Thus the difference between the Old Country and the New: There, anti-Semitism was ubiquitous and guns scarce. Here, anti-Semitism is scarce — though virulent where it exists — and guns ubiquitous.

So the routine centers of daily life — schools, camps, temples — must now become “hard targets.” It’s America, Jake, where life in a bunker is just the price we pay to enjoy the freedoms of the Second Amendment.

We still don’t know very much about the suspect, Buford Furrow, except that he had in his van all the regalia of a paramilitary fruitcake — the ammo, the grenades, the fatigues, the survivalist tracts — and that the North Valley Jewish Community Center was a little off his beaten track in rural Washington state. What I do know is that after the Benjamin Smith shootings in Chicago, and now in Los Angeles — whatever the shooter’s motives turn out to have been — a certain ease and freedom have gone out of Jewish life, as, since Columbine and the other shootings, they have gone out of the lives of schoolchildren. What I know is, whether or not America is undergoing a crisis of values, which nobody has the faintest idea how to remedy in any case, it most surely has fallen prey to a crisis of gun violence, which we actually do know how, over time, to defuse — if only our legislators would stand up to the NRA.

But our legislators — more particularly, the Republican majority in Congress — hear the popping of Uzis and conclude the culprit is the absence of faith: Use a gun and we’ll post the Ten Commandments on your wall. Yet, the rates of religious observance and belief in the United States greatly exceed those of any nation of Western Europe, while our rate of gun violence greatly exceeds theirs, too. GOP logic notwithstanding, the incidence of gun violence is higher here because the incidence of gun ownership is higher here. The pattern holds true within our borders, too: Our most God-fearing region, the South, is also our most gun-toting, and historically our most violent.

None of this is to deny that a hollow materialism and a corrosive individualism and the atomism of suburban life and the waning of a stable work life are creating a disconnected nation with some dangerously disconnected citizens. But what distinguishes the New Land from the Old Country — at Columbine, Atlanta and Granada Hills — is less that we’re America the Anomic than that we’re America the Armed. Loose screws rattle around every nation; only here do they command a platoon’s worth of firepower to unleash on 5-year-olds.

At first glance, such reductionism seems logical, rational, even boringly uncontroversial. But two recent news items highlight how in a globalized economy, there are troubling consequences that come from the particular kind of export economy we’re building.

The first bit of news came from the Washington Post, which this week reported that “the Obama administration is crafting a proposal that could make it easier to export firearms and other weapons.” Though the Homeland Security and Justice Departments say the new rules could make it easier for terrorist and drug cartels to further arm themselves, the White House is nonetheless citing the “stuff” theory of exports to ignore the objections.

This is part of a larger pattern since President Obama took office. During Obama’s first year in the White House, he began to gut the Pentagon’s approval process for arms exports, weakening controls on what could and could not be sold. Later, diplomatic cables uncovered by WikiLeaks showed, as Fortune magazine put it, “American officials act(ing) as de facto pitchmen for U.S.-made weapons.”

The result is that America has become the true “Lord of War,” as the arms dealer motto goes. We are the leading arms supplier to the developing world and we are responsible for the majority of all weapons sales across the globe. Yes, we are so committed to selling instruments of death to the rest of the planet that military industries have almost tripled their share of the U.S. economy in just a decade.

The second bit of news came from the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, whose new study shows that America is exporting our obesity crisis to Mexico. Coupling health statistics with U.S. export data since the North American Free Trade Agreement tore down Mexico’s agriculture trade barriers, researchers found that the Mexican market was flooded by American agribusinesses’ taxpayer subsidized commodities (corn, soybeans) and their processed derivatives. According to the report, that quickly wiped out Mexico’s local food economy, leaving its food system exactly “like the industrialized food system of the United States — characterized by the overabundance of obesogenic foods.” Not surprisingly, Mexican obesity rates have consequently skyrocketed.

Taken together, these export booms represent what could be called America’s new Guns and Butter economy. We are so desperate to export any “stuff” we can, we are now fattening up the world and arming it for permanent bloodshed.

Seeking to short-circuit any objections to this trend, President Obama has said simply that “we’re at a moment where necessity has tempered the old debates” over exports and economic policy. In terms of history, he’s not wrong — during the previous century, America witnessed fevered fights over what constitutes a moral farm policy, and in the 1930s the U.S. Senate’s Nye Committee held almost 100 hearings into “greedy munitions interests” that were unduly influencing public policy. Sadly, Obama is correct – those debates have been silenced.

But should they be? Should we simply say that any exports — no matter their moral, ethical, environmental or health implications — are inherently good? Does “necessity” really mean that “stuff” for stuff’s sake must be the basis of our export economy?

Washington and profit-at-all-cost industries certainly say yes — but that doesn’t mean it’s the right answer.

ALEC is now shutting down its “Public Safety and Elections” task force. ALEC’s Public Safety and Elections task force’s goals were twofold: to improve “public safety” by making it easier for citizens to carry guns everywhere they go and to shoot certain people without fear of arrest or prosecution, and to improve elections by making it harder for politically undesirable types to exercise their right to vote. (Why were gun rights and voter disenfranchisement the purview of one task force? Those two issues really have very little in common besides being of supreme importance to paranoid white people.)

What happened is, people suddenly noticed that self-defense laws had recently become much more “robust” (slash-”insane”) in lots of states after this guy in Florida named George Zimmerman shot and killed an unarmed black teenager named Trayvon Martin and then somehow was not arrested. These new self-defense laws were widely blamed for the police reaction, or non-reaction, and while the NRA had predictably lobbied for them in the various states where they passed, it turned out that ALEC had been instrumental in drafting these laws and others like them that had nothing to do with being “pro-business” but everything to do with quietly remaking the nation into a right-wing paradise.

So major corporations began abandoning ALEC, because they hadn’t signed on for the full right-wing culture war. While Coca-Cola has a vested interest in, say, stopping public health initiatives, there’s no compelling profit-based reason for it to support the dismantling of gun control legislation. People do not get thirstier when they are carrying concealed firearms, as far as I know. Kraft does not, as a company, have any interest in making it more difficult for poor people to vote.

So! ALEC is giving up on the items of its agenda not directly related to helping giant corporations make as much money as possible without fear of lawsuits or union agitation. Because those are less “hot-button” issues.

That’s a slam-dunk argument, right there. And she’s not even done!

Klein suggested that if Cain is innocent he should sue White for libel and went on to attack the media for digging up the allegations. She also said that in politics, “we want a virgin to do a hooker’s job.”

Yes! Herman Cain is a hooker. But a hooker with a heart of gold, and the constitution to resist harassing or assaulting Lori Klein, a noted attractive woman!

Klein is, of course, an expert in what constitutes appropriate, professional behavior among adults, as she proved when she took a loaded gun out of her purse and pointed it at a newspaper reporter who was attempting to interview her in a state Senate lounge.

Lori Klein is a rising star in the GOP. Remember her name. Or she’ll shoot you, for being a Mexican.

[Via Ben Smith]

The NRA has homed in on Operation Fast and Furious in order to advance its agenda of undermining not just Holder but the president. The misguided operation, run by ATF officials reporting to the Justice Department, encouraged Arizona gun dealers to sell weapons to “straw purchasers,” with the hopes of tracing the weapons to the Mexican cartels. ATF lost track of many of the guns, and some surfaced at crime scenes on both sides of the Mexican border, including one involving the murder of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry last year in Arizona.

Bent on getting this latest ad circulated, the NRA is soliciting funds to air it, and has posted this on the website:

“Watch the video and see how Eric Holder’s lies are destroying freedom and costing lives. Please make a donation to help NRA-ILA air this video across America. And please, forward this video to family and friends!”

The group’s  outrage over guns getting into the hands of the bad guys under Fast and Furious would be slightly more plausible if the NRA ever expressed any concern about U.S. gun laws that effectively armed the Mexican drug cartels with heavy weaponry.

The NRA’s critics note that the powerful gun lobby, based in northern Virginia, has essentially accomplished the same evil as Fast and Furious by lobbying hard — and taking legal action if necessary — to water down tough U.S. gun laws and regulations. The NRA is particularly determined to undermine its nemesis, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which enforces gun laws.

The NRA has adamantly fought ATF regulations that require gun dealers in four Southwest border states to report sales of two or more assault weapons to one person within five days. The NRA also helped derail the confirmation of  Obama nominee Andrew Traver for director of ATF, which has been in dire need of stability. The NRA opposes strict handgun control laws in such cities as Washington that have high rates of gun violence.

“I think the NRA has to have something to scare their members about and attacking Obama and more specifically Holder is part of that plan,”said Kristen Rand, legislative director for the Violence Policy Center in Washington.

Rand says the NRA has conveniently homed in on the guns in Operation Fast and Furious, while ignoring “the hundreds of thousands of other guns that have flooded Mexico and killed tens of thousand of Mexicans.”  And she noted that the  NRA has been mum about news in recent days that  a similar ATF gun-walking operation — Operation Wide Receiver — was pursued under the Bush administration and Attorney General Mike Mukasey.

“They’re not upset about that,” she said.  “They’re directly threatened by another Holder-Obama administration,” and using it to help fundraise.

Few contest the downside of Operation Fast and Furious.

“This operation was flawed in concept, as well as in execution,” Holder told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday. “And, unfortunately, we will feel its effects for years to come as guns that were lost during this operation continue to show up at crime scenes both here and in Mexico. This should never have happened. And it must never happen again. ”

“The American public needs to know the whole truth on this,” said NRA president Wayne LaPierre  in a video last June. “The fact is, that brings us to the consequences, these guns are now, as a result of what they did, in the hands of evil people and evil people are committing murders and crimes with these guns against innocent citizens.”

The whole truth is that lax U.S. gun laws — supported by the NRA — are what have helped the Mexican drug cartels to arm themselves and slaughter law enforcement officers, rivals and innocent people.

“The NRA has been devoted to assure that our gun laws remain anemic, ” said Dennis Henigan, acting president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.  ”The NRA is not really interested in stopping the gun trafficking.”

“In large buildings with multiple rooms and lots of people, you need to have some feeling among the staff, as well as the public, that it’s a secure place, particularly where it’s used a lot by children,” said library-district director Harry Courtright, who retired Friday.
[...]
In his 12 years with the district, Courtright said there have been no incidents of a guard drawing a gun.

“And they shouldn’t have to, because they have the training. But that gun makes a difference to the people who are coming in the building who might want to do something that could be bad; they see an armed guard, and the reality is they back off and they don’t do things – it’s a preventative thing,” he said.

Right! Which is why all large libraries in big cities have armed private guards in them. Right, Phoenix libraries?

Interviews with officials at city-run libraries in the Valley that don’t belong to the county district indicate that armed guards are uncommon.

In Mesa, library-security guards are unarmed. The topic of arming them has never come up, said city spokeswoman Lily King-Cisneros.

“If there is a problem, they call the police,” she said.

Chandler’s libraries have a simple behavior policy to follow up on negative behavior, Manager Brenda Brown said.

Chandler employs security guards sparingly: Park rangers help during high-traffic times at the Downtown Library, while at Hamilton and Basha branches, both located on school campuses, security guards are present for a few hours following schools’ closing times. None is armed.

“Most of our behavior issues take place downtown, and police are less than a block away. We call them quite often and quite frequently,” Brown said, adding that stolen bikes are a common problem but threats to librarians are rare.

Phoenix, which has 16 libraries, trains its own guards, who are city employees and unarmed.

Incidents are rare even at the Burton Barr Central Library, where the surrounding neighborhood has a high number of homeless people, said Lupita Barron-Rios, acting deputy director for public services.

“For the most part, we don’t have a lot of incidents that require calling the police,” Barron-Rios said.

Barron-Rios said police are called when a patron’s car or bicycle is stolen.

Of course, none of these minor behavioral issues and occasional thefts would happen at all if literally every person in that library, from the children to the librarians to the homeless people, was carrying a clearly displayed handgun. It’s just a fact.

Is this armed guard program controversial? It wasn’t, until one library made a fuss.

Doesn’t Southwest Regional Library in Gilbert, Ariz., look like a lovely place? Looks can be deceiving! This library is suffering from a rash of “hostile encounters with irate patrons over late fees and other issues,” which is why the town decided to reinstate the guards they let go for funding reasons last year. But! “Town officials contend that the library district never told them of the plans to arm the guards once funding was restored …” I feel like town officials should’ve understood that they’re dealing with Maricopa County, here. There were going to be guns involved, no matter what.

[Via Michel Marizco]