Sunday Night Video – The Melissa Harris-Perry Show Addresses Gun Rights

On the Melissa Harris-Perry Show yesterday, the panel discussed how we went from being a society in which assault weapons were banned into one where we can’t even have a discussion about where to draw the line in what sort of weaponry can be owned by the public. I very much agree with Dorian Warren of Columbia University.

WARREN: When you have military-level fire power in civilian hands, this is what happens. This is the inevitable outcome and it will happen again and again and again unless we want to make a distinction and say we have a value around certain kinds of guns in society that nobody needs.

Unfortunately, I also think Warren’s right when he says that he doesn’t think that either presidential candidates will propose anything practical to reduce the rampant gun violence in the United States.

WARREN: This is the result of the successful campaign by the gun lobby and the National Rifle Association over decades to shape public opinion. So in 1990, 80% of Americans, roughly, were in favor of gun control. By 2010 only 44% of Americans are in favor of gun control.

So some things were better back in 1990. As for the argument that the solution to gun violence is more gun violence? The best response I’ve seen so far comes from the All-Seeing Atrios:

I can imagine there’s something to the fantasy of the single well-trained marksman performing a heroic act, but in the conservative fantasy several people would pull out their guns in a dark, noisy, smoky room and instantly no one would have any idea who the “bad guy” actually was. One significant identifier of “the bad guy” is that he’s the one with the fucking gun. They’d all just shoot each other. And everyone in the way.

Life’s not a movie.

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