SCOTUS & Guns

So, it has now been, what, two weeks, since the Roe v. Wade SCOTUS “decision” was “leaked”. And it (the actual decision) has not yet surfaced, i.e., released. So, does that mean they are still actually arguing? And in the meantime, states are beginning to move (pass laws) that assume Roe v. Wade is dead and they are free to do whatever they want.  And it amazes me. We keep hearing that maybe 60% of the American public favor continuation of legalized abortion. But apparently, SCOTUS cares not about the American public. They care only about what the religious right thinks and says.  And the states. Wow!, Oklahoma just passed a bill banning abortion after six weeks, i.e., when women might barely know they are pregnant.  And similar to other states, they authorize unconnected citizens to sue anyone having an abortion, providing one, or assisting in any way, e.g., anyone driving someone to an abortion could be sued for $10,000. So, Oklahoma has opted for “vigilante justice”.  Makes you wonder when they will authorize their citizen anti-abortion guardians to use guns to enforce their opposition.

And so it goes, as America turns into a Land of Vigilantism.  Nazi’s everywhere you turn.

And speaking of Nazi’s, we have that mass shooting in Buffalo aimed at killing people of color. Ten innocents were killed. The 10 people killed, and an additional three injured, made this weekend's racially motivated attack at a Buffalo, N.Y., supermarket the deadliest mass shooting of the year in the United States. It is also the 198th mass shooting in 2022. With just over 19 weeks into the year, this averages out to about 10 such attacks a week. And even more recently, the Texas school shooting upped the toll, in which 19 kids and 2 adults were killed. Think of that people—19 innocent children!

The tally comes from the Gun Violence Archive, an independent data collection organization. The group defines a mass shooting as an incident in which four or more people are shot or killed, excluding the shooter. The full list of mass shootings in 2022 can be found here.

Prior to the Buffalo attack, the largest-scale mass shooting this year was at a car show in Dumas, Ark., on March 19. That attack killed one person and injured 27. Mass shootings, as is well known by now, are a common recurrence in the United States. Around this time last year, the U.S. had experienced a similar number of mass shootings: also about 10 a week. 

We ended 2021 with 693 mass shootings, per the Gun Violence Archive. The year before saw 611. And 2019 had 417.

The massacres don't come out of nowhere, says Mark Follman, who has been researching mass shootings since 2012, when a gunman killed 12 people at a movie theater in Aurora, Colo. 

"This is planned violence. There is, in every one of these cases, always a trail of ... behavioral warning signs," he told NPR earlier this month.

Follman, the author of a new book, Trigger Points, says the role of mental health is also widely misunderstood.

"The general public views mass shooters as people who are totally crazy, insane. It fits with the idea of snapping, as if these people are totally detached from reality." "That's not the case", he said. There's "a very rational thought process" that goes into planning and carrying out mass shootings.

The suspect in the Buffalo attack left behind a racist screed, donned body armor, and livestreamed the attack. 

And yet, we do nothing to stop this problem, and we will not even begin to visit the subject of GUNS, i.e., we have too many guns, and way too many automatic weapons that enable mass shootings.

So what should we do? Well, NOT Thoughts and Prayers surely. That is the precise opposite of doing something.  It’s really astonishing that organized religion refuses to deal with the Gun Lobby. Of course, organized religion and the Gun Lobby constitute the current republican party. And when that party controls 50% of our US Senate, we can do nothing.

I am unsure what we should do about gun violence in America. I think America is now alone in this category of organized gun violence against innocent civilians.  But we really do need to get guns off the street, and out of people’s closets.  Which guns? I am unsure. The Gunners of the country say, NO, they are protected by Second Amendment. But as I best understand that Amendment, it argues for a State Militia, not individual ownership of automatic weaponry.  My best take on this is that we need to strip all households of all automatic weaponry. So, maybe no household should own more than ONE SINGLE SHOT Pistol, and ONE Double Barrel rifle/shotgun. Full Stop.  I know, I know. I can hear the screams of anguish.  But those are the same screams to be heard by any proposal to limit guns. ANY! So, why not go for one that might work.  Now how we manage to retrieve all the now illegal guns from homes is a difficult question.  But maybe we can release all those folks imprisoned now for illegal drug usage, and replace them with folks owning illegal guns. Nice, Huh?

But whatever we do, it must pass through the halls of Congress, and at least some republicans must possess the cajones and the ethics to vote in favor. And that might be tough, since there seem no such republicans left on the planet.

Well, we will see what happens. I wonder how long it will be before the next idiot decides to shoot up some preschool somewhere in America. Stay tuned, folks.

Roe v. Wade RIP

 Borrowing from Wiki:

“Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973),^[1] was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that the Constitution of the United States protects a pregnant woman's liberty to choose to have an abortion without excessive government restriction. The decision struck down many U.S. federal and state abortion laws.^[2][3] Roe fueled an ongoing abortion debate in the United States about whether or to what extent abortion should be legal, who should decide the legality of abortion, and what the role of moral and religious views in the political sphere should be. It also shaped debate concerning which methods the Supreme Court should use in constitutional adjudication.

The decision involved the case of Norma McCorvey—known by the legal pseudonym "Jane Roe"—who in 1969 became pregnant with her third child. McCorvey wanted an abortion but lived in Texas, where abortion was illegal except when necessary to save the mother's life. Her attorneys, Sarah Weddington and Linda Coffee, filed a lawsuit on her behalf in U.S. federal court against her local district attorney, Henry Wade, alleging that Texas's abortion laws were unconstitutional. A three-judge panel of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas heard the case and ruled in her favor. Texas then appealed directly to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In January 1973, the Supreme Court issued a 7–2 decision in McCorvey's favor ruling that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution provides a "right to privacy" that protects a pregnant woman's right to choose whether to have an abortion. It also ruled that this right is not absolute and must be balanced against governments' interests in protecting women's health and prenatal life.^[4][5] The Court resolved this balancing test by tying state regulation of abortion to the three trimesters of pregnancy: during the first trimester, governments could not prohibit abortions at all; during the second trimester, governments could require reasonable health regulations; during the third trimester, abortions could be prohibited entirely so long as the laws contained exceptions for cases when they were necessary to save the life or health of the mother.^[5] The Court classified the right to choose to have an abortion as "fundamental", which required courts to evaluate challenged abortion laws under the "strict scrutiny" standard, the highest level of judicial review in the United States.^[6]

The Court's ruling in Roe was criticized by some in the legal community,^[7] and some called the decision an example of judicial activism.^[8] The Supreme Court revisited and modified Roe's legal rulings in its 1992 decision Planned Parenthood v. Casey.^[9] In Casey, the Court reaffirmed Roe's holding that a woman's right to choose to have an abortion is constitutionally protected, but abandoned Roe's trimester framework in favor of a standard based on fetal viability and overruled the strict scrutiny standard for reviewing abortion restrictions.^[4][10]

On May 2, 2022, Politico obtained a leaked initial draft majority opinion penned by Justice Samuel Alito suggesting that the Supreme Court is poised to overturn Roe and Casey in a pending final decision on Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization.^[11] Chief Justice John Roberts confirmed the authenticity of the leaked document in a statement released a day later, although he noted that "it does not represent a decision by the Court or the final position of any member on the issues in the case".^[12]”

I needed to actually see a reasoned definition of this famous ruling. We have spoken and written so much over the past 50+ years about Roe, without always fully understanding it.

As best I can understand, the Roe ruling set in place a series of protections that guarded a woman’s right to decide on whether to continue a pregnancy or to eliminate it.  And the ruling set fairly hard and fast rulings. That is, no state could simply decide on its own whether to enforce the rulings. Roe V. Wade WAS THE LAW OF THE LAND.

And now, because at least two current SCOTUS justices flatly lied to the senators deciding whether to approve their elevation to SCOTUS, we have a change in settled law. So, apparently, it’s ok for candidates to lie during their hearing. And then we get what we deserve—a thoroughly corrupted Supreme Court. Oh, my, it is as though we have five Donald Trumps as justices of our Supreme Court.

And now all the misogynists in America have been let loose, so no woman is safe in any state in America.

And I assume the anti-sex crowd (anti-abortionists=anti-sex) will not let it stop on abortion. Having eliminated the possibility of physician administered abortions, they will now turn to pills that cause abortions. Yes, they will intrude on a woman’s right to obtain abortion pills, including somehow screening their mail (is that at all legal?), and blocking their ability to travel to a state or foreign country to obtain an abortion.  Can they legally do that? Well, in many states (Texas comes to mind) they don’t care about such legal niceties. They will act, perhaps even violently to block abortions. A woman was raped??? Doesn’t matter.  The fetus is not viable? Who cares? Certainly not Gov. Abbott.  I half wonder whether their next step will be to ban contraceptive pills also.

And we have no idea where this mad course leads us. How many riots, even how many riotous deaths may result?

And if women decide to push back and deny sexual intercourse to spouses or close friends . . . as in, “oh honey, sorry, but we aren’t planning any babies, so no on the sex thing.” Might that lead to violence . . . divorces certainly, but male on female violence almost as certainly.  And the anti-abortionists will simply turn away –“didn’t happen on my watch”.

I envision marches on Washington (maybe even on Austin and other such backwards places), marches leading to riots almost certainly. And we know what riots lead to—property damage, human injury and deaths (remember January 6^th??).

My biggest worry is that I do not see a rational course to fix what SCOTUS just broke.  A new Constitutional Amendment?? Can you imagine that passing? How about a Federal Law? Well, any Federal Law would be brought to SCOTUS, and we know where that leads.

Generally, most of the similar dilemmas I write about can be resolved through voting—selecting the right (correct) legislative folks and the problems at least have a chance of being resolved.  But this one seems different.  I assume better/happier results through voting in the right people. But, I don't really understand what legislators can do in this case.

I will have to remain hopeful, because that’s my only option.  I guess voting could lead eventually to expanding the Supreme Court to, say 13 instead of 9.  And then, of course, appointing four moral, ethical, intelligent, humans (you know, the kind of folks republicans no longer know).

So, vote on folks. It really is your only course of action, short of moving permanently to, say, New Zealand.