On Weapons

[kengr]

A friend has posted yet another rant about guns. Given the Orlando shooting, I can't blame him too much.

But he, as usual, is letting his prejudices and assumptions suggest measures that aren't workable in the real world.

Just for the heck of it, let's consider the "perfect" defensive weapon. The ubiquitous "stunner" from many a science fiction novel.

Basic characteristics seem to be: you point it at the target, fire, and they pass out. Some have off center hits "putting to sleep" the affected portion of the body.

Side effects are none, or maybe a bad headache when you wake up. It's not dangerous to use on kids or elderly/infirm people.

Sounds great, right? You can shoot first and ask questions later. "Stun 'em all. We'll sort them out at the station." etc.

Except....

Picture a rapist or mugger with one. How about a burgler.

Now picture someone stunning the driver of a car? A semi. Or the pilot of a plane?

Or Stun someone you hate and cut their throat. Etc.

So much for "safe" and "non-lethal".

In short, it is not *possible* to have a weapon that can't be misused. Ditto for any *tool*.



No, his main idea was to make guns illegal, and get rid of the existing ones.

Nice concept, not terribly workable.

Guns already get smuggled in along with drugs. and often, these are guns that are difficult or impossible to get legally even now.

So you'd have to ban them throughout the world, and destroy all of the existing ones.

I don't see a lot of countries going along with that. I also don't see place like Somalia, Colombia, and many other places giving up their guns. In much of africa, giving you your guns means you'll get slaughtered by neighboring groups. Heck, they've done it with mere machetes in recent time.

Also, I don't see the police giving up gun. Even in the UK the police have Armed Response units even though the average officer doesn't carry a gun.

The military give up guns? Yeah, right. ain't gonna happen.

So that means guns will still be around and still be manufactured. And thus there will still be a black market. Even the military has guns (and grenades, anti-tank missiles, etc) stolen.

Now, just assuming for argument that guns are a lot harder to get. Effectively impossible for civilians to get without some serious connections.

You won't have accidental shootings in the home. Or on hunting trips (of course you won't have hunting trips either unless you have a bow. And you can still get accidentally shot with one of those)

You won't have shootings in domestic quarrels. But you'll still have stabbings, beatings and poisonings. and more of the victims will be the weaker person, because they can't effectively fight back.

A lot of "casual " murders will go away. The more premeditated type will drop, but not as much. If you are going to *plan* a murder, you can plan for some other means.

"Going Postal" type murders will drop, but not go away entirely.Some folks will find other ways (more on that below).

mass shooting will drop. But again, some will find other ways. Likely *worse* ways.

On thebad side, people won't be *defending* themselves from muggers, armed robbers, burglars, etc. Though you also won't have people getting shot because they were mistaken for burglars.

Now about those "other ways" for "mass casualty" incidents.

Simplest is to just drive a car or truck into your workplace. Or a crowd you don't approve of. This alreadsy happens, just not often. Without guns, I bet it'd happen more.

Arson. There are a number of incidents of people setting fires and blocking doors at nightclubs and other places. So this is not a new idea. And it too would likely become more common.

Then there are bombs. One of the first of the "big" school shootings in recent decades involved bombs as well as guns. It's just that the bombs didn't go off, so they have mostly been forgotten about.

Note that the *worst* school massacre in US history far exceeded the Orlando shooting. and it involved a bomb. Also consider the Oklahoma City bomibing, the Boston Marathon, bombing. The Unabomber, the bombing at the Atlanta Olympics, etc. All mass casualty situations. All carried out by one or two people.

Bombs are *not* that hard to make people. And a lot of the folks who have done mass shootings could have gone the bomber route if they hadn't had access to guns. Lack of guns would only stop the "impulse" shooters. The "plan it all out" types could go for bombs, arson, etc.And likely have a better chance of getting away (at least for the short term).

Poison gas has been tried in Japan. This did involve a larger and organized group. They also got it horribly wrong. We can't count omn the next person or group that tries being that stupid. There are several common places where you could kill a lot of people with poison gas. They are so common (and mostly so vulnerable) that I won't name them.

And then, of course, we have biowarfare. Only case I know of was in the 1980s in Oregon. The Rajneeshies tried to contaminate the salad bars of several restaurants with something (I forget what).

Scarily, this too could have been done a lot better. and it's actually not that hard. So much so that I won't go into details. I'll just note that the hardest step is acquiring an infectious agent. and that'd doable in a number of ways.

Amateurs won't have ebola, but plague might be possible. And even E. Coli has caused a lot of troule in "natural" outbreaks. Picture something like MRSA...

In summAry, the world is not safe, and cannot be *made* safe. At least not at an acceptable cost.

You can discourage impulse type stuff in various ways. The planner types will just go on planning.

And terrorists? Some are impulse types. Others are planners. And we don't have measure in place to stop methods they *haven't* used before. For that matter, some of the measure to prevent things they *have* done before are more show than substance.

Comments

[kengr]

Oh, lest anyone get the wrong idea, I am *not* saying that nothing can be done or nothing should be done.

I'm saying that we need to avoid falling into an all too common trap:

Every complex problem has a simple, easy to understand (wrong) answer.

Banning alcohol worked *so* well. So has banning drugs. Banning guns won't work any better.

How about we try something *different*? Why don't we try identifying the folks prone to abuse things and get them help instead?

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

I am fed up with the post-tragedy wave of Gun Whores coming out of the woodwork to pitch their pre-written rants. I don't care if you're pro-gun or anti-gun; don't plant your flag on a pile of dead bodies. :-(

[alex-antonin.livejournal.com]

I want to feel safe. I want black people and other LGBT people and women and children to be able to feel safe. I post against guns because guns are inherently unsafe and we in this country keep proving time and again we can't be trusted with them. We see the evidence all around us, shootings in the US every fucking day now, something like once every 23 minutes last I heard. They don't have that shit in UK and Australia, where they've banned guns. We need to do that, ban guns and repeal the second amendment, so this heart-breaking violence can stop.

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

I have no disagreement with any of those things.

Hauling out your arguments to take advantage of a tragedy? That I've seen too often.

[alex-antonin.livejournal.com]

I'll have you know I haul out my arguments frequently, tragedy or no tragedy.

[stickmaker.livejournal.com]

I think a large part of the problem is the stigma so many have in re. mental health issues. There's also a strong social stigma against asking for help or helping someone against their will, and an ignorance among the public as to what actualy counts as a serious mental illness. We need to pay more attention to each other, be more accepting and supportive, and - where justified - more willing to intervene.

I wrote the above all too aware there are, indeed, people who would "stage an intervention" on someone just because they, as an example, go to furry cons. Avoiding things like that is also part of the "be more accepting" issue.

The various law enforcement agencies also need to do their jobs. This is at least the second mass murder I know of where the FBI had plenty of reason to investigate someone and stop them, didn't, and people died. Local and state police have also failed to put people whom they knew were barred from owning firearms in the National Instant Background Check System and people have subsequently died.

[kengr]

Well, there are two common threads I see now with regards to "mass casualty" situations:

1. if the perp is, (or seems to be) muslim they talk about him havbing been radicalized, are blame some other aspect of him being Muslim or from another country.

2. If he's white & christian, they talk about mental illness.

Guess what? *None* of them have been found to be mentally ill yet. And the "radicalized" is often just an excuse to salve our consciences.

What seems to be the problem in this case (and many others) is prejudice and bigotry.

This guy decided that he had to do something about gays.

Others have been all about something else.

This isn't mental illness or radicalization. This is people who are quite *sane* and having logical reasons for what they do.

It's just that one or more of the premises (axioms if you want to be formal about it) they are using is *different* from what the rest of us are using.

One of them is "It's ok to kill people to make a point or to discourage others from acting that way".

We can't fight that one very well given that we still have the death penalty. and fight wars.

But we *can* fight things like "it's ok for you to think that someone else's sexual practice or religion is any of your business"

But that's gonna be a *long* fight.

As for the law enforcement "doing their jobs", contrary to what Hilary has been spouting, they *did* do their jobs. They guy was spouting stuff in favor of ISIS and other things. They investigated. SEVERAL TIMES. And each time they found no connections. They guy was just saying that sort of thing to blow of steam and associate himself with "powerful" groups.

Evidence so far is that he was *still* a lone wolf and the 911 calls were just to make himself sound more important.

Contrary to what some folks are advocating we *cannot* keep everyone who has been investigated *and cleared* on various lists.

For one thing a lot of times the investigation uncovers the fact that the person was just blowing off steam (say they said they'd like to shoot the president) and someone who didn't like them reported them.

That happened to someone I knew. The Secret Service was *not* amused. They weren't unhappy with *him*. They were unhappy with the mutual acquaintance whop made the report and wasted their time.

Malicious reporting is very much a thing. And thus once someone has been checked out, you need to drop them (though leaving a note in case their name pops up again is standard procedure.

The "terror watch lists" are bad enough as is (in that you may not know you are on them, can't find out why you are on them and it's hell to get off of them if you are on them by mistake).

But this would make them *worse* than thne sex offender lists. and those ruin lives already.

It's the idea of "we must expand the list so we don't miss anybody" that the problem.

Mistakes will happem. and some folks *will* check out ok and later become dangerous.

But you have to *live* with that. especially since you *also* have the danger of putting people on the lists who shouldn't be there.

In fact the whole war on terror is based on the faulty assumption that we *can* make things safe. We can't. Not ever.

We can reduce risks. But that involves doing a lot of things we *aren't* doing. and not doing a lot of the things we *are* doing.

It also requires that politicians and the media quit trying to scare us (to get votes or sell air time).