Politics

Logistical Issues With Gun Control

Posted on by Tom

This is just my personal opinion, but the basic problem with implementing gun control in America is that “the genie is already out of the bottle.”

There are tons and tons of guns stockpiled in the hands of American citizens. Setting aside the issue of whether or not it *should* be done, let’s say you pass legislation tomorrow that bans the sale of all guns and ammunition. That still leaves a whole lot of people out there with a whole lot of deadly weapons already in their possession. (If a bill like that passed, incidentally, firearms would suddenly become more valuable than gold, so perhaps it’s a good investment opportunity to buy them now–which is almost certainly one reason people buy stockpiles of guns and ammunition.)

Once you cut off access to new firearms and ammunition, then the real fun begins. You have to get the guns out of the hands of the people who already purchased or inherited them over the last 200+ years.

Many firearms are registered of course. I don’t know all the complexities of firearm registration in this country but I know it’s not as simple as printing out a list of every person who owns a firearm. Even if you could print out such a list, you then have to drive to each person’s house and ask them nicely to hand over their firearms. Offhand I can’t think of any examples of a nation state which has done that, not counting war zones, of course.

If the government really wanted to gather firearms from its citizens, they may and certainly *should* offer some incentives for people to voluntarily hand over their weapons such as, you know, money. We’ll set aside the issue of where that money comes from. Given proper incentive, some people will volunteer to hand in their firearms. Maybe even “many” people will.

But the reality is that some people are going to try to use those firearms to shoot anyone who tries to take them back. So you have a situation where the American government is going to have to make decisions about whether to shoot and kill American citizens who refuse to hand in their guns. We’ll set aside the issue of whether it’s appropriate for a government to do that, and whether it can defeat a gun owner determined to keep his guns.

There is also the issue of *which* government will handle this theoretical firearm collection program. People, particularly overseas, seem to think that America is just one big government, but in reality there is the federal government of the United States, 50 state governments for each state in the Union, and God only knows how many local governments at the city and county levels. Which one of those governments is going to be responsible for driving around collecting firearms?

I have just read a tweet comparing regulation of guns with regulation of cigarettes.

Cigarettes are consumables. Firearms are not. And again, even if you eliminate the sale of all of the consumable ammunition, people still have stockpiles of it. I don’t know exactly how long gunpowder stays effective, but I would imagine you can leave cartridges properly stored on a shelf for many years. And maybe people don’t know this, but *you can make your own ammunition.*

Also, not to get too snarky, but just as this person rightly pointed out that laws were implemented to make it illegal to smoke in many places, he may have forgotten that it’s been illegal to shoot people with a gun for quite some time.

The point I’m trying to make is that it’s not as simple as passing a few laws. America was founded on the principle of placing and keeping power in the hands of the people. Enacting the kind of gun control that would prevent random psychos from carrying out mass shootings would fundamentally change the country and take a determined, long-term, *bloody* effort over the course of more than one presidential administration.

And after all of that work and sacrifice to make America a gun-free, somebody will still find an old AR-15 in a basement and go on a shooting spree. What then?

Politics

Followup: Outrage

Posted on by Tom

Remember that alleged lynching of a bi-racial kid in New Hampshire? Periodically I’ve been Googling for new information, because you may recall I applied my superpowers of skepticism to that story and found it didn’t pass the smell test.

I’m not sure I consider Newsweek to be the most journalistic of sources, but here’s an interview with the parents of one of the alleged attackers. And here’s an ABC News story with more detailed information from all sides (the photograph did indeed come from Facebook).

To me it’s still inconclusive. We are only hearing the parents’ interpretation of events that they did not personally witness.

The only thing we know for sure is that you still can’t trust anything you read on the Internet, and viral sharing is dangerous to human lives.

Politics

The Race To Condemn Politicization

Posted on by Tom

One other observation about Las Vegas: In the wake of mass shootings in America, another important battleground for activists of all stripes is the race to place blame on who politicizes the event first. Activists believe that whichever party America thinks politicized the event first “loses.”

So it is incumbent upon Republicans to point out if Democrats try to use shootings to enact gun control legislation, and it is incumbent upon Democrats to point out if Republicans try to cover up domestic terrorism. (That is pretty much standard operating procedure for activists in every situation every day, to be honest.)

Politics

What’s In A Terrorist?

Posted on by Tom

Whenever there’s a mass shooting, one of the most important things for left-leaning activists in this post-Trump world (I should start naming them as “The Resistance”) to find out is whether the shooter is a white guy or not, and if so, to label him a terrorist.

I understand the reasons for it, because Trump and the right in general have spent so much time trying to label brown people as terrorists. Trump wants to ban immigration from certain predominantly brown-people countries for fear that terrorists will infiltrate the country. The vast majority of brown people are *not* terrorists, so the left feels the need to turn the tables on the narrative and point out that Americans are more likely to get killed by mass-murdering white terrorists already inside the country than brown terrorists from abroad. (Which is 100% true. It’s also true that Americans are more likely to get killed in a car accident or from a heart attack than by either white or brown terrorists. Statistically speaking, no American should be afraid of terrorism in any shape or form.)

I understand all of that. And if labeling a shooter as a terrorist in the legal sense of the word allows for stronger prosecution of a mass shooting perpetrator, I’m all for it. (Not that it matters in many cases, since they usually kill themselves.)

But to me, the term “terrorist” carries a strong connotation of not only political motivation, but animalistic, grisly violence. The terrorists of ISIL cut off people’s heads to literally terrify people into supporting their cause. “Submit to our rule, or we will cut off your head and kill your family,” is the ISIL campaign slogan. (I am paraphrasing a bit.)

(I actually don’t know what the ISIL campaign slogan is.)

What is the political motive for the Las Vegas shooter? I’m sure The Resistance would be happy to make up a message for him, but thus far, a little over seven hours since I first heard the news, I have yet to hear any (factual) motives ascribed to the shooter. I have my own suspicions deep in the cold blackness of my heart, but I’m not going to say anything until I read more facts. It could be weeks or months before we find out the cause of this shooting, if we *ever* find out.

The point I’m trying to make is that, in my mind, I don’t equate a person who cuts off political prisoners’ heads with a knife–or runs over people in a van, or walks into a crowd and blows himself up with a suicide vest–to people who shoot randomly at crowds from three hundred yards away. Not that I have any experience with this, but cutting off someone’s head with a knife seems like a pretty intimate act of violence that I would imagine requires a great deal of dedication to a cause.

Shooting indiscriminately at a crowd where you can’t even see who you’re hitting is … well, not the same. The violence and death is far, far away. This was an act of cowardice, especially when you kill yourself before getting caught. I am speculating wildly, but this guy probably decided to commit suicide and thought it would be fun to take a bunch of people with him. What did he care? He was planning to be dead anyway.

We can only guess at political motivations. It’s highly unlikely he wanted to prompt the country into enacting more gun control legislation. (It’s highly unlikely any such legislation will happen anyway, because even the Sandy Hook massacre of 20 children couldn’t do it.) It’s highly unlikely he was a Resistance-approved stereotypical racist white guy bent on ethnic cleansing because he was shooting at people attending a country music concert–not the place you’d expect to see a lot of minorities.

The only thing he’s accomplished politically is to drive a bigger wedge between the resistance and the alt-right on Twitter.

So again, call him a terrorist if it makes you feel better, but I don’t see this as the same kind of terrorism that is used as a weapon for political action.

Politics

Insidious Propaganda Labels

Posted on by Tom

I have to be extremely careful about this post, because it’ll be easy for someone to pick out some words here and there and conclude that I’m a white supremacist racist bigot kitten killer.

I think “white nationalist” is one of the most insidious negative propaganda labels I’ve heard in a while. It dawned on me one day that you can use that label to describe basically any white person who expresses any positive sentiment about their country. (America, in this case.)

“I had fun on the Fourth of July,” says the white person. “White nationalist!” cries the propagandists.

“I’m glad I called my Congressman,” says the white person. “White nationalist!” cries the propagandists.

“I’m glad I live in America,” says the white person. “White nationalist!” cries the propagandists.

“I hang an American flag outside my house on Memorial Day,” says the white person. “White nationalist!” cries the propagandist.

See? Pretty insidious. Especially because the propagandist can respond, “Oh no, we don’t mean that kind of nationalism, we mean the bad kind of nationalism, we mean the “America first” kind of nationalism that can better be described with a different word such as xenophobia.”

So when people say, “white nationalist,” they really mean “white xenophobic.” Unfortunately since the nationalist terminology is so broad, it’ll catch a huge amount of innocent white people in the propaganda net. And, that, of course, is exactly the purpose of good propaganda labels: To marginalize huge swaths of people, and to make it impossible to push back without self-harm.

When I say self-harm, I mean that since I’m a white guy it’s not politically correct for me to say any of this. I’m under the influence of white privilege which renders all my opinions invalid. (Unless they are the “correct” opinions, of course.)

This has been another random thought about politics and propaganda that will probably make everyone mad. Now to sit and think about whether I should post this and risk the consequences of saying something thoughtful and reasonable on the Internet.

Spoiler alert: I did post it. But not before it sat in my Drafts folder for seven months and I completely forgot that I wrote it in the first place.

Politics

Straw Man Tweets

Posted on by Tom

It occurred to me while browsing through my Twitter timelines that there are a lot of tweets that have built-in straw man logical fallacies. They usually follow one of these forms, which I’ve made up:

Them: Some ridiculous claim that doesn’t make sense.
Us: That’s a ridiculous claim that doesn’t make sense!

“The moon is made of green cheese.” That’s dumb! Everybody knows the
moon is made of blue cheese!

Dear people who say silly things: You look foolish when you say silly things.

Basically it’s where a claim is made and attributed to some mysterious, unnamed opposition (a “straw man”), and then a rebuttal is made to the claim. The person writing or sharing the tweet comes off sounding like a hero for “eviscerating” the claims of their adversaries. The only problem is, naturally, there is no evidence given that anyone ever made the adversarial claim in the first place. It sounds vaguely like something you might have heard before, or like something that your ideal adversary might say, but that’s about it.

Many of these kinds of tweets get retweeted into my timeline. Some activist or another somewhere makes up something in the hope that they will be spread far and wide and influence public opinion. It’s the Twitter equivalent of fake ads on Facebook.

I mention this not to shame anyone, but because I feel like we as a country and a species don’t teach people how to think critically anymore. One of the ways to be educate yourself is to recognize the patterns used by propagandists and con-artists (and advertisers!). One of those patterns is the straw man logical fallacy.

The point is not to *discount* straw man arguments out of hand. (The “dear people who say silly things” example above is 100% true.) Instead, be extra cautious and skeptical of them, especially when they come from a stranger or from someone who has a vested interest in influencing people a certain way. (For example, RUSSIANS.)

Here are some real-life examples that were retweeted into my timeline today.

 

Politics

Behind The Tweets: Sean Spicer at The Emmys

Posted on by Tom

CNN’s Kaitlan Collins’s tweet is representative of the Twitter backlash against former White House press secretary Sean Spicer appearing at the Emmys last night:

No, but it’s comical that the American people–and journalists, of all people–don’t understand that the literal job of the White House spokesman is to lie for the president.

I think this is indicative of a split between liberals who are starting to recognize reality and liberals doubling down on conspiracies. The fact that Sean Spicer could even make it through the door at the Emmys without getting beaten up means *somebody* there must understand the real world.

Other reactions:

David Perry is a journalist, according to his bio, and that thread goes on in a similar vein for some time. I assume he is also referring to former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski being named a visiting fellow at Harvard.

Reminder: I don’t follow any of those people. They are retweeted into my timelines.

UPDATE: Here’s the controversial appearance, all 30 seconds of it.

Politics

Behind The Tweet: Outrage

Posted on by Tom

Saw this tweet come through Tweetdeck:

UPDATE: To be clear, I don’t follow that account. It was retweeted.

“Everyone should be outraged,” it said. About what? I hovered over the link and found the title of the story:

“New Hampshire police refuse to discuss apparent lynching of biracial boy.”

That is the correct way you should respond to questionable tweets in your feed. Note that at no time did I click any part of the tweet. I did not retweet it, I did not click the link.

I considered quote-tweeting it with a sarcastic comment: “About misleading headlines?”

Then I thought it would make a good blog post, so I copied a link to the tweet so I could screen grab it, and got this lovely photo right in my face:

Of course I had read about this story already from other sources. It’s terrible. But I don’t know if it’s true or not. I have no idea if that photo is real or not. My instinct these days, if you can’t tell, is to assume everything on the Internet is fake until proven otherwise. In any case I’m certainly not going to go a place called “Raw Story” to investigate it, because I’m a reasonably savvy news consumer.

I’m dubious about that photo. Where did it come from? It’s obviously not a police photo following the proper chain of evidence that would stand up in a court of law. That leaves only one thing: It came from a parent posting a picture on Facebook. Will that stand up in a court of law? Is it real? Maybe. Could it be fake? Certainly. How will we know for sure? By waiting and watching real journalists do real reporting.

Assuming it’s all true, the police, obviously–so, so obviously–are conducting an investigation. The boy is obviously–so, so obviously–underage (as are the attackers) and should not be talked about by the police in public.

I don’t know this for sure, but I would imagine the police are refusing to discuss what happened because they are professionals at their job who respect the privacy of the people involved and the integrity of their investigation. So, so obviously.

So yes, everyone *should* be outraged…

…about people spreading tweets like this around the Internet without using their brains for two seconds.

…about people spreading links to rawstory.com as if it’s a legitimate source of news.

…about people writing headlines which twist the facts to manipulate readers’ emotions.

…about people attaching horrific images to their tweets to make people react instinctively with emotion even though we have no idea if it’s real or not.

…about the huge swaths of world citizenry who do not yet understand the above simple facts of modern life, which might someday lead to the downfall of civilization.

Incidentally, Raw Story, according to Wikipedia, is “an American progressive online news organization founded in 2004.” I shouldn’t have to say this, but never get news from sites that boldly declare their partisanship.

Politics

Behind The Tweet: Letter of Intent

Posted on by Tom

Yet another example of why you should never trust a tweet. Saw this on Twitter:

Seth Abramson, a lawyer according to his bio (but mainly a pundit) said, and I quote, “here’s a Letter of Intent Trump signed with some Russians while running.”

Obviously we know not to trust a tweet from some random dude on the Internet. So I found an article from a legit source, Business Insider: ‘Help world peace and make a lot of money’: Here’s the letter of intent to build a Trump Tower Moscow.

Scroll down to the bottom of the letter of intent.

There’s no signature from Trump or any Trump representative.

Even if it *was* signed, it doesn’t show collusion to win an election. It shows an agreement to build a tower. Related? Sure. But strictly illegal? I doubt it. It falls in a deep, smoky gray area. Which is also known as “the real estate business.” *rimshot*

The left shoots themselves in the foot every time they claim to have a smoking gun that obviously *isn’t* a smoking gun.

P. S. This is why Twitter should never allow editing tweets. So activists can be held accountable for spreading lies and misinformation.

Politics

Rush Limbaugh Versus The Hurricane

Posted on by Tom

You know the liberal bubble is 100% airtight when people actually believe Rush Limbaugh said that a hurricane is a liberal hoax.

UPDATE here’s more. Some of these people are journalists.

CNN at least had a factually correct headline, though incredibly bitchy and defensive:

What do I think? Well, let’s just say this Daily Show segment from 2005 still applies:

 

UPDATE 2: I wondered if Snopes would tackle this issue, and they finally did, although they buried it near the end of a general post about the hurricane instead of giving it its own story like they should have. It unfortunately supports my general thesis of the last year that Snopes tends to work harder on debunking conservative fake news than liberal fake news.