Oct 26, 2016 – Pro-gun candidates don’t come any better than Mike Pence. … amendment that allowed law-abiding gun owners to carry concealed in national …

The NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action, at the link above, approvingly quotes  Freedom Fighter Mike Pence (one man’s freedom fighter is another man’s…):

In stirring language, he said, “No state has the right to legislate away the blood-bought constitutional right of every law-abiding American to protect their person, their family and their liberty.” 

He noted further, “This decision is a victory for the Second Amendment, but as a 5-to-4 ruling among the justices, it also sends a warning. The Supreme Court is closely divided and at least four of its members would not extend a basic constitutional right to all 50 states. For that reason alone, the nomination and confirmation of any Supreme Court justice requires careful deliberation to ensure that the members of the high court will protect the rights handed down by our Founding Fathers.” 

With Hillary Clinton’s contention that “the Supreme Court is wrong on the Second Amendment” and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s stated intent to overturn Heller, Pence’s words of warning resonate even more today than the day he said them.

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OK, we know that Mr. Pence, who while running for Congress in 2000 advocated diverting funds set aside for indigent HIV/AIDS patients to “programs for those seeking to change their sexual behavior,” is famous for being a slippery, deniable advocate of Gay Conversion Therapy [1].   This is a debunked, one might say medieval, method for turning sinful homosexuals into God-fearing straight people by an intervention that makes the homosexual see the evil of his or her sexual preference and become a normal heterosexual.   

Mr. Pence is an extremely religious Christian, we are told.   He believes that every abortion is an act of murder and signed a law as governor of Indiana making burial or cremation mandatory for every aborted fetus or embryo.[2]. 

Now, far be it from me to say that someone who believes things like these is fucking insane.   The degree of an individual’s religious fervor, even fanaticism is their own concern.  Arguably only our business if that religious person imposes those views in a lawmaking capacity.   But let’s get back to guns, a subject less fraught with emotionalism, superstition, faith and bigotry.

What is this concealed carry reciprocity?   It is a turning on its head of the old States’ Rights argument, the long time rallying cry of conservatives everywhere.  States’ Rights is a relic of the Civil War with roots that go back to the days of the Articles of Confederation when states kept control of virtually everything and were very zealous about what powers, if any, they’d cede to the federal government.  States should have the ultimate say on what goes on within its borders, most Americans seem to agree.  States today maintain control of most of their legal affairs, business, civil, criminal and family laws, etc. except where there is an overriding need for a superseding national law.   Nowadays most Americans recognize that in certain important matters, like, for example, the treatment of former slaves and later so-called Civil Rights matters (more properly called Human Rights, as many have said), citizen’s rights can only be protected by federal law and federal government enforcement.   Regulation of dangerous working conditions, pharmaceuticals, toxins in the environment have traditionally been the realm of the federal government.

Look, we know one shouldn’t look for any kind of consistency, or even logic, in political ‘ideology’, particularly now in the Post-Fact age we are expected to live in, but this National Rifle Association initiative, to expand the state right of concealed gun carrying (and these aren’t rifles they’re concealing, by the way) into every state in the US by ‘reciprocity’, is inconsistent beyond reason or even madness.   

Here’s the logic for overriding the will of states who want to limit guns that these otherwise States’ Rights advocates use:  State A, say Mississippi, passes a law that allows citizens to walk around with licensed guns concealed on their person.  Now I have a damned valid Mississippi license to carry, why should fucking Massachusetts have the right to prevent me from carrying my legally concealed legal gun when I go to Boston?  States rights have nothing to do with it!  It’s a matter of basic damned comity.  My Mississippi driver’s license allows me to legally drive in every state in the union, why do some states get to arbitrarily deny me my blood-bought constitutional right to carry my licensed concealed gun?

We already have plenty of gun-friendly legislation in various states, but this is not enough for those who truly believe the right to have and use guns is the “blood-bought constitutional right of every law-abiding American”.  Look no further than  ALEC’s  “Stand Your Ground” which is the law in roughly half of the United States. Written to give legal grounds for shooting someone you reasonably fear anywhere you may encounter them, all a peaceful citizen who doesn’t believe guns are the best way to solve the problems of fear and violence can think about it is “what the fuck?!!”   But there it is.  Under this law a citizen can jump out of a car, confront a black kid on the sidewalk, feel reasonable fear when the kid tells him to fuck himself, shoot the kid to death and be exonerated at trial under “Stand Your Ground.”  USA!  USA!!!  Tip of the cowboy hat to the Koch boys and other funders of ALEC, and to the legal eagles at ALEC who drafted the nifty bill/law.

Granted the NRA is a very powerful conservative lobbyist.  Granted the American love affair with the gun goes back to the earliest days of colonization, when the only cure for lawlessness was a brave man with a gun who was not afraid to shoot when decency and public order was at stake.  Or, say, in a field where sullen black slaves might seek to threaten and physically overtake the overseer.   That overseer, without an Equalizer, as the Colt .45 revolver was called, would be dead meat in any slave revolt.  One man with a gun that could fire six shots in a row was a match for any three muscular brutes with bad intentions.  Same goes for godless savages intent on thwarting America’s God-given Manifest Destiny.  You want to scalp our women and children?   We have gatling guns for you motherfuckers.

I am idly wondering about the beliefs of devout men like Mike Pence, one unhealthy heartbeat away from becoming the most powerful man in the world.   He is loved and supported by the Koch Brothers, the two billionaires most responsible for making their father’s lunatic fringe right wing vision a reality,  and he is loved by the National Rifle Association.   He is a devout Christian who seems untroubled by the fact that, on average, 33,880 Americans die every year by gun shot [3].  Jesus may weep, but Mike Pence is clear eyed about it. 

He is a Christian who would, first of all, dispute that number of annual American gun deaths as gun nut propaganda.  The actual number is indisputably way, way less than 33,880 [4].  Say we take the inflated Brady Campaign numbers, on the high side it’s more like 10,000 Americans a year outright murdered by people with guns.  It’s not fair, as the NRA consistently insists, to include the 21,037 gun suicides a year.  That wildly skews the numbers.   How is that fair?  If someone uses a gun to blow their own brains out, isn’t that the fault of the crazy person?  How do you blame the God-given right to own a gun for that?  So unfair!  SAD!  Skews the “facts” completely, inflates the numbers artificially.  Guns don’t kill people, especially when those people are only hurting themselves.   Partisans will point out that American suicide by gun is 800% the world average [4].   Exceptional, you have to admit, but nothing to do with the annual number of Americans killed by guns. 

So as you follow the news of the Mueller investigation, watch the noose tightening around many of Trump’s lawyered up inner circle, tingle at the seeming inevitability of our provocative, supremely unqualified president being designated, like Nixon, an “un-indicted co-conspirator,” remember that this white haired Christian soldier, Mr. Pence, is one heartbeat away from doing a Jerry Ford for all those best people unfairly targeted by relentless partisans.  And then going on to be chief executive according to his conscience, and the consciences of billionaires David Hamilton Koch and Charles de Ganahl Koch.

And, like I say, madness may actually be a not unreasonable way to go.  If you’ll excuse me, I have to try to expectorate more of this greyish white gunk.

[1]  quote:

Vice President-elect Mike Pence has also appeared to support conversion therapy. When he was running for Congress in 2000, Pence’s website declared that money set aside by the federal CARE Act, to help indigent HIV/AIDS patients, also be “directed toward those institutions which provide assistance to those seeking to change their sexual behavior.” (The Trump transition team has not responded for a request for comment.)

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[2]  quote:

Indiana Governor Mike Pence signed House Enrolled Act 1337 into law on March 24, 2016, a hulking piece of “kitchen sink” legislation that the National Network of Abortion Funds called “one of the most vicious omnibus anti-abortion bills the United States has ever seen.” Among its 31 draconian provisions is a requirement that miscarried and aborted fetuses must be buried or cremated.

Mandating interment means that women accessing abortion would be forced to state in writing how they want the tissue disposed of. The fetus would then receive a burial-transit permit and be transferred to a funeral home, where a funeral director would oversee its final disposition. These absurd requirements load additional administrative and logistical burdens on clinics. Further, says Jennifer Dalven, director of the ACLU’s Reproductive Freedom Project, “these laws are certainly attempts to shame and stigmatize women who have decided to have abortions. Telling them that the embryonic tissue has to be cremated or buried signals that the state is treating the embryo or fetus as a person.”

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[3]  On average every year in America

33,880 people die from gun violence

• 11,564 murdered
• 21,037 die from suicide
• 544 killed unintentionally
• 468 killed by legal intervention
• 267 die but intent was unknown

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[4] see, for example USA Today