Below the jump, some thoughts on topical issues relating to two things Americans are way, way too obsessed with. Contains politics, so don’t read it if you don’t wanna:
Regarding The Aurora Massacre:
Absolutely tragic, no other way to say it. That having been said, this whole thing where we’re not supposed to say James Holmes’ (the shooter’s) name or discuss certain “bigger” aspects of this story so that he won’t “win?” Look, I understand the feeling behind that… but he already “won” to the degree that he pulled off his crime. I understand the symbolism behind “denying him the fame he so craves;” but come on, that’s largely impossible whether you participate or not. It’s too late to deny this bastard “victory” (since he clearly doesn’t care about being caught); so the only tangible “win” the rest of us can get out of this is to learn from it and prevent it from happening again…
…Which brings me to guns.
I think people have the right to own guns, because guns are tools and tools are only as good or bad the person using them. However, I also recognize the reality that it’s incredibly stupid for anyone to be able to own any gun. I drive a car, for example, and to get the right to drive that car I have to prove that I know how to drive it, register it with a government agency on a yearly basis, get it inspected on a yearly basis and have a public record of what I do with it – because cars, while useful, are also dangerous. And if I prove that I’m incapable of using a car properly, my privilige to drive can be restricted and even revoked. To me, that guns should be at least as well-regulated as cars is pretty logical.
But it’s not really about logic – it’s about cultural mythology. It’s about symbolism. Americans LOVE The Gun as symbol. It reminds us of ourselves as we like to see ourselves. Guns are symbolic of our revolution against an oppressive colonial government, our “conquest” of the western wilderness and the “spirit” of how both were accomplished – i.e. not through strategy or fighting-techniques informed by high-born martial legacy, but through a tool that any man of any background can pick up and become a warrior with. “God didn’t make all men equal,” goes an old saying that might as well be our secondary national motto, “Samuel Colt did.” Guns and their attendant mythos are sacred to the American Psyche, so you’re never going to get us to “quit” them.
But is it really too much to ask that there be common-sense restrictions on their use? Is it really “radical” to suggest that a Second Ammendment written in an era when foriegn-invasion by armed ground-troops was a very real threat and the “fastest” gun was a single-shot pistol may not be entirely applicablr in an era where foreign-invasion by armed ground-troops is a logistical impossibility and automatic weaponry is commonplace? A common gun-rights retort is that, “yes, people DO need to have assault rifles in case the enemy becomes our own government!;” in which case it seems to me that the Second Ammendment is even more obsolete: Sorry, Mr. Gribble, but The Government has nukes, radar-guided missiles and predator drones – if the Eeeeeeevil Kenyan-Born Secret-Muslim Communist President wants your ass dead, it won’t matter how many AKs you’ve got stacked up in your post-Rapture Panic-Room.
Just saying.
Regarding Penn State.
So Penn State’s football program doesn’t get the “death penalty” for covering up decades of child-rape in order to protect the “honor” of a fucking athletics program. Instead they just lose a shitload of money, the Holy Program gets kneecapped for a few years and bunch of utterly-meaningless statistics and records get either wiped-out or asterix’d from the books. And yet some people think this is “too far.” Me? I don’t think it goes nearly far enough.
Granted, nothing can “undo” the crimes or the cover-up; but the sickness that allowed both things to happen – that allowed a monster to go about raping children while others covered it up goes higher than Joe Paterno and bigger than Penn State. The cover-up was possible because Football Programs wield far, FAR too much power in the American college system. Programs wield that power because it’s often the college’s main source of income – effectively supporting the rest of the institution. And they are the main source of income because alumni donors, and Americans in genral, care way, way too much about Football.
That we are willing, as a culture, to pump infinitely more money into bloated, greedy NCAA programs in order to maintain a talent farm for the bloated, greedy NFL is obscene enough, but predictable – you can’t expect America to start caring as much about collegiate science, art and humanities programs that might yield cancer cures, energy-sources on the next transcendant works of art as we do about whether or not some guy can kick a ball between two poles… I mean, have you met us? Most of the time, these warped priorities manifest themselves in ways that are only superficially irritating; like raising men whose sole contribution to the world is throwing a ball pretty-good to the status of living gods. But the Sandusky Scandal represents the logical-extreme of this obsession: The willingness to excuse/ignore horrible crimes in order to protect The Game itself.
This is, incidentally, why while I feel bad for the players, potential players and other program staff whose careers have been impacted by this; I don’t see that as a reason not to have done it – innocent of the cover-up they may be, it’s all part of an institution that has frankly been crying out to be knocked-open, re-examined and probably dismantled to a large degree for a long, LONG time now. Yes, Penn State should be made to honor the commitments they made to scholarship athletes who may no longer be playing, up to an including financially-assisting them in finding placement at other schools’ programs. Yes, either the NCAA, Penn alumni or their trustees should take the good-faith step of helping potential scholarship prospects already “in the works” get to the school (if they still want to) even if there’s no real program waiting for them. But beyond that? Knock “The Program” over, find the rotten parts, reassemble if possible and above all else put the fear into every other Program that they’re godhood – and their free ride – is over.
Now, obviously, you can’t stop people from caring too much about NCAA football; but if colleges were better funded in other areas to begin with football programs wouldn’t be quite so all-powerful, which is the only way you’re going to stop the next Penn State from letting the next Joe Paterno cover-up for the next Sandusky. I’ll probably be branded some kind of “socialist” for saying this, but y’know what’d be a good start? More federal funding for the non-athletic departments of American colleges. Start with the science and technology departments, since after all those have a tangible economic/security benefit to the nation as a whole so as to warrant such investment.
Just saying.
MOVIEBOB CENTRAL 
Bob,
Your main point stands but you could not be MORE wrong on the idea that “Footballs support the rest of the university.” Less than half of football programs are even profitable, and the cost on law enforcement and medical responders on football events outweighs any type of tax revenue.
http://sportsologist.com/college-athletics-by-the-number/
In fact, only like 20% of total athletic programs are profitable. Even if they were, this is very, very far from “supporting the rest of the university.” Universities typically subsidize the programs, not the other way around. Of course, you could maybe argue that the programs serve as attractants for more students–but I think if you looked into it, school pride before choosing a school is mostly vapid and students generally just choose college based on where they feel like they should go. In any case, the research isn't there for that.
Okay, so there I am with the fact correction. But the thing is…it makes your point more right. They weren't covering up to protect revenues. They weren't covering up to protect a university's success as a whole, hoping that the scandal would be offset by a new generation of learners. No. They were covering up for the sake of their own jobs, and for the sake of FOOTTBALLL. We are too entrenched, and it has blinded us to the main mission of the university.
LikeLike
@UNH
You make a great point. Speed-loaders are also something I think we need to consider banning. Really, my position is that anything that would let you shoot 70 people in two minutes should be unavailable to the general public.
LikeLike
@Paranomasiac, UNHchabo, the “3 crimes prevented per year” statistic is from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, also known as the FBI.
LikeLike
@Anon,
By “speed loader” I assume you mean a magazine? To ban those you'd have to ban nearly all firearms designed in the last 120 years. You can also achieve that speed of shooting with nearly any firearm made in that timespan, with a little practice.
Go watch a video of Todd Jarrett, one of the most successful competitive shooters. Even with a 100-year-old pistol design, he can shoot two accurate shots from two magazines faster than most newcomers could fire off two controlled shots. How would you propose we put restrictions on him?
@Smpoza,
I read the McDowall study as saying that 15,000 people are shot defensively per year. Based on that, I think it's a stretch for the FBI to say that only 3 crimes are ever stopped that way. Do you have a link for your statistics? I can't find anything with google.
LikeLike
@Smpoza
Yes, it was mentioned that it was an FBI statistic. However, after a couple of hours of research (yay unemployment), I was unable to find any such statistic anywhere on the internet, let alone the FBI's website. Please, anyone, link me to a primary source that says 3 crimes per year are prevented due to guns.
At least give me enough information to search it up.
LikeLike
“#2: Everyone agrees with the premise that there are some weapons that only the military should have (for example, nuclear bombs).”
I don't.
LikeLike
@UNH
Weapons of mass destruction should not be covered by the 2nd Amendment. If a layperson can do this kind of damage with that kind of speed, it's too much; ban the tools, criminalize their possession. I understand you don't agree with me, but my position (any weapon that goes beyond the basic requirements for self defense or hunting should be restricted, and any object designed primarily to kill people ought to be licensed and heavily regulated) saves lives and yours (which appears to be “gun owners are, as a group, so awesome that they should be allowed to have whatever they want”) at best fails to save lives, I'm sticking with my opinion.
@ Zeno
I've talked to you before, so I recognize you're not an idiot, but unless your position is secretly “there are some weapons NO ONE should have”, you're just being silly.
LikeLike
@Anon,
Except that statistics show that not to be true. John Lott's study found that ownership, and specifically the carrying, of guns decreases violent crime rates. There's been some debate over his results, with other researchers finding no effect. Since Lott's study though, no academic has found any evidence that violent crime rates will increase.
My view is simply that the current federal laws are all we need from the legislative side. Yes, more enforcement is always better, but I haven't heard someone suggest a new law, that we don't already have in place, that I think would be effective at reducing crime.
LikeLike
“any object designed primarily to kill people”
ITT: Teleology
“you're just being silly.”
Am I? For humans ever to conquer space requires cheap and abundant energy, probably from a nuclear source. The decentralization of this technology would make it much easier for people to acquire nuclear weapons. Even if that weren't the case, any reaction engine that can accelerate large amounts of cargo to high velocities would be able to do comparable damage to a nuclear weapon. Ultimately, because the advance of technology, the proliferation of Archimedean levers, means that individuals will have that much more destructive power at their disposal, progress depends just as much on trust as it does on engineering.
I'd also like to mention the short story by Heinlein where a man who broadcasts instructions on how to build a laser pistol capable of taking out whole armies effectively ends the possibility of tyrannical government.
LikeLike
As a college student, I personally support increased federal loans and such, not federal funding of colleges. For one, the government will get the loan money back, will in itself help offset whatever deficit created by an increase in education spending. Secondly, I'm afraid of improperly going about increasing the funding of education such that colleges either increase tuition costs or decrease financial aid. It's a really tricky issue that I'm scared of giving a definite answer on, mainly because my ability to attend my university comes down to whether I can afford a few more hundred dollars or not due to not exactly being a part of a well off family.
LikeLike
It's not even proper football.
Just sayin'. 😉
LikeLike
Im sorry, but increasing loans wont help…. It can't to be quite honest, not in the long run.
In fact, isn't it unpayable student loans that were the main issue the Occupy movement was about? Well, when it was about anything in particular, anyway…
The problem is we have hit the “education bubble” where the cost more then outweighs the benefit, and people are starting to notice. It's going to burst, the number going to college is going to drop like a rock, and we are going to all be on the hook for the hoard of students who wont be able to pay either the government or banks who gave the loans.
Just watch and see.
LikeLike
@Zeno
Yes, you are being absurd. On the one hand, a nuclear bomb can kill millions of people at a stroke, and we already have ample evidence that some people can't handle being allowed to own handguns without going off the rails. On the other hand, one time Robert Heinlein wrote a story. You're overthinking this.
@UNH
Here are the statistics you're looking for demonstrating to no one's surprise that strong gun laws correlate with fewer shootings.
http://www.vpc.org/press/1006gundeath.htm
The United States has a rate of gun homicide something like twenty times higher than the rate of every other similarly-situated country because of our laws.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20571454
As for “no legislation that would help”…I mean, preventing people from avoiding background checks and weapons bans using gun shows, gun kits, and the internet is kind of a no-brainer, isn't it?
I feel like this issue really comes down to perceived utility. I've read that it would save something like 10,000 lives a year to take the national speed limit down to 55mph, but we don't do it because we just hate the idea of having to drive slowly. Similarly, I think we'd save thousands of lives by tightening the rules around weapons, but we don't do it because some of us really, really love owning guns. The difference is that gun ownership is kind of a subculture, whereas most people drive. So to me, it seems kind of ridiculous that we don't restrict guns more aggressively, but of course those laws would cost me nothing I care about. But it also would behoove us to stop pretending gun control is totally ineffective.
LikeLike
“Yes, you are being absurd. On the one hand, a nuclear bomb can kill millions of people at a stroke, and we already have ample evidence that some people can't handle being allowed to own handguns without going off the rails.”
You know the cost of everything and the value of nothing.
LikeLike
Do you have homicide/violent crime rates stats? Not just gun, but general? Might prove interesting.
Although then again, Im not sure how legitimate the stats are… considering Boston is a very liberal city in a state with strict gun laws… but how often do shootings happen there?
Im sorry, but it seems to me this is one of those topics that the figures tend to match what the guy compiling them wants them to… to use a phrase: “figures never lie, but liars sure can figure.”
Also, changing the speed limit would do nothing but generate more speeding tickets…. cause no one would obey it.
LikeLike
There's really no right answer to gun control. Both sides have their strengths and weaknesses.
States with strict gun control laws generally have high crime rates because the citizens don't have a gun to fend off a criminal who has a gun or a knife in their hands and it's hard to buy, or carry a fire arm. The police take a long time to get to the crime scene and the criminal will be long gone by the time they arrive, leaving the victim either dead at the scene, or critically injured, or shaken up by the event. States with strong gun control laws have low gun related deaths or injuries because again, the citizens don't have a gun and its hard to buy one.
States with lax gun control laws on the other hand have low crime rates because the citizen can easily buy a gun and use it to fend off a criminal. These states will most likely have tragedies like Aurora, or Columbine because it's easy for a criminal to get a gun. The criminal will purchase the firearm via a loophole, or run circles around the background check by getting someone to purchase the firearm for them. Gun related deaths are also in places with lax gun control laws for a variety of reasons: the owner harming himself, or a loved one due to reckless gun usage, the shooting sprees, or gun user killing a criminal.
Personally, I think we need more gun safety classes to teach people how to use a gun responsibly, have gun stores run background checks on the customer before they sell they sell the fire arm to the the person, and close the loopholes to prevent criminals from exploiting them.
Unfortunately, that won't happen because the politicians vote along party lines.
LikeLike
@ Megabyte
No, the speed limit thing was tested in the 1970s when the speed limit was decreased in order to save gas. We have very good statistical data supporting the extremely high probability that there would be fewer accidents and they would be less fatal.
And arguing that the (easily accessible) statistics that pretty much conclusively prove the effectiveness of gun control legislation must be lies because the facts don't agree with your prejudices is the last resort of an intellectual coward. The whole “lies, damned lies, and statistics” argument only works if you haven't already dug underneath the facts.
Violent crime not committed by handguns, for example, is much less deadly, which is the whole point of gun control (sorry, no stats right now, I'm too tired, but look 'em up.)
@ Shark
No, you're just making shit up. Find me a shred of evidence that violent crime correlates to states with strict gun laws somewhere. A MUCH more useful correlate is that in CITIES, which tend to have stricter gun laws for reasons that are pretty obvious, crime is also higher for reasons that are also obvious, and so states that have smaller cities and looser gun regulations also have lower crime rates. But population density is a much better predictor of crime than gun laws are. On the other hand, lax gun laws are a MUCH better predictor of deaths by gunfire as a percentage of population than anything else. There is, in this case, a right answer: stricter gun laws would save lives.
To give you, again, a really specific example of what I'm talking about, there was an armed man at the incident in which Gabrielle Giffords was shot. And he wanted to stop the shooter, and he almost killed an innocent person.
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/human_nature/2011/01/friendly_firearms.html
That's *all* you get from arming the populace….and anyway, I say again for the millionth time, the really fascinating thing about this argument is that no pro-gun person ever wants to argue about assault rifles or extended clips; the argument always becomes a debate about whether we should ban ALL guns, which of course nobody is talking about because there are good reasons to own a gun.
As for gun safety, I live in a state with very strict gun laws, including a safety course, and the net result is that I still found a loaded semi-automatic weapon next to the bed of a man who had left his house with two small children in it and I had to unload the thing before somebody shot themselves. There is no amount of training that can make up for that kind of flagrant stupidity.
So to sum up: I see very little evidence that guns in the hands of civilians save lives at all, no evidence that military-grade weapons save lives at all, and a mountain of evidence, both anecdotal and statistical, that thousands and thousands of people wouldn't be dead if Americans weren't so devoted to shooting things.
Again, I'm fine if we want to decide that we love guns so much we just don't care about that, but I'd like that reasoning to at least be explicit.
LikeLike
“the really fascinating thing about this argument is that no pro-gun person ever wants to argue about assault rifles or extended clips;”
I'll argue about SLBMs and beryllium tampers.
LikeLike
@Anon,
The anecdotal argument about the Arizona shooting could also happen to off-duty cops. The point is that Zamudio didn't ask irresponsibly.
I've already pointed out stats; John Lott's book “More Guns, Less Crime” provides a detailed statistical analysis that has never been positively refuted. The most any other academic study has been able to do since is to claim that gun control has zero effect on violent crime.
I agree that population density has a much greater effect on violent crime, which is why John Lott's study is so detailed; he looks at the effects over time in particular states as laws change. We don't need to try to determine whether the difference between Baltimore's and San Francisco's violent crime rates is due to differing laws. We need to look at each city's rates over time, as compared with the national rate as a baseline. John Lott's done that, and I've read his analysis.
“the really fascinating thing about this argument is that no pro-gun person ever wants to argue about assault rifles or extended clips”
I have been doing that. Assault rifles, which are full-auto, are all but banned in this country. Semi-auto rifles that look like assault rifles are no more dangerous than any other rifle. I'd like you to look at an M1 Carbine, a very common rifle in this country, and unrestricted by the so-called “Assault Weapons Ban”, and tell me what makes it more dangerous than an AR-15. They shoot similar, relatively low-power rounds, and both take detachable magazines. The only real difference is that the M1 Carbine has a stock made of wood, and the AR-15 has a stock made of black plastic.
As for magazine capacity, my argument is simply that it won't affect crime. A ban on magazines larger than 10 rounds was also in place during the 1994-2004 “Assault Weapons Ban”, and no study has shown any part of that law to have an effect on crime. Almost all firearms come standard with larger mags; most pistols designed since the 1930s hold around 15 rounds, and most rifles hold either 20 or 30 rounds. When the AWB was in place it didn't affect existing mags (and neither does Lautenberg's proposed law), so you have hundreds of millions of mags unaffected by the law, it just meant that manufacturers had to make newly-designed 10-round mags. Some rare mags got raised in price, but overall the law had no effect on what people were able to buy.
Extended mags, that hold more than the standard amount, were involved in both the Giffords shooting and the Aurora shooting. However, both of these mags arguably saved lives, since they both appear to have jammed, whereas reloading with California-legal 10-round mags would have been very quick, possibly allowing both shooters to take more lives than they did.
A magazine is a small, simple device that can be built using a spring, sheet metal, and simple tools. Since criminals would be able to make “high capacity mags” quite easily, why not let defensive shooters use the mags their firearms were designed to use? Yeah, most incidents are over in under 3 shots, but why not let them decide what they need on their own?
I'll leave you with a quote:
“No matter how psychologically comforting it may feel to just do SOMETHING in the wake of a senseless tragedy, you can't just start banning or censoring things because you think they MIGHT give people bad ideas, for the simple reason that in a civilized society, you don't punish innocent people for the possible crimes of another.” – Bob Chipman
LikeLike
Yeah, but that quote is total nonsense and Bob is a goofball for saying it. If that were true, we'd have no safety standards for anything at all, no regulatory agencies at all, no controlled substances, no airport security, blah blah blah, all of which are inconveniences that we put on ourselves because not to do so would be to take insane liberties with public safety. I totally disagree with that and I bet you do too, if you think about it for five seconds.
I think it's fantastic, truly, that automatic weapons are banned. I think we'd be doing even better if those extended clips were banned, because – hey – if they *had* worked, more people might have died, and there's NO REASON AT ALL why anyone NOT planning a massacre needs to personally own one.
I haven't read this Lott dude's book, but it strikes me as impressive that I found multiple articles accusing him of faking his results during a routine Google search. And here's an article pointing out – with lots of data – that in facts more guns lead to more crime.
http://islandia.law.yale.edu/ayers/Ayres_Donohue_article.pdf
I suspect that the stats aren't ever going to convince anyone, although I think I made a perfectly good case with the basic numbers. I also think it's hard to to measure gun control laws accurately in the US, because they're so easy to circumvent here that it's hard to do the thing gun laws really are designed to do, which is to reduce the number of guns available to add to the US's statistically impressive habit of shooting its citizens.
I really appreciate your desire to talk about the specifics of guns and gun equipment, though, which to me is the only way to have a rational discussion about this issue. In my mind, I simply don't understand why anybody who is not on a SWAT team or in the military needs to fire more than one bullet at a time, or use armor-piercing bullets, or do any number of things with guns that are really for tactical assault people to do. I think it's messed up that crazy people keep getting their hands on this equipment legally and that we should take aim at preventing that while allowing guns to be bought and used for protection, hunting, etc. I just don't know why that position is so offensive.
LikeLike
@Anon,
Bob's quote is not total nonsense; he was speaking about censoring movies and other media, but it fits here too. You can't go around banning things because they sound scary; you actually need a reason. The First Amendment allows all speech as long as it doesn't advocate immediate violence, or another limited restriction that the courts have outlined. Similarly, I still think most gun control legislation, and most of the things you've outlined, are directed towards firearms that “sound scary”, rather than being based on fact, or allowing the ordinary person any latitude in being able to protect themselves from harm.
If you think that Ayres and Donahue's article says that “more guns lead to more crime”, then you missed the point entirely:
“We conclude that Lott and Mustard have made an important scholarly contribution in establishing that these laws have not led to the massive bloodbath of death and injury that some of their opponents feared. On the other hand, we find that the statistical evidence that these laws have reduced crime is limited, sporadic, and extraordinarily fragile.” (pg 9 of the pdf)
Also, this academic work only covers “shall-issue” concealed carry laws, not gun ownership overall. This means that states cannot deny someone a License to Carry without cause; generally this means a criminal record or history of mental illness. I believe in “shall issue” on the basis of the 14th Amendment; if you grant and deny licenses based on personal opinion, that's a system that's ripe for abuse. Sheriffs could deny licenses to minorities they dislike, or they might be anti-gun, and not give them to the people who really need them.
Armor-piercing bullets are a non-issue in this country; no police officer has ever been killed when his vest failed to stop a round it was designed for. The anti-gun lobbies like to say that the NRA wants people to have armor-piercing rounds, but that's just spin. The NRA helped rewrite the law, since the original law banned any round that could penetrate a vest, which would have included every rifle round (and the anti-gun lobby was okay with that). In order to stop a rifle round, you need the big and bulky armor our military uses. No cop wants to wear that on patrol. The current law bans handgun ammo of a design that is conducive to penetrating armor.
When you want to define what firearms are “acceptable” for defensive use, it gets very tricky. Are you okay with pistols? Then what about pistol-caliber carbines like the Beretta CX4? That platform is essentially just a long-barrel pistol with a stock, so you're less likely to miss your target and hit something or someone else. If you're okay with that, then you're talking about semi-auto rifles; the M1 Carbine I brought up earlier is only a little bit more powerful, and the AR-15, firing a weak rifle round, is only a bit more powerful than that. Where would you draw the line?
LikeLike
This is such an interesting blog. You are very knowledgeable about this subject. Please check out my site.
Toy guns for kids
LikeLike