As the repulsive Trump regime makes America a far more dangerous, inhumane place by the hour, I have a common-sense solution that would make us far safer immediately:
Ban guns.
Make it so only our military can carry weapons on their bases or in a theater of battle.
That’s it.
Picture it: an America with no guns.
Our children would be safe in school. Our neighborhoods would be positively dreamy. Life expectancy would rise, and America might just get a shred of respect from the rest of the world, which looks at us these days as the complete maniacs we most certainly have become.
But you think I’m the one who has completely lost his mind.
Never happen, Earl. Guns are here to stay.
You know, it wasn’t so long ago, that some sort of meaty gun control actually looked doable. Back then, when America was at least semi-sane, gun control was my No. 1 issue.
I railed about it. I marched for it. I joined gun-control groups, and put some of my limited treasure in furthering this noble cause.
Hadn’t we seen enough of our children brutally slaughtered in all those classrooms?
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I used to tell people at the time that I was a reasonable man, and because I was a reasonable man, I would entertain compromise on this vital issue.
Since I wanted ALL guns banned — every damn one of them — and you wanted all guns legal — every damn one of them — we could meet somewhere in the middle.
We could adopt common-sense legislation. Both sides might not be completely happy, but we would be safer.
Guns kill people. No guns, no deaths. Fewer guns, fewer deaths.
Well, we all know what happened.
America’s biggest killer, BIG MONEY, got involved, started threatening lawmakers at a gunpoint, and they all but surrendered on the issue.
Oh sure, a few things got done to make us minimally safer, but there have never been more guns in America than there is right now. There are so damn many of them that it has become impossible to count them all, much less track them.
Most experts have it in the 500 million range.
I look at that astonishing number and wonder why I come bouncing in here with hope about anything sometimes …
The guy who wants no guns, is living in a country with more guns than people.
Tell me again how great we are …
And because this is America, and the only thing we know for certain these days is that things can always get worse …
They have.
On the year of Lady Liberty’s 250th birthday, we have unnamed, armed, roving government agents marauding through our streets. They are caging and murdering us with absolute impunity.
Land of the free?
You are kidding me, right?
Since ICE has been unleashed by its fish-lipped, dead-eyed, puppy-killing leader, Kristi Noem, there have been 16 shootings by on-duty, unidentified federal agents patrolling U.S. cities and towns during the past year. This includes, of course, the cold-blooded murders of Minnesota protesters Renee Good and Alex Pretti.
There have been beatings, gassings, and human beings being disappeared in concentration camps. It has all blown past appalling, and into the dark realm of the unimaginable.
ICE needs to go, because short of getting rid of guns in America, the elimination of a federal agency that treats people like targets on some shooting range or Noem treats a puppy, would be a step toward decency.
But since eliminating ICE completely is close to an impossibility unless and until Democrats take back the White House, the party of good and decency should do everything it can to pull the fangs from these grotesque agents’ masked, dirty mouthes.
This starts by putting demands on Noem’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) before it gets a drop of OUR money.
The following is a list of the 10 guardrails on ICE that Democratic leadership presented to Trump’s grotesque Republicans before DHS funding expires Friday:
- Targeted Enforcement – DHS officers cannot enter private property without a judicial warrant. End indiscriminate arrests and improve warrant procedures and standards. Require verification that a person is not a U.S. citizen before holding them in immigration detention.
- No Masks – Prohibit ICE and immigration enforcement agents from wearing face coverings.
- Require ID – Require DHS officers conducting immigration enforcement to display their agency, unique ID number and last name. Require them to verbalize their ID number and last name if asked.
- Protect Sensitive Locations – Prohibit funds from being used to conduct enforcement near sensitive locations, including medical facilities, schools, child-care facilities, churches, polling places, courts, etc.
- Stop Racial Profiling – Prohibit DHS officers from conducting stops, questioning and searches based on an individual’s presence at certain locations, their job, their spoken language and accent or their race and ethnicity.
- Uphold Use of Force Standards – Place into law a reasonable use of force policy, expand training and require certification of officers. In the case of an incident, the officer must be removed from the field until an investigation is conducted.
- Ensure State and Local Coordination and Oversight – Preserve the ability of State and local jurisdictions to investigate and prosecute potential crimes and use of excessive force incidents. Require that evidence is preserved and shared with jurisdictions. Require the consent of States and localities to conduct large-scale operations outside of targeted immigration enforcement.
- Build Safeguards into the System – Make clear that all buildings where people are detained must abide by the same basic detention standards that require immediate access to a person’s attorney to prevent citizen arrests or detention. Allow states to sue DHS for violations of all requirements. Prohibit limitations on Member visits to ICE facilities regardless of how those facilities are funded.
- Body Cameras for Accountability, Not Tracking – Require use of body-worn cameras when interacting with the public and mandate requirements for the storage and access of footage. Prohibit tracking, creating or maintaining databases of individuals participating in First Amendment activities.
- No Paramilitary Police – Regulate and standardize the type of uniforms and equipment DHS officers carry during enforcement operations to bring them in line with civil enforcement.
They ended their proposal this way:
These reforms should apply to all federal activity, whether funded by FY26 appropriations, the OBBBA or any other act.
Furthermore, there are steps that the Trump administration has the power to take right now to show good faith, including fully ramping down the surge in Minnesota and removing Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem from her position.
These are common sense solutions that protect constitutional rights and ensure responsible law enforcement.
Short of eliminating ICE altogether, I fully endorse this proposal.
Now we see just how serious Democratic Senate and House Leaders Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries are about standing behind their words.
I have been hard on both of these men, and think Democrats are overdue for new leadership. But I also know Republicans are horrid, disgusting people, who will continue doing everything in their seemingly unlimited power to back a lawless regime that by words and deeds is intent on incinerating our Democracy, and the notion that all men (and women) are created equal.
Democrats must hold the line here.
If you somehow still aren’t convinced about the danger we are in right now, consider that on this date in 1936 — exactly 90 years ago — Nazi Germany passed a law investing the Gestapo secret police with absolute authority exempt from any legal review.
Here’s a word from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum on the Gestapo. The parallels to ICE are absolutely chilling:
The Gestapo’s mission was to “investigate and combat all attempts to threaten the state.” In the Nazi view, threats to the state encompassed a wide variety of behaviors. These behaviors included everything from organized political opposition to individual critical remarks about the Nazis. The government even defined belonging to certain categories or groups of people as threatening. To combat this wide array of potential threats, the Nazi dictatorship gave the Gestapo enormous power.
One way in which the Gestapo carried out its mission was by enforcing new Nazi laws. Some of these laws broadly defined criticism of the regime as a security threat. For example, a December 1934 law made it illegal to criticize the Nazi Party or the Nazi regime. Telling a joke about Hitler could be categorized as a “malicious attack against the state or the Party.” It could then result in an arrest by the Gestapo, trial before a special court, and even imprisonment in a concentration camp.
But the Gestapo went much further than monitoring individual behaviors. They implemented Nazi ideology, which defined entire groups of people as racial or political enemies. Membership in the Communist Party or a Jewish background was enough to make someone a threat to the state and subject to Gestapo attention.
The Nazi regime gave Gestapo agents a great deal of power to decide the fate of the people they arrested.
The Gestapo had the final word.
Nobody in America can say they haven’t been warned.
Nobody in our government should ever be allowed to murder Americans and say, “they were just following orders.”
If Republicans continue to get their gruesome way, America’s 250th birthday will be her last.
We must fight for her, and US with everything we have.
That starts with putting guardrails on murdering ICE right now — unless you want to tell me a country with 500 million guns can’t be wrong …
D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here.