Mountain Views News, Combined Edition Saturday, August 17, 2019

11

Mountain View News Saturday, August 17, 2019 


TOM PURCELL

MOUNTAIN 
VIEWS

NEWS

PUBLISHER/ EDITOR

Susan Henderson

PASADENA CITY 
EDITOR

Dean Lee 

PRODUCTION

SALES

Patricia Colonello

626-355-2737 

626-818-2698

WEBMASTER

John Aveny 

DISTRIBUTION

CONTRIBUTORS

Mary Lou Caldwell

Kevin McGuire

Chris Leclerc

Bob Eklund

Howard Hays

Paul Carpenter

Kim Clymer-Kelley

Christopher Nyerges

Peter Dills 

Rich Johnson

Lori Ann Harris

Rev. James Snyder

Dr. Tina Paul

Katie Hopkins

Deanne Davis

Despina Arouzman

Jeff Brown

Marc Garlett

Keely Toten

Dan Golden

Rebecca Wright

Hail Hamilton

Joan Schmidt

LaQuetta Shamblee

SOCIAL 
MEDIA? 
MORE 
LIKE 
ANTI-
SOCIAL 
MEDIA

 

“I can’t 
take it anymore! My social media 
friends are driving me batty!” 

 “Ah, yes, you speak of a recent 
Pew Research Center survey that 
found ‘46% of adult social media 
users say they feel ‘worn out by 
political posts and discussions they 
see on social media’ - a share that 
‘has risen 9 percentage points since 
the summer of 2016, when the 
Center last asked this question.’”

 “I sure am worn out. Half of my 
online friends hate one political 
party, half of them hate the other. 
Personally, I’ve come to dislike 
both parties!”

 “It’s becoming regrettably unusual 
for anyone to have online friends 
who hold differing views, which is 
an awful shame.”

 “You want shame? Post anything, 
positive or negative, about 
President Trump or Bernie Sanders 
and see what happens. Whatever 
happened to decorum?”

 “It’s being replaced by growing 
intolerance of differing viewpoints. 
The Aspen Institute explains why: 
Our technologies make us more 
connected to each other than at any 
time in history. We learn news as it 
breaks and can instantly message 
thousands of people at once.”

 “Like what I had for breakfast? 
Even our grub has become divisive! 
A little hint: Don’t share your love 
of bacon online unless your safe 
house is ready!”

 “Aspen rightly points out that our 
incredible new tools should help 
us build bridges and discuss new, 
different ideas with new people 
everywhere to strengthen and 
improve our social fabric, but the 
reverse is happening. These tools 
are encouraging us to connect with 
like-minded people and ‘unfriend’ 
everyone else.”

 “Maybe so, but there are 
exceptions. I ‘friended’ a group of 
fellow beer lovers on Facebook. 
We get together every Friday to 
share homemade brews. Half 
are Republicans and half are 
Democrats, but we never argue.”

 “Never?”

 “Not when you burp as often as 
we do!”

 “The Pew survey has findings 
across major demographic groups. 
It says white social media users 
(52%) are grumpier about political 
posts than nonwhite users (36%).”

 “I’d try to say something witty 
here, but half of my friends would 
hate it, half would like it, and I’d 
have to go incognito to reach my 
safe house.”

 “Further, says Pew, ‘Republicans 
and Republican-leaning 
independents are somewhat 
more likely than Democrats and 
Democratic leaners to say they are 
worn out by the political posts they 
encounter on social media (51% vs. 
43%).”

 “I’d try to say something witty 
here, too, but I’d have to go 
incognito to reach my safe house.”

 “A key takeaway from the survey 
is that all social media users are 
‘more likely today than in the past 
to describe the political discourse 
on these platforms in negative 
terms.’”

 “Thank goodness some people 
still have a sense of humor online. 
Like whoever did that post with 
an elderly gentleman in a chair 
who says, ‘Life is short. Make sure 
you spend it arguing politics with 
strangers on the internet.’”

 “That’s funny! Look, most 
reasonable people agree we are 
misusing our technologies, making 
us more tribal and insular, not 
less. That’s why our discourse 
has reached a fever pitch. But we 
need reason and clear-headed 
discussions to address growing 
challenges. Otherwise, we will 
continue to shred the fabric of our 
civilization. We must do better.”

 “You’re right. But everybody else 
is going to have to brew more beer. 
No way can our little group brew 
enough to bring the whole internet 
together!”

 Tom Purcell, author of “Misadventures 
of a 1970’s Childhood,” a humorous 
memoir available at amazon.com, is 
a Pittsburgh Tribune-Review humor 
columnist.


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LEFT TURN/RIGHT TURN

MICHAEL REAGAN

32 SECONDS TO MAKE THE 
CASE FOR BANNING ASSAULT 
WEAPONS

JOHN MICEK


SHOOTING DOWN 

CALIFORNIA’S AMMO LAW


Thirty-two seconds.

That’s how long it took for the madman responsible 
for the carnage in Dayton, Ohio to shoot 
26 people, killing nine, including his sister, and 
wounding 17 more before he was killed by police.

According to CNN, the Dayton shooter (he will 
not be identified here) was armed with a 223-caliber 
high-capacity rifle with 100-round drum 
magazines. As USA Today reports, the “AR” variants 
used in Dayton and the El Paso killing that 
claimed 22 lives barely 24 hours earlier, were legal, as were the high-
capacity magazines employed in the shootings.

“Those rifles usually come with 30 or fewer rounds in a magazine. But 
increasingly gun manufacturers have catered to shooters looking to 
have 40, 60 or 100-round magazines that traditionally were shunned 
because they were heavy and cumbersome,” USA Today noted.

These weapons of war are so far past what the Founders, who lived 
in an age of muskets, envisioned when they crafted the Constitution. 
These semi-automatic weapons, with their extended magazines, aren’t 
intended for hunting, or self-defense, or even sport shooting. Their 
only purpose is to kill as many people as possible, as quickly as possible.

Recognizing this, the United States banned these weapons for a decade, 
from 1994 to 2013.

We need a new ban. And we need it now.

As NPR reports, the old ban, formally known as the Public Safety and 
Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act, “prohibited the manufacture 
or sale for civilian use of certain semi-automatic weapons that 
could be converted to fire automatically. The act also banned magazines 
that could accommodate 10 rounds or more.”

In an Aug. 11 op-ed for the New York Times, former Vice President 
Joe Biden, who was chairman of the U.S Senate Judiciary Committee 
when the original ban was enacted, summed up the argument expertly.

“We have a huge problem with guns,” Biden wrote. “Assault weapons 
- military-style firearms designed to fire rapidly - are a threat to our 
national security, and we should treat them as such. Anyone who pretends 
there’s nothing we can do is lying - and holding that view should 
be disqualifying for anyone seeking to lead our country.”

As PolitiFact notes, “in raw numbers,” researchers at New York University’s 
medical school found that mass shootings decreased when the 
ban was in effect and rose afterward.

In fact, “the death toll from mass shootings went from 4.8 per year 
during the ban years to 23.8 per year afterwards.” Still experts are split 
on whether there was a causal effect between the ban and a reduction 
in gun deaths.

But “that doesn’t mean that the ban was ineffective - only that we don’t 
know and probably cannot determine the answer given that the outcome 
of interest (mass shootings) is so rare,” Duke University expert 
Philip Cook told PolitiFact.

As The Hill reports, momentum for a ban is growing in the majority-
Democrat House. It will be a far harder lift in the majority-Republican 
Senate. But that doesn’t mean the House should not act.

There is a baseline case to advance a new, and constitutional, assault 
weapons ban. If we had one before, we can have one again. And if the 
data shows even a modest reduction in deaths, that’s an outcome good 
for society as a whole.

As lawmakers on Capitol Hill debate a potential federal ban, they can 
strengthen it in two very important ways: by authorizing a gun buyback 
and extending any sunset provision included in the new ban. 
In the 1990s, backers were forced to capitulate on both fronts so they 
could cobble together the votes to pass it.

An assault weapons ban won’t solve everything. Fighting gun violence 
requires a holistic approach that includes expanded background 
checks, extreme risk protection orders, and earlier identification and 
treatment for those who might be inclined to carry out horrific acts of 
violence.

But those are still only half-measures if the weapons of war that enable 
the wholesale slaughter of innocents in mere seconds are still readily 
and easily available.

America banned these weapons once and was safer for it. We can do 
it again.

Dove season opens in California and across the U.S. on Sept. 1. 

For as long as I can remember, all I had to do when dove season rolled 
around each year was oil my 1970s-vintage shotgun, buy a case or two 
of shells at the nearby Big Five sports store and drive toward the Arizona 
border with my hunting buddies for a few happy days of shooting. 

But thanks to a proposition approved by 63 percent of Californians in 2016 and the leftist 
Democrat lawmakers in Sacramento who’ve been wrecking the state for 40 years, dove season 
this year will be much more complicated. 

A new state law aimed at reducing gun violence took effect on July 1 that requires anyone 
who buys ammo for any kind of gun to first pass a state background check. 

If you’re one of California’s 4.5 million gun owners who has bought a gun recently, it’s no 
big deal. 

You are already in the state’s database as a registered gun owner, so you don’t need to clear 
another background check. 

But if you’re someone like me who hasn’t purchased a gun since the 1970s, when you could 
buy a deer rifle or shotgun at Sears as easily as buying a lawn mower, you’re in for some 
serious bureaucratic torture. 

Before I can buy the shotgun shells I’ll need this year, I have to go to a state-licensed vendor 
(a sporting goods store), give them all my information, show them my California driver’s ID 
and then pass a background check that takes anywhere from 3 to 30 days to clear. 

After I pass my $19 background check I have 30 days to buy the shotgun shells I’ll need. If 
after 30 days I need to buy more shells, I’ll have to pay another $19 for another background 
check. 

The DMV-like process of buying ammo in California is bad enough, but if I’m not careful 
about how or where I get my shotgun shells, I could become a criminal. 

Let’s say I’m out in the field next month and I run out of shells after a day or two of shooting. 

According to the new law, the only place I’d be allowed to buy more shells is at the same 
sports store where I passed my background check – which would be a hundred miles away. 

What if I asked one of my hunting buddies to give me a box of his shells? 

Good idea, but if he gives them to me he’ll break the new ammo law because he didn’t do a 
background check on me first. 

A person from a less liberal state like Pennsylvania might ask, “Why don’t you just go out of 
state to Arizona and buy your shells there?” 

It’s a perfectly sensible idea – except that if you are caught bringing more than 90 rounds of 
ammo into California you can go to jail. 

And don’t think you are free to order your ammunition online. Manufacturers aren’t allowed 
to ship directly to individuals in the state, just to licensed ammunition vendors like 
Big Five. 

The end result of all this anti-ammo-madness is that somehow on Sept. 1 all of us will be 
breaking the law at some point by sharing shotgun shells.

-

Michael Reagan is the son of President Ronald Reagan, a political consultant, and the author 
of “Lessons My Father Taught Me: The Strength, Integrity, and Faith of Ronald Reagan.” 
He is the founder of the email service reagan.com and president of The Reagan Legacy 
Foundation. Visit his websites at www.reagan.com and www.michaelereagan.com. 

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