Gun Control

Today we watched the House of Representatives pass a series of gun control bills in a package responding to the Uvalde, Texas massacre of the innocent.

The two most siginificant of the seven pieces of legislation voted on in the Houe would mandate a minimum age of 21 to purchase an assault rifle, the kind used these days in the war in Ukraine, or in American classrooms and supermarkets.

The other would ban high capacity magazines, those big enough to feed enough rounds into an automatic weapon in less than a half-minute to take out a squad in a U.S. Army platoon, at least as big as a squad was back in my day in the Army when there were 10 soldiers in a squad.

Of course as the seven proposals increasingly prescribed stiffer controls on guns and gun capacities, like how many bullets you can insert into an automatic weapon magazine, there were fewer and fewer Republican votes for the bills.

I think four voted to limit the assault weapon purchase age to 21 and three voted to limit magazines; or three voted for the age limit and four for the magazine limit. Whoopdy doo! There are about 190 Republicans in the House. Woopdy doo.

In fact, 190 Republicans voted yesterday for murder, mayhem and killing children.

But this is not about them or about the various restrictions and reforms in the House gun control package and it certainly is not about the phony shit being considered in the U.S. Senate — or that Mitch McConnell wants the least possible of that shit passed so he and his mostly fellow white men Republicans can beat their chests, say they responded, did what could be done – so now let’s talk about the price of gasoline.

A shooting in which — from testimony by their pediarician today in the House prior to the gun limits votes, the doctor who saw their bodies at the hospital — two of the children were literally decapitated.

They literally had their heads separated from their bodies by the bullets from the AR15 that killed them.

They had their heads blown away from their bodies – by an AR15.

No wonder no one wants to let us see that, least of all that fucker McConnell.

No, this is about an even far more important piece of gun control legislation, one more important than any of those the House passed today, more imporant than others they didn’t even bring up like a total ban on AR15s, on all those terrible, murderous, war weapons you can just walk into a store and buy in this country.

No, the most important gun control measure that will never see the light of day absent 60% Democratic majorities in both houses – and that won’t ever happen – is to remove the product liability protection conferred on but one industry in the United States – gun manufacturers.

While they are not 100% immune from law suits pinning blame on them for what is caused by what they make – guns – they are at least 95% so protected. No other business or industry in the United States of America has this protection. None, zero, none.

Tobacco manufacturers did not have it. That’s why over 30 states could sue them and gain settlements 25 years ago for a total $246 billion. But gun manuifacturers? They have it.

The most recent version of the gun manfacturers’ federal liability exemption is the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act – read the words, so high and mighty, protecting the makers of murder.

Congress enacted this law in 2005 with both Democratic and Republican votes in the Congress, albeit more Republicans, but also Democrats and one independent, the oh so greatly esteemed Bernie Sanders.

Bernie Sanders voted to protect Daniel Defense company from law suits by the parents of the children who had their heads blown off by the AR15 the killer fired in the Uvalde School.

Bernie Sanders. Man’s a real killer, isn’t he?

Know who voted against this monstrous law and whose 2016 presidential platform called for its repeal.

Yep, you’re right, Hillary Clinton did that.

Anyone out there feeling some remorse about their 2016 vote? You should.

If your child or grandchiled dies tomorrow or is injured tomorrow in a plane crash, you can sue the airline, you can sue the airplane manufacturer. If the child dies in a car crash in a car with faulty brakes or whatever, you can sue the auto maker and the parts makers. If the child chokes on a piece of a toy, you can sue the toy maker.

You might or might not win in court but you can sue, you can make your case that the manufacturer is/was negligent, that the manufactuter knew or should have known the harm its product could do, would do, any and all of that.

But if someone blows that child’s head off with a gun made by Smith & Wesson, or Remington or, as in Uvalde, by Daniel Defense, you can’t sue. Her parents can’t sue, his grandmom and grandad can’t sue. No one can sue.

Why?

Because federal law gives gun manufacturers immunity from law suits. They wrote the law, they handed it to the NRA, which handed it to Congress, which passed it and sent it to President George W. Bush, who signed it.

The NRA is a horror cartoon that, without the largess of the gun manufactuers, would not amount to squat.

It is the gun manufacturers who purchased the Republican Party and own it and will continue to own it. But hey, ask the reactionaries on the Supreme Court and they’ll tell you money is speech.

Well, it isn’t. It’s money. It buys votes, it buys people and it has bought a nation and half of its national legislature in one party.

The most important gun control measure would be the removal of the liability protection cloaking the purveryors of death, the manufacturers.

It won’t happen in this country, not now, not ever that we can see or imagine. The gun makers bought the United States and its Congress.

They own it. You don’t.