How to Spot a Hypocrite in the Gun Debate and Other Reflections on Newtown

Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a law-breaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.

– Justice Louis D. Brandeis

How to Spot a Hypocrite in the Gun Debate and Other Reflections on Newtown
For those of you that follow me on twitter, some of the statements and themes you will read in this article will sound familiar.  What happened on December 14, 2012 was obviously a horrific tragedy that my simple mind can’t possibly wrap itself around, but what I can do is send my deepest thoughts, prayers and sympathies to all of those affected.  I can’t imagine the level of pain and suffering you are all experiencing.  This article; however, isn’t directed at you.  There is nothing I can do to ease your pain.  This article is for the rest of us who weren’t directly affected by the incident, but may be indirectly affected by certain parties’ emotional response to it and by those that will exploit it to justify agendas.

One of the key lessons from all of human history is that the easy way to deal with any tragedy is to scapegoat.  In some cases, like in Nazi Germany, the scapegoat proved to be unpopular minorities, especially Jews.  These days, many Americans have fallen into the trap of scapegoasting Muslims and the Islamic religion for all the bad things that happen on the planet.  The key similarity I see in these sorts of situations is that the population affected by some trauma (hyperinflation and economic collapse in Germany and 9/11 in the United States) tends to resort to the knee-jerk reaction of scapegoating an easy target rather than diving into the complexities of the issue and engaging in societal self-reflection.  This is extraordinarily dangerous.

From what I can tell, some of the most ridiculous polices are the direct result of a trauma, people getting emotional, and then begging for a response.    In my own lifetime, 9/11 is the perfect example.  Our national response to a gruesome attack that killed thousands of innocent civilians was to tear up the Constitution, specifically the cherished Bill of Rights, with insane Big Brother type legislation like the “Patriot” Act.  We basically launched the war on terror by waving a white flag.  Truly defeating terrorists wouldn’t have consisted of running to the mall and shopping, as George W. Bush insisted, or giving up the freedoms that made America the most attractive country to move to for the last two hundred years.  The way to judge victory or defeat in the “war on terror” eleven years later is not to check the statistics on terrorist attacks.  They way to judge victory or defeat is to look at the nation economically, socially and politically and ask yourself are we better off or worse off?  I think the verdict is clear on that front, and I do in large part blame our childish and emotionally reaction to the national tragedy of 9/11.

Well here we stand in mid-December 2012, just days from the Mayan end of the world and another national tragedy has been unleashed on the land.  Most of the victims were innocent, helpless six and seven year old children that never even had the chance to fulfill their potential on this planet.  Unfortunately, just as Ron Paul told us, key parts of the Patriot Act were written and desired by certain factions well before 9/11, there is a powerful faction in the highest echelons of the elite that have wanted and continue to want to remove guns from the hands of innocent American citizens.  These people are not interested in easing violence; these folks want to disarm the public before the mathematically inevitable economic collapse occurs (see my article “Slaves are Always Disarmed”).  While many of these folks claims publicly that there is an “economic recovery” and happy days are just over the horizon, they know better and privately want to get all their ducks in a row before the final and horrific collapse occurs.  This is why the surveillance state is making such aggressive strides at the moment.  It is also why there is a panic to remove firearms from the public.

The person who bothers me the most on this entire topic is Mayor Michael Bloomberg, of my hometown NYC.  You can tell when someone is disingenuous if they freak out over gun violence like it is the biggest issue in America today and at the same time protect the banksters and their “too big to fail” culture, which has and continues to systemically steal trillions of dollars from the poor.  This is Michael Bloomberg to a tee, so this man should have no credibility on any moral subject when he protects and coddles the most dangerous criminal organizations on this planet.  I guess there is something “liberal” about white collar crime.

The other way to spot a hypocrite is to see whether they ever speak out about other acts of violence, or if they only open their mouths when it comes to gun incidents.  I see this attitude all over the “fake left” landscape. If someone you know, or someone in the media never decries American drones strikes that kill children regularly in the forgotten parts of the globe, yet jumps at every gun incident like it is the end of the world, that person has an agenda. That person hates guns, not necessarily violence.  They do not have a clear head in this argument.

Zerohedge put together an excellent article yesterday called Newtown Shooter Had Asperger Syndrome, And Some US Gun Facts, which I suggest everyone read.  They go into the fact that mental illness seems to be the determining factor in most of these shooting incidents and also points out that the deadliest school massacre in U.S. history was The Bath School Disaster, which was carried out with dynamite, not firearms.  Care of justfacts.com we learn that:

In 2007, there were 613 fatal firearm accidents in the United States, constituting 0.5% of 123,706 fatal accidents that year.

These emergency room visits for non-fatal firearm accidents resulted in 5,045 hospitalizations, constituting 0.4% of 1.4 million non-fatal accident hospitalizations that year.

During the years in which the D.C. handgun ban and trigger lock law was in effect, the Washington, D.C. murder rate averaged 73% higher than it was at the outset of the law, while the U.S. murder rate averaged 11% lower.

The homicide rate in England and Wales has averaged 52% higher since the outset of the 1968 gun control law and 15% higher since the outset of the 1997 handgun ban.

Since the outset of the Chicago handgun ban, the Chicago murder rate has averaged 17% lower than it was before the law took effect, while the U.S. murder rate has averaged 25% lower.

Since the outset of the Chicago handgun ban, the percentage of Chicago murders committed with handguns has averaged about 40% higher than it was before the law took effect.

The interesting thing about all of this is because of differentiated gun laws in these United States we can see how effective gun bans really are in the places where they are in effect.  The answer seems to be not very effective.  This shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, as what ends up happening with gun bans is that only criminals end up with guns.  A criminal will not obey the law, and even in the Newtown shooting case, these weren’t Adam Lanza’s guns.  He stole them from his own mother.

For the record, I’d love a world without guns, but as long as criminal governments have them and start wars, the people have the right as well.  The actions of one or several mentally ill people should not lead to the restriction of a Constitutionally enshrined right for the hundreds of millions of law abiding, honest citizens that use firearms responsibly.  In fact, with an estimated 300 million firearms within these United States, I’d say it’s somewhat impressive how little gun violence there is.

Unfortunately, going forward, I expect gun violence to escalate.  I don’t think this is a result of the number of guns as much the result of increased poverty and societal marginalization as a result of the economic catastrophe we are witnessing.  A direct result of criminal theft by the TBTF financial institutions that gun haters like Michael Bloomberg protect and serve.  It is also the result of the increasingly sick culture that has developed in America.   One that is in many ways a reflection of the sickness and depravity at the very top of U.S. society emanating from the political and economic oligarchs.  It reminds me of the anti-drug commercial from the 1980’s where the son says to the father “from you dad, I learned it by watching you.”  It’s the same with violence in America. Our own government leads by example.

Recall the words of Justice Brandeis before jumping to emotional conclusions on the gun debate.  We already made that tragic mistake once this millennium.

Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a law-breaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.

Peace and wisdom,
Mike

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45 thoughts on “How to Spot a Hypocrite in the Gun Debate and Other Reflections on Newtown”

  1. Reality and perception – the amount of comments on social networks for more guncontrol has been deafening. This despite the facts as you illuminated above. Just status quo here in USA where the people swallow the propaganda, perception and look to their emotions for a response.

    Reply
  2. Absolute BS… who cares if UK murders went up or down… they have a few hundred murders a year and all guns are banned… Japan has maybe 30 gun murders a year and all guns are banned… the good old USofA, with 300 million guns, have 12,000 gun murders and 20,000 gun suicides a year! AND YOU TRY TO JUSTIFY THE MADNESS by cherry picking gun data? Sick and depraved… and soooo American!

    Reply
    • Freedom is a responsibility, not a right. If you’re an american making these comments there’s plenty of places you can move off to where society chose to give up their freedoms for the illusion of safety. The only MADNESS you speak of was in the killer’s own mind and heart. Whether 300 people died or 30,000 people died murder is wrong, and shouldn’t happen anywhere. One of the points of the article is the us government’s illegal wars which has killed millions of innocents in iraq and afghanistan with drones, and other weapons of mass destruction where’s the outcry over thses people? Is an american child’s life anymore important than a child in iraq?

      If you don’t like what your government is doing in your name what is your ultimate recourse? Did the founding fathers have the foresight to give its citizens the opportunity to have a governmentfor the people and by people with the creation of the 2nd amendment?

  3. You are a moron – making the case for loss of liberty over automatic weapons being taken off citizens by a government with planes, tanks, drones etc. is possibly the weakest argument I have ever encountered!

    Reply
    • You sir are quite wrong on this. Automatic weapons are pretty much banned already. Are you referring to semi-automatic weapons? If so that will never happen.

      Please realize that it’s not the gun that does anything but the idiot behind the trigger. That is who actually does something. I know my guns inside and out and I know they’ll not shoot a person because I don’t fuck with them loaded and I don’t let others use them.

      Honestly I would be willing to give up the 2nd if everyone is willing to give up the 1st as well.

  4. If the founding fathers saw the carnage of Newton,Columbine etc etc etc, they’d repeal the 2nd amendment instantly.Disgusting argument.

    Reply
    • Wrong.

      You don’t see beyond the surface of things. What are the roots of our violence problems in the US? The presence of guns? Clearly not, as there have always been a lot of guns in the US.

      No. It’s because it’s a sick culture, pervaded with lies, which inevitably produces many mentally ill people.

      The US gov’t slaughters children on a regular basis in other countries, with nary a peep of protest from most ‘good’ Americans. We allow military recruiters into our schools to seek to lure (enlist) our youth into these crimes. Americans are raised on a steady diet of violent images and stories in their mass media and video games from the time they are born. On top of this, we feed them crap food that makes them physically and mentally ill, because our food system is dominated by the corporate/industrial food paradigm. And then we give them psychotropic pharmaceuticals so they’ll be docile rather than acting inappropriately (and to give big $$ to the pharmaceutical corps, of course). And then we act surprised when some of them go nuts?

      And that’s taking it for granted that these are all a bunch of genuine kooks committing spontaneous acts of violence. There are some fishy things about some of these cases. In recent Holmes and Sikh temple incidents, for example, why do witnesses indicate that the perpetrators did not work alone, while the official version insists that they did act alone?

      It’s reasonable to hypothesize that the elite want to ban guns, because they are afraid the mob will come after them when their enormous pillaging of the country becomes obvious to all. It’s also clear they are putting a police state in place, presumably so they can have more power over the rest of us. So they have the motive. Do they have the means? Some, like Jesse Ventura, believe that at least some of these instances may be due to ‘Manchurian Candidates’. It’s worth considering the possibility.

      It’s your ‘argument’ that is disgusting. Except that it’s not even an argument, just a baseless, brainless assertion.

  5. Scapegoat is what Nero did with the Christians when Rome burned.

    Hitler did it with the Jews.

    Stalin did it with the capitalist.

    Reply
    • MV: Stalin did it with everybody. Kulaks, Jews, Cossacks, Peasants, Asiatics, Party members, Ukrainians; the list goes on and on. And then just for good measure, he purged his closest and most loyal regularly, just to keep every last human being within his borders dependent upon his mercy for survival. It was a decades-long, uninterrupted personal paranoid psychotic episode, leaving perhaps 13 – 20 million dead, most during the ’30s.
      I believe Stalin restricted guns in 1929, but somebody check me on that.

  6. It’s the same thing in all parts of society. Travel is a good one. They put a dumb-ass patsy on a Xmas flight without a passport through multiple checkpoints and what is the result? TSA looking in everyone’s underpants for Al Queda card carrying members. That’s 631,939,829 people that flew domestically in the USA in 2010. Most of these sheeple are radiated like chickens and the rest of them are patted down looking for the boogeyman.

    http://www.quora.com/How-many-people-fly-domestically-in-the-United-States-each-day

    How many terrorists did the TSA find since 2001 (that’s almost 12 years sheeple) after radiating and patting down a few billion people because of one retarded patsy? 0. Oh yeah, that’s an effective strategy. It’s so effective let’s put the TSA in schools, stadiums, and everywhere else. Can’t wait to see the patdown’s on the kindergarten kids on CNN.

    This gives new meaning to the words “terrorize”. Who is terrorizing who here? If you can’t figure this out go back to sleep. When you wake up turn on CNN and listen to Piers Morgan and Anderson Cooper.

    Reply
  7. Bloomberg? Bloomberg!?!
    Don’t waste your ‘ink’ MK. Bloomberg lost his soul, and any claim on frankness, so long ago he wouldn’t recognize it coming round the corner. Salomon Brothers banker; financial media magnate/controller; double deca-billionaire; oligarch; mayor of NYC, protector of Wall Street and ruler of the surrounding boroughs. The guy’s a globalist overlord and agenda-driver on so many different levels, it makes your use of term disingenuous to describes his statements look, well, witty.

    Reply
  8. Horrific is too mild a word for the slaughter of innocents. That said, we need to remember that the killer murdered the owner of the guns he used and stole those weapons. Then he broke into the school and slaughtered those kids. In other words his actions were criminal throughout the entire affair. Emotional calls for gun control have nothing to do with controlling this kind of criminal activity. Why did he do this? There are probably several reasons including something in his diet. But I believe that only when citizens have a sense of optimism and belief in their future will we see a decline in this type of violence. Real security comes from good jobs, a home, and a real opportunity to improve the quality of life for your family. It is not guards, hypocritical laws, and less liberty. Bob

    Reply

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