Happy 2013! My life is in many ways as good going into 2013 as it’s ever been; I’ve got two books in print and am working on book 3, I live in a nice house, have a decent number of friends. I’m feeling optimistic about everything but politics and my ability to update Alas as frequently as I’d wish. :-)
How are you doing? Any hopes for 2013? My big one is to finish this book before 2014.
Use this as an open thread. (Thanks for the prod, G&W!)
Sure, if a seven foot person needs to buy an oversized vehicle, that's fine - just as it's fine if…
In the link you've posted, Amp, it seems to say that for people taller than 7ft, only SUVs or trucks…
There are non-huge cars that are designed to fit tall people. You'd probably have more room in a c-max than…
Your "ten reasons" cartoon left out a major reason why some of us buy full-size cars: Because we're taller than…
You appear to have spelled “traitor” as “traiter” on the poster in the cartoon. Elon fired the person in charge…
Well, I’ll say it again: HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!!!!!
Some random tidbits:
-Has anyone ever studied the # of children required in a small space before their behavior precisely mimics a pack of chimpanzees? Just wondering.
-My latest Xmas thing: When talking to children I know about Xmas, I always ask them “what did you give?” and never “what did you get?” I’m trying to start a trend.
-We bought a roast for the holidays, which when opened turned out to be rotten. So we had pasta and everyone was happy.
-It’s my fault, but all of my children are currently addicted to Minecraft. So am I, sort of. Anyone else play it? Do you know of any super-kid-safe public servers where they can run around and see crazy stuff that people built?
Fascinating:
New Jersey Democrats have long argued that they would approve only “diverse” nominees to the state Supreme Court. But now, as liberal opposition builds against Gov. Christie’s most recent picks, the definition of diverse appears to be changing.
One of the two nominees, Monmouth County Superior Court Judge David Bauman, was born in Japan to a Japanese mother and would be the first Asian American on the high court.
Yet the Legislature’s black caucus, the state Latino Action Network, and a broad coalition of more than 50 groups, including teachers’ unions and Planned Parenthood, are opposing Bauman and the other nominee, Robert Hanna, who is white, primarily because they would not make the court more diverse – and specifically, because they’re not African American or Latino….
Obviously, it’s not as simple as this commentator would make it out to be.
Based on my observations as the youngest of 3 boys raised in a 3 boy/0 girl sibling group, I’d say “3” is the minimum. Based on my observations as a Cubmaster and Scoutmaster I’d say “4” is the maximum required (i.e., when 4 or more boys are present you will always end up with them acting like chimpanzees).
Here’s the top few population %ages from the US chart:
White persons not Hispanic 63.4% (This one is more relevant than “white persons” for diversity discussions)
Persons of Hispanic or Latino Origin 16.7% (includes those who identify as white)
Black persons 13.1%
Asian persons 5.0%
American Indian and Alaska Native persons 1.2%
It runs into the very difficult question that is generally kept off the table: What’s the end goal of a diversity initiative?
If it’s “non-white” representation (which is the easiest one, at least from a functional perspective), then this makes no sense.
If it’s “non-white, with an exception for Hispanic whites” then it’s the same.
If it’s “proportional” representation then it provides excellent justification for helping minorities get positions, but you run into the obvious problems: (a) what do you do when a particular identified group takes too many of the “diversity” slots; and (b) do you seek proportionality for every group except whites?
The (a) question is really an issue for Asians. It wasn’t so long ago that we were sticking many japanese-ancestry folks (including US citizens) in prison camps and stealing a lot of their stuff. This isn’t an Asian wonderland here. Should we discriminate against Asians in favor of Hispanic and/or black people?
The (b) question is really one of strategy. Proportional representation has a comparatively large amount of moral, logical, and emotional support. The U.S. works on that basis. But the support ends–in fact, it reverses–when you cross the proportional “line.”
For example, the argument works for you if you’re trying to get more diversity on the Supreme Court. Run the #s and we should have 5.7 (rounds to 6)whites, 1.1 blacks (rounds to 1); 1.5 Hispanics (rounds to 2) and… that’s it. If you want another non-white member of the Supremes, proportionality is your friend. If you want more than one, then you run into problems. Even if you round 5.7 down to 5 whites you would still need to stomach the concept that you’re guaranteeing 5 white slots.
But the Supremes are a bad example, because (irrespective of commentators’ opinions) there’s a deep enough pool that you can find qualified people in any category.
Proportionality really runs into problems with things like college admissions, where you really run into difficulty defining “qualified” in a non-gerrymandered and realistically assessable fashion.
BTW, I am not universally opposed to AA or diversity or anti-sexism or wage gap initiatives; I think it’s perfectly fine to have specific programs or initiatives to increase representation and success of any group(s) in any area(s). But I am opposed to ones which are far from the start point AND WHICH are made in disregard of normal decision making processes like goals and metrics.
So I’ll propose a new set of rules, called the “STATE YOUR GOALS RULE:”
You don’t have to talk about boundaries or end points or details, or make in depth analysis, until you meet one of these criteria. But once you meet one, the conversation needs to change. It needs to go from “support this because diversity is good!” to “here’s why, specifically, we think it makes sense to help out Group A over Group B/C/D.”
1) You are helping a group which is higher than 85% of its proportional representation. (Reason: things really get different morally and practically when you selectively benefit a group that is present ABOVE proportion, and 85% leaves a bit of cushion.)
2) You are harming a group which is itself a disproportional minority, or protected class. (Reason: You don’t get to screw over Asians in favor of other POC without explaining why the particular group you’re trying to help, i.e. “recent illegal immigrants,” deserves a pound of flesh from the Asian community. Nor do you get to screw over POC in favor of white women.)
3) You are dragging any group much below their proportionality, including whites, men, and white men, in any significant way. (Reason: ethically, it switches from “reclaiming what’s mine” to “taking what’s yours.” It may be justified, but it requires a greater degree of justification. A bit of wiggle room here is reasonable, of course.)
Good luck with that, G&W.
In unrelated news, CFL bulbs kill everything in their path. (Possible slight exaggeration for rhetorical effect.) http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1751-1097.2012.01192.x/abstract
I would propose that it be to ensure that the broadest possible spectrum of experiences, outlooks and experiences be represented in the group seeking to be diversified. Selection of candidates by race, sex and ethnic background are readily quantifiable ways to start towards this, but they do not guarantee it and should not be the final criteria by which diversity is judged.
Thus, for example, to increase diversity on the U.S. Supreme Court the next nominee should by no means have any connection to Harvard Law School (especially) or Yale or the U. of Chicago.
Re: CFL bulbs –
I attended the “green” break-out session at the Episcopal Diocese of Chicago’s Annual Convention a couple of years ago. For “Convention” think “Convocation” + “Annual Business Meeting”. Lots of talk about how parishes’ church buildings could be engineered to use less energy. CFL’s were pushed as a quick fix. I spoke up and noted that mercury is pretty poisonous and a broken bulb pollutes a heck of a lot of water.
This was way off-message and got me some severe frowns. Trust me, in the world of Episcopalian diocesean-level folks, a severe frown is a very high level of disapproval. I’m sure she expected me to shut up and sit down. At that point someone who wouldn’t know a spectrophotometer from a TV started to lecture me on the biochemistry of mercury. While tempted, I did not club them over the head with my academic background. What I did tell them was this (I can’t remember exactly, this is a paraphrase):
“First, let’s face it – regardless of how many recycling barrels you put up in the hardware stores, 95% of the broken bulbs are going to go in the trash. It’s not like people don’t already toss out broken fluorescent bulbs in the trash.
But, second, you’ve got your pollution focus all wrong. Don’t think about where that mercury is going. Think about where it came from. It didn’t come from the U.S. How do I know? Because the EPA justifiably sets the safety and pollution standards very high for mining mercury. So high that there are no operating mercury mines in the U.S. Instead, the mercury is mined – and then manufactured into CFL-based bulbs – overseas. And like any other third-world mining operation, pollution regulations are either non-existent or the people in charge are bribed to ignore them. The result is that third-world miners and their families are born with birth defects and get vacuoles eaten into their brains by mercury poisoning in their air, food and water. You haven’t saved pollution. You’ve just exported it so that little brown people suffer it instead of local white people. You’re all very self-congratulatory over these bulbs, but I think it’s racist.”
And then sat down.
Episcopalians love to apply the word “racist” to people who don’t follow an extreme leftist agenda a lot, but they sure are uncomfortable in confronting it in the mirror. There was a lot of harrumphing, the emphasis on using CFL bulbs went unchanged, and I was nobody’s friend after that (except in the choir, they didn’t hear about this and tenors are in short supply, anyway).
Hopes for 2013?
Health for me, my wife and my kids. Jobs for my wife and my daughter (unemployed since May and grossly underemployed to the point that she can’t easily support herself, respectively). Stable relationships for my kids. A canoe trip to Canada for myself (I’m not getting younger, and a certain level of physical fitness is required). And work on improving my singing voice.
And that, and everything else, I leave in the hands of God. Peace on Earth and goodwill FROM all people would be real nice; maybe we could find a way to solve our problems that way.
Very good news for 2013, Maggie Gallagher has quit the hate the gay gig.
http://www.uexpress.com/maggiegallagher/
I wonder if she quit, or if Universal Syndicate chose not to renew her contract?
In either case, it’s clear she’s going to continue being an anti-marriage equality activist. She’s just not going to have a syndicated column anymore.
I don’t think so Barry, if you closely read the article, rather than just a quick read, I am reading that she really is quitting. + she blogs at National Review and she wrote a short one or 2 sentence column saying she quit.
In both articles she directs people to her MaggieGallagh.com website but there is nothing there of substance. I think she reads the handwriting on the wall, they lost 4 States on Marriage Equality, and I think she is just tired of it. + I have an inkling (conjecture on my part really but I REAALY follow NOM and Gallagher close) my inkling is she doesn’t collaborate well with Brian Brown.
I saw this coming. Since I follow this stuff so close I noticed she didn’t write about the Supreme Court taking on the Marriage cases at National Review. I think she got a buy out or going away money bag from NOM, and that she is completely separated from NOM. Barry, you could write to her and ask her if she is still on NOMS payroll, I bet she is not.
She appears to be quitting, not getting dropped, at least according to her own statement reprinted at http://joemygod.blogspot.com/2013/01/syndicator-drops-maggie-gallaghers.html
I hoped the comments might have more info; managed to wade through the fat jokes but decided to stop once people started calling her a whore.
@Robert re the comments on Joe My God, know what you are saying. BUT, I would like to offer you a different perspective. You gotta remember the people commenting there have been persecuted their whole lives. It is kind of like saying in the 1950’s or 1960’s about black people, “We’ll I stopped reading once they started calling George Wallace and Bull Connor Bastards”
I read Joe My God daily and frequently comment there myself, I have learned a LOT from the commenters there. One comment or there stands out to me. He is an older man, in his 70’s in a wheelchair who has been separated from his love for 18 years because of the immigration laws. If you are heterosexual there is a provision in our Immigration rules to bring your fiancée over on a Fiancée Visa, and that is the actual name, “Fiancée Visa”. It is a 6 months Visa and when the 6 months are up if you do not marry the person they have to go back to their own country. He often comments on Joe My God. He remains separated from his partner simply because he is gay, if he was straight no problem he would have gotten that Fiancée Visa 18 years ago.
There are several other people who comment that they are living outside the United States to be with their partner because the Laws of the US do not permit them to be together in the States.
There is actually quite a number of seniors who comment on Joe My God and from time to time share their histories, especially people who were kicked out of the Military. I remember reading a comment from a woman, she is the whole 9 yards, top of her class her Senator appointed her to West Point, how she excelled there , both in the rigorous physical training AND the Academic studies, and she was kicked out for being a lesbian.
What I am trying to say Robert is you do NOT know the person behind the, “she’s a whore” comment. You do not know what their lives are like and how they have suffered at the hands of Maggie Gallagher. It is far far easier to discuss issues on an intellectual basis with civility when you are far far removed from them.
I am reasonably, and by reasonably I mean absolutely and iron-claddily, certain that had Maggie Gallagher never existed, not a single one of those people would have suffered any less from a homophobic and unjust social order. So it is meaningless to speak of them suffering at her hands; she inherited a social order, she did not devise one and impose it on unhappy strangers. Her sole crime is advocacy – advocacy of a position which, if no longer solidly majoritarian, is certainly still mainstream, and will be for years to come. Civil and reasoned advocacy, at that.
You are correct that I do not know the individual people, or their life stories. I do not need to, in order to know that (a) there are and have been many, many injustices inflicted on people with unorthodox sexual identities, and that (b) it does not require a Gandhi-like sense of restraint or a Christ-like ethic of forgiveness to refrain from calling people with whom one has political disagreements, fat whores who should die in a fire. I could, reluctantly, accept that one might simply have no option but to hate someone of the Westboro Baptist ilk; if someone is screaming about God wanting me dead and picketing my child’s funeral, some emotional retaliation in kind is, if not acceptable, then at least completely understandable.
Being an articulate, if not purely consistent, defender of a wrong but understandable political position is not an offense against decency at the level of Westboro thuggery. I reject both the childish ugliness of the attacks against Gallagher (and similar figures), which are apparently as widespread as they are moronic, and I reject with equal firmness attempts like yours to equivocate or justify them because of The Oppression.
Oppression excuses many things. It does not excuse anyone from the universal obligation to be a decent human being, or at least to act like one. One’s oppression may make it difficult or impossible to discuss issues intellectually, in an abstract and oh-so-civil manner; it does not make it impossible to refrain from calling people fat whores.
Just to drop in my two cents, I find comments like “she’s a whore” and comments on MG’s weight appalling. Because trading one oppression (heterosexism) for another (sexism, or sizeism) is always a losing game, and rarely accomplishes anything other than to ensure that those who aren’t listening, won’t. Letting off steam might feel good in the moment but there’s plenty of ways to express deeply-felt and justified rage without resorting to cheap insults that reify other biases.
So apparently you can have avoid conviction for rape in California if you deceive your unwitting sexual partner that you are their boy/girlfriend (as opposed to their spouse, which is explictly illegal. See here
Elusive, Your comment is very interesting because actually I have seen gay blog owners and other commenters to gay websites say to knock it off about her weight when some people make those types of comments. While I would not myself call her a whore I will not condemn those who do. I don’t condone it. But I will not chastise others who rage at her. I am straight, I do not walk in their moccasins. You know the old Indian saying, “Walk a mile in my moccasins.”
Robert, with all due respect, no. Had Maggie Gallagher NOT existed, Prop 8 would have passed and History would have been different. You either underestimate what she did to sexual minorities or you are ignorent of the facts.
In fact it was MG who flew out to Californis, raised the money, especially she raised the early money, and it was she who organized that first Pastors Conference Call that launched the counter offensive, and she worked on Prop 8 every day up until the election. So I disagree with you, if Maggie Gallagher didn’t exist Prop 8 would have passed. As it was it was a very narrow win .
It IS Maggie Gallagher and Robert George who launched NOM, and to minimize her impact on the History of the Civil Rights for Sexual Minority movement is to close your eyes to reality.There was no umbrella organization specifically targeting the Civil Rights of sexual minorities before Maggie Gallagher started NOM. And she was very good at what she did. She united under the National Organization for Marriage, Catholics, Mormons and Evangelicals to unite together and fight against the sexual minorities. Her organization is not simply about Civil Marriage Robert she has organized and testified and fought against Civil Unions, Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and every other attempt by sexual minorities to be treated equally to every other citizen by their government.
If the Government told you that they didn’t approve of your selection as a spouse and thus would not be granting you a Civil Marriage License Robert, I look forward to seeing your “Christ like restraint” and you non profane civil discussion with your government and societal leaders who are egging on your elected Representitives to deny you a Civil Marriage License. Some can do it, maintain a Civil Tone, some can do it most of the time, but some people have been so persecuted that they simply lash back, and I DO understand that.
Yeah, that’s a horrible loophole which should be rapidly fixed.
(For whose who ask “how the fuck is that horrific result actually possible?” it’s because we have a principle which provides that criminal statutes are interpreted strictly. The idea is that if you’re can be arrested for ___ you need to know what ___ actually is with a high degree of specificity, so that you can avoid it. Looks like the California rape statutes had a loophole, and generally speaking criminal defendants get to exploit loopholes.)
Funny that the disagreement between StraightGrandmother and Robert has come down to the Great (wo)Man Theory of History. In this case, I side with Robert. Maggie was an effective fundraiser and political activist, but I think if she hadn’t stepped up and filled that role, someone else would have.
I’m not sure that anyone’s really disagreeing about the misogynistic and anti-fat comments at Joe I Am. Yes, it’s understandable that some people who are mistreated, mistreat others in turn. That doesn’t make it okay. Nor am I judging someone as a person, or suggesting that they don’t have any worth, when I say that a particular misogynistic, anti-fat comment they wrote was appalling.
I think it is also worth remembering that gay, fat, and sex worker are not mutually exclusive categories.
Anyway, 2013 has been astoundingly bad so far, due to the unexpected break up of a long term relationship, and to make matters worse, work has been incredibly busy and stressful.
On the bright side though, I suppose this year has nowhere to go but up?
Given that this blog often addresses questions of the definition of femininity and masculinity, here’s a question that springs from an entry on The Advice Goddess’ Blog entitled I Get Tired Of The Notion That Men Don’t Show Their Feelings –
What they don’t do is show them like women do, in the Approved Women’s Magazine Way Of Doing It.
Gentlemen: when have you, since reaching your majority, cried in front of at least one witness?
Speaking of women and emotions: I was browsing through the children’s section of the local library yesterday, and I noticed the magazine rack. There was a magazine called “Girl” or something like that. (The only girl-specific magazine that I remember from when I was elementary school aged is American Girl, and that one started when I was about 10 or 11, so I didn’t read it much.) I looked at the cover, and every single headline was somehow emotion-related. Things like “Be the boss of your emotions!” and how to deal with your feelings when your friends say something mean to you, and how to feel great about yourself. There was not one headline about anything else. The boys’ magazine was all about adventures. I remember reading plenty of adventure-type stuff when I was a girl, even in that American Girl magazine — there would be articles about girls who did things like sail around the world or win a rodeo, and less adventurey but still not so emotional, there would be articles about girls who organized fundraisers for food banks, or started mentoring programs, and things like that. I’m trying to remember myself at ages 8-12 or so, and I can’t imagine wanting to read an entire magazine about emotions. Was I that weird, or has the girl environment changed that much?
I have cried in front of one or more witnesses so many times since I turned 18 that I can’t even count them.
Here are some of the highlights of my public teariness (and my age):
Friend’s death (23)
Kitten’s death (19)
Penultimate cheating by ex-spouse (26)
Multiple times during attempted reconciliation of prior mention (26)
Break up of marriage to ex-spouse/ultimate cheating by ex-spouse(28/29)
Deaths of pets (31/38/42)
Multiple times during stressful moments in current marriage (36 through current)
Multiple times when hurts by ex-spouse came bubbling to the surface(34 through current)
When reconnecting w/ very good friend to whom I felt I hadn’t been enough of a friend (44)
During random, drunken fits of depression (teen years)
I’ve been particularly weepy since my ex-marriage broke up. Movies, books, TV shows even – they can get me crying. I cry in public and have no shame about it.
Denise – that sucks, and I hope things turn around. On the flip side, never say that things couldn’t get worse. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWlrbtLlQZ8
Amp – Yes, I love the irony of being on the wrong side of the Great Woman argument…but in this case I think that you’re right, MG may have been an important or even central figure in the movement, but she’s hardly irreplaceable.
Grandma – Proposition 8 did pass, so I am not sure what your argument is intending to prove. It passed by about five points, but has been in court ever since. It’s going to get struck down (again) but is in effect in the meantime, which sucks – but which does nothing that the status quo didn’t do. And it passed by five points, which is about 600,000 voters. Do you really think Maggie Gallagher is such an effective propagandist and organizer that she swayed more than half a million people? I don’t.
RonF – It’s undoubtedly because of my incredible manliness, but I’ve felt secure in blubbering at fairly regular intervals. Last time was yesterday, at “Parental Guidance”. Pretty much any father-and-child storyline can start the waterworks, no matter how hackneyed. I agree that our culture has tended to discourage that kind of expression in men (and has discouraged other kinds of expression in women), which is one reason that I take the things I like from our culture (Star Trek, blue jeans, sexual liberation) and tell the rest to go fuck itself. (But really the main reason is that I’m just a stubborn jackass.)
Jake – Your lack of gender performance sickens me. Get a dress, nancy. God.
Ruchama – It’s worse than it used to be. I don’t *think* it’s a patriarchal plot, particularly; it’s just the expansion of the fee-fees industry hit the wall a while back, and they think that young girls are a better target market for propaganda than young boys are. They’ll phase fee-fees for boys in at a later date, in the form of “True Grit” remakes and father-child plotlines in popular media. Bastards.
I’d never thought about True Grit that way. It’s one of my favorite books, largely because it features an awesome girl main character who doesn’t stop every five minutes to analyze her feelings — she gets done what needs to be done.
In terms of father-child scenes, though, the one that gets me every time is Field of Dreams.
Ruchama – it’s the same issue that these “survival guides” highlighted. (The issue being, of course, sexism.)
Amp – I mentioned that I condemn such comments in part because a favorite complaint of the Right, and a few commenters here IIRC, is “well [Democratic/progressive group/person/ad] said/did [something offensive or discriminatory] and no one* said anything about it, so clearly all [Democrats/progressives] condone that kind of thing unless it comes from a Republican so you are all hypocrites.” It has its grimmer cousin in the refrain of “why don’t any [African-Americans/Muslims] condemn [black-on-black violence/drug dealing/gangs/terrorism/violations of women’s rights]?” which is of course a racist dog-whistle as well as pretty clear evidence of the commenter’s utter ignorance of indigenous protest and within-group dialogue.
And my honest reaction was “those kinds of comments are gross and shouldn’t be allowed to pass without remark.” As a fat, queer woman, I hear rather more of that kind of thing, particularly from gay men whom I wish were my ally, than I’d like (where “the amount I’d like” actually equals “zero” obviously.)
*Where “no one” of course means “no one who was put right in front of my face where I could easily access and digest it.”
Elusis, I totally agree. I’m glad you condemn such comments – sorry if that didn’t come across.
Edited to add: And I know what you mean about pre-emptive defensive criticism of jerk allies!
@Ruchama – Mattie Ross is my idol. Haven’t read the book – glad to know her awesomeness wasn’t a Hollywood tack-on. I’ll have to order it from Amazon.
Robert, you are right Prop 8 did pass I reversed the issue in my comment.
I think it is a cop out to say it’s not MG’s fault because if she wasn’t there agitating, organizing and executing a campaign, somebody else would have done it. The fact is she was there and she did it and she is responsible for leading a campaign that has directly harmed thousands of people.
Again fat jokes are out of line. As for anti women, I don’t think so because when they write articles on Brian Brown, or Brian Fischer the comments are similar. As for myself I don’t go for name calling, but I will strongly comment about anti gay people’s words and actions. And I will laugh at hypocrisy wish is exposed all the time.
Here look at this article for Maggie Gallaghers future endeavors.
She has earned the hate she receives.
http://www.hrc.org/nomexposed/entry/about-maggie-gallaghers-old-friend-and-current-colleague-charles-limandri#.UOeO_Hy9KSN
In gun news, I’m now saddened to say that while I still know nobody who’s life has been saved thanks to the gun(s) they own, I do now know somebody who killed a family member while attempting to clean his newly purchased guns.
That’s horrible news, Jake. My sympathies to the family, especially to what must be the incredibly guilt-ridden gun owner.
Yeah, Ron, it’s awful. I can’t even begin to imagine how he feels. I don’t know how the rest of the family deals with this, either.
I’m not particularly close to co-worker and I feel terrible about it. In several ways. First, it’s just a terrible thing. Second, I know that his wife had left him several months ago and now I can’t help but wonder whether it was truly accidental. If I’m having trouble figuring out how to feel about him, I don’t know how the family figures it out.
Jake, I’m sorry to hear it. That’s truly tragic.
That gun-owner is now at a highly increased risk of self-harm, and will be for a long time (probably for life, actually, but particularly now). It’s partly for the simple reason that no sane person would ever want to do that to a family member, or have to live with the memory of having done it. It’s partly also because in order for that death to happen, the gun owner had to violate three separate safety rules at the same time (or four, depending on how you count them), simultaneously.
I cannot imagine feeling the level of pain and guilt he is probably feeling.
Grace
That makes me feel much, much worse. Can I assume that, if he’s cleared of wrongdoing (which is a whole other can of worms… I mean, how is that not reckless disregard?), there is nothing to prevent him from owning and handling guns in the future?
This whole thing has really hit home in a way that I never would have expected and it just keeps getting worse from my point of view as I learn more.
What a horrible thing to happen!
As far as I know, there’s no provision in our laws to take away gun ownership rights from someone who is adult, sane, and not found to be a criminal. Which, in case like this, does seem really wrong.
Well, I wasn’t going to bring it up, but
is quite true. “It went off while it was being cleaned” is a misleading statement. First, because it makes it sound as if the gun fired of it’s own agency, as opposed to a person firing the gun. Second, cleaning a gun is not done when the gun is loaded, it’s as simple as that. It CAN’T be properly cleaned when it’s loaded, as part of what you clean is the inside of the chamber that contains the round. What happened has nothing to do with cleaning the gun. Your co-worker fired that gun because he grossly mishandled a loaded gun, breaking multiple rules of gun safety as Grace pointed out. And yes, it’s got to be a horrible burden to him. I’m sure Grace is right to say that this person is at great risk for self-harm.
Amp, while I’m obviously a strong adherent of 2nd Amendment civil rights, I’m willing to state that you have an at least arguable point.
If it was not intentional, I see no reason to lock him up and further destroy his family. Otoh, even if it wasn’t intentional, the mind numbing carelessness deserves a conviction that prevents him from ever touching a gun again. I would hope that there would be something he could be convicted of that would both prevent him from owning a gun and not include jail time, keeping his family together.
Based on what I know, what we have here is death by negligence with no criminal intent. I have no idea whether there are any applicable criminal statues that cover this.
Permanent revocation of the right to possess firearms is normally only done upon conviction of a felony, unless there is some aspect to the creation of a protection order that I’m not aware of. Arguing whether that’s appropriate in this case or not is frankly not one I’m enthusastic for here. Not because I’m a die-hard 2nd Amendment civil rights advocate – I’m willing to consider that this may well be an exception that’s justifiable in the interest of public safety. It’s just that I hate to see something like this become fodder for debate here.
Obviously I don’t have all the facts, but from what you’ve said it seems like a criminally negligent manslaughter charge would be entirely appropriate. That’s a felony, which ought to do the job as far as firearms ownership is concerned; I can understand why you’d think he ought not to get jail time but as an outside observer, some jail time seems entirely appropriate. Negligence at a level that kills another human being is very, very bad negligence.
Like Ron, I have a high bar for fiddling with people’s gun rights, but killing someone (whether accidentally or “accidentally”) is going to jump right over that bar 9 times out of 10.
What could be more appropriate? Here I am, experiencing from closer than I’d ever thought, a gun death. If that doesn’t make me think about what our laws and policies are and should be, I don’t know what will.
I don’t have all the facts either and I haven’t been eager to ask those who seem to know more, but it does seem, based on what both Grace & Ron have said as well as the descriptions I’ve heard, to be outrageously careless. The police and, perhaps, DA will do their investigation and decide what charges, if any, are appropriate.
It’s a bit appalling but in a way you have the ideal vantage point from which to consider or reconsider your views on the various related topics: close enough to care and to be in a position to get a lot of information, at arms-length enough to not be overwhelmed by grief or anger, able to both feel and reason within your operating parameters. How kind of the universe to bring you this wonderful gift.
I felt a little bit bad about saying it sounded to me like your coworker ought to see a cell, but then I remembered that you like the wrong kind of pastries and felt fine about it.
Wow, that is horrible for everyone involved, especially with the specter of “what if it wasn’t accidental” hanging over everything. I hope the justice system does get to the truth of the matter and that the punishment is appropriate, and doesn’t needlessly add trauma for the family. (I do think jail time is appropriate. Not life or anything, but taking someone’s life, even accidentally, merits more than a fine.)
It’s been a while since I’ve handled a gun, probably more than a decade, but my dad strongly impressed on me that you always treat it as loaded and you never, *NEVER* point it at a person. (This was in the context of hunting rifles. If there had ever been discussion of a handgun for self-defense, I assume “who isn’t trying to kill you” would have been added.)
And when I was in sixth grade, a hunter safety course was taught to the whole sixth grade class. (And “First Day of Deer Season” was a school holiday.) Even though I had no desire to shoot Bambi, it was a really good thing that every kid learned a bit about basic gun safety.
I haven’t cleaned a gun myself, and, like I said, it’s been a while since I’ve handled one, but I have a hard time even picturing how you would manage to shoot someone while doing so, because my mental picture assumes that *of course* you would have it pointed at the floor for all stages of the process where you can’t see an empty chamber.
I honestly think that before purchasing a gun, people should have to demonstrate basic competency. Do you know how to clean and store it safely? How about transport? (I seem to recall stories of hunters getting shot because they left loaded guns loose in the back of a pickup truck.) Can you actually hit the broad side of a barn? If not, I don’t think you should be able to own one until you’ve brushed up those basic skills. I think there’s an inherent right to self-defense, but I also think it’s the kind of right that comes with responsibilities.
It looks like trying to summarize a complex and highly sensitive topic by using an under-researched and oversimplified graphic, apparently written by a clueless person, is not so good an idea.
http://theenlivenproject.com/the-truth-about-false-accusation/
Why oh why do non-statistics people always insist on labeling their bullshit as “the truth,” when they are so often the reverse?
Sigh. The truth is horrible enough. Lying about it draws attention AWAY from the truth.
Probably because it’s hard to run a school when every male teacher and not a few of the female teachers aren’t there.
I was first taught the basics of gun safety when I was 8. That’s when my 12-year old brother was given a .22 bolt-action single-shot rifle for his birthday. We set up a range in the back yard and we all learned how to shoot. “Always treat a gun like it’s loaded” was rule #1. Got the rest of my instruction when I took Marksmanship Merit Badge when I was 12.
He’s 64 now. Still has that rifle.
RonF @ 47, exactly! Not to mention most of the students.
Most of the male students, anyway. And, again, a few of the female ones. It’s also not unheard of for a goodly number of the cars in the high school’s student parking lot to have firearms in them from unsuccessful hunters who go to school after a couple hours in the deer blind.
So here’s a topic dear to my heart; burning food for fuel. You won’t see me linking to the NYT too often, but even a stopped clock is right twice a day (or once in the military). In As Biofuel Demand Grows, So Do Guatemala’s Hunger Pangs we see that the huge demand for corn for biofuels is driving up the cost of food for everyone, including the people who can least afford it.
Now, specific claims need to be met with skepticism. But overall the rule of demand vs. supply gives the basic story credibility – if the U.S. puts 40% of it’s corn crop in to fuel instead of food (a number I have seen elsewhere), the price of corn is going to go up. I would really like to know a) what effect the use of ethanol in gasoline has on emissions, b) what level of subsidies are being paid, c) who’s getting them and d) why are subsidies needed at this point?
Five years ago, some of my wife’s friends were describing me as a gun freak. I, myself, would have described my best friend as such. He had gone to the trouble of legally obtaining a number of weapons as a foreigner, then as a Green card holder (in California, this involves a lot of studying, exams, and seeing a judge)
He even actually still has his old service weapon from the Ole country, and I do not see how it could have legally made it into the States. We were going shooting almost every week, and we were blowing 50-100 bucks on ammo each, easily.
The day his then-not-yet-wife moved in, he moved all his guns at Prado, and we shoot them once per year, if that. He pays more for storage than for ammo.
His explanation: the chance that he needs the guns for self-defense where he lives is infinitesimal compared to the chance that he/his wife/his possible kids will get hurt by accident.
Both me and my wife had handguns when we lived on the East Coast. Once we moved to a good neighborhood in California, we just sold the pieces of junk to a pawnshop.
As far as I am concerned, guns are fun toys, but unless you move in unsafe areas, or you hunt, they’re more trouble than they’re worth.
There are numerous ways to secure a gun with children in the home. Your security methods should include teaching the kids how to use and maintain them at a young age. Having a shotgun kick you in the shoulder and blast your ears when you’re 9 or 10 years old is a good way to make an impression that is far more lasting than any lectures. There’s also gun safes, trigger locks, etc. I’ve heard of a few incidents involving kids getting their hands on guns and misusing them. I’ve never heard of one where the kids defeated a trigger lock or broke into a gun safe.
As far as using them in self-defense, it was on national news just two days ago that a woman was forced to defend herself against a home invader after he broke into her house by forcing the door with a crowbar and then pursued her and her kids into a closet. When he broke into the closet she shot him 5 times with a .38 and she and her kids were unharmed. He survived (proving the wisdom of rule 24) and was captured by the cops outside the home.
No neighborhood is good enough to permit you to assume this will never happen to you. A 14-year old girl was savagely murdered just a very few miles from my home last year. She came home from high school earlier than usual and surprised a home invader. He stabbed her to death with a half-dozen blows from a kitchen knife her mother had doubtless used a hundred times to make dinner for her. Then he took her cell phone and texted taunts to her mother. Apparently he pulled off onto the shoulder at a nearby expressway and climbed over the fence between it and a residential area looking to make a quick score and getaway. The girl was supposed to have been at an activity, but her grades had slipped a bit and so her mother did the responsible thing and told her to go right home and do her homework. I can assure you that we are a “good neighborhood”. But Kelli is still dead.
Yes, people have been and will continue to be saved by the guns they have in their home. Many, many, many more than that will be accidentally killed by the guns that they have in their home.
My co-worker’s tragedy has been in no news at all. Not newspapers – local or national, not TV news reports – local or national, nowhere. Not a single mention. If you look up the victim’s name you will find only the death notice/obituary listing at the funeral home. I can guarantee you that if my co-worker had killed a home invader that it would be all over the news.
Many, many, many more than that will be accidentally killed by the guns that they have in their home.
This seems unlikely.
Latest figure for accidental gun deaths I’ve seen was from 2010, and was 606. This is a generous number for you, because you restricted it to people killed by guns in their own home, whereas some of that 600-odd would have been hunting accidents, etc.
There is huge controversy over how many defensive gun uses there are. Gun fondlers are keen on citing Gary Kleck’s 1993 survey that estimated two million defensive uses annually. The gun-shy are more attuned to the NCVS, which in that year (for comparison purposes) estimated a little over 100,000 defensive gun uses. There are methodological problems with the NCVS number. There may be bias problems with the Kleck number. In the years prior to Kleck’s big survey, there were a number of other studies by people with varying agendas and points of view, and their estimates ranged from 800,000 to 2,500,000. The 2.5 million number has been roundly critiqued as impossible; I agree with those critiques. 2 million is probably also being overgenerous.
The 100k number is probably far too low (it’s the lowest credible figure ever cited by anyone), but for the sake of argument let’s use it. Even if every single defensive use in the NCVS survey didn’t stop a killing or a rape, “just” a property crime or assault, I am not at all convinced that 167 prevented muggings isn’t a pretty substantive counterweight for every 1 accidental death.
And of course, not ever defensive use was a mugging. There were a LOT of rapes in 1993 and a pretty high number of homicides, too. NCVS reported that about 1% of crimes overall were stopped by brandishing of a gun, and another 1% were stopped by use of a gun or some other weapon (but mostly a gun). Somewhere in the neighborhood of 100,000 rapes (and that an undercount) and 18,000 murders in 1993 – do the math, that’s approximately 2000 prevented or terminated rapes and 360 prevented homicides.
So do you really think that 600 accidental deaths > 360 prevented deaths + 2000 prevented rapes + 98,000 prevented burglaries/muggings/assaults?
There’s a whole lot of statistics out there regarding gun usage, Jeff. What can you cite to back up this assertion?
I tend to accept at least the lower Kleck figure. Remember that one need not fire a gun to use it for defense. If someone threatens to mug you, you produce a gun and they run down the alley you’ve used that gun for self-defense even if you didn’t fire it. And that will never make the paper because you never reported it because you don’t want the Chicago cops to take your gun from you.
Jake:
Crap. Sorry, Jake. I held off on commenting until you appeared to say that it was not someone close to you (probably similar thinking to Ron’s reason for not commenting until after I did), but maybe it was still a mistake to comment. But, since you asked a question, I’ll continue until you say you’d like us to drop it.
Unless he is convicted of a felony or certain domestic crimes, there will be nothing to prevent him from owning, let alone handling, guns in the future.
Whether he will be charged with a crime at all is an open question. Often, in many jurisdictions, people who genuinely made a terrible mistake and killed someone they loved are held to have suffered enough. It’s the same sort of thinking which can get a suicide listed as an accident, so that the family avoids stigma and gets the life insurance.
—
In case anyone is wondering, the cardinal rules which he has to have violated, at a minimum, run something like this (your phrasing may vary):
1. Always treat a gun as a loaded weapon.
2. Always point a gun in the safest possible direction.
3. Keep your finger and anything else out of the trigger guard until you intend to fire.
In principle, for a firearm functioning correctly, only #2 or #3 is necessary. In practice, humans being fallible, safety handling includes redundancies; practice all the rules and when you screw one up, the others will save you and others.
—
Ron:
Jurisdictions will vary. In my jurisdiction, crimes require a mens rea as one of the elements. There are four: purposely, knowingly, recklessly, and negligently. Anyone handling a firearm has a duty of care, so negligently would certainly apply. I could make a good case that anyone accidentally discharging a firearm into a human being acted recklessly (because, see above, violation of a minimum of three fundamental safety rules).
I have no idea what the laws are in this person’s jurisdiction, but it’s likely that he could be charged, and as Robert points out, possibly with manslaughter. Whether someone who accidentally killed a family member and breaks down on the stand talking about it would ever be convicted by a jury is a whole ‘nother question.
KellyK:
In principle, I agree that people who handle weapons should know how. The problem lies in who decides. Many, many governments, including state and local governments in the US, have used that principle to institute rules which make practical use of firearms for impossible in actual practice (though often there are exceptions for privileged classes of people). Given that track record, many gun owners, including me, are very wary of measures which restrict access.
As a society, we are good at acting on our outrage, and not good about talking about cost/benefit. Robert very ably discusses cost/benefit, but most people simply aren’t willing to have that discussion. People like Robert and me, who talk about cost/benefit, get called “cold blooded” and worse. I was once arguing that a police department I worked for (not my current employer) ought to buy ballistic (“bullet-proof”, which they aren’t) vests for all officers. I was told they were expensive. I asked how expensive a public funeral for a dead officer was. “Jesus Christ, [Grace]!” was the response I got. Cost/benefit wasn’t, apparently, permitted as an argument.
But then we look at car collisions, which kill and injure hundreds of thousands annually, and there is HUGE societal resistance to making it harder to get a driver’s license and easier to take one away, and I, who investigate car collisions professionally, have to wonder why we can’t discuss how many people die so that marginal drivers can have licenses, or how many people have to get mugged, raped or killed so that a responsible civilian can own a gun.
Ron:
That rule 24 is hogwash. A .357 magnum is more than several grown men I’ve taught to shoot could enjoy shooting, and .357Sig has a proven track record.
Jake:
As Robert ably points out, that’s factually not true, even if you define “saved” carefully.
Nationally, it’s simply not news, any more than a non-famous person drowning in a pool is news. Locally, I imagine editors ask themselves whether it’s news enough to add to the family’s trauma. News editors are not renowned for their sympathy, but it actually does influence decisions at the margins.
It’s fascinating to hear this argument from the other side. Self-defense proponents routinely complain that mass murders get all the press coverage, while defensive uses get little-to-none. (And in my experience, this is largely true.)
Grace
“People like Robert and me”
Neener, I’m in the Grace Club and you guys aren’t, neener neener.
By the way, Jake, I got off into abstract-discussion-of-data land there, and quite forgot that you know these people and, even if your world isn’t shattered it’s got to be feeling a bit unstable and objectionable, and my tone didn’t reflect that, and sorry about that.
“I can guarantee you that if my co-worker had killed a home invader that it would be all over the news.”
I won’t guarantee it, but I can say that for an awful lot of people, if they kill a home invader, it will very likely make the news eventually – as “Missing Person Continues To Not Be Found”. I am a peaceable man and pray daily that the lack of necessary violence in life that I’ve been blessed with to date, continues unabated for the rest of my long and happy life.
But if I had to take lethal action against someone in a scenario like that, God forbid, and it wasn’t crystal clear that it was self-defense, if I didn’t have videotape evidence, if I saw the slightest measurable chance that I’d end up going to jail for murder or manslaughter…I think Mr. Home Invader would become Mr. Trunk Passenger and, eventually, Mr. Mystery Body Found Deep In National Park, Coroner Reports Death Was Years Ago, Police Close Case. I suspect there are a few of those not showing up in the statistics, in addition to Ron’s cogent point about a lot of brandishments never finding their way onto a police report.
No need to bother the nice officers.
@Robert, a really good way to make sure the nice officers think that you murdered someone, rather than defending yourself, is to hide the body rather than call the police. After all, even scumbag burglars have friends, and family, and DNA, and cellphones that show where they last were; and “I only killed him and hid the body because he was a scumbag burglar!” is not something the nice officers let you pinky-swear to.
…and dataplans not hooked to their Life Crystals, so that a string of innocuous texts along with consistent server logs give their loving family a reassuring, if fact-free, narrative that leaves me and mine well off the timeline the police would be working on, if it were a rich white person with a job who had gone missing.
Obviously there will be scenarios where the risk of being found out hiding the body makes it a suboptimal scenario. I was not attempting to lay out a response that would replace consideration of the actual odds with a simple heuristic, just expressing the not-unreasonable view that crimes the police don’t find out about are crimes that you get away with, usually.
Quite all right Robert. In fact, comment # 44 warmed the heart of my cockles.
I appreciate all the info given by Robert, RonF and, especially, Grace.
What do you guys think of this article? He spends most of his time discrediting the 2.5 million study, but seems to be saying that the NSCV is also off.
Can you point me to the section of the NSCV that has the number of defensive gun uses? I’m having some trouble finding it and orgs like the Brady Campaign appear to be saying something entirely different about the numbers. (Of course, the Brady Campaign is clearly on one side of the issue so I don’t know how reliable their claim is).
If any one can tell me what I should be getting from this study, that would be awesome. I think that they’re telling me that the 2.5 million figure is so flawed that it should never be taken seriously, but I’m not clear on what they’re saying about the NSCV. I’m getting both that it underestimates and overestimates and that these surveys aren’t nearly good enough to give us decent numbers, anyway. I’m pretty sure I’m wrong about that.
In the past 8 years or so – since I’ve started to pay attention – I’ve seen far more reports on people who used a gun to defend themselves (usually by killing their assailant) than people accidentally killed by guns. The vast majority of accidental gun deaths that I’ve heard about are juveniles who were playing with their parents’ gun. Mass murders, unquestionably, get all the press coverage. There are three in my geographic area that come immediately to mind over the last 8 years.
I’m there with you on driver’s licensing. I used to drive a shitload of miles. IME, people are so unsafe as drivers that I would have at least one “holy shit, you won’t believe this” story each day. (Seattle drivers experience more single car rollovers than I’ve seen anywhere else I’ve ever lived. I used to see at least one every week or so.) As to the last part of that statement, “responsible civilian” is key. Since the shooting, I’ve been hearing a lot of gun mishap stories from my overwhelmingly gun enthusiast co-workers. (Shotgun discharged through floorboard of car, etc.) Each of these people think that they are responsible, safe gun owners, yet almost all of them are relating stories in which they are clearly not safe with guns.
I’ve told you my Uzi story, right? At a place I used to work a fellow employee (high up in the hierarchy) brought his Uzi in to show off. I’d had many conversations with him about guns and he was always talking about the importance of safety and training. He asked me if I wanted to hold it. I said, “Sure. I’ve never touched a gun in my life, though.” He hands me the gun. I’m surprised at how heavy it is. I swing it around and he says, “Woe, don’t point that at me.” Given that I’d just told him I’d never touched a gun, you’d think he might have told me that first. I don’t recall him telling me to keep away from the trigger, either. I’ve been skeptical about safe, responsible gun ownership since then.
Human beings are, in my experience, pretty careless. We form habits and, as long as nothing bad happens to us, we continue those habits – as unsafe as they may be. Pointing a gun at people, driving 20 mph over the speed limit, whatever. I’m as guilty of that as anybody else. At this point in my life, I simply don’t want to be near somebody with a gun. I don’t trust that I’m safe with them and their gun.
Anyway, thanks to all for your input, corrections and sympathies.
In other random open-thread-ish-ness:
OLD STUFF
What sort of everyday stuff do you all keep around and get attached to, and own for a very long time?
For example, it is finally time to replace my shoes. I don’t know how many resoles I’ve gone through since I bought them–6? 8?–but they’re my everyday and dress black shoes and I’ve owned them for 10+ years. Given my profession I’ve worn them a LOT. I’ll miss them. (Fortunately, since I’m a guy, and since they are black cap toes, the same company still makes that exact shoe.)
My briefcase, however, is only getting a decent patina right around now. It’s vintage 1990. I’ll die with it.
My favorite sweater from college also died recently, but I still have a t-shirt from high school.
What’s your favorite old stuff?
Kleck has addressed criticisms of his study in various places – This is one such. I haven’t read it, mind you, I’m just posting it to show that there’s an engaged debate over the matter.
By all means, Jeff, if you don’t want to own a gun then don’t buy one. And if you don’t want to associate with gun owners (I presume you mean physically), then don’t. Given the circumstances and your apparent unfamiliarity with firearms I can understand it. I support your right to express that viewpoint and take those actions 100%. The only issue I would have would be that if you choose to attempt to enforce that latter desire by forcing law-abiding people to relinquish their guns whether they want to or not. I don’t know if that would be your intent, but it seems it’s the basis of the intent of a great many anti-2nd Amendment civil rights activists.
I do hope that at some point your co-worker can find some peace of mind. I suspect it will be a very long time before he does. I would suggest that a relative find a way to take his gun (s) away from him to keep him from using one on himself.
My wife has tried to get me to replace my wallet for, oh, maybe 5 years now. Not gonna happen.
I have the boots that I wore on my 2000 canoe trip into Quetico. It was my first canoe trip with my son. They’re in pretty bad shape, the leather’s all cracked, the tread is completely worn off of the soles. I should probably toss them. Hasn’t happened yet.
I’ve got boxes and boxes of stuff from H.S. and college. I should probably toss all that stuff, too. Some of it – my old chemistry set that was greatly augmented with chemicals “borrowed” from H.S. and college lab, will present a bit of a challenge. The golf-ball lump of lithium was easy to dispose of in a 5-gallon bucket of water after I cleared everyone away for about a 100-foot radius – which turned out to be well-justified. Highly entertaining, and we were far enough out of town that by the time the cops showed up we were gone.
In fact, this last Christmas the kids looked around the house and started to talk about “You really need to get rid of a lot of this shit, because we don’t want to have to do it.” My wife’s rejoinder was along the lines of “This is nothing compared to all the shit we had to clean out of my parent’s house when they died, so tough shit.” Christmas was … interesting … this year. Gah.
Dammit, I thought we were done with the legitimate rape thing for now.
The main part that I find offensive in that paragraph is the last sentence. Assuming that all of the preceding sentences were absolutely true, Akin was still saying something deeply damaging to women who’ve had pregnancies resulting from rape–the implication that their rapes weren’t “legitimate”. The implication that the important part is that he was partially right and the media should have been more respectful to him and given him “partial credit” is ridiculous.
Ron,
Co-worker’s relatives took all of his guns. Not that that’ll stop him going out and getting another if that’s what he really wants to do.
I would say that my goal is to restrict what firearms are legal. You can’t own a fair amount of military weaponry, I see no reason not to extend that to certain classes of gun. I want the licensing requirements to be much stricter than they are now. For example, demonstrate knowledge of use and safety. I want limits on ammunition capacity for a gun.
I know I’m in the minority and I know it’s settled law, but I still don’t understand why the first thirteen words of the 2nd amendment are irrelevant. Even the SCOTUS seems to imply that it has some meaning and that meaning seems to be in accordance with my preferences, although that’s entirely ignored in most places when it comes to owning and using guns.
If you want a gun, don’t bring it with you when we get together and don’t bring me to your home if it’s got guns in it. Beyond that, whatever.
Oops, I wasn’t done writing this one and accidentally hit post…
Since we’re talking about gun control…
I’ve mentioned smart guns in a couple places recently, once on FB, once on another forum. I was honestly pretty disappointed in the response. In each case, I mostly just had one pro-gun person respond to me–I was unable to judge exactly where on the spectrum they were beyond the fact that they were pro-gun ownership and anti-smart gun. But my impression was that they were basically knee-jerk anti-gun control, and saw smart guns as a kind of gun control. That’s not to say that there aren’t legitimate objections to smart gun technology, but the ones they came up with seemed more like excuses for a reflexively anti-gun stance than the driving force behind their opposition.
The best argument against smart guns that I saw was that sometimes guns sit unused for 10 years until you need them, and what if the battery on the smart gun technology had run down by then? But aren’t you supposed to maintain your gun fairly often anyway? Even if that’s not the case, I have to get my car inspected every year, I have to check the batteries on my smoke alarm–why should we expect less of gun owners? (The not-so-great arguments were, what if the tech fails (possibly due to a dead battery) and there’s a lawsuit?, your article was biased and you should have looked at more articles (without disputing any of the facts in the article), this is a technology to make guns less reliable, this could change the results of shooting competitions and those are based on police qualifying tests and those are IMPORTANTand it would be annoying when I’m at a shooting range and every 100th shot doesn’t fire.)
Since we’re talking about gun control…
I’ve mentioned smart guns in a couple places recently, once on FB, once on another blog. I was honestly pretty disappointed in the response. In each case, I mostly just had one pro-gun person respond to me–I was unable to judge exactly where on the spectrum they were beyond the fact that they were pro-gun ownership and anti-smart gun. But my impression was that they were basically knee-jerk anti-gun control, and saw smart guns as a kind of gun control, and therefore bad. That’s not to say that there aren’t legitimate objections to smart gun technology, and if you know of them I’d like to hear them, but the ones they came up with seemed more like excuses for a reflexively anti-gun stance than the driving force behind their opposition.
The best argument against smart guns that I saw was that sometimes guns sit unused for 10 years until you need them, and what if the battery on the smart gun technology had run down by then? But aren’t you supposed to maintain your gun fairly often anyway? Even if that’s not the case, I have to get my car inspected every year, I have to check the batteries on my smoke alarm–why should we expect less of gun owners?
A slightly-less-good argument was, the smart gun technology adds another layer of complexity to a home-defense situation means that defense is “much less likely” to be successful. But based on the description of smart grip tech, it’s an automatic process with no additional steps taken by the gun owner once it’s been set up, so it wouldn’t be an extra step, just an extra chance 1% chance at misfire. Given that many self-defense situations involve deterrence rather than actually firing the gun, and given the possibility of being shot with your own gun (this source says that according to the New York Police Department, “Up to 40% of instances where an officer is shot, they’re shot with their own gun”), the small chance of not firing seems like it would be outweighed by the advantages even just limiting the focus to that situation (rather than also looking at stolen guns used in later crimes, for example).
(In case you’re worried that I’m just picking the easy arguments, here are the not-so-great arguments: what if the tech fails (possibly due to a dead battery) and there’s a lawsuit; the article you linked was biased and you’re gullible and you should have looked at more articles (without disputing any of the factual parts of the article); why would you want your gun to be unreliable; why are firearms being demonized; this could change the results of shooting competitions, and those grew, in part, from police qualifying tests, and those are important, so therefore sporting contests based on them are also important; and it would be annoying when I’m at a shooting range and every 100th shot doesn’t fire.)
I confess that I cannot cite from memory how the Supreme Court dealt with those 1st 13 words. However, I’ve spent a fair amount of time reading up on this and I’ve come to a few conclusions.
1) It was the intent of the Founders that the militia consisted of the whole people, and that anyone capable of bearing arms should have the right and knowledge to do so.
2) This was not a designation that could be legislated to be limited to particular groups of people controlled by the government; it was an inherent property of being born a free person.
3) The government could certainly designate a part of the whole people for service in a particular situation, and it was necessary that such a group should be organized, trained and maintained, but that didn’t mean that the rest of the people were thereby to be divested of their right.
4) It was necessary that this be so in order for the government to be able to call out at any time every person capable of bearing arms in case of rebellion, insurrection, or any other threat to the peace and liberty of the citizenry.
5) It was also necessary that this be so in order for the people to be able to resist tyranny and have the means of changing the form of government should said government become intolerable.
5) The word “people” in every place in the Constitution refers to at least all citizens, if not all residents, of the United States, and not one particular subset of the citizenry selected by the government.
6) The concept that the intent of the 2nd Amendment was to give the States the right to arm the militia only seems absurd; they already had that right.
7) The concept of the Bill of Rights was to enumerate specific rights for the people, not for the States or for the Federal government.
Even now, under current law, the National Guard is designated Federally as the “organized militia”, but a large fraction of the rest of the citizenry is also considered to be in the militia, albeit in the “unorganized militia”.
Further:
If you look at Article II in the section where the militia is discussed, you’ll note that while the Feds are required to fund the State militias, the States, not the Feds, control the appointment of officers. In Federalist Paper 29 it’s noted that this is to ensure that the militia exists but is loyal to the States, not the Feds, so that the State militia can be used against the Feds’ standing army if necessary. Hence the wording “A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state”; there, as in every other place in the Constitution, the word “state” refers to one of the constituent States, not the United States as a whole. The fact that a great many people feel that this is absurd and no longer necessary does not mean that the meaning and the intent of the Constitution as written is no longer properly the law.
Then there’s the consideration that the militia of the people as a whole – which concept is supported by not a few quotes of the Founders and extends back into English law – also is meant to ensure that the people themselves are thereby able to defend themselves against tyranny by the State governments. Surely many of the States (e.g., New York) found their Royal Governors to be despotic. In that wise the prefatory clause of the 2nd Amendment is noting a necessary evil (the State has to be armed to resist the Feds, but then can be turned against the State’s people), and the rest of the amendment is meant to ensure that the people’s ability to resist the State in turn using force of arms must be preserved to ensure their liberty.
Cool. Of course, should someone not knowing this invite you to their home you’ll have to ask them if they have guns. I’ve seen letters to the Chicago Tribune editors of local residents demanding that lists/maps of gun permit holders in the state be published so that they know who in their neighborhood presents a danger to them, what homes they should make sure their kids avoid visiting, etc.
Which won’t help them a whole lot. In Illinois the State does not maintain a list of gun owners – at least, not long gun owners. All it does is have a registry of people who have Firearms Owner ID cards (FOID). To get one you have to have a background check (no felonies, no orders of protection against you, etc.). But all that means is that you have permission to buy guns and ammo, it doesn’t mean that you have to register your guns with the State or that you even own any.
Oh yeah, since this is an open thread–
I’d meant to ask, do you know what happened to one of your posts, “In Defense of HAES–and Denialism”? I had it bookmarked, and it’s gone now. Was it deleted on purpose? This is the Web Archive’s copy of it:
http://web.archive.org/web/20100817183536/http://www.amptoons.com/blog/archives/2010/05/17/in-defense-of-haes-responding-to-amanda-marcotte/
It wasn’t deleted on purpose at all! I have no idea what happened. I’ve restored the post as best as I could. Thanks for letting me know.
Amp, it looks like all your posts from May 2010 might have gotten deleted somewhere along the line. When closetpuritan posted about the missing entry, I noticed there was no line at all for that month in your Archives drop-down menu. Now it’s there, but it only links to the one article you’ve restored. Meanwhile, there are about ten entries each for April and June 2010.
Amp, @70, the Federalist Paper citation should be #29, not #26. Can you correct?
[Done! -&]
What’s your favorite old stuff?
I don’t like keeping old stuff. Stuff needs maintenance.
Robert, pretty sure “we’ll hide the body — the cops will never find it” is one of those plans that rarely works out as intended.
QKZ, wow! Thanks for pointing that out. I do have the database backed up, so there’s a good chance that I can restore those posts. Add it to the to-do list….
” “we’ll hide the body — the cops will never find it” is one of those plans that rarely works out as intended.”
How do you know? By definition, every time it succeeds, you don’t find out about it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJ1a0ymGCKA
Mythago, I concede the point, illuminated by Ernie’s quiet wisdom.
If I ever end up killing someone, I will confess it immediately. If I haven’t made such a confession, you can be absolutely certain that I haven’t killed anyone. If I had, I would have confessed.
So, the President of the United States has issued some Executive orders that he thinks will affect the incidence of violent crimes in America. According to the White House press release (which is not on the White House website yet, so here’s a copy there’s 23 of them. My first question would be whether any of these exceed his authority as President.
“1. Issue a Presidential Memorandum to require federal agencies to make relevant data available to the federal background check system.”
There are often laws limiting the information that one Federal agency can give another. I wonder if this violates that.
“2. Address unnecessary legal barriers, particularly relating to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, that may prevent states from making information available to the background check system.”
Hm. How does an Executive order address what the President sees as unnecessary legal barriers? Apparently a legislature thought they WERE necessary. On what basis does he intend to overrule them? Or does this mean he’s bringing suit to try to overthrow the laws?
“3. Improve incentives for states to share information with the background check system.”
What are the incentives? Do it or lose Federal funding that the Congress has authorized?
“5. Propose rulemaking to give law enforcement the ability to run a full background check on an individual before returning a seized gun.”
I’m cool with this – as long as there’s a time limit (say, 24 hours) where law enforcement has to either finish the check or give back the gun regardless. New Orleans law enforcement took 4 years and defied two Federal court orders before it returned guns seized in the aftermath of Katrina.
“11. Nominate an ATF director.”
Nothing to do with the law – I’m just minded of the SNL skit where it opened with a shot of an old-style office door entitled “Director, Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Agency”. The door opened to reveal Jim Belushi, unshaven, in shirtsleeves, vest and undone tie – smoking a cigar, bottle of whiskey in one hand and a .45 on his desk at ready reach. I don’t even remember what the lines were. But it makes me think; if we’re going to have an ATF director with a focus on firearms, how about hiring someone who actually owns a gun and knows something about them?
“12. Provide law enforcement, first responders, and school officials with proper training for active shooter situations.”
Hm. Where’s he getting the money from? Doesn’t he need Congress to authorize/allocate it? Good idea, mind you. Especially if it includes the proper protocols for carrying and using a firearam in such situations. Just curious as to how he can do this with an Executive order.
14. Issue a Presidential Memorandum directing the Centers for Disease Control to research the causes and prevention of gun violence.
Gee. Vice President Biden says that there’s laws to prevent that very thing. Again, aside from whether this is a good idea or not, is the man whose job it is to enforce the law announcing that he’s going to direct an Executive department to break it?
Oh, and while we’re here; about that term “gun violence”:
In 2011, about 350 people were killed with rifles. About 500+ were killed with hammers. About 10,000 were killed by a drunk driving a car. But we don’t talk about hammer violence, we talk about murderers. We don’t talk about alcohol violence or car violence, we talk about drunk drivers. So how is it that we focus on people when any other kind of violence occurs, but when a gun is used we focus on the tool, not the perpetrator? Maybe it’s the agenda of people who just hate and/or fear the tool and are using the victims of the violence as tools themselves.
The rest look pretty reasonable. It’s a great idea to bring focus on the issues of mental health. Back in the day a lot of mentally ill people were institutionalized. Of course there were abuses. The response was to close the institutions and put the mental patients back into the community. While probably a good idea for some of them, overall that has turned out to not exactly be an unalloyed good. Which one should have expected and in fact was greatly anticipated – but the people who pushed for deinstitutionalization did not push for follow up to critique and evaluate just how their great idea worked.
[Note: This comment is intended as a satirical response to this post by RJN. –Amp]
Ron, I cannot help but note that the text of your comment criticizing the President’s actions is…well…black. This kind of coded symbology, intended to “tip off” white readers of your comments, is an unacceptable canine pitch-tone. (“Dog” promulgates stereotypes of our canine brothers as being “simple”, while “whistle”, of course, encapsulates the patriarchy with its inner exegesis of “HIS”.) Note that the “black” text, when you entered it, appeared on a stark ivory background – yet when it is read, the system automatically codes the space around the words as beige – a “neutral” color that oh, just HAPPENS to be the skin tone of many of the dominant European-descended elite. This redirections the white reader’s attention away from the black-white dichotomy at the time of the text’s actual interpretation – yet that dichotomy remains encoded in the background, a telling rebuke against the penis-worshipping, Gaia-murdering, textual racial harassment that you and your kind would like to impose on all decent, multicultivaluing individuals, collectives, dyads, and nodes.
For shame, Ron. For shame.
Robert, I realize that you belong to a party and ideology that hates anyone who isn’t white, and sneers at anti-racist efforts as if the people involved had no more reason to be concerned about racism than someone objecting to a font color. But I didn’t realize that you had drunk so much of the kool-aid as to subscribe to those asinine beliefs yourself.
I guess it’s easier to rationalize your mindless devotion to a racist party, and the way that you’d vote for those racists no matter what they do or say, if you pretend that racism is a trivial issue.
Do me a favor: Next time you have the impulse to post something containing nothing at all but mockery of people whose politics you disagree with, take it to a right-wing website, where you can be sure that your contribution will fit in well. This most recent contribution would have fit in well on the Stormfront forums, for instance.
In the case of a drunk driver, we focus on the perpetrator, not the tool. We don’t wait for a drunk driver to kill someone before they are arrested; drunk driving is illegal even if the drunk driver breaks no traffic regulations, hits no one, and to all appearances drives safely. Even the appearance of drunk driving – such as a sober driver with an open beer bottle on the passenger seat – is illegal in many areas.
Oh please. That shit was hysterical. Mr. Newman is so attuned to the (justice-seeking, perfectly decent) anti-racism agenda that when he sees people do the exact same thing they’ve done a million times before, only this time one of the players on the field happens to be black, he goes off the deep end. His decency is commendable and were I a person of color I am sure I would feel comforted to know that I have allies so committed to the welfare of me and mine that they are willing to go on public websites and make absolute jackasses of themselves by spouting utter gibberish, with total sincerity.
I belly-laughed when I saw the Obama meme where he’s removing his sunglasses and saying “sorry it took so long to get you that birth certificate, I was busy KILLING OSAMA BIN LADEN”. Because that shit was hysterical too. Maybe its just us racist folk awash in our hatred of the nonwhite, but I’m pretty sure that some percentage of the beliefs that I hold dear and the beliefs that people I ally with hold dear are going to turn out to be complete turpentine, worthy of nothing but scorn and mockery. If you can’t laugh at yourself – heck, not even yourself, just your team – a little bit, even when your team’s goofballery is making Groucho Marx look like an Easter Island statue, then in the immortal words of someone unsuccessfully trying to get Al Gore to lighten up, it’s time to take the stick out of your ass and replace it with a new stick.
Stormfront, forsooth. Those barbarians wouldn’t get half the interstitial puns and I’d end up getting read out of the white supremacy movement because 53% of them would think it was a sincere accusation of racism against RonF. I’d miss the Prussian Blue concert and everything. You wound me, sir. You wound me.
Oh, you were doing a satire of RJN’s post – a post that I hadn’t seen and was entirely unaware of. Ooops!
Okay, that’s different. Without knowing about RJN’s post, and on a blog where (as far as I knew) the only place racism had come up recently was in discussing voting rights, I think your comment read VERY differently than you intended.
I frankly think that you should have posted it on the thread that you were actually responding to, or at the very least included a link to the thread you were responding to.
That said, my reaction – now that I know what you were actually responding to – was over-the-top, and I apologize. I think you can legitimately criticize RJN’s post for straining to see racism in what seems to me to be just the NRA’s typical pro-gun ridiculousness.
Oh thank God. I thought you had been assimilated by the Stick-Stiffening Alien Combine and we could look forward to an endless winter of borderline Stalinisms about proper exercise of People’s Humor.
I put it here because this is the open thread, whereas that one is a discussion of racism. What kind of racist would I be to post it over there?
I would go in and edit it to include a link, if the white people that ran this place were capable of maintaining an edit function.
(I dithered and debated over putting “Jews” where “white people” is. I briefly flirted with “Hebes” and considered “white devils”. See, I’m sensitive and stuff.)
I feel very offended that you left my Jewishness out. Next time, use “white Jew four-eyed cartoonist devil” – it’s best to cover all bases.
The last update of “Ajax Edit Comments” seems to have had the effect of Ajax Edit Comments no longer working. I’m poking around a bit, but so far haven’t found a solution.
I’m no numerooculist. It’s morally wrong to make fun of someone’s eye count, and probably speciesist as well. We should all be proud Ocular-Americans, even those of us who, like the tragic but bravely inspirational eyeless huntsman spiders, are Ocular-Numerically Challenged.
Fine, you’re a filthy perfidious Jew. I already covered white. Cartoonist would be a legitimate mantle of opprobrium, but your mother is a nice woman and suffers enough, who am I to make more public her shame. You’re not even a proper Jew. You can’t spell mazel tov, you can’t program a computer, I’m reasonably certain that your first year of medical school would have created an identifiable spike in the city’s mortality rate, and there is zero sign of you landing an insanely hot shikseh wife, creating Superman, or leading a raiding party of your fellow Hebes to kill Hitler. If you said kaddish and G-d was just implementing the words you said without paying attention, He’d probably have to actually invent Jewish hell for all the ancestors you would schlemiel into the Bad Place with your bad pronunciation. Oh, but you’re a published novelist. That certainly sets you apart from the other non-doctor Jews. I’ll alert the media.
(Fairness compels me to say that, having no knowledge of the state of Amp’s Hebrew education, if any, my aspersions directed towards his recitation of the prayer for the dead are groundless and without factual basis. Though probably, like the rest of that paragraph, dead accurate.)
It’s funny that when tallying deaths from various means, RonF uses the example of murders using rifles (exactly as I heard a paid NRA flack do on the radio last week), but neglects to mention the number of murders committed using handguns.
What are those numbers RonF? How many people were murdered using a handgun? How many people died from being shot by a handgun (murder, accidents and suicides combined)?
Do tell. Perhaps that well tell you why we talk about gun deaths.
Robert,
I thought you might find it interesting to know that the black-white-ink-paper issue you raised in terms of Ron’s comment was in fact foreseen by the 11th century Muslim poets of Arab Andalusia:
My personal prescription for mental health goes like this:
1) Every day, have a good laugh.
2) At least once a week, have that good laugh based on what you see in the mirror.
Well, let’s see. According to the Center for Disease Control, in 2010 (if you can find more recent data, go for it) there were ~11 K firearm homicides and ~19K firearm suicides. There were also ~ 9.5 K suicides by suffocation and ~ 6.5K suicides by poisoning – combined they are comparable to suicides using firearms. So do we talk about “rope deaths”? Do we talk about “poison deaths”? No. We talk about suicides.
Zounds! My nefarious scheme is laid bare for all. I CONFESS IT!
Or maybe the complainers have no fucking clue about relevancy. Or maybe they’re in 4th grade.
If you’re a grown-up who understand math, you realize that the proper factors for the “why do we focus on ‘gun deaths’ and avoid saying _____ deaths?” answer include:
[Numbers of ________in the country]
[Frequency of ________]
[Numbers of ________ which are used to kill someone]
[Usefulness of ______ for doing shit OTHER than killing someone]
[General social benefit of _______]
[Number of people who get accidentally killed by _______]
[Alternatives to ________]
[Number of dead people who might NOT be dead if ____ wasn’t available]
and so on.
Seriously: Hammers? Rope (see #94?) How are you not embarrassed to even spout that type of BS?
And “drunk driving deaths” and “poison deaths” are, BTW, extremely common terms.
Let’s see. Apparently the FBI estimates of the number of guns in the U.S. in civilian hands at approximately 200,000,000. Figure they are all used for recreation (target and skeet shooting plus a percentage of hunting), subsistence (the rest of hunting), self-defense (they don’t need to be fired to use them for such), suicide and homicide.
Based on the above figures, that means that .0055% of guns were used for homicide, .0095% of them were used for suicide, and 99.985% of them were used for recreation, subsistence, and self-defense. Seems to me that pretty much kicks the shit out of “[Usefulness of ______ for doing shit OTHER than killing someone]”, presuming that you grant that a defensive gun use (henceforth a.k.a. DGU) is not a societal negative.
Using Kleck’s lower bound for defensive gun uses, there are about 800,000 civilian DGU’s a year. You may not love that number, and a few people might have to do that more than once. So let’s round it down to 500,000 violent crimes (a substantial but unknown number of which would have been homicides). What’s the societal benefit of 500,000 – or 800,000, or 2.5 million – violent crimes, including homicides, averted vs. some number less than 11K homicides and 19K suicides averted? “Some number less than” because it’s reasonable to believe that some of those homicides would otherwise have been committed with a hammer or knife or other such instead, and a great many of those suicides would likely have resorted to the nearly equally popular alternatives of suffocation or poison? Seems to me that, depending on the manner of legal gun ownership restrictions, “[Number of dead people who might NOT be dead if ____ wasn’t available]” could easily increase, not decrease. So, I still see no argument why “gun violence” isn’t as absurd a term as “rope violence” or “car violence”.
I didn’t include unintended (a.k.a. accidental) deaths involving firearms because I didn’t find a CDC figure for them. The table I referenced above shows the top 10 causes of violent death in the U.S. by age group and as a total. Those causes include unintentional violent deaths of numerous categories. The 10th leading cause for all age groups combined had an incidence of 3,782 (unintentional drowning). So I’m presuming that unintentional deaths involving firearms are fewer than that and don’t really change the above numbers significantly.
Again, I agree that talking about “rope deaths” and “car deaths” is absurd. That’s my point. Such syntax is treated as absurd by civil-rights opponents when things people use every day for numerous legal and useful purposes are involved – unless its a gun, then the rules change, because ….? I speculate that it’s because otherwise guns are not sufficiently demonized.
And, yes, thank you, I managed to get past Miss Rogers and out of 4th grade some time ago. The mental scars still exist – and I can still recite the alphabet backwards almost as quickly as I can recite it forwards. It was a thing she had ….
A couple of my fraternity brothers at the Institute proudly claimed the title “New York Hebe”. I’m amazed they didn’t think of T-shirts.
In fact, your inclusion of unintentional firearm-related deaths in the car vs. gun comparison does you no favor. The figures for car-plus-drunk-driver deaths are about at 11K/year. The CDC table shows Unintentional car-related deaths at 32K/year. I guess they don’t count the ones involving drunk drivers as a separate category, but presuming they’re included that means that accidental car deaths are at least 10 fold greater than unintentional firearm-related deaths. Another example of car violence.
Amp, I’ve got to take you mildly to task for not recognizing satire when you see it. Since when has Robert – or I, for that matter – ever gone that far off the beam?
Hm. From that press release from the White House, the President is going to do the following:
According to The Weekly Standard (I don’t know that their credibility on whether this is factual or not should be questioned, but if you think so please speak up) a White House press background document that they handed out says:
This will be interesting. The ACA certainly regulates communications between a doctor and a patient when it comes to firearms. The ACA is here. http://www.grimbeorn.blogspot.com/2013/01/this-should-be-interesting-clarification.html>Grim's Hall cites the relevant portion:
Looks like regulation of communications to me. If the law says that a doctor can’t require me to answer certain questions and forbids the doctor from writing down the answer, communications are regulated.
To say that a doctor can ask a question but can’t require you to answer and can’t write down the answer if you do seems a fine point to me. Cops asking you questions that you were not required to answer (at least without informing you of your rights) is a Miranda violation. Sure, it’s obviously not an exact analogy. But a doctor is an authority figure to a great many people. My guess is that doctors are ill-advised to ask such questions; unless they like lawsuits.
RonF says:
January 17, 2013 at 12:19 pm
Let’s see. Apparently the FBI estimates of the number of guns in the U.S. in civilian hands at approximately 200,000,000. F
Sure. Want to guess at hammers, rope, cleaning fluids, and the like?
That’s changing the dynamic. Generally speaking people aren’t trying to ban full-sized shotguns, or normal long guns used for hunting. Statistically speaking those are less likely to be used for gun violence. People are trying to ban handguns and/or certain relatively specialized long guns.
You’d like to focus on the NON-relevant ones in order to make your stats better. That’s not how it works.
Where are you getting this, precisely?
Your # is too high, because you need to account for the increase in crimes which were committed with a gun.
If you have a gun it’s easier to defend, assuming that everything works out hunk-dory. But if they have a gun it’s easier to commit a crime.
Not many.
It’s reasonable to assume that folks who will seize a blunt object and kill someone with it are going to kill someone no matter what: the world is full of blunt objects. Baseball bats and hammers are not so different.
It’s far less reasonable (and isn’t borne out by the evidence) that folks who would pull a trigger will, absent a gun, go and try to stab someone or bludgeon someone to death. Nor is it at all borne out by the evidence that theyt will SUCCEED even if they try.
Suicides don’t concern me. Nor do suicides properly fall into the “gun violence” category.
If it seems that way, you’re incorrect.
w/r/t cars, One obvious reason is that people who kill other folks with cars are stupid, not violent. They’re generally trying to AVOID killing someone. The other obvious reason is that cars are not only high in number but are crucial to the entire country and are used by most folks for many hours/day.
“Rope deaths” is absurd because it’s meaningless. “Hanging deaths” would be perfectly relevant, and it’s not like you can buy a premade noose at the local store.
“Car deaths” is quite relevant and we talk about automobile fatalities all the tike.
We also specifically talk about drunk driving deaths, even though there’s usually far less intent to kill someone than is involved in gun violence.
Um, because of the many logical reasons which i set out in the post above.
You replied to a few of them. You ignored most of them.
Go ahead and run an item-by-item comparison with cars and guns, and then perhaps you can answer your own question. For example
[Numbers of ________in the country]
About the same–between 200 and 300 million.
[Frequency of ________]
HUGE points for cars. Pretty much everyone gets in a car every now and then. most folks get in a car many times a day and spend many hours driving. Cars are more dangerous than buses but still relatively safe, especially if you wear seatbelts. They’re only getting safer.
If you own a gun which sits in a safe, it’s relatively useless but (as you can see if you look at child gun accidents) still dangerous
[Numbers of ________ which are used to kill someone]
HUGE points for cars. People don’t generally “use cars to kill people.” Why should they when there are better and faster ways?
[Usefulness of ______ for doing shit OTHER than killing someone]
U.S. Society if all of the types of guns that folks want to ban disappeared tomorrow: largely the same, possibly (in your opinion) with much higher crime rates, or (in my opinion) without that much of an effect.
U.S. Society if all autos disappeared tomorrow: Dead.
Want to argue this one?
[General social benefit of _______]
See above. Even if you credit the defensive issue, it’s still a car win.
[Number of people who get accidentally killed by _______]
Higher for cars. But not if you count usefulness and hours spent.
[Alternatives to ________]
Guns: knives, dogs, bats, trained spiders.
Cars: None, really.
[Number of dead people who might NOT be dead if ____ wasn’t available]
Cars: Lots.
Guns: Lots.