#gun nuts

Running where: for the Senate, VIC and TAS; for the House, 7 seats in NSW plus Lyons in TAS

Prior reviews: federal 2013, VIC 2014, federal 2016, VIC 2018, NSW 2019, federal 2019, federal 2022, VIC 2022, NSW 2023, WA 2025

What I said before: “Exactly what it says on the tin. The SFF will water down our successful gun control laws, support environmentally destructive policies, back the mining and logging industries, and be a brake on urgently-needed climate action.” (VIC 2018)

What I think this year: The Shooters are primarily an NSW party: they were founded there in 1992 and it is where they concentrated most of their energies in the 1990s and 2000s. They did field some interstate candidates at federal elections, but it was only in the 2010s that they began contesting state elections elsewhere. Since their first NSW state election in 1995, the Shooters have won one seat in the NSW Legislative Council at every election except 1999, and they seemed to be on an upwards trajectory in 2019 when they won three lower-house state seats too. But that soon imploded: one of those three quit, party leader Rob Borsak made offensive comments about her, and when he would not apologise, the other two also walked out.

The Shooters have never been able to turn their success in NSW state politics into success at the federal level, and when they have picked up seats in a couple of other state parliaments it has been thanks to preference harvesting through Group Ticket Voting (a system abolished for Senate voting in 2016, so that voters today have full control over their preferences at federal elections). They have held 1–2 seats in Victoria since 2014, and had one in WA from 2013 to 2021; this was briefly two in 2016–17 after a Liberal defected. The Shooters' statewide tally at a couple of those elections in Victoria and WA would be good to win a seat legitimately under the at-large proportional system used in NSW and introduced this year in WA. Those specific Victorian and WA elections, however, had multi-member regional divisions with higher quotas to win a seat, and the party would almost certainly not have won seats had above-the-line voters been free to allocate their own preferences.

I say all this partly because I enjoy writing electoral history in these reviews, but mainly because I find it a bit bizarre where the Shooters are running candidates this year. Although they are standing in seven (mostly regional) seats in NSW for the House of Representatives, they have not submitted a ticket for the Senate despite this state being their home turf and where they would have the best chance—if a very improbable one—of scoring a seat via a good regional campaign. It’s unlikely they will even make the two-candidate-preferred count in any of the seats they are contesting, let alone win. They contested just two of them in 2022 and got 5.31% in Farrer and 6.37% in Riverina. Meanwhile, they are running Senate tickets in Victoria and Tasmania. I’m surprised not to see the Shooters stand in WA given their history in this state, but after the hiding they got at the state election, not even faintly competitive despite the small quota required to win a seat on the Legislative Council, perhaps their campaigning energies are at a low ebb.

The party’s policies are what you would expect: reckless attitudes about gun ownership, rants that fishers are victims of “green government and bureaucracy gone mad”, and a lot of anti-environmentalist/anti-Greens rhetoric. Like just about every right-wing minor party since 2020, they talk about covid and healthcare with language about “freedom” in the hopes it will secure votes from cookers and conspiracists. And I find it fascinating how pro-mining they are. This is not the party for farmers who are anxious about the effects of resource extraction on their farms and the watercourses on which they depend, despite some lip service to the idea that mining “must never be allowed to permanently affect prime agricultural land or water systems”.

The Shooters’ climate policy is contrarian drivel that sows doubt about established scientific facts by repeating worn-out talking points on natural climatic change and hand-waving about the inevitable side effects of having a human population of seven billion. They insist that any policy on climate change should “not unnecessarily restrict the activities of farmers, resources, transport, manufacturing or any other industry”. Basically, even if there is evidence of serious human-induced climate change that they are willing to accept, they want to play no part in responding to it. It’s the climate policy for Homer Simpsons everywhere asking “can’t someone else do it?”

Finally, I wish the gun-toting right would stop uploading their policies as PDFs (yes this includes you, Katter’s Australian Party) and just put their policies on a normal webpage.

Recommendation: Give the Shooters, Fishers, and Farmers Party a low preference in the House and a weak or no preference in the Senate.

QAnons are so fucking insane. Don't be surprised if you hear "QAnon man killed person because their child was throwing a tantrum in Walmart" in the future.

I mean, some of them already killed their own family. What's stopping them from killing others?

Steve Brodner

* * * *

How things have—and have not—changed.

July 15, 2024

ROBERT B. HUBBELL

A young man two years out of high school used a weapon of war in an attack that sought to deny 70 million Americans the opportunity to vote for the presidential candidate of their choice. The weapon was purchased legally and carried in a public space as allowed by the laws of Pennsylvania. The assailant failed in his objective by a matter of inches. The nation was thus spared the tragedy and chaos that would have followed the assassination of one of the two major party candidates for president.

Many media outlets viewed the attempted assassination through a single lens: How will this affect the horse race of presidential politics? As I wrote earlier this morning, that is the least important question we should be asking ourselves. The question suggests that we are helpless victims being battered by history as we await the outcome of the 2024 election. Not true! We will determine the outcome of the election, but only if we believe in the righteousness of our cause and have confidence in our ability to convince others that our vision of America’s future is the only sane alternative. We can do that. It will take tremendous effort on our part, but we can do it.

I have spent much of the day sifting through articles (forwarded by readers) that describe how Republicans will pervert and distort the message of this tragedy to benefit Trump and hurt Biden politically. Other articles engage in the profound silliness of attempting to quantify how the failed assassination attempt will affect polling. We are not sheep. We are not potted plants. We are flesh and blood human beings with intellect and free will. No one who fears for their reproductive liberty or right to same-sex marriage will suddenly change their mind and vote for Trump because he survived an assassination attempt. Let’s stop the nonsense of attempting to convert an assassination attempt into a polling prediction.

I don’t care what Republicans will or won’t say about the attempted assassination. They have demonstrated that they will lie about everything without shame or limit. Given that steady state, the question is not “What will Republicans say about the attempted assassination?” but “What will we say?” We must stop being reactive and go on offense. The Democratic message is one of truth, hope, sanity, safety, dignity, and compassion. President Biden has the strongest legislative record of any president in 75 years. Let’s shout those truths from the rooftops!

And the last thing that should happen is for Democrats to be cowed into silence or curtail their truthful criticism of Donald Trump. He said he wants to be a “dictator for one day” (which is the same thing as being a dictator, period). He has called for the mass deportation of 10 million immigrants. He has called for the “termination of the Constitution.” He has called for the jailing and persecution of his political opponents by the DOJ. He interfered in an election by paying for the silence of a porn star with whom he had a sexual encounter and has been adjudicated by a jury to be a sexual abuser. He incited and has now excused, condoned, and praised the violent insurrectionists who attempted to prevent the peaceful transfer of power.

No, Joe Biden and Democrats should not relent in speaking the truth of who Donald Trump is and the vision of America he seeks to promote: white Christian nationalism in the service of fascism. He is the same Donald Trump he was before the assassination attempt. The threat to democracy remains the same. The threat to individual liberties and the health and financial security of elderly Americans remains the same. As does the daily menace of mass violence at schools across America.

As Katrina vanden Heuvel wrote in The Guardian,

While we condemn political violence, we should understand that getting shot does not ennoble the target – or transform victims into moral leaders. A presidential race is not a WWW wrestling drama. Trump should be assessed – as anyone who would lead this country – on his behavior, his character, and his agenda. That responsibility does not disappear because someone took a shot at him. The prospect of a Trump presidency was as deeply unsettling before Saturday’s shooting incident – and it remains so after it.

So, what can we do? The hopeful truth is that most Americans (65%) support an assault weapons ban, while a minority (26%) oppose such a ban. See Statista, Support for banning assault-style weapons by party U.S. 2023. If 65% of Americans support an assault weapons ban, why don’t we have one? Answer: The Supreme Court, the “blood money” from gun lobbyists, and gerrymandering that allows the minority to maintain a stranglehold on the majority.

The will of the majority will be frustrated so long as there is no political cost to opposing an assault weapons ban. The moment that opposing an assault weapons ban threatens GOP control over state legislatures, Congress, and the Supreme Court is the moment that an assault weapons ban will pass.

The scale and depravity of gun violence is the US is so immense that people have difficulty in comprehending the true nature of the threat. After mass tragedies, many Americans pay attention for a few weeks and then look away because the reality of gun violence is incomprehensible; it requires sustained effort and discipline to hold the immensity of the threat in mind.

Each of us must make gun safety activism a part of our daily regime. It does not matter how many other causes we join; leaving gun-safety activism to others is no longer acceptable. An assassin’s bullet came within inches of upending the US presidential election and civil order in the US. It is only a matter of time before there is another assault rifle mass shooting in a school, workplace, or public space. It has to stop—and it won’t until gun safety is the top issue in every race.

There are dozens of effective gun safety organizations in the US. Mom’s Demand Action, Everytown for Gun Safety, and Students Demand Action are three affiliated organizations that form the core of the gun safety movement in America. Become a member of a local chapter, participate in grassroots events, or donate on a regular basis to help compete with dark money from gun lobbyists. I invite readers to promote other gun safety organizations in the Comments section.

There is so much more that can and should be said about the failed assassination attempt. David Frum spoke to many readers in his piece in The Atlantic, The Gunman and the Would-Be Dictator. Frum does a masterful job explaining Republican hypocrisy on the violence we just witnessed:

When a madman hammered nearly to death the husband of then–House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Donald Trump jeered and mocked. One of Trump’s sons and other close Trump supporters avidly promoted false claims that Paul Pelosi had somehow brought the onslaught upon himself through a sexual misadventure. After authorities apprehended a right-wing-extremist plot to abduct Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, Trump belittled the threat at a rally. He disparaged Whitmer as a political enemy. His supporters chanted “Lock her up.” Trump laughed and replied, “Lock them all up.” Fascism feasts on violence. In the years since his own supporters attacked the Capitol to overturn the 2020 election—many of them threatening harm to Speaker Pelosi and Vice President Mike Pence—Trump has championed the invaders, would-be kidnappers, and would-be murderers as martyrs and hostages. He has vowed to pardon them if returned to office. His own staffers have testified to the glee with which Trump watched the mayhem on television.

And in truly inspired prose, Frum captures the simultaneous horror of what happened to Trump and the threat he presents to society:

Nobody seems to have language to say: We abhor, reject, repudiate, and punish all political violence, even as we maintain that Trump remains himself a promoter of such violence, a subverter of American institutions, and the very opposite of everything decent and patriotic in American life. [¶] Those who stand against Trump and his allies must find the will and the language to explain why these crimes, past and planned, are all wrong, all intolerable—and how the gunman and Trump, at their opposite ends of a bullet’s trajectory, are nonetheless joined together as common enemies of law and democracy.

Exactly: We must find the “will and the language” to explain how the gunman and Trump are “joined together as common enemies of law and democracy.” And as we raise the alarm, we must also become active members of the gun safety movement. Every one of us. When that happens, gun safety will assume its rightful place as the defining issue of preserving democracy for generations to come.