Filmmaker Michael Moore was on Chris Hayes’ MSNBC show on Tuesday, May 24, 2022. It was the day of another senseless mass shooting in the United States. The targets this time were once again school children. Twenty-one people in all killed in the town of Uvalde, Texas.

Moore is clearly for strong gun control legislation, but he didn’t say what so many proponents of gun control frequently say, “I believe in the Second Amendment.”

Instead, Moore pointed out how the Second Amendment has essentially given pro-gun people free license in opposing meaningful gun control. Then Moore raised a fascinating hypothetical question. “What if bullets had not been invented until fifty years after the U.S. constitution was written?”

His point was that gun rights are completely different from any other rights in the constitution. All of the other rights would have been relevant in the times of Greece, or Rome, or really any time. These non-gun rights could easily have stood alone without the Second Amendment.  This doesn’t mean that people could not have had guns once they and bullets were invented. The difference is that there would not have been a constitutional guarantee to be able to purchase and possess guns.

There are many who say that even with the Second Amendment, there is no such guarantee. The wording is thoroughly ambiguous:

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.

It may seem at first that this amendment guarantees people the right to bear arms, but the context is having a well regulated militia. So does the right to bear arms only apply for those who are in a militia (armed forces) or the United States, or can they own guns regardless of whether or not they are in the U.S. military?

This argument is one which America’s gun owners have won. Much as those who favor gun control want immediate new regulations, it appears that it will be years before Congress passes meaningful legislation or the Supreme Court chooses to value public safety above gun rights.

There are numerous reasons why the gun advocates are currently winning this dispute:

1. They own most of the guns, and that frightens many who want to limit gun rights.
2. The roots of the Second Amendment have a great deal to do with slave owners’ rights and needs to hunt down runaway slaves. Creating the constitution required considerable compromise to get southern states to agree to the document. Protecting their control over slaves who were already in the United States was essential to southern states’ acceptance of the constitution. In contemporary American society, many White Americans feel that they need to have guns to protect themselves against Black Americans.
3. Unlike most other democratic countries, the United States has this peculiar institution called states rights. In many cases, the rights of states supersede those of the federal government. For example, the state of Georgia can make a law stating that it is illegal to bring a glass of water to someone standing in line to vote, and currently there is nothing that the federal government can do about it. In the absence of strong federal gun controls, the states pass more “gun rights.”
4. The U.S. Senate favors small and southern states, and those are the states in which gun rights are most deeply cherished. This makes it very difficult to pass meaningful gun control legislation. It might be possible without a filibuster, but that arcane rule is cherished by senators from small states, rural states and southern states.

The United States did not come close to writing a constitution in a time before guns and bullets were invented. The first guns were invented in China in the 10^th Century. Michael Moore was not trying to point out that we almost avoided having the Second Amendment in our Constitution. What he meant is that it is significantly different than any other part of the constitution, and had guns not existed, we would have found a way to agree on the constitution.

It’s one of those “What ifs ….” that keep us thinking. It’s interesting talk, but regrettably, only academic now. Barring some sort of unforeseen circumstances, we’re going to have to live with lightly regulated guns for some time which means that we’ll have more Uvaldes and other mass shootings. The “thoughts and prayers” come easily; meaningful gun control is stymied by the oddity of having the Second Amendment in our Constitution.

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In 2021, as summer ebbs into fall, Democrats are concerned with a number of issues, but perhaps most importantly, abortion. It has become a wildcard issue because the Supreme Court has rendered a decision regarding it that neither is supreme nor courtly.

Bullies and cowards often travel together, and that is precisely how Republicans have acted regarding the latest legislation from the hallowed halls of the capitol of Texas. The Lone Star state has enacted the strictest abortion law in the land. Essentially it outlaws any abortion that would be performed approximately six weeks following conception. That’s the bullying part – exercising arbitrary and capricious power to encroach on a basic human right. And, of course, the Republicans chose to place far more restraints on the women of Texas rather than the men. In case you have forgotten, men don’t need abortions.

The cowardice angle is that the state is relieved of any enforcement responsibilities. Rather than have state authorities monitor abortion clinics for alleged crimes, the state “farms out” responsibility for enforcement to the citizens of Texas, or for that matter, the citizens of any other state who might happen to be in Texas. They are empowered to sue any woman in Texas who chooses to have a prohibited abortion.

The “infraction” is not settled in criminal court; rather in civil court where the “apprehender” or bounty hunter can seek to recover as much as $10,000 from a fine levied on the woman seeking the abortion. In further acts of cowardice, the law states that not only can a woman receiving an abortion be sued, but any other person who is “complicit” with her can as well. This could be the receptionist at the abortion clinic, the Uber driver who gives her a lift to the clinic, and any healthcare professional who works or volunteers at the clinic.

Indeed, Americans live in a strange country when the supreme court of the land, operating under the jurisdiction of the world’s oldest and presumed fairest constitution, cannot find one, much less dozens of reasons, to rule this sham of a law unconstitutional.

Almost all conservatives vehemently oppose abortion. Is there anything that draws a similar opposition from progressives?

How about gun control? Just as conservatives see abortion as an issue if life, progressives see unfettered gun rights as a matter of life, and death. Ever since 1973, when abortion became legal in the United States in the Roe v. Wade ruling, conservatives have been successful at chipping away at abortion rights to the point where now in Texas, over 85% of what were legal abortions are now against the law. Dozens of other states are fashioning similarly draconian laws.

During that same forty-eight-year period of time since Roe v. Wade, progressives have been trying to chip away at gun rights in the interest of gun safety. In 1973, Richard Nixon was still hanging on to his presidency with its law and order mantra. The rate of violent crime in the United States was growing rapidly. Conservatives favored stricter laws against gun crimes. Some progressives favored stronger penalties as well, but most wanted to deal with the root of the problem, the presence of guns, legal and illegal, on the streets and in the homes of Americans.

How much progress have progressives made in reducing the number and the of guns in America and the power of the types that are legally permitted? The answer is virtually none. In 1994, with Bill Clinton as president, the Democratic Congress passed a ten-year ban with the Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act. It did outlaw some powerful weapons, but there was the sunset provision, limiting the restrictions to ten years before the law had to be renewed.

Conservatives were outraged that the bill passed. Less than two months after the bill became law, the first nail was hammered into its coffin as Newt Gingrich and the conservative Republicans took over Congress. By the time that the ten-year life of the bill was over in 2004, Republican George W. Bush was president, and he was in a position to veto any extension of the law. Since that period, gun laws have not been strengthened; they have been weakened.

So, suppose that progressives wanted to counter the strength of guns in America in a fashion similar to what Republicans have done with abortion. If there was to be symmetry in their strategy to what Republicans did, they would choose to not have any have any government agencies or officials involved in enforcing the laws.

Instead, they would set up a bounty system similar to what Texas Republicans have done to curtail abortions. Progressives would pass a law that would enable citizens to monitor the presence of weapons, particularly assault weapons, in the streets, workplaces, schools and homes of America.

That way, progressives could try to be like conservatives and bully their foes. They could establish un-armed posses to travel throughout America, to wherever guns are present. They could courteously go to gun stores, gun shows, bars, gang hideouts and wherever else there might be high concentrations of guns and please ask the owners (legal or illegal) to surrender their weapons in return for a summons to appear in court. This method by progressives to deal with guns would have a parallel construction to how conservatives in Texas are currently dealing with abortions.

Conservatives would be pleased with these parallel laws. All that they would have to do would be to take a picture of a woman about to have an abortion, along with anyone assisting her, and issue a warrant for their arrest. They show up in court and their work is done and they are richer.

Progressives would simply take pictures of people with guns and find a way to serve a warrant on the gun owners and be sure to say ‘please’ when they do so.

This is what conservatives call fair. They can act like bullies and prevent a woman from having control of her body while the other side must forcefully try to confiscate powerful firearms.

Yes, the absurdity is very clear to progressives; not at all to conservatives. This is why conservatives are winning so many of the battles these days. They get to use firearms as their weapon of choice; progressives use a basic right on human reproduction. If you can’t see a power imbalance in this conundrum, look again.

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School shootings in America have proliferated. In response, individuals and for-profit companies have developed a plethora of products aimed [pun intended] at reducing the carnage. Are they necessary? Do they work? If one of them saves a life, it may turn out to have been a worthwhile purchase, whatever the price. But I can’t help thinking that these defensive approaches, while well intentioned, and perhaps effective in some instances, miss the point. It’s clear that in 2019 America, creative minds, inventive marketers and politicians call themselves ready to address everything about gun violence—everything, that is, but the guns.

Instead of focusing on reducing the number of guns in circulation and enacting stricter laws for owning guns, this is what passes for protecting students from school shootings. Do we really have to live this way?

Stop the bleed

Stop the Bleed is a national awareness campaign intended to encourage bystanders to become trained, equipped and empowered to help in a bleeding emergency before professional help arrives. Through the program, healthcare professionals teach effective blood-stopping techniques to teachers, parents, students and members of the general public. [I’m not saying this is a bad idea; I’m just saying that it’s very sad that there’s a need for it.]

Bulletproof hoodies

A woman whose neighbor was shot and killed in an attempted robbery has started a company that makes bulletproof hoodies to keep people of all ages safe. The California company, Wonder Hoodie, now produces the bulletproof protection in smaller sizes for young children and teens in response to the rash of school shootings.

Bullet-resistant classroom blankets

Vox describes Door Shield is a panel of “soft armor” — used as cover by police SWAT teams when they raid buildings and exchange gunfire. You nail the shield to a classroom door. If a shooter breaks into the school, teachers lock the door, and with one hard tug on a canvas strap, you release the bullet-resistant panel, which rolls down and covers the door. “Even a child can operate it,” claims the manufacturer. The list price per blanket is $1,995—pretty pricey for a school with lots of doors. The manufacturer says, “It’s cost versus value: the cost of [Door Shield] versus the value of a life.”

PepperBall

Billed as a solution for “schools that don’t want teachers to carry guns,” the PepperBall launcher is a flashlight-shaped weapon that shoots bullets filled with pepper spray. Originally, it was marketed to campers and truck drivers, who wanted non-lethal weapons to carry on the road. After the shootings at Parkland, the manufacturer saw teachers as an additional market for the product.

Bullet resistant backpacks

The manufacturer calls its armor-plated backpacks, “the backpack that will save your life.” They retail for between $150 and $500. Originally aimed at law-enforcement personnel, after a recent school shooting, the manufacturer began designing a kid-sized version.

Rocks, bats and hockey pucks

While they’re not high-tech inventions, in the category of “Whose Brilliant Idea Was This,” are the primitive weapons that some school administrators have put in classrooms for kids to use in case a shooter shows up. Oakland University in Michigan gave out 3,500 hockey pucks to faculty members and students in November 2018 to throw at a gunman. Since 2016, a Pennsylvania school district has kept 5-gallon buckets of river rocks in classrooms. “If an armed intruder attempts to gain entrance to any of our classrooms, they will face a classroom full of students armed with rocks. And they will be stoned,” David Helsel, superintendent of the Blue Mountain School District in Schuylkill County, has said. Finally, Millcreek Township School District Superintendent William Hall wanted to show that safety policies had changed from hiding from a shooter to running, fighting, and surviving. So he distributed 600 mini baseball bats, and encouraged staff to keep one in every classroom of the Pennsylvania district’s 11 schools.

Fear sells. Gun laws, apparently, do not.

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Last week the National Rifle Association suffered a resounding defeat in the State of Arkansas.

I imagine that this week most Arkansans will be resting a bit easier and feeling a lot more secure out on their streets, in parking lots, and in other public places following the defeat at the hands of the state’s judicial committee of a Stand Your Ground bill introduced by Republican State Senator Bob Ballinger. Following a hearing characterized by heated testimony and a passionate plea by State Senator Stephanie Flowers for senators to reject the proposal, the bill was defeated by a vote of four to three—with three Democrats and one Republican voting “nay” and three Republicans voting “aye.”

In their wisdom, Arkansas’ state senators delivered a blow to the National Rifle Association’s long-term legislative priority of expanding the Stand Your Ground law to all fifty states. Since 2005, when the NRA lobbied hard and successfully for the first Stand Your Ground law in Florida, twenty-four states have followed suit with their own iterations of the law—including Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and West Virginia.

What are Stand Your Ground or “no-duty-to-retreat” laws? The laws effectively remove an individual’s duty to retreat before using deadly force, as long as the individual reasonably believes that he or she is facing bodily harm or imminent death. Stand Your Ground can be invoked while an individual is present in virtually any place where the person has a legal right to be.

Here’s how Everytown for Gun Safety characterizes the dangers of Stand Your Ground:

Stand Your Ground laws upend centuries of traditional self-defense doctrine and threaten public safety by encouraging armed vigilantism, allowing a person to kill another person in a public area even when they can clearly and safely walk away from the danger.

The record on the fallout of invoking the Stand Your Ground defense is horrific. Americans were first made aware of how far justice could be thwarted with the shooting death by George Zimmerman of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin and the subsequent not-guilty verdict on charges of second-degree murder and manslaughter after Zimmerman claimed he was acting in self-defense—even though Trayvon was unarmed.

The data since that first highly publicized incident demonstrates the extreme danger posed by these laws.

• In Florida, in cases where perpetrators claimed Stand Your Ground as a defense, fully 79 percent of the shooters could have retreated to avoid the confrontation, and 68 percent of the individuals killed were unarmed.
• Even more shocking, of those Floridians who claimed Stand Your Ground, almost 60 percent had been previously arrested, and about one third had been previously accused of violent crimes.
• Since 2005, there have been two hundred incidents in Florida alone in which the Stand Your Ground law played a role in the decisions of prosecutors whether to bring charges, in juries’ decisions to acquit, or in judges’ decisions to throw out the charges.

A pattern of extreme racial bias and racial disparity has become ever clearer since the unjust verdict in the Trayvon Martin case. According to a study published in the journal Social Science and Medicine:

The impact of Stand-Your-Ground laws revealed a disturbing pattern of racial bias. Individuals (i.e., defendants) in Florida were more likely to avoid charges if the victim was black or Latino but not if the victim was white. Indeed, individuals are nearly two times more likely to be convicted in a case that involves white victims compared to those involving black and Latino victims.

Here’s what Everytown for Gun Safety observes about the dangers and injustices of Stand Your Ground:

These laws are associated with increases in homicides and injuries across different demographics and neighborhoods, while disproportionately impacting communities of color. They encourage the escalation of violence in avoidable situations and do not deter crime.

Watch and listen below to the despair, the frustration, and the justifiable anger of Arkansas State Senator Stephanie Flowers as she pleads for the life and safety of her son and for the lives of all Arkansans of color who would have born the brunt of the law’s assault on public safety had it passed.

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My local school district, the Ichabod Crane Central School District in New York’s Hudson Valley, recently held a vote on a capital improvement project with a price tag of $27,115,200. This massive project—passed by less than seventy votes—will update and modernize the district’s facilities and buildings and address long-deferred repairs to the deteriorating infrastructure of the district’s primary, middle, and high schools.

The project will address five key areas: health and safety,academics and program, physical education and athletics, building infrastructure, and site infrastructure. Upon reviewing the outline of the scope of work, my attention focused on a few of the bullet points listed under the “health and safety” category. There I discovered that the proposal calls for modest, enhanced security features for the campus’s three school buildings.These include security glazing film at the entry vestibules and the installation of bullet-resistant security transaction windows and drawers.

 Thankfully, my school district has so far escaped the tragedy of an active-shooter incident. Still, the threat is present and real. As we’ve learned from the tragedies at schools across the country, it takes just one angry, lost kid with access to deadly firearms to carry out a violent incident that becomes everyone’s worst nightmare. With that threat always present, school districts and communities are being forced to consider expensive security measures that would have been unthinkable in the past.  

 The range of security measures runs the gamut from modest retrofits, like those proposed by my local school district, to more extensive and expensive planning, such as complete building redesign, like the plan for the rebuild of the Sandy Hook Elementary School.  In answer to the public health crisis of school shootings, administrators and school boards are being forced to consider an array of new security measures, such as bullet-proof doors, replacement of entryways with a single, administrator- or security officer-monitored main entrance, safe rooms constructed of concrete, bullet-resistant window and door glass, and even building siting on raised ground and landscaping to increase visibility and control exterior access. And, of course, there’s the additional cost of human and behavioral security upgrades and training, such as generating active-shooter and evacuation plans, the hiring of additional security staff, and, in some districts, the dangerous and ill-conceived proposal that would allow teachers to be armed with firearms in the classroom.

 How did we get to the point where we have been forced to consider covering the costs of school security as a result of our schools devolving from being safe havens to places of danger that threaten the lives of children?

There are certainly many answers—both sociological and political—to that difficult question. But beyond any doubt, one of the primary answers is that the threat to our children is the inevitable result of the failure of our elected representatives in our states and at the federal level to muster the political will to pass common sense gun laws favored by an overwhelming majority of Americans, including gun owners and NRA members.

 Universal background checks. A ban on the sale of military-style weapons. These are measures that studies show will protect our children and make it more difficult for kids to harm kids. 

 What’s the result of failing to pass common sense laws that will keep our children safe?  Statistics show the story of our government’s malfeasance. Since 2009, there have been 288 school shootings. The U.S. has the highest rate of gun-related deaths,suicides, and homicides among the top thirty-four advanced economies in the world where access to firearms is restricted.

 The fact is that school-security measures come with a price tag that communities may simply be unable to afford. With all of the other costs that communities need to fund for the education of our children—facility maintenance and upgrades, teacher salaries, transportation, healthcare costs for school employees—we may ultimately be forced to face the impossible choice of choosing whether to fund improvement of the educational experience or voting to fund security measures. With that thorny dilemma poised to become reality, shouldn’t we be questioning who should be responsible for the cost of the security measures required to keep schools safe in a culture that is flooded with dangerous firearms?

 The answer may be that we need to begin a serious conversation about considering the creation of a school-safety tax to be levied on the industry that profits royally from the sales of the weapons that are harming our children. That is, the gun manufacturers.

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In 2017 there were 346 mass shootings. In 2018 there have been 307 so far. On average America has experienced one deadly incident per day this year. Thoughts and prayers are not enough.

The Shameful Toll of Mass Shootings

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“I don’t wanna be brave. I just wanna be safe.” – Lyrics from “The Most Vicious Cycle,” by Kesha.

Two must-watch videos. Two approaches to get out the youth vote. One is of the mind, and one goes straight to the gut.

In the first, Barack Obama, showing off his signature combination of brain and wit, obliterates the seven most often repeated excuses why young voters fail to show up at the polls.  The most spot-on moment is when Obama narrates over an image of a bespectacled, white-haired lady and asks, “You wouldn’t let your grandparents pick your play list, so why would you let them pick your representatives who will determine your future?”

The second video, called “The Most Vicious Cycle,” was produced for March for Our Lives, the gun-control advocacy group founded by survivors of the mass shooting that stopped short the lives of seventeen teens at the Marjory Stoneham Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. The video powerfully inserts the viewer into the moment in a high school corridor when bullets fly and the sound and blast of gun fire shatter the every day. Music and rap lyrics are by singer Kesha, and production is by Sage Sebert, a graduate of Marjory Stoneham Douglas.

I dare you not to chuckle at one and cry with the other. But after you’ve finished, share these videos and talk about them with your friends and family. Then work like hell to make sure that the people in your lives get out and vote.

Here’s what March for Our Lives wrote upon the video’s release: “After every shooting, there’s outrage, prayers and false promises. Then it happens again. End #TheMostViciousCycle. Vote for morally just leaders and share the video.” #VoteForOurLives on 11/6.

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In an unlikely brain spasm for a person with my political proclivities, I’ve recently been thinking about Senator Marco Rubio. Every so often, Rubio toys with the idea of growing a spine. And it seems to me that, if he did go full vertebrate, Rubio could actually have an impact—on his own career and potentially on the Republican Party.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a Rubio fan. Based on his performance so far, I fully subscribe to the widely quoted philosophy that, if your life depends on Marco Rubio developing a spine, you’re already dead. Rubio specializes in changing his position: He very publicly flip-flopped on immigration reform, on healthcare, even on his own intention/not intention to run for re-election—to name just a few examples of his whichever-way-the-wind blows approach to controversial subjects.

But, even as an observer from the other side of the political spectrum, I can see how Rubio has the potential to be the new Republican maverick—taking on the legacy of Sen. John McCain [who, it should be noted, has had his own inconsistencies]. In a era when virtually all Republican Congressmen and Senators have knuckled under to Donald Trump’s antics, immoral views, lies, and degradations of democracy, a principled dissenter could be a game changer. Even an unprincipled dissenter could be helpful: Even if Rubio made some out-of-the -right wing-mainstream moves as a way of advancing his political star—rather than out of a nobler impulse to pull the Republican Party and American democracy back from the abyss we are approaching—the effect could be salutary.

Recently, Rubio had a chance to make a whole new name for himself, one that could turn his spine-free image around and perhaps move the needle among other Republicans. After the Parkland mass shooting, Rubio—courageously, I must admit—showed up at the town hall meeting called by Parkland survivors. Just being there put him one rung higher on the courage index than almost any other Republican.

But then it happened: One of the high-school students from Parkland asked Rubio ,” Would you be willing to make a pledge that you will no longer accept money from the NRA?” Rubio’s answer had the potential to make him a Republican hero to the majority of Americans who have been shown to favor sensible gun laws. As the Senator from Florida, where the Parkland shooting took place, Rubio was in a unique position to take a leadership role in changing attitudes toward the NRA and gun culture.

All he had to do was to say, “Yes.”

He didn’t. Instead, he asserted that he takes political contributions from the NRA not because those dollars influence his views, but because his views just happen to coincide with those of the NRA.

End of opportunity.

And that’s unfortunate—for all of us, as well as for someone as ambitious as Rubio. We’ve already seen him make an attempt to run for President. Given the groundswell of popular support—on both sides of the aisle—that a disavowal of gun money [not guns themselves, of course] could generate, Rubio might have been seen as the most courageous Republican since Senator Howard Baker and other Republicans who pushed for impeachment proceedings against Richard Nixon. Perhaps he could have even ridden that [admittedly] limited stand for integrity all the way to the White House.

Silly me. Sure, every so often, Sen. Marco Rubio toys with the notion of exhibiting some political fortitude. But toying is just that—a game of make-believe. Instead of standing up and taking an adult position that could propel him to political stardom, Rubio does what Rubio inevitably does—flip flops on yet another issue, pretends that he never said what he said, and solidifies his reputation as as a spineless hack and slave to the Republican Party line.

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1. You cannot be forced to have someone stay in your house of you don’t want them to be your guest.
2. If you are arrested for an alleged crime, the bail that is set for you cannot be excessive.
3. If you are charged with a crime and the case goes to court, you have the right to a trial by jury.
4. You have the right to say whatever you want so long as it does not put another person in harm’s way.
5. If you wish to believe in and practice a religion, you have the right to choose your religion. You also have the right to choose no religion at all.
6. The government cannot conduct unreasonable searches and/or seizures of your personal property.
7. You have the right to own a gun.
8. If you are accused of a crime, you have the right to a speedy trial.
9. The rights that are enumerated in this list are not exclusive; there are other rights retained by you and everyone else.
10. If you are charged with a crime, you do not have to testify against yourself.
11. The press and other media forms have the right to print what they wish, so long as it is not intentionally injurious to someone else.
12. If you wish, you and others can peacefully gather and petition the government (or other entities) for what you consider to be grievances.

Well, if this looks like the Bill of Rights to the U.S. Constitution, that’s because it is, slightly reorganized and simplified. Here are the changes:

1. The actual First Amendment delineates four rights that are protected (freedom of religion, of speech, of the press, to assemble and to petition the government). Four of these five get a separate listing in items above.
2. The 10^th Amendment is not included because it does not relate to any rights; it is essentially an ambiguous procedural guidepost relating to the powers of the federal government and the states.

So, if you look at those rights, remembering that their order has been scrambled, is there any one that seems to have less to do with promoting as civilized society than any of the others? If you think so, please indicate by answering the one-question quiz below.

Scroll down to answer. Your answers are completely private. We’re not selling anything.

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America’s gun laws are shot through with irony and illogic. Some would want you to believe that our national attitude regarding guns reflects a reverence for the Second Amendment. In reality, the gun laws passed—or should I say, not passed— in Congress and state legislatures are based less on ideology and more on the purely mercenary goals of the gun and ammunition manufacturers who are the true drivers of the NRA.

So, instead of a sane approach that acknowledges that gun deaths are a public health problem, we have an irrational patchwork of laws that often defy logic and do nothing to protect us. I’ve compiled some bullet points to illustrate the insanity of our gun laws:

• As we recently learned, via the Parkland tragedy, in Florida, you cannot buy a beer until you are 21. You can buy an assault weapon at 18.
• Florida and other states also have implemented strict ID requirements for voting, but none for buying an assault weapon.
•  You must be 25 to rent a car. You can buy an assault weapon at 18 in many states.
• In Iowa and other states, you must be 21 to by a scratch-off lottery ticket. You can buy a rifle in Iowa at 18, without a state permit.
• State legislatures have passed laws allowing guns in schools, churches, bars and public parks, while at the same time barring guns from the legislative chambers of their state capitols.
• In most states, you need a license to: use a scissors to cut people’s hair or trim their toenails; use a nail file to perform a manicure or pedicure; use a razor to shave a customer; use your fingers to braid someone’s hair. But you do not need a license to wield a weapon that, used for the purpose for which it was designed, can kill multiple people.
• In many states, you can bring a gun into a bar, but you cannot serve alcohol without a state license.
• In many states, under open carry laws, you can brandish a weapon openly, but if you are driving a car, you cannot have an open container of alcohol with you. By law, your child must be secured in a safety seat, but you can have a loaded gun concealed in the glove compartment or the console.
• Federal product-safety laws mandate safety standards for baby strollers and cribs, to prevent them from pinching a child’s finger or enabling a child’s head to get stuck between the crib slats. Similar protections—such as trigger locks on guns—are not required for guns in a bedroom drawer, in a purse, or in a closet.
• You can sue McDonald’s for serving too-hot coffee; you can sue a toy manufacturer, a food company or a lawn-mower company if you are accidentally injured by their product. You can sue a doctor or a hospital for malpractice if they prescribe the wrong dosage. Gun manufacturers and gun stores are protected, by federal law, from lawsuits stemming from injuries caused by their products.
• You need a state license to perform a healing massage, but—in many states—you do not need a permit to carry a gun into a spa.
• Right-wing, anti-LBGTQ fanatics consider the act of selling a wedding cake to a gay couple as tantamount to participating in the wedding, thus violating their religious “rights.” Selling a gun to someone who uses it to kill people is not seen as participating in murder.
• If you want to fly a drone or a model airplane, you must register it with the Federal Aviation Administration. No federal registration is required for buying or shooting a gun.
• After a would-be terrorist was found to have a non-functioning bomb wired into his shoes, the Department of Homeland Security mandated that all travelers have to remove their shoes for inspection at TSA checkpoints. After mass murderers armed with military assault weapons succeeded in killing of hundreds of people, laws regarding AR-15s and other semi-automatic weapons remained unchanged.
• Pharmacies and supermarkets limit the number of Sudafed cold tablets you can purchase. You can buy as much ammunition for your handguns, rifles and assault weapons as you want to.
• Supermarkets now keep Tide detergent pods locked up, to protect children from swallowing them. After a scare in which Tylenol tablets were found to be contaminated, drug manufacturers were required to package over-the-counter and prescription drugs in “child-proof” packaging. Congress and state legislatures continue to reject the notion of mandatory gun locks that could prevent children from accidentally discharging guns.

This list is far from comprehensive—unfortunately. I welcome additions that further demonstrate the hypocrisy and madness. We live in a country where even the deaths of 20 first-graders don’t move the needle even one centimeter on gun laws. This is just plain crazy.

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