More guns, less curriculum revision

I’ve been waiting for this one (although I wrongly suspected that David Kopel was going to be the first to go there).

Well, like the Examiner always says: Guns don’t kill people, liberal do-gooderism kills people.

If you ban guns at university, the only people with guns at university will be criminals. Similarly, if you ban tax evasion for top earners, the only top earners who evade taxes will be criminals. Lucky duckies!

In reality, the question of whether professors should bring their .45s and glock nines to faculty meetings has very little bearing on student safety.

I think the best approach would be a hierarchy of permitted armaments – rather like the mediaeval rules about who could carry what sort of hunting hawk. (Only kings were allowed gyrfalcons, priests could carry sparrowhawks, yeomen could have goshawks, etc.) In the same vein, undergraduates would only be allowed .22 or .177 pistols; a BA would mean elevation to .38 calibre revolvers, an MA would mean automatic pistols would be allowed, a tenure approval would mean the right to carry fully automatic weaponry, and a department head would be given a GE minigun or rocket-propelled grenade.

“In reality, the question of whether professors should bring their .45s and glock nines to faculty meetings has very little bearing on student safety.”

This is true, but trivially true since students do not attend faculty meetings. If we extend the question to the more general one about whether students, faculty, and staff should be permitted to carry handguns on campus (whether at a faculty meeting, classroom, office, or other campus location) it surely has a significant bearing on student safety. In fact, that seems to be the one thing both sides of the argument agree on. Pro-carry folks think it would make students safer, since law-abiding citizens would have effective means of self-defense available to them in the event of a violent attack. Anti-carry folks think it would make students less safe, since 1) people would shoot each when they got angry about things like curriculum changes, bad grades, insults, etc., or 2) people would be harmed by firearms accidents.

Hence, you write that carrying on campus “would definitely raise the stakes for the discussion of whether to revise the Literature Before 1800 requirement of the English major.” Presumably the stakes are raised because there is always the threat of lethal violence if someone disagrees with you. But, this is a silly argument, as I am sure you would agree upon reflection. For starters, there is always the possibility of violence–severe violence–in any disagreement. Any healthy adult is capable of inflicting a lot of damage on another healthy adult, event without having a weapon. It is always true that we could bash one another over the head with chair if we do not like a proposal for a senior capstone course, but people generally don’t do that and so we generally don’t worry about it. If faculty were permitted to carry guns, that would still be the case. Guns would not at all be involved with day-to-day decisions like curriculum changes. The guns would be there for when the uncollegial assistant prof. who is denied tenure decides that her life is over, we will have some chance at defending ourselves and limiting her damage. There is very little in the way of evidence which shows that people who have permits to carry and do so on a regular basis are more likely to harm others. Many people are permitted to carry in their workplaces, and many people carry in public places such as supermarkets, movie theaters, etc., and yet we somehow manage to avoid the “intimidation factor” of guns when we speak to people in those places. The same would happen on college campuses and other gun free zones were they to be opened up to handgun carrying: we would continue to assume that people are not carrying (and most of the time we would be right about that) and would continue to have normal, healthy interactions with them. The difference is that evil people planning to go on a shooting spree will have to work harder to find a soft target — schools and malls would not be as safe and easy to hit.

great suggestion, ajay. then, instead of my cv i could just show off my gun-safe.

future hiring deliberations:

“well, he carried a rim-fire at harvard, but then wound up taking a webley from oxford. all very impressive, i suppose, but our next candidate got her sig-sauer from geneva, as well as a heckler-koch from göttingen, and i think you’ll have to agree that that has more stopping power.”

6- if there would have been a ski-masked attack, the non-tenured professor would’ve clearly been able to stick it to them ;-(

“But it would definitely raise the stakes for the discussion of whether to revise the Literature Before 1800 requirement of the English major.”

:):)

16: see 8. Faculty members were allowed to bring weapons on to campus. They just didn’t do so. Therefore, permitting the carriage of firearms is not enough to deter this sort of shooting. You’d have to make it compulsory… and wouldn’t that be fun.

But, this is a silly argument, as I am sure you would agree upon reflection.

And bearing in mind that I am armed.

David: is there any situation where I could falsify the hypothesis that the answer is more guns? I say this because it appears that the NRA crowd here in the USA appear to take a position like this: For any situation, the problem is not enough options for people to kill one another at short notice.

I prefer creating environments where it’s harder to kill people, counter-intuitive though that may be.

so wait: is this the pro-gun argument?
1) without guns there is some probability, admittedly minuscule, that someone will use a very cumbersome and indirect means to inflict damage on a someone else who can’t side-step a swung chair;
2) therefore, we should increase the probability that more people will use effortless and effective means to murder multiple people who can’t dodge bullets.

is that really it? if there’s a small positive risk, then it’s okay to multiply that risk? is that really how you reason about risk in the rest of your life?

some people still die in car accidents even when buckled up, so i’m buying a convertible and getting rid of the belts, airbags, and brake-pedal?

we can’t kill all the pathogens in our environment, so we might as well eat shit?

cause unless that’s the general principle, then it seems like all this stuff about “there is always the possibility of violence… we could bash one another over the head with chairs” is just flagrant misdirection.

I am a department chair, and no one has ever bashed anyone over the head with me. I’m more worried about guns, but I haven’t seen any of those at meetings either.

As someone who was, quite literally but not terribly seriously,* “attacked” in a department meeting by an angry colleague who lost his cool and thankfully toppled a chair over instead of thinking to use it on my head, I can assert how glad I am that people don’t and can’t carry lethal weapons to university.

I imagine that the number of incidents of, for example, punches and kicks being thrown in faculty meetings are quite nontrivial, and that at least some of these incidents could have become shooting sprees if the participants were armed.

*I just ended up with the pitcher of water splashed in my general direction. It was inexplicable, and later apologized for as an overreaction that was basically a consequence of some kind of personal troubles/stressors at home that had nothing to do with me. But that’s exactly the kind of scenario that, when paired with a lethal weapon, could have been horrifying.

the fear that others are packing heat does not deter me from drawing; it deters me from drawing *second*. if they’re armed too, then you have *got* to shoot first; you may not have a second chance.

as don rumsfeld taught us, you have to lean forward; start firing *before* they have a chance to draw their own guns or disarm you of yours.

and since gunplay is often the result of heated verbal exchanges, it’s probably prudent to start firing before they start talking, too.

Also, I think this post by Yglesias speaks to this circumstance quite well:

US [anti-terrorism] policy, by contrast [to India], is dominated by hysteria, moralism, and a self-defeating quest for absolute security.

As is the policy of universal heat-packing!

Last time I checked, zero point zero percent of campus law enforcement officials want concealed carry on campus. Why is that?

permitting the carriage of firearms is not enough to deter this sort of shooting. You’d have to make it compulsory

I wonder how the insurance rates would react. You can generally trust actuaries to assess death risks with some degree of rationality. Imagine if a college saw a large spike (or decrease) in its liability insurance premiums as a result of a change in firearms policy.

(I’m avoiding commenting on the increased rates of successful suicide attempts when people have guns in the house, because I haven’t seen any data on whether access to roommates’ or colleagues’ guns similarly increases the rate of successful suicide attempts on a college campus. Anyone know?)

LOL, er, krawkrawkraw!

I say: give these people guns!

So clearly the reason my comments still go to moderation every time after years is I’m not carrying to this blog.

The solution is obvious: Prof. Bishop’s childhood home didn’t allow all its members to carry guns. Her brother might be alive today had he been packing. Or perhaps her father or mother could have gunned her down before she killed him.

Talbott seems to think it’s a devastating rebuttal to Prof. Berube to point out that even if guns were commonly carried on campus, they would not be used.

Why do you want guns carried on campus again, if not to use them?

“Do you really want to give the most erratic and unstable faculty members a bunch of firearms (say, a sig-sauer from geneva and a heckler-koch from göttingen), safe in the faith that (a) most of the time they won’t use ‘em and (b) even if they do, we sane people will be able to gun them down before (b1) they get us or (b2) the dead/wounded toll climbs unacceptably high?”

Because laws banning guns at faculty meeting are going to keep the most erratic and unstable faculty members from bringing them if they want to?

Do you really want to give the most erratic and unstable faculty members a bunch of firearms (say, a sig-sauer from geneva and a heckler-koch from göttingen), safe in the faith that (a) most of the time they won’t use ‘em and (b) even if they do, we sane people will be able to gun them down before (b1) they get us or (b2) the dead/wounded toll climbs unacceptably high?

First off, I have to admit that I am pretty surprised to find out how concerned people are about erratic and unstable faculty members. I would have thought that college and university faculty members would have been among the sanest people in the country, and that departments would generally have a fair amount of choice among non-erratic and stable persons in their hiring decisions. It seems to me that if they are genuinely erratic and unstable then they are not going to abide by staff handbooks which forbid the carrying of weapons — that is certainly what happened in this case. The school had a policy which forbid faculty to carry guns on campus — the shooter ignored that policy. We didn’t have to “give” this faculty member any guns, she went out and got one herself and brought it onto campus, despite the rules against it. Further, if you have someone who is unstable or who threatens you, you should notify the police, no?

In general, the real question is how significant a rise in impulse shootings we would have if we allowed people with permits to carry on campus — would this rise outweigh the self-defense and 3rd party innocent defense benefits that would come from having more permitted carriers . I remain unconvinced that impulse shootings would skyrocket, despite the stories of apparently violent faculty meetings. People with permits don’t engage in impulse shootings off campus, and I see no reason to think faculty meetings are more intense than interactions off campus.

If we did allow faculty and students to carry on campus (with permits, of course), that would not at all make me “safe in the faith that…we sane people will be able to gun them down before (b1) they get us or (b2) the dead/wounded toll climbs unacceptably high.” I wouldn’t feel “safe in the faith” at all. What I would think is that any students or faculty in the room who were armed would at least have a chance to defend their own lives and the lives of other around them with effective means.

Regardless of how you answer that question, I still don’t see that guns in faculty meetings have anything to do with campus safety. You want students to feel safer about the prospects or stopping a serial shooter after the Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois incidents (and why does everyone forget about Northern Illinois?), arm the campus police.

I have to admit I am not following your first line here. Surely faculty meetings are part of what go on on campus and hence are part of what concerns campus safety, aren’t they? Perhaps there is not much in the way of student safety involved in that question, but it would still be part of campus safety.

Your final suggestion that we arm campus police seems like a good one…except that campus police at both Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois University were already armed. It seems that the police cannot be everywhere at once.

16: see 8. Faculty members were allowed to bring weapons on to campus. They just didn’t do so.

Check again — there was a staff p0licy against carrying weapons.

On the other hand, I personally know of several incidents in faculty meetings (official and impromptu) of physically threatening behavior, some of which crossed the line into assault. Guns are easy to use: that’s what they’re good for.

Yes, it’s possible that my less stable colleagues and students might own firearms already. But I don’t want anything to make that more likely.

Again, the question is whether the lives saved from having guns for self defense would outweigh any lives lost from impromptu shootings. I understand your argument, but it seems to me that a) in many cases where we are mad at someone and would hit them we still would not kill them, and b) if you were correct then there would be a lot of relatively normal folks off campus who engage in impromptu shootings. If we reach a point in society where these impulse shootings become far more commonplace and deadly than premeditated shootings then I would grant the argument a lot more weight. As it is now, in states like Virginia and Alabama there are a lot of people who have a permit and carry on a daily basis and do not shoot anybody. If faculty, staff, and students were allowed to do the same I think the same thing would hold true for them. During the past 30 years states around the US have liberalized their carrying policies dramatically — this liberalizing has not resulted a radical rise in impulse shootings that one would expect if you were correct.

If you want to argue that faculty members are more unstable, impulsive, and reckless than average citizens I would have to admit that is a novel argument to me.

Here’s an idea, though, since faculty meetings are apparently places which are highly dangerous — each department can purchase a metal detector, and as people enter the room for the faculty meeting they can pass through/get wanded by the metal detector. This way faculty will not have access to guns at the moment of their passion. Honestly, that would at least give you more peace of mind the unstable person is not already carrying a handgun — something which given the recent shooting none of us can take for granted.

David: is there any situation where I could falsify the hypothesis that the answer is more guns? I say this because it appears that the NRA crowd here in the USA appear to take a position like this: For any situation, the problem is not enough options for people to kill one another at short notice.

I think over time empirical studies could bear significantly the claim that liberalized carrying requirements result in less loss of life (whether those studies could rise to the level of falsification or conclusive demonstration I doubt). Each study would necessarily be limited to a particular time, location, and people, but if we had a lot of such studies I would think that could give us at least some indication of the effect of these policies. As it happens we have a number of different data sets here in the US which bear on it — crime rates before & after the enactment of significant gun laws, for example, seem like data that could be helpful here. I have looked at several such studies and find they generally lean in a pro-carry direction.

I think again you are focused on the “short notice” aspect here. Most killings are premeditated. If they are premeditated, they will not be prevented by things like staff handbooks and workplace policies. Remember, too, that the NRA is in favor of a wide variety of restrictions on gun ownership and carrying — including people with mental diagnoses and felonies. But, people who are bent on doing harm will still be able to get firearms. It is that reality which makes diffused gun ownership and carrying make more sense.

I prefer creating environments where it’s harder to kill people, counter-intuitive though that may be.

I completely agree, Marc. But you are assuming that regulations against carrying make it harder to kill people. I would argue the exact opposite — regulations against carrying make it easier to kill people on college campuses. Those regulations make it less likely that someone who is armed and intent on doing violence will encounter any armed resistance to stop him. This most recent shooting is a perfect example of that fact — as are all the other mass shootings on college campuses in recent years. In fact, is there any kind of location in the US that has seen as many mass shootings over the past decade?

I say, let’s go completely open on guns. No regulations at all. And then let’s sit back and watch.

Whoa there, Turbo. No reason to eliminate all regulations. Those who are violent or mentally unstable should not be allowed to own or carry them, right?

so wait: is this the pro-gun argument?
1) without guns there is some probability, admittedly minuscule, that someone will use a very cumbersome and indirect means to inflict damage on a someone else who can’t side-step a swung chair;
2) therefore, we should increase the probability that more people will use effortless and effective means to murder multiple people who can’t dodge bullets.

No, that is not the argument. The argument is liberalized carry policies on college campuses would result in an overall lower loss of life because 1) killers would be more hesitant to carry out such attacks knowing they could meet with armed resistance, and 2) in the event that such an attack does occur, it will be more likely for the killer to meet with armed resistance, thereby reducing the loss of life in the attack.

In the case of this shooting, the killer came to campus with a plan to harm and in violation of staff regulations which forbid carrying. No law or regulation would have helped here, except perhaps a ban on all ownership of guns in the US (which is obviously not legally feasible right now), or staffed metal detectors at every entrance to campus or certain campus buildings (which is cost prohibitive). The only thing which realistically could have helped is if faculty were permitted to carry and one or more of the faculty in the room chose to do so. Of course, given the psyches of the faculty involved, that may not be feasible either and so there might not be anything that could have prevented this.

Last time I checked, zero point zero percent of campus law enforcement officials want concealed carry on campus. Why is that?

Can you refer me to the study, or do you just like to make cutesy points?

when confronted with a pair of premises that contradict one another, i do the rational thing:

deny them both.

No reason to eliminate all regulations. Those who are violent or mentally unstable should not be allowed to own or carry them, right?

This assumes that a propensity to violence and mental instability are traits that do not change over time, such that “nonviolent” people never become violent, and “stable” people never become “unstable.”

It further assumes that these unchanging traits can be detected with 100% accuracy by The Guy at the Gun Store.

There was a staff policy against carrying weapons.

No doubt there was, and is. You can, of course, point to the hundreds of cases where violation of this policy led to adverse personnel action? The tens? The one?

There is, on 9th St. in Washington DC, multi-colored paint which proclaims the existence of a bus lane. It is city policy that people driving other vehicles than buses not use this lane. The city code makes dire threats against such people. But no-one enforces this prohibition, so people drive cars on the bus lane all the time.

Unenforced prohibition is de facto permission.

Mr. Talcott’s argument is that converting de facto permission to de jure permission will lead to major changes in behaviour. Everyone else doubts this.

Last time I checked, zero point zero percent of campus law enforcement officials want concealed carry on campus. Why is that?

Can you refer me to the study, or do you just like to make cutesy points?

I happen to have the International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administration right here and they’d like to say that you know nothing of their work.

If only David Talcott had told us of the course he teaches at Columbia on “Guns, Campus and Liberty,” and how his insights into campus security, well, have a great deal of validity.

All I know is the folks around here who argue most fervently for concealed carry are the folks who have Liberal Hunting Permit stickers on their trucks, which have (empty when parked in the university parking lot) gun racks. And I’ve had guns pointed at me as a “joke” before, and I’ve had people ask me “so how fast do you think you can run” while pointing a gun at me. As a “joke.” (When I was also armed. We were hunting.) So count me as one who thinks lots of people carrying guns are a net safety risk rather than a net safety benefit.

And I dunno, I can see the “Liberal Hunting Permit” folks deciding it would be a fun “joke” to take aim at me as I walk to my car. Or maybe just walk by and pat their holsters as I unlock my car door and say, “How you voting this November?” And a few more years of this nonsense about liberals being a literal threat to the American life, and maybe they’ll feel their lives really are threatened by my presence.

They’re crazy enough to find the hunting permit sticker funny enough to put on their truck. They’d probably laugh it up if they saw me slip and break my knee at a rally (and sure as hell wouldn’t help or go call an ambulance, as I would if roles were reversed). Our campus has a regular (like, monthly) problem with people hanging effigies. It doesn’t take a whole heck of a lot of imagination to see that this plus concealed carry is unbelievably dangerous. Who the heck am I to say they wouldn’t have fun firing blanks at folks like me, just to see me cringe?

So where do we draw the line? How about at prohibiting people from carrying the devices that would be necessary to accomplish this kind of harassment. That sounds pretty good to me. Yep yep.

Of course, the real answer is to just end tenure. It’s archaic. And look at all the trouble it’s causing!

The argument for getting rid of prohibitions on carrying guns is that they don’t work against criminals and insane people. And you know what? It’s true! If you don’t have well-policed regulations that prevent people from buying guns quickly and cheaply, then laws against bringing guns into certain places can’t stop dangerous people from bringing guns into those places. So, since we’ve already agreed as a society that every nut-case and criminal in America is entitled to a gun, the only way to prevent them from killing people is to make sure that everyone else also has a gun. That way we can gun them down after they’ve killed one or two people instead of four or five, or twenty.

There’s a sort of elegant insanity about the argument, isn’t there? The conclusion flows effortlessly from the premise.

But the real reason to have laws against carrying guns has nothing to do with stopping crazy people and criminals, and everything to do with stopping ordinary-seeming people who might lose their tempers and do something they will regret later. And that’s a very hard argument to make because it requires people to admit to themselves that they, personally, might at some point be tempted to do something rash.

Also cf. this:

Gregory Girard, a Manchester technology consultant, was found with a stash of military grade weapons, explosive devices including tear gas and pepper ball canisters, camouflage clothing, knives, handcuffs, bulletproof vests and helmets, and night vision goggles, say police. They believe Girard, who pleaded not guilty at his arraignment, was “preparing for domestic and political turmoil,” and feared martial law would soon be imposed.
… Girard’s wife said her husband had recently told her: “Don’t talk to people, shoot them instead,” and “it’s fine to shoot people in the head because traitors deserve it.”

I mean, I know of people who would consider those statements to be one-liners worth printing on T-shirts (well, maybe not the second one, but the first one definitely). To put a backwards spin on this, let me wonder, do those folks trust my ability to calmly and rationally assess whether they pose a threat to me if they “joke around” making statements like this? Their trust in liberals’ ability to be rational is, at best, inconsistently applied…

@55: the real question is … would this rise [in impulse shootings] outweigh the self-defense and 3rd party innocent defense benefits that would come from having more permitted carriers .

.. on the impulse shootings side, you forgot to add the accidents, the people caught in the crossfire between impulse shooters and defenders, the defenders who get shot because other people think they are impulse shooters, and of course the impulse shooters who get shot, plus the impulse shooters who have second thoughts but get shot anyway, plus probably some others that I haven’t thought of.

@noen – I see what you mean, but on behalf of non-gun-toting insignificant little men I’d like to suggest this is wrong. The Napoleon trope is a common one – that aggression is a reaction to a lack of some masculine attribute, but doesn’t this just play into the plainly false idea that broad-shouldered, thick-necked manly types are less likely to be aggressive jerks?

As just one example, I would never have called Charlton Heston little or insignificant.

Its been fun to read this thread. Michael you, as always have out done yourself.
My dad born at the beginning of the last century in southern Alabama told me that all white men carried. He said it made everyone super polite. Of course he told me about the interesting experience of watching church members very politely getting a drunk member to put the gun away and go find somewhere to sober up before coming back to find Jebus.

I wonder if David Talcott will respond to Salient’s comments…?

I was once at a conference where the panel chair descended from his table and started wrestling with a member of the audience who was asking a question. Physically, literally wrestled with him. The question was quite reasonable too. This was the same man who had to be led off campus by security one sunday because he couldn’t get into the office and had started trying to smash his way through the door.

I saw it could only be better for everyone if a chap like that were armed at all times.

“I doubt if militias are likely to be well-regulated in this day and age.”

well, they are tolerably well-regulated, and you are familiar with them already–they are just called “the national guard”.

those are the direct descendants of state-level organized militias, which were the only militias envisioned by the founders.

luckily, the question of militias no longer matters, because they are no longer necessary for the common defense now that we have a standing professional army. (sure, in any given year there may be some personnel shortfalls in the regular army that are made up by national guard. but as an institution, and with a proper recruitment or draft level, it is the army and professional services that now see to to our common defense, and the militias are just relics).

the 2nd amendment contains its own sunset clause–i.e., “so long as militias are necessary for the common defense, for that long the right to keep and bear arms, etc.”

now that the enabling condition, i.e. the necessity of militias, is an historical curiosity, it follows that the consequent of the sentence is no longer in force.

(touched up version) So, a few things that have been consistently overlooked here, or at least not taken seriously.

One is the tired old argument from autonomy. I have the right to defend myself from people who are trying to kill me and innocent third parties I care about. If they are doing this with a gun–and it seems our Huntsville Professor found it quite easy to find one and, in an act of brazen disregard of a firm administrative policy (!), bring it to the meeting–then it seems reasonable if not quite important for me to at least have the option of defending myself with a gun as well. If I am sane, without a criminal record, and my choice of gun falls within acceptable norms, then why must I die at the hands of a crazy faculty member because someone else has decided I shouldn’t have the right to effectively defend myself from people who decide to go on killing rampages? It’s clear in these cases that the state is usually powerless to intercede on my behalf in time, so I’m pretty much on my own. I don’t see how your right to be free of nebulous worries about unobserved hypotheticals regarding my behavioral propensities as a citizen in good standing so handily trumps my right to protect my life and those of others I care about when the cops just nevers seem to get there in time. For crying out loud, soldiers at Ft. Hood–many of them combat vets–couldn’t even protect themselves against one crazy clinical academic with a pistol as he shot them by the dozen. They just had to wait around and die until the police came.

Another problem is people’s odd grasp of gunfight logic. It doesn’t really matter if the crazy faculty member is undeterred by knowledge that some people may be carrying when she starts shooting. First off, some people may be deterred, and that’s a good outcome. Beyond this, when the crazies start shooting, the shooter can be summarily stopped before she wecks much more death and injury. So it’s not just about some game theory race to be the “first” shooter. It’s a race to be the first shooter, and then, as you’re stubbornly trying to kill lots of professors or students or whatever or make your armed escape to the hills, a race to not be killed in mid-stride by the people with handguns around you. Reading “One prof dead; crazy prof killed by other prof” is a better outcome in all cases than “Three profs killed and three other profs shot as well by crazy prof as others just cry, run and hope for the best, now knowing for sure that god is dead.”

Anyway, I suppose there are people who presently carry in violation of school policies, and not just the loonies. This much we can safely assume. So far, the body count of the loonies (Columbine, Alabama, Virginia, Ft. Hood–soldiers can’t carry concealed on base, ironically–etc.) seems to greatly outweigh presently observed incidents of accidental shootings or flare-up shootings in and around campus. Do I also get to talk about the person who beheaded the student in the cafeteria recently? It doesn’t seem like a handgun on some person’s hip is a stupid solution to these pretty grevious problems. It’s the solution everyone apparently desires when the cops arrive on the scene, in any case. Unless some of you are suggesting that these killings aren’t really a big deal. Other people’s lives often aren’t as we sit at our terminals and ruminate over what we are and aren’t going to allow others to do.

Finally, as a throwaway point, people are rightfully fuming that the Court recently affirmed corporations as “people” for campaign finance purposes. “No,” we argue, “people are just people in these crucial matters. You know, guys, gals.” But then when the Constitution says “the right of *the people* to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed,” everyone does painful twists and cartwheels to argue that they didn’t mean regular old guys and gals, but some strange arm of the state government. Where else in the document does “people” mean the state government, or anything less than the common sense use of the term?

David Walcott’s points seemed to me to be quite lucid and to have met with little substantive response. If you want fewer guns on campus, don’t carry one. If you got in a car and found your seatbelt as broken, would you drive more carefully? If you lost your insurance, would you change your eating and health habits? Would you still ski? It’s not clear that these prophylactic measures don’t induce more reckless behavior in at least some people, so we can’t simply conclude guns are unique in increasing certain dangers from their mere presence. Stupid people ski and drive more stupidly when they know they are well insured, and both they and other people get hurt as a result. This is a problem for any type of insurance, not just guns.

What people also seem to forget is that in that one in a million chance that you come face to face with crazy prof or crazy student, shooting everyone around you, coming back for head shots (actual facts, to assist your intuition pumps), you don’t have mere split seconds to decide what to do. You in fact have the rest of your life to formulate and enact your plan. Many of you have decided, in advance, a gun will have no part in it. Others have decided it will. In my view the matter is so important that it is not a matter of consensus or deliberation as to what choices I may have.

Anyway, as far as conspiracies go, the sword it double-edged. Most adults on this site who live in US urban centers have passed by people with concealed handguns on them many hundreds if not thousands of times. Carried by citizens and citizen-criminals, legal and illegal. You all seem to handle it quite well and lead normal lives. But if we were to just say the words–if we were to just say “it’s okay, you can do it on campus,” it would produce some sort of armageddon. I can only suppose these are the same folks who want pot legalized, and who mock the people who seem mortified to acknowledge with clearly-spoken words the pot-smoking practices that in fact prevail today, all around us, seen and unseen.

I think we’re on to something: mandatory guns and pot at these meetings. Everyone ready for the worst, but too relaxed to get there. This aggresssion will not stand.

David Walcott’s points seemed to me to be quite lucid and to have met with little substantive response.

Indeed, he has even been mocked as a know-nothing armchair philosopher spinning stories about autonomous choice in abject ignorance of the social science on concealed carry. Sort of like you.

Suppose one of Bishop’s victims had defended him/herself with a firearm and a passing security guard had seen a black or South Asian professor shooting at a white professor. What do you suppose the outcome would be like?

“Suppose one of Bishop’s victims had defended him/herself with a firearm and a passing security guard had seen a black or South Asian professor shooting at a white professor. What do you suppose the outcome would be like?”

The outcome would have been no worse than what actually prevailed in this case, as we have witnessed it.

You are suggestng that the South Asian professor shouldn’t be allowed to carry to defend himself from crazy killers because he might be a victim of racism and shot acctidentally. Well, that’s possible. As a citizen he is free to assess that risk. If he feels it’s decisive, he can elect not to carry and wait for the police to show up and deal with Bishop. For my part, I don’t feel comfortable making this decsion for him because I have I have decided racism might effect the outcome of his efforts to save his own life.

And I don’t see why we’d stop at universities. Columbine wouldn’t have happened if Cassie Bernall had been packing heat.

When a man with a shotgun opened fire in a Unitarian Universalist church in Knoxville, Tennessee a couple of years ago, he was taken down by the unarmed parishioners. The lower death toll in that instance can be attributed to the fact that a shotgun holds fewer rounds than an semiautomatic pistol, as well as to the presence of a large, diverse crowd not separated from the shooter by a table.

It’s far from clear that an armed audience could have brought about a better outcome. Comparison of the two cases suggest that handguns present a worse hazard than other legal weapons.

Steven, the most likely scenarios seem to me to be any of

1) the shooter kills her intended targets, and then further people die in the ensuing crossfire, because no-one can get their gun out in time to stop her initial fusillade
2) the shooter knows who is carrying because they’re faculty, so she shoots the armed faculty first, before they can get their guns out, and then shoots her real targets
3) the other faculty who know she carries, and has been denied tenure, turn up armed to the teeth and when she reaches into her pocket for a tissue they blow her away
4) after the initial shots armed people panic and run away, and there is general chaos on campus

The scenario you imagine, where she pulls her gun out but other people are able to draw and shoot her down before anyone dies, is ludicrously unlikely. Even in the scenario in which they manage to turn the initial shooting into a multi-way gun battle, the criminal will do damage because she is able to select targets randomly but the faculty will have to avoid shooting each other, highly unlikely in a faculty meeting. What you’re proposing is putting a group of 20 or 30 people in a room little larger than the circle they stand in, and then getting 5 or 6 of them to try and shoot each other without hurting anyone but their intended targets.

I’ve yet to meet a concealed-carry advocate who has managed to outline the means by which their preferred scenario will come about, except when they shoot first. Last time such an argument happened on this blog, I recall one of the commenters had a black brother-in-law in a coma precisely because a concealed-carrier drew and shot first. The brother-in-law was, of course, completely innocent.

And honestly, a swiss style universal militia, guns and all, would probably be a superior equilibrium to the present situation where only those with an interest in weapons have them, and less of a threat to world peace than the industrial-military complex with a professional army the US has..

I thought it was pretty obvious anyway from the constitution and associated documents that the authors didn’t want a standing army? They didn’t really go one way or the other on, say, income tax or national health care, but they made it very clear that a standing army was a bad thing and made it as difficult as they could for the US to have one.
IANAH though.

First of all, what is an “armchair philosopher?” As if there is another kind. This cannot possibly be an insult, but rather a plainly-stated redundancy. But you apparently meant it as one. Awkward.

If only there were an “internet” “search” “engine” (possibly named Doodle or Poople or something like that) where one could go for more information on different types of philosophy and on their respective attitudes toward the relation of social science and public policy.

kant shot first!

this just in from ap:

“Associate professor Joseph Ng says in an e-mail he was one of 12 people sitting around an oval table for a department meeting Friday at the University of Alabama-Huntsville.
Ng says the meeting had been going on for about half an hour when Amy Bishop suddenly got up, took out a gun and started shooting. He says she fired at each person in a row as they sat around the table.
Three people were killed and three injured. Bishop was arrested and charged with capital murder and attempted murder.
Ng says the survivors dropped to the floor and rushed Bishop during a pause in the shooting. They pushed her out the door and called 911.”

no warning. so really the only way that a second gun could have reduced the death toll is if the second gunner had been able to remove it from its place of concealment, aim, and fire, in less time than it took bishop to squeeze off three shots. that’s not going to happen, no matter how much you practice quickdraw. three shots come far too fast.

unless you are always prepared. it’s not enough just to carry; you should have the gun in your hand, ready for instant reaction, at all times. that’s how a second gun could have saved lives here: if some brave steven or david had simply had their gun in their lap, and fired as soon as bishop stood up.

that’s the policy that would have saved lives here. don’t wait for the assailant to start shooting: shoot first! it saves lives!

Any person who wonders how these concealed carry shooting scenarios would work out need only thoroughly canvas the tabloid newspapers for myriad instances of armed off-duty police officers who stumble on violent crimes in progress.

Steven demands to be taken seriously.

steven, it’s pretty evident that liberalizing concealed carry laws/regs would have done nothing to make the bishop case better.
entirely unarmed people were able to keep the death toll down to three. no amount of weaponry in the room, if deployed responsibly (i.e. not shooting first), could have done any better.

it seems to me that your best strategy going forward is just to concede that huntsville is not a case in your favor. the fact pattern just does not support your cause.

then, if you like, you can go back to arguing that va tech or columbine or some other fact pattern really vindicates your policy preferences. but the more we learn about huntsville, the clearer it is that more guns would not have helped.

John, in Lousiana, does posting a link of a pic from Arrested Development in order to mock someobody count as publication?

let us by all means call nonsense, nonsense.

and what has been shown to be nonsense in this conversation is your belief that a second gun in this room would have reduced fatalities.

and by the way, where did you read that bishop’s gun jammed? certainly not in ng’s statement.

“entirely unarmed people were able to keep the death toll down to three. entirely unarmed people were able to keep the death toll down to three.”

Now we are actively relying on the crazed killer’s gun to jam in order to keep the death toll down? That is how we’re going to treat ourselves?

“Why don’t you thoroughly canvas the tabloid newspapers to find out?”

Thoroughly canvassing tabloids is a respected research method in the social sciences. Don’t knock it. Much tenure has been made this way.

Did my comment run afoul of some rule or other? Or is it just stuck in the moderation queue?

It probably doesn’t need to be pointed out but Steven is most likely wrong about the record of off-duty police officers with their guns. Most instances I read about either (a) innocent bystanders are hurt or killed or (b) the cops shoots the intended target, but that intended target never fired a hot themselves (in a sane country this would be called “murder” not “self defense”). Now Steven could claim that I have a perception bias while he doesn’t. In that case I’d like to see some statistics.

May I also warrant a guess and say that Steven has absolutely no idea how he and his handgun would react under fire? Because seriously we can’t know how we’ll behave until it happens.

kid bitzer @122: if you’re right, we’ve been mocking a disturbed person, which would be unkind of us. I prefer to treat Steven as a performance artist, demanding to be taken seriously while citing in a farrago of tabloid newspapers and Romero remakes. It was “the crazies” that was the bridge too far for him and gave away his game.

In other parts of the developed world, groups of people are shot dead by crazed gunmen noticeably less often than in the USA. Has anyone ever stopped to wonder why this might be the case? I know the price we pay for this is having to go about in identical Mao suits and being forbidden access to disturbing ideas, but still…

1- I would prefer that there many, many were fewer guns around, such as in GB or other nations. The cat is out of the bag; the camel’s nose is in the tent, etc. There are millions of them in the US. A disaster. Crazies have unlimited access to guns. There is no going back. This is a purely practical realiztion, and my principles are informed by it.

2- I am not seeking amendments to any laws. I would just prefer that the body of freedoms accorded to me be my state and local government, ones that allow me to choose how to protect my life and the life of others I care about, be afforded to me on the university campus as well.

3- I can only supposed that everyone here rejects Bentham’s “panopticon” concern about hidden surveillance’s chilling effect on freedom of behavior. It is much the same argument as the concealed carry deterrence argument. The flip side is giving up a lot of firepower, so to speak, against those annoying government cameras cropping up in every public space. I wouldn’t expect a concession like this from the folks here, but alas they have implicitly given it.

Many people also speak during combat; two carriers can run into each other, nervous, guns out, and one can shout “Hear those shots? Maybe Crazy Eddie is killing students in French 103.”

Or maybe they’re just screening The Battle of Algiers for a 20th-century French history class. But we can’t take the risk! BLAM BLAM KA-POW!

Please, do go on.

The policyI wrote had hints of the absurd, I agree. But man if was fun to write. You can strike that rule out. People can wrestle armed gumen with their bare hands if they want. They can also use chairs, etc. or whatever they see lying around that would help.

The government isn’t making anyone powerless; I’m not in that conspiracy camp. Most state goverments allow for concealed carry with the right vetting and checks. My concern is that it is the university that has said it doesn’t care what rights the government has afforded a person, their policies supercede and the citizen must leave his gun home. If only Bishop had listened.

So I guess my humor lends itself to characterizations about power fantasies. I’ll have to accept that. And, BTW, it IS what happened in Alabama. Nobody did a thing, at all, except die, until they got to step five in the policy.

John P., don’t knock performance art. It is a respected research method in the social sciences. Much tenure has been made that way.

you know, steven, developing ever more elaborate fantasies of your powerlessness, and how your gun gives you power in your fantasies, is not a good way to establish the bona fides of your sanity in these discussions.

See, I keep trying to explain this to concealed carry advocates, but they get so… carried away…

Case in point:

But man it was fun to write.

I’m glad it was so invigorating and cathartic? I guess?

Salient makes it hard, with the insults and all, to be calm and properly philosophical in all I say.

(Facepalm.) See, I could point out that if getting called a “troll” is enough to make it hard for someone to remain calm and rational, I sure as heck am glad that such a person cannot legally bring a gun to my place of work, but what’s the point.

And I’m not sure I would agree that “troll” is an insult, sir. Some of my bestest online friends ever are trolls.

My concern is that it is the university that has said it doesn’t care what rights the government has afforded a person, their policies supercede and the citizen must leave his gun home.

Yeah, but lots of workplaces have “no weapons” rules, including high schools, hospitals, many factories, most offices…

Okay, no point in continuing. Have a good and safe day Steven. Please contemplate, like, would you really trust a horrible aggravating (and I really do try to not be aggravating, but let’s go with the premise) wickedly insulting left-wing goofball like me with a concealed carry and the right to assess whether you pose a threat to me and act with lethal force? I understand you want concealed carry for yourself, but really, for everyone?

Sorry I said something which insulted you. The field’s all yours.

Ng says the meeting had been going on for about half an hour when Amy Bishop suddenly got up, took out a gun and started shooting.

Ms. Bishop does seem a bit extreme, but think of how much more efficient faculty meetings would be if they regularly issued guns to all participants at, say, the 45-minute mark.

At this point, I’m surprised that people haven’t started quoting from The Simpsons, ‘The Cartridge Family’:

[at the sporting goods center desk]

Cashier: Sorry, the law requires a five-day waiting period. We’ve got to run a background check.

Homer: Five days? But I’m mad now!

(The cashier pulls the gun away from Homer.)

Homer: I’d kill you if I had my gun.

Cashier: Yeah, well, you don’t.

Homer: [muttering] Lousy big shot, thinks he’s so big ’cause he’s got a lot of guns. If he didn’t have any guns, I’d show him a thing or two …

[at home, pacing the hallway in front of Lisa’s bedroom]

Homer: … let’s see him walk into my store and then we’ll see who’s worried about five-day waiting periods …

Lisa: Dad, it’s 3:00 AM. Can’t you mutter in your room?

Homer: Marge kicked me out.

Lisa: All right, go ahead.

Homer: Pushy kids think they can tell me what to do in my house. Why, I tell you, these parents these days, they don’t know how to rear children …

Remember, kids: ‘Guns aren’t toys–they’re for family protection, hunting dangerous and delicious animals, and keeping the king of England out your face.’

davidtalcott@55:

“The argument is liberalized carry policies on college campuses would result in an overall lower loss of life because 1) killers would be more hesitant to carry out such attacks knowing they could meet with armed resistance, and 2) in the event that such an attack does occur, it will be more likely for the killer to meet with armed resistance, thereby reducing the loss of life in the attack.”

wow, this is…wow.

firstly, the killers (that you claim more weaponry will be deterring) tend to want to go out in a gunfight. outside of the US people call it ‘american suicide’ – take a gun to a public place and kill people until someone takes you out.

so the idea that being the people doing this are going to be deterred by the prospect of armed resistance is only valid in Doom 3. the overwhelming majority of the campus/gym/office killers that you are resting on to make your argument end their uniquely american performance theater with suicide. that is, being shot is a sought after outcome. none of them are making plans for the next day.

secondly, force as a deterrent merely changes the stakes. people who want to be noticed, avenge themselves on others and commit suicide in one largely insane agglomerate event aren’t going to be deterred by the idea of people resisting. just like people planning serious crime are’t deterred by the death penalty. however, they will take it into account and take appropriate actions to ensure that they succeed in all three parts of the composite goal.

all you achieve by adding more weaponry into a volatile situation is make it all the more volatile. once the original shooter at Virginia Tech was downed, you’d more than likely have spent the next 40 minutes dousing the 11 knock-on shootings that flickered and flared across the campus, as every terrified student with a glock took aim at every jock with an itch to be the terminator and both took intermittent aim at shadowy figures wearing paramilitary gear and carrying rifles. that is, at special force units and SWAT teams.

fail.

d

Now there you go again, Steven, playing the jocularity card when we all know by now you think this is a documentary.

But if you still demand to be taken seriously, tell us what you make of this guy’s work and its relevance to your scenarios.

John, in the end, the jocularity card is the only thing that can save us. In the end, jocularity could even heal Palestine.

As for Correll’s work, yes, we live in a society with strong racist undertones, and this means that black people will get shot before white people for doing the same things. My main concern, however, is that all of the people actually shot were shooting-worthy in the first place. If they were, then it is still a problem that whites who could have been shot weren’t, while shooting-worthy blacks were shot almost all the time, but it doesn’t mean that the blacks who were shot were shot unjustly. Equal protection and due process provisions don’t apply in active shooter scenarios. But they should definitely be two of the several guiding principles by which we restructure the larger society to solve this problem in the first place.

More generally, if there is a black Samaritan with a gun, he definitely shoulders greater dangers than his white counterpart. This doesn’t mean that he should not be able to assess those dangers and decide for himself if he wants to carry, and it definitely doesn’t mean that nobody should be able to carry because this problem exists.

Indeed, the only way to defeat Double Shotgun Dude before Double Shotgun Dude defeats you is to be Double Shotgun Dude. It’s a zen thing.

Or a Welsh thing. How come nobody has mentioned Llap Goch yet?

All Steven has said is that he wishes it weren’t the case that there are so many guns in the US, but given the unfortunate reality he would hope that universities extend to him the same right to self-defense that he is legally entitled to elsewhere. I fail to see why this qualifies as “idiocy”.

Strawmen like “OMG He is going to shoot teh kids watching teh Battle of Algiers!” are absurd. Claims that people are likely to get caught in the crossfire, police are likely to misidentify the real bad guy, etc. are useless unless there’s strong data to suggest that these scenarios are significant when compared to scenario in which an individual exercising his right carry stops a massacre from happening (recall the Colorado church shooting, where a person with literally hundreds of rounds of ammo was stopped from killing hundreds of people by another person who had decided to carry a gun). Salient’s insistence that Steven’s request for evidence is the equivalent of “Make my day, you effer” or indicative of some Napoleon complex, is silly. There are strong arguments for gun control, sure, but you wouldn’t know it looking at this thread.

Bérubé, Beito’s calling you out. His views, as expressed there, are indistinguishable from Steve’s — Beito appears to have read your post, but not the comments — so the rest is left as an exercise for the very bored reader.

Mary Rosh, is that you?

Just kidding, Sperry, I just get the giggles when I see the name “John Lott.” What was your point again?

Appeal to authority all you want. It’s at least more intersting than appeals to hypotheticals or Simpsons episodes.

I am simply suggesting that IACLEA seems most concerned with binge drinking students going to parties with .22s in their shoes. This is reasonable.

You suggest that adults should be stripped of rights they are entitled to elsewhere because grade grubbers would be afraid of being murdered during offices hours. IMO, this is less reasonable.

[googles “Mary Rosh”]

Facepalm.

There is no thread but this thread, and Berube is its moderator!

Problem is though, Steven and Co may be a minority in this thread, but the USA dances to their tune, mostly. The large majority for gun control evaporates at the ballot box.

I’m trying to stay patient with you, Sperry, but you’re not making it easy. The entire discussion has been about allowing concealed carry *on campus*. As you note, that’s not the case for *the vast majority of college campuses*. Indeed, one might even say it’s the status quo *on campus*. Do you want to change that? Why? To preserve “rights” or to make campuses safer?

If it’s the former, then we have to argue deontology vs consequentialism (but that’s just the beginning, because there’s lots of interplay here: I’m not sure you have a right to concealed carry if exercising that right decreases the safety of everyone around, that is, impedes the rights of others to be free from harm — in other words, rights have to be consistent with maximal liberty for all involved, and with such a “consistency” requirement we have to get into probabilities and consequences).

If it’s the latter, the experts in campus safety, the IACLEA, disagree with your position. The onus is on you to make your case against them and the hundreds of campus administrations that don’t allow concealed carry. So far you have have indulged some claim of a false analogy, but that objection hardly seems enough to warrant a drastic change in the considered policies of those responsible for campus safety.

Here’s a suggestion: why don’t you write the authors of the studies cited in the IACLEA document, and the journals they were accepted in, as well as the leadership of the IACLEA, and the admins of campuses that don’t allow concealed carry, and tell *them* of your problems with their policies? And please, be sure to set up a blog and publish their replies. Cause I’d really like to see that.

What needs to be argued is why universities are fundamentally different than churches or office buildings when it comes to these laws.

They aren’t. I could post a “no guns alowed” sign at my office, and legally bar anyone from carrying a gun onto the premises, even if the jurisdiction otherwise allows people to carry guns around. Constitutionally-protected property rights, you know.

“If it’s the latter, the experts in campus safety, the IACLEA, disagree with your position.”

But what organization concerned with coercion does not recommend, indeed try to require, that it have a monopoly on force? I bet the Iranian and North Korean governments share the same policies as the IACLEA regarding weapons on campus, and as most urban police departments, etc. John P., for a person with your training, you are being way too charitable towards this agency.

I bet the Iranian and North Korean governments share the same policies as the IACLEA regarding weapons on campus

Did you know Hitler was a vegetarian? Think about it.

“By having been called an idiot by assorted academics on such a pressing, practical matter as the use of force and the saving of innocent lives during times of crisis, I can be reasonably certain that I’m indeed on the correct side of the argument.”

now i understand.

this is exactly why i myself spend hours on end discussing modern art on blogs that are populated primarily by nascar drivers. (the topic doesn’t come up often on nascar blogs, but when it does, i’m all over it!)

it’s not because i think i can learn anything from the other posters–no, i come with the assumption that they are ignoramuses.
and it’s not that i think that i can persuade them of my views, either–for one thing, they’re all moral cripples, and for another thing, they keep on asking me hard questions that i can’t seem to answer.

no–what keeps me at it, hour after hour, is the thought that i can vindicate my preference for rauschenberg over rothko, if the drivers will only tell me that rothko is better than rauschenberg.

it’s a slightly indirect way to make myself feel better about my preferences, sure.

but it’s rationality itself compared to what you’ve been up to.

John P., the Iran and NK points notwithstanding, I expect you from now on to take seriously and embrace the policies of law enforcement agencies when you argue, since you are anxious, in this case, to use them to support your arguments. Law enforcement organizations make for strange bedfellows.

I didn’t start participating here thinking that disagreement would lead me to be more certain of my correctness; it just kinda worked out that way, and it’s sad. I said “Hey, the CT folks are smart, thoughtful people who take liberties, civil and otherwise, very seriously, who aren’t dogmatic, and who don’t jump to conclusions, and who are circumspect about speaking of things whereof they should remain silent due to lack of practical experience or other reliable knowledge in the matter.” What amazes me is the inflexibility of some of the people here, who are then shocked to hear that I have concluded I can vindicate my views because they don’t give an inch in an argument. When people refuse to budge in the face of even a smidgeon of common sense, then, yep, they can help vindicate your position. For example, if I tell you that the color of the earth is open to debate but the sky is certainly blue, and you say “no, idiot, the earth is pink and the sky is certainly orange,” I can argue with you for a while but will leave pretty confident that the earth is not pink.

Why do I say this? Because I have been told here that:

– We shouldn’t have armed people interfere with ongoing mass shootings because it’s dangerous.
– Law enforcement agencies normally despised for their efforts to control public spaces for their own ends are now the lauded experts in controlling public spaces in this particular matter.
– It’s better for a killer to shoot six people and have her gun jam or run out of ammo than have an armed person at least try to stop the attack prior to that point.
– Universities are no different from corporations in their rights and abilities to control their spaces, and apparently this similarity is enough to justify how universities choose to do so (let’s see how this argument works when we use it to make a rule that professors who blog will be fired, a common rule in corporations).
– Once a mass shooter starts shooting people, if we have concealed carry, everyone will just start shooting everyone.
– Unseen deterrence that could be anywhere is the reason we hate CCTV’s in public spaces, because it has a chilling effect on certain behaviors, but this same panopticon effect would not be present to chill violent tendencies if people were to carry concealed.
– Law-abiding students and faculty who want to carry handguns are ispo facto too dangerous to be allowed to carry handguns.

Gunfights are not thought experiments, and yet every philosopher here is apparently an expert logician qua gunfighter. They all *know* that having civilians armed at the scene of ongoing mass murders won’t make a difference, based on… their elaborate thoughts on the matter.

No worries; the University Policy on Mass Shootings has a robust historical precedent:

“Candide, trembling like a philosopher, hid himself as best he could during this heroic carnage.”

That’s strange, because in most states people, once they meet certain requirements, are allowed to carry a concealed weapon with them almost anywhere they choose to go. I say almost, because universities are a glaring exception to this norm.

This is just bullshit. Missouri has exceptions by the score. In the small town I lived in (two colleges, too) businesses, the library, all churches, the courthouse, the correctional institutions (yes, it was an institutional town), public schools, a private school, the park, and the hospital all had signs posted that it was illegal to bring concealed weapons inside.

I’ve curiously never seen anyone argue that libraries and hospitals are doomed to be abbatoirs if their Patrons Are Denied Their Gun Carrying Rights. WILL NO ONE THINK OF THE LIBRARIANS?!

And as for the question–would I, a professor, be opposed to a retired cop bringing his gun to class? As someone who’s had ex-police and veterans, as well as active military for students: FUCK YES.

so, steven, after all this time, you fundamentally don’t understand the difference between an individual event and a policy, is that it? you still think that because you can construct some pleasant fantasy in which something works perfectly, once, that means it’s a good idea to construct policies without regards to how it will go all of the other times? and without regard to all of the further consequences of the change in policy?

i bet you have found the ticking time-bomb scenario a truly compelling guide to what our public policy on torture should be, right? it works on 24, so it couldn’t possibly go wrong to give all of our public servants a green light to torture people? and it couldn’t possibly have negative consequences for our foreign policy to public announce that we don’t care about the geneva convention?

because that would be no stupider than thinking that our policies on gun use should be determined by fantasies about one-off events in which everything goes just right.

this is not serious thinking on your part. this is merely fantasizing.

A friend of mine lectures international politics at the Australian Defence Force Academy and come up with a delicious idea – having two competing teams of his Special Forces students protecting unarmed academics in a paintball match. I told him it would be even more fun if the boffins were in academic robes.

in case you were wondering how rare…

“Between 1987 and 1990, David McDowall found that guns were used in defense during a crime incident 64,615 times annually.[60] This equates to two times out of 1,000 incidents (0.2%) that occurred in this time frame.[60] For violent crimes (assault, robbery, and rape), guns were used 0.83% of the time in self-defense.[60] Of the times that guns were used in self-defense, 71% of the crimes were committed by strangers, with the rest of the incidents evenly divided between offenders that were acquaintances or persons well-known to the victim.[60] Of all incidents where a gun was used for self-defense, victims shot at the offender 28% of the time.[60] In 20% of the self-defense incidents, the guns were used by police officers.[60] During this same time period, 1987 and 1990, there were 46,319 gun homicides,[61] and the National Crime Victimization Survey estimates that 2,628,532 nonfatal crimes involving guns occurred.[60]”

and

” The National Academy of Science has found no evidence that shows right-to-carry laws have an impact, either way, on rates of violent crime.[7] ”

sources are footnoted at the wikipedia article.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_States

d

“I think over time empirical studies could bear significantly the claim that liberalized carrying requirements result in less loss of life (whether those studies could rise to the level of falsification or conclusive demonstration I doubt). Each study would necessarily be limited to a particular time, location, and people, but if we had a lot of such studies I would think that could give us at least some indication of the effect of these policies. “

shorter David Talcott:
“it would be nice if there was evidence for my views.”

“I also contend that the person who is on a killing spree is pretty easy to spot and distinguish from the people who may be trying to stop him. He is the one who is shooting everyone, at random, with the crazy look in his eyes. “

shorter Steven:
“ignore that stuff I said about Bishop being calm and methodical.”

somewhere in this thread someone (Steven?) said that they hadn’t any practical experience of free fire situations, but they intuited something or other. i spent my 18 and 19th years as a conscript in the South African Defence Force, in 1989 and 1990, largely seconded as manpower to the South African police services. (the idea was that we would serve as a sort of a check on any possible transgressions and provide some kind of neutrality. of course, this failed quite thoroughly, but that’s a different story.) this was at the height of the last civil violence push by the ANC and the popular liberation front organizations.

i spent a couple of years after that involved in Community forums and activism that put me right in the middle of armed conflicts. a few years back, i was in the middle of a cash heist at the company i was doing analysis work at. 2 people were killed. i resuscitated one and a friend of mine the other. (they both died later that afternoon.) the bad guys used automatic weapons in a small confined space to keep the crowds down, and 9mm pistols to kill the security guards. (back of the head at two inch range).the automatic fire was from an AK47 and the range to the crowd was about 30 feet. no-one was hit, because everyone had gone to ground when the security guards were killed. when i was 21, i was caught in crossfire in fox street, downtown Johannesburg, when a store robbery went wrong.

it sounds hectic, but probably being south african just exposes you to a lot of this stuff. i don’t regard myself as an expert in this, but overall, ny conlcusions ahve a basis in solid personal experience of the situations that are being lovingly fantasized about on this thread.

here are a few thoughts:

it’s not EVER clear who’s doing what to whom. things happen really, really REALLY quickly. street fire fights are chaotic and very unpredictable. that is, they escalate in directions that cannot be planned for. fire fights in small enclosed spaces are very scary and they disorient you. happens to everyone. people under duress will default to their weaponry if it’s available. however they will not suddenly become clear of eye, steady of hand and rational when they get the safety off. the situation will get worse. most situations are over fast. shooting at assumed targets after the fact starts the cycle again. it is extremely difficult to hit anyone with a handgun in the best of circumstances, at any range greater than ‘average room.’ (i blame films for the persistence of the idea that they’re accurate). these circumstances are made worse by adrenaline, confusion, disorientation, panic, movement and the presence of people firing at you.

shorter me:

“real life is entirely different to standing at an indoor range and double-tapping away at a paper target. and it’s entirely different to Doom 3.”

d

Law enforcement agencies normally despised for their efforts to control public spaces for their own ends are now the lauded experts in controlling public spaces in this particular matter.

I’m well aware that John Protevi here has long despised law enforcement agencies precisely for their efforts to control public spaces. He also has a deplorable record of spitting on troops returning from Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and even Grenada. In 1969, moreover, he burned a bra stuffed with draft cards. But I for one take his sudden and opportunistic deference to the official statements of law enforcement agencies at face value.

Those were the days, my friend. I well remember when Steven “Off the Pigs” X and I would be on the phone every day with Bill Ayers dreaming of the day we could elect our Islamomanchuriansocialistfascist candidate to president and begin our plan to de-arm the cops and give them to everyone on college campuses instead. We even would make up ridiculous names for the candidate, weird Afro-Arabic hybrids. Good times.

Law enforcement agencies normally despised for their efforts to control public spaces for their own ends are now the lauded experts in controlling public spaces in this particular matter.

I’m well aware that John Protevi here has long despised law enforcement agencies precisely for their efforts to control public spaces. He also has a deplorable record of spitting on troops returning from Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and even Grenada. In 1969, moreover, he burned a bra stuffed with draft cards. But I for one take his sudden and opportunistic deference to the official statements of law enforcement agencies at face value.

Those were the days, my friend. I well remember when Steven “Off the Pigs” X and I would be on the phone every day with Bill Ayers dreaming of the day we could elect our Islamomanchuriansocia!istfascist candidate to president and begin our plan to de-arm the cops and give them to everyone on college campuses instead. We even would make up ridiculous names for the candidate, weird Afro-Arabic hybrids. Good times.

“That’s why SWAT teams use stun-grenades.”

I would stop pushing for handguns on campus if all students could be issued a can of mace, anyone above 35 got issued a taser, and anyone above 40 a stun grenade. With, of coures, a short but thorough seminar on the use of these items.

Steven, you actually now want to be serious? Really? Now after all this time, after gracing us with cerebral emissions like recommending tabloid research and using “the crazies” as an analytic category? Why should I treat you now as being anything other than the buffoon you’ve been working so hard at presenting yourself as? Now, I should think you to be arguing in good faith?

Anyway, I’ll humor you for now, but you’re on a short leash. I don’t show a “deep, deep distrust of police and military policies,” because “police and military policies” is a ridiculously — and I mean that literally, as in something to be laughed at — abstract term. I have in fact written an essay on Katrina and am now working on a paper on Haiti, in which I criticize the specific policies that militarized those relief efforts. If you want to actually read the Katrina paper and discuss the work of the University of Delaware Disaster Research Center people I cite, then we can do so, but until then, you haven’t shown that you have the work ethic to actually do the homework and read the social science and social neuroscience my work is based on. When you cowboy up and do the reading, then we can talk seriously. Until then, it’s mockery for you.

Steven you still aren’t making any effort to explain how you would manage to stop Bishop from shooting those 5 people, given she had the element of surprise. How would there even be other people shooting at her to distract her from the head shots, given that she has this element of surprise?

Your argument continues to assume magic gun-drawing powers you don’t have, and fails to present any evidence that anyone does have these magic gun drawing powers. It also fails to consider the possibility that Bishop would first shoot the gun carriers. Are you ever going to get around to explaining your magic powers of not being surprised by colleagues who pull guns?

in addition, steven still has not figured out the difference between a one-off incident and a policy.

you know, last week a horrible, life-and-death tragedy occurred in a faculty meeting. no—not that huntsville thing. this happened in kalamazoo: an assistant professor in the french department confused froissart with ronsard, and the chair died of a heart attack.

that death could have been avoided if anyone in the room had been carrying a hypodermic needle and a vial of digitalis, and had given the chair precisely the right dosage within one minute of the attack.

and yet—can you believe it? the ama and the fda both prohibit ordinary law-abiding citizens from carrying syringes of digitalis on their person at all times and injecting them whenever they think it would be therapeutic.

well—i guess it’s not really surprising that the ama and the fda take that stance—after all, they have a monopoly on medicine, so they’re going to lie and scheme to maintain it.

but we brave citizens should ignore them! we should try to get as many people as possible to equip themselves with syringes of digitalis! after all, for every handful of people killed by spree-shooters each year, literally hundreds of others die of heart attacks that could have been resuscitated by the swift injection of some digitalis. this is a matter of life and death, people!

oh sure, some people claim that it would not be a good policy for everyone to carry syringes full of digitalis and inject them whenever they feel like it. some people point out that there are hundreds of other cases in which the injection of digitalis would kill the patient instead, and that it is actually quite hard to diagnose when a patient needs digitalis, and that the therapeutic dosage of digitalis is very close to the lethal dosage, even for those who need it. and they point out that having millions of people walking around with syringes full of digitalis in their pockets might have unintended consequences that could make the national health-care situation worse, not better.

but they’re just wrong! they’re cowards, or fascists, and they want to deny our rights! clearly, anyone who opposes this policy is saying it was better for that chairman of french literature, last week, to die like a dog! clearly, anyone who opposes that policy is denying that the chairman could have been saved by an injection of digitalis—and yet the autopsy shows that he would have been!

people who oppose the universal right to carry digitalis are just unable to face the life-and-death reality that people are dying in america, hundreds of people every year, who could have been saved if someone with them had injected the right dose at the right time.

that’s why the only policy to endorse—the brave policy, the manly policy—is to encourage everyone to carry, and be ready to inject on a moment’s notice.

“in addition, steven still has not figured out the difference between a one-off incident and a policy.”

I haven’t addressed this because I thought the response was obvious to all. Good policies address the widest range of incidents possible. You feel concealed carry only addresses mass killings and street crimes but has flaws because of all sorts of other problems it produces. I feel these problems are overstated to the extent they are not showstoppers for a concealed carry policy, and then this policy goes on to address a fuller spectrum of cases. than a non-carry policy does. Therein lies one of our difference. Done.

kid bitzer for the win!

steven;

“You know, then, that when a cop shoots his or her weapon, it is almost always the very first time they’ve been in a gunfight.”

not here, sunshine.

steven:

“So you have about as much experience with these matters as I do.”

ummmmmm. no.

since i was actively serving as a proxy law enforcement officer in south africa, where gunfire is so regular an occurrence that it makes people yawn these days, and since it was during a time when what was called ‘civil unrest’ was speaking, and since that went on for 2 years and i was mandated – under the (so-called) ‘state of emergency’ legislation – with pretty much unrestrained powers, and since i followed that with a period of informal activism in a country that was undergoing a massive transition that saw us on the streets every week), activism that saw me often confront armed people in highly charged situations while unarmed myself (one of many such unarmed people, usually), and THEN since i carried on living in south africa and found myself in the regular stream of armed violence that everyone else is exposed to….

…i’d say i probably have more experience than you. not only more, but more varied, and more pertinent to the kind of situations you’re making claims about. specifically, i have experience of being the guy with the gun in hand when other people go bang, as well as being the guy with no gun.

all in all, of the specific situations – those of armed threat, of gun fire, of crooks and civilians, of tension, death, blood and mess and noise and screaming and running and so on – that are the express subject of discussion, i am pretty sure i have the edge on you. for what that’s worth.

there’s quite a lot of what you’ve written here that makes me think you have no idea what you’re talking about. you’ve supplemented (i assume) with guesswork and ‘The Wire’ and so on, and developed a set of expectations about such events that you’re using to argue from. as i pointed out, real life is different. sorry.

“but a South African would be the first to agree the camel’s nose is in the tent on that one.”

quite so. which is why if you really wanted to save the people in the rooms full of armed psychos you keep describing, you’d throw your weight behind removing guns from your society, and you wouldn’t stop until you’d succeeded. because that makes it harder to kill people. period.

hope it helps.

d

Okay, you’ve said your bio. I elect not to, andI won’t, for the reasons you elect to. It would sound fantastical in certain ways, it would end certain conversations. It would be unfair. Our experiences are approximate. I seem to have more of it some ways, you in others. but they are on par. End of story, nothing further to discuss. Sunshine.

In fact, based on some of what you’ve said, especially about how fear and confusion in armed encounters negates any good that can come of moderately trained amatuer actors doing their best to defend themeslves, I actively question your bio. You know full well that the cops and soliders who come to these scenes in the US will, statistically, have no more experience in a gunfight than the civilians hiding under the table.

I’m sorry that SA is such a mess that your cops have all been in shootouts over there. Maybe if Protevi let them be our campus police I would back off my desire to allow citizens to carry on campus.

Also, SA has one of the worst police forces of any semi-developed nation on the world. Its ability to render timely aid is nil. I guess this is why you are comfortable with just allowing violence to run its course until the killer runs out ammo or suicides. This seems like the norm in SA, where some jurisdictions are served by one rusty old police van and a bunch of corrupt cops.

As for removing guns from my society, please, by all means, show me how. It has made for a disaster. Really. For such a hardened person you can be so quaint at times.

I do not want me or my friends to die this way, even once.

And I don’t want to die because some would-be superhero thought they were taking out a crazed murderer, when in actuality they were shooting some poor schmuck (viz., yours truly) who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

This is the argument that’s been made repeatedly, and not, as you insist on caricaturing it, “Eh, if I die, I die.”

I don’t think you’re too dumb to understand that, so I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and just assume that you’re just a jerk who’s incapable of arguing in good faith. But you’re still providing good entertainment value for the dollar, I’ll give you that. Your response to daelm above was nothing short of dazzling. So carry on.

Uncle,

It’s not your moral prerogative to stop another person from defending her life because you assume there is some small added risk to you of her doing so.

If you are lying prone under a table, the chance of this “hero” shooting you accidentally is pretty small to nil. Just ask dalem, he gives an account of people spraying entire rooms with automatic fire and and nobody getting hurt because eveyone was down on the floor. Ditto the IDF’s Entebbe tactics. Anyway, your worry of being in the crossfire is just as unrealistic as the one of the neat kill where a head shot neutralizes Bishop prior to her first shot. The truth is the loud, messy, smoke-filled middle.

As for just dying, if you are saying you’d rather be solely at the mercy of the shooter and the eventual police response, rather than have a peer who is trying to actively to save herself and perhaps you, then, eh, you are cotnent to wait around to die and see how things turn out. It is your right. By all means.

” The basis of policy has to be social science.”

Or ethics, or morality, or community sentiment, or deliberation, etc. etc. Social science, unchecked, has produced the worst policies of our time. As has the rest of these things, unchecked.

Anyway, yeah, AEDs and digiatlis do not harm others. But we are talking about shootings. The third-parting harming is out of the box. It’s all third party harm. It’s nothing but third party harm. Until the party ends, any solution at all, with or without Samaritans or cops, will be about third party risk and harm. The mere reason this risk to others exists is not a trump against a given possibe solution, because any and all acts during the event are about this risk and how to best manage it.

So it all gets factored out on all sides, and the public AED example still holds as making the case for concealed carry, if kid wants to stick to his guns.

“Anyway, yeah, AEDs and digiatlis do not harm others.”

you really didn’t get it, did you? not the details, not the big picture, none of it.

by the way, i’m going to point out (though i hope other than readers other than Steven won’t need it) that here …

“…actively serving as a proxy law enforcement officer in south africa, where gunfire is so regular an occurrence that it makes people yawn these days, and since it was during a time when what was called ‘civil unrest’ was speaking, and since that went on for 2 years and i was mandated – under the (so-called) ‘state of emergency’ legislation – with pretty much unrestrained powers…’

…i’m not making a point about me. my point is that the argument Steven makes, based on his assumptions about how a dangerous situation unfolds, is not borne out by anything i’ve experienced.

this is a common CV for white south africans over a certain age, because of our history. if i’d been 10 years older, i’d have a bush war under my belt, with all that entailed, whether i liked it or not. none of it implies Die Hard moments. rather the opposite, in fact.

d

Anyway, yeah, AEDs and digiatlis do not harm others.

It’s very difficult to kill someone by mistake with an AED. It’s very easy to do so with digitalis, as mentioned in the example.

Okay, you’ve said your bio. I elect not to, andI won’t, for the reasons you elect to. It would sound fantastical in certain ways, it would end certain conversations. It would be unfair. Our experiences are approximate. I seem to have more of it some ways, you in others. but they are on par. End of story, nothing further to discuss.

I didn’t think people still used that. I thought the “I was in Super Sekrit Army but if I told you any more I’d have to kill you” gambit went out in about 2003.

Dude, we’re not asking for operational details. Just “I was in the army for six years, including a tour of duty as an infantryman in Iraq” would do fine.

speaking for myself, i was stationed at drambuie, off the barbary coast, and saw a lot of action in the raid on daquiri. it gave me far more insight into handgun crime than you’ll ever have, and gives my arguments unimpeachable authority, but i can’t reveal the details, for reasons that steven would understand.

Let’s go with this a little further, shall we? Let’s imagine that the current paradigm of spree-killing/suicide-by-cop is rendered less pervasive by an armed citizenry. Does this, then, suppose that the mentally unbalanced people who currently pursue these avenues will simply stop? I mean, that would be the logical thing for them to do, right? But… they’re mentally unbalanced. Maybe they’re smart enough to figure out that they can’t whack the faculty meeting like they planned back in the good ol’ days [and if they aren’t, let’s face it, we’re still back with some tasty crossfire to take our chances in]; but if they do have the baseline smarts to see that, they’ll find other ways. Maybe they’ll do more drive-bys; maybe they’ll start busting in on their neighbors at dinner-time and taking out the family round the table. Do we start having to have somebody riding shotgun more than merely idiomatically? Does a Sunday brunch suddenly need somebody with a weapon poised at all times? At what point of crazed preparedness can the Good Guys secure the fort against Bad Guys who, let’s again face it, could be anyone?

Phew, okay, deep breath.

I am at home, convalescing from minor surgery. This was great. I have lots and lots and lots of education, and all of the experience I purported to have to daelm. Sometimes I use it for semi-evil ends.

These are my conclusions:

It is probably best to keep concealed weapons out of the hands of the people who really see the world as a place where we need to have them handy, all the time, as regular citizens. They trouble me, but not to the paranoid extreme of Salient. It would be nice if there was a way to allow normal, well-adjusted people with a sense of civic duty to have them. How do we do this? It’s very hard. Big cities like NYC and LA seem to have very strict standards for concealed carry that do a decent job of this. If the permitting agency is strict enough, the adjacent campus might be inclined to abide by its decisions.

I feel law enforcement took way too long to get into the buildings at Columbine and VT. What where they waiting for? If the shooting was in a bank or supermarket, they’d run in and end the fight in about three minutes. On a campus, they wait forty minutes or an hour while people die. Not appropriate. I would feel better with nobody carrying concealed if the police could be relied upon to break down the doors quickly and keep the crazy person busy shooting at them rather than students and faculty. It’s their job on this instance.

Retired and active police officers attending classes on a campus should be exempt from the weapons ban. They have entered into a compact to protect the public, have taken on this role, and are expected to do so at all times. It is appropriate for them to have the tools necessary for them to act accordingly.

Gun laws should permit quite closely-regulated ownership and sometimes carry, but be federalized to eliminate the huge disequilibriums that exist between the states. The state of Virginia is the main reason threads like this even exists.

John P. was indeed being opportunistic in his trust of law enforcement in this case. But he did so because their policy seemed reasonable to him. Fair enough. It will be a rare case for John. People who teach French Studies are usually quite animated but ultimately thoughtful and gentle. I assume the stereotype is true in his case.

Salient embodies the left wing paranoia and dogmatism that allows right wing paranoia and dogmatism to flourish and be taken seriously. Both are annoying and must be stopped.

The deep, long fight is the prophylactic one, not the one about the gunfight in the classroom. Bishop killed her brother years ago and looks like a maniac. The Columbine kids gave hints. There are most often visible antecedents. Like fighting terrorism, the most important and lasting solutions don’t address the attack, but everything that came before it. These are also extraordinarily hard solutions to find and implement. I’m all for them.

I would prefer a classroom with fewer rather than more weapons. We basically have this. Someone here stated we don’t need a policy change, and he’s right. But every time these mass shootings happens, the tragedy is real and a decent person will wonder if there’s anything else that could have been done. The problem I’ve had with this thread is that yes, there could have been something, but maybe it just isn’t worth it in the long run. That is a point made a few times, but quickly lost to inaccuracies about the ability of citizens to do anything constructive with a firearm in a time of danger. This just isn’t true, it just might not be worth it.

So for the most part, I’d like to thank everyone for a stimulating two days. Be safe, duck and crawl at the sound of gunfire, and report crazies to the authorities as you discover them. Your intuitions aren’t everything Gladwell says they are, but they aren’t nothing, either.

Okay, Salient, you made me laugh. You may continue with your ways.

In 1984 Orwell envisioned a society in which the overwhelming majority of its citizens are oppressed by a bureaucratic police state. In your brave, new world you would transform the police state into a totalitarian police state, in which all citizens assume the responsibility, and the means, to defend themselves against each other. A police state on steroids.

On the other hand, daelm is right: if we want to resolve or reduce the negative consequences of gun ownership then we need to eliminate or restrict access to gun ownership. Guns don’t kill people. Gun owners kill people.

“Is a university campus a public right-of-way?”

This will be my last comment, since I really like the way Salient and I ended it. I am writing again beceause I think this is important.

University campuses, to me, ought to be places in which each person therein has “an equal right to the most extensive scheme of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar scheme of liberties for others,” and moreover a scheme of liberties that is in substantial congruence with or exceeds liberties granted by the overseeing government at large.

So when a person has a freedom given to him by the larger government that obtains in other places, I think the university must be very careful about circumscribing that freedom. They may so do, but not out of dogmatism, or prejudice, or cavalier opinions on the matter. I prefer that if a univeristy takes away a freedom that a person has on a public street or space the moment she steps outside its gate, it must be extraordinarily careful in doing so, and the reason must be very compelling. They have to show that this government-granted freedom in question is harmful in a way that is relevant to the university and that the harm is genuine. Then they may circumscribe it, but only with regret. If universities shy away from this standard, they lose soemthing that makes them special.

So they may have the regulatory powers of a private corporation, but certainly not the duties of a private corporation that provide checks on those powers. They day we let an argument about freedom at universities simply rest on what they *may* do is the day we might want to consider abandoning them.

Steven at 228: “I have lots and lots and lots of education.”

I knew he sounded familiar!

It seems to me that anyone doing anything back to her—I mean, even shooting and missing, or poking her with a stick—could have made for a better result than what actually occured.

How do you know no one tried anything? We don’t know much about this event yet, but previous campus shootings have been full of people doing plenty of brave things, some heroic, some not, and the thing is, one can do something heroic and still end up dead. (E.g., the professor at VA Tech who barred the door so his students could escape.)

Serious question. When the Walther Mittys come out to play, they don’t imagine themselves attempting to tackle the shooter, missing, and getting shot themselves. They don’t imagine firing wildly out of panic and accidentally killing a friend instead of the aggressor. They don’t imagine looking on helplessly because their purse which contains the gun is nestled under a desk chair just out of reach. They don’t imagine being the first victim shot in the head, who never had a chance to draw a weapon, whose weapon was then seized by the aggressor, allowing her to kill more. They imagine a taut thriller with themselves as the star.

It seems that before concluding that having guns on campus would be better than doing nothing, we might want some actual evidence beyond fantasies.

I should have thought all the evidence was right out there in the world. The wider and more uncontrolled access to guns is in a society, the more people get shot. Arguments that fail to address this, and propose further deregulation of gun-holding, are presumably pointing towards the unverifiable hope of a ‘tipping point’ at which this will cease to be a valid correlation. Or they don’t mind if more people get shot [because in their imaginations it will only be the Bad Guys…]

But now that we’re on the topic, of course I’m a dweeby academic type. Isn’t this the time you tell us how much you bench? Or are you a combat conditioning guy?

I do admit the physical resemblance, Alex, as in 245. I’m in fact so ashamed of what I look like that Steven had to do extensive internet research to find the photo that I had myself posted on my own website, which is linked to everything I’ve ever posted on the net.

I was pointing to the intellectual resemblance between Buster Bluth and Steven. That’s why I said he “sounded” like Buster: both had “lots and lots and lots of education” with no apparent effect; both had extensive military experience that made them experts in public policy; both were at one point or another “at home recovering from minor surgery”; both blather for hours on end about things that pop into their heads; both think the tabloids are good research methods; both talk about their fear of “the crazies,” etc. (OK, I’ll admit it, the writers of Arrested Development, brilliant as they are, weren’t inventive enough to come up with the last two things: credit where credit is due: they’re solely Steven’s!)

I will admit it’s something of an inside joke for AD fans, but if you knew the show, I think you’ll see what I’m after.

I’m a PhD student at Aberdeen University, Scotland. I’m also an ex-Marine. And to me, this conversation and debate veers from hilarious to licking-the-windows-crazy.

If you want to stop school/uni shootings, don’t arm everyone, arm nobody. Look, in Scotland in 1996, in a town called Dunblane, a former Scout leader walked into the primary school (kindergarten) and shot dead 16 five-or-six year olds, their teacher, and then himself. The result was that it is now almost impossible to get a handgun in the UK. Not coinicidentally, 1996 was also the last occasion on which there was a firearms-related massacre. In the UK in 2005/6 there were 50 fatal shootings (ie 1 per 1,000,000 members of the population), while in the US in 2004 there were 9,326 gun homicides reported (ie 1 per 33,333 members of the population).

Americans are no more homicidal by nature than anyone else. But y’all have guns, and that makes killing people easy. Can we not just get on board with the idea that the Amendment permitting firearms ownership is, to use a technical term, a dumb-ass idea? (Apart from anything else, the folks the Militia are meant to be opposing control the Army, Airforce, Navy and Marines. So either get rid of the Amendment, on the grounds that it’s no damn use; or level the playing field and let private citizens buy tanks).

If you want safer campuses, take the guns out of circulation. Giving them to everyone makes the problem much worse, and not simply because fatal outbursts of temper become more likely. Here’s a question I haven’t seen raised in the above discussion: is anyone proposing to train gun owners to carry them safely? As I said, I was a Marine, and we trained all the time in how to carry a weapon safely and then in how to use it without endangering bystanders and non-coms. If you want to demand people carry guns, then you have to demand that they know how to use one safely. If, as some are saying, there is a deterrent value in having an armed faculty, then the extent of that deterrence is somewhat determined by whether or not the faculty know how to shoot straight. There’s also the issue of owner safety – one of my mates, copying something he’d seen in a film, stuck his Browning Hi-Power in his waistband and immediately said a noisy farewell to his left testicle. (And to be perfectly selfish for just a moment, you have no idea how horrific the administration of first aid was on that occasion!)

Guns are weapons. No more, and no less. The numbers suggest that they make American society less safe, not more so. Isn’t it about time the damn things came out of circulation?

Regards,
Gavin

“More guns, less bollocks” – that’s an NRA bumper sticker just waiting to be marketed right there…! :-D

Hell we bash the chair at every meeting.