Sikh Temple: In the Wake of Yet Another Massacre, What Will it Take to Stop the Gun Madness?

The reason we can't have a sane, adult discussion of how to cut down on random gun violence is simple: the NRA has hoodwinked gun owners.

The United States is not the only country to experience the horrors of mass shootings. We are, however, the only society in which a serious discussion of tighter gun controls doesn't follow incidents like the massacres we've seen at the Sikh temple in Wisconsin or the movie theater in Aurora. In fact, in most countries these kinds of tragedies result in some kind of concrete legislative action.

The reason we can't have a sane, adult discussion of how to cut down on random gun violence is simple: the NRA has hoodwinked a lot of reasonable gun owners into believing that there's a debate in this country over banning firearms altogether. We'll never be able to have a serious discussion about how to cut down on gun violence until that group accepts the actual terms of the debate. And the NRA has a vested interest in making sure they remain obscure because the organization represents gun manufacturers and a small, highly ideological minority of gun-nuts, rather than (typically responsible) gun  owners.

And that means that, at least in theory, there is political space for a new kind of gun control advocacy – one that isn't about whether Americans have a right to bear arms, but instead explicitly advocates  safe and responsible  gun ownership, a goal the polls tell us most gun owners would embrace.

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Texas Set To Unconstitutionally Execute A Mentally Retarded Man Next Week

It is unconstitutional to execute the mentally retarded. So Marvin Wilson, a Texas inmate scheduled to be executed next Tuesday, should not constitutionally face the death penalty. As a court-appointed psychologist’s report details, Wilson is mentally retarded:

[Wilson] required repeated instruction for doing even simple things, such as cutting the grass. Mr. Kelly also noted that Marvin Wilson had significant reading problems. He had a difficult time keeping up when playing football. He could never understand how to run even simple plays. Mr. Kelly also noted that Mr. Wilson seemed to have a difficult time dressing himself properly. He could not color coordinate and sometimes wore mismatched socks. He. also would wear his belt so tightly that it would “almost cut of his circulation”. Frequently his shirt was buttoned incorrectly. Some of these problems continued even into adolescence. Mr. Kelly indicated that when Mr. Wilson was younger he tried to get some simple jobs involving things like sweeping the floors at a local store. However, he would lose the jobs quickly because he wasn’t “fast enough”. Mr. Kelly specifically recalled Mr. Wilson working at Wizard Car Wash. Even though he was assigned the simple duty of working at the drying station, he apparently was fired after a few days because of his inability to do the job. Mr. Kelly also noted that Mr. Wilson exhibited difficulty doing any kind of task that required logic or thinking. He never learned how to count money correctly until he was older. . . .

It is my opinion that the WAIS -III is the most valid indicator of adult intelligence now in current usage. On the WAIS-III Mr. Wilson earned a Verbal I.Q. of 61, a Performance I.Q. of 68, and the Full Scale I.Q. of 61. This places him within the mildly retarded range of intellectual ability and below the 1st percentile.

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Private Prisons Cost Arizona $3.5 Million More Per Year Than State-Run Prisons

Private prisons, touted as a cost-efficient alternative to state-run penitentiaries, are not living up to their promises in at least one state. A new study of Arizona’s private prisons finds that the state is actually losing money — $3.5 million a year — by turning their inmates over to for-profit corporations.

According to the Tucson Citizen’s analysis of Arizona’s three oldest private prison contracts, the rate to hold one prisoner for one night has increased 13.9% since the contracts were awarded. Compared to the cost of state-run prisons, Arizona overpaid for its private prison beds by $10 million between 2008 and 2010.

The cost of these private prison contracts was no surprise to the legislators who awarded them. In an earlier investigation, the Citizen discovered the Legislature was well aware how expensive the private prisons were and simply circumvented a law requiring corporations to show cost savings before receiving a contract. In 2012, the Legislature repealed the requirement entirely — as well as a requirement that the state conduct a review comparing the quality of private and public prisons.

After removing any incentive to maintain facilities, the Legislature made things even easier for these corporations by guaranteeing their prisons will always be 100 percent occupied:

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Police alone can't stop gangs, Toronto Chief Bill Blair says

Two weeks after Toronto was shaken by the largest mass shooting in its history, Police Chief Bill Blair sees the gang violence at its root not as one neighbourhood’s problem but a social issue that demands solutions from Toronto’s business and community leaders.

In a wide-ranging interview with The Globe and Mail Tuesday, Chief Blair said police keep track of people involved in or associated with gangs – roughly 2,100 – and of those about 500 or 600 are considered “really violent.”

The long-term solution, he said, involves preventing these mostly young men from so-called priority neighbourhoods from going down this road by interceding in their lives when they are much younger. That involves continuing to provide opportunities, including employment, but first requires learning “more about these kids and find out where we lost them.”

“By the time you go, with a 14- or 15-year-old, and try to get them into a program and play basketball, some of these young guys are so completely lost to us that they represent such a significant danger, all we can do is protect everyone from them,” Chief Blair said.

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Let's Just Say It: The Republicans AND the Media Are the Problem

Many mysteries plague us regarding the press coverage of the Obama era, but one strikes me as central to our political predicament. Why, after everyone else has given it up, do members of the mainstream media persist in helping to hide—and therefore empower—the radicalization of the Republican Party?

The GOP strategy was clear from the start. Republicans, circa 2009, were no longer interested in bipartisan solutions to America’s problems. As then–Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told National Journal, “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.” Senator Jim DeMint famously promised healthcare reform could be used to “break” Obama from day one. And that was before the Tea Party even existed.

Part of the problem, for far too long, was that President Obama collaborated in the charade. He was so invested in the notion that both sides could just get along and legislate together that he couldn’t part with the illusion he had helped to create. His communitarian rhetoric, together with his compromise-in-advance legislative strategy, was always oriented toward inclusiveness, consensus-building and, ultimately, political passivity. As a result, Obama allowed the Republicans to stymie his ability to act on behalf of most of his agenda, beginning with the underfunded stimulus and carrying through with virtually every single initiative he undertook throughout the first two years of his term.

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Three Rulings Against Women’s Rights

At a time when abortion rights and women’s access to affordable contraception are threatened by political attacks, judges in three newly decided federal cases failed to preserve constitutional protections for women.

On Monday, Judge James Teilborg of the United States District Court in Phoenix upheld an Arizona law signed by Gov. Jan Brewer in April that bans all abortion procedures at 20 weeks from a woman’s last menstrual period, which is about 18 weeks after fertilization. 

It is the most aggressive of the previability abortion bans passed recently by a handful of states. It defies binding Supreme Court precedent that prevents states from banning abortions before a fetus can survive outside the womb, which generally occurs at about 24 weeks. 

To get around that pesky barrier, Judge Teilborg erroneously characterized Arizona’s outright ban as a permissible “regulation” that limits only “some” previability abortions. To make that argument, he relied, in part, on the fact that the ban contains a dangerously narrow exception for a “medical emergency.” 

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New York’s Used Police Shells, Reloaded for Sale

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s attacks on the gun industry are legion, and familiar far beyond the boundaries of the city he runs. They were heard again just hours after the shooting massacre in Aurora, Colo., in his calls for tightened gun control.

So it may come as a surprise to some that in June, New York City sold more than 28,000 pounds of the Police Department’s spent shell casings not to a scrap metal company, as it has in the past, but to a Georgia ammunition store. The store, Georgia Arms, routinely buys once-fired shell casings, reloads them with bullets and sells them to the public. 

The store sells bags of 50 bullets, at about $15 each; per Georgia’s gun laws, no questions are asked and no identification or registration is required. It is a transaction that could not occur in New York City, where it is illegal to possess ammunition without a license to own a gun, and where obtaining a license to own a gun is harder than in most other states. 

The sale of shell casings to Georgia Arms is perfectly legal and not uncommon; other police departments sell their used casings. And many of its “factory loaded” bullets, as the second-generation rounds are known, are sold in bulk to police agencies for use on their own firing ranges. They are less expensive than new ammunition. 

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From Aurora to Anaheim, Guns Are Going Off Everywhere

Welcome to the abattoir—a nation where a man can walk into a store and buy an assault rifle, a shotgun, a couple of Glocks; where in the comfort of his darkened living room, windows blocked from the sunlight, he can rig a series of bombs unperturbed and buy thousands of rounds of ammo on the Internet; where a movie theater can turn into a killing floor at the midnight hour.

We know about all of this. We know because the weekend of July 20 became all-Aurora-all-the-time, a round-the-clock engorgement of TV news reports, replete with massacre theme music, an endless loop of victims, their loved ones, eyewitness accounts, cellphone video, police briefings, informal memorials, and “healing,” all washed down with a presidential visit and hour upon hour of anchor and “expert” speculation. We know this because within a few days a Google search for “Aurora movie shootings” produced over 200 million hits referencing the massacre that left seventy-plus casualties, including twelve fatalities.

We know a lot less about Anaheim and the killing of Manuel Angel Diaz, shot in the back and in the head by that city’s police just a few short hours after the awful Aurora murders.

But to the people living near La Palma Avenue and North Anna Drive, the shooting of Manuel Diaz was all too familiar: it was the sixth, seventh or eighth police shooting in Anaheim, California, since the beginning of 2012. (No one seems quite sure of the exact count, though the Orange County District Attorney’s office claims six shootings, five fatalities.)

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Women claim ‘hairy legs’ profiling; police face new G20-related lawsuit

Women claiming to have been profiled because of their hairy legs are among a group of seven people planning to serve a $1.4-million claim against police on Wednesday arising out of the violence-marred G20 summit two years ago.

The group from Hamilton alleges the police wrongfully arrested them on June 27, 2010 – a day after vandals went on a rampage in downtown Toronto – as they emerged from a Yonge Street restaurant, their lawyer said.

They allege they were kept for hours in handcuffs, then held for more than 24 hours at a makeshift detention centre in the city’s east end before being released without charge. One of the plaintiffs also alleges she was sexually assaulted during a roadside strip search.

None of the claims has been proven or tested in court.

In a statement, lawyer Davin Charney said one of the seven asked the reason for their arrest and an officer told them police “would make one up.”

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