2013 – Page 11 – Shall Not Be Questioned

A Lie Spreads Halfway Around the World …

… before the truth can even get its pants on. I have mixed feelings about the parody ad copy someone is circulating and is being taken as real Brady Campaign copy. I won’t help to spread it or promote it by showing it here, but I’ll probably surprise some people by saying under the right circumstances, something similar to this could be an extremely effective tactic. Maybe because it was obvious to me when I first saw it that it was parody,Â I actually don’t think such a tactic is necessarily damaging to the cause.

Nonetheless, even as parodies go pretty outrageous rather than something that tickles the funny bone. There’s enough grain of truth to it that makes people wonder if maybe it is real, and it plays on a lot of our beliefs about the other side. Comments made during the debate over gun control in Colorado only make it seem more likely it’s real. Think about the factors:

It’s outrageous, so it spreads.
Even for people who recognize it’s parody, it turns the issue around and makes people think about it from our point of view.
For people who don’t get its parody, it engages them with the issue. They may find it’s false, but then why did they believe it?
The media can debunk it, but by doing that they just draw attention to our own message.

I’m not saying this is great, and Â there ought to be more of this. Because we’re currently doing well in the debate, I think the straight and narrow is the best path forward; we just don’t need to use deception to win. I’m concerned, though, that we think about tactics in terms of their effectiveness, and not be too concerned about whether a tactic is fair to the other side. That we took the ethical high ground will be of little comfort when the knock comes at the door.

We’re faced with opponents who have no qualms at all about using deception to advance their cause. I think we need to be committed to winning above most other considerations. I agree with Miguel that we don’t need to be using tactics like this in the current environment, but I’ll take a dirty win over a clean loss.

Guns and Depression

Megan McArdle ventures on to the topic of guns with what I generally think is common sense:

If suicide is indeed a temporary impulse, then having an extremely deadly means of self-destruction close at hand is likely to increase the percentage of successful suicides — and indeed, thatâ€™s exactly what Tabarrok and Briggs find. So people who have had major depressive episodes in the past might be well advised to avoid gun ownership or put their guns in the care of a trusted friend. And folks who have recently gone through a horrible life event (job loss, bad breakup or the death of a loved one) would be well advised to get the guns out of the house until theyâ€™ve recovered from the blow.

Of course, I think this is a highly individual thing. A difficult life event would not itself be a reason for me to remove the guns. I have gone through what most people regard as the most difficult things in life. At age 20 I lost a parent after a horrible six year battle with cancer. I’ve been through the loss of a job and six months of unemployment. I’ve been through break-ups. I’ve found myself in what could be regarded as depression.

Nonetheless, I’ve never once contemplated killing myself, and have a hard time understanding why people would think that’s an answer. But I still have a standing order in with family that if I start going cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs, either the combination to the safe is to be changed, or the guns are to be removed. There are medical conditions that can happen outside of depression, albeit rarely, that could have an impact on mental and emotional stability. I am not a naturally impulsive or unstable person, but I’ve still had the discussion.

UPDATE: A great point in the comments “Butâ€¦â€¦ Leaving your guns with a trusted friend can land you in prison for the unlawful transfer of firearms!” Yep, if certain people have their way when it comes to “background checks” there won’t be anyone you can leave your guns with. You’re damned either way. That’s the point.

Excellent Article on Spree Killers

Summarized by the Weapons Man blog:

He reviews a lot of literature and finds that killers, like the mass shooters that bedevil us from time to time, are not â€œinsaneâ€ as thatâ€™s clinically defined: they donâ€™t generally hear voices, hallucinate, or act in illogical fashion (once you grasp their ends, which are illogical to the rest of us). Instead, they are personality-disordered, but quite logical and even methodical in their actions. This has several consequences (which we understand not just from Schulmanâ€™s excellent article, but also from previous study of personality disordered individuals) that include …

Read the whole thing, as they say. He notes that there’s no background check that could plausibly detect these kinds of people, and notes that multiple spree killers managed to pass background checks, some of them quite extensive. I agree with the Weapon Man the solution likely lies in not offering these killers the publicity and notoriety they seek. It’s why you’ll seldom see me mention the names of spree killers on this blog.

At Least it’s Honest

Several people have drawn my attention to this Texas A&M professor opining that it’s time to repeal the Second Amendment. These folks have never really engendered the same visceral outrage in me that others who advocate against the Second Amendment do. They at least acknowledge the proper mechanism for having this debate, and understand that the Constitution and Bill of Rights is a meaningful restraint. I get much more annoyed with people who want to treat the Constitution and Bill of Rights like a buffet line, taking from it the parts they find appealing, while leaving the parts they don’t.

Second Amendment Debate: Moving the Goal Posts

Recently, Eugene Volokh, Dave Kopel, Sanford Levinson, and Alan Dershowitz appeared in New York for a debate over whether the Second Amendment has outlived its usefulness. Not surprisingly, with an audience of New York elites, Professor Levinson and Alan Dershowitz, who argued against the Second Amendment having modern usefulness, “won” the debate. It seems I can embed the introduction, but to watch the full debate, click on the “Watch Full Program” at the bottom right.

I would encourage everyone to watch. I think if you really boil away everything about the debate, the folks that think the 2A an anachronism have an abiding faith in the democratic process. Like many of our founders, I am deeply skeptical of it. I’d much rather live under a benevolent constitutional monarch than live under the tyranny of the majority.

The idea that the Second Amendment is an anachronism, and that instead we can be happy with some vague but constitutionally guaranteed right of self-defense strikes me as moving the goal posts. They are saying if we just got rid of this nasty gun business, they’d be happy to concede we had an even less well-defined right to defend ourselves. I’m not buying.

To me, guns are the core of the debate. Maybe in 100 years, particle beam or electromagnetic weapons will be at the core of the debate. But for now that debate is over firearms, which is the current pinnacle in self-defense technology and has been for the past 500 years. You can’t have a debate about the legitimacy of self-defense if you’re arguing to take the most effective means of doing so off the debating table. I can see right through that as if it were a sheet of glass, and so can most everyone else who doesn’t live on the Upper East Side. I’m fine with the idea of including a right of self-defense in any proposed constitution, but given that having effective means of doing so is still very much a political issue, any such constitution damned well needs to have something that looks an awful lot like the Second Amendment. Then we’re right back to the gun debate, which is where we started in the first place.

Quote of the Day: Government Screw-Ups Edition

Tam shares my befuddlement that people are shocked, SHOCKED that the government could possibly screw up something as big as Obamacare.

The naive credulity these people have towards the power of government, their blind faith that they can tamper with the machinery without it hurting anybody, differs in kind nor quality not one lick from the most snake-handlin’ Pentecostal’s faith that Jesus will keep the serpent from biting.

They look down on people of faith, but they are just as much the same. Even worse, because they put their faith in men.

Latest Colorado Recall Gets Nasty

Colorado voters are mobilizing for the signature-gathering phase of another recall election, and Democratic interests groups are getting quite dirty and nasty with their tactics to keep from losing additional seats. The Democrats backing Evie Hudak are taking to scare tactics by “warning” voters that people asking for their signatures on recall petitions may be sex offenders or criminals coming to the homes. The organization listed on the warnings say that attacks and fake warnings are justified in order to keep the Democrats in power.

The door hanger warnings came back in October, but they have stepped it up this month with an official-sounding robocall telling voters that if they sign the petition, they are releasing their personal information to possible criminals. The media has picked up on these stories when worried voters called them asking to know why the police aren’t doing something about these supposed criminals going door-to-door.

According to a grassroots report out of Colorado, several signature gatherers for the recall were told by a supporter that he would be going home to get a gun to shoot them.

The Future of News

Boy, if you think the media is anti-gun now, it’s probably time to just turn it all off and cut off the subscriptions.

This article on the gun control debate in a New York City high school is recognized as one of the “best” pieces of student journalism in the entire region.

The most effort the team of three students made to get a remotely opposing opinion was to talk to a social studies teacher who acknowledged that there’s a legal right to own a handgun, only in the home for self-defense there. He makes it very clear that no other guns and purposes should be allowed, “just a pistol to defend the home.”

I get that these are just high school kids, but it is a little disturbing that they don’t even make an effort to try and present an alternative position or outline why someone might not agree with the vast majority of the proposals that other students and public school employees suggest. The fact that this lack of any real effort to present even an argument from the opposition is not only printed in a student paper, but actually awarded a prize for high school reporting is disturbing to me. It’s like the major mainstream media outlets are admitting that it’s not even worth it to pretend they aren’t just partisan hacks.

Jesse James Gun Going to Auction

Rumor has it that I’m related to Jesse James. As much as Sebastian & I have been able to learn about our families through genealogy, I can’t confirm or debunk this at this point. Regardless, it does mean that I spent quite a bit of time as a child checking out Jesse James-related sites when visiting Western Missouri during family gatherings.*

Anyway, the Colt .45 owned by my possible distant cousin is apparently going up for auction soon. This account claims that they expect it to go for more than $1.6 million.

While I mentioned this to Sebastian, he wondered if the gun used to shoot Jesse James was actually worth more money. A quick search indicates that while the price of that gun has been on the rise over the last 20 years, it’s not nearly as valuable. It was apparently predicted to go for about $150,000 when auctioned in 1993 and then again in 20033 for $350,000.

*I will not be surprised if I can eventually debunk this family myth. On the other hand, the James family that appears in my tree may have come from Missouri around the right time.

Running Against SAFE in NY …

… it’s winning some politicians re-election. This is somewhat heartening because Erie County contains Buffalo, which is a reasonably sized city. But upstate has always been relatively anti-gun control. It’s the fact that they are outvoted by downstate that keeps New York anti-gun. From both an economical and political point of view, it would actually make sense to partition New York State into two states, New York, and Upper New York. It’s more than just guns. The economic policies and taxes imposed by downstate have ruined the upstate economy. It’s depopulating faster than Western Pennsylvania, because of the lack of opportunity. It doesn’t hurt the downstate people as much because the financial industry throws off enough money to afford the tax burdens and regulations.