[BearwWthoutBorders] Watching the tube and all on the "gun control" issue

Tue Dec 18 21:34:49 EST 2012

I was never in favour of one kind of firearm -- handguns -- in my younger days. They are not as effective, so far as I sees it, for home defense, frequently used in crime (up to and including murder) as opposed to other firearms, and so forth.

But then that runs into a serious problem: the police are useless for crimes against citizens, especially for crimes against homeless people and people in government-assisted housing. Having gone from being homeless to being in public housing, I have been, for quite a while now, in the category of humans whom the police do not consider have any rights at all.

People in my "Neighborhood Association" get hit. I get hit AT the meetings; others usually get followed outside and beat up in the parking lot. One day there were articles written about someone getting in trouble with the law for being caught with a handgun on the passenger seat in his truck.

Well, by golly, I wrote a letter to the newspaper and advocated that all people in the neighborhood should be allowed firearms, and should bring them to the Neighborhood Association meetings. Fair is far.

(An aluminum baseball bat might work almost as well for this level of menace, but I figure we go in prepared, no?)

With zero police enforcement of what the law might be, that means every individual ought to have such defensive mechanism on his/her person as needed. I know some people question why a Glock model G34 9mm Safe Action Pistol is a good choice -- let's just remember, a man with poor eyesight can miss with seventeen bullets and STILL have enough ammunition in the clip to defend himself. (The Portland Police, where I live, have also adopted this service weapon -- seriously, the clip holds 18 rounds.)

Now this other point, "violent games"... No. The problem with these is that they are games which feature violence and a form of brutality: there is no particular purpose behind inflicting massive damage except that it is the arbitrary purpose in winning.

For many years -- and still, in many instances -- violence is placed in its context in a video game: if one attacks, you must defend. If your defense is vigorous enough, the attacker might flee -- *IF* s/he does, you must drop the counter-attack and/or go to a non-lethal weapon option. That is, if you act in an amoral way, your score is for shit. (There really are computer games like this.)

In hand-to-hand combat; in swordfights; in that whacky Society for Creative Anachronism, et alii, you have concepts like that you are learning how to use your hands and feet to be very effective in violence -- for your own protection and/or the protection of others. Usually, but not necessarily, there is the implication of honour, or even a code of honour. If you apply the same thoughts to handguns and other projectile-tossing things, as well as the computer games you feel like playing, a practice that includes the study of violence, even a very intensive study of violence, is not a direct lead to senseless brutality.

Contrariwise, most of the insipid video games available today, as well as most of what goes on in move theaters, on TV, in any chat room or internet list, most religious pulpits, etc., is a blank check to go out and participate in rigourous, nonsensical displays of violence, brutality, and stupidity.

Wherefore, I can understand if Barack Obama were calling for tighter regulations on what they show on TV.

Long live the Fist and Rose,

Michael C. Marino

Secretary and Executive Chair, Socialist Party of Oregon

http://www.thesocialistparty.org/spo/

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- Oscar Romero

--- On Tue, 12/18/12, David McReynolds <davidmcreynolds7 at gmail.com> wrote:

From: David McReynolds <davidmcreynolds7 at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [BearwWthoutBorders] Watching the tube and all on the "gun control" issue
To: "Hunter Gray" <hunterbadbear at hunterbear.org>, "Friends of Hunter Bear" <bearwithoutborders at lists.mayfirst.org>
Date: Tuesday, December 18, 2012, 11:37 AM

A good try, Hunter, but I'm not persuaded. However you are on target (in my view) on the other aspects of the problem, from monitoring mental illness (though we would both agree the sane folks do most of the killing - ie, war), to the violent games that are so popular.

The NRA staff folks make a good living at what they are doing. 

Peace,
David McReynolds

On Tue, Dec 18, 2012 at 2:27 PM, Hunter Gray <hunterbadbear at hunterbear.org> wrote:

Idaho Mountains:  December 
18 2012:

When I haven't been outside, shoveling and 
dealing with rain-into-snow-into-ice [and grateful that I have heavy Lowa Size 
16 Mountain Boots that prevent disastrous slippage on slick stuff], I've been 
listening to the gun control folk on TV.  CNN, in some quarters, has 
increased its anti-gun sentiments -- but not yet to the point of becoming, once 
again, the "Clinton News Network" of the '90s. Not surprisingly, MSNBC, which 
totally capitulated a couple of years ago to the superficial and 
often supercilious "liberalism" of the central Atlantic coast, has the 
full retinue of anti-gunners.  They seem especially fond of those 
relatively few who have defected from the gun rights 
ranks.

Defections under pressure always remind me of 
this little colloquy on Satan -- in which, presumably, neither of the two, 
one the inquisitor and the other the focus, actually 
believed:

"[He] is thin, ascetic and a fanatical 
devotee of logic.  He reads Machiavelli, Ignatius of Loyola, Marx and 
Hegel; he is cold and unmerciful to mankind, out of a kind of mathematical 
mercifulness.  [If a setback occurs] he shrugs his shoulders; he has seen 
many weaken and creep out of his ranks with pompous pretexts. . 
."
Ivanov to Rubashov in Darkness at 
Noon [Koestler].
I wrote last evening on Redbadbear that 
"Anti-gun people, including the few there are on RBB, don't strike me as 
knowing much at all, if anything, about firearms, hunting, 
self-defense. "  I underscore that and add, and many know little about 
firearms law. (Some may know many things I don't but there are things about 
which I do know much, often experientially.)  A close family connection was 
in a meeting yesterday in a mid-western city.  The topic had nothing to do 
with guns but eventually got around to the subject.  Our person said 
"Virtually everyone there assumed all someone had to do was go to a gun shop 
with money and come out right away with a machine 
gun."
Of course, that's flatly untrue.  
Machine guns -- and fully automatic, genuine military assault 
rifles -- have been banned for civilian use for decades, the former since 
the year I was born. What are loosely termed "military assault rifles" in 
these tragic civilian situations are simply conventional semi-automatics, 
dressed up in superficial military clothing.  
And there's a good deal of paper work 
and related ritual involved in any gun store purchase.
Another recent quote of the same 
genre from New York City:  "Anyone can go down to Virginia, buy a 
truckload of guns right away, and come up and sell them on the New York City 
streets."
And I heard someone on either CNN or 
MSNBC ask, in bewildered fashion, "Why do people need more than one gun?"  
Well, different firearms for different purposes: e.g., small game, big game, 
quail, ducks and geese, target shooting, protection.  Simple as that.  
I now have six firearms (having given some away to younger family 
members):  four lever action big bore hunting rifles (Marlins and Browning 
High Grade Winchester replicas), a single barrel .10 gauge Magnum shotgun 
via New England Firearms, a .22 Magnum Ruger revolver. (I don't like 
semi-automatics but many people do and they're perfectly 
legal.)
Lots of talk demonizing the NRA from 
people who really know little or nothing about it.  Some talk 
attacking gun owners in general -- but still little on mental health issues and 
the sociological causes of crime -- and virtually nothing about the 
effects of our long term and endless wars on developing psychotics.  
(Apparently the kid who did the killings in Connecticut was  a very, 
very long time obsessive devotee of the most violent video war games.  
Where were his family members, others?)
The NRA presently has more than four 
million members. This current situation will draw even more. There are 
at least 80 million gun owners in this country and a truly vast number of 
firearms.  The two relatively recent USSC decisions clarifying the 2nd 
Amendment as a full member of the Bill of Rights stand tall, though not 
totally absolute, in a firearms protective sense -- and have ended 
what was once the decades of ungrounded talk about the 2nd meaning only 
state militias.
And many, if not most, political races 
tend to be pretty close these days.
See this long and full and pluralistic 
web page of ours on many things relating to firearms:  http://hunterbear.org/BLOODSTAINED%20TRAIL.htm
And here is something interesting that 
came to me just this morning: http://reason.com/blog/2012/12/18/yes-guns-are-dangerous-but-they-also-sav

We have a host of other issues.  
When, for example, do we see bona fide Labor Law Reform -- now decades 
overdue?
Hunter Gray (Hunter Bear) Benefactor 
Life Member, NRA; Life Member of North Dakota Shooting Sports 
Association
HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR] Mi'kmaq 
/St. Francis 
Abenaki/St. Regis Mohawk 
Member, National Writers Union 
AFL-CIO
www.hunterbear.org 

(much social justice material)

I have always lived and worked in the 
Borderlands.

Key pieces from our big Jackson Mississippi 
Movement 
scrapbook.  Three consecutive and full pages beginning 
with
this Link:  http://hunterbear.org/a_piece_of__the_scrapbook.htm
And 
see my reflection ON BEING A MILITANT AND RADICAL
ORGANIZER -- AND AN 
EFFECTIVE ONE:
http://crmvet.org/comm/hunter1.htm

The Stormy Adoption of an Indian Child [My 
Father]:
http://hunterbear.org/James%20and%20Salter%20and%20Dad.htm
(Expanded 
in Fall 2012. Photos. Material on our Native
background.)  And see 
Personal Background Narrative: 
http://hunterbear.org/narrative.htm  
(Updated into 2012) 

For the new (11/2011) and 
expanded/updated
edition of my "Organizer's Book," JACKSON MISSISSIPPI -- 

with a new and substantial introduction by me.
 http://hunterbear.org/jackson.htm

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