Blame the NRA for George Zimmerman

It’s not difficult at all, and I believe pretty valuable to draw a direct line from the killing of Trayvon Martin and the acquittal of George Zimmerman to the work of the National Rifle Association.

Since last Saturday night’s verdict there have been demonstrations, hand-wringing over our racially distorted (i.e. racist) justice system, punditry excoriating Zimmerman, jurors, the defense, the prosecution, and even Martin himself, the dead kid … for looking too much like the sort of menacing guys insulated, law-abiding white folks have every damn good reason to be afraid of. (It’ll be a long while before the Washington Post lives down the racial/classist reek of columnists Richard Cohen and Kathleen Parker. Lord I hope their limo never breaks down in Anacostia.)

But no one to date that I’m aware of has made a point of fingering the NRA for being the heavy it is, from the roots up, in this tortured drama. My guess is that since we are now seven months past the Newtown slaughter and the NRA has prevailed in Congress again, the four million member fire-arms lover/super patriot organization is old news … again.

Same old same old. Boooring. Must have fresh villains.

Never mind that it was the NRA in Florida pushing, excuse me “extorting”, votes to pass the state’s Stand Your Ground law, as it was after  that when Florida adopted Conceal Carry.

Lacking either, young Mr. Martin would still be alive, although given his record for domestic abuse and other outbursts of violence Mr. Zimmerman might likely be incarcerated somewhere. (In fairness, the deceased was a known pot smoker.) Under standard NRA lobbying, a record of violence is not a disqualifier for purchasing a gun, hell several guns, and gobs of ammunition, over the Internet. With over half its funding coming from the country’s gun manufacturers, the NRA is and has been for a generation the marketing arm for the likes of Smith & Wesson and rent-a-mercenary companies like Xe, formerly Blackwater. With that in mind you’re going to say and do everything possible to get a gun in the hand of every one who can still pull a trigger, and they do.

I always pity the poor dumb cracker, sitting down the bar from me at my favorite northern Wisconsin watering hole, proudly telling everyone in earshot, (but mainly the two low-lidded gals sucking down Marlboros and playing penny video poker) how he wrote the NRA a check for $100.

“And why”, I ask? “Well … ” and then the story starts to spin-off into the time two black guys in Superior — 25 miles through the woods and down the hill — looked at him funny while he was picking up a prescription at Walgreens, and how “with that crowd that’s in there now” the NRA’s the only people stopping the Feds from breaking down his trailer door, grabbing his guns and leaving him defenseless … most likely against blind drunk white guys careening down the dusty back roads blasting away at Deer Crossing signs.

The fear a yob like that feels is also an effect of NRA marketing. Every politician who votes against Conceal Carry, Stand Your Ground/Castle Doctrine, registration, whatever == assault rifles for psychopaths — has to have a salable reason,  and the talking points the NRA has used since it dropped that silly Boy Scout shit about firearm safety and realized that the real dough was in regular checks from the manufacturers, is the pitch they use. “it’s damned terrifying out there and as an exceptional American who loves John Wayne, Dirty Harry and the Constitution you owe it to your family to pack heat. That is if your family left a forwarding address.

So it is when your average terrified-of-the-next-nut-in-the-next-primary Congressman/state legislator gets back in the district in front of “outdoors” activists . Out rolls all the paranoid NRA verbiage about the vulnerability, threats and carnage of modern American life, usually in code language with the unmistakable inference that they’re referring to black guys, young black guys in particular. (The flab and paunchiness of the paranoid crowd contrasts pretty vividly with the young buck-ness of the black guys that scare them the most.)

There’s zero chance the Justice Department is going to launch a racial case against George Zimmerman, and not because it’d fry the tin foil antennae of the black helicopter crowd. Proving racist intent would be all but entirely impossible. More likely is that Trayvon Martin’s family will file a civil suit against Zimmerman, who, like most sweaty-palmed pistol-packers, is not anyone’s idea of a genius with money. So good luck with a pay-day.

Maybe Mike Bloomberg will take this opportunity to hire David Boies and make the NRA a co-defendant in a suit against Zimmerman.

Neuter the Rabble.

Last Thursday night, during the blizzard before last, I drove out to the high school here in beautiful, misunderstood Edina to catch weatherman Paul Douglas’s act on climate change. The operative cliché for “my people” is that they’re all self-absorbed, hyper-competitive materialists restless-to-bored with any conversation or endeavour that doesn’t add to shareholder value in the next quarter. Nevertheless, over 100 fellow citizens slogged their way through the right-angle sleet to hear what Douglas had to say.

Being that he’s spent the bulk of his career on TV, his name and face are familiar to every Minnesotan over the age of 15, and sure enough there were people posing with him for souvenir pictures in the lobby before the “show”.

And it’s a pretty good show. Douglas, TV performer and demonstrably shrewd businessman, has a polished, credible and engaging act laying out the known reality of climate change. I doubt there was a skeptic in the theater, but the impact of deniers, willful ignorers and utter know-nothings is stark in his story of building effective consensus. (His shtick was the main attraction in a night raising awareness of Edina’s various green initiatives, for which, as Mayor and MC Jim Hovland proudly pointed out, the city — of preening, avaricious capitalists (not his words) — has already won national acclaim and regard as a leader.)

Having followed Douglas’ career since his KARE-11 days, through WBBM in Chicago, back to (and then out of) WCCO, including more than a half-dozen businesses along the way, his evolution into a prominent consciousness-raiser for climate change is surprising only in a couple of ways. There’s never been a question he is smart enough to grasp the metrics of true science, the only issue was whether he’d take the career-risk of actually proselytizing for what he knows to be true.

But he has. Perhaps most aggressively after realizing that his days with network affiliate TV were over, but he has. And it’s dramatically more than any of his meteorological colleagues left behind at any local station dare to do. In case you haven’t noticed human-caused climate change is a taboo in local weather reports … and not much less on The Weather Channel.

Douglas makes only passing reference to his experiences dealing with nervous news directors skittish about injecting anything into weather (or any element of news coverage) that comes with so much as a hint of political provocation. As he says, “Everyone on TV wants to be loved”. And you’re not creating love (translation: ratings) if you’re making some people irrationally angry.

But who, at this point in the climate change discussion, are we making angry? As Douglas and everyone who is actually conversant in science, peer review, climatology, core samples, etc. fully accepts, the “debate” over human causation is over. (Has been for years.) Those who continue to deny it, citing transparently fraudulent counter-studies (usually underwritten by the Koch brothers or other carbon producers), have no credible standing on the matter. They can make noise, bluster and rage, but from the perspective of everyone who can read a graph on carbon dioxide release, that crowd is the rhetorical equivalent of a drunk armed with the same handful of bogus bar stool talking points.

But as we’ve just seen in the Senate vote on universal background checks, an absurdly small minority of irrationally angry/misinformed citizens still has powerful influence over the well-being of the … vast … majority.

How to reverse that dynamic?

Ninety minute seminars for the choir will only do so much. Likewise, simply writing campaign checks to sympathetic politicians for election season ads has obvious effectiveness issues. Not the least of which is that the crushing majority of ads during a campaign cycle are little more than noise and annoyance to viewers.

My suggestion, both for gun control and climate science awareness, is an experiment in the full, sustained impact of … theater. Paul Douglas long ago learned and honed the techniques of performance. You have to engage and sustain an audience to get your message across. In terms of building broad cultural awareness, what if we combined the talents of Hollywood and Madison Avenue, two industries full of people who “get” the science and the consequences of doing nothing. (Add to them the military and insurance companies, two other entities long past the point of denying climate change.)

Given Hollywood’s progressive attitudes, I have to believe writers, directors, editors, actors and camera people, would fall over each other to be a part of a campaign producing PSAs on the reality of human activity on climate, pulling back the curtain on the disinformation industry, and the modest lifestyle changes that can be made (not to mention the employment opportunities in renewable energy). Ditto, a sustained campaign to further delegitimize the NRA, with the intent of rendering it inconsequential to the election prospects of Bible Belt and rural legislators.

The commonality of climate deniers and ardent gun “enthusiasts” is striking.

And the money for it? How much did Hollywood and uber-liberal fat cats pour into the 2012 election? How fast do musicians volunteer for the latest disaster relief telethon? How much of this kind of work could be had pro-bono? How much (if any) could the networks be pressured to provide at discount through their affiliates? (Okay, forget that one.)

Point being: The vast majority of the American audience is receptive to both messages, particularly on guns. The demographic downside is minimal. You’re not exactly pissing off the well-educated, top dollar crowd. Moreover the artful, entertaining application of humor, visuals and message association would likely have a solidifying effect among the young, much as gay rights has enjoyed, largely due to representations in the entertainment industry.

It’s one thing to ignore the angry rabble. It’s something better to neuter them into insignificance.

 

 

 

 

 

“If I Were King”, 2013 edition.

The King apologizes for being out of court for the past fortnight. Official business in the distant reaches of his vast realm required his attention. But now, upon his return, he sees that the usual assortment of mulish knavery, imbecilism and jowl-flapping pedantry is still afflicting his people … and he is not pleased. Then again, he’s built an empire on never being pleased about anything, except for perhaps the swift and cruel humiliations of his enemies, like in the most recent election. (Although he would have been happier had it been far swifter.)

So, as he brushes dust from his raiment and rests his road-weary crown on its velour pouffe, The King summons his sullen scribes with this year’s list of changes deemed necessary to restore peace and harmony to his lands.

Here, here and herewith:

1:  The King has had it up to his royal migraine with fools with guns. And while a fresh series of decrees will be helpful, few things will cut to the core of the gun “problem” like a strategy for extracting the misguided notions of bravery, masculinity and exceptional expertise from what is plainly an juvenile, emotional cry for relevance. As a Catholic-in-name-only The King finds shame to be particularly useful in reducing a pretense of courage to its essential silliness. Therefore …

1 (a) The royal populace will be routinely informed — by its media — of how low the actual violent crime rate is, the ridiculous odds against being a victim of a violent home invasion in most of the kingdom’s neighborhoods, the number of innocent people killed or wounded by terrified homeowners opening fire simply because they were “patriotic” enough to buy a gun and the utter ludicrousness of Constitutional illiterates thinking their basement arsenal is going to keep the CIA and ATF at bay when Big Gummint comes to take away their “freedoms”.

1(b) Not only will the name and address of every gun owner be placed in a kingdom-wide data base, for all to see, especially all those hardened criminals plotting to break in and kill them for their flat screen TVs, but every individual gun owned by that individual will be listed, as well as every purchase of ammunition … and that individual’s criminal history, be it for tax fraud, reckless driving or restraining orders by old girlfriends. Criminals … and cops coming through the door … have a right to know what they’re dealing with.

1(c) The kingdom’s entertainment industry, its jesters and dramatists, will cease trading in revenge fantasies involving gunfire. If aging macho men like Sly Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis require mass amounts of ammo to shore up their manly bona fides the kingdom’s taxing authority will assess a per bullet fee for every shot fired. At a rate of say $50,000/bullet sound effect, producers will quickly reevaluate the cost of producing brain-numbing dreck appealing mainly to emotionally unevolved males and so many “overseas action markets”.

1(d) Likewise, the kingdom’s video game industry, financially linked to the gun manufacturing industry, will be subject to the same bullet assessment, plus another for body count. The King has ordered his court minions to come up with a scale of quantifiable video game “storyline” stupidity for additional assessing, but is still awaiting their decision.

1(e)  The kingdom’s gun lobby, so fearful a presence in the careers of elected noblemen and women, will NOT be granted “a place at the table” in conversations about getting rid of this form of homegrown terrorism. The liquor industry isn’t routinely invited to AA meetings, so why should the NRA, a paid bitch of the gun manufacturers, be granted a voice in dealing with the mayhem caused by their products?

1(f)  The King hereby orders immediate repeal of the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act of 2005. The act prevents lawsuits against gun manufacturers in state and federal court. Last time The King checked, drug manufacturers can still be sued if their products kill people. By lifting the PLCA Act the gun manufacturing industry can bravely, courageously and patriotically face the same kind of legal liability as everyone else in the large and happy kingdom.

And on other matters …

2. No money handler in the kingdom caught defrauding citizens through fraudulent loan modifications, “robo-signing” foreclosure documents or any other such 48th floor knavery will be able to settle complaints “without admitting guilt”. In other words, like a street punk caught smoking a joint behind a royal stable, anything Bank of America, AIG or Goldman Sachs says can and will be held against them in a court of law … even after the kingdom accepts a pennies on the dollar settlement for flagrant fraud.

3. The King is also very bored with these episodes of repeated obstruction. The King recognizes the opposing feudal barons, also known as the Republicans, have no actual legislative plan of their own, much less any control over the 50 to 70 manifest morons identified as “their base”. But that doesn’t mean the rest of us have to suffer for the sins and lack of discipline in that house of fools. Therefore, The King will be exercising the 14th amendment over the debt ceiling stupidity and every other executive order he can grab at to blow past these idiots and get a few things done around here. And so what if they howl about violations of their precious “Constitutional freedoms”? They scream that when you’re standing still waiting for them to pull their thumbs out of their butts, so what is The King afraid of?

3(a). Ditto the Senate “filibuster”. Take it out behind the petit palais, borrow a bullet from the NRA and be done with it.

Finally, 4. The King fears few things more than intrusion of movie musicals into discussions of art. Musicals are twaddle for a generation still clinging to Lerner and Loewe. The King has faced many fearsome opponents on the field of battle. Hideous goons with broken teeth, sallow eyes and hot, diseased breath. (Oh, sorry, those were agents of the American Legislative Exchange Council “instructing” salaried court knaves on proper decree-writing.) But nothing is as terrifying as The Queen forcing him to attend “Les Mis” and listen to Russell Crowe sing.

God save the kingdom!

The Silence of the NRA, The Voices of the Children

Only once in my crisis-counseling career have I advised a client to just stay quiet. Say nothing. Don’t return media calls. It was an organization accused of something, and they knew worse was likely to be disclosed. Nothing was going to help — not getting out in front of it, not giving a short, straight explanation, not an apology. They just had to keep their heads down and take a beating.

Usually the communications advice in a crisis is to say something, even if it’s just to say “We’re looking into this and will get back to you.” (I am not one of those who advises people to mouth that empty cliche, “We take this very seriously…” — Well, duh, what are you going to say, “Nah, we don’t really care”?) The advice is usually to get your point of view in the mix as soon as possible.

The National Rifle Association has kept its head down since the shootings in Connecticut. Not a word. Not a reply to reporters’ calls, according to The New York Times. No tweets, no website comment for several days after the shootings. Don’t even return reporters’ calls? That’s a no-no in our business. But, really, what could they say?

Now there is a post on NRA.org that says the organization was allowing time for mourning and that the four million NRA moms, dads, sons and daughters were “shocked, saddened and heartbroken” by the tragedy. Then: “The NRA is prepared to offer meaningful contributions to help make sure this never happens again. The NRA is planning to hold a major news conference in the Washington, DC area on Friday, December 21.”

Stay tuned. In the week since the shootings, the weather has changed for the NRA. Politicians are starting to find their spines. Some reasonable forms of gun and bullet control, once passed and then rescinded, may return as public horror and anger grow. Brian Lambert’s take on leadership in his most recent post lays out the issues well. Leaders at many levels — city, state, federal — are stirring.

But follow the money. The NRA can stay silent in public but speak with their dollars in elections. That’s their MO. A story in Tuesday’s New York Times shows how they take out legislators who are insufficiently loyal to their view of the Second Amendment.

But money cuts both ways. Pressured by the California teacher’s pension fund, Cerberus Capital Management, a private equity fund that owns several gun companies, is selling them. “The move by Cerberus is a rare instance of a Wall Street firm bending to concerns about an investment’s societal impact rather than a profit-at-all-costs ethos,” the Times reported. Some public employees don’t want their pension money supporting 30-bullet magazines. Way to go.

The NRA has been speaking softly and carrying a big stick. Maybe, this time, at last, their voice, and their money, will be overwhelmed by the voices of little children, eloquent in death.

— Bruce Benidt

(Photo from guardian.co.uk)

Shoot First, America.

Other than as an infallible acid test for how rational the person you’re talking to is, there’s very little to be gained arguing America’s gun possession laws. It’s like abortion. Minds are made up. Those of us who perceive little or no mortal danger in our daily modern mostly urban lives can’t fathom the need to own one. Much less can we understand the need/desire to acquire a small arsenal. So … we and look on the crowd arguing for the need/right to carry, then conceal and lately “Stand Your Ground” (the so-called “expanded Castle Doctrine”) as precisely the kind of people — addled by bizarre paranoias — that should not be packing heat as they order their triple macchiatos and/or stroll the aisles of Home Depot.

A comprehensive psychological profile, administered to gun license applicants, would do wonders for denying permits to the personalities who need guns way too much for reasons that have nothing to do with “personal safety”.

In the past two weeks we’ve had two more incidents of outrageous gun play by (very likely) damaged characters acting as guardians of our safety. First, Master Sgt. Robert Bales in Afghanistan, accused of the mass murder of 16 civilians, including nine sleeping children, and now George Zimmerman the, and I quote, “self-appointed” citizen watch guard who pretty obviously stalked an unarmed black teenager, engaged him in a confrontation and shot him dead … all in, as I say, his personally appointed role as guardian of a … wait for it … gated Florida community.

Far from being beside the point, the mental instability of both Bales and Zimmerman is highly germane to whatever conversation you might care to have. Bales was obviously in a war zone. But the truly grotesque irony in the Zimmerman-Trayvon Martin case is that Zimmerman most likely imagined himself in something similar.

How did either one of these guys get in the position to do what they did?

I have very little confidence that the Army, left to its own investigation and courts-martial, will reveal any of its possible failures to screen out Robert Bales, a family guy (with a red flag financial management career) who had already served three tours in Iraq and reportedly didn’t want to re-deploy. (Who would? In Bales’ favor is that he was sane enough at that point to understand that another combat tour wasn’t in his best interests. If it were me, I’d be testing any soldier not complaining about  returning for a fourth tour. Someone’s enjoying just a bit too much.)

The Zimmerman-Martin episode speaks more directly to the fear-struck homeland side of the equation. Florida has the law that gun-talking/gun-loving/gun-toting small town police chief/Republican legislator Tony Cornish has been pushing here in Minnesota for what seems like years. Mark Dayton vetoed the bill this time around on the grounds that it was — yet another — GOP solution in search of a problem. What statistical evidence there is that ordinary citizens need legal protection to extend their “threat zones” to basically any place they happen to be, allowing them to “Stand Their Ground”, shooting first and thinking of retreating later, is preposterously subjective at best. Even anecdotally there isn’t enough to suggest this is necessary legislation.

The larger point though is the psychological screening that goes on with “avid” gun buffs. As I say, if ever there were a signal that someone needed a thorough screening for irrational thinking and aberrant threat assessment, it’s the guy building an arsenal in his leafy suburban basement or arguing loudly that he needs a loaded gun on his hip to gas up the truck at SuperAmerica.

To any rational person that is thinking of someone in a paranoid fantasy land, i.e. someone very likely to contrive a situation to “deploy” his arsenal.

How someone like George Zimmerman, plainly a nutcase based on his constant 911 calls alone, was allowed to cruise around — a gated community — unimpeded by police has everything to do with political cowardice in the face of gun zealots and NRA lobbying. “Stand Your Ground” is the law in post Tea Party Florida. The survivor’s word that he was acting in self-defense is good enough, no matter how palpably unstable the pistol-packing citizen appears to be.

(In the context of inducing fear in legislators I note the profound under-coverage of the Zimmerman-Martin case by FoxNews — the cable news organization of choice for many gun lovers, I’m guessing — and the entirely predictable twisting of the story into yet another “war on guns” by hysterical liberals.)

The hysteria and fear-mongering, of the imminent threat to home and family by homicidal intruders, is a constant theme of far-right media. I spent a couple of hours driving around Phoenix last winter slack-jawed at the paranoid nonsense being spewed by … Arizona Gun Radio, a station entirely devoted to gun talk, gun rights and … fear of everybody walking past your front door.

George Zimmerman may well be crazy. The likelihood is that a lot of people who have crossed the line from amiable deer-hunter to gun fetishist are also crazy on some level. But the issue here is what is the sequence of events and influences that put a crazy-ass character like him on a “block watch” detail … with consent to carry (at least one) loaded gun … and enough legal immunity that he not only shot to kill an unarmed kid … but hasn’t been arrested?