Las Vegas

I feel like I have to start with a disclaimer that I don't hate guns.  I don't mind that people own guns. I've been shooting and it's fun, right? I enjoy it.  Not enough to buy my own guns, but I understand why some folks do spend the time and money on it.

I also feel strongly that right now is absolutely the right time to talk about our national problem with guns. It's not politicization of a tragedy, it's just that the tragedy is a very visceral example of the intersection of the American attitude about guns and the law of large numbers.  And that’s exactly what we need to talk about. Jimmy Kimmel made a great point in his very moving monologue after the shooting.  20-30 years ago there was a hotel fire in California that killed many people.  A few months later there was another one.  Nobody argued that it wasn't the time to politicize a tragedy.  Instead, the California legislature investigated the issue, identified the problems, drafted a fire code and there hasn't been a similar tragedy since.

It is absurd, especially in the shadow of the tragedy to try and claim that there is no problem. The claim "but those guns are already illegal. There is no regulatory change that can be made," That's just not acceptable.  Any politician who makes that argument is just too lazy to do his job.

So the law of large numbers ... for those who may not know, it's a cool math thing that allows us to derive probabilities from statistics. A simple example is rolling two dice. The likelihood of getting snake eyes is a simple to calculate 1/36.  Yet anyone who has played Settlers of Catan can tell you over the course of a typical game (approximately 60 - 80 rolls) you may not get the expected 1 - 2 2s. You may get 0. Or 5.  That's random statistics. 

However, if you roll the dice 36,000 times, you will get very close to 1000 2s.  Maybe not exactly 1000, but very close to the calculable 1/36.  And even closer to 1/36 if you roll the dice 360,000 times.

The inverse is that if you want to know a probability that is not so easily calculable as dice rolls, such as the likelihood someone will order pineapple on a pizza or that an accident will occur at an intersection, you can look at a large number of test cases and approximate those probabilities. Use them to stock a restaurant correctly, or build roundabouts in the right places.

A corollary to the law of large numbers is that if there is any chance something may happen, then if you perform enough tests, it eventually will happen. No matter how small the probability.  Eventually someone will ask for sardines on his pizza.  Eventually an accident will occur at any corner.  I mean, someone wins the lottery, right?

The intersection of the law of large numbers and American attitudes about guns is that it is too easy to get guns in America. We have proliferated them far too broadly. It is a certainty that eventually a crazy man is going to shoot up a country festival.  Or a baseball field.  Or a school.  And sure, theoretically, those things could happen even with strong regulations ... but it is far less likely and would be far less common and that is worthwhile.

I strongly believe we need to stem the flow of firearms. They should be harder to acquire.  It should require background checks, waiting periods, licensing and registration.  Certain types of firearms should simply not be legal to sell to civilians.

More than just an issue of gun numbers, though, we need to confront our attitude about guns.  We have let the NRA define the debate and that is a mistake.  They are not some valiant third party protecting our 2nd amendment rights.  They are a lobbying organization for the firearm industry.  They're not fighting for liberty or personal security, they are fighting to sell as many guns as possible.

One thing the NRA isn't lying about, though, is that guns don't kill people, people do, right? And then my entire life the NRA has been telling us that it is okay to shoot people. In fact, you should carry a gun with you in case you need to.  That's abhorrent. It is never good to shoot someone. It always, regardless of circumstances, means something is going tragically wrong. It should be treated as such. Not celebrated.

Culpability for this shooting, the one in Virginia, Sandy Hook, all of these mass shootings, in some measure lies at the feet of the NRA.  For their tireless work to inundate the USA with large numbers of firearms, every one of which is a test, "is this the crazy man that will go on a shooting rampage?" For their constant, callous devaluation of human life.  For pushing the propaganda that guns are a legitimate answer ... to crime, to social problems, to anything.

I don't know what the answer is.  I suspect there is no single simple answer.  But I strongly believe the answer needs to include those two elements. Fewer guns.  Confronting our NRA attitude about guns.

Thoughts on Firearms in the Aftermath of the Pulse Shootings

I have a friend who posted the following on Facebook:

I imagine the conversation would go more like

Liberal: We should ban *assault* weapons.
Conservative: There is no such thing.
End of civil discussion.

That's a problem.  I mean, I think the vast majority of us agree on the extremes.  Like, (1) maybe we can agree it's okay to own a rifle for hunting or recreational shooting, and (2) maybe we can agree private citizens shouldn't be able to purchase machine guns. Between the extremes, it's just a matter of drawing lines.  What level of lethality should be legal?  It's hard to get anywhere in that debate when we can't even agree on what to call the line.  Or even worse, we dig in our heels and think the others stupid for disagreeing with us.

Personally, I think the line should be closer to the less lethal extreme than the more lethal.  As in, I'd like to see more regulations.  I think you should need a license to own a firearm, getting a license should require a background check and when you purchase a firearm you should be required to register it.  You should be required to store it securely and separately from its ammo.

I think we should ban the sale of assault weapons.  I realize that is not a technical firearm term ... but it can be given a legal definition.  Contrary to the NRA bluster about "banning guns because they look scary", the Brady Bill actually did a good job of defining "assault weapon".  It identified parts of a firearm that are designed to help it shoot more targets, more quickly and more accurately.  If any given firearm, no matter what it's marketed as, had a certain number of those qualities, it was an assault weapon as defined by law. Not because it "looked scary", but because it was designed to be more deadly.

I don't like that we can carry firearms around in public.  Accidents happen.  People execute poor judgement.  It's not that I object to someone having a gun on hand when a murderer shows up at the bar.  I object to people bringing guns there every other night.  I mean, look at the context of a bar; patrons are engaged in highly emotional, high stake, alcohol infused mating rituals.  I believe it's perfectly reasonable to ask bar-going folks to leave their guns at home.

But even not talking about bars, I don't feel safer knowing the people around me have guns.  At the store, I don't know most of the people walking through the aisles with me.  Probably they're mentally stable, probably they'll execute sound judgement, probably their firearm will not discharge accidentally.  But if their gun was at home there would be a 0% chance that their mental state or judgement or stupid accident would get someone in the store shot.  It may be that carrying a gun around in public, the chance of an incident is very small, but it's greater than zero.  And greater than zero is significantly different from zero.

I don't actually dislike guns.  I've been shooting.  It was fun.  I didn't enjoy it so much that I'm willing to spend much money on it to buy my own guns or do it very often.  But I understand why someone would enjoy it.  I don't object to gun ownership, but I think it would be reasonable to regulate it more than we do.

However, while I do believe that stricter regulations would decrease the number of killings in the USA, and that's worthwhile, I also believe more regulation just treats the symptoms of our real problem.  The real problem America has with guns is our attitude.  We actually believe they are a legitimate way to deal with crime.  We think it's okay to kill or threaten to kill someone who is stealing our property.  We think showing someone that we have a gun will diffuse a potentially violent situation.  We think there is so much violent crime that we need guns to protect ourselves.  At least, given the state of gun laws in our country, those seem to be the majority opinions.  I think that's a shame.

Zimmerman part 2

Did Trayvon Martin have the right to stand his ground? Or does that only apply if you're holding a gun?

Trayvon Martin should have been able to walk down a neighborhood street unmolested. It was wrong of George Zimmerman to tail him. It was wrong of Zimmerman to confront him. Zimmerman went out of his way to let Martin know, "hey, you're not welcome here." In the world according to Jack, a guy like that deserves a good ass-whuppin'. If he shoots someone to death for giving him the ass-whuppin' he deserves, he should go to prison.

Unfortunately, George Zimmerman didn't shoot Trayvon Martin in Jack's world. He shot him Florida where, apparently, it is legal to start an altercation and if it doesn't go down like you imagined it in your head, you can kill the other guy. In fact, maybe you even should kill the other guy. There are several minutes of uncooberated events that ocurred during this altercation. What words were exchanged? Did Zimmerman approach him with his gun in hand? Did Martin fear for his safety? Who took the first swing? Kind of fortunate for Zimmerman, isn't it, that he's the only person who can answer those questions.

Trayvon Martin did a brave thing when he stood up to George Zimmerman. Not necessarily a smart thing, being that he was an unarmed teenager standing up to an armed adult, but a brave thing. I guess I've never heard anyone accuse adolescent young men of having too much common sense, right? If anyone stood his ground that night, though, it was Trayvon Martin who had every right to be out on that street, who was doing nothing wrong, nothing even out of the ordinary and yet found himself harrassed by an intolerant, self righteous prick.

Consider this about stand your ground firearm laws. If a state wants to put a man to death it has to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the man has already committed a murder. Under stand your ground laws, any one of us can sentence a man to die based on what we suspect he might do in the near future. It's like some post-apocalyptic comic book scenario. Every citizen is commissioned as judge, jury, executioner, and can make their judgements based on some sort of extrasensory clairvoyance.

From what I understand of the events that ocurred that night, the jury probably made the correct legal decision. That doesn't lend even an ounce of legitimacy to what happened, though. It merely illustrates just how bad stand your ground laws are. This was the nightmare scenario. George Zimmerman, legally, got away with murder.

Gun Control Soap Box

I've got to admit, I don't think a background check should be performed on every gun sale. I mean, I understand how it could be a hassle for small, private transactions. Sometimes it really isn't worth it. If I just want to sell an hunting rifle I inherited to my neighbor, for example. That should be a simple, private transaction.

No, I think that instead, background checks should be done when you get your license to use a firearm. Then you simply produce the license when you register any firarm you purchase and, voila, you have verified that you already passed the background check.

You know, there have been a couple of high profile incidents recently that demonstrate the NRA isn't always lying. They make the argument that if an evil person wants to hurt people, he will. Regardless of access to firearms. He will grab a knife or a hammer or a car or whatever he can to use as a weapon and he will hurt people. Incidents last week when a guy drove his car into a Wal-Mart in California and this week at a community college in Texas demonstrate the truth in that.

In both cases people were severely injured. They were serious crimes and the perpetrators should face serious criminal penalties. It should be noted, though, that in neither case was anyone killed. I would argue that if the criminals had brought a gun, that would likely be different. I understand that's not necessarily true. I don't have a crystal ball, "would have beens" and "could have beens" are always, really, just conjecture. However, given the many, many documented incidents of gun violence, I feel pretty safe saying that criminals' access to guns, or lack thereof, makes a significant difference in their crimes. And I hate, hate, hate the NRA for how hard it works to make it easy for anyone, anyone, to get almost any type of gun and take it anywhere they want.

Joe Biden is absolutely right. Bring the gun control legislation to a vote. Make legislators put their official yay or nay on the bills in question and then hammer the bejeebers out of them over it when they come up for reelection. Air commercials with pictures of kids from Sandy Hook next to the plots where they're buried and ask the question, "How did your legislator respond?"