gun control

Obama’s Remarks On The Charleston Shooting Were Unethical, And Here’s Why:

/ Jack Marshall / 44 Comments
Because every tragedy is a chance to sell policies on emotion alone...

Because every tragedy is a chance to sell policies on emotion alone…

President Obama’s comments this morning again emphasized his tendency to stoop to reckless, careless and divisive rhetoric when far better is called for.

He said in part:

We don’t have all the facts, but we do know that once again, innocent people were killed in part because someone who wanted to inflict harm had no trouble getting their hands on a gun.

Now is the time for mourning and for healing. But let’s be clear. At some point, we as a country will have to reckon with the fact that this type of mass violence does not happen in other advanced countries. It doesn’t happen in other places with this kind of frequency.

And it is in our power to do something about it. I say that recognizing the politics in this town foreclose a lot of those avenues right now. But it’d be wrong for us not to acknowledge it, and at some point, it’s going to important for the American to come to grips with it and for us to be able to shift how we think about the issue of gun violence collectively.

The fact that this took place in a black church obviously also raises questions about a dark part of our history. This is not the first time that black churches have been attacked, and we know the hatred across races and faiths pose a particular threat to our democracy and our ideals….

Observations:

1.  How does Obama know that the shooter had “no trouble getting their hand on a gun”? He doesn’t know that, and it is a misstatement  to say that this assumption of his is a fact. We know that the shooter had a gun when he used it, and that’s all. For all Obama knows, he had a very difficult time getting his hands on a gun. For all Obama knows, it took the killer months, accomplices, money, elaborate maneuvers. Or is he saying that having a gun at all is proof that it was too easy to get one? What does that suggest?

2. Obama waited barely a few hours before politicizing a tragedy, and using it to stump for his gun policies. This was inappropriate, disrespectful, crass and cynical.

3. Reasonable and enforced gun regulations are necessary and rational, but it is intellectually dishonest —and politically inept—to use this kind of an incident (or Newtown) to promote them. Nothing short of outright gun banning will stop people like the Charleston shooter from acquiring guns, and gun banning is not going to happen, ever, nor should it. The anti-gun zealots who would love to see guns banned just respond to the Pavlovian stimulus of this kind of rhetoric, and the pro-gun nuts will see this as an outright effort to repeal the Second Amendment. This kind of statement accomplishes nothing but to gin up “the base,” and, frankly, I think that’s all it’s intended to do. Continue reading →

The Washington Post’s “Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc” Gun Control Deceit

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments
This is Johns Hopkins, who already had to deal with his parents putting an s after his first name, and now the Bloomberg School of Public Health attaches a bogus study to his name. Poor guy.

This is Johns Hopkins, who already had to deal with his parents putting an s after his first name, and now the Bloomberg School of Public Health attaches a bogus study to his name. Poor guy.

If you want a graphic example of why climate change skeptics distrust—and are right to distrust— the studies and computer models on the subject indicating that we are doomed unless we adopt Draconian measures, look no further than the Washington Posts’ embarrassing story on a study released this week in  the American Journal of Public Health.

It is deceptive, biased, misleading and incompetent from the headline: “Gun killings fell by 40 percent after Connecticut passed this law.” The headline is designed to fool anyone so ignorant and unschooled, not to mention devoid of critical thought, to fall for the classic fallacy of “post hoc ergo propter hoc,” which means “after this, thus because of this.” The thesis of the study in question, swallowed whole by the gun-control shills on the Washington Post staff, is that because gun deaths in Connecticut fell after a mid-summer 1994 state law was passed requiring a purchasing license before a citizen could buy a handgun, the law was the reason. Of course, the rates also fell after the baseball players strike that same summer: one could make an equally valid argument that stopping baseball limits deaths by gunfire.

The story, and the study, epitomize biased journalism hyping bad research. You see, since rates of deaths by gunfire also fell after the Connecticut law in 39 states where no such laws existed, the claim that Connecticut’s limits caused that state’s drop is impossible to prove, and irresponsible to assert. Especially since… Continue reading →

AGAIN: Irresponsible Gun Owners Must Be Charged

/ Jack Marshall / 80 Comments
"...but since this is a .357 magnum, the most powerful handgun on Earth, and will blow your head clean OFF.... I think I'll go shopping with my little boy with this in the holster, unfastened, and bullet in the chamber!"

“…but since this is a .357 magnum, the most powerful handgun on Earth, and will blow your head clean OFF…. I think I’ll go shopping with my little boy with this in the holster, unfastened, and bullet in the chamber!”

CBS informs us that in Wassila, Alaska, where you know who dwells, a 4-year-old boy was shot in the leg Saturday on a public sidewalkwhen his mother’s .357-caliber handgun fell out of its holster, struck the pavement on its hammer and fired.

No one has been charged, we are told.

Well, that’s cretinous, and as a society, our law enforcement has to send more responsible messages than that.

Again, as I noted here and here and here, all since the dawn of 2015, the fact that the child or an innocent bystander wasn’t killed by this reckless and stupid gunowner was pure chance, moral luck. As far as her conduct goes, there is no difference. She is the equivalent of a drunk and speeding driver. This isn’t an accident that “can happen to anyone.” This can happen to idiotic gun owners who don’t know basic gun safety and allow guns to be in the close vicinity of children. Why was her holster unfastened? Why did the gun have a bullet in the chamber? Why wasn’t she aware that what she was doing might make the gun fall? Why did she feel she had to carry a cannon of a hand-gun with her on a weekend outing to beautiful downtown Wasilla?

Charge her, prosecute her, throw her in jail, take away her gun privileges, and have child protection services investigate the home.

This has got to stop.

[But don’t call her a gun owner. She isn’t a real gun owner. Real gun owners don’t act like this. To call her a gun owner gives her dignity that she doesn’t deserve, and promotes bigotry against true gun owners, who by definition are responsible, peaceful, and observe gun safety principles at all times. If you don’t believe me, just ask the President. He understands. This is how he thinks, after all.]

One More Time As A Child Finds A Gun And Kills: Prosecute the Parents

/ Jack Marshall / 99 Comments

DSC_1306

This time the locale was Elmo, Missouri, and it was a five-year old pulling the trigger. The victim was a 9-month-old boy, but it’s basically the same tragic, stupid story….just like in the Idaho Walmart, where the two-year-old shot his mother, or the Albuquerque motel room where another toddler shot both of his parents, who were just lucky and lived. (They have been charged with child abuse. Good.) A gun owner negligently, recklessly, criminally leaves a firearm, loaded, where  young children are and a tragedy results.

Alexis Widerholt, the mother of the children, called 911, and when emergency crews arrived they found that her the baby had been shot in the skull with a .22-caliber magnum revolver.

Somebody has to go to jail for this, maybe several people. Authorities say the gun belongs to a relative, but not the mother. If she knew the gun was in the house, she’s accountable. Anyone responsible for putting the loaded gun where a kid might find it is accountable. Charge them with manslaughter, convict them, send them away. Unless the mother didn’t know about the gun (she originally told the police it was a paint gun, either out of panic, confusion, or ignorance), she needs to lose the right to parent them, at least for a while. Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “Comment of the Day: ‘Hard Lesson Of The Walmart Tragedy: Bad Ethics Kills’”

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Homefront-the-Revolution-592

My post about the tragic shooting incident in the Idaho Walmart continues to generate fascinating comments, not always directly related to the post. (Linking publications and websites to the contrary, I took no position on guns or gun control measures, though I have elsewhere on Ethics Alarms. The post’s positions were anti-incompetent gun ownership and anti-irresponsible parenting.) In the inevitable gun-related debates that have emerged, frequent commenter and blogger Shelly Stow opined that the need for guns to resist a government that attempts to crush individual freedom no longer exists.

This sparked the Comment of the Day, a history lesson as well as an explication for the need to have the last resort of armed revolution available, from 2014’s most prolific commenter, texagg04, and here it is, beginning with a quote from Shelly’s comment, on the post, “Comment of the Day: ‘Hard Lesson Of The Walmart Tragedy: Bad Ethics Kills’”:

“I disagree that, should our citizenry today become threatened by a government bent on tyranny, weapons in the hands of that citizenry would right the situation.”

Wait. What????

So, you are saying that IF we truly faced a tyrannical government at home THEN we aren’t supposed to do anything about it to overthrow it. And that’s precisely what you are saying if you think weapons in the hands of citizens isn’t the right situation.

What???? God knows in the face of a tyrannical government, sit-ins, hunger strikes, and demonstrations accomplish precisely nothing. Certainly no external forces would come to our succor — the UN, populated by precisely the kind of tyrannies we don’t want? No. Western Europe, which can’t even be bothered to solve it’s own problems? No…

Come now… Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “Hard Lesson Of The Walmart Tragedy: Bad Ethics Kills”

/ Jack Marshall / 27 Comments

First The Washington Post suggests that my commentary on the tragic shooting death of Veronica Jean Rutledge by her two-year old son in an Idaho Walmart as using “the accident as an excuse to grandstand on gun rights,” then the website Raw Story writes that my post is “a talking point for both sides in the gun rights debate.”  Neither is true; neither is remotely true. The post wasn’t even about guns: the topic is accountability for reckless and irresponsible conduct by parents and their consequences. Do journalists even read the stuff they link to?

The comments to the post, however, are another matter. Naturally some of them opine on gun policy, and an interesting query arrived from a reader in India, who wrote:

Hello all… I’m from India and we don’t have such gun laws here.. but it looks like, the only news that I see concerning America are “school shootings” and “accidental ones” every week. I have nothing against America and I love your country .. but owning a gun, seems to be a sign of insecurity to me. and I repeat, the only news I see is a regular pattern: “kid goes on shooting spree” or “kid accidentally discharges weapon”.. Don’t you see what’s happening b’coz of these Gun laws ? anybody can be careless about anything… nobody is perfect. I’m only airing my views about this.

This prompted an excellent Second Amendment explanation from 2014 New Prolific Commenter of the Year joed68. Here is his Comment of the Day on the post, “Hard Lesson Of The Walmart Tragedy: Bad Ethics Kills”: Continue reading →

Unethical Quote Of The Month: Hillary Clinton On Government Control Of Non-Conforming Viewpoints

/ Jack Marshall / 46 Comments

mind-control-tests

“I believe that we need a more thoughtful conversation, we cannot let a minority of people — and that’s what it is, it is a minority of people — hold a viewpoint that terrorizes the majority of people.”

—-Hillary Clinton, forcefully inserting her leg in her mouth up to the knee during a CNN town hall as she talked about gun control, and, apparently, the new Democratic-progressive goal of government censorship of words, thoughts and beliefs.

Yup, Hillary really said that we cannot allow a minority to hold viewpoints the majority objects to. Oh, I know: she just said “terrorizes.” But if you can stop people from holding terrorizing viewpoints, there will  no longer be any prohibitions on barring other viewpoints that “the majority” believes are unwise.  This is the progressive paradise, I guess: all dissenting thoughts, opinions and viewpoints banished. I can almost feel the electroshock treatments now.

This is just a gaffe, right? I doubt it. I don’t think someone committed to free speech, open discourse, liberty and pluralism makes such a gaffe. The Left has been working over-time to suppress opposing opinion, dissent and non-conforming views for much of this President’s administration. Why should we believe this is a mistake?

Hillary will, and should, have this quote shaken in front of her face from now on. It is disgraceful, and terrifying (but I’m probably not part of Hillary’s “majority,” so what terrifies me doesn’t matter) for a former U.S. Senator and Secretary of State to assert such an un-American sentiment.

And immediately, the news media has begun trying to clean up the mess. The Huffington Post, realizing most people read headlines, not full posts, titled its report this way:

“Hillary Clinton On Gun Control: We Can’t Let ‘A Minority Of People’ Terrorize The Majority”

That is, you will notice, a lie. That is not what she said, and it is not up to journalists to decide for us what she “meant.” She said, very specifically, “holding viewpoints” is what we cannot permit, although the Constitution and a long line of Supreme Court cases says quite specifically that viewpoints are exactly what the government must permit. Later she said,

“I don’t think any parent, any person, should have to fear about their child going to school or going to college because someone, for whatever reasons — psychological, emotional, political, ideological, whatever it means — could possibly enter that school property with an automatic weapon and murder innocent children, students, teachers.”

This is less totalitarian, arguably, but dumber. “Could possibly” enter that school? I guess we have to lock them up, then, right, Mrs. Clinton? Can’t take any chances.

_____________________________

Pointer: Democratic Underground

 

 

The Mind Of The Unethical Advocate: 41 School Shootings Just Isn’t Enough—Let’s Pretend There Are More

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Shootings

You have probably seen this map; it went viral on the internet almost immediately after it was first published on Twitter last week by  and editor at The Huffington Post. It purports to show the locales of the “1.37 deadly school shootings per week,” 74 in all,  that have occurred since the December, 2012 Sandy Hook massacre according to Everytown for Gun Safety. That is an anti-gun activist organization founded by Michael Bloomberg and Shannon Watts, and its release that “there have been at least 74 school shootings in America” since Newtown was just what the doctor ordered for the languishing gun control forces.

It’s an intentionally misleading number. Journalist Charles Johnson checked the facts, and these are not all “school shootings” in the sense that the public now understands the term and how honest journalists use it—episodes where someone brings a gun to a school and starts shooting teachers and kids. At least 33 of the “school shootings” just fit the conveniently broad definition used by Everytown for Gun Safety so as to make the strongest impression, fairness and truth be damned. They include not just Columbine and Newtown-type episodes, but also assaults, homicides, suicides, gang fights, and accidents involving guns that happened “inside a school building or on school or campus grounds.” Continue reading →

Zeynep Tufekci Thinks We Should Trust Journalists To Protect Us From Mass Murderers Like Elliot Rodger, And Yet Restrain Themselves From “Protecting” Us From Other Things They Don’t Want Us To Know. And She Is A Fool.

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments
Zeynep Tufekci: so thoughtful, so gentle, so concerned, so dangerous, so terribly, terribly WRONG.

Zeynep Tufekci: so thoughtful, so gentle, so concerned, so dangerous, so terribly, terribly WRONG.

Zeynep Tufekci is a fellow at the Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton University, an assistant professor at the School of Information and Department of Sociology at the University of North Carolina, and a faculty associate at the Harvard Berkman Center for Internet and Society. She wants  journalists to censor the news and information they publish for our own good, to protect us from mad killers like Elliot Rodger. Because she has surfaced again, as before, to spread her “solution” to mass killings, this well-meaning, sensitive, smug and utterly deluded academic is once again getting respectful quotes, interviews and nods of approval from the likes of The Atlantic, Vox and National Public Radio. Since the hysterics can’t seem to take down the Second Amendment, now they want to use the latest mass shooting (it was a stabbing too) to wound the principles underlying First.

I have been waiting for someone with more influence than me to point out how dangerous and wrong-headed her “solutions” are. So far, nothing. I guess I have to do it myself.

Tufekci laid out her plan in detail two years ago, and it is being resurrected now. In an article for the Atlantic, she opined that the media is complicit in mass murders like the Santa Barbara shooting, because such deranged killers are primarily seeking fame and publicity as they exit this cruel world in blood and bullets. For the sake of time and argument, let us accept her dubious premise that this is indeed the driving motive behind these incidents. (I am sure that this is the motive in some such cases; it is certainly not the motive in all of them, as with the University of Texas tower shooter Charles Whitman.)

Here were her five recommendations: Continue reading →

ALL ABOARD! The Elliot Rodger Ethics Train Wreck Is Leaving Rationality Station!

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

trainwreck6

Wait…I think I’ve seen this wreck before!

Richard Hernandez’s enraged rant at the National Rifle Association for getting three people stabbed to death by Elliot Rodger signaled that this mass killing would  be exploited to the max by a succession of unscrupulous and/or irrational activists, social critics, and pundits, and, as my son used to say before he stopped respecting the French, “Voilà!”

The burgeoning ethics train wreck looks like it might be even more infuriating than most, though nothing, ever, will be able to top the Trayvon Martin-George Zimmerman Ethics Express for pure, widespread, unethical lunacy. Early indications are that the usual suspects will try to wring lessons from the crazed acts of a very unusual, spectacularly deranged, unsympathetic creep as if the fair and obvious answer isn’t there for all to see who are objective and smart enough to perceive it: this one mad act proves nothing. Not about the U.S., men, not about whites, not about guns, not about law, not about Hollywood. Nothing.

It’s a big country, and there’s lots of time before climate change destroys us all or something else does first. The attack of Elliot Roger is the opposite of signature significance, an utterly meaningless convergence of factors with fewer lessons to teach than other odd but deadly events, like the Great Boston Molasses Disaster of 1919, or the St. Pierre Snake Invasion of 1905. He means nothing, and should be shunted aside to obscurity as quietly and quickly as possible, so his undeserved notoriety doesn’t set off differently motivated but similarly unhinged sociopaths who are teetering on the brink. Unfortunately, that would require journalists, politicians and single-issue fanatics to be fair, logical and responsible. Continue reading →