Since Sandy Hook: Gun Laws Stagnate in the Wake of More Mass Shootings

Police officers secure the area after Wednesday's mass shooting at a social services agency in San Bernardino, California, Dec. 2, 2015.

It's been three years since 20 year-old Adam Lanza shot and killed 26 people (including 20 children) inside an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut with a high-capacity magazine assault rifle before killing himself with a handgun. Immediately following these events, the White House laid out ambitious new proposals towards gun control and the general public demanded more action be taken. In all, 23 executive orders were issued by the president in the wake of the shooting, all promising tighter control on guns and more preventative measures towards future mass shootings. It has been three years. There have been 894 mass shootings since Sandy Hook. Nothing has changed.

The gun lobbies in the Republican Party and the NRA have a lot to do with this. In a developed nation with such an abnormally high gun death rate, you would think an issue that effects the entire country on such a universal scale in such a negative way would gain precedence. But still nothing gets passed. The only piece of gun control legislation Congress has passed since Sandy Hook is to renew an expiring ban on plastic fire arms that can easily avoid detection at airport security terminals and other security checkpoints. So that is all well and good except that shooters don't need to buy plastic guns to commit mass murder; we have seen time and again how easy it is for people to purchase assault weapons, walk into a public place and slaughter innocents indiscriminately.

I'm not arguing for a ban on guns. I think that is unnecessary for a number of reasons and impractical for others. Guns are an intrinsic part of American culture. People should have the right to own a firearm for hunting, for sport, or even for protection. But when it comes to something as dangerous as a firearm, that is when our safety protocols need to be the most stringent. The fact that absolutely no significant gun control legislation has been passed in three years even though there have been over 800 mass shootings with thousands of innocent victims dead or injured, is simply an insult to the American public.

The fact is, the NRA has been relentlessly pursuing the notion that the government is after the gun rights of the average American citizen even though the track record of Congress shows otherwise. If anything it is the Conservative right that has a stranglehold on gun legislation in Washington. But where our leaders in D.C. have failed us, state governments have taken up the mantle of responsibility to protect their respective citizenry. Over the last three years, 39 states have passed upwards of 117 new pieces of legislation on gun control, according to the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence.

Ultimately, it is up to the American public to demand reforms on gun control. There will always be a segment of the American right that espouses the doctrine that all gun rights are to be held sacred by the Constitution, and are thus inviolable. But the reality of modern America is that guns are killing our people and we need to take measures to ensure the safety of innocent civilians. People should not have to fear going to school, work, the movies, a restaurant. Guns have become too prolific in American life. There is no need for so many firearms to be so readily available in our communities. A mental change in attitude towards guns is long overdue. We are no longer a nation of homesteaders on the open range, or paranoid colonials defending our coasts from the British. We are the richest, most powerful nation on Earth and we have the means to protect ourselves without unrestricted access to firearms.

DNC stands for "Don't Nominate Clinton"

If Hillary Clinton wins the Democratic Party’s nomination for president, then I am out!  I will cease to be a registered Democrat.  If the candidate with a multi-billion dollar political franchise wins the Democratic nomination, then our political process has truly failed us; both parties are then the parties of greedy, quid pro quo, status quo, disingenuous, establishment, business-as-usual politics.

In my mind, there is only one candidate who can truly represent not only the message that Democrats have been pushing for years, but the message in which most Americans actually believe.  That candidate is Bernie Sanders.

Come 2016, the only cheddar I want DNC to smell is that sharp Vermont gold, not the gold spilling out of Hillary’s pockets.  If Democrats are serious about the biggest issues of our time such as global warming and income inequality, they will not nominate someone who is paid by Wall Street execs to make speeches about the country’s economy; they will not elect someone with a Super PAC that takes advantage of the campaign finance loopholes Bernie Sanders intends to close.

The only real concern that I have heard regarding Sanders’s broader appeal is his connectivity with African-American voters.  Hillary’s record is no doubt stronger in terms of engagement and involvement with the black community.  However, should Bernie win the nomination, I have a hard time believing that a demographic that historically votes Democrat 90 percent of the time will feel so snubbed as to let Trump, or Cruz, or Rubio walk into the White House unchallenged.

Bernie’s message is the message.  His campaign is the campaign.  His candidacy is the candidacy.  There is no other, and it is time for the Democratic Party to put its money where its mouth is…and then chew…and then swallow.

Republicans are Stacking the Deck: The Politics of Pointlessness

This is a map of the United States.  As you can see, the Bible Belt and Deep South Regions of the country have populations of African Americans (represented by purple spots) greater than the national average:

This is another map of the U.S. that highlights our country’s most impoverished regions.  Again, the Bible Belt and Deep South appear to be the clear winners:

For my third map, I present the most gerrymandered districts in America.  (That is, districts whose boundaries have been redrawn over and over again, usually to ensure political incumbency.  The very liberal city of Austin, for example, belongs to seven separate districts in Texas and is represented by conservatives year after year.)  Noticing a trend here?

This is a map showing States with Democrat (blue) governors and Republican (red) governors. It has yet to be updated to include Kentucky's newly elected Republican governor:

The fifth and final map (although there are more that could help prove my point) is actually a two-pronged map, if you will.  One shows the state by state breakup of the 2012 election, and the other shows a district by district breakup of the 2012 election:

                                                                                        

So, what did you see?  Did you see the nation’s poorest minorities living in districts gerrymandered to suppress Democratic votes and shoe-in candidates who act against the best interests of their constituents?  So did I.  Otherwise, it wouldn’t make any sense that in election cycle after election cycle, the poorest Americans continue to vote for the party that tells them they’re lazy; the non-white Americans vote for the all-white party that makes them feel unwelcome; and the liberal bastions in the contested Deep South consistently elect shady, cowardly, no-good Republicans.

Green vs. Greed: Tackling Our Nation's Biggest Problems If The Price Is Right

Global Climate Change has been rightfully labeled the most pressing issue of our time.  Its effects are already showing up in places like the Middle East and South Asia.  It is a sign of hope too that, as of recent, 57% of Americans now say that climate change is caused by human beings.   Hallelujah, America is majorly in favor of action regarding the most pressing global issue of our time!  Something is bound to get done in terms of reversing the harmful effects of this already unfolding ecological, economic, and political disaster. Right? Wrong.  Remember after Sandy Hook when 90% of America supported common sense gun control measures and Congress didn’t pass a thing?  Well, this is kind of like that.  Americans could be 90% in support of action against climate change, and Congress still would not pass one single piece of legislation to help stop it.

The reason for this is that fossil fuel companies and big polluter industries have monstrous lobbying power in the U.S. government that dwarfs the NRA’s influence.  If anything is to be done about climate change, something must first be done about the corrupting influence of money in politics that has characterized the American political process for centuries.  If politicians can be made to see the actual consequences of hugely important issues affecting millions of Americans by looking past the fat cat holding a giant bag of dough, then we might yet be O.K.

And guess what? There is hope.  This presidential election is, in many ways, radically and fundamentally different from the way campaigns have turned out in the past.  For example, Jeb Bush raised an intimidating $100 million early in his campaign thanks in large part to a network of wealthy donors he inherited from his father, but he has struggled to get above 5 percent in the polls..  Meanwhile, on the Democratic side, both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have raised tens of millions on primarily small donations from average voters, not millionaires and billionaires.

On the Republican side, the infamous climate change-denying Koch brothers have pledged almost 1 billion dollars in support of conservative, fellow climate-denying 2016 presidential candidates.  In the face of vast, intimidating political action networks and committees like the one orchestrated by the Koch’s, action on climate change will surely flop.  That is, unless Americans a) vote in 2016 and b) vote according to their conscience in 2016.  Upon first glance at the presidential field, it should be quite clear to American voters - especially the 57% of them who think climate change is an issue - which party is more interested in the American people and which party is more interested in itself.

A mind-boggling 14 candidates now make up the Republican field.  None of them believe that climate change is man-made.  None of them think we should be doing anything to stop it.  That number, compared to the 3 people running on the Democratic side, should speak volumes as to the amount of politically corrupt money sloshing around on each side.  This is not to say that Democrats are entirely incorruptible by political money.  It does mean that Republicans lined up one by one to recite their lines, collect their checks from fat cats and polluters, and fool the American public into thinking they really care.  Common sense would have it that 14 and 3 are not indicators of each party's caring and enthusiastic urge to help Americans; they are measurements of each party’s greed.

All Is Fair in Love and War Crimes

Aftermath of a CIA drone-strike that killed 16 year old Tariq Aziz and 12 year old Waheed Khan. Waziristan, Pakistan.

Warfare has changed much in the decades following the carnage of the Second World War, and the brutal wholesale destruction of the A-bomb has been replaced by the lethal practicality of the unmanned drone. On one hand the effectiveness of drone strikes is clear. According to a New York Times article published in May of 2009 entitled "Death From Above, Outrage Down Below":

"The appeal of drone attacks for policy makers is clear. For one thing, their effects are measurable. Military commanders and intelligence officials point out that drone attacks have disrupted terrorist networks in Pakistan, killing key leaders and hampering operations. Drone attacks create a sense of insecurity among militants and constrain their interactions with suspected informers. And, because they kill remotely, drone strikes avoid American casualties." - David Kilcullen & Andrew Mcdonald Exum

But as the article continues to clarify, drone-strikes do more damage to the countries they are supposed to be freeing from tyranny than they do good; all at the expense of American prestige in the region. Drones simply kill too many civilians. whenever drones are used to destroy military targets abroad, it only increases the popularity of the militant extremists they are meant to target. People are more fearful of a faceless enemy that kills wantonly from hundreds of miles away than they are afraid of the extremists occupying their own communities.

Drone strikes kill vastly more civilians than they do actual terror suspects and terrorist leaders. According to human rights group Reprieve, that number comes out to 41 men targeted and 1,147 killed. That is a success rate of 3.5%, hardly accurate although accuracy is the very label these strikes have been sold under to the American public since even before the Bush administration. And these results are not partisan. Unmanned drone strikes have continued to overwhelmingly kill civilians under Obama's administration as the US continues its misguided military presence in the Levant.

What really should make the average citizen angry about these strikes is that the US government is never made to answer for these crimes the same way that despots and dictators in the Middle East and elsewhere are. If Assad is the one firing the missiles then he is a criminal, if it is the Pentagon ordering the strikes then it can just be chalked up to tactical error. But these are not error percentages on a computer screen, (or even more colloquially disdainful, 'bugsplats') these are innocent human lives being forfeited for the sake of preserving an American idea of peace in the communities in which they are trying to make a living. 

The United States will likely never have to answer for the lives of civilians taken in places like Pakistan or Iraq. When a Western power is at war, it seems only the country on the receiving end can be to blame. Even in the case of civilians. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't condemn these actions for what they are: acts of terror. An act of terror should not be labelled differently depending on who is the initiator and who is the recipient. 

East vs. West: The Superpower Squeeze of Sovereignty in Ukraine

Armed men in front of a tank. Donbas region.

There is a war raging in eastern Ukraine that threatens the stability of the entirety of Europe and possibly the world. It does not equal the Syrian Civil War in terms of casualties or refugees, but it reflects deeper underlying problems in the region that could lead to further bloodshed between Western powers and the Russian Federation.

In the winter of 2013-2014, Ukrainian nationalists in the Maidan revolution ousted pro-Russian Ukrainian President Victor Yanukovych and put pro-EU candidate Petro Poroshenko in power. Shortly after, Vladimir Putin seized control of the Crimea, a semi-autonomous region in the south of Ukraine which encouraged pro-Russian separatists in the east of Ukraine to then declare independence in a region known as Donbas. In the year and a half since then, the war has continued to rage in Donbas between the Ukrainian military and the rebel forces supported by Putin.

The United States has so far supported the new Ukrainian government because they are pro-Western and wish to be granted entry in the EU. Russia supports the secession of Donbas and defends their claims on Crimea because it is Putin's goal to create a Eurasian sphere of influence for Russia to once again reassert itself as a global power. When the Ukrainian people rejected his offer of inclusion in his newly formed Eurasian Union, in favor of the European Union, it was a great blow to Russian economic plans in Eastern Europe. Putin has also shown great initiative in the Middle East as an ally of Assad's fight against Daesh and other rebel groups in Syria; no matter the political implications. The Russian military is out-showing their rivals in NATO in that region. And so it is in Ukraine where it seems that despite crippling economic sanctions, Russia is unwilling to back down on their stance in the country.

Unlike the United States, the Russians also have a deep cultural impetus to gaining more control in Ukraine. The land that comprises Ukraine  forms the heartland of the ancient homeland of the Rus and some of the oldest Russian cities can be found there, including Kiev which is arguably even more historically significant to the Russian people than Moscow. The West is willing to offer paltry support to the Ukrainian government, but we do not feel the same deep connection to the land that the Russians do. That being said, neither the Russian government nor the Ukrainian government should be allowed to decide what determines the sovereignty of any particularly region of the country.

We need to care about what is happening in Ukraine. Not because we should wish to be the ones dominating the Ukrainian sphere of economics and politics rather than the Russians, but because both the Russians and the West are allowing this country to fall apart all for the sake of more power. It is this hunger for power that is truly reprehensible, that is causing a rift to form in Ukraine. Instead of competing for influence over a country that is too weak to be able to reform on its own, we should be joining together to figure out a solution to the issues in Ukraine so that all of its citizens may strive for a better and freer life.

Voting: The Cornerstone of American Democracy

A county-by-county map of the 2012 presidential election. Red =Romney, Blue = Obama.

With the upcoming presidential election even now looming over our heads; I feel like its important to take a break from the violence that has pervaded recent news to talk about the importance of voting. We are lucky enough to live in a time and a place that affords a great percentage of our population the ability to vote. However, our democracy is participatory. The people who actually do go out and vote tend to be wealthier, older, and whiter. These statistics do not accurately reflect the true demographic make-up of this country. Voting determines who is allowed to make decisions in our society; so why isn't everyone voting?

One major reason a lot of 'rare voters' (people who rarely, if ever, make it to the polls) cite is that they don't feel they know enough about the candidates to have an opinion. This is a major deal seeing as a quarter of registered voters are currently labelled as being 'rare' according to the Pew Research Center. Is it the responsibility of our candidates to more effectively get their message across? Or is it the responsibility of our citizenry to educate themselves on matters of government and politics in our republic? I would argue a little bit of both. Americans need transparency from our elected officials. Without the guarantee of honesty, many people just feel they cannot trust who they are voting for. But it is also the responsibility of the voters to educate themselves about what issues need to be focused on in our society and which candidates have the most feasible responses to these dilemmas.

Voting is also generational. That is to say that if people in your family have traditionally been involved in politics, (and further extending to include your neighborhood/town/city) then you yourself are more likely to at least know the importance of voting or be more informed about elections. Candidates statistically do not campaign in communities with low voter turnout. Millions of Americans are effectively being glossed over because they are, i.e. too uneducated, too poor, or simply not white enough. Because America is an elective democracy, the people who vote get to determine what kind of candidate best represents them; and what kind of policies they want to see preserved or acted upon. Think about the tyranny that was the Jim Crow South. Even in states like Mississippi or Alabama with large black populations, because black people either didn't have the means to vote or were intimidated into not voting, racial Apartheid was upheld and white voters were able to secure more social control and effectively power in their government.

What we see in modern America is an economic/ethnic divide in voter coverage that mirrors the racial politics of the segregated South. An apathetic underclass allows a more socially mobile and socially aware upper and upper middle class to dominate elections and retain control over political interests that favor their continued prosperity. If we want to see real progress for the vast underclass in America, there needs to be a renewed interest in the voting process. Real change starts from the grassroots level up. It's not only important to vote in the big presidential and senatorial elections, but in the elections that effect us in our own backyards. Don't scoff at the polls, they are the driving force of our society and who we elect also ultimately determines the character of that society.

I would like to leave you with a quote from George Takei;

"This is supposed to be a participatory democracy and if we're not in there participating then the people that will manipulate and exploit the system will step in there."