Go Lean Commentary
“Can’t see the forest for the trees” – Famous Quotation
This is an expression used for someone who is too involved in the details of a problem to look at the situation as a whole: “The congressman became so involved in the wording of his bill that he couldn’t see the forest for the trees; he did not realize that the bill could never pass.”
This concept is true for communities too!
The United States of America presents itself as the “City on the Hill“, the richest, most powerful model democracy in the history of the world. But this country has some societal defects – i.e. Institutional Racism & Crony-Capitalism – that are so acute that they distort the American reality as a Great Society. One defect in particular is the American gun culture, gun deaths and mass shootings.
Still, America draws – or pulls – a lot of immigrants from around the world, including the Caribbean, despite the voluminous deaths. Just how many deaths are there?
First, the US has far more gun deaths than most other advanced economy countries.
Title: Visualizing gun deaths: Comparing the U.S. to the rest of the world
Whenever a mass shooting occurs, a debate about gun violence ensues. An often-cited counter to the point about the United States’ high rates of gun homicides is that people in other countries kill one another at the same rate using different types of weapons. It’s not true.Compared to other countries with similar levels of development or socioeconomic status, the United States has exceptional homicide rates, and it’s driven by gun violence.
Here is the data:
Source: Posted June 12, 2016; retrieved October 9, 2017 from: Global Burden of Disease Study. Access the data visualization here: http://ihmeuw.org/3oi4
Just how many mass shootings are there?
See this encyclopedic reference:
Title: Mass shootings in the United States by year
These are the number of shootings (incidents) that transpired during the applicable year. For the last 2 years (2017-to-date & 2016), the actual shooting events are detailed.
Year Incidents Details 2017 13 Partial Year – As of October 1, 2017 Bronx-Lebanon Hospital attack Burnette Chapel shooting Clovis library shooting Congressional baseball shooting Fort Lauderdale airport shooting Freeman High School shooting Las Vegas Strip shooting Little Rock nightclub shooting Mississippi shootings Orlando shooting Plano shooting UPS shooting in San Francisco Weis Markets shooting 2016 14 Baton Rouge shooting of police officers Cascade Mall shooting Citronelle homicides shooting of Dallas police officers FreightCar America shooting Hesston shooting Kalamazoo shootings Madison High School shooting Mukilteo shooting Orlando nightclub shooting Pike County, Ohio, shootings Pablo Antonio Serrano-Vitorino St. Joseph courthouse shooting Wilkinsburg shooting 2015 9 2014 5 2013 6 2012 11 2011 7 2010 5 2009 8 Source: Retrieved October 9, 2017: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Mass_shootings_in_the_United_States_by_year
In a previous blog-commentary, the thesis was presented that for Caribbean citizens, it is NOT better to live “fast & furious” in the US, but rather it is better to prosper where planted in the Caribbean homeland. Life in the US may experience a shorter mortality due to the risky gun culture.
And yet, our Caribbean communities are losing people more and more with our atrocious societal abandonment rates – estimated by one report at 70 percent of the professional classes – to destinations like the United States. Why are they leaving? Two reasons:
- “Push” refers to people who feel compelled to leave, to seek refuge in a foreign land. “Refuge” is an appropriate word; because of societal defects, many from the Caribbean must leave as refugees – think LGBT, Disability, Domestic-abuse, Medically-challenged – for their life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.
- “Pull”, on the other hand refers to the lure of a more prosperous life abroad; many times our people are emigrating for economics solely.
Is life really so prosperous in the US with such a track record of gun violence?
On October 1, 2017 a shooter – Stephen Paddock – used 23 guns (mostly automatic rifles) perched in a 32nd floor hotel room rained down bullets on a Country Music concert in an adjacent park. He killed 58 innocent people and injured more than 500.
The repeated incidences of mass shooters – with no gun control remediation – makes American life defective; see VIDEO in the Appendix below.
This commentary aligns with the charter of the book Go Lean … Caribbean to make the countries of the Caribbean region better places to live, work and play. The goal is to be Better Than America; to be a protégé without the ignominious Second Amendment; to exercise better governance. A previous blog-commentary entitled 10 Things We Want from the US and 10 Things We Don’t Want from the US detailed:
The “right to bear arms” has a personal application beyond the country’s entitlement to maintain a militia. This “right” has been interpreted in a manner in which any normal “man” can get possession of guns and other armament. This proliferation of guns in society results in the highest rate of gun violence in the world, even an unconscionable rate of school shootings.
The Go Lean roadmap purports that this status has also caused discord – a gross abuse and availability of illegal guns – in bordering communities of Mexico, and Caribbean states of the Bahamas, and the DR. This propels our gun-related crime.
The Go Lean book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU) to elevate the region’s societal engines – economics, homeland security and governance – for all 30 Caribbean member-states in the region. In fact, the prime directives of the roadmap includes the following 3 statements:
- Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion & create 2.2 million new jobs.
- Establishment of a security apparatus to ensure public safety and protect the resultant economic engines with proactive and reactive measures.
- Improvement of Caribbean governance to support these engines, including a separation-of-powers between the member-states and CU federal agencies.
The quest is to minimize the paradox of future-planning/decision-making for Caribbean citizens. We want to make the Caribbean region better places to live, work and play; this way our citizens would not have to leave … for American shores. Above and beyond mass shootings, the truth of the matter is people die more readily in America due to gun-violence than they die in the Caribbean, or anywhere else.
The planners for a new Caribbean should be able to lower the “pull” factors for Caribbean citizens. Caribbean life is in competition with American life and we should be able to sell the lower risk of being killed by American guns.
The Go Lean book contends that bad actors will always emerge just as a result of economic successes in society. Once the prospects of guns are factored it, the inevitable “bad guy with a gun” can do more damage than ordinary. There must be remediation and mitigation. This point is pronounced early in the book with the Declaration of Interdependence (Page 12) that claims:
x. Whereas we are surrounded and allied to nations of larger proportions in land mass, populations, and treasuries, elements in their societies may have ill-intent in their pursuits, at the expense of the safety and security of our citizens. We must therefore appoint “new guards” to ensure our public safety and threats against our society, both domestic and foreign. The Federation must employ the latest advances and best practices … to assuage continuous threats against public safety.
xi. Whereas all men are entitled to the benefits of good governance in a free society, “new guards” must be enacted to dissuade the emergence of incompetence, corruption, nepotism and cronyism at the peril of the people’s best interest. The Federation must guarantee the executions of a social contract between government and the governed.
xvi. Whereas security of our homeland is inextricably linked to prosperity of the homeland, the economic and security interest of the region needs to be aligned under the same governance. Since economic crimes, including piracy and other forms of terrorism, can imperil the functioning of the wheels of commerce for all the citizenry, the accedence of this Federation must equip the security apparatus with the tools and techniques for predictive and proactive interdictions.
The Go Lean book provides 370 pages of details on the economic principles and community ethos to adopt, plus the executions of strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to better secure the Caribbean homeland. Just “how” can the Caribbean region reboot, reform and transform their societal engines to provide better protections and gun control. This is the actual title of one advocacy in the Go Lean book. Consider the specific plans, excerpts and headlines here from Page 179, entitled:
10 Ways to Improve Gun Control
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Lean-in for the Caribbean Single Market The [CU] treaty allows for the unification of the region into one market of 42 million people across 30 member-states, thereby creating an economic zone to promote and protect the interest of the member-states. In addition, the treaty calls for a collective security pact to ensure homeland security and assuage against systemic threats. The CU will elevate and consolidate the registration, gun-permitting process to regional oversight. The goal is to apply learned-lessons from the US example. For Third World countries, as most of the CU apply, undisciplined gun use affect the Failed-State indicator: Criminalization / De-Legitimization of the State. The CU’s mandate is to manage the image and reality of Failed-States. |
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Background Checks It’s a best practice to restrain certain aspects of the population access to guns (felons, defendants on bail, targets of restraining orders). This includes gun purchasing and ownership. So the CU Gun Registration regulation (within CariPol) will enforce strict background checks for ALL purchases: retail, wholesale and private-party. This regulation will also be post-reactive in the event a CU resident becomes a subject of legal/police action so as to suspend their gun rights. |
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Ballistics Testing The CU will extend gun registration/regulation beyond our American neighbors. To facilitate subsequent investigation of gun crimes, every registered gun must complete ballistic tests and the results must be on (computer) file at CariPol. |
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Mental Illness Data |
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Intelligence Gathering and Big Data Analysis |
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United States (FBI / ATF) Coordination |
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Private Security Bodyguards |
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Private First Responders / Bounty Hunters |
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Gun BuybacksThe CU will maintain a constant program for anonymous gun “buybacks”. These endeavors will be funded with CU funds and coordinated with not-for-profit foundations. The acquired guns will all be registered, for serial numbers and ballistic testing results, and then destroyed; unless needed for legal prosecutions. |
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Public Relations / Anti-Bullying Campaign |
There have been a number of blog-commentaries by the Go Lean movement that highlighted the eco-system of crime-domestic terrorism; this is part-and-parcel of the regional homeland security initiatives. See a sample list here:
| http://www.goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13126 | “Must Love Dogs” – Providing K9 Solutions for Better Security |
| http://www.goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=12400 | Accede the Caribbean Arrest Treaty |
| http://www.goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=11332 | Boston Bombing Anniversary – Learning Lessons |
| http://www.goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=11048 | Managing the ‘Strong versus the Weak’ Series – Model of Hammurabi |
| http://www.goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=9072 | Model: Shots-Fired Monitoring – Securing the Homeland on the Ground |
| http://www.goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7485 | Mitigating Interpersonal Violence Series – Street Crimes |
| http://www.goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2684 | Role Model for Law, Order and Justice – The Pinkertons |
In summary, it is only logical that any stewards of society to remediate any known risks and threats; yet this is not the case for guns in America.
This is stupid … for this to continue unimpeded … for so long. (The American rationale is the 2nd Amendment of the US Constitution; one original motivation in 1791 was to suppress insurrection, allegedly including slave revolts [60][61][62]).
In a previous blog-commentary, it was related that when stupidity persists in society it is because someone is getting paid. Who are the financial benefactors in the case of guns in America: The Firearms Manufacturers!
Stock prices of firearms manufacturers rose the day after the shooting, as has happened after similar incidents. Investors expect gun sales will increase over concerns that such an event could lead to more stringent gun-control legislation and a rush of customers wishing to defend themselves against future attacks. – MarketWatch[83] / Bloomberg[84]
In fact, the National Rifle Association (NRA) now has the reputation of being a Chamber of Commerce-like organization rather than a consumer protection/advocacy group as was its original charter.
Enough already! Too many innocent lives have been lost; see the VIDEO in the Appendix below. Surely, we can be better here in the Caribbean … going forward. Surely we can convince our Caribbean people to Stay Home and not be lured to this madness in the first place.
And for those of the Diaspora in the US: you are in harm’s way, just living an ordinary life. It is Time to Go … back home!
Now is the time for all of the Caribbean – the leaders and the people – to lean-in for the empowerments described here in the book Go Lean…Caribbean. It is conceivable, believable and achievable to prosper where planted here in the region; to make the Caribbean a better place to live, work and play. 🙂
Download the free e-book of Go Lean … Caribbean – now!
Sign the petition to lean-in for the roadmap for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation.
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APPENDIX VIDEO – Reassessing the Same Old Debate on Gun Control: The Daily Show – https://youtu.be/U0UUrMmoPME
The Daily Show with Trevor Noah
Published on Oct 9, 2017 – In the aftermath of a mass shooting in Las Vegas, Neal Brennan explains why the debate over gun control in the U.S. needs to change.
The Daily Show with Trevor Noah airs weeknights at 11/10c on Comedy Central.
- Category: Comedy
- License: Standard YouTube License