Toe-to-toe at the OK Corral

[An appendix to this post]

In an effort  better to understand the psychology of gun nuts  Second-Amendment fundamentalists, we’ll post from time to time  such anecdotes as may throw light on this.  The point is not to highlight fringe cases, but to explore what is indisputably a large part of the American mainstream -- and which has, after all, largely had its way, via the legislative process.

The following, for instance, which appeared in this morning’s Washington Post, does not concern some marginal wacko, but an actual Republican House majority leader.  Oh, wait …

FreedomWorks tea party group  nearly falls apart in fight between old and new guard

December 25

The day after Labor Day, just as campaign season was entering its final frenzy, FreedomWorks, the Washington-based tea party organization, went into free fall.

Richard K. Armey, the group’s chairman and a former House majority leader, walked into the group’s Capitol Hill offices with his wife, Susan, and an aide holstering a handgun at his waist. The aim was to seize control of the group and expel Armey’s enemies: The gun-wielding assistant escorted FreedomWorks’ top two employees off the premises, while Armey suspended several others who broke down in sobs at the news.

The coup lasted all of six days. By Sept. 10, Armey was gone — with a promise of $8 million — and the five ousted employees were back.

Presumably the moral of the story (NRA-style)  is that this tragic incident never would have happened, if only those two top employees had themselves been heavily armed.   Then Armey would have been outgunned.  Or, if he too was packing (concealed), they could have simply had a shoot-out, may the better man win.

The fellow who is to cough up the eight million is himself a pretty interesting character:

The force behind their return was Richard J. Stephenson, a reclusive Illinois millionaire who has exerted increasing control over one of Washington’s most influential conservative grass-roots organizations.

Stephenson wanted a substantial sum spent in support of Rep. Joe Walsh (R-Ill.), a tea party favorite and Stephenson’s local congressman, several who attended the retreat recalled. Walsh garnered national headlines during the campaign when he questioned whether his opponent, Tammy Duckworth, a former Blackhawk helicopter pilot who lost both legs in Iraq, was a “true hero.”

It is apparent that such thinking cannot be understood as simply lying at this point or that point on the traditional politico-economic spectrum from liberal to conservative.   Something else is going on.

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Disclaimer:

Lest anyone imagine that I harbor mean and hurtful thoughts about guns per se,

check out the action at the site of my buddy,

the two-fisted, pistol-packing, wise-cracking pre-Consiliar private eye,

Murphy!

http://murphybros.blogspot.com/

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[Update]  That crack about the “shoot-out” was intended as satire -- and not very trenchant satire at that, since it presumably portrays the principles as more extreme than they really are.  And yet someone just posted the following response to the WaPo article:

Liberals and other misguided leftists (are there really any other kind?) of course fail to take the lesson that this article contains. 
 Well, here's one lone American patriot who has. 
 If the three weeping women had Bushmasters--the gun of choice of patriots and "responsible" gun owners, they wouldn't have been weeping. And they might have watered the tree of liberty with the blood of patriots and tyrants.  
 …  It seems that Brother Dick hasn't got his "man card" yet or he would have been carrying. 

Now, to me, that reads like satire as well, and rather broader.  Yet apparently a number of readers took it seriously,  and got all in a worrit.  These were then scolded by another poster,  saying that the original poster showed “irony …  so plain that his tongue was practically sticking out the other cheek? Lighten up, people.”

Since I don’t know anything about the original poster, I can’t be sure whether it reflects his actual politics.  Nor is that in itself of the least importance.    The point here is simply that it has become difficult, in some cases, to distinguish between satire and actual delusion.

[Update]  You can skip this next item, in that it does not feature prominent mainstream figures; but it does give an (acrid) aroma  of the terms of the 'debate':

The Journal News of White Plains, N.Y., on Saturday posted an interactive map with the names and addresses of handgun permit owners in New York’s Westchester and Rockland counties. Gun owners — many outside of the paper’s readership — considered the map and accompanying story a provocation and the liberal declaration of war they widely feared. All of which led the conversation to take a markedly nasty turn.

Some conservative blogs published the names and home addresses of the paper’s publisher, Janet Hasson, and its reporters and editors, including the man responsible for “Comics, crosswords, Jumble, Sudoku, movie clock.”

“Merry Christmas, Eva Braun/Janet Hasson!” read one blogger’s headline. “So. You want to use your liberal rag to publish the names and addresses of legal conceal carry gun owners in your area? Okay. But don’t whine squeal like a little stuck Gestapo agent when the tables are turned, Ms Hasson.” Jeffersonian, a commenter at Sauce for the Goose, wrote “Nice house. Wooded lot, too. Lots of places to hide.” Syuck in NY. . . . For Now added “Lol. That was the 1st thing I thought of when viewing those pics of her palace!”

The target expanded to include the home phone number and address of Gracia Martore, chief executive of the paper’s parent group, Gannett. (“House is loaded with highly valuable easily transprtable [sic] items,’’ a poster identified only as “vintovka” wrote on a Web site for assault rifle enthusiasts, according to Gannett’s blog. “As a promonent [sic] liberal from suburban D.C. she probably goes to a lot of well publisised [sic] funerals, during which her house would be empty.”)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/ny-newspaper-posts-gun-permit-map-starts-nasty-online-battle/2012/12/26/747ae7d6-4fb0-11e2-950a-7863a013264b_print.html

[Update 13 January 2013]   A more significant update, indicating that we are dealing not just with lone-wolf loose-cannons, but those who figure largely in the Republican Party:

Undercover 'supply sergeant' helped bring down Alaska militia

In another life, William Fulton was "Drop Zone Bill," a bounty hunter who ran a military surplus store in Anchorage. You need a tactical vest? A bayonet that would clip neatly onto an M-4? Bill Fulton was your man.

"We do bad things to bad people," his company jackets said.

Fulton was also a go-to guy for Republican politicians who occasionally needed to reach out to the far right fringes of the party — those who spent weekends in the woods in camo gear and considered the 2nd Amendment an expression of divine intent.

When then-Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was plotting a move against the Republican Party chief at the state convention in 2008, Fulton was there strategizing over whiskey and cigars with Palin staffer Frank Bailey and Joe Miller, who later made a well-publicized run for the U.S. Senate as a tea party conservative.

That was the meeting where Fulton was introduced to Schaeffer Cox, an up-and-coming young firebrand of the far right who was running for the state Legislature and had, as it turned out, plans that went well beyond upending the Republican Party in Alaska.

It was a meeting that opened the door to a dangerous cat-and-mouse game that would transform the two men's lives and leave them at opposite ends of one of the federal government's biggest prosecutions of right-wing extremism on the West Coast.

Cox, 28, was sentenced Tuesday to 25 years in prison for heading a militia that plotted to kill judges and other government employees …

[Update 14 Jan 2013]  A fascinating glimpse of the sociopolitics of the NRA milieu, by Joel Achenbach:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-nras-true-believers-converted-a-marksmanship-group-into-a-mighty-gun-lobby/2013/01/12/51c62288-59b9-11e2-88d0-c4cf65c3ad15_print.html

[Update 9 Aug 2014

In nearly 30 years at Heckler & Koch, a legendary German gunmaker, Ernst Mauch designed some of the world’s most lethal weapons, including the one that reportedly killed Osama bin Laden.

Now the gun world sees him a different way: as a traitor. The target of their fury is the smart gun Mauch designed at Armatix, a start-up near Munich. The very concept of the weapon has been attacked by U.S. gun rights advocates even as it has helped Mauch resolve a sense of guilt that has haunted him his entire career. He knows children have killed each other with his guns. Crimes have been committed with them.

“It hurts my heart,” the 58-year-old gun designer said.

Mauch’s solution, the iP1, can be personalized so it only fires if the gun’s rightful owner is wearing a special watch connected wirelessly to the weapon.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/a-german-gunmakers-quest-for-a-smarter-weapon-infuriates-us-gun-rights-advocates/2014/08/06/4c78fd82-18cb-11e4-9349-84d4a85be981_story.html

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