The author, Richard Escow, is associated with the Center for America's Future, a think tank so far to the left if it was a ship the captain would be sending out damage control teams.
Maybe you've heard about the "bullet fee" that was supposedly charged to the families of prisoners executed by gunfire. The fee, which is almost certainly an urban legend, has been attributed at various times to Bolshevik revolutionaries and the governments of Iran and China.
But even if the bullet fee is mythical, there is a very real price to be paid when a society becomes intoxicated by gunplay. What price have we paid for the bullets fired at Newtown and in the year since that tragedy?
The financial estimates only scratch the surface.
The Cost
Researcher Ted Miller estimates the direct cost of intentional gun injuries at more than $8 billion per year, and the total societal cost at roughly $174 billion per year. A more focused study that concentrated on medical costs concluded that gun injuries lead to 31,000 hospitalizations each year at an annual cost of approximately $2.3 billion. More than 80 percent of that cost is borne by the government through Medicaid and other public assistance programs. In case you didn't do the math, that comes to more than USD $75,000 a stay. Dunno how much it costs for a hospital room stay for a gunshot wound, but I do not think we lost 31,000 to shootings. Mexico had to exist between 2007 and 2010 to reach those numbers of violent deaths in a country one third the population of the US.
Do most gunshot wounds require hospital stays, rather than just a bit of bandaging and a tetanus shot?
And yet, with all the talk of deficit reduction in Washington, gun control never seems to come up.
If most gunshot wound treatment is covered by Medicaid, etc., are most of the guns involved legal or illegal? If the latter, given that the majority of gun homicides involve illegally owned weapons used by gang bangers and their friends and relations, isn't the issue a lack of enforcement of current laws rather than the need for new ones that also won't be enforced? Lots of conflating of legal and illegal going on it this op-ed...
Guns are certainly big business. As we reported last year, "Firearms and ammunition sales rose 45 percent between 2009 and 2010 alone" and gun sales in some markets soared after the Newtown shooting. The Blackstone Group hedge fund, source of anti-Social Security billionaire Pete Peterson's wealth, makes money from the gun business. Oh the horror, making money in a growth industry. Leftists are all about destroying profit, but only the profits they don't like.
Cerberus Capital, an investment fund, created something it called the "Freedom Group" to invest in gun manufacturers. That investment became politically toxic after the Newtown shooting, especially with large institutional investors like teachers' pension funds. But then, when you name your fund after the two-headed dog that is said to guard the gates of hell, you're not exactly presenting yourself as a socially responsible investor.
So far they haven't been able to sell it. I don't blame Cerberus Capital. It's a terrible time for investors with a political class absolutely bent on destroying every vestige of personal liberty they can find.
And where there's money, there's lobbying. As the Sunlight Foundation reports, more than half of the new members of Congress elected last year received NRA funding. The school shooting didn't make politicians any more reluctant to attend gun fundraisers. Good news for us.
People of the Gun
But that doesn't begin to get at the heart of the matter -- or to the true extent of the cost. To estimate that, we first need to understand: We are the People of the Gun. We own more guns per capita than any other nation on earth. Only Yemen comes close, and Yemenis reportedly have an ambivalence about their guns that Americans don't seem to share. Something about an Islamic infected sh*thole that could conceivably make free people less ambivalent about guns.
Our love of the gun is as old as the nation itself. We needed our guns in the beginning. The long-range accuracy of the Pennsylvania Rifles used by colonists in the Revolutionary War contributed to a number of victories against the Redcoats, who carried shorter-range Brown Bess military muskets. Maybe that helped create the uniquely American algebra that says that "Guns = freedom." We still need the rifle and the handgun and the shotgun, as well as most variants available. Fascists who have seen a growing government, all too willing to press an anti-liberty, freedom destroying agenda wonder why free men want to arm up. Keep going and they will soon find out.
A dispersed agrarian people made up of homesteading farmers and ranchers needed guns -- to protect the livestock from wild animals and themselves from marauders and thieves. Guns were a tool. We are a people who take pride in our tools, and in our ability to use them. We take our quotidian tasks and make them sport -- and art, and adventure. Guns are mostly a bulwark against tyrants, like the writer who wrote this Saloon article. It is baked into the Constitution because the men who wrote it knew that even a democratically elected government can be a tyranny. A tool is but one of the uses.
But then, as the railroads and industrialists and combines began to steal the American dream away from the farmers and ranchers, the cowboys and settlers, the gun became our consolation prize, our sublimated revenge, a symbolic instrument of power to distract us from the real power -- the economic power -- that had been taken from us. Here comes the dialectic, and the historical materialism of Marxism. Do try to stay awake for it.
It has been a century since the United States became an urban-majority country, according to the Census Bureau. When a healthy need or desire lingers too long or gets out of control, it becomes a fetish. So says someone likely closely aligned with those with fetishes.
The Fantasy
The Second Amendment crowd is misreading the amendment in whose name they struggle, but they're not wrong about everything. There is a cultural divide over guns. He wants the conflate the Constitution with the culture as the gatekeeper to owning a gun. Nice one. Dishonest and irrelevant. This was probably for the Saloon crowd who will lap up everything liberals have to say about guns.
As one who has used guns recreationally off and on for many years (mostly off in the year since Newtown), Awww, they shamed him into putting down his BB gun, poor baby!
and who has lived in the major capitals of the East and well outside them, I've seen that divide firsthand.
It didn't happen by accident. Urban Americans were the first to experience the immediate and devastating impact of gun violence. And with the passage of the Sullivan Law of 1911, the "liberal elites" of New York State became the first Americans to live under some form of gun control. They've lived that way for generations now, and have never experienced the gun culture so common to other parts of the country. And yet, some of the most horrific mass murders have taken place in those places where, as the author puts it, the "residents live under some form of gun control".
Much of the rest of the country is still living out the pioneer fantasy forged in the 1800s -- and that fantasy is still fulfilling the same economic purpose: to distract them from the true imbalances in power that rob them of agency and economic power. They may not have money or a good job. But with a well-stocked gun cabinet they can feel that personal power is, in the words of the Rolling Stones song, "just a shot away." Dick can stack this crap until it is a sh*t mountain, but it changes nothing. Gun and the Constitution are separate from the culture and justifiably so. He can add references to declining economics until he is conditioned to say "comrade", but that doesn't change the basic argument.
Americans have the right to own a gun, regardless of the reason or the utility.
We're not here to judge them, but there is a through-line that reaches from their innermost fantasies to the deaths of children in Newtown. F*cking prick. This very article is nothing but judgment, bad judgment at that.
We've all been programmed with internal fantasies, with consequences we can dimly understand at best. Fantasies such as gun control. and speak for yourself, Dick.
But theirs is an especially deadly fantasy. It fuels Tea Party rage with a violent individualistic ethos that rejects collective action, even when that action is in their own interest. And it prevents the kind of legislation that could prevent future Newtowns. Dja get that? TEA Party = deadly fantasy about guns. I wonder if Dick got paid to insert that bit about the TEA Party.
The architects of this particular fantasy have been constructing it inside our psyches for generations. It was projected in the "spectacular" special effects of Buffalo Bill's sideshow, which included simulated prairie fires, a sunset and the cyclone. It has flickered before our eyes at 64 frames per second for nearly 100 years now, from "Birth of a Nation" to cowboy movies, from Charles Bronson and Clint Eastwood to the more stylized and nerd-friendly dogfights of "Star Wars." You will note that 90 percent of the folks who brought this "fantasy" to the silver screen would like nothing better than to seize guns from your cold, dead hands, and attribute that the the "culture". More money and resources for them.
Sure there's a solution to your problems, pardner. It's just a shot away. More culture. What a maroon.
The Price
On my office wall is a framed photograph of Buffalo Bill and his troupe given to my grandfather when he was a young boy attending Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show. The American strain runs in the blood. Your grandfather would probably beat the tar out of you for writing this.
What price have we paid for the many bullets that have been fired in the year since Newtown? To answer that we need to know: What's the value of a human life? What's the cost to a society for allowing itself to be distracted from decades of economic plunder? What's the value of a child's lost future, which lies like some subatomic phenomenon in a field of potentiality? Most of all: What does a society lose when it values its children's lives so cheaply? Newtown is a tragedy, and I don't want to get into the wherefores, unless it is to state the f*cker that did the shooting was crazy. I don't attach costs to children, nor do most of the people who have them. It is a loss and a tragic one but the loss of liberty simply means your means of dealing with that loss are gone, likely forever.
As of this writing, one year after the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, they are interrupting regularly scheduled programming to report on another school shooting, at Arapahoe High School in Colorado. That's shouldn't surprise anyone. We are the People of the Gun. We are, but the man who did the shooting was also crazy.
Has that been determined? He certainly was a vocal leftist, and strongly for gun control, which is odd.
The cost of a bullet is the price of a fantasy paid in blood. Let's hope it isn't also paid with the price of our souls. A fantasy that your ideological allies have fomented for 100 years. That doesn't change the calculus:
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
#1
A more focused study that concentrated on medical costs concluded that gun injuries lead to 31,000 hospitalizations each year at an annual cost of approximately $2.3 billion. More than 80 percent of that cost is borne by the government through Medicaid and other public assistance programs.
The author should delve in more depth into these statistics before coming up with knee-jerk solutions.
A gun-free society is one that invites unbridled tyranny and lawlessness. Those who are doing many of the intentional shootings are also those who have illegal firearms. BTW, they also do many of the unintentional collateral damage shootings.
No, we 'are the People' of a failed justice system. Convicted horse thieves were once hung by the neck until dead. A man's (or woman's) horse was the way they earned a living.
#5
yes, it never dawns on the gullible lead by these wannabe tyrants that if the ruling class actually delivered a safe and relatively just society, the resistance to 'gun control' would shrink to unimportant levels. The tyrants know they can't so deliver, but they need the arms out of the hands of those they desperately want to rule.
Van Gogh was murdered by Mohammed Bouyeri as he was cycling to work on 2 November 2004 at about 9 o'clock in the morning, in front of the Amsterdam East borough office (stadsdeelkantoor), on the corner of the Linnaeusstraat and Tweede Oosterparkstraat (52°21′32.22″N 4°55′34.74″E). The killer shot van Gogh eight times with an HS 2000 handgun. Initially from his bicycle, Bouyeri fired several bullets at Van Gogh, who was hit, as were two bystanders. Wounded, Van Gogh ran to the other side of the road and fell to the ground on the cycle lane. According to eyewitnesses, Van Gogh's last words were: "Mercy, mercy! We can talk about it, can't we?" Bouyeri then walked up to Van Gogh, who was still lying down, and calmly shot him several more times at close range. Bouyeri then cut Van Goghs throat, and tried to decapitate him with a large knife, after which he stabbed the knife deep into Van Gogh's chest, reaching his spinal cord. He then attached a note to the body with a smaller knife. Van Gogh died on the spot. The two knives were left implanted. The note was addressed, and contained a death threat to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who was subsequently forced to go into hiding, threatened Western countries and Jews and also referred to the ideologies of the Egyptian organization Takfir wal-Hijra. (Wikipedia)
#10
I wonder how many massacres there were back in the 1800's, when everyone owned a gun. The per-capita murder rate must've been sky high, eh? And everybody in Wyoming should be murdered off by next Tuesday.
Posted by: Bobby ||
12/27/2013 13:31 Comments ||
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#11
Cerberus played it well. After the Newtown shooting protestors showed up at the CEO and CFO's home. Their kids received death threats. They had to move the families because the threats were real. The CEO Came out and said they would sell all of the Freedom works firearms. The wacko's stopped the harassment and Freedom was never sold. A well played plan.
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
12/27/2013 13:39 Comments ||
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#12
What's the value of a human life?
To who?
The thug, (Who obeys NO laws, or the human who fights against them)
Thug, has an illegal gun.
The Person, who must Defend against thedm.
And The people who would Disarm him.(Like this twit)
There's a saying "When seconds count, the Police are Minutes away, and will get there AFTER it's all over.
I for one, would rather be standing, maybe with the perp at my feet, (Alive, or dead) maybe he's fled.
Either way, I'm standing.
(Yes, I'm always armed and i'm friendly too.)
Nobody feels scared talking to me.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
12/27/2013 14:00 Comments ||
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#13
When the state is disarmed then it could be time to think about it.
#14
PX4 Storm, nice. I have one in in .40 S&W full frame. And the CX4 Carbine, same caliber. Both weapons use the same magazine.
Beretta or SIG, those are my hand gun choices.
Posted by: Secret Asian Man ||
12/27/2013 20:30 Comments ||
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#15
But then, when you name your fund after the two-headed dog that is said to guard the gates of hell where every Mayan New Year Thor would ride out on Anansi the Spider, armed by Shiva with a high capacity assault rifle shotgun, you're not exactly presenting yourself as a socially responsible fish tank filter.
Cerberus is Greco-Roman, Hell is Judeo-Christian, and you are a failure. Think tank, guess they need the sucker fish as well.
Turkey is coming apart. The Islamist coalition that crushed the secular military and political establishmentbetween Tayip Erdogans ruling AK Party and the Islamist movement around Fethullah Gulenhas cracked. The Gulenists, who predominate in the security forces, have arrested the sons of top government ministers for helping Iran to launder money and circumvent sanctions, and ten members of Erdogans cabinet have resigned. Turkeys currency is in free fall, and thats just the beginning of the countrys troubles: about two-fifths of corporate debt is in foreign currencies, so the cost of servicing it jumps whenever the Turkish lira declines. Turkish stocks have crashed (and were down another 5% in dollar terms in early trading Friday). So much for Turkeys miracle economy.
...For the past ten years we have heard ad nauseum about the Turkish model of Muslim democracy. The George W. Bush administration courted Erdogan even before he became prime minister, and Obama went out of his way to make Erdogan his principal pal in foreign policy.
...Now the hashish smoke has cleared, Erdogans Cave of Wonders has turned back into a sandpit, and the foreign policy establishment has nothing to show for years of propitiation of this Anatolian wannabe except a headache.
#1
Remember ole Lawrence of Arabia said in the Seven Pillars of Wisdom that things in the ME are never as they seem or as they are represented to be. There is always something swimming beneath the surface or hiding in the shadows.
Posted by: Bill Clinton ||
12/27/2013 22:24 Comments ||
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[Pak Daily Times] Even the well wishers of the PML-N government are having an increasingly hard time defending its performance in office during the last six months. Given Pakistain's dire situation as far as terrorism, law and order and the economy are concerned, the incoming government initially enjoyed a great deal of goodwill based on the perception that a 'business-friendly' government may prove more adept at turning the economy round at the very least.
However, some people are alive only because it's illegal to kill them... six months down the road, that hope appears to be dwindling. It should not come as a surprise then that opposition leaders are starting to speak out on the handling of the economy in particular, and the country's affairs in general. Leader of the Opposition and a PPP leader Syed Khursheed Shah felt compelled to warn the government on Wednesday that they had better get a grip and allay the sense of drift that seems to permeate the affairs of the government. Khursheed was nevertheless constrained, perhaps in recognition of the serious difficulties the country is in, to offer another three months to the government to put its house in order, otherwise the opposition would be compelled, he said, to devise a new strategy. Without referring to the 'old' strategy of the opposition, it can be surmised that the warning of a 'new' one emanates from two factors. One, the government's failure to reduce inflation (despite the claims of the Punjab PML-N government regarding foodstuffs), eliminate scheduled power outages (which has returned with a vengeance because of the diversion of gas from the power sector to textiles to take full advantage of the recently granted GSP Plus access to EU markets), or uplift the economy. Fortunately, the Leader of the Opposition, as behoves a senior and responsible parliamentarian, rejected taking these issues to the street (a la Imran Khan) ... aka Taliban Khan, who who convinced himself that playing cricket qualified him to lead a nuclear-armed nation with severe personality problems... and argued for parliament as the proper forum to resolve these problems. However, Caliphornia hasn't yet slid into the ocean, no matter how hard it's tried... while criticizing Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar's 'performance' in parliament, particularly the festering sore of the use of the word 'tamasha' (drama) to describe the opposition's stance on verifying votes in four constituencies, he said half the ministers do not come to the National Assembly (following no doubt their prime minister's example) and the minister was talking about the TA/DA allowances parliamentarians get for attendance. He went on to take a dig at the prime minister by arguing that he had kept so many crucial ministries to himself that he had no time to come to parliament. Another voice that has been added to the concerns about the government's performance is that of PML-Q leader Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain. He is so alarmed that he has come out with the 'original' suggestion of an All Parties Conference (APC) on the economy, just as was held over national security. The example he gave runs against Chaudhry Shujaat's wishes as the APC on the approach towards terrorism produced nothing but more confusion and paralysis. Going by that track record, the suggestion of an APC on the economy fails to inspire confidence.
Whether one agrees wholly or partly with Khursheed and Shujaat or not, the fact remains that they have put their finger on a critical aspect of the government's manner of tackling things. The inescapable sense of policy drift has left even government supporters frustrated. Inflation is a direct consequence of supply and demand factors, implying only a boost to production can restore some balance between the two. Production increases require investment (not to be had for love or money at present), energy (increasingly in short supply again) and an enabling environment for entrepreneurship (the Youth Loan scheme has run into trouble at the very outset and the bureaucracy still wields extraordinary power to frustrate businessmen). While Khursheed lauded the reversal of the decline of the rupee vis-à-vis the dollar and hoped for further improvement in this regard, the currency's value is tied in inextricable bonds with business confidence (the state of which is reflected in the flight of capital from the country) and the state of the country's external obligations. Whether domestic or external factors are considered, one irreducible truth is undeniable: without tackling terrorism (and its concomitant bad law and order), there isn't a snowball's chance in hell the economy can recover, let alone flourish. If there is one key to the whole mess the country is in, it is this. But unfortunately, this is an area where confusion and drift reign supreme, refurbished by the confusion the APC produced on peace with the bully boyz through talks. Now we neither have 'talks', nor concerted action to root out terrorism. In this policy impasse, how can the economy or any other national matter be expected to yield improvement? The government must go back to the drawing board in its own interest and at least be seen to be tackling the country's problems, otherwise the present perception of drift could hurt it badly in the eyes of the electorate. *
Posted by: Fred ||
12/27/2013 00:00 ||
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[Pak Daily Times] In theory, Pakistain can be considered as one of the richest countries in the world. Its geopolitical location, its fertile lands, its access to warm waters, its natural resources and its extraordinarily talented people -- everything obliges us to believe that Pakistain by now should be the fully grown 'economic tiger' of Asia, a hub of education and culture in the subcontinent and an inspiration for all Mohammedan nations but, unfortunately, it is not. On the contrary, Pakistain, in the 21st century, has emerged as an irresponsible nation infamous for hiding the world's most wanted forces of Evil and providing them safe havens to plot their future assaults, a failing state that has laid down its arms in front of violent criminals instead of bringing them to justice and a country wrecked by religious intolerance and sectarianism while claiming itself to be peaceful.
Nonetheless, for us, the reason for our failure is not our internal ineptitude at all. It is not our Afghan policy or Kashmiri jihad, nor has it anything to do with our unstable political system or imbalance in power between the military elite and the civilian administration. It is not related to rampant corruption, crime or terrorism. Rather, we believe it is because of the foreign conspiracies and enemy agents in our ranks who are working against the national interest to benefit others. All of us carry blind faith in such presuppositions. There are some differences in their execution and the criminal mastermind behind these plots, whether it is Israel, India or the US but their objectives, in our eyes, always remain the same: destroy Islam, divide the Mohammedans and annihilate Pakistain. Our xenophobia is so powerful that even though Pakistain is a nation created in the name of Islam, a simple proclamation of the belief in One God and His Prophet (PTUI!) may divide us further and lead to sectarian violence. However, ars longa, vita brevis... a declaration in these conspiracy theories will firmly unite us together like conjoined twins.
Without any hesitation, we pass our verdict about some Paks who we believe have sold their conscience for mundane luxuries and are being played as puppets in the hands of their foreign masters. In our opinion, many media outlets have been compromised in the race and some renowned politicians, probably, have also been corrupted. The sincerity of some prominent civil right activists is doubtful for us and the patriotism of some 'so-called' non-governmental organizations (NGOs) is questionable. There are some journalists who need to be investigated, and then there are some bureaucrats whose loyalties, from our point of view, need to be explored. In short, we have people from every aspect of life who can easily be labelled as Indian or enemy agents. Most of the time we can recognise them because of their liberal ideology, their narrative of peace with India and their rigid stance against negotiations with the Taliban. Their duplicity, in the eyes of most Paks, is indeed mindboggling. While they will proclaim that talks with the Taliban are not going to work and a strong army operation is the only option, they will, in the same breath, also announce that there is no military solution with India and that war is not an option for Pakistain. These are the people who get easy access to the Indian embassy and receive special protocol when they visit the neighbouring state.
For the sake of argument, let us suppose it is true. Let us also assume that there are people in every aspect of life who are working to harm Pakistain against its enemies, an act of treason that no sovereign nation state is ready to forgive. Now, for a moment, consider yourself as an Indian financier, who is investing his nation's hard earned money on some selfish Paks. With that in mind, tell me, do you want your agents to be exposed or do you want them to be hidden behind masks of religiosity and nationalism? As the sponsor, do you want your agents to be openly critical of Pak policies, infamous in their own country for promoting pro-Indian policies or do you want them to be totally unrecognisable as a conservative Mohammedan who is always favouring unity of the ummah (Mohammedan community) -- an impossible idea -- while promoting only one particular sect?
The answer is obvious. From a logical perspective, it is much more likely that the paid Indian agents among us would not be openly secular or liberal. They would not advocate a policy that raises eyebrows regarding their own patriotism or cast a doubt about their personal integrity; instead they would be prone to support a nationalistic ideology, a stance that not only camouflages their true identity where no one points a finger at them, but also provides them with a higher moral pedestal from where they can easily announce anyone who disagrees with them as an enemy agent.
I strongly think this is the case in Pakistain. I believe a lot of people who pretend to be hyper-religious or hyper-nationalist -- the ones who we know get easily annoyed and pass a judgment on others -- are in fact greedy agents working for other countries. Their job is to create a constant state of paranoia in Pakistain, a condition in which every Pak believes that the rest of the world intends to destroy them. They want to build an untrustworthy nation that cannot -- or would not -- keep its international obligations and would want to lay the foundations of a failed state in which the implementation of international trade agreements becomes impossible. Their intention is to alienate Pakistain from the international community and promote it as a country whose expectations with other nations are so impractical and unrealistic that even a simple transaction like the NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A collection of multinational and multilingual and multicultural armed forces, all of differing capabilities, working toward a common goal by pulling in different directions... supply lines becomes a life or death event.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/27/2013 00:00 ||
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#1
oh. I thought this was going to be an article about how to avoid those Indians calling you to tell you your computer has a problem only they can fix.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Pak Daily Times] In theory, Pakistain can be considered as one of the richest countries in the world. Its geopolitical location, its fertile lands, its access to warm waters, its natural resources and its extraordinarily talented people -- everything obliges us to believe that Pakistain by now should be the fully grown 'economic tiger' of Asia, a hub of education and culture in the subcontinent and an inspiration for all 
