Two thumbs up.

The Center for American Progress has released a “50-State Analysis of Gun Violence and Its Link to Weak State Gun Laws.” See also Interactive: Measuring Gun Violence Across the 50 States. The report states,

Despite this complex web of factors that influence the rate of gun violence, this report finds a clear link between high levels of gun violence and weak state gun laws. Across the key indicators of gun violence that we analyzed, the 10 states with the weakest gun laws collectively have an aggregate level of gun violence that is more than twice as high–104 percent higher, in fact—-than the 10 states with the strongest gun laws.

The report measured these ten indicators of gun violence:

1. Overall firearm deaths in 2010
2. Overall firearm deaths from 2001 through 2010
3. Firearm homicides in 2010
4. Firearm suicides in 2010
5. Firearm homicides among women from 2001 through 2010
6. Firearm deaths among children ages 0 to 17, from 2001 through 2010
7. Law-enforcement agents feloniously killed with a firearm from 2002 through 2011
8. Aggravated assaults with a firearm in 2011
9. Crime-gun export rates in 2009
10. Percentage of crime guns with a short “time to crime” in 2009

Gun laws are not the only factor impacting gun violence, the press release says. I would add that there are outliers that don’t fit any correlation. New Hampshire, for example, has permissive gun laws but ranks low in gun violence. I suspect the correlation between rates of gun ownership and gun fatalities is stronger. Nevertheless, the data do seem to show a tendency toward more gun violence in states with loose gun laws.

Some on the Right still complains about including suicides as part of “gun violence.” I’ve already explained why it’s perfectly legitimate to include suicides, since the presence of guns is known to increase suicide rates. The Harvard School of Public Health considers access to firearms to be a major risk factor in suicides.

The headline at HuffPo is that North Carolina is considering creating a state religion, in clear violation of the 1st Amendment establishment clause and the 14th Amendment due process clause.

The bill, filed Monday by two GOP lawmakers from Rowan County and backed by nine other Republicans, says each state “is sovereign” and courts cannot block a state “from making laws respecting an establishment of religion.” The legislation was filed in response to a lawsuit to stop county commissioners in Rowan County from opening meetings with a Christian prayer, wral.com reported. …

… The bill says the First Amendment only applies to the federal government and does not stop state governments, local governments and school districts from adopting measures that defy the Constitution. The legislation also says that the Tenth Amendment, which says powers not reserved for the federal government belong to the states, prohibits court rulings that would seek to apply the First Amendment to state and local officials.

Originally the 1st Amendment did only apply to the federal government, but the 14th and subsequent case law changed that. But establishing a religion really isn’t the craziest part of this, as Charles Pierce points out —

Not only the clearest violation of the First Amendment possible, but backed up by the theory of nullification which, to borrow a phrase from my pal, Roy Blount, Jr., was a bad idea at the time and looks even worse in retrospect. Thus does North Carolina march boldly into the past, looking neither right nor left as it passes 1789 or 1776, until it arrives at 1640, and Quakers and Catholics are hiding under the bed.

“The Constitution of the United States does not grant the federal government and does not grant the federal courts the power to determine what is or is not constitutional; therefore, by virtue of the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, the power to determine constitutionality and the proper interpretation and proper application of the Constitution is reserved to the states and to the people,” the bill states. “Each state in the union is sovereign and may independently determine how that state may make laws respecting an establishment of religion.”

Now, anyone smart enough to outwit a turnip ought to be able to realize that if states could just ignore the federal government whenever they liked, there wouldn’t be a United States today. Indeed, the nullification theory is built on a vision of America that was rejected when the Constitution was adopted — that every state retained all of its sovereignty. Some, yes. Not all.

Here’s a bipartisan election fraud scandal for you —

State Senator Malcolm A. Smith, a contractor and real estate developer who rose to become the first black president of the State Senate, and City Councilman Daniel J. Halloran III were arrested early Tuesday on charges of trying to illicitly get Mr. Smith on the ballot for this year’s mayoral race in New York City, according to federal prosecutors.

Mr. Smith, a Queens Democrat, and Mr. Halloran, a Queens Republican, were among a half-dozen people arrested by Federal Bureau of Investigation agents in the corruption case. Others included Republican County leaders in Queens and the Bronx, the mayor of the Rockland County village of Spring Valley, Noramie F. Jasmin, and her deputy, Joseph A. Desmaret, according to a criminal complaint. …

… Mr. Smith has said he was considering running for mayor of New York as a Republican, and the charges contend that he made payments to Mr. Halloran in exchange for the councilman’s assistance in setting up meetings with Republican leaders as part of an effort to get on the ballot, the complaint said.

Ed Kilgore writes that Smith “recently helped sell out his party to give Republicans partial control of the state legislature.”

Some of you might remember Halloran from the New York City snowstorm of December 2010. He was the guy who claimed “union thugs” were shaking down the city for more money to remove the snow. The claim was bogus, of course.

A Georgia Republican chairwoman is worried that if same-sex marriage becomes legal, straight people will enter into sham gay marriages to reap the benefits that they can already get in a straight marriage.

Kind of takes your breath away, huh?

Researchers Charlotte and Harriet Childress write in WaPo that “White men have much to discuss about mass shootings.”

When white men try to divert attention from gun control by talking about mental health issues, many people buy into the idea that the United States has a national mental health problem, or flawed systems with which to address those problems, and they think that is what produces mass shootings.

But women and girls with mental health issues are not picking up semiautomatic weapons and shooting schoolchildren. Immigrants with mental health issues are not committing mass shootings in malls and movie theaters. Latinos with mental health issues are not continually killing groups of strangers.

Each of us is programmed from childhood to believe that the top group of our hierarchies — and in the U.S. culture, that’s white men — represents everyone, so it can feel awkward, even ridiculous, when we try to call attention to those people as a distinct group and hold them accountable.

I understand serial killers are nearly always white men, too. Yes, gun violence is perpetrated by other racial groups in the U.S. But in the U.S., the particular phenomena of mass and serial killings are disproportionately carried out by white men, even though non-whites are disproportionately responsible for homicides overall. See, for example:

Michael Kimmel and Cliff Leek, “The Unbearable Whiteness of Suicide-by-Mass-Murder”

Erika Christakis, The Overwhelming Maleness of Mass Homicide

David Sirota makes the point that with all the calls to profile this or that group to prevent terrorism, the one group not allowed to be profiled is white men.

I agree with the researchers that it’s high time we all acknowledge this. I disagree with them that the perspectives of white men themselves are not credible —

Nearly all of the mass shootings in this country in recent years — not just Newtown, Aurora, Fort Hood, Tucson and Columbine — have been committed by white men and boys. Yet when the National Rifle Association (NRA), led by white men, held a news conference after the Newtown massacre to advise Americans on how to reduce gun violence, its leaders’ opinions were widely discussed.

The NRA lacks credibility because it has a vested interest in stopping gun control legislation, not because their leadership is mostly white men. Since most white men are not mass/serial killers, I welcome their insight into this phenomenon, especially into the question asked by the researchers, “What facets of white male culture create so many mass shootings?” I have my own ideas, but not being a man I might be missing something.

Update: Steve M, who I know for a fact is a white guy, has an interesting perspective:

… mass shooters, for the most part, aren’t the alpha males within their own culture, even though most come from America’s alpha race.

And maybe that’s the problem. If you’re white and male (and middle- or upper-middle-class), the culture tells you that you can have it all. If you’re white, male, and developing paranoid schizophrenia, or having profound difficulties with socialization, you’re falling short of very, very high expectations. Why aren’t you thriving? You’re a person who’s supposed to be thriving! Everyone in your demographic category can thrive!

Young American males of other ethnicities are conditioned to expect disappointment in life. White suburban males are led to believe that the world is their oyster. Maybe it’s falling short of these high cultural expectations that attracts a certain percentage of socially struggling white males to fantasies of violent revenge. They want to kill because they’re expected to dominate, and this is the only way they know how.

That makes sense to me.

A libertarian organization connected to the Koch brothers has named North Dakota the “most free” state. North Dakota also recently passed the most restrictive abortion law in the U.S. I guess libertarians want to be free to keep the womenfolk barefoot and pregnant.

Along the same lines — men with loaded rifles crashed a pro-gun control rally of Moms Demand Action.

A member of Moms Demand Action said that she felt unsettled by their presence and said that the organizers would have to think twice before holding another event, particularly one where children could be present.

Because freedom, that’s why.

Ann Friedman of Columbia Journalism Review talks to Chris Hayes about the way he and his producers use a quota system to be sure the guests aren’t all white men. Sorta kinda related — here’s an essay about why gifted children from rural poor families don’t apply to elite colleges. And it’s not just about money.

This has been Same-Sex Marriage Week at the Supreme Court, and reports are that the Defense of Marriage Act was absolutely clobbered yesterday. Of course, such predictions have been wrong before, but Lyle Denniston of SCOTUSblog reports that Kennedy the Swing Justice appears to be on the side of the four liberals on this one.

See also Irin Carmon:

It didn’t take long for the empty truth about the discriminatory Defense of Marriage Act to be exposed Wednesday, and there was little equality opponents could do. At the Supreme Court hearing, Elena Kagan, the newest justice, went to the House Report from Congress when it passed the law in 1996, and summarized DOMA’s entire legal underpinning: “Congress decided to reflect and honor a collective moral judgment and to express moral disapproval of homosexuality.” According to people in the room, there were gasps and laughter at the so-called “gotcha moment.”

It was a duh moment, but a necessary one. Yes, DOMA’s about discrimination. That disapproval of gay people, not tradition or government uniformity, is at the root of the act is blatantly obvious both to anyone who observed it at the time and to everyone who has changed their Facebook profile photo this week. But it needed to be set out on a national stage, a few feet away from rainbow-festooned children asking what the big deal was. This week, both sides put forward their best cases and it quickly became clear the opposition to equality is based not on law or reason, but bigotry.

See also Defense Of Marriage Act Takes A Beating At Supreme Court and “Elena Kagan’s DOMA ‘gotcha’ moment.”

Religious bigots have been quick to claim martyrdom — Christians are now more scorned than homosexuals — and denounce legal gay marriage as a denial to their religious freedom, never mind that nobody is asking anybody to get “gay married” against his will. In the twisted minds of the bigots, “freedom” means the freedom to oppress others.

Paul Wildman writes —

… Here’s Fox News commentator Todd Starnes on the oppression that has already begun (“it’s as if we’re second-class citizens now because we support the traditional, Biblical definition of marriage”). And how is this second-class citizenship being thrust upon them back in the real world? Well, people are … strongly disagreeing with their position on an issue of public concern! It’s awful, I tell ya.

The impulse to jam that crown of thorns down on your head is a powerful one in politics. It means you’ve achieved the moral superiority of the victim, and the other side must be the victimizer. The problem is that these folks don’t seem to have much of a grasp on what second-class citizenship actually looks like. Last time I checked, nobody was forbidden to vote because they’re a Christian, or not allowed to eat in their choice of restaurants, or forced to use separate water fountains, or even be forbidden by the state to marry the person of their choice. That’s what second-class citizenship is. Having somebody on television call your views retrograde may not be fun, but it doesn’t make you a second-class citizen.

But I call particular attention to Erick Erickson’s screed, ‘Gay Marriage’ and Religious Freedom Are Not Compatible.

Erickson begins by acknowledging the libertarian argument that government should stay out of marriage. But, he argues, “the left” will never allow that to happen.

The left cannot take marriage out of government because for so long it has been government through which marriages were legitimized to the public and the left must also use government to silence those, particularly the religious, who refuse to play along.

Oh, that crown of thorns you wear must be digging into your brain, EE. But let’s continue … Erickson’s argument against legal same-sex marriage is entirely religious. He quotes the Bible, even, and says,

As long as there are still Christians who actually follow Christ and uphold his word, a vast amount of people around the world — never mind Islam — will never ever see gay marriage as anything other than a legal encroachment of God’s intent.

Erickson has several blind spots, one of which is that DOMA was/is a blatant attempt to use government to thwart those who disagree with his point of view. “Using government” is only bad when liberals do it, apparently.

Erickson’s biggest blind spot is, of course, the establishment clause. The 1st Amendment specifically strips Congress of the power to create law based on religious consideration. Even if God Herself were to pop into Washington DC and ask that such-and-such a bill be passed, it would be unconstitutional for Congress to do so, unless there is also a compelling non-religious reason for the law.

And, of course, nobody is forcing anybody to “gay marry.” Further, as Paul Wildman continued,

One of their favorite scare stories is that before you know it, Christian ministers are going to be hauled off to jail or have their churches lose their tax-exempt status if they refuse to marry gay people. Right, just like at the moment a Jewish synagogue will lose its tax-exempt status if the rabbi won’t preside over a Pentecostal wedding. And as for the florist who refuses to sell flowers to a gay couple, what he’s asking for is not a right but a privilege, the privilege to discriminate based on sexual orientation. It’s no different than if he refused to sell flowers to an interracial couple. But somehow, if he finds justification for that discriminatory practice in his faith, that’s supposed to make it a fundamental right.

What they can’t permit themselves to see is that they are not asking for freedom for people to live according to their own religious beliefs, which is what religious liberty is about. They are intent on using government to force everyone to live according to their religious beliefs. When Christianist whiner David Brody asks,

So here’s a question that may be a bit rhetorical in nature: Is it not the responsibility of the homosexual activist leaders to become much more vocal and preach tolerance and acceptance of the views from Bible-believing evangelicals? If they want tolerance and respect, shouldn’t they preach the same thing toward evangelicals?

… he’s asking for homosexuals to be “tolerant” of his oppression of them, whereas nobody is denying him the right to marry a woman. It’s not exactly equal.

The rhetorical question of the day is, “Do Conservatives Want to Win?” Joe Gandelman points out that in recent years the Republican Party has reacted to voter rejection of their whackjob agenda by doubling down on their whackjob agenda.

Whether conservatives even want to win is a serious question in light of the reaction to the Republican National Committee’s brutally honest “autopsy” on why the party lost the 2012 presidential election. The RNC concluded that the party should change such things as the number of primaries, its image among minority voters, its positions on immigration reform, its ground game — and become less “scary” to voters. It all amounts to this: At least look more moderate. But “moderate” remains one of the filthiest words in the Republican Party, and the feeling is kinda mutual: Moderates voted for Obama in droves.

Indeed, many conservatives are rejecting the RNC’s tough-love report faster than Michele Bachmann running away from a reporter. And it makes you wonder: What are they thinking?

The GOP is divided into two factions symbolized by what New York’s Dan Amira calls “the world’s worst investor, Karl Rove, and the world’s worst vice-presidential candidate, Sarah Palin.” Rove, an establishment figure and Bush family stalwart, wants to win. Palin, darling of the Tea Party, the grassroots, and talk-show fans, wants purity — which she believes will bring victory.

I agree with Ed Kilgore that the baggers are not so much indifferent to winning as they are to playing the long game.

But if your goal is something a bit more ambitious than winning the next election, other calculations come into play. Suppose you want to impose so total a degree of domination of a major political party that you destroy your intraparty enemies and plow and salt the ground upon which they once trod. You go RINO-hunting, whether or not you think that may contribute to short-term success in general elections. Or suppose you are pursuing a “big-inning” strategy in which is less important to you to “score” in each election than it is to produce big results—e.g., enactment of the Ryan Budget, game-changing judicial appointments—then that, too, might indicate a willingness to undergo some strategic defeats.

They’re thinking may be less strategic than eschatological, however. I’m not talking about literal Christian eschatology, or belief in the End Times. It’s more like a habit of mind — cultivated by messianic religious thinking — that sees humanity growing toward some ultimate, foreordained end. I think the true believers among the baggers truly believe they are somehow working toward America’s, if not humanity’s, ultimate destiny — a place where white supremacy and paternalism rule. So, keeping the faith is more important than winning elections, at least in the short term.