Guns: Three scenarios

This blog has never published a polemic in favor of any form of gun control. I've always presumed -- and still presume -- that the issue is a loser for Democrats. On the other hand, gun zealots (as opposed to gun owners) have always struck me as being more than a little creepy. And the concept of regulation is built into the Second Amendment itself. (Look it up.)

Despite my own mixed feelings on this issue, I would like to share with readers a piece written by a friend to this blog, someone who has very firm ideas. Well, he's not so much "a friend to this blog" as he is the husband of a friend of a friend to this blog. At any rate, he has produced a worthwhile piece of writing. Whatever your stance on gun regulation, you will surely agree with the sentiments expressed in the final paragraph.

The author's name is Mike; all the words below the asterisks are his.

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Open letter to the NRA and gun enthusiasts everywhere:

Hi folks,

Many of you think the world would be more peaceful and polite if everyone carried a sidearm and practiced vigilante justice, so here's a few scenarios for you.

1.) You're walking down the street and you see someone in the distance being held up at gunpoint. Being a good citizen with your own pistol at hand, you draw it and prepare to issue a challenge to the attacker. Unfortunately, someone you hadn't noticed has just come out of a nearby doorway, has not noticed the holdup down the street, and sees you draw your gun - clearly up to no good - and pulls his out (everyone is a good citizen and well armed, remember?) and blows you away. Criminal finishes the business at hand in the ensuing commotion and gets away.

2.) All of the above happens except that no one stops you in your heroic duty. You announce your intentions to the criminal and he engages you in a firefight. Since very few humans are crack shots with a pistol, no matter how much they practice, the first few bullets fly past both of you. Maybe you get him. Maybe he gets you. But oops, one or two people who weren't able to get out of the line of fire in time get mortally wounded or killed outright. Shit happens.

3.) Same scenario as #2 but you don't want this scumbag to get away so you move in as close as possible without saying anything (there are of course no law enforcement standards or practices for citizens doing their civic duty) and blow a large hole in the back of the guy's head. He's down and you feel great. The citizen you just assisted picks up the firearm he was forced to discard, shoots you through the chest and says, "Thanks, I was going to hold that guy up and take his wallet, but he drew on me first!" Oops, I guess not being clairvoyant will be a drawback in such a "society."

Yours is a gallant and sober society, right? Hell no! People drink, take drugs and argue and drive however they want, because they're FREE, dammit! And since they love their guns, they have them in every situation: when they're in a hurry and have to cut through a bunch of others to get where they're going on time (POW, POW); when they're drunk and get in someone's face (POW, POW); when they get dumped by their girlfriend, or fired, or cheated on (POW, POW, POW, POW, POW).

You can argue home and public protection all you want. My response is, "NO, FUCK YOU AND YOUR SUPPOSED RIGHTS. I DON'T TRUST YOU OR ANYONE ELSE WITH A GUN."

If you are worried about criminals, then do your part to prevent them from coming into being. Don't raise them. Don't ignore your kids or only teach them fear and paranoia. Volunteer for or donate to a youth group. Don't bully, denigrate, or piss people off because it makes you feel superior. Don't engage in the kind of behavior that causes other people to feel wronged.

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Forecast

We had a little rain today, but it looks like there's a warm front coming in.

You know, tomorrow will either bring total annihilation or it will give us still another reason to laugh at New Age ninnies. Whatever happens, it's a win-win!

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Joe Biden gives his guarantee

In August, 2012, Joe Biden visited a diner in Virginia and got into a conversation with patrons about Social Security:

"Hey, by the way, let's talk about Social Security," Biden said after a diner at The Coffee Break Cafe in Stuart, VA expressed his relief that the Obama campaign wasn't talking about changing the popular entitlement program.

"Number one, I guarantee you, flat guarantee you, there will be no changes in Social Security," Biden said, per a pool report. "I flat guarantee you."

Uhhhh....Joe?

Chained CPI?

Joe? Anything to say about that?

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Heckling Hagel

I never thought that I'd be defending Chuck Hagel, but the guy seems to have made the right enemies. Bill Kristol, for one. From Politico:

The William Kristol-founded conservative Emergency Committee for Israel says it’s launching cable ads starting Thursday slamming Chuck Hagel, the latest in a spate of criticism over the man who’s said to top President Barack Obama’s list for Secretary of Defense.

The spot, which hits Hagel for voting against sanctions on Iran, is an indication of the next phase of attacks on the former lawmaker, whose past stands on Israel have gotten the most attention.

The American Jewish Committee -- not usually considered a conservative group -- also opposes Hagel.

Meanwhile, as Shmuel Rosner, an Israeli-based columnist points out, “The disbelievers find it hard to comprehend that Obama would want to appoint such a controversial personality to the job, thereby almost ensuring clashes with Israel over Iran and the Palestinian issue. In fact, some of them still expect Obama not to make the appointment.The smirkers are, well, smirking. These are the Israelis who never bought the Obama-is-a-friend-of-Israel line, and they see in a possible Hagel appointment proof that they were right all along.” Indeed, the irony of a Hagel appointment would be that Obama would have even less influence and credibility with the Israelis, whose unilateral action against Iran he has forestalled.

Obama did that? I thought that this scenario was still in the "tea leaf reading" category, not the "verified fact" category.

At any rate, I think that what we're seeing here is a replay of the campaign against Rice. Having tasted blood recently, the right-wingers want more.

It is simply ludicrous for anyone to portray Chuck Hagel as a closet anti-Semite or a terror-enabler or a squishy peacenik dove. From The American Conservative:

It’s impossible to portray Hagel as a would-be McGovernite, and the fact that he and Obama are frequently in agreement exposes how absurd most hawkish complaints against Obama are.

Hagel has not been a maximally hawkish supporter of Israel, but the smear against Hagel on this point is particularly loathsome and of course has absolutely no merit. If Hagel criticized Israel’s 2006 Lebanon war, that’s because the overkill and folly that war represented deserved to be criticized. If he believes that attacking Iran would have disastrous consequences and war ought to be avoided, that makes him unusually sane for a member of the political class. The fact that such a despicable smear is already being thrown around (albeit by an anonymous aide who won’t attach his name to the slur) reeks of desperation. The “isolationist” charge is much more amusing because Hagel has often warned against the dangers of so-called “isolationism” (and occasionally insulationism), and has been happy to fling that charge at others as all internationalists do from time to time. Being a thoroughly conventional and generally hawkish internationalist in his own right, Hagel has indulged in chasing away the non-existent bogeyman of “isolationism” almost as often as the people now attacking him. Hawks fling these charges so often at so many people that they have lost almost all of their power, and at the same time they serve to discredit the positions of the people lobbing the accusations.

Yes, there is indeed an argument to be made against Hagel -- from the other direction. Calling the man insufficiently neo-connish is like calling a Three Musketeers bar "diet food" because it doesn't have as much fat and sugar as a gallon of ice cream.

The anti-Semitism canard stems from the fact that Hagel once dared to offer some forbidden words:

"The Jewish lobby intimidates a lot of people up here," but as he put it, "I'm a United States senator. I'm not an Israeli senator."

If that sentiment is considered controversial, then we need to reconfigure our national mind-set.

Politics in America is pretty simple: Find out Bill Kristol's position, then go the other way. Kristol's ginned-up crusade is the best reason I can think of to root for Hagel to get the job.

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No cuts to Social Security!

If the cause is important, should I get over my antipathy for Daily Kos -- on just this one occasion? Yes. And you have no idea how much it galls me to do so.

Please, I beg you -- go here and sign the petition. Yes, it is a Kos petition. But it sends the right message, so do it anyways.

As part of the fiscal showdown negotiations, President Obama has proposed cutting Social Security for almost all current and future beneficiaries.

Social Security should not be a part of the negotiations. It does not contribute even $1 to the deficit, and according to even the most pessimistic projections it is 100% solvent for more than 20 years.

Send an email to the White House telling President Obama to immediately stop proposing any cuts to Social Security.

Better still would be for you to send a message directly to the White House and to your congressional representative. But let's not pretend that you'll do that.

Obama and Boehner are really close on this chained CPI business. Only you can put a stop to it.

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Why do our young go violently mad?

A friend to this blog, Bill Dash, sent an email that asks an important question which arises out of the Sandy Hook Elementary massacre. The words below the asterisks are his (published here by permission); I'll have a comment or two afterwords.

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Yes, something quite strange seems to be going on. I’m referring to the way the phenomenon of an individual going “postal” and committing mass murder has turned into an all but routine component of American life. It started out as an almost exclusively adult aberration, but over the past 15 years or so adolescents and college kids have increasingly become regular contributors to this bizarre cavalcade of butchery and the corresponding national drama of breast-beating and finger pointing that flares-up before fading away until the next one.

The overwhelming majority of the time the weapons of choice are firearms, though not always. Which really isn’t terribly surprising considering guns are the most efficient and convenient means for killing that’s available to civilians in our period of history. Why knock-off Caesar with a flintknapped obsidian knife, when you can use a razor sharp Roman gladius?

But not that many years back these sorts of wild killing sprees where an embittered individual massacres a bunch of strangers were basically non-existent, yet modern firearms then were as just as ubiquitous as now, if not more so.

Civilian semi-automatic pistols and rifles have been widely available since the early 1920s. In fact, back in the twenties and early thirties, in many parts of the country, anyone, I mean anybody who had the cash could saunter into a good hardware store, not a gun shop mind you, but an ordinary well-stocked hardware store and buy a brand new Thompson automatic sub-machinegun with a 50 round drum magazine and all the .45acp ammo you wanted. Sears sold them mail-order. Yet, apart from their notorious use in gangland wars (the Chicago typewriter) and by professional bandits like the Dillinger gang, Clyde and Bonnie Barrow or George “machine-gun” Kelly, as far as I can determine no submachine gun or gun of any sort was ever employed simply as a murderously efficient scythe for reaping a harvest of homicidal rage, involving complete strangers. I don’t claim to have conducted exhaustive research on the subject. Perhaps a case or two may exist, but if so that just further demonstrates how exceptionally rare that sort of crime used to be.

Not only have semi-automatic handguns, rifles and shotguns been around for about one hundred years or so, as a matter of fact, soon after World War Two, the American market became flooded with inexpensive war-surplus rifles and handguns.

(One memorable example: The year was 1959, I remember going downtown one Friday afternoon after school let out early, to my favorite NYC Army-Navy store and seeing a group of scruffy, bearded tough guys in olive drab combat fatigues buying a large number of surplus M1-Garrand rifles. Turned out they were Cuban guerrillas. At the time, high-quality surplus rifles were so inexpensive that it paid for Cuban revolutionaries to fly up to NYC and buy over-the-counter weapons.)

That widespread situation of plenty of low-priced surplus guns lasted right up till the mid-sixties. Homicidal-maniacs and serial-killers certainly weren’t exactly a rarity at that time. Why no impersonal mass-murders then, I wonder?

But the fact is you do not need semi-automatic guns to go on a blood-drenched killing spree. Magazine-fed, cartridge loading, multiple-shot rifles and revolvers have been commonly available to the public since the mid-1870s. Though not quite as efficient as modern semi-autos, these weapons were and still are perfectly suitable for conducting a rage fueled mass murder. But the indiscriminant and impersonal slaughter of strangers or workplace co-workers only started becoming a regular occurrence in the latter part of the 20th century.

So what changed Joe? Do you have any hunches as to what may have happened to give rise to this new category of human time-bomb: the disgruntled and/or deranged mass-murdering gunman ? And why is it that such murderously dramatic behavior never evidenced itself in earlier periods of American history when guns suitable for mass murder already existed and were commonplace ?

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Cannon here, again. I'll add this. The Sandy Hook Elementary massacre was committed by a young man frequently -- though perhaps erroneously -- described as suffering from "Asperger's Syndrome." This tragedy follows hard upon a horrifying tableau in Wyoming, in which a young man named Christopher Krumm murdered his father in front of the father's students in a community college science class. Krumm blamed his father for passing on Aspergers.

Although this disorder has received a lot of gruesome publicity in recent days, it was unheard-of until the 1980s. Many experts doubt that Asperger's even exists; the DSM will drop its entry in its new edition.

I know a young boy -- the son of a friend -- commonly presumed (though not officially diagnosed) to have this disorder. He certainly displays many of the signs: The boy is highly intelligent, poorly socialized, lacking in empathy, and given to strange fixations and weirdly repetitive actions. His behavior is appalling. Worst of all, he seems to recognize no connection between the things he does/says and the punishment he receives. Neither a soft nor harsh approach to discipline works, because the outside world simply does not penetrate this boy's consciousness. Bright as he is, he cannot discern a linkage between cause and effect; when he shouts blood-curdling things at his mother, he seems genuinely surprised when sent to his room -- each and every time. My dog learns such things more easily.

When I was growing up, I didn't know any kids who acted in this fashion. Sure, many of my classmates were brats. Some were cruel, uncontrollable -- downright fiendish. But none were quite like this guy.

Is the Asperger's diagnosis simply trendy? A fiction? A psychiatric catch-all term? Or -- odd thought -- has human personality itself changed over the years?

I think that question links directly to the one Bill Dash has asked.

Added note: Adam Lanza, who was quite computer savvy, appears to have intentionally damaged his hard drive with a hammer. He would not have done so unless there were something on that drive he wished to keep people from knowing. That hard drive must have stored an electronic diary or the logs of online chats or something similar.

He knew that such evidence would be recoverable if erased.

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Deal or no deal

A fiscal cliff deal appears to be in the making. The Republicans seem willing to allow a fairly substantial rise in taxes on the affluent; in return, they want cuts in Social Security -- and the cuts look to be rather substantive. That is to say, the deal will accept something called chained CPI, an arcane term which means fewer cost-of living increases for seniors. As Brad DeLong puts it:

"Chained-CPI" is code for "let's really impoverish some women in their 90s!" It's a bad policy. It should be off the table.

Chained CPI also disproportionately hikes taxes on people in the $30-$40,000 range.

So far, this is reminding me of the Obama of the bad old days, when he was far too ready to wheel and deal on Social Security.

Paul Krugman says that the Medicare eligibility age will not be raised, but Ezra Klein seems to indicate that this option may still be on the table.

On stimulus, unemployment insurance will be extended, as will the refundable tax credits. Some amount of infrastructure spending is likely. Perversely, the payroll tax cut, one of the most stimulative policies in the fiscal cliff, will likely be allowed to lapse, which will deal a big blow to the economy.

I prefer spending on infrastructure. Creates jobs; increases the rate of growth; may ultimately pay for itself. The real problem right now is not deficit spending but uneployment. Full employment pushes wages up, which slowly but surely pushes people into higher tax brackets, which brings in scads of new revenue, which painlessly eases the deficit.

Are you curious about Defense cuts? Taylor Marsh sums up:

As for Pentagon cuts, they’re hidden under a unicorn in an addendum you’ll find after a wild goose chase.

Okay, so it’s not that opaque. Obama’s new deal calls for $100 billion in defense cuts, while his cave on Social Security is $30 billion more than that.

Obama is not negotiating from a position of strength.

The hell of it is, many GOP legislators (and rank-and-filers) will hate this deal too, since taxes on the rich are the only thing those guys really and truly care about. Boehner will have a harder time getting his team to go for a deal like this than Obama will -- even though the Dems are the ones getting screwed.

Given the situation, every Dem in the country should do whatever they can to force Obama into pursuing a more progressive course. The Republicans are going to shriek and howl anyways, so we might as well give 'em something to shriek and howl about.

A new story in The Hill indicates that the military is the place to cut the fat:

Several high-profile defense think tanks from across the political spectrum are on relatively the same page, in terms of what kind of financial hit the Pentagon should take in the coming decade, according to a recently released report.

The study, compiled by Washington-based National Security Network, found the average spending reduction to DOD coffers recommended by these think thanks came to just over $510 billion over the next ten years.

That number dwarfs the $100 to $300 billion top defense industry leaders proposed in early December as the most budget reductions the Pentagon could handle, while maintaining national security priorities worldwide.

If Democrats must make one painful sacrifice, let it be the payroll tax cut. As for Social Security: Raise the cap; problem solved.

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