The Tradeoffs Of Reducing Gun Violence

Thoughts from Dan McLaughlin:

Even if the mainstream media goes dark, there’s social media. Our exhibitionist culture may encourage disturbed people to perform acts of retribution that guarantee them maximum publicity; think of the mass shooter as taking a kind of mass selfie of rage. But that genie can’t be put back in the bottle, either, at least not without a massive campaign against freedom of expression.

As always, human beings are the real weapons of mass destruction, and the tools they choose are not the causes of violence. If we want to weed out people who might commit violent acts in the future, we need to scale back due process protections and incarcerate more people on less evidence. Although that too is a trade-off many of us would find it hard to make, we could plausibly target privacy laws that make it difficult to compile records on people with a history of threatening behavior.

Some don’t want to accept that freedom comes with a cost. Or they don’t care about freedom.

[Update early afternoon]

Five terrible messages the media sends to school shooters.

Yes. They’re only encouraging more of it.

[Monday-morning update]

Six reasons your right-wing friend won’t come around to your “arguments” about gun control.

People don’t react well to being accused of being evil and wanting children to die because you disagree with them about a policy.

35 thoughts on “The Tradeoffs Of Reducing Gun Violence”

  1. So close, yet missing the target. The solution is not to scale back due process. The solution is to make the penalty for repeat offenders severe. Two strikes gets you the guillotine should about do it. And make it a public death. No hiding it.

    If we’re going to do things right, they will need full due process.

    1. Sorry Ken, but I don’t agree. I don’t think this kid had a prior. What I think is at issue is despite a community concerned about his behavior, a background conducive to attachment issues, and a formal complaint to the FBI with his proper name and correct spelling (yet they couldn’t figure out who he was); it doesn’t seem this kid was analyzed for mental instability. I have to wonder if he shouldn’t have been committed. I personally think we have gone to far in avoiding analyzing people this way, but then again, I see why. We already have people in Hollywood, who lied for years about Harvey Weinstein, trying to convince others that Trump is insane and needs to be removed. That type of overreaction prevents proper care from being given to those who need it.

      1. Insanity is by definition something you can’t predict. Most people are not insane, just badly educated. Make it clear that crime has punishment and the message sticks. All you have to do is look at the variation of crime statistics in various societies.

        The other problem is criminal govt. making so many things crimes with selectively enforcement. Criminals feel justified because they know they’re the amateurs.

        1. I can’t say I agree with that characterization. Several people predicted this person to be a problem. He even said he would do it. The FBI seems to have dropped the ball, despite having his name, and now we know a bit more. Were they more competent and had got to him; punishment as you described previously would not have been an option. Yet they might have found enough to stop the attack. Committing people to receive mental health care is one option to preventing them from hurting themselves and others. Alas, too often that solution is only used after such violence was already committed.

          At least another attack was stopped. Do you think we should guillotine these potential bombers?

          1. You have to have some criteria. A person has both thoughts and actions. Pre-crime is a fantasy. Actions are reality. Many crimes are one of and don’t represent a long term threat. They should still be punished, but with some consideration.

            Multiple crimes after the second can be eliminated completely which is the majority of crimes. I believe we should do that.

            My personal choice is all felonies get the same punishment. Dropped on an isolated island with other criminals and loss of citizenship. They can make any life they like but not hurt decent people.

          2. My personal choice is all felonies get the same punishment. Dropped on an isolated island with other criminals and loss of citizenship. They can make any life they like but not hurt decent people.

            Like Australia?

          3. Australia worked out pretty well in my opinion.

            At some point there must be a reality check. For example, what would happen if the media were held accountable for their encouragement of shooters?

            Bad guys are responsible for their actions, but others are responsible for making bad guys more likely to act.

            A person can be seriously mentally ill their entire life and not act on it, were they never encouraged. Obviously that’s not universally true, but more often than not.

            The deep question is who makes bad guys more likely. They are worse than the killers themselves because they’re multiplicative.

            Chop off those heads and you’ve really sent a message. Which in no way limits the punishment for te actual perps.

          4. “My personal choice is all felonies get the same punishment. Dropped on an isolated island with other criminals and loss of citizenship. ”

            Can’t really do that Ken. Stealing a car is not the same crime as 1st degree murder.

          5. Fear of retribution doesn’t enter an insane person’s mental calculus, Ken. They’re not rational actors.

            You strike me as a person who has never been in the presence of a person with full blown psychosis. I don’t know why it is but I see it all the time: people who have never seen it up close don’t believe that others can, indeed, lose possession of their rational faculties.

            The brain is an organ just like any other, and it can fail, just like any other. And, we’re not talking mild quirks here. We’re talking people who really, genuinely believe there are voices in their heads, and grand conspiracies out to get them. They live in a dream-like state, and they cannot separate fantasy from reality.

    2. We could just make untreated insanity a criminal act.

      (And no, I don’t want to go there, because the Soviet Union shows how psychiatry can be abused. But maybe we need to have the “discussion”).

  2. Before we see the normal trope; I figure this link may be helpful. It’s old data, but effective enough to stop comments that just stereotype rather than focus on actual story and what went wrong.

  3. I’ve noticed, via Facebook, that actual civil libertarians are few and far between.

    They think they’re that, but they’re not, because they’ll toss anything they don’t like away in a second.

    (Despite the sample in my case being almost entirely Progressives*, not one of them applies intersectionality to this, of course; “human rights” and “civil rights” are only what they deem.

    * Conservative sorts equally aren’t mostly civil libertarians, from examples elsewhere, but my local sample is heavily skewed Left.)

    (Doubly so, I’m beyond sick of people calling for “action” to be taken, when the actions they demand would not have had any effect on what they’re responding to.

    They’re not even pretending to do anything but totemize both the problem and their “solutions”.)

    1. It’s better to be seen “doing something”, no matter how ineffective or counter-productive, than to actually attempt to alleviate the problem. (Or to recognize that all the proposed remedies are worse than the actual problem, and “doing nothing” is the right thing to do.)

    2. when the actions they demand would not have had any effect on what they’re responding to.

      Yup. Outcomes of political policies are rarely looked at. To be truly concerned about an issue, you have to be concerned about outcomes not just action.

      Gun control is similar but proposals aren’t really about preventing whatever incident happened. Gun control advocates always transfer guilt from the individual to innocent people (scapegoating) and their proposals always punish the innocent group not the individual, or people like the individual. In this case, the outcomes are exactly what they want, even if they are dishonest about their advocacy.

      It isn’t an intentional act for some. Transference happens because the real problem is much more complex and harder to deal with than their brains can handle. Transference is a defense mechanism that makes people feel better about doing something when they don’t actually know what to do. It just so happens some people harness this phenomenon to attack their political opponents.

  4. I used to work with an ex-flower child who was full of Peace, Love and Brotherhood, and after John Lennon was killed, he called for gun-control. I pointed out to him that if gun control were to work (a big “if’) it would take a police state more extensive and powerful than anything seen in his worse nightmares of fascist America. No response.

  5. The police had been called to this kid’s house 39 times over the past 7 years for mentally ill person,” “child/elderly abuse,” “domestic disturbance” and “missing person.” Last month, someone close to Cruz called the FBI and specifically named him, described his desire to kill people, and his obsession with firearms. The FBI did nothing.

    McLaughlin’s only “thoughts” involve nothing other than the trade-off of which abrogation of Constitutional rights the rest of us must accept for preventing another Cruz’s crimes. F**k that, and the horse McLaughlin rode in on – and anyone else who considers his “thoughts” worthy of discussion.

    Here’s a suggestion. Pull a few agents off of the critical task of trying to torpedo the duly elected President of the Unites States, and assign them to do the f***ing job they are paid to do. They aren’t doing it now. They’re too busy trying to overthrow the government.

      1. They ‘represent’ actions, but they’re clearly not actual actions that actually achieve anything.

        The police say ‘give us your guns, and we’ll protect you,’ but then prove that, even when someone calls them and tells them there’s about to be a mass murder, they’re unable to do so.

        1. they’re clearly not actual actions that actually achieve anything.

          They should be held accountable.

          I got into a strange situation one time that required a very unusual solution exactly because the govt washed their hands of it. I’m not going into all the details but it involved a behavior problem with a person that I could not otherwise resolve without this counter intuitive approach.

          I called the cops to have myself arrested. They were not going to do anything so I told the cop if he didn’t arrest me I’d punch him. Then I still had to convince him I was serious.

          It worked like a charm and resolved my problem because I allowed myself to see other solutions. Sometimes you have to make those responsible be so.

  6. While the FBI’s handling of this was nothing short of incompetent and negligent – maybe criminally so, I find the event reminds me of the adage:

    “When seconds count, police are only minutes away.”

    To rely on any agency in the D.C. Leviathan to be able to act rapidly and correctly is just so much fantasy. And it seems to be just as true for the local Florida FBI agents.

    So, as has occurred to me many times in the past, it seems to me that the more local the defense the more successful it can be.

    And WHY do people rely on the Federal government anyway?

    What a terrible habit.

    1. While the FBI’s handling of this was nothing short of incompetent and negligent

      It is almost like there was this attitude in the FBI that if a major gun crime was committed with an AR15, perhaps rather than stopping the crime, it might be something to let happen and then use as a political argument for gun control.

      Nah, nobody who worked in the Justice Department would act that way. Such behavior might cause a culture of corruption within the FBI.

  7. Gun control runs afoul of the 2nd Amendment. Weaselly attempts to get around that have long been made, but that’s mostly over.

    Two comments:

    (1) The overly excited left is doing 2nd Amendment repeal no favor by all the Trump = Hitler comparisons. If that equation really is accurate, the main justification for the 2nd Amendment — as an ultimate insurance policy against a tyranical takeover — is greatly strengthened.

    (2) I think the best strategy for reducing support for the 2nd Amendment among many on the right would be a campaign designed to get guns into the hands of as many poor and racial minorities as possible. Of course the Dems won’t do this.

    1. I think the best strategy for reducing support for the 2nd Amendment among many on the right would be a campaign designed to get guns into the hands of as many poor and racial minorities as possible. Of course the Dems won’t do this.

      Some, not sure about “many.” And it depends on your definition of “right.”

    2. Most gun control measures began with the goal of preventing black people from being able to fend off some of the benefits showered on them my (mostly) Democrats – benefits such as lynching, for example. I am all in favor of a program to arm poor families of all races, and teach firearm safety along with self-defense usage and lots of range practice. You’d think the government of a place like Chicago, if it actually cared about its poor, would spend about 1% of its welfare budget on something like that. In addition to saving innocent lives and avoiding theft and destruction of property, thus improving everyone’s life and the city’s economy, it would reduce the need for police and expose the police to less risk.

      No, I’m not that naive. But that would be something I think a lot of good people with some discretionary money would support financially on a voluntary basis, since it would be so highly leveraged.

  8. Reported on the radio this morning – the FBI’s Miami office has over 1000 employees. That’s an outrageous figure – apparently the USA is a police state.

  9. People don’t react well to being accused of being evil and wanting children to die because you disagree with them about a policy.

    Nope, but Democrats are not really interested in solving problems or they would try actual persuasion techniques. Democrats are really good at scripting messages, so we know they could do this if they wanted.

    Look at how quick the Democrats recruited some kids and scripted their interview statements. We aren’t supposed to point that out? It is OK for Democrat activist groups to recruit kids and lobby the government but the NRA are the evil ones?

    The Democrats are great at gas lighting. There is this huge push in the Democrat media to claim that everyone wants guns banned but only paltry donations from the NRA prevent politicians from banning guns. The reality is that at least half the country doesn’t want gun bans and they vote for politicians who support the 2nd amendment. Through the magic of the DNC media, half the population is being vanished from existence.

      1. When the warning on the bottle says, “May cause suicidal thoughts.” It isn’t just the person taking the pills.

  10. Amazing what happens when violence comes to a rich, mostly white neighborhood/school. Notice NONE of these kids had any problems with the violence in Chicago, Baltimore, St. Louis, etc., but now that the issue affects them, well, now something must be done. Because that’s what has always happened in their lives – their parents are rich and they are used to getting their own way.

    If they are so serious about saving lives, give up their driver’s licenses until 21 as the young drivers are disproportionately at fault in driving accidents and deaths. That would affect their ability to get to the mall, so don’t expect that to happen.

    1. Did you see Trump’s first listening event? There were a couple guys from schools in cities with lots of gang violence. They were like, hey, maybe you guys could learn some lessons from what we do at our schools but it would be nice if you cared about our kids getting shot travelling to and from school.

      Their problems can’t be blamed on scapegoats or used in national politics so the media wont elevate their needs into the conversation.

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