The NRA calls for armed cops in every school. Basically
the NRA is selling out its principles on this one. The solution to most problems is not giving
the government more power and authority.
Since the whole point of owning guns is to keep tyrants in check, calling
for more government is philosophically identical for calling for increased gun
control because the result of both processes is the same: more government power, which is then used to harass
and suppress innocent civilians. In the
name of keeping them safe of course.
Karl Denninger on Killing. This is definitely a
must-read post. I would bet that quite a
few of those clamoring for gun control have never killed anything. Killing animals, in my experience, can be a
very disgusting task. I have shot and
killed several animals in the last couple of years. I’ve mostly killed chickens, as an act of
mercy when they were injured and unable to take care of themselves (mostly
broken legs and the like), and I’ve killed several raccoons that had attempted
to kill some of my mom’s chickens. Most
of the animals I’ve killed, I killed with a .22, and most of my kills have
required multiple shots. There is
nothing more disconcerting than watching an animal suffer and knowing you have
to put a bullet in its brain because that’s the more merciful thing to do. You quickly realize just how fragile life is,
and you become more aware of what mercy truly is.
Over Christmas my youngest brother and I killed a squirrel. We had never killed an animal for food
before, and so we decided that we would clean and gut this squirrel so we could
cook it. It was a remarkably disgusting
process. We got blood all over our hands
and completely dismantled the squirrel’s body.
Tonight, we will cook it. This is
the first time we will have been directly and personally responsible for our
food, and it is certainly a humbling experience.
Killing and gutting an animal is nothing like the simulated violence
on television and in video games.
Killing is dirty, violent, and visceral.
Nothing compares to it, and nothing can prepare you for it. Quite simply, nothing compares to taking the
life of a living thing. Perhaps one
reason why people are so callous to killing is because they don’t understand
how violent it is, and how necessary it is.
Perhaps that is the reason why neo-cons who have never gone to war are
so eager to start them (paging Newt Gingrich).
Perhaps people are able to treat school killings as talking points
because they simply do not know how killing works.
Guns Save Lives. An excellent resource that aggregates reports
of people preventing crime by using guns in self-defense. Now, these sorts of stories might seem
obvious (seriously, does anyone with a functioning brain doubt that weapons of
any sort can be used defensively?), but it’s always good to have this sort of
resource on tap, bookmarked for handy reference. Some people are apparently so obtuse that
even the obvious must be proven as fact before moving on to more productive
conversations. This is the perfect
resource, then, for proving that guns can be used defensively.
Paul Craig Roberts on Agenda Drive News. Unsurprisingly,
the mainstream media appears to have quite an agenda behind its coverage of the
Newtown massacre. In addition to misusing
jargon to confuse people, the media has apparently been rather quiet on
following up on the mental health aspect of the story. (I noted in a prior post that the drugs Lanza
took for his Asperger’s were intended to be used by schizophrenics.) The media has also demonstrated an extreme
reluctance to follow up on why the official story of the Colorado movie shooter
differs so much from eyewitness accounts.
It’s really quite puzzling, at least if you assume that news organizations
are supposed to give dispassionate accounts of the facts of a news story.
Bill Powell proves that there was a conspiracy behind the recent mass shootings. As I noted before, the respective fathers of
the Newtown and Aurora shooters were supposed to testify in the LIBOR
scandal. Apparently neither shooting had
demonstrated any firearms proficiency prior to their respective shootings. Incidentally, the news site Bill linked to
pulled its story shortly after publication.
It’s a coincidence, I’m sure.
Andrew Ross Sorkin notes that Wall Street is heavily invested in firearms. This is the one good thing about Wall Street,
at least these days, and bodes well for the future. Unfortunately, this may prompt soft forms of
gun control if the government decides to pressure major investment firms into
divesting their investments in gun manufacturers. The NRA and other guns’ rights organizations
may want to bone up on investment laws, and may want to start their own mutual
funds that invest in guns and weapons manufacturers. In fact, if the NRA is intelligent, it may
offer members opportunities to invest in owning stock in gun manufacturing
companies, which would help to force the government to be more overt in its
attempts at banning guns.
Stephen Williamson displays his ignorance on gun ownership. He
asserts that people buy guns for three reasons:
1) they want to shoot animals, 2) they want to shoot people, or 3) they
want to threaten people. This is, of course, a very shallow view. There are some people who purchase weapons as
collector’s items, and there are some who engage in competitive target
shooting. Thus, there are more than
three reasons why people would buy guns.
From there, Williamson notes that sometimes guns may be used
to harm people, even when harm isn’t intended.
This is rather obvious, but the conclusion that this should lead to
either gun bans or extremely strict regulation is highly dubious, to say the
least, even by economists’ standards. In
the first place, Williamson ignores the unintended benefits of gun ownership
(reduced crime rates, e.g.). In the
second place, Williamson ignores the fundamental rule of tradeoffs that is the
foundation of economics: sure, we could
have more gun safety, but at what price?
What is the tradeoff equilibrium between the costs of gun ownership and
the benefits? In the third place, there
is no way that Williamson would ever apply this logic to things like cars or
swimming pools, which also account for a rather significant number of deaths. Williamson can recognize the concept of
tradeoffs for cars; why can’t he do the same for guns?
John Fund on mass shootings. He makes two important
observations. First, he notes that there
are lots of potential preventive gains to be made by addressing mental health
issues. Second, he observes that
gun-free zones effectively turn people into blindingly obvious targets. This
should seem obvious, but it often is not to those with an agenda.
Vox Day on why US gun deaths are so high. Unsurprisingly, minorities
account for a disproportionate amount of gun violence. If you divided up America by race, White
America would have a gun rate death in line with most Western European
countries, Tan America would have a gun death rate similar to that of most
South American countries, and Black America would have a gun death rate similar
to that of African countries. All this
is simply a fancy way of saying that whites don’t commit a lot of gun violence,
while Hispanics and blacks do. Maybe we
could reduce overall gun violence by taking guns away from minorities.
David Masciotra on the culture of narcissism. David
does a good job of pointing out the fatal conceit of gun control, which is the
idea that all problems are solvable.
Since we are dealing with a complex system, the appropriate way to view
the problem is to think in term of tradeoffs.
We can never eliminate gun deaths; we can only reduce them. It’s highly unlikely that we would have been
able to prevent Adam Lanza from going on his spree, unless we had the precogs
from Minority Report to tell us
specifically that he would do it. Adam was dedicated to the idea of shooting up
a school, and his plan was not deterred by gun control laws or signs stating
that the school was gun-free zone. The only
way he would not have gone through with his plan would be by divine
intervention or by locking him indefinitely from the time he was of age. There will always be violence, and we can
never eliminate it. At best we can
reduce it, but even reduction has its limits.
Why Grandpa Carries AGun. Like the Guns Save Lives link
above, this is another helpful resource in the gun control debate, as it lists
the various historical attempts at gun control.
Funnily enough, every time gun control is enacted, it is generally followed
by mass killings at the hands of the government. Liberals are too blinded by their faith in government
(and authority in general) to see this, but I will have more to say on this
later.
Yahoo has a propagandistic hit piece. One thing
that I think is important to note in this debate over gun control is how it is
argued on pragmatic grounds, that is, the frame of the debate is whether people
are safer with more or less gun control.
The Yahoo piece subtly builds on this by trying to speak reasonably on
the subject, in that it represents both views (i.e. strict gun control works;
strict gun control doesn’t work). In
America, though, the real debate should be about the constitutionality of gun
control. Pragmatism should be ancillary
to that. What I fear most about the NRA’s
statement is that it focuses more on the safety issue of gun ownership rather
than on the inherent right of gun ownership.
This small concession may be significant later on.
Also, another thing this article ignores is gun violence that occurs at the hands of the government. I wonder why this never gets brought up...
Also, another thing this article ignores is gun violence that occurs at the hands of the government. I wonder why this never gets brought up...
Obama calls for more gun control. Obama wants the assault
weapons ban back in place, as well as stricter background checks and limits on
high capacity clips. The impact of the assault
weapons ban would be to drive up the price of existing assault weapons; its
impact on reducing violence would be marginal at best. The impact of the second requirement would
likely be nil, unless applicants were asked about mental illness. The impact limiting high capacity clips would
be minimal as well, since there are already a good number of high capacity
clips, and since lower capacity can be switched out quickly and easily by any
experienced shooter.
Are Mass Shootings Increasing? Maybe, maybe not. Shooting sprees, of the sort witnessed at
Newtown, seem to be on the rise, while overall mass gun violence is stagnant. I
think what’s happening is that rational killers are becoming a little more
cautious, probably due to increased conservatism in the criminal justice system
(judges are not as lenient today as they were forty to fifty years ago), while
crazy killers are becoming more bold. I
would imagine that this is evidence that American society has become
increasingly perverse, and this development is masked by the fact that America
has one of the world’s largest incarceration rates.
Brian LaSorsa on enlightened wimps. While I
ultimately think that the mental illness aspect of the Newtown Shooting is
significant, I also think it may be best to simply look at Adam Lanza’s actions
and say that he and he alone is to blame for them. And it may well be the case that Adam was
simply evil. Not crazy; evil.
Karl Denninger on mental illness. Karl brings up
another good point, and one that I suspect is relevant to the matter at
hand: the mental health profession has
continued to increase its base of defining illness. For some reason, psychologists have this idea
that he human brain is to have a stagnant, non-fluctuating emotional state of
quiet happiness and confidence at all times, and that any deviation from this
state is a disorder. Depression,
moodiness, lack of focus, social awkwardness (basically, an autistic spectrum
disorder on the lighter end of the scale) are all considered diseases, brain
malfunction. To me, this is nothing more
than ignoring basic facts of human nature. Sometimes we’ll be depressed. Sometimes we’ll lack focus. Sometimes we’ll be moody; sometimes we’ll
feel awkward. That’s life, we move
on. We don’t need to go on meds the
second our confidence is challenged or the second we find ourselves be less than
perfectly happy. And constantly
medicating everyone for every last minor, abrupt deviation from that which is
perceived as normal is simply foolish.
Eric Peters has some perspective. Here’s a helpful reminder
that the worst mass-killing at an elementay school didn’t involve guns.
Larry Correia on gun control. It’s deep and thorough, and
well worth bookmarking for future reference.
This op-ed on Nancy Lanza contains the interesting observation that Adam Lanza does not appear
to have had any significant gun training.
Now, you probably don’t need a whole lot of gun training to effectively
kill a decent number of defenseless people at close range. However, you’d think someone who spent a lot
of time planning an attack would, you know, practice the most important part of
carrying it out. Again, I’m starting to
smell a conspiracy here.
Gun control advocates apparently know little about guns.
Here’s a good way to start a debate with a gun control advocate: ask them to define their terms. If they can’t tell the difference between a
clip and a magazine, a revolver and pistol, an automatic and a semi-auto, or a
rifle and an assault rifle, then they clearly have no clue what the hell they’re
talking about. Make sure everyone is
aware of their ignorance before you proceed, and the discussion just might go
in your favor.
On a personal note,
both my mother and sister—both of whom are schoolteachers, and both of whom are
rather squeamish about guns and violence—are now considering buying
handguns. I recommended Walther P22s to
start, but would also recommend a compact 9mm, like the Kel-Tec P11. Anyhow, I only mention this as anecdotal
evidence that even those among the half of the population less inclined towards
logic are not convinced by the nonsensical and unrealistic argument that gun control
advocates have been offering of late, so maybe there is hope after all.
