Gun Control Is Just the Latest Issue Where Facts Lose Out to Emotions and Paranoia

[This article also appears on Huffingtonpost.com. You can access it from my author page here.]

This is not another impassioned plea for immediate action to enact gun control legislation. Well, at least not entirely.

With each gun massacre this year (Aurora, Colo.; Portland, Ore.; Newtown, Conn., just to name the last three well publicized ones), it would seem obvious that any discussion of how to prevent these increasingly common horrific events would have to at least consider finding ways to limit access to especially destructive weapons, especially by those most likely to use them to kill. We lose thousands of people each year to gun violence (more in six months than all the casualties of terrorism and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan combined). But, with each tragedy, we are quickly warned by gun supporters that we can't have that discussion. To even bring it up is to be accused of politicizing a tragedy or infringing on gun owners' freedoms.

(A side issue: With shootings coming so quickly on each other's heels now, by this theory we could never have the discussion, because before the moratorium after a shooting on discussing gun control ends, the next gun tragedy will have already taken place, leaving no accepted time for discussion.)

So we're left with an obvious problem--the prevalence of mass shootings--as well as hard data relating to the problem, but discussion of the problem is off the table.

Today it's gun control, but we're told this again and again. Climate change is an obvious problem, but we can't talk about it, so much so that the topic wasn't even raised in the three presidential debates. Why? Because one side of the political divide has perpetuated a lie that there is a lack of legitimate scientific consensus on the issue, when, in fact, there is near uniform agreement that climate change is real and man-made. Unprecedented hurricanes and tornadoes hit with horrific impact, killing people and costing billions of dollars, the polar ice is melting, sea levels are rising, but the issue can't even make it into a presidential debate.

Health care? You utter the terms "single payer" or "public option," and you are called a socialist, barraged with cherry-picked statistics about care in Canada or Europe, and told it's not up for discussion. What about the statistics that show we spend more on health care than any other country but grade poorly in quality of care (including last in a Commonwealth Fund study behind, in order, the Netherlands, the U.K., Australia, Germany, New Zealand, and Canada)? Nope, can't discuss it. John Boehner says the U.S. has the "best health care delivery system in the world," so don't bother us with your facts and evidence. If you disagree with him, you are just not a patriot.

I could go on, but the point is the same. How can we debate issues when we're not allowed to acknowledge the facts?

Back to gun control. What most people are talking about is not banning guns completely, but putting in place some reasonable restrictions that would provide a line of defense against mass killings like the one in Newtown without infringing on what most people consider reasonable uses for guns. Assault rifles, automatic weapons, weapons that don't need reloading, megaclips, etc. aren't meant for hunting or sport. They are specifically designed to do as much damage as possible to the human body. It is amazing we can't even discuss limiting these types of weapons.

And there are certain people, namely felons and those with mental illness, who should not be allowed access to guns, so we need to be careful to whom we are selling weapons. After all, we require people to take three tests (eyes, written, driving) to get a driver's license, so I'm not sure why increased scrutiny for gun licenses (or the need for them at all) is so controversial. Don't we want to keep guns out of the hands of the mentally ill and those with criminal records? Don't we want a system that makes it as easy as possible for gun sellers to identify these classes of individuals?

The problem is that opposition to reasonable gun control is irrational. What I mean is that the arguments of opponents come from a subjective place (feelings, tradition, paranoia, etc.) with no basis in empirical reality. The arguments I'm seeing on social networking sites and in news stories since Newtown are evasive, looking to push the discussion away from facts and figures and toward appeals to emotion. The main problems with gun control seem to be:

- People will get guns anyway, no matter the law. The problem with this argument is that you can extend it to a world of things most of us agree should be illegal. Few argue we should decriminalize heroin and meth, but they are readily obtained by those who want them. Same with counterfeit bills, insider trading, and stealing cable television. They all still exist, but that doesn't mean we would want to make these things legal.

When we, as a public, choose to make something illegal (like, if we were to say that people can't buy assault weapons), we are making a statement that the item in question is dangerous and doesn't belong in our society. Doing so makes it harder (not impossible, but harder) for people to get the item, and it provides law enforcement with an opportunity to act. We don't make things illegal with the expectation that in so doing we will completely obliterate the underlying problem. We make the thing illegal to help cut down on the problem the best we can.

Yes, eliminating weapons that don't need reloading as often would not have made Newtown impossible to happen. But that is a straw argument. The real question is would a ban on certain types of guns make it harder for disturbed individuals to get their hands on these devastating weapons and engage in mass killings. And the answer is unquestionably yes.

- Guns don't kill people, people kill people. Yes, but people kill people a lot more effectively with guns. Remember, a man went crazy in China earlier this month and slashed 22 students with a knife. Nobody died. What does that attack look like if the same man has an assault rifle? A lot like Newtown. Similarly, there has been a statistic running around the Internet in the last few days showing how gun deaths in the U.S. far outpace those in countries with stricter gun laws. It's a nice quick-hit attention-getter, but the breadth of evidence that lax gun laws lead to more shooting deaths is deep and persuasive (the Brady Campaign has collected a ton of relevant statistics on its website).

Again, the "guns don't kill people" argument completely misses the point. Of course people can kill in all sorts of ways. Limiting the sale of assault weapons wouldn't eliminate mass attacks. But it would make it harder for those contemplating these kinds of killing sprees to succeed. It's not brain surgery to figure out that the harder you make it to kill people, the fewer people will be killed.

- I want guns to defend myself/The solution to guns is more guns. I've seen all over the Internet people saying they want to be able to protect their family in case someone breaks into their home. (And let's put aside for a second the issue that the kind of gun control legislation Americans favor would not stop people from having a gun, only certain types of weapons, and only in the hands of certain people.) If we go to facts rather than gut feelings, the argument doesn't hold water. The fact is that, statistically, a gun in a home is more likely to end up harming someone in the home than an intruder and raises the chance of a homicide in the home.

This is why I say opponents of reasonable gun control are irrational. They may think that having a gun makes them safer in their homes, but the evidence points to a very different conclusion.

As for the "more guns" argument, we had a sitting member of Congress make the claim Sunday that things would have been better in Newtown if the teachers were armed.  Think about the implications of the congressman's statement: Do you want to live in a perpetual cross-fire? Again, such a view is irrational. A gun in the hands of an amateur during a highly stressful firefight is as likely to kill an innocent person as it is the assailant. And how does law enforcement sort out who is whom?

- Taking away my guns is the first step to taking away my freedom. This one is my favorite. It sounds so compelling, but it is completely without substance. How is having a gun the symbol of freedom? The only partially historically accurate facet of this argument goes to the Second Amendment's opening language: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State ..." So the argument is that the Second Amendment was intended to allow for militias to fight a suddenly tyrannical government. But in 2012, if the government decides to become tyrannical, I don't think an assault rifle is going to help, given the arsenal at the disposal of the U.S. armed forces. A semi-automatic pistol isn't going to do much against a drone attack or a bunker-busting bomb.

And, call me crazy, but I don't think a suddenly tyrannical government is something we have to worry about right now. We have way bigger problems, which include madmen going into public settings like movie theaters and elementary schools and shooting innocent people.

The "freedoms" argument is nothing more than a rhetorical smoke screen. It is, again, irrational. If the federal government were to enact a ban on assault rifles, the only people who would have their freedoms infringed would be those trying to carry out a Newtown-like attack.

- The Second Amendment doesn't allow for any limitations on the right to bear arms. Most constitutional scholars would disagree with this argument, for several reasons. First, again, the amendment begins with the reasoning for the right, the need for militias. So the right is not absolute.

Second, it took until 2010 for the Supreme Court to agree that the Second Amendment provides a personal right to bear arms. In other words, for 207 years after the Supreme Court affirmed the right of judicial review in Marbury v. Madison, no such right was recognized by the Court. It took an extremely conservative majority to do so as part of a larger agenda to establish far-right readings of everything from voting rights to the Commerce Clause. The Court's reading of the Second Amendment is not inside of the mainstream approach to the amendment of the last 200 years.

Finally, none of the rights in the Bill of Rights are absolute, so why should the Second Amendment be different? You have the right to free speech under the First Amendment, and yet the states and the federal government can prohibit defamation, speech that incites violence and obscenity. The Fourth Amendment protects citizens from warrantless searches and seizures, and yet there is a long list of exceptions (borders, airports, exigent circumstances, etc.) recognized by the Supreme Court. The Fifth Amendment protects our right to due process and against double jeopardy, but, again, there are exceptions. Same goes with the Sixth Amendment right to counsel (try asking for a court-appointed lawyer the next time you get a speeding ticket).

The point is, even if you accept that the Second Amendment limits how far the government can go in preventing citizens from acquiring guns, the right is not absolute. Surely banning convicted violent felons from buying guns would not violate their Second Amendment rights. The Court never accepted a challenge to the assault weapon ban that expired in 2004, but I'm sure most mainstream legal scholars would admit the Second Amendment would be no impediment to such a ban.

The bottom line is that arguments against reasonable, limited gun control are not based on empirical positions but on subjective gut-feelings. The reasons offered to oppose gun control are emotional responses meant to divert the argument from the evidence. And we are all suffering from the refusal to engage in a rational discussion on the topic.

It is also important to note what it is and is not being proposed, so that the paranoia of the most ardent gun supporters does not take over the debate. Nobody is talking about banning all guns. As Sen. Charles Schumer noted today, nobody in power is pretending that the Second Amendment doesn't exist. And I certainly am not dismissing the reality that guns have different geographic meanings (e.g. the family traditions and day-to-day realities of someone growing up in a rural area are very different than those of someone raised in a city), and we have to recognize those predispositions while addressing the epidemic of mass shootings.

What people are proposing are reasonable limitations on certain types of weapons and licensing procedures. The vast majority of gun control advocates are asking for common sense measures to help make it harder for someone like Lanza to brutally murder 26 people, 20 of whom were between 5 and 10 years of age.

My point here, again, is that the opposition to these reasonable measures is not rational. They don't come from reasoned arguments, the marshaling of (truthful) opposing data and evidence. Rather, those opposing reasonable gun control measures can only make lousy arguments (e.g. people would kill anyway) to cover up for gut-level reactions (e.g. "I feel safer" or "This is my culture") that are not based in evidence.

What I am asking for is that we at the very least be able to have a discussion on the issue based on reality. But I don't think we'll get one. Because in the current political environment, we don't get to have reasonable discussions based on facts. We can't talk about the effect on guns without being told we are taking away people's freedoms, even though a majority of people now support reasonable gun control measures. Just like we could not talk about the public option, even though close to 60 percent of people supported it, or global warming, even though there is virtually unanimous scientific agreement that it exists and is man-made.

I'm fine with losing an argument when both sides stick to the facts. I just think democracy can't work if we don't even have a reality-based argument in the first place.

One Lesson from Sandy: We Can't Afford to Have a President Who Irrationally Hates Government

[This article also appears on Huffingtonpost.com. You can access it from my author page here.]

I lived virtually all of my life in the Northeast, mostly in the New York area, and the majority of my friends live there. Hurricane Sandy is more than just a political football to me. It's about as close to personally affecting me as something can be without me and my family actually living through it. So it is only natural that I am going to pay close attention to how President Obama and Mitt Romney handle the storm.

With the election a week away, it's not playing political games to look at the responses of the two candidates to Sandy and what they tell us about the two men who are asking us to entrust them with the executive power of the nation over the next four years.

I think the best way to make the comparison is by looking at two telling quotes, both by Republicans, one from yesterday and one from June 2011.

Quote 1: "The president has been outstanding in this, and so [have] the folks of FEMA."

Republican New Jersey Governor (and ardent Mitt Romney supporter) Chris Christie said this Tuesday about the response to Hurricane Sandy.

I am not making the argument that President Obama has done anything extraordinary here. He did what a president is supposed to do, what, for most of the 20th century, any president, Democrat or Republican, would have done. He competently responded to the storm, as did the agency tasked to intervene in these situations, which is led by someone qualified to do so. It's pretty basic stuff if you don't have a disdain for government that is so irrational and intense that you neglect to even take seriously the basic services expected from the federal government.

Now, you would think that should be the standard position of anyone running for president. Unfortunately, it is not. Because the modern Republican Party has a hatred for government so intense, and takes the responsibility of government to provide basic services so loosely, it is unable to take care of the basic health and safety of Americans in a time of crisis.

Don't believe me? We don't have to go too far back in history to see what the new GOP thinks of its obligations. In August 2005, when Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast, FEMA's feeble response was on display for all to see, and people died and suffered as a result. Why was FEMA so incompetent? Because the president, George W. Bush, thought so little of the agency's role (you know, saving lives in a disaster) that he did not appoint someone to head the organization who had experience with these kinds of situations. Instead, he tapped the director of the Arabian Horse Association (a job he was fired from, apparently). In Bush's view, the government is a bad thing (short of its functions of waging unnecessary wars, apparently), so government jobs exist to reward cronies for their support.

Remember, it was under Bush that Nancy Nord, the acting head of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, testified to Congress that it should not give her department more money to inspect products after a spate of Chinese exports--from dog food to children's toys--were recalled after doing damage. And Nord was the acting head because Democrats refused to confirm Bush's first choice, Michael Baroody, who as a lobbyist for the National Association of Manufacturers pursued anti-consumer policies and was about to receive a $150,000 payment from the group before taking his government position.

Reasonable people can differ on the best way to get the economy going. But a president with disdain for the basic protecting functions of government is a threat to the safety of Americans.

Now, you may be asking, how does this pertain to Mitt Romney? Well, that's easy. Let's go to the second quote:

Quote 2: "Absolutely."

The speaker of this one-word quote was Mitt Romney at a Republican presidential primary debate on June 13, 2011. The question? Should FEMA be eliminated. Romney's proposal? Privatize it. That's right, let profit-making corporations be in charge of disaster relief.

Okay, that was over a year ago. What is Romney's position on the FEMA issue now? Silence. He refused to answer questions about the debate statement after Hurricane Sandy ravaged the Northeast.

Watch it yourself. Mitt Romney is asking you to vote for him to be the president of the United States, and he believes it's not the federal government's job to provide assistance in times of disaster. This isn't the hysterical ramblings of liberal blogger. It is the words of the man himself.

Romney's politically motivated, photo-op response to Sandy is especially distressing in light of the fact that he is still on the record opposing a federal response to the suffering.

Bush taught us the lesson of putting someone in charge of the executive branch with a disdain for government. It results in damage to the health and safety of Americans, as the government can no longer effectively carry out its basic protecting functions. In light of the devastation of Hurricane Sandy, we can see what a competent, reasonable chief executive means to the lives of those affected (so much so that a Republican governor with eyes on the White House is nevertheless forced to praise the sitting Democratic president).

One last thought: I am sure some of you will be saying, "Well, when Romney said he would shut down FEMA, he was just pretending to be "severely conservative" (his words) to win the nomination." But the facts just don't back up that claim. Romney's lie-fueled (debates 1, 2 and 3) race to the center didn't happen after he sewed up the nomination, nor did it happen at the convention. No, it happened at the first debate, just over a month before the general election, when he was down in the polls and had been left for dead by even some Republicans. Romney's decision to act like a moderate is a desperate campaign maneuver, nothing more.

Actions speak louder than words, and Romney chose Paul Ryan to be his running mate, the author of the far-right House budget that would slash Medicaid and Social Security and essentially destroy Medicare (turning into a voucher program that would leave tens of millions of seniors without insurance), all while giving massive tax cuts to the rich (but raising taxes on the middle class). And Romney didn't just pick Ryan; he endorsed his budget. (I wrote more about the significance of Romney tapping Ryan in this space in August.)

If Romney was just acting severely conservative, he would not have given a huge platform to the poster child for far-right, Tea Party positions.

Sometimes, in the heat of an election, it is easy for voters to forget about the bigger picture. With three debates, endless soundbites, and, if you live in a swing state, a ceaseless barrage of television ads, it is hard for some to remember the context and history of the candidates' claims. It is this hectic environment that allows Romney to, suddenly, turn his back on two years of campaigning (all caught on video) on far-right positions and shake the Etch-a-Sketch and call himself a moderate.

But sometimes, an event happens that shakes the electorate up and forces it to concentrate on who the candidates really are and what they stand for. It happened when the financial crisis hit in September 2008, and it is happening again in 2012 with Hurricane Sandy. The responses of the two candidates are symbolic of where they stand: President Obama's competence forcing a Republican rival to praise him, and Mitt Romney's silence when asked about his declaration that FEMA should be shut down and disaster relief should be privatized.

You just can't put a guy in the White House who hates government so much, he will not even take seriously its basic function to protect the American people. We have seen that scenario before, and it meant pain and suffering for too many of us.

Ben Folds Five at the Newly Renovated Capitol Theater

I headed to New York for Game 3 of the ALDS (for you baseball fans, that's the game Raul Ibanez pinch hit for Alex Rodriguez in the bottom of the 9th inning and hit a game-tying home run, and then hit a game-winning home run in the 12th), and my friend asked if I would go see Ben Folds Five with him the night I arrived. I was always a take-or-leave guy with Ben Folds, but I thought it would be fun, especially since the show was at the newly renovated Capitol Theater in Portchester in Westchester County, which previously most notably served as the spot Bob Dylan used as his rehearsal venue before going on tour (fittingly, he played the first show there when it re-opened in August; the NY Times did an article about the place).

 

 

First, the theater. It is an ideal venue for a show. Beautiful, great sound, and although the main floor is general admission (no seats), the balcony, which hangs close to the stage, has reserved seats (see photo for view) and great sight lines.

On to Ben Folds Five. This is a reunion tour for the band, as Folds has played solo (with a backing band) the last 15 years. Ben Folds Five (which, contrary to the band name, has three guys: piano, bass and drums) is one of those acts that is impossible to describe through comparison to other artists. The band's sound is unique, taking elements of pop (but with slightly off-kilter melodies), jazz (but more accessible) and rock (the bass player employs an Entwistle-like approach, with distorted sound and active lines that fill the space normally occupied by an electric guitar), all with slice-of-life, quirky lyrics that often go for a laugh, sung by Folds's expressive, higher register voice. The songs range from angsty, dark slow-tempo meditations like "Brick" (great song, not a highlight at the show, though, as Folds had trouble with some of the extreme high notes in the chorus), to mid-tempo rock songs that play like slightly-off 70s California rock songs (like "Landed," which was a highlight of the live show), to louder, faster burners like "Draw a Crowd" from the band's latest album (my favorite song of the night) and the strong show opener, "Michael Praytor, Five Years Later."

The band is a vibrant presence on stage. Folds stands at the piano on the faster songs, and the whole band plays with an urgency that energizes the crowd. Folds is funny, in a nerdy way, in his between-songs banter. And the band's harmonies were surprisingly strong. I liked every song on the night except the experimental, weird and dissonant "Narcolepsy," which was the only hiccup in a five-song finish of fast-tempo songs that really rocked the end of the set.

(The whole set list is available here.)

I was really glad I got to see Ben Folds Five (and the newly renovated Capitol Theater). The band is certainly worth checking out if you get the chance.