TYT - Renisha McBride, 19, Shot To Death Trying To Get Help

TYT - Should The UN Intervene In America's Gun Violence Crisis?

MR - Big Gun Cartel: Why Gun Control Legislation Does Not Pass Congress

Humanitarian Intervention and Exceptionalism

Trey Smith

Last week, Starbucks asked its American customers to please not bring their guns into the coffee shop. This is part of the company's concern about customer safety and follows a ban in the summer on smoking within 25 feet of a coffee shop entrance and an earlier ruling about scalding hot coffee. After the celebrated Liebeck v McDonald's case in 1994, involving a woman who suffered third-degree burns to her thighs, Starbucks complies with the Specialty Coffee Association of America's recommendation that drinks should be served at a maximum temperature of 82C.

Although it was brave of Howard Schultz, the company's chief executive, to go even this far in a country where people are better armed and only slightly less nervy than rebel fighters in Syria, we should note that dealing with the risks of scalding and secondary smoke came well before addressing the problem of people who go armed to buy a latte. There can be no weirder order of priorities on this planet.

That's America, we say, as news of the latest massacre breaks – last week it was the slaughter of 12 people by Aaron Alexis at Washington DC's navy yard – and move on. But what if we no longer thought of this as just a problem for America and, instead, viewed it as an international humanitarian crisis – a quasi civil war, if you like, that calls for outside intervention? As citizens of the world, perhaps we should demand an end to the unimaginable suffering of victims and their families – the maiming and killing of children – just as America does in every new civil conflict around the globe.
~ from American Gun Use Is Out of Control: Shouldn't the World Intervene? by Henry Porter ~

Can you imagine the outrage and contempt of most Americans if the United Nations seriously entertained a resolution to intercede in this American civil war? Any nation that had the temerity to suggest that the UN needed to send peacekeepers to our shores would be denounced -- threatened even -- in the strongest terms possible. This would be one of those rare situations in which Americans of almost all political persuasions would unite together to say that the UN has no business telling us -- the exceptional Americans -- what is right and what is wrong.

And yet, this is what the US does all the time. We constantly stick our noses into other people's business. If something is going on in some nation and we don't like it -- it somehow threatens our overly broad national interests or national security -- we easily can come up with a host of reasons why it is our supreme role to step in to discipline recalcitrant leaders or factions and/or to aid the downtrodden. We often package it as a humanitarian effort, but these actions too often terrorize, kill and maim the innocent.

If the shoe was on the other foot -- the world joined together to try to end the humanitarian crisis of American gun violence (one that we refuse to address on our own) -- do you think our leaders and most of the public would welcome the aid with open arms?

TYT - How Many Mass Shootings In The US?

Study Confirms the Obvious

Trey Smith

Guns do not make a nation safer, say US doctors who have compared the rate of firearms-related deaths in countries where many people own guns with the death rate in countries where gun ownership is rare.

Their findings, published Wednesday in the prestigious American Journal of Medicine, debunk the historic belief among many people in the United States that guns make a country safer, they say. On the contrary, the US, with the most guns per head in the world, has the highest rate of deaths from firearms, while Japan, which has the lowest rate of gun ownership, has the least.
~ from High Gun Ownership Makes Countries Less Safe, US Study Finds by Sarah Boseley ~

I really don't have much to add except that this study conforms what should be obvious to any sentient individual. If guns made a nation more safe, as 2nd Amendment advocates like to argue, then the US should be one of the safest countries in the world! But we all know that this is not the case. Death by gun is high in the US...because Americans own, on average, one gun per person.

If there were fewer guns, then people could not so easily kill others. There would still be murders, robberies and mass killings, but not as many. A lot of the folks who impulsively pull a trigger would think twice if they had to do it with their bare hands, a knife or a crossbow.

TYT - Jonathan Ferrell, Unarmed Man, Shot 10 Times By Officer

If Only More People Had Guns

Trey Smith

Every time there is a mass shooting someone will opine, "If only more people had guns...someone could have stopped this carnage." Yes, gun-toting citizens are the best defense against gun-toting killers!

What many of these folks fail to grasp is that most gun-toting citizens aren't trained in using their weapon of choice during a confrontation or a situation marked with chaos. It is not as if a mass shooter is willing to stand still and draw a big X on his shirt. Bullets are flying everywhere and most people involved in these sorts of situations can't tell up from down.

Besides, even those professionals who are trained to handle such situations aren't always the best shots either as a recent incident in New York City underscores.

Two police officers opened fired on an emotionally disturbed man who was dodging cars on a busy Manhattan street on Saturday night, wounding two bystanders and sending people running for cover, authorities said.

On Sunday, authorities identified the man as Glenn Broadnax, 35, of Brooklyn. He faces multiple counts including menacing, riot, criminal possession of a controlled substance, and resisting arrest. He was in custody. The Associated Press could not locate a phone listing for his home.

Police said Broadnax made movements suggesting he had a weapon, though he turned out to be unarmed. The officers' shots missed him, and he was eventually brought down by a stun gun. The encounter happened just before 10pm near the Port Authority Bus Terminal, a block away from Times Square.

Officers saw Broadnax, who was on foot, weaving erratically through traffic and sometimes blocking vehicles. "It appeared he wanted to be struck by cars," police commissioner Raymond Kelly said, at an early morning news conference.

As officers approached, police said, Broadnax reached into his pocket as if grabbing a weapon, and two officers fired a total of three shots. The bullets struck a 54-year-old woman in the right knee and a grazed a 35-year-old woman in the buttocks, police said.

Police officers spend a good deal of time on the target range and they receive training in how to manage situations such as this. Still, we have officers firing at a suspect and missing. Do you think a citizen or two who happened on a similar scene and pulled out their trusty six shooters would have possibly shot even more bystanders? I say the chances of that happening are fairly good!

~

There are two other issues concerning this story. For starters, how does an unarmed man make "movements suggesting he had a weapon"? This is an all too common rationale offered by the police. Is putting your hand in your pocket sufficient? Is waving your arms? If you say, "Bang, bang," does that suggest you have a weapon?

The other question is why were they prepared to shoot this man anyway? Nothing in the report suggests that he was trying to harm anyone...other than possibly himself. This isn't the first case in which someone is thought to be suicidal and so the police decide to try to defuse the situation by killing the person. I am not a big fan of stun guns (tasers), but this seems like the kind of situation where its use may have been appropriate.

TYT - 13-Year-Old Black Teen Murdered By 75-Year Old White Neighbor

TYT - 'If My Vagina Was a Gun'

Forget "Stand Your Ground"

Trey Smith

As reported in The Atlantic, a recent study appears to indicate that race plays a role in the application of "stand you ground" laws. To wit,

The data give credence to claims that such laws introduce bias against black victims and in favor of white shooters, as many have contended. In cases where the shooter was black and the victim white, there was hardly any difference between "Stand Your Ground" and other states: Only 1.4 percent of these homicides were deemed justified in "Stand Your Ground" states, in comparison to 1.1 percent in states without a statute. But, the situation is substantially different when the roles, and races, of shooter and victim are reversed. For murders with a white shooter and a black victim, 16.9 percent were ruled justified in "Stand Your Ground" states. Only 9.5 percent were in states that have no "Stand Your Ground" law on the books.

and

In the wake of the Zimmerman verdict, Roman provided me with his more recent, more fine-grained analysis of the relationships between shooters and victims, including the types of weapons involved. The racial (black-white) divide was strongest in just the kind of shooting that Zimmerman committed: a fatal shooting involving a handgun and two strangers of different races, neither of whom is in law enforcement. Even in states without "Stand Your Ground" laws, the numbers are stark; 29.3 percent of white-on-black shootings are ruled justifiable, while only 2.9 percent of black-on-white shootings are. But in states that have enacted "Stand Your Ground" laws, the situation is worse: 35.9 percent of white-on-black shootings are ultimately deemed to be self-defense. In the reverse situation, black-on-white shootings, only 3.4 percent of cases have ended with the same verdict.

While the author of this article is focusing on the significant disparities in "stand your ground" states, I think the differences in the other states is just as astounding! If nothing else, it underscores that our justice system is anything but colorblind.

To recap the above for states that have not enacted a "stand your ground" type of law, we find the following:

• (Older data) Black shooter/White victim: 1.1 percent justifiable
• (Older data) White Shooter/Black Victim: 9.5 percent justifiable
• (Newer data) Black Shooter/White victim: 2.9 percent justifiable
• (Newer data) White Shooter/Black victim: 29.3 percent justifiable

Something is seriously wrong with the picture derived from this data.  What it basically tells us is that in our society a white life is worth far more than a black life.  While I am confident that class has something to do with this skewed picture, there is no denying that race is the biggest factor.

We do not live in a post-racial society.  Racism is alive and well.  The chief difference between the past and now is that America's racism tends not to be as overt as before, but it is so woven into the structure of our society, that it continues to be almost as pervasive.

Reflections on the Zimmerman Verdict

Trey Smith

In all honesty, from all I've read, watched or heard, I don't think a jury should have found George Zimmerman guilty of second degree murder. The prosecution would need to prove intent to kill beyond a reasonable doubt and, since the one person (Trayvon Martin) who could have bolstered that point is dead, it becomes almost unprovable in a legal sense.

What surprises me is that that the jury found Zimmerman not guilty. In my view, the more reasonable charge should have been manslaughter.  But as it often happens, the prosecutorial decision to pursue the greater charge ended up hurting their chances of obtaining a guilty verdict on the lesser charge.  

Mind you, I am not necessarily blaming the prosecutor for pursuing the greater charge.  I am sure this was done due to the social and political pressure from around the nation and world.   If the prosecutor had decided to pursue a charge of manslaughter only, a lot of people would have said that this shows a form of racial bias.

The worst part of this entire ordeal is that Trayvon Martin is dead for no reason.  He wasn't up to "no good".  He merely was walking back from a convenience store to watch basketball on TV.  He didn't initiate the fatal circumstance he soon found himself in.  The entire onus of the situation falls on the man whom the jury acquitted.

This verdict will embolden others to stand behind the insane "stand your ground" laws.  Other people will initiate fatal circumstances and all they will need to say is that they "feared for their lives".  It won't matter -- as in this case -- that the deceased was unarmed.  It won't matter -- as in this case -- that the deceased wasn't the aggressor.  And it won't matter -- as in this case -- that the whole scenario was set in motion by the person pulling the trigger.

"Protection" Racket

Trey Smith

Over and over again, the talking heads who ostensibly represent us keep saying that both foreign and domestic all-encompassing spying is needed in order to protect American lives. Yes, they are repeating this argument ad nauseam, but there is almost no concrete evidence to support this claim. About all they have been able to come up are two possible examples and even these two have been roundly debunked!

This dragnet of spying somehow didn't develop any key information to thwart the Shoe Bomber, the Underwear Bomber, the mass shooting at Fort Hood (called a terrorist act by some), the attempted Times Square Bombing OR the Boston Marathon Bombings.  In each case, the investigation hinged on civilian reports and/or good old fashioned detective work.  If the various surveillance programs administered by the NSA are so damn effective, how is it that the authorities were caught flat-footed in each of these cases?

In fact, with the government and contracted spooks slurping up so much information from Americans, it is just as mind-boggling that no one seemed to have any foreknowledge to try to thwart the following mass shootings:

• Virginia Tech University
• Amish School
• Tuscon, AZ
• Lakewood, WA
• Wisconsin Sikh Temple
• Aurora, CO
• Christopher Dorner Shootings

To be fair, it could be assumed that not all of the alleged assailants had strong phone and internet record footprints, but not a one of them? Heck, we know from press reports that some of the culprits did, in fact, post rantings or manifestos on the internet.  More than one of the alleged shooters purchased weapons and/or ammunition online.

My point here is that, if the authorities could point to a few concrete and unequivocal examples of how this widespread dragnet had saved a number of lives here and there, they would have some sort of leg to stand on (though a handful of cases out of MILLIONS of people being spied upon would still be a very weak argument).  But they can't even muster that!  All they can offer are nebulous words WITHOUT clear examples.

I don't know about you, but by perusing the brief lists above -- there are scads more heinous incidents I could have included -- it is really obvious that one of two things is true.  Either the authorities are genuinely inept spies OR they are collecting this voluminous data for reasons other than to protect us. 

Neither explanation offers much comfort!

Republicans Trust the NSA...But Not the FBI!

Trey Smith

In one of the segments Wednesday on The Young Turks, host Cenk Uygur called out several Republicans for their rampant hypocrisy on the issue of privacy. He showed how members of the GOP, like Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, view privacy one way when it comes to the 2nd Amendment, but completely different when it comes to the 4th Amendment.

McConnell, for example, is steadfastly against ANY gun legislation that even hints at the creation of a federal gun registry. Why? According to McConnell, it invades the privacy of law-abiding Americans! Why does the government need to know who owns one or more guns and who does not?

How ironic it is that McConnell and his brethren see no issues at all when it comes to domestic spying. Even though the NSA is collecting a wide assortment of data on law-abiding Americans, conservatives have no problem with this kind of a massive invasion of privacy! While a domestic gun registry might help to keep guns out of the wrong hands and thereby save lives, McConnell and his ilk argue that this constitutes too much of a hassle for American gun owners. Yet, we are told by these same folks that domestic spying is worth the hassle because...it might save some lives!

While Uygur focused on the issue of hypocrisy, I think there is another plausible explanation: Republicans trust the NSA, but not the FBI!

You see, the FBI would be charged with administering the gun registry. That means that government employees would be the ones maintaining the list and we know how conservatives feel about the big intrusive government, don't we?

In an interesting twist, the NSA also has a list of gun owners, but you don't hear conservatives crying foul.

I'm sure some of you may be curious as to how an individual like me knows that the NSA has such a list. Well folks, it is based on pure logic. We know that the national security state has the capacity to read the content of our online communications and this ability most likely extends to our telephone conversations as well. Consequently, ANY individual who owns a gun and has ever mentioned it online or on the phone unwittingly has shared this knowledge with the NSA. Not only that, but we have also learned that the NSA has access to any electronic sales receipts, so they have the data for most gun purchases.

All this information is being stored in massive databases. In order to access any of this information, the government works like the major search engines. My guess is that they are utilizing bots to index all the information and then analysts create specialized searches utilizing terms like protest, terrorism, blueprints or...guns. What this means is that if someone at the NSA or one of its many private contractors wanted to generate a list of gun owners in America, it wouldn't be difficult to do at all. It probably wouldn't include every gun owner, but I would presume that such a list would be fairly comprehensive.

So, if conservatives go bonkers over the idea that the FBI would know which Americans own guns and which do not, why aren't they just as concerned that the NSA has their hands on this information too? If it is a massive invasion of privacy for the FBI to know, why isn't it a massive invasion of privacy for the NSA to know that and so much more?

Just asking.

TYT - Republican: Guns Are a Gift From God!

What Sometimes Happens in the Wild, Wild West

Trey Smith

A 21-year-old university student who was taken hostage in her apartment and then shot to death during a police standoff with an armed robber on New York's Long Island was killed by a bullet fired from an officer's gun, investigators said on Sunday.

Andrea Rebello was shot in the head on Friday by one of eight rounds fired at Dalton Smith, who had the woman in a headlock with a 9mm gun pointed at her head at the time, Nassau County Police Department spokesman James Imperiale said.

Smith, 30, was struck by seven bullets and died in the apartment in Uniondale, about a half a mile from Hofstra University. Rebello, who was studying public relations at Hofstra, was taken to a nearby hospital where she later died.
~ from Female Hostage Died From Police Bullet in New York Standoff by Brendan O'Brien ~

I am not sharing this news story to provide fodder for a screed against a local police department. No, I'm sharing it because it indirectly goes to the heart of a notion that many gun enthusiasts harbor: If more citizens own firearms, the chances that one of them could thwart our next mass shooting are greatly enhanced.

We heard this argument after Virginia Tech, Tucson, Aurora and Newtown. The way this line of reasoning goes is that, if not for our currently weak gun control regulations, some average citizen or, in the case of Newtown, a school administrator or teacher, could have whipped out their trusty sixshooter and stopped the carnage sooner as opposed to later.

Hey, it sounds good, but I don't think it would likely play out that way in real time!

The police are trained in the use of firearms during stressful situations. Unfortunately, as this case sadly illustrates, not all of their shots find the intended target. The police were there to try to save this young woman's life and, in doing so, they killed her. This certainly wasn't their intent, but that is what happened.

There was another case within the past year or so when the NYPD tried to apprehend a man with a gun running through the streets. While they eventually shot him, they also ended up wounding several innocent bystanders. They are damn lucky none of those bystanders ended up dead.

If our trained law enforcement personnel sometimes shoot the wrong folks, what are the chances that an average Joe or Jane Doe might do the same? Shooting an assailant in a highly charged and chaotic situation is not the same thing as shooting an immobile target at the local shooting range. For one thing, paper targets don't shoot back. For another, you don't have scores of innocent bystanders running around the range darting in and out of the potential line of fire.

About the last thing we need the next time there is a mass shooting is for more innocent deaths because an average citizen who decides to take the assailant down turns out not to be such a good shot!

TYT - Million Moron March: 'SHOOT Government Agents'

TYT - Daughter of Murdered Sandy Hook Principal Confronts Senator Ayotte

The Battle Cry of Freedom

Trey Smith

There’s plenty of proof of an authoritarian streak and animus toward democratic ideals in today’s conservative movement. There was the movement’s use of its judicial power to halt a vote recount and instead install a president who had lost the popular vote. There is the ongoing GOP effort to make it more difficult for people to cast a vote in an election. There is the GOP’s record use of the Senate filibuster to kill legislation that the vast majority of the country supports. There is a GOP leader’s declaration that what the American people want from their government simply “doesn’t matter.”

Up until today, you might have been able to write all that anti-democratic pathology off as one infecting only the Republican Party’s politicians and institutional leadership, but not its rank-and-file voters. But then this morning Fairleigh Dickinson University released this gun control-related poll showing that authoritarianism runs throughout the the entire party.

Take a look at the cross-tabs on page 3 of the national survey. That’s right, you are reading it correctly: Almost half (44 percent) of all self-described Republican voters say they believe “an armed revolution might be necessary to protect our liberties.” Just as bad, more Republicans believe an armed revolution might be necessary than believe one isn’t necessary.
~ from Rise of the Conservative Revolutionaries by David Sirota ~

I don't know what to say. This result is both a bit scary and ludicrous. The worst part is that it is NOT about freedom. The lunatic Right wants to impose their will on others, not allow us to make free choices.

I suppose, however, I shouldn't be that surprised. On two social issues, arch conservatives are seeing the writing on the wall. More and more states have legalized gay marriage or civil unions. Washington and Colorado have legalized marijuana. Young people tend to favor both of these initiatives which means that, as the old guard dies off, these "sins and abominations" will become acceptable and commonplace.

So, since they see they are losing to the democratic process, they believe their only recourse is to overthrow the government to install their idea of a conservative Christian theocracy.

Another Typical Day in These United States of the Gun

Trey Smith

Five people, including two small boys, were shot to death in their home early on Wednesday in Manchester, Illinois, before the suspect was killed in a shootout with police, state police said.

Illinois State Police also said that a 6-year-old girl was critically injured in the shooting and taken to a hospital. State officials identified the suspect as Rick Smith, 43, who had a criminal history including for reckless homicide.

State police did not discuss any motive but told a news conference that the victims were related and included an infant boy, another male child, two women and a man. Officials did not expect to release names until Thursday.
~ from Five People Murdered in Illinois Town, Suspect Dead by Mary Wisniewski ~

I am not sharing this news article because there is anything specific to it. It merely is the first such story on this topic that I came upon. It is sad that there is nothing unremarkable about it. You can find news reports of this nature almost EVERY week of the year -- year AFTER year.

So many lives senselessly lost. So many psyches tarnished and torn. So many dead parents, siblings, children, aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, friends and colleagues. It tears at my heart that, in these United States of the Gun, there just isn't much we can do about it. Any suggestions of even mild deterrents are met with a chorus of "You are restricting the rights of law abiding gun owners."

You know, Food Stamp fraud is a problem. The feds and state governments have worked to develop strategies to lessen it. A good deal of these strategies makes things a lot more difficult for all the folks who utilize their Food Stamps properly. But that's okay, we're told, a little inconvenience for you good folks is a small price to pay to keep the bad folks from committing fraud. So, why doesn't this sort of argument work with guns?

Yes, I am aware that many will say this is like comparing apples and oranges. Gun ownership is a constitutional right; receiving food stamps is a privilege. Nowhere in the US Constitution does it say that people have the basic right to eat.

Be that as it may, I still don't understand why deterrents to Food Stamp fraud are widely embraced, but not deterrents for the ubiquitousness of gun violence. As far as I know, Food Stamp fraud never killed or maimed anyone!