An interesting opinion piece by Jake Novak.
Focusing on whether or not there is enough legislation on the books if
only enforced, or whether more cops on the corners is the solution,
does not deal with the central problem. That is, we are a violent
people. And we are becoming more violent, the more sophisticated our
tools of violence become.
Violence is woven into the very fabric of the American Empire. From
the very first ship that landed on the shores of this Promised Land we
have butchered our way across an entire continent declaring those
whose lands we claimed in the name of God, to be Savages and not
worthy of caring for the Land. But before you look about to see just
how well we've served as care takers, keep your eye on the continuous
advance of the Empire. Beyond the western edge of the North American
continent, moving both West and South. Taking violent control when
political diplomacy did not gain our ends.
Violence is a part of our entertainment. What turns us on at a hockey
game or a football match? Even a quiet game of baseball explodes if a
"wrong" call is made by the umpire
Did your school chums ever chant, "A rope, a tree, hang the referee"?
Just childish fun, you say? Remember the Football(soccer) player in
South America, who accidentally scored the winning goal for the other
team? He was shot, murdered, as he came out of a restaurant. And
what about those riots in England, at soccer games?
But it goes back even earlier than the crowds eagerly waiting for the
next bit of violence. Pick up a cross section of what our children
are reading for leisure time, relaxation. What is the thread in the
most watched TV programs? Or the popular video games?
Whether we believe it or not, we teach our children that violence is
both fun and rewarding. Supermen, cowboys in white hats, dashing
about the Land saving fair damsels and single handedly taking down the
evil ones. And even though there is little sign of teamwork, or
peaceful resolutions, we even trash what little there is.
I wonder at times, just when does a nation become a mob?
Can enough people ban together and defeat this growing violent nature?
At the moment, the future is not too pretty a place to want to live
in. But our survival as a Race depends upon ending violence, and
replacing it with mutual support and understanding.
Good luck with that one!
Carl Jarvis
On 7/5/16, Bob Hachey <bhachey@verizon.net> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Saw this one on another list and it does make good points. Yes, we ought to
> ban assault type weapons, but I do believe that stricter enforcement of
> existing laws is also needed.
>
> Bob Hachey
>
> Gun control isn't the answer. We already know how to stop the violence
>
> It's a vast understatement to say that the U.S. is at a political impasse
> when it comes to gun violence in this country. And like all good impasses,
> the reasons for it are multiplying rather than shrinking every day. But it
> boils down to a very old and stubborn argument. Pro-gun control forces
> insist on new laws and bans to stop gun violence while their opponents say
> those new laws and bans will only end up punishing and endangering the
> law-abiding gun owners or would-be gun owners in this country. Politically,
> this has been an unbridgeable divide for going on 40 years in this country.
> And no amount of sit-ins, NRA rallies, mass shootings, accidental
> shootings,
> or incidents where armed citizens stopped crimes in their tracks are going
> to break it.
>
> The crux of the problem revolves around legislation. As long as Democrats
> insist that new gun laws and bans are the only way to stop or slow gun
> violence, the Republicans and most of the American people will stand in
> their way - unless they rush to pass new gun laws and bans within 2-3 weeks
> of major mass shootings. The reasons are many, but one of the biggest
> problems with the new legislation approach is the fact that gun violence is
> mostly committed in urban areas by people in demographic groups and living
> in geographical locations that a large segment of the American people
> believe are heavily connected to the Democratic Party. As "Dilbert" creator
> and blogger Scott Adams wrote last week, that leaves many non-Democrats who
> own guns looking at newly proposed gun laws by Democrats as essentially
> saying to them: "put down your guns. so we can shoot you." This approach
> simply isn't going to work.
>
> But here's the funny thing, in a tragically laughable way of course: we
> already know how to reduce gun violence and gun crimes because we've
> already
> done it many times before. That's right, we actually solved the issue of
> rising gun violence in America in the mid-1990's and again in the early
> 2000's by doing something really radical. We enforced the law.
>
> Now Republicans often get off too easy with their base voters by talking
> the
> talk about enforcing existing gun laws and leaving it at that. While it's
> technically true that there are already enough gun laws on the books to put
> the hammer down on gun violence, most Republicans know all too well that
> law
> enforcement all over the country needs a lot more funding and other tools
> to
> enforce those laws better. And that became clear during both the Clinton
> and
> George W. Bush administrations when new funding programs to cut down on gun
> violence were instituted and they worked.
>
> "There's no denying that maintaining the high number of gun arrests and
> prosecutions is expensive, and the money available for that kind of law
> enforcement has indeed become scarcer because of budgetary constraints
> brought on by the Republican Congress."
>
> I'll start with the Clinton years and remind everyone that it wasn't the
> Brady Bill or the Assault Weapons ban that made the real difference. It was
> the increased funding to police departments from his 1994 crime bill that
> showed real progress. I was on the White House lawn that day in October,
> 1994 when President Clinton was joined by an army of police chiefs and
> mayors to announce the $200 million being released to put 100,000 more cops
> on the streets. It's not clear just how close the Clinton Administration
> came to reaching that 100,000 number, but the message the funding sent had
> almost as much of an effect as however many new cops actually hit the
> streets.
>
> The message was that police weren't the problem, which just a couple years
> after the Rodney King beating and subsequent L.A. riots wasn't such an easy
> thing for any Democrat to say. And President Clinton was never shy about
> trumpeting the falling crime statistics during his presidency. He and
> Hillary Clinton are trying to backtrack on that a bit now as the "Black
> Lives Matter" movement has started a new anti-cop sentiment in the new
> Democratic Party base, but there's really no denying that the increased
> Clinton administration funding for policing and incarceration made a
> difference.
>
> Clinton's successor, President George W. Bush, saw similar successes with
> boosted funding for the FBI to go after gun runners and then his "Project
> SAFE" program in his second term aimed at prosecuting criminals who used
> guns. Project SAFE alone got more than $1.5 billion from the Bush
> administration. Violent crime fell sharply during the Bush years, even when
> compared with the already falling crime numbers under President Clinton.
>
> But at the end of the Bush years, the focus shifted from gun prosecutions
> to
> new regulations. That was probably the result of Republicans losing control
> of Congress in the 2006 midterms and the Bush domestic agenda was gutted.
>
> President Obama has sadly continued this trend. Thankfully, violent crime
> has mostly remained at historic lows. But prosecutions of gun-using
> criminals has decidedly gone down. Federal prosecutors brought a total of
> 5,082 gun violation cases in 2013 recommended by the Bureau of Alcohol,
> Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, compared with a record 8,752 prosecutions
> of ATF cases brought by the Justice Department in 2004 under President Bush
> according to the Executive Office of U.S. Attorneys.
>
> There may be ideological reasons for this decline, as many of President
> Obama's critics insist the White House is more interested in scoring
> political points by harassing law abiding gun owners. But there's no
> denying
> that maintaining the high number of gun arrests and prosecutions is
> expensive, and the money available for that kind of law enforcement has
> indeed become scarcer because of budgetary constraints brought on by the
> Republican Congress. The White House may be blaming the GOP a little too
> much for the gun prosecution decline, but it does have a solid point. Both
> the Clinton crime initiatives and the Bush crackdown on illegal guns cost
> money, big money. And Republicans haven't been so forthcoming with
> budgetary
> cash lately.
>
> That leaves us with a unique double "put your money where your mouth is
> moment" when it comes to guns in America. The Democrats, if they really
> want
> to slow gun violence in this country, need to put their money where their
> mouths are and support renewed efforts to enforce existing gun laws like
> Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush did in the recent past. Republicans,
> if they really want to prove they believe enforcing the existing gun laws
> is
> all we need to do, need to put their money where their mouths are and get
> proactive about offering real funding for that enforcement up front.
>
> So far, both sides just aren't stepping up to the plate. So we're stuck
> with
> stunts like sit-ins and scare tactics. I remain convinced that the
> presidential candidate who refocuses the gun debate towards a push for more
> funding would enjoy a significant boost in the polls. The question is:
> which
> candidate is smart enough to simply promote what we already know works?
>
> Commentary by Jake Novak, supervising producer of "
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> D-_GnY&s=xpfEwafxJBjx0i597WwzIV1UGj68U3564sD6yJCmA-Y&e=> Power Lunch."
> Follow him on Twitter
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> <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.cnbc.com_jake-2Dnov
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>
> <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.cnbc.com_jake-2Dnov
> ak_&d=DQMFAg&c=cBOA5YEoZuz9KdLvh38YxdrPtfJt83ckXekfBgq5xB0&r=CK8oOj7-JYZnTDm
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> =KqR85_eO2r3bBcP3IvaPHb_CNrwkX9w4yBZCmFFnqJY&e=> Jake Novak
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