the upper-middle class is disliked more than the rich.
Sure. Upper-middle is people you know, and maybe have some idea of what they do, and it doesn't seem all that hard, especially compared to what you do.
The truly rich? We're getting into god territory there. Bill Gates. Steve Jobs. The pair that founded Google. Some others. To join that group all you have to do is create a new technology or three, and as a side effect also create tens of thousands of jobs.
There you're dealing with people who are doing things you can't do, even in theory, and don't think you could ever do.
Well, it sounds worse, but at least we’re using *our own* information to track them down (Usually by tracking cell communications and watching satellite images), as opposed to Gitmo, where we just paid bounties for people who other people *asserted* were terrorists.
Living people go to Gitmo and are often released, drone strikes kill that person plus everyone around them. And I don't share your trust that "our own" information isn't actually just paying for tips.
But I’m not fine with the CIA use of drones in killing people who are not declared soldiers.
That's rewarding activities which should be punished. Soldiers who aren't wearing uniforms or obeying the laws of war don't magically become civilians and the police don't magically gain the ability to control the battlefield they're on.
If we know there are terrorists in a certain house in Yemen, then Yemen needs to go get them.
Mostly we use drones where the local government doesn't actually control "its land". Us putting boots on the ground there would also raise sovereignty issues.
We don’t need to deal with them in *our* legal system. If we capture ISIS members, for the duration of the war, *we* should treat them like captured soldiers from a country that didn’t sign Geneva. (Some protections, but without a lot of fancy stuff.)
This takes us back to guantanamo bay or something like it.
ISIS soldiers did not commit crimes against the US.
ISIS is committing genocide, various other crimes against humanity, and is a thinly disguised/mutated/renamed/reincarnation of the 911 Al-Qaeda attackers. One of ISIS's previous names was "Al Qaeda in Iraq".
there’s already a nearly-fatal Catch-22 under Geneva for soldiers who *do not have a country*. Namely, they’ve got nowhere to go at the end of hostilities
I thought you were opposed to holding people forever without charge? Hostilities may not end this century.
They are an enemy soldier, in which case, Geneva,
Sure, but this brings us back to Geneva giving rights to soldiers who follow the rules, however these groups aren't following the rules. All the other categories you mention assume police control of the scene, which is simply nonsense in terms of a battlefield.
…regardless of whether his friends kill you *and everyone else with your skin color in the county*
First of all, *Yes*.
2nd of all, if you're not going to defend your life because some terror group might get upset, why stop there? They might burn down your town if you get all "uppity" and get a job, or out think one of them, or for nothing connected to you at all (false allegations of rape for example). The modern equiv would be eliminating women's rights because that's what is really angering ISIS.
3rd of all, the only reason that threat is on the table is because gun control (i.e. the KKK) was successful. With more guns around every group of 10 members of the KKK (or rioters) need to worry about which of them does the dying so that the others can do the killing.
In a world of imperfect choices, shooting the murderous scumbag who is trying to kill me is the least imperfect.
They *did* do the same for liberal groups! You just didn’t *hear* about it because Congress decided to hold hearing repeatedly demanding the IRS talk about the *conservative* groups they investigated.
The WSJ did a time line on this and they didn't start doing liberal groups until the conservatives started making a fuss. Further wiki says the depth, degree, and intrusiveness was worse for the conservatives.
It’s a goddamn Star Chamber, and one that *keeps not finding anything*.
I'm going to quote the USA today here: "For a scandal that is frequently derided as 'fake,' it is amazing how often real evidence disappears. The disappearing act is so frequent, it is reasonable to wonder whether it is really a systematic attempt to destroy evidence of abuse of power."
And note that the back-up explanation (i.e. mismanagement and total incompetence) is hardly better. The people in charge of regulating speech have so poor an understanding of the rules that they can look like they're "accidentally" coming down on the administration's side and "accidently" suppressing its enemies.
You *also* seem unable to actually explain the useful outcome you think guns would have resulted in.
Shooting the person trying to lynch you seems like a pretty good outcome right there, regardless of whether his friends kill you.
Dude, you realize that *claiming* that the people the IRS targeted were ‘political opponents’ *literally makes what those people did a crime*, right? Those groups *were not supposed to be political groups*.
It is very dangerous to have the government regulating speech. It is doubly dangerous when the gov is selectively enforcing laws on the administration's political enemies.
Yes, this was a stupid way to select groups, but stupid is not the same as criminal.
So the gov can suppress the administration's political enemies without it being criminal?
They're allowed to put conservative groups under a microscope to see if everything is fine when they don't do the same for liberals? And then stand on their 5th AM rights so they can't be investigated? And somehow magically the people who need to be questioned have had their hard disks fail?
If something looks/acts/sounds like a duck, it probably is one.
First, as I’ve said repeatedly, over and over, here, the size of the government has very little to do with how authoritarian the government is.
Only somewhat true. Gov grows until it doesn't work. Then in outrage the people turn to someone who offers emotion.
So when [the rich] begin to hanker after office, and find that they cannot achieve it through their own efforts or on their merits, they begin to seduce and corrupt the people in every possible way, and thus ruin their estates. The result is that through their senseless craving for prominence they stimulate among the masses both an appetite for bribes and the habit of receiving them, and then the rule of democracy is transformed into government by violence and strong-arm methods. By this time the people have become accustomed to feed at the expense of others, and their prospects of winning a livelihood depend upon the property of their neighbors, and as soon as they find a leader who is sufficiently ambitious and daring . . . they introduce a regime based on violence.
-Polybius
By ‘adjusted for situations’, you mean ‘Black people are more likely to be criminals, so the police *should* be shooting more of them’.
The police shooting someone is the last step in society's disparate impact on Blacks, not the first step. The "situation" includes concentrated poverty, the war on drugs, etc, etc.
Interesting... the history goes deeper and is more complex than I'd realized.
It’s a *lot* easier for law enforcement to figure out who is running around in masks than superhero comics make it out to be...
Any realistic description of superheros has them instantly being outed and turned into celebrities. Insane or criminal supers would be killed, not imprisoned, and the rest could find work a lot more profitable (and legal) than 'fighting crime'.
...they need to stop pretending that they can shoot their way out of it...
Ya, if we hit the point where guns become the solution then it's beyond ugly.
This requires strengthening checks and balances in the government, and not cheering when the checks and balances fail *even if* it’s your own side coming out ahead.
Agreed. Which means no ignoring Congress just because they're being a pain.
It requires making, as a hard and fast principle of US law, that the US cannot detain people without charge. *cough*Bush*cough*
It goes beyond Bush. The legal system isn't setup to deal with illegal soldiers, Geneva only addresses it to condemn it. We need alternatives other than treating illegal enemy soldiers as civilians (that would be rewarding behavior which should be punished).
The Obama solution is to kill them before they end up in the Justice system. I'm not sure that's an improvement.
…and it also requires not electing... Donald Trump...
This isn't the first, nor last, time we've gotten someone like him. The people who cheered the imperial presidency and the expansion of government should understand they're building tools for others.
Actually, since many suicides are a spur of the moment thing, and many people that run into troubles to kill themselves then and there tend to not kill themselves after all, yes, not having ready access to a gun will reduce the total number of suicides significantly.
There's an intuitive attractiveness to this line of thought, but I doubt it's long term utility. A country's suicide rates isn't related to its level of gun control. The reality is we're surrounded by things (ropes, cars, knives, plastic bags, harsh chemicals) which can kill us.
There are deep cultural (symbolism) factors here. In our culture, we have the whole gun=death thing. Removing guns or whatever symbol is dominate at the moment might help for a while but some other symbol would rise to replace it.
I'm thinking of someone who is basically this bad caricature of why-welfare-is-bad. She'd make a good GOP attack ad. The gov has tried to 'fix' or 'help' her multiple times and I think "enable dysfunctional behavior" is probably a better description of what's happened.
What people object to (seems to me) is your advocacy that the solution to the problem of gun violence is more gunz.
"Gun violence" stats are dominated by suicide and the war on drugs, neither of which seems likely to yield to a gun control solution (unless you count changing suicide-by-gun to suicide-by-something-else as a victory).
The underlying "advocacy" which people are arguing for, and I'm objecting to, is that a gun in the hands of a good person is every bit as much of a problem as a gun in the hands of an active shooter.
To be fair, some argued that "guns + alcohol is bad" which is at least passes some sanity test, but all too often I've seen the "more guns=bad" line of thought extended to "people are safer if they're unarmed, even if there is an active shooter (or lynch mob) trying to kill them", and we saw hints of that argument at various times here.
It doesn’t, because guns in the hands of alcohol-impaired againts-ISIS self-appointed vigilantes are way, way, more dangerous that any ISIS murderer will ever be
What we know about our sample 20 potential carriers is that they disarmed because of a sticker on the door, i.e. they're law abiding.
This suggests that the entire alcohol+guns thing could be fixed via regulation, rather than a flat ban.
You wrote that arming up is a legitimate response since on your analysis twelve armed people with intent to kill can show up on anyone’s porch at any time. Hence, it’s not about your (faulty) analysis, but your (perfectly legitimate) response.
Are you claiming that's the only situation in which a gun would be useful? We've got that gay bar shooting on the table as an example, it doesn't count?
You want to talk reasonable fear? AWESOME! What are the odds of being shot by ISIS? A “gangbanger”? A loved one? What are the odds a weapon purchased for self defense is used to protect innocent life? Is used to harm innocent life? What are the odds a weapon purchased for self defense is used to protect innocent life? Is used to harm innocent life?
This would be a very interesting statistic. How many times a private gun is used in a household or the street to stop a crime. How many people are killed or injured in handgun accidents (I’m excluding rifles because of the hunting thing). The balance will tell you a lot about how good firearms are to protect your home and life.
:Amusement: No, you don't get to lump all sorts of gun risks into the stats. People who carry mostly come from hunting/law-enforcement/ex-military communities and they've already got the risk of having guns in the house. Similarly suicide is off the table.
The issue is whether *your* fear of being injured via someone who carries is reasonable.
We had roughly 475 people die from mass shootings last year (pbs).
One of these anti-carry websites claims we've had 700 people die in carry incidents over the last 10 years. Ideally we'd subtract incidents where the person carrying gets himself killed but whatever.
That is your position as you’ve laid out. I’m asking you to justify the difference in treatment you advocate.
You're pointing out a linguistic difference, not a policy difference.
The US is able to make it impossible for a person to defend himself. Not difficult, not expensive, not against morals, but actually impossible via "we'll arrest you if you try".
The US sometimes even does this without offering any effective defense for that person ("gun free" zones enforced not by armed guards but by trusting criminals to obey the law, various cities where guns are outlawed but people get shot on the street).
Despite lip service, the US is unable to force the same thing on countries. (We don't threaten to nuke any country which gets nukes)
It is a good thing to have effective law enforcement and other things which prevent the need for weapons at a personal/country level. It is a good thing to try to convince countries/people they don't need them. It's a bad thing to force people to die merely so that you can feel good about your ethics in your comfortable home where you can ignore the risks they face.
DarkMatter: You’re comparing “going to war and killing many thousands of people” with “carrying a gun and not using it unless you have to”. IMHO a better comparison would be “insurance”.
Stillwater: No, I’m comparing you’re decision-making about this issue to Cheney’s 1% doctrine. It’s not about your analysis, it’s about your response.
I must be missing something here. You seem to be claiming that carrying a gun is extremely aggressive in and of itself (and can be sensibly compared to the deaths in a war), even if it's never used.
I doubt they will feel great. “Yes, I got three or four bystanders down with friendly fire, but at the end I got the bad guy, so I’m not overtly concerned about the other ones I killed. Even if I had hit a dozen people, is still an improvement”
True. They'll also have legal problems since the system only covers for police in "friendly fire". For that matter they'd probably still feel horrible even if they only shoot the active shooter.
But the other realistic option on the table is 100 people shot.
Facing up to that is grim, but not facing up to it is looking at the world with rose filtered glasses.
Because, of course, all of the twenty will magically know that the other nineteen good shooters are all fighting the lone bad ISIS guy together. At no time would they think that any of their nineteen co-heroes might be a second, third, fourth, …., nineteenth, twentieth, ISIS shooter, and start shooting at each other in all directions.
If I don't get to assume some Clint Eastwood movie, then you don't get to assume the keystone cops.
Not all of the 20 will be there, they certainly don't have the ammo to reload many multiples of times, and they'll probably think the bad guy is the one deliberately mowing down unarmed people.
And the default situation without them is really, really nasty. Saying it will kill someone, or even a dozen people, is still an improvement.
Oh, no, the *historic* example in the US of an authoritarian government is not the KKK. This is because the KKK is, obviously, not a form of government.
No, the issue on the table is not "authoritarian government". The issue on the table is gun control, and with the KKK (and lynchings) as the example, the question is whether or not it was better for the Blacks to be disarmed. Government failure/cooperation in the face of the KKK is only a backdrop to these issues.
Please note that as soon as Federal troops were withdrawn, the KKK *went away*. (The first one, at least. It lasted maybe a decade.) Why? Because they didn’t need to do that shit in secret anymore.
The last of the federal troops were withdrawn via The Compromise of 1877. The Klan's membership peaked in 1924. Lynchings occurred most frequently from 1890 to the 1920s, a time of political suppression of blacks by whites, with a peak in 1892. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynching_in_the_United_States
Like I keep pointing out, no one on the right actually seems to be doing *any* logical thinking *at all* about how the government would *actually do things* in a modern society.
We always respond to the last emergency, not the next one.
Does insurance ever carry the risk of…
…being turned around to harm the carrier?
…accidentally harming innocent bystanders?
…being stolen or lost and then used to harm others?
…being misused or misapplied and harming others?
The first one is a risk to the person carrying so they should decide for themselves. The 3rd is a problem with firearms existence and beyond the scope of this discussion (unless you want to argue for total gun confiscation of everyone).
The 2nd and 4th are better, the question is whether or not they're reasonable fears on your part.
On “How White Working Class Culture Shaped American Politics”
If it's not racism then it's something wrong with the Dems, not the voters.
"
Sure. Upper-middle is people you know, and maybe have some idea of what they do, and it doesn't seem all that hard, especially compared to what you do.
The truly rich? We're getting into god territory there. Bill Gates. Steve Jobs. The pair that founded Google. Some others. To join that group all you have to do is create a new technology or three, and as a side effect also create tens of thousands of jobs.
There you're dealing with people who are doing things you can't do, even in theory, and don't think you could ever do.
On “Confession of a Liberal Gun Owner”
Living people go to Gitmo and are often released, drone strikes kill that person plus everyone around them. And I don't share your trust that "our own" information isn't actually just paying for tips.
That's rewarding activities which should be punished. Soldiers who aren't wearing uniforms or obeying the laws of war don't magically become civilians and the police don't magically gain the ability to control the battlefield they're on.
Mostly we use drones where the local government doesn't actually control "its land". Us putting boots on the ground there would also raise sovereignty issues.
This takes us back to guantanamo bay or something like it.
ISIS is committing genocide, various other crimes against humanity, and is a thinly disguised/mutated/renamed/reincarnation of the 911 Al-Qaeda attackers. One of ISIS's previous names was "Al Qaeda in Iraq".
I thought you were opposed to holding people forever without charge? Hostilities may not end this century.
Sure, but this brings us back to Geneva giving rights to soldiers who follow the rules, however these groups aren't following the rules. All the other categories you mention assume police control of the scene, which is simply nonsense in terms of a battlefield.
"
First of all, *Yes*.
2nd of all, if you're not going to defend your life because some terror group might get upset, why stop there? They might burn down your town if you get all "uppity" and get a job, or out think one of them, or for nothing connected to you at all (false allegations of rape for example). The modern equiv would be eliminating women's rights because that's what is really angering ISIS.
3rd of all, the only reason that threat is on the table is because gun control (i.e. the KKK) was successful. With more guns around every group of 10 members of the KKK (or rioters) need to worry about which of them does the dying so that the others can do the killing.
In a world of imperfect choices, shooting the murderous scumbag who is trying to kill me is the least imperfect.
The WSJ did a time line on this and they didn't start doing liberal groups until the conservatives started making a fuss. Further wiki says the depth, degree, and intrusiveness was worse for the conservatives.
I'm going to quote the USA today here: "For a scandal that is frequently derided as 'fake,' it is amazing how often real evidence disappears. The disappearing act is so frequent, it is reasonable to wonder whether it is really a systematic attempt to destroy evidence of abuse of power."
And note that the back-up explanation (i.e. mismanagement and total incompetence) is hardly better. The people in charge of regulating speech have so poor an understanding of the rules that they can look like they're "accidentally" coming down on the administration's side and "accidently" suppressing its enemies.
"
Shooting the person trying to lynch you seems like a pretty good outcome right there, regardless of whether his friends kill you.
It is very dangerous to have the government regulating speech. It is doubly dangerous when the gov is selectively enforcing laws on the administration's political enemies.
So the gov can suppress the administration's political enemies without it being criminal?
They're allowed to put conservative groups under a microscope to see if everything is fine when they don't do the same for liberals? And then stand on their 5th AM rights so they can't be investigated? And somehow magically the people who need to be questioned have had their hard disks fail?
If something looks/acts/sounds like a duck, it probably is one.
Only somewhat true. Gov grows until it doesn't work. Then in outrage the people turn to someone who offers emotion.
So when [the rich] begin to hanker after office, and find that they cannot achieve it through their own efforts or on their merits, they begin to seduce and corrupt the people in every possible way, and thus ruin their estates. The result is that through their senseless craving for prominence they stimulate among the masses both an appetite for bribes and the habit of receiving them, and then the rule of democracy is transformed into government by violence and strong-arm methods. By this time the people have become accustomed to feed at the expense of others, and their prospects of winning a livelihood depend upon the property of their neighbors, and as soon as they find a leader who is sufficiently ambitious and daring . . . they introduce a regime based on violence.
-Polybius
The police shooting someone is the last step in society's disparate impact on Blacks, not the first step. The "situation" includes concentrated poverty, the war on drugs, etc, etc.
"
Interesting... the history goes deeper and is more complex than I'd realized.
Any realistic description of superheros has them instantly being outed and turned into celebrities. Insane or criminal supers would be killed, not imprisoned, and the rest could find work a lot more profitable (and legal) than 'fighting crime'.
"
Ya, if we hit the point where guns become the solution then it's beyond ugly.
Agreed. Which means no ignoring Congress just because they're being a pain.
It goes beyond Bush. The legal system isn't setup to deal with illegal soldiers, Geneva only addresses it to condemn it. We need alternatives other than treating illegal enemy soldiers as civilians (that would be rewarding behavior which should be punished).
The Obama solution is to kill them before they end up in the Justice system. I'm not sure that's an improvement.
This isn't the first, nor last, time we've gotten someone like him. The people who cheered the imperial presidency and the expansion of government should understand they're building tools for others.
"
There's an intuitive attractiveness to this line of thought, but I doubt it's long term utility. A country's suicide rates isn't related to its level of gun control. The reality is we're surrounded by things (ropes, cars, knives, plastic bags, harsh chemicals) which can kill us.
There are deep cultural (symbolism) factors here. In our culture, we have the whole gun=death thing. Removing guns or whatever symbol is dominate at the moment might help for a while but some other symbol would rise to replace it.
On “On Reversing the Tide”
I'd love to see social shaming but thus far haven't. I suspect that has to be in place before these high trust institutions can be put in place.
"
I'm thinking of someone who is basically this bad caricature of why-welfare-is-bad. She'd make a good GOP attack ad. The gov has tried to 'fix' or 'help' her multiple times and I think "enable dysfunctional behavior" is probably a better description of what's happened.
On “Confession of a Liberal Gun Owner”
Thank you.
Ouch. Gov can not only fail, but doesn't really have the duty to succeed.
On “On Reversing the Tide”
What do "high Trust" societies do with/about trust breaking people?
On “Confession of a Liberal Gun Owner”
"Gun violence" stats are dominated by suicide and the war on drugs, neither of which seems likely to yield to a gun control solution (unless you count changing suicide-by-gun to suicide-by-something-else as a victory).
The underlying "advocacy" which people are arguing for, and I'm objecting to, is that a gun in the hands of a good person is every bit as much of a problem as a gun in the hands of an active shooter.
To be fair, some argued that "guns + alcohol is bad" which is at least passes some sanity test, but all too often I've seen the "more guns=bad" line of thought extended to "people are safer if they're unarmed, even if there is an active shooter (or lynch mob) trying to kill them", and we saw hints of that argument at various times here.
"
Any reason not to drink is a good one.
"
20 law abiding people and none of them are a designated driver? Is it legal to drink and drive in Florida?
"
What we know about our sample 20 potential carriers is that they disarmed because of a sticker on the door, i.e. they're law abiding.
This suggests that the entire alcohol+guns thing could be fixed via regulation, rather than a flat ban.
"
Are you claiming that's the only situation in which a gun would be useful? We've got that gay bar shooting on the table as an example, it doesn't count?
"
@j_a @kazzy
:Amusement: No, you don't get to lump all sorts of gun risks into the stats. People who carry mostly come from hunting/law-enforcement/ex-military communities and they've already got the risk of having guns in the house. Similarly suicide is off the table.
The issue is whether *your* fear of being injured via someone who carries is reasonable.
We had roughly 475 people die from mass shootings last year (pbs).
One of these anti-carry websites claims we've had 700 people die in carry incidents over the last 10 years. Ideally we'd subtract incidents where the person carrying gets himself killed but whatever.
"
You're pointing out a linguistic difference, not a policy difference.
The US is able to make it impossible for a person to defend himself. Not difficult, not expensive, not against morals, but actually impossible via "we'll arrest you if you try".
The US sometimes even does this without offering any effective defense for that person ("gun free" zones enforced not by armed guards but by trusting criminals to obey the law, various cities where guns are outlawed but people get shot on the street).
Despite lip service, the US is unable to force the same thing on countries. (We don't threaten to nuke any country which gets nukes)
It is a good thing to have effective law enforcement and other things which prevent the need for weapons at a personal/country level. It is a good thing to try to convince countries/people they don't need them. It's a bad thing to force people to die merely so that you can feel good about your ethics in your comfortable home where you can ignore the risks they face.
"
I must be missing something here. You seem to be claiming that carrying a gun is extremely aggressive in and of itself (and can be sensibly compared to the deaths in a war), even if it's never used.
"
True. They'll also have legal problems since the system only covers for police in "friendly fire". For that matter they'd probably still feel horrible even if they only shoot the active shooter.
But the other realistic option on the table is 100 people shot.
Facing up to that is grim, but not facing up to it is looking at the world with rose filtered glasses.
"
If I don't get to assume some Clint Eastwood movie, then you don't get to assume the keystone cops.
Not all of the 20 will be there, they certainly don't have the ammo to reload many multiples of times, and they'll probably think the bad guy is the one deliberately mowing down unarmed people.
And the default situation without them is really, really nasty. Saying it will kill someone, or even a dozen people, is still an improvement.
"
No, the issue on the table is not "authoritarian government". The issue on the table is gun control, and with the KKK (and lynchings) as the example, the question is whether or not it was better for the Blacks to be disarmed. Government failure/cooperation in the face of the KKK is only a backdrop to these issues.
The last of the federal troops were withdrawn via The Compromise of 1877. The Klan's membership peaked in 1924. Lynchings occurred most frequently from 1890 to the 1920s, a time of political suppression of blacks by whites, with a peak in 1892.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynching_in_the_United_States
We always respond to the last emergency, not the next one.
"
The first one is a risk to the person carrying so they should decide for themselves. The 3rd is a problem with firearms existence and beyond the scope of this discussion (unless you want to argue for total gun confiscation of everyone).
The 2nd and 4th are better, the question is whether or not they're reasonable fears on your part.
"
The question is whether or not this is a reasonable fear.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.