Toronto gun deaths are up, but still safer than U.S.

This column was going to be written, even before the horribly tragic Aurora movie theater shooting. Excessive heat increases gun violence, and thanks to a mild winter and very hot summer, gun deaths are on the rise, even in Canada’s largest city.

As bad as things are by Toronto standards, they don’t even compare to a typical day in the United States, even if you don’t count mass shootings such as the Aurora shooting.

The difference, though, is that shootings are still a big deal for Canadians, where the victims of mass shootings in the United States disappear from the public eye. Ask yourself if you remember Christina Taylor Green without Googling her name.

For more of a look into gun violence on both sides of the border, check out our perspective from our sister blog, CanadianCrossing.com.

2012 presidential notebook: What if the other Michael Steele and Joe Walsh ruled in politics?

Wouldn’t Michael Steele have made an awesome RNC Chair? You can imagine that Joe Walsh would be a pretty cool Congressman?

We’re not talking about the Michael Steele that was the RNC Chair or the current Congressman named Joe Walsh. We’re referring to their musical counterparts.

Michael Steele plays bass and guitar, most notably with the Bangles, but also briefly with the Runaways. Joe Walsh is a guitar hero, known for the James Gang, Eagles, and a rather excellent solo career.

If the RNC had a female chair, you wouldn’t be seeing quite the War on Women we see today. Despite the stoner, laid-back dude image of the rock singer Joe Walsh, he is actually very smart and politically enlightened.

The Joe Walsh who is running is a teabagger who preaches fiscal responsibility while reportedly owing more than $117,000 in child support. Walsh’s challenger is Tammy Duckworth, Iraq War vet who lost her legs in that war. Duckworth ran for the seat in the 6th Congressional district and lost. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s former chief of staff, has encouraged Duckworth to run for Congress back in 2006. When Obama got into office, Duckworth was picked to serve as the Assistant Secretary of Public and Intergovernmental Affairs for the Department of Veterans Affairs. You might also remember that Duckworth spoke on the third night of the 2008 Democratic National Convention.

On paper, this would be an obvious slam dunk for the Dems. The suburbs are growing more liberal. Obama coattails. Iraq War vet vs. deadbeat dad. However, incumbency — even one built on hypocrisy — requires a more intense effort. Duckworth hopes the second time is the charm.

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We are less than 12 weeks from when Iowa started and you hear people are tired of the Republican race. For a society that puts up with “American Idol,” “The Voice,” “X Factor,” and “So You Think You Can Dance Smarter than a Fifth Grader,” we have a short attention span when it comes to presidential races. True, we haven’t had a long discussion on ideas in this race. The faux pas have dominated the attention because they are more interesting than the ideas.

What do Republicans want to do about health care? Aging infrastructure? Trade deficit with China? Alternative energies? If they know, will they tell us?

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While picking on Florida is as easy as drinking a glass of orange juice, the Stand Your Ground laws are in multiple states. The issue in Florida is that the interpretation of the law is so broad that authorities don’t feel it necessary to arrest George Zimmerman. This isn’t to say that Zimmerman is guilty, but people in this country get arrested on less evidence than we know about Zimmerman. We do have a system of justice that discourages arrest unless you’re really sure, but this case has enough suspicion for questioning, interrogation, and subsequently, arrest.

People are protesting in great part not because they think Zimmerman is guilty, but that Zimmerman hasn’t been arrested. And if this was about a black man, the fear is that the arrest would have happened a long time ago.

We focus our elections microscope on presidents and to some extent, Congress. But what happens in the states matters greatly to the everyday lives of Americans. If Trayvon Martin had lived in a different state, he might still be dead, but at least, George Zimmerman would have been arrested.

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They actually took a poll about whether Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul should drop out. No surprise: a majority said, “Sure. Why not?”

Ron Paul has been severely undercovered in this race. “Well, Ron Paul doesn’t win anything. Newt Gingrich hasn’t won since Georgia.”

Paul probably did win Maine, but there is little interest in finding that out. If he had won Maine, that would help a little. But since the press ignores him, why does it matter? Did it really hurt people to have Mike Gravel in the race in 2008?

Paul is different since he wasn’t expected to win. The issue with Gingrich staying in is two-fold: 1) he thinks he can still win, and 2) his presence has helped Romney, the man he wants to defeat. Gingrich is severely cutting back on his campaign, a sign that he thinks he can’t win in the traditional sense (still holding out hope for a brokered convention).

This is democracy; sometimes the packaging and presentation aren’t pretty. “We want a two-person race.” Well, you have a two-person race. These people are still on the ballot. You could have voted for Rick Perry in Illinois if you wanted to do so. This only happens every four years. Live with it.

Rep. Giffords assassination attempt reminds us that Constitutional rights bring responsibilities

Here is what we know: someone has been charged with the assassination attempt of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ). In the incident, 6 died and 14 were wounded outside a Safeway in Tucson, Arizona last Saturday. And police have said that Rep. Giffords was the target of the assassination attempt.

And we won’t know for some time as to the extent of the long-term injuries that Rep. Giffords have suffered.

This story has guns, magazines, mental illness, gun references in politics, intense political rhetoric, and anger in our media.

We have this exaggerated impression about our first two amendments while the other amendments seems to go by with very little notice. True, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia is paying attention to the 14th Amendment, even if he doesn’t quite get what it means.

And Sarah Palin has confused private business with government in the First Amendment on more than one occasion.

As the Fourth Amendment has been severely damaged and others have been knocked around, the prevailing mood is that the Second Amendment is so pure that a clearly disturbed person can purchase a magazine designed for no other purpose than to kill a bunch of people.

There was a special on former Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey that noted his tenacity in helping to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1965. Of course, this spotlighted the fact that we passed the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments and didn’t enforce those Amendments for 100 years.

Rep. Giffords read the First Amendment as part of the political stunt of reading the Constitution before she went back home to Arizona. Yes, a political stunt not so much in reading the Constitution, but that Congressmen are already required to uphold and defend the Constitution, yet seem to have problems understanding what the words actually mean. Reading them out loud, especially by people who blew off the swearing-in process (where you have to swear to uphold and defend the Constitution), won’t make anyone smarter about what is in the document.

Ironically, we had a situation where the First Amendment — the peaceful right to assemble — was tragically undermined by a narrow take on the Second Amendment in an act designed to intimidate the right of the First Amendment in our society.

This takes us to the second conflict where the threat of the Second Amendment is designed to restrain use of the First Amendment. “Second Amendment remedies” and Congressmen shown as targets in cross hairs — these are examples where threats backed up by the Second Amendment was used to browbeat people into not voting or not voting for the person they wanted in office.

And the MSM, protected by the First Amendment, takes no significant notice of these Second Amendment threats against our democracy. They reward those who use these phrases with more attention and don’t have any sense of deploring little if any concern for violent imagery.

The event marred by the assassination attempt on Rep. Giffords was the truest example of the First Amendment — peacefully assembled to participate in democracy. In the United States, we have a representative democracy; they represent us in Washington. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was exercising that right, as were the people who came down to see her outside a grocery store on a Saturday morning. Some of those people died in the exchange, including a federal judge, a 9-year-old who was learning about politics, and at least one Republican who may have disagreed with Giffords’ stands, but liked the Congresswoman for who she was. Others were shot participating in democracy, but will likely live through the experience.

Constitutional rights bring responsibilities. We had an assault weapon ban, but Congress (under GOP rule) didn’t renew it. We have a MSM that doesn’t discourage violent imagery in political conversation and landscape. They have rights granted by the Constitution, but not the level of responsibility. In the reading of the Constitution, responsibility got left out of the debate.

For our country to be strong, we need to match Constitutional rights with democratic (small d) responsibilities. Saturday’s shooting proves we aren’t even close.

graphic courtesy of SarahPAC.com.