Mass. police: Bomb suspects didn't have gun permit

Hey guess what: the Marathon Bomb suspects didn't have gun permit. And yet they were able to have lots and lots of guns. My reaction:

Gun Issues Update

Here's some more resources about the ongoing sea-change in the American view about gun ownership and gun violence. It's good to see that at least so far the change is occurring. After Sandy Hook I read many journalists (aka pundits) say with all the idiotic gravitas that they could muster that "there's nothing we can do" about our gun culture. Speaking as a sociologist, I can say that nearly every journalist I have read - on every subject - is at best an educated layman, but more often just a loud ignoramus. So, thank God, the mood is shifting. If we could stop slavery, maybe we can stop this too.

1. This is Slate.com's "Gun Death Map" - a handy, and shattering, crowdsourced reference guide for current gun deaths.

2. For quick reference, here are Obama's executive actions. Again, thank God, Big B is doing what we elected him to do. I'm seeing a change in his attitude towards congress, something I hoped would happen after his reelection.

What comes out from this list is a demonstration that the NRA maybe the most evil organization in America. Because while the other legal-evil groups - e.g. tobacco, oil - advocate indirect death for their own profit, the NRA is in favor of actual death. They may be more evil than gambling and drug lobbyists (and they exist) for that same reason. Jewish law is pretty clear that the one worst crime is murder, mainly because it can't be reversed.

Why do I say they are the most evil? Because after Sandy Hook the journalists have kicked into gear and are now reporting just how much the NRA has been working to ensure that crazy people can get their hands on mass murder tools. It's stupefying, it's numbing, just how much the NRA has done to allow murder!

The best journalist team is, yet again, the Daily Show. Even though they've gotten worse and worse about Israel (shame on you Stewart!), they are top notch about this issue. See the second video here to be astounded:

3. From Huffpo: Jon Stewart Takes On NRA Over ATF Limitations On Enforcing Existing Gun Laws (VIDEO)

Sandy Hook Massacre

Like everyone, the Sandy Hook massacre has shaken me deeply. I can't think about it for long without weeping: my middle son just turned 6.

But I have 2 points: (1) This could finally be the "9/11" type event that changes our culture to reject the "unlimited guns." The case I use as a model is smoking. When I was a kid, smoking was everywhere and completely accepted. Then something happened, thank God, and it became socially unacceptable to smoke. Bam, it was done. I'm hoping that this is what happens with guns now.

(2) This leads to my second point. I will now say, without fear of stidency, that I believe we should consider a person who owns a gun a potential murderer. WHat I mean by that is that the biggest fallacy from the gun-nuts is the belief that you can somehow divide the population into 'good people (who should own guns)' and 'bad people (who shouldn't get guns).' As the Treyvon Martin case showed us, the gun-nuts have convinced people that the way to distinguish these two populations is by race. The nuts basically make the bigoted case that blacks shouldn't have guns because they are automatically criminals and everyone else is not. Naturally this view is evil and it got exposed in that case.

After Sandy Hook, we should just admit: everyone who owns a gun is on the verge of being a murderer. What difference is there between Adam Lanza, may his name be cursed, and his mother? His mother owned the guns he used for his massacre. The NRA would claim that you need to keep guns to protect yourself, but those very guns were what killed her.

Again, what separates a gun-owner from a "potential murderer." A gun can only do 1 thing, it can only be used to kill. A knife cuts bread, a car is crucial transportation, a gun just kills. Sure, there a sport where the goal is to kill animals, and we're OK with that for some reason, but is that "sport" so necessary for America that it means I need to accept a few massacres a year? Deer hunting is so important?!?

I've said in many different places that the experience of Jews in the Diaspora is that we're more afraid of our neighbors than we are of the government/police. I think everyone in America needs to have that view too. The US government is not my enemy. It is my representative. And I want that government to protect me from gun-owners. Punto final.

We will know, there will be many signs, before the government gets too powerful that we need to arm our citizens. I cannot imagine that there's a cogent argument out there to say that Americans owning guns have helped our country in any way, at least in the past century. Anyone?

Guns

Adam Gopnik one of the best New Yorker writers, says in reaction to the latest mass murder:

Of course, we don’t know, and perhaps never will, what exactly “made him” do what he did; but we know how he did it. Those who fight for the right of every madman and every criminal to have as many people-killing weapons as they want share moral responsibility for what happened last night—as they will when it happens again. And it will happen again.

Yes. This happens way too much in America. One thing we need to realize is that there are many prices we pay, as Americans, for our freedom and Federalism. We are a huge country, and each state is different enough from the other that what is a blessing for some areas is seen as a curse in the others. The problem with the gun situation is that the people who think they are a blessing seem to rarely be the victims.

As a country we seemed to believe that we would restrict our freedom when it comes to air travel and new immigrants in order to not have another 9/11. Yet we seem determined to retain the same freedom - for guns - that will allow domestic terrorism to run amok. I believe the same impulse is behind both aspects of this paradox - the same people who ruin air travel, and who never liked immigrants in the first place - are the same people who demand the guns. The impulse is either myopic xenophobia (which we don't own the patent for), or the adolescent need to have someone else pay for your pleasures.

America has at least two major cultures that at times conveniently line up to the red-state blue-state divide. But suffice it to say that the reason why the US will never truly be an enlightened moral leader of the free world has to do with the burden of the South (and, if necessary, all the Red States). They are the ones who (a) are the worst Xenophobes, (b) hate education in favor of backwards religion [note to surfers, I am a clergyman], (c) want to hit their own kids and lock up other kids in prison for adult crimes, (d) enjoy the death penalty (not support, these guys love it), and the list goes on.

Like many things, American exceptionalism and supremacy - something I grew up believing and want to exist - was a historical necessity during the Cold War. The world was divided into slave and free, seen as Communist vs. Non (South Africa for some reason was part of the 'free' team) and we were the biggest, baddest of the non-Commies. It helped that we weren't damaged by World War II. But even more crucial is that we are a huge unified land mass with crucial natural resources and bordered by two oceans. We have plenty of room for crops and industry, and being under one government allows a stupendous synergy for business. This means we'll never be out of the top 5 world powers - as long as we stay unified, see Russia and China for proof of this. And we're better off than those 2 because much of our land is useable and we have warm-water oceans.

Our might made us right, and thank God we were on the side of freedom. But one aspect of our freedom is that we allow less than half of the population residing in states that due to Federalism give them disproportionate electoral power. These 'freedom loving' states hate much of the world, and distrust anyone who doesn't look like themselves (case in point: Obama hatred... do you believe that people still think he's stupid? You can call him arrogant, aloof, even foreign - there's proof for all of that- but stupid? It makes sense only if you are an inveterate racist, of which there are many).

Is this the freedom we want in America? So far, our vision of freedom not only ensures we have an insane health care system, but also mass murder of our children.

Trayvon Martin Case: Comments

The Trayvon Martin case is very important for exposing some rotten aspects of American society (which, like all diseases, has gotten virulent soon after the cures have been located). Specifcally, our addiction to guns and a deep-rooted racism.

I've mentioned in previous posts on gun control, that the biggest fallacy the gun-nuts push is the idiotic idea that a person can tell the difference between a good guy and a bad guy. That's why this case demonstrates the anti-Black racism of America better than any I remember. Because here the victim was an unarmed and innocent black teenager who lived near where he was murdered and his assailant was basically a crazy violent loner with a gun. A crazy Hispanic loner. In every other scenario, were Zimmerman the victim and the shooter were White, the case would be the same. But in the US, blacks are hated more than Latins... need proof, here's your proof.

The key point is this: only if you hate and fear blacks could Zimmerman's actions be OK. And while I hate to credit an anti-Zionist slimeball with anything, Robert Wright of Atlantic makes my points so well, I need to cite him: "(1) A man with a gun pursued an unarmed teenager who had done nothing wrong. (2) The man with the gun initiated a confrontation with the teenager. (3) As a result of the confrontation, the man with the gun shot the teenager to death. "

As Wright points out, these facts aren't in dispute - they are part of Zimmerman's defense! But when seen without race, this is a clear case of an armed assailant attacking and killing an innocent teen. However, since many Americans are viscerally racist, the "innocent teen" is automatically worthy of being shot because of his race. That's why the Police are releasing Trayvon's misdemeanor record - to depict him as a walking criminal. However, and I feel this is so obvious that it's overlooked, Trayvon wasn't doing anything wrong when he was stalked and murdered.

This reminds me of the Toulouse Massacre (which I need to say more about) because in both cases, some disturbed individual with a gun decided that the object of his hate could be killed. Yet, while in France it is seen as a crime to kill children in cold blood, sadly in the US - or in the crazy province of Florida (home of voter suppression and hanging chads) - you can.

Magnum Force

I purchased recently (for cheap!) "Magnum Force" [Wiki, IMDB, TCM] and I want to add it to the list of sequels that are better than their originals.

It's not only much more watchable (it has the awesome plane hijack scene) but the politics are better than the original. Most people didn't get Dirty Harry - most notably Pauline Kael, who I've learned since my youth to completely distrust - she was not only wrong most of the time, but disastrously so - I actually think I've lost friends because I recommended movies on her suggestion, I've definitely lost some sanity following her advice on such stinkers like "The Warriors," "Deliverance" and "The Killer Elite" - she had a tin ear for action films, and I suffered.

Kael labeled the film "fascist" but she did not understand the deconstruction of Harry in the film itself. He's meant to be an unlikable character, he's called "Dirty" because he'll do the things others are too ashamed to do. Kael's criticism could be against those who didn't understand that Harry was to be questioned not lauded, but alas she was in the benighted category herself.

In any case, the writer of Magnum Force - the cro-magnon John Milius - says explicitly that he wrote the sequel as a response to the critics. He wanted to explain what real fascism would look like. And as a result the full character of Harry comes out - instead of being a fascist response to the Miranda ruling of the early 70s, Harry was just another cowboy. Which interpretation would be more interesting? Well, the full fascist would be the Stallone characters of the 80s - really stupid expressions of a man being above the law. In Harry, as seen in Magnum Force, we have a person who believes in the Constitution, just not how it was being interpreted at that time. Fascism believes that liberty should be sacrificed for unity of the people, while the American cowboy ethic is libertarian - have as much liberty as possible. Both seem to agree that when a person violates the code, they should be killed. But libertarians believe the only things which violate the code are extreme crimes, while fascists reduce all action against the Polity as crimes.

Also, it had the best main theme - although nothing beats Lalo Schifrin's music for Dirty Harry's school bus scene.

P.S. The latter Dirty Harry films don't get put into the mix; while "Sudden Impact" was decent (it was a rehash of Magnum Force's anti-vigilantism) the "Enforcer" was absolutely ridiculous. And I can't even muster enough memory to recall "The Dead Pool."

The Holocaust and Guns

I just finished a stint as a teaching assistant for a Holocaust history class this semester. It was a fascinating class with a brilliant professor but, naturally, it was horrible. I've purposefully kept away from the topic all my life, not because I'm trying to ignore or hide the facts, but because a little bit of emotional dread goes a long way with me (and my family). I lost many relatives; I'm named after two brothers of my grandfather who were murdered; but I have tried to avoid the soul-crushing intensity that a dive into the holocaust waters would bring.

Well, there went that plan out the window. The class met for an hour three times a week, which meant I was depressed for most of the time. True story: I got the last word in class - the last day we have a class-wide discussion and I explained to the mass of undergraduates, many of whom were born the year when I was a college freshman, that studying the Holocaust is different when you're a able-bodied single adult than when you're a married parent. As a 20 year old, you can imagine being in the resistance, escaping a ghetto, hiding out in the woods etc. As a parent, all you imagine is your children being murdered. Again, it was horrible.

One natural response of a study of the Holocaust is Zionism, but it's a bit more complicated than that. One disturbing realization of the history is that while the mass murder started in Western Europe, aided by a culture of anti-semitism that reacted to the gains of liberal Jews in Weimar Germany, for the most part the assimilated Jews of the Western countries managed to escape. E.g. 50% of German Jews escaped, and many more would have survived if they had decided to identify as Jews (and thus flee) and not as loyal Germans (and thus stay, wearing their WWI uniforms).

Who were the overwhelming victims? Orthodox Jews who were estranged from their home countrymen (Poland, Lithuania, Belarus) - and the estrangement led to a mutual hatred. One way to see it is that the assimilated Jews of Germany angered the Western European murderers who took over the backward Slavic nations and slaughtered the unassimilated Jews. One lesson I take from this is another support for Modern Orthodoxy, but the whole subject is too dreary for clean lessons.

A question I do ask is why Jews in the diaspora don't own more guns. Zionism is a natural response to the Holocaust, but Zionism isn't limited to the land of Israel. This is a large topic - the debate between political vs. cultural Zionism - but you don't need to go as crazy as the JDL to wonder why Jews don't have a gun in the tool-shed for protection against our crazy neighbors.

My quick answer is that (a) Jews in the US are primarily urban and the anti-gun laws are severe in cities, and the response time of police is quick (especially since Jews, as prima-facie middle-class Caucasians, are preferred clients of law enforcement); (b) Jews are pro-natalist (i.e. we have many kids) and guns and kids don't mix; (c) Jewish law forbids hunting, and eating food shot to death, so it's not in the culture that way; (d) it's tough to be a Jew in the military and that's where gun familiarization occurs.

Those are at least most of the reasons why I haven't already purchased a load of weapons after a semester of being scared out of my mind with Holocaust horror.

Bad Gun Argument

For those who oppose gun-control, there's a frequently stated concept that these psycho handgun mass-murderers would be prevented were everyone else allowed to be armed. This came up with the Virginia Tech case and in the few hours after the Ft. Hood massacre some gun-control partisans exposed their ignorance by using this argument ironically/mockingly (the fact is that army bases are quite gun-free). The Styx would like to inject some rationality in this debate.

Primary Point: Evolution and Crime

First of all: there may be a fancy sociology-deviance-criminology term for this, I don't know yet, but I'll call it the Adaptability argument (or the Better Mousetrap, Better Mouse argument): that antagonistic agents will adapt to the expected environment. Put in simpler terms: if a psycho gunman knows his future victims will be armed, he will arm himself better. So instead of bringing a handgun, he'll bring dynamite.

I think Gladwell wrote about this with the anti-hijack tactics in the 1960s-70s. There were a high quantity of airplane hijackings in that era; then the law-enforcement tactics got better at eliminating the easy hijacking, which resulted in fewer attempts, but those that were attempted had a much higher casualty result.

Now one can plausibly argue that having a highly armed populace would be the equivalent of the better law-enforcement in the hijacking case. More guns = fewer mass murders. True, if you buy the analogy, then instead of using guns the murderers will use explosives, lets say, but that may be desirable to the gun defender. The fewer number of possible mass-murderers means, probabilistically, that in such a large country, I'll be less likely to be randomly shot. It's sorta why we say that air-travel is better than car-travel - the car accidents are smaller in body counts but far more frequent, while the air crashes are quite rare, but when they happen, they take out hundreds.

Analogies can be fun, you say. But here's the problem with using hijacking as a pro-gun (air-crash) case: ease of access. What does it take for a guy to go on a gun rampage? Uh, a gun. What does it take for a guy to hijack a plane? Much more planning.

In fact, speaking as a social scientist, it would behoove us to analyze why the gun violence occurs and how the crimes are committed. I'd predict, from what I remember reading about the data, that the murderers are often either (a) insane, or (b) on drugs/alcohol. Which means that their brains aren't working right at the time of the crime. Which means that logic & deterrence will have less of an effect than we'd like. If a person kills because the voices in his head tell him to, then he's going to try to kill. And, as I said above, if the voices warn him that everyone will have a gun, then he won't use his gun, he'll use his legally modified sub-machine gun or explosives.

Therefore, when dealing with nutjobs/addicts, the best defense won't be deterrence, it will be arms control. Ipso facto and QED.

Secondary Point

And, as I said in the earlier post, the key point the gun-advocates miss is that we don't know which citizen, when he buys his weapon, is a (potential) criminal or a (potential) whacko or a (potential) hero. Sadly, most of the pro-gun websites I've visited (when looking for good blog-pics) are also disturbingly racist. That means that these pro-gun people are often the same people who will use their guns not against criminals or varmints, but against their fellow citizens! And my Jewish tush will be on the their top 3 hit list.

Sadly, that means that most of the people who are most forceful about their gun rights may precisely be the people I want most to keep guns from.
The best argument for the pro-gun crowd is one that is nearly unassailable: it's in the Constitution. This means that all my logic, or statistics (if I find 'em), or their cries about freedom and crime-control, are meaningless. Because it's the law of the land.

Top pic from here, second pic is frequently seen on the intertubes. Third pic from here.

Warning Signs? What Warning Signs?

Sigh. "No warning signs"...

See the NY Times story: Fort Hood Gunman Gave Signals Before His Rampage. Or these 2 via Sullivan, from the Telegraph, and NPR.

NPR reported:

The psychiatrist [who worked alongside Hasan] says that he was very proud and upfront about being Muslim. And the psychiatrist hastened to say, and nobody minded that. But he seemed almost belligerent about being Muslim, and he gave a lecture one day that really freaked a lot of doctors out.

They have grand rounds, right? They, you know, dozens of medical staff come into an auditorium, and somebody stands at the podium at the front and gives a lecture about some academic issue, you know, what drugs to prescribe for what condition. But instead of that, he - Hasan apparently gave a long lecture on the Koran and talked about how if you don't believe, you are condemned to hell. Your head is cut off. You're set on fire. Burning oil is burned down your throat.

And I said to the psychiatrist, but this could be a very interesting informational session, right? Where he's educating everybody about the Koran. He said but what disturbed everybody was that Hasan seemed to believe these things. And actually, a Muslim in the audience, a psychiatrist, raised his hand and said, excuse me. But I'm a Muslim and I do not believe these things in the Koran, and then I don't believe what you say the Koran says. And then Hasan didn't say, well, I'm just giving you one point of view. He basically just stared the guy down.

Note, this may not be true (why would the Feds investigate some things Hasan said online but not when he gave an unprecedented religious rant about the Joy of Murder?), but hey, when you need to reduce the 'warning signs' to zero, some evidence gets thrown out.

Yet, back on The Styx's planet, it's predictable: every time there's some massive disaster or mass murder, the news agencies are quick to say that there were no warning signs. Besides the problem of retrojecting warning signs (Hasan was quiet! Killers are quiet!) there happen to be in almost every case huge red flags. As we saw with the VTech killer (a psychotic off his meds who published videos and stories about mass murder) Hasan gave numerous signals. Sure, most people seem to be dense, and it would have been nice had he told people explicitly - like John David Stutts - that he was about to go nuts. But honestly, what more do we need?

New Rule of Debate

I guess one step is to make it harder to buy a gun, but that would be unconstitutional. And guns don't kill people - nutjobs who easily buy guns do. And anyway, the media people - including most blogs I read - have emphasized that it is unseemly to use a mass murder (using handguns) to advance my partisan position of gun control.

Except, uh, two things: (1) In general, I don't take ethical lessons from journalists, and more importantly, (2) I am not a partisan on gun control. Were I to have an emotional connection to guns (e.g. an innocent loved one was gunned down, or I was saved by a gun) then you can say that I am partisan. But when do the Grand Ethicists allow a neutral person, like me, use evidence to make a decision about gun control?

In fact, the only people who demand that an incident not be used as evidence are the partisans themselves. So, OK - you can accuse me of being a partisan, but when that can be demonstrably gainsaid, then I claim that the incident is fair game.

Application of this Rule

So here goes: (1) I am neutral about guns. I happen to like them and would love to own one, shoot one every day, and if the opportunity presents itself, to kill someone who - if allowed - would have killed me or someone I care about.

(2) Yet, as an intelligent, judicious, and educated person, I have determined that the chances of my using a gun correctly is low while the possibility of inadvertent tragedy is high. I have three kids.

(3) It appears, from numerous major tragedies, that easy access to firearms has led to mass murder. As such, I believe that our gun rules are more likely to hurt me than to help me.

(4) When a new mass murder occurs, I see ways to prevent another one. Hence in this case, I want to bring up - as it is very relevant - that the killer used a handgun to destroy innocent people.

Conclusions?

To be honest, I think - beyond the gun control issue - the real 'cause' of this - and the reason why the warning signs were ignored - is from the breakdown of resources in the military. If we weren't stretched to our limit, it's more likely that this guy would have been stopped earlier. But, IRONY ALERT, because we needed mental health professionals to help with crazy soldiers, this crazy solider was forced to keep his crazy.

Quick Update

A quick clarification, and prediction: I predict that we'll discover (and if not, then it's a probable coverup) that Hasan would have been diagnosed as a security risk had it not been for our insane need for active-duty retention. The army paid a lot of money to make this psycho a doctor and they were not going to allow his being psycho make them lose their money. Even if we find out that he was convinced to go on a suicide mission by a Crazy Cleric, all that will show is that the crazy clerics could recognize the warning signs. As such, if we *was* recruited, it will show that his psychosis was even more evident. Take it from me, there are always warning signs. I'll expand on this with my long-awaited "Jaws" Essay.

First pic was self-made, second from this site.

Thoughts on the Ft. Hood Massacre

As you've heard, a nutjob shot up 50 people in 3 minutes in Ft. Hood, Texas. A few thoughts:

1. The moment I read he was a Psychiatrist, not just a guy with a Muslim name, I thought that this is another Baruch Goldstein. The pattern is familiar. Two motives of BG (yimach shemo) were (a) as a doctor he was driven nuts by the trauma of his patients, and/or (b) he was nationalist scum going for a big score via 'collective punishment.
   
2. I'm not a pure mental health professional (despite being on the front-lines, as it were, of the nutjob world as a pulpit rabbi), but I am training to be a behavioral scientist; and I've been fascinated, for years, on how most people don't know the warning signs of these mass murderers. I claim, and we'll see what we find about yesterday's (and now today's) mass murdering mamzers (MMM), but I'm certain there were warning signs. Remember Virgina Tech.
   
3. Connected to the 'warning signs,' I've also hoped that one day we'd catch one of the MMMs alive, and it looks like we've done that for both shootings. This is good - because, especially with the Hood shooter, who's was not only a psychiatrist, but he's also a client! Who better to give insight as to why these crazy men (and it's almost always men) snap and decide to kill random strangers.
   
4. Related to that, maybe by talking with Hassan Hassan Hassan, we can find out the best way to convince these budding MMM to just straight out commit suicide, first, before the rampage. Because, as I claim, these guys are usually giving off many warning signs. Yet since there is, as a guest teacher confirmed for me in pastoral psychology, a "license to be crazy" in America, we can't do anything for the MMM before he takes out his family/coworkers/random innocents. So my idea is to create a stress kit for mental health professionals who can convince the pre-MMM that suicide is the best option. In the long run, we'll save many lives. I'm only slightly joking.

America, Land of the Free, Home of the School Shootings

It appears schoolkids are rapidly overtaking postal workers as those Most Likely to Open Fire. Today, a "gunman" - wait, does 14 years old make you a gun-man? this should read "gun-boy" - opened fire in his Cleveland school, wounding a bunch of people before he was killed, either by himself or by police.

The NYTimes reports:

'The student had two guns, one in each hand, and fired them both while walking down the hallway,' Channel 19 reported. 'Three people have been shot — including two teachers.'

We need to thank my man, John Woo, for popularizing the two-gun style of mayhem... because it looks cool (and thus attracts these miscreants) but Thank God you can't hit a blessed thing that way. Whew.

{2009 Update: pic from here.}

Proof I Like Guns: MadOgre

[Backpost addendum: I've made a few posts that talk about gun control, but this is to show how I do like guns]

So I do like guns and have for years. When I was a early teenager in Ithaca, I would like visiting the Uris Library reference room because they had many references books on weapons.

Totally True Story: This acquired information came in handy on my first day in Machal in Camp Moshava I/O. How I got to that camp is a whole other long story, but for the purposes of this anecdote, know that this was the first and only year I was there and I didn't come with a cohort of friends (most people there had been going for years with the same group of friends). So I was settling into my bunk, getting used to the filth and squalor of Moshava back in 1987, and a bunch of these New Jersey yeshiva H.S. kids were trying to size me up. One of them, a very big guy with muscular arms, I'll call him Jacques, took out two knives and held them up by his head, facing me, and asked if I had ever seen such great knives before.

I was a cagey survivor type, even back then, and coolly I replied that I prefer guns to knives, specifically the Browning High Power 1936 because of it's large ammo capacity and significant muzzle velocity. Jacques kinda blanched, thought that I had a good point in the gun/knife debate, and we became friendly. This was the only time, so far, that I can say that guns saved me some weird violent grief.

Anyway, as I've mentioned elsewhere, the amazing internet has saved wee lads like myself from needing ink and pulp encyclopedias to get our recondite info and fulfill masculine fantasies. So in my online searches, I came across a fun gun info place: MadOgre. Note, like many of the pro-gun camp, he feels the need to craze out with anti-Democratic-Party screeds. Ah well. Ignore that part and his gun knowledge and attitude is worth the read.

Probably his best stuff are his analysis of gun-use in particular movies. He suggests how and why characters are using the guns they do. Note, this is basically Ogre critiquing the specific movie's gun-tech expert - because it's rare for a big budget action film to not have some ex-IDF nudge on the payroll to choose hardware. Taken in that light, it's like hearing how those movie-gun-techs go about their decisions.

As a result, I thank Ogre for cluing me into Boondock Saints, which I like, and Equilibrium, which was OK. Here's a list of the articles:

Backpost finished 2009-12-03.

Don't Forget to Duck

Backpost from June

Guns don't kill people, people kill people. Using guns.

P.S. I found a link to the story from this online community:, The Pennsylvania Firearm Owners Association. Here's what these gun-advocates have to say:

• From 'Gorgon': "[The article says:]They plan to begin patrolling Monday evening in two-person teams wearing "Edgewood Park Defense Patrol" T-shirts and carrying concealed, licensed firearms. While I'm sure the weapons will be concealed, the T-shirt would seem to advertise the fact that you are carrying..."
  
• 'Skuggi' responds: "I think that's the point, I think unlike here there are laws up there against open carry."
  
• 'Penguini66' adds: "Something tells me that this is going to end up bad."
  
• To which 'Bubba23' responds: "Yep, I got the same gut feeling. I am also concerned about two-person teams. That is simply not realistic. There are many situations where two trained LEOs can't safely handle a situation. I wish them the best and applaud their efforts, but still not sure..."
  
• 'Penguini66': "I'm also worried about the legality of the act. Advertising an armed citizens patrol is going to PO some LEO [Law Enforcement Officer] I'd imagine."
  
• 'Bubba23' concludes: "I think it would have been much smarter to forget the t-shirts and the name. The t-shirts are just targets and calling yourself a patrol might be a problem. Why not just be a few citizens out for a walk. If you have a right to carry, so be it. Anything else and you play right into the definition of vigilante: vigilante - someone who takes the enforcement of law or moral code into his or her own hands."

Note, these are all gun-carry advocates. And even they know the patrols are dangerous, counterproductive, and geared to annoy the police.

Material for the Gun Debate

In reaction to the Virginia Tech massacre many commentators wondered if a change in the gun laws would have made the tragedy worse, better or unchanged. One of the many websites I had been reading directed me to this online book that studied the relationship between gun laws and violence "Firearms and Violence" by Charles F. Wellford, John V. Pepper, and Carol V. Petrie from the [official sounding] Committee on Law and Justice of the National Research Council.

Backpost finished 8/9/07, and again just the link

Second Amendment

No, I didn't receive a memo ordering me to write about today's horrific massacre: (32 Shot Dead on Virginia Tech Campus - New York Times). These are just how the blogger personality type responds to tragedy. Some cry, some pray, most blog.

Naturally, this type of incident makes we bloggy types revisit the issue of guns in America and the interpretation of the second amendment. Just as all the anti-gun types look at this and say 'were there no easy access to guns, this type of thing wouldn't happen.' While pro-gun people see this as a perfect example of how having a whole mess of students with concealed weapons would have put a stop to this right then and there.

Look. Common sense and burning passion can only carry one so far in this type of debate. Let's get factual. Has there been a case where a civilian carrying a concealed handgun managed to subdue some mass murdering wacko? Israel doesn't count because almost everyone who packs heat also served in the army. What Michelle Malkin would want, doubtless, is for Virginia Tech freshmen to be able to tote around sidearms. So, again, any case where this worked?

We anti-gun types see the pro-gun people as not getting the point. If crazy wackos have a tough time getting guns and still manage to go on rampages every year or so, what would happen when we made getting guns EVEN EASIER?

Often, the two sides of a debate will disagree because they envision different cases in their heads. I use the example, often, of welfare. Conservatives see welfare as a way to perpetuate irresponsible crack-smoking single-mom baby machines while liberals see welfare as a way to protect noble hard-working people wronged by the system.

So too with guns. Conservatives - who in the previous example show a contempt for the majority of the country that is in financial difficulty - somehow believe that the people who can't handle the responsibility of a job will handle the responsibility of a gun.

Guns are one issue where liberals feel people are less capable, less responsible, than conservatives do. Weird, no?

But, the gun wackos will respond, who will defend you when the Islamic communists knock on your schoolroom door? The answer is the police. We liberals - and urban moderates - live in tightly packed city streets with thousands of neighbors. We don't everyone to have guns and we need to have a large, swift moving police force to protect us as a result. [This urban-rural split is the only decent argument I've heard to defend gun ownership; the same crime that would have police respond in 10 minutes in a city would be impossible to duplicate in a rural area.]

If you want to know how the Styx analyzes the current data on the Virginia massacre, it's because of a breakdown of the police. Not the police themselves, but because the moron of a school president didn't think of enforcing the law. If you see the above story, there was a first shooting at 7:15 am (killing 2) and then a second set at 9:45 am (killing 30+) from the same guy. Ample time to send in SWAT and lock down the campus. But that didn't happen. Why? As the above NYTimes story quotes:

"[School President] Mr. Steger defended the decision not to shut down or evacuate the campus after the first shootings, saying officials had believed the first incident was a self-contained event, which the campus police believed was a 'domestic' dispute. 'We had no reason to suspect any other incident was going to occur,' he said."

I'm going to perform a anthropology trick here: what type of person would describe some guy killing two people on a college campus as a 'domestic dispute' that doesn't require even a minimal enough police presence to arrest the murderer? The president is defending his decision to let a murderer run amok on campus because, hey, it was just a minor dispute.

I would say that this is the attitude of a gun owner. Virginia is gun country. Look at Democrat James Webb - caught sneaking a gun (unapologetically) into the Senate.

If this was a northern school, I believe they would've shut it down. And while this is a hearsay/circumstantial proof, I see no way of explaining the idiotic behavior of the Virginia Tech president … unless he was a Bush appointee.

And this was a Blue State

According to this New York Times story (5 Killed in Hunting Dispute in Wisconsin):

BIRCHWOOD, Wis. (AP) -- As several deer hunters made their way through the woods of northern Wisconsin, they were startled to come upon a stranger in their tree stand. .... Asked to leave, the trespasser, wearing blaze-orange and carrying a semiautomatic assault rifle, opened fire on the hunters and didn't stop until his 20-round clip was empty, leaving five people dead and three wounded, authorities said.

Makes you feel glad the assault weapon ban was led to die in Congress. Or else these men would have been killed by a crazed deer!

{2009 Update: link fixed to this CBS story. And pic of crazy gun from here.}

Assault Weapons and CBS

Somewhere, when I wasn't looking, the second Amendment became more important than the first. The Assault Weapon Ban - a perfect thing to need renewing during a presidential election - real smart guys - is history. Not that it mattered much anyway, I mean, considering that we can't go on a plane with nail clippers, America is that much safer. And 9/11 would clearly have been prevented if we all had AK-47s.

Anyway, as an avid reader of political cartoons (both through my subscription services and through Slate), I have slowly become outraged at the cowardice of the Press. I've been a critic of the pusillanimous Press for years now and I'm so glad that I didn't enter the field because I'd have to retire from the shame of my colleagues.

And I'm not only talking about the shoddy journalism of CBS and Rather. Rather sucked the moment he sat in Cronkite's chair (and I'm not just saying that because Roger Mudd was my professor at Princeton). I'm talking about the total timidity of the press in the face of the type of government they were empowered to battle.

If you check the list of editorial cartoons about CBS and Rather you'll see that many 'toonists are claiming that CBS works for Kerry. One 'toon said that Rather's replacement will be Michael Moore.

Ahem.

In this age where Fox is de-facto owned by the RNC -- DENY IT, COME ON, DENY IT! -- and where the Press has let Bush, Cheney and Rove run amok with the truth, the concept that anyone critical of the President is loyal to Kerry is just disgusting. The Press is supposed to criticize the government, that's why the constitution protects it.

The Press played along in a shamefully slack-jawed, lazy, frightened manner with the 'Swift Boats for Rove' crapola. So if they go after a legitimate story - based on those black things on white things called "words" and "paper" - about the gaps in Bush's military record... gaps which can explain why he can't handle responsibility - why that is considered acting on Kerry's behalf?! I understand why Fox would assert that, but there are a half-dozen toons and counting. I can't wait till I see one which says Osama is behind it.

Look, Iran just successfully tested long-range missiles. North Korea is rattling nuclear sabres. Our army is being chewed up like yellow pencils in Iraq and we're roaming the sinkhole of Afghanistan looking for an Osama in a haystack. We've lost more soldiers per day in Iraq after the 'transfer of power' than before. Why would saying these things be considered partisan. IT'S THE TRUTH DUMMIES!

Oh, forget it. I can see we're going to get four more years of this pencil-neck and his beady-eyed thuggery. The GOP in Ohio has rejected the new registrations of voters (mostly Democrats) because they registered on the wrong weight of card-stock. How many elections can they steal and still call this America?

Sorry to say, this is no longer the Styx; we're entering Hell.

{2009 Pic Update: First from here, second from here.}

Join the NRA Blacklist

TPM alerted us to the NRA Blacklist- a group of people and organizations who are "anti-gun." As far as I can tell, "anti-gun" should probably mean "pro-life" but there's where I get confused.

Anyhoo, the AARP, American Medical Association, the American Bar Association, the Anti-Defamation League, B`nai B`rith, the Central Conference of American Rabbis, American Jewish Committee & American Jewish Congress (which are the same organization, trust me), Hadassah, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Union of American Hebrew Congregations and even the "American Trauma Society" - who you'd think would like gunshot wounds - are on the blacklist.

Missing: the OU. Young Israel. Agudah.

There are a whole mess of celebrities on the list. Some you'd expect (Ed Asner) some you'd not (Tony Bennett, my man Sean Connery)

You too can join! Click here.

Personally, I don't know if I'll join the blacklist. If my leaders, the OU etc, aren't on the list then YA KNOW how can I disagree with those older and wiser than me.

Also, do I really want to be on the bad side of an organization wholly devoted to guns and shooting people?

P.S. There are a mess of interesting articles on the NRA website.

Man Shoots 5 Co-Workers, then Himself

Maybe in Mississippi they don't look askance when someone repeatedly claims that they want to come in and shoot up their coworkers. Repeatedly. Yay for gun ownership! NYTimes story here.