Posted by
Mostly Genius – August 27, 2009
Ironically this is not going to be commentary on crime, but rather on the gun rights movement. I found this little rant in a Seattle alternative weekly. All of the emphasis is mine.
… It scared me to no end. It also pissed me off. If you all four hadn’t had guns, we would’ve had a completely different situation. Instead, you got all six of us tied up while you stole what you deemed worth jacking. What also pisses me off is that you were all black. Why the fuck would you feed the stereotype? I couldn’t see more than your eyes and a little bit around them, so I found myself racial-profiling out of fear. I stopped doing that, because I’m stronger and better than that…
…I work hard as an attractive woman to be intelligent and interesting, because I don’t like perpetuating negative stereotypes. I wish you would work just as hard to rid the world of the stereotype that black men should be feared because they’ll put a gun to your head and steal…
I cannot read this article without wondering if the author would have been happier if her home invaders were more racially diverse. Now for the gun rights portion of the post. When we talk about “normalization” or similar sentiments regarding gun rights, this is part of the audience we are trying to convince. These are people who worry about ethnically stereotyping the home invaders that victimized them. I don’t think they get reached by shock therapy (or even lobotomy.)
The idea that people would have some kind of practical (or tactical) answer to a home-invasion robbery (regardless of race) is totally alien to those of the authors ilk.
Posted by
Mostly Genius – May 29, 2009
The people who do not recognize an urgency for self-defense preparation like to throw around the word, without really knowing what it means:
Suspicion and mistrust of people or their actions without evidence or justification.
Truthfully, everyone accepts that a certain level of preparation is relevant and necessary, but people disagree on where the line is to be drawn. Ironically it is the under prepared that think they have all the answers because they don’t understand the scope of the problem. I see a lot of people try to use statistical arguments for their lack of preparedness:
“Getting attacked by a serial killer has pretty low statistical probability, therefore no preparation is required.”
The corollary to this reasoning is that if you are unlucky enough to be attacked by a serial killer then you are just dead. It ignores the fact that the skills and equipment necessary to thwart the serial killer are useful in situations at occur more frequently. It also ignores that situations evolve and escalate. The application of single finger salute in a parking dispute can transform an irritation into a deadly force encounter.
The position of the defender is always reactionary. To my way of thinking we don’t really get to make a lot of choices because the actions of the aggressor dictates what our responses will be. If the assailant poses an immediate deadly threat, we don’t have a lot of options: run, fight, or die. My suspicion and mistrust of people is based upon the simple fact that many people in our society do not have our best interests at heart, are willing to do us harm to further their own ends, and people really do get killed. Having the will to succeed, a plan to do so, and the training and equipment to ensure success is not paranoia, it’s prudence.
Posted by
Mostly Genius – December 18, 2008
Orlando police chief’s top goal for 2009 is to take guns away from criminals
The article doesn’t explain how the police chief is going to go about accomplishing this, and I am sure the devil is in the details:
“It’s going to take a whole lot of people to help us do that,” said Demings, who pledged to work closely with the public, prosecutors and legislators for stricter gun control.
“It’s not about keeping guns out of the hands of law-abiding citizens who have every right to possess them,” she said. “Our initiative will focus on the people who are not supposed to have them.”
The most interesting bit of the article is here:
Data released Wednesday show the male murder victims and suspects share a common background of repeated arrests without imprisonment.
At least 95 percent of the victims and suspects had criminal histories. One-third of the suspects had been arrested at least 20 times. One quarter of the victims had been arrested at least 10 times. And about 40 percent of the suspects and victims had been busted for dealing drugs.
If 95% of the people getting murdered are actually criminals then taking guns away from them has a very good chance of increasing other types of crime. The sample size is pretty small here, but it would be interesting to know how many people killed by firearms (other than suicides) are in fact criminals.
Posted by
Mostly Genius – December 15, 2008
Guns, U.S. Parks: A Deadly Mix
Crime rates in the national parks are down significantly. Yet the international trade in animal organs may be pushing poaching to new heights. The National Parks Conservation Association reports poaching is partly responsible for the decline of at least 29 species of wildlife in national parks. Nineteen species — including grizzly bear, lynx and the desert tortoise — are in danger of being eradicated.
I think that people attempting to poach grizzly bears with handguns are going to be a self-correcting problem. I should ceased to be amazed by journalists who have opinions but no facts on which to base them.
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