The death toll is rising among all kinds of Americans in connection with illegally acquired firearms. See ENDNOTE at the bottom of this post.
And now, a non sequitur: The Bonus Book of the Week is “A Fighting Chance” by Elizabeth Warren, published in 2014.
Born in 1949, Warren spent her childhood in Oklahoma, but later lived in Texas, and various cities on the Eastern Seaboard.
In a rare achievement for a female of her generation, she earned a law degree. With her daughter, she wrote a book about how Americans’ spending habits changed between 1971 and 2001. After meticulous research and numerical analyses, the authors explained why Americans are actually getting poorer with every generation. The answer is that even with accounting for inflation– wages haven’t risen in value; and housing, healthcare and education costs have soared.
Warren was appointed to a task force that investigated the big-bank bailout of 2008. She thought of the task force’s mission as bipartisan, but early on, Congressman Jeb Hensarling (R.-TX), had an us-versus-them mentality and wanted to make sure the Republicans on the task force got the same resources that the Democrats did in their investigation.
The task force hired expert auditors to check and re-check whether taxpayers got their money’s worth, since taxpayers were the ones fronting the money. But for the task forces’ calling the financial institutions’ bluff on their claims, taxpayers would have been financially punished even worse.
Warren wrote that it was fortunate that in 2011 the media helped publicize the lies of the big financial institutions (the credit unions and community banks weren’t to blame) in the mortgage and foreclosure scandals– because regulators were, out of willful ignorance or incompetence, not doing their jobs.
Warren recounted her stressful experiences running for a U.S. Senate seat in Massachusetts in the 2012 election. Here is a parody that sums it up:
ELECTION BLUES
sung to the tune of “Electric Blue” with apologies to Icehouse.
If I had a chance
to run for office like you,
are you gonna hate from the start,
smear and lie with your crew?
Are you spying somewhere behind my lines?
I just cringe with every wrong that you do me.
You get away with it, too.
Election blues.
No privacy. I need to raise money.
Tell me what can I do?
Election blues.
Oh, you dealt me a low blow.
Voters believed it was true.
Oh, I would give anything just to defeat you.
Are you spying somewhere behind my lines?
I just cringe with every wrong that you do me.
You get away with it, too.
Election blues.
At great expense,
traveling all over as I’m briefed on issues.
Election blues.
I can sense, sense that the media
are plugging for you.
Election blues.
I’m so tense, I need to get votes.
Tell me, what can I do?
Election blues.
ENDNOTE: Warren told an anecdote in which she met with a religious minister to pray for victims of gun violence (after the fact!), instead of suggesting a way to prevent it. Her areas of expertise are obviously law, economics and finance, but it appeared that she was told not to talk about “gun control” because her mouth had gotten her in trouble on another issue earlier in her campaign.
It seems America’s current leaders think GUN CONTROL is a dirty phrase, pandora’s box, not worth fighting for, or for some, it is too lucrative to even mention.
As is well known, Third World countries (!) have black markets in firearms. The United States likes to think it is more civilized than them. But in recent decades, that point has become more debatable.
In the second half of the 1970’s, the nation suffered both psychological and physical “malaise” of various kinds. Forty years or so ago, even though there was no political lockdown imposed to try to stop the spread of severe flu– there was intense political pressure put on president Gerald Ford to do something. So a swine flu vaccine was developed in 1976. There were also two (!) assassination attempts via firearms on president Ford.
Then, in March 1981, president Ronald Reagan was shot by someone who had acquired a gun illegally. Fortunately, he survived to turn the country around psychologically. No one wants shootings to ever happen again. But the ones involving illegally acquired guns are a reasonably preventable occurrence!
Further, Americans’ First-Amendment right to peaceably assemble has been severely restricted as an alleged COVID prevention measure. It is also obvious that keeping large numbers of people from gathering in one place, makes deaths from gun violence less likely. The fact that professional athletes, some politicians and VIPs have had their right to assemble restored with no disease-prevention measures, shows that keeping people apart was not actually a disease-prevention measure.
It seems America’s leaders should pass federal legislation on gun control, in order to restore the rights of ordinary Americans to peaceably assemble, as assembly is a Constitutional (federal) matter. If they have the courage. One last thing– a question for the ages: After all he’s been through, how can Steve Scalise live with himself?