Justified

By Capt. Fogg

It isn't common for the US media to make an issue of the level of violence in South Africa, but Oscar Pistorius is a celebrity and the woman he's accused of murdering was a celebrity.  The lives of our secular pantheon are important to the public and particularly if the celebrity has to do with sports.  Are the successful athletes we love to appoint as role models, whom we love to pretend to emulate, really paragons of virtue and discipline or does their drive, their ego, their motivation spill over into something sometimes less than wholesome?  I'm not going to generalize about the famous, but like the USA, South Africa is a violent nation and one with a long history of violent racism and violent crime and a population with a large difference between haves and have-nots. The murder rate is high, about 50 per day, and while I read that only about 12% of South Africans own guns, the probability is that many more are not reported and are illegally owned.

White, middle and upper class South Africans live in fear and those who can afford to, live in gated enclaves behind iron barred doors and windows; behind electrified fences with sophisticated alarm systems and armed security guards -- and they own guns.  The standard of living is lower for non-whites but the level of fear is high for all and one can argue that it's justified. Guns are used in 77 per cent of house robberies and 87 per cent of business robberies, and they are the cause of death in more than half of all murders.  Many burglars are seeking guns over other items.

South Africa is often described as a "gun-loving" country. Yes, of course if one lives on a remote farm in the bush, there are leopards and lions and hippos and elephants that argue for heavy arms, but I think that for the most part, owning a gun is all about crime and a sense of security in a violent nation. According to Wikipedia, A survey for the period 1998–2000 compiled by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime ranked South Africa second for assault and murder (by all means) per capita and first for rapes per capita in a data set of 60 countries. Total crime per capita was 10th out of the 60 countries in the dataset. A study by the government  on the nature of crime in South Africa  concluded that the country is exposed to high levels of violence as a result of different factors, including:

The normalization of violence. Violence comes to be seen as a necessary and justified means of resolving conflict, and males believe that coercive sexual behaviour against women is legitimate.
 

The reliance on a criminal justice system that is mired in many issues, including inefficiency and corruption.

A subculture of violence and criminality, ranging from individual criminals who rape or rob to informal groups or more formalized gangs. Those involved in the subculture are engaged in criminal careers and commonly use firearms, with the exception of Cape Town where knife violence is more prevalent. Credibility within this subculture is related to the readiness to resort to extreme violence.

The vulnerability of young people linked to inadequate child rearing and poor youth socialization. As a result of poverty, unstable living arrangements and being brought up with inconsistent and uncaring parenting, some South African children are exposed to risk factors which enhance the chances that they will become involved in criminality and violence. 

The high levels of inequality, poverty, unemployment, social exclusion and marginalization.

Much of this should seem familiar to Americans and the kind of  justification many Americans feel in owning guns is the same. Discussions of gun control in South Africa have understandably become as heated as they once again have in the US after high profile, heavily publicized murders, but in neither place will effective debate be conducted without acknowledging the various reasons people buy and own guns: without acknowledging the kinds of perpetrators and their proportion.  Not as long as we focus on undoing the latest headline, not as long as we depend on fear rather than fact.

In both nations, the murder rate is declining. In South Africa after tougher limits on gun ownership took effect in 2004,  the number of gun-related crimes has dropped by 21 per cent. The Globe and Mail tells us that  this decrease is not merely because of a general decline in crime in South Africa. One study of female victims, we are told,  by the country’s Medical Research Council, found that gun-related deaths had dropped by nearly half from 1999 to 2009, while other causes of violent death were virtually unchanged. You'd think you'd hear us talk more about the how and why of it.

In the US, gun-related violence has been declining for longer and has declined further.  Does this argue that gun control can be effective?   I think it does. Does that prompt us to improve our efforts along the same lines and with regard to underlying causes?  I think it does,  yet in the US I see little effort being made to acknowledge this; to look at what works and what has not worked -- but rather we seem to champion ideas without support of experience, despite experience while demonizing the pragmatic, scientific efforts. Too many of our arguments and most of the angriest seem to have more to do with blaming certain weapons with certain appearances or often fictitious attributes and rely on using certain kinds of descriptions designed to inflame, not to inform -- and may people who agree in principle that there are things we can do to lower the violence and the fear find it impossible to work together, to cooperate through the barrage of  passionate slogans and shoddy shibboleths.  Too many of our arguments depend on denial and maintaining, despite the truth, that everything is getting worse as if hope were an enemy, confidence a conspiracy and truth irrelevant.

We Americans seem to think that nothing that works elsewhere can work here, that we are so unique in our nature and the nature of our problems that we retreat into solipsism and blindness.  In fact, looking at our history of prohibitions and bans and the emotional dishonesty and selective blindness that supported them,  it seems to be an American tradition of long standing.

Baby on Board

By Capt. Fogg

If all that I read were the sporting goods catalogs that arrive in the mail I would still know something was up.  There are suddenly pages of drum magazines for sale to fit  everything from non-military versions of  long guns to shotguns to semiautomatic pistols.  Drum magazines, you'll remember seeing them on The Untouchables, great round things holding 75 to 100 rounds mounted on the infamous "Chicago Typewriter."   One catalog even features violin and cello cases fitted out to carry them.  Fedora and Zoot Suit sold separately. What you'd need to carry a Glock pistol with a 75 round drum mounted below the grip, I don't know, but it's next to useless as a concealable or even portable weapon. So why this feeding frenzy?  Why just now?  Is there an invasion coming?

Gun shops are getting very crowded again.  There's a large supermarket style one under construction in my area of coastal Florida.  Prices are rising and they can't seem to keep military-looking fake 'assault rifles' on the shelves.  Another catalog features a kit allowing one to bolt together two Ruger 10/22 rifles - the kind of gun some country gentleman might give his son on his 18th birthday into a two barrel, crank operated .22 rimfire Gattling gun, complete with tripod.  Only $397 but you have to supply your own pair of rifles. Their website bears a headline saying they're up to a week behind on shipping orders because of  massive demand.

In barber shops and hardware stores and the Sporting Goods department at the local Wal-Mart, you hear muttering and whispering about "that monkey" and they don't mean Wayne LaPierre.  I heard an octogenarian friend say at dinner the other night "we don't have any freedom any more."  She'd just sold her handgun from the fear that someone would steal it and murder someone and she'd be blamed.  It isn't true of course, I don't think there's any way of tracing guns in Florida, but the fear is on the street and in the retirement homes and the mansions and yachts and trailer parks. That monkey is after our guns.

Yes, it's gun control time again with one side arming themselves for war and the other side howling Gun Control like ragged extras in a  Frankenstein movie.  The President has offered a package of measures designed to calm the hysterical on both sides and  it's not likely to do that, or so I think.  It's the "biggest legislative effort in a generation" says the Huffington Post,  "a bold and potentially historic attempt to stem the increase in mass gun violence."  Lets see what it looks like after passing through the entrails of Congress. Surely some of the proposals were pinned to the coat-tails of  a tragedy like a rider on an unrelated bill: ban the armor piercing ammunition?  Well it's really not that nor are the hollow points we use for hunting "Cop Killer Bullets" either.  How does one argue for meaningful gun control with all that lying going on?

 Really most of these inflammatory lumps of high velocity hyperbole are just that: attempts to emotionalize and to dupe the uninitiated and succeed in polarizing the attempt to do something useful. To me, much of this heated argument  is corrupted by dishonest coinage, invention and the refusal by both sides to examine  the axioms their arguments rely on. GUN CONTROL! and when I ask "what kind?"  The expression I get from either side is the same -- I must be one of them!

Will banning the millions and millions and millions of  guns and accessories now in 150 million private hands  do anything?  By the time anything like another loophole-ridden, designed-to-fail ban hits the streets, the number of these things buried in back yards and hidden behind paneling in basements will have doubled and the ranks of camo-clad, militiamen and survivalists and preppers will have grown further and short of a house to house search of 100 million private residences and storage lockers and bunkers, very little will be done to reduce their numbers.And nice people, ordinary people, educated people, affluent people are buying guns they would have had no interest in -- because Obama's gonna ban them.   The best way to create demand is to ban something.

And if Congress does do it again, and if they suddenly disappear with a wave of the magic wand, will someone still be able to find the hardware to kill a score of innocents?  Could you get drunk in 1929?  Can you get stoned in 2013? Of course.

Have all the miscellaneous and ballyhooed safety regulations done anything?  Mandatory trigger locks, microstamping of firing pins, loaded chamber indicator and magazine disconnect regulations?  No. Has there been an increase in the murder by firearm rate as is being said?  No. It's lower than it was in the 1950's. The fear is oversold.  Much of what is being proposed can be no more effective in protecting school children than those stupid, yellow Baby on Board signs people put on their cars in the '70s.  It's just there for the "I hate guns" people.

I'm still wondering if there has been an increase in mass gun violence or if the handful in the last few years is a statistical blip and the result of the unrelenting "never forget" emotional media coverage  that promotes repeat performances, but that question will never be settled when opinions on both sides are bolstered by selective facts, when the tenets of faith, the proclamations of activists and politicians and lobbyists are taken as axiomatic without question.  

Whatever happens, I doubt my shotgun will be confiscated, nor my Civil War pistols or my Flintlock Rifle. I'm sure I'll still be able to go to the outdoor shooting range and make holes in targets with a .22 pistol  Top Shot will still be on the History Channel and the Biathlon will still be held and Sarah Palin can still hunt for moose. Floridians will still be able to shoot wild hogs and Burmese pythons and out in the bayou, they'll still be able to hunt 'gators with .22 rifles. The fear is oversold.

Whatever happens, much legislation will be designed by people who know dangerously little about firearms and in a state of near hysteria and much will be sabotaged by their opponents terrified of symbolic emasculation and little will change. No one will bother to mention or discuss or factor in the fact that gun violence is still on the decline and that the level of gun control in any particular state or city does not correlate to that decline. It's a battle of preconceived notions and it's all about irrational fear.

Increased penalties and such won't effect anyone bent on committing  suicide and taking a few dozen innocents with him. Banning an auto-loader with a 15 round magazine when Abraham Lincoln's brass bound Henry repeater will fire 16 rounds in 16 seconds will  not make anyone all that much safer and we'll go on banning all kinds of things to "save the children" and setting the stage for a massive Republican victory in 2016.  America loves guns or we wouldn't own 300 million of them. America loves guns the way it loves trucks and football and beer and that's not going to change.

 
* Opinions expressed above are the author's alone.

Grimm's tales

by Capt. Fogg

"They need to change the subject" writes Fred Grimm in the Miami Herald as though anyone who doesn't quite share his assumptions and conclusions  or ill informed and breathless opinions,  must be of an ilk.  It's easier than to address real concerns after all. That might require him to address my concerns and yours rather than to abuse a straw man.

"Gun advocates — a polite term after the seventh mass murder of 2012 — would rather not fumble around on TV just now, trying to invent a sane-sounding rationale that pretends to find civic good in the easy commercial availability of military weaponry" he continues.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/12/17/3146597/gun-advocates-just-change-the.html#emlnl=Five_Minute_Herald#storylink=cpy

Suddenly everyone is an expert on guns and gun law,  but although I'm hardly a "gun advocate" I do advocate the truth and the truth is that although the police and the military do use some autoloading pistols, real military assault rifles have been banned since 1937 and are not "easily available" at your local Bass Pro Shop or Wal-Mart. That dearly beloved ban left store shelves loaded with extended magazines and the kind of weapons it didn't actually ban.  I'll just assume that my Grimm brother here is as ignorant as most journalists who think that BA in journalism grants poetic license and instant expertise on all matters and not just someone looking for ratings by reaching into that bucket of breathless hyperbole and  cheap drama and pulling out plums about "high velocity bullets" without actually knowing anything about ballistics.  Would the victims have been better off being hit by slow moving .45 ACP slugs or faster moving .22 magnums?  Not really.

So am I changing the subject or is he avoiding honest questions  by lining up straw men like -- well like targets in a shooting gallery?   Is he being honest by asserting that unless you first accept his solution to the problem and don't ask any inconvenient questions you're either being a "gun advocate" or changing the subject?  Well no, if you ask me.  I think I'm right on topic.

No, what matters is the emotion he can cram into another tired repetition or our ritual morning and artisinal outrage -- and that's what sells papers. What apparently doesn't matter is a rational approach to school security.  What's apparent to me is not some culture of violence and video games led by the black robed evil ones at the NRA, but the same kind of tunnel vision that made us spend a trillion dollars on airport security in response to another tragedy that could have been prevented for a few hundred bucks per plane by installing heavier and lockable cabin doors.

So am I changing the subject by insisting that we read the "assault weapon ban" before wanting it back or that we might look at our existing gun control laws  with an eye to seeing what has worked and what hasn't?  Am I avoiding a discussion or is he replacing discussion with stereotypes and  straw men who can't fight back?

So am I "gun advocate" even though I'm not promoting more gun ownership and instead promoting a wider, more informed look at security?  Or is Grimm a greedy, opportunistic hack looking for ratings?  Your answer is more likely to describe you than me, sad to say, because this never has been a rational discussion about protecting the public but a battle of fairy tales and illusions where pragmatism and fact do fear to tread.

Make it stop

This sums up where my head is today.

Mass murder renders me useless. I pretty much spent yesterday in stunned disbelief, musing on what a relief it would be to be living on a remote beach on the Caribbean where the internets don't reach. Guess it will pass eventually. [graphic via]

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

The best security of a free state

By Capt. Fogg

"Let your gun therefore be your constant companion on your walks."

-Thomas Jefferson-

If the reason for a constitutional protection of a natural right is unclear or incomplete or perhaps obsolete, does the law no longer protect that right? "Yes it does" has been an argument for ignoring the second amendment for a long time. The motivation and the argument of course aren't congruent. I believe that a great number of people think that private ownership of weapons is too dangerous to allow and so deem the law superfluous or obsolete and don't object when despite the clear language in the phrase "the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."

The court has had to decide whether the right that is not to be infringed was intended to be contingent upon militia membership and only on militia membership or whether the necessity of a "well regulated militia" was only an example or illustration of the benefit. It's long been my opinion that this stated right was deemed as natural a part of freedom and personal liberty as the others set fort to be protected against government prohibition. As Liberals, the Framers were concerned with limiting the power of government to oppress, and private ownership of arms was firmly advocated by those I have read. I have reason to believe that Jefferson saw a militia as a potential bulwark against government rather than an agency thereof and indeed, the unique use of the word "infringed" seems to emphasize that the right should not be limited, qualified, nibbled away at or made conditional for any reason.

If the right to free speech had mentioned the necessity of that right to good government and democracy, would we then argue that only government officials were to enjoy it or that speech unrelated to government can be prohibited absolutely by State and local governments? I don't think so. I'm inclined to believe the reference to a militia is a further reference and not sole justification or exclusive qualification and I'm inclined to believe that it is the fear of weapons that has produced the arguments that the second amendment is ambiguous and therefore largely to be ignored and infringed upon at will by any local government.

Ignoring a seminal constitutional guarantee; infringing upon it or interpreting it so restrictively as to render it completely nugatory is not the stuff of good government and it is to be remembered that the constitution provides a clear way to remove it. No, it is not easy and requires far more support than simply allowing the government to break the law through judicial interpretation, but the risk of doing that is obvious. Should fear of treason infringe upon free speech, the right to assemble, to petition? Indeed such has too often been the case and should serve as a warning. Rights will be infringed by those with the loudest voice and the most money and by those with power to protect. Let's not go along with that process and feel that we are protecting ourselves. We need either to follow the constitution or amend it.

I'm a very vociferous critic of our Supreme Court and I feel everyone should be, but I have to agree with the decision that gun control laws have to take the constitution into account and are bound to be reasonable. I'm a bit sad that the Liberals on the court do not see it that way, but all in all, the Court has handed down several decisions of late that I approve of, from upholding Habeas to limiting the expansion of Capital crimes. I can only hope that some kind of balance prevails in the future.