Texas Tech and Guns

I finished watching some fun TV to find that there has been a shooting at Texas Tech, where I taught from 1995-2002 (well, until 2001, but was technically still employed until summer of 2002).  We don't know much yet, but I can't help but think about a few things:

1. The Texas legislature decided to allow guns on campus despite the opposition of university police departments across the state and, well, common sense.
2. The first person to pay the price for this is a campus cop, and the student seems to have problems.  The cops were visiting the student to do a welfare check.  So yeah.
3. The slogan at TTU, instead of hook 'em or gig 'em or whatever, is Guns Up!  

I am glad that my remaining friends at TTU and everyone else except the cop and the kid are ok.  The kid's life is destroyed, and the cop is gone and his family is ripped apart.  But there's more freedom with heaps of guns, so there's that.

Optimism about Gun Control

Can we be optimistic about gun control, given that we have seen no real progress after any/all of the previous mass shootings?  I think so.  Why?  Because of this:

If you’re too dangerous to get on a plane, you're too dangerous to buy a gun in America. https://t.co/jTFExp1BXF

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) June 14, 2016

No, it is not because HRC will be able to make it so when she wins (Trump's attack on the federal judge and other stuff seems to be alienating moderates, as if everything he has done before isn't inherently alienating to moderates). 

No, it is because Hillary Clinton is strategic, and will take stances on issues when those stances are likely to help her win votes.  Because we are beyond the primaries (sorry, Bernie), HRC is playing to the general election crowd.  So, this stance on gun control now is about reaching general election voters and not just liberals voting in primaries.  If she didn't think it would play well, she would not take this stand.  She may not be the triangulator willing to sell out everything like her husband, but she is very much focused on doing what it takes to win.

Which leads to this: gun control of some kind is actually something that most Americans support, even most NRA members.  Couching in anti-terrorism language makes it sell better, but the basic reality is that more Americans want background checks and closed loopholes, and the assault weapon ban was not unpopular. 

However, I am not too optimistic, because, of course, the American political system is built to allow minorities to stymie majorities--preventing tyranny of the majority is a good thing but it has costs.  So, even after HRC wins and even if the Democrats win the Senate, there will be enough craven Democrats and certainly enough GOP folks that will follow the NRA and refuse to do anything.

But the politics may be a-changing on this. 

Guns, Guns, Guns

I have not researched gun control or gun rights or gun anything.  I am just a frustrated, saddened blogger who finds the status quo appalling: an individual shoots up a church/school/mall/theater/whatever, lots  of condemnation, nothing substantial changes, rinse, repeat.  Obama's statement after the latest shooting in Oregon reflected his own frustration and sadness over the lack of progress.

What is always annoying are the responses to the concerns about guns, so I thought I would come up with a listicle of the usual responses and my quick response to each:

1. "Too soon!"  Well, it is always too soon to discuss this stuff because there is always another shooting a few days or a week later.  If we wait for a decent peaceful interval, we will never have a discussion of this stuff.  Also, this is wonderfully cynical: "hey, you guys are mobilized by outrage and might do something.  How about we all wait until the anger fades and you guys have less passion to organize a response?  Kthxbai."
2. "It is about mental illness, not guns." Why are these opposed?  Obviously, when an individual decides to kill a bunch of people, it combines motive and means.  The motives are often hard to understand and may often be the result of mental and emotional problems.  Yes, we need to do a better job of treating those with these problems, but, no, doing something on the mental health front does not logically exclude government from doing anything else such as regulating guns.  
3. "If the disturbed don't have guns, they will use knives."  Well, that would be progress.  Far easier to run from a knife than from a bullet.  It is also harder to kill many people with one knife than with a semi-automatic handgun or rifle with a magazine of 15 or more bullets.
4. "If the disturbed don't have guns, they will escalate and use bombs."  Again, that would be progress, as it is not easy to build bombs.  It is not impossible either, but it is not easy.  And the government already does a fair amount to make sure people don't have easy access to bombs.
5. "Gun control does not work." The handy charts this week of states with and without gun control and the rates of murder via guns is suggestive.  Yes, the causal arrow could go the other way--states with less violence develop more gun regs.  Yet other countries have guns and have disturbed citizens but yet don't have the same incredibly high level of violence.
6. "Most gun deaths are not caused by sprees by whites but are among/between minorities."  Oh really.  So, we should not do anything about spree shootings because it is only one form of gun violence.  That is like saying we should not fight all cancer but just focus on the one or two forms that are related to the most deaths.  It also suggests that gun control might not make a difference in such places.  Or that we need to solve racism or poverty or intra-African-American problems or "culture" before we turn to guns.  Which is another classic way of kicking the can down the road so far that it cannot be seen.
7. "Liberals just want to take everyone's guns away." Maybe some do.  I think most folks just want sensible gun regulation--that anyone buying a gun from any source should have a good background check, so that those who are most likely to use them as they are designed (to kill lots of people) don't have easy access.  My particular focus would be to bring back restrictions on weapons that can kill large numbers of people quickly.  One does not need a Glock with a 19 bullet magazine to defend one's house or an AR-15 to go hunting.  These weapons are designed to kill many people quickly.  I don't expect that we can eliminate murder, but I would like sincere efforts to reduce the carnage.  Yet, I know that this would be closing the barn door but ...
8. "There are already so many guns out there that gun regulation would not make a difference."  Maybe, but most of the spree shooters were able to get their guns at stores quite easily, rather than having to buy or steal them from some gray/black market.  I wonder if the anti-gun control people support legalization of drugs because the argument here seems similar--the stuff is going to get out, so why bother?
9. "This is just part of an attempt to increase the power of the state."  I am pretty sure that most gun control advocates would not be advocating gun control if gun-related death and destruction was a minor problem.  It is on political agendas because of the damage guns do.  Far more than terrorism as Obama made quite clear, far more than many sources of death and far more than most preventable causes of death.  
10. "The Second Amendment means that guns cannot be regulated, just as the First Amendment says that speech or assembly cannot be regulated."  Um, no.  The Bill of Rights establishes rights that are rarely but sometimes abridged, when there is a compelling public need.  One cannot yell fire in a crowded theater if there is no fire, for instance.  Assembly is regulated in a variety of ways.  Freedom of religion does not permit murder or cannibalism or whatever.  So, the idea that there can be no regulation, especially when the 2nd amendment mentions a "well-regulated" militia, well, there you go.
11. "This is the first step in an effort by the government to become totalitarian." Give me a fucking break.  Of course, as Barney Frank once said, talking to a conspiracy theorist is like talking to a piece of furniture--what is the point?

Note I am not discussing the arguments about having guns--that they are for protection (when guns in the home are far more threatening to the kids and spouses in that home).  All I am saying is that we get these same tired arguments after each shooting.  And they are dumb, dumb, dumb arguments.

The Few and the Many: Guns and More Guns

Yet another mass murder.  Obama's statement last night was moving and painfully accurate.  I loved that Obama was putting the US in a comparative context.  Alas, that does not fly too well.  His call for stats comparing terrorism to gun crime was met quickly by folks on the internet. 

Obama challenged the media to compare gun and terrorism deaths. So I did. http://t.co/0JZkoeLKTo pic.twitter.com/C9xj7QH5jV

— Zack Beauchamp (@zackbeauchamp) October 1, 2015

And the facts are likely to be ... irrelevant.  Dan Drezner has an excellent post discussing the limits of Obama's anger.  Obama is not going to stop the rest of government for this one issue.  And I understand that.  I would like to see one of these speeches (alas, there will be more opportunities) to actually contain some real proposals of what sensible gun regulation would look like.  Provide a clear alternative between doing nothing and taking all the guns away.

Of course, even that will not matter much.  The social science on this is pretty clear.  It goes to basic politics that despite the rhetoric of democracy, the small almost always have more power than the large.  What is true about dairy in Canada is also true for sugar in the US and is also true for ethnic politics/diaspora influence (draft in pdf).  It is far easier to get a small group of enthusiastic people who are directly affected to organize and mobilize than the large mass of society to focus on a single issue. And politicians care about who shows up, not those who stay at home or who are focused on other stuff.  The President was right to point out that many gun owners do not support the stances of the National Rifle Association, but those that do are the ones that write letters, show up at protests, and all the rest.

So even the most left wing of politicians in the U.S. would take pro-gun, anti-regulation stances: Bernie Sanders.  Running in Vermont, chock full of hunters and liberal ice cream purveyors, Sanders pandered to the NRA folks.  This is not a left/right thing, but a who mobilizes thing.  Some progress was made in the 1980s after the shooting of Reagan and those around him (James Brady most notably).  Mostly regression since then.

But as folks note, if we can do nothing in the aftermath of the mass murder of small kids, then it is not likely that anything will happen when other folk are killed.  Yes, I am profoundly frustrated and profoundly cynical about this issue.  A very sad Spew after yet another sad day of avoidable tragedy. 

Speed Vs. Armor, Academic Style

One of the classic tradeoffs in building weapons is the tradeoff between speed and armor.  The more protection a ship or tank or plane has, the slower it will go.  Put on a belt of armor on a ship and it will be able to take more punishment but will be less likely to evade attacks.  This was nicely illustrated in the Viper vs. the Mountain battle in last season's Game of Thrones. 

Why is this relevant today?  Because I am trying to figure out what I would be doing if I had remained at Texas Tech.  With students now being allowed to carry weapons in the classroom, the question for professors will become: do I wear armor or will that slow down my ability to dodge, dip, duck, dive and/or DRAW?  That is, should one practice a speed draw so that one can shoot students who reach for their pens phones gun? 

I guess profs will have to figure out their strengths and weaknesses.  If they do not have quick reflexes, then armoring up is probably the way to go. I do wonder if infrastructure grants will allow one to spend money on kevlar podiums.

Another lecturing conundrum: should one stand behind the podium or move around?  I tend to move around as I lecture, which means I wouldn't have the protection of a podium.  On the other hand, hitting a moving target is more difficult.  However, many of these students may have some hunting experience, and I would not be moving that fast.  

Hmmm, difficult choices.  Perhaps not letting folks walk around with guns might have been a better option?

Sunday Silliness: Entitlement in the 21st Century

Brian MacFadden brings the heat in a big way this week, taking on the Men's Rights and Open Carry entitlement folks:

I hadn't thought of putting the two together, but it works so very, very well.  I must admit that when I heard about the frustration that the SB killer had with pickup artists, I was shocked.  My first thought was that only 14 year olds believe in pickup artists and their magic ways to score with the ladies.  Apparently not.  I guess somebody does indeed buy the books and the other merch of the avowed artists.  I could understand the resentment against these hucksters except the onus is on the fools who believe them.  I mean, if you send money off to Nigerian princes, shame on you.

The Open Carry folks have a similar sense of entitlement via a bad reading of the 2nd Amendment.  I do wonder how male that movement is.  My guess: very.  I would have some sympathy for the argument that folks need guns for self-protection if it were not for the years and years of statistics showing that owning a gun is far more likely to lead to someone in the house getting killed by it than it being used for protection. 

The combination of ignorance and entitlement in both of these groups is breathtaking.  Anyhow, the next time anyone complains about how entitled the Millennials are, I will point them to two real groups of people that are super-entitled rather than the imaginary characteristics of folks who were all born in the same big time frame.

Speaking of Satire: Guns

Once again, Brian McFadden brings the heat and light on a Sunday morning:

The Right to Be Hypocritical

Check out the latest right--the right for the NRA to be hypocritical.

We Are Not That Different After All

Right to Bear Arms does not discriminate, right?

Black NRA from Sarah Silverman     

Just too good. We are not that different after all was just the best line.

Are 3D Printers the Replicators of ST-TNG?

Are the new 3-d printers the replicators we are familiar with from Star Trek: The Next Generation?  Lots of concern that these devices, which can apparently make guns, will end any effort gun control and otherwise let anyone create anything.

But are we there yet?  Can they reproduce something so that the internal chemistry, the internal wiring, whatever is all the same?  More importantly, are these things so cheap that anyone can have them?  I simply do not know.  But I sincerely doubt that anyone can simply get one of these things and pump out tons of guns, bullets or whatever.  Especially when guns and bullets and whatever are easy to  get at a fraction of the price.

Lots of fear-mongering, but until the supply and demand of these things leads to quality/quantity/input/output dynamics that compete with guns, I am more worried about the conventional gun manufacturers and their political power than the new cool devices.

Cowards Called Out

One of the best things about Game of Thrones as that the books expanded my vocabulary so that I have an appropriate word to use to describe the Senators who voted against sensible albeit limited gun control: craven.   But don't listen/read me.  Rely on Gabby Giffords for articulating the real meaning of fear and of cowardice.

Political Cartoon of the Week

Yes, I pad my number of posts by throwing in a cartoon from Brian McFadden on a regular basis, but this one is too good to drop the habit now.:

It definitely puts the crimes of Lance Armstrong into sharp relief.  Jon Stewart had a great bit addressing the various claims and showing that the NRA says--hey, enforce existing laws while simultaneously pushing their friends in Congress to limit enforcement.  Is the NRA the most mendacious lobbying group?  Hard to think of another one, now that the tobacco industry has been on its heels for a while.

Anyhow, better to use this cartoon than to ponder the ironies and lessons to be drawn by the number of people shot at gun shows yesterday during Gun Appreciation Day.  Isn't always Gun Appreciation Day at American emergency rooms?

Sensible Comparisons for a Better Tomorrow

Funny or Die apparently does not need to take a course in comparative analysis:

NRA - Stand and Fight Parody - watch more funny videos