Even when it does.
Oh goodie, we can stop obsessing about Ebola and the Ottawa shooting and renew the obsessive hysteria about school violence until something else happens. Of course something else is happening constantly, but there's no money in discussing it when you compare it to the blockbuster ratings boost from red-eyed, glued to the tube, round the clock repetition of the same damned video clips under the rubric of "breaking News!"
I suppose there will be little or no comment on the likelihood that the massive coverage will produce copy-cat incidents of suicide by shooting spree and the usual refusal to attempt perspective by noting that such things seem to clump, but all in all have been declining significantly - over 50% - for more than 20 years. It's more profitable to claim that schools aren't safe although impartial statistics seem to show it's more dangerous at home and that any one American school can expect to have a gun or explosives incident only about once in 12,800 years. People are demonstrably terrible at assessing risk and news providers get rich by helping them panic while other institutions of reform and anti-reform distract and misinform to promote their programs, all of them so convinced of their rightness and righteousness, truth can be damned as an obstruction and lies praised as noble.
Showing posts with label school shootings. Show all posts
Showing posts with label school shootings. Show all posts
Saturday, October 25, 2014
Tuesday, June 10, 2014
Who's blowing those pipes and where is he leading us?
There's something happening here
What it is ain't exactly clear
-Buffalo Springfield-
Another day, another school shooting, or so it seems. It's not clear yet, as I write this, just what happened to the perpetrator except that he's dead and I'm only using the male pronoun because face it, almost all rampage shooters are male. The only other facts available at the moment are that one person was killed and that the weapon used was "semiautomatic" which is really of no import but that it excites people who have no idea what that means and are afraid of guns, which is precisely the effect the media desire because it pins us all to the tube.
But it does seem that it's not only a growing thing, but a rapidly growing thing, but perhaps once again, impressions can be deceiving particularly when there's a strong desire to make it a political issue.
Actually it may be otherwise and if one looks for patterns, it might seem that rampage shootings on the whole reached a peak, along with violent crime in general, in the 1980's and has tapered off since and the Sandy Hook incident looks almost anomalous. That certainly is not the impression I get from the news.
So lets look further back and let's average it out per period and use the per capita figures to adjust for the exploding population to make it easier to differentiate noise from trends and it seems the years from 1980 through 1990 were indeed a maximum. I might be tempted to say we're at a similar rate to what we had during the Great Depression.
I might be tempted to mention that one of the largest gun control programs dates to 1967 and that violent crime accelerated sharply thereafter. There was a big bump during prohibition and a minimum during the 'Fabulous 50's' as Ike used to call it, but off the top of my head, that 1980 to 1990 period coincided with Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. Make of that what you will and I'm sure one can look at other trends and events and conditions and make correlations and speculate about causation, Does it show a marked effect of gun control milestone legislation like the 1967 restrictions on types of weapons, the end of mail order sales, the end of "saturday night specials," waiting periods, gun owner registrations and the like? I don't see it. I see a long term downward trend.
"Too many guns!" is a favorite explanation for a trend that may be apparent without actually being true, but again, the number of households with guns seems to be steadily declining and while US gun production is up, it might have a bit to do with the 13 years of war we've suffered through. Fewer people have an inclination to have guns in the house and although it's easy to dismiss the positive correlation of gun ownership per capita with gun crime of any kind, we're just not being objective if we see more guns everywhere.
Really, just what is happening here? More than one thing certainly, but we can't rule out politics -- not in everything at a time when politics determines what we perceive in all things. What it is, ain't exactly clear but it's clear to me that there's a piper making some kind of music and we just can't seem to resist following him.
Tuesday, December 18, 2012
Grimms tales
"They need to change the subject" writes Fred Grimm in the Miami Herald as though anyone who doesn't quite share his assumptions and
conclusions or ill informed and breathless opinions, must be of an
ilk. It's easier than to address real concerns after all. That might
require him to address my concerns and yours rather than to abuse a
straw man.
Suddenly everyone is an expert on guns and gun law, but although I'm hardly a "gun advocate" I do advocate the truth and the truth is that although the police and the military do use some autoloading pistols, real military assault rifles have been banned since 1937 and are not "easily available" at your local Bass Pro Shop or Wal-Mart. That dearly beloved ban left store shelves loaded with extended magazines and the kind of weapons it didn't actually ban. I'll just assume that my Grimm brother here is as ignorant as most journalists who think that BA in journalism grants poetic license and instant expertise on all matters and not just someone looking for ratings by reaching into that bucket of breathless hyperbole and cheap drama and pulling out plums about "high velocity bullets" without actually knowing anything about ballistics. Would the victims have been better off being hit by slow moving .45 ACP slugs or faster moving .22 magnums? Not really.
So am I changing the subject or is he avoiding honest questions by lining up straw men like -- well like targets in a shooting gallery? Is he being honest by asserting that unless you first accept his solution to the problem and don't ask any inconvenient questions you're either being a "gun advocate" or changing the subject? Well no, if you ask me. I think I'm right on topic.
No, what matters is the emotion he can cram into another tired repetition or our ritual morning and artisinal outrage -- and that's what sells papers. What apparently doesn't matter is a rational approach to school security. What's apparent to me is not some culture of violence and video games led by the black robed evil ones at the NRA, but the same kind of tunnel vision that made us spend a trillion dollars on airport security in response to another tragedy that could have been prevented for a few hundred bucks per plane by installing heavier and lockable cabin doors.
So am I changing the subject by insisting that we read the "assault weapon ban" before wanting it back or that we might look at our existing gun control laws with an eye to seeing what has worked and what hasn't? Am I avoiding a discussion or is he replacing discussion with stereotypes and straw men who can't fight back?
So am I "gun advocate" even though I'm not promoting more gun ownership and instead promoting a wider, more informed look at security? Or is Grimm a greedy, opportunistic hack looking for ratings? Your answer is more likely to describe you than me, sad to say, because this never has been a rational discussion about protecting the public but a battle of fairy tales and illusions where pragmatism and fact do fear to tread.
"Gun advocates — a polite term after the seventh mass murder of 2012 — would rather not fumble around on TV just now, trying to invent a sane-sounding rationale that pretends to find civic good in the easy commercial availability of military weaponry" he continues.
Suddenly everyone is an expert on guns and gun law, but although I'm hardly a "gun advocate" I do advocate the truth and the truth is that although the police and the military do use some autoloading pistols, real military assault rifles have been banned since 1937 and are not "easily available" at your local Bass Pro Shop or Wal-Mart. That dearly beloved ban left store shelves loaded with extended magazines and the kind of weapons it didn't actually ban. I'll just assume that my Grimm brother here is as ignorant as most journalists who think that BA in journalism grants poetic license and instant expertise on all matters and not just someone looking for ratings by reaching into that bucket of breathless hyperbole and cheap drama and pulling out plums about "high velocity bullets" without actually knowing anything about ballistics. Would the victims have been better off being hit by slow moving .45 ACP slugs or faster moving .22 magnums? Not really.
So am I changing the subject or is he avoiding honest questions by lining up straw men like -- well like targets in a shooting gallery? Is he being honest by asserting that unless you first accept his solution to the problem and don't ask any inconvenient questions you're either being a "gun advocate" or changing the subject? Well no, if you ask me. I think I'm right on topic.
No, what matters is the emotion he can cram into another tired repetition or our ritual morning and artisinal outrage -- and that's what sells papers. What apparently doesn't matter is a rational approach to school security. What's apparent to me is not some culture of violence and video games led by the black robed evil ones at the NRA, but the same kind of tunnel vision that made us spend a trillion dollars on airport security in response to another tragedy that could have been prevented for a few hundred bucks per plane by installing heavier and lockable cabin doors.
So am I changing the subject by insisting that we read the "assault weapon ban" before wanting it back or that we might look at our existing gun control laws with an eye to seeing what has worked and what hasn't? Am I avoiding a discussion or is he replacing discussion with stereotypes and straw men who can't fight back?
So am I "gun advocate" even though I'm not promoting more gun ownership and instead promoting a wider, more informed look at security? Or is Grimm a greedy, opportunistic hack looking for ratings? Your answer is more likely to describe you than me, sad to say, because this never has been a rational discussion about protecting the public but a battle of fairy tales and illusions where pragmatism and fact do fear to tread.
Monday, December 17, 2012
What's wrong with us?
This is what I'm going to say about this and this is all I'm going to
say. We have a lot of firearms in the USA. We always have had. For a few, hunting for food
or furs or hides and protection from wild animals makes them necessary.
For many, protecting the hen house, the livestock, the crops, might
require a firearm. For some a firearm is something you shoot at paper
targets or clay pigeons with at the country club. For others, it puts
meat on the table and for some, they can be relics of history prized for
craftsmanship or beauty or historical value. For many, living in a
violent and dangerous area, people who have to transport valuables,
people who are a target for criminals for many reasons; having a gun is
peace of mind. For such people, being associated with psychotics and
terrorists and hit-men and bandits and deranged murderers is offensive
and worthy of scornful denunciation. And don't we hear a lot of it?
We have a lot of people in this country who cannot conceive that any of the above will own one for any justifiable reason or that firearms exist for any other reason but to kill someone, and so these horrifying and otherwise useless pieces of metal must be made to disappear and right now and at all cost. If you don't agree with that, words will be placed in your mouth that prove how deranged you are so don't even try to explain. Many of those people, and they are in the minority, refuse to discuss what needs to be done to protect us all from crime and the grotesque results of a madman with a gun or a bomb unless and only unless there's a prior agreement to reduce or eliminate or severely curtail the right to own one. For them it's guns and guns alone that explain the needless death of innocents and the notion that the murderer is more guilty than his weapon is offensive and well worthy of scorn and mockery. It's all about guns, guns, guns and guns alone and don't we hear a lot about it?
Welcome to American fear, American extremism and American intransigence. Neither side will talk to the other with the intent to understand, just as with so many things America concerns itself with. Neither side will brook any discussion of the complexity of human behavior and motivation, the cost of reducing risk, the efficacy of anything that has already been tried or proposed, the "other side" certainly being so far into a delusional state or simply so committed to brutality and mayhem that there is no middle ground between "we must trust the people" and "it's too dangerous ever to trust the people" and no point to looking for it.
What will never be discussed is the very reason discussion is futile. That reason is us. What we don't want to talk about and what we cover up and distract from with epithets like Libtard or gun nut, with shibboleths like the NRA or the Brady Bunch or the Gungrabbers or the Gun Culture or even made up discussions is that it just may be that the enemy is not some piece of metal and explosive, some nefarious group of bogeymen, but something to do with who and what we Americans are and why we seem to be different, so angry, so afraid, so filled with self pity and lack of compassion. It just may have something to do with the reason Switzerland with a widespread love of shooting and hunting; Switzerland where there are 46 guns per hundred residents has virtually no gun crime, nobody shooting up the schools and movie theaters -- and the US with about twice as many has vastly more than twice as much. What causes that difference is something we need to talk about. Without doing that, all we will hear are rationalizations of prejudice and peremptory proclamations of belief -- but that's up to you the people, because I'm too disgusted to give a damn any more.
We have a lot of people in this country who cannot conceive that any of the above will own one for any justifiable reason or that firearms exist for any other reason but to kill someone, and so these horrifying and otherwise useless pieces of metal must be made to disappear and right now and at all cost. If you don't agree with that, words will be placed in your mouth that prove how deranged you are so don't even try to explain. Many of those people, and they are in the minority, refuse to discuss what needs to be done to protect us all from crime and the grotesque results of a madman with a gun or a bomb unless and only unless there's a prior agreement to reduce or eliminate or severely curtail the right to own one. For them it's guns and guns alone that explain the needless death of innocents and the notion that the murderer is more guilty than his weapon is offensive and well worthy of scorn and mockery. It's all about guns, guns, guns and guns alone and don't we hear a lot about it?
Welcome to American fear, American extremism and American intransigence. Neither side will talk to the other with the intent to understand, just as with so many things America concerns itself with. Neither side will brook any discussion of the complexity of human behavior and motivation, the cost of reducing risk, the efficacy of anything that has already been tried or proposed, the "other side" certainly being so far into a delusional state or simply so committed to brutality and mayhem that there is no middle ground between "we must trust the people" and "it's too dangerous ever to trust the people" and no point to looking for it.
What will never be discussed is the very reason discussion is futile. That reason is us. What we don't want to talk about and what we cover up and distract from with epithets like Libtard or gun nut, with shibboleths like the NRA or the Brady Bunch or the Gungrabbers or the Gun Culture or even made up discussions is that it just may be that the enemy is not some piece of metal and explosive, some nefarious group of bogeymen, but something to do with who and what we Americans are and why we seem to be different, so angry, so afraid, so filled with self pity and lack of compassion. It just may have something to do with the reason Switzerland with a widespread love of shooting and hunting; Switzerland where there are 46 guns per hundred residents has virtually no gun crime, nobody shooting up the schools and movie theaters -- and the US with about twice as many has vastly more than twice as much. What causes that difference is something we need to talk about. Without doing that, all we will hear are rationalizations of prejudice and peremptory proclamations of belief -- but that's up to you the people, because I'm too disgusted to give a damn any more.
Friday, December 14, 2012
Oh my God, not again
What do we do to protect our schools? Is this one of those questions that have no real answer or at least not one definite answer? What can we propose that does more than give in to the predictable shouts and demands of the irrational and angry and fearful and uninformed? What can we do that isn't something that has already failed to have any effect or that we're already doing? What can we do to calm the irrational, the ill informed, the hysterical and fear ridden?
Certainly none of the solutions we've so passionately offered and instituted and defended against criticism have done anything we can point to as having helped: the three day waiting period, the background checks, the late "assault weapon" ban, the ban on "Saturday Night Specials," the ban on sending guns through the mail without a Federal license, the ban on automatic weapons that's been here since 1937, the restrictions on how many guns you can buy in a year, how much ammunition. . . the need for criminal background checks and fingerprinting -- how short a barrel can be and even whether a sporting gun can legally be made to look like a military weapon -- Sure, the overall rate of violent crime may continue to decline and perhaps some of that is due to these measures or to more people being in jail, but there will be more incidents as there are in countries with draconian gun control laws. At every one we can be sure there will be calls to make murder even more illegal, to somehow confiscate all guns from the 175 million people who own them -- and the same mouldy arguments will be trotted out again and discussion of whether experience anywhere has given us a reason to be hopeful, will not be heard. Still I have a good idea what will happen.
The media will chew on this for days striving to raise the discussion to the point of mania, because it's good for ratings. As I watch, the network nitwits are prattling about whether we should go back to that fraudulent "Assault Weapon Ban" which really only banned newly made fake assault weapons made overseas and left millions already in circulation. It made us liberals feel good. It made nothing better.
People will be afraid to send their kids to school. When heads begin to cool, there will be a search for heroes and the folk psychoanalysis of perpetrators by the usual hired opinionators. The same old axes will be ground.
There will be more earnest insistence that banning things make them go away, even if there are 200 million in the country, perhaps much more. More idiocy about making psychotics "just say no" by passing a ban, a restriction, a law.
What we should be asking is what I asked just now -- how do we protect the innocent, the helpless without increasing helplessness? How do we protect our schools? How do we keep the dangerously insane off the streets and how do we keep them from acquiring bombs, guns, crossbows, knives and yes, airplanes? How do we do this without harming those people who need guns: farmers, for instance and people who use them to feed their families. Do we need to argue for weapons with smaller magazines? Shorter barrels, longer barrels, longer waiting periods, sanity checks? All I can say is that we'll argue and in a fashion no more or less likely to produce an answer then in the past. There will be all or nothing parties and neither will make any sense. The NRA will act as though Obama is going to take all our guns, Fox will imply that he already has. Bumper stickers will appear on cars and trucks.
Will anyone ask that we calmly assess how much danger must be seen as unavoidable in a free society and how much authoritarian control and how much less liberty we will or can accept in the interests of safety. One side will say arm the kids and blame Obama, the other will insist that the theoretical saving of one life justifies anything at all. Anyone in the middle won't be heard and the extremes won't listen.
I've always thought that the outcomes of a policy are the necessary test of it's effectiveness, but we're talking about America the hysterical and ill informed. It's about believing in a policy and if it doesn't work, it's because you didn't believe or didn't make it authoritarian or even Draconian enough. And so I have to ask again -- what can we do to protect the weak, the helpless, the innocent that works and doesn't unnecessarily tread on the rights of all? I fear, given the way we are, that the answer is nothing.
Certainly none of the solutions we've so passionately offered and instituted and defended against criticism have done anything we can point to as having helped: the three day waiting period, the background checks, the late "assault weapon" ban, the ban on "Saturday Night Specials," the ban on sending guns through the mail without a Federal license, the ban on automatic weapons that's been here since 1937, the restrictions on how many guns you can buy in a year, how much ammunition. . . the need for criminal background checks and fingerprinting -- how short a barrel can be and even whether a sporting gun can legally be made to look like a military weapon -- Sure, the overall rate of violent crime may continue to decline and perhaps some of that is due to these measures or to more people being in jail, but there will be more incidents as there are in countries with draconian gun control laws. At every one we can be sure there will be calls to make murder even more illegal, to somehow confiscate all guns from the 175 million people who own them -- and the same mouldy arguments will be trotted out again and discussion of whether experience anywhere has given us a reason to be hopeful, will not be heard. Still I have a good idea what will happen.
The media will chew on this for days striving to raise the discussion to the point of mania, because it's good for ratings. As I watch, the network nitwits are prattling about whether we should go back to that fraudulent "Assault Weapon Ban" which really only banned newly made fake assault weapons made overseas and left millions already in circulation. It made us liberals feel good. It made nothing better.
People will be afraid to send their kids to school. When heads begin to cool, there will be a search for heroes and the folk psychoanalysis of perpetrators by the usual hired opinionators. The same old axes will be ground.
There will be more earnest insistence that banning things make them go away, even if there are 200 million in the country, perhaps much more. More idiocy about making psychotics "just say no" by passing a ban, a restriction, a law.
What we should be asking is what I asked just now -- how do we protect the innocent, the helpless without increasing helplessness? How do we protect our schools? How do we keep the dangerously insane off the streets and how do we keep them from acquiring bombs, guns, crossbows, knives and yes, airplanes? How do we do this without harming those people who need guns: farmers, for instance and people who use them to feed their families. Do we need to argue for weapons with smaller magazines? Shorter barrels, longer barrels, longer waiting periods, sanity checks? All I can say is that we'll argue and in a fashion no more or less likely to produce an answer then in the past. There will be all or nothing parties and neither will make any sense. The NRA will act as though Obama is going to take all our guns, Fox will imply that he already has. Bumper stickers will appear on cars and trucks.
Will anyone ask that we calmly assess how much danger must be seen as unavoidable in a free society and how much authoritarian control and how much less liberty we will or can accept in the interests of safety. One side will say arm the kids and blame Obama, the other will insist that the theoretical saving of one life justifies anything at all. Anyone in the middle won't be heard and the extremes won't listen.
I've always thought that the outcomes of a policy are the necessary test of it's effectiveness, but we're talking about America the hysterical and ill informed. It's about believing in a policy and if it doesn't work, it's because you didn't believe or didn't make it authoritarian or even Draconian enough. And so I have to ask again -- what can we do to protect the weak, the helpless, the innocent that works and doesn't unnecessarily tread on the rights of all? I fear, given the way we are, that the answer is nothing.
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
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.
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
