Thursday, January 17, 2013

Doing the Same Things and Expecting Different Results

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But be real careful not to piss anybody off
So now we have the President's agenda on firearms legislation, including both his planned executive actions and his legislative proposals.  It's a pathetic combination of hand waving and feel-good laws and rules that will have NO impact on gun violence in America.  And the sad thing is that our insanity around guns is so deep and so complete that even most of these proposals have little or no chance of passing.

Most of the President's executive agenda (other than "Nominate someone to head ATF" -  Wow - how'd they come up with something that radical?) centers on improving the background check process.  This is fine - there's no reason NOT to do this, and it might actually do some good.  But here's the problem - amidst all this talk about 'strengthening' background checks, you haven't heard any details, have you?  Do you know what they mean when they talk about "strengthening" background checks?  Anyone?  They're talking about including individual's mental health records.  And nobody wants that information made available to any idiot with access to the DoJ database.  There are even laws protecting individual privacy by preventing public disclosure of this information.  It's a dogwhistle, similar to terms like "entitlement reform", and it means making public some of the most private medical information we have.  Whether you think it's a good idea or not, as these proposals wind their way through the regulatory process, they are going to run into resistance from just about everyone in the mental health and privacy community, and may very well find that the whole idea is a non-starter.

Now, there are two problems with background checks.  One is the lack of comprehensive mental health information discussed above, and the other is the so-called "Gun Show Loophole" that actually has very little to do with gun shows at all.  If you buy a firearm from a licensed dealer, he is required to run a background check on you to determine that you are legally entitled to own a gun.  But if you buy a gun from an individual, there is no such requirement.  Now, we can argue quite logically that there SHOULD be universal background checks, but there's a very simple reason why there are not.  An individual can sell his car, his stereo, his dog - anything that he owns - without intervention from anyone.  If someone owns a gun and wants to sell it to their neighbor, essentially the same dynamic applies.  Getting a piece of legislation written and passed in such a manner that could pass muster with the courts has been difficult, and enforcement would be a nightmare.  If we had a national registry of firearms we could easily make it the buyers obligation to provide an update to the ownership record, just as we do with automobiles, but as I have mentioned before, our firearms laws are insane.

So the point is that in a year, we'll have slightly modified our background check regulations and the entire issue will have disappeared from the radar for most Americans who will assume that somebody must have done something after Sandy Hook.  But it's hard to make profound changes to a premise that is so fundamentally flawed at it's root that you're essentially slapping a coat of paint on a burning building.  And even worse, we'll see even these virtually worthless "feel good" laws fail in Congress.  Some say "well, you have to start somewhere", and that's perfectly valid, but if we can't even start here, and must wait for more horrific bloodshed to try again, we're complicit in perpetuating an insane system.

The legislative proposals are for a renewed federal assault weapons ban and federal limits on magazine capacity.  I've gone on at length about the pointlessness of such legislation, but the bottom line facts remain that "assault weapons" bans don't ban guns that do precisely the same thing but don't meet the strict legal definition of an assault weapon, whatever you decide it should be, and that limiting magazine capacity MAY on some occasions reduce the number of people killed in certain mass shooting events (and may not), but will do nothing to reduce the overall gun violence problem in America.  As long as we place no real limitations on manufacturers, importers and dealers, guns will continue to be broadly legal, widely available and ridiculously cheap.  That's the insanity we can't seem to find the will and courage to address.

If you had an elephant in your living room, that would be a problem.  You'd have trouble moving around, he'd get in the way of the TeeVee, he'd often break your stuff, and OH LORD, the piles of poop.  Now, you could try to address this problem by putting him on a leash, spraying him with Febreeze and training him to always poop in the same corner, but what you really need to do is GET THE ELEPHANT OUT OF YOUR LIVING ROOM.  As long as we are doing nothing and yet can find a way to convince ourselves we are doing something that matters, we'll continue to see the same results.  And that's the definition of insanity.
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22 comments:

  1. Ah. So pointless to do ANYTHING, then, is it?

    Mild and milquetoast as all this is, it has the paranoiacs targeting Obama's kids. They are slavering for a 'shooting war'.

    I disagree about the assault weapons ban, incidentally. the ineffectiveness (which is debatable) of the prior ban was due to the efforts of our friends at the NRA, who made sure the law was toothless. Other countries have effectively banned assault-style weapons, so it is not as impossible a task as you make out.

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  2. The countries that have successfully banned them critically do NOT have a constitutional guarantee, let alone one that has been broadly interpreted by their Supreme Judiciary. You can disagree all you want, but we have a recent historical experiment that we can look at. The problem is not even the NRA in this case, except in the most general sense. The problem is that a law banning "assault weapons" MUST define the term. Then it becomes nothing but a simple engineering challenge for the manufacturers, in their greed, to change the specs. I'll always point out the Ruger Mini 14 - never affected by ANY assault weapon ban, and yet it fires .223 or 7.65 rounds in a functionally identical manner to the AR15.

    And once again, as I have argued repeatedly, no, it is NOT pointless to do anything. It is pointless to do things that are pointless. We KNOW that even if every bit of Obama's gun agenda passes, which won't even happen, 20,000 more Americans will die from firearms again this year, and next. It is, as I keep saying, due to our unique constitutional/judicial/legislative circumstances, a problem that must be addressed not as a PRODUCT problem, like cocaine or anthrax spores, but a COMMERCE problem. We must use our commerce authority to tighten regulations around insurance, product liability and distribution to drive up the cost of firearms. It's the only way we can effectively reduce availability, and it's the availability that is the problem...

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  3. I am particularly hopeful for the EO that enables the CDC to again study gun statistics, and allows doctors to inquire about guns in the home as part of risk assessments.

    The thing about any of these gun laws is that the effect will take years to become apparent. Just like when environmental lead was restricted, it took DECADES for the effects to become apparent.

    yeah, so specific gun restrictions will be fighting a rearguard action. So what? Put the damn death merchants on the fucking defensive for a change. I'm OK with it. Don't let it sunset, though, like the last one. Engineered so a softball law would expire just as its effects started to be shown.

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    1. Yes, I agree with you on that. The Tiahrt amendments are toxic - willful legislative ignorance to prevent the facts from interfering with the propaganda. And even more hopefully, that research will demonstrate clearly that trying to ban some rifles with specific features never saved a single life, and will make irrefutable clear the linkage between legal handgun availability and gun violence.

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  4. An individual can sell his car, his stereo, his dog - anything that he owns - without intervention from anyone.

    How about a car?
    ~

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    1. Legally, the largest share of the onus is on the buyer to update the ownership, registration and insurance on the car. The seller will most often choose to notify the administrative agencies that he no longer owns that car, but the force of law is focused on the buyer making the appropriate updates to the data.

      Of course, this would require there to be a similar state-level registry of firearms and a criminal statute making it a misdemeanor to acquire a firearm and not update the ownership record. This would be nothing but simple common sense, and we could never make it happen in the US.

      Only Haiti, Honduras, Mexico and the US have a constitutional guarantee of the right to own guns. And not surprisingly, these are all very, very violent societies...

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  5. that trying to ban some rifles with specific features never saved a single life, and will make irrefutable clear the linkage between legal handgun availability and gun violence.

    Tommy-guns? Seems to have been a quite effective ban...

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  6. EXACTLY!! Thank you. The NFA is a perfect example of what we need to do. It's worth mentioning that there is NO BAN. You can own a "tommy gun". I can't, but that's the whole pesky felony conviction thing. But there's no ban on owning machine guns - quite the opposite. There is just a reasonable set of regulations around them.

    If you, my Zombie friend, set out to buy a Thompmson submachine gun, you would have to spend a LOT of money and jump through a LOT of regulatory hoops. At the end of the process you would own a Thompson Submachinegun (and I would be viciously jealous), but the question is not a "ban", but "availability" and you would NEVER use your Tommy Gun in a crime, because you went through a year of bureaucratic folderal and spent something on the order of ten thousand dollars in order to own it.

    This is PRECISELY the kind of regulatory regime I'm advocating...

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    1. But the weapon still has to be defined, right? What's the difference between defining weapons in a regulatory manner, and in a restrictive manner?

      Oh yeah, the Class III regulations were written before the NRA became a terrorist organization.

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    2. If you, my Zombie friend, set out to buy a Thompmson submachine gun,

      I don't think ANYONE thinks this is a good idea.

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    3. Sure, but the key is they are regulated, but they are not banned. That is necessary because we have this absolutely insane constitutional guarantee. But you're right, you couldn't pass the NFA today. So the plan ought to be to remove the product liability limits, and require owners to carry liability insurance. This would require an ownership registry (again, not possible in today's absolutist legislative environment) which would open the door to regulation. It's like carbon regulation - not legislatively possible but critically necessary, so the goals ought to be identified and defined.

      But yeah, when we can't even decide to fix our most dangerous bridges or invest in our electricity distribution system we are going to stand by, shouting slogans, while a hundred Americans die every day...

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    4. we are going to stand by, shouting slogans, while a hundred Americans die every day...

      NOT TO MENTION THE ZOMBIES

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    5. Perhaps we should propose some kind of National Shovel Regulation, at least a waiting period for shovel purchases and maybe a mandatory background check...

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  7. Essentially there's nothing to be done because Murkins are crazy & stupid & much too invested in guns & the "Fuck w/ me & I'll kill you" philosophy.

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    1. Or, to put it in political terms, our legal firearms regime is nothing short of insane. There is no value to society in the easy, even unlimited availability of modern firearms. There has to be some cost, some consequence to ownership and some legal liability if people are harmed...

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  8. This is easily documented. There are thousands of Class III weapons in private hands. I dare you to find a case where a legally owned Class III weapon was used in a crime. This is the PERFECT regulatory model, and while it's not legislatively possible today, it should be the goal we're reaching for...

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    1. Myrhbusters once cut a tree down with one. That HAD to have been against SOME kind of ordnance...

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    2. Actually, it was a gatling-type gun. Dunno if that counts as Class III, although I would imagine it would HAVE to. Fired something on the order of 50 rounds per second.

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    3. Yep - you could own a minigun too. But I can't even imagine how much that would cost. Probably well into six figures, and your ammunition cost to take it out and play with it would be staggering...

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    4. Once you are again pulling down phat stax from the Silicon Valley crowd, you can finance the Great Zombie-mikey Minigun Episode.

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    5. Damn, we shoulda done this thang in '98...

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    6. And my dream is not to own a minigun, it's to own a BAR. That's got to be about the coolest motherfucking rifle in history. Anytime your opinion is validated by Clyde Barrow you're on the right track...

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