Defending US Gun Policies

"The claim that gun massacres are mysterious or 

difficult or bewildering or resistant to legislation is a lie." 

— Adam Gropnik, "Four Truths About the Florida School Shooting," 

The New Yorker 15 Feb. 2018

"In our time, political speech and writing are largely 

the defense of the indefensible. 

Things like the continuance of British rule in India, 

the Russian purges and deportations, 

the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, 

can indeed be defended, but only by arguments 

which are too brutal for most people to face, 

and which do not square with 

the professed aims of the political parties."

— George Orwell, 

"Politics and the English Language" (1946).

Allowing gun massacres can be defended — e.g., if one argues as allowed by the New Yorker essay that the economic and cultural advantages of widespread ownership of a variety of guns justifies the loss of life. Alternatively, people have argued that the 2nd Amendment in the Bill of Rights undergirds all our other rights by helping guarantee The Right of Revolution, the final bastion against tyranny and oppression by the Federal government (and State and local governments as well). Thomas Jefferson said "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure" (1787), to which, in this argument, we would add the blood of a few thousand innocent Americans a year.

So of course the NRA should be defending sale of Kevlar-piercing bullets: the police and military personnel defending the State might well be wearing Kevlar armor. And of course US citizens should have semi-automatic weapons — and some access to kits to make them full(y) automatic — with large magazines: to counter those of the SWAT teams and military. Etc. Q.E.D.

Like, if you want a coherent and rational argument, go to the greed-heads of the weapons biz (or the crazies arming for the coming race war or apocalypse) or those who fear the black helicopters coming in from the Deep State. They'll be bringing AR-15s to a drone fight: the State always outguns the People. The turning point of revolutions is when the troops turn their guns away from the People and toward an oppressive government.

On the other hand, "Post-Truth is pre-Fascist," and in a Post-Truth USA, there is much to be said for recalling the Right of (Mostly NonViolent) Revolution.

Disruption vs. Business as Usual: Bakers, Milkmen, #NeverAgain

The cover story for The Nation Magazine for their end of April double issue is "How the youth activists of #NeverAgain are upending gun politic" and bears the cover title, "THE DISRUPTERS."

"Disruption" has become a positive buzz-word, and I can go along with that, having insisted ca. 1970 with US warfare in Vietnam, "No more business as usual."

We should keep in mind, though, that the flip side is the need for "regular order" in most of the business of the Congress of the United States and that the bakers of Paris during The Terror after the Revolution and the milkmen of London during the Blitz in World War II acted admirably in staying calm, carrying on, and supplying their cities with necessities. There can be heroism in "business as usual" and resisting disruption.

So let us praise the young disrupters of #NeverAgain, and, in different situations, those who got on with their business when the times were dangerously unusual.

Collegiate Age of Anxiety: "Stranger Danger!!"

Apparently, Letters to the Editor of The Ventura County Star published on line do not appear in Google searches. I will therefore immodestly post them on this blog. Under the shorter title "Age of Anxiety," this letter appeared in The Star for 9 October 2015.

Collegiate age of anxiety

REFERENCE: "A call to action after devastating campus events" by Luis Sanchez, President of Moorpark College, Star, 27 September 2015.

            In a column in the Star for September 27, Luis Sanchez, President of Moorpark College notes that "Many of America's college students today live with acute anxiety" partly because they grew up post-9/11, with its shattering of the "illusion of […] security" and how "The horrors of global terrorism, international discord, and even domestic strife have assaulted our children relentlessly through the Internet and […] smart phones […]."

            President Sanchez tweaks the Parable of the Lost Sheep (Luke 15.3-7) and ends with "the shepherd who delivers 99 sheep safely but loses one to the wolf" and how "our joy for the 99 is overwhelmed by our grief at the loss of the one."

            Today's students and more important the parents of today's students grew up in an America of "Stranger Danger!" in which usually well-meaning people have worked effectively to assault parents relentlessly with images and stories not of the figurative one lost sheep in a hundred but far smaller percentages of kids abducted and murdered by strangers, lured into drug addiction or slavery, attacked by sharks, molested by sexual predators, killed in home invasions, or gunned down in their classrooms.

            Americans generally, and journalists particularly, do poorly at risk assessment. Advertisers, marketers, and propagandists for an array of causes — many quite worthy — competently manipulate psychological weakness that can render us "overwhelmed by our grief at the loss of the one" child in a hundred thousand or more, underrating both the safety of most middle-class kids and everyday insecurity for poor kids.

            Many American college students should be anxious and non-clinically depressed because their elders are putting them into debt and not providing decent jobs when they graduate; but too many "live with acute anxiety" because they grew up with parents kept near-constantly anxious and afraid.