Sometimes I think we will self-destruct out of sheer gullibility, especially since we have become just barely literate enough to read our email and Facebook messages but not smart enough to investigate their truth value or significance. We are way not wise enough to keep our fingers off the “forward” button.
As the evangelical minister Rick Warren says, political division easily jumps to hatred: “All of a sudden, the guy you disagree with is evil, and you demonize him.”
Gun rights, in particular, threaten to make us rural folks caricatures of ourselves by inspiring quick fear whenever we perceive a threat to a prized and primal part of our lives—our ability to feed and defend ourselves.
Never mind the not inconsiderable support of the U.S. Supreme Court which in 2008 confirmed for the first time in our history that the right to bear arms is an individual right.
We go crazy when we see any control of firearms proposed, leaving behind our also famous rural skepticism expressed as: “believe nothing that you hear, and only half of what you see,” still good advice if only we could follow it.
I spent several hours this week chasing down an “Ammunition Accountability Act,” a.k.a “The Blair Holt Bill,” controversial proposed legislation that has been coming up on email since 2007 and around our kitchen table as recently as Christmas, as a measure that (various inflammatory emails now say) requires coded ammunition by June 30 of 2009.
Most of the first several hundred of the 10,400 hits I got on Google on the AAA were variations on the same email: “Remember how Obama said he wasn’t going to take your guns? Well it seems that his minions and allies in the anti-gun control world have no problem with taking your ammo,” and so on.
In fact, the AAA never made it to the floor in Congress, but coded ammo came up in 18 states without becoming law anywhere. Factcheck.org says, “Such a proposal is being pushed by a company that holds a patent on bullet-coding technology. But none of the 31 bills introduced last year ever made it out of committee.”
Ah, it’s those free enterprise guys again, trying to take away my guns.
And then someone forwarded me the text-only of U.S. HB 45, the actual proposed AAA, and when I went to investigate its status in Congress on the internet, I ran into the same wall of fear and repeated internet stories without any helpful information about whether or not this bill poses a real threat to possession of firearms.
Our politicians, bless their hearts, do not always help us distinguish between real threats and threats that can be used to make political hay to get themselves re-elected.
In my perfect world, which does not exist, here is how my legislator would respond to me when I contact her or him after someone sends me a copy of a piece of federal gun legislation with no surrounding documentation that makes me fearful as a hunter, a gun owner, and a somewhat free citizen in the fiercely independent state of Alaska.
I would deeply appreciate it if he or she would say:
“Mary, this bill has just been introduced. It would, as you suggest, do a lot of bad things including 1) discourage gun ownership in a whole class of citizens outside the criminals with semi-automatic weapons it is trying to target, 2) prevent our children from proper gun and hunting education, 3) stomp on states’ rights, and 4) drive the Attorney General of the United States stark raving mad because it makes his office directly responsible for repeatedly (every 5 years) handling the registrations of every single one of these firearms owned by every single person in the country.
“But Mary, I am not going to defame the character of Representative Bobby L. Rush of the 1st Congressional District of Illinois, a guy who started the Chicago chapter of the Black Panthers more than 40 years ago in 1967 and in fact once spent 6 months in prison in 1972 on weapons charges.
“I wouldn’t tell you those details without also telling you that Representative Rush ran the free breakfast for school children program and started a medical clinic while he was a Black Panther, but left the group when they ‘started glorifying thuggery and drugs.’ He holds two masters degrees, is a Baptist minister, and has been a U.S. Congressman since 1992.
“Since 1999, the year his young son was murdered, he has sponsored 30 pieces of gun control legislation.
“He was moved to write HR45, which is a rewrite of the also misguided HR2666 which he introduced in 2007, by the deaths of 31 Chicago school children in gun violence in that year, including Blair Holt, the namesake of the bill, who was shot while trying to shield a friend from a gunman’s bullet.
“But before you get mad at Rep. Rush for being a gun-hating creep, take a deep breath and think what an amazing thing it is that a person who formerly associated himself with a radical group that sometimes encouraged violent political protest is now—a mere four decades later—an elected representative of his district.
“That is a political version of beating a sword into a plowshare, and a fulfillment of the promise of our democracy.
“He is a federal legislator who submits his ideas and those of his constituents at the ground level of the American political process and trusts that, if that idea is well-enough supported in the society through its elected officials, it may become a law of the land.
“I will not attack the character of Representative Rush by letting mention of his long-ago gun conviction just hang out there by itself and thereby imply that he is still a thug. As a congressman, he apparently believes he is representing the interests of his constituents, though he also apparently does not know enough about the lives and livelihoods of people who live outside his inner city universe.
“And Mary, since my staff and I have researched this bill carefully, keeping a vigilant eye out as always for threats to the security and rights and cultural identities of Alaskans, we are happy to tell you that this legislation has not a snowballs’ chance in Hades of advancing to law.
“In the month since it was introduced, it has not attracted a single co-sponsor, which it must have to even advance through committee. And because this piece of legislation perfectly combines elements which make many citizens fearful—gun control, a radical connection, a person of color who can be objectified to one of ‘them,’ and not to mention a Democrat—I want to reassure you and anyone else who wants to polarize Americans by blowing this out of proportion, that the resistance to this asinine piece of legislation is bi-partisan.
“In short (although it is too late for that), Mary, these bills are introduced very often, and not just lately since you-know-who got into office.
“So although the Senate and House Joint Resolutions we are introducing in opposition to this U.S. House Bill 45 confirm our responsiveness to the concerns of our constituents and will be remembered by the most ardent of our gun owners and sportsmen when they later see our Congressman’s name on the election ballot, you could justifiably view these Joint Resolutions as an overreaction, a bit of grandstanding, and a waste of political energy and everybody’s time in our short 90-day session.”
When I called US Congressman Don Young’s office, though, Press Secretary Meredith Kenny described the status of the bill as above, and for all the reasons listed above, as a “non-starter” and nothing to worry about.
That hadn’t stopped her boss from making a little political hay with it however.