requirement that records all
firearms transactions. This is not so much in regard to gun show transactions
as to private purchases between individuals.

An approach which could be much more acceptable to the firearms
community would be something like Iowa's pistol purchase permit,
which I experienced in the mid 1990s. It included a background check
good for a year or two pf purchases. A background check meets the
stated goals of Rep Hope, without venturing into firearms registration
territory. Another equivalent would be to exempt firearms purchases where
the purchaser possesses a valid WA state concealed pistol license.
I have personally only sold firearms to persons possessing a valid CPL,
which I believe meets my responsibility as a gun owner squarely.

I am frankly disappointed with Jenny Durkan's attempt to ingratiate
herself with the firearms community by saying "I grew up with shotguns"
and then have her go on to urge a ban on so-called "assault weapons". If Ms
Durkan grew up with guns, surely she knows that these firearms are
functionally equivalent to hunting firearms. The idea of banning rifles which are
used to kill less people than blunt objects and half the people killed with
hands and feet is patently ridiculous.

The US will never have its gun culture destroyed in the way that other
countries have. There are many millions of handguns in private hands
and tens of millions of semi-automatic rifles and normal capacity magazines
for them as well. The djinn is out of the bottle but gun rights advocates share
your concern in reducing violence.  Why not ask for our ideas?

If you ask us how instead of "splaining" to us what controls we have to
accept, we can work together to improve the situation. But we don't have
to accept any bad idea you come up with and we won't. Something like
a hundred thousand gun owners took the time to show up and protest
peacefully for our rights in state capitols around the country, two weeks
ago. We're not going anywhere.

Gun Appreciation Day - January 19, 2013

 Washington state was one of almost 50 states today that

staged huge gun rights rallies, under the Gun Appreciation

Day rubric. New channels are reporting that a couple

thousand people showed up in Olympia and I believe it!

 

Had to get a shot of my last minute sign.

As you might expect, this gal and I had a big old fist bump 

when we noticed each others signs.

A few pictures of this big and very awesome crowd.

GOP Recovery Plan

There's a familiar pattern in American politics, where a party starts getting some real power and starts thinking it can use that power to start forcing the country into their little mold. This arrogance then causes them to lose big in elections, giving them a valuable opportunity to rethink their platform. It happened in 1992 and 2010 to the Democrats...this year, it happened to the Republicans.

What does the GOP need to do to be worthy of a comeback? Here are my suggestions:

1) Do be financially conservative without appearing like a soulless dick. A balanced budget is one thing; a schmuck like Romney joking about firing people during a Recession just makes you look stupid.

2) Don't mindlessly attack whole segments of the population. Intelligent people don't try to control or influence what birth control women have access to. Intelligent men don't quibble with women about what "real" rape is and "men" who do deserve a punch in the nose, not a job with lots of power.

3) Don't take power you were given on a limited government platform and try to be the lifestyle police. Gay and lesbian people are really cool when you get to know them and our society is immeasurably richer for its diversity. That LGBT folks want to form committed relationships with legal standing is an awesome thing and not something you should even think about getting in the way of.

4) Do stand out by becoming the party that takes civil liberties more seriously and doesn't shred the Bill of Rights at every opportunity. Again, back to that small government thing. Using drones in the US, the TSA and its constant grabs for more power to stupidly embarrass senior citizens, the endless Drug War and its abominations like Asset Forfeiture...shut them down before we end up hunting you with dogs, OK?

5) Do remain supportive of the Right to Keep and Bear Arms. Speaking of civil liberties, this is one of your party's few solid, smart pro-right positions. Don't be be like California Republicans and support dumb gun laws.

These are my suggestions...make of the what you will. As a swing voter, I will only vote for the best candidates and in this election cycle, you gave me very little to support.

Ditto (Election 20XX)

Some Republicans: that Republican candidate is too liberal
Some Republicans: that Republican candidate is too conservative
Some Republicans: that Republican candidate is Ron Paul
Most Republicans: Obama is a bigger dick and that's why we should vote GOP
Most Republicans: We want less government except for all the stuff we want to ban

Some Democrats: Obama is too liberal
Some Democrats: Obama is too conservative
Most Democrats: Obama is a dick but Republicans are bigger dicks and that's why we should vote Democrat if they nominate a Honey Badger.
Most Democrats: We want less government except for all the stuff we want to ban

News media: BLAH BLAH BLAH we have something relevant to say BLAH BLAH

Most people in the US: there's no 'None of the Above' option and old reruns of Gilian's island make more sense than this crap

Don't Wait for a Leader: Become One

The Net uprising over SOPA/PIPA this week has been an interesting exercise. It *looks* as if Congress is backing down, though of course dumb laws like this are revived and become laws all the time. It looks as if Obama is opposed to them, although his recent surrender regarding the military detainment of civilians has shown that he will support the Democratic party's interests over those of the American people.

The election this Fall promises to be a gloomy one. Since we don't have a 'None of the Above' option on the ballot, our vote is a forced choice between a sellout incumbent president and a field of Republican alternatives who I'd hesitate to give a supermarket job reference for, with Ron Paul being the one possible exception.

Maybe it's time we all stopped waiting for a leader to come along and took back the reins of our own damn country. When enough Americans get pissed off, we can make the government back down. Get involved, stay informed, fight back. According to this article, 4.5 MILLION people took the trouble to sign a petition against the acts. That's huge.)

Put the government back on the short least it was released from after 9/11, a leash it has been furiously trying to put on us!

My Dream for 2012: Drop TSA From The Plane!

My dream for 2012 is to see the TSA dissolved as an entity...for the American people to grow a fucking spine and say "enough" to idiotic and offensive, yet ineffectual scenes like these:



Since the Democrats and Republicans are milking the "War on Terror" for all the power they can get, it will be up to a pissed off mob of business travelers to rebel and turn on the creeps at a TSA checkpoint:



Real cops, tired of having to tolerate sex offenders in their areas, do not interfere or perhaps support the rebels who Shanghai TSA agents onto planes...



And in 2012 sanity returns, when the newest competitive sport is dropping TSA goons from planes onto crop circles. Eventually, there is talk of making it an Olympic sport, if they don't run out of TSA "volunteers" first...

Election Season as Reality TV

Election season 2012 is now in full swing here in the US, promising yet another misspent preparation for choosing our national "leaders". In keeping with the tradition of the past 50 years or more, it will have have much more in common with a dysfunctional family holiday gathering than an intelligent, adult discussion with the goal of choosing our potentially great nation's course into the future.

The Right is likely to continue preaching the ideal of small, less intrusive government while making it a priority to legislatively micromanage peoples' in the name of morality. Their reason for wanting to turn the US into a third world country is financial. We're paying too much in taxes...cut those school and library budgets!

The Left, ever nostalgic for the 1960s, is busy occupying Wall Street now (because, um, some people there are bad with the goal of, um, making things less badder). They are likely to continue preaching the idea of more civil liberties for all, though the fourth amendment doesn't apply to taking your backpack or purse anywhere in public and they think having your privates (and your kids') felt up in airports is a small price to pay for the illusion of safety from terrorists. Their reason for wanting to turn the US into a third world country is because humans are bad for the environment.

All in all, we've become a nation best symbolized by two dumb prats in a Toyota Prius and a pickup truck driving side-by-side at 5 mph under the speed limit, both flipping each other the bird and making faces at each other. Meanwhile, the people who want the US to continue being a world leader who can compete with India and China are stuck in traffic behind them.

Where do we go from here? I see three possibilities:

1. Continue with more of the same until we become a nation whose population is made up mostly of government bureaucrats and call centers operators working for minimum wage for tech companies overseas. But if we can come home and have a few Budweisers and 150 channels of reality TV, what the heck?
2. A good old fashioned Civil War. When you look at our big dysfunctional family, it's abundantly clear that we're a country full of people who are really, REALLY sick of each other. So stop pussyfooting around and get on with it. Because the 1860s were a WHOLE lot of fun.
3. Everybody grow the fuck up, start finding common ground with people who aren't just like you and start rebuilding a society that find strength in the diversity that's a fact of life and can make us the most versatile and successful country in the world.

Which option are YOU working towards?