The Slow Massacre
People across the nation reacted in horror when 20 young children died after being shot by a gunman at their elementary school. People across the nation react not at all when four times as many...
View ArticleGuns and Hitler
Ever since I started debating gun control on Usenet forums in the early 90′s, one argument has been standard: Hitler took away his people’s guns, like all dictators take away their people’s guns. Gun...
View ArticlePeople Kill People
Bernard Harcourt at the University of Chicago Law School makes an excellent point in the culture wars on the ownership of guns. He notes that the NRA, along with many pro-gun advocates, stand on the...
View ArticleIrrational Enthusiasm
Before Obama announced his plan, New York already passed a tightening of gun laws. Predictably, people with little sense acted irrationally: “It’s ridiculous. It’s absolutely — how to put it nicely —...
View ArticleSmoking Guns
In Talking Points Memo, there was an article about gun vs. non-gun culture. It touched on a story about a couple of 22-year-old men who decided to “educate” people in a neighborhood in Portland, Oregon...
View ArticleNo Kidding?
A few gun stats noted in the Washington Monthly: — According to the CDC, having a gun in your home is associated with triple the risk of homicide and nearly fivefold the risk of suicide. — The Harvard...
View ArticleArguing From Both Sides of Their Factoids
In writing the last post, I re-read the definitive posting I made on gun control back in 2006 and the comments, which ranged into late 2007. The last comment I made held a point which I had forgotten...
View ArticleProgress?
The good news: despite NRA opposition, it looks like there may be consensus on closing background check “loopholes” (actually, more like “gaping open chasms”). The bad news: conservatives insist that...
View ArticleThe Last Acceptable Prejudice
Confronting prejudice seems to be a matter of not just social norms, but of visibility, psychology, and choice. On visibility, race and gender cannot be hidden, so they were confronted much earlier....
View ArticleThe War on Reason Rages On
Remember how we believed that the horrific national tragedy of twenty little children being slaughtered with an assault rifle, especially after so many other shootings like the Aurora theater massacre,...
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The Weight of a Gun
The Trayvon Martin case has a number of elements which are, to say the least, distracting. The fact that the police accepted Zimmerman’s story and seemed to dismiss Martin as a criminal, failing even...
View ArticleNOW Can We Talk about Gun Control?
This is getting to be morbidly absurd. We are now seeing mass shootings as common occurrences, and it is most likely we are become inured to them. After a shooter kills a few dozen first-graders, after...
View ArticleThe Institution of Marriage
There are several reasons people may oppose gay marriage. A predominant reason is that people are at least uncomfortable about homosexuality, or they feel threatened by it somehow, or they simply...
View ArticleOn Zimmerman
Josh Marshall summarizes my own view very well: If you’re a wannabe cop loser with a gun who starts stalking a kid in the dark, you’re responsible for the outcome. I blogged pretty much the same thing...
View ArticleHe IS the Messiah! Or At Least One of Them
A few days ago, a child support judge in Newport, Tennessee decided a case from two parents disagreeing over their child’s surname. The mother, Jaleesa Martin, wanted to name the boy Messiah DeShawn...
View ArticleMy Right to Swing My AR-15
Every once in a while you read about a story like this one, from Appleton, Wisconsin: Police detained two men openly carrying AR-15 rifles near Saturday’s farmers market, setting off a debate this week...
View ArticleOblivious to Your Surroundings
A terrible story out of San Francisco: The man drew the gun several times on the crowded San Francisco commuter train, with surveillance video showing him pointing it across the aisle without anyone...
View ArticleNo, Outlawing It Isn’t Worse
At TPM, Cathy Reisenwitz made an argument that laws against revenge porn are worse than the problem itself. She begins with a disturbing hint that the law may be like marijuana laws that put people in...
View ArticleIt’s Not About What Others Do
Fred Phelps is reported to be near death in a health care facility. When he dies, no one should picket his funeral. Wrong is wrong.
View ArticleWhen to Tolerate Intolerance
If someone in a position of authority makes public statements of intolerance towards a class of people, should that person be forced to step down? Most people would say yes, as they are demonstrating...
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