Pro ‘Gun Safety’

There is a very amusing (to me at least) recent article in The Atlantic (hat-tip to Jeremy Orndorff for the article) with the following headline and subtitle:

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The Death of Gun Control
Why the recall of two Colorado legislators is a major setback for gun-safety advocates nationally

It is a complaint that the recent Colorado recall elections that removed two “gun control” politicians can’t be whitewashed into anything more than the scare-away-gun-control-votes episode that it really is.

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I especially enjoyed the phrase in the subtitle “gun-safety advocates.”  If the criminalization of gun ownership (a more accurate name for “gun control”) advocates were truly interested in gun safety, they would advocate things like gun safety classes at government schools.  I am not in favor of anything like that, for one thing because I don’t even like the idea of governments owning schools.

If you want people to be “safe” around guns, you should want to teach them how to use guns in a safe manner.  You really need both aspects – the use of guns, and the use of guns in a safe manner.

If you are around guns, it is usually for one of two reasons.  One possibility is that you like to use guns to target shoot, hunt, or other recreational purposes.  If that is the case, you want to use them safely, in much the same way that you want to use things like automobiles safely.

The other (and very unpleasant) possibility is that some very bad person has brought a gun near you to threaten you with it.  If that is the case, you want to know how to use your gun safely to ward off the attack.  In either case, gun safety is very important.  But it has nothing to do with what the people at The Atlantic are talking about – nothing whatsoever.

To those at The Atlantic “gun safety” means passing laws that criminalize the possession of guns.  It almost does not bear repeating (because it is such an obvious point that “gun safety” people just ignore) that really bad people do not care about such laws, do not follow them, and constantly shoot people anyway.  In fact, locations like Chicago, Illinois, where there are enough gun laws to make (perhaps) even the people at The Atlantic happy, has many, many more killings with guns than other locales without such laws.

The fellow who brought several guns into the Navy Yard in Washington, D.C. yesterday broke all sorts of laws in the process.  For some reason, those laws kept none of his now-dead victims alive.  The same is true of every recent high-profile multiple murder using guns we have seen.  So clearly, gun-criminalization laws do not make anyone safe in regard to guns.

Points like this make no impact on most “gun safety” advocates, of course.  Some religions see reason as something opposed to faith.  To adherents of such religions, faith is necessarily logic-less.  Many advocates of “gun safety” seem to hold their views in a way similar to this.  To their minds, laws criminalizing gun possession will end gun murders and other crimes committed with the use of a gun.  The evidence does not support that view, but to them evidence really has nothing to do with it.  It is their illogical religion, and that’s all there is to it.

The Atlantic article tries to cast this whole matter in terms of political re-election strategies.  As they said of politicians, “All they'll see is a fight between Bloomberg's lofty promises and the creaky old tactics of the NRA, and the NRA won.”  As they point out, all politicians want to be re-elected.

That component can never be taken out of the equation, of course.  But perhaps more of what is going on here is that more people are beginning to understand that “gun safety” in the style of The Atlantic simply does not make sense.

No “trust and confidence” in Government

(CNSNews.com) - The “trust and confidence” the American people have in the federal government’s handling of both domestic and international problems is now at a lower level than it was even during the height of the Watergate scandal in 1974, according to Gallup polling data released last week.  (Read the whole story here.)

Kent comments:

It does not surprise me that people generally do not have “trust and confidence” in government.  I think the explanation for this is fairly simple.

I would generally not trust my dentist to repair my automobile.  I would not trust my mechanic to care for my teeth.  This does not necessarily reflect negatively on my dentist or my mechanic.  It’s just that it generally does not make sense to trust anyone, or any entity, to do something for which it was not designed.

People generally expect governments to do far too much.  When I say “too much” I mean in particular “things for which it is not competent.”  You can wish your mechanic could also fix your teeth, but that wish is irrational.

It is irrational to expect governments to do almost everything.  This tendency, in fact, is something of a theological issue.  We tend to expect governments to be omnicompetent.  But that is really not very competent of us.  In fact, it is not just stupid.  It is also a bit idolatrous.  Yet we often exhibit this weird tendency to wishfully think governments can everything for us, all the while (at least in more sober moments) realizing that this is a false hope.

Think of all the things most of us want governments to do.  No, wait – that would take too long.  Instead, try to think of something we don’t want governments to do.  Slim list, isn’t it?

I know many think this is related to Barack Obama’s somewhat fading hyper-popularity.  That could be part of it.

But most of this attitude stems from the fact that asking governments to take care of all our problems is something like asking your auto mechanic to clean your teeth.  No matter how nice a guy he might be, you are going to be disappointed.

Bankrupt In So Many Ways

There was a rather striking article today in Christianity Today.  The general tenor of the article is this:  the city of Detroit is a horribly messed up “Fallen Empire” BUT some Christians are going to bravely stick it out there “hoping better days are coming.”  It is the kind of pathetic and naïve thing you hear far too often from certain segments of Christendom.

The article seems to have been written before the announcement that Detroit had declared bankruptcy – at least I could detect not even a mention of that ironic fact in the article.

The author, reflecting the attitudes of the many “hang in there” types trying to “renew” Detroit interviewed in the article, does something now found in a whole genre of Christian periodical writing.  The horrible conditions of Detroit are recounted, but the ultimate reasons behind those conditions are carefully avoided.

Living in Detroit is surely now a most unpleasant experience:  rampant crime, poverty, and social and economic decay are the current norm.  As the article points out, many thousands of Detroit residents have fled those conditions, as any sane person who could would.

But no mention is made of the policies of governments at many levels that made the current condition of Detroit nearly inevitable.  Policy makers who were either very stupid or morally bankrupt both inside Michigan and Detroit and in our imperial D.C. insisted on all sorts of bad policies that funneled Detroit down the path to its current condition.  That condition was both predictable and predicted by many.

Christians can sit around Detroit rehabbing old houses and trying to attract new, small businesses with “sustainability” as long as they wish.  It is perhaps noble effort, and will no doubt help a few people in the short term.  But Detroit will remain a relative ghost town as long as the ideology that insists on policies that lead to social and economic decay remains the rule in Detroit.

Hope all you want, but that hope will be in vain as long as the bad ideas that make Detroit what it is live on there.

Capitalism?

In the right circles you will find a running debate about using the word “capitalism.”  Here is a good example, but there are many more.  This debate is almost always among those who favor the idea economic freedom.

Those who would rather abandon the term have a somewhat standard list of worries.  The list usually begins with the fact that “capitalism” began as a term of derision applied to economic liberty by Marxists.

I sympathize with the “give up the term ‘capitalism’” crowd.  The term does have a lot of negative connections.  It probably is much easier to talk to people about economic freedom without this now very loaded term.  And yet, I wish we could find something that would convey one aspect of matters economic contained in this word in whatever name we might use.

As I was mowing the yard the other day and thinking about this, that, and the other thing (the mind must do something while pushing a lawn mower back and forth) I began to think how little-valued economic capital is today.  Capital is, to simplify matters, economic wealth that is not consumed, but is rather used to create means of production, or tools.  Realize that “tools” here does not just refer to wrenches and such, but included anything used to create other goods and services.

People producing, consuming, saving and exchanging where economic freedom is the rule might not have a bias toward the capital aspect of things economic.  But the thing that is made possible by economic freedom that tends to produce economic prosperity is the accumulation of capital.

Life is relatively easy for us here and now because our ancestors did not consume everything they produced.  Rather, they invested significant portions of their production in things they could not immediately consume, but which would be used to make even more of the things the did want to consume.

I think we tend to forget, or underestimate, the wonder and value of capital.  Unlike our ancestors, we tend to save very little these days – and remember, capital comes from “savings.”  This is not just a personal financial failing on the part of many.  Because we tend to want everything, want it NOW, and usually borrow money to buy it, there is often nothing left for savings and the capital that can result from savings.

We seem to think that the vast array of things that are used to make the things we want just appear magically, from someone else, maybe from “the government.”  That is not the case and cannot be the case.  One of the greatest contributions to economic well-being that anyone can make is not consuming everything he has and investing that in things that make things.  If the things that make the things we want were even to begin to be not replaced, we would soon be very unhappy indeed.

So, while I do not have a good answer to the debate about using the term “capitalism” I do very much appreciate the thing denoted by the term “capital.”  The possibility of its existence and use is one of the greatest material gifts God has given us.

Thugs Anonymous

Yesterday I was washing our car and listening to a small, pocket-sized “transistor” radio, as they used to be called.  On came the local news.  One item dealt with the Cincinnati Zoo.  There is a proposal to put a tax levy on the ballot soon for the zoo.  In the typical and now a bit annoying “sound bite from someone to make the story more personal” style, some voice popped on for a few seconds to say something like, “I think the zoo makes a contribution to our city and deserves our support.”

I like the Cincinnati Zoo.  I have visited it occasionally throughout my now not so short life.  It is enjoyable.  It is even historic.  I think having a zoo is a good idea.  But I wouldn’t want my grandmother to be evicted from her house by the sheriff to have a zoo, or anything else, for that matter.

The tax levy for the zoo will be a property tax levy.  Every year such a levy is in effect, if you don’t pay your “zoo tax” your property will be confiscated and sold.  News reports about such property tax levies almost always imply that they are not very much.  But the size of such a tax is not the problem.  The many problems with such taxes is that they harbor all sorts of unseen negatives.

For example, takes the size of the levy.  No matter how small, for someone, somewhere, the smallest extra tax can be the one that put things over the edge for someone of limited means.  Then many of the same people who want to tax you for a zoo want to tax you to help the homeless.

But even for those who can easily afford such a tax, there are many unseen consequences.

When we tax our neighbors for a zoo, we are telling them, under threat of taking away their houses and property, that they must like what we like.  This is arrogance at its worst.  There is simply no justifiable way to claim that spending money for a zoo is better than spending money on, say, a family vacation, a book, an electronic device, all the imaginable other possibilities, or even saving it for retirement.

As sane, socially acceptable, and sanitized as it might seem, forcing people via tax levies to buy what you want with their money is the worst possible use of democracy and little more than legalized thuggery.  And yet we do it so often, so glibly, and often so smugly.

A zoo is nice, and so are many other things.  But treating your neighbor like your slave is not.

Let’s Embrace True Religious Marriage Equality

WASHINGTON (CBSDC/AP) — The National Cathedral is pealing its church bells, along with some other Washington churches, to celebrate the Supreme Court’s decisions on gay marriage.

Cathedral spokesman Richard Weinberg said the bells rang at noon Wednesday for 45 minutes to an hour. Bells also rang at other Episcopal, Methodist, Presbyterian, Unitarian and other Christian churches.

The cathedral scheduled a prayer service for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender families Wednesday at 7 p.m. to celebrate the ruling.

In a statement, the cathedral’s dean, the Rev. Gary Hall, says the church is ringing its bells “to celebrate the extension of federal marriage equality to all the same-sex couples modeling God’s love in lifelong covenants.”

Hall says the ruling should serve as a call for Christians to embrace religious marriage equality.

Kent comments:

I will consider Cathedral spokesman Richard Weinberg’s call for Christians to embrace “religious marriage equality” just after he issues a call for true “religious marriage equality” which must include such equality for human beings who wish to marry animals.  Unless, that is, Mr. Weinberg and his ilk have some kind of species-centric view of marriage that does not allow for human-animal couples who “model God’s love in lifelong covenants.”

But perhaps these “Episcopal, Methodist, Presbyterian, Unitarian and other Christian churches” mentioned here harbor animal-phobic persons who stubbornly refuse to recognize the right of people to marry animals.

(Sneering contempt aside for the moment:  I fear that those “Christian churches” probably DO have people who would advocate human-animal marriages.  And I expect to live long enough to hear some of them say so in public.)

Yes, but . . .

"I believe that gendered writing . . . will one day be immediately recognized as archaic and ludicrous." Chief Judge Judith S. Kaye, A Brief for Gender-Neutral Brief-Writing, N.Y.L.J., 21 Mar. 1991, at 2.

Kent comments:

It is, of course, considered such today, a “mere” twenty-some years later.  But the attempt to remove any gender from writing still often leads to idiotic results.

For example, yesterday in the scripture reading at church, the translation being read coordinated “anyone” with “they.”  This is now done routinely both in writing and in speech.   For example, “If anyone lost a cell phone, they may pick it up at the lost-and-found.”  The problem with this is that “anyone” is singular, while “they” is plural.

We still sense this because almost never do we read or here something like, “Almost anyone are able to solve that problem.”  It sounds wrong because it is wrong.  It should be “Almost anyone is . . .” because the singular “is” goes with the singular “anyone.”

The problem is that in the original example, to make the singular “anyone” match the next singular pronoun, we can choose only from this list:  he, she, it.  The “it” is ruled out because the owner of a cell phone will (usually?!?) be a person.  The convention used to be the use of “he” when the person was unknown.  It was not an attack on women.  It really had nothing to do whether the sex of the person in question was male for female.  It was just a convention.

But it offended the idiotic sensibilities of most feminists, and those idiotic sensibilities have been slowly, carefully, and deliberately foisted on all of us in the last thirty years or so.

After trying to accommodate these idiotic sensibilities with things like “he/she” or “s/he” – or even randomly picking “he” or “she” for no apparent reason – we seem to have landed on the even more ridiculous coordination of the singular “anyone” with the plural “they.”

I was a little surprised to see that in a Bible translation.  There are all sorts of work-arounds that are used to avoid “gendered language” in certain situations.  After all, one doesn’t want to sound “archaic and ludicrous” does one?

But this particular and often-used construction has no clever work-around.  It stands as a kind of monument to the idiocy of certain kinds of feminist sensibilities in our culture.

So pay attention when you read or hear these singular words:  anyone, someone, anybody, somebody, everyone, everybody – and maybe some others that don’t come to mind just now.  Think to yourself, “I would never say, ‘Someone are’ would I?”  Then see if it is matched up with the plural “they.”

Then say to yourself, “Thank you, feminist culture, for this little monument to your own stupidity.”  The feminists won the culture war, no doubt about that.  But we can at least be thankful for this little reminder of the idiocy of it all.