Pixel Scroll 6/13/16 Carry On My Wayward Scroll

(1) NEXT STEP. Sigrid Ellis responds to the Orlando attack with a series of autobiographical notes in “The road to murder is paved with microaggressions”.

  1. I was horrified to hear the news out of Orlando. But I wasn’t surprised. I wish I found murders of LGBTQIA folk to be surprising. But I have been found guilty of being gay my entire life. I know how much, how casually, how thoughtlessly I am hated. Hated not because I am evil, but because I am merely the most horrible disgusting thing people can imagine.
  2. The shooter went to a place of refuge, of joy, of celebration. He went to a place where queers go when we are told we are too queer to be seen anywhere else. He went to the place where all the shoving and flaunting of queer would have been hidden away from him. He sought it out, this crusader vigilante, this one good man with a gun we hear so much about. He took his righteousness and hunted down the gay he hated and feared.
  3. So how do we go on. How do we live in a world that hates and fears us?

I cannot stop anyone from murdering anyone else. I don’t have that power. But I am … done. I am done with letting the jokes and remarks slide by. I cannot continue to passively agree that I am a punchline, a threat, a bogeyman, a cautionary tale. I just, … I am done.

I can’t stop the Orlando murders, or any other murders of queers.

But I am done being complicit.

(2) HELPING. Stephanie Burgis researched a list of links about ways to help Orlando victims, and community LGBTQ organizations.

This is not the post I wanted to write today. Today, I was planning to announce a fun new project up for pre-order. I was going to talk about other stuff, the normal, small incidents of life. But I’m still reeling. So I’ll post about all those things another day. Today, I just want to pass on the things I’ve seen that might help a bit:…

(3) DIAMOND TIME. Alastair Reynolds’ story “Diamond Dogs” will be on stage in Chicago this season.

An adaptation by Althos Low (the pen name for Steve Pickering and creatives from Shanghai Low Theatricals) of Alastair Reynolds sci-fi story “Diamond Dogs” will complete The House Theatre’s 2016-17 season.

The production, set in the future, follows characters caught in an alien tower and will be third in the company’s season, running Jan. 13-March 5. Artistic director Nathan Allen will direct.

(4) TIME TRAVELERS PAST. The Economist discusses“Time-travel from H.G. Wells to ‘Version Control’”.

MUCH of what is good in science fiction is not about the future. Rather, the genre uses the future as a canvas on which to imprint its real concerns—the present. Counterintuitively, perhaps, time travel stories are often those tales that are most anchored in the present. As Sean Redmond argues in “Liquid Metal: the Science Fiction Film Reader”, time travel “provides the necessary distancing effect that science fiction needs to be able to metaphorically address the most pressing issues and themes that concern people in the present”.

One of the earliest time-travel novels, H.G. Wells’s “The Time Machine”, can, for example, be read as reflecting contemporary anxieties about the effects of the industrial revolution on Britain’s rigid class system. The elfin “upper class” Eloi are seemingly content, but are in fact easy prey for the ape-like “working class” Morlocks. The fear that a strong but supposedly inferior working class, empowered by industrialisation, could come for them would have resonated with many of Wells’s Victorian readers.

Robert Heinlein’s time and dimension-hopping novels featuring Lazarus Long, who lives for over 2,000 years, are rooted in the author’s rejection of the social norms of his times. With their enthusiasm for nudism and free love, the novels, which must have seemed provocative in the 1950s and 60s, can now feel dated.

(5) REYNOLDS WOULD STAY. Alastair Reynolds tells “Why I’m for the UK remaining in the EU” at Approaching Pavonis Mons by balloon.

Many of the arguments for and against membership of the EU seem to revolve around economics, which seems to me to be an extremely narrow metric. Even if we are better off out of the EU, which we probably won’t be, so what? This is already a wealthy country, and leaving the EU won’t mend the widening inequality between the very rich and almost everyone else. More than that, though, look at what would be lost. Friendship, commonality, freedom of movement, a sense that national boundaries are (and should be) evaporating.

(6) THE CENTER WILL NOT HOLD. SF Gate reveals the crime of the millennium — “The great city of San Francisco no longer has a center”.

A brass surveyor’s disk, recently installed on an Upper Market-area sidewalk to mark the precise geographic center of San Francisco, has been stolen.

On Wednesday, city surveyors and Public Works Director Mohammed Nuru visited the spot in the 700 block of Corbett Avenue to call attention to the disk and to the work of the surveyors who had established the spot as the precise center of town.

It wasn’t technically the center of town — that spot is under a bush on a nearby hillside — but it was close, and it was publicly accessible.

At the time, surveyor Michael McGee predicted that the small brass disk — attached to the concrete with heavy-duty glue — would suffer the fate of similar markers and be stolen by vandals.

“I’d give it about six weeks,” McGee said.

He was off by five weeks and six days.

On Thursday, an orange arrow and shakily written “Geographic Center of City” were still on the sidewalk. A circular patch marked the spot where the disk had been, briefly.

(7) YOU SHOULD WEAR A HELMET. “Could a satellite fall on your head?” BBC follows German scientists’ efforts to find out.

“There are a lot of satellites in orbit and they will come down sooner or later,” he says. “They’ll probably break up and the question for us is: what is the chance of an impact?”

In other words, could sections of dead satellites survive re-entry to hit something or, worse, someone?

The wind tunnel being deployed for Willems’ experiment resembles a giant deconstructed vacuum cleaner attached to a pressure cooker, arranged across a concrete floor. The gleaming machine is covered in a mass of pipes and wires. Capable of producing air currents of up to 11 times the speed of sound, the wind tunnel is used for testing the aerodynamics of supersonic and hypersonic aircraft designs.

(8) GENRE DINERS. Lawrence Schoen presents — Eating Authors: Naomi Novik, the June 13 edition of his Q&A series.

I’m preparing this week’s post from New Mexico, where I am ensconced at a writers’ retreat and working hard to up my craft (while also enjoying great company, fabulous meals, and some truly awesome leisurely walks through nature). But such things cannot stop the juggernaut that is the EATING AUTHORS blog! Which is about as much of a segue as you’re going to get this week by way of an introduction for my latest guest, Naomi Novik, who should already be known to you for her Temeraire series which blends fantasy and alternate history (or, as it’s more commonly described, the Napoleonic Wars with dragons!).

(9) SEND ONE BOOK. Throwing Chanclas pleads the case for a Nevada high school library looking for book donations. Cat Rambo says SFWAns are pitching in.

I live in a town of 1200 people in the Northern Sierra Nevada –where it meets the Cascade Range near Mt. Lassen National Park and about two hours drive northwest of Reno, NV.  Two hundred of that population is students. Over the years as the population dwindled after mines closed, then mills–nothing except tourism and retirement have emerged as ‘industries.’ Many businesses have closed down and with it many things we take for granted—like libraries….

What we’re lacking is pretty much everything else.

We need racially diverse books. We need graphic novels. We need women’s studies. We need science. We need series. We need film. We need comics. We need music. We need biographies of important people. Looking for Young Adult. Classics. We want zines! Contemporary. Poetry. Everything that would make a difference in a young person’s life. Writers send us YOUR BOOK. We have many non-readers who we’d love to turn on to reading. We need a way to take this tiny area and bring it into the 21st century. We have a whole bunch of kids who don’t like to read because all they’ve ever been given is things that are either dull , dated, or dumbed down.

The students who are excelling are doing so because they have supportive parents at home and access to books and tablets elsewhere. But most students are without.

So here’s what I’m asking. Will you donate a book? A real book. Something literary or fun—something that speaks to your truth, their truths. Something that teaches them something about the world. Makes them feel less alone?

I’m not asking for money. I’m asking for you to send a new book or film or cd to us to help us build a library we can be proud of. Just one book.

So who is with us?

Send us one book.

Greenville High School/Indian Valley Academy
Library Project Attn: Margaret Garcia
117 Grand Street
Greenville, CA 95947

Thank you for your support.

If sending during the month of July (when school is closed) please send to

Library Project/Margaret Garcia
PO Box 585
Greenville, CA 95947

(10) SFWA. Today was the second SFWA Chat Hour. Streamed live and saved to video, you can listen to Operations Director Kate Baker, member Erin Hartshorn, Volunteer Coordinator Derek Künsken, President Cat Rambo, and Chief Financial Officer Bud Sparhawk talk about the organization’s new member experience, game writer criteria, the state of SFWA finances, volunteer opportunities, Worldcon plans, the 2017 Nebulas, awards for anthologies, what they’re reading, and more.

(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOY

  • Born June 13, 1943 — Malcolm McDowell

(12) TSF&HF. Leonard Pierce experiments with placing the emphasis on each different word in this six-word phrase, and ends up with a column called “Third Booth on the Left”.

“So, what do you guys sell?”

“Traditional science fiction and high fantasy.”

“Your average author isn’t 83 years old and nearly dead, then?”

Traditional science fiction and high fantasy.”

“Oh.  Okay.  But, I mean, you don’t just do space operas based on the technical education of someone who was an undergraduate when Eisenower was in the White House, right?”…

(13) TEH FUNNY. John King Tarpinian recommends today’s Reality Check cartoon by Dave Whamond.

(14) CHINA SF AWARD. “The Chinese Government is Setting Up Its Own Major Science Fiction Award” reports the Lifeboat Foundation.

This is pretty interesting: during the latest national congress of the China Association for Science and Technology, chairman Han Qide announced that the country would be setting up a program to promote science fiction and fantasy, including the creation of a new major award.

Throughout much of its genre’s history, China’s science fiction has had a legacy of usefulness, often promoted to educate readers in concepts relating to science and technology. This new award will be accompanied by an “international sci-fi festival” and other initiatives to promote the creation of new stories.

(15) HE BITES. A deliberately harmful robot named “First Law” has been built to hype discussion about the risks of AI.

A robot that can decide whether or not to inflict pain has been built by roboticist and artist Alexander Reben from the University of Berkeley, California.

The basic machine is capable of pricking a finger but is programmed not to do so every time it can.

Mr Reben has nicknamed it “The First Law” after a set of rules devised by sci-fi author Isaac Asimov.

He said he hoped it would further debate about Artificial Intelligence.

“The real concern about AI is that it gets out of control,” he said.

“[The tech giants] are saying it’s way out there, but let’s think about it now before it’s too late. I am proving that [harmful robots] can exist now. We absolutely have to confront it.”

(16) VERY LATE NEWS. Appropriate to the previous item, Bill Gates was named 2015 Lifeboat Foundation Guardian Award Winner – in January.

Story

January 3, 2016 — The Lifeboat Foundation Guardian Award is annually bestowed upon a respected scientist or public figure who has warned of a future fraught with dangers and encouraged measures to prevent them.   The 2015 Lifeboat Foundation Guardian Award has been given to Bill Gates in recognition of his fight against infectious diseases, his warnings about artificial intelligence, and his funding of improvements in education since a smarter civilization is one that is more likely to survive and flourish.

About Lifeboat Foundation

The Lifeboat Foundation is a nonprofit nongovernmental organization dedicated to encouraging scientific advancements while helping humanity survive existential risks and possible misuse of increasingly powerful technologies, including genetic engineering, nanotechnology, and robotics/AI, as we move towards the Singularity.

(17) PLAY BALL. “Chewbacca Mom and some special ‘Star Wars’ friends threw the first pitch at the Rays game”, as major league baseball blogger Chris Landers told Cut4 readers.

Over 150 million Facebook views later, “Chewbacca Mom” was born. She sang with James Corden. She was offered a full scholarship to Southeastern University in Florida. She started charging $20 for an autograph. And finally, on Saturday, the cherry on top: Payne threw out the first pitch before the Rays’ 4-3 loss to the Astros.

But, befitting a woman who was brought happiness to so many, it wasn’t just any first pitch. It was a “Star Wars” first pitch — featuring the cantina song, another Wookiee, and of course, Taylor Motter at catcher wearing a Chewy mask.

[Thanks to Cat Rambo, Jim Henley, Martin Morse Wooster, Chip Hitchcock, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day JJ.]

194 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 6/13/16 Carry On My Wayward Scroll

  1. Here in the Metro Phoenix area, if you want to put a swimming pool in your backyard, you’re nowadays required to put a child-proof fence around it.

    “Child-proof” doesn’t always mean child-proof. Sometimes a fence latch is forgotten, or a “self-latching” latch doesn’t quite fully engage. Or a small child manages to find a way to unlatch it themselves, or a way to climb over the fence. And sometimes a child will drown in a bathtub, or a half-filled bucket, without a swimming pool anywhere nearby.

    So we still have child drownings here every year. The fence law doesn’t stop them all. But it reduces the number of child drownings per x-number of pools.

  2. Darren Garrison on June 15, 2016 at 11:58 am said:

    Because while it may work well for some cultures that put high value on conformity, those regulations will be seen as noting more than something to work around in a culture that idolizes the idea of “rugged individualism.”

    And yet if we confine ourselves to looking at countries with the closest cultural ties to the US in terms of language, law, history, modern alliances, cultural dialogue etc etc we don’t find any of them have anything like US gun laws. The UK notably has some of the strictest (possibly THE strictest) gun laws in the world. Australia has much looser gun laws than the UK but still much tighter than the US. Canada likewise has stricter gun laws than the US.

    Now while none of those nations are exactly the same as the US is is very odd to believe that US culture is so extremely different that in this one respect everything functions utterly differently. In reality in terms of gun ownership and in terms of homicide the US is a statistical outlier when compared with industrialized, “western” democracies. It isn’t in anyway like any nation that you might normally compare the US with. To try and find nations with technically stricter gun control laws and equivalent or higher murder rates you need to look to poorer nations with less effective systems of law enforcement (i.e. nations where the mismatch between what laws are written down and practically what laws are effectively enforced is large).

    Now is some of that because of things OTHER than gun laws? It could be. The US is arguably an outlier in other regards. It is arguably more religious than similar countries but I struggle to see how that makes the US more murderous even if I channel the spirit of Christopher Hitchens. All nations have their own issues with poverty and racism but arguably those issues in the US function differently, so that may play a role. Related to that a substantial amount of gun violence and disproportionate levels of homicide are in troubled urban areas – and while again, all Western nations have issues with entrenched urban poverty and social deprivation, the extent to which some cities in the US have been left to decline is arguably significantly worse than in similar nations.

  3. Mike Glyer:

    So Hampus’ argument against venerating centuries old laws — which he is arguing to support gun control, and in opposition to someone citing the 2nd amendment — is superficially appealing but inherently self-contradicting, in that there are laws of ancient origin he wouldn’t challenge.

    Fundamentalism implies a veneration of specific texts (that are seen as “fundamental”). Venerating an old law because it’s old, or because it was written by mr. Infallible Hero, is a completely different beast than agreeing to an old law because you think that particular law still have merit in today’s society. There is no inherent contradiction in criticizing the first sentiment while holding the second.

  4. Johan P.: Fundamentalism implies a veneration of specific texts (that are seen as “fundamental”). Venerating an old law because it’s old, or because it was written by mr. Infallible Hero, is a completely different beast than agreeing to an old law because you think that particular law still have merit in today’s society. There is no inherent contradiction in criticizing the first sentiment while holding the second.

    That’s what stirred my objection — as used here, “fundamentalism” is a subjective kind of namecalling to advance an argument, the user imputing all these fallacies to someone else who thinks he is respecting a component of a successful system of government and laws of long standing. But everyone living at peace within their own society is doing as much for a whole host of other laws, apart from the one under debate.

  5. @Johan P.

    I don’t disagree about cosmetics and macho culture. The Assault Weapons Ban of 1994 focused on a list of cosmetic items though that really made no difference. I’m not going to bother pulling up photos but I could show you a pre-ban and post-ban assault weapon and you’d be hard pressed to tell the difference. Which sets aside the question of semi-automatic hunting and target rifles that don’t look military at all but are effectively the same thing.

    @Dawn Incognito

    Statistics there are difficult. Since I looked up the current ones for Mexico last night and roughly remember them I’ll use them – they have much tighter gun laws than the US and only about 3/4 the gun death rate (which includes homicides, suicides, and accidental shootings) but also 3 times the homicide rate. It’s not a 1:1 marry up between gun laws and homicide rates.

    That’s where I think cultural factors and structural factors like poverty and mental health systems come into play. Which I think needs to be a primary focus if we’re serious about lowering US homicide rates. I’m not opposed to tweaking the gun laws (though the outright ban of assault weapons Hampus wants: I am opposed to). Some changes seem common sense. I believe a focus on gun laws though is a distraction from core issues and unlikely to receive much, if any, traction in the current political environment. Then again: improving social safety nets is controversial and likely un-passable in current US politics too (though maybe marginally less so than tweaking gun laws).

  6. @Stoic Cynic Statistics there are difficult.

    Well they aren’t that difficult though. Sure; across every nation in the world violent deaths involve many factors – political instability, gross social inequalities, ineffective/corrupt law enforcement and legal systems, sudden social change, war or regional conflict, organised crime, terrorism. But as there are lots of countries in the world you can control for a lot of that and compare like with like.

    Is the US in every other way really more like Mexico than say the UK, Canada and Australia? Would, if it came to most other issues, Mexico be the first country you’d think of as a benchmark for a comparison with the US?

  7. @JJ You seem to think that the legal availability of guns will reduce gun violence. This ignores:

    – Much (most?) gun violence is done by people whom restrictions on purchasing won’t affect. People don’t go and legally buy a gun and then immediately shoot someone. They either steal/straw purchase/buy a hot gun, or they use a gun that they’ve had access to for a long time. So shut off the marketplace, and gun violence will continue.

    – The marketplace routes around restrictions on types of guns (assault weapons, high-capacity magazines, etc.). If I want a gun, and I can’t buy an Assault Weapon, I’ll buy a similar rifle that is functionally equivalent (see Federal AWB, or the more recent California AWB and “bullet buttons”), or a hunting rifle. If I can’t buy a pistol with a 13 round magazine, I’ll buy one with two 8 round magazines (NY SAFE Act). If I can’t buy a semiautomatic pistol, I’ll buy a revolver. Or a shotgun.

    – Restrictions on private sales/transfers are unenforceable. The black market will not shut down. If this were not so, straw man purchases could not happen.

    – Availability and gun violence don’t correlate. Domestic gun manufacturing has about doubled between 1993 and 2013, but gun violence dropped by something like 40% during the same time.

    The problem is not that guns are available to buy. The problem is that some people want to kill other people, and when they want to, they aren’t going to let a pesky thing like a law stop them.

    Methinks you are defending the right to hold that gun in your hot little hand just a little too hard.
    I have tried, and am trying, to address opposing arguments with logic and facts. If my data is wrong, or my reasoning is flawed, show me and I’ll take the hit. But being insulting is not a way to win hearts and minds.

    @Tasha
    Limiting sales of new semi-automatics, . . . no sales of ammunition to civilians Can’t happen. There’s that inconvenient Second Amendment. buyback programs Spectacularly non-effective, so long as they are voluntary. And compulsory can’t happen (see, again, 2nd Amend.) working on changing social attitudes This is something that could possibly work, over time and around the margins at least. I’m all for education about firearms (many public schools used to have marksmanship programs, both stand-alone and as part of Junior ROTC).

    I’ve said it before here: buying and maintaining ownership of guns should be as difficult as getting a drivers license and buying a car and we should have similar databases for registration as we do for cars. Making guns and autos legally similar is a great idea! After we do that:
    16 year olds can buy guns.
    Guns can be owned and operated on private property with no restrictions whatever.
    Silencers, like mufflers, will be mandatory, and there will be no excise tax (currently $200, see the NFA).
    Gun dealers will no longer need to be licensed by the Federal Govt.
    Of course, there will be some downsides as well:
    In New York, you can’t have a high-capacity fuel tank. Ten gallons, tops. And once the state police work out a system, you’ll need to pass a background check to buy fuel.
    You can’t sell your old car to your cousin who lives out-of-state without going through a dealer who has a Federal Automobile License.
    If you want to buy a new (or used) car, you have to get a background check, which may take as long as 3 days.
    If you live in Pennsylvania, and want to drive to NY, you have to get a NY license first. But they won’t give you one unless you are politically well connected, and even then it will take months. And if you forget and drive into NJ accidentally, and a policeman sees you, your car is confiscated, you get a felony conviction, and you can never own another automobile for the rest of your life.

    The guns/cars analogy isn’t very useful. New (and old) laws and restrictions on guns (and cars) should be judged on their own merits, not because of existing laws on other non-related products.

    But while we are comparing cars and guns, I’d note (using 2013 statistics) that each caused about 33,000 deaths. But it took ~350 million guns to kill that many people, and only 259 million cars. The average car is 35% more likely to kill someone than the average gun.

    @Hampus
    And look at Australia. They imposed strict gun laws. And it worked very well. Very well indeed.
    It didn’t work so well for law-abiding citizens who wanted to own a gun. The Australian law was a confiscation law. They had to turn them in, otherwise other men with guns would come and take them.

    If imposed here, it would not work. John Howard, the Australian PM who oversaw the program, said “Our challenges were different from America’s. Australia is an even more intensely urban society, with close to 60 percent of our people living in large cities. Our gun lobby isn’t as powerful or well-financed as the National Rifle Association in the United States. Australia, correctly in my view, does not have a Bill of Rights, so our legislatures have more say than America’s over many issues of individual rights, and our courts have less control. Also, we have no constitutional right to bear arms. (After all, the British granted us nationhood peacefully; the United States had to fight for it.)”

    Americans would not comply (they didn’t turn in their magazines or register their guns in NY and Connecticut after their recent laws), and the 2nd Amend wouldn’t allow it anyhow.

    Cherry-picking. Lets see what science says instead:

    I’m cherry-picking? The same NPR story you linked to mentioned JAMA and CDC studies that did not show effectiveness of background checks.

    Right now, most US gun purchases are subject to background checks. There are two classes that aren’t: 1) legal private transfers, and I’m not aware of any data that shows that such sales are a significant source of guns used in crime; and 2) Illegal purchases and transfers (theft, black market, straw purchases), which are already illegal, and wouldn’t be affected by a new law to prevent them.

    And here is another study on what laws that really have impact on homicide rates:
    That study has been widely discredited. Reduce gun deaths from 10.1 per 100,000 to 0.16 per hundred thousand? Ridiculous.

    @ Tasha [comments on problems with the terrorist watch list] Absolutely. Recall that Ted Kennedy was on the no-fly list for a while. And, in addition, you shouldn’t deprive anyone of a Constitutional Right without some sort of due process and adversarial hearing.

    @Hampus
    – Forbid selling of assault weapons that have no civilian use.
    – Extensive background checks in every state.
    – Have to renew license every five years.
    – Regulate where weapons are allowed.
    – Regulate how weapons are stored at home.
    – Regulate when and how a weapon might be transported.

    Every one of these is already in place in some of the states. AWs are not sold in California. Universal background checks exist in 8 states and Washington DC. All states have “sensitive places” where guns are not allowed. Massachusetts requires that all guns be stored with a lock in place.

    Studies are not showing that they are generally effective in reducing gun crime.

    I also have a problem with the deference people show old dead people.
    As a general rule, such skepticism may be warranted. But these particular “old dead people” sure did get a bunch of stuff right. The constitutional democracy they set up is older than any other. It has provided for more freedom and liberty than any other system ever developed. If you are arguing that you know more about how this country should be run than Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, James Madison, Thomas Paine, etc. etc., my initial working assumption is that you are wrong.

    @Cassy B
    Also, as I understand it, belonging to a militia was a requirement for free men in many (not all) states.
    It wasn’t so much that being in the militia was a requirement, as that the militia was (by definition) composed of the local populace of able-bodied free white men. And it still exists today. I’m not in the Guard, but as a free citizen, I am a part of the militia, and as such I bear responsibility for maintaining/protecting the country. If Red Dawn ever occurs (not likely, I realize), I owe it to myself, my family, my community to take up arms against the invading foe. “A well regulated militia” (that is, a militia that works well, not one that is subject to governmental regulations) is “necessary for the security of a free state” (that is, if the local populace isn’t responsible at a personal level for the security, the state cannot survive). So that the militia can execute its responsibilities, “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.”

    @Hampus
    The swedish constitution is changed now and then (mostly in small ways) to update to new demands and expectations from the society.
    As has the United States Constitution. But the first 10 amendments are so fundamentally tied to national character that it is unlikely we will see them changed.
    Does “The right of the people” mean The People, in which it may be delegated to a part, or the people as in ordinary people? Everywhere else in the Bill of Rights, and of the Constitution, it has the ordinary meaning of people. There is no reason to think it means anything different here.
    Regulation does not have to mean to confiscate every existing weapon. There are a lot of regulations that can be passed. And there are many that are already in place. Despite recent mass shootings, though, overall gun violence is on a downward trend, and the mood of the country is not to make new laws. In fact, gun laws are significantly looser over the last decade (Heller has codified rights that weren’t generally recognized, concealed carry is more widely available, etc.) As a Swede, you may think that is wrong. That is your privilege (in America, that would be a right). We (Americans, in general), disagree. Over time, that may change.

    @ Johan P
    I think it’s funny how people insist that gun laws will both take guns away from people, and be totally inefficient in taking guns away from people.
    What I’m insisting, at least, is that gun laws take guns away from law-abiding people (the ones who are not a threat), and are inefficient in taking them away from criminals (those who are a threat).
    an amazing lack of faith in your own lawmakers and law enforcement agencies. You just described the mindset that was responsible for most of the U.S. Constitution. It may be a uniquely American mindset. But yes, I don’t trust my law makers, or police. Acton had it right. (and look at our choices for president. Do you trust Clinton or Trump?)

    @Hampus
    I see that you totally, to 100%, ignored every example of regulation I gave.
    Except for that whole Australian confiscation thing. So he only ignored 6 out of 7.

    @Mike Glyer
    I’m interested in having gun control, because that will make it harder for people with their own notions about the exceptions to walk into public places and act on them. Of course, the opposite holds as well. “God Created Men. Sam Colt Made Them Equal.”

    @Camestros
    The US is arguably an outlier in other regards. Most significantly, it was founded by men who believed that power lay in the hands of the citizens, who only delegated some of it to the government, but retained rights (and the means to enforce those rights, such as guns). That attitude lasts 240 years later.

    @Hampus
    Mexico would be a much safer country if US regulated its firearms sales. We do. Right now, as we speak, it is against the law to buy a gun in the United States and transfer it to Mexico. But we could make it more illegal than it already is, I suppose.

  8. Mike Glyer on June 15, 2016 at 2:04 pm said:
    That’s what stirred my objection — as used here, “fundamentalism” is a subjective kind of namecalling to advance an argument, the user imputing all these fallacies to someone else who thinks he is respecting a component of a successful system of government and laws of long standing. But everyone living at peace within their own society is doing as much for a whole host of other laws, apart from the one under debate.

    I took it as meaning asserting something as unopen to critical examination. In terms of the 2nd ammendment it is treated differently by the US right than the rest of the Bill of Rights. Even free speech is treated with more nuance and scope for compromise.

  9. @Camestros Felapton

    Yes and no. Culturally of course we share a closer heritage with any of the UK derived cultures you mentioned. I think in poverty, social safety net, mental health programs, and frontier / macho mindset we’re probably closer to Mexico than any of the more likely candidates though. Canada has gun laws less tight than Mexico but social programs and such closer to Europe. Gun violence and homicide rates are much lower than the US or Mexico.

  10. That’s what stirred my objection — as used here, “fundamentalism” is a subjective kind of namecalling to advance an argument,

    I can’t speak for Hampus and how he meant the word, but in my opinion “fundamentalist” is a not-unreasonable description for the way the 2nd amendment tends to be referenced in gun debates. The debate focus a lot on “what did the Founding Fathers mean”, and very little on “what makes sense in today’s society”. I’m not sure if there really are Americans whose entire approach to politics is to interpret the meaning of the Founding Fathers, but it’s clear that a lot of Americans thinks “the Founding Fathers said so, so therefore” is an argument with considerable weight.

    Norway also have a 200 year old constitution. To have a political debate focused on nitpicking on exact phrases in the constitution, discussing what the “men at Eidsvold” (the people who wrote it) meant by that phrase, is unheard of. We have a completely different approach to our constitution.

  11. @Camestros Felapton

    Actually to be fair I forgot about Australia. I’m not familiar enough with their social programs to draw a parallel though frontier mindset would be a lot closer.

  12. @Bill: “The problem is not that guns are available to buy. The problem is that some people want to kill other people, and when they want to, they aren’t going to let a pesky thing like a law stop them.”

    That’s an awfully big middle you’re excluding.

    Any time you make something more difficult, you decrease the number of people who achieve it. As has already been discussed, taking away certain very easy ways to commit suicide demonstrably results in a lower suicide rate… because there are people who will only go to a certain amount of trouble to kill themselves.

    The same goes for murder. Yes, you’re always going to have a few determined killers out there – but by limiting access to weapons of mass murder, we can stop mass murders of the “I feel horrible, I’m going to go kill a roomful of people” type that is presently our most significant source of mass shootings.

    Focusing on the determined few and ignoring the many who can be deterred is (ahem) a fatal flaw in your reasoning.

    If my data is wrong, or my reasoning is flawed, show me and I’ll take the hit.

    Done.

    Right now, most US gun purchases are subject to background checks. There are two classes that aren’t: 1) legal private transfers, and I’m not aware of any data that shows that such sales are a significant source of guns used in crime; and 2) Illegal purchases and transfers (theft, black market, straw purchases), which are already illegal, and wouldn’t be affected by a new law to prevent them.

    Note that as soon as a “legal private transfer” firearm gets used in a crime, the story suddenly becomes “it was stolen.” Neat trick, that…

    Every one of these is already in place in some of the states. […] Studies are not showing that they are generally effective in reducing gun crime.

    “I have butter, Martha has eggs, George has sugar, Steve has flour, and Jolene has an oven. Somehow, though, none of us has been effective in producing a cake!”

    What I’m insisting, at least, is that gun laws take guns away from law-abiding people (the ones who are not a threat), and are inefficient in taking them away from criminals (those who are a threat).

    I love how you think “criminal” is a static condition, like you’re born that way. News flash: Up until the moment someone commits a crime, he’s by definition a law-abiding person and not a criminal.

  13. Bill, I’m cherry-picking? The same NPR story you linked to mentioned JAMA and CDC studies that did not show effectiveness of background checks.

    I bring this article to your attention. Do you support a resumption of Congressional funding for the CDC to actually study this, or are you content with the current situation where they don’t actually have funds or support to do basic research?

  14. There are probably stats about this available somewhere, but I don’t know where to look.
    in the 1960s we had gas ovens run on coal gas, which was toxic (see Sylvia Plath). These days everything’s just methane with a smell added to help people spot leaks. Non-toxic, not an effective means of committing suicide.

    https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/means-matter/means-matter/saves-lives/
    https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/struck-living/201012/can-obstacle-prevent-suicide

    @Stoic Cynic

    It is about countries with high poverty, large income inequality gaps, weak social safety nets, and poorly supported mental health systems.

    To change the violence rates, I think that is the change we need to focus on. Gun laws are largely a sideshow distraction.

    As a person who actually works in the mental health care system (and has had it pounded into her head to always ask about ownership of guns) it’s no sideshow to me. I think one part of the many-pronged solution to the guns issue (and yes, it will always be only a partial solution, but any partial solution is better than none) is to strengthen the ability of mental health professionals to bar purchase of guns by patients with a history of suicidality or violence – and this should include the gun show loophole.
    This task would be made a lot simpler without the NRA trying to thwart it at every turn:
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/03/us/03guns.html

  15. With regard to Mexico’s homicide rates in comparison to their gun laws, I would point out that the drug cartels likely account for a significant proportion of Mexico’s homicide rates. The drug cartels have too much money at stake to be overly concerned with any laws regarding weapons possession. Last year, as an example, 43 trainee teachers were kidnapped in the state of Guerrero and executed by a drug cartel, it’s believed they also had help from the police as well.

  16. I think it was Darren who referred to gun control efforts as “security theater.” Apologies if it was someone else. The irony is that gun culture – the notion of owning and possibly carrying guns for “self-defense” – is the real security theater.

    The classic case is people who want a gun in the house in case of a home-invasion. First, home-invasion is an extremely low-probability event. Second, if you treat your weapon according to best safety practices – the sort that the NRA and most gun-owners considered de rigueur when I was a tyke – you’re not going to be able to get to your gun when the gang kicks in your door. It is stored out of reach of the kids unloaded with a safety lock. Everything you do to make your gun more easily available during that freak home-invasion event makes it more likely something tragic happens. Your toddler gets it and accidentally shoots your friend. Your teenager wigs out and shoots you in anger. You have a dark night of the soul after layoffs and shoot yourself.

    Similarly, for most people, concealed or open carry. The US is a high-crime OECD country, but even here many people go their entire lives without being the target of a violent criminal. I’ve never been mugged, for instance. If you are attacked, your gun is only useful if you can get to it before they do, and they don’t have one of their own with which they are faster and better.

    As far as active-shooter situations, the fact is professionals train for those. You take your pistol to the gun range now and then. You are completely untested. The chance that you and your gun will help rather than harm is much, much less than certain. The chance that you will help more than brave unarmed people – who have stopped many shooting incidents – is also much less than certain. As has been pointed out, Pulse nightclub had an armed, trained security guy on duty who did confront the shooter. It didn’t help.

    The most pathetic recent example of gun culture as security theater dates from the holidays, when Marco Rubio announced that he had bought a gun because, if ISIS attacked his family, he had to be their last line of defense. This pretty much gives the entire game away. Because – hello! – Marco Rubio wasn’t home much. He ain’t gonna be protecting any of the other Rubios. It would’ve been marginally less ridiculous if he said, “I’ve bought a gun for Mrs. Rubio.” But he didn’t, because it was all security theater: a public ritual of right-wing PC, posing as a masculine figure doing masculine protective things, even though his action did nothing material to protect anyone.

    In Rubio’s case, he was putting on a show for the voters. In most cases, people are putting on a show for themselves.

    Now, if you regularly carry the day’s receipts to the night depository in a dicey neighborhood, and you get yourself a pistol and train with it, cool. At some point maybe you’ll find out what you can’t know until the moment arrives: if you are actually willing to shoot someone over a bag of money. If Zoe Quinn has gotten herself a carry permit and spends time at the range, good for her. These are people in known, higher-than-normal danger. But for most of us, the balance of risks and benefits just isn’t there because the danger is low, and the likelihood that the gun provides more help than harm lower yet.

  17. If you are attacked, your gun is only useful if you can get to it before they do, and they don’t have one of their own with which they are faster and better.

    I read a news story about a guy in the Bay Area who was robbed at gunpoint. They took his gun, too.

  18. Guns are cool. They can exhibit marvelous workmanship. If you appreciate that, great. If you hunt, you can easily need five or six different guns: a small-game rifle, a deer rifle, a big-game rifle, three different gauges of shotgun for woodcocks, pheasants and geese. A pistol for plinking or, if you live in Kentucky, to shoot the rattlesnake that crawled into the shed overnight.

    US gun culture is terrible. Previously I spoke about the (im)practicalities of gun ownership for “self-defense.” But those impracticalities become moral failings when we tease them out. The starting point is the formulation that:

    “It takes a good guy with a gun to stop a bad guy with a gun.”

    The irony that US gun culture overlaps strongly with white evangelical Christianity isn’t mere irony, but it’s huge irony. These people don’t just cherish the Bible. One of their favorite quotes from it is, “There is no man righteous, no, not one.” And suddenly they are not just espying good guys, they are seeing a good guy in the mirror.

    This notion that “good guy” is some unchangeable quality that inheres in me, as opposed to something someone else may say about me upon the accumulation of a lengthy record of doing the decent thing somewhat more frequently than the crummy thing, is vanity. And vanity plus firepower equals danger. In the real world, you’re as “good” as whatever you’ve actually done to this point, and you are fallible and prone to error and emotion. Adam Lanza was a good guy until he wasn’t. His mom was a good gal with a gun until they got taken away from her. (Her guns did not protect her from her murderer.) Michael Dunn was a good guy with a gun until he shot four black kids in a parking lot because they wouldn’t turn their music down. Several thousand people a year, mostly men, are good guys with a gun until they turn those guns on themselves in despair. Several thousand more are good guys with a gun until they get really angry at their spouse, or get really drunk before an argument with the neighbors. Some number are good guys with a gun until the active-shooter situation they’ve dreamed of stopping happens in front of them and they freeze or start popping off wildly. Some number think they’re good guys with a gun and even think they’ve defended themselves by brandishing their weapon in a dangerous situation, but neutral observers think they are short-tempered bullies.

    The Dunning-Kruger Effect is a danger for all of us, but in US gun culture it’s almost a given. People who are convinced that they are not just above reproach but certainly competent to wield deadly force without continual training are all but defining themselves as untrustworthy. And the larger cultural impulse – to divide the populace into irreducibly “good” people and “bad” people – does terrible social damage.

  19. Wayne LaPierre said the “It takes a good guy with a gun to stop a bad guy with a gun”. He’s not really in the habit of considering what he says. First, the “good guy with a gun” is, overwhelmingly, most often a cop.

    Second, it’s not always a good guy with a gun who stops the bad guy. In Tucson, Loughner was stopped by several people without guns, one of whom hit him with a folding chair when he ran out of ammunition and stopped to reload,

    http://abcnews.go.com/US/heroes-rep-gabrielle-giffords-shooting-tucson-arizona-subdued/story?id=12580345

    Shooting from the lip, as LaPierre does regularly, is a really stupid habit.

  20. Wayne LaPierre originated the “good guy with a gun” formulation so far as I know, but it’s become a commonplace in gun fandom since then.

  21. Blindspots, unconscious biases, confirmation bias, the ability or lack there of to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes all impact our ability to have an actual back and forth discussion versus just talking at each other.

    @Bill you’ve misinterpreted or misrepresented everything I’ve said multiple times in this thread. The 2nd Amendment has always allowed limits on who could own what guns and where they and ammunition could be stored from day one. You can play as many word games as you want but it doesn’t change the facts.

  22. @Tasha Turner

    Blindspots, unconscious biases, confirmation bias, the ability or lack there of to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes all impact our ability to have an actual back and forth discussion versus just talking at each other.

    It’s an emotionally charged issue where folks generally have strongly developed reasons for their particular opinion. I think it’s to everyone’s credit it hasn’t devolved into an uglier conversation. Whether it’s really serving any purpose towards an ultimate consensus or just venting of everyone’s ideas and assertions to little purpose? I’ll lay money on the latter. Any thoughts to on how to make a productive conversation out of it? Or is it just time to snip the thread off and go back to books and puns and bbq?

  23. I remember when we were never going to be able to banish smoking from any and all shared spaces. Never, ever. We were on shaky ground asking people not to smoke inside our own homes, if guests wanted to smoke.

    And then things changed, and it’s now rare that I have a tobaco-triggered asthma attack.

    Part of that change was passing laws that we allegedly could never pass.

  24. Re: the comparison of smoking to guns:

    One, the tobacco lobby didn’t have the lobbying skills of the NRA. They couldn’t even prevent the labeling of their own product with warnings-warnings which became increasing graphic. They weren’t strong enough to fight back. The NRA has the benefit of being able to look at what happened to tobacco and adjust its approach accordingly.

    Two, most smokers know the product they are using is killing THEM. Gun enthusiasts are convinced guns protect them. Cigarettes were being called “coffin nails” more than a century ago.

    Three, gun ownership has been seen as a right in the US for more than 200 years. For a good part of that time, they were a necessity in a lot of areas. Interestingly, back then, they were more sensible and probably understood the necessary limits better than gun advocates now seem to.

    Guns have been ingrained in the culture of the US longer and more deeply than cigarettes ever were. They will be infinitely harder to remove than cigarettes were. As I said up-thread, sadly, I’m afraid that incidents like Orlando and Newtown could happen daily for a year and you’d still have trouble getting something meaningful passed-because the NRA has very deep pockets and will do anything it has to in order to maintain the status quo.

    I dearly want to be wrong, but I doubt I am. By all means, continue fighting, but please understand who and what you’re up against.

  25. What changed for cigarettes according to a book I was reading (Blindspot?) was the proof 2nd hand smoke was harmful – making your kids, spouse, parents, grandparents sick changed the conversation.

    For guns we’d need those studies by the CDC on gun violence which would show frequency of kids, spouse, others dying accidentally/suicide/committing homicides – 2nd hand gun problems by good people.

    Yes starting with laws and good marketing we can change attitudes. Right now that’s how the NRA is winning yet they are against a number of really foolish ways many gun owners behave because they aren’t following basic gun safety and the way they handle guns in public, for good reason, freaks many people out. Things like not paying attention to where your gun is pointed at all times is unsafe especially if loaded and bad manners if around people.

    Polling numbers on individual gun controls show majority of voters are in favor of certain controls. We need to write, call, email our local, state, federal representatives and senators to make our voices heard. Get on mailing lists so we are heard not just the NRA supporters when bills come up. Be the change you want to see.

  26. One, the tobacco lobby didn’t have the lobbying skills of the NRA.

    They tried, though. They knew tobacco use was dangerous for years before they were forced to put warning labels on packages. They still try to market them as if they weren’t hazardous.

  27. Bill:

    “Much (most?) gun violence is done by people whom restrictions on purchasing won’t affect.”

    What we still can see is that backgroundchecking saves lives. And no, you haven’t in any way shown that this is wrong. Rightwing lobbying blogs as Reason are not scientific studies and should not be treated as such.

    “The marketplace routes around restrictions on types of guns (assault weapons, high-capacity magazines, etc.). If I want a gun, and I can’t buy an Assault Weapon, I’ll buy a similar rifle that is functionally equivalent (see Federal AWB, or the more recent California AWB and “bullet buttons”), or a hunting rifle. If I can’t buy a pistol with a 13 round magazine, I’ll buy one with two 8 round magazines (NY SAFE Act). If I can’t buy a semiautomatic pistol, I’ll buy a revolver. Or a shotgun.”

    And why should those be legal? Both semi-automatics and fully automatics have no civilian use. There is no civilian reason for why high-capacity magazines should be available. A revolver or a shotgun would be much less lethal in a situation like the last shooting in that the massmurderer would have to stop regulary in his shooting.

    “– Availability and gun violence don’t correlate. Domestic gun manufacturing has about doubled between 1993 and 2013, but gun violence dropped by something like 40% during the same time.”

    This is pure fantasy. There are no doubts whatsoever that there is a correlation. That crime also goes down all over the western world for other reasons is another thing.

    “The problem is not that guns are available to buy. The problem is that some people want to kill other people, and when they want to, they aren’t going to let a pesky thing like a law stop them.”

    And yet the firearms related deaths fell with 47% when Australia imposed stricter regulation.

    “It didn’t work so well for law-abiding citizens who wanted to own a gun. The Australian law was a confiscation law. They had to turn them in, otherwise other men with guns would come and take them.”

    It worked very well for them, because they hadn’t got a reason to have those guns in the first place. If they had a reason, they could have kept the gun. But you are right in quoting John Howard in that the largest problem in US is the powerful gun lobby.

    “Every one of these is already in place in some of the states.”

    So we agree that it should be all states.

    “Studies are not showing that they are generally effective in reducing gun crime.”

    Citation needed.

    ” If you are arguing that you know more about how this country should be run than Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, James Madison, Thomas Paine, etc. etc., my initial working assumption is that you are wrong.”

    Might as well have said Napoleon or Julius Ceasar. Or Emperor Norton. What do you think Ben Frankling would have to say about internet neutrality? Something about a Series of Tubes perhaps? Their knowledge of what laws are needed in society today would be nil. Zip. Nada.

    “Everywhere else in the Bill of Rights, and of the Constitution, it has the ordinary meaning of people. There is no reason to think it means anything different here.”

    It means The People as a Whole even in the first sentences. That is not every person as an individual, but the people as a common group.

  28. From Harvard:

    “Our review of the academic literature found that a broad array of evidence indicates that gun availability is a risk factor for homicide, both in the United States and across high-income countries. Case-control studies, ecological time-series and cross-sectional studies indicate that in homes, cities, states and regions in the US, where there are more guns, both men and women are at higher risk for homicide, particularly firearm homicide.
    […]
    We analyzed the relationship between homicide and gun availability using data from 26 developed countries from the early 1990s. We found that across developed countries, where guns are more available, there are more homicides. These results often hold even when the United States is excluded.
    […]
    Using a validated proxy for firearm ownership, we analyzed the relationship between firearm availability and homicide across 50 states over a ten year period (1988-1997).

    After controlling for poverty and urbanization, for every age group, people in states with many guns have elevated rates of homicide, particularly firearm homicide.
    […]
    Using survey data on rates of household gun ownership, we examined the association between gun availability and homicide across states, 2001-2003. We found that states with higher levels of household gun ownership had higher rates of firearm homicide and overall homicide. This relationship held for both genders and all age groups, after accounting for rates of aggravated assault, robbery, unemployment, urbanization, alcohol consumption, and resource deprivation (e.g., poverty). There was no association between gun prevalence and non-firearm homicide.”

    So everything comes down to reducing gun availability. That must be the goal.

  29. Basically just popping back in to apologise to Darren; my comment wasn’t intended to be aimed at him.

  30. @Darren Garrison

    If you want to know why your hand-wringing about how the 2nd Amendment is set in stone and gosh darn, there’s just nothing we can do about it is getting so much flak, it’s because at best, your unaware of legal precedent around the Bill of Rights, and at worst, this is offering a terrible argument with the mask of good faith. There’s no shame in the first, that sort of legal literacy is sadly lacking in this country. (And you can make a solid case the powers that be like it that way.

    So let’s look at the Bill of Rights. Your First Amendment rights involve your freedom of speech, assembly, and the free exercise of any creed you please, combined with a bar to the establishment of any creed by the Federal government. Except of course, you’ll need to get a parade permit for a lot of those, your exercise of your religion runs up against laws of general applicability (in most cases, got my eye on you Alito), defamation can still be a cause of action at law, and assault charges can still flow from threats of violence.

    The Fourth Amendment demands a warrant for the state search you. Except if it’s exigent circumstances, hot pursuit, the police had a good faith reason to believe their invalid warrant was valid (seriously) if your car has been stopped for a very wide definition of “they could reach it from the driver’s seat”, your email is more than six months old, or a very wide range of other exceptions to the actual text of the Fourth Courts have found over the years.

    The Fifth Amendment’s prohibitions on you incriminating yourself is a bright line law. Except of course, your testimony can be compelled through a grant of immunity – and it’s a grant of immunity that says the police just can’t use your testimony against you. They can do more investigation, as long as they pinky-swear to the judge that they didn’t use your compelled testimony as a roadmap. They really swear they’d do no such thing. Additionally, your right to remain silent must be invoked before the police even tell you there’s suspicion against you. According the Salinas case in 2013, the police can comment on your failure to testify if you don’t invoke the right early enough.

    I can go down the list, the whole way. I can even say that not all of the amendments apply in state court – only those that the Supreme Court has said apply to the states through the mechanism of the Fourteenth Amendment’s incorporation of them apply. And you know when the Supreme Court said you have a right to a firearm? 2008. In the Heller case. So Darren, please don’t give me this wide-eyed, gosh, it’s so awful but the Constitution means we can do nothing. The Courts interpret the other amendments every damn day. It’s only the Second that is held out as some Mosaic tablet that may never be questioned, some Molloch that can only be propiated by the occasional hecatomb of first graders and club go-ers.

    If you don’t want to change the status quo, you need to give us reasons why it’s a good thing – you can’t hide behind some ersatz Constitutionalism that is legally laughable.

    @Cat (and Henley)

    First, a link [https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/firearms-research/gun-threats-and-self-defense-gun-use-2/] Excellent data that your suspicions are very much true, Cat. And actual data, not just smoke blowing.

    More generally, the studies that have been done show that most of threats of defensive gun use are at best imaginary. The person felt safer in a situation with the gun, or let it be known that they had a gun, and to their minds, that’s the heroic defensive gun use that they imagined happened.

    It’s defensive use to the guy that says they prevented serious awfulness from happening by showing their gun. Everyone else in the bar might think its just a drunk asshole threatening someone. At best. Often enough, the fact that you “defended” yourself from your wife’s criticism or that uppity child by pulling the gun out is domestic violence, not self-defensive gun use.

    But yes, most of the these “defensive” gun uses are imaginary. And there is some data for that.

  31. Empathy fails, I do not understand normal people wanting to possess tools for terminating life. Fewer such tools must make a more life-supporting society, no?
    Credit to all in this difficult discussion.

  32. Empathy fails, I do not understand normal people wanting to possess tools for terminating life.

    That’s the problem you face with societal issues–both sides can have valid points, meaning that there can be no absolute “right” answer. It is easy with matters of measurable fact– you say the sky is orange, I can say that you are dead wrong. You say that the world is flat, I can say that you are dead wrong. You say that the universe is 6,020 years old, I can say that you are dead wrong. But things that aren’t objective facts are personal opinions, philosophical choices, and social constructs. That is why there will never be consensus on the hot-button topics that anger everyone, such as abortion rights, marriage equality, and gun control. I can disagree with people on those topics (sometimes strongly) but I can’t say that they are objectively wrong if they have the opposite opinion. Both sides may have points that are perfectly rational, from their point of view, even if you don’t share their point of view. Almost nobody is evil for the sake of evil–most people think that they are the good guys.

    Part of empathy is trying to understand now only why the people you agree with believe what they believe but also the people who disagree with you. Can’t understand why someone would want to own an “assault rifle?” Do a little research, and think about it harder.

  33. A school shooter was stopped two years ago by the heroic action of a student armed with… pepper spray.

    You know what? I’m all for Universal Pepper Spray. Let every man and woman in America have pepper spray. Give out key-ring pepper spray with driver’s licenses.

    A good guy with pepper spray can stop a bad guy with a gun. And he or she won’t accidentally kill an innocent bystander, or be shot by a cop who mistakes them for a bad guy with a gun. The worst that’s likely to happen is that when they make a mistake (and people make mistakes) they’ll be up on an assault charge… not a murder charge.

  34. I do not understand normal people wanting to possess tools for terminating life.

    Mostly I’ve decided to stay out of this discussion at this point. Lots of heat and likely no one is changing their mind where they stand. I think that quote though is a key insight.

    I grew up around guns. Probably shot my first (under adult supervision obviously) around kindergarten. Was on the rifle team in high school. Handled them in the military. Lived in rural places where response could be measured in significant fractions of an hour or worse and wild predatory animals were a reality too. Never once brandished a gun or killed anything with one.

    To me, and I think most gun owners, firearms are a tool. Like any tool they can be misused or fall into the wrong hands. I personally support stronger regulations to prevent that but still they’re just a tool.

    On the other side of fence a significant number of folks see firearms as murder tools.

    I’m not sure how you bridge that gap. It goes straight to definitions. Finding a position viable to accomplish anything though probably needs to find a way.

  35. @Stoic: “To me, and I think most gun owners, firearms are a tool. Like any tool they can be misused or fall into the wrong hands. I personally support stronger regulations to prevent that but still they’re just a tool.”

    And the purpose of that tool is to make living things into dead things. That is not a moral judgment. A hammer exists to make hitting things more effective, wrenches exist to tighten and loosen bolts, saws exist to cut things, and guns exist to kill things. They’re all tools, but calling something a tool without saying what it’s a tool for is dishonest on some level.

    A gun is not “misused” as a tool when it is employed to kill something. That’s its job. A wrench is misused as a tool when used as a bludgeon to cave someone’s head in. That’s not its job, although it serves the purpose rather well.

    tl;dr: Refusing to say that guns are made to kill does not change the fact that they are. Shoot all the tin cans and paper targets you want to, but that’s practice for using the gun more accurately… to kill something.

  36. Darren, legally, in the American sense, what you are saying about the Second Amendment is the equivalent of saying that the world is 6,000 old. Now you are blowing smoke about equivalent points of view. Step into a courtroom about any constitutional issue, and see how far you get talking about the mutability of cultural constructs.

    You’re perfectly welcome to do this, but there’s a reason some of us are grouping your blowing of smoke in with that of conservatives who tend to blow the same sort of smoke about cultural constructs when the age of the world comes up. It’s a pleasant fiction that ignores two centuries of American legal history, and focuses on there decades of poor faith by the conservative right telling pleasing lies.

    The rest of us have become aware of this, by our separate courses, and are marveling at how one of this blog’s prominent proponents at laughing at other people whenever they talk about cultural context suddenly discovering one that he’ll defend to the death.

  37. Darren Garrison:

    Of course there are people who would like an assault rifle. The question is if they really have need of an assault rifle. And the answer to that is that they don’t.

  38. Darren Garrison on June 15, 2016 at 12:45 pm said:

    Which link? The Pink Pistols one? I’d never heard of them, but apparently they are fairly significant with 45 chapters. (Of course, the wiki doesn’t say how many people per chapter–could be a total membership of 150 for all I know.)

    Just following myself up on this–an MSNBC reference to the group has popped up on the front page for Google news, saying that their membership was around 1,500 pre-Orlando–and around 4,500 now.

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