SHAPE UP AMERICA!

I wrote the following after landing at O’Hare in Chicago after a flight from Ankara, Turkey in June, 2014.  It is pertinent now in light of recent dialogue about the poor condition of the infrastructure (including airports) in our country.  Unfortunately, the “young people in slovenly dress sprawled in walkway areas”, would most likely be originally Bernie supporters, and now Hillary supporters.  Not to paint all millennials with the same brush, but so many young people these days expect entitlements without working for them, as if these entitlements just appeared out of thin air.  Free college, $15/hr minimum wage, forgiveness of college debts, jobs appearing out of nowhere or from government largesse – and on and on.   Written in June, 2014 “As many of you know from my Facebook posts, I just returned from where I have been have travelling in Turkey for several weeks. It was great trip. I primarily went to see the antiquities that are replete in Turkey. I found much more. I expected a somewhat backward, laid back Moslem country. What I found is a proud, dynamic, vigorous secular country of “can do” people. Does that remind one of something? Maybe like our own USA in the first half of the 20th century? I did not see any Turks looking for a handout, or for unearned “entitlements”. I saw people actively working - at whatever level, from trash pickup, to service workers, to the professional classes. In Antalya we were surprised to hear a garbage truck playing Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons” while the men worked. The workers waved in happy, non-contrived, fashion. Long flight airports are always challenging. The airline carriers on my international flights (Germany/Turkey) were efficient, on time, with good service. Airports were clean and well appointed. I came into the USA via O’Hare in Chicago. I thought that I was in a third world country in the ‘60’s. Young people in slovenly dress sprawled in walkway areas, eating, drinking, etc. “Chaotic” does not even begin to describe the scene. I love the USA and I am saddened when I see lack of responsibility and selfishness erode the principles that made our country the greatest in the world. It really brings it home when I see a country like Turkey exhibiting the values that made our country great, while we Americans don’t seem to give a damn. Can we not instill some pride in our bearing? In our work ethic? In our identity as Americans in this greatest country on earth? I realize that using specific incidents to postulate conclusions is not intellectually fair, but these comments are a culmination of observations over a period of time. A trip like this to a foreign country is a juncture which allows highlighting our seeming erosion of values. SHAPE UP AMERICA! Starting in Washington.” I have been to East Europe, Turkey, China and Spain in the last three years.  All but China have deteriorated and have become prone to almost daily violence due primarily the actions of the the Daesh caliphate and to the migration crisis from the Middle East and Africa.  China’s technocratic rulers plot a separate course for their 1,400,000,000 people and represent another form of long term threat.  But the Western “Democracies”, including our own country, are hurting from too much micro management, too much political correctness, too much talk, and not enough action.  Some of our leaders will not even name Islamic Terrorism by name. And the reactions are not pretty to see, either.  Euroskeptic parties from both right and left are gaining strength in Europe.  Hungary and Poland are already virtually Neo-Fascist in nature.  Brexit is a reality.  Donald Trump is running a populist campaign along similar lines of dissatisfaction and will probably win the U.S. presidency.  The consensus of over 820+ million people in the U.S. and E.U. is that we cannot continue to tolerate the violence which claims innocent lives nearly every day, and which is inspired primarily by Islamic radicals.  We cannot continue to talk about it in “politically correct” terms, and to claim, as the current U.S. administration does, that “there is no problem, the crime rates are down”.  The people in the western world, not just “Larry the Cable Guy types”, but a broad range of people across all social and intellectual lines, are demanding change, and a return to actual government, not the lip service, corruption, dishonesty and political correctness that we’ve seen in recent times. A return to stronger governments and nationalism, while soothing to the dissatisfied mind, obviously can be dangerous.  Chants of “demagoguery, Fascism, racism” are already bandied about by the biased U.S. media.  Thankfully the checks and balances embedded in our U.S. system should allay abuses from any one segment of government.  Hopefully our European friends will react in a similar responsible fashion. The civilized world needs to defeat the corrosive Islamic radicalism (Daesh or ISIS), which threatens to push the world back to the 7th century.  We need to come to grips with governments where nuclear weapons are incipient, that try to keep their populations in the 11th century.  We also need to find realistic and humanitarian solutions for the world’s migration and immigration problems.  We need to somehow accommodate the millions of human refugees that have resulted from recent military and social disruptions. All of the above requires action.  Not talk, not political correctness.  Intelligent, pragmatic, decisive action.

The Trump Phenomenon - II

When Donald Trump first announced that he would run for President of the U.S. I predicted that he would indeed become the Republican nominee, and eventually, the President.  I stand by that prediction.  As I blogged in March, Trump is a phenomenon, not just a standard Republican candidate.  He is taking advantage and riding the wave of a (western) world-wide disaffection and disenchantment with the status quo.  Brexit proved that over liberalization and too much political correctness and too many rules, coupled with ill-defined and weak leadership from the EU would not be tolerated.  The Trump phenomenon is proving the same in the U.S.

Trump takes on all comers – corrupt, weak, unjust, i.e., the establishment.  He calls it the way it is.  He hits at not only inner beltway abuses, but also the biased news media that supports the ineptitude and corruption and injustice in Washington.  His targets are not only Obama and Hillary.  Inept and vituperative Republicans are not spared.  CNN and NBC and NYT are slanted against him?  Who cares?  Many of us get our news and read opinions on social media these days, and Trump & Co. are masters of the Internet, and of the media in general.  He is not just a candidate, he is a populist phenomenon.

Already the biased media talking heads and similarly biased “opinion” pieces start their barrage against Trump.  “Fascist”, “racist”, “hate monger”, “demagogue” and worse.  These peoponents of the status quo and opponents of change fail to see the meaning of Brexit in England and the euroskeptic movements in Europe.  People are fed up with middle road apologists, their so-called ”political correctness” and their “only we know what’s best for you” attitudes.  The reactions and the results are not always pretty.  Beata Szydlo of Poland and Viktor Orban of Hungary are recent examples of not too pretty right wing (and almost neo-fascist) democratically elected governments. 

Inveterate intellectual Democrats will not be dis-abused of their shop worn and disproven socialist theories and will vote for Hillary no matter what.  Those who are truly intellectually honest will acknowledge the morass that our country is in and will hold their nose and vote for Trump and for change and law and order.  Hopefully so will Bernie followers without jobs drowning in college debt who see Trump as a jobs oriented leader.  So will dis-satisfied and disenfranchised middle class Americans stuck with no jobs or low paying jobs.  And so many more of us who are just fed up with virtually no leadership out of Washington, a cynical disregard for law and order, and liberal rhetoric that encroaches on our morals and ethics and religious beliefs with “political correctness”.  We have had enough already.

Don’t Drink the Kool Aid

Don’t Drink the Koolaid

The average, mostly apolitical American has been fed a continuing gruel of skewed news, lies and politically “correct” views; to the point that rank falsehoods have been imbued with the mantle of truths and have become embedded in our culture.  

The process is insidious.  If major network news, CNN, the New York Times et al say it’s so, it must be so.  If our national leadership continues to point to what they consider problems and avoid addressing others, their views must be guiding principles, must they not?  In time we drink the Koolaid and are led down this skewed (and crooked) path.

This article discusses only two such untruths – the falsehood of “assault rifles”, and the falsehood of disproportionate use of firearms by police against black men.

Volumes have written about second amendment rights, but out of the rhetoric comes the bugaboo of the AR-15 as a monstrous “assault rifle” and as a tool of massive destruction.  In actual fact, the AR-15 is a popular one-shot-at-time (semi-automatic) civilian rifle.  Its’ very ubiquity and popularity have resulted in its’ use in several high profile shooting incidents.  Inaccurate press reporting and inept legislators have made the AR-15 into a false “killing machine” in the popular view.  I’ve blogged extensively on this topic and reference my blog here.    http://raygruszecki.blogspot.com/. Choose the blog on the Truth about “Assault Weapons”

With all of the recent news about demonstrations and riots by “Black Lives Matter”, the average viewer and reader would think that a disproportionate number of black men are killed by white policemen in the U.S.  Statistics simply do not bear this out.  The number of black men killed by police is proportionally the same as for Caucasians and Hispanics.  It seems that the only thing out of proportion is the increased releases of smart phone videos out of the black community to an avid press corps.  Both long term statistics and recent, focused studies support the above conclusion.  An in depth Harvard study just published posits “On the most extreme use of force – officer-involved shootings–we find no racial differences in either the raw data or when contextual factors are taken into account”  Full Harvard Study.   New York Times Report       More extensive FBI Data.  

The Harvard study points out that while young black men are more likely to be stopped and hassled than young white men, black men are not disproportionately shot by police, thereby dispelling the whole “Black Lives Matter” argument. Note how the New York Times article bends the rhetoric a little bit in the direction of supporting the BLM movement.

As far as the hassling of young black men is concerned, it is to be remembered that many of these police stops are in high crime urban settings, which leads to increased suspicion.  One of the points made in the NYT article is surprise that more police shootings don’t take place in these volatile environments.

The above two examples illustrate how watching “normal” TV news and reading “normal” mainstream newspapers can instill a false view of the world.  What is the answer?  To my view it is not to watch only Fox News and read only the Wall Street Journal as counterbalance to liberal-leaning news.  This would result in an equally biased opposite view of the world.  All the above being the case, where do we get balanced and unbiased news?  I don’t think that such is entirely possible, but after long experience, three sources come to mind that are pretty reasonably balanced on most issues concerning the U.S.  These are The Telegraph newspaper out of the U.K., the Thomson Reuters news agency, and the Pew Research group.

The Truth about “Assault Weapons”

The Truth about “Assault Weapons”

I wrote and blogged a fairly comprehensive paper on morals and ethics around some of the more important social questions that we are faced with in the modern world.  This link refers.  There are extensive references in my paper for more detailed study.

One of the topics I addressed was gun violence and reaction to it.

Every time a terrorist or criminal or mentally defective person grabs a firearm and kills people, whether in the U.S. where guns are readily obtainable, or in Europe or other parts of the world with very limited access to firearms, the press and government go wild with false information and accusations.  They quickly adopt and proliferate terms like “assault weapon”, “assault rifle”, “AR-15”, and use them out of context and with incorrect meaning.

One name particularly bandied about recently is “AR-15”, as if this stood for “Assault Rifle-15”.  Nonsense to CNN, NBC and other purveyors of this falsehood!  “AR-15 stands for “Armalite Rifle-15” – Armalite being the firm that originally designed  the rifle.

The AR-15 is a one-shot-at-a-time civilian rifle as discussed below.  Its’ cousin, the original military M-16 introduced during Vietnam is a selective fire rifle, one of whose modes is fully automatic.  It is illegal for civilians to purchase and own M-16’s. 

Just as an aside, the M-16 and AR-15 were called “mouse guns” by knowledgeable shooters after the more powerful M-1 Garrands of WW2 and the M-14’s of Korea.  It is almost humorous to read descriptions of how powerful and horrible these “mouse guns” are to shoot, by someone who obviously has never shot one.

Britannica - Assault rifle, military firearm that is chambered for ammunition of reduced size or propellant charge and that has the capacity to switch between semiautomatic and fully automatic fire. Because they are light and portable yet still able to deliver a high volume of fire with reasonable accuracy at modern combat ranges of 300–500 m (1,000–1,600 feet), assault rifles have replaced the high-powered bolt-action and semiautomatic rifles of the World War II era as the standard infantry weapon of modern armies. Their ease of handling makes them ideal for mobile assault troops crowded into personnel carriers or helicopters, as well as for guerrilla fighters engaged in jungle or urban warfare. Widely used assault rifles are the United States’ M16, the Soviet Kalashnikov (the AK-47 and modernized versions), the Belgian FAL and FNC, and the German G3. (See also AK-47; M16 rifle.)

Below is a well thought out article and truthful article about the above terms. 

This is an AR-15 rifle. It is the most popular rifle sold in the United States today. Millions have been sold to American citizens since 1963.

The AR-15 is the most common example of what are sometimes called assault weapons. But what does this term actually mean?

First, it is important to understand what an assault weapon isn't. The terms "assault weapon" and "assault rifle" are often confused. According to Bruce H. Kobayashi and Joseph E. Olson, writing in the Stanford Law and Policy Review:

Prior to 1989, the term "assault weapon" did not exist in the lexicon of firearms. It is a political term, developed by anti-gun publicists to expand the category of "assault rifles."

If an assault weapon is not an assault rifle, what is an assault rifle?

This is a M4A1 carbine. It is a U.S. military service rifle. It is also an assault rifle.

The M4A1 is fully automatic. This means it fires multiple rounds each time the trigger is pulled. The M4A1 can fire up to 950 rounds per minute.

The M4A1 and other fully automatic firearms are also called machine guns. In 1986, the Federal government banned the sale or transfer of new machine guns to civilians.

Like the majority of firearms sold in the United States, the AR-15 is semi-automatic. This means it fires one round each time the trigger is pulled.

The AR-15 can fire between 45 and 60 rounds per minute depending on the skill of the operator. This rate of fire is comparable to other semi-automatic firearms, but pales in comparison to fully automatic assault rifles, some of which can fire more than 1,000 rounds per minute.

So-called assault weapons are not machine guns or assault rifles. According to David Kopel, writing in The Wall Street Journal: What some people call "assault weapons" function like every other normal firearm—they fire only one bullet each time the trigger is pressed. Unlike automatics (machine guns), they do not fire continuously as long as the trigger is held. ... Today in America, most handguns are semi-automatics, as are many long guns, including the best-selling rifle today, the AR-15, the model used in the Newtown shooting. Some of these guns look like machine guns, but they do not function like machine guns.

The truth about assault weapons is that they function like this ranch rifle...

...and this shotgun...

...and this pistol...

...and this double-action revolver.

All of these guns fire one round each time the trigger is pulled.

But if that's true, what makes this semi-automatic rifle a ranch gun...

...and this semi-automatic rifle an assault weapon?

The answer is perception. According to a 1988 report by the Violence Policy Center, an anti-gun lobby: [H]andgun restriction is simply not viewed as a priority. Assault weapons ... are a new topic. The weapons' menacing looks, coupled with the public's confusion over fully automatic machine guns versus semi-automatic assault weapons—anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun—can only increase the chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons.

In the late 1980s, more than two decades after the AR-15 was first sold to the American public, the anti-gun lobby began a systematic campaign to conflate it and other "military-style" firearms with machine guns. The media followed suit, and soon the American public began to think that an assault weapon was, like the assault rifles it resembled, a machine gun.

This strategy came to fruition in 1993, when the Federal Assault Weapons Ban (AWB) was introduced in Congress. The AWB would ban the sale of new assault weapons to American civilians.

However, since "assault weapon" was an invented term, it had no technical meaning. Before assault weapons could be banned, legislators had to define them.

Because assault rifles were already banned, and because an outright ban on semi-automatic firearms wasn't considered politically feasible, the AWB defined assault weapons as semi-automatic firearms that shared too many cosmetic features with their fully automatic counterparts.

 These banned "military-style" features included certain combinations of collapsible stocks...

...flash hiders...

...and pistol grips, none of which actually made the firearms more lethal.

According to a Department of Justice study, the firearms that the AWB would ban were used in only 2% of gun crimes.  Nevertheless, the AWB's passage was aided by the fact that many Americans believed the bill would ban machine guns and "weapons of war," something that had, in fact, already been banned.

To secure enough votes to pass the bill, a sunset provision was added. After ten years, the AWB would end.  

On September 13, 1994, the Federal Assault Weapons Ban went into effect. A Washington Post editorial published two days later was candid about the ban's real purpose:  [N]o one should have any illusions about what was accomplished [by the ban]. Assault weapons play a part in only a small percentage of crime. The provision is mainly symbolic; its virtue will be if it turns out to be, as hoped, a stepping stone to broader gun control. 

When the AWB became law, manufacturers began retooling to produce firearms and magazines that were compliant. One of those ban-compliant firearms was the Hi-Point 995, which was sold with ten-round magazines.

In 1999, five years into the Federal Assault Weapons Ban, the Columbine High School massacre occurred. One of the perpetrators, Eric Harris, was armed with a Hi-Point 995.  Undeterred by the ten-round capacity of his magazines, Harris simply brought more of them: thirteen magazines would be found in the massacre's aftermath. Harris fired 96 rounds before killing himself.

In 2004, the Federal Assault Weapons Ban expired. It was not renewed. The AWB had failed to have an impact on gun crime in the United States. A 2004 Department of Justice report concluded:

Should it be renewed, the ban's effects on gun violence are likely to be small at best and perhaps too small for reliable measurement. [Assault weapons] were rarely used in gun crimes even before the ban. 

Regarding large capacity magazines, the study said:  [I]t is not clear how often the outcomes of gun attacks depend on the ability of offenders to fire more than ten shots (the current magazine capacity limit) without reloading.  Furthermore, legislators had misjudged the popularity of so-called assault weapons. In his memoir, Bill Clinton wrote that Democrats lost control of Congress in the 1994 midterm elections because of the AWB. Other Democrats have stated that the AWB may have cost Al Gore the 2000 presidential election.

At Virginia Tech in 2007, Seung-Hui Cho again showed the futility of regulating magazine capacity when he carried nineteen ten- and fifteen-round magazines in his backpack as part of a carefully planned massacre.  Cho used seventeen of the magazines and fired approximately 170 rounds—or ten rounds per magazine—from two handguns before killing himself.  Like Eric Harris before him, Cho demonstrated that a magazine's capacity was incidental to the amount of death and injury an unopposed murderer could cause in a "gun-free zone."

Although the Virginia Tech massacre was and remains the deadliest school shooting in U.S. history, it resulted in relatively few calls for new gun control, possibly because so-called assault weapons were not used.

But after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, the AR-15 and other so-called assault weapons were widely depicted as military weapons whose only purpose was to rapidly kill large numbers of people.

In reality, so-called assault weapons are commonly used by hunters and competitors.

It has been estimated that at least 3.3 million AR-15 rifles were sold in the United States between 1986 and 2009. In its ubiquity, the AR-15 is a modern musket—the default rifle with which law-abiding Americans exercise their right to keep and bear arms.  The AR-15 is particularly favored for its modularity, accuracy, light weight, and low recoil—attributes that make it ideal not only for shooting sports but also armed self-defense.  As such, it is the epitome of what America's founders sought to protect when they wrote the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

Nevertheless, on December 17, 2012, Senator Dianne Feinstein, the author of the original AWB, announced her intention to introduce another Federal Assault Weapons Ban in Congress.
However, Senator Feinstein's own facts do not support her agenda. The truth about assault weapons is that they are underrepresented in gun crimes.  According to Senator Feinstein, so-called assault weapons have been used in 385 murders since the AWB expired in 2004, or about 48 murders per year. But there were 8,583 total murders with guns in the United States in 2011, meaning so-called assault weapons were used 0.6% of the time.

Further illustrating the small role so-called assault weapons play in crime, FBI data shows that 323 murders were committed with rifles of any kind in 2011. In comparison, 496 murders were committed with hammers and clubs, and 1,694 murders were perpetrated with knives.

Insofar as the AR-15 is used in crimes, the rifle's popularity must be considered.  Besides the AR-15, James Holmes used a best-selling and arguably more lethal shotgun at the Aurora movie theater shooting.  At the Virginia Tech and Tucson shootings, Seung-Hui Cho and Jared Loughner used a best-selling handgun.

All else being equal, a gun that is common is more likely to be used for legal or illegal purposes than a gun that is rare. Outlawing guns that are popular today will only make different guns popular tomorrow.

The truth about assault weapons is that there is no such thing. So-called assault weapons are semi-automatic firearms—the guns most commonly used by millions of law-abiding Americans.

Banning firearms because of their cosmetic features is misguided.  Contact your legislators, and tell them the truth about assault weapons.

As the nation begins to wrap its head around what happened in Dallas, Texas during a protest against police shootings, certain factions are already shifting blame from the suspect in the case to the firearms used.

“When people are armed with powerful weapons, unfortunately it makes attacks like these more deadly and tragic,” President Obama said at a press conference during a trip to Poland. “In the days ahead we’re going to have to consider those realities.”

However, the rifle used by the suspect in the Dallas murders wasn’t an AR-15 variant rifle as many people originally thought. No, in fact the gun used was a 70+ year old relic that would not meet the definition of an “assault weapon” under most state laws. CBS News is reporting that the firearm used was an SKS rifle.  Unlike the Sig Sauer MCX rifle used in the Orlando terror attacks, which had similar features, controls and magazine to AR-15 style rifles, the SKS rifle used in Dallas couldn’t be more different.

The rifle has a non removeable 10 round magazine and uses a heavy, traditional wood stock. None of the features that states such as California, Massachusetts, and New York use to classify so called “assault weapons” such as a pistol grip, forward vertical grip, removable magazine or other cosmetic features. According to the Wikipedia article on the firearm:  The SKS is a Soviet semi-automatic carbine chambered for the 7.62×39mm round, designed in 1943 by Sergei Gavrilovich Simonov. Its complete designation, SKS-45, is an initialism for Samozaryadnyj Karabin sistemy Simonova, 1945 (Russian: Самозарядный карабин системы Симонова, 1945; Self-loading Carbine of (the) Simonov system, 1945). In the early 1950s, the Soviets took the SKS carbine out of front-line service and replaced it with the AK-47; however, the SKS remained in second-line service for decades. It is still used as a ceremonial firearm today. 

When I shot high power rifle competitively as a sport back in the 1980's and 1990's, we called the AR-15 "The Mouse Gun", because of the puny .223 round it shot, and after its more robust predecessors like the M1 Garrand, M-14 and 30-06 Springfield rifle.  My main rifle, which I built specifically for accuracy, and which I shot at those paper targets with iron sights out to 600 yards, was a bolt action Winchester Model 70 with a Hart heavy barrel.  Military (and some civilian) target shooters also preferred specially constructed M-14 rifles for accuracy shooting.  I also shot my heavy barrel AR-15 “Mouse Gun” in many rifle matches, since it was light to carry and reasonably accurate

Having said all of that about target shooting, over the last 30 years, the AR-15, which was originally made by Armalite and Colt, became very popular in the general public (not necessarily accuracy target shooting).  There Are now numerous “knock-offs” of the rifle, and it is estimated by some that there are 15 million AR-15 style rifles now in the country. 

Anti-gun advocates have demonized the AR-15 as some horrendous killing machine.  In fact, it still is the “mouse gun”, a small bullet, single shot rifle, easy to carry, easy to “trick out” (embellish with lasers, lights, etc).  It looks like a military rifle, but it is really no more dangerous than any firearm misused by some deranged person.

Ray Gruszecki

July 10, 2016

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