What we’re not hearing much of after the Tucson shooting is serious talk of tighter gun control. A few people have brought it up, of course, but IMO in a half-hearted way. Because it ain’t gonna happen. Not in today’s America. And I think large chunks of the progressive Left have accepted that and don’t push it much.

Of course, the reaction of the Right is that America needs more guns. An Arizona Congressman, Rep. Trent Franks, said after the Tucson shooting, “I wish there had been one more gun in Tucson.”

But according to Timothy Egan, some people in the crowd were armed.

The only gun-carrier I can find reference to in news stories is described by law professor John J. Donohue 3rd:

Joe Zamudio, the first lawful gun carrier on the scene, came around a corner and saw a man with a gun. Zamudio “grabbed his arm and shoved him into a wall.” Thankfully, Zamudio didn’t shoot because this was not the shooter, but the person who disarmed the shooter. Zamudio, age 24, displayed further caution in that he didn’t pull out his own 9 mm handgun because “he didn’t want to be confused as a second gunman.”

You may remember that Jared Loughner was subdued while reloading by several bystanders, including a woman who grabbed the loaded magazine when Loughner fumbled and dropped it. Another bystander clubbed Loughner in the head with a folding chair, while a 74-year-old retired colonel who had just been wounded wrestled him to the ground.

Timothy Egan continues,

It defies logic, as this case shows once again, that an average citizen with a gun is going to disarm a crazed killer. For one thing, these kinds of shootings happen far too suddenly for even the quickest marksman to get a draw. For another, your typical gun hobbyist lacks training in how to react in a violent scrum

Lots of “gun hobbyists’ also don’t seem to understand that a firearm is not necessarily the self-defense tool of choice in all situations, especially in urban settings.

You might remember, back in 2000, a young woman was sexually assaulted in broad daylight on the south end of Central Park. She was in a big crowd of people gathered to watch the Puerto Rico Day parade. And when I say big crowd, it was big even by New York City standards. There were hundreds of thousands of people in the immediate vicinity, in some placed packed elbow to elbow.

So on some web forum some yahoos in Texas were smarting off about how that wouldn’t have happened to a Texas woman, because Texas women know how to shoot, or some valiant Texan male with a gun would come to her rescue, or some such nonsense. After pointing out to the yahoos that New York City had a much lower rate of forcible rape than Dallas (and still does), I tried to explain that in a crowd like that it was unlikely anyone could have gotten a clean shot at the perpetrator. And they just jeered that I obviously didn’t know what I was talking about, because guns are the solution to just about everything.

Now, I realize that there are lots of responsible gun owners out there who have a lot more sense than these goons did; the young man in Tucson with the 9mm pistol he didn’t shoot, for example. But it’s exchanges like this that make me leery of the “more guns are the solution” attitude. And I’m sorry, but it always seems that the hotheads who holler the loudest about their gawd-given right to carry anything anywhere are the last people you’d want to have handy in a crisis like Tuscon. Hooray for the guy with the folding chair, I say.

Bob Drogin wrote for the Los Angeles Times that back in the Wild West days of Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday, Arizona cities like the infamous Tombstone had tougher gun laws than they do today. Then, visitors were supposed to check their guns at the sheriff’s office and pick them up when they left town. Today, however,

Arizona’s gun laws are among the most lenient in the nation. Under legislation passed last year, guns are permitted almost everywhere in the state except doctors’ offices and some businesses. It is one of three states, along with Alaska and Vermont, that allow people 21 or older to carry concealed weapons without a permit. Concealed guns may be carried into bars as long as the gun owner isn’t drinking, and guns are permitted on school grounds as long as the weapon is unloaded and the owner remains in a vehicle.

Any law-abiding citizen 18 or older may buy or possess a rifle or shotgun. To buy a handgun, federal law requires a minimum age of 21. Firearms may be sold 14 hours a day, seven days a week, except Christmas.

Arizona also has among the highest rates of firearm-related deaths of any state in the nation. Arizona ranks eighth nationally, with 15.1 deaths per 100,000 people. By comparison, the state in which you are least likely to get shot is Hawaii, with 2.6 deaths per 100,000 people.

What about the claim that more guns equals less crime? This is from Daniel Webster, a professor and the co-director at the Center for Gun Policy and Research at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health:

It is not clear that permissive right-to-carry laws haven’t increased violence. There have been numerous studies of these laws, many of which have substantial flaws. The best study was done by Ian Ayres and John Donohue, law professors at Yale and Stanford, respectively, and disaggregates the effects for each state and type of crime.

The estimates from their best models show right-to-carry laws associated with increases in 7 of 9 crimes studied, with the largest effect (+9 percent) being the crime many researchers would have hypothesized would increase – aggravated assaults.

I can already see the “gun hobbyists” reaching for their well-thumbed paperback copy of John Lott’s More Guns, Less Crime. Don’t bother, fellas; Lott’s name has become synonymous with “cherry-picked data.” See also the John Lott “alternative Q and A.”

Related: See also “Police Fear War on Cops.”

Now he’s swimming the Milky Way, towing asteroids and small planets.

Some citizens of Vermont are preparing to strike a blow for real liberty, as opposed to the plastic-wrapped, corporate-sponsored “liberty” — artificial flavors, no preservatives — the teabaggers are, well, teabagging for. See “Vermont Is Gearing Up to Strike a Major Blow to Corporate Personhood.”

This needs to be a national movement.

[Update: Greg Sargent has a different take on the Olbermann departure; worth a read.]

Obviously, the big news this morning is Keith Olbermann’s departure from MSNBC. I take it from most news stories this was a mutual decision that has been brewing for a long time. Is the takeover of MSNBC by Comcast a factor, however? Hmm.

From Steve M, a follow up to yesterday’s Right-Wing Domestic Violence News — to recap, a man in Massachusetts named Travis Corcoran wrote a blog post advocating that all members of Congress and their staffs be shot. After approving of the Rep. Gabrielle Giffords shooting — “1 down and 534 to go” — he added, “It is absolutely, absolutely unacceptable to shoot indiscriminately. Target only politicians and their staff and leave regular citizens alone.” Well, that’s big of him.

Police raided his house, seized weapons and ammunition, and suspending his gun license pending their investigation. To rational people, this would be a sensible precaution. But righties are screaming that they are being targeted by the police state because of their beliefs.

Meanwhile — Glenn Beck’s insane rants are endangering the life of an elderly retired professor because of something she wrote 45 years ago.

Unbelievable.

[Update: Steve Benen writes of the elderly professor, “With Beck having singled out Piven as an instigator of political violence, Beck’s audience has published death threats against the CUNY professor, and some of his followers have even contacted her directly with menacing messages.” Ooo, what strong, brave men they must be to threaten a 78-year-old woman. Next up: Kristallnacht.]

Elsewhere — a certain rightie blogger whom I called out for lying about me has now put up a post in childish retaliation of my post about him. No, DD, you don’t get a link. You’ll have to annoy someone else if you’re that desperate to boost your traffic.

Finally — it’s increasingly obvious to me that many so-called “right to life” advocates don’t really care about reducing abortion. They just get off on being self-righteousness about it.

I love this (and Ezra Klein, who comes up with the best stuff):

See Rick Ungar, “Congress Passes Socialized Medicine and Mandates Health Insurance -In 1798.”

In July of 1798, Congress passed – and President John Adams signed – “An Act for the Relief of Sick and Disabled Seamen.” The law authorized the creation of a government operated marine hospital service and mandated that privately employed sailors be required to purchase health care insurance.

Keep in mind that the 5th Congress did not really need to struggle over the intentions of the drafters of the Constitutions in creating this Act as many of its members were the drafters of the Constitution.

This is a fascinating thing I don’t think I’ve heard about before. The new country depended very much on the private merchant fleet for trade, but the seamen were always getting hurt and coming down with diseases. Sick merchant seamen were bad for the economy. So the 5th Congress established government-run maritime hospitals for the seamen, paid by a payroll tax on the seamen’s wages. And seamen were required to pay into their health care system or they weren’t allowed to work as seamen.

Do read the whole article, and also Greg Sargent’s follow up. This absolutely destroys the argument that the Founding Fathers wouldn’t have approved of government-run health care as a public good because it wasn’t explicitly discussed in the Constitution.

Conservative Republicans (isn’t that redundant?) in the House have introduced a bill that they say would reduce government spending by $2.3 trillion over ten years. David Weigel explains how they will do this:

The proposal does what Republicans have been talking about for two years — “repeal” of remaining stimulus funds (now $45 billion), privatizing Fannie and Freddie ($30 billion), repealing Medicaid’ FMAP increase ($16.1 billion), and what they estimate at $330 billion in discretionary spending cuts. Highlights of these projected annual savings:

– Cutting the federal workforce by 15 percent through attrition, and do this by allowing only one new federal worker for every two who quit.
– Killing the “fund for Obamacare administrative costs” for $900 million
– Ending Amtrak subsidies for $1.565 billion
– Ending intercity and high speed rail grants for $2.5 billion
– Repealing Davis-Bacon for $1 billion
– Cutting annual general assistance to the District of Columbia by $210 million, and cutting the subsidy for DC’s transit authority by $150 million.

Reforms that go after their own perks:
– Cutting the Federal Travel Budget in half, for $7.5 billion
– Cutting the Federal Vehicle Budget by 1/5, for $600 million
– Halve funding for congressional printing – $47 million annual savings
– Ending the death gratuity for members of Congress

And cuts that get revenge for Juan Williams: $445 million from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, $167.5 million from the NEA, and $167.5 million from the NEH.

Steve Benen:

The likelihood of these cuts actually passing is non-existent, but it is a helpful snapshot of Republican priorities. But also note perhaps the most important detail about a plan such as this one: it would be devastating for American jobs. Indeed, if lawmakers were to get together to plot how Congress could deliberately increase unemployment, their plan would look an awful lot like this one. The RSC proposal would deliberately fire thousands of civilian workers, force states to make sweeping job cuts, and lay off thousands more who work in transportation and infrastructure.

Instead of working on creating jobs, we’re left with a new House majority that either (a) wants to ignore the problem; or (b) wants to deliberately make it worse. For all the Republican excitement about the midterm results, I suspect the GOP just wasn’t listening very closely to what Americans said they’re concerned about most.