Month: August 2012

Mass shooter in action

Posted on by kathiemm

By guest author Dr. Mike Corgan

“Run, Hide, Fight” is a new reality police video promulgated by the Boston University Police for the BU community.

The film, featured on some local news programs, is a powerfully realistic depiction of what could happen if a mass shooter went into action on the campus.

The instructions are clear and disturbing. Learn escape routes from your office. If you sense that an incident like the Aurora theater shooting is occurring. run away, even if others  are too scared to do so. If running isn’t possible, hide or barricade yourself into a secure and presumably bulletproof  area. Finally, be prepared to fight as best you can if trapped.

Is this the stuff of some latter-day paranoid McCarthyite fantasy? Alas, as recent events have all too graphically shown, mass shootings can and do occur anywhere.

Unfortunately, we as a citizenry can’t do much in advance about gunmen intent on violently settling grievances, then adding random killings to their spree.

But we can do something about the amount of killing taking place. So can the National Rifle Association (NRA).

The Second Amendment protects the right to “keep and bear arms” but like others in the Bill of Rights, this right is not absolute. You can’t own a machine gun or many other military grade weapons. Problem is the NRA tries to keep the prohibited list as small as possible and even shrink it.

It is the military grade weaponry (e.g., 100-round magazines for semi-automatic assault-type rifles easily  converted to full automatic firing) that make the mass killings possible. Without abrogating the Second Amendment, we can do something about that.

The NRA is fond of using the “slippery slope” metaphor to argue that any restriction on gun ownership is a step to confiscation.

That argument works the other way, too. The continued loosening of gun laws can also lead–and has certainly already led–to mass killings that have become far too abundant.

Michael T. Corgan, Ph.D., Associate Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies
Department of International Relations, Boston University

The Constitution corrupted, Part 2

Posted on by kathiemm

In my last post, I considered one factor contributing to mass violence—a form of domestic terrorism–in the United States. That factor is the corrupting of the U.S. Constitution by extremist right wing groups—often supported by and aligned with the National Rifle Association.

U.S. Bill of Rights
U.S. Bill of Rights. Image in public domain.

This post provides further examples of the distorted versions of Constitutional Amendments promoted by these groups, as well as examples of real Amendments they would like to nullify all together.

A)     Here are DISTORTED versions of real amendments:

Amendment 7.  Anyone can be incarcerated for any suspected crime and anyone can be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law because the country is in a continuous state of public danger;

Amendment 8. In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial by an impartial jury unless such a trial could prove embarrassing to those in power or their supporters;

In addition to several of the first 10 Amendments (the Bill of Rights) to the Constitution, there are several other Amendments that right wing extremists would like to gut, and already often ignore.

B)     Here are some REAL Constitutional amendments under attack from right wing extremists (see, for example):

Amendment 14. Citizenship cannot be denied on the basis of skin color and all citizens are guaranteed equal rights and equal protection under the law—even in the face of resistance by individual states and local communities.

Amendment 15. The right to vote cannot be denied on the basis of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

Trying to destroy basic Constitutional protections because they do not promote your own interests, values, and prejudices is the opposite of true conservatism.

The right wing extremists, the neo-nazis, the white supremacists are not conservatives. They do not want to conserve or preserve the Constitution or democracy. They cloak their hateful agenda in distorted versions of Constitutional Amendments framed as justifications of personal freedom to dominate and terrorize.

As for Amendments designed to promote social justice and equality, the preference of those right wing extremists is to shoot them down, just like other obstacles.

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology

The Constitution corrupted, Part I

Posted on by kathiemm
Hate crimes victims data
Graphic by Abram Samuelson, used under CC Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

Seven more deaths (including the gunman) and four more wounded in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. Why? Racism, hatred, anger, fear, frustration, propaganda, the easy availability of weapons, and the corruption of the United States Constitution.

Pseudo-conservative, pseudo-Christian, pseudo-moral right-wing extremists have been able to convince too many people that the United States Bill of Rights was written solely for them.

Their claims appeal in particular to the increasing number of people who see the American dream escaping them, who struggle to make a living in a society where wealth seems to abound, and who wonder why they can’t have it all.

The propaganda giants are only too happy to create scapegoats.

Imagine what it would be like if the Bill of Rights were re-written by the power-hungry right-wing minority that would like everyone to believe that our basic rights should be interpreted as follows:

Amendment I. Congress shall make no laws interfering with the right religion; Congress shall not interfere with the freedom to spread lies and hatred and to incite to violence; Congress shall not interfere with the right of people to assemble peacefully as long as they are the right people.

Amendment II. Nobody shall interfere with the right of disaffected vengeful people to bear arms in order to kill anyone who disagrees with them (or is the wrong color or the wrong religion or the wrong nationality).

Amendment IV.  People have the right to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures unless they are the wrong people.

These are NOT the original Amendments to our Constitution—the Constitution that our public officials swear to uphold. (See the correct wording.)

In the next post, I will consider how some of the other Amendments to the U.S. Constitution have been corrupted by seekers after power who have no interest in human rights or democracy–only the pursuit of their own interests.

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology