Gun Referendum

   November's general election in America will be a referendum on gun control.  All members of the House of Representatives and one-third of the Senators will be on ballots throughout the country.
  Many Republicans rely on financial support from the NRA for their campaigns, and in return feel obliged to reject efforts to restrict the easy availability of guns to anyone who wants one.
   This easy availability has resulted in the deaths of many hundreds of people in America so far this year, including most recently the killing of 19 children and their two teachers in Texas.
   But the National Rifle Association (NRA) and their political lackeys insist that the problem is not the number of guns in America (there are more guns than people in the U.S.), and the way to prevent incidents like the Texas school shootings is to arm all teachers.
   Moreover, they maintain that the shooters have mental or emotional issues that need treatment, and this has precedent over the claim they have a constitutionally guaranteed "right to bear arms."
  Question: Does this mean they have a constitutionally guaranteed right to kill children?
   Recent mass shooting incidents have again raised the issue of federal gun control. Efforts to increase restrictions on gun ownership have been blocked by Republicans in Congress after a mass shooting in America.
   Result: This puts gun control on the back side of election ballots, as voters decide to choose those who will act to save their children rather than those who take instructions from a gun lobby more concerned with monetary profit than children's lives.

Gun Logic

Guns don't kill people.

People kill people.

Therefore, more gun means more defense. -- NRA backer

 

People use guns to kill people.

More guns means more death.

Therefore, fewer guns means fewer deaths. -- Opponent

Nineteen Chlldren

   There are more guns in America -- 400 million of them -- than there are people.

   There are four gun deaths per 100,000 population in America, compared to fewer than one in Canada or the UK. The more precise ratio is 3.96 per 100,000 in America, and 0.47 in Canada and 0.04 in Britain. In Japan, South Korea and China, the ratio is 0.02, according to those who track such ratios.

   Only 2 percent of all the guns in America are held by the military and police departments. The rest -- 98 percent -- are owned by civilians, and the average gun owner has five firearms.

   Already this year, there have been more than 200 mass shootings in America. The term "mass shooting" is defined as four or more people killed or wounded in a single incident.

   Already this year, there have been 27 school shootings in America.

   Later this week, the National Rifle Association (NRA) will hold its annual meeting in Texas, with Donald Trump as the featured speaker.

   What will they have to say about the murder of nineteen children and two adults at an elementary school in Texas this same week?

   One of the defenses gun advocates use is to say firearms are needed in case of an invasion by a foreign power.

   From where, Canada?

   Compare that defense to the amount of time it took the person to kill nineteen unarmed children and their teachers this week in an elementary school.

    Police response can be measured in minutes, especially when schools have armed security guards in the building every day. 

  Another defense put forth is to say the perpetrators are typically mentally ill, so the issue is therefore not about guns but about sickness.

  But mental disturbances are just as common in other nations, so the issue is not about sickness but remains the easy availability of guns. 

 And they cite the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution for their right to bear arms. They neglect the first phrase, which stipulates that a "well organized militia is essential to the security of a free state." 

 Were the shooters at schools and churches in America members of any militia, well organized or otherwise?

   Hunters insist they have a right to use firearms when hunting, but they say is unfair to use automatic weapons against deer. Apparently it's acceptable to use them against children. 

Polysyllabic Nonsense

    From an "epistemologically informed linguistic analysis as an analytically prior first philosophy" to "behavioristic relativism and epistemological naturalism," this "deflationary pragmatic spirit" leads to "ethical and  political concerns."
   Say what?
   The above is from an introduction to a series of recorded lectures on the history of philosophy. But what does it mean? To someone with college degrees in linguistics, literature, economics and history as well as decades of experience in journalism (me), it amounts to balderdash.
   Translated to plain language, it means this: Talk about speech like you understand what words mean.
   Or as my editor said after she rejected my report on the computer programming business, "Write it for your mother-in-law."

Cycles

    There have been twelve economic downturns since the Great Depression that struck America in 1929. All but three of them began while a Republican was in the White House. Two of those three downturns were postwar adjustments while Harry Truman, a Democrat, was president. The third was in 1980, Jimmy Carter's last year in office. That was a six-month dip when the economy faded by 1 percent. All three recessions were relatively short and mild.
   Now we are facing another drop in economic performance, and experts fear this one may be substantial. Some raise the question whether the presidential administration of Donald Trump did enough damage to the economy to plant the seed of the recession weed we now face.
   Others insist the business cycle has a life of its own, and politicians have no influence on it. Also, there is the reality of the covid virus, which has struck hard at nearly all aspects of world society.
   Nevertheless, those who believe the stock market is a barometer of the economy say we are facing a serious drop. The past few days have seen serious declines in Wall Street averages, and experts also note the return of "stagflation," a phenomenon where the economy is stagnant even as prices are inflated. Already, the first three months of this year have seen a dip of 1.4 percent in the economy. Two consecutive quarters of decline represents a recession. If the fiscal quarter ending in June also shows a drop, that will meet the definition of an economic recession.
   As for the Power of Twelve, our resident numerologist points out that this is the twelfth recession since 1929, and the seeds of the current decline were planted when Donald Trump was in the White House. Call it coincidence, but he is the twelfth person to occupy the White House since the Great Depression was at its worst.

Greed Enterprise

 "Greed is good." -- Gordon Gekko

   Corporate minds call it free enterprise.
   Customers call it greed.
   Meanwhile, people wonder why journalists are cynical.

   These thoughts come to mind as gasoline prices soar to nearly $5 per gallon, and corporate speakers blame it on the problems in Ukraine, which they insist affects international trade in general and the oil industry in particular.
   As if an event today instantly affects the value of crude oil that has not yet been pumped out of the ground or is in a tanker ship on its way to another country.
    A similar event is the price of bread, which is made from wheat that was harvested weeks ago and future loaves will be made from grain that has not yet been harvested, whether the crop is in America or in Ukraine.
   Those who defend the free enterprise system insist they must plan ahead to deal with events that may (or may not) happen at some time in the (distant?) future.
   But if it turns out that the unforeseen event they insist must be planned for does not happen, can we assume that the price hike boosted currently will be reduced?
   Assume not, lest ye be labeled with the first part of that word.

Great Replacement Hypocrisy

    The current anti-immigrant theory is the latest in a centuries-old series of efforts to block newcomers from coming to America.
   The keep-out campaigns reached a height in the mid-19th Century as bigotry against Irish and Italian immigrants became blatant. In the first half of the 20th Century, that prejudice focused on people from Eastern Europe.

  Throughout both centuries, bigotry against Asians was so common as to result in Congressional action to limit their numbers and prevent them from citizenship. Now, the prejudice focuses on people from Hispanic nations of Central and South America.
   All these blockage campaigns stressed variations on the slogan, "America for the Americans." The current anti-immigrant slogan is called the "Great Replacement Theory," and warns that the newcomers' goal is not to join traditional American society, but to replace it with theirs.
   However, the avowed tradition of America has long been to blend elements of the arriving culture with those already here.
   Bigots claim otherwise, conveniently forgetting that they too are beneficiaries of the Open Door, as noted on the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor.

   And there is the historical reality that many of the peoples already here welcomed the newcomers until the immigrants began to take away what had been lands occupied by the tribes for centuries.

   History is often a variation of the same story.