The Journal News Saves the Earth! Not!

You have no doubt heard by now that The Journal News, a daily paper in a northern suburb of New York City, published the information of all the registered gun owners in two counties in New York. This included their addresses along with a handy little map with all those addresses plotted on it. The article was entitled “The Gun Owner Next Door: What You Don’t Know About the Weapons in Your Neighborhood.”

The names and quotes and specific information cited here came from a New York Times article. Of course, their take on it is a bit different than mine, but there is no accounting for their idiocy. They think publishing the names of our spies for all the world to see is a good thing, too.

The Journal News article was hailed by the usual liberal idiots and anti-gun crowd as “courageous” and “a great public service”.  Blah, blah blah.

Then the reaction from the pro-gun side kicked in. Bloggers researched and published on the internet the names and addresses of the editors and reporters for the paper. Those courageous icons of journalism at the Journal News received phone calls, letters, and emails in protest, and not a few threats of violence.  The president and publisher of the paper, Janet Hasson, whined that “…in the U.S. journalists should not be threatened,” and in the meantime has hired armed guards to protect her and others at the paper’s offices.

One must enjoy the irony of it all. I mean, the result of publishing the names and addresses of registered gun owners was bound to make those owners uncomfortable. We can’t be sure, but the paper must have known that by exposing these gun owners there was a possibility that the public reaction to those gun owners would be negative and they would be hounded by anti-gun folks. Now the worm has turned.

The usual commentators were quick to defend the paper on the grounds that the information was a matter of public record and the paper has the right to publish this information. Forgoing the obvious arguments about why the information even exists to be published, we must agree that The Journal News does indeed have the right to publish the information. Bully for them.

Of course, that does not mean that publishing it was a good idea. In fact, it was a very bad idea for a lot of reasons. One of those reasons is that it was guaranteed to piss off a sizable portion of the population, many of which are going to be vocal about their displeasure and some even violent about it.

I’m not defending the crazies who threaten violence and death to the paper’s employees. But, any reasonable person understands those crazies are out there, both on the left and right, and if you go out of your way to piss them off, bad things could happen. I am also not saying that journalists should cower from the threats offered by the crazies. Trust me, I can practically hear the cries of indignation around the theme that if journalists are silenced by the threats from their critics then that results in anarchy. True. The other side of the coin is that when journalists exercise their power only for their own bias, without regard to the harm it causes others, and are not accountable in any way, that is also a form of anarchy.

You have to understand that if you have a right to publish something, others have a right to disagree with it and the form of their disagreement may be painful. There is plenty of pain without violence.  Pain will come in other ways. It will come in the form of reduced circulations from people upset with the paper’s actions. It will come from the boycotts being organized against the advertisers in the paper, some of whom will decide they don’t need that kind of attention. It will come from the outraged voices of decent people who will yell loud and long about what they think of the publisher, editors and reporters. Some of those folks could end up losing their jobs if the parent corporation, Gannett, begins to feel too much heat. Longer term, it results in the further erosion of the public trust and confidence in American liberal journalism of today. 

Let’s not overlook the pain that comes from the threat of violence, too, however unjustified it is. Violence committed against journalists is seldom justified. (You can’t say it is never justified, because I can think of scenarios where it might be)  I’m sure many of the employees’ of the Journal News are worried, and probably with good reason. If you are the Lady Garden’s Club reporter, you have to wonder just what the hell is going on and that this isn’t what you signed up for. The fear and trepidation the employees of the Journal News are feeling is, however, pretty much self inflicted by their leaders. What did they think was going to happen? When the majority of Americans favor gun rights and the second amendment, did the editors really think they wouldn’t get a backlash? Could they not imagine the potential harm they were doing and that people would be kind of upset?

What harm? Well, there is the obvious fact that guns are always a target for thieves, so the paper just published a treasure map where thieves are likely to find some. Inevitably, some of those guns will be stolen by thieves relying on the information published in the Journal News article. Not only will the legal guns owners suffer the loss of their property and the indignity and personal violation of being robbed, those stolen guns will go from their law abiding responsible citizens—who after all complied with a questionably unconstitutional law requiring them to register their guns-- into the hands of criminals to be used in the furtherance of their crimes. It is not inconceivable that some innocent person is going to get shot with one of those guns that would not have been so shot but for the Journal News article and map. A stretch? Maybe, but also maybe not. No doubt the Journal News started with the premise that public knowledge of the gun owners in the neighborhood somehow makes that neighborhood safer, yet exactly the opposite will in fact manifest.

There is the opposite problem as well. Rapists and such, and thieves not interested in stealing guns, don’t like it when their potential victims could be armed. Guess what potential victims are now reasonably known not to be armed? The answer is the people whose addresses are not shown on the map provided by the Journal News.

The publisher, editor and reporters of The Journal News responsible for this are staggeringly stupid. Congratulations Journal News, in one fell swoop you managed to heighten the risk for almost all of the citizens in two counties. But, oh yes, you had a right to do it, and we all know that when one exercises his constitutional rights he should never be questioned or criticized for doing so. More importantly, none of the bad things that are going to happen as a direct result of your journalistic masturbation are in any way your responsibility, right?

Dwight Worley is the reporter who had the idea to publish the gun owner’s names and addresses. When asked about criticism of the article and whether the databases of the registered owners should not be available to the public, he confirmed just how amazingly stupid he is. He said, “The people have as much of a right to know who owns guns in their communities as gun owners have to own weapons.”

There is no such right to the knowledge about others possessions. Where does he think this right comes from; it certainly isn’t in the Constitution, unlike the right to keep and bear arms.

Do we have the right to know which housewives have vibrators in their purses? Do we have a right to know which men have a prescription for Viagra? Yes I know that vibrators are not subject to governmental registration, which is the basis for the point the Journal News and its supporters make that information collected by the government is therefore owned by the public and should be publicly available. But Viagra is subject to registration and all those with a prescription for it are so recorded. So where is the difference? Hey man, one of those old guys is going to have a bad reaction to the little blue pill someday, get one of those erections lasting more than four hours while in the meantime coming into close proximity to a 16 year old in a tight sweater and short skirt and the next thing you know that Thing will go off and tragedy ensue. As long as we know which men out there have access to Viagra we can all take steps to protect ourselves, or at lease our 16 year old daughters. Same logic.

How would Mr. Worley like it if suddenly the State of New York said he was going to have to register as a Catholic, or Jew, or Baptist, or Scientologist, or Atheist, or something, not because they wanted to take his constitutional right to practice his religion, which they assure he is free to do without impediment, but because sometimes religious nuts prove to be a threat to the rest of us and this registration will make us all safer from them. And, besides, we all have a right to know what religion our neighbors practice, so of course, the registration list will be publicly available. Same logic.

Clearly, too many folks think it is not only okay for the government to require registration of firearms and even require permits for them, but that it is incumbent on government to do so for the protection of us all. They believe we are all safer as a result. Why, if they weren’t forced to register their handguns, the owners of those guns would feel no compunction about shooting anyone they please whenever they please, because they would have no fear of being caught. But now that they know that we know who they are because they registered their guns, they are forced to restrain themselves. To paraphrase a poster making the rounds, if you believe that requiring a permit and registering lawful citizen’s guns means that criminals won’t have guns or that you are somehow safer, then you are a special kind of stupid.

My apologies for digressing.

I don’t know if the Journal News was motivated by an anti-gun bias or if they were just interested in creating buzz to sell more newspapers and advertising. Coming on the heels of the Newtown massacre, and that Worley was returning from covering the story when he had the idea for the publishing the gun owners database, one must think the Journal News was acting on an anti-gun bias. It’s just plain mercenary and cold blooded if they were manufacturing a sensational story because of Newtown just to sell more newspapers. Or maybe they thought it was a twofer? That's somehow even worse.

Either way, they seriously misunderstood what they were doing. I think the newspaper and its employees are going to be worse off for it. It can’t be pleasant for them now. I think the citizens of those two counties are going to be worse off, too, or at least their risk is much heightened and now they will have to be especially vigilant.

The question is if the crime rate goes up in those New York counties and innocent people are harmed because the bad guys now have a literal road map to follow, will Mr.Worley and Ms.Hasson blame themselves? Will they lay awake at night and think to themselves, “I sure wish I hadn’t done that.” Or will they blame someone else? Knowing how these liberal journalists think they will blame right wing nut gun owners because everyone knows they don't care about the well being of others, just about themselves and their precious outdated rights. Do you see the sophomoric logic they will employ? If those gun owners hadn't owned those guns in the first place, none of this would have happened. Right?

Psychos and Gun Control

The tragedy in Connecticut is nearly unbearable. In our anger and hurt a lot of us are going to knee jerk into demands for more gun control. Notwithstanding all the other valid arguments about why that is such a bad idea, consider this.  Did you know the crazy bastard in the recent Oregon Mall shooting was stopped by a citizen with a concealed carry pistol? Didn't hear that on the news did you? Nick Meli is his name. Funny how CNN and the New York Times didn't mention him.

When Mr. Meli pulled his piece and aimed it at the bad guy, the fellow was trying to unjam his semi-automatic rifle. Meli did not immediately pull the trigger because there were people behind the bad guy and he was afraid of missing and hitting an innocent bystander. But, the bad guy definitely saw Meli aiming at him and immediately retreated, ran into a stairwell, unjammed the weapon he was carrying and killed himself. My guess is the bad guy was participating in a bizarre suicide and, seeing Meli drawing down on him, he realized that he might be shot but not killed and yet be unable to kill himself as a result of wounds. He was unwilling to face what he had done in the event of that possibility, decided to not risk surviving and so shot himself. 

I have no doubt that if Mr. Meli had not been there with his pistol, the madman would have kept on shooting and killing even more people once he cleared his weapon's jam. Some of those who would have died probably are enthusiastic gun control supporters. Indeed, some of them, and their friends and families, may now be even more resolved than ever to eliminate private citizen gun ownership because of the experience. How ironic, is it not, that they are alive today and able to hold these beliefs rather be among a larger number of dead or injured because a private citizen exercised his right to keep and bear arms.

The guns genie is out of the bottle, whether we like it or not. There is no putting them back in. The Founders saw to that. They had very good reasons for creating the second amendment. But, those reasons are not the point I want to make, as valid and true as they still are. The point is there are so many guns in so many private citizens hands that there is no way to eliminate them. That means that people will always be able to lay hands on a firearm if they really want to do so. Wail and grind your teeth at the thought if you must, it will make it no less true. Psychotic turds bent on killing others are always going to be able to get guns, no matter how many laws and controls and enforcers we create. The only way to stop them is for the rest of us to also be armed so we can defend ourselves.

Another way to look at this is that many people don't want to have to defend themselves. It may sound harsh, but in a way many of these people are cowards thinking only about themselves. To defend yourself is to put yourself in harms way. There is a chance the bad guy will kill you rather than you kill the bad guy. So, one way to limit your risk is to let someone else take on the danger, to brave the bullets. That's the policeman's job. That's what we pay the security guard to do. For many people, telling them they will have to fight for themselves scares the holy crap out of them, and so they grasp at any alternative to avoid it, no matter how absurd or unworkable it might be. If we could just take away everyone's ability to do us harm then we won't have to worry about harm coming to us, right? Pie in the sky.

It works the other way, too. Sometimes the cowards do have the guns. That bastard in CT was a coward, don't think he wasn't. He went to that school with the intention of dying. He simply didn't have the balls to face his demons or whatever was bothering him, but he also couldn't kill himself quietly in his basement all alone either. Instead, he needed to share the pain and suffering with a sort of involuntary and gruesome support group.  Another thought bothers me even more. He was too cowardly to kill himself just for his own reasons. Perhaps he knew them to be trivial or false or something. The solution was to commit such a horrendous sin and pile up the guilt so high that in the end the only justifiable thing, the only way to atone, was to kill himself. Cute little mind trick: I'm too chickenshit to kill myself, so I put myself in a position where not only do I deserve to die but I'm even more scared of living.

The psychos target schools on purpose. It's the easiest place for them to create a big body count, whatever their reasons. Schools are among our most sacrosanct gun free zones, along with court houses and government buildings. All sorts of penalties apply to anyone who would dare to bring a gun onto school property. Those laws work really well, don't they? A variation on an old favorite saying is, keep all the law abiding citizens with guns off the school property and only the psychos there will have guns. Oh, and the difference between our schools and those court houses and government buildings is the latter have security checkpoints and armed guards and metal detectors and on and on; schools don't. Do we really think that if this piece of crap in CT knew that some of the teachers, the principal, other administrators and even the janitors were packing that he would have chosen to go out this way? More to the point, even if he had, it is likely that some of those kids and teachers would be alive now if some of the adults in the school were armed that day. I sincerely believe that to be true. God knows I wish some of them had been carrying in that school in Connecticut.

Before anyone offers up the silly argument that letting school officials and teachers pack a gun puts our children at risk, I offer this: if we can't trust our teachers to carry guns in school then how can we trust them with our children at all? No I don't really expect a Kindergarten teacher to have a Glock in her purse or in her desk. However, I wouldn't prevent her from having it if she demonstrated the same level of proficiency required of other conceal carry licensees.

Remember all the silly righteous outrage spewing from peoples mouths and in the press about the TSA allowing airline pilots to carry arms in the cockpit after 911? We can trust the pilots to take off and fly at 35,000 feet at 500 mph with 150 passengers on board, but not with a revolver in their briefcase while they do it. Asinine.You will hear all the same supercilious arguments against allowing school officials to be armed. Let me pull a Meryl Streep: Think of the children! What are we doing to our children?!

Back to the teachers, there is a photo going around the internet and on Facebook of an Israeli woman with an assault rifle on a sling over her shoulder and a purse or book bag with a bunch of young students around her. By all accounts this is probably not a teacher. A number of reputable sources indicate that Israeli teachers are not armed in their classrooms. However, the picture according to those same sources is probably of a guard whose job is to protect the kids at school and on outings. Islamic terrorists will cause you to have to do that. For my money its six of one or half a dozen of another. Either way, there are responsible people with guns in the Israeli schools to protect the kids.

I will be blunt. Anyone who would rather take away the guns of honest law abiding citizens than allow protecting armed adults in the schools is as morally culpable every time a child is killed as is the monster who killed that child.

Finally, if we must pass some sort of unconstitutional law, then lets choose one that really would be effective at stopping some of this: make it illegal to publicly refer to these crazy monsters by name in the press or anywhere else. At least that way we take away the motivation for many of them.You will notice here that I did not once use the names of the inhuman butchering scum in Connecticut or Oregon. They should be completely shunned by history as non-persons. Perhaps some others who are thinking about going out in a similar way will think differently when they discover that not only will they not go into the history books, no one will ever know who they were or care.

Goodbye, Bob!

Bob died on Monday.

Bob is/was my father-in-law.

Bob was a pedantic, obstinate, anal retentive, opinionated SOB.

He had his own BOB way of doing things. Every tool had its place and only its place on the shelf or rack, to the point that the outline of the tool was drawn on the wall to help one find where it went. Every bottle of liquor had its spot on the shelf. Every piece of meat was cooked to a certain temperature.  Every smoked salmon was done the same way every time.

But it was good (no read excellent) smoked salmon.

All of that tended to piss the rest of us off sometimes.

He ripped into me one night at dinner because I teased my wife in good fun though perhaps somewhat rigorously. I was told to “Be quiet! That’s my daughter you’re speaking to!”

I wanted to reply “She’s my wife and I will speak to her as I wish.”

But I did not, because he was being a protective father and I was being trivial.

I wasn’t very nice to Bob the last time I saw him. He wanted help in programming his new TV, DVD player, cable box, and sound bar all on one remote.  It was complicated and required three or four steps done in the right order on the universal remote we bought to make it all work. Bob had trouble getting it. I explained it several times and walked him through the steps. A little while later he asked another question that indicated he still didn’t get it. I got frustrated, and probably let that show in my tone of voice and facial expression.

I regret that very much.

What do I know about cutting precise dovetail joints? Not much. Bob did.

What do I know about raising a steer or training up a horse to ride? Nothing. Bob did.

What do I know about plywood and all its various kinds and types? Bob knew all of it and more.  I don’t think there is anything that Bob didn’t know about the wood industry and its products.

So I know some stuff that Bob didn’t. Whoopee! What he knew could probably make my brain explode if I had to learn it.

Everyone I know was frustrated by Bob. He had a way of clinging to his opinions and making sure you knew that whatever your opinions were, if they did not match his, they were wrong. He never said that out loud, mind you. You just sort of knew it.

He could be plodding in his preparations, as if he was going down a mental check list that extended to some 50 or 60 pages.

The closest Bob and I came to a serious disagreement was when I argued that flag burners should be allowed to do that thing without penalty. My thought was that the constitutional guarantee of free speech allowed flag burners the right to express themselves in this way. In my defense, this was a very libertarian view. I was not defending flag burners; I was defending their right to free speech. Bob did not see it that way. To him it was unpatriotic. It was criminal. If you burned the flag, you deserved to be tarred and feathered at the least. I was told in no uncertain terms that I was not allowed to discuss this topic with him again. I did not.

The bottom line is Bob was a man. He had his own views of what the world should be and he stuck to them. Whether you agreed with him or not was not important.

I will miss Bob. Very much. He was a man’s man, with his own values and insights to the world. Too many of us rely on others to shape our world view. Bob did not.  He helped shape ours.