As I continue my recovery from face planting into the front of a car, I did something I never have a chance to do. I watched a Rhode Island House Judiciary Committee hearing on proposed firearms legislation. Clearly I am not living my best life.
Full disclosure, I and my RICLAPP associates testified before this Committee in 2014 regarding legislation for my legal services organization. The reasons for our testimony are detailed in my book. Notice my lack of shame over a cheesy book plug.
The ostensible purpose of these hearings was to solicit information from the public, either from individuals or from community groups. From the information gleaned during these hearings, the committee, by individual members or collectively, will be better able to reach consensus from which to better serve the public interest.
That’s the theory. Reality can be, and often is, different. Legislation is often moved or stymied for reasons different from its merits. If you read my book (another shameless plug - I’m getting pretty good at this!), you’d know that both chambers of the Rhode Island General Assembly are driven by their leadership. Put another way, each legislator has their agenda, all agendas are equal, but some agendas are more equal than others. This is evidence that high school runs deep in all of us.
Permit a simple hypothetical. I am second-term legislator, a member of the majority party controlling the chamber. I have my agenda of issues which are important to me and my constituents. I write a bill, submit it to the clerk, and it is referred to the appropriate committee with jurisdiction over bills such as mine. Now, let the games begin. And, “may fortune ever be in my favor.” This is where high school morphs into the Hunger Games.
Being in my hypothetical second term, I‘ve learned a few things. One is that I need co-sponsors to my bill. And not just any co-sponsors but ones with juice. My ability to do that will go a long way regarding how my bill is regarded by leadership. However, before I can get on the leader’s radar, I first have to make nice with the leader’s Praetorian Guard, the Chair of the committee that will first review my bill. There is one truism here - leaders control what is heard, what never gets heard, whether to hold the bill (laughingly for further study or until the resurrection of another Lazarus), or (and here’s my holy grail) onto the floor for a vote on the merits.
This vote is my holy grail because once it gets to this point, the chances that it won’t prevail, at least in an amended if not original form, are slim and none. And if I prevail to this point, because we have a bicameral legislature, I’m half-way home. The same process will likely be followed in some form in the other chamber. If I’m smart, I managed to get a member of the second chamber to sponsor my legislation in her chamber, where the same process will be repeated.
Now that this looks more like bi-level chess, let’s add a few other considerations. Recall that each member of my legislative chamber has an agenda. That goes for the committee’s Chair as well as other members of the committee hearing my bill. So how does my brilliantly noble idea mesh with theirs? In the scheme of things in that committee, if my bill runs afoul of the Chair and his philosophy, agenda, and internal and external political realities, I’m probably not going to fare well, even if I’m a solid supporter of the whole leadership team.
Other considerations: is there a financial component to my bill, and if so, how much? Even the sense that there might be will earn a referral to the chamber’s Finance Committee for a determination of whether it’s going to incur costs and if so how much, or it has no costs, or it’s revenue neutral. The last two are ok, the first finding is likely the kiss of death.
More considerations: how does this legislation impact the political galaxy comprised of the political agendas and viewpoints of the other members of the chamber? Who’s for and who’s against my bill? And assuming I can figure that calculus, can I do anything to mitigate any known opposition? And, is there an unseen external force opposed to my bill about which I’m not aware? If you haven’t read my book yet, it’s helpful to do so now!
And then, the question of all questions: what does leadership of both chambers think of my bill? This is where some agendas are really more equal than others is played out in stark relief. At this point forget my book and dig out “Animal Farm.”
At this point we’ve gone from the relative checkers game played in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, through bi-level chess, to tri-level chess on steroids. I was once told that legislation often takes multiple tries over multiple years before it will ever get passed, if passed at all. This results in the pace of meaningful change to be not merely incremental, but glacial.
From the 1920s to the early 1940s, the criminal syndicate dubbed the National Syndicate, an amalgam of Italian-American and Jewish American crime families, employed an outside criminal organization popularly known as Murder Inc. as the Syndicate’s enforcers. By all accounts it was a name well deserved.
In the 1980s, Bruce Springsteen wrote the song “Murder Incorporated,” not as a tribute to a former gang but as commentary on modern American life. The opening verse goes:
Bobby's got a gun that he keeps beneath his pillow
Out on the street your chances are zero
Take a look around you
It ain't too complicated
You're messin' with Murder Incorporated
Bobby lives on the increasing mean streets of too many communities in America. He lives in a constant state of fear that without the gun he keeps under his pillow his chances to survive to the next day would be zero. Fear is his life. Bobby’s fear forces him to get a gun, believing it’s his only chance to survive in his neighborhood and in his home.
And it’s this fear that instead of preventing violence, contributes to it’s expansion. Bobby may soon think that he needs a bigger, more powerful weapon. And perhaps multiple weapons would make him feel safer but in reality places him in more danger of meeting the violence that he seeks to avoid.
The next verse goes:
Now you check over your shoulder everywhere that you go
Walkin' down the street there's eyes in every shadow
You better take a look around you
That equipment you got's so outdated
You can't compete with Murder Incorporated
Everywhere you look now, Murder Incorporated
Bobby realizes that he hasn’t enough firepower. Maybe a semi-automatic weapon would be the ticket. Maybe he should get a conversion kit to turn his semi-automatic into a full automatic. He’ll need the proper ammunition to achieve full security. But that might not be enough to safeguard to violence all around him.
The last two verses tell the story:
So you keep a little secret down deep inside your dresser drawer
For dealin' with the heat you're feelin' out on the killin' floor
No matter where you step you feel you're never out of danger
So the comfort that you keep's a gold-plated-snub-nose-thirty-two
I heard that you
You got a job downtown, man that leaves your head cold
Everywhere you look life ain't got no soul
That apartment you live in feels like it's just a place to hide
When you're walkin' down the street you won't meet no one eye to eye
Now the cops reported you as just another homicide
I can tell that you was just frustrated
From livin' with Murder Incorporated
So what happened? Did Bobby snap, fearful of every body and everything? Maybe with all his faux courage born of having his own gun, he confronts the wrong guy, or guys. Did his frustration boil over, drawing attention that he sought to avoid?
Whatever the direct reason, the chain of events that brought Bobby to his demise was born of fear. Fear permeates our culture so profoundly that the only way too many people can feel “safe” is to have a gun for protection. Whether a simple handgun or a semi-automatic assault style long-gun, too many of us feel unsafe in our own communities and homes. Four hundred thirty million guns of all sorts exist in a nation of three hundred thirty million Americans.
In our rapidly expanding grievance culture, these killing machines allow some of us to destroy the real and perceived sources of our grievances. This in turn has led to the mass shootings of schools, houses of worship, music concerts, and birthday parties.
And recently we have seen that four young people were shot, one of them killed, because they were simply in the wrong place. One was a young Missouri high school student who went to the wrong house to pick up his younger brother. A second involved a young woman in upstate New York who was in a car that turned around in a residential driveway, and was killed when the homeowner opened fire on the vehicle, killing her. A third was a high school cheerleader who mistakenly tried to enter the wrong vehicle, whereupon recognizing her mistake withdrew from the car only to be shot at and wounded by the vehicle’s occupant. The fourth was a North Carolina child who was shot retrieving a ball that inadvertently landed in a neighbor’s yard.
Four kids, three wounded and one killed, all because it was easier or safer to shoot at them than merely ask why they were at the wrong place. This is the corruption of the soul, unwittingly abetted by a seemingly impotent political system. Can anyone think that the political process described above is even remotely equipped to tackle all the issues leading to the destruction of our national culture?
This is the first of a multipart series discussing some of the issues raised by these shootings. This is a complex social, political, and legal problem that cannot be addressed by binary ”solutions.” Part II will examine some of the issues raised in the Judiciary committee hearing.
Until then keep this in mind: according to data reported by the Pew Foundation, 79% of all murders in the United States in 2020 involved a firearm. Maybe Bruce is right and we live in a Murder Incorporated inspired society.
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