RETRACTED WITH APOLOGIES
I’m pulling this post. It was based on bad information; I didn’t check it correctly; I cited the original source without making sure the secondary source had quoted it accurately, and my commentary ended up completely misleading and unfair in every way. Stupid. Incompetent. Careless. Inexcusable.
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I’m the Ethics Dunce here.
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The Loretta Lynch statement that I was under the impression that she made was not what she said. Thanks, so much, to commenter Zanshin for flagging my error.
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I’m pulling this down rather than leaving it up with a correction because as of now the post constitutes web pollution of the sort I rail about regularly. It is the equivalent of a hoax. Those who come to read it should be told immediately that the miscreant in this case was me, and the source that misled me, but mostly me. I’m not even going to mention that source either, though it has been reliable in the past. This is my fault, and nobody else’s.
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I offer my apologies to Ethics Alarms readers, and anyone they may have misled as a result of my carelessness. I also apologize to Attorney General Lynch, who did not say, for the most part, what I criticized her for saying.
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Frankly, I’m relieved about that.
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This is the phenomenon of being so focused on a trend–in this case, anti-gun forces enthusiastically using gun-related tragedies to advance their agenda—that I was primed to accept a pretty outrageous example that was so outrageous it should have sparked skepticism. I allowed confirmation bias to dull my judgment, and let that be a lesson to me, and everyone else.
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Also: never write a post right after your head explodes.
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I’m sorry, angry at myself, and embarrassed.
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You deserve better, and I will intensify my efforts to ensure that you get better going forward. You have to trust me, and this time I let Ethics Alarms down.
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UPDATE (12/5): As of 2 PM today,both Instapundit and the National Review are sticking with the misrepresentation of Lynch’s remarks, either because, like me, they relied on an inaccurate source, or because they want to.
Ethics Alarms 
I’m gonna barf!
“If anyone can think of a benign interpretation of her statement, please let me know”
It’s the end of the work day, give Charles or deery a chance to get home.
I eagerly await the leftwing media, but I repeat myself, to trash her “condolences” like they trashed a variety of republicans “thoughts and prayers”.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CVav8UmWoAAYMEU.jpg:large
Pretty much the rest of the world. Mass shootings are as American as Apple Pie.
It’s the price you pay for having a system where:
1) The police have no duty to protect the public.
2) The police have no ability to protect the public, so having the ability to protect yourself is necessary.
3) The crims are mostly armed..
4) There’s a patchwork of gun regulation – can’t get a gun where you live? Go to the next county or cross a state line.
School massacres and the like are as inevitable as deaths in auto accidents, given US culture. We in Australia value the freedom to travel so highly we risk our lives daily on the roads. You in the US value your freedom to bear arms so highly that you risk armed nutters coming into schools and starting to shoot.
From a numeric viewpoint, the road toll vastly outweighs the number of homicides in school shootings.
On this matter, the rest of the world knows not what it is talking about, so its opinions of US values is as useless and irrelevant as a Christian’s opinion of Islamic values.
Where did you get this stuff?
1) The police have no duty to protect the public. How do you figure that?
2) The police have no ability to protect the public, so having the ability to protect yourself is necessary.
The ability to protect yourself is always necessary, police or no police. It’s called self-sufficiency, also liberty. The statement is like saying “The government has no ability to feed you, so having the ability to feed yourself is necessary.” The police have no ability to protect the public? They have the ability, and for the most part, do as good a job as a non-police state can do.
3) The crims are mostly armed…
The vast majority of criminals are not armed. Many are.
4) There’s a patchwork of gun regulation – can’t get a gun where you live? Go to the next county or cross a state line.
Translation: federalism. The federal government doesn’t dictate local standards. One size doesn’t fit all. It’s no different than Europe. France has strict gun laws: They worked well.
https://scontent.fadl1-1.fna.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xat1/v/t1.0-0/p526x296/12313868_10207129128203381_2398248198858372528_n.jpg?oh=15b9d8e939c1a35935ab0f2f82ce9c03&oe=56D466B1
Nevada Assemblywoman Michele Fiore shared an image of the card on Facebook on Nov. 30. It features six adult members of her family each carrying a gun, as well her young grandson, Jake, holding a pistol.
“It’s up to Americans to protect America,” Fiore wrote in the post. “We’re just your ordinary American family.”
When a state legislator says that, not just a nonentity – who am I to say they’re not? I think they’re probably unusual even for the US, but there’d be millions like them.
1. Where do I get that? Warren v District of Columbia, Castle Rock v. Gonzales etc.
2. “When seconds count, the police are only minutes away”. It’s the tyranny of distance. A 4-10 minute response time is reasonable inside a city. In rural areas, even 4-10 hours might not be physically possible. Where I live, Emergency Services take an average of 4 minutes, and anything over 10 causes a formal inquiry. But 100 km away, that’s just not possible,
3. When I say “criminals”, I wasn’t just referring to bank robbers, car thieves etc. I meant DUI, jaywalking, littering, speeding… it would only be prudent in large parts of the US for a police officer to have his gun ready in any traffic stop. In Australia, where only the aforementioned bank robbers, drug gangs etc are armed, not so much,
4. Interstate commerce clause. One of the few cases where this almost universally misused clause actually has reason to apply.
I’m not criticising the US here – just pointing out the facts. If you find those facts uncomfortable, that’s your problem.
1. Holding: “[t]he duty to provide public services is owed to the public at large, and, absent a special relationship between the police and an individual, no specific legal duty exists [ to that individual].” That only means that you can’t sue the police when they choose to be someplace else rather than helping you. Which makes perfect sense.
2. That does not translate into “The police can’t protect the public.”
3. Then what you mean is “criminals MAY be armed.” So might actors, plumbers and grannies. And?
4. The Constitution doesn’t say Congress has to regulate interstate commerce, just that it can.
4-10 minutes is reasonable enough to tell the citizens you don’t need to be able to defend yourself?!
I can’t even have a discussion with comments that daft. I simply can’t. That level of brainwashed combined with self-delusion is impossible to reason with.
In 4 minutes, the average person can walk 1/5 of mile and run almost half a mile, sprint near 3/4 of a mile.
In 10 minutes? make that 1/2 mile, a bit over a mile and near a mile and a half.
In 4 minutes, an average person can expend almost half the amount of ammo a soldier doctrinally carries into battle: a load of 210 rounds (taking decently aimed shots).
In 10? They’d be in desperate need of a resupply.
In less than 1 minutes a person can bleed out from a substantial wound at the hands of an assailant.
Seriously, authorities don’t respond to “help” they respond to “clean up”.
Now, go ahead and assert that all those numbers prove just why everyone ought be disarmed… go ahead. Be stupid.
My Strawman can beat your Strawman… should there be any age restriction on the possession of multi-megatonne warheads? Is 18 months too young, or do you think there should be no restriction at all on the Right To Bear Arms?
So – do you live on a battlefield? If things are that bad, how do you deal with airstrikes, or NBC?
If a bad guy breaks in by tossing in a nerve gas grenade, or even CS – do you have a facemask?
I live in a culture where the odds of a miscreant staging a home invasion using firearms on my home is rather less than yours of being hit with CS stun grenades and massed automatic gunfire (by a SWAT team going to the wrong address in a “No Knock” raid).
A sensible discussion would involve analysing the threat, assessing risks, finding an optimum that would reduce innocent deaths while preserving as much freedom of self defence as possible. But such research is forbidden by law in the USA,
I was afraid this would fly right over your head.
Using the capabilities of an *average* person, I demonstrated exactly what can happen in the “reasonable” time frames you mention. It isn’t a strawman.
I swear a discussion about the most ancient right of man can’t ever be had without a blind leftist mentioning nukes. Do you even try to have good faith discussions anymore?
You also live in a culture that has quietly acquiesced to a government doing whatever the hell it feels like doing with your only recourse to be saying “please stop we’ll get really upset”. Now go ahead make the same facile comment “it can’t happen in a modern western democracy”. Go ahead, be ignorant of history and human nature.
My partner and I are currently fulltime carers for my in-laws, both in their 90s.
Getting punched, bitten, or hit by a walking stick by a granny with severe dementia who doesn’t recognise the stranger bringing her sandwiches or coming to change her nappy is something we have to live with. I’d really rather that she didn’t have a .22LR semi-automatic pistol as well. Having my own as well (or a 9mm Glock, an MP5 carbine etc) wouldn’t help that one bit.
Down the street is a dysfunctional family with perennial alcohol problems. They get mean when drunk. I’d be far less safe if both of us had substantial firepower than if neither of us had.
Yes, they run a plumbing business, coincidentally.
extraneous comparisons are misleading and foolish, in an attempt to compare those who wear nappies wanting to have a gun or alcoholic neighbors who did not apply for a gun permit, or did these do so ? and that is why they are mentioned in the topic of ‘gun ownership’ and purchasing one ?
such strange ways of connecting disparate subjects is often used when someone is attempting to promote Only Their One Point Of View upon others and using any verbiage that does not fit together or make sense and is illogical comparisons. Is this what is happening here ?
You can bet France will recruit a bunch of ex-Legionnaires to keep watch on tourist spots, concert venues, etc. armed to the teeth. Maybe if a few of them were in the concert venue with NATO assault rifles the terrorists wouldn’t have lasted long.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Sydney_hostage_crisis
I guess this guy manufactured his gun at home on his own lathe or three D printer.
Regarding Lynch and Eric Holder, where do we go for competent national leadership? Affirmative action has given us the Obamas and Holders and Lynches. Legacies have given us the Roosevelts, Kennedys, Gores and Kerrys. The SATs have given us the Clintons (and Lanny Davis) and probably Nixon and Carter. There’s just a serious dearth of ethical leadership in the public sector.
I left the Bushes out of the legacy category. Error.
Hi Jack,
The quote you posted at the beginning of this blogpost is not an exact quote from the source ( http://www.justice.gov/opa/speech/attorney-general-loretta-e-lynch-delivers-remarks-white-house-convening-incarceration-and )
As I read it, she first takes a moment to talk “about the tragic events in California yesterday”. And then — two paragraphs later, the one starting with “Now of course, today’s announcement is of a matter really of equal seriousness, but of long-standing concern.” she starts discussing the original agenda, which is about “Incarceration and Poverty”.
And in that part she delivers the sentences, ” I’m actually thrilled that this event is being held here today, now, at this time. We’re at a point where these issues have come together really like never before in law enforcement thought and in our nation’s history. And it gives us a wonderful opportunity and a wonderful moment to really make significant change. You all are such a distinguished group of advocates, of lawmakers, judges, experts – and we’re all here to talk about today how we can ensure that our legal system serves every American faithfully, fairly, regardless of their economic systems.”
For me, this gives a totally different reading than the quote you are commenting on.
Yup—I just pulled it. You can see the explanation there. Thank you. I’m trying to reconstruct this and see where I screwed up, but I sure did.
Well, at least it results in a very good and extensive example of a level 1 apology on your apology scale
Thanks.
Small consolation, but I’ll take any silver lining I can find.
I still read it as being thrilled about the wonderful opportunity to advance the narrative. So considerate of terrorists to provide a tragedy to exploit at the very time and place it is needed.
“I still read it as being thrilled about the wonderful opportunity to advance the narrative.”
So did probably Jack’s source of the secondary quote.
Yes, the first section was still twaddle, but there is no way the second part was referring to the shooting, but rather the purpose of the conference. I am still royally ticked off that the quote was presented as it was, without elipses, so misleading that I fell for it. And t5hank you again for minimizing the damage here.
Thank you. This attempt to make things right and to humbly accept that you made a mistake makes this website way easier to trust. This is why you’re one of my favorite voices on the Internet even when I disagree with you (which is seldom).
Thanks. I have to try to live by the standards I hold others to here. It’s not easy, but I have so many reverse-role models who show me what not to do.
Jack, a class act on your part to pull the post in the way you did, given the facts as you came to see them. You just demonstrated the right way to acknowledge and apologize in the event of a mistake (which we all make). Thanks for the live demo of important ethical behavior.