I’ve watched the press reports over Newtown over the past few days with a confused kind of feeling, and I think this blog post from The Economist finally explains why. On the one hand, this is a terrible tragedy for the mothers, fathers, sister, brothers, and friends who were directly and personally affected by loss of young lives in Newtown. But on the other hand, the whole “Why God Why?” outcry seems pretty damn silly when one considers the chances of catastrophic gun violence in a country where citizens can arm themselves to the teeth. Rather than crying out as if this were some sort of random act from the heavens, why aren’t we doing something to take guns out of people’s hands?
For those that know me well, my response to Newtown might come as something of a surprise. I’m generally a “conservative” guy, and the conservative party line is that the right to carry a gun is sacrosanct.
But truth is, I’m beginning to think that’s bullshit. Witness Eugene Volokh over at the Volokh Conspiracy pumping out weak sauce defenses over the past few days on the almost-unlimited right to carry a weapon. Compare those writings of an accomplished constitutional law scholar to those The Onion. I never thought I’d say this, but The Onion wins this fight hands-down.
And perhaps even more troublingly for me, this issue seems to reflect the recent conservative inclination to elevate abstractions over reality. Sure a few kids die, but our Founding Fathers (with capital Fs!) wanted us to have guns. Freedom! Democracy! And hey, the budget’s a mess and everyone understands that we all need to chip in more lest we tip into the abyss, but we can’t do that lest we suffer under tax tyranny, right? And oh yeah, it’s definitely murder and a catastrophic harm to kill a fetus, but screw the poor little thing once it’s actually born and breathing on its own. Welfare programs for children? Ha!, comes the conservative response. Those parents should be forced to bear the consequences of their own actions.
I’m not sure that this all makes any sense to others. But for some reason, in my own mind, Newtown has served as a kind of crystallizing moment. Shouldn’t we be paying attention to what’s here and now, rather than making policy judgments premised on abstract notions of rights and values? Shouldn’t our policies be built around ensuring the day-to-day betterment of each person?
I’m done with it. Abstractions are nice in good times. But they are cold comfort in times like these.
-Michael
Update: And now I’m agreeing with the New York Review of Books. *sigh* Anyway, here’s an article making a point similar to the one I try to make above: that cherished but vague “principles” are causing us to lose sight of empirical consequences.
This is a post I saw on Facebook. I haven’t seen the story of Nick Mali in Clackamas Mall on any National News sites, but it is on local news in Oregon. I have seen a report from the Nurse at Newtown that said she heard what was happening and was helpless, she was helpless because the School is a gun free Zone. If the teachers had been allowed to defend themselves they and their students might have stood a chance, as it is they had no chance. I would give the victims a chance to defend themselves, the Bob Costas’s of the world would take that chance away and leave them helpless.
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There have been a few incidents of violence in the past few days, the media and politicians are plastering the air waves with Gun Control stories. Whenever someone disagrees with their political stance they say it’s too soon to talk about the violence. Here is the thing all of the incidents have in common with the Colorado shooting stopped by Jeannie Assam in 2007.
Guard saved untold lives, officials say
http://articles.latimes.com/2007/dec/11/nation/na-shoot11
Jeannie was at church, armed as usual having a nice Sunday when a gunman came from a mall where he had shot some people with no resistance. He showed up in the church parking lot killed 2 people and proceeded into the church. This is where Jeannie pulled her weapon and met him at the door to the chapel. He was armed to the teeth expecting no resistance planning on killing potentially hundreds of victims trapped inside before he killed himself, instead he met Jeannie and her gun. He knew he would be shot multiple times and probably die of blood loss or go to prison for the rest of his life, so he ended it quickly with a shot to his own head. He was ok with the way things were going until he met armed resistance.
You may ask how this relates to Clackamas Or, or Newtown, CT. More details are coming out about these shootings, and they do have a few things in common most importantly a mass shooter meets armed resistance. Unlike Aurora CO where the gunman had free reign.
Clackamas man, armed, confronts mall shooter
http://www.kgw.com/news/Clackamas-man-armed-confronts-mall-shooter-183593571.html
Clackamas OR was a mall shooting; the strange thing is that with the weapons he had only 2 were killed and 1 injured. Since he was not shot by police something else had to happen, this is now coming out courtesy of KGW Channel 8. Nick Mali was there with a friend and her child, when the shooting started they took cover, the gunman’s rifle jammed, until this point the gunman had met no resistance. Nick saw a chance and pulled his Concealed Weapon, the gunman saw him lining up to shoot. Nick saw movement in the background and held his fire to keep from hitting innocent people in the crossfire as any responsible gun owner knows to do. The shooter was now meeting armed resistance and the potential of being shot, lots of pain, and possibly going to jail for the rest of his life, ended it quickly with a gunshot.
This brings us to the incident in Sandy Hook Elementary; the police today said that the shooter shot himself when police were closing in. This seems self explanatory; he had free rein to do his damage to defenseless unarmed victims until armed resistance in the form of police arrived. The shooter was now meeting armed resistance and the potential of being shot, lots of pain, and possibly going to jail for the rest of his life, ended it quickly with a gunshot.
“We need guns to shoot gunmen” seems to be the most common response I’ve seen from pro-gun folk. Query whether escalation is a game we really want to play.
Lets look a Mexico to see where tougher gun laws lead, for the average Mexican Citizen it is nearly impossible to “Legally” own a gun to defend themselves. If you are rich you can afford to jump through the hoops to hire armed security. If you are a Criminal you do not care about the laws. Through their laws they are trying to disarm US Diplomatic Security Service that are supposed to be responsible for the safety of out diplomats.
If you have a better tool for Self Defense I will gladly give it to the women I know that have been raped and/or battered by Violent Boyfriends, if Javon Belcher’s girlfriend had a gun she might have been able to defend herself from someone who could have just as easily snapped her neck with his bare hands. Here is an example of an incident in Casper WY where a customer caused a gunman to run by merely having the weapon without firing a shot from just a few weeks ago.
Casper Police: Nail salon customer packs heat, gunman leaves
http://trib.com/news/local/casper/casper-police-nail-salon-customer-packs-heat-gunman-leaves/article_e3236de2-6756-539a-92b0-ae3aaf64c900.html
If Nancy Lanza had owned a gun, she might have been able to defend herself from her attacker.
Oh wait…
If we are choosing to make comparisons to other nations, I would simply note that the rate of death by guns is much higher here than it is in the rest of the “first world.” I think places like Australia and Canada (which both restrict guns) are better comparators than Mexico. (No offense, Mexico.)
And if you earnetly believe that the United States needs more guns, I would tell you that this country has the highest rate of civilian gun ownership in the world. By a lot. Yemen is next, but even it’s not in our neighborhood.
To be fair, if I were living in Mexico I would probably want to have a weapon to use for self-defense, too.
But I’m not sure that “ensuring that we have an armed populace in case the rule of law ever breaks down and the US starts emulating the conditions in Mexico” is a worthy policy objective. Or at least not when compared to other objectives, such as “creating a civil society where violence has been so minimized that there exists a negligible individual benefit to possessing a firearm for use in self-defense.”
“To be fair, if I were living in Mexico I would probably want to have a weapon to use for self-defense, too.”
If I were living in Mexico I’d want a small private army for defense.
unitron
Mexico is important in all of this, if gun control gets passed here to the level most on the left want it will create a large black-market in guns for the Drug Cartels to exploit, does anyone not think they will? Unless we do something really radical and secure the border. As far as Europe goes, the Brady Bunch use the Gun Crime statistics they manipulate to make it seem like Europe is safer and they are all singing Kumbayah. Mark Twain “There are three types of lies: Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics” The reality is violent crime has increased throughout Europe since their right to defend themselves has been taken away. The European Union since it’s inception have been an un-elected body with the intellectual elite able to override the will of the people of Europe running it into ruin. Riots in Europe are quickly getting out of control, and no one is able to defend themselves. For the LA riots, the Korean businessmen were in their stores and on their roofs with those Evil Guns everyone wants to ban. The rioters tried but in the end left their businesses pretty much alone compared to the rest of the LA riot area. In Europe they pretty much destroy everything. Riots are probably the best reason to own an AR-15 or an AK-47. The mere presence in your storefront or home armed to the teeth can keep you and yours safe. It is Establishing Presence, we (Military) use it to deter, police use it to deter, store owners use it to deter and more often than not this saves you having to actually fire.
LA Riots – Armed store owners deter rioters.
Inspector Gadget — I’m not particularly adamant about gun-control, and, as a recreational matter, I think firearms are pretty swell. But I am absolutely opposed to the argument that encouraging gun ownership is a valid way of addressing and discouraging domestic violence.
A handgun does have the potential to provide a defense to a stranger’s intrusion into the home, or an unexpected random act of violence in a public place. But domestic violence doesn’t work that way — in a case of domestic violence, the aggressor can literally sit around and wait until the victim has, for a split second, lost access to their gun. The aggressor also has the opportunity to preemptively take control of the gun. Or wait until the victim takes a shower. Or to attack the victim in their sleep.
Not to mention, that whole line of argument also comes dangerously close to outright victim blaming.
My intention and my actions to teach self defense to the people around me are proactive; Empowering them to defend themselves, vs reactive. I tell them what they could have done as an After Action lessons learned to teach them how to handle a situation in the future. As more details come out of this shooting in Newtown and the Oregon Mall shooter I will incorporate this information as a lessons learned to help people in the future that may be trapped in these situations. Out of what has come out about the Clackamas shooting is that when Nick Mali (Concealed Weapon Holder) confronted the shooter he held his fire despite the adrenaline rush to shoot the Bad Guy, because he recognized that there were innocent people in the background that could be hurt by a stray bullet. That was an excellent call to wait, after seeing Armed Resistance the shooter decided to end his own life. Just because you have a gun in this situation does not mean you automatically start firing, you asses the situation and wait for a clear shot. My first reaction when I hear about domestic violence cases is to tell them to get out, preferably with a restraining order in case they do have to use lethal force to defend themselves.
The Second Amendment prohibits this line of thinking, Michael. The Second Amendment is like the uber-Amendment — it has to be interpreted to allow the maximum level of freedom possible, or else it is violated. The Second Amendment is just that hardcore. The Founding Fathers actually had a footnote about this in the original version of the Constitution, but unfortunately the footnote accidentally got cut off due to a printing error. But it clarified that the Second Amendment was the most sacred Amendment of them all, and it unconditionally guarantees every American’s right to maximum gun availability. True story.
This is in contrast to all those other provisions of the Constitution, which obviously have to be interpreted in light of reasonable policy objectives. Strict enforcement of any Constitutional Amendment other than the Second Amendment would be dangerous and absurd, because it would lead to increased gun violence. Those other Amendments must be curtailed, before they cause even more mass murders.
Like the First Amendment, for example, which should be enforced only in moderation, and should be understood to contain important exceptions, notwithstanding that Amendment’s use of misleadingly unambiguous language. In order to fully protect the Second Amendment, the First Amendment has to be reasonably interpreted in light of competing interests, because keeping religion out of government institutions is the number one cause of mass murders in the United States. (Everyone knows, of course, that there is a strong correlation between extremely religious nations and nations with low levels of gun violence.) (Inverse correlation is still correlation, right?)
And the Fifth Amendment, too, needs to be restrained. That amendment has been responsible for more shooting deaths than any other, with its unrealistic and misinterpreted guarantee of due process. We have to eradicate “laws that make it difficult to control people with mental illness,” not to mention all those “ACLU-inspired laws that make it so difficult to intervene and identify potentially dangerous people.” Once the Fifth Amendment has been appropriately interpreted and understood in light of its original context, we’ll be able to lock up crazy people and prevent them from using guns in ways that make guns seem problematic.
I understand that you were sarcastic in saying that the Second Amendment is absolute, but I bet many people would be surprised to learn that it’s not. For those people, I would suggest a read of one particular portion of the recent Heller opinion:
There seems to us no doubt, on the basis of both text and history, that the Second Amendment conferred an individual right to keep and bear arms. Of course the right was not unlimited, just as the First Amendment’s right of free speech was not. Thus, we do not read the Second Amendment to protect the right of citizens to carry arms for any sort of confrontation, just as we do not read the First Amendment to protect the right of citizens to speak for any purpose.
District of Columbia v. Heller, 128 S. Ct. 2783, 2799 (2008) (internal citation omitted).
The common meme in the gun community, although any actual Constitutional justification is shaky at best, is “a rifle over the mantel and a cannon on the green” (i.e. drawing the line at small arms vs. crew-served weapons).
But going back to US v. Miller, the Court found that any weapon that might reasonably be considered part of a soldier’s equipment might be considered to fall within the scope of the Second Amendment, while those that weren’t most certainly did not. So the distinction is not as fine as might first appear.
I’m on my cell so I wont be able to provide a decent response with links until tonight. In the case of DC violent crime rates have gone down since the heller decision.
My concerns lay more along the lines of the Gonzales decision where no govt entity is responsible for your individual safety, but only the safety of society in general. The only person responsible for your safety is you according to that decision. In Newtown the adults are by the gonzales decision solely responsible for their own safety yet are denied the ability to protect themselves.
Violent crime rates were going down all over the U.S., and had been going down since well before Heller was ever filed. And as of 2012, crime rates are heading up again, anyway.
And I don’t see how adults in Newtown were deprived of the ability to protect themselves, since obviously adults in Newtown were allowed to have guns. But in any event, your interpretation of Castle Rock v. Gonzalez is, at a minimum, oversimplified, and I don’t really see how it applies here.
I have just found something interesting now that I am back home doing research on Teachers carrying while at school in CT. While my earlier post was from work where research is limited to my cell phone, I had assumed that a teacher could not carry at a school period. My thought process is based around what if a teacher had a restraining order against a violent EX, could she defend herself from him since there are no penalties for the police not being able to protect her (Gonzalez Decision). CT has some of the more restrictive gun laws in the US, not quite Chicago but getting there. Here is a reference to an Official Opinion on “Possession of a weapon on school grounds.” Until 1998 a person with a permit could carry at school, this exception was removed in 1998. I am quite surprised and pleased to know that a teacher can ask the School District if she can carry at school to protect herself from any threats as long as she can convince the District that she needs to be able to defend herself. At this point a teacher in CT could ask to carry to prevent another Newtown from happening in her/his classroom, but it would be up to the district. Were I a teacher in CT or anywhere else I would be asking to carry while working for my safety as well as my students.
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CT Law: Possession of a weapon on school grounds.
http://cga.ct.gov/2011/pub/chap952.htm#Sec53a-217b.htm
Sec. 53a-217b. Possession of a weapon on school grounds: Class D felony. (a) A person is guilty of possession of a weapon on school grounds when, knowing that such person is not licensed or privileged to do so, such person possesses a firearm or deadly weapon, as defined in section 53a-3, (1) in or on the real property comprising a public or private elementary or secondary school, or (2) at a school-sponsored activity as defined in subsection (h) of section 10-233a.
(b) The provisions of subsection (a) of this section shall not apply to the otherwise lawful possession of a firearm (1) by a person for use in a program approved by school officials in or on such school property or at such school-sponsored activity, (2) by a person in accordance with an agreement entered into between school officials and such person or such person’s employer, (3) by a peace officer, as defined in subdivision (9) of section 53a-3, while engaged in the performance of such peace officer’s official duties, or (4) by a person while traversing such school property for the purpose of gaining access to public or private lands open to hunting or for other lawful purposes, provided such firearm is not loaded and the entry on such school property is permitted by the local or regional board of education.
(c) Possession of a weapon on school grounds is a class D felony.
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Official Opinion: Possession of a weapon on school grounds.
http://www.handgunlaw.us/documents/CTLegAnalystGunsSchools.pdf
While a teacher or staff-member would be prohibited from bringing a gun to school without the district’s permission, the statute appears to allow him to do so pursuant to an agreement with said district. However, it is not clear from session transcripts that this result was contemplated by the legislature and a cursory review of related board of education policies reveals that this practice would generally be prohibited by school districts. For instance, Hartford Public Schools’ policy on weapons and dangerous instruments and personnel states that “all dangerous instruments and illegal weapons are prohibited on school property, student transportation and at school-sponsored activities. ” Similarly, a Stamford Public Schools board of education policy notes that “the presence of weapons poses a risk to all persons, and [the board] prohibits weapons from school property and school-sponsored activities, except as may be required as a condition of employment, such as for peace officers. ” It generally prohibits employees and others from bringing any weapon or dangerous instrument onto school property or to any school-sponsored activities.
An important consideration is: any measures we take will have expense (probably a considerable expense) and an increase in government power attached. It behooves us then, if practicality is our aim, to take actions that have actual benefits. We tried a ban on scary guns and large magazines from 1994 through 2004. The net measurable effect was nil — even the most partisan gun-control advocates interpreting data very loosely are hard-put to show more than a very weak benefit. Many of them admit the Clinton AWB accomplished little and its expiration did not spell doom. So I don’t think focusing on assault weapons or magazine sizes is the answer, especially as neither was apparently a factor here (latest reports I read are that all of the victims at the school were shot with one of the two handguns; I don’t know if that’s true of his parents).
What is the answer? In this case it would have required more comprehensive (some would read “intrusive”) mental-health monitoring, and either household members responsible enough to remove weapons from Lanza’s environment or a government powerful enough to do it for them. That cure might be worse than the disease, especially if it’s done ham-handedly and drives people who might otherwise seek help earlier away from it instead.
And ultimately we can’t prevent 100% of these incidents. Cold as it sounds, the numbers are pretty steady over the last several decades at 100-130 victims per year over the last couple of decades (source: http://boston.com/community/blogs/crime_punishment/2012/08/no_increase_in_mass_shootings.html), so we have to ask ourselves how far we are willing to go for how much benefit.
Armed resistance ends another mass shooting at a San Antonio theater, Sunday night a mass shooting was stopped by a good guy with a gun, this will not make it to the national news just like the details of how the Oregon mall shooting ended have not gone national. This one started as attempted Domestic Violence against the Girlfriend that had broke up with him. If not for Sgt. Lisa Castellano working a second job this would have ended with lots of bodies, the one person he hit has been released because he did not hit any vital organs.
http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local_news/article/Officials-Breakup-sparked-Santikos-shooting-4123414.php
Here is an idea I saw that I do like, there are a lot of us with Combat Experience that have retired or separated from the military when our time was up that need jobs. We are better trained in the use of weapons than most police officers due to the very nature of the military. Start hiring my Brothers and Sisters in Arms to do security at schools, malls, theaters, etc.. The mere presence of Armed Resistance is enough to discourage a lot of Monsters from trying it there. Gun Free Zones and No Gun signs only disarm Law Abiding Citizens leaving them defenseless and the Monsters know this. Gun Control is a feel good measure that has done effectively nothing to stop any mass shootings, this guy was 19, he was not able to legally purchase a gun so how would any Gun Control law have stopped this.
Dood, the US can’t afford to hire TEACHERS for our schools, what makes you think they can afford armed guards?
@Susan Simpson
Cut off because of a “printing error” or removed by the liberal-communist-socialist-Obama is a secret Muslim trying to destroy the world-left wing media conspiracy?
I hear Nicolas Cage is going to go hunting for the secret first draft in National Treasure 3…
This whole “debate” makes me sad. It’s yet another in a long line of “political arguments” that only exists because, as a culture, we’ve been taught that we have to suffer fools. One of the most valuable lessons I’ve ever learned was that tossing the words “In my opinion,” “I feel,”or “I think” onto the beginning of a statement doesn’t magically make it unimpeachable.
Here you’ve got two camps of people- intelligent informed folks who recognize that guns exist solely to allow people to more efficiently kill things and that they, therefore, have no place in civilized society and idiots (and those making a living off keeping said idiots as dumb and pliable as possible- Hello Messrs. Limbaugh, NRA, Hannity, Fox News…!). This latter camp is made up of folks too boneheaded to recognize that anecdotal evidence of a shooting or two being stopped by someone “defending themselves” doesn’t mean we should start requiring people to carry handguns (as Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell has proposed http://dcist.com/2012/12/va_bill_would_order_teachers_to_car.php).
Not all gun owners, nor proponents of gun rights, are idiots. And the examples of defensive uses of guns go far beyond “a shooting or two”, whether we’re talking about common street crime, home invasions, or mass shootings (although a mass shooting that stops at 2 or 3 because the gunman was shot isn’t officially counted by the feds as a mass shooting, so the stats there are not as easy to suss out). If you are under the misapprehension that living in our “civilized society” means never being responsible for your own self-defense, then a lot of blacks, gays, women, and other minorities of my personal acquaintance would like some words with you.
Note also that you are incorrect about the Virginia bill in two important respects. It was not proposed by Governor O’Donnell, and it apparently (I can’t find actual bill text because I don’t think it’s made it to the floor yet) would not require anyone who didn’t want to to carry a gun — it is in fact partly modeled on an earlier bill that required schools to have staff trained to stock and administer epinephrine injections (because with anaphylactic shock, seconds count). In fact DCist omits an important part of the writing of the bill — it was not simply written because nothing clearly says the legislature can’t do that, it was written as it was after consideration of the epi-pen law as precedent. The bill only specifies that schools must designate staff to be trained and carry weapons on school property — they can hire staff dedicated for that purpose if they wish.
I don’t follow LL2, but am on WordPress and got this apparently by random.
You are all gone, but here are a few ideas:
—–Dividing people into two black and white camps is a loser. We are not it is a sliding scale.
—–Our goals should be as Susan has expressed them. That is why we give power to use violence to our police, so we may be peaceful and disarmed ourselves.
I don’t want to live in Texas where the murder rate is low (?), but everybody is packing.
—–He, spouting about the EU is very poorly informed, which makes the rest of what the Inspector says very suspect as to veracity.
—–I don’t want to live in an armed camp, or be dependent on somebody in church, mall, bio or elsewhere to be, and thus save me. For all I know the savior might be nuts too!
fallingpetals@hushmail.com
Merry whatever to all. God Jul is what we say here in Sweden, even ex-pats.