Clayton's commentary on news and events of the day. Broadly speaking, I'm a conservative with libertarian sympathies (getting more conservative as my children get older).

Other blogs you may enjoy: Permagringirl instapundit.com The Volokh Conspiracy

Email me at my first name, the at symbol, then my domain, which is first name, last name, .com. Sorry to be so indirect, but all spambots must die! But they haven't died yet!

 
Ego Stroking the Sniper

Instapundit points to a Washington Post article by a psychologist about the manner in which the attention being given to the sniper is providing positive reinforcement to him. Remember: what this guy is doing, contrary to some of the press attention, isn't that hard. Real sniping skills are demonstrated at distances of 500 or 1000 yards--not 80 to 150 yards. Almost any reasonably competent rifleman could do what this guy is doing, and most would get away with it. I think the press is giving just a bit too much suggestion of astonishing skill for what this murderer is doing.

Assuming that the sniper is a lone domestic nutcase, and not an al-Qaida cell or sympathizers, there is also the matter of encouraging copycats. You might find interesting this paper of mine from the Journal of Mass Media Ethics about the manner in which disproportionate mass media coverage of mass murder clearly caused at least one blatant copycat mass murder a few years back.

The press clearly can't ignore this major story. At the same time, they need to think carefully about whether too much coverage of it may cause other unstable sorts to follow suit.
posted by Clayton at 9:54 PM

 
I Never Expected An Article of This Sophistication In the Washington Post

I do not normally expect the mainstream media to actually know anything about guns. As a general rule, those who write about firearms policy are fierce gun-haters, and their ignorance is often astounding. But here's an article in the Washington Post of pretty astonishing sophistication about the sniper case, and the technology involved. Unsurprisingly, the author doesn't write about gun policy for the Washington Post. Instead, he is their movie critic.

His choice of weapon reveals something as well. It's notable that he hasn't selected a firearm or a cartridge that's linked to sniping as it's practiced professionally. The police have described the recovered fragments as being from a ".223 bullet," a particular vagueness that suggests they know a lot more than they're letting on or a lot less. In any event, the .223 family of cartridges -- it could also include a target round like the .222, a varmint round like the .22-250 or a specialized pistol round like the .221 Fireball -- aren't part of authentic sniper practice or the more informal "sniper culture" that surrounds this most disturbing but necessary of jobs. Most government and police snipers use a .308 Winchester rifle because it is far more lethal (its muzzle-energy, which measures force in pounds by mathematical formula, is around 2,300 pounds, while the .223's is around 1,200; in most states the .223 -- or any .22 centerfire -- is illegal for deer hunting because it wounds without killing too frequently.) The .223, as a combat round, has proved disappointing; one merely has to read "Black Hawk Down" or the specialized gun press to sample the discontent with its performance in Mogadishu or Afghanistan.

Go ahead, read it. If you know much about rifles, you will be impressed at both how much this guy knows, and how careful he is to apply that knowledge to the sniper situation. If only the people who write about gun policy knew as much as their movie critic.
posted by Clayton at 9:40 PM

 
More Evidence That Suggests This Is Not A Domestic Nutcase

Nathan Alexander noticed something that I noticed, but I was too busy beating a ksh script into submission at work today to blog it:

Quote: “Dear Mr. Policeman. I am God.”

I’m not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but I have some experience with language and translations. I don’t think someone whose native language is English would say “Dear Mr. Policeman”. First, this is a taunt, right? Someone who grew up in the US would call him a pig, or a cop, or something, wouldn’t he? Furthermore, we don’t usually use a title after the word “dear”, except in the case where the title is part of a formal address, like “Dear Mr. President” or something. ‘Mr. Policeman’ just sounds funny to me, like ‘Mr. Sandman’ or something.

He goes on to point to other indications that whoever wrote on the tarot card is probably not someone raised in the United States. It's not spectacularly strong, but I find it interesting that I had the same reaction as Nathan.
posted by Clayton at 8:35 PM

 
Why The Sniper Contributes Nothing to the Gun Control Debate

Gun control advocates, in their usual style, are dancing in the blood of murder victims, trying to get some mileage out of this situation for their bans on "sniper rifles" (that is, any rifle accurate enough to reliably take deer) and "assault weapons" (any gun that looks military and takes a high capacity magazine). Ditto for their demands for mandatory ballistic registration. Regular readers of my column in Shotgun News will know that I don't find these arguments terribly persuasive. You may also be surprised to find that I don't find the arguments advanced on the pro-gun side--that this is an argument for wider issuance of concealed weapon permits--very persuasive either.

Why This Doesn't Do The Gun Control Crowd Any Good

1. Almost any rifle accurate enough and powerful enough to be used for hunting deer would do the job here. The sniper is apparently sufficiently skilled to know what the limits are of his weapon. That's why most of these shots were head shots. The torso shots, I would guess, were because the sniper is back at a distance of 150 yards or more, and wasn't absolutely sure of a headshot. Rather than risk a second shot (which means that people will now be looking for the muzzle flash), he decided to go for less certain torso shots. There is no evidence at this time that we are looking at any sort of specialized sniper rifle--the caliber .223 almost certainly argues against it.

2. In every case, there has been one shot fired. Assault weapons with their big capacity magazines and ability to fire again quickly are completely irrelevant to this crime.

3. Ballistic registration? According to this gun rights newsletter, on page 8, Maryland has spent more than million dollars to start their ballistic registration program, and expects to spend $900,000 a year on a regular basis to operate this program. So far, they have solved no crimes with it--but they have spent a lot of money that could have been spent on police officers on the street, or paying to keep convicted murders in prison, or fund child abuse prevention programs (a long-term solution to violent crime), or hiring more prosecutors or judges.

Another problem is that this is far less certain of a process than it appears on television. From my book Firing Back (Krause Publishing, 1995), which received rave reviews but no one bought:

To quote from a standard work on forensic science:

A rifled weapon’s characteristics are not so immutable as a man’s fingerprint. Although it has been demonstrated that the first and the thousandth of successive rounds fired through a clean weapon in good condition can be matched, weapons to be examined are not always clean and free from rust. Secondly, and more frequently, if the crime bullet has struck anything hard, it may be too distorted for any comparison to be made. Lastly, if the gun barrel is very old and worn and if the bullet has a very hard jacket, the marks may be too indefinite for a definite conclusion to be reached.[H. J. Wells, Forensic Science, (New York: Praeger Press, 1974), p. 201]

All the cost and time problems of gun registration apply to ballistic registration, and more so. Registering a gun simply requires writing down a serial number. The police would have to do ballistic registration at a facility with a forensics bullet trap. Not all police departments have this equipment, especially in smaller towns. Someone familiar with the equipment would have to fire and recover the bullet. It seems unlikely that the police could do such ballistic registration in less than 15 minutes per gun, including filling out forms, firing the gun, and photographing the rifling marks under a microscope. (We won’t even consider what will happen if the courts decided that the police must preserve the bullets themselves to prove that the photographs of the rifling are accurate.)

Even if just the 65 million handguns were subject to this requirement, at least 16.25 million man-hours would be required nationally to do an initial ballistic registration. Since there are 2,080 working hours in a year, that means more than 7800 police employees in the United States would be doing nothing but ballistic registration for a whole year. There were 748,830 full-time police employees in the United States in 1991 (both sworn officers and civilian employees). More than 1% of law enforcement agency personnel in the United States would doing nothing but ballistic registration for a year.

To keep such records up to date, because of the problem of rifling changes caused by wear, existing guns would have to be test fired again. Even if we only did this every two years, more than 3900 police officers in the U.S. would be working full-time just to keep the registration records up to date.

Another problem with ballistic registration is that it’s not clear how much of a difference it will make. In 1992, the police solved 65% of murders—a pretty impressive figure—even without ballistic registration.

4. Another problem is that these sort of incidents are actually pretty rare. In looking through Uniform Crime Reports 2000, I find that out of about 13,000 murders for which the Supplemental Homicide Detail Report provides us data, only 8 have circumstances listed as "sniper-type." There are probably more that are lumped together under "other" or for which no SHDR exists, but it is very hard to believe that we are talking about hundreds of sniper attacks a year--probably a dozen to a few dozen in the whole country. Making laws to deal with a crime like this is rather like passing a law requiring every house roof to be meteor-proof because a woman in Texas was injured by a meteor back in the 1950s.

Why This Doesn't Do the Pro-Gun Side Much Good, Either

I'm a big believer in non-discretionary concealed weapon permit laws. For the vast majority of violent crimes that a law-abiding adult will experience, carrying a handgun is a big win. I often carry a handgun, and my wife occasionally does. But this is one of the few occasions where the people being shot at won't stand a chance. Their first warning that they are under attack is when they suddenly get shot. The head shots mean that there is no practical chance of responding to the attack, and even the torso shots are almost certainly causing immediate incapacitation.

Even if you had the chance, who are you going to shoot at? There is one shot, and you don't know where it came from. Even if you did, few handguns are accurate enough to engage a target at 100 yards or more with any certainty. If someone has a rifle at 100 yards or more, and you have a handgun, you are better off looking for cover, not returning fire.

The one circumstance where carrying a concealed weapon might make a difference is if you were walking through the woods, and happened upon the sniper preparing to take a shot. But this seems like a rather small probability. Whoever the sniper is, he is showing considerable intelligence and skill, and I suspect that he doesn't have his gun out where you can easily spot it.

It is time to stop trying to extract political mileage from this murderer. What he is doing is atypical of murder in the U.S., and a lot of people are blowing a lot of smoke, and making themselves look ridiculous.
posted by Clayton at 8:19 PM

 
Oddball, But Plausible Theory For The Sniper's Motives

One of my readers (Norman Yarvin) pointed out that along with "domestic nutcase" and "al-Qaida cell or sympathizers," there is yet another possible motive that we need to consider.

Your weblog talks about the sniper possibly being Al-Qaida. But there's another strong possibility. A few years ago, someone like this was caught in New Jersey. He was an ordinary criminal, who was shooting multiple people in order to create the illusion of random killings, when really he just wanted to kill a single person, and have the police not ask hard questions about who would want that person dead -- since they would be looking for a lunatic, not for a common criminal. In the event, he was caught almost by accident: someone remembered selling a rifle of that caliber to someone suspicious; he contacted the police, who went and
dug out some test shots that the seller had previously fired into a tree, did ballistic comparisons, found that they matched, then went looking for the killer who had bought the rifle, and found him.

This might be someone similar -- it might even be someone who learned from the NJ sniper's mistake, and used one of the very commonest rifle calibers.

I'm sure the police are considering this possibility--and the rest of us should think about it as well. But if so, the murders should stop soon, simply because every murder is increasing the sniper's risk of being caught.

That today's murder took place across the street from a police officer would suggest that perhaps this isn't the sniper's motive. If it were, it would be a lot of risk for no actual reward.

UPDATE: Norman's description is from memory, so it may not be completely accurate in all details.
posted by Clayton at 7:40 PM

 
More Evidence That We Live In a Global Village

Maybe that's not such a wonderful thing, either. The popular form of chaos theory presented in Jurassic Park claims that a butterfly flapping its wings can cause rain on the other side of the planet. Here, we have evidence that Falwell flapping his lips in America causes deadly riots half a world away. This AP story reports that Rev. Jerry Falwell's uncomplimentary comments about Mohammed have caused deadly rioting in India.

1. Even 40 years ago, there isn't much of anything that an American televangelist could say that would have even caused a raised eyebrow on the other side of the planet.

2. No matter how offensive someone's remarks are, is it worth killing or being killed for? It sounds like certain people need to be reminded that "Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words will never hurt me."

3. According to the report, the deaths were caused with stones and knives; more evidence that when irrational people are involved, guns aren't required to cause a lot of death and suffering.

UPDATE: Over at Suman Palit's blog is an explanation of how Falwell's words can have such a big reaction over there. It doesn't really excuse this sort of behavior, and it does sound like some people are just looking for an excuse to go kill someone.
posted by Clayton at 11:45 AM

 
The Idaho Statesman Published A Letter By Me Today...

Click here and scroll down to "Guns save lives." Ordinarily this wouldn't be such a big deal, but it seems to be impossible for me to get an opinion piece published in the local paper, so I settle for even a letter to the editor getting published.

Since content beyond 14 days gets locked up in the Idaho Statesman's "pay us for content" box, I'll include the letter right here:

Guns save lives

Diane Pulsipher´s letter of Sept. 28 sneers at Idahoans using guns for self-defense. Instead, she gives examples of gun accidents, suggesting that these are more typical.

More than a dozen surveys have measured how often American civilians use guns for self-defense, ranging from as few as 108,000 per year (the National Crime Victimization Survey) to as many as 2.45 million uses per year (the Kleck and Gertz survey).

When two antigun criminologists, Philip J. Cook and Jens Ludwig, decided to perform their own survey to disprove these large numbers, their survey (at www.ncjrs.org/pdffiles/165476.pdf), published by the U.S. Department of Justice during the Clinton administration, showed 1.5 million defensive gun uses per year.

Fatal gun accidents, by comparison, are very rare. There were 866 accidental gun deaths in the U.S. in 1998; eight were in Idaho. Three of those were teen-age males, for the same reason that car insurance for teenage males is so expensive. (Visit http://wonder.cdc.gov to get more information.) Tragedies? Yes, and preventable, but compared with defensive uses of guns, pretty minor.

Clayton E. Cramer, Boise

posted by Clayton at 9:24 AM

 
Another Sniper Killing? Police Have a Detailed Description of the White Van They Want?

Two different accounts. This one from the Washington Post says that a number of white Chevy Astro vans with ladder racks have been pulled over, and:

One van that seemed to be attracting a lot of attention this morning was a white Astro with yellow ladders strapped to its roof that was pulled over just north of Seminary Road.

This account from AP is a bit more interesting:

Spotsylvania County Sheriff Ronald Knight said authorities had pulled over several white vans on Interstate 95 after the 9:30 a.m. shooting and had reports of a white van bumping other vehicles, apparently trying to get out of the area.

Authorities surrounded one van near Alexandria, about 40 miles away, and prepared to tow it. There was no word on whether anyone inside was arrested.

UPDATE: More coverage, including some useful tips on reducing your risks if you live in that area.

ANOTHER UPDATE: The sniper is clearly not afraid. This morning's murder was committed across the street from a uniformed police officer.

UPDATE AD INFINITUM: Reader Bob Strauss (no, not the one that used to be RNC Chairman) points out that since white vans are so common, the sniper might be using one for cover--waiting until he finds a situation where he has a target, and a white van in the vicinity that will get blamed for the murder. This might explain the low number of killings at the beginning (have to wait for a white van to be around). Mr. Strauss has a truly devious mind--I never would have considered that possiblity.
posted by Clayton at 8:53 AM

 
The Iraqi/Oklahoma City/WTC Connection

Senator Specter (R-PA) is asking the Justice Department to look into it. Aside from this article in the Philadelphia Daily News, can you find any mention in the mainstream media of this absolutely astounding story?
posted by Clayton at 7:20 AM

 
SpongeBob Isn't Gay: He Has a Girlfriend, Errr.... Squirrelfriend, Sandy

I was going to go for cute, and point out that SpongeBob has a young lady (young lady squirrel?) in his life. But then again, certain people would say, "But we never see them having sex." At that point, it went from mildly humorous to something that has me upset. The left insists that all art is political. Certain Stalinists in the homosexual community similarly insist that everything is sexual--and even some as innocent and sweet as SpongeBob has to be stuffed into a sexual significance. Can't we leave anything in the innocence of childhood? Freudians used to talk about the sexual latency period of youth, and perhaps they went overboard on this. But there is something really sick about the need to turn everything of youth into a sexual sort of symbol.

Let SpongeBob be SpongeBob--innocent, sweet, charming, absorbent, and yellow, and that is all!
posted by Clayton at 6:55 PM

 
A Black Man Reaches One of the Highest Posts in the Land: Who Insults Him and Calls Him Names?

A Klansman? A neo-Nazi? You might expect that. But no, it's Harry Belafonte comparing him to a slave.
posted by Clayton at 1:58 PM

 
Good News: Miss America Is Again Allowed To Promote Perverse Sexual Practices...

such as abstinence for teenagers. I guess the pressure on the Miss America Pageant finally turned them around.
posted by Clayton at 1:51 PM

 
Which is Harder to Get? A Visa Card? Or A Visa?

See this discouraging article at National Review Online about how 15 of the 19 hijackers received visas to enter the United States were clearly in violation of the requirements for those visa. (The visa applications for the other four weren't available for review.) The article includes links to images of several of these inappropriate applications.
posted by Clayton at 11:44 AM

 
The Iraqi/Oklahoma City Bombing Connection Just Won't Go Away

The investigative reporter from Oklahoma City who has been uncovering evidence that Iraqi soldiers--and the 9/11 hijackers--had connections to TImothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City Bombing in 1995--is meeting with Sen. Arlen Specter today. From the news coverage in the Philadelphia Daily News:

Given the imminent war with Iraq, you would think the government would have accepted Davis' many offers to hand over her file long before this. But the feds have rebuffed her repeated invitations.

And the FBI and Justice Department have even denied Specter's staff their own request for a briefing on Davis' work.

What is it that the government doesn't want made public? Is she a crackpot, some kind of conspiracy nut? Does her work under scrutiny resemble Swiss cheese?

Or is it that she ruffles feathers when reminding us that the first APB after the Murrah bombing was for two Mideastern-looking men? Perhaps somebody doesn't like her uncovering the presence of an Iraqi cell in America's heartland?

Or maybe her identification of John Doe No. 2 as former Iraqi soldier Hussain Hasem al-Hussaini is a sensitive subject. (See the police sketch of John Doe No. 2 with a photo of al-Hussaini that's running with this column.)

Or is it the Philippine connection of Oklahoma bomber Terry Nichols and Ramzi Yousef, who masterminded the 1993 WTC attack?

Or that Davis claims McVeigh and Nichols staged their crime at a motel where Mohamed Atta and Zacharias Moussaoui later appeared pre-9/11?

posted by Clayton at 11:28 AM

 
This Is Beginning To Smell Al-Qaida...

Today's report about another suspicious killing again includes two men in a white panel minivan:

Two men were seen in a white van shortly after the sniper slayings began eight days ago in the Washington suburbs. The vehicle described by witnesses to Wednesday's shooting was similar - a white "panel truck."

If it was just one guy doing this--and especially because of the Tarot card--I would be prepared to believe it was a single, perhaps domestically produced nutcase. Two people? No apparent pattern to the killings, but including a kid at school, and a shooting across from a police department? This smells like something that an al-Qaida cell, cut off from directions from the mothership, might decide to do to promote terror. It's working.
posted by Clayton at 9:46 AM

 
Rave Banners

Instapundit thinks Congress has better things to worry about right now. Probably. And at least early versions of this bill seemed written by idiots. But why is there so much interest in doing something about raves?

One little anecdote. About two years ago, I was visiting family in the Riverside area. I didn't see much of my brother-in-law. He was busy preparing for a funeral. Who died? Five teenagers from his church. They had all lied to their parents about where they were going. Coming back from the rave, they drove off the side of a mountain. There were no skid marks--the driver apparently either didn't realize where he was going, or didn't care.

Yeah, yeah, not everyone that goes to a rave gets loaded. Not everyone that gets loaded drives off a mountain coming back from it. But stuff like this, and stuff a lot less tragic, happens all the time. Lots of parents out there are looking for someone to blame, when at least some of the problem has been the poor example that they have set. But sometimes, parents do at least a good job, sometimes a great job--and it doesn't matter. Unfortunately, the drug culture is very alluring to a lot of kids because they lack the maturity and self-control that (usually) comes with age. Can you understand why so many people insist that something has to be done? This particular bill probably isn't the right solution. But these aren't abstractions; these are lives lost and sometimes irrevocably damaged.
posted by Clayton at 7:58 AM

 
Finally: Russian "Concerns" About War Against Iraq Are Out In The Open

Thanks to instapundit for pointing me to this Telegraph article.

Amazingly enough, Prime Minister Blair is providing cover for Russia--when Russia clearly doesn't want cover.

Briefing western journalists, Sergei Yastrzhembsky, President Vladimir Putin's official spokesman, said: "The devil will be in the details of these [United Nations] resolutions but our position is essentially pragmatic. What is interesting for us is our economic and financial interests."
...
"It's a question of making sure that we do this in such a way that the world is made a safer place, that Iraq can develop and that the interests of everybody, including Russia, are taken account of." Nonetheless, Mr Yastrzhembsky said the Kremlin's policy on Iraq was driven by economic concerns.

At the heart of Russia's fears are the effects that a war in Iraq might have on the price of oil. Moscow, which relies on oil for half its external income, fears that if Saddam is deposed, America may attempt to flood the market with cheap Iraqi oil to bolster its own economy.

Economists say that for Russia, still battling with the huge costs of economic restructuring, a steep fall in the oil price could provoke financial disaster.

Mr Yastrzhembsky said: "We are heavily dependent on world oil prices and it is difficult to anticipate the consequence of an attack on Iraq."

The price of oil, currently at $29 a barrel, is widely expected to fall if Washington launches a successful war on Iraq. Mr Yastrzhembsky said Russia could cope with a fall in price to $18 a barrel but not any lower.

Moscow said it will also be looking for guarantees that Russian companies would be able to keep valuable oilfields in western Iraq if Saddam is deposed.

But according to Prime Minister Blair:

In a BBC interview last night, the Prime Minister played down suggestions that Mr Putin would be demanding huge financial guarantees in return for offering his support in a war against Iraq.

"Obviously, there are interests that Russia has in this issue but I don't think it's a question of price tags," Mr Blair said.

posted by Clayton at 7:39 AM

 
Amusing Description Of Being a Conservative Actor

Dave Konig, a New York City actor, gives an amusing description of being a conservative in an occupation that is very, very liberal.

New York City is a liberal town. But there's no liberals like Show-Business Liberals (like no liberals I know). Not just the obvious characters you see slapping on the old red ribbon and heading downtown to The Performer's Black Box Experimental Theater for a deconstructionist production of Waiting For Godot (Godot shows up and he's a lesbian) to benefit the Third Annual Free Mumia And Legalize Medicinal Crack Artists Collective. Those are the reasonable ones. I'm talking true believers, people who think the only thing wrong with Castro is he's a smoker.

posted by Clayton at 5:12 AM

 
I Will Be Interviewed on a Minneapolis Radio Station Thursday Morning

Listen to the Arnie Arnesen Show in Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota, FM107, at 7:20 CST on Thursday. Topics of discussion are the infamous (but bogus) Hitler quote about gun control, and whether ballistic registration is a good idea or not.
posted by Clayton at 11:22 AM

 
Another Sign That War Against Iraq Is A Good Thing

Farrakhan has weighed in on this very important issue.

I have a theory that Louis Farrakhan is actually a robot created by neo-Nazis of the future (think of the book Guns of the South) to make American blacks look stupid. If Farrakhan's ravings were from some guy living on a steam grate, I would feel sorry for him. But Farrakhan apparently has some significant support in the black community. Why?
posted by Clayton at 7:28 AM

 
How Horrifying! Miss America Wants To Promote Chastity!

And the Miss America pageant officials are trying to shut her up about it. See here.

It really says something about the sickness of the liberals that run this society that they are scared of having Miss America promote sexual abstinence for teens.
posted by Clayton at 7:25 AM

 
More About That Racism Conference That Expelled Non-Blacks

It isn't just France that they intend to sue for slavery:

Black activists and lawyers at the forum also vowed during meetings to bring lawsuits against Britain, France, Belgium, Germany and Spain for the slave trade.

Now, at least you could make some argument concerning Britain, France, Belgium, and Spain. All of them were engaged in the slave trade, and with the active support of their governments. But Germany? Germany as a nation doesn't even exist until 1870. If the predecessors of Germany were engaged in the slave trade, it must have been on a very small scale.

There are some other countries that played a part in the slave trade that aren't mentioned. Arab nations that were engaged in the African slave trade a thousand years before the Europeans got involved. African nations that both fought wars to take prisoners to sell into slavery, and that sold their own people into Arab and European slavery as a money-maker measure, and to rid themselves of criminals. But there's no mention of suing African or Arab nations for their involvement in the slave trade. Just a coincidence?
posted by Clayton at 12:05 PM

 
Rep. McDermott Accuses Bush Of Planning Coup d'Etat

This nutcase just gets more and more bizarre! Admittedly, he represents the zillionaires of Seattle, so I guess it's required. From the Seattle Times, this gem:

U.S. Rep. Jim McDermott broadened his attack on George W. Bush's war plans yesterday, saying the president is threatening military action in Iraq as part of a plot to crown himself emperor of America.

The rest of the story is even more surreal. What is it about multimillionaires that makes them hate America so much that they keep supporting idiots like McDermott?
posted by Clayton at 9:16 AM

 
British Murder Rates: How Accurate Are They?

This story is from the Guardian about Dr. Shipman, who murdered 215 people. Dr. Shipman was only caught because the daughter of his last victim was suspicious. This should be a reminder that if British gun control laws are effective at reducing gun murders, it may be at the cost of higher poison murder rates. Poisoning murders seem to be a lot easier to hide in Britain.
posted by Clayton at 2:25 PM

 
American Death Rays

This amusing item reminds me of the famous Arthur C. Clarke statement that a sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic:

Will (Sgt.):

I think something that's key in all this is that both Northern Alliance and enemy communications were, for the most part, CB radios. They would be arguing with each other in the heat of battle. The Taliban would be saying, "nanny, nanny, boo, boo" and the Northern Alliance would be saying, "hey, we're coming to get you." They would also tell the Taliban about this death ray. At Kunduz, we were negotiating back and forth to try to get these guys to surrender. They were saying, "We'll surrender, we'll march into your camp, but we want to keep our guns." Dostum finally said, "Put your guns down, take your jackets off, march in here or we're turning the Americans onto you with the death ray." Instantly you could see the guys bend over. They put their guns down, they took their cloaks off and they started marching in, in single file right up into the middle of our perimeter, because they knew that it was over if that death ray was coming out.

Mark Capt.:

This was also perpetuated by the presence of the AC 130 Spectra gunship. They had a female fire support officer that was on the radio. Dostum heard her voice and he brought Mohammed Fazal, who's the former Taliban chief of staff. He's trying to delay this surrender in Kunduz while his forces are attempting to recapture Mazar-e-Sharif. Dostum brings Fazal near the radio so that he can hear this female voice. Fazal hears her voice as it's being explained to him, through the translators, that we have the angel of death overhead, from the AC 130 gunship. Dostum explains to him that we have the angel of death overhead and that we possess the death ray. If they don't surrender now all of their troops will burn in hell. Fazal jumped on the radio and his men were surrendering within minutes.

posted by Clayton at 8:52 AM

 
This Made My Day: Hussein's Inner Circle Is Negotiating...

The Telegraph today carries a story that suggests that war may not be needed, or may not be terribly long:

Saddam Hussein's power base is coming under extreme pressure, with members of his inner circle defecting to the opposition or making discreet offers of peace in the hope of being spared retribution if the Baghdad dictator is toppled, according to Iraqi exiles.

Ayad al-Awi, the head of the opposition Iraqi National Accord, said his group in recent weeks had received senior defectors from the Iraqi security services, which form the regime's nerve centre.

At the same time Kurdish groups said they had received secret approaches from military commanders offering to turn their weapons on Saddam when the war began.

One danger to worry about is that a palace coup could mean that another bunch of brutal thugs are still in charge of Iraq. This might mean the end of weapons of mass destruction, and it might not. It would also short-circuit the development of a democratic Iraq--something of value in the long run for destabilizing governments like Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Syria.

It might be in the short-term interests of the U.S. to see Saddam Hussein removed without a war, but in the long run, our interests are an Iraq with a free press and free markets. Changing the thugs in charge without changing their system is only a small improvement.
posted by Clayton at 8:08 AM

 
What Category of Arms Does the Second Amendment Protect?

Mark A. R. Kleiman argues that the Second Amendment only protects arms appropriate to militia service, and that if understood in that form, a ban on handguns is constitutional. Professor Reynolds makes a similar argument.

Sorry, this won't wash. There are really three separate concerns protected by the Second Amendment. The first concern, and the one that was most of concern to the Antifederalists who asked for a right to keep and bear arms, was the right to be armed for overthrowing a tyrannical government. To serve that purpose, the right of the masses to be armed with weapons appropriate for military action against the standing army is protected. That means assault weapons, machine guns, rifles, and shotguns. A case could perhaps be made for pipe bombs and hand grenades, though I would be reluctant to make that argument terribly strongly. (In practice, you can't prohibit pipe bombs; you can only prohibit assembling them.)

The second concern, and the one that would most interest antiwar leftists today, is the desire to avoid maintenance of a standing army. There was widespread concern among Whiggish philosophers that standing armies lead to abuses such as military dictatorships and foreign adventurism. While Federalists made many of the right noises about the importance of relying on militias for defense of the nation, most recognized that at least a small standing army would be necessary, both because of the low (white) population density on the frontier, and the less than sterling performance of militias during the Revolutionary War.

The third concern was the right to self-defense, not just against government gone mad, but against private criminals. This is one of the rights that Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England identified as a right of Englishmen, and if there was any disagreement in the early Republic about this right to carry arms for self-defense, it left no tracks. (Except, of course, if you were black.)

The decisions that made a distinction between militia arms and other arms, and that U.S. v. Miller (1939) cited to justify restrictions on weapons not suited to militia duty are actually pretty atypical. Here's a far more typical nineteenth century decision, and one that recognizes that pistols are protected arms.

Here I am arguing a complex and subtle set of points on a blog. Read this book by me for a lot more detail (enough to solve all insomnia problems, anywhere). You can order it here from amazon.com.
posted by Clayton at 9:55 PM

 
Self-Esteem Not the Panacea

Permagringirl pointed me to this New York Times article about recent research into the importance of self-esteem. Some of you may recall when California legislator John Vasconellos decided that California's children were short on self-esteem, and persuaded California's open ward to pass a law establishing a self-esteem commission. The idea was so loony that even diehard liberals like Doonesbury made fun of Vasconellos's goal.

Within a couple of years, my wife and I started to see the fruit of this focus on self-esteem showing up in my daughter's classrooms. "I am special" day, when one of the students would be the made the center of attention. My wife and I were confused; if you want to build up someone's self-esteem, why not show them how to do something well--something that would make that self-esteem real, instead of just a big puffed balloon, about ready to pop on exposure the real world? Yes, public schools could do something really bizarre and unique for kids--teach them the basic skills required for competence in life! I'll bet that would raise self-esteem! Of course, that's harder to do than, "I am special" day for every kid.

What this article mentions is that racists and drunk drivers have high self-esteem. One of the experts interviewed captured an idea that gets little attention at all today:

Yet more old-fashioned strategies for making one's way in the world, like learning self-control, resisting temptation or persisting in the face of failure have received little study, in part because the attention to self-esteem has been so pervasive.

"My bottom line is that self-esteem isn't really worth the effort," Dr. Baumeister said. "Self-control is much more powerful."

Or to quote a Sonoma State University political science professor with whom I had an unpleasant run-in some years ago, "Self-control is a very overrated quality."
posted by Clayton at 9:32 PM

 
"Delegates at an anti-racism conference have expelled non-blacks from the meeting..."

It would be funny if it weren't a real news event. It sounds like something a neo-Nazi would make up to justify his racism. I saw this first in the October 5, 2002 Seattle Times, but it seems to have received wide coverage.

Cheer up, according to the news account linked above, it isn't just the United States that is going to be sued for slavery, but France as well. This should make the Euroleftists happy!
posted by Clayton at 4:39 PM