video of the day, random thoughts on guns, & etc.

It was impossible to avoid discussion this week of the Supreme Court's takedown of the Washington, DC handgun ban, and it will be interesting to see how this actually plays out.

Hardcore gun advocates see this as just the beginning, or, as scary, scary Wayne LaPierre (CEO of the NRA and author of The Global War on Your Guns: inside the UN plan to destroy the Bill of Rights) put it, "I consider this the opening salvo in a step-by-step process of providing relief for law-abiding Americans everywhere that have been deprived of freedom." Poor, put-upon gun-owners, what with their lack of freedoms! But seriously, the NRA has already filed several lawsuits challenging gun restrictions in Chicago and San Francisco, with more probably soon to follow.

Gun-control advocates like the good people at the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence are up in arms (so to speak) at the Court's decision, arguing that it upends decades of tacit understanding that the Second Amendment protects the right for states to have armed militias to fend off the potentially evil federal government, not the right for every man, woman, and child to carry around lethal weapons.

In purely statistical terms, it will be interesting to see how this decision impacts gun deaths in the United States, if at all. Justice Scalia, in a strongly worded dissent in the court case recently granting habeas corpus to Guantanamo detainees, argued that the majority's decision was bad because it "will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed." More than 30,000 Americans die annually at the end of a gun. This is already more than 10 times as many deaths every single year than were caused by the terrorist attacks on 9/11. It's hard not to imagine that with yet more guns will come yet more deaths. (But then, I'm a New York liberal democrat, so what do I know?)

One last thought on this gun thing. This article is worth reading in its own right, but more importantly, take a look at the picture. The guy screaming. The guy with the sign. "If guns kill people... do pens misspell words?" Not only is it gratingly unlyrical, but do we really want someone who thinks guns and pens are equivalent to have access to deadly weapons? Pens may misspell words when placed in the wrong hands, true, but we've invented copy editors and spell check for that. What kind of check do we have for guns being in the wrong hands? Emergency rooms, I suppose.

One last, last thought on this gun thing (I promise) also brought on by this picture: do these people honestly believe that the founders thought every household should have a.. a.. I don't even know what exactly it's called, but the big, scary looking thing in the front right corner? I wouldn't have such a huge problem with the Court's newly-enshrined constitutional right of individuals to bear arms if they were bearing, you know, muskets.

And on a different note entirely, this for Marti: "It is downright unsheeplike to leave the flock and stand nose-to-nose with a dog for long periods." -Jon Katz's Stories from the Farm


(My propensity for black clothes is clearly an evolutionary defense mechanism)