Counter? I hardly knew 'er. (Questioning a current theme)

Anyone else interested in the Big Picture, where addressing violence is concerned?

The momentum to curb violence in our nation built after recent mass shootings, with the Media busy, as usual, taking its opportunity to spin the discussion in directions that preempt rational consideration in order to polarize (and divide) the People. Whether they frame a position as absurd to make it less popular, attack the individual rather than the argument, or claim a topic is sacred to avoid its exploration - the Media are equipped with tactics the Public fails to recognize. 

I thought it important to fact-check what our elected representatives and (failed) Fourth Estate, have asserted lately and to counter a few points so prevalent in our current gun control debate. Here are a few fallacies used in the discussion on gun violence.  

...and a little Background...

This article analyzes mass shootings in American as far back as the 1930s and presents interesting bases for relevant discussion:

"The first point I want to draw your attention to is that roughly half of shooting rampages end in suicide anyway. What that means is that police are not ever in a position to stop most of them. Only the civilians present at the time of the shooting have any opportunity to stop those shooters. That’s probably more important than the statistic itself. In a shooting rampage, counting on the police to intervene at all is a coin flip at best.
Second, within the civilian category 11 of the 17 shootings were stopped by unarmed civilians. What’s amazing about that is that whether armed or not, when a civilian plays hero it seems to save a lot of lives. The courthouse shooting in Tyler, Texas was the only incident where the heroic civilian was killed. In that incident the hero was armed with a handgun and the villain was armed with a rifle and body armor. If you compare the average of people killed in shootings stopped by armed civilians and unarmed civilians you get 1.8 and 2.6 but that’s not nearly as significant as the difference between a proactive civilian, and a cowering civilian who waits for police.
So, given that far less people die in rampage shootings stopped by a proactive civilian, only civilians have any opportunity to stop rampage shootings in roughly half of incidents, and armed civilians do better on average than unarmed civilians, wouldn’t you want those heroic individuals who risk their lives to save others to have every tool available at their disposal?"

As well, it is extremely important to understand that observable studies show that greater gun ownership is inversely related with higher levels of violent crime. The Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy presented an analysis concluding that:

."...The burden of proof rests on the proponents of the more guns equal
more death and fewer guns equal less death mantra, especially
since they argue public policy ought to be based on
that mantra. To bear that burden would at the very least
require showing that a large number of nations with more
guns have more death and that nations that have imposed
stringent gun controls have achieved substantial reductions
in criminal violence (or suicide). But those correlations are
not observed when a large number of nations are compared
across the world." - Kates & Mauser

 With that said, let's explore the possible actions the executive is looking to take.

"Assault Weapons"

First... a distinction:
ANY weapon used in an assault is, therefore, an ASSAULT WEAPON (meaning your knitting needles, your forks, your knives).  

An "assault rifle," however...

"...as explained by the Associated Press Stylebook and Briefing on Media Law, is a 'rifle that is capable of being fired in fully automatic and semi-automatic modes, at the user’s option.'
...[these gunmen] did not use a firearm that can be fired in fully automatic mode. Instead, [they] used an 'assault weapon,' which per the AP Stylebook, is strictly 'semi-automatic' and is 'not synonymous with assault rifle.' This confusing distinction in terms is not by accident. The term 'assault weapon,' which sounds like a synonym for 'assault rifle,' was introduced into the gun control debate in the 1980′s and popularized with the expressed intent of confusing the public into thinking that certain semi-automatic guns are machine guns.' " (from hotair.com)

 Although even discussing these guns seems impotent in addressing the point (ANY gun beats NO gun), let's look at what role "military-style" rifles played in these mass shootings:

- After the Aurora theater shooter began shooting with a shotgun, he switched to an AR-15, which jammed because of its 100-round after-market drum magazine. When that failed, he used a more reliable Glock pistol. 

- When the Newton shooting was first reported, I watched police say the shooter used two handguns to end lives, and that both the Bushmaster and a shotgun were found in the trunk of his car after the gunman killed himself. I was shocked to hear the media later claim a rifle was the murder weapon for (nearly?) all the victims. (Does anyone else question why the narrative changes over and over in these stories? Why, in other crimes, do police photograph and carefully remove crime scene evidence, but somehow there seem to be so may guns all over campus that they aren't sure which guns were his or where they were found? I guess the million hours of CSI haven't added much to viewers' critical thinking toolbox.)

- More importantly, school shooters are in such close proximity to their (mostly tiny) victims that almost ANY gun would kill. A handgun would have been just as effective, if not easier to conceal and wield. 

Another interesting assertion is that:
"the M16 platform (and the semi-automatic only AR15s) are not optimized to kill, they are optimized to wound. The U.S. military strategy for decades was that if you wound one enemy soldier, you actually take three off the battle field because two more enemy soldiers help their wounded comrade" (from The Truth About Guns.com)

Background Checks

The Newtown shooter's mother would have certainly passed a background check. A murderer probably isn't concerned with whether he's using only those weapons legally available to him. And a point about the "gun show loophole:" it's irrelevant in crime.

"A 1997 U.S. Justice Department survey of 14,285 state prison inmates found that among those inmates who carried a firearm during the offense for which they were sent to jail, 0.7% obtained the firearm at a gun show, 1% at a flea market, 3.8% from a pawn shop, 8.3% from a retail store, 39.2% through an illegal/street source, and 39.6% through family or friends" (from JustFacts.com)

Ammunition Limits

Now our elected officials are proposing a limit and/or electronic record of ammunition purchased? Well, that's interesting... because the government itself has been one of the largest purchaser of ammunition in the past year. If the National Weather Service, the Social Security Administration, and other government agencies found it urgent to spend the past 6 months amassing 1.6 billion rounds of hollow-point ammunition - shouldn't the People feel justified in meeting their own needs for safety as they see fit?

"When governments fear the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny."

 -Thomas Jefferson

  Limiting Magazine Capacity

...Doesn't really touch the issue. Anyone practiced in shooting a handgun knows how easy and quick it is to change a magazine. Two? Three seconds? But, perhaps that would be long enough for a defender to overcome a shooter delayed by reloading a magazine. Which makes me wonder...

Who might that defender be? So far, I have been told by teachers and parents that teachers are already asked to do so much, we can't expect them to step up to defend students with their own lives. So, the time it takes to change a magazine is rather insignificant in comparison with the 8 to 30 minutes.

Also... 10 rounds make it a "high capacity" magazine?? Refer to above discussion of "assault weapons" to recall that there are those who manipulate public opinion by substituting their own definition for reasonable ones. (See page one of Edward Bernays' "Propaganda" if you doubt there are those who intend to do this.)

  Armed Guards 

Today's controversy surrounding the NRA's most recent ad seems to ask the viewer to be "disgusted" rather than examine the facts asserted. In the ad, the NRA calls the president a hypocrite who wants to encourage gun-free zones in our nation's schools, while his children are protected by 11 armed guards at their own schools. 

This media reaction to the ad does indeed ignore the president's recent signage of a bill affording lifetime secret service protection to all former presidents and first ladies (and children, up to age 16).

How does this actually address the problem that initiated this discussion - violent individuals able to murder people who are trapped like fish in a barrel?

ALL of the children killed in Newtown were first graders aged 6 or younger. Classrooms of a certain grade level are usually clustered together in elementary schools. It is likely, then, that this gunman spent most (or all) of his time shooting children in a small area of the school. He inflicted severe damage without needing to wander far into the school.
Standing unopposed with a mind made up to destroy human life - he was given free reign to kill. Even an armed guard alerted to his presence would have had to make his way to the gunman from wherever he was on campus. Until he arrived, the shooter would have taken life after life.  

Will anyone - can anyone - counter the assertion that "the only thing that can stop a bad person with a gun is a good person with a gun?"

In each and every case, a person carrying out this type of massacre only stops when he is either apprehended by an armed official, forced to turn his gunfire on an armed individual shooting at him, or when he decides to shoot himself.  

Again, sticking to the point at issue, the most effective way to immediately address school safety where gun violence is concerned is to arm and train teachers.

The Upshot

 I have to wonder why assault weapons, size of magazine, and number of ammo are being asserted as a solution to the problem of murderers having free reign to kill unarmed individuals.

The Second Amendment IS NOT about hunting. What a person "needs" in self-defense is not a matter we allow our elected government to choose. 

"The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government."   - Thomas Jefferson

{History break}
 "We" lined out permissions we gave our representatives in this the agreement we made that constituted a republic made up of many people who disagreed but painstakingly worked to boil down their concerns to what were in essence their common needs to protect:

Consult any history for assurance that government is not inherently good - "[the price of...] liberty unto man is eternal vigilance." - John Curran 

High Note

I am truthfully thankful to live in a time and place in which so many people have a heart that can be deeply affected by the loss of lives they never personally knew. It requires much of a person to reckon with the unsavory side of Life, and accepting responsibility for how we respond to others' actions can be intensely uncomfortable. Spurred by deep emotional responses to these events in our modern society, it is our responsibility to decide what we, individually, will do when violence arrives in our lives unexpectedly.