In an
effort better to understand the
psychology of gun nuts Second-Amendment fundamentalists, we’ll
post from time to time such
anecdotes as may throw light on this.
The point is not to highlight fringe
cases, but to explore what is indisputably a large part of the American
mainstream -- and which has, after all, largely had its way, via the
legislative process.
The following, for instance, which appeared in this morning’s
Washington Post, does not concern some marginal wacko, but an actual Republican House majority leader. Oh, wait …
December 25
The day after Labor Day, just as
campaign season was entering its final frenzy, FreedomWorks, the
Washington-based tea party organization, went into free fall.
Richard K. Armey, the group’s
chairman and a former House majority leader, walked into the group’s Capitol
Hill offices with his wife, Susan, and an aide holstering a handgun at his
waist. The aim was to seize control of the group and expel Armey’s enemies: The
gun-wielding assistant escorted FreedomWorks’ top two employees off the
premises, while Armey suspended several others who broke down in sobs at the
news.
The coup lasted all of six days. By
Sept. 10, Armey was gone — with a promise of $8 million — and the five ousted
employees were back.
Presumably the moral of the story (NRA-style) is that this tragic incident never
would have happened, if only those two top employees had themselves been
heavily armed. Then Armey
would have been outgunned. Or, if
he too was packing (concealed), they could have simply had a shoot-out, may the
better man win.
The fellow who is to cough up the eight million is himself a
pretty interesting character:
The force behind their return was
Richard J. Stephenson, a reclusive Illinois millionaire who has exerted
increasing control over one of Washington’s most influential conservative
grass-roots organizations.
Stephenson wanted a substantial sum
spent in support of Rep. Joe Walsh (R-Ill.), a tea party favorite and
Stephenson’s local congressman, several who attended the retreat recalled.
Walsh garnered national headlines during the campaign when he questioned
whether his opponent, Tammy Duckworth, a former Blackhawk helicopter pilot who
lost both legs in Iraq, was a “true hero.”
It is apparent that such thinking cannot be understood as
simply lying at this point or that point on the traditional politico-economic
spectrum from liberal to conservative. Something else is going on.
* * *
Disclaimer:
Lest anyone imagine
that I harbor mean and hurtful thoughts about guns per se,
check out the action
at the site of my buddy,
the two-fisted,
pistol-packing, wise-cracking pre-Consiliar private eye,
Murphy!
* * *
[Update] That
crack about the “shoot-out” was intended as satire -- and not very trenchant
satire at that, since it presumably portrays the principles as more extreme
than they really are. And yet someone
just posted the following response to the WaPo article:
Liberals and other
misguided leftists (are there really any other kind?) of course fail to take
the lesson that this article contains.
Well, here's one lone American patriot who has.
If the three weeping women had Bushmasters--the gun of choice of patriots and "responsible" gun owners, they wouldn't have been weeping. And they might have watered the tree of liberty with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
… It seems that Brother Dick hasn't got his "man card" yet or he would have been carrying.
Well, here's one lone American patriot who has.
If the three weeping women had Bushmasters--the gun of choice of patriots and "responsible" gun owners, they wouldn't have been weeping. And they might have watered the tree of liberty with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
… It seems that Brother Dick hasn't got his "man card" yet or he would have been carrying.
Now, to me, that reads like satire as well, and rather broader. Yet apparently a number of readers took
it seriously, and got all in a
worrit. These were then scolded by
another poster, saying that the
original poster showed “irony … so plain that his tongue was
practically sticking out the other cheek? Lighten up, people.”
Since I don’t know anything about the original
poster, I can’t be sure whether it reflects his actual politics. Nor is that in itself of the least
importance. The point
here is simply that it has become difficult, in some cases, to distinguish
between satire and actual delusion.
[Update] You can skip this next item, in that it does not feature prominent mainstream figures; but it does give an (acrid) aroma of the terms of the 'debate':
[Update] You can skip this next item, in that it does not feature prominent mainstream figures; but it does give an (acrid) aroma of the terms of the 'debate':
The
Journal News of White Plains, N.Y., on Saturday posted an interactive map with
the names and addresses of handgun permit owners in New York’s Westchester and
Rockland counties. Gun owners — many outside of the paper’s readership —
considered the map and accompanying story a provocation and the liberal
declaration of war they widely feared. All of which led the conversation to
take a markedly nasty turn.
Some
conservative blogs published the names and home addresses of the paper’s
publisher, Janet Hasson, and its reporters and editors, including the man
responsible for “Comics, crosswords, Jumble, Sudoku, movie clock.”
“Merry
Christmas, Eva Braun/Janet Hasson!” read one blogger’s headline. “So. You want
to use your liberal rag to publish the names and addresses of legal conceal
carry gun owners in your area? Okay. But don’t whine squeal like a
little stuck Gestapo agent when the tables are turned, Ms Hasson.”
Jeffersonian, a commenter at Sauce for the Goose, wrote “Nice house. Wooded
lot, too. Lots of places to hide.” Syuck in NY. . . .
For Now added “Lol. That was the 1st thing I thought of when viewing those pics
of her palace!”
The
target expanded to include the home phone number and address of Gracia Martore,
chief executive of the paper’s parent group, Gannett. (“House is loaded with
highly valuable easily transprtable [sic] items,’’ a poster identified only as
“vintovka” wrote on a Web site for assault rifle enthusiasts, according to
Gannett’s blog. “As a promonent [sic] liberal from suburban D.C. she probably
goes to a lot of well publisised [sic] funerals, during which her house would
be empty.”)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/ny-newspaper-posts-gun-permit-map-starts-nasty-online-battle/2012/12/26/747ae7d6-4fb0-11e2-950a-7863a013264b_print.html
[Update 13 January 2013] A more significant update, indicating that we are dealing not
just with lone-wolf loose-cannons, but those who figure largely in the
Republican Party:
Undercover 'supply
sergeant' helped bring down Alaska militia
In
another life, William Fulton was "Drop Zone Bill," a bounty hunter
who ran a military surplus store in Anchorage. You need a tactical vest? A
bayonet that would clip neatly onto an M-4? Bill Fulton was your man.
"We
do bad things to bad people," his company jackets said.
Fulton
was also a go-to guy for Republican
politicians who occasionally needed to reach out to the far right fringes of
the party — those who spent weekends in the woods in camo gear and
considered the 2nd Amendment an expression of divine intent.
When
then-Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was plotting a move against the Republican Party
chief at the state convention in 2008, Fulton was there strategizing over
whiskey and cigars with Palin staffer Frank Bailey and Joe Miller, who later
made a well-publicized run for the U.S. Senate as a tea party conservative.
That
was the meeting where Fulton was introduced to Schaeffer Cox, an up-and-coming
young firebrand of the far right who was running for the state Legislature and
had, as it turned out, plans that went well beyond upending the Republican
Party in Alaska.
It
was a meeting that opened the door to a dangerous cat-and-mouse game that would
transform the two men's lives and leave them at opposite ends of one of the
federal government's biggest prosecutions of right-wing extremism on the West
Coast.
Cox, 28,
was sentenced Tuesday to 25 years in prison for heading a militia that plotted
to kill judges and other government employees …
[Update 14 Jan 2013] A fascinating glimpse of the sociopolitics of the NRA milieu, by Joel Achenbach:http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-nras-true-believers-converted-a-marksmanship-group-into-a-mighty-gun-lobby/2013/01/12/51c62288-59b9-11e2-88d0-c4cf65c3ad15_print.html
[Update 9 Aug 2014
In nearly 30 years at Heckler &
Koch, a legendary German gunmaker, Ernst Mauch designed some of the world’s
most lethal weapons, including the one that reportedly killed Osama bin Laden.
Now the gun world sees him a
different way: as a traitor. The target of their fury is the smart gun Mauch
designed at Armatix, a start-up near Munich. The very concept of the weapon has
been attacked by U.S. gun rights advocates even as it has helped Mauch resolve
a sense of guilt that has haunted him his entire career. He knows children have
killed each other with his guns. Crimes have been committed with them.
“It hurts my heart,” the
58-year-old gun designer said.
Mauch’s solution, the iP1, can be
personalized so it only fires if the gun’s rightful owner is wearing a special
watch connected wirelessly to the weapon.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/a-german-gunmakers-quest-for-a-smarter-weapon-infuriates-us-gun-rights-advocates/2014/08/06/4c78fd82-18cb-11e4-9349-84d4a85be981_story.html
.
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