The Voices of the Unarmed

The New York Times published an op-ed piece entitled "Good Sense in Tennessee."

Safety-minded localities in gun-friendly Tennessee have delivered a blunt and very welcome lesson in gun control to the National Rifle Association. While Tennessee’s ever-obeisant Legislature has enacted a law permitting handguns in all state and local parks, about 70 cities and counties have voted to opt out of this latest lock-and-load obsession from the N.R.A.

The message is obvious: folks at the local level will not be bullied by the gun lobby. Local municipalities have rejected legislation which allows guns to be carried in hundreds of parks — "including public playgrounds, campgrounds, greenways and nature trails."

Few state politicians anticipated there would be local resistance. But bans were voted by Nashville and Memphis and dozens of suburban counties and rural communities.

It's very interesting that the surprise resistance to gun friendly legislation comes from two of the largest urban centers as well as many rural ones. What's your opinion? Do pro-gun folks, who object so strenuously to the federal government dictating policies that affect them, feel the state government should have this same power? It seems the NRA thinks this.

The gun lobby is not giving up, of course. It is already marshaling lobbyists and cash to ensure the next Legislature strips localities of their right to just say no.

What's your opinion?

Bill Maher on Obama's Health Care Speech

Thanks to kavemen for a wonderful compliment, I've decided to turn to Bill Maher for more info on the health care story. Actually, what I like about Maher is that he's extremely critical of the President. Some of the others are very funny in their observations about the right, but Bill Maher really says it like it is. What do you think?

Is It Really About Racism?

Reform Madness - White Minority

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Maureen Dowd on "You Lie"

The New York Times published an op-ed piece by Maureen Dowd, entitled "Boy, Oh, Boy." In it, Ms. Dowd pulls no punches in assigning racist motivations not only to the unprecidented outburst of Congressman Wilson, but to the the general animosity being shown President Obama.

The outburst was unexpected from a milquetoast Republican backbencher from South Carolina who had attracted little media attention. Now it has made him an overnight right-wing hero, inspiring “You lie!” bumper stickers and T-shirts.

The congressman, we learned, belonged to the Sons of Confederate Veterans, led a 2000 campaign to keep the Confederate flag waving above South Carolina’s state Capitol and denounced as a “smear” the true claim of a black woman that she was the daughter of Strom Thurmond, the ’48 segregationist candidate for president. Wilson clearly did not like being lectured and even rebuked by the brainy black president presiding over the majestic chamber.

This is exactly where conservatives have veered from the path of acceptable debate and disagreement. And attempts to justify Rep. Wilson's actions by saying Bush had received much of the same, are the height of rationalization. Here's an example, read the comments.

In debating the gun enthusiasts and being continually surprised at the depth of their ill will towards President Obama, I suggested it was due to his gun politics. This was roundly denied, most pro-gun commenters claiming that his gun control sympathies are only a small part of what's wrong with Obama as president. I had another idea which I dared not mention. Maureen Dowd has dared though.

I’ve been loath to admit that the shrieking lunacy of the summer — the frantic efforts to paint our first black president as the Other, a foreigner, socialist, fascist, Marxist, racist, Commie, Nazi; a cad who would snuff old people; a snake who would indoctrinate kids — had much to do with race.

I tended to agree with some Obama advisers that Democratic presidents typically have provoked a frothing response from paranoids — from Father Coughlin against F.D.R. to Joe McCarthy against Truman to the John Birchers against J.F.K. and the vast right-wing conspiracy against Bill Clinton.

But Wilson’s shocking disrespect for the office of the president — no Democrat ever shouted “liar” at W. when he was hawking a fake case for war in Iraq — convinced me: Some people just can’t believe a black man is president and will never accept it.

What's your opinion? Is the fact that Barack Obama is a black man, the unspoken problem? Do you think that plays a role in what we've been seeing in the news? Is there anyone commenting here with the guts to admit this, either about themselves or the others? As politically incorrect as overt racism is, perhaps integrity and honesty might overcome the inhibitions, and some would be willing to admit it.

For two centuries, the South has feared a takeover by blacks or the feds. In Obama, they have both.

What do you think?

Sebastian on Glock

On his wonderful blog, Snowflakes in Hell, Sebastian makes an interesting observation about the Business Week cover story on Glock that came out the other day.

It raises some questions about the business structure and profits of Glock, but I’m not sure what they are describing is illegal.

I very well may have missed something or misunderstood, but it seems to me the Business Week article is rife with allegations of not only intrigue and the usual dirty shenanigans that go on in business, but plenty of illegal activity as well.

Among the Glock-related material the IRS allegedly is examining: boxes of invoices and memos provided by the company's former senior executive in the U.S., Paul F. Jannuzzo. Once one of the most prominent gun industry executives in America, Jannuzzo said in a federal complaint he filed last year that Gaston Glock used his companies' complicated structure to conceal profits from American tax authorities. "[Glock] has organized an elaborate scheme to both skim money from gross sales and to launder those funds through various foreign entities," Jannuzzo alleged in the sealed May 12, 2008, IRS filing, which BusinessWeek has reviewed. "The skim is approximately $20.00 per firearm sold," according to the complaint. Glock's U.S. unit, which generates the bulk of the company's sales, has sold about 5 million pistols since the late 1980s, Jannuzzo estimates in an interview.

Jannuzzo is currently being prosecuted by the Cobb County District Attorney's Office for siphoning corporate money into a Cayman Islands account. Jannuzzo, who left the company in 2003, claims he's the victim of a vendetta.

In the U.S., Jannuzzo and another former Glock executive, Peter S. Manown, have claimed that for years they distributed company funds to their wives and Glock employees with the understanding that the money would be donated to congressional candidates—an apparent violation of U.S. election law.

The Glock company seems to have more than its share of intrigue and internal turmoil. Beginning in 1987, the Austrian industrialist had employed Charles Ewert to head up the sales end of the business.

Ewert, a mustachioed Luxembourg resident now in his late 50s, it turns out was a purveyor of shell companies: paper corporations that can be used to shield income from taxation—sometimes legitimately and sometimes in questionable ways. Ewert designed a network of shells to lessen the gun empire's exposure to product liability and potential taxation, according to documents filed with the Luxembourg court.

Perhaps those questionable ways were within the letter of the law, but one wonders about the integrity of Mr. Ewart when it turns out he tried to have Mr. Glock killed.

Over time, Ewert transferred ownership of some of the Glock-affiliated shells to himself, according to Luxembourg court judgments. Suspicious of Ewert, Gaston Glock sought an explanation in July 1999. On the afternoon of a meeting scheduled at Ewert's office near the tony Rue Royale in central Luxembourg, Glock was attacked in an underground garage. The hit man, a former professional wrestler and French Legionnaire named Jacques Pecheur, bashed the businessman on the head with a rubber mallet, a technique apparently aimed at making it look like the victim had fallen down and fatally injured himself. Glock, physically fit from daily swimming—often in the frigid lake abutting his home near Klagenfurt, Austria—fought back. When police arrived, they found Glock bleeding from gashes to his skull. Pecheur, 67, was unconscious.

Luxembourg investigators found Ewert's business card in Pecheur's car and determined that the two had met at a gun range in Paris in 1998. Both were convicted of participating in a conspiracy to kill Glock. Pecheur received a sentence of 17 years, Ewert 20.

My overall reaction to this story is to have admiration for Gaston Glock. His rise to prominence in the international gun manufacturing business is impressive as is his personally beating off a would-be assassin. But to say "I’m not sure what they are describing is illegal," as Sebastian did, I just don't understand.

The Business Week article is a chronicle of illegal activity, granted it's the kind that many big businesses engage in, but it's certainly illegal.

What's your opinion? Is there a problem with American law enforcement doing business with a shady company like Glock? Or is that beside the point, the point being their product is superior and that's all the clients need be interested in?

I'm sure Sebastian can explain what he meant, but why do you think he would defend the Glock company like that? Is the pro-gun position to give the benefit of the doubt to gun manufacturers even in the face of all those allegations? Do you think the dirty dealings which may go on within the manufacturer's company somehow taint the consumers of the product, the gun buying public in this case?

What's your opinion? Please leave a comment.

Lock 'em Up, That's the Answer

AztecRed, whose blog I like very much, said in a recent comment, "If you can't trust someone enough to own a gun, you can't trust them enough to not be locked up."

The discussion that followed indicated that not all pro-gun folks agree, but many do. These are the same guys who generally believe in harsher treatment of criminals, even young ones guilty of their first offense. The problems of overcrowding in prisons and the near non-existence of rehabilitation does not concern these law-and-order types. This video made me think about all that.

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Guns and Africa

The Economist published an article on the flow of guns in Africa.

THE UN reckons there are some 500m small arms in circulation around the world. At least 70m are Kalashnikovs. The Soviet-designed automatic assault rifle, the Avtomat Kalashnikova, was first manufactured in 1947 (hence its commonest version, the AK-47). Its compactness and durability have made it Africa’s killing weapon of choice since the 1980s, despite its inaccuracy. These days, the continent has all of the score of Kalashnikov variants, including the AKM, the Chinese Type 56, and the Serbian Zastava M70.

I remember commenters claiming not to care what goes on in Mexico and Canada. I don't suppose those guys will be too concerned about this. But it is interesting, and may put some of our other discussions in perspective.

In an attempt to make it harder for organised criminals to arm themselves, and in a nod to global counter-terrorist efforts, a group of ten eastern and central African countries, including Ethiopia, Rwanda and Uganda, which owe their liberation movements partly to the Kalashnikov, has agreed to harmonise gun laws.

Now, there's an interesting idea. African borders are easily crossed, much like the state borders in the U.S., and so the obvious solution to them is to "harmonize gun laws" among the different countries. This is one of the solutions proposed by gun control folks in America. Even in Africa, which is not known for its cutting edge politics, they know this much.

What's your opinion? Is the autonomy of individual states in the U.S. more important than attempting to make a unified effort at gun control? Aren't there already many areas in which the federal government "harmonizes" states' efforts? Why do some people resist this when it comes to guns?

What do you think about the statement, "500m small arms in circulation around the world. At least 70m are Kalashnikovs?" Does that sound right to you? How does that jibe with the U.S. numbers we always throw around, 50M, 80M, and so forth? Are we talking about the same thing, "small arms?"

Please leave a comment if you'd like.