Torches and Pitchforks

My plainness of speech makes them hate me,
and what is their hatred, if not proof that I am
speaking the truth?
Socrates


It's been a while. I haven't written because, frankly, I didn't feel that I had anything to say about current issues that someone else hadn't said first and maybe better than I could have.
There's no point in adding to the general clamor. But it's about time I provoked somebody, so here goes:

Barack Obama is pushing his gun control agenda using the parents of the murdered children of Sandy Hook as props. The parents are complicit in this charade, and that's shameful. Shameful for Obama, to be sure, and he already has much to be ashamed of. Shameful for the parents, who are allowing themselves to be the eager tools of a crass political manipulator.

Understand this: I grieve for the children, as much as anyone can who was a stranger to them. I imagine the sorrow and the rage I would feel if the victims had been my children or grandchildren, a rage that would vent itself on whatever target was handy.

But.

That's wrong. It's wrong because that venting does no good, enhancing rather than reducing the grief one feels. It's wrong because such venting increases the sadness, the hostility, the misery in the world. It's wrong because it's yet another example of rationalizing actions driven by emotion, undermining the single aspect of humanity--our capacity for reason--that separates us from, say, chimpanzees.

That last is, of course, exactly what Obama and his co-conspirators depend on, and what they've been so successful at since 2008.

The Sandy Hook parents who appear with Obama, giving emotional cover to yet another attack on the Constitution, are the moral and intellectual equivalent of the mob in Frankenstein, identifying guns and gun owners as the monsters who murdered their children.
No, there are no real torches or pitchforks, just the much scarier weapons of the State. The real monster, Adam Lanza, is dead already, but the mob needs a villain to vent its rage on. Who better than anyone who tries to bring reason to bear on the issue? They must be monsters because they're not carrying torches and shouting.

This, too, is what Obama, his minions and his camp-followers want. "Never let a good crisis go to waste," indeed. The corollary to that is:  "When you don't have a crisis, manufacture one." That's what Obama and his sorrowful props are doing. 

For shame.

Teens and Guns

"It ain't so much the things you don't know that get you in trouble. It's the things you know that just ain't so."

Artimus Ward

I'm a strong supporter of gun-rights initiatives, and adamantly opposed to restrictions. Imposing background checks on private sales, for instance, is a step toward enforced registration, which is a step toward confiscation.* Even if the current administration were trustworthy (a big stretch of the imagination) there's no guarantee a future one would be. 

I also favor nationwide recognition of carry permits, just as there is nationwide recognition of state-issued driver's licenses. I support concealed carry on all school campuses. You get the picture.

There's one pro-carry initiative I can't support, though: extending carry permits to 18-20 year olds. Proposed by Georgia State Senator Judson Hill, who says it was inspired by young people's military service, it would give the right to carry to kids who've taken a day's worth of training and passed an unspecified test.

This is another of those "If they're old enough to risk their lives in combat they're old enough to..." arguments.  The "old enough" criterion has been applied to voting, drinking, making contracts, and it's as foolish in those cases as it is in this one. Adolescents as a group simply do not have the intellectual or emotional maturity to make sound judgements, even when those involve deliberation (e.g. in voting) let alone in the daily handling and possible use of deadly weapons.

Let's get the military argument out of the way first. Adolescent soldiers may well be capable of high-level physical competence and astonishing courage, but they don't act alone. In the military they're told when to go to bed and when to wake up; what to wear and how to wear it;

how their hair should be worn; when and what to eat; what to do each day, and precisely how, when and where to do it.  In combat they act on someone's command, operating under strict rules of engagement. Their weapons training is designed first and foremost to avoid training accidents; they're forbidden loaded weapons under most circumstances except actual combat.  In short, even combat experience doesn't teach these kids how to carry a concealed, loaded weapon among unarmed people and be prepared to make sudden, life-or-death decisions on their own responsibility.

The large majority of 18-20 year olds will not have even this level of training, nor will they have been taught by competent parents. They'll get their concepts and their habits from movies and video games, or maybe from paintball. Does it seem even remotely possible that four hours of lecture and four hours of range instruction followed by a DMV-level test can create the necessary level of personal responsibility, skill and knowledge?

In fact, it's questionable whether adolescents as a group are capable of learning the judgement and self-control skills necessary to be a responsible armed citizen. A good many of these skills aren't even cognitive. Yes, kids can reason. They often have better information about risks than their elders, or overestimate risk. They do stupid, risky things regardless. What research shows they lack is the emotional development necessary to avoid doing those stupid things. They don't get the queasy feeling that tells an adult some action is foolish or wrong, and that's what gets them in trouble.

Even worse, adolescents don't know they're handicapped. It's not only that since the 60's they've been pandered to by marketers and politicians. It's not only that they've been victimized by a moronic "self-esteem" ideology that neither allows the self-discipline that comes from failure nor the satisfaction of real accomplishment.  It's simply a result of ignorance. If one is ignorant of some area of knowledge or skill, one has no basis for judging competence. Add to that the common motive to think well of oneself and you get a case of "unconscious incompetence", or even an illusion of high competence, that's very hard to overcome.

It's because I care about both the right to keep and bear arms and the welfare of innocent people that I oppose Hill's initiative. I believe bad things will happen to people if it's implemented, and these will be used by totalitarians as yet another excuse to deny the right of self-defense to everyone. 

We don't need to give them another excuse.

* Read history, or just take the word of someone who knows:

"A system of licensing and registration is the perfect device to deny gun ownership to the bourgeoisie."   -- Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, "The Beginning of the Revolution in Russia", Selected Works, Vol. I

Guns

"We have four boxes used to guarantee our liberty: The soap box, the

ballot box, the jury box and the cartridge box."

  Ambrose Bierce (1887)

Once again, pro-Constitution pundits are pointing out that the gun control rhetoric is incoherent. With the same commendable reasoning as before (e.g. this from John Lott) they illuminate the logical inconsistency, lack of evidence and appeals to fear that the anti-Constitution crowd presents to justify gelding the Second Amendment. They're perfectly right and, sadly, perfectly irrelevant to this fight. Let me reiterate: logic, evidence, moral standards and the like matter in the governance of our own behavior. They matter in determining whether and how to respond to threats, whether and how to shoot at a quarry in forest or field, whether and how to practice, to safeguard our weapons, and so forth. Being factually correct, being logical, being moral will not help us win. Please note that I'm not recommending we be illogical, factually incorrect, or immoral. Those are the province of our enemies, the anti-Constitutional "Progressives."

Let's be brutally frank: Gun control is a civil rights issue. If Heller was the Second Amendment counterpart to the Brown vs Board of Education decision's Fourteenth Amendment victory, Obama's gun control proposals (like those hurriedly passed by New York) are the equivalent of Jim Crow. Andrew Cuomo might as well be the reincarnation of George Wallace, and anti-Constitution cabals like the Brady Campaign the new White Citizen's Councils.

How can I say that? Easy. First of all, gun control has always been about political power. The Sullivan Law in New York was about maintaining Tammany Hall's position atop a corrupt heap, and keeping the immigrants unarmed. Britain's 1920 gun restrictions were motivated by a fear of the "working classes." For the same reason, fear of revolt, they also disarmed the people of India.  After Reconstruction gun control was imposed to keep the newly free black population from resisting the Klan and other white supremacists. In 1930's Germany, Jews were disarmed. 

That can't apply here, say the Progressives. We have a wonderful racially harmonious society. Who would be the target? I would note cynically that Obama himself identified his enemies, those backwards rednecks bitterly clinging to their guns and religion. That his proposals would also disarm black people, women, Asians, Latinos, Jews and others who might need to protect themselves matters not at all to him and his co-ideologues. To Obama and his Progressives, as to all collectivists, only the herd matters. Individual losses are acceptable if it means the herd is better controlled. By them.

Progressives will deny this victimization, of course. Consider Jay Bookman, pet liberal of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, who wrote in Sunday's issue that "Guns Don't Guarantee Liberty." Of course they don't. Nothing does. Life doesn't come with guarantees. What guns do is make it easier to resist tyranny, either of the state or of criminal gangs. Bookman might read Max Boot's Invisible Armies, about insurgencies and guerilla warfare throughout history. He might also read about Jewish resistance to the Nazis, some of which involved shooting them. He could start here. He won't, though.

Surely one can't accuse Progressives of bigotry? They love diversity, welcoming all to their rainbow-illuminated Candyland. Don't they? Read Richard Parncutt, who wants to kill "global warming deniers." Oh, and the Pope. Read some Progressives who want to kill NRA members here, here, and here. There are more but you can use Google as well as I can.

Then there's the Occupy Wall Street crowd, who want to purge the US of "Zionist Bankers."

And, finally, these people : http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703559004575256323526178094.html

Is there any doubt that Progressives would love to disarm, to segregate, to disadvantage anyone who disagrees with them? To treat us as Stalin did the Kulaks? As the Chinese did the Tiananmen Square protestors or as they currently treat dissident Tibetans? 

If you're not a black person, imagine this: How would black people respond to new Jim Crow laws? How would they respond to "common sense" racial restrictions? If you are black, you don't have to imagine. Now, all of you, because you're all in this together: 
Govern your behavior accordingly.

Power

How can we lose when we're so sincere?

Charlie Brown, in Peanuts

The Second Amendment to the Constitution is under attack as never before. The excuse is the murders in Newtown CT , Aurora CO and other places. Make no mistake, though: these are simply excuses to enact intentions held for years. The real goal is to gut the Bill of Rights, and always has been. The same people who exploit the fears of the caponized pacifists will then turn their attention to "common sense speech control" and "common sense religion control." We've mostly given up on due process already. It's been done before, it's going on now, and anyone who thinks the US is immune is dreaming. People are people, all over the world and throughout history. Don't believe me? Read "The Politics of Obedience: Discourse on Voluntary Servitude" by Etienne de La Boetie. Written in the 16th century, by a Frenchman no less, it describes our situation with frightening precision.

What do we see opposing the latest wave of totalitarianism? Reasoned discourse. I can't recall how many editorials I've read which, with commendable logic and using the best available data, point out that gun control is absolutely ineffective in accomplishing the (publicly) stated goals of the gun-ban lobby. That's true, and it matters nothing. This isn't about reason and data.

Get over the idea that the Constitution protects anything. The Constitution is the embodiment of some of humanity's noblest ideals, but by itself gives no more protection than their Torah scrolls did to the Jews of Europe. What does matter? Power.

What is power, then? In physics power is the rate at which work is done, that is, accomplishing some change in the world. Work is accomplished when a force acts on an object, displacing it. So--- power depends on resources, but power doesn't exist until resources are used to accomplish work. Socially, money is not power. Guns are not power.
People are not power. Knowledge is not power. A supertanker full of gasoline is only a toxic spill waiting to happen until it is converted into a force, say a push on a piston via controlled combustion. When the piston moves a distance, that's work, and when that work is repeated over time you have power.

No resource confers power unless it is used and no power is produced without cost. That's a law of nature, as true socially as it is physically. How much power one can produce, at what cost, depends on how efficiently our mechanism works. If two mechanisms are opposed, like linked locomotives pulling in opposite directions, the better designed and operated one will dominate. The same is true in civil conflict, whether electoral or armed.

So far, those who stand for the Constitution have spent resources creating the political equivalent of sound and fury. It may make us feel good to watch, but like a fireworks display over a gulag it doesn't leave us any better off. What's necessary is to use the resources we have--the people, the money, the time, the intelligence-- to create and apply power. Force, multiplied by leverage, over time.

How should that power be used? The first thing we think of is resistance, because all we really want is to be left alone to live peacefully. But that's playing defense, and you can't win playing defense. You just lose more slowly. To win we need to use power to build something, to offer an alternative to the gilded prison that our opponents are creating. Power has to be used to communicate and persuade, as well as to dominate.  As to tactics, I'll leave that to the more knowledgeable. A man's got to know his limitations. But our goal should always be to win. Period.

Newtown CT

I hate to add to the clamor over the Newtown killings, but I must say this. 

Predictably, the vulturous media is circling the corpses of twenty murdered children and their teachers. The news personalities assume solemn expressions while competing for scraps of flesh "news" to fatten their ratings. They trot out "mental health experts" whose equally solemn pronouncements amount to nothing more than your grandparents knew, and frequently less. 

Bureaucrats rush to "protect the children" with actions like closing their school, which will make them more vulnerable to fear and depression. The mental health experts will then prescribe drugs, further reducing the children's ability to cope with real emotion. In other cities and towns, heavy police presence is prescribed to increase the appearance of security, notwithstanding that heavily armed police in elementary classrooms sends a clear message of danger. Children are young, not stupid.

Meanwhile, the liberal political and media establishment, ever alert for an opportunity to trash the Constitution, calls for banning the evil guns, despite libraries' worth of evidence that such policies are not only ineffective but harmful. These are the people who believe, in effect, that a helpless woman who is raped and murdered is somehow morally superior to one who kills her attacker; that a community destroyed in a genocide is preferable to one that defends itself; that innocents shot down by the sinfully (and I use that word deliberately) untrained NYPD are preferable to citizens defending themselves.

None of the academics spotlighted by the media seem to realize that endless rumination on this horror serves only to amplify grief, fear and anger. Neither do the media personalities realize, nor would they care if they did, that the "debate" they foster serves only to polarize positions based on emotion, not reason. They likewise care nothing that their constant calls for government action to provide a feeling of safety have created a cowardly, dependent society, one in which self-reliance and individual initiative are viewed with fearful disdain. A society in which hand-wringing replaces effective action, and tears, independent thought. A society in which helplessness is a virtue.

To use the infinitely sad deaths in Newtown to promote their vile totalitarian ideology is more despicable than I have words to describe. I wish on these opportunistic grief-mongers, these despoilers of our country, the worst curse I can imagine: That they experience personally all of the consequences of the policies they would force on others. 

The Sheepdog Fallacy

I'm an armed citizen and take self-defense seriously. I know the conventional wisdom: We're on our own, when seconds count the police are only minutes away, all of that. I train with a variety of weapons, in a variety of ways, with a variety of people all more adept and expert than I. My goal is to be safe, responsible, effective, and when possible to help others be the same. You'd be hard pressed to find a stronger supporter of the Bill of Rights--all 10 amendments--anywhere.

That said, there's an idea common in the self-defense community that I think is not only incorrect but dangerously so. It was put forward most recently in a pro-gun column in the August 3rd. Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and goes like this:

People can be divided into three groups, sheep, wolves, and sheepdogs. Sheep are the stupid majority, helpless in the face of danger, cowardly, conforming, hiding from threats (real or imagined) in the midst of the herd. Wolves prey on these, snatching sheep and lambs as they can, leaving only bloody scraps behind.* Sheepdogs are the guardians of the flock, bravely standing between the sheep (for whom they have a vague contempt) and the wolves, their sworn enemies. This makes the self-identified sheepdogs very proud. 

Let's consider this for a minute. "Sheepdog" doesn't describe me and probably shouldn't apply to you, either. First, who do sheepdogs serve? Not the sheep. They serve the shepherd, who owns both the herd and the sheepdogs. What's the shepherd doing with the sheep? Making a living, first by regularly shearing, or "fleecing" them, second by eating them, and third by selling them to someone else for either purpose. Sure, the shepherd wants the sheep alive and healthy. His living depends on them. They're not pets, they're products. The sheepdogs aren't pets, either. They're regarded as employees at best, as tools at worst. They exist to do a job.

Second, what is the sheepdog's job? It's not to protect the individual sheep, which they couldn't do in any case. There are simply too many sheep and too few sheepdogs. Having enough sheepdogs to guarantee each sheep's safety is not possible. The goal is to keep sheep losses to an acceptable level. Acceptable to the shepherd, that is. Sheepdogs  protect the herd, not each sheep, and to make this collective protection (and fleecing, and roast lamb) feasible the herd must be controlled, which is the sheepdog's primary job.  Domestic sheep are unable to survive in the wild; without the shepherd's control they couldn't live.

Third, how do sheepdogs control the herd? Through fear. Many years ago in New Zealand I watched sheepdog trials. In response to the shepherd's whistles and hand signals his beautifully trained dogs circled the herd, crouching and staring at the sheep, who nervously moved away in the direction the shepherd wanted. If the sheep weren't fearful they couldn't be herded.

Think about it. Police officers are formally tasked with protecting "society," i.e. the herd, not the individual. (See, e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v._District_of_Columbia) In our society, governments from the Federal to the local increasingly act like shepherds.  Police, the great majority of whom are fine and honorable people, are in the role of sheepdogs, like it or not.

Armed citizens are a problem for the shepherds. Not being sheep, they're not afraid of the sheepdogs and are prepared to take on the wolves, hyenas or whoever. They mean no harm to anyone, have no desire to control others, but are much harder to control and therefore to exploit. Worse, their example might spread. They're not  wolves, but not  sheepdogs either. The shepherds, expecting obedience from everything but wolves, have no clue how to deal with them. Their common response is to try to get rid of armed citizens one way or another, typically by removing the arms. Acting like a sheepdog when you're not gives the shepherds that opportunity.

 From the sheepdog's viewpoint the armed citizen is just in the way, becoming one more source of disorder. They hate disorder. From the herd's viewpoint, they're either scary or a provocation. Sheep have dominance hierarchies, too. Consider George Zimmerman, whose sheepdog fantasies led him to confront Trayvon Martin. Martin might have grown up to be anything from a serial killer to a respected statesman, but at that moment he was just a smartass kid who wasn't going to let himself be pushed around. So he did what sheep do, butted heads with what he thought was another sheep, and now he's dead. Zimmerman, who might have become a respected leader in his community had he learned better judgment, may never get his life back. The shepherds, meanwhile, use this sad incident as yet another excuse to remove the "menace" of the armed citizen from their herds.

Given all that, if you must have an inspirational totem animal, what fits? Well, two of the most dangerous animals on the planet are the rhino and the Cape Buffalo. They're grass-eaters,  grazing happily if unmolested and seriously aggressive when threatened. Neither seems obligated to protect the zebras, wildebeest and so forth from the predators. Rhinos are pretty much solitary, buffalo live in groups that cooperate in their defense.  I wouldn't try to herd either one. Take your pick.

* I like wolves, who generally get a bad rap. Modern urban predators are more like hyenas or jackals, but that's another rant.