Right Wing Radical Repugnicans In Frankfort Declare War On The Working Class

On February 10, 2024, I wrote in a blog post about the current Kentucky state legislature and their active effort to become the worst legislature in America.  I had promised at that time to continue to write about their effort to destroy democracy and individual constitutional rights in the state.  I have to admit that I have been remiss in not having written about them on a daily basis since they have been working on a daily basis to pull off their plan.  This post in particular is about one pending piece of legislation which is as diabolical as anything passed in any state legislature in the nation.  It is literally a declaration of war on the entire working class in the state.  It is labeled House Bill 500 and the key elements of it are listed in the image below which is from the Kentucky State AFL-CIO.  

 

 As you can see in the image above, House Bill 500 will repeal several elements of pro-labor legislation which have been considered sacrosanct all across America for more than 50 to 100 years.  Union men and women literally fought and died for these rights all across the United States and the working class has grown to assume that they would never be attacked or eliminated in a democratic country or state.  But Kentucky is no longer a democratic state.  By the phrase "Kentucky is n o longer a democratic state", I do not mean that the state is being run by Right Wing Radical Repugnicans which it is except for the governor and his appointed staff.  I mean that the Right Wing Radical Repugnicans in the state legislature and the majority of statewide elected offices have been working to destroy democracy in Kentucky on a daily basis since they gained control of the majority of the elected offices in the state.  When a state legislature even quietly considers taking away the rights of workers to have a designated lunch period, a designated break or rest period, or to receive overtime pay if they are forced to work 7 days in a row, or the other rights they want to destroy with this legislation, they are declaring war on the entire working class in the state.  And the only reasonable response to such an act must be for the working class to declare war on that state legislature and remove every one of them from office in the November 2024 election.  A vote for any Right Wing Radical Repugnican for any office in Kentucky is a vote against the working class; against teachers, nurses, EMT's, police officers, and every other blue collar worker in the state.  This is a link to House Bill 500 as described above.  You can go to this link and read the bill for yourself to see exactly what it and its sponsors intend to destroy.  This bill will literally rob every worker in the state of their individual and collective rights to have a decent, acceptable working environment.  Every legislator who votes for this bill or even speaks out loud in favor of it must be voted out of office in the November election.  We must remove these people from office all across the state and we must give Governor Andy Beshear a Democratic majority in both houses of the legislature for the last three years of his term so all the actions of this legislature can be repealed, revoked, and never again be thought of in this state.   Phillip Pratt is the original sponsor of House Bill 500 and is also sponsoring another bill, House Bill 255 which is intended to weaken child labor laws in the state.  He must be defeated and so must any other public figure at any level in the state of Kentucky who votes for, publicly speaks out in support of, or commits any act in defense of these two bills.  

The Most Unjustifiably Ambitious State Legislature In America!

 The Kentucky state legislature convened on January 2, 2024, to begin the 2024 regular session which will last until April 15, 2024, which will be a sine die day, or the date of adjournment.  They have set aside 10 days from March 29, 2024, to April 9, 2024, as days to deal with any vetoes which Governor Andy Beshear might sign.  However, sadly, very sadly, the Right Wing Radical Repugnican party has a veto proof majority in both houses and any vetoes which the governor will sign are likely to be only on bills which are so abhorrent to both the governor and common sense that he feels that it is necessary to take a public position against them.  At two links below, I will post the individual links to both the legislature's schedule and the link to the link to the page labeled 2024 Regular Session Record. That page is operated by the Kentucky Legislative Research Commission and is updated every day if necessary.  It will contain every bill being considered by the legislature, every bill passed into law, and a great deal of other information. The schedule page will tell you every day the legislature is in session and, for those of you who are willing to travel to Frankfort, it will let you plan to be there on a day when you have a possible opportunity to publicly express your opinions to the legislature by either seeking to contact a legislator, leave a message face to face with a legislative employee, or engage in public protest by exercising your right to free speech. I urge all of my readers who live in Kentucky or have a vested interest in what happens in the state to spend time on both links to learn what is being considered by the legislature and to familiarize yourself with the legislative process.  This is going to be a very destructive legislative session and will do a great deal to destroy individual constitutional rights in the state; destroy a multitude of programs intended to provide health care, education, free speech, environmental protections, and virtually any program intended to assist the lower echelons of society. 

At this time, it is too complicated a process to attempt to address every legislative bill in the session. But I will speak out here for the first time about a bill which I just learned about yesterday, February 9, 2024, which is intended to take away the right of Kentucky teachers to keep unused sick days throughout their careers and add them to their time for retirement purposes which has been a standing perk for all full time state employees for many years. This bill is labeled as Senate Bill 4.  This bill will pass the state legislature, will go to the governor's desk, and, I suspect, will be vetoed as a public moral, ethical, and political statement by the governor who is deeply committed to education in the state but, incredibly sadly, unable to prevent this attempt to further incentivize every good educator to consider either never applying for a job in Kentucky or leaving the state early in their careers to seek better jobs in states with a genuine commitment to high quality education.  I repeat, the Right Wing Radical Repugnican majority in the legislature has a veto proof majority in both houses of the legislature and all Andy  Beshear, the best governor can do is speak out and take a rational public position by refusing to sign such damaging laws into the state code.  We must support the governor and lieutenant governor, who is a former educator, in their effort to save public education in Kentucky.    

As I have time to read, research, and understand other bills being proposed in this legislative session, I will post other blog posts to this blog, may modify this particular post, and will do my best to keep my regular readers in Kentucky informed about the most dangerous bills being proposed by the legislature as they continue their effort to become the worst state legislature in the nation.  

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.