Hmm..one more reason?

Much of the noise being created over gun control seems to come from the sources responsible for most American discord: angry white males. These people are not too good at connecting the dots, and in the case before the house now, neither was I.

I wrote a few days ago about the amazing price tag that assault weapons carry, but I missed the other part of the equation. They are generally very cheap to manufacture. Low production cost was one of the chief objectives behind one of the grandparents of assault rifles: the Russian AK-47.

By creating a market for weapons that are deficient for recreational purposes, deadly, and cheap to make, firearms makers can gradually get rid of gunsmiths, the artisans who created items like my old Lefever shotgun. Skilled artisans are an expensive resource, more costly than the assembly line operators who churn out assault weapons.

No wonder, then, that the manufacturers are pulling the strings of all their pro-gun puppets with exceptional vigour. It's never about rights, or safety: it's always about profit. I would rather have manufacturers who nourish and cherish the creation of beautiful things than those who are simply stamping out (literally) products that have no purpose other than to spit out killing projectiles. If the aesthetics are gone from the manufacture of firearms, then we're rather close to the "the hell with it" moment.

Just sayin'.

Contemplative calculations

Oddly enough, this is prompted by a barside conversation about why in hell the cost of good whiskey has increased so far ahead of the rate of inflation. We might get onto that someday, but all that plus the gun control "conversation" ( still more of a screaming match, it seems) made me wonder what we are talking about in the way of economics. How much do assault rifles cost, anyway?

First, if you know little or nothing about firearms, you need to grasp Fact 1: for a civilian without homicidal intent, and assault rifle falls somewhere south of useless. You can't use one as a deer rifle in most states, and if you did, you'd end up with pulled venison. Their defenders like to say they are good for target shooting and shooting vermin. So are many other, more traditional rifles that lack the crippling liability of assault rifles (coming to that), as well as their deadliness.

Being curious, I did some firearms shopping, trying to see if I could match the rural arsenal I had when I came south and gave up hunting. As I recall, I had:

• a .30 cal bolt-action deer rifle. (Deer were safe around me; I was not a good shot off the range.)
• a 20 gauge double-barrel Lefever shotgun, a beautiful masterpiece of the gunsmith's art. I'm going to leave this out of the estimate because it's hard to find them now at any price. The one I had would now be about 100 years old, and a collector's item, not a working firearm.
• a .25 cal "varmint" rifle
• a .22 target rifle
• a .22 target pistol

In short, it was a typical collection for the time and place, apart from the Lefever.  I could replace all of the other firearms at today's prices for the average cost of just one assault rifle, and probably have change for ammunition.

Here we see the delusional logic of extremists at work. Most of the people ranting about the government taking their guns away probably can't afford assault rifles. Left to their own devices, most would avoid wasting money on something so worthless. It's no more accurate on the range (probably less) than less extreme firearms. It doesn't kill rats any better than a .22, and every round costs five times as much.

If assault rifles had not been made the icon of the anti-gun movement, how many average people would give two to three weeks' pay to own one? We've been down this road before. In the early 1960s, the workhorses of WWII, the M-1 Garand rifle and the M-1 carbine, came onto the surplus market. Our fathers were intimately familiar with both.  They respected them, but did not love them.*  The Garand was never popular with anyone but militaria collectors. The carbine enjoyed a brief  vogue as a varmint rifle, but the genre that included today's assault rifles soon came along and pushed them  into obscurity. Now, anyone who adds a passion for politics to a passion for firearms does not ask whether an assault rifle is of any use to them, they know only that they must spend as much as $2000 on one, to assert their Second Amendment rights. This would be comical if it weren't so damn deadly, and perhaps we'll be making progress when enough people see the hilarity of their actions.

Sic transit gloria saniae.


*Consider that 50 years ago, a much higher percentage of the population were veterans. That experience cures many people of a desire to play soldier, and I wonder if the fascination with assault weapons reflects unfulfilled military ambitions. In that case I have a suggestion: enlist.

Truthy dialect humour

As a troublesome child, I spent an above-average amount of time in my grade school principal's office. I remember a sign hanging on her wall, which was at first incomprehensible to me. It was a measure of my advancing education that I was eventually able to understand that the German Gothic type formed words, and that the words formed a saying in dialect German:

Ve grow too soon old und too late schmart

I recalled this yesterday, when the effort to bring a measure of reasonable gun control to this country included appeals to the moderate majority of NRA members to support such measures. Good luck with that. 

Gun control has been the mother of all wedge issues for forty years. As a person of progressive leanings, a one-time owner of firearms and (horrors!) a one-time NRA member, I've received a good deal of the vitriol thrown from the left as well as that thrown from the right. To the lefties who have indulged themselves in this fashion, I hope that you've enjoyed this. Now, more than ever, it's clear that gun control will only happen when people like me sign on to make it happen, after elements on the left have done everything possible to ensure that moderate support can't happen. It's one more reason why the left in the rest of the world constantly rolls its eyes at the painful imbecility of the left in the U.S.

Jon Meacham, author of Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power, appeared on WGBH's Greater Boston yesterday. In the context of the eternal tension between the principles of Jefferson's Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, Margery Eagan turned the discussion to gun control.   Meacham discussed the appeal to the centre,  and how this is another case where the Declaration's timeless principles are again in conflict with the sometimes-obscure legalisms of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Moderate gun owners, he said, must choose now or at some point to separate themselves from the pro-gun extremists, in order to achieve the sort of democratic pragmatism that Meacham argues was Jefferson's genius.

It can happen, Meacham says. It has happened. He observes that 50 years ago, the NRA was a constructive force teaching firearms safety and promoting shooting sports. Lobbying was a small tail to the dog.  I can attest to this, because that was when I became involved in the NRA. In the aftermath of the assassinations of the 1960s, when more stringent gun controls were bruited, the NRA's legal stance hardened and lobbying grew to be the tail that not only wagged the dog, but made the dog disappear altogether. In the aftermath of Waco and  Ruby Ridge, its actions and stance became toxic.  After the Oklahoma City bombing, their rhetoric grew intolerably shrill and paranoid.  Meacham cited Bush 41 as one  of thousands of NRA members who resigned in protest in those years. I can attest to that also:  I was one of them. 

It would have made a great deal of sense for leftist gun control supporters to reach out to these disaffected former NRA members, but of course they did not: As I said, painful imbecility. Now, any action this critical centre takes will probably be their own. The ship of cooperation with the left may have sailed.

As I understood it at the time, the NRA was rocked by the resignations of the 1990s, but obviously not enough to change course. I suggest that the extremists by then in control persuaded themselves that it amounted to a purge of the weak-willed.

Having worked that patch for a dozen years once, I know enough about membership organisations to know that membership numbers are their Achilles' heel. Dues may not be the largest part of their income structure, but membership is the magnet that attracts corporate support. A useful centre-based strategy would be to induce NRA membership resignations in the tens, even hundreds of thousands. If I were in development for one of the smaller, related organisations, I would begin a move to the centre and a drive to recruit people disaffected by NRA extremism. If there is such a thing as Jeffersonian pragmatism, this would be it: another organisation acting simply in its own interest, and able to persuade NRA corporate supporters that it, not the NRA, represents the majority of gun owners. Competition could reduce the NRA back to what Meacham called "four people...with big megaphones."

Would it happen? On the one hand, as that sign said, Ve grow too soon old und too late schmart. On the other hand, the NRA today issued a disingenuous statement that of course it had never opposed background checks, because it is a supporter of firearms safety. Funny how that self- knowledge only occurred after recent polls showed that over 60 percent of NRA members support background checks. Even wild-eyed extremist groups apparently have cold-eyed Development departments.

An emerging and fluid position

(Disclosure: the Beast is back, in somewhat moderate form, but my Special K snack is messing with my concentration. Bear with me.)

My starting principle is that, 49 years ago, nobody thought the Surgeon General, with lukewarm support from the White House and Congress, could wage war on the tobacco companies and win. With that example in mind, I refuse to believe in letting the corporations who pull the NRA's strings will always win.

The fear factor being what it is, I believe that those of a progressive mindset need to make the first moves. A little honesty will remind us that not all the extremists are on the far right. One step, then, is kindly to ask the most extreme people left of centre to STFU until a rational dialogue can begin. The objective here will be a compromise that they detest as much as their right-wing counterparts do. All good compromises are like that.

For example, I do think a licencing/registration plan is necessary. I suggest it has to be accessible and offer benefits as well as penalties to every social level. The proposals I've heard so far appear to be deliberately burdensome and unhelpful. If proposals like this smack of confiscatory policies to someone who favours gun control, how much more so will they to the other side? Back off.

@ Mass Marrier: I haven't heard or read any arguments drawing analogies with auto registration, nor have I advanced them. On the face of it, I should think there is something to learn there,  unless the purpose of registration is punishing the innocent. Why, pray, is there not? Incidentally, if we're going to get anywhere creating a centre interested in solving the problem, we have to take a pass on pejorative adjectives. If the analogy is false, it is not lame, it simply appears to lack evidence. (To live up to my own standard, I just took a very nice pejorative adjective out of the next paragraph.)

I think the journalistic gambit of publishing names of law-abiding firearms owners is as useful as it would be to publish the names of all smokers in the same jurisdiction. Both sides seem to agree that theft of firearms owned by the innocent is a significant source of firearms used in crime. There is a moment in this sort of reporting when it crosses the line between advocacy for a position and accessory before the fact. It's been crossed when a newspaper provides a road map for gun theives.

Job One in gun control is to defuse the fears of a significant portion of gun owners that any form of control will end with Them "taking our guns away." Advocates of gun control must take any personal fillips that they conflate with the job and bury them far, far away. Only by doing that, one by one if necessary, can one hope to cut the legs out from under the fear-mongering. That is why it is not useful to have any extreme left positions colouring the debate.

Job Two is to get the most dangerous firearms out of the hands of the most dangerous people. Defining those people may be an exceptionally difficult task.

Gen. Mc Chrystal has said that he sees no reason for civilians to have and use firearms as dangerous as assault weapons. There are 80-year-old laws prohibiting certain types of weapons dangerous then. The precedent exists; let supporters of gun ownership either recognise that the present statutes need to be modernised, or present a cogent argument (at low decibel levels) why civilians need these weapons.

One suspects the reason, in some circles, isn't rational. It's the argument that arms the self-appointed militias in many rural areas. They are naive enough to think their M-16s would protect them against tanks and rocket-armed drones in the event that they pull off their fantasy revolution. I suggest that the availability of assault weapons just feeds the angry white guy delusions.

The question of mental illness and gun control strikes close to home for me. First, let's be very careful about plastering labels on people. I would rather my neighbour with a rifle be bipolar under successful treatment than a rabid racist outside the mental health system preparing for some kind of Commie takeover, but perfectly normal in the eyes of the world. As things now stand, the reward of the recovered or stable mentally ill person will be a scarlet letter to wear lifelong, which will include never laying hands on a firearm of any kind. The  racist, depending on where he lives, can keep on amassing an arsenal that would equip a rifle battalion and keep it in the field for a year. Punitive gun control's answer is delusional: let no one have firearms. Yeah, how did that work for the country when we tried it with alcohol? Even reasonable approaches right now are clouded by the examples of Aurora and Newtown. It's so much easier to keep victimising mentally ill people, isn't it? Controls that would recognise innocent intent, and filter every sort of malicious intent, are far harder to accomplish. They are also essential, or the whole idea is a waste of time.

Personal experience and recent examples teaches me that psychiatry has a very poor record determining who among its patients may be a danger to themselves or others. When psychiatrists do succeed in this, either the clinicians are too timid in presenting their conclusions to authority, or the authorities are too stupid to listen. It isn't that psychiatrists are necessarily cowards: they are hamstrung by increasingly absurd rules from their own profession that limit the sharing of information. Those rules in turn are driven by the stubborn refusal of the rest of the world to understand that these are illnesses; that they can be treated, controlled and sometimes cured. The profession knows that the mentally ill label stays with the patient forever, but what price confidentiality?

Another favourite position of both extremes has to go, and that is attitudes toward knowledge or ignorance of firearms. To the extreme Second Amendment advocates, those who oppose them must also know nothing about firearms. In many cases this is true, and I'll be there in a moment. They have no really good argument to present against current and former gun owners, who also support the Second Amendment, but who think that enough is enough and want reasonable controls.

Well, then, how are such people going to be welcomed by extreme anti-gun advocates? Not well, if my past experience is any guide. There is no other place in the rubric of progressive thought in which ignorance of a topic (firearms) is not only welcome but raised to the level of a virtue. The corollary is that knowledge of this topic is a vice in itself, and indicative of evil, even homicidal intent. That is intellectual weakness, and a luxury that has to go. Any successful effort at gun control needs to welcome everyone prepared to support it, and especially welcome those who understand the mechanics of what one seeks.

During my absence, forced by a war of Linux, v. Blogger,  I note that a number of  other people have come to these conclusions. This is one of those times when a growing a vocal centre may be the moving force for change. Let's not screw that up.

Channeling Treebeard

It was Treebeard the Ent who said "I am not altogether on anybody's side, because no one is altogether on my side."

That's me on prevention of mass shootings in general, and gun control in particular. Several years ago, I used to comment on both of these questions here. In my innocence I thought that the perspective of someone who had grown up with firearms and still knows how to use some of them might matter. This was also the viewpoint of one who spent seventh grade being savagely bullied, and did not commit mass murder despite as much justification and means as anyone ever had; I thought that might count for something.

It doesn't matter to anyone, because a question once resolvable has become almost beyond resolution. There are two sides, period. Someone like me who tries to introduce an alternative perspective, or facts that don't fit the preconceptions, can expect to be demonised. If one introduces an alternative view and know how firearms work, they must watch out for the torches and pitchforks.

For example, when I reached adolescence in the early 1960s, numerous adult gun owners were far more progressive in their views than most knee-jerk anti-gun people today. They had grown up seeing the worst possible consequences of firearm confiscation in the form of the Spanish Civil War and never forgot it. Mention it and you get denial. Like most Americans, most anti-gun people never heard of the Spanish Civil War or the issues involved. A typical answer is to assert that no true progressive would ever support firearms ownership. My answer to that is to say that's an example of polarised thinking.

Similarly, we are in the land of the blind when it comes to management and treatment of mental illness. What afflicted the Newtown killer? We have only media speculation, because we have a set of psychiatric protocols that forbid informed speculation and forbid disclosure by any clinician who might actually have seen the child. Despite the numerous consequences, we still have psychiatric professionals who can't bring themselves to act in ways that prevent a mentally ill patient from doing harm to him/herself or others.

If you can actually read this (which is rather old) I'd like to know that. This is my first shot at seeing whether Blogger will actually support my new Linux Mint OS. On the other hand, if all you want to do is bash the poor schmuck trying to carve out some room in the middle of this verbal war, don't bother. I won't post it, but I will keep score and perhaps swipe a few tangential quotes.

We Shouldn't talk About It

In the horrid backwash of the Virginia Tech tragedy, Virginia's governor has asked everyone with a political agenda to tone it down (I'd like a link to that).

This has been widely interpreted as a ban on discussing

1. The troubling and inconsistent accounts of VT campus security's emergency response. All we have now comes from a security chief with an obvious interest in covering his ass.
   
   
2. Gun control .

I think I'll discuss Number 2, since I don't live in Virginia. It should be amusing.

There is really only one wedge issue. It isn't abortion, it isn't gay marriage. It is gun control and all that travels in its wake. While the other two issues make screaming lunatics of conservatives, and high-minded martyrs of liberals, gun control (plus hunting control plus whatever) makes screaming lunatics of nearly everyone.

I regret to observe that the issue brings out the worst in anyone of a progressive bent. It brings out the worst trait of liberalism, which is the tendency to say "I know what's right, I'll decide for you what is right, and you're an illiterate turd if you don't accept my decision with gratitude." Cruise the progressive blogosphere today and you'll catch my drift. There is no end of vindictive, vituperative prose, chiefly (pardon me) aimed at demonising anyone who ever held a gun, and very little concerned with finding new solutions to this problem.

At work today, two of us were discussing the Explainer's alleged explanation of how a man with two handguns could kill 33 people. The explanation covered everything, badly, except what really mattered: that a 9 mm pistol bullet is capable of shooting through an engine block, which really leaves you with no place to hide. The size of the weapon, we were commenting, has little bearing on the stopping power of its projectiles.

This was my cubicle mate's cue to jump into the conversation with a jocular, but sincere, comment that we must both be potential homicidal maniacs because we knew how firearms worked.

Wow: knowledge is dangerous. When did that become a liberal concept? Where firearms are concerned, it has been a liberal concept all of my life.

Any issue that involves firearms (or seems to) draws an ineradicable line in the sand between rural and urban people. It is almost a caricature to think of rural people as hicks believing that liberals are people who "want to take our guns away." The trouble is, many liberals do want to disarm the entire population. Let's be honest: that isn't about crime. It is about a fundamental disquietude about firearms and hunting, which occupy a central part of real rural life ( as opposed to the gentrified version). Both are more foreign to most urban progressives than the life of a village in India.

Progressives rightly expect conservatives to look all facets of many issues, yet fail entirely to do so themselves when it comes to this point. Far too many urban progressives do not care what rural people think or how they live lives that may be vastly different from their own. Which suggests these progressives have forgotten how to listen.

Gov. Kaine was perfectly correct when he asked people to back off the political dimensions of the Virginia Tech tragedy. It is a poser for both screaming camps, fraught with awkward questions. The shooter's purchases were perfectly legal. His possession of them on campus was not, but was never detected. So, if gun laws ( including an outright ban on possession at this location) can't prevent mass murder, what can? Alert prevention and boots-on-the-ground police work?

Oops: that brings us around to forbidden topic Number 1, doesn't it? I will at least leave that one alone.

If I could advance one idea to the Democratic Party before the 2008 election, it would be to steal the gun control issue away from the right. The issue has not budged an inch in 45 years, and will not without a wholly fresh approach. To do that, progressives need to do some really honest self-assessment about the motives behind the violent animosity they show, not only to right wing interests using the issue, but toward people like me.

All I'm proposing is that urban progressives drop the "hick" stereotypes, consider how to neutralise this issue, and try to reconnect with the ordinary people they've frightened and antagonised over gun control. I expect to be hammered for suggesting that, from both sides if anyone actually reads this stuff. I certainly was the last time I brought it up, and the climate then was much less charged. Last time I shut up shop. This time I'm waiting for prose that makes my point.