Behavior

To Hell With The People


Reading time – 49 seconds; Viewing time – 2:17  .  .  .

Trump says they should stall. McConnell said he will stall in the Senate. All the Republican candidates for president insist we must wait to appoint a new Supreme Court justice until the next president takes office. They hope that a Republican will win the general election in November, in which case they can get a new justice that matches their extremist notions.

So, the political rant is all about dragging feet for almost a year – until after January 20, 2017, to fill the vacancy on the court. What’s conservative about that? Can you think of a single reason – even a bad one – that the court should be limited for a year if its job is to be the the final arbiter of disputes and the interpreter of laws, as established in Marbury v. Madison over 200 years ago? Harvard Law Professor Lawrence Tribe can’t and he derided the Republicans’ behavior, saying the Republicans were, ”  .  .  .  holding the court and America hostage.” He said that’s shameful.* He’s right.

It is the obligation (i.e. requirement, duty, responsibility) of the president to nominate candidates to sit on the Supreme Court. It is the obligation of the Senate to vet the president’s candidates and approve or reject. Nowhere in the Constitution are there words suggesting that any of these required duties should be postponed for a year because it’s a presidential election year and the Republicans want to pack the court with their lapdog justices. Indeed, there have been 8 justices put on the court during election years since 1900, including Justice Anthony Kennedy, nominated by Ronald Reagan in  his last year in office.

This Republican hair-on-fire tantrum is just their current denial of reality, another flick of the middle finger to America, saying to hell with the people. The Republicans will likely cave in and hold hearings but will reject whoever President Obama nominates just to string out this process for a year and to deny President Obama another victory.

Isn’t America supposed to be better than that?

* Said to Chris Matthews on Hardball, February 15, 2016.

————————————-

Ed. note: There is much in America that needs fixing and we are on a path to continually fail to make things better. It is my goal to make a difference – perhaps to be a catalyst for things to get better. That is the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people and a robust dialogue.

ACTION STEP: Please offer your comments below and pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe.  Thanks!  JA


Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Betrayal


WWPReading time – 88 seconds; Viewing time – 3:36

One of the most difficult things to deal with is betrayal. It is the very thing that is driving the popular success of the Donald Trump f#&k you campaign. People feel sold out – betrayed – by our government and they are livid and they gravitate to a candidate spewing outrage. That sense of betrayal – the stab in the back by those we trusted – is part of the reason why treason is a capital crime.

And it is exactly why I have a problem with the Wounded Warrior Project. I’ve always had an unease about the slick commercials that show wounded vets in rehab, families with a disabled parent and they’re all smiling, a popular country singer tugging at hearts in a practiced baritone voice and a sound track that begs that we say a prayer for peace. The commercials are slick, because nowhere in the ads is there a statement about services actually delivered to vets and the benefits vets get and the recoveries they experience due to Wounded Warrior Project services, so the ads don’t quite pass the sniff test. What is really going on?

In a stunning January 27, 2016 article in the New York Times online, Dave Phillips detailed the lavish spending – hundreds of millions of dollars per year – that Wounded Warrior Project spends on its executives, not vets, for travel, dinners and hotels, its draconian employee practices and other questionable activities of the organization.

Wounded Warrior Project urges us to donate $19 per month and they give a WWP blanket as a token of thanks. That would be nice, were the monthly ding on your credit card account actually going to helping our vets. Phillips reports that, “About 40% of the organization’s donations in 2014 were spent on its overhead  .  .  . which includes administrative expenses and marketing costs  .  .  .” That means that $7.60 of every $19 monthly donation goes to executive pay and fancy hotels at $500 per night, instead of helping wounded veterans. To put that into perspective, ”  .  .  .  the Semper Fi Fund, a wounded-veterans group .  .  .  spent about 8 percent of donations on overhead.”

Ugly fact: Phillips reports that Mr. Nardizzi, CEO of Wounded Warrior Project, ”  .  .  .  was given $473,000 in compensation in 2014.” Is it okay with you that all that money went to a very healthy, never-been-in-the-military CEO instead of going to vets suffering PTSD or amputations? If you have donated to Wounded Warrior Project, are you now feeling duped?

We hold our veterans in highest esteem, as they do for us what we don’t want to do ourselves. They intentionally put themselves in harms way to protect us and they too often need our help when they come home. I’m all for supporting our veterans and I’m definitely not for supporting Mr. Nardizzi, who probably won’t be sending me a Wounded Warrior Project blanket any time soon. And that’s okay, because I think he is betraying our veterans.

CBS reported on this issue, too, and if you’d like to read the weasel words Wounded Warrior Project had to say in response, click here. Perhaps the reporting is wrong. Maybe they spend 20% on overhead, as Nardizzi claims in his rebuttal. But 8% is even better – and there’s still that sniff thing.

————————————-

Ed. note: There is much in America that needs fixing and we are on a path to continually fail to make things better. It is my goal to make a difference – perhaps to be a catalyst for things to get better. That is the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people and a robust dialogue.

ACTION STEP: Please offer your comments below and pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe.  Thanks!  JA


Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

In Service To America – Up Close and Personal


Reading time – 107 seconds; Viewing time – 3:55

The late 1960s was a deeply troubling time. Political assassinations, civil injustice and upheaval and a divisive war all had America in spasms of confusion and conflict, even down to an individual level.

I spent a large portion of my senior year in college,1967-1968, wrestling with what I would do when my 2S deferment would run out in spring. I felt a deep sense of duty to my country, yet the war in Viet Nam seemed so wrong to me that I did not want to support efforts to prosecute it – not even indirectly. My problem was solved at the end of my pre-induction physical, when a military doc processing the herd of fresh meat for that day pronounced me a 1Y.

That didn’t satisfy my sense of duty to country, though, and it didn’t take a great deal of introspection to realize that if I didn’t go to war, some poor kid from somewhere else would take my place. What did I owe that kid? What did I owe America? I’m guessing the avoidance of military duty left many others with similar feelings, a sense of lack of obligation fulfillment.

I looked into running for Congress as a way to serve my country, but after much investigation realized that I couldn’t stomach the continuous begging for campaign cash that our elected representatives have to do, so I looked for a better way to contribute. That was around the same time that I came to realize the corrosive effect big money has on our politics and on our democracy.

The influx of big money into our politics is the mother lode of our national dysfunction. Jimmy Carter calls it “legalized bribery.” It drives our insanely expensive and second rate healthcare outcomes, our too-big-to-fail banks that are once again driving us to the precipice, our continuing refusal to create and follow any energy policy for this new century (or even the last one) in order to avoid catastrophic global warming, the entrenched refusal to do anything to prevent three dozen gun murders per day – the list goes on and on, and 4 out of 5 Americans who know about the big money in our politics that drives our dysfunction want that changed. Once I saw that with sufficient clarity, not surprisingly, an idea emerged and it turned into a program.

I deliver leadership keynote presentations and workshops for a living, so it was a natural fit to harness the skills I use in the business world to educate and motivate Americans to action over our campaign finance and lobbying dishonesty. That is to say, more Americans need to know what’s really going on, because 80% of those who know will demand that we clean up this cesspool of political corruption. I set out to let them know about it.

I created Money, Politics & Democracy: You Aren’t Getting What You Want. It is a 1 hour, 15 minute presentation that outlines how we got to where we are, the mess we’ve made of our democracy such that We The People aren’t getting what we want and, most importantly, what we can do about it. The program is non-partisan and is not aligned with any political candidate for any office. It is an equal opportunity exposure of the outrageous mess that is our campaign finance and lobbying systems. It is designed to open eyes and catalyze Americans to demand change, the nation-defining transformation we need if we are to remain a democracy.

Here’s the call to action: Connect me with groups where I can deliver this message. I don’t want anything other than to have the opportunity to serve our country and change it for the better. This is about our duty – my duty – to make a difference for America. Will you help me do that?

————————————-

Ed. note: There is much in America that needs fixing and we are on a path to continually fail to make things better. It is my goal to make a difference – perhaps to be a catalyst for things to get better. That is the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people and a robust dialogue.

ACTION STEP: Please offer your comments below and pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe.  Thanks!  JA


Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Stupidity – a Reminder


Reading time – 77 seconds; Viewing time – 3:18  .  .  .

Ed. note: This post was originally published in summer, 2015, but this is the start of our primaries and it’s time to pay attention and take action.

———————————————-

Said Harlan Ellison, “The most common elements in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity.” That is cynical and harsh, yes, but there surely is an element of truth to be found in that statement. Let me offer a simple syllogism:

Doing self-destructive things is stupid.

We Americans are doing self-destructive things.

Therefore, we Americans are stupid.

Perhaps your mind is instantly pushing back on that condemnation. Fair enough, yet here is a short, off-the-top-of-my-head list to make my case:

  1. We are largely ignoring the threat of climate warming that shows us every day that the planet is going to hard boil us. Evidence of our folly: We subsidize fossil fuel industries and pay scant lip service to non-carbon based energy sources, all of which makes things worse.
  2. After nearly forty years of failure, we still practice the same supply-side, trickle down economics that has forced millions of Americans into poverty. Worse, we keep electing the same self-serving politicians who perpetuate this reverse Robin Hood of ensuring the stuffing of the pockets of the wealthy and subsistence and hopelessness for the masses.
  3. We have waged roughly 50 years of near-continuous war, largely because we have tolerated a spineless Congress that abdicates its responsibility and caves to the war profiteers.
  4. We have allowed our state governments to abdicate their financial responsibilities for the deferred pay owed to state workers. That may put millions into retirement age peril by denying them the pensions they earned.
  5. The First Amendment gives us freedom of speech and that includes the right to lobby Congress. However, we have allowed huge corporations not to just speak, but to control our laws and regulations. That has given us more guns and murders per capita than any other western nation, crops that are designed primarily to resist ever-greater applications of toxic pesticides, rather than delivering safe, nutritious food  – the list could go on and on.
  6. We have passively allowed the need for huge amounts of money to control our elections so that now we hear more about campaign fund raising than we hear from candidates about their proposals for the betterment of America.

All of that and more goes on because we fail to show up on election day. That’s self-destructive. stupid.

Your primary election is coming up soon – here’s a link to a primary election calendar. Find yours and put it on your personal calendar. Do it now.

The general election for all of us is on Tuesday, November 8, 2016. Put that date on your calendar now, too.

Then VOTE! Can’t find a great candidate? Then pick the least bad one, because failing to vote isn’t an act of rebellion: it’s surrender.

Failing to vote is, well, stupid. And you’re too smart to do that. So, show up and vote.

————————————-

Ed. note: There is much in America that needs fixing and we are on a path to continually fail to make things better. It is my goal to make a difference – perhaps to be a catalyst for things to get better. That is the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people and a robust dialogue.

ACTION STEP: Please offer your comments below and pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe.  Thanks!  JA


Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

The 2,700 Club


Reading time – 69 seconds; Viewing time – 3:04  .  .  .

Point #1

There’s plenty of data showing that moments of anger can escalate to crimes of passion and somebody’s death occurs far more easily when there is a gun present. That’s exactly what happened in the Northlake Mall in Charlotte, NC last month, when two people got into an argument and at least one of them had a gun.

The same principle is true of suicide, which is a specialized form of homicide. It’s a lot easier to pull a trigger than to jab a knife into one’s chest or slit one’s wrist. Just the daunting task of slicing into your body or imagining a wrenching death from poisoning is enough to prevent many people from ending their lives and they are later grateful there wasn’t a gun within reach.

Point #2

The TSA recently announced that almost 2,700 handguns were confiscated from carry-on luggage at U.S. airports last year. That number is up 20% from 2014, perhaps suggesting that we were 20% more stupid in 2015 than in 2014. That may be an incorrect analysis, but let’s consider who would try to get a gun past security at an airport.

Idiot #1 – An ISIL operative bent on taking down an airliner and killing people on the ground in a seventh century leap for martyrdom.

Idiot #2 – A true-blue American with absolute faith and belief in the Second Amendment and who is standing up for his right to do stupid things. His back is straight, eyes alert and ahead, proud to be a pistol packing cowboy believing himself to be a direct inheritor of the intent of the Founders, as he passes through the body scanner without his boots.

Idiot #3 – “Oh, yeah. I forgot it was in there.” I had a discussion recently with a TSA agent at O’Hare, who told me that’s what they commonly hear when they find some fool’s gun in his luggage. They forgot they had a loaded Smith & Wesson in their suitcase? Forgot?!!! Actually, it doesn’t matter if they forgot. Trying to get a gun past security is a crime and each of the 2,700 were quickly given an opportunity to meet new and – let’s say, interesting – people at the local slammer.

Therefore,

Every one of these idiots is a form of terrorist, regardless of his hijacking intent. That includes the one who is the NRA’s “good guy with a gun” and who thinks he’s going to gun down bad guys on an airplane. In reality, that scenario is the Northlake Mall shooting all over again. It’s the crime of passion or the depression-driven attempt at suicide that turns into someone being murdered solely because there was a gun handy.

2,700 fools with guns is a terrible statistic, because one of those guys who didn’t get caught could have been on your flight with his  loaded 9mm. Next time you go through screening at the airport, instead of being annoyed by the delay, thank the TSA folks for doing a great job to protect you.

————————————-

Ed. note: There is much in America that needs fixing and we are on a path to continually fail to make things better. It is my goal to make a difference – perhaps to be a catalyst for things to get better. That is the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people and a robust dialogue.

ACTION STEP: Please offer your comments below and pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe.  Thanks!  JA


Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

The System Is Not Supposed to Work


NY Times 12-19-15On December 19, 2015 The New York Times ran an opinion piece by Kevin Baker entitled Political Party Meltdown, which put perspective and a smidgen of clarity to the opaque and toxic swamp that is our Congress. I urge you to read his insightful essay now. Then have a look at the exchange between my friend Dan Wallace and Kevin Baker. Whatever comes up for you in reviewing the words of these smart and informed guys, put them in the Comments section below. Help us all to learn even more. And perhaps the frustration we feel over our dysfunctional and often non-functional government just might abate just a bit.

———————-

Dan Wallace wrote:

Kevin – I loved your essay in the NYT, and I had a thought/question on which I’d love your opinion.

I worked for a moderate Republican senator in the early 80’s (about when I think the shift from 4 “parties” to 2 really started – the Reaganites were very intolerant of anyone to their left). I left Capitol Hill believing that the Founders had intentionally designed the institutions of the Federal government, and especially Congress, to require lots of horse trading because that would ensure that resources were apportioned reasonably fairly over time. It seems to me that it worked beautifully as long as resources were growing, which is all the Founders could have imagined they would do, but that it stopped working around 1975, which is the last year the US ran a trade surplus and therefore, I would argue, marks the point at which the US actually became intrinsically non-competitive in the global economy. Our political institutions simply have no capacity to take things away from people, which is really what they’ve needed to do for 40 years, and so they have behaved in a very distorted fashion. The main form of distortion has been to paper over our lack of competitiveness with massive deficit spending. “Conservatives” (and remember, my instincts are those of a moderate Republican, not a liberal Democrat) don’t like to remember this, but the deficit spending was kicked off in earnest by Reagan. We were running deficits of $50-60 billion/year until the tax cuts passed, at which point they jumped to about $350 billion/year, which is pretty much where they’ve stayed ever since, except for ’98-99 surpluses, and 2008-present, when they’ve been closer to $1 trillion/year. And the latter, I think, can be seen as simply one piece of reckoning for the can having been kicked down the road by institutions (not just people) who intrinsically don’t have the capability to do anything else.

The discourse certainly was much more civil in 1983 than it is now, but my experience tells me that Congress was no better at actually solving a difficult problem then than it is now. It just failed at lower volume.

That’s my 30,000-foot view of how this has played out. I would be REALLY interested to know where you agree and disagree.

Warm regards,

Dan Wallace

————–

Kevin Baker’s reply:

Dear Dan,

Thanks for reading—and writing.  You make some interesting points. Just some quick reactions to them:

—While I’m hardly an expert on them, I’m not sure that the Founders, for all their virtues, really did foresee a lot of constructive horse trading.  They never seemed that at home with a party system; I sometimes [think] they envisioned high-minded debates in which the overwhelming logic and beauty of their arguments swept all away.  When that situation failed to materialize, they turned immediately to scandal sheets and pistols.

—I don’t think I’d agree that our institutions are incapable of taking things away from people.  I think Americans have a generally good record of sacrifice in times of war, and I would say that decades of generally stagnant incomes mean that many people have had a lot taken away from them. For that matter, the minimum wage still is not the equivalent of what it was in 1968, and didn’t the famous Reagan-O’Neill deal on “entitlements” entail a payroll tax increase on the vast majority of Americans?

—Did the trade deficit really mean we were inherently unable—or less able—to compete in the world economy?

I would question that.  I think the increased competition with the likes of Japan and Western Europe then was generally a good thing, which forced our companies and workers to get better.

But competing with a host of other nations, all over the world, that employed such tactics as using child labor, outlawing unions, banning civil liberties, and erecting tariff barriers?  I think that was, and is, crazy—and also, as I’m sure you know, very much an anomaly in our history.

William McKinley, for instance, would never have contemplated the idea that Americans should have competed against, say, labor from Italy in his time, much less from China.  But now, for some reason, both parties generally embrace it.

—Beyond that, I’d say our economy, and our society, both have deeper structural problems.  My thoughts on this are far from original, but in general I would say that these include doing much too little to support wages for the 70 percent of the population who still do not get a bachelor’s degree; shifting more and more of the tax burden onto the working and middle classes; and so structuring tax codes and financial regulations [such] that, more and more, the best minds of our nation are lured into the mere manipulation of money.

I don’t think most people aren’t sacrificing enough.  Instead, they are in overdrive:  scrambling to work 2-3 jobs, working desperately to send their kids to private schools and universities that charge ungodly amounts of money, and at the same time trying to take care of aged parents who now live longer than ever, with less and less capacity.

It’s a big reason why, I think, the establishment narrative from both parties—work hard, obey the rules, get an education, and you’ll be fine—seems increasingly absurd to them.

Anyway, nice corresponding with you.  Just out of curiosity, which Republican did you work for?  Many in my family were Rockefeller Republicans, and I’ve always had a certain admiration for old Rocky.

All the best,
Kevin Baker

————————————-

Ed. note: There is much in America that needs fixing and we are on a path to continually fail to make things better. It is my goal to make a difference – perhaps to be a catalyst for things to get better. That is the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people and a robust dialogue.

ACTION STEP: Please offer your comments below and pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe.  Thanks!  JA


Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Not Politics – Except It Is


Reading time – 39 seconds; Viewing time – 1:53  .  .  .

It’s just a little over 20 years since O.J. Simpson’s murder trial. In a country of continuing homicides, we fixated on that murder of two innocent people, surely in part due to the celebrity of the accused. The verdict of innocent enraged whites and was celebrated by blacks.

A short time after that verdict was announced I asked a black friend to help me to understand how the American people could look at the same evidence and arrive at two polar opposite conclusions. I recall his worlds – I think – exactly. He said, “Black people aren’t stupid. We know he’s guilty. We just don’t want the system to beat down another black man.” I don’t think he could have been any clearer and I continue to thank him for opening my eyes.

The Simpson trial was also a turning point in how we Americans deal with reality. In a stunningly prescient article in The New Yorker by Adam Gopnik published at the time of the trial he wrote,

“Put simply, it is that we, as Americans, no longer believe in the integrity of events; that is, we are no longer able to accept events at their own value—horrifying or funny or just sordid—but must see them as episodes in a drama, by some unknown author. The growth of the paranoid style of explanation—the belief that the truth is hidden beneath the surface of events—has become absolute.”

Which is to say, we no longer trust ourselves to evaluate what is right before our eyes. We even rely on someone else to spoon feed us our opinions. If you doubt any of that, just watch any cable news channel. That makes success in calling upon people to think for themselves doubtful.

Yet thinking for ourselves is exactly what is needed right now.

————————————-

Ed. note: There is much in America that needs fixing and we are on a path to continually fail to make things better. It is my goal to make a difference – perhaps to be a catalyst for things to get better. That is the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people and a robust dialogue.

ACTION STEP: Please offer your comments below and pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe.  Thanks!  JA


Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Change?


Professor Alan King

Professor Alan King

Reading time – 21 seconds  .  .  .

Alan King was a brilliant comedian. He brought sophistication to the discussion of street level life and backed it with his mostly undisclosed intellectualism, as he poked a stick in the eye of human foolishness.

We are faced today with great challenges and it’s plain to see that they are of this day. These are modern problems demanding answers, right? Well, yes and no.

Have a look at some instruction about the 1980s middle-east from Alan King. Once again we see that:

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Thanks to FA for pointing out the Alan King tutorial.

————————————-

Ed. note: There is much in America that needs fixing and we are on a path to continually fail to make things better. It is my goal to make a difference – perhaps to be a catalyst for things to get better. That is the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people and a robust dialogue.


Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

What Are We Becoming?


Confederate Battle FlagReading time – 46 seconds; viewing time – 2:07  .  .  .

We’re seeing many more Confederate stars and bars, now that Donald Trump has assumed the mantle of Leader Of the Crazy Opposition (acronym: LOCO). These are the terminally angry people who want to return America to their America, whatever it is they imagine that was. But let’s check out what that really means.

There are a number of things that conservatives hold dear and value more and in different ways than do liberals. One is loyalty.

While we all value loyalty, it’s a huge value for righties and the further right you look, the more fervently you’ll find that loyalty is embraced. But the original stars and bars waving Confederates were so insanely reactive with their “You can’t tell me what to do!” tantrums that they crossed the line and made themselves traitors. There is no loyalty in that. It is the ultimate betrayal.

Conservatives also place huge value on individual freedom. Who wouldn’t? But the original Confederates believed in individual freedom only for themselves and they demanded slavery – the complete lack of freedom – for millions of people. They had good reasons for that, of course. It gave them a sense of power to have that kind of control over others. Far more important, though, is the financial gain they received by not having to pay laborers to work their fields. Reasonably translated, they sold their declared personal value of individual freedom, sold out themselves, for money. They chased their greed, no less than our 1% chase their greed today. That’s ironic, because today’s stars and bars wavers hate today’s greedy 1%-ers for doing what the original Confederates did.

So, please, if you want to wave your Confederate flag, don’t tell me that it’s about individual liberty or freedom or loyalty. The damned thing stands for slavery, greed and disloyalty  .  .  .  and the millions of Americans motivated to wave that flag are supporting Donald Trump.

What are we becoming?

————————————-

Ed. note: There is much in America that needs fixing and we are on a path to continually fail to make things better. It is my goal to make a difference – perhaps to be a catalyst for things to get better. That is the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people and a robust dialogue.

ACTION STEP: Please offer your comments below and pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe.  Thanks!  JA


Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Crimes of Passion and Packing Heat


Northlake Mall Shooting

Northlake Mall, Charlotte, NC

Reading time – 53 seconds; viewing time – 2:56   .  .  .

Crimes of passion are exactly that: crimes of passion. When the fight-or-flight instinct kicks in, the amygdala is screaming out imperatives at about 10 times the rate of our analytical, logical pre-frontal cortex. In other words, we act solely in response to the passion of the moment and we slay that dragon and obliterate the danger before us. And we believe that imperative is justified if we see ourselves as having been victimized. Have a look at Arthur C. Brooks’ brilliant piece in the December 20 New York Times for more on that.

On December 24, 2015, some pistol packing fool got his impassioned conflict with another person violently solved in the Northlake Mall in Charlotte, NC. What might have prevented that from happening?

The NRA says that we need more “good guys” to be packing heat in order to alleviate the slaughter that continues unabated in America. They push back against any attempt to promote gun safety, ideas like universal background checks and prohibiting violent felons from owning guns. Their push-back is most commonly anchored in the claim that such laws would not have deterred shootings like those at Sandy Hook Elementary School and the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, CA. It’s a stupid argument, but let’s apply its logic to the North Carolina mall shootings and another from not long ago.

More people packing heat in that mall would not have stopped that slaughter because it happened way too fast. In fact, more people packing heat likely would have made it unclear who the bad guys were and even more innocent people would likely have been injured or killed by ignorant shooters.

Think next about the movie theater in Aurora, CO where in 2012 that idiot opened fire during the Batman movie. What do you suppose would have happened if a few dozen other movie goers were carrying guns? The additional carnage that would have been created by the NRA’s so-called “good guys carrying guns” and doing their version of the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, but this time in a dark movie theater, would have been horrific. And they wouldn’t have even have stopped the shooter from killing and wounding people.

Now let’s apply the NRA’s “it wouldn’t have stopped certain killings” logic to these shootings and their push-back against gun safety measures.

More people packing heat would not have been useful in stopping either the killing at the North Carolina mall or in the movie theater in Aurora, CO. In fact, they would have made things much worse in both cases. Therefore, according to the NRA’s own logic, we should not have more “good guys” carrying guns.

Quod Erat Deonstrandum.

Dear NRA: Stick that up your Glock.

————————————-

Ed. note: There is much in America that needs fixing and we are on a path to continually fail to make things better. It is my goal to make a difference – perhaps to be a catalyst for things to get better. That is the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people and a robust dialogue.


Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

1 … 61 62 63 64 65 … 78  Scroll to top