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A friend of mine from Washington DC wrote up a funny bit:
From the minutes of the meeting:
“Ok, folks, dangerous terrorists have vowed to kill us. We need ideas on protecting people. Go!”
“We could x-ray people’s shoes at airports?”
“Good! Keep ’em coming!”
We could also make sure no one has full-sized bottles of shampoo when they fly.”
“Excellent! What else?”
“Ooh! We could indiscriminately scoop up vast amounts of people’s digital data; it would violate their privacy and we’d have no hope of using it effectively, but better safe that sorry, amirite?”
“Definitely! Anything else?”
“Well…just thinking outside the box here…we could do something to keep them from getting the weapons they would use to kill us…”
[Stony silence; no one makes eye contact]
“Right, so, how about endless, drone-based surveillance of everyone? Too much?”
“Now that’s what I’m TALKIN” about!”
All in favor say aye…
This early morning’s massacre in the other major Orange County, with the other U.S. Disney Theme Park — at the Orlando LGBT Bar named “Pulse” — brought together the three main “culture war” themes from Presidential election years past: “God, gays, and guns.”
- “God”: the killer was a Muslim who asserted, in a 9-1-1 call just prior to the massacre of over 100 people (of whom 50 have thus far died ), sworn allegiance to the leader of ISIS/ISIL/IS/Daesh. (I’ll use the term “Daesh” here.) Donald Trump literally took credit for predicting such a disaster.
Well, big whoop. If you want to go out in a blaze of blood-spattered glory these days, and you’re even a non-observant Muslim, you can claim fealty to Daesh and be famous post-mortem. Daesh will cooperate, claiming credit after the fact whether they knew of it in advance or (as likely here) not. Thus your violent misanthropic assholery will get a political gloss that detracts from the fact that you’re simply a violent misanthropic asshole who found a PR angle. And the killer was born here to an Afghan immigrant, raising the question for Trump of whether he not only wants to keep Muslim immigrants from the country but their home-born-and-raised children as well. To the extent that religion is implicated, it is the cultural conservatism that binds the most orthodox religious factions — among the Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, and Pagan faiths as well, as well as some non-religious creeds — for which cultural heterodoxy like openly celebrated homosexuality is a grave affront. The shooter was virtually guaranteed to be a homophobe of some stripe, but not any particular religious brand of one.
- “Gays”: most of the targets were gay men, who according to the distraught father may have been targeted because the shooter was affronted at seeing two men kissing, a claim that others dispute.
I’m going to presume that no one willing to write here under their own name, at least, will breathe a public sigh of relief that some other group, some group to which they do not (publicly) belong, was targeted rather than stolid heterosexual them. But that targeting is not lost on anyone, is it? Here’s the thing, most readers — this didn’t happen to “People Like You.” You were not being terrorized, which we can roughly define as facing threats either to get you to do something or because of the characteristics you share with others. As with the attacks on Paris, the victims were chosen for their being at least slightly counter-cultural: those attending an alternative rock concert, those sitting in chichi coffeehouses, and now those spending late nights in gay bars. And so if you cannot see it as terrorism not against non-Muslims — who knows, really, if there were any Muslims in the bar — but specifically against LBGTs — then you’re either not paying attention or not willing to follow your attention to its logical conclusion. While the specific religion of the killer was incidental, the sexual orientation of his targets was not.
- “Guns”: and this takes us to my friend’s imaginary government meeting with which I began. If we’re serious about our security, and by “our” I mean most of all the “soft” targets appealing to the reactionary temperament, then we have to understand that the means of this killing was not incidental to the scope of the carnage. Yes, a bomb could have done much the same, and probably an arson fire as well. But There’s Something About Guns.
Already we see quibbling everywhere — that the AR-15 used in this attack (and a Newtown, and at Aurora, and at …) was not an “assault rifle” because it was not an automatic weapon. Yes — and no. Yes, there’s no such technical category of firearms as “assault rifle,” so it’s fair to say that it was not one. No, because “assault rifle” was a marketing term made up by firearms vendors to sell this very kind of weapon. I agree that we should get rid of the meaningless term “assault rife” — I’ll agree to do it on behalf of all liberals if the industry and fans will give it up in their marketing and fandom, which they won’t — and talk about a more scientific category: weapons that have the ability to create more than a given level of Atmospheric Density of Accelerated Metal in a given place. In other words: how many bullets, how many shell fragments, can one get into the air within a given space at a given time?
One nice thing about this notion is that it works for non-nuclear or incendiary or purely concussive explosives as well: a bomb and a grenade, can be measured by the same metric. One could even adapt it to apply to knives, maces, throwing stars, and wrecking balls.
How much matter, accelerated to the point where it can puncture or shatter flesh and bone, can one get into the air within a given space at once?
That — with some tweaks to the formula, I’m sure — is what the argument is really about. A handgun is an extremely dangerous machine, but it will add fewer bodies to the death toll than an AR-15. And a knife will do less than a handgun. An an AR-15 with a standard magazine that takes time to reload will do less than one with an extended magazine, or any device that facilitates quick shifting between them.
Q: How many shooters are taken down while they are reloading?
A: Not enough of them, and not quickly enough.
For a liberal anti-gun-violence activist, I’m relatively tolerant of guns. Whether the Second Amendment was intended to provide for it or not — and it wasn’t, being intended to protect the ability of slave states to press their citizens into militias to go capture runaway slaves, but I think that the Heller v. D.C. decision recognized one of those “penumbral rights” assured by the Ninth Amendment just as much as Griswold v. Connecticut and its forebears did for the right of personal privacy — I think that the notion of a constitutional right to firearms for personal protection of the home based on the Second, Third, Fourth, and Ninth Amendments is probably correct. But there has to be a limit — as there is with the First Amendment as it has been applied (and don’t even get me started on the Fourth Amendment) — and when we discuss that limit we should use some metric like the one proposed above.
You want to be able to kill people, at home or in public? OK — let’s figure out how many people you think you should need to be able to kill, and how quickly, and work backwards from there.
And if you’re one of those who identifies only with the prospective shooters, rather than the victims, of the privatization of doling out death, then maybe your opinion doesn’t matter quite as much as others. Sorry to be blunt, but at least I wouldn’t kill you over it.
Although the context is different, the specter of the Japanese internment camps arises if Trump’s logic regarding Muslims prevails.
Repeating the Swedish experience is hardly preferable. (I omitted “learning from it” because the US seems to steadfastly insist on only learning, if at all, from its OWN mistakes. )
https://youtu.be/UoUjJKXZjRY
The Swedish, or German, or French, or Italian, and let’s add the Greek experience is very different than the internment camps.
Over 700 migrants recently drowned in the Mediterranean. Why are these people desperately leaving their countries of origin?
Why are neighbors complaining about STRs in Anaheim ?
STR is a real estate business model. Immigration and its impact on the receiving countries is an outcome of complex policy decisions, like invading Iraq. The Swedish experience in your links displays a Jean Le Pen/ Trump type of interpretation.
Does that then invalidate the experience of those involved? The commonality between the two being not their abstract definitions, but that both groups are victims of unilateral action by government(s) which ignored even any consideration of consequence, to me because it cared as little for/about them as they do for it. As opposed to the current imposition of high-volume, non-prepared, non-cultural assimilation ready resettlement unilaterally on uninformed communities (both cases) I think Internment camps SHOULD be considered, ONLY with the proviso they be located on the GROUNDS of the White House, Pentagon, and Congress, (the unilateral initiators) (and whatever building houses the Security Council, if not those) and situated BETWEEN those buildings and their associated parking, such that it requires occupants to travel twice daily through their actions’ consequences, heretofore removed from their consciousness, to close the loop instead of deflecting the end “elsewhere”. Wasn’t it that kind of eventual awareness that contributed to (at least) limited local success, moving the Board of Supervisors to action on homeless assistance?
Before anyone starts, let’s get some things out of the way:
– Typo: “public sign of relief” in your fifth paragraph
– Please google “clip” and “magazine”. They are two different things.
– Likewise “shrapnel”, named after its inventor. Hasn’t been used much since the early 20th century, as mentioned in one of my old language rants:
https://kitchenmudge.wordpress.com/2011/08/17/hes-doing-that-again/
Fixed — thanks.
*Not really…..first off a Hand Grenade or IED will certainly kill more folks than any known so-called Assault Rifle…let alone Firearm of any description. 2ndly, the firearm does not pull the trigger all by itself. Some nutcase has to pull the trigger, over and over and over and over again. Then they have to knowingly reload…..and do that all over again. The firearm kills NO ONE. The Shooter kills everyone! If the shooter was able to utilize 100 single shot rifles and took each one and killed a person with each shot…..would you feel any better that you did everything in your power to stop firearm violence? How about just asking the Legislature to ask for Mandatory Drug Testing for every New Firearm purchase or transfer through a Federally Firearm Licensed Dealer? Does that really offend you that much? Manteen was doing depression drugs and would not have qualified to buy either firearm had this law been in place. Wake up a magazine with 8 or 100 rounds does not fire itself. It takes the nutcase behind the trigger to do that.
“. .first off a Hand Grenade or IED will certainly kill more folks than any known so-called Assault Rifle…”
And a knife will certainly kill fewer than an assault rifle.
You don’t know SHIT about guns – well you are correct in that there is no specific technical definition/specification of an “assault rifle.” Gun entusiasts HATE the term “assault rifle.” No shooter uses that term in the use or in the promotion of guns as you incorrectly infer. Those types of guns are referred to as “sporting rifles” or long guns.
How much will you give me if I can find an ad from a manufacturer that invites purchase of “assault rifles.”
No need to sputter as you reply; that a given.
Of course there are a few outliers – but overall “assault rifle – assault weapon” are not used by the shooting sports public or manufacturers.
Think about it ……
Just because they don’t like those terms doesn’t mean they aren’t essentially accurate.
I am just trying to prove Diamond wrong on the use of the term dipwad – now butt out.
And I’m the prick.
Prick, heal thyself.
^^^ ftw
The term was INTRODUCED by gun merchants as a marketing phrase. That they’ve disavowed it since is irrelevant. One would think that you’d have learned this lesson with the history of “teabaggers.”
*Target Practice….ever heard of it? People go out to the range all the time and into the desert quite a bunch to plunk cans, bottles, old tires, old rusted fenders and occasionally a prairie dog of two. Three reasons other than hunting: (1) Self Defense (2) Competitive Shooting Events and (3) Target Practice. Firearms are not designed solely to kill something. That act requires INTENT, Desire to take life and sometimes – that lacks a moral or ethical compass. It may also require a twisted mind through drugs, deep depression or mental derangement. It does not matter if a firearm can utilize a eight round, 30 round or 100 round magazine – it only takes ONE bullet to kill someone. Load up a pickup truck with 100 muzzle loaders……each one fire ONE Round….do we have you worried yet?
*Yes – all of that.
Check out this NRA article & let me know if the NRA approves of the use of the terms “assault weapon – assault rifle.” Hint … they don’t.
https://www.nraila.org/issues/assault-weapons-and-semi-automatic-firearms/
And this from the gun control lobby – they like those terms.
[A]ssault weapons . . . will . . . strengthen the handgun restriction lobby . . . . [H]andgun restriction consistently remains a non-issue with the vast majority of legislators, the press, and public. . . . Assault weapons . . . are a new topic. The weapons’ menacing looks, coupled with the public’s confusion over fully automatic machine guns versus semi-automatic assault weapons—anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun—can only increase the chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons. . . . Efforts to restrict assault weapons are more likely to succeed than those to restrict handguns.
Gun manufacturers don’t really need to call them “assault weapons.” Instead, they can market them with language like “battle-proven core”
and
“…shares many features with its combat proven brother…”
How very sporting of them!
http://www.colt.com/Catalog/Rifles/LE6920-Series
http://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2016/06/13/maker-assault-weapon-reportedly-used-orlando-massacre-sponsors-nra-news-show-called-defending-our/210894
Let’s not feed the beast of ignorance here. The term originated after WWII to distinguish a new class of weapon between the battle rifle and sub machine gun.
This whole marketing nonsense is a red herring.
Anyway, we’re hoping to bring a series of pieces dedicated to firearm regs in the next couple weeks. Stay tuned.
“This whole marketing nonsense is a red herring.”
It seems to have some importance to Diamond.
Diamond: “I agree that we should get rid of the meaningless term “assault rife” — I’ll agree to do it on behalf of all liberals if the industry and fans will give it up in their marketing and fandom, which they won’t”
In an overwhelming repudiation of the term – neither the “industry or fans” – for many years have referred to sporting rifles, long guns, semi-automatic rifles as “assault rifles.” So whatcha gonna do to live up to your word Diamond?
What category term would you use to apply to those weapons as a group? (That doesn’t really affect my argument; I just want to know if you have an answer.)
If we agree that the term “assault rifle” has been used to refer to semi-automatic rifles like an AR-15, whether modified to rip through a magazine automatically or not, then objecting to the term seems pretty pointless — but I’ll do it as a courtesy. Just tell me what category terms to use for such sorts of weapons instead.
He calls them “sporting rifles.” LOL
How about if we go with “Combat-Proven Sporting Rifles”? Haha!
Crap I won ! – and you grant me that. I don’t care what you call them – proceed.
You won?
What is this, sixth grade?
Remedial, if so.
As I said, I avoid the use of the term “assault rifles” as a courtesy, specifically to avoid this very argument with crater-brains like junior. I don’t think that it’s WRONG to use the term, as it was popularized (whether or not coined) by gun manufacturers themselves. I just avoid it because it makes discussion more difficult.
But the vision of junior pumping his fists in the air to celebrate a victory by securing a concession that I had made at the outset is just SO DARLING that I don’t have the heart to quibble. He won! He won!
That is not what you said Mr. Shitforbrains.
“.. the vision of junior pumping his fists in the air to celebrate a victory by securing a concession that I had made at the outset is just SO DARLING ..”
You made no such concession at the outset.
“The Atmospheric Density of Accelerated Matter”
You mean like the shit you throw against the wall to see if it sticks?
Please find something else to do.
California has some of the toughest gun laws in our country. We don’t need anymore restrictions except one: Mandatory Drug Testing for every New Firearm Purchase of Transfer and required through an FFL Dealer and an administered NIH Litmus Test for Psychotropics, Opioids, Oxycotin and of course all the illegal drugs. The Colorado Highway Patrol is already using NIH Litmus testing for Marijuana Abuse and getting massive convictions. The Firearm Drug Testing is a no brainer, except that the Big Pharma people are against it…….why? The chilling effect on those with severe depression and domestic violence and PTSD and more. Either we are going to fix the problem or again put a massive band aid on something that certainly doesn’t require bans or restrictive laws which do nothing but penalize the true Law Abiding.
If someone is on Drugs – they are NOT Law Abiding. Olympic Athletes, NCAA and Professional Athletes, ICC Truck Drivers, Rail Engineers, School Bus Drivers, USA and certain International Air Crews – all require Drug Testing. For something that is designed to kill…….what makes sense to you? It would be a simple PASS or FAIL test. If you fail – come back in six months and see if you are clean. Take Drugs – No Firearms. Want Firearms – No Drugs! Pretty simple. How often do we have to beat this horse til someone gets the message?
Was the Orlando shooter on drugs? If not, I think that I see a flaw in your argument.
*Severe Depression….and yes…Drugs. How about Aurora? Drugs! How about West Virginia? Drugs! How about Newtown? Drugs! How about Major Hassan? Drugs! How about………Columbine? Drugs! Start to get the picture?
So you go off drugs, you get them out of your system, then you get your assault weapon.
I think that I see a flaw in your argument.
No. No. No. No. No.
Um, how about San Bernardino ? The shooter got a neighbor to buy the gun for him. How soon we forget. But, continue.
And Newtown. Those were the mother’s guns. And, uh, no drugs;
“The report found no evidence that Lanza had taken drugs or medication that would have affected his behavior…”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Hook_Elementary_School_shooting
Seriously, ‘Ships, get your facts straight before you go shooting from the hip. Pun intended.
” from the lip” would have been a pun. lol.
*Newtown was a Drug issue. The kid was taking mood altering drugs which he quit taking for a week or two. West Virginia – Drugs! Aurora – Drugs! Columbine – Drugs! Major Hassan – Drugs! Sniper Kyle killing – Drugs! How many do we have to bring up? How about South Carolina – Drugs! Just keep counting. San Bernardino – dig into it…..there are Prescription Drugs involved. 30 million people on Opioids and you don’t want drug testing. Right.
If you think the NRA, or 99.9% of the gun-owning public for that matter, is going to get behind denying guns to people taking prescription drugs, YOU are the ones who need some mind-altering drugs.
Never. Gonna. Happen.
Drug test gun owners ? Are we also going to drug test the president ? As Trump would say….” He’s got the best guns.”
It’s been awhile since we had one that would pass.
Which celeb-tard said that his/her First Amendment rights are being violated on account of those exercising their Second Amendment rights? Really ……..
While arguments continue here over weapon terminology, sad news from GB about “Brexit” vote suspension after shooting/stabbing death of Labor MP Jo Cox –
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-36550304
Mr Abdallah said the weapon had “looked handmade” —-
A will finds a way. Possibly reminiscent of the Arizona Giffords shooting, the account reported the area “Swarming with armed police” after the attack as was the infirmary of treatment, but no mention of PRE attack security, Will try and update if found?
Sad indeed. A few similarities to some of our issues and political scenario :
“Our communities have been deeply enhanced by immigration,” she insisted, “be it of Irish Catholics across the constituency or of Muslims from Gujarat in India or from Pakistan, principally from Kashmir. While we celebrate our diversity, what surprises me time and time again as I travel around the constituency is that we are far more united and have far more in common with each other than things that divide us.”
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jun/16/jo-cox-global-aid-worker-to-labour-adviser