Militia or Not?

Some gun enthusiasts claim that, rather than granting the people of the several States the right to form Armed Militias, the Second Amendment provides an individual an untrammeled right to own and carry guns. They are not, these people claim, members of the Militia.

You may be able legitimately make this argument if you use your guns only within confines of your home and property and never take them outside. But as soon as you arrogate yourself the right to shoot people outside your home, you are performing the function of the militia, which these days is essentially the police.

But the gun nuts of the NRA do not stop at their property line. They demand the right to carry guns anywhere they want, any time they want -- except at NRA conventions and Trump rallies.

They claim they can shoot people outside their homes, like the Louisiana man who killed a Japanese student who knocked on his front door.  They claim they can patrol the streets and don't have to back down when they pull their guns on people minding their own business. They consider George Zimmerman's murder of Trayvon Martin a righteous act. But patrolling the streets is a police function.

They claim they need guns to protect themselves as they drive along traffic-clogged streets and interstates. This frequently results in road rage incidents, like the shooting David Michael Keene was found guilty of in 2008. Keene is the son of David A. Keene, who was a member of the NRA board of directors at the time.

They claim they need guns to protect themselves from muggers while walking down the street, though muggers will nearly always get the drop on you and take your weapon from you. They then pivot to the idea that they will protect others who being accosted by muggers. This is a function of the police.

They claim, as Donald Trump implied during the meeting where he asserted the right to confiscate guns from people without due process, that they need guns to rush into schools and stop shooters. This is a function of the police. Except when they sit outside the school and do nothing.

If individuals are taking it upon themselves to perform the functions of the police, they are claiming the right to deputize themselves as members of the police.

If they are protecting the public, then they are either members of the "Militia" -- the armed citizenry -- or they are lawless vigilantes.

So, if you've got a gun, and consider yourself as a protector of your fellow citizens, then state and federal governments have the right to regulate your use of that gun. They can impose the same kind of licensing, training and storage requirements that they impose on members of the military and the police force.

Otherwise gun owners are just a bunch of lawless vigilantes. The idea that any random moron should be able to wave deadly weapons around on the streets and in churches and bars (!) without any restrictions is, at best, catastrophically naive.

This is why the Heller decision is restricted to guns in the home and nothing more. The justices were angling for a "Castle Doctrine" excuse to prevent the District of Columbia from stopping people from owning handguns.

But this completely ignores the reality of handguns. They can be taken outside the home. DC was trying to prevent carnage in the streets from too many handguns in circulation. The activist conservative justices completely ignored reality to cook up a legal excuse for a political quid pro quo on guns.

They did the same thing when they ruled corporations can contribute unlimited amounts of cash to political campaigns with Citizens United. It is catastrophically naive to assume that wealthy corporations -- which are often owned by foreign interests -- would never buy politicians and spend anyone who opposes them into the ground.

These two decisions were overt political acts, overturning decades and centuries of legal precedents, and have engendered a horrible climate of fear and division in this country.

Nixon's Chief Justice on the Second Amendment

Let's hear what Warren Burger, who was appointed Chief Justice of the Supreme Court by Richard Nixon in 1969, has to say about the Second Amendment (via NPR):


In the interview Burger said:

This [the Second Amendment] has been the subject of one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word fraud, on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime.

Burger goes so far as to say that he would not have included the Second Amendment if the Bill of Rights were being written today, but that is unnecessary: the Constitution clearly grants the Congress and the President the authority to regulate Arms.

In particular, the Second Amendment grants "the people" the right to bear Arms. The people is a collective noun that does not mean all persons. Where the Constitution means an individual person, it says a person. For example:

The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a Tax or duty may be imposed on such Importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each Person.

Don't you just love that "importation of such Persons" and the ten-dollar tariff part?

No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State. 

and

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

and

All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. 

This last paragraph illustrates the difference between the people and a person. The Second Amendment grants the right of the collective people (i.e., the Militia of a State) to bear arms, but persons cannot be denied life, liberty, property and equal protection of the laws.

If the Second Amendment meant every person can own whatever guns they hanker for, it would have been written without any preamble about Militias and States, thusly: "The right of a Person to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed." It does not say that.

Congress can pass laws as Congress sees fit to regulate Arms, and all individuals must be treated equally under those laws. The government cannot deprive persons of lawfully owned Arms without due process.

The Second Amendment does not grant an individual the absolute right to own any kind of weapon, including hand guns, AR-15s, hand grenades or nuclear weapons, or the right to carry guns around wherever they feel like it in order to threaten others. It grants the people of the States' Militias the right to bear Arms, as regulated by the Congress.

Congress can pass gun laws. States can pass gun laws. The Heller decision acknowledged that states can regulate guns, it simply ruled that the District of Columbia went too far in banning handgun ownership in the home.

In essence, Heller says that regulating gun ownership is just a matter of degree. The error in Heller is in denying the state's right (remember states' rights?) to decide what that degree is.

The conservative justices who decided Heller were using the Second Amendment as a lame excuse to prevent the District of Columbia from stopping them from keeping guns under their pillows.

I'm not a liberal, wild-eyed gun-confiscating nut: all I'm saying is that federal and state governments have the right to pass laws that regulate gun ownership. Those laws should include those that make sure that the persons who own guns are not criminal or violent, and are mentally stable and competent in firearm use; that weapons in private hands are not overly dangerous; and that weapons are properly stored so that children and unstable people can't steal or otherwise access them.

If you want a wild-eyed, gun-confiscating nut look up this guy named Donald Trump: he thinks that he can seize people's guns without due process.

How To Buy A Gun in Israel

 Israel 1Join a shooting club, or prove that you live or work in a dangerous area authorized for gun ownership, including certain settlements.2Get a doctor’s note saying you have no mental illness or history of drug abuse. 3Install a gun safe. 4Release your criminal and mental health history to the authorities. 5Buy a gun and a limited supply of bullets, usually around 50. 6Demonstrate that you can use your gun or a similar gun at a firing range before taking it home.

Many countries, including Israel, also allow people with certain jobs to more easily obtain guns, including security, research and pest control.

Trump Using Tariffs for Extortion

Donald Trump announced that he's going to impose tariffs on steel and aluminum, annoying pretty much everyone except a small minority of nutjobs. 

The stock market has reacted quite negatively. Most Republicans have reacted negatively. All our allies have reacted negatively. Pretty much every economist has blasted the move. So why is Brain-Dead Donald (his new nickname -- everyone is using it!) imposing tariffs?

Trump plans to use the tariffs to extort campaign contributions from companies:

A top trade adviser to U.S. President Donald Trump said on Sunday a process will be in place for businesses to get exemptions from the White House plan to place steep tariffs on steel and aluminum, offering the first indication a tariff hike could be less broad than first thought.

Peter Navarro, director of the White House National Trade Council, said countries will not be excluded from the tariffs because that would become a slippery slope, but there will be a mechanism for corporate exemptions in some cases. 

What will that mechanism be? They haven't said. But we can only assume, since this is Donald Trump, that it will involve secret contributions to his presidential campaign and patronizing Trump businesses.

And even though Navarro said that countries will not be exempt, Trump has already said that Canada and Mexico will be exempted if they do what he wants on NAFTA. Which is blatant, naked extortion.

Pretty much everything Trump does as president includes a component that allows him to profit personally.

Trump is the poster boy for corruption.

Site Policies

Our site traffic has increased a great deal here at Zombie Politics over the last couple of months so I thought it might be a good time to review our comments policies. Here is the link to my original post on comments and how they will be moderated. Let's review the main points.

Comments that refute points or ideas presented in the posts or by other commenters are just fine. Criticisms about groups of people (liberals are all blah blah blah...conservatives are all blah blah blah) are also acceptable. Criticism about public figures are fine (Barack Obama is a Kenyan Muslim! John Boehner is a corporate shill!) as well. Personal remarks about posters or other commenters that take the form of insults, childish baiting, answering questions with questions or arguments about arguments will not be allowed.

In short, no trolling. This was a recent comment I had to delete.

Nowhere else in The Constitution does "The People" mean anything other than ALL THE PEOPLE. The law has never once been applied in this country to deny people the right to bear arms based on militia membership. Heller simply stated the obvious, de facto reality we've all been living under for the last 200+ years. The tortured mental gymnastics you had to go to try and make your argument are laughable. You don't want to try to repeal the 2nd amendment because you know you can't. You're also not going to neuter it with this militia nonsense. Get fucked.

The first part was fine. The bolded part was not. It was childish, baiting, insulting and made an argument about an argument. Those comments will be deleted.

Any questions or concerns, please use the comment form on the right side of the site. Thanks and welcome new readers!

The Norwegian Oil Company's Floating Wind Farm

When it comes to wind power people come up with the most ridiculous complaints. 

One is that it "wastes" land. This one is a complete crock, as most wind farms are sited on productive farmland in places like Iowa and Minnesota.

Another is that wind kills birds. It does, by the hundreds of thousands. However, glass buildings -- like all the hotels and office buildings that Donald Trump owns -- kill billions of birds every year. Cats kill an additional two or so billion birds in the United States alone.

Another is that wind power is unsightly. What's more unsightly: A) tall, graceful turbines spinning in the wind, B) giant smokestacks spewing thick, black, sulfer-laden coal smoke, or C) nuclear power towers built along rivers and lakes, emitting huge gouts of slightly radioactive steam.

Well, the Norwegian oil company has a solution: offshore floating wind turbines.

The world's first commercial floating offshore wind farm, called Hywind, started sending electricity to the grid last October. Since then, the six-turbine, 30MW installation has been working well. Really well. In fact, Hywind has had a 65-percent capacity factor over the last three months according to Statoil, the Norwegian mega-corporation that built the wind farm off the coast of Scotland. (Capacity factor measures a generation unit's actual output against its theoretical maximum output. A capacity factor of 100 percent means the wind farm would be sending 30MW of power to the grid every minute of every day since it's been in operation.)

That 65% capacity factor is higher than land-based wind and solar, and greater than many hydroelectric facilities, which have an average of 45% capacity. Since the wind is stronger and more consistent during the winter, Hywind's figure will be lower for the full year.

The wind farm is 15 miles offshore, eliminating all the complaints about wasting land, killing birds and being unsightly.

It uses the same technology that oil drilling uses: a floating platform anchored to the seafloor with suction anchors. This allows the platforms to withstand high winds and hurricanes, just as oil platforms do:

In October, the proximity of Hurricane Ophelia exposed Hywind to wind speeds of 125 km/h (80 mph), and later in December, another storm delivered "gusts in excess of 160 km/h (100 mph) and waves in excess of 8.2 m (27 ft)."

If you compare this success story to the abject failure that was the Kemper "clean coal" facility, which has now been abandoned after wasting billions of dollars, it becomes clear that the future of energy is renewables.

Overturn DC vs. Heller, Not the Second Amendment

In the wake of the Parkland shooting, there have been many calls to repeal the Second Amendment. This is completely unnecessary, as the Second Amendment itself reads:

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.

The key phrases are "well regulated Militia," a "free State" and "the people." It's clear from context that "the people" are the Militia of the State, not an individual person. Furthermore, if you scan the Constitution for the word "Militia," you'll find these references that describe the powers that the President and the federal Congress have over the militias:

The Congress shall have the power to ...

To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;

To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;

and

The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States; he may require the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any Subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices, and he shall have Power to Grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment. 

and

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation. 

From these references it's clear that the Congress is responsible for arming, disciplining and training the Militia, i.e., the people armed by Second Amendment. The President is the Commander in Chief of the Militia of the several States. The Militia in these times is the National Guard.

All this means that the federal government has the right and responsibility to regulate the Arms and discipline the people in the Militia who keep and bear those Arms.

Speculation about what the Founding Fathers "really meant" or what English common law said about owning arms should irrelevant to strict conservative constructionists who claim to abide by the letter of the Constitution.

Even if you don't agree that one needs to be a member of the National Guard to keep Arms (i.e., we're all citizen soldiers), it's clear that the Constitution indicates that the President and Congress have the right to regulate Arms and impose training and discipline on people who keep and bear arms. If you've got a gun, you've got to obey the laws imposed by the Congress and enforced by the President.

Which means Congress can pass laws to regulate or ban dangerous weapons in civilian hands -- AR-15s, silencers, machine guns, hand grenades, and kevlar vests. Congress can discipline those who bear Arms by requiring licensing and training, or barring incompetent or unstable individuals from keeping Arms.

Furthermore, since the Second Amendment is concerned with the security of a free State, the States should be able regulate Arms as they see fit. The Second Amendment is about states' rights, after all. If States want tighter gun laws than the Congress imposes, they should be able to have them, just as they can have tighter laws for automobiles, gambling, pollution regulation, health care and most anything else.

This was the view of Constitutional scholars -- and even the NRA -- for two centuries. And then, some time in the 1970s, the NRA went off their rockers and began clamoring for an unlimited ability to murder and maim. The 2008 DC vs. Heller Supreme Court decision recognizing an individual right to bear Arms was not a Constitutional decision, it was a political act of conservative justices kowtowing to a tiny minority of Americans and the arms industry.

The Second Amendment doesn't need to be repealed: the illegitimate DC vs. Heller decision simply needs to be overturned.

How To Buy A Gun In Australia

 Australia 1Join and regularly attend a hunting or shooting club, or document that you’re a collector. 2Complete a course on firearm safety and operation, and pass a written test and practical assessment. 3Arrange firearm storage that meets safety regulations. 4Pass a review that considers criminal history, domestic violence, restraining orders and arrest history. Authorities may also interview your family and community members. 5Apply for a permit to acquire a specific type of weapon. 6Wait at least 28 days.7Buy the specific type of gun you received a permit for.



In response to a 1996 mass shooting, Australia made guns a privilege, not a right. Gun owners must provide a valid reason for owning a weapon, such as farming or hunting, and gun clubs must inform the authorities of inactive members.

Thoughts and Prayers

Take The Guns Early, Then Go Through Due Process

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHHAAHAHAHHAAAAAAA!!!!!!

Buyer's remorse yet, gun humpers?

For the record, even though he is saying things I agree with, he's still a terrible president who has failed to defend this nation from within and without.

Right-to-Carry Laws and the Arms Race

The existential angst that gripped the country during the Cold War resulted from the arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union and its corollary, Mutually Assured Destruction.

Another arms race, writ small, has been affecting this country for decades now. The result is not just fear, but an actual increase in violent crime.

According to a working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research, states with right-to-carry (RTC) laws experienced higher rates of violent crime after these laws were passed (emphasis added):

The 2004 report of the National Research Council (NRC) on Firearms and Violence recognized that violent crime was higher in the post-passage period (relative to national crime patterns) for states adopting right-to-carry (RTC) concealed handgun laws, but because of model dependence the panel was unable to identify the true causal effect of these laws from the then-existing panel data evidence. This study uses 14 additional years of panel data (through 2014) capturing an additional 11 RTC adoptions and new statistical techniques to see if more convincing and robust conclusions can emerge.

Our preferred panel data regression specification (the “DAW model”) and the Brennan Center (BC) model, as well as other statistical models by Lott and Mustard (LM) and Moody and Marvell (MM) that had previously been offered as evidence of crime-reducing RTC laws, now consistently generate estimates showing RTC laws increase overall violent crime and/or murder when run on the most complete data.

We then use the synthetic control approach of Alberto Abadie and Javier Gardeazabal (2003) to generate state-specific estimates of the impact of RTC laws on crime. Our major finding is that under all four specifications (DAW, BC, LM, and MM), RTC laws are associated with higher aggregate violent crime rates, and the size of the deleterious effects that are associated with the passage of RTC laws climbs over time. Ten years after the adoption of RTC laws, violent crime is estimated to be 13-15% percent higher than it would have been without the RTC law.

The arms race analogy explains this perfectly. If a criminal thinks his victims will be armed, he will arm himself. He will attack first and more forcefully if expects armed resistance. Criminals are using more powerful weapons, like high-capacity magazines and the AR-15, requiring cops to get better armor and more powerful weapons. Criminals in turn get armor piercing bullets. SWAT teams start driving around in tanks. It's a never-ending cycle.

Worse, the more guns there are, the more opportunities there are for burglars and robbers to steal them. When there are more guns in circulation, cops are afraid that any interaction with the public will get them shot, so they're more apprehensive and ready to shoot, resulting in the deaths of innocent people like Justine Ruszczyk-Damond. People stop trusting the police. Everyone is afraid, and the fabric of society breaks down.

What did we do to reduce the tensions caused by the Cold War? Over many decades both Democratic and Republican presidents worked on arms reduction treaties, such as Nixon's ABM Treaty, Carter's SALT II Treaty, Reagan's INF Treaty, the START treaty (worked on by the Reagan, Bush I and Clinton administrations), etc.

These treaties reduced the number of nuclear warheads held by each country. Thousands of Russian missiles were decommissioned and uranium contained in their warheads was even sent to the United States, where it was used to fuel American power plants.

Unfortunately, nuclear tensions are being ratcheted up again, with North Korea's nuclear program, Trump's obliviously casual talk of using nuclear weapons and plans to develop small tactical nukes, and Putin's recent announcements that Russia is developing similar small nuclear weapons, and will retaliate instantly against anyone who uses nuclear weapons against Russia or their allies. This rhetoric is presumably aimed at Donald Trump, who has toyed with the idea of nuking North Korea and Iran.

More nuclear weapons do not make us safer. The more nuclear warheads there are, the more likely it is that one will be detonated accidentally, or intentionally based on faulty intelligence, fear, spite or naked aggression. And, as Putin has stated, any nuclear attack would solicit "instant retaliation."

Which means that any nuclear attack from any side will quickly escalate to the annihilation of modern civilization.

Clearly, the only solution is to reduce the number of nuclear weapons, especially in the hands of rogue actors like North Korea.


Just as clearly, more guns do not make us safer. The only solution to the arms race taking place in American society is to reduce the number of weapons, especially in the hands of rogue actors like Nikolas Cruz, Dylann Roof, and Stephen Paddock.

Chaos at Trump's Panama Property

What the hell is going on at the Trump Ocean Club in Panama?

Police in helmets and bulletproof vests on Wednesday entered and then left the Trump luxury hotel in Panama that has been at the center of a management dispute and the scene of brawls.

The owners of the hotel/condo are trying to oust the Trump Organization, which has been managing the property. The Trump people refuse to leave.

For months there have been accusations that the building has been used to launder money from drug trafficking and the Russian mafia:

In the interview, Ventura [the man who handled advance sales for the property] admitted that some of his brokers and clients who bought and sold units in the Trump Ocean Club were connected to the Russian mafia and other organized-crime groups, including a convicted money launderer who moved cash for drug cartels.

This is exactly why any reasonable president would never want to have business entanglements, especially in foreign countries. He doesn't really have any control over what goes on there, and when crap like this goes down, he will be tainted by the criminal activities taking place in a building bearing his name.

Donald Trump's refusal to divest from these properties and release his tax returns make it look like he's trying to cover up illegal activities.

I don't think Trump is involved in drug dealing. But he is profiting from drug dealing indirectly by laundering their money through his properties.

Trump has a long history of knowingly dealing with organized crime -- especially the Russian mob, which ran operations out of Trump Tower for years. He has sold hundreds of millions of dollars worth of property to Russian mobsters in New York and Florida. He has been involved in numerous projects with Russian-linked mobsters and crooked government officials in countries like Canada and Azerbaijan, in a deal that was linked to Iran.

The crazy thing is that the Panama debacle is not an isolated incident. Pretty much every Trump deal has a shady history -- from the casinos, to Trump University, to Miss Universe. It baffles me how Republicans can continue to defend a such an obvious crook and liar.

Conspiracy theorists on the right, as well as Fox News, are always trying to discredit Hillary Clinton and the Democrats with the most tenuous associations to non-existent crimes, like Pizzagate. But when there are literally dozens of widely known and irrefutable connections between Donald Trump and Russian mobsters, they just ignore them.

Hope Abandons the White House

Abandon all hope, ye who enter here, reads the inscription over the gates of Dante's hell.

Now Hope (Hicks) has abandoned the White House, which has become Hell on Earth:

Her resignation came a day after she testified for eight hours before the House Intelligence Committee, telling the panel that in her job, she had occasionally been required to tell white lies but had never lied about anything connected to the investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.

At least one person in the Trump administration appears to have a conscience, but that person is leaving.

Turnover in the White House and the Trump administration has been phenomenally high, and it appears that it will be accelerating.

Jared Kushner and several other White House aides have just been denied top-secret clearances, which means they can't do their current jobs. Which means they serve no useful purpose and should be fired.

Ben Carson is under fire for spending tens of thousands of dollars on dining room furniture for his office. For some reason, Carson's wife -- who has no official position at the Department of Housing and Urban development -- demanded that staff violate federal law to spend $31,000 on a table. Incredibly, this was Carson's reaction:

Mr. Carson “didn’t know the table had been purchased,” but does not believe the cost was too steep and does not intend to return it, said Raffi Williams, a HUD spokesman.

$31,000 is more than most people spend on their cars, and is more than the starting teacher salary in Montana, South Dakota and Missouri!

Other Trump administration officials are under investigation for flying first class or using private jets at taxpayers' expense.

Trump has resumed badgering his own attorney general, Jeff Sessions, on Twitter, presumably an attempt to get Sessions to resign so that Trump can appoint a new attorney general who will fire Robert Mueller and stop the Russia investigation.

During Hicks' testimony before Intelligence Committee she refused to answer any questions about what happened during the transition and Trump's first year in office, specifically, what happened when Trump crafted multiple mendacious statements about the Trump Tower meeting Don Jr., Kushner and Paul Manafort held with Russians offering dirt on Hillary Clinton.

When Robert Mueller comes calling, Hicks will no longer be able to demur. But at least she will have escaped from Hell.

And this Is What Happens When Teachers Have Guns...

Donald Trump thinks guns should be in the hands of teachers in schools. This is already the case in some states, and guess what happened:

A North Georgia teacher, known as the longtime radio voice of Dalton High School football and basketball, is in custody after he fired at least one shot inside a classroom Wednesday, police said.

The incident at the high school, about 91 miles northwest of downtown Atlanta, sent panicked students running through hallways and alarmed parents who were already on edge in the wake of a mass shooting at a Florida high school earlier this month.

About 11:30 a.m. Wednesday, some students tried to get into Randal Davidson’s classroom and he would not let them in, Dalton police spokesman Bruce Frazier said.

They alerted Principal Steve Bartoo. When he came to the door and used his key to try to open it, Davidson forcibly closed it on him, Frazier said.

At that point, Bartoo heard one gunshot. The bullet went through a window and outside, Frazier said. Police have not said what type of gun was used, only that it was a handgun.

No one was shot, but it shoots holes in the NRA's idiotic plan to arm teachers.

This wasn't the first shooting by a teacher in a Georgia school:

In August, Lithia Springs High School closed after a teacher shot himself in his classroom office before students arrived. Jonathan Freeman, 43, fired one round from his own, recently acquired, handgun. He survived the shooting.

Guns have no place in schools. Arming more teachers will simply result in more accidental shootings in schools, more suicide attempts in schools, more angry teacher outbursts involving guns, and eventually students will attack armed teachers and use their weapons to shoot fellow students.

A Sin Tax on Guns

To see how seriously the Trump administration takes school safety, consider this:

Two days before the school shooting in Florida that left 17 dead, the Trump administration proposed cutting millions in federal education programs meant to help prevent crime in schools and assist them in recovery from tragedies.

Funds targeted for reduction or elimination in the Trump administration's fiscal 2019 request have helped pay for counselors in schools and violence prevention programs. Such funds were used for mental health aid for students and teachers in the Newtown, Conn., school district following the deadly shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in 2012.

These funding cuts would have hit the very mental health programs that Donald Trump now says are needed to stop school shootings. If this isn't evidence of Trump's total cluelessness, what is?

Now Trump and the NRA are proposing training teachers to be armed guards and hardening school facilities and turning them into prisons. Okay, fine. But it'll cost a lot of money. How are we going to pay for all that?

Gun violence is a serious health problem, as deadly as cigarettes, and should be treated as such.

Research has shown that one of the most effective ways of curtailing cigarette and alcohol use (which can also be quite deadly) is to raise taxes on things that cause societal problems -- so-called sin taxes.

Since murder is a cardinal sin, the instruments of death should be highly taxed. If Congress won't ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, then they have to do something to keep them out of the hands of kids.

A hefty sales tax should be levied on all firearms and ammunition to pay for increasing security at schools and other places of business. The deadlier the weapon, the higher the tax. The larger the magazine capacity, the higher the tax.

In addition -- just as there is for cars and other property, including homes -- there should be an annual licensing fee for each weapon owned to recoup the ongoing social costs of so many guns circulating in society.

It's clearly constitutional to tax guns -- we've been doing it for centuries. Now gun owners need to start paying full freight for the social costs of their hobby.

Surprise! Companies Use Tax Cuts to Buy Back Stock!

When Republicans sold the giant tax cut for corporations they promised that all the money would go to workers in the form of raises. I predicted that the tax savings would be almost exclusively used to buy back stock and pay dividends to investors. Guess who was right?

Almost 100 American corporations have trumpeted [plans to buy back shares] in the past month. American companies have announced more than $178 billion in planned buybacks — the largest amount unveiled in a single quarter, according to Birinyi Associates, a market research firm.

A small number of companies have announced plans to increase wages or pay bonuses, with bonuses being preferred because they have no lasting effect -- they're a one-time publicity stunt to make Donald Trump look good.

In effect, bonuses are just donations to Republican political campaigns.

Money going to workers is dwarfed by stock buybacks:

S&P 500 companies have devoted about $5.6 billion to bonuses and wage hikes because of the tax law, according to research from academics Rick Wartzman and William Lazonick as well as the Academic-Industry Research Network. The group added up commitments from the 50 companies in the S&P 500 that had announced plans to reward workers through February 15.

And it's just the beginning:

Bank of America recently predicted that S&P 500 companies will use repatriated foreign profits to buy back about $450 billion of stock.

CEOs are judged by the performance of the company's stock, not by the company's performance in the marketplace (they're not the same). CEOs are more frequently compensated by receiving additional stock rather than higher salaries because salaries are taxed at higher rates.

Investing in capital equipment, raising wages and increasing production aren't rewarded by the stock market. Stock prices increase most when there are rumors of acquisitions and moves to reduce expenses (i.e., firing workers). Companies that raise wages are hammered by the market, as witnessed by American Airlines' plan to raise pilots' wages last year.

Thus, the incentives for American companies are perverse and destructive. Even worse, companies whose products mostly waste people's time -- Facebook and Apple -- have sky-high stock prices, while stock prices of companies in sectors that people need to survive -- food, transportation, housing -- are moribund.

The stock market simply does not reflect the real economy, and it's insane that CEOs are compensated based on rumors and fantasy.

Archie Bunker on Gun Control

The above was 45 years ago and supposed to be a parody. Look at what's happened today...

One More Time, with Feeling: Guns are Not Protection

There are reports, as yet still unverified, that more than one Broward County deputy failed to confront the Parkland shooter:

The Broward County Sheriff’s Office said it is investigating allegations that multiple deputies failed to enter Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., after the shooting rampage there, adding to the mounting internal probes examining the department’s response to the attack and its prior interactions with the suspect.

Donald Trump and others are casting this as cowardice. But what it really does is emphasize the fact that guns are not protection.

These deputies were probably armed with handguns and shotguns. I would wager that they could tell that the shooter was using an AR-15. They knew they would be outgunned, and they were probably waiting for SWAT to show up. SWAT has ballistic armor and weapons like the MP5/10 submachine gun, Colt M4 carbine, sniper rifles, etc.

It should be obvious by now that civilians have no business owning weapons that are more powerful than what the police carry. Civilians should not be allowed to own assault rifles like the AR-15, or ballistic armor, or silencers (which the NRA was still trying put into civilian hands, and into children's hands after the Vegas shooting!).

Gun nuts whine that many hunting rifles can be categorized as assault rifles. Read this article about what the AR-15 does when it goes through a human body.

Any weapon that purees your liver when its bullet goes through your body is a weapon of war. Such firearms should not be in civilian hands, any more than civilians should own machine guns, hand grenades or nuclear weapons.

What the...FUCK?

Guns + Classroom=Epic Fail

Former marine Anthony Swofford wrote an excellent piece on why having firearms in classrooms is really bad idea. Here are some highlights.

The military issue M-16 is the model for the AR-15 assault rifle that the accused shooter used to kill 17 people this month at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. The shooter bought the weapon lawfully. He received zero hours of mandated training. There is no reason that any civilian, of any age, should possess this rifle.

Yep. Based on the response to this shooting, I think the AR-15s days are numbered. In fact, I think anything beyond a single shot rifle/shotgun and a handgun aren't going to be in civilians hands much longer. If there is one more school shooting between now and the time they try to pass some kind of legislation, they are toast. The people that support them are going to be voted out of office.

This is absurd. More likely, had Mr. Feis been armed, he would not have been able to draw his weapon (a side arm, presumably) quickly enough to stop the shooter, who with an AR-15 would have had the coach outgunned. Even if the coach had been able to draw his weapon — from where? his athletic shorts? — any shots he managed to fire would have risked being errant, possibly injuring or killing additional students. As some studies have shown, even police officers have missed their targets more than 50 percent of the time. In firing a weapon, Mr. Feis would have only added to the carnage and confusion.

I have to wonder what goes through the head of a gun humper when they read this. Here's a guy who was trained with all sorts of weapons speaking the cold and logical truth. A handgun is no match for an AR 15. According to The Shooter's Log, "a properly configured AR-15 is easily capable of good performance at 500+ yards. Good performance means it can hit a 1-foot-square target all the time." Yet, most handguns average out at effective ranges of around 100 yards or less. So, do we arm all teachers with AR 15s?

Here is something I didn’t think about: I did not think about arming myself to protect my students. President Trump on Thursday specified that he wants only certain teachers — “highly adept people, people that understand weaponry” — to be armed. I will immodestly state that among professors in the United States, I am almost certainly one of the best shooters. But I would never bring a weapon into a classroom. The presence of a firearm is always an invitation to violence. Weapons have no place in a learning environment.

No, they do not.

But it's important to note that this debate is a purposeful distraction. The gun humpers are trying to shift the responsibility away from themselves and into a silly argument that will drive their opponents nuts. The focus should stay on voter registration, calling lawmakers out who support the NRA, and finding people to replace them who will change our gun laws forever.