Last weekend’s horrific massacre in Aurora, Colo. has reopened questions about gun control in America. With 12 people dead and 58 injured after a gunman fired assault weapons inside a movie theater, media are asking what legislation, if any, has been passed to protect the public.
The gun control debate has been around for years. In fact, 30-plus years ago, I wrote a research paper on it for my government class.
As the daughter of a farmer, I grew up with guns in the house. My father was never a hunter or gun enthusiast; he simply used the weapons to take care of dangerous or unwanted animals.
My brother, on the other hand, became interested in hunting as a teenager. He learned to use Dad’s guns to hunt with the neighbors.
So I grew up with an appreciation for guns’ usefulness. But I was also taught healthy respect for them and their power to take life. They were a tool used in necessity. And when I conducted research for my paper, I looked at both sides of the issue – from the dangers guns posed to people in communities struggling with violence to the needs of rural residents for hunting and protection.
But even 30 years ago, the number one force blocking any and all forms of gun control was the National Rifle Association (NRA).
Today, the NRA is the nation’s largest lobbying force. Most recently, they successfully blocked extending a ban on assault weapons, which most Americans, including NRA members, support.
NRA leadership, including NRA President Wayne LaPierre, successfully trots out two canards to block any gun control measures: that they will take away citizens’ 2nd Amendment rights and that “guns don’t kill people, people do.” Both arguments oversimplify a complex issue and completely ignore public safety.
They also divert attention from the organization’s business goals. For the NRA is nothing more than a business whose nominal mission is to represent and protect the interests of gun owners. But like many other large organizations, leadership manipulates the organization to empower and enrich themselves.
As Alan Berlow relates in the first of a three-part series on the NRA in Salon Magazine (http://www.salon.com/2012/07/24/nras_doomsaying_sham/), the NRA’s leadership is happy to sell products (including concealed carry hoodies and liability insurance for shooting someone) and to e-mail alerts to solicit donations to their political action committee. Yet research shows these same leaders, who draw six-figure or more salaries, don’t donate themselves. As Berlow writes:
“Former NRA lobbyist Richard Feldman has suggested one reason NRA big shots are happy to sit on their wallets. In his book ‘Richochet: Confessions of a Gun Lobbyist,’ Feldman calls the NRA a ‘cynical, mercenary political cult … obsessed with wielding power while relentlessly squeezing contributions from its members.’ According to Feldman, NRA leaders ‘weren’t interested in actually solving problems, only in fueling perpetual crisis and controversy’ because ‘that was how they made their money.’”
Meanwhile, the NRA blocks compromise on gun laws that could protect the public.
As Edith Honan notes in a Reuters article recent polling by Republican pollster Frank Luntz shows gun owners, including NRA members, favor some ownership restrictions.
“Seventy-four percent of the current and former NRA members and 87 percent of the other gun owners supported criminal background checks of anyone purchasing a gun, according to the poll.” The results showed support for other checks as well.
In the wake of the Aurora massacre, we need to get beyond black-and-white arguments about guns and explore compromises. I think actor Jason Alexander said it best in an essay last weekend: “We will not prevent every tragedy. We cannot stop every maniac. But we certainly have done ourselves no good by allowing these particular weapons to be acquired freely by just about anyone... but this is not the time for reasonable people, on both sides of this issue, to be silent. We owe it to the people whose lives were ended and ruined yesterday to insist on a real discussion and hopefully on some real action.”
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
Wednesday, July 4, 2012
Trying to understand health care act opposition
Last week as we waited for the Supreme Court of the United States to hand down its ruling on the Affordable Care Act, a Reuters/Ipsos poll on the health care reform law was released. It showed, yet again, that while a majority of Americans oppose the law, most favor the individual elements. Does that make any sense?
It is instead a knee-jerk reaction based on ignorance and fear of change. But I have to ask, is our current system really workin’ for you?
Opponents of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) like to rant about government run health care, death panels and denied care.
But after my husband and I went through physicals and an injury during the last 10 months, it seems we already have that with insurance.
Because ACA is not government-run health care; it’s a band-aid designed to make private insurance more affordable and to sustain it for a few more years. Nothing more.
In fact, when polled on individual elements of ACA, people liked the following provisions:
— Allowing children to stay on their parents’ policy until age 26;
— Banning insurance companies from denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions;
— Requiring corporations to cover employees.
And whether they know it or not, as a result of ACA many retirees on Medicare are already enjoying free preventative coverage and will receive rebate checks for their drug expenses.
What Americans claim they don’t like is the individual mandate – largely because they’ve heard a lot of bunk about how it impinges on their freedom.
Do you rail about your auto insurance, which most if not all states require to own a car? You may split hairs about auto coverage being a state’s right, but that’s all you’re doing – splitting hairs.
The reality is through our private health insurance system, your company may deny you coverage or limit your treatment options. The insurance company may limit which doctors you can see. The insurance company may delay treatment for underwriting. And yet that’s what we say we’re afraid of with government health care?
Instead of parroting media messaging manufactured by health insurance corporations via think tanks and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, think about how many forms, co-pays and deductibles it takes to go through a simple physical under the current system. Is it really workin’ for you?
And why is it that during the debate before ACA passed, we heard people crying “Keep your hands off my Medicare”? Medicare is a government-run universal single payer insurance plan, and most people on it like it.
Maybe instead of automatically repeating what we hear on television and radio, we should look at reality and start asking some questions. Like, “Why should health care be governed by the profit motive?”
If we want something better – like a health care system instead of a profit-driven payment system, we have to educate ourselves and speak up.
Too many of us sit at the kitchen table and complain without actually doing anything.
It’s not enough to vote. You have to know what you are voting for. And the six o’clock news is not going to give you the information you need.
Start with the Reuters/Ipsos poll results: www.reuters.com
Then visit the Kaiser Family Foundation’s Health Reform site to learn about ACA’s provisions: healthreform.kff.org
And finally, the government offers easy-to-use resources and information: www.healthcare.gov
Learn what the law actually does. Then use not only your vote, but your voice.
It is instead a knee-jerk reaction based on ignorance and fear of change. But I have to ask, is our current system really workin’ for you?
Opponents of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) like to rant about government run health care, death panels and denied care.
But after my husband and I went through physicals and an injury during the last 10 months, it seems we already have that with insurance.
Because ACA is not government-run health care; it’s a band-aid designed to make private insurance more affordable and to sustain it for a few more years. Nothing more.
In fact, when polled on individual elements of ACA, people liked the following provisions:
— Allowing children to stay on their parents’ policy until age 26;
— Banning insurance companies from denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions;
— Requiring corporations to cover employees.
And whether they know it or not, as a result of ACA many retirees on Medicare are already enjoying free preventative coverage and will receive rebate checks for their drug expenses.
What Americans claim they don’t like is the individual mandate – largely because they’ve heard a lot of bunk about how it impinges on their freedom.
Do you rail about your auto insurance, which most if not all states require to own a car? You may split hairs about auto coverage being a state’s right, but that’s all you’re doing – splitting hairs.
The reality is through our private health insurance system, your company may deny you coverage or limit your treatment options. The insurance company may limit which doctors you can see. The insurance company may delay treatment for underwriting. And yet that’s what we say we’re afraid of with government health care?
Instead of parroting media messaging manufactured by health insurance corporations via think tanks and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, think about how many forms, co-pays and deductibles it takes to go through a simple physical under the current system. Is it really workin’ for you?
And why is it that during the debate before ACA passed, we heard people crying “Keep your hands off my Medicare”? Medicare is a government-run universal single payer insurance plan, and most people on it like it.
Maybe instead of automatically repeating what we hear on television and radio, we should look at reality and start asking some questions. Like, “Why should health care be governed by the profit motive?”
If we want something better – like a health care system instead of a profit-driven payment system, we have to educate ourselves and speak up.
Too many of us sit at the kitchen table and complain without actually doing anything.
It’s not enough to vote. You have to know what you are voting for. And the six o’clock news is not going to give you the information you need.
Start with the Reuters/Ipsos poll results: www.reuters.com
Then visit the Kaiser Family Foundation’s Health Reform site to learn about ACA’s provisions: healthreform.kff.org
And finally, the government offers easy-to-use resources and information: www.healthcare.gov
Learn what the law actually does. Then use not only your vote, but your voice.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
