Local Second Amendment Sanctuary Acts

In recent weeks, we have seen a plethora of county governments, mostly in the rural south and southeast or the far west pass, no doubt at the behest of the NRA, what they are calling local Second Amendment Sanctuary Acts.  At the time of this post, Kentucky, Virginia, West Virginia, Florida, Texas, Tennessee, and several states in the southwest have passed these asinine local ordinances which state most often that "local officials will not enforce federal laws which infringe on the second amendment".  The governor of Virginia actually was forced to utilize a short term ban on guns on state capital property recently in order to protect innocent potential victims of self-described gun rights activists who marched on the capital to oppose the possibility that the Democratically controlled state legislature would pass some form of rational gun control legislation in order to help control gun violence.  Yet, several thousands of these Right Wing Radical domestic terrorists marched on the capital which had been temporarily fenced off and was being protected by several hundred state police officers.  Call it what they will, acts like this by supporters of unrestricted gun ownership are acts of terrorism, their perpetrators are domestic terrorists,  and are in direct violation of the Preamble of The US Constitution when it says "We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."  The acts of these people in pursuit of self-centered, irrational, and ignorant local ordinances are acts which endanger "the general welfare and domestic tranquility" by promoting the ignorant belief that the Second Amendment allows any one who wishes to, regardless of their mental impairment or arrest record to own, openly carry, and endanger their neighbors with any weapon they choose.  These people and these acts are also in direct conflict with the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution which states "This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding."  Eventually, the US Supreme Court will be forced to issue an opinion concerning one or more of these local ordinances which will make all of them unconstitutional.  But until a case somewhere, brought to the courts by people more intelligent, patriotic, and altruistic than these idiots who are supporting this local stupidity, these acts and their supporters will endanger the general public over a large portion of the country.  Any public official who refuses to enforce federal law is immediately in guilty of obstruction of justice and malfeasance of duty and should be fired, arrested, prosecuted, convicted, and imprisoned. 

As a nation, we are facing the most horrible time in our history, at least since World War II.  Russia and Vladimir Putin have placed a TRAITOR in the White House and that TRAITOR, under the pressure of impeachment, is attempting to foment domestic terrorism by people like these who are supporting this gun rights terrorism.  His generally poorly educated supporters are falling for his lies by the thousands. They listen for every rant on Twitter from this career criminal and hope to be able to defend him and his crimes with whatever weapons they own.  This is an incredibly dangerous time in America.  We are the laughing stock of the civilized world.  We are literally facing an attempt by these Right Wing Radicals to destroy law and justice in this country and replace it with a society which has already begun to make Old Dodge City look a daycare center.  If the forces of reason and true constitutional democracy do not succeed in convicting TRAITOR Trump in his impeachment trial in the senate and removing him from the scene of his three year crime spree, we will literally lose this country. Russia will have won and will have fulfilled the words of Nikita Khrushchev when he said, “We will take America without firing a shot. We do not have to invade the U.S. We will destroy you from within...."  Now is the time for all decent, rational citizens of this country to stand up for the US Constitution, representative democracy, and the last great hope for the entire world, American Democracy. 

A Call For Gun Control In Appalachia In 1941

The attached news story below was taken from the Floyd County Times of April 10, 1941, just a little over 78 years ago.  I was quite pleased to find it in a county newspaper anywhere in Appalachia but even more pleased to find it in the primary local newspaper I read as a boy in Floyd County Kentucky, the county in which I spent the first 6 years of life and one which has played a significant role in the lives of myself and my entire extended family since the day my third great-grandfather Aulse Hicks immigrated to the area from Western Virginia sometime between 1790 and 1810.

Floyd County Times, January 2, 1941

In his charge to the Floyd Circuit Court grand jury a few days before the story made the paper, Floyd Circuit Judge Henry Stephens, Jr. stated "Reduce the carrying of pistols, and you reduce murder. I desire that the grand jury investigate all  classes and kinds of crime and especially the carrying of concealed deadly weapons.  Thousands of dollars could be saved in Kentucky through the circuit courts, if the law was such that the first offense of carrying a concealed deadly weapon was punishable by from one to five years in the state reformatory."  Judge Stephens was correct in this statement in 1941 and he is still correct today more than 78 years after he said these words in his charge to the grand jury.

Five of the twenty worst states in America, based on their per capita gun deaths by 100,000 citizens, are wholly or partially in Central and Southern Appalachia.   Alabama, whose Northeastern region in the area of Sand Mountain, is the fourth worst state in the union for gun deaths with 17.6 gun deaths annually per 100,000 citizens.  Tennessee, where nearly the entire eastern half of the state is Appalachian, is 10th worst with 16.4 gun deaths yearly per 100,000 residents.  West Virginia, which is wholly in Central and Southern Appalachia, is 13th worst with 14.3 gun deaths per 100,000 citizens.  Kentucky, which has nearly all the eastern half of the state in Central and Southern Appalachia, is 17th worst in the nation with 13.7 deaths for each 100,000 potential living victims in the commonwealth.  Georgia, whose northeastern counties are in Central and Southern Appalachia, has 12.6 gun deaths per 100,000 residents and is the 19th worst state in the nation for gun deaths.  These are deplorable and indefensible statistics if we are honest about the issue of the horrible need for comprehensive federal gun control legislation.  The number of lives which could be saved all across the nation, not just in Appalachia, with such legislation would be worth far more than enough in human life, legal costs, and total lives saved to more than justify the uproar which such rational and well justified humane legislation would engender.  The 2nd Amendment does not guarantee the right to unrestricted ownership of weapons as groups such as the NRA would have you believe.  It guarantees the right to "well regulated" ownership of guns and, if we are honest, we know that guns have never been well regulated in America.  It is long past time for us to work to make Judge Stephens' dream come true.   

The Second Amendment As It Is Written

On January 3, 2013, I wrote and published a post entitled One Appalachian Man's Opinion Of Gun Control which since that time has consistently been one of my most read and most commented upon posts on this blog.  Naturally, there have only been two opinions expressed about that blog post, either I am a genius or I am an idiot who wants to forever damage the 2nd Amendment to the Constitution and have the government take away every gun everybody in America owns.  Since that post was written, the four worst mass shootings in American history have taken place.  The post was actually written in response to the Newtown School Shooting on December 14, 2012, which killed 28 people if we include the shooter and his mother. It is only natural to include all the dead after a mass shooting.  But we still do not  have a consistently used and solidly defined understanding of what constitutes a mass shooting.  The verbiage varies from at least three victims shot but not necessarily killed to three or four dead shooting victims.  Since many murder suicides involve spouses or life partners and are generally limited to two dead, most murder suicides do not fall into anyone's commonly used definition of a mass shooting unless they involve several other victims besides the shooter such as children or other relatives.  Another truly bizarre quirk in our examinations of mass shootings and other forms of mass murder such as bombings, arson, and vehicular homicide is that the media and police almost never use the words "terror", "terrorism", or "act of terror" unless the event is perpetrated by a non-white, non-citizen, non-Christian who has expressed some belief in some form of government or religion which is not prevalent in American society.  It is my considered professional opinion, both as a writer and a retired mental health professional, that all mass murders are acts of terror.  No one with good sense would ever approach a survivor of such an act or a relative of one of the victims and argue the point that an event which killed four or more victims was not an act of terror.  All murders, all attacks of any form which kill or seriously injure multiple victims are terrorizing to the victims, witnesses, other intended victims, survivors, first responders, and family members of those murdered or injured.  As a society we need to broaden our definitions of terrorism and acts of terror.  If Porky Pig became enraged due to rabies or having eaten poisonous food and marched into his local mall and killed, maimed, or otherwise injured a dozen people we should and probably would call it an act of terror because Porky Pig is not like the rest of us or his human victims.  But if a Right Wing Religious lunatic who is Caucasian, a self professed "Christian", and an auxiliary deputy  in his local sheriff's department lost his mind and shot and murdered his wife and three children, it is highly unlikely that any form or media or any police spokesperson would call that an act of terror. That is a serious flaw in our reporting, policing, and analytical perspectives.  We must recognize that terror and terrorism do not need to be committed by a Muslim, an African American, an immigrant, or a Rastafarian in order to be terrorism.  Any murder, whether by gunfire, bombing, automobile, stabbing, or poisoning terrorizes both the victim and her family and friends as well as any witnesses to the act.  

I regularly refer to the website Gun Violence Archive when I am seeking information about gun violence, mass murder, or murder statistics in America.  They are the best, most impartial, and most accurate website in the nation in the field of gun violence statistics.  As I am writing this blog post on January 2, 2018, there have already been 138 gun violence incidents with 50 deaths and 83 injuries in less than two days in America.  If you do not believe or understand it, that is far too many incidents, deaths and injuries in what is supposed to be the most civilized country in the world.  In Australia, the country most people commonly think of as being a great deal like America, there have been no mass shootings since a wide ranging change in their laws following the worst mass shooting in the country in 1996 which killed 35 people and wounded 23 more.  Strong gun laws worked in Australia.  They will work in the United States and the 2nd Amendment gives the judicial and legislative branches of government full power to regulate guns and their ownership and usage in America.  

There is something deeply flawed morally, ethically, legally, and religiously in any country which will not take appropriate actions to prevent the murder of 15,000 people and the unnecessary maiming of 30,000 others a year.  The language of the 2nd Amendment is this:
"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

The National Rifle Association has managed, by spending hundreds of millions of advertising dollars and buying the support of thousands of elected officials, to perpetrate the mistaken belief that the government does not have the right to regulate gun  ownership.  The US Constitution is a living document and the US Supreme Court has the right to interpret that document to fit the needs of a changing world.  The phrase "well regulated militia" gives the courts and legislatures full rights to regulate all guns, gun ownership and use, and all auxiliary paraphernalia related to their use.  Both guns and automobiles can be and are used to commit murder, mayhem, and mass injuries and death all across America.  We regulate automobiles and their use from sea to shining sea and we regularly change the laws to meet the needs of the country as is taking place at this time in response to self-driving automobiles. Every state in the union requires registration, insurance, and a drivers license to own and operate a motor vehicle.  But anytime any courageous legislator or judge steps to the plate and makes an honest attempt to regulate guns a public outcry occurs and the National Rifle Association and its well trained members scream, yell, lobby, and threaten to riot in order to prevent life saving progress.  As a nation, we need to re-educate our populace and our legislators to the need for comprehensive federal gun control legislation.  We need to replace any elected official who will not support that effort.  We need to fund organizations which are fighting to improve gun control legislation and we need to lobby both individually and collectively until that legislation is enacted.  

I propose the following changes to US gun control laws and I propose that they be enacted immediately.  However, I am not naive enough to believe this can happen today, tomorrow, or even this year.  But it must happen step by step. 

1. All guns must be required to be registered.
2. All transfers in gun ownership must require a background check conducted by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, and that should include transfers of ownership within families in cases of estate management and gifting.  
3. Those background checks must include all sales at gun shows.  The gun show loophole must be eliminated.
4. All gun ownership should require the owner to complete and pass a basic gun safety course with testing as a requirement to pass the course. 
5. Gun ownership by convicted felons, the mentally ill, and those convicted of any crime of violence should be illegal.
6. All fully automatic guns should be illegal in the country except for use and ownership by legally constituted police agencies functioning as an arm of a federal, state, city, or county government.   
7. All appurtenances such as bump stocks and modified firing mechanisms which can be used to make a gun fully automatic should be illegal. 
8. All parts required to compose a working gun capable of firing, sometimes known as ghost guns, should be illegal for sale unless they carry a registered serial number and require the same permits, clearances and record keeping as complete guns.   
9. The creation of all firearms or any other mechanism capable of firing a bullet or missile of any kind via the use of printers should be illegal with a minimum prison sentence upon conviction.
10. No magazines holding more than five rounds should be legal.  
11. Armor piercing or "cop killer" ammunition must be illegal. 
12. Ownership of all forms of military weapons such as grenade launchers, flame throwers, and rocket launchers should be illegal.
13. All guns seized in the commission of a crime should be impounded by the police and courts and held until the complete legal process in the case has been completed up to and including the expiration of appeals timelines.  Upon conviction and expiration of the appeals process, all weapons used in the commission of a crime should be required to be destroyed the state police in the state in question. 

     I realize most of the ideas expressed in this essay are not going to be well received by supporters of unrestricted gun ownership.  That is fine with me.  We, as a nation, must become willing to listen to the uproar until such time as education and legislation have eliminated the need for these actions.