Fear and Hatred in Orlando

Last weekend, a man filled with hatred walked into a nightclub and shot dead over fifty people. The sadness, the horror and the disgust for his actions were so massive that I wanted to immediately write a long diatribe about his misguided actions and the foul philosophy that drove him. But I decided to wait for  my initial passion to cool and address this only after both my own thoughts and the motives of the killer were clearer. My initial shock and outrage that we'd just seen another horrific mass shooting was magnified by the realization that the death toll had just reset an almost century old record as the bloodiest mass murder in the US (I assume we weren't counting events like Wounded Knee), but other than statistics  does it matter so much if the death toll is 49 (Orlando), 33 (Virginia Tech) or 28 (Sandy Hook)? To each person who had his or her life cut short and to their loved ones who have to deal with the aftermath, it's as big a tragedy whether one or a hundred other died alongside for no good reason. Does it matter more if it's a a grade schooler, or a college student? Does it matter if it happened on a military base or in a movie theater? Does it matter if it happened at midday or in the early hours of morning just before last call? In the end, the fact that it happened at all is what should matter and how we react in the days to come will define the kind of country and people we are.

Depending on one's political views, the most compelling part of the story is either that the club catered to gay people and the victims were mostly gay people or that the killer was a young Muslim man who made a grandiose pledge of allegiance to the Islamic State in the middle of his cowardly attack. A secondary concern also dictated by one's political worldview is the use of a semi-automatic rifle, legally purchased by a man who had been investigated previously for links to terrorist groups. And yet, we have to wonder if these concerns need be mutually exclusive, or if in fact we should be equally concerned by it all. I am leaning strongly towards the latter position as I think it over.

Let's start with the major conflicting concerns - was this a crime of terror or hate? Did the killer attack because he was homophobic or anti-American? We may likely never know, and never with certainty since he died in the hostage rescue; in reality even had he lived, there is  good chance that we would not know because he himself did not know why he did what he did. My guess is that he was driven by many reasons, and attempting to point a finger at just one flawed philosophy misses the bigger picture here. He was likely driven by homophobia, given the public statements of his family and other acquaintances. Even if he were a homosexual himself, as seems very possible notwithstanding his father's denial, it doesn't preclude hatred of gays from driving his actions, and may even have exacerbated his anger and hatred. Yet, it is very likely, especially given his own declaration, that he had developed a hatred of his own country that also motivated his actions and that hatred has its roots in his religious beliefs. And this despite the fact that he was far from a pious or observant Muslim - his alcohol consumption alone marks him out as a pretty unobservant Muslim. But just as his own homosexual desires could not soften his hatred, so too his flouting of basic tenets of Islam do not hide the fact that his hatred for America started and ended in the violent Nihilistic teachings of fundamentalists.

This does not smear the guilt over every Muslim, in America or anywhere - after all, this was also a clear attack on gays so should all straight people be considered guilty? The best course, as President Obama has done, is to treat this exactly for what it is - a crime of hatred and terror, but the crime of a single violent, unbalanced individual. It is dangerous to act as if his Muslim identity is paramount - the day after his attack, an Indiana Christian extremist was intercepted by chance in California en route to wreak similar havoc on destruction on the Gay Pride parade in Los Angeles - and focusing only on Muslims ignores the reality of these other threats and leaves us vulnerable. To ignore his religious extremism is just as dangerous - but this push back against religion cannot come from the government. For one, the government is constitutionally required to eschew religious discrimination, As long as the believers comply with American law - and nearly every American Muslim does, regardless of the foolish chatter of those calling for banning of Sharia law in America without a shred of proof that Muslims have ever sought special treatment under the law - the government has no reason to step in or treat them any different from anyone else.

From a practical standpoint furthermore, the threat of Muslim extremists is far overstated and our perception of the greater risk is largely colored by political grandstanding; by my estimate, we've had five major attacks on the US that could be attributed to Muslim extremists - Fort Hood, the Boston bombing, Chattanooga military recruitment center, San Bernardino and now Orlando and of these, both Orlando and San Bernardino seem to be more complex and driven by confused and mixed motives. In the same time period (dating back to 2009) we've had 28 other mass shootings, including Tucson, the Aurora movie theatre, Sandy Hook, Charleston Church, Umpqua Community College and Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood. This does not include the seditious and quasi-terrorist actions of the Bundy clan in Nevada and Oregon. These many mass shootings were motivated by a variety of issues, but extremist Christianity was definitely one of the causes, in attacks on the Black Church and Planned Parenthood (will Donald Trump start talking about "radical Christianity" along with "radical Islam"?). Military installations were targeted on multiple occasions, including a second attack at Fort Hood. All this shows that we have an outsize fear of one type of killer and one motivation, which is mostly unfounded. We should be especially cognizant of the fact that not one of the terrorist attacks attributed to outside influences, be they al-Qaida or ISIL, was actually planned, directed or overseen by those organizations. In other words, the attacks have much less in common with the terror attacks in Europe and are really no different than our many, many other shootings. The push back on religious extremism must come, but it must come from all of us and it should hold all extremists to the same standard. Muslim extremists are dangerous but no more than any other violent angry person.

In the aftermath of any attack, there is a debate about gun control and it follows a standard unchanging script. There are calls for tighter laws, the gun lobby pushes back, a lot of statistics and claims are thrown around by all sides and at the end of the day, nothing is done. The only equally predictable outcome of this will be that gun sales will spike...AGAIN!I am a long time proponent of greater gun control, but one thing I now realize, and amazing as it may seem, I find myself in agreement with the NRA that this is not the time to discuss gun control. We have different reasons, I imagine - the NRA, thinks no time is a good time to discuss the topic and fears that the heightened emotion in the aftermath of such an attack may overcome the typical obstruction to any form of gun control; I fear that the heightened emotion in the aftermath of such an attack may lead to passage of a flawed and purely reactionary law. The key factor to remember about these many, many mass shootings is that they were committed with legally purchased weapons and that many of the perpetrators owned the weapons for weeks, months, even years before they snapped and committed their crime. Most, if not all suggested laws would have little effect on deterring these mass shootings. Much ink has been used, metaphorically, on the implausibility of a meaningful buyback scheme similar to what Australia achieved twenty years ago. While highly unrealistic, it remains the only way that gun deaths in the US will ever drop. But such a program cannot be forced by the government, it must come from a change of heart amongst gun owners, and the time to address this is not in the immediate and emotional aftermath of a mass shooting when gun owners are defensive and unwilling to engage with equally intransigent gun control advocates. But when passions have cooled, then it is time for America to address the question of whether we really need assault weapons for self defense, whether such weapons are actually "sporting rifles" at all, and whether any gun, be it a pistol, shotgun or long rifle actually increases the safety of its owner or whether it increases the probability of death by the gun. Let there be a debate, without needless and irrational emotion, and if America judges that their scientists should be forcibly restrained from collecting any data on gun deaths and violence or that doctors should be forced, by law, to keep from discussing health risks involving guns, then so be it: we will have decided that we would rather keep our guns with all the dangers they entail than risk a society without easy and universal access to these instruments of death and defense.

Meanwhile, our best and most appropriate response to this latest shooting is to do everything that repudiates and rejects the intent of this attack. As I said before, this attack was likely motivated by a mix of different ideas, but whether it was terror or hatred that predominated hardly matters when it comes to our response. Terrorists aim to scare society and to provoke harsh and fear-driven responses, especially from the government that both hurt everyone as a whole and through its disproportionate response, builds support within a minority group; in such a case, a Muslim terrorist would hope that government and societal reprisal against all American Muslims would isolate and radicalize that same group. Our best response, again as epitomized by President Obama's actions, is to reject the role that the killer would have us play and react in a measured and rational manner. If we stop for a moment and look past the name and ethnicity of the killer we see no difference between this and any other mass shooting in the US - so if we do not barricade ourselves in our homes in fear when mentally ill young men gun down score of young school kids, why should we allow the acts of an unstable killer in Florida to affect us differently? We react with a resigned shrug when a college student guns down his classmates, so why should we react with less fortitude just because this killer claimed to kill in the name of his religion instead of some equally garbled and confused manifesto? We do not blame all Christians for a killer who invokes that faith, why would we do any different for Muslims in America?

The hatred and homophobia that may have played at least as large if not a greater role can be best defeated by utterly rejecting the very premise that these victims were in any way different from us. The politicians and others within this country who have marginalized, demonized and discriminated against gays and lesbians are not responsible for this specific hate crime (especially if the hatred was born and nurtured in a non-Christian environment), but with every statement or action that builds a wall between segments of society they encourage the darkest corners of society to give in to the hatred and anger and eventually it boils over; while our politics of discrimination had small role in this crime, it may not be as blameless the next time around and it is up to all of us to turn away from this kind of divisiveness and all the agents who encourage it and embrace all members of society. When I saw Michael Bradley lead the US soccer team onto the field wearing a rainbow armband, it was a thrilling moment that reminded me of everything that was great about America. Another awesome gesture was a local Chick-fil-A, once publicly identified with homophobia courtesy of their very religious founder and CEO, opening on Sunday to offer free meals to people lined up to donate blood for the injured of this attack (itself an exhilarating reaction on the part of the people of Orlando); how awesome would it be if that bakery in Albuquerque or that pizza place in Indianapolis were to offer their wares to the pride rallies this week, not as an acceptance of something that they do not countenance for religious reasons, but as a gesture that repudiates the hatred that would wreak violence on people simply because they are different. The best way to fight hatred of this kind is not with laws and polemics, but with simple gestures that show that whatever our differences, whatever our beliefs, we reject hate and stand united as a human brotherhood. Ultimately, whether this attack was driven by hatred of gays or America or an attempt to terrorize us or both, we will not allow him to script our response and that is the best way to defeat such attacks.

Police and Public: A Two Way Steet That's Closed

It's been over four months since the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO shone a light on a part of the American politic that most citizens would rather not face or acknowledge. Race in America is always a sensitive subject, and more importantly, certain to stir deep passions. When an unarmed young black man is shot by police, it is certain to cause great anger within his community, no matter the exact circumstances. When the shooting occurs in a Southern city, when the police of that predominantly black township is predominantly white and when the reaction on all sides seems tone-deaf at best, it would seems inevitable that trouble would follow. In the following months, more young black men were shot by police. More accurately, in the following months the press reported about more young black men who were shot by police. And this week, the next, and equally inevitable chapter was written, when two police were murdered while on duty, gunned down in cold blood by a young black man.

And yet, we have yet to acknowledge the real problems, of which all the violence and angst of these past months is but a symptom. While the New York police may blame the death of their colleagues on the rhetoric of their mayor, a bit of introspection should tell them that the badly disturbed killer was not taking his cues from Bill DiBlasio, especially when he first shot his ex-girlfriend in Baltimore before heading to New York. If anything could destroy the righteous anger of the thousands protesting peacefully, it was this senseless act, and the greatest tragedy in a tale marked by more than its share will be that protesters will now be reluctant to air their legitimate concerns and that the supporters of harsh police action will feel and act vindicated. In weeks past, athletes on the biggest TV stages made a quiet statement with mute gestures as they entered the stadium or a simple T-shirt message.

Perhaps the saddest aspect of this sordid mess has been the response of the police to these protests, or in fact any protests. The St. Louis police demanded that the Rams football team apologize for drawing attention to the fact that Michael Brown was unarmed when shot, as were the victims in so many other similar cases. The police do not understand the frustration and anger in the communities they serve and in turn feel that those protesting their actions do not appreciate the risks they face daily, every moment that they are in uniform. That is essentially the same feeling that has led to a almost juvenile behavior of the New York police, when the mindlessly lash out at the Mayor for his empathy with an unarmed man who died in a police choke hold; they ignored the equal empathy he wished to display when their fellow officers were murdered in cold blood last week, in part because they feel that his earlier criticism denies him the right to condole with them in their loss.

Like a couple in a bad marriage, both the police and the minority communities do not see each others point of view and every act is seen through a prism of distrust. Add in a racial filter and it's all too easy for the two sides to neither hear nor understand each other. In reality, all the anger has obscured an important fact: these deaths are not about race, they are not about a police force out of control, it's most certainly not about the wrong and overeager use of lethal force or prohibited choke holds. Those are all valid concerns, but they are simply symptoms of the actual underlying problems. Not surprisingly, both problems are fairly uniquely American and that in part makes them both harder to recognize and certainly far more difficult to address.

The problem starts with manpower and cost. The US has always struggled with the high cost, and shortage of, manpower and the police forces have been no exception. It's generally left fewer officers on the street than might be ideal, and police departments have always turned to technology to extend their reach with fewer personnel. We've seen police switch from foot patrols to police cruisers; in the last twenty years, most departments have switched from a pair of officers per cruiser to just the one officer in each car. This definitely extends the reach and coverage of units with limited personnel, but it exacerbates  a different problem that I will address below. However, the most obvious effect has been to create a gap between the officers and the neighborhoods they police. A modern police force, reflecting the modern view of policing, should interact with the community. Totalitarian states, echoing the concept from colonial nations of yesteryear, use their police to suppress and control their population and the police serve the ruler, not the people, but in a liberal democracy one would expect the police to live up to the idea that they serve the community. It's a concept that receives plenty of lip service (after all, nearly every department has "To protect and serve" in its motto) but without a real interaction between the groups on either side of the blue line that sentiment rings hollow. The problem goes far beyond just a lack of information on criminal activity; when the police force is insulated from the people there is a lack of empathy in both groups and a real lack of understanding of the issues that the other side faces.

Given the generally enlightened attitudes on race, so far removed from just fifty years ago, I cannot imagine that even a predominantly white police force walking the streets of an inner city populated by black people or Hispanics would be unable to reach out and develop a rapport with the people. But this can happen only if the officers can interact face to face with the people. Human interaction should never be underestimated, and it can transform the way people think about each other and the way they act. Conversely, when police and citizens are separated, there is a dehumanizing aspect - think about rap music referring to police as "pigs" - and when forced into confrontation, it is a lot easier to employ lethal force against someone that isn't really seen as a fellow human being. Once the first step of separation is taken, the gap simply widens. Today, even when one encounters police out of their cruisers, there is a lack of interaction. Given that their paths will rarely cross again, neither  the citizens nor the police make much effort to even greet each other more than perfunctorily. When police do respond to a call for their services, they tend to be professional (in the best sense) but there is a lack of human contact in the meeting; we are but statistics, mere numbers in a spreadsheet rather than people. Again, this is not a failing of the officers at a personal level - when given the chance, police officers have reacted with great warmth and sincerity - but the system in which we live today makes such events few and far between. In the end, the best chance one has to meet a police officer today is when one is a victim. Or, sadly, suspected of wrongdoing. Given the relative time we spend not in either role, it's not surprising that we barely know each other. When the only interaction between the police and people is suspected crimes, as is the case for so many young black men, it is hardly surprising that the only emotion between them is suspicion, fear, resentment and anger.

This lack of interaction plays no small role in the other major problem plaguing police-civilian relations, and as I mentioned before, this too is a quintessentially American problem: guns. Now admittedly, I am strongly in favor of gun control and naturally any case involving a shooting death will prompt me to urge greater control of firearms. It seems so self-evident to me that an overabundance of guns, coupled with ever less control on who may carry them or where they may be taken, is the greatest reason that police will react with lethal force in any confrontation. In the case of Ferguson, MO, the police officer has testified that Michael Brown lunged towards him, and he reacted instinctively to protect himself. Leaving aside the possibility that his story is not strictly true, the fact is that a police officer would be not unjustified in suspecting that every person he confronts may be armed and willing to shoot back. When police confront a person, they fear him or her, just as much as the person fears them. Just this past weekend, an officer in Flagstaff, AZ was shot dead when he responded to a domestic violence call. When an officer in Cleveland shot and killed twelve year old Tamir Rice, he was responding to a report of an "armed man"; as it turns out that was a kid with a toy (but realistic looking) gun who refused to obey an order. From the kids viewpoint nothing made sense - a police officer (who he was probably conditioned to distrust) order him to drop his gun and lie flat, as though he he some dangerous criminal. For a young kid on the cusp of becoming a teen, refusing an order would seem the most natural thing in the world. For a policeman, lacking any empathy with the boy he's confronting, who may be armed and dangerous, that refusal was enough to trigger his deadly reaction. No one was wrong and no one was right - but a child died because he had a toy gun.

The fact is police face a danger every minute they are on duty. They are alone, stripped of wingmen - costs and manpower shortages have reduced patrol cars to just one officer per vehicle - so many stops involve two and three cruisers converging on a single vehicle before the police approach. If the person stopped turns violent, the police have little chance to protect themselves from the first strike and hence they respond with measures designed to give themselves some protection, but which are humiliating for those on the receiving end. Now when you add in racial tensions, and a lack of empathy between police and civilians, every move by one is viewed through a hateful prism of distrust and even the smallest, most innocent actions are interpreted in the most negative manner possible.

These are not problems that can be solved easily. Having the same number of police per capita as say France, would involve increasing the total number of officers by fifty percent, a cost increase that is beyond unimaginable. Even were that possible, our sprawling suburbs would make foot patrols impossible and even if we had the men to walk the streets, they would find contact rare; in the inner cities, decades of distrust will not vanish overnight even if we could triple or quadruple the number of officers and worse yet would probably lead to an initial feeling of being invaded and occupied. Guns are so deep a part of American culture that removing them from the equation between police and community is not even worth a thought today. Until America awakens to the consequences of universal gun ownership, nothing will happen, and so far the attitude has pure denial. Meanwhile we will continue to send our police for more training and we will write lengthy directives on the correct protocols for employing deadly force. But our police will remain removed from the community around them, suspicion and distrust will continue and increase, and the next confrontation will end as always - in a death, that whether it's that of a child, a young adult or a police officer is just as tragic.

(On a sidenote: for those who think that more guns would reduce crime and killing consider that two armed officers of the NYPD were shot down before they or anyone else could react. Two trained police officers could not save themselves from a less than emotionally stable civilian; what chance then for a bunch of people who have never trained to react to a shooting situation?)


Some interesting links:
Today more and more police wear body armor while on duty -  http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/lpd07.pdf.
A comparison of police manpower levels around the world -     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_police_officers

Insuring Gun Rights

It appears as though the window for meaningful regulations of guns has closed, if indeed it were ever open more than a hair's breadth. The well organized lobby called the National Rifle Association, with help from some other organizations, has moved to quickly re-frame the debate on its own terms, and using a mixture of false fears and misinformation to obscure facts and drown out voices of moderation. From a purely academic standpoint their polished demolition of a majority viewpoint is as nearly perfect as anything I've seen, and only my deep disagreement with them keeps me from leaping to my feet with full fledged approbation.

I have mentioned in my earlier post on this topic that the NRA is not an organization that represents gun owners, despite all their posturing to the contrary - it represents the interests of gun manufacturers and gun sellers. Unfortunately, the strong hatred for the political players lined up on the side of gun control blinds people to this very obvious fact. Nothing in the NRA's actual position aids law-abiding gun owners, but the various changes in legislation that they have supported - fewer background checks, no inventory keeping by gun sellers, exempting gun shows from laws on background checks and waiting periods - all help in selling ever more guns to a country that already outguns most of the world (it speaks volumes when Somalia may be one of the few nations that can claim better gun penetration across its population, pun unintended). The NRA taps into an irrational fear of the federal government, maybe even into deeper and darker parts of the mind, when they argue that gun sellers should be allowed to destroy records of gun sales within a day; no other industry has anything approaching that attitude towards records. Tellingly, the fear that the government will use this information to find those who would oppose its potential tyranny does not extend to outrage over, say, warrant-less spying on one's communications or the fact that health insurance companies and credit rating companies (to cite but a couple of examples) collect a lot of information about us and for most part, we don't even question what they know about us or with whom they share this information, including possibly the much maligned federal government. What the NRA does achieve is a world in which it is easy for criminals or straw buyers acting for criminals to freely obtain guns - so much for protecting the rights of law-abiding citizens!

One of the tropes advanced on many forums debating gun control was the argument that more people die per year in auto accidents than from gun homicides, so cars should be banned before guns. This is a false argument on many different levels, since it starts with a conflation of accidental and intentional killing. But more interesting in the choice of this analogy is that these partisans would have been hard pressed to find a more regulated segment than automobiles. They are strongly regulated from the design and manufacturing phase, through every step thereafter. There are laws against driving while drunk, driving and texting, driving underage, driving with an expired license, for starters. One cannot legally drive without a license, and to obtain a license one needs to demonstrate one's expertise in driving. When stopped by the police, for any actual transgression or suspected problem, a driver has to show his license, or face strictures for that failure even if nothing else is blameworthy. And every driver is required to maintain insurance to cover damage that he may, or may not cause while driving. This is actually a perfect idea, and I owe the plan I lay out below to the gun rights advocates who first drew my attention to the level of regulation we accept on cars and the parallels that they see between car and gun ownership. (Not surprising perhaps, given the Bushmaster advertisement that suggested owning an assault rifle conferred a man card upon the owner; in another version, that would have been a Mustang, Camaro or pickup truck).

If there is one thing the Roberts Supreme Court has upheld consistently, it is the power of corporations and their status above individuals. While I strongly disagree with the idea philosophically, I see an opportunity to use this concept towards regulation of guns, along with the concept enshrined in the Court's ruling regarding the Affordable Care Act. Simply put, I suggest that all guns be insured against the damage that they can potentially wreak. Let me clarify that the insurance is on the gun, not the gun owner. The key reason is that the gun must be insured from the moment it rolls off an assembly line (if locally made) or the instant it enters a US entry port. The moment the weapon is sold to a gun dealer, the onus for maintaining insurance can be transferred to the dealer or retained by the original party - I do not forsee many companies choosing that option, even less their insurance companies. Similarly the dealer is free to transfer ownership of the insurance policy along with ownership of the gun to his buyer, or he may choose to trust his buyers will never use their guns on other people without good and unimpeachable cause. The same rule holds for any sale of the gun, with no exceptions.

Some advantages of this are immediately obvious. Libertarians who fear the reach of the government and its intrusion into their private lives have fewer qualms over the same power in the hands of private companies and corporations. The level of regulation required over the sales will now be determined not in Washington but in the opaque boardrooms of Omaha and Charlotte and Wilmington. The greatest fear of Constitutionalists, that their right to bear arms enshrined in their reading of the Second Amendment, will be set at rest, since the law does not prevent anyone, not even Son of Sam, from buying a gun, so long as he or she can pay the insurance rates on it.  In my mind, the actual intent of the Second Amendment can be further strengthened by offering waivers or reduced insurance needs for militias that can meet the definition of "well-regulated"; in essence, weapons for the police or National Guard would not need to be insured to the same level as those in the hands of the Hutaree. 

However, in fairness to Branch Davidians and their ilk, the insurance amount on guns will be predicated only on the gun itself, not the owner. There is a challenge in determining the correct amount of insurance required, especially when the aim is to keep the amount within reason that can be serviced by private insurance companies. My starting thought for this would be the potential destructive power of the weapon. Obviously a small handgun, a shotgun or a hunting rifle have limited use in mass killings and would carry a smaller coverage than the now infamous AR-15 Bushmaster. Determining a good coverage amount is a job for actuaries (maybe?) and underwriters, and I have no doubt that they will crunch through the numbers and figure out a formula that combines population, per capita gun ownership, annual gun homicide rates, lost earning due to premature death and tooth fairy taxes. This amount would then be applied to every privately owned gun in the US, and to every gun being manufactured, offered for sale or being imported. In the event that a weapon is used in any crime, the insurance would be shared amongst the victims and/or their next of kin. One advantage, one that would really bring lawyers over to support this, is that even accident victims like Dick Cheney's unfortunate hunting partner would stand to gain when mistaken for a quail and shot in the face.

I appeal to the free market supporters on this idea. The insurance companies can evaluate the risk of say a large gun dealership, look at their safety methods and attention to inventor keeping and set a very low rate or a high rate that reflects the risk that a weapon will be sold improperly. This provides an incentive to the dealer to follow better practices and sell only to those customers who can take over the weapon liability. In turn, when seeking to buy a gun, an individual would have to convince his insurance company that he is not a risk. He may be required to provide mental health certification, and private insurers may ask for periodical certificates - it's important to emphasize that these checks would be between the individual and his insurance company only. If an insurer wishes to ban its customers from carrying their guns out of their houses, that too would be between the two private entities, and the government's role would start and end with requiring that the gun be insured at all times. As I said before, if a dealer trusts his strawbuyer client, he may retain ownership of the insurance, but he would face claims if any of those weapons was used in a crime subsequently - his insurance company may require a much higher premium for the risk involved or may refuse him permission to sell without transferring liability. On the flip side, the insurance company may very well offer big discounts for a dealer that has a waiting period on purchases, or performs detailed background checks, or one that ensures the buyer has insurance before handing over a weapon. (In part the need for waiting periods and background checks are based on the idea that dealers, similar to car dealerships, may offer a 30 day insurance period to the buyer).

In much the same vein, the individual may obtain discounts on their insurance by showing that they keep their guns securely. I envision insurance rates for existing gun owners being very low if they can show a long and responsible history of ownership - in other words for most gun owners. I also imagine most hunting weapons and smaller caliber pistols being either waived or covered for very low rates, given that they can be used in homicides (see the latest high profile case from Arizona and the on-going hostage standoff in Alabama), but they cause comparatively less death and destruction. I also foresee insurance companies offering reducing rates (similar to auto insurance models) based on history and discounts for people who can demonstrate safe practices and attendance of gun safety classes, again similar to auto insurance discounts for defensive driving classes and the like.

No proposal would be universally hailed, and gun owners would likely grumble at any rule that increases their bills for owning weapons. But given that this neither constrains one's rights under the Second Amendment, nor increases the role of government in our lives, I see it as the simplest means to reducing gun violence. It would have a very small impact on the vast majority of gun owners, but it would go a long way to reducing the vast number of guns available to criminals. I will, I admit, increase the cost of owning a gun, but that may be a small price to pay for reducing the overall level of gun violence.

A Call From Arms

In the month since the Newtown, CT massacre, emotions have surged and ebbed, and as is my practice in such emotionally charged issues, I've waited a while before addressing it in my blog. While it appeared, in the first days after the killings, that the sheer horror of seeing a score of elementary school kids cut down in their schoolrooms would lead to a raft of overdue regulations to take some of the tools of mass execution out of the hands of would-be killers, with each passing day the chances of any meaningful legislation reduce rapidly. In a world of the twenty four news cycle,  even a tragedy of this magnitude cannot long hold our attention, especially when the national news is devoted to the never ending manufactured drama of the national debt and budget deficit, and predictably the first excitement has faded and with it the burst of energy to take on the entrenched interests of the gun industry has rapidly dissipated.

No discussion on gun control is complete without a mention of the National Rifle Association, which has only just reached five million members. That's not a small number, of course, but it represents only about a tenth of the total number of gun owners in the country. On the other hand their political power is far beyond their membership numbers suggest, all the more amazing when one considers that they don't seem to represent the interests of gun owners so much as those of gun manufacturers and sellers. Yet the legislature is largely beholden to them, and every presidential candidate has to profess his love for guns and his commitment to the right to own. The NRA and other gun rights groups have chipped away at controls and regulations, even used the courts to overturn laws they oppose, in the name of freedom and the rights of the Second Amendment. Members, and gun owning non-members have followed along, reading docilely from the script they've been handed and apparently driven by an irrational fear instilled in them by their handlers, and rarely stopping to actually question the actual dangers to their way of life.

The most amazing thing is that NRA seems to have abandoned their gun-owning individual members a long time ago, and now seem only to care about the rights, and profits, of the gun manufacturers and sellers. There is no other explanation for their opposition to background checks, their opposition to tracking gun sellers' inventories, their support for destruction of the records within twenty four hours and above all, their opposition to any restrictions on who can buy guns. Ironically, they always cloak their motives as protection of the rights of law abiding citizens. Yet all these policies they endorse have nothing to do with law abiding citizens and everything to do with selling guns at all  costs, to anyone and everyone. The NRA's favorite argument in favor of guns for law-abiding citizens' access to weapons is to protect themselves from criminals, who will have guns anyhow; an amazingly prescient argument, since the NRA does their best to ensure that those criminals will be able to buy guns whenever they want. It's a logic that benefits only those providing guns. As an interesting comparison, in many even most states, convicted (and even suspected to be convicted) felons lose their right to vote (and those convicted of sexual crimes, even be it urinating in public, can lose all rights to privacy), but they retain their right, or at least their ability to buy guns, in world of "don't ask, don't tell" between buyer and seller.

I concede that if the most radical of gun control proponents had their way, there would be a lot of guns to collect and destroy. On the other hand, almost no one believes that such a sea change is practical, or even necessary; and even fervent believers in gun control such as I know that anything so radical would be tantamount to plunging the nation into chaos and bloodshed, hardly the end result desired. We may not believe in the need for any normal individual to own a gun, or ten, but we see the answer in education, not confiscations. Unfortunately, the most influential voices on the gun rights lobby refuse to accept that reality and either truly believe or cynically profess to believe that their rights to own guns are threatened, and their followers appear to buy into it rather wholeheartedly.

Most control proponents disagree with gun rights believers over the reading of the Second Amendment - indeed, millions of pages have been devoted to the correct interpretation of that one little sentence - but let us leave that argument for another time and grant a universal right to own firearms. Why is it then so impossible to find some common ground, based on common sense? No one, surely, wishes to see more deaths by guns (I would hope) and surely the basic interests of gun owners can be met while still ensuring civic safety in a practical manner; I emphasize practical, since there are some suggestions that the way to safety in schools is either bullet proof vests for the children (talk about a Dystopian scenario) or armed faculty or guards. The single biggest regulation required would cover high capacity gun magazines - does this in fact infringe on the normal gun owner? Would a lack of assault weapons - high rate of fire, high capacity magazines - really affect the vast majority of gun owners, or any legal owners in their professed needs?

To the best of my knowledge there are three main reasons that people own guns, viz. personal defense, hunting and protection against a tyrannical government. In the case of protection, whether in one's home or even for those partisans who claim a right to carry their guns at all times (again a topic that is best left for another time), the most effective weapons are pistols and shotguns. One rarely sees cases of home invasions or muggings deterred by individual with M-16 rifles; even in such cases as homeowners do defend their castles with assault rifles, it seems more like an overkill than a necessity, with the exception, of course, of those trapped in Precinct 13 on that fateful night. My intellectual twin, who couldn't agree less with me on almost any topic under the sun, is possibly the only hunter I know who claims to need an assault rifle to hunt hogs, but most other hunters seem to prefer weapons that are better at killing animals than human beings, or in other words, hunting rifles or shotguns; and I'm almost certain that Dick Cheney's hunting partners, like Harry Whittington, are strongly opposed to hunting with assault rifles.

Which brings us to the last reason for owning weapons. the one often touted by those on the far edges of the political spectrum: citizens need their guns to protect themselves from the tyranny of the government. This latest idea has been trotted out on Fox TV recently, suggesting that it is the new normal on the rightwing, but few of those advocating this position seem to really think through the argument. Let us set aside for a moment the very great differences between the times in which the Constitution was framed and the world we live in today - the men who wrote that document lived in a world of muskets, not automatic rifles. Perhaps even more importantly, the framers envisioned a citizen militia for national defense, and did not support the invention of a permanent professional army - again, an idea that was reasonable in the days it was written, but long since overtaken by a changing world. But let us set aside these lacunae, and focus only on the practical aspects of opposing the potential tyranny of the government in today's world. Let us even entertain, for academic purposes, the suspicion of the government, so rampant amongst owners of assault rifles and like weapons. Let us pretend that the government is in fact out to usurp our liberties and that we need to fight back against tyranny, even though I see no credible evidence of this happening in the way envisioned by these partisans. The fact is that weapons alone, even the powerful semi-automatic rifles available to everyone today, are far less important in withstanding State repression than their owners believe. Not only is the State (any functioning country really) possessed of far greater firepower than its civilians could muster - especially when the State in this case commands the might of the US military - but their advantages over would-be resistance fighters really lies in their command and control systems, their organization and dedicated communication networks, and their control over the wider communication systems. This is what has helped the Assad regime retain power in Syria, and that regime's gradual loss of control over those levers of power to their opponents is leading to their demise. It is why governments from Iran to Egypt have countered popular protests with a shut down of the internet and other public communications, and their successes in those endeavors have determined the success or failure of the protests against them.

Freedom must be protected, even in the freest of societies, but it is not defended with guns or swords. Those who think that they can take on the government with their personal weapons are fooling themselves - of course, most of those who seek to defend themselves against their government in the United States are living in an illusory world already. They suspect their government of sinister motives where none exist, and close their eyes to the actual constraints upon their freedom. These patriots fear the jack-booted minions of the government, seeking to tear their guns from them, when the real weapon of freedom is information. The power to know the truth of the workings of our government is the real shield against government tyranny, the ability to mobilize public opinion, share ideas and information is our real defense against a government's attempt to usurp our rights. Guns, especially in the hands of a disorganized mob, are of no avail and would do more harm than good, while a free press and open channels of communication are what keep our government servants, not masters of the citizenry.

Governments, especially tyrannical ones but even democratic ones, may like to keep their population's access to weapons limited, but they do not fear their armed citizens; they only fear informed and questioning citizenry. It is no coincidence that governments, everywhere, seek to draw a curtain over their actions and keep their secrets from the people they purport to serve. Guns do not compel transparency in governments, but ceaseless vigilance by citizens and the Fourth Estate does. A study of access to weapons in the populations of different nations showed no great co-relation between weapons and freedom. The USA leads the world in gun ownership, and staunchly democratic and liberal nations like Switzerland rank up there with it; however so do nations like Iraq, even under Saddam Hussein, Afghanistan and Somalia, which leave a lot to be desired by way of liberty. Nations like Japan enjoy the same level of freedom without a high percentage of armed citizens. Perhaps most telling in the argument regarding the importance of guns to liberty are the cases of Libya, Egypt and Tunisia - nations that have risen against dictators. Libya had plenty of weapons in the hands of its people, yet the forces of the state rapidly crushed the local militias and were stopped only by the more powerful air forces of Europe and the US. By contrast, Tunisia, and to a lesser extent Egypt had very low numbers of armed citizens, but overthrew their dictatorial governments through largely peaceful mobilization of huge swaths of the the population. Guns played next to no role in overthrowing the tyrants, while information and communication was king.

In conclusion, I may say that I see no overwhelming need for citizens to own the kind of assault weapons that so many gun proponents demand as a right. I'll concede that they may have a Constitutional right to weapons even (though I have never bought into that narrow reading of the Second Amendment) but if they see their weapons as protecting their freedom, they delude themselves. There has been no attempt to reduce the proliferation of guns in decades, while numerous rules have greatly expanded access to powerful weapons. The continued paranoia about government tyranny in the face of all facts would be merely pathetic, except that it has also placed this country far ahead of the rest of the world in every category of gun related violence and death. Guns may be cool to shoot, and I cannot help but wonder if in the case of military-style assault weapons, they also help the owners compensate for other shortcomings and feelings of inadequacy. But given the number of avoidable deaths, is the price too high?