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Authors Note: This is Part 2 of a 2 Part Series…
The problem with prohibition is that it doesn’t work. And the reason it doesn’t work is because prohibiting a thing, such as alcohol, or drugs — which kill far more people every year than guns — or weapons, doesn’t treat the underlying issues that cause the thing to be abused or misused in the first place. The thinking seems to be that by making it illegal, human beings will magically stop being human beings, which is an hallucination we have been having long enough now that we should know better.
Predators from the author’s old beat.
“There is little evidence to suggest that (the Australian mandatory gun-buyback program) had any significant effects on firearm homicides.”
“Although gun buybacks appear to be a logical and sensible policy that helps to placate the public’s fears, the evidence so far suggests that in the Australian context, the high expenditure incurred to fund the 1996 gun buyback has not translated into any tangible reductions in terms of firearm deaths.”
~Wang-Shen Lee & Sandy Suardi, University of Melbourne
Studies in places like Australia, above, have shown no appreciable result in overall gun homicides after new laws and a massive buyback were enacted. And in Russia, where private firearms are prohibited, the homicide rate is four times that of the United States – only those murders are committed with other weapons, or simply by hand. And the idea that the spikes in violent crime are exclusive to America, land of the 2nd Amendment, is a myth.
“In just 15 years, according to Interpol data, per-capita violent crime went up almost fivefold in Norway and Greece; nearly fourfold in Australia and New Zealand. There was a clean tripling in per-capita violent crime, in these 15 years, in Sweden. And per-capita violent crime approximately doubled in seven other European nations.
“Some of these nations, like Norway and Sweden and Denmark, that have seen these doubling and tripling and quintupling of violent crime, they’ve been keeping track of violent crime for over a thousand years. And, never, in the last thousand years, have we seen anything remotely like this. This is unprecedented for violent crime to just double in 15 years; it’s staggering, for it to go up fivefold in 15 years.”
~Dave Grossman
Grossman’s studies, convincing as they are, aren’t the last word on what is causing all of this predation in our country, and indeed around the world. But they do, it seems, outline at least a large part of the answer, and they reveal to some extent how the emotional, mostly knee-jerk debate surrounding calculating predators who murder innocents tends to wander off the trails of cause and prevention.
“The question you need to keep asking yourself is: What is the new variable, what is the new ingredient? And, the new ingredient is that we are creating killers, we are creating sociopaths.”
For long-term thinkers, the most alarming part of our failure to have the right conversation about the causes of predatory mass killings is that our civil liberties are put at risk. The seductive anodynes put forth by short-term thinkers require that law-abiding citizens sacrifice their own freedoms in a well-meaning but clearly improbable effort to stuff the predator genie back into the bottle.
That’s true because the conversations we do have almost inevitably end up focused on guns, and perhaps most frightening to the law abiding — or anyone with a sense of liberty and its tenuous place in history — it also reveals an emotional propensity among many of our fellow citizens to surrender their freedoms to fantasy visions of “public safety”.
And “public safety,” if you haven’t noticed, has become a catchall phrase meant to justify any movement to legislate the reduction of danger in our environments. That is particularly true in the narrative over gun control, and exclusively true when the subject of control is the ubiquitous AR-15 or its variants.
Despite the now familiar refrains for stricter gun control after every active killer event, it remains unclear how any gun ban, magazine restriction, bullet-button, confiscation scenario, or buy-back program will negate the sudden appearance of a bloodthirsty predator in a defenseless henhouse.
Because predation is what predators do.
There is, amongst many well-intentioned gun-control advocates, a sincere belief that outlawing weapons of a specific type will prevent mass killings. They believe this even though, as a matter of historical fact, knives, cars, passenger jets, ANFO bombs, and even poisoned punch have been used in acts of mass murder. And each of those methods has been used more than once.
Nevertheless, people all over the country insist that the answer to predatory violence is –- rather than addressing its causes — to outlaw a particular weapon, which means that even a law-abiding citizen would be prohibited from its justified use in defense of themselves or others in the face of an active killer who uses the same banned weapon to kill innocents.
A wolf on its kill
But 21st century citizens of the American empire are being conditioned to surrender their fundamental right to self-preservation by ridiculous requests from various “authorities” and law-enforcement agencies to “not take the law into your own hands,” or to “run, hide, and fight”. These pleas also serve as frank evidence that the state would prefer us all to behave like victims, and to surrender all interest and control over our own outcomes to their good offices and the Hail-Mary hope that predators will some day cease to be predators.
Imagine the broader implications of a state that prefers, even insists, its citizens behave like sheep when a wolf comes trotting out of the forest.
In virtually any event involving matters of safety and law, the law-abiding citizen is being encouraged to embrace the role of a barely functional emasculate, to “become a good witness”, and to avoid exercising his or her own rights, or the rights of others similarly effected, while waiting for “trained professionals” to handle any and every problem, ranging from neighbor disputes to parking lot fender benders to the sudden appearance of an active killer in a shopping mall.
Which isn’t an approach that worked well in the Florida shooting, given the FBI’s utter failure to track tell-tale spoor left all over the trail, and which was compounded by the inaction of a school resource officer who did precious little while a wolf was rampaging through his flock.
However it is phrased, and no matter how well-intentioned, such lemming-think is both foolish and dangerous for responsible adults, and catastrophic for the security of a free-society.
The more obvious problem with surrendering any right whatsoever to the government – which never stops insisting on turning its citizens into dependable and powerless victims — is that you will never get it back. Once any piece of the freedom pie is handed over, it is gone. Forever.
If you remain unconvinced, go to Wounded Knee, study what happened there, and have a think on the long-term benefits of US government largesse in the name of public safety.
The results of a Public Safety campaign at Wounded Knee
Every citizen in the United States owns, and it actually is a possession, the right to preserve not only their own safety, but the safety of others in the face of a predator. That is not a right vested solely with law enforcement, nor is it ceded anywhere in America to government agency, except perhaps in “Gun Free Zones” which exist — if only as a kind of mass hallucination — precisely because the predator element is so rife in those areas that effective self-defense is an everyday conundrum.
How disarming in the face of inveterate, unpredictable, and widespread predation amounts to a wise move is anyone’s guess.
As a humorous aside, once, while hauling a gang member and his family to another state where they would enter federal witness protection, my partner and I strayed from the beaten path and ended up driving through a “Gun and Drug Free Zone” in Sacramento, California.
Worse, we somehow managed to get lost while hauling this gangster and his family in a rented Cruise America RV with a rodeo cowboy and visions of Monument Valley plastered all over the side of it. The gangster, who had given us murder suspects in a high profile gang killing, crept forward and asked, seriously, if we had an extra gun we could loan him while we drove around in circles looking for a way out of the badlands.
The point is that predators know how to respond to their own kind.
“The only common denominator in all these tragic massacres that have plagued our country has been exposure to violent video games. We have truly raised an assassination generation that has committed unthinkable crimes as children, and they will grow up and commit crimes as adults that we never dreamed of in our darkest nightmares.”6
Which brings me finally to the “need” equation.
Creepily, we have been hearing from opponents of firearms – particularly AR-15s — a new trope in the gun-control conversation. “Nobody needs an assault-weapon,” goes the line.
Imagine the absurd circumstance of having to “demonstrate a need” to assert your civil liberties – any of them — to a government entity, particularly in the midst of a lethal predatory event. Yet this is already the case all over America, and it shows up in strange ways, such as “free speech zones” created, as always, in the name of “public safety” during controversial appearances by politicians and others.
This “declaration of need” is almost universally true in places like California, the same cratering socialist state that recently eliminated mandatory firearms enhancements for violent gun crimes while releasing tens of thousands of predators from state prisons and county jails. They did this while simultaneously demanding that law-abiding citizens “demonstrate a need” to carry a concealed weapon for self-defense. Predators never demonstrate a need to anyone, they simply prey on the weak.
“They whose minds are least sensitive to calamity, and whose hands are most quick to meet it, are the greatest men and the greatest communities.”
~Thucydides
California, which mass produces much of the media that lies just off-stage in the violent predator conversation, is not alone in its love for criminal predators or its fostering of victim-think. And what’s worse is that we can see and hear in our national conversation that we are now being asked to accommodate predatory behaviors caused – to some uncertain degree — by constant exposure to the violent “entertainment” pumped out by a sick and decaying culture.
Predator Control
Disarming, or willingly surrendering the right to be functionally armed under those circumstances, can only be seen as a form of insanity.
When I walk my dogs in the woods I am aware that bears, mountain lions, and coyotes live there, and I take every precaution to provide for our safety in the event one of those predators decides to do what predators do. After a career in law enforcement I have learned to take that same view anyplace there are human beings – the world’s undisputed champion of predatory behavior. And mostly, while in the woods, I am confident that animal predators have better judgment than human beings when it comes to applying the violence they are capable of.
While we can hope that we will never find ourselves ambushed by a predator, and we take precautions to avoid it, we can’t be certain.
And if, someday, we are ambushed, what is certain is that I won’t be interested in what socio-economic factors contributed to the creation of that predator. I won’t care how old he is or how much money he has. I won’t care what color he is or where he was born. I won’t be asking permission or formulating a needs statement, and I won’t be waiting for anyone else to solve my existential predator problem.
Brian Hessling says
It is no doubt a time of crisis and national soul searching. It is, indeed, an “existential” crisis for myself (as much as I understand Sartre). Regarding Part 1: I have to look at my own youth and the childhood of my own, now 22, son. We played a lot of “guns” with cap pistols and squirt guns. My mother hated that, she being born in Holland 1939. My own son probably had too much free reign with so many things, but that’s another story. He played some games, had a console but ultimately was more distracted by trucks and girls and far more personally dangerous thrills. We were lucky and we were not. Regarding Part 2: In my own work, I’ve manned a lot of retail gun counters. Day in and day out it’s just another poor paying sales job but there are moments with some customers where you wonder if you really are acting without harm to the greater world. The other day, I personally and publicly (well, in what constitutes “public” on social media anyway) stated that in the face of this continued American carnage I no longer could personally ascribe to a position of absolutes regarding the issues of gun violence in our beautiful monster of a country. As the days pass, I don’t know what that mean’s. Certainly in respect to “voting” I have no clue anymore but even after that; am I throwing Citizenship under the bus? Am I setting myself up for some karmic comeuppance? Maybe I need to read some more Sartre…So yeah, great column. Thanks. I think…
You can never go wrong reading Sartre, in my opinion. And Camus as a sidekick. They were coming out of the disaster of France in the WW2 era and had long reckonings to make. What underwrites my premise is simply the endless of loop of predator creation in our culture. We are building them and accommodating them at the same time, while simultaneously asking the law-abiding and mostly peace-loving citizen to become an emasculate. From 30k feet that looks increasingly foolish. Thanks for taking the time to write in, it is much appreciated.
cris says
This is so on target and i am deeply moved by your writing. i am not wired to be a willing victim which frequently gets me in unpopular places.
Thank you for articulating the missing component to the public discussion.
Such good stuff.…never stop writing.
Thanks Cris, I’m humbled, thank you. And never lose that unwillingness to be a victim. Traits like those are going to see us through the rubble we are creating all around us.
TJ says
The Sacramento story made me laugh out loud Craig. There were some characters on both sides of the chase weren’t there?
A great topic and some great responses — encouraging.
Right? That is a trip I will not soon forget. And it got even more weird before it was over. 🙂
“And if, someday, we are ambushed, what is certain is that I won’t be interested in what socio-economic factors contributed to the creation of that predator. I won’t care how old he is or how much money he has. I won’t care what color he is or where he was born. I won’t be asking permission or formulating a needs statement, and I won’t be waiting for anyone else to solve my existential predator problem.”
Agreed.
From your vantage point as an educator, you must have some interesting insights and observations. What do you and your colleagues make of it all?
deuce says
Excellent post, Craig.
Another piece of the puzzle is to be found in John Putnam’s reluctantly published, BOWLING ALONE. He hated the results of his study. Facts hurt, sometimes. Even then, he did everything he could to dance around why America’s “social capital” and cultural cohesion have so drastically declined in recent decades. The US is a State of Alienation. It is no longer a “nation” by any reasonable interpretation of the original meaning of the term.
https://www.amazon.com/Bowling-Alone-Collapse-American-Community/dp/0743203046
Marvelous. Thanks, Deuce. I’m ordering it up today.
Alienation is the core, I think. On so many fronts. Hell, I feel pretty alienated myself.
J.F. Bell says
Still got the tribe, scattered though it may be.
Still…a civilization without cities and a nation without borders…it’s an odd state, to be sure.
Pat_H says
It is the core, and it works into this in some really interesting ways. More than a person could put in a single reply, as it’d be a book length reply.
Trying to summarize however, one thing that’s common with the events like we saw a couple of weeks ago is that they tend to ball be committed my young males who fit into a certain psychological class. According to an article in The New Yorker published several years ago, at that time all of the shooters were individuals who had Aspergers.
Just mentioning that brings down a storm of criticism in most places on the person mentioning it, but it is the case that almost all of these people fit on the edge of the psychological profile. Now, we’ve always had those folks with us, but our society has really evolved in a direction that has put then in a very isolated spot, even at the same time the more “progressive” amongst us think that they’re doing a kindness by proclaiming they’re “mainstreaming” them.
In truth, if you are 50 years of age or older, you can well remember working with people who fit into this class even though it didn’t really have a name back then, or at least one that was commonly used. They were just odd silent people we worked with. But there was a place for them. If you were in the service, or worked on the shop floor, etc, you remember that co-worker who never said anything, but could do his job, and on Friday when you knocked off work or got leave he was taken along as part of the group, where he also probably didn’t say anything. But he felt like he was part of the group, as he was.
Now, as we’ve become more and more technologically advanced we’ve created a society were more and more of the jobs go to the better and better educated and the hyper gregarious at the same time. That drops out from the bottom loners who are incapable of really existing in that world. Some of them were always dangerous, but others have become so as they live out their lives in solitary isolation with nothing but video games for interaction.
It’s not just that, of course. Society has evolved (de-volved?) in all sorts of ways that fuel this. Basic standards of conduct have evaporated. The Western World has become feminized in a way that deteriorates from isolated males being able to really develop and has made traditional roles for men less and less viable. Family structures have been crushed so that a lot of young men grow up with no male role models at all, and in spite of the Murphy Brown myth to the contrary, at some point their single mothers can’t handle them anymore. It’s a mess.
Pat, I’m becoming more and more convinced that atomization, “autonomy” and isolation are working havoc on our psychology and our social psychology. In the suburbs, people often don’t know their neighbors AT ALL. As you say, it didn’t used to be that way. And other social pressures come to bear and… it’s a mess.
Great contribution. I would recommend a Netflix show called Mindhunters. It is about the early days of the behavioral analysis unit at FBI, which were landmark in identifying some of the same connections you are illustrating here. My contention remains that probably every child killer might have been stopped if anyone had been paying attention to them. In fact, just saying STOP, has stopped child killers in the middle of their spree. Grossman writes about that strange turn of events as well. Thanks for taking the time to comment, much appreciated.
Sorry for all the typos. I didn’t stop to proof read (which I always should).
Lane Batot says
Well, I TRIED to comment–had plenty to say on this subject–but the dang format Timed-Me-Out again, and, having no idea how to copy, cut-and-paste on this contraption(if it is even possible), I just wasted quite a long, time pointlessly pecking, and I just GIVE UP for today! Frustrating. It must be some Karmic Penance that I’m subject to–my favorite blogs that I wish to join in conversationally the most, are the ONLY blogs that have this !@#$%^&*()(*&^%$#@!!!! “Time Out” feature! But don’t worry folks, despite my frustration with modern high tech contrapshuns, I won’t be getting a gun and going out to murder scores of completely innocent strangers because of it.…..
I will talk with Lynn tomorrow about un-Lane-proofing. Sorry my friend.
Lane Batot says
“If once you don’t succeed”–back on to try, try again. It would help(if such a feature cannot be entirely eliminated, for whatever computoid reason), to KNOW perzackly HOW LONG we got before we git “Timed Out”–so’s we kin keep one eye on the clock and have warning to finish up, er perhaps split the harangues into pieces.…..
Lane Batot says
.….I, and all the others with a higher influence of Neanderthal genetics, will thank you.….
Saddle Tramp says
“Never pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel.”
— Mark Twain
Lane Batot says
Ha! And how ironic that here we are discussing the inanity of limiting the ability of citizens to protect themselves(at least I think most participators here see the absurdity of it, despite the best of intentions behind those wishing/campaigning for it.…), and yet the format of this blog limits our commentary! But then I am well aware that I am probably the only primate in this society that is so computer ignorant that it does limit only my participation. Why don’t these contraptions come with basic owner operation manuals like almost any other mechanical device I’ve ever purchased? I just DO NOT have the social network available(living as a semi-hermit in the woods with a bunch of dogs) to ask about such stuff. Part of the ARROGANCE I despise regarding the Computer Dominated Regime, is how people are just supposed to KNOW how to operate these gizmos, even if they have no prior experience. They are especially exclusionary to someone raised by wolves, like moi. Okay, that mini-harangue over–let’s git back to the subject at hand(see below–in pieces!)
Patrick McGowan says
Thank you for your article. All of my questions below are sincere and based out of a desire to have an honest and straight discussion of this tragedy that has overwhelmed our county. One of the sources you cite states:
“There is little evidence to suggest that (the Australian mandatory gun-buyback program) had any significant effects on firearm homicides.”
“Although gun buybacks appear to be a logical and sensible policy that helps to placate the public’s fears, the evidence so far suggests that in the Australian context, the high expenditure incurred to fund the 1996 gun buyback has not translated into any tangible reductions in terms of firearm deaths.”
What about mass shootings specifically? What does the evidence say about that? This statement seems to leave a lot of information out. Perhaps the specific numbers are included in the book. I am far from an expert on this subject, my line of work is being an inner-city elementary school teacher in Los Angeles. What I have read is that the huge majority of gun related deaths are domestic disputes and suicides. I have no number but I doubt the majority of them are done with AK-47’s. So this is one (of many) questions I have. What is anyone’s need for that weapon other than to kill another human being? Perhaps, for you it’s that it is naive and negligent not to have the best weapon on hand to protect yourself against these sociopaths. You’ve been trained as law enforcement. I think I can fairly guess that the majority of people in this country that own these high powered non hunting fire arms have not been trained to a fraction of the level you have. I am citing an article I tagged Jim in and will place the url here as well in hopes that it furthers the discussion. This deals with not only the idea of arming teachers but of anyone other than Law enforcement and the military dealing with a shooter. And for the record, I am not someone who believes that citizen should not have guns.
“Defending children is a must, but putting a firearm in the hands of even the most trained teacher isn’t the answer. Anyone suggesting this solution has clearly never experienced a situation like the one seen in Parkland because it oversimplifies the complexity of an active shooter situation, especially in close-quarters. It is not as easy as a “good guy with a gun stopping a bad guy with a gun.
“I ask that you take a few minutes to understand my perspective and why I feel strongly about this matter. Before recently moving to Charlotte, I served for three and half years as an Army infantryman, stationed at Fort Wainwright in Fairbanks, Alaska, and I deployed to Afghanistan’s Kandahar Province in 2011. By the time my tour was over, I left a place that claimed two members from my company, cost six others at least one limb, wounded over 25 percent of our total force, and left me with shrapnel in my face and a bullet hole in my left thigh. When I saw the news flash of another school shooting I couldn’t help but think of the firefights I had been involved in and how these students and teachers just encountered their own version of Afghanistan.
“Make no mistake, the fear and chaos they faced is no different than what my fellow soldiers and I faced in Afghanistan—a fear and chaos that I still remember like it happened yesterday.
“Regardless of training, you don’t know how people will respond in life and death situations until the moment comes. You don’t know how people will react when they hear gunshots. You don’t know how people will react when the person next to them is shot. You don’t know how a person will respond when their task is shooting someone they know or taught. You just don’t know.
And now we are expecting teachers, even with training, to perfectly handle this situation. I say perfectly because anything less could mean even more tragedy and death. This isn’t a movie where bullets always miss the hero. These teachers aren’t action stars. These are average people, who more likely than not, have never come close to experiencing anything like this.”
https://www.charlottefive.com/arming-teachers/
I don’t disagree with the possible influence the shooter games have on young men. I have played a number of them and stopped playing them because I found them gruesome. I don’t disagree that prohibition doesn’t solve problems. But wouldn’t raising the age that one could buy an ak-47 create an obstacle for a teenage shooter? Thank you for taking the time to consider my questions.
Patrick:
I think Craig should be the one to respond to this, but I wanted to note that I added quotation marks and italics to clearly identify the extended quote. Please let me know if that’s not accurate.
Jim
Patrick, thanks for the thoughts and your cordial approach to a difficult topic. I would argue that the “need” premise is wrong for many reasons. As I outlined in the piece, we are unable –at this point, and probably ever — to stuff the predator genie back into the bottle. If there were not vicious sociopaths walking the streets the “need” question would perhaps be more relevant. I would also offer that we are approaching a solution to the mass killing question from the wrong direction. We are looking from the top down, first at the aberrant behavior, then at the method, but we aren’t asking what is causing these people to go off the rails in the first place, which is logically the only thing that will stop them from victimizing someone else. And then, doubling down on the wrong approach, we are assuming that banning a certain type of weapon (or in the minds of many, any weapon) is going to magically cause these predators to change their fixations. It won’t. If every AR disappeared tomorrow it would not stop the next mass killing. We live in an era where mass killers will find a way to kill people–whether its driving a delivery van down a crowded street, or putting cyanide in the fruit punch. The only real effect of a weapons ban would be to turn millions of perfectly harmless and law-abiding citizens into outlaws for adequately providing for their own defense–which is enormously problematic in a free and responsible society. Accommodating predators by disarming their potential victims is an utterly bizarre notion, in my mind. One doesn’t suddenly unlock all the doors to their house when a burglar is prowling the neighborhood. As to raising the age to purchase an AK or an AR–I see no problem with that at all. As to arming teachers, I have no problem with arming the ones that want to carry, just as airline pilots who make that choice are free to do so. The other thing we might do is make a better effort to keep violent predators in jail, where they can live with the other captured predators until they die. A walk through any yard in the California prison system — any prison in any system — where only a fraction of our predators live, is an excellent way to get a first hand look at the kind of predator our culture is producing. Thanks very much for your thoughts, and for taking the time to share them here. Please keep them coming.
Patrick McGowan says
Thanks for the response, Craig. I want to break down my reply so that I can wrap my head around it. In that tone, I repeat one of the questions from above namely, this quote:
“There is little evidence to suggest that (the Australian mandatory gun-buyback program) had any significant effects on firearm homicides. Although gun buybacks appear to be a logical and sensible policy that helps to placate the public’s fears, the evidence so far suggests that in the Australian context, the high expenditure incurred to fund the 1996 gun buyback has not translated into any tangible reductions in terms of firearm deaths.”
What about mass shootings specifically? What does the evidence say about that?
Secondly, your comment; “If every AR disappeared tomorrow it would not stop the next mass killing.” I disagree with. It wouldn’t stop ALL mass killings of course, but the scenario of many of these shootings, gunmen coming into a workplace or school just couldn’t happen. Of course they could drive up during vunerable times, but your statement seems lacking. I am going to stop here because there are SO many angles to this issue and I need to parse them out. What a campfire discussion this could be.
Best
The evidence suggests that mass shootings aren’t prevented either. If you recall, a gunman in Norway killed 77 people with a banned firearm. A student in Germany until very recently held the dubious distinction of killing over a dozen of his classmates with a banned firearm.
Why wouldn’t they happen? A crazed man in a delivery van killed 86 people in Nice, France. Four days later another man stabbed five people on a train in Germany. Shortly after that, yet another man in a van killed 12 people and injured nearly 60 in another delivery van. The list of non-firearm massacres goes on almost without end. Yet nobody has suggested banning delivery vans, because the realization in that case is that banning delivery vans won’t stop the underlying causal factors. The premise of my position remains that predators will find a way to kill regardless of bans. What we need to be addressing is what is driving them to kill in the first place, and without making a generational capitulation of freedoms that we won’t ever see again, and which may be wanted very badly in the future.
Patrick McGowan says
I’ve asked twice about Australia specifically and haven’t received a reply to that specific question so if you have a link I will look it up myself.
As I replied to your comment, the banning of every AR weapon, wouldn’t stop all mass killings,I agreed with you. I brought it back to school shootings and that seemed to be ignored. I am in agreement with you that we are looking at the wrong end of the problem but a number of the mass killings you cite above were people with a political agenda. To my knowledge most school shootings do not fall into that category. No question that people with the will to do harm, will find a way, but when I think of the school shootings, I cannot imagine them playing out the same way without the easy access to guns the killers had. By the way, started watching Mindhunter last and enjoyed it. The Wire is my favorite show of all time and it nailed the BS of public school testing as well and what you mentioned.
It was ignored because the premise is attempting to segregate mass killings into categories based on location or purpose. It’s irrelevant what is behind them or where they happen. School shootings shock the conscience because of their location and victims, but are essentially no different than a religious or ideological zealot running over children and others with a delivery van at a festival. Australia has not suffered a similar mass shooting event since Port Arthur, but this a thin plank to stand on in support of the notion that buybacks or prohibition had any meaningful effect on gun related homicides.
http://c8.nrostatic.com/sites/default/files/Lee%20and%20Suardi%202008.pdf
http://c3.nrostatic.com/sites/default/files/Baker%20and%20McPhedran%202007.pdf
Here are links to two studies supporting those conclusions.
Patrick McGowan says
Craig,
Thanks for the links, I look forward to reading them. Binged watch Mindhunter and was very intrigued by it. Perhaps there is some parallels with these shooters in terms of home lives. I seem to recall reading an article that the Columbine shooters were not loners though. Obviously lots of layers to this.
I think that the home lives of the average American predator are abysmal — variations on the same theme in Mindhunter. It may or may not present in an act of mass killing, or even a single killing, but a well-adjusted person with a support network does not typically savage his neighbors. And this is the thing we must address to make real progress against violence. It will be an uphill slog because violence as a solution is ingrained in the fabric of our culture and often celebrated in media, disassociated from cause and effect. In other words, it sells — as do many of the band-aid “solutions”.
Pat:
I agree with Craig that the “need” test regarding any right is flawed. In insidious ways, we’re seeing it applied to all of our rights: “free speech zones”; the grotesque notion that “if you’re not doing anything wrong you shouldn’t be worried about surveillance.” I am open to effective actions to separate the drunks from the car keys — if that’s the actual purpose and the measures are undertaken in good faith. Stringent background checks are totally appropriate. Raising age limits may be appropriate, though it is a sad commentary that an 18 year old might enlist in the military but cannot be armed as a civilian. Maybe we’ve come to that. I am opposed to bans and “declaration of need” tests.
I consider “Arm the Teachers!” as much of a bumper-sticker solution as “Ban the Guns!” While I would personally want the fighting chance in that kind of extremity, it’s not a “fix.” Acting effectively under extreme stress requires rigorous and continuous training. While some may be willing to engage at that level (to their benefit, I would argue), I don’t see it becoming a common thing in schools, for a variety of reasons. And who pays for it? I understand teachers bridling at the sudden interest from the right when they have a hard time buying supplies. The responsibilities of concealed carry become more acute in a school environment — you CAN’T leave your firearm unattended, and if a student were to access it there would be hell to pay. And while I have no doubt that a teacher could and would pull a trigger on an adult hostile intruder, I don’t know a teacher who doesn’t revolt at the very thought of pulling a trigger on a child — even a threat.
The local school staff here in Sisters emphasize the importance of connection — which they can achieve due to the small scale of the operation. Ultimately, it’s atomization, isolation, alienation, fed by pernicious influences, that feed a culture where young men choose to become the monsters in their own tale. There are no straightforward “answers” to that problem.
To paraphrase Vaclav Havel, we need to live better lives. A “better system” does not in itself ensure better lives and living better lives is necessary to create a better system.
Lane Batot says
I am all for more stringent rules regarding the acquisition of guns, but NOT because I have some unrealistic notion that it’s gonna solve the gun violence problem–it WON’T. But what stricter rules and regulations WILL do, is make sure people who DO legally acquire guns, understand just what the responsibility is, and MAKE MANDATORY gun education/operation certification classes–so that they are confident and sensible in their carrying and using of guns–it would make things MUCH safer on the part of the legal citizenry–instead of having bumbling, inexperienced, panicked people attempting to defend themselves against cold-blooded, superiorly armed sociopaths. My earlier rant about how frustrating and stupid(see,it all fits together in the end!) computers are not coming with basic instruction manuals–DITTO for guns!
Patrick McGowan says
Jim,
Well you nailed it. Empathy is sadly lacking everywhere in our society. We have programs in LAUSD to address in in all grades but when the emphasis is on test scores and the infrastructure is falling apart, the programs that are derided as “Touchy-feely get thrown out. The school I am at now, does a fair job with the principal and vice-principal out every day helping the students. I try to check in with any student I see looking glum. I see them connect with me on some level. Teachers praise other classes. But I know kids are still falling through the cracks. We have a president who lacks any kind of empathy and insults people on a daily basis, I wonder how that is mixing into the dangerous stew that we already have.
Lane Batot says
Patrick(bless you), it sounds like YOU are doing exactly what needs to be done–never discount your efforts(or let others cynically do so), or wonder if they are doing any good just because you see know blatant evidence of it–there is no telling HOW much good you have already done with that attitude and effort! Of course no one can “save” everybody, but it is amazing(if only you could know) what a few simple acts of kindness and genuine concern can eventually elicit. Old as I am now, I still WELL REMEMBER both things said and done to me by good teachers and bad teachers during my institutionalized incarceration in the public school system! And of the many, many teachers I had(that were SUCH an influence in my life), I only had TWO bad ones–3rd grade math teacher, and 6th grade combination homeroom, history/science teacher–which yes, I remember with great detail! THAT’S some purty good statistics, when you think about it–only a coupla bad ones outta several dozens! So keep it up, man–you cannot know HOW MUCH a simple reaching-out can do, unless you have been one of those “glum” students yerself!
Right on, Lane.
Breaker Morant says
Over the last couple weeks, my 15 YO just started playing a first-person shooter game. Fortnight, which is the big fad.
Speaking as someone who has a Remington VTR version of an AR-15, it is disturbing to hear the constant discussion of AR-15’s and so forth, especially when juxtaposed with the news.
How do you address it? Would be interesting to hear your thoughts on that.
Breaker Morant says
How do I address it? Good question that has to be defined as a work in progress and may take a couple of posts. This is his first multi-player online game. A couple of weeks ago, he was with Grandpa in town and bought the console without telling us as he knew that we would, probably, reflexively, say “No.”
I can’t be mad at him about it, because it is kind of fun to see the friendship interaction. Yesterday, I picked him up from basketball practice and he took forever to come out of the locker room. I asked him “Why?” and he said they were talking. I knew what he was talking about and he slowly admitted that they were talking about “Fortnight.”
Some about him-he has always been older than his years and he has always been a gun enthusiast and he is very mechanically inclined. I have told him many times that he needs to be an armorer in the military or something. He said he is thinking about the Marines.
He wanted a new shotgun for trap shooting and he did extensive research for it. He picked up a Franchi in the store and I saw a boy fall in love when he pulled the action back and it was as smooth as butter. I, too, fell in love when I pulled the action back, it is that smooth. He paid half and I paid half.
He is very political and, knows his own mind. Our family is on the “Trump Train” for lack of a better term, but he goes way deeper into politics than we ever discuss, but the questions, he asks can be some doozies. We have joked for years that we will get a call from school about his politics and we would have to say “That’s him-not us.”
Every once in awhile, he comes home from school venting about his liberal teachers and I just ask him-“Do you need a beer?” He always turns me down-LOL.
We were in California during the 2016 Republican convention. We stayed with a bachelor uncle, who as a conservative, is very frustrated at California politics. It was good that we were there for him, as he got along very well with my 15YO-then 13, and he needed somebody like-minded to talk politics with. I am still surprised that both my boys (then 18 and 13) were more excited to visit the Reagan museum than the beach. My daughter (then 15) liked both.
He has “Attorney” written all over him, but I think he is more drawn to the trades and/or the military.
I guess this is a really long way of saying-“I don’t know what to do about this new game?”
Breaker, my guess is that your son is already pretty well moored. You talk. That, sadly, is a huge distinction. My sense is that problems crop up when a kid is alienated, isolated (internally) and pernicious influences become primary influences.
I’d say play it with him. And talk about it. Talk about real life consequences. If you do that, I think, everybody wins. In my piece I mentioned a peanuthead we took into Witsec. For two weeks prior to launching we had him locked down in a hotel room for safety reasons, which meant my partner and I were locked down too. Know what we did to kill time in the hotel room? We played Call of Duty with the peanut-head in our custody. For hours. In the old days I guess they sat around smoking cigarettes and playing cards. We drank Coors Light and played a first person shooter video game.
deuce says
As per the Supreme Court, the police have no general duty to protect a member of the public. Such a duty would open the police up to countless lawsuits. We saw how much “protection” was provided by the officer on duty at Parkland. Then, we saw how much protection the NEXT three officers provided. Good thing Parkland was a “gun free zone”. Who knows what carnage might’ve ensued if it hadn’t been designated with such a thoughtful label?
https://www.firearmsandliberty.com/kasler-protection.html
By the way, most mass shooters are 21 or older.
Legislation that is reactive to particular circumstances usually misses the mark.
I have seen some reasonable counter-narratives for the initial delay in going inside. First, there is some reason to believe that the deputy(s) thought the shooting was happening outside of the building, as apparently many initial reports indicated. Undoubtedly the kids running by gave many different versions of what was happening–even if they didn’t actually know themselves. We have to be very careful on this subject because condemning the guy is too easy. While its true that SRO’s often come from the dump pile of patrol officers, that isn’t necessarily so, and it can be VERY difficult to distinguish where gunfire is coming from, particularly on a large campus with radio traffic in your ear and, in this case, hundreds of screaming kids in the other. There are also policy considerations to bear in mind. This agency may have had a policy — and may have trained it — to wait for sufficient resources. 4 is often considered sufficient because it allows for the almost universal “diamond” formation that provides 360 coverage and the ability to move quickly in hallways. That is not unreasonable because law enforcement is, or at least should be in this age, mindful of incidents such as the one in Beslan, where heavy machine guns, explosives, and a hostage situation developed. With multiple shooters, which one must assume when responding, running inside instantly may ultimately prove a dumb move. A dead cop in the middle of that horror does not make the situation any better, for a host of reasons. In those first few seconds it is reasonable to not know what is happening and to be wary of making a bad situation worse.
At my old agency we discussed all of these possibilities. The vast majority of officers agreed that we would make entry alone if necessary, and I know that there are many who actually would. We trained to the notion that every gunshot was another dead child, and our training was as realistic as we could make it, complete with “shooters” armed with simunitions and live kids running around screaming.
Every car in our dept. had an AR, and most of us carried a war bag of extra magazines for such an occasion. But I would hate to think, because none of us were standing in his shoes or dealing with the information he had at hand, that we destroyed a man’s reputation without all of the facts, and something about this is starting to feel like scapegoating–particularly by the Sheriff who is scrambling to get heat off of himself. I can say with very high degree of confidence that I would not have handled it the way these officers did — I would have gone inside. But that doesn’t necessarily make me right either. Thanks, Deuce.
On this topic, I seriously wonder if concealed carry civilians present a more realistic degree of protection (but only a degree). I know that this is controversial, of course, and I limit my comment here to those who have obtained a permit.
The reason for that is going to the trouble to obtain a permit to carry concealed is extremely singular in nature. It’s about one thing, that one thing being that you are willing to intervene in a deadly situation and you know what that means.
Police have an entirely different role by training and occupation and it involves a million emergency situations. Last time I called a policeman it was for a manhole cover that had been taken off of the manhole by a snow plow. I called the non emergency number and a policeman came up shortly thereafter.
The point is that policeman’s roles are so broad that simply delegating the role of keeping everyone safe from harm to the police isn’t really realistic in every situation. I’m not making any comment about this incident in particular, about which I don’t know the facts beyond those reported, but in general. People tend to recoil in horror from the suggestion that broader carry may be the answer, but in fact responsible broad carry is something that does have an impact.
I can tell you from experience that keeping almost anyone safe from harm is impossible for the police. The cops show after something has happened most of the time. There aren’t enough cops, for one thing. For another, departments have encouraged the “no call too small” policy which means that 25–30 convoluted calls for service a day for one cop isn’t unusual, with many calls holding for hours because higher priority calls are pouring in and stacking up. A single day might start with a woman complaining of having a radio implanted in her vagina that is telling her to do bad things, and graduate to a bank robbery to an injury traffic collision to a stabbing or a found body. In a single shift. Once, I stopped two yoots who had just committed an armed robbery of a convenience store. I was grateful for the assistance of a concealed carry holder who saw me holding them at gunpoint while waiting for a cover unit and who stopped and offered to assist. I enlisted that help at once because, naturally, the yoots had a gun. I think there is much truth in the notion that an armed society is a polite society.
Thanks for your insight.
Today a liberal friend of mine posted an item on Facebook noting that in armed confrontations police only hit their targets 16% of the time. Statistics like that are always grossly overbroad, but to the extent they have any value, I think it shows the opposite of what my friend thinks it does.
If you are in an occupation in which you have to prepare for a day potentially involving heart attacks, fires, car wrecks, barking dogs, loud radios, drunks, unlicensed street venders, etc. ‚etc., preparing to be in a gun battle is really something that’s only a remote possibility that you couldn’t focus on to the detriment of everything else.
A concealed carry permit, holder, however, has strapped on that gun without the mace, handcuffs, etc. etc., and is carrying for a singular purpose. They too will almost never have to use it, but the fact that their wearing isn’t part of a more global mission means, I think, that they are much more reliable than people might think.
I am of the belief that outsourcing the role of protection solely to police/military is antithetical to the foundations of the Republic and to the essence of manhood itself. We would be much better off if every civilian took more responsibility for their own and their neighborhood’s security. We should all know CPR and first aid, too.
We would be, but in the over-tight trousers, sensitive to their feelings era of manhood we are now in, that won’t be happening.
I’d go on, but it’d be dispirited thread hijacking so I’ll avoid doing so.
Lane Batot says
Like most anyone(isolated lifestyle that I live, however), I have pondered this dilemma over and over, and I cannot say I have any solutions, but perhaps some more unique(if somewhat chilling) thoughts considering what’s going on in modern society, with these seemingly pointless mass killings. Especially with my specific Anthropology and Critter Geek mindset. First, let me briefly complain(since I seem to be doing quite a bit of that this moon phase.…) about the entrenched(alas) tendency to compare human aberrant criminals and mentally twisted individuals to other animal predators. I know I cannot single-handidly change that now entrenched bit of our language, but I’ll still complain about it given any opportunity! There is a VAST GULF of difference between the two, into which I could digress and discuss interminably. Perhaps one reason people aren’t getting what’s going on, is because they are visualizing it and inaccurately comparing it to perfectly natural behavioral phenomenon, when there is nothing natural or “normal” about the behavior of human mass killings. In TRUTH, WE ARE ALL PREDATORS by Nature, whether the vegans, who have made other conscious choices, want to ever admit that or not–but what is more natural, formerly acceptable predatory that has been historically accepted in human society, is NOTHING like these aberrant, insane killings by disturbed individuals. But we can get into THAT more in further commentary, if anyone wishes. For now, I’ll introduce some other “notions”(not supported by enough evidence–yet–to be “theories”. THERE IS a difference between “notions” and “theories”, by-the-by, although you’ll encounter professional scientists that don’t seem to know the difference! To be continued.….
Lane Batot says
.….One notion I cannot completely discount, with the understanding that “there are things not dreamt of in my philosophy”(paraphrased), and to get perfectly supernatural with you guys here, is the subject of Demonic Possesion. Or WHATEVER perfectly reasonable, scientific explanation covers THAT phenomenon(which science HAS NOT effectively explained away such incidents to my knowledge.…). Which hot potato, after tossing out there, I will now hastily DROP!.…But that leads us DIRECTLY(in my eccentric, perhaps illogical way of reasoning) to WITCHCRAFT. No, no–NOT the supernatural, spell slinging brews and curses attributed to fairy tale witches, but the REAL witches that live amongst us always, and more prevalently now more than ever(especially since public burnings are currently “politically incorrect”!) otherwise known as sociopaths and psychopaths. Think about it(from an Anthropological perspective.…)–WHAT exactly IS a witch, in any society that recognizes such(VIRTUALLY ALL societies throughout human history), and what is it that witches DO or are accused of doing?(spells and incantations aside.…)…To Be Continued.….
We had in our city, during my Narco travels, a witch-doctor. She (really a he) was a node for drug traffickers in our area, and widely visited. Drug traffickers of the Mexican persuasion believe very strongly in the power of various idols and saints to protect them in their business. We watched many of our subjects go into her little shop for blessings. Later, we had informants that gave us a good idea of what was happening during those blessings, and it took a strange turn toward Santeria complete with chicken blood. We also discovered cops from neighboring agencies were going in there. Rival traffickers and cops all going to the same basement witch doctor. At any rate, ultimately, the witch doctor showed up on our wiretaps, playing one side against the other and working hard to make her own predictions and blessings true. He (she), whatever, ultimately went south and did not return. Do not discount the power of mysticism in all of this, it is a strong and real influence.
Lane Batot says
.…I guess I should define what “witchcraft” I am describing here, and comparing to sociopaths, is regarding what would be–heck, still IS in many parts of the world–evil “black” magic, as opposed to good, “white” witches(and this color designation IS NOT mine, but exists even in Africa, where I personally also had some experiences with witch doctors–both good, beneficial ones, and bad, perhaps sociopathic ones.….But that’s ANOTHER long, almost impossible not to be “Timed Out” story!.…And YES, DO NOT automatically disregard or pooh-pooh the effects of witchcraft on societies. Perhaps a psychosomatic effect, perhaps something else entirely.–I’ve seen enough to not entirely discount such.…And sociopaths in the U. S.A., with no cultural thought or understanding of “witchcraft”, almost certainly do not think in such terms, though they may be behaving in ways that WOULD get them labeled such in other societies, with the standard, usual, quite effective consequences.…
Tom Russell would agree with you. Experiences in West Africa…
Lane Batot says
.…..WHAT witches DO is go out of their way to cause trouble any way they can with whatever group they live among„ and actually REVEL in it–it is their greatest source of pleasure and feeling of power, which, just like those video games, they MUST get some kind of endorphin release from. Setting people against each other, causing dissent in any way, and with absolutely NO sense of immorality or guilt–these are CLASSIC symptoms of the sociopath, and if you compare the two–so-called “witches”. Their behavior makes no sense to those with a more normal conscience, consequently, their ability(honed with much practice and a wicked understanding of how easily manipulatable those with a conscience are_)to LIE so effectively, allows them to get away with such behavior, and cause the maximum of dissent and problems before they are ever, IF they are ever, exposed. Nowadays, people caught in such aberrant plots and duplicity are just fired, divorced, maybe arrested, but allowed to go on and practice their “witchcraft” on others, wherever they end up, indefinetely. Whereas in the past, in an amazing number of societies across the globe, the SAME punishment had been doled out–such sociopaths are BURNED. “Though shalt not suffer a witch to live” is a quote, and probably very practical advice, from a very influential book, I might preach. Am I suggesting we set out to have bonfire celebrations to eliminate this curse of sociopaths that has been allowed to run rampant and unchecked in modern society? And bring back all the purported unjust accusations and frenzy and executions of innocent people that popular history likes to tout we have now evolved beyond as a society? Not really, but we MUST recognize that this phenomenon–sociopathy–is EPIDEMIC in society just now, perhaps BECAUSE it is not recognized fully, and we have no “politically correct” way of dealing with it any more. Despite the tragic mistakes made in the past, perhaps all that witch burning DID serve a basic, functional purpose in preserving a society. I have read(in trying to learn how to deal with such personalities which, alas, I have had more than my share of experiences with.…)where it is estimated that as many as 1 in 25 people are full blown sociopaths now–maybe more. That is VERY chilling, in my view.…to be continued.…
Ties to narcissism, which is rampant.
Lane Batot says
Narcissism(try to say THAT word without lisping!) IS one of the major characteristics of sociopaths.….
Lane Batot says
…AND, incidentally, in my “research” in trying to learn how to deal with sociopaths I was co-workers with, I encountered what are considered the only two solutions when trying to deal with them: GET RID of them(by whatever means–in the workplace, that would be to “fire” them, if possible–a most appropo term, when you think about it), or GET AWAY from them. Sadly, there ain’t no reasoning with them–although they will pretend to do so, then treacherously destroy you any way they can while you imagine things are going swell. And, equally sadly, ain’t no “Fixing” them–something is missing(basically, a conscience) in their mental make-up, that all the therapy and discipline in the world cannot “fix”. Hence the former solution of immolation.
No contact is the only effective strategy in dealing with a narcissist. It is known.
Breaker Morant says
A suggestion for site design. It is not real clear how to get to the older posts that are not on the main page. I realize it is a new site and there are not a lot of old posts, but I think there are a couple older than ‘Hunter-Gatherer-Blues” which is the last post on the main page and it is not clear how to find them.
Thanks — will refer to Lynn Woodward.
Lane Batot says
.….What is equally chilling to me, in regarding the fact that sociopaths are apparently more numerous than ever before(perhaps due to the lack of “controlled burning”), is, exactly WHY and HOW are they proliferating in modern, Western society? Is it something wrong with our society in general(nurture)? Or–even more chillingly, could it be something environmental(nature)? Just think about that for a second. Think about the theories(based on some real evidence and statistics) that purport that the epidemic rise in autism may be environmental–caused by pollution or chemical poisoning or whatnot. Could not other mental aberrations be caused by the same? Like sociopaths? Now THAT’S REALLY scary. But a “notion” that ought to be considered, I think. Perhaps it is a combination of factors that when mixed–young, testosterone peaked males whose endorphin levels have been spiked only by violence–video games or other such–that have too easy access to guns without supervision, that have been exposed to whatever this environmentally induced factor is–and you have the recipe for disaster.….
Saddle Tramp says
Check out the etymology of “gone amok”.
It’s certain that environmental factors are playing a part in all of this. And by environment I mean in total — the 360° world we inhabit — which includes long-term marination in media violence. Wendell Berry’s excellent essay, “It All Turns on Affection,” argues very effectively that our means of inhabiting the earth, which presently gives very short-shrift to the environment we depend on to sustain the life we have created, must be centered on affection, respect, and sustainability of the ground we walk on. The question should not be “What can I get out of the land,” but “what can I do to help it.” We don’t do that, not even close, and have built a society around a mindset of exploitation. Full throttle. It is damaging our brains and creating sociopaths in record numbers. Worst, it has one inevitable end: utter calamity.
Lane Batot says
Let’s just hope sociopathy is not contagious! Makes you wonder–there are accounts of perfectly normal, sane people being unjustly incarcerated in lunatic asylums, that, upon being liberated, were found to have actually GONE MAD themselves, after being surrounded by madness 24/7.……
Saddle Tramp says
For the sake of brevity:
“Men willingly believe what they wish”
— Julius Caesar
And I would add that it is seemingly coming out of the woodwork. I will try to comment further with what I feel are both cogent and respectful to all. Gotta roll…
My wife’s grandmother had a mockingbird who lived in her yard. I hated that bird. Every morning it woke up too early and started running through its set of birdcalls at full throated pitch. Every birdsong it had ever heard on a seemingly endless loop. We have far too many mockingbirds doing the same thing in the human realm.
Saddle Tramp says
Interesting…
TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD is to kill innocence. A great book and an equally (and so rarely) great film. Affection perhaps ill-defined. I really struggle with the dichotomy, of all this, but I do full understand it. My interest is in understanding it more fully.
In the book it certainly is. In real life its a boon to sanity. 🙂
Saddle Tramp says
Ha! And I thought art imitated life and not the reverse…
Thanks!
This is a hornets nest that you are well aware of no doubt. Maybe hornets and not Mockingbirds…
🙂 The minute I saw the word Mockingbird all of my mainstreaming techniques abandoned me. I was reduced to old pathologies.
Lane Batot says
Dang, man, I LOVE mockingbirds! I lament how they have disappeared from so many places, thanks in a large part to their susceptability to pesticides(they are major insect eaters). When I grew up, there was a mockingbird in every bush, in every person’s yard. We had one that sang on our chimney, and the music resonated throughout the house. Gosh, I MISS that! In fact, there used to be A LOT more birdsong everywhere–perhaps an ominous realization of the statement in Lauren’s Van Der Poste’s novels “A Story Like The Wind”, and “A Far Off Place”, that the birds have “changed their tune”.……
I am willing to concede that not every mockingbird is a psychopath. However, there was one particular mockingbird who drove me to the edge of my endurance. 🙂
Lane Batot says
.….And the whole gun control thing, and the observation by many that we’ve always had guns, and guns available to juveniles, yet never experienced mass shootings to the degree we now are experiencing, and the conclusion that we are somehow DIFFERENT than we used to be–is paralleled with an amazing similarity in attitudes towards DOGS! How appropo since a snarling dog(Rottweiler, I believe) is used as an illustration to head this post! Bear with me–there are some interesting parallels. There has been, throughout modern history in the U. S. A.(at least since the late 1800’s) a tendency to label a certain type/breed of dog as “bad dogs”–untrustworthy, treacherous, maniacally liable to “turn” on you. Of course we all know that Pit Bull terriers are the present “bad dogs”. Yet, when I was a kid, in the 1960’s, one just NEVER heard about pit bull attacks–they were considered one of the best, most reliable family dogs around–especially throughout the South. And indeed so throughout the breed’s history. In my day, and apparently since World War 2, “German Police Dogs”, i. e. German Shepherds, were THE “bad dogs” that the media had field days with, and seemed to be involved in every “unprovoked” attack–especially on children. If you’ve seen many kids unsupervised around dogs, and witnessed their diabolical primate cruelty, you soon learn to question that “unprovoked” bit! Anyway, after a bit, DOBERMANS became more prevalent, and soon eclipsed German Shepherds as THE “bad dogs”, and amazingly, GSD incidents in the media virtually disappeared. Then Rottweilers raised their blocky heads circa 1980–before that, hardly anyone in the U. S. even knew what a Rottweiler was, but that movie, “The Omen”, with a “Devil Dog” Rottie as one of the main stars, changed all that! And Rotties had their “bad dog” day,which does seem to have died down particularly lately. Pit Bulls also became the newest “bad dogs” right about the same time as the Rottweilers(thanks in a large part to urban gang members and drug lords acquiring them), and have eclipsed them. I know better, having handled HUNDREDS of Pit Bull Terriers working in veterinaries and dog boarding kennels over the years, that it is how the dogs are raised and treated, socialized and trained(or NOT!) that determines a lot of their temperment–NOT the breed or type. An excellent book on the subject is “The Pit Bull Placebo”, which tells the progression of “bad dogs“in American society, rather as I did above, but where I learned THE “bad dog” of the late 1800’s/early 1900’s was–almost unbelievably these days–the BLOODHOUND! Same ridiculous media persecution of them as the ensuing “bad dogs”. Which makes one realize that the “bad guns” being vilified right now, as if banning them will solve the problem, is a ridiculous notion. IF they are banned and successfully totally eliminated, guess what? People will just go get “another dog”.…..
An interesting and valuable comparison.
Saddle Tramp says
Lane…
Texas Dog Stories (and more).
When I first moved to West Texas on the Llano Estacado and that land of canyons and caliche roads, a major construction project was taking place at work. We had electricians out of the Amarillo local doing extensive work at that time. One day the foreman rolled in and a blue healer jumped out of the truck bed. He said that he had found him stranded on the road on the way in and being both a big guy and with a big heart to equal it, he brought him to us. We eagerly adopted him as our plant dog. I named him Sparky for obvious reasons. Our other plant dog was living the last of her long years in the guard shack being taken care of by Linda. Well, long story short some time later Sparky disappeared never to be seen again. Our other dog passed away as well. Linda was beside herself. About two weeks later, I was going out my front door at home early one morning only to find a pup Border Collie on my porch. It was still dark. Since I could not search for an owner and could not leave the poor thing there on the porch, I took her to work with me. Linda immediately took to her. We could never locate the owner.
Of course we adopted her as well. Linda named her Shelby. She grew up just fine and had a great temperament. A few years later I got a call from a very upset and panicky Linda. Evidently, Shelby had been out in the pasture in front of the plant where we kept Longhorns and Llamas. One of Shelby’s front legs was swelling up real bad and we saw the fang marks. A Rattler had bitten her. It is rare that one gets bit on the front, as usually it is while in retreat. The whole area around the plant was infested with Rattlers. It was not uncommon for one to come inside the plant. Even more common was to find one coiled up on a diesel engine of a tractor seeking warmth that you discovered when lowering the hood for pre-inspection. Anyway, I rushed Shelby to the vet and got her treated. The prognosis was not very good. She got even worse the next several days. We finally changed vets and the next one saved her (and limb) also greatly aided by the help of Linda’s loving care.
She ended up recovering fully.
I hated it when I would have to go out bushwhacking through the weeds to check on our lagoons and the University of Missouri test project equipment they had installed for testing the evaporative rate on one of our lagoons. They were out there aplenty. Even though you know they don’t want trouble you still do not want to test that theory.
Later, after I left West Texas and had hit the open road , one time I came across a dead 10 button Rattler that showed up in my headlights one night. He had been run over and was strung across a back road dirt lane near Antelope, Texas north of Jacksboro. This was just as I arrived at the dairy farm to drop an empty trailer and pick up a loaded one.I had to drop the trailer in a thickly weeded area near the dairy farm. When I got out of the truck I heard a rustling in the weeds when suddenly a Armadillo scurried out right in front of me. I was sure damn happy to see that critter after having a mind full of that Rattler and memories of Shelby…
I hate snakes as bad as Indiana Jones does.
Lane Batot says
Great stories, Saddle Tramp! One of these days, I hope to finally git around to pecking out some “Frontier Partisan Canine” guest posts, over on the FP, with hopes it will encourage the swapping of tales and ideas about dogs just like the above!.….I myself learned to accept, and even rather LIKE snakes(they ARE amazing critters!) long ago–I learned early as a kid messing about in the woods and swamps to admire them at a distance, and LEAVE THEM ALONE. The only snakes I ever had that tried to bite me, were snakes I was messin’ with! I think Kipling’s “The Jungle Book” had a definete influence on me in that regard–one of the only stories(and a kid’s story at that!) where a snake(Kaa) was a friend/ally, unlike his portrayal in the film versions(a real pet peeve of mine.…) I also took Baloo’s and Bagheera’s teachings seriously, to where I would actually hiss to snakes when I encountered them as a kid(and still do) “We be of one blood, ye and I”. Superstitious as this sounds, I truly believe snakes are ESPECIALLY attuned to movement and can read your intent at a glance–fear, aggression(and in humans, fear OFTEN leads to aggression!), or peaceful acceptance, and they react accordingly. Not that unexpected accidental encounters can happen faster than you can react “politely”, but it probably is a miracle of sorts I’ve never been bitten(hope I’m not jinxing myself here.…) as many copperheads and rattlesnakes as I’ve encountered in all my woods roamings–and where I was in the tropical forests in Africa, literally crawling on my hands and knees at times in thick bush, in an area where virtually every venomous snake native to East Africa(except the Gaboon Viper) lived, I had ZERO bad encounters.…I DO have a 13 year old Bluetick hound(named Roland) who DID NOT ever read “The Jungle Book”, that kills every snake he can, and consequently he has been bitten numerous times by copperheads, and once by a rattlesnake, but survived them all. He just WON’T learn the consequences of impolite attitudes towards serpents!
By all means — peck em out and I’ll publish em.
Saddle Tramp says
Thanks Lane…
My closest encounter with a venemous reptile was while canoing on the Huzzah River in Missouri with a friend of mine. We went under a low lying tree and a Water Moccasin (Cottonmouth) dropped from a branch right into the middle of the canoe. Needless to say we quickly bailed out. We also used to go to the old abandoned coal strip pits in Central Missouri that were filled with water. Good fishing. There were stories (unverified) of a kid diving into a nest of water moccasins (Cottonmouths) and being bit multiple times. We used to swim in them, but bad ear infections broke me of that. The Cottonmouths also gave me enough of a reason too. Canoed virtually every river in both the Missouri and Arkansas Mountains in my youth. I prefer the faster moving water for all kinds of reasons. You are no doubt though the advanced woodsman and canine expert among us…
I was by comparison more recreational you might say…
Lane Batot says
.…and another consideration to throw in the mix(NOW yer gittin’ some idea maybe why I got “Timed Out” yesterday–perhaps folks ARE better off just gittin’ small doses of me at a time).…OVERPOPULATION. Experiments with rats set up in luxurious(for rats), ideal captive environments with everything they needed, with no controls on reproduction, and, not surprisingly, which soon became overpopulated, would eventually turn on each other, and start murdering one another–not for food(plenty of food was always available in these experiments), but simply due to the stress of overcrowding. Are we perhaps seeing some of this in our own(especially urban environments) present society? I personally think it has something to do with such mindless killings.….
My wife thinks that “too many rats in the cage” is sufficient explanation for just about every pathology.
Saddle Tramp says
A perfect example of the amok theory…
Yes.
Harry Pollard says
A really excellent op ed series on the problems we are facing , not just our schools, but our entire society today. Please keep it going.
The moral fabric of our society has been and continues to be methodically and deliberately shredded by a media and an ideology that glorifies crime, criminals, atrocities and heinous crimes against the very institutions that exist to protect, not only our physical safety, but our spiritual safety as well. The vast majority of people, Americans in particular, are still good people and moral people. The total effect of all of the attacks (including games that devalue life) has been an erosion of conscience in our society. A person with a conscience does not commit mass murder of innocents.
Thanks, Harry, for your kind words and for taking the time to comment. I think the “erosion of conscience in our society” is both cause and effect. It is an endless loop. We value the wrong things. We admire the wrong people. We behave in the wrong ways, and it starts with how we view the ground beneath our feet, at the planetary level, where we rip the tops off of mountains, pollute our streams and our air, savage our forests, trash the oceans, and create toxicity levels so high in some places that no one will be able to live in them for thousands of years. If we can’t even respect the bounty of our planet, which is the only home we have, there is ZERO chance we can respect the lives of others. But, as he usually does, Wendell Berry offers an anodyne:
The Peace of Wild Things
When despair for the world grows in me
and I awake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
Lane Batot says
We have a portion of that poem on a placard(complete with heron photo) overlooking a lake and a marsh at the zoo where I work–I had not seen this more complete version–thanks. Although I do not often wax poetic, this piece immediately brings to mine one of my(few) favorites, by none other than Walt Whitman, from his “Leaves Of Grass”–THE BEASTS; I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contained,.…. I stand and look at them long and long.….They do not sweat and whine about their condition,…They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,…They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,.…Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things,…Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago,…Not one is respectable or industrious over the whole earth.
Saddle Tramp says
Some Whitman…
“Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me, the long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.”
This Whitman quote is emblazoned across a large ceiling beam at Newton’s Outpost Cafe in Oak Hills (Hesperia), CA where U.S. Hwy 395 buttons into I‑15.
The cafe dates back to the Route 66 days. The historic First Gas Stop has now been replaced by a Pilot Travel Center (Truck Stop) that is adjacent to the cafe. I highly recommend it for all reasons. I talked a waitress out of a menu for posterity sake. I stopped every chance I could. Last stop before dropping down from Cajon Passwhen going south and then dropping down into that expanse of concrete and madness below.
Thanks, my mind wandered ahead of itself. Apologies.. The Roadhouse Restaurant on up 395 in Kramer Junction is another classic diner I frequented (but I digress).
Another fine batch of words from Whitman…
Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune,
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,
Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms,
Strong and content I travel the open road.
Saddle Tramp says
Some more Whitman.
This from his diary:
“After you have exhausted what there is in business, politics, conviviality, love, and so on — have found that none of these finally satisfy, or permanently wear — what remains?
“Nature remains; to bring out from their torpid recesses, the affinities of a man or woman with the open air, the trees, fields, the changes of seasons — the sun by day and the stars of heaven by night.”
— Walt Whitman
Traven Torsvan says
“This “declaration of need” is almost universally true in places like California, the same cratering socialist state that recently eliminated mandatory firearms enhancements for violent gun crimes while releasing tens of thousands of predators from state prisons and county jails.”
Except…
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/true-crime/wp/2016/05/18/mass-release-of-california-prisoners-didnt-cause-rise-in-crime-two-studies-find/?utm_term=.c4bc3106fc9e
Thanks for providing the piece Traven. Look forward to reading the study in detail. I have always had reservations about “three strikes” and it seems both intuitive and data-confirmed that matrixing out the 3‑non offenders can be done with little negative effect. But eliminating mandatory firearms enhancements while enforcing frankly silly gun control mechanisms on the law-abiding public seems pretty bizarre.
Saddle Tramp says
Jim…
I say this with absolute sincerity and with a little tongue in cheek. How do you maintain such a voluminous reading habit, keep up with all of this, a day job and household duties (and all so proficiently it appears)? I was not sure if you are injecting all these books and research or what. You must be a Super Man. Seriously! You ain’t slowing down either. I have a fairly uncluttered life and I struggle to keep up. My youngest grandson is teaching himself to read just by my oldest daughter’s exposing him to all of the components. Another future reader thankfully. I am very fortunate with all of 4 of my children. That is also the attraction here. All avid readers. Glad for that…
Just keep plugging away. Really. That’s it.
Saddle Tramp says
Well…
Watch out for your mental health. It can be like trying to hold a two-headed Rattle Snake by the rattler trying to maintains it all. Much appreciated though…
Thanks, ST. The research and writing really is a beneficial thing for me.
Police and Sheriff’s departments are under intense pressure to “modify” their UCR and Compstat numbers in response to the reality of Prop 57. One way they accomplish that magic trick is by reclassifying and underreporting crimes.
Here is one example: https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/LAPD-Crime-Statistics-Misleading-Underreporting-455592013.html
Here is another: http://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2016/11/09/law-enforcement-upset-after-californias-proposition-57-passes/.
This goes on and on. The statewide numbers game is driven by politics rather than reality, and is a kind of ritual tap-dance now so habitually false it is considered pure comedy by anyone who is actually involved in police work.
The excellent HBO series The Wire captures the ritualized insanity of Compstat perfectly, and I recommend watching that to get a taste because it is both real and instructional.
And if any report anywhere ever suggests low recidivism, look for the CDC to jump immediately on board in its defense because they must eagerly promote the bizarre notion that they are “rehabilitating” inmates. Nothing could be further from the truth. The reality is that they warehouse them, or at least used to, then turn them out into the community, where they almost inevitably join the distinguished ranks of recidivists.
Thanks for taking the time to comment.
Traven Torsvan says
It’s murky when you get into issues of self defense with handguns, but honestly, on a personal level, even as somebody with a slight fascination with the history of firearms (video games didn’t help) I still just have a lot trouble seeing a rational reason why civilian ownership of military grade weaponry is necessary, but then again it’s more of a kneejerk reaction to the hoards of paranoid goobers who think their rifle collection is the only thing defending civilization against a Zombie Apocalypse or George Soros.
I can’t however rationalize calls tying mental health databases, no-fly lists, or any other arbitrary watch-list to firearm purchases
Due process matters; nothing should be arbitrary. Unfortunately, both the reflexive “ban ’em” camp and the “paranoid goobers” distort the discussion.
Lane Batot says
I am continuously flabbergasted at folks questioning citizens’ right to protect themselves–doesn’t every frikkin organism from amoebas to blue whales have a frikkin’ “right” to defend itself from threat of harm or death? When did modern civilization become so overly domesticated that people think they should just stand around like a bunch of sheep(and, criiter geek that I am, I will add that SOME sheep, that are not overly domesticated, DO defend themselves, and do it quite effectively! Rams with horns of some types have been known to kill attackers quite effectively, or at least send them rolling!) and wait and hope some shepherd comes along to save the day? Most attacks and crimes happen SO FAST there is hardly time to react(except instinctively, IF one still has a few remnant natural instincts), much less call on and wait for some branch of law enforcement to show up. Do people think law enforcement officers are magical, telepathic beings of some sort? OF COURSE you should be prepared to defend yourself, however necessary–calling the cops is just to record and document what’s occurred after the fact, in the hopes YOU won’t be prosecuted, is how I’ve always perceived things. No doubt law enforcement officers deter some crimes merely with their presence, but how can anyone be so unrealistic as to expect them to be everywhere all the time? If you have a protective dog, he/she knows what to do, and it ain’t dialing “911”. Learn from yer dog!
Matthew says
Somewhere I read an article by a cop who said the first line of defense against crime isn’t the police but citizens.
I have a friend who was saved two weeks ago by a citizen doing CPR when he collapsed in sudden cardiac arrest. Citizens should be prepared to act in all sorts of exigencies — the degree to which we’ve outsourced action in all arenas is, I would posit, a valorization of weakness and dangerous to the Republic.
Saddle Tramp says
Agreed, especially in matters of the Good Samaritan order. The best solution starts at birth. I struggle with the “bad seed” when taken to hastily, but there are times when that seems to be the only explanation. I could easily go on at length, but a quick example. My brother was out driving with a friend when he was 16. My mother recv’d a panicky call from his friend saying he did not know what was wrong with Ted, but to get over there right now and gave the address. My Dad was out of town and she called me. When we got there (on the street) a policeman was there with them. Ted was sitting at the curb rolling his eyes back as if he were in another world. Fortunately the policeman was not jumping to any conclusion. We took Ted to the hospital. He was diagnosed with Grand Mal Epilepsy. This was in the early 70’s. It could have easily been misconstrued as something else. This is the danger we face. The dilemma of unqualified (and at worst) vigilantism. Not the case here for sure. This is why I have withheld my opinion this far. I have even more severe examples of personal family situations. It’s a tightrope that I do not feel we should be too hasty. When caught in a no time to prepare situation I just hope the good citizen shows up. Like the man who dove into the icy waters of the Potomac River after that Air Florida crash. The (good human) instinct took over. We are in a real conundrum (even more so today) on what has happened to our better nature and where it has drifted off to. Circle the wagons. I understand. I hold no illusions. I always try to lean to the positive. When facts (loosely speaking) fail, fall back on faith. Facts first. These subjects are such hot button issues. I understand. At times when there is only seconds to act, the body reacts to what the mind already knows. A Zen moment you might say…
You’ve taken this a little deeper. I think the vast majority want to do the right thing and I’ve seen compassion in action in ways that stir the heart and soul. Connecting right feeling and desire to help with actual action is the critical step and I fear that the creation of a “spectator” culture, combined with liability fears and a lack of training to competence is eroding that willingness to act. If my friend Clyde Dildine had waited for EMT response, my friend David Adler would be dead. No two ways about it. Clyde knew what to do, how to do it and DID it.
I am gratified that many jurisdictions have passed Good Samaritan laws shielding people who act in good faith to help in dire situations. I’d like to see more people learn how to do basic things and prepare for emergencies.
Hell, I guess that the bottom line is that I’m arguing for the Boy Scout ethic. We could do worse than to all be a buncha Boy Scouts (including the girls).
Saddle Tramp says
I could not agree more. I have acted in that capacity myself in more than one instance. Seconds mattered and I did not give it a second thought. Basic CPR and emergency aid should be a must. I have taken the courses multiple times in the line of work. If we lose that ethic we are indeed goners. To save a life (and fortunately and thankfully) your friend’s life should be an incentive for all. Taking a life to save others becomes a more complicated issue in my opinion. I am not negating it in the least, just cautious is all. I am sure that you are as well. I was also a witness when I was 13 to an accidental shooting of two kids at a park. The .22 caliber bullet went through the lungs of one and into the stomach of another. They both survived fortunately. It was the result of an idiot (about 15) handing both a .22 pistol and the clip to another innocent girl (my age) standing next to me. It happened so fast but was also like like a dream as I saw her shoving the clip in and before I could do anything to stop her, she unintentionally pulled the trigger at the same time. She had no idea what she was doing. She had never held a gun before. Two fools collided and two kids (about 7 or 8 ) were shot. It and other examples have stuck with me all these years. Yes, it is the untrained, unqualified that are dangerous. Who oversees it? An issue fraught with complications and may just be wading into quicksand. Freedom and control colliding. I know you are seeking a prudent and reasonable course. It’s the amateurs I worry about. Thanks Jim!!
VIA: The Flying J in Lodi northbound to Portland/ Yakima again. They just took down the chainup requirements for 5 north of Redding. I luckily missed the snow storm coming back down last trip and then slipped through the window heading back up.
I’ve been thinking about your 2‑part narrative and think it’s the basis for a new ballot measure proposal; let’s address the problem head-on.
Video/arcade games, music, recorded programs (movie or television), print materials (including newspapers, magazines, and books), and electronic media displaying, referencing, or otherwise using a weapon of any kind will include a “W” designation for “weapons”.
Prohibit those under age 18 from listening to, viewing, or playing video/arcade games, music, recorded programs (movie or television), print materials (including newspapers, magazines, and books), and electronic media displaying, referencing, or otherwise using a weapon of any kind.
Using ORS 471.410(2) (furnishing alcohol to a minor) as a model, “a parent or legal guardian may allow their minor child to listen to, view, or play video/arcade games, music, recorded programs (movie or television), print materials (including newspapers, magazines, and books), and electronic media displaying, referencing, or otherwise using a weapon of any kind in a private residence as long as the parent is with the minor child. If anyone illegally provides a video/arcade game, music, or recorded program (movie or television) displaying, referencing, or otherwise using a weapon of any kind to a minor, or provide the same to an adult that you know will make it available to a minor, you will receive a criminal citation. (Class A Misdemeanor)”
Minors involved in sport shooting/hunting activities must successfully complete an approved hunter’s safety course and mental health screening prior to their participation. Minors who have successfully completed these prerequisites may participate in sport shooting/hunting activities under the direct supervision of their parent, legal guardian, or their coach (as designated and authorized by their parent or legal guardian).