I'm Mother Jones' engagement editor and Tumblrizer, specializing in explanatory journalism and new-media reporting. As a Navy vet and ex-Iraq contractor, I'm also committed to articulating all things martial—good, bad, and weird—to new audiences.
Adam Weinstein is Mother Jones' engagement editor, having previously served the magazine as its national security reporter and copy editor. Before that, he worked at the Wall Street Journal, the Village Voice, and the Tallahassee Democrat. He's written for the New York Times, New York magazine, GQ, and Newsweek. A Navy veteran, two-day Jeopardy champion and ex-political scientist, he also did a recession-fueled stint as a military contractor in Iraq. For more about Adam and his writing, click here.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Gen. Martin DempseyDOD photo
If the United States had previously allowed women to serve officially in military combat roles, including special operations forces, there might be fewer sexual assaults in the armed services, the Pentagon's top general told reporters Thursday.
Having studied the issue of rampant sexual misconduct in the ranks, Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, noted that he has concluded that the phenomenon exists partly because women have been subordinated to men in military culture: "It's because we've had separate classes of military personnel."
Rick Perry, Louie Gohmert, Rand Paul, Ted Nugent, and more star in our roundup of the oddest and most offensive reactions to the president's gun-control proposals.
From the House's new impeachment caucus to the lone-wolf "lock and load" government resisters, Mother Jones is compiling the craziest of the right-wing reactions to President Obama's gun violence initiatives. Got more suggestions? Add them in the comments.
The Insurrection Caucus
Ted Nugent, troubadour
The bowhunting guitarist took to airwaves to declare war on "Eric gun-running Holder, Hillary no-security-for-Clinton, and Barack ACORN Obama, and all of these leftist minions," exhorting listeners to stock up on holsters and AR-15s:
We want Eric Holder arrested…We want Hillary Clinton arrested…We want to know where Barack Obama got the authority to spend like a drunken maniac and blowtorch all these tax dollars following the Cloward-Piven and Saul Alinsky playbook to destroy the last, best quality of life in the world and it's called the United States of America. Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and Eric Holder are the enemy of the state.
James Yeager, Tactical Response CEO
After incorrectly assuming that President Obama was going to ban assault weapons by executive order, the tactical-weapons trainer vented on YouTube: "Fuck that. I'm telling you that if that happens it's gonna spark a civil war, and I'll be glad to fire the first shot…I am not letting my country be ruled by a dictator, I'm not letting anybody take my guns. If it goes one inch further, I'm gonna start killing people." Yeager has since had his gun-carry license yanked by the Tennessee Department of Safety.
"Oathkeeer 151"
In this heavy-metal infused video that interposes shots of Obama with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a self-described New Jersey police officer and Oathkeeper exhorts his fellow peace officers to disobey illegal orders: "There might be a time in the near future, for instance, if this…Feinstein bill gets through, and what if she doesn't has the votes, and now it gets passed up to the president, and he signs it by executive fiat? What are you gonna do? It's a law now. What are you gonna do?" Fortunately, since POTUS didn't issue such an executive fiat, the issue is moot.
In a 1,747-word December manifesto, the Oathkeepers founder argued "that our semi-automatic, military pattern rifles are the single most important kind of arm we can own," and pledged "to refuse compliance with any and all laws that attempt to strip me and my children of those arms, the full capacity magazines needed to load and fire them, or the parts and ammunition needed to keep them firing…We will not disarm, we will not comply, and we will resist."
Alex Jones, truther
The enfant terrible of conspiracy theorists used great white sharks and hot spittle to warn CNN's Piers Morgan that "1776 will commence again if you try to take our firearms! It doesn't matter how many lemmings you get out there in the street begging for them to have their guns taken. We will not relinquish them. Do you understand?"
Any federal regulation enacted by Congress or by executive order of the President offending the constitutional rights of my citizens shall not be enforced by me or my deputies, nor will I permit the enforcement of any unconstitutional regulations or orders by federal officers within the borders of Linn County Oregon.
At last check, his letter had nearly 47,000 "likes."
Republican state Reps. Steve Toth, John Otto, Jim Pitts, and Drew Darby are working on passing a Firearms Protection Act that would permit state authorities to imprison federal officials who try to enforce any new gun laws. Citing the state's constitutional freedoms, Toth said, "It is our responsibility to push back when those laws are infringed by King Obama."
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.)
The Senate's No. 1 Randian announced on Fox Wednesday that he would introduce a bill to nullify "anything the president does that smacks of legislation." "I'm against having a king. Having a monarch is what we fought the American revolution over," Paul told CBN earlier in the week, "and someone who wants to bypass the Constitution, bypass Congress, that's someone who wants to act like a king or a monarch."
The head of Gun Owners of America told a radio interviewer that he had a simple message for Congress: "When are you going to impeach this guy? When are you going to defund his illegal activities? Republicans can't continue, at least I hope they cannot, continue to be spectators while the country is being torn apart." Pratt then theorized that progressives' gun views are formed by their paganism: "The left, which is largely made up of people who don't believe in Jesus Christ's blood as being necessary for our salvation, view inanimate objects as possessing their own will."
Rep. Steve Stockman (R-Texas)
This gentleman from Texas, who has a long history of crazy, spearheaded the first call to impeach Obama for overreaching on gun violence. "We have a president who's stepped over the line," he told Fox News earlier this week. "He's not a king!" Stockman then compared Obama to Saddam Hussein for "using children" in the gun debate.
Rep. Trey Radel (R-Fla.)
Asked by a local conservative blogger about impeachment proceedings, the freshman congressman said he was comfortable with the idea. Americans "have completely lost our checks and balances in this country, the Congress needs to hold the President accountable for the decisions that he's making right now, and [that's] why again, I would say that all options should be on the table."
The always-colorful congressman told Newsmax that impeachment was on the table. "That is something to consider if the president is going to attempt to destroy the Constitution strictly with a pronouncement of his mouth or the stroke of his pen," he said, adding, "No one branch has overstepped its boundaries like this president has." Asked about an assault weapons ban, Gohmert poured it on: "Let's face it, a knife can be an assault weapon, a machete—in Rwanda, they slaughtered 800,000 people with machetes. An assault weapons ban has been tried for 10 years. It did nothing to stop gun violence. It doesn't work. It is just an assault on the Second Amendment."
The sad young man who did that in Newtown was clearly haunted by demons and no gun law could have saved the children in Sandy Hook Elementary from his terror. There is evil prowling in the world—it shows up in our movies, video games and online fascinations, and finds its way into vulnerable hearts and minds. As a free people, let us choose what kind of people we will be. Laws, the only redoubt of secularism, will not suffice. Let us all return to our places of worship and pray for help. Above all, let us pray for our children. In fact, the piling on by the political left, and their cohorts in the media, to use the massacre of little children to advance a preexisting political agenda that would not have saved those children, disgusts me, personally. The Second Amendment to the Constitution is a basic right of free people and cannot be nor will it be abridged by the executive power of this or any other president.
Priebus, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, issued a press release Wednesday blasting POTUS: "President Obama's series of gun control measures amount to an executive power grab that may please his political base but will not solve the problems at hand. He paid lip service to our fundamental constitutional rights, but took actions that disregard the 2nd Amendment and the legislative process." (There's one problem with that line of argument: Nothing Obama proposed Wednesday actually disregards the Constitution or Congress.)
The fresh-faced freshman accused Obama of imperial overreach and exploitation. "The impetus for all of this was the shooting in Connecticut, right? That's what led to this. And yet nothing he's proposing would have prevented Connecticut," he told Fox News. "This is stuff they've always wanted to do, and now this has created the political climate to pursue it."
Renee Elmers (R-N.C.)
Famed for her past Islamophobic campaigns, Ellmers jumped on the blame train Wednesday. "President Obama is once again exploiting a tragedy for political gain and eroding our constitutional rights for the sake of an extreme liberal agenda," she said, adding, "attacking our legal rights and liberties through abusive executive orders destroys the very principles that have protected our citizens from oppressive government power for over 236 years."
The NRA executive director, who popularized the term "jack-booted government thugs" to refer to federal law enforcement officers, told supporters he was in war mode this week. "I warned you this day was coming and now it's here," he wrote in a fundraising letter. "This is the fight of the century and I need you on board with NRA now more than ever…Right now, they're steamrolling ahead with legislation that would ban your guns, register your ammunition purchases, and even force you to register the firearms you already own with Obama's anti-gun bureaucrats."
After mocking the children onstage during the president's gun violence announcement as "human shields," the shock jock mused that the president was attempting to exact revenge on "bitter clingers"—that is, gun-loving patriots. He then argued that as long as America was going to have legal abortions, lawmakers should "require that each one occur with a gun."
Mark Levin, talk-show host
After telling Fox News that most of Obama's executive orders were ineffectual, meaningless bureaucratic recommendations, the right-wing talk-show host changed his mind: "There are certain things in his executive orders that are un-American. In some ways they’re even fascistic." Goaded on by Neil Cavuto, he continued: "Obama doesn't believe in legislation. He believes in executive fiat…The attempt to nationalize the medical profession, and have doctors reporting their clients to the federal government, this is 1930s stuff. The American people need to rise up against that. The medical profession needs to say no."
Jered Townsend, private citizen
Though he's been fairly quiet through the latest gun debate, Townsend made waves in 2007 when CNN chose his recorded question to ask candidates in the Democratic presidential primary debate. "Tell me your position on gun control, as myself and other Americans really want to know if our babies are safe," he said. Then, brandishing an AR-15 for the camera, he added, "This is is my baby." Joe Biden, coauthor of the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban—who as vice president chaired the panel that made gun-policy recommendations to President Obama this week—quipped: "I'll tell you what, if that is his baby, he needs help…I don't know that he is mentally qualified to own that gun."
"I prepared to be very, very frightened," journalist Amy Wilentz writes of a trip to Haiti during the 1994 US military showdown over embattled president Jean-Bertrand Aristide. "Instead, I was dazzled." That sense of apprehensive wonder imbues this lyrical first-person survey of Haiti's exposure to "capriciousness and nature's indifferent hand"—from slavery and thuggery to earthquakes and disease. Creole proverbs abound as she gauges the temperature of Fred Voodoo, Haiti's version of Joe Sixpack. What emerges is a case study in what Wilentz views as a global erosion of human kindness.
This review originally appeared in our January/February issue of Mother Jones.
As my colleague Kevin Drum pointed out Wednesday, a lot of journalists are seeking to say something meaningful about guns in the wake of Newtown…and failing miserably because their knowledge of guns is rather limited. In fact, this is grist for the NRA, which constantly rails against "the liberal media" and unarmed citizens: If you don't know guns inside and out, they argue, you have no right to an opinion on the issue. (It didn't take long for a similar argument to break out on one of our Newtown-related comment threads.)
Not every advocate of firearms law reform is an uninformed blanket gun-banner. But there is enough bad info floating around in the blogosphere that we decided to shed some light on a few of gun culture's most confounding terms. Got suggestions for more entries? Add them in the comments below.
Automatic
Now synonymous with fully or full automatic, this connotes a firearm that continuously fires with a single pull of the trigger, and stops only when the trigger is released or the ammunition runs out (or when the gun's machinery fails, due to overheating or jamming). These include machine guns. Under the landmark National Firearms Act of 1934, the Gun Control Act of 1968, and the Firearm Owners Protection Act of 1986, it is generally illegal for civilians to own these weapons. Exceptions are made for dealers and collectors who obtain permission in the form of a special Federal Firearms License from the FBI and ATF. Many states place additional restrictions on automatic weapons.
Semi-automatic
The vast majority of modern guns sold and collected in the US are semi-automatic, which means they fire a single shot with every pull of the trigger, but automatically reload between shots. That's in contrast to full-automatic weapons, as well as single-shot guns that require the operator to "cock" the gun or hand-feed ammunition between shots. (There are a variety of sporting weapons that are single shot, such as lever-action, bolt-action, and breech-loading rifles, pump-action shotguns, and many revolvers.)
Machine gun
A firearm that only fires in full-automatic mode. In the military, these generally refer to large, heavy weapons like the M60 (pictured) or M240, which are fed large amounts of ammunition via a belt or drum. These usually fire rifle or other high-velocity ammunition over long distances, but the term can also refer to lighter rapid-fire weapons and submachine guns that fire shorter, blunter "handgun" ammunition in full-auto mode, like "Tommy guns" and Uzis.
Assault weapons
Assault weapon is a nebulous and relatively recent term. It generally refers to a class of military-style, semi-automatic magazine-fed rifles and carbines that fire high-powered ammunition and carry features or modifications that could be especially useful in combat. They evolved from military assault rifles, in particular the AK-47 and the M16/M4, which are selective-fire weapons: depending on the model, the shooter can select whether the gun fires in semi-auto, full-auto, or three-round bursts.
The most common assault weapons are civilian variations on the AK-47 and M16 designs; these include the Bushmaster carbine used in the Newtown massacre last week. The Federal Assault Weapons Bill, which became law in 1994 (and expired in 2004), banned specific types of guns such as AR15s, MAC10s, and TEC9s, but it also forbade possession of rifles and handguns that featured two or more military-style modifications (pistol grips, oversize magazines, and folding stocks, for example). California, one of a few states that maintains its own ban on assault weapons, uses this rather confusing flowchart to define the term.
Rifles, carbines, and shotguns
Rifles are highly accurate, high-powered long guns. Carbines are usually shorter and lighter versions of rifles. (Compare, for instance, the military's M16 rifle and M4 carbine.) Shotguns are designed to fire shot, a cluster of small projectiles. They can also fire a very large single ball or slug. The main distinction between shotguns and rifles is that the barrels of the former are smooth, while the latter have "rifled" barrels: spiral-patterned grooves that impart a spin to the slug for greater accuracy over long distances.
Magazine
An enclosed container that stores and feeds ammunition into a gun for use. Many people refer to it as a clip, though those are technically different, because they're not enclosed (and are generally passé). As firepower goes, assault weapons and semi-automatic handguns are limited only by the capacity of their magazines. A few states currently bar gun owners from possessing high-capacity magazines.
Clip
Clips usually are rails to hold ammunition that's fed into a rifle, like the military's old M1 (see the above illustration, left). It can also refer to a circular "moon" clip that holds ammunition for easy feeding into a revolver (above right). Rappers, TV writers, and journalists often use "clip" and "magazine" interchangeably.
Bullet
The bullet (1 in the diagram above) is technically the projectile that is fired from a gun. It is part of a cartridge, and is encased (2) with a gunpowder propellant (3). Cartridges and bullets are sometimes referred to colloquially as rounds.
Brady Act
The Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, signed into law by Bill Clinton in 1994, requires individuals purchasing guns from licensed dealers to submit to an instant background check against an FBI-maintained criminal database. It also limits who can be a firearms dealer. The Brady bill is often confused with the Federal Assault Weapons Ban, which was passed the same year. It's named for James Brady, the White House press secretary who was paralyzed in a gunman's attempt to assassinate Ronald Reagan in 1981.
Form 4473
When you buy a gun from a licensed dealer, you fill out a federal transaction record, Form 4473. A copy goes to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, and dealers are required to keep copies for 20 years. Additionally, dealers must keep a record of that purchase info in a "bound-book," which they surrender to the government upon retirement. The 4473 is often the only record of a legal gun purchase from a licensed dealer in the United States.
Gun-show loophole
Not everyone is subject to the requirements of the Brady Act. Individual gun owners who don't buy and sell weapons as their primary means of income can make "occasional" sales without running a background check on the buyer…or even maintaining a paper record of the sale (no 4473s necessary). Such private sales typically occur at gun shows, or via the classified sections of publications like the Shotgun News. The Coalition to Prevent Gun Violence estimates that 40 percent of US gun sales pass through this "loophole."
The big-money buyout firm behind Bushmaster and many other gunmakers is getting out of the firearms business—and thanks may be due to public-sector workers in one of America's bluest states.
Chances are you didn't even know that Cerberus Capital Management, the Dan Quayle-employing, Manhattan-based private equity group that famously took a bath on Chrysler during the auto bailout, owned 15 gun manufacturers with $238 million in total sales last quarter—including Bushmaster, which produced the assault rifle that was Adam Lanza's weapon of choice in Newtown last Friday. Cerberus managed this "family of companies" through a shell called Freedom Group, which grew so large that some rank-and-file NRA members feared a mysterious anti-gun purchaser was buying up the companies just to shut them down.
