Oh shit

Not again.

Two students were shot at a Los Angeles High School today because some idiot put a cocked and locked pistol in his backpack and it went off when he dropped his pack on a table. One could call it an accident, but you'd at least have to put the word in italics.

There's no resemblance to the Tucson shooting, although the student obviously illegally possessed the gun, illegally concealed it and illegally brought it into a school, he wasn't out to shoot anyone at that particular moment. I'll bet there will be more calls to make it even more illegal, but more than likely he was a gang member, so illegality isn't a deterrent any more than it is to a psychotic. It may have earned him some status in fact.

It may surprise some people, but we have a maze of gun control laws and they aren't doing a good enough job with this kind of crime and these kinds of criminals: gang members, psychotics and sociopaths - a tiny but deadly element.

But without knowing just how the kid got the gun, I can only speculate about what went wrong and can't talk about what to do, other than to do a better job with the metal detectors. There's a gun show loophole. There are hard to control private transfers, some legal, some not and some guns are stolen. Even though nothing short of a 24 hour curfew and a police state with no civil rights will stop such crimes, it's time we stopped calling for, stop being comfortable with more and more "gun control" bills based on twisted descriptions, laden with straw arguments and riddled with loopholes. It's time for -- no, please don't laugh - some bi-partisan and rational reconsideration.

It's also time to remember that in a huge country, with a growing population, crime can be on the decline and still appear to be on the rise.

Kids in cages

"Children should neither be seen or heard from - ever again" said W.C. Fields.

Surprisingly, our activist Supreme Court has begged to differ. It was only five years ago that the Supreme Court finally decided that killing kids for justice was a bit behind the times, but of course some "Conservative" states have continued to sentence juveniles to life without parole. Chief amongst those states is Florida, which houses about 70% of them.

It would be hard to describe Florida as a particularly child-friendly state. Although I can't say it's particularly friendly to those who prey on them or neglect them, the poverty, substance abuse and ignorance that abound isn't child friendly either. Certainly "55 and older" communities are everywhere and as communities of older people are more likely to be afraid of the noise wild behavior and petty crime, there's a certain hostility. There's a certain feeling of helplessness and even terror amongst older people that can lead to hostility. It's a terror that overrides conscience in some cases and that sides with a draconian justice system while whimpering about a less powerful government.

Of course there's a big difference between chasing those brats off your lawn and locking them up in a cage for as long as they shall live, and that bit of casual inhumanity has at last drawn Supreme attention. Terrance Graham was implicated in armed robberies when he was a minor and has been sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole. The court voted 5-4 on Monday and Kennedy, writing for the majority said:

"The state has denied him any chance to later demonstrate that he is fit to rejoin society based solely on a nonhomicide crime that he committed while he was a child in the eyes of the law. This the Eighth Amendment does not permit." (as a cruel punishment)

This decision was a majority one because Chief Justice Roberts sided for once with the liberals although with the qualification that it should not apply to all non-homicide crimes. That of course makes the decision less than decisive. It's a step forward, but a timid and qualified step toward humanity; toward sometimes, in some cases allowing a second chance to someone who got caught doing what millions of others have got away with and never done again. That's just the sort of thing conservatives object to: making the law and justice more congruent; making the law for man and not man for the law -- and that's just the reason we need to balance the angry, self righteous and fearful elements on the court.

The sky is falling

I live in a small county in Florida. Violent crime rates in this county are declining with 486 per 100,000 population last year. In Pittsburgh they are also declining with about 1070 which is none the less about twice the national average. of course far from all of violent crimes involve firearms. A great many involve fists, beer bottles, baseball bats and knives, but Pittsburgh has much, much more restrictive gun control than Florida and probably fewer guns.

For what it's worth, traffic fatalities in Florida are at 14 year lows and even if shark and alligator attacks and lightening strike fatalities reflect a growing population, you can't say it's getting more dangerous, despite the constant appeal to the relentless fiction that it is.

You'll be reading about the four people killed in Pittsburgh by a misogynous, racist, paranoid and perhaps schizophrenic nutjob for some time and you will hear suggestions that this could have been prevented by even tighter gun control although there won't be any practical, or constitutional, suggestions short of blanket confiscation. The won't be any evidence that such has ever been the case. Pittsburgh already requires guns to be registered. Florida does not.

There are many reasons that you might consider Pittsburgh to be more dangerous than an unincorporated town in Florida, but obviously registration Vs. non registration requirements aren't a significant factor, so can we dispense with the knee-jerk reactionary rhetoric and the stereotyping of gun owners -- but we won't. We'll hear the same axe grinding, throwing out the same sparks and we will continue to advocate the same cures that haven't had any effect and ignore whatever it is that has.

Just watch and see.