Law for machine guns is working

West Wing continues to deliver as political drama ahead of his time

By Ken Tingley

Nicholas Kristof is a New York Times journalist renown for his work overseas covering human rights abuses. Along the way, they’ve given him a couple of Pulitzer Prizes.

The first one came in 1990 for international reporting while teaming with his wife in covering the student pro-democracy movement in Tiananmen Square. He was just 31.

Living the cushy life of an international columnist for the Times, Kristof has been to more than 150 countries, including places none of us would go without an escort from the 10th Mountain Division.

It’s easier to recount the years when he was NOT a finalist for the Pulitzer.

He won a second Pulitzer in 2006 “for his graphic, deeply reported columns that, at personal risk, focused attention on genocide in Darfur and gave voice to the voiceless in other parts of the world.”

We all should be ashamed for not knowing more about the genocide in Darfur, but Kristof did his part.

“There is no one in journalism, anywhere in the United States at least, who has done anything like the work he has done to figure out how poor people are actually living around the world, and what their potential is,” Bill Clinton said about Kristof.

And he said it in 2009 when he was done running for political office and nothing to gain by stroking the ego of national journalist.

“So every American citizen who cares about this should be profoundly grateful that someone in our press establishment cares enough to about this to haul himself around the world to figure out what’s going on,” Clinton concluded.

The biography is to prepare you for what is coming.

So you won’t just chalk him up as another one of those liberal journalists you are always complaining about.

Kristof got out of the newspaper game briefly in 2021so he could run for governor of his home state of Oregon. But before the campaign got going, Kristof was told he failed to meet Oregon’s residency requirements. He returned to the New York Times this past August where I think he makes a much bigger difference anyway.

He wrote a column about gun control recently that had a unique perspective.

Like so many others before him he pointed out the enormous toll guns have in our country. In 2021, there were a record 48,000 gun deaths when you combine suicides, homicides and accidents.

He acknowledged we are never going to eliminate guns, so we should bypass the culture wars and “try a harm-reduction model familiar from public health efforts to reduce deaths from dangerous products such as cars and cigarettes.”

He pointed out thousands have died from using those products, but we never banned cars or cigarettes.

It’s what’s next that I learned something new.

Apparently, we have 700,000 machine guns legally in the hands of people outside the military in our country.

That was hard to believe.

Kristof reports that most are owned by federal, state and local agencies - not sure what for - but there are still a couple hundred thousand in private hands.

With a background check, a clean record and $200 for a transfer tax, you can buy a mounted .50-caliber machine gun made before 1986. You can also purchase grenade launchers, a howitzer and a mortar, too, but it is unclear what the transfer tax is for those items. I suspect these products are bought by well-heeled collectors and not for self-defense, but I didn’t talk to anyone in Texas about that.

Here is the lynchpin: The process can take a couple months to legally get the permission for the weapons, but if you are willing to be patient, you too can have a machine gun’s nest defending your homestead.

So here was Kristof’s point. In a typical year, registered machine guns are responsible for zero suicides and zero homicides.

That’s really quite remarkable.

So if you are careful about who gets a .50-caliber machine gun, the damage done can be minimal.

There is a lesson to be learned there.

Racism alive, well

While we’d like to think blatant racism is a rare occurrence in our country, a recent lawsuit in Oregon proved otherwise.

In March 2020, a 63-year-old black woman from Portland, Oregon stopped to get some gas at a convenient store. In Oregon, customers are not allowed to pump their own gas. So as the woman waited, she noticed several people getting their gas after she arrived.

When she asked what was up, the attendant said, “Ill get to you when I feel like it.”

Frustrated by the rudeness, the woman went inside the store to talk to the manager, who didn’t offer any help either. Finally, another employee pumped her gas. As she was about to leave, she asked the first attendant why she had not been served.

“I don’t serve Black people,” he reportedly said.

The jury awarded the woman $1 million in a lawsuit this week. That doesn’t make me feel much better.

The West Wing was first shown in 1999. It was way ahead of its time.

Just as relevant

West Wing, the political drama starring Martin Sheen and written by Aaron Sorkin, debuted in 1999 and is just as relevant today as it was 20 years ago.

I’ve recently watched the first two seasons again and find that the topics foreshadow many of the problems we are seeing today from divisive politics to right-wing extremism to political gamesmanship.

In season 3 in 2001, President Bartlet is being investigated by a special prosecutor for withholding a multiple sclerosis diagnosis from voters before he was elected. Seems pretty tame considering what we are seeing today.

In the episode “Ways and Means,” press secretary C.J. Craig gives us this description about what motivates Congress.

“Leo, we need to be investigated by someone who wants to kill us, just to watch us die. We need someone perceived by the American people to be irresponsible, untrustworthy, partisan, ambitious and thirsty for the limelight. Am I crazy, or is this not a job for the U.S. House of Representatives?”

I think Aaron Sorkin just described the current state of the House of Representatives.

Newspaper revenue

In decades past, newspapers were able to reap enormous revenues from classified and retail advertising.

According to the American Press Institute, the Seattle Times - the second largest newsroom in the western United States - now gets 70 percent of its revenue from reader subscriptions.

The Seattle Times implemented a metered paywall in 2013 and has continued to refine the business model ever since. This is the future.