Enough Is Enough Already!

The worst mass shooting in modern American history* occurred just a few days ago on October 1, 2017 in Las Vegas.   A lone gunman (of unknown motive and political affiliation) armed to the teeth with the obligatory high-powered semi-automatic rifle--23 of them to be exact, many equipped with rapid-fire "bump stocks", plus thousands of rounds of ammo--shot up a country music concert from the window in his hotel room, killing 59 and injuring over 500 people.  It seems that mass shootings have become an almost daily occurrence in recent years--in the USA at least.  But the rest of the industrialized world doesn't really seem to have this kind of problem.  Why is that?  Well, there's always....

GUNS.

America is the land of 300 million guns, and combined with a culture that is crazier and more violent than most other "developed" countries, and much more extreme inequality, it is a very lethal combination indeed.  Of course, the biggest elephant in the room is the fact that at least 98% of mass shooters are MEN.  Thanks to the patriarchy and the sort of "toxic masculinity" that it creates, combined with the above factors, too many men end up resorting to violence.  Like the Iron Maiden song says, "a briefcase, a lunch, and a man on the edge".  With a gun. I mean, what could possibly go wrong, right?

There should be no doubt at this point that something needs to be done.  However, we do not believe that banning all guns for everyone, or adopting British or European-style gun laws, is the solution, as the genie is already out of the bottle, and there is also that whole Constitution thingy as well.  Thus, the TSAP recommends that the following measures be taken:

1. Bring back a new and improved 1994 assault-weapons ban yesterday, this time with more teeth.  This time, include all rapid-fire devices and all magazines with more than ten rounds in the ban as well as the previously-banned types of semi-automatic rifles and their knockoffs.
2. Remove the 20-year ban on gun violence research, yesterday. 
3. End the gun-show loophole and implement universal background checks, yesterday.
4. Put a significant excise tax on all bullets/ammo, like Chris Rock recommended. (Seriously)
5. Treat ammo sales the same as gun sales.  Or better yet, treat bullets like Sudafed:  must show ID, limit on the number that one can buy, the number bought would be recorded, and if you do buy too many, you will be investigated.
6. Pass a "one gun a month" law at the federal level.  And consider perhaps putting a limit on the number of guns that an individual can own at a given time, except for antiques/relics/curios.
7. Require reporting of lost or stolen guns.
8. Regulate firearms like other consumer products in terms of health and safety standards--currently such standards are nonexistent.
9. Improve enforcement of existing gun laws, which tend not to be enforced very well these days, and improve state reporting of prohibited persons to NICS.  Also, prohibit anyone on the terrorism watch list from buying any guns, period. (Believe it or not, the shooter in last year's Orlando shooting was on the terror watch list and was still able to get a gun)
10. Consider a massive gun buyback program, one that pays significantly more than what the guns are worth on the street.  Voluntary for any still-legal weapons, mandatory for any newly-banned ones. 
11. And last but not least, improve our woefully-inadequate mental healthcare system.

Of course, to truly solve our gun violence problem would require a fundamental overhaul and transformation of our society, which the TSAP clearly supports.  We need to go from being what Riane Eisler calls a "dominator" society to more of a "partnership" society, as the latter kind is far less violent overall.   And for what it's worth, one of the very few things we do know about the shooter is that he was observed to be fairly mean to his girlfriend in public--a textbook example of the sort of toxic masculinity that so many mass killers seem to share, and is part and parcel of the "dominator" model (i.e. patriarchy and the larger kyriarchy). But in the meantime, the aforementioned recommendations would go a long way towards taking the dangerous edge off of the problem. 

In this particular shooting, a deadly combination of toxic masculinity, readily-available weapons of war, and perhaps some unknown sort of zealotry (or not) ultimately led to the deaths of over 50 innocent people.   And yet no one saw it coming, at least under the current system.  If that's not the all-time KING of wake-up calls, I honestly don't know what is.

I don't know about you, but my favorite part of the Second Amendment is where it says "well-regulated".  Too bad so many Republican Congresscritters who are bought and paid for by the NRA can't seem to read the first half of the freaking sentence.  Oh, and nevermind that when it was written, guns at that time fired at most one round per minute, not 600+ per minute like so many of today's killing machines.  Not like the gun lobby and their lackeys really do nuance.

* Many people refer to the Las Vegas shooting as the "worst mass shooting in American history" period, but to do so ignores that there were even worse ones still in the 19th century against Native Americans, most notably at Wounded Knee.  Of course, that's different.  I mean, today's shootings aren't even in the same league as the GENOCIDE our nation was founded on.