Rose Parade Float Driving

This essay about driving a float in the Rose Parade aired over the weekend on the Milwaukee Public Radio Station and is on the WUWM 89.7 FM website here:

http://www.wuwm.com/programs/lake_effect/lake_effect_segment.php?segmentid=9992

Lake Effect: Tournament of Roses Parade: A Driving Experience

www.wuwm.com

Many of us watch the Rose Bowl parade every year, but we have a firsthand account of what it’s like to be in the parade.

People Use Guns to Kill People

This is a letter I sent to U.S. Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) yesterday that addresses some of the absurdities proponents of the little-to-no-gun regulations espouse. It points out some of the conclusions their arguments imply. If you agree with or want to use any part of the letter, please feel free to share anyway you like.

Sen. Ron Johnson

United States Senate, Wisconsin

517 East Wisconsin Avenue, Suite 408

Milwaukee WI 53202

Re: Sandy Hook Elementary School Massacre

Dear Sen. Johnson:

For the love of God – and our children – I, as a parent, a grandparent, a school volunteer and a lover of children, beg of you to please support sane, responsible, effective gun-safety and gun-and-ammunition access laws that will stem the hemorrhaging of Americans’ blood in these ever-more frequent, tragic, traumatic and senseless shooting rampages.

Opponents of such laws constantly echo the NRA’s canard that “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” If that were true, given that the United States has more than 10,000 more gun-related homicides annually than most other countries in the so-called developed world combined, that would mean that way more people in the United States are killers than in those countries. Do you really believe that’s true? Do you really believe that America has that many more criminals, mentally unhinged or maniacal individuals than the rest of the “civilized” world?

Children in the United States are 14 times more likely to die by gunshot than children in the rest of the “developed” world. Since NRA parrots insist that “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” that has to mean than 14 times more Americans kill their children than do Britons, Scots, Israelis, Germans, Australians, Japanese and Canadians. Does that mean that 14 times more Americans hate their children and want to do away with them than individuals in other countries? Do you really believe that?

• First, those words were written 250 years ago before this country had extensive or effective organized law-enforcement agencies and little in the way of a standing army to protect its citizens. The “well-regulated militia” was akin to today’s volunteer fire departments in areas that can’t or choose not to fund paid firefighters.
• Second, what part of individuals stockpiling automatic and semi-automatic weapons that can fire multiple rounds in a few short seconds relates to a “well-regulated militia”? No,

Sen. Ron Johnson

Sandy Hook School Massacre

Page 2

        what NRA acolytes would have citizens of this country believe is that the 2^nd
        Amendment really means “Every man for himself.” That is antithetical to even the
        name of our country. We are the United States of America, not the Individuals of
        America.

•      Third, the twisted misinterpretation of that Amendment has turned this country into the exact opposite of what the Founders’ words, “being necessary for the security of a free state” say. Instead of being secure, this country has become a profoundly insecure state and society, with responsible, law-abiding citizens being held hostage by what has become a grotesque distortion of the Founders’ intent. No other country in the “developed” world has a higher homicide rate than the United States and the vast majority of homicides in the United States are gun-related. If you buy the logic that it isn’t guns that are killing people, but people who are killing people, then it follows that Americans are significantly more homicidal than residents of other countries. Do you really believe that is true?

Calls for teachers and/or school staff to be armed and, supposedly, at the ready to take down any invading gunman is complete lunacy. Anyone who proposes such an idea has simply not thought it through and/or has no concept of what such a real-life scenario is actually like. Three stark examples of how training and arming a teacher or school staff wouldn’t work is:

(1)   Four armed Seattle-area police officers were sitting in a coffee shop discussing their shifts and schedules when a gunman burst in and shot them all dead. All four of them. If being armed is a way to prevent such tragedies, why didn’t one or more of those officers pull their guns and shoot the shooter? Answer: they did not have time. Not just one didn’t have time, none of the four had time. Not because they weren’t well trained or weren’t competent. It’s because the gunman got the drop on them. On all four of them.

(2)   Four Army officers, eight enlisted personnel and a civilian physician assistant were shot dead and 29 other soldiers and installation staff were wounded by a single gunman at Fort Hood, Texas, a facility that has an arsenal of fire power. How could that happen? I’ll tell you how. The gunman took them all by surprise. He got the drop on them. No one had time to go grab his gun and shoot him.

(3)   A Newtown, Connecticut, woman well trained in the handling and use of firearms, including semi-automatic guns, was shot dead in her home where she had numerous guns. If being armed is the answer, why didn’t she defend herself with her guns?

What school teacher or staff member, going about her or his business – i.e. primary duties – of teaching or tending to the school operations when someone covered from ears to toes in Kevlar storms the building with guns blazing, is going to have time, once she or he realizes what’s going on, to get to where ever his or her gun is kept and get to the location where the gunman is shooting students and teachers and stop him – especially when that teacher/staff person is not protected by bulletproof gear like the gunman is? Even if the teacher or staff person has a loaded gun strapped to his hip, he is going to be on the losing end of the proposition.

Sen. Ron Johnson

Sandy Hook School Massacre

Page 3

NRA head, Wayne LaPierre, said today that the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre “could have been prevented or stopped if there had been armed, trained security personnel on site” and that "The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun." Both statements are pure baloney as the four dead Lakewood, Washington, police officers evince.

Any armed, trained security personnel on site at Sandy Hook Elementary would have been mowed down in less than a second by the shooter who stormed that school – before they could have even gotten a gun raised to get a shot off at him. 

Mass shootings have occurred in other developed countries. Scotland and Australia are examples.

• On March 13, 1996, a man with four handguns walked into a Dunblane, Scotland, elementary school and killed 16 children and one adult, and injured 15 other individuals.
• On April 28, 1996, a gunman killed 35 individuals and wounded 23 in Port Arthur, Australia.

Both countries have proved that the only thing that stops a bad guy is to prevent him from having access to guns. Both Australia and Scotland imposed gun-safety laws after the 1996 massacres in their countries that have effectively eliminated the repeat of such carnage. The conservative prime minister of Australia, which prior to the Port Arthur killings had lax laws regarding firearm access, said in supporting strict gun laws that he didn’t want his country invaded by the “American sickness.”

If guns don’t kill people, what accounts for fact that no mass murders have occurred in those two countries since gun access was limited after those massacres? If it really is people who kill and not guns, what did Scotland and Australia do, aside from restricting gun access, to cause residents in their countries to stop committing mass murder? Don’t you think it has more to do with opportunity, i.e. the availability of high-capacity firearms and ammunition, than any change in the psyche, intent or motivation of those countries’ populations?

I heard a man say a few days ago that calls for more effective gun-safety laws in the wake of the Sandy Hook children’s massacre was a “knee-jerk reaction.” Surely a debate that has raged since the April 20, 1999, shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado in which two shooters killed 13 and wounded 21 – and has been reignited time and time again in the wake of the many subsequent mass murders in this country is anything but a “knee-jerk reaction.”

Australia’s Prime Minister John Howard was right. America is afflicted by a deadly sickness. And too many Americans and public officials are in denial about that sickness, just as so many substance abusers and mentally afflicted individuals are in denial about their addictions and psychoses.

Sen. Ron Johnson

Sandy Hook School Massacre

Page 4

One measure that might be a move toward addressing that sickness is to mandate a background check on any person who buys a firearm, no matter what the venue – gun store, gun show, over the internet, in a personal transaction or by any other means. And put teeth into that law by making any seller – whether individual or commercial enterprise – that does not conduct the required background check subject to the same criminal charges, prosecution and penalties as the person who buys a firearm that is used in a crime.

Again, I beg you to support laws that will serve as an intervention to those who are afflicted with America’s deadly disease and that will accurately reflect the intention of the 2^nd Amendment. By doing so you will be doing a tremendous public service by contributing to saving the lives of others – including little children – who otherwise will be victims in the next mass shooting in this country, and the next one and the next one and the next.

I thank you in honor of the memories of the 20 dead children and six dead adults of Newtown, Connecticut, and on behalf of all the children, teens and adults whose lives you might be able to help save.

Respectfully,

Jerrianne Hayslett

C:       Joe Biden, Vice President of the United States

Dianne Feinstein, Senator, California, United States Senate

          Tammy Baldwin, Senator-Elect, Wisconsin, United States Senate

Gwen Moore, Congresswoman, Wisconsin-Fourth District, United States House of Representatives

Tom Barrett, Mayor, Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Pogo Would Recognize Us

My hometown newspaper, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, often publishes a column or editorial from elsewhere as a counter, parallel or completely unrelated view of the paper's editorial position, which the JS labels "Another View". Such was the case in its Nov. 30 edition.

The paper's editorial headline that day was "GOP claims on tax effects overstated and misleading". The subhead said, "We're not persuaded that a slight increase in the top marginal tax rates will ensnare many 'job creators'." http://www.jsonline.com/news/opinion/gop-claims-on-tax-effects-overstated-and-misleading-pj7rhcc-181450841.html.

The other view, "Obama's demeaning ways don't help the 'job creators', (http://www.jsonline.com/news/opinion/obamas-demeaning-ways-dont-help-the-job-creators-q57relj-181450851.html) was written by a man named Peter Rush, who was identified as the author of Class Tax, Mass Tax. Rush's book bio says he is chairman and CEO of Kellen Company, a global professional services firm and that he has worked as a journalist, teacher, public relations executive and small business owner.

The word that got me was "demeaning," which I considered pejorative and, frankly, whining. Here's the letter I sent to the Journal Sentinel, as yet and probably forever, unpublished:

We have met the job creators and they are us. That play on the "We have met the enemy and it is us" epiphany of Walt Kelly's wise comic character, Pogo, came to mind when I read Peter Rush's "Another View" on Nov. 30's editorial page. Mr. Rush and so many others who have bought into the notion that rich people are "job creators," thus mustn't be taxed too much, (i.e. equal to the rest of us), don't seem to realize that without us, the consumers of goods and services, the wealthy would not be. It is consumers' buying power that enriches corporate owners and CEOs, hedge funders, entertainers and sports stars and rewards them for their talents and good fortune. Rather than demeaning the people Rush, etal, place in such elevated strata, President Obama is recognizing the value and contribution of the "real" working Americans, whom Rush, etc., do demean and don't acknowledge as being the engine of true job-creation power; American workers who deserve to be dignified with adequate pay and benefits.