Posted on by rjonakait

Don’t Let Them Shut Your Mouth

Responses to mass shootings have been predictable. Calls for better gun control go out, and conservatives respond: How dare you! You are terrible and callous for trying to make political points in this time of grief.

The conservative reaction to Charlie Kirk’s murder has been different: This particular “time of grief” is, apparently, the time to suppress and punish opponents and dissenters. Trump and his allies speak of plans to target liberal groups, monitor speech, and revoke visas. Government officials are considering criminal prosecutions of those who speak out against Kirkian and Trumpian policies. Officials threaten government actions against the media, teachers, school board members, and many others, and in advance of any actions by these people, have begun to shut down critics. Jimmy Kimmel is just the most famous of their targets. Some who want something from the government, such as approval of a merger, preemptively censor. Vigilantes have helped remove people who speak out from private jobs. (Notably, the MAGA folks did not seek the removal of a Fox News host who urged that the mentally ill homeless be given lethal injections. An apology was good enough.)

Not surprisingly, the movement to stifle opponents has been accompanied by misinformation, which in this case means lies or willful ignorance. It has been given as a fact that politically motivated murders primarily come out of leftist ideology. The fact is that study after study has shown that the majority of such killings have been by right-wingers. If we go back to 9/11, Islamic terrorists were responsible for the most political killings, but since then, according to the Cato Institute, the right-wing share of politically motivated terrorist murders have been 63 percent while the left-wing share has been 10 percent. (Cato says that the conservative killers have been “motivated by white supremacy, anti-abortion beliefs, involuntary celibacy [incels], and other right-wing ideologies.” This list should also include anti-LGBTQ ideology.) The Department of Justice had come to a similar conclusion, but you will have trouble finding that study since our government, which proclaims to be “the most transparent ever,” has removed the study from its website.

It does not matter to the President, of course, that we have seen nothing indicating that Kirk’s shooter was influenced by any extreme leftist or even liberal group. Instead, all we know is that Tyler Robinson has said that his motivation was the hate spewed by Kirk.

Until a bullet pierced his neck, Charlie Kirk was not on my radar. I had seen his name and that of his organization, but I knew little besides that. Now I know more, and I am amazed by his sanctification. Charlie Kirk may have been a loving, open-minded person, motivated by a true desire to foster legitimate debate, and he was undoubtedly a charismatic entertainer. Nevertheless, his religious, societal, and political views, which carried undertones, at a minimum of racism, ethnic bias, misogyny, frivolity, and stupidity, furthered hate and closed the minds of others. For example, Kirk said that “Jewish dollars” were funding Marxist ideas in education and policy and contributing to opening the borders.” Kirk said: “If I see a Black pilot, I’m going to be like, ‘Boy, I hope he’s qualified.'” Kirk said: “We made a huge mistake when we passed the Civil Rights Act in the 1960s.” Kirk said: “I can’t stand the word empathy, actually. I think empathy is a made-up, new age term that — it does a lot of damage.” Kirk said about affirmative action and Joy Reid and Michelle Obama and Sheila Jackson Lee and Ketanji Brown Jackson: “Yeah, we know. You do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously. You had to go steal a white person’s slot to go be taken somewhat seriously.” (Snopes.com is the source for these quotations.) This, of course, is only a small sample of Kirk’s tendentious statements.

Charlie Kirk was not a deep thinker, but he did know how to make money. Siri tells me that he was worth $12 million—not bad for a 31-year-old community college dropout. How much did he profit from those rallies and other activities whose stated purpose was merely to advance the political dialog?

Conservatives have said that millions “celebrated” Kirk’s death. I know none of them, and I doubt that number is true. Confirming evidence has not been provided.  An anecdote, even two, is not proof. Many, however, have come forward to criticize Kirk’s “teachings.” I would not be surprised if there have been millions, even tens of millions, of them. I certainly hope so. The attempt to honor Kirk has coincided with efforts to suppress and punish such critics of Kirk–a strange legacy for someone who supposedly stood for free speech and debate. If his ideas were sound, they should be highlighted. If they were sound, they would only benefit from critics. What are the Kirk supporters afraid of?

In these dangerous moments, I am reminded of another time when a supposed political murder was used to justify the suppression and oppression of those designated as enemies. On November 7, 1938, the Polish Jew Herschel Grynszpan shot the Nazi diplomat Ernst vom Rath. Two days later vom Rath died. Almost immediately, a pogrom against Jews was launched as a response to the murder. That event is now known as Kristallnacht. The murder by one person was used to suppress and oppress tens of thousands of others. Sound familiar?

As in 1938, many are seizing upon the murder by one person of Charlie Kirk to lead to oppression and suppression. Truly patriotic Americans should respond.

Don’t let them shut your mouth.

Posted on by rjonakait

Snippets

The response to a mass shooting in a liberal state or city: If only you had gun-friendly laws, a good guy with a gun would have stopped the carnage. There have been mass shootings in Montana and elsewhere where the restrictions on guns are few. Where was that “good guy” with a gun? And the mass shootings continue.

A highly placed source has confidentially informed me why so many ICE agents wear masks. They are concealing that they are aliens. No, not people from a foreign government, but beings from another planet. Apparently, ICE cannot find enough American humans to do the job.

A new friend insisted that I read Showdown at Gucci Culch: Lawmakers, Lobbyists, and the Unlikely Triumph of Tax Reform (1987) by Jeffrey H. Birnbaum & Alan S. Murray. The book chronicles the passage of the 1986 tax reform bill. The book contained more detail than I cared to read, but some details had an up-to-date relevance. For example, the authors point out that at the close of nineteenth century, federal revenue came from tariffs and excise taxes, which operated similarly to sales taxes as an exaction on consumers and placed a heavy burden on low-income Americans. An income tax was considered a fairer way to raise money to fund the government. The Revenue Act of 1913 simultaneously imposed a tax on large incomes and reduced tariff rates. We are now taking the opposite course by reducing taxes on large incomes and increasing tariff rates. The 1986 tax reform was led by President Ronald Reagan, and we are diverging from it. That 1986 package incorporated the largest corporate tax increase in history. Now, of course, we are reducing corporate taxes. We now also ignore what is known and obvious: Our taxes are uneven and unfair in part because some people simply don’t pay them. In 1986, there were estimates that every dollar of increased IRS enforcement led to the collection of ten dollars of previously uncollected tax revenue. We, of course, now reduce enforcement by the IRS.

As the night wears on, my curiosity increases. What will Dee Dee Gatton be wearing at The National News Desk?

Pesky pronouns. I call the Roomba “he.” The spouse calls the Roomba “she.” What is right? Neither of us thinks of Roomba as an “it.” Surely not “they.”

I was driving across Manhattan to get to the entrance of the FDR drive at 96th Street. The traffic slowed as I got to the traffic light. I could see a panhandler approaching. Most often I gently shake my head indicating not today, but this was one of those every so often days when I dug for my wallet. The spouse beat me and handed me a bill. The panhandler blessed me, smiled, and asked what I had not expected. “Are you a Yankee or Mets fan?” I replied, “How many Mets fans do you get here.” He did not answer but said that Aaron Judge had just driven through. The panhandler told me that Judge was on his way to Yankee stadium where the team was playing the Astros that night. Just before the traffic started moving again, he said, almost laughing, “He makes a gazillion dollars, and he did not give me a cent.” And then, “Have a good rest of the day.” I turned to the spouse, “I still love New York.”

Posted on by rjonakait

Simple Solutions to a Complex Crime Problem

My dinner companion asked me how I felt about crime in New York City, a topic that comes up more often these days not only among New Yorkers but also from others when they learn I live in Brooklyn. The question usually implies that New York crime is rampant, and the city is dangerously unsafe.

I want to reply, “Of course, crime is prevalent in New York; we have all these people working in the financial industries.” But, of course, that’s not the kind of crime they are talking about. They are speaking of the kinds of crimes that are committed on the streets that aren’t Wall Street.

When a non-New Yorker makes comments about the city’s crime, I assume I am talking with a person who watches a lot of Fox News, but I know that that is not true for my crime-commenting NYC friends, who certainly are not conservative. I ask my fellow residents whether they or family members or even acquaintances have been recent crime victims, and uniformly the answer has been no. I remember a time some years ago when that same question would have produced recitals of victimhood.

Even though untouched personally by crime, many of my friends know people or are among those people who won’t ride the subways because of perceived rampant crime. And this highlights some of the special relationship between crime and New Yorkers. I have friends who choose other means of transportation over the subway, but I also know people who will not enter the trains under any circumstances. Period. It’s true: if you ride the subways enough, you will see untoward things. True now. True always. Have the bad incidents increased dramatically? I don’t know but not in my personal experience. A friend who recently gave up the subways did it at a time that transit officials maintained that crime had not increased on the trains. But it was also at a time when local news outlets increasingly reported subway crimes. It certainly seemed that danger had increased on the trains, whether it had or not. Think, though. If you are or have been a commuter or an otherwise regular user of a car, how often during the last several months, did the news media report about a serious accident on your network of roads? How often did you witness or were told about a dangerous incident—a car suddenly cutting in front of another one to make an exit or weaving about or tailgating or driving too fast? My guess is that scary road incidents in Atlanta and Dallas and many other places far exceed the dangerous incidents on the New York subway. Someone can check this out for me, but I believe that more people are killed and hurt in car accidents in this country than they are in crimes. Few people, however, decide not to drive because of highway violence even though they are much more likely to die or be injured that way than a New Yorker is by a subway or street crime. I am not immune to these patterns. Like most of us, I am not good at assessing risk. Even though I intellectually know that if I die or am hurt violently, it is more likely to be on my drive to Pennsylvania than on the subway, the report of a subway crime makes me feel more vulnerable and concerned for my safety than seeing the remains of a car crash on Route 280.   

There is, of course, crime in New York City that causes concerns and perhaps it has increased recently, but statistics show that the New York crime rate is lower than in other major cities and much lower than it was a generation ago. However New Yorkers, regular Americans, and news media don’t talk about other cities as much as they do about New York. A lot of weird and bad things can, and perhaps generally do, happen each week in New York, but I wonder if we collected all the similar news from places with a comparable population, whether we would find nearly as many weird and frightening things. For example, if each week you heard all that kind of news from all parts of Wisconsin, would you feel that Wisconsin is a dangerous place to live? The local paper from my birthplace reported that there was a shooting this last week in Sheboygan, which contains a tiny fraction of the state’s population. How many similar violent episodes were there in the entire state, and how would that compare to New York? I saw a report recently that there had been two mass shootings this year in New York City (population 8.4 million). Bad, yes. However, Wisconsin (population 5.9 million) had six; Colorado (6.0 million) had five; and Louisiana (4.6 million) had nine. But because one of the mass shootings in New York occurred on a subway in Brooklyn, it got national coverage. Most mass shootings don’t even make more than the local news these days.

Even with these statistics, we don’t tend to ask whether Wisconsin is dangerous and crime ridden. We might ask that about specific places in the state, but the state covers too much territory to think about it in those terms. The Janesville resident is unlikely to be concerned about a shooting in Wausau or Rhinelander. It may be surprising to you that the homicide rate in Florida is higher than it is in New York. But Florida encompasses many more square miles than New York City, and so you are only concerned about the small area of the state in which you live or where you visit. Similarly, a robbery or even a killing in the East Tremont section of the Bronx does not affect me. I don’t believe I have ever been there, and I can’t see how the event can make my life more dangerous. However, it will make it into the New York crime statistics, and when I see that crime is increasing in the city, it can make me feel more apprehensive even when few, if any, of the crimes truly affect me.

(continued September 23)

Posted on by rjonakait

Gun Violence/Gun Safety

          The term “gun violence” misleads. There is not a single violence problem; there are several. Gun violence includes mass shootings, but the term should also refer to suicide by firearms, which takes more lives than homicides in this country. Urban shootings are also part of the violence as are family killings. It is important to recognize the different problems because the motivations for them vary. Important, too, to understand that different firearms are involved in the different settings. Because there are different problems, there can be no one solution or even one palliative for “gun violence.” We can, however, hope to have reforms that serve to decrease violence in a particular area. With enough incremental reforms a significant dent can be made in our national shame.

          A discussion of gun violence should recognize that there is a constitutional right “to keep and bear arms.”  The goal for those wishing to decrease gun violence should be to make it more likely guns are used safely rather than to take guns away from responsible people. A recent column by Nicholas Kristoff offers many sensible proposals. Opinion | These Gun Reforms Could Save 15,000 Lives. We Can Achieve Them. – The New York Times (nytimes.com) None of these possibilities is “the solution” to gun violence—there is no such thing. However, incremental improvements in gun safety can add up to a real difference. Increasing the age to buy assault rifles will not by itself make a huge difference in gun violence, but it may lessen gun deaths and injuries a little. Requiring all who buy guns to have background checks will not make a huge difference, but perhaps things will improve somewhat. Better  reporting of felony and domestic violence convictions will not make a huge difference, but it might help some. Limiting the size of magazines will not make a large difference, but perhaps some lives will be saved. If we make enough little changes, we might end up strides ahead of where we are now.

          Here’s my suggestion for an incremental improvement: Make it a crime to carry a gun while intoxicated. Of course, carrying a gun is not the same as using it, but even carrying one while drunk should be prohibited because the decision whether to use a carried firearm should not be made when a person is intoxicated. The consequences should be similar to drunken driving. Perhaps a first conviction would be a misdemeanor, but just as driving licenses are suspended for a period for a DUI, the right to possess guns would be suspended for a period, and all guns owned by the offender placed in police custody during that time. A second conviction would be a felony, and the person could no longer possess guns. . . and might even go to jail.

          Frequently after a car mishap, the driver gets tested for intoxication. The same should happen after gun accidents. Each year at least a few people are hurt or killed in hunting accidents when there has been too much drinking, and perhaps that problem can be lessened.

          Those who favor the status quo on gun violence often proclaim that new gun safety measures will not accomplish anything. Sometimes this is an act of misdirection. They might say, for example, that age restrictions on the purchase of an AR-15 will do little about urban gun violence because assault weapons are hardly ever the firearms used on city streets. The response should be–once again–that there is no single solution to gun violence, but that the different components of gun violence must be addressed in different ways to make incremental increases in safety in all the areas.

          Gun safety advocates need to shape the debate on the effectiveness of reform. Part of it might be mockery. Those of us who regularly read The Onion are familiar with its headline: “‘No Way to Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where It Regularly Happens.” But more data-driven responses should also be regularly presented, such as was done in the New York Times recently. The study indicated that up to a third of mass shootings might not have happened or could have been less deadly if simple reforms had been in place—such as universal background checks, no extended magazines, and no sale of guns, or at least assault weapons, to those under twenty-one. None of these would have removed guns from responsible people.

          A few days after a mass shooting, a story often appears telling us about the “warning signs” exhibited by the shooter missed by the “authorities” implying that the shooting could have, or perhaps should have, been prevented. In considering the “warning signs,” however, there is a hindsight bias. We know that the shooter has slaughtered many people, and that makes the missed warning signs seem especially egregious. But we need to evaluate “warning signs” before the violence, not after. Many people engage in the behavior that are called warning signs after a mass shooting and almost none of them become murderers. . We need to find the predicters of future gun violence. How often are the signs accurate? How often do they produce false positives? What are the responses that lessen the possibility of future violence? How often are such warning signs reported to law enforcement or other agencies? What resources does it take to respond? Where do the resources come from? What responses will politicians legally authorize? We need to know more.

(concluded June 10)