"End of the World As We Know It is next. Mind the gap."

[captainsblog]

Here's what's gone wrong with the world. Here, also, is why you should never, EVER, get into reading the comment sections of media websites.

There have been numerous efforts, at both federal and state levels in recent days, to limit the access of ordinary citizens to some of the most powerful and deadly of weapons. The gun nuts have been going postal over it. I've heard so many Nazi references in the past few days, Godwin's Law is on the verge of being repealed. The defense of the indefensible, and the plain inability of people to read the Second Amendment, is staggering.

Even worse, though, is that they've gone even gun-nuttier in their attempt to destroy the First Amendment in their effort to build a fort and moat around the Second.  New York's just-passed gun law contained one sop to the Nuts Running America: it provided a temporary restriction on the right of the public (and, with it, the press) to obtain the names and addresses of pistol permit holders- information that has always been expressly public. A downstate newspaper published maps and listings of such information, and promptly got tons of threats and hate mail for doing so. Either the gun owners were at risk of having their guns stolen, or the non-gun owners would become sitting ducks because the "bad guys" would know they weren't packing.  Locally, our paper did the same thing the gun nuts did on the eve of the new law being passed: they ran out and tried to beat the deadline. In the case of the News, they made their Freedom of Information request right before the new law took effect.

This effort caused an even more violent eruption among the wingnuts. The local right-wing radio mouthpiece, home of Limbaugh and Hannity as well as some local nutjobs, reported that the News intended to do its own Scarlet Letter mapping of the permitholders. The paper immediately responded that they intended no such thing- that they wanted to have access to the database in case, for instance, a gun-related crime occurred so they could check if someone involved in it had a legal handgun.

The comments on that- up to 68 of them as of this hour- basically called them out as liars, demanded that the editors' financial records be hacked and disclosed, and used the usual pile of threats and namecalling.  I've stopped reading them; blood pressure meds only go so far.

But that's not the worst local story of the day. No, that would be this:

Animal control officers and Erie County sheriff’s deputies found dozens of emaciated animals and four children living amid animal waste and filth Wednesday, and charged two Clarence residents with at least five counts of animal cruelty and four counts of endangering the welfare of a child.

Authorities executed warrants against Amie Burkley, 36, and her husband, Matthew, 37, late Wednesday morning, after receiving a tip that horses had died on the property two or three weeks ago, said Jerry Schuler, Clarence animal control officer.

Schuler described the scene of animal hoarding at the couple’s Goodrich Road home as something out of a “horror story.”

I'll spare the specifics beyond that; trust me, they're horrid. But guess how many local American patriots reacted to that with comments with the same vitriol they are heaping on their duly elected government and a constitutionally protected press that's just doing its job?

As of this moment, as it's been since first thing this morning? None. Zero.

There's no rally scheduled to demand better enforcement of our animal or child protective laws, in reaction to this horror. But there IS a gun rights rally already scheduled for this weekend in downtown Buffalo, sponsored by a prominent local teabagger group.

On the weekend of Martin Luther King Day.

Maybe they can show videos of James Earl Ray exercising his Second Amendment Remedies.

Shoot me now.

Comments

[liddle-oldman.livejournal.com]

Of course no-one is protesting the horrorshow. Dead children have nothing to do with Muslin (sic) socialist nazis trying to take away their penises guns.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

I'd say the difference is that, in the animal-and-child-cruelty story, the system is working as designed, more-or-less. Nobody is claiming that The Ebil Gummint Is Taking Away Our Rights To Starve Our Children.

Which, mind you, isn't an exaggeration: there have been cases in other parts of the country where people HAVE claimed that they have the right to beat and starve their children, wives, and/or animals. And in some areas of the world, people have claimed the right to kill their daughters.

In this case, your region is at least somewhat sane on this point, and recognizes that there is no right to beat and/or starve your children and/or animals. Therefore, there is no outcry against the government taking action against these people.

In this case, there IS a legitimate privacy issue being raised. Now, in my opinion, it's not crazy to claim that certain responsibilities and trade-offs come with exercising the right to be armed. And it's not crazy to state that you have a responsibility to be public with your state of being armed if you so choose to be. I'm not sure I agree with that, but it's not crazy. (It's also not crazy to state that there is no right to be armed. Personally, I DO believe in SOME sort of right to be armed, but am comfortable with that right to be hedged around with restrictions and safeties.)

But it's ALSO not crazy to believe that one's state of being armed or not is a privacy issue: that a person has the right to be armed in certain circumstances, and also has a right to privacy, and the one right oughtn't interfere with the other. And, indeed, I kind of lean that way myself. While, like I said, I'm comfortable with "being armed" to come with caveats, restrictions, and regulations, I'm not really comfortable with a loss of privacy being one of them.

It IS, of course, crazy to start going to death threats and the other sorts of general craziness that comment sections always erupt into. But at least there exists a potential non-crazy thought process that could lead somewhere to the vague neighborhood.

But at least nobody is holding a rally to assert their right to starve horses.