To the Ball!

I recently read about how our American society can be described as being composed of three basic groups of people. Each of us falls into one of these groups. We are a SHEEP, or a WOLF, or a SHEEPDOG.

The Wolf is all those who for one reason or another, prey on the rest of us. They could be psychotics, like the guy who killed all those kids in Newtown. Or, they could be Jihadists who believe that all they have to do is kill enough of the unbelievers to make us believe like them. Or, they could be the common bad guys who take from others; the burglars, drug dealers, pimps, rapists and the like. The common thread is Sheep are prey for Wolves.

The Sheepdog, on the other hand, is neither taken from or a taker; it is a protector. The Sheepdog protects the Sheep from the Wolves. Most Firemen and Police are Sheepdogs, though some are Wolves. The Army, Navy and Marines, at least at the enlisted level, are mostly sheepdogs. Any mother who stands in harm’s way to protect her children is a Sheepdog. You get the idea.

I buy into this concept. But, lately, I have been having a different take on it.

Forget about the Sheep, Wolf and Sheepdog. Let’s think instead about Sardines and their Predators. Imagine a giant bait ball of sardines in the ocean surrounded by sailfish, barracuda, porpoise, tuna and marlin.

The bait ball is thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of fish, clustered together, swimming as close as they can to each other, each fish hugging the fish next to him, constantly shifting directions to desperately evade the predators slashing through their ranks.

A sailfish darts through the edges of the group and grabs a sardine. Oh well, there are still thousands of us left who haven’t been eaten. No matter how many predators show up, and even though some of the school will be eaten, the ball will go on.

The bait ball is marvelously effective at protecting the species, but is not so good at keeping the individual safe. The guys on the outside of the ball sacrifice their all for the good of those who happen to be on the inside. All you have to do to greatly increase your chances of survival is be on the inside of the bait ball whenever the predators show up.

So after thinking about this for a while, I have concluded that our society is not based on the Sheep analogy at all. We are, in fact, a society of Sardines. We would rather huddle together, like sardines in a ball, and let a few sacrifice themselves for our continued living benefit, than step out as individuals and defend ourselves. If you step out and leave the ball behind, what happens? You get eaten for sure.

At least that is what all those on the inside of the ball tell us. Guess who in our society is on the inside of the ball?

You guessed it: Politicians.

And Rich People.  Yes.

And Famous people.  And Movie Stars.

And Liberal Progressives.

Wait!  All Liberal Progressives?

Well, no. Just those that are in Government, or are Rich, or Famous, or are Movie Stars, or sycophantic hangers on to those others, and like that.

Every Day Common, not Rich, Famous or Governmental Progressives don’t automatically get a place in the middle of the ball.

Are there actually any real Every Day Common, not Rich, Famous or Governmental Progressives?

Well, yes, sadly, there are. They are most shocked to find out that their children were on the outside of the bait ball and were killed by a lunatic in their school. Or, that the real cool marathon that they wanted to run or attend also turned out to be on the outside of the ball and could be targeted by a bomber. Or, they were on an airplane going somewhere to do something and ended being flown into a building. 

Outside. Of. The. Ball.

Please, don’t think of this as a criticism of the individuals or a comment on their lives or life styles. It is not that at all.

They were all really good fish, I’m sure, loving of the rest of the school and devoted to all their fellow fish. They tried to give back to the bait ball, and were very generous and kind to their neighbors. Model sardines, in all respects.

We are hearing a lot of sardines on the inside of the ball saying things like "We need more gun control!"Apparently the thinking goes that if we all give up our guns the predators won’t have any either and would not be able to eat us so easily! If we make nice with the jihadists, they will make nice back and won’t eat us. Those of us who find ourselves on the outside of the ball are willing to try anything that sounds like it might work, no matter how stupid and desperate it is. After all, we are on the outside and don't have many prospects of getting on the inside.

Why is it that those of us on the outside of the ball keep listening to those who are on the inside, telling us to keep together, stay the course, as a school we will come through?

But come to think of it, once I’m on the inside of the ball, then maybe it is a good idea to have lots of others on the outside. Isn’t it in my best interest, being on the inside, to make sure there are always those on the outside, as a buffer between me and the big bad shark?

Furthermore, it might not be such a good idea to make it harder for the predators to eat those on the outside of the ball. If the outside is not easy to eat, maybe they will find a way to get to the inside instead? 

Changing metaphors briefly, think about the antelope waking up in the morning to find the Cheetah stalking the herd. From me the Antelope’s perspective, all I have to do is outrun the slowest Antelope in the herd to avoid getting eaten by the Cheetah. Another way to look at it is I don’t have to be the fastest Antelope; I just have to make sure I’m not the slowest. Take it one more step and realize that if I can somehow contrive to make sure there are always slower antelope around, my survival chances are much improved.

Back to Sardines, all I have to do is make sure there are plenty of suckers willing to swim on the outside of the ball.

Now how do I do that?

 

Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics

I wanted to reprise something I did back in the 90’s. I lived in California at the time. In a short period of time in California, like a year, several children were killed by playing with their parent’s guns. I don’t remember how many but it was no more that 2 to 4. I believe all the cases involved one child accidentally shooting another.  Of course it was a great tragedy. Many people in the goofy state of Cally, including the LA Times and other BS rags, predictably had a completely illogical and asinine reaction.

Their reaction was to introduce a bill to make it a felony whenever a child gained access to an adult's gun and hurt or killed himself or another child, even if it was an accident. In other words, and they specifically intended this, they wanted to send Mom or Dad or both to jail if their child found the family gun and some child was shot with it. Their reasoning was that the owners of the gun had a duty to keep the weapon secured in such a way that a child could not ever access it. The real intent was that just owning the gun was prima fascia evidence of guilt if a child was shot with it.

The editors of the LA Times published an editorial supporting the bill and urging everyone to get behind it. The basic argument, the same one they always use, was to challenge the readers to think of the children. If we save just one child’s life it’s worth it. Who knows that life we save may one day invent the cure for all cancer. Blah Blah, Blather, Blather, Blah. It was, and still is so much bullshit, as you will see.

Anyway, I did a little snooping around on the Center for Disease Control internet site. The internet was in its infancy then, and the CDC site was little more than a list of text files available as ftp downloads; no pictures, no fancy graphics, no charts. Still, they had scads of data on causes of death.  I worked through the data and then fired off a letter to the LA Times. In it I argued that the law they supported was a really bad idea for a number of reasons. One reason was they wanted to criminalize the parents for something the child did. Daddy goes to jail and Mommy is left to raise the child in a fatherless household. The child grows up feeling guilty not only for killing his friend but for making Daddy go away. I suggested there could be no better recipe for disaster for the child, not to mention the parents, and ultimately all the rest of us in society. 

It was easy to conclude that the bills supporters were either stupid or were such rabid anti-gun nuts they were willing to utterly destroy whole families for their cause.

I went further in the letter to basically call the editors a bunch of hypocrites, and that the arguments in favor of the bill were specious and disingenuous. If, I asked, they were really just concerned about children’s lives and safety, and that sending Mom or Dad to jail was the best way to prevent kids deaths by guns, then we had better start building a lot more jails. I trotted out statistics on children’s accidental deaths, ones that were preventable in most cases by exerting the maximum possible parental care.  I pointed out motor vehicle accidents hugely outnumbered guns as a cause of death for kids.  Drowning also caused more deaths than guns. We should, I suggested, investigate each of these deaths and if they were preventable by the parents in any way, then Mom or Dad should go to jail for failing to prevent the accident. Certainly if this was going to be an effective savior of lives regarding guns, it would work even better to save even more children from accidental death, right?

The letter was never published by the LA Times. Imagine that.

The recent hyperventilating and running around with hair on fire prompted me to revisit causes of death. Again, I visited the CDC site, which is not much easier to use now than it was then. And, again I come away with the inescapable conclusion that we are surrounded by bunch of screaming hypocrites. Let’s have some fun with numbers, shall we. And, we shall also be mindful of Benjamin Disraeli’s observation that: “There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.”

Here are some causes of death for kids ages 1-14 from 1999 to 2010, or the last 10 years. I have eliminated diseases, which are the major cause of death. Also not shown are specific causes with low occurrence rates for this age group, like falls and suicide. 

Cause of Death Ages 1-14	Deaths	Rate Per 100K Population
Motor vehicle accidents	24,076	3.5
Accidental drowning	8,974	1.3
Assault (homicide) not by firearms	6,018	0.9
Accidental exposure to smoke, fire	5,155	0.8
Accidental poisoning of all kinds	1,139	0.2
Assault (homicide) by firearm	2,855	0.4
Accidental discharge of firearms	789	0.1
Discharge of firearms, unknown intent	134	0.0
All Firearms- not  suicide	3,778	0.6

The way to read the data above is to understand that for every one hundred thousand kids ages 1 through 14, 3.5 of them were killed in a motor vehicle accident. You can see that only 0.6 died from gun discharges of all types, including accidents and murder. Another way to think about it is to understand that more than twice as many kids drowned as were killed by guns, 8,974 versus 3,778. 23% more children were accidentally poisoned to death than were accidentally shot (not murdered), 1,139 versus 923. More than twice as many were murdered by a means other than a firearm as were murdered with firearms, 6,018 versus 2,855.

Where is the outrage about swimming pools and unsupervised bathing? Or about the many unsupervised children who got into substances that poisoned them to death?

How about motor vehicles? Should we be outraged? One can reasonably argue that the motor vehicle is so necessary to our economy, way of life, and the needs of a modern society, that we must accept that some deaths will occur. Arguably, these losses are acceptable given the benefits we all enjoy as part of an active motor vehicle society. However, if we accept this argument, doesn’t that pretty much invalidate the one that starts with “if we can save just one life”?

Let’s not stop at children. Below are some selected statistics for the entire US population from 1999 to 2010. Again, I left out diseases and some causes that were miniscule in comparison to others.

So what do we find? Again, motor vehicle accidents kill nearly 15 people out of every 100,000. Non transportation related deaths are a very broad category that includes accidents of all kinds, including falls, poisonings, and, yes, gun accidents, but does not include motor vehicle accidents. Non transportation accidents make up 34.7 deaths out of 100,000; or looked at another way by taking firearms accidents out of  this category, 34.3 deaths are by accidents not including motor vehicles or guns.

Of those 34.3 non transportation/non gun deaths, you can see that poisoning kills 9 out of 100,000, while falls kill a bit more than 8. Indeed, you are almost 4 times more likely to die from falling or being poisoned than being killed by a gun (17.3 per 100K versus 4.4).

More people kill themselves by suicide without the use of firearms (5.4) than kill other people with firearms (4.0). Of course, more kill themselves with firearms (208,923 or 5.9 per 100K) as kill others with firearms (141,165 or 4.0 per 100K) as well. On the face of it, that means people are more dangerous to themselves with a gun than they are to the rest of us.

Cause of Death All Ares	Deaths	Rate Per 100K Population
Nontransport accidents	1,226,909	34.7
Motor vehicle accidents	519,177	14.7
Accidental poisoning of all kinds	316,834	9.0
Falls	293,041	8.3
Suicide by discharge of firearms	208,923	5.9
Suicide not including firearms	190,708	5.4
Assault (homicide) not by firearms	74,561	2.1
Assault (homicide) by firearms	141,165	4.0
Accidental discharge of firearms	8,842	0.3
Discharge of firearms, unkown intent	3,035	0.1
All Firearm deaths but not  suicide	153,042	4.4

The point here is that if 0.6 deaths by firearms of children age 14 and under, and indeed 4.4 deaths out of 100,000 for the entire population regardless of age, are enough for us to seriously consider throwing out the 2^nd Amendment to the Constitution, sending parents to jail, and making decent law abiding citizens defenseless in the face of criminals and others, then what more dramatic, draconian, and drastic steps must we take to deflate Poisonings, Falls, and the like?

After all, if we can save just one life…

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?