Take Executive Action On Gun Control

Tennessee’s James Yeager promises to “start killing people” if President Obama limits his ability to start killing people

“Welcome to Tennessee, patron state of shooting stuff” says Mark Wahlberg‘s character in the movie “Shooter.”

A couple of days after Alex Jones‘ anti-gun control tirade on Piers Morgan’s CNN show, West Tennessean James Yeager, who runs an uncertified firearms training school called Tactical Response, went all in on the crazy.  After hearing that “Reich Marshal Biden,” as Stephen Colbert calls him below, suggested that President Obama consider using his executive authority to rein in the proliferation of military style assault rifles and high capacity ammo magazines to help limit the carnage in our schools, movie theaters, and shopping centers, Yeager promised to “start killing people” should Obama so act.

Well, that didn’t escape the notice of Tennessee law enforcement, which revoked Yeager’s handgun carry permit. Oops.

In the “Be careful what you ask for” category, a number of “gun enthusiasts” including NRA Director Wayne “Call Me Crazy” LaPierre, warned all during President Obama‘s first term that he was coming to take their guns away.  The only action on guns that Obama did sign into law is the new right to carry weapons in national parks and on Amtrak trains.

But after refusing to take action after the mass killings in Aurora, Virginia Tech, Ft. Hood, Tuscon, et al, the wholesale slaughter of twenty 6 and 7 year old children in Newtown, Conn. seems to finally have caught the president’s, and the nation’s, attention.  Much to the dismay of the “I’ll give you my TOW anti-tank missile when you pry it from my cold, dead hands” crowd.

Back to Jones, who makes his money as one of talk radio’s top conspiracy theorists (911, the Oklahoma Murrah Building Bombing, and WACO all being government plots), his rant has him taken him to the threshold of US domestic terrorism laws (h/t Juan Cole):

(5) the term “domestic terrorism” means activities that—
(A) involve acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State;
(B) appear to be intended—
(i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population;
(ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or…

Jones followed up his call for revolution (ala Donald Trump‘s Tweeted reaction to Obama’s re-election) by going on an anti-Prozac rant.  Presumably another government plot to keep voters voting Democratic.  All of which suggests that, like the flu, crazy is contagious.  Once it slips its moorings, it seems to feed on itself and multiply.  Not a good development in a highly networked world.

As for the prospect of passing saner gun control laws through Congress, given the lobbying power of the NRA and the munitions industry as a whole, we won’t see any help from that quarter, especially via the  House.  So that leaves limited executive action as the only recourse.  It might not get us an outright ban on assault rifles, but it could produce something like closing the gun show loophole and make background checks mandatory for everybody.  Better than nothing, I suppose.

Stephen, as usual, captures the zeitgeist.

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