Crying (Out)

Crying (Out)

    As a general rule, I tend to stay away from politics, at least with these posts; for one thing, so much of politics is limited to one's country and one's time and viewpoint in life.  Look back in history and one can indeed watch politics change the course of the world; but overall, the faces and names tend to fade to a few short moments or hours of decisions, some right and some wrong...all of this, after years and often decades of serving in politics.  Here in the U.S., our politics and political debates are rarely transmitted across the oceans, much as we in the U.S. don't tend to see the elections of India or Nigeria or Thailand.  A quick mention on the news of a won or lost election and what it could mean, and onward to rugby or some such other "more important" issue.  Think back just 30 days ago and what exactly happened in the world that has affected you?

    But stoic as most politicians are, one rarely sees a loosening of emotions...perhaps a smile captured here or a laugh captured there.  But generally, the mood of politicians is somber and serious, the meetings caught on camera deemed important enough to avoid any hint of a lack of focus.  Even more rare is to see a display of emotion on the other end of the scale, a genuine choking up during a speech or an outburst or a tear dotting a path along a cheek.  So when this happened the other night to the President of the United States, one had to ask what subject could be so penetrating and so affecting to allow such an important head of state --for the first time in U.S. history-- to tear up in front of a set of news cameras?  And the answer, as was revealed, was the mass gun shooting deaths of innocent, random children.

    What the President proposed, and used his executive action powers to pass, was something rather small, a call for background checks when purchasing a gun at a gun show (again, limited to the U.S.) or online, at most a 90-minute delay in the purchase.  And for the most part, gun show vendors were in favor of the measure, even if it meant a small loss of sales.  But unfortunately, this was not the case with the majority of Congress who vowed to fight the President's action citing a citizen's right to bear arms (as a side note, having to submit to a background check is already in place if purchasing a gun at an authorized gun shop; the President's action only closes the loophole that formerly allowed for no background checks if purchasing an assault weapon or gun at a gun show or online).  But this is an emotional issue in the U.S., so let's step back once again from this heated debate and try to get a glimpse of what else might be involved in this Presidential action.

    The Federal Bureau of Investigation defines a gun background check as: ...a computerized background check system designed to respond within 30 seconds on most background check inquiries so the FFLs (Federal Firearms Licensees) receive an almost immediate response...If no matching records are returned by any of the databases, the transaction is automatically proceeded.  If the NICS returns a match of the prospective firearm transferee’s descriptive information to that of record information located in any of the databases, the FFL is advised that the transaction is delayed.  While the FFL is still on the telephone, the call is placed on hold and transferred to the NICS Section in Clarksburg, West Virginia, for a quick review and evaluation by a NICS Legal Instruments Examiner (NICS Examiner).  If the record information returned by the NICS presents a valid match to the descriptive information of the prospective firearm transferee, the NICS Examiners, who have access to protected information (as opposed to Call Center personnel who do not have such access) review the information to determine if state and/or federal firearm prohibitive criteria exists...From the inception of the NICS (National Instant Criminal Background Check System) to December 31, 2014, a total of 202,536,522 transactions have been processed...Since its inception, the NICS Section has denied a total of 1,166,676 transactions...The NICS Section staff obtained approximately 30,780 final dispositions which were posted to criminal history records, and disseminated more than 18,500 dispositions to state agencies to assist in updating state records.  As of December 31, 2014, the NICS Section staff had obtained and posted approximately 890,000 dispositions.

    Five states already impose background checks no matter the venue.  And recent polls show a majority of voters support such background checks (in one poll, the figure was 92%).  So why is most of Congress so opposed to having such checks?  For one, many of the mass shootings (defined as four or more people being killed in one shooting incident) used guns purchased legally, either through friends or by their own self (in some cases, guns were taken from family members).  Also, in many of the shootings, assault weapons or longer clips of ammunition were used, all legal under the current U.S. system for gun purchases (efforts to block the sale of such items are continually defeated by Congress, a subject I have written about before).  Another argument is that background checks will do nothing to stop the mentally ill (the President's action provides an additional $500 million in funding to research this subject; from the NICS: Proposes a $500 million investment to increase access to mental health care by increasing service capacity and the behavioral health workforce.  The Department of Health and Human Services will finalize a rule removing legal barriers preventing states from reporting relevant information about people prohibited from possessing a gun for specific mental health reasons...Requires inclusion of mental health information from the Social Security Administration (SSA) in the background check system about beneficiaries who are prohibited from possessing a firearm.  To this end. SSA will issue a rule to ensure that this information is reported to NICS.  This rule will also include a waiver provision available to people seeking relief from the federal prohibition on possessing a firearm because of mental health reasons.)

    But here's where the difficult part occurs.  In an article in The New Yorker subtitled How School Shootings Catch On (by Malcolm Gladwell), the father of John LaDue tells police that: No, his son has never been diagnosed with mental illness or depression...He’s never expressed a desire to hurt anyone.  He spends a lot of time in front of his computer looking at YouTube videos.  He likes to experiment with what his father calls his “interesting devices.”  He wears a lot of black. Isn’t that what teen-agers do?  When the police interview John LaDue, he tells one of them, Tim Schroeder, he...doesn’t hear voices.  He isn’t emotional or malicious or angry or vindictive.  Schroeder asks him about violent games, and he says he hasn’t been playing them much recently.  Then they talk about violent music, and LaDue says he’s been playing guitar for eight years and has little patience for the “retarded” music of “bands like Bullet for My Valentine or Asking Alexandria or some crap like that.”  He likes Metallica: solid, normal, old-school heavy metal.  “I was not bullied at all,” LaDue tells Schroeder.  “I don’t think I have ever been bullied in my life...I have good parents.  I live in a good town.”

    If this all sounds normal, then imagine how puzzled the police were to discover what he had in mind when they arrested him: He was making Molotov cocktails, LaDue said, but a deadlier variant of the traditional kind, using motor oil and tar instead of gasoline.  From there, he intended to move on to bigger and more elaborate pressure-cooker bombs, of the sort used by the Tsarnaev brothers at the Boston Marathon bombing.  “There are far more things out in that unit than meet the eye,” he told Schroeder, listing various kinds of explosive powder, thousands of ball bearings, pipes for pipe bombs, fifteen pounds of potassium perchlorate, nine pounds of aluminum powder, and “magnesium ribbon and rust which I use to make thermite, which burns at five thousand degrees Celsius.” Schroeder asked him what his intentions were...“O.K. Sometime before the end of the school year, my plan was to steal a recycling bin from the school and take one of the pressure cookers I made and put it in the hallway and blow it up during passing period time...I would detonate when people were fleeing, just like the Boston bombings, and blow them up too.  Then my plans were to enter and throw Molotov cocktails and pipe bombs and destroy everyone and then when the SWAT comes I would destroy myself.”...In his bedroom, he had an SKS assault rifle with sixty rounds of ammunition, a Beretta 9-mm. handgun, a gun safe with an additional firearm, and three ready-made explosive devices.  On the day of the attack, he would start with a .22-calibre rifle and move on to a shotgun, in order to prove that high-capacity assault-style rifles were unnecessary for an effective school attack.

Schroeder: “Do you have brothers and sisters?” -- LaDue: “Yes, I have a sister. She’s one year older than me.” -- Schroeder: “O.K. She goes to school too?” -- LaDue: “Yes.” -- Schroeder: “She’s a senior?” -- LaDue: “She is.” -- Schroeder: “O.K. So you would have done this stuff while she was at school as well?” -- LaDue: “I forgot to mention a detail. Before that day, I was planning to dispose of my family too.” -- Schroeder: “Why would you dispose of your family? What, what have they done?” -- LaDue: “They did nothing wrong. I just wanted as many victims as possible.”

    In the case of the San Bernardino, California shootings, police found in their home five thousand rounds of ammunition, another rifle, and twelve pipe bombs, all of which were bought legally.  This is what (primarily) Republicans in Congress say is why background checks will make no difference.  But on the other side, the NICS has denied over 1,000,000 gun sales due to background checks and resistance to such checks is baffling to President Obama, something he called "insane."  In a press interview, he said that if such background checks could stop one --just one-- child's death from gun violence, it will have been worth it.  Congress replied that he was overstepping his authority and taking away guns from Americans (no such language is in the President's new action).

    On average, there was more than one mass shooting per day last year.  And each day, an average of seven children are killed by guns.  And, says The New Yorker in an opening page, "Gun laws are, on the whole, more lax now that they were on the day the twenty children and eight adults were shot dead (in the Newton school shooting)."  This is what brought the President to tears.  Currently, America's number of guns surpasses its population by 40 million, according to an aritcle in The Washington Post.  Last year, Black Friday sales for guns broke a record with nearly 200,000 guns sold in one day.  Smith & Wesson (gun manufacturer) stock was up 151% in 2015; another manufacturer, Ruger, saw its stock price soar 70%.  

   

    What might be lacking in all of this is the human side, the people affected by the shootings.  As The New Yorker so eloquently put it after the San Bernardino shootings: What stops mass shootings from seeming routine is, ultimately, the particular stories of the people who died.  Aurora Godoy and her husband eloped in 2012; she leaves behind a two-year-old son.  Tin Nguyen was planning her wedding and the life she and her fiancé would share.  Larry Daniel Kaufman’s boyfriend dropped him off at his job at the I.R.C.’s coffee shop that morning.  Michael Wetzel, a father of six, coached a soccer team of five-year-old girls that, according to the Los Angeles Times, “had a princess theme.” 

    One can always fall back on the now-tired expression from gun manufacturer Colt (and often used by members of the National Rifle Association or NRA), "Guns don't kill people; people kill people."  But as The New Yorker article reflected on the shooters in San Bernardino: The pipe bombs, which Farook and Malik appear to have assembled themselves, thankfully did not detonate, but the guns functioned just as they were built to.