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.}

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.