GUN LAWS AND MASS KILLINGS-68

Rather than react emotionally and unthinkingly either for strict or unrestricted gun control laws in response to the unspeakable and horrendous shooting and mass killing at the Newtown, Connecticut school, I believe that a rational and logical reaction based upon facts would be a superior response. Here then are some facts in regard to mass killings in the USA: Mass killings in the United States (defined as three or more killings in one episode), rose from the 1960’s to the 1990’s, and then dropped in the 2000’s. Contrary to popular opinion, these mass killings have declined in the decade of 2000-2009 to 26 as contrasted to 42 in the decade of 1990-1999 and 32 in the decade of 1980-1989. The murder of school age children declined by 42% in the period 1992-2008 from the previous same time - span. Although it is still a haunting tragedy only 1% of school age children who are murdered die at school. Was the Newtown school shooting the biggest mass killing at a school in the history of the country? Not in terms of the number of human beings killed. On May 18, 1927 part-time caretaker, Andrew Kehoe, at a school in Bath, Michigan, killed 45 people, including 38 children from the 3rd to the 6th grade, and wounded 58 more with dynamite then shot to death two first responders and himself. He spent months placing explosives inside the school and in fact 500 lbs. of unexploded dynamite were discovered under the school that did not explode owing to faulty wiring. It was estimated that if all of the dynamite had exploded there would have been hundreds killed or severely wounded. He killed his wife before committing this insane act. What was his problem? He was having financial difficulties and was angry about having to pay taxes. There is never an adequate explanation of why madmen take these murderous and terrible actions. Despite this abomination in 1927, according to criminalist Grant Duwe of the Minnesota Department of Corrections, the year 1929 is known to be the high point for mass killings in the USA. Part of this is attributed to organized crime killings by Al Capone and his ilk. I doubt if the Main Stream Media in their zealotry to banish guns from the American public will mention the past mass killings in the USA. In 1994 there was an Assault Rifle ban lasting 10 years. This ban limited an ammunition clip to 10 rounds or fewer. What was the result of this ban? In short, nothing. There was no increase or decrease in the numbers of shootings during this time period compared to the previous 10 years. The likely reason was that people already owned the type of guns that were prohibited. There are an estimated 300 million firearms of all types in private hands in this country at this time. When Australia passed a strict gun control law in 1996 the type of guns that were restricted were confiscated from gun owners with severe penalties for those people who did not turn them in to the government. As Charles Krauthammer has said, can you imagine what would happen if the government tried to confiscate guns from Americans. The gun law passed in 1994 and those being talked about today, including what Sen. Dianne Feinstein has proposed, grandfathers in what people already own. It does appear that the current mass killers are younger that those in the past. Why? Some answers might be that there is less discipline imposed upon the youth of today and therefore they are subjected to more harmful external influences outside the family; movies, which the youth flock to today as opposed to older gents, are more graphic and violent than in the past; and the explosion of video games where gratuitous violence and nonstop shootings are experienced and played by these young people without consequences. Of course, it should go without saying (I will say it anyway) that a vast majority of the youth are not affected or impacted by all this senseless violence, yet for the relative few who are already mentally unstable this might push them over the edge of sanity. Thanks to the ACLU (American Criminal Liberties Union) and other left wing groups, there has been a movement in recent decades to make it more and more difficult to have clearly troubled people, especially youth, restrained or even forcible treated for mental illness. It is not that anyone wants everyone who is considered odd or a bit strange to be incarcerated else everyone excepting you and me might be locked up and I am not quite sure about you being allowed unimpeded freedom; just joking – I think. Gun-free zones have been the most popular response to previous mass killings. But many law-enforcement officials say they are actually counterproductive. “Guns are already banned in schools. That is why the shootings occur in schools. A school is a ‘helpless-victim zone,’” says Richard Mack, a former Arizona sheriff. “Preventing any adult at a school from having access to a firearm eliminates any chance the killer can be stopped in time to prevent a rampage,” Jim Kouri, the public-information officer of the National Association of Chiefs of Police, told Mack earlier this year at the time of the Aurora, Colo., Batman—movie shooting. Indeed there have been many instances – from the high-school shooting by Luke Woodham in Mississippi, to the New Life Church shooting in Colorado Springs, Colo. – where a killer has been stopped after someone got a gun from a parked car or elsewhere and confronted the shooter. Economists John Lott and William Landes conducted a ground breaking study in 1999, and found that a common theme of mass shootings is that they occur in places where guns are banned and killers know everyone will be unarmed, such as shopping malls and schools. According to columnist John Fund, Lott told him “Disarming law-abiding citizens leaves them as sitting ducks. A couple hundred people were in the Cinemark Theater when the killer arrived. There is an extremely high probability that one or more of them would have had a legal concealed handgun with him if they had not been banned.” Lott offered one more damning statistic: “With just one single exception, the attack on Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson in 2011, every public shooting since at least 1950 in the USA in which more than three people have been killed has taken place where citizens are not allowed to carry guns.” According to a 2005 to 2007 study by researchers at the University of Wisconsin and Bowling Green University there is no evidence that private holders of concealed-carry permits (which are either easy to obtain or not even required in more than 40 states) are any more irresponsible with firearms nationwide than the police. What can be learned from this current tragedy? (1.) Mass killing is not a new phenomenon, which means it has been an unsolved problem with no easy solutions for some time. (2.) Simply passing gun control laws have not and will not solve the problem in this country. (3.) Intervening more forcibly to treat and/or restrain identifiably dangerously mentally ill people, especially young people, should be part of the solution. (4.) A voluntary or, if necessary, a mandatory reduction in gratuitous violence by movie and video game makers should also be part of the answer.

THE USA SPENDING & DEBT PROBLEM-67

Let me cut through the fog and folderol of political partisanship in regard to the subject of this essay. First I will document the data in regard to the national debt increases during the presidential terms of the USA presidents going back to the Ronald Reagan administration. Notice I did not say the debt accumulated by each of these presidents. Although the president is not a mere bystander in regard to the national debt increase during his administration (for better or worse the masculine form of the pronoun can be exclusively used to date) he can certainly legitimately be held responsible for a large but not sole contribution in this regard. Here are the increased national debt data for the specified presidents. Even though President Clinton is credited with having budget surpluses in the last three years of his presidency, in all of his eight years as president the national debt increased. In fact, the last decrease in the national debt occurred in the 1956-57 fiscal year (when Eisenhower was president). As you can see the national debt increased more in the 8 years of the G.W. Bush administration than in the three previous administrations (20 years) and will have increased by circa $1 trillion more in the full 4 years of the Obama administration than in the 8 years of G.W. Bush. The national debt increase under these combined last five presidents accounts for about $15 ½ trillion of the total $16 ½ trillion debt. Of particular interest is that three of these presidents were Republicans and two were Democrats: Ronald Reagan $1 ¾ trillion in 8 years G.H.W. Bush $1.5 trillion in 4 years Bill Clinton $1.5 trillion in 8 years G.W. Bush $4.9 trillion in 8 years Barack Obama $5.9 trillion (est.) in 4 years Back in 1955 foreigners owned less than 5% of our national debt. Today nearly 50% of our national debt is owned by foreign governments and foreign private investors. A big chunk of this lending is from China and Japan. Even with low interest rates currently being paid on US government bonds the US government paid $230 billion in net interest in 2011. The reason the US government can pay lower interest rates than other countries is that investors still have more confidence in the $US than other currencies. There is no guarantee this will continue for long into the future unless we get our debt under control. It has been described as the USA being the largest midget. When Franklin Roosevelt was elected president in 1932, federal spending stood at 4.3% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP); today it is almost six times that, accounting for one dollar out of every four in the overall economy. As has been stated by practically every economist extant, such explosive government growth and expense is unsustainable. Anyone can check these data, as they are readily available from official sources on the Internet. The numbers are rounded to the nearest $.1 of a trillion ($100 billion) and are calculated starting with the first year of the presidential term and are not adjusted for inflation, but are the actual dollar amounts at the time. On our current course this country is headed towards financial disaster. What does that mean? It indicates that unless corrective action is taken this country’s financial institutions and hence social structures will collapse. What is going on in some of the countries of Europe, especially Greece, will be replicated here in spades. Can this be avoided? Yes, of course, but it will take the co-operation of both Democrats and Republicans as well as the popular will of a majority of the people in this country. I don’t believe this catastrophic condition will happen. However, I do believe that the situation will get worse, perhaps much worse, before enough of the populace is alarmed to the degree that they will demand that their representatives in Congress and the White House fix this deadly serious problem. Given the big government and massive spending philosophy of most of the Democrat politicians and the still big spending, but not quite as big as the Democrats and the more reliant on the private sector philosophy of Republicans, a compromise solution as everyone must realize will not be quick or easy. Given what will certainly happen if no solution is agreed to it is not unreasonable to believe after much complaining, bloviating, and posturing eventually a meaningful compromise will be worked out. What course of action would I suggest? First, let me layout the problems as I see them. What are the biggest expenditures of the federal government? Here are the percentages in 2011 of the $3.6 trillion federal budget: Medicare & Medicaid 21%; Social Security 20.1%; Defense 19.4%; Benefits besides health 15.1%; Interest on the debt 6.4%; and Everything else 18%. It is therefore plain that since the first three items comprise 60 ½% of all government expenditures, then that is where the most meaningful reductions in expenditures can be made. Not that it is not worthwhile that the myriad other unnecessary and wasteful expenses be cut or even eliminated to have an important impact on reducing the debt, yet the large expenses are where the most dollars to be saved are to be found. Democrat politicians need to risk offending part of their constituency by reining in out-of-control welfare spending. It has grown like Topsy such that now there are some 82 means tested federal and state welfare programs (not including Social Security and Medicare which are only partially subsidized by the government) that cost almost $1 trillion annually. This country, or any country, cannot afford such massive government paid public largesse. Additionally such large-scale welfare programs have an enervating effect on the self-reliance and individual initiative of a great many people all to the detriment of what might otherwise be a more flourishing economy. Republican politicians need to take on the military hawks by significantly reducing our military budget. The USA defense budget at almost $700 billion annually (as late as 1990 the defense budget was $300 billion annually) is greater than the combined defense budgets of the next 17 largest spenders. These are China, the United Kingdom, France, Russia, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Germany, India, Italy, Brazil, South Korea, Australia, Canada, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Spain, and Israel. This is a ridiculous, wasteful, and completely unnecessary expense by the USA. For a more exhaustive treatment of the USA military read my blog essay THE USA MILITARY. The federal government gives up almost as much money for tax loopholes, deductions, credits, and other tax breaks as it collects in individual and corporate income taxes. That makes this area of potential increased government revenue a fertile source to consider as the Republican politicians, at least some of them, have stated they are willing to negotiate on. The Democrat politicians would be well advised, if they have the wellbeing of the country in mind, to actively engage Republicans on this aspect of financial reform rather than stubbornly insisting that income tax rates for the higher income cohort (where the most jobs are created) be the backbone of their increased revenue strategy. One Republican “talking point” is that we have a government spending problem, not a government revenue problem. There is a great deal of truth to that, yet the overriding problem is our ever burgeoning national debt (state indebtedness is also a major problem and a barrier to economic prosperity at the state level) which, if there is any hope to greatly ameliorate it, will require the co-operation of both Democrats and Republicans which will mean a two-pronged approach of reduced government spending and, at least temporarily, increased government revenues. I believe that a compromise solution to our debt problem is the only one available to us. The alternative: a failed, discredited, disgraced, and pitiful nation.