Tuesday, November 24, 2015

Conflating Two Good Ideas - Disqualifying Those on the Terror Watch List and Universal Background Checks

24 comments:

  1. I can't believe some gun control people try to make hay out of what happened in Paris. Even you, Mike, were silent on it. Biggest mass shooting the world has seen since you started blogging, but because it happened in one of these other countries that "these types of shootings don't happen" in, we hear crickets from you.

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    1. I might have posted something about it. I noticed some of you gun nuts actually said it was because no one was armed. I always love that argument.

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    2. What have you said about it? Just about how useless guns are for protection (the quality that makes guns really good at killing people suddenly disappears when you need to kill people) and nothing about how if the French had "proper gun control"...

      I think you tone would be quite different had this attack happened in Louisiana, don't you think?

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    3. "the quality that makes guns really good at killing people suddenly disappears when you need to kill people"

      Is there no end to the lies and distortions of what we say? The point is that a regular joe with a gun is pretty much useless when the crazy guy with a gun attacks. Of course Joe could be lucky and be in exactly the right place at exactly the right time and happen to be one of the few with quick enough reflexes and the right character to take the proper action, but's it very unlikely that all those elements would come together.

      That's what we really do say, not that sarcastic bullshit you wrote.

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    4. MikeB: "The point is that a regular joe with a gun is pretty much useless when the crazy guy with a gun attacks."

      You are still confirming the same stance as my "sarcastic bullshit" as you called it. Joe with a gun is "useless" but Crazy Guy with a gun is not. Why? Doesn't Crazy Guy need the same "right character" and "reflexes" to take the proper action when Joe starts shooting at him too? Minimally, you can call it 50/50 if both Joe and Crazy Guy are armed and aware of each other. If Crazy Guy is unaware of Joe, then advantage Joe. If Joe likes guns because he thinks they are cool then he probably spends more time shooting and training with them than Crazy Guy who just went out to buy a gun in order to kill a bunch of people. Again, advantage Joe.

      And as usual with you, I need to qualify that I said "advantage". There are no guarantees in life, so don't start putting your sarcastic bullshit in my mouth by saying Paris happened because no one was armed.

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    5. MikeB: "Is there no end to the lies and distortions of what we say?"

      Let's delve into this accusation that I lie and distort what you say. I said:

      "What have you said about it? Just about how useless guns are for protection (the quality that makes guns really good at killing people suddenly disappears when you need to kill people)"

      And you scolded me by saying it is a "lie and distortion" because what you really say is:

      "The point is that a regular joe with a gun is pretty much useless when the crazy guy with a gun attacks."

      I said you say "useless", you said you say "pretty much useless". So in other words, my lie and distortion of what you say is "pretty much" exactly right.

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    6. "Doesn't Crazy Guy need the same "right character" and "reflexes" to take the proper action when Joe starts shooting at him too? "

      No. What you're pretending to not see, in your zeal to justify this flimsy gotcha, is that the crazy guy with a gun is attacking. He's aggressively taking action while the regular joe is not. At best regular joe is practicing some situational awareness, so he has a great disadvantage even if he's lucky in the other factors I mentioned, the being in the right place at the right time and all that.

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    7. What you're pretending to not see . . .

      And what you are failing to see (or "pretending" to fail to see, if I shared your weird need to accuse people of deception) is that when some nutjob starts blasting away into a crowd of people, chances are pretty good that he or she won't have eyes locked on to whomever is equipped and prepared to fight back. In such a scenario, the element of surprise can work for the defense, too.

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    8. You’ve obviously gone through the mental gymnastics that it takes to justify your position. It’s the “aggressor” who finds firearms useful… Why can’t Joe be “aggressive”? What if the killer is too aggressive? What the hell makes you think “aggressive” is the key to proficient gun use anyway? One clear pattern that has emerged from the mass shootings we have seen is that often the killer has every intent to die that day. That might mean walking into a bad situation where someone with life-preserving instincts would not do. It also means they don’t want to be taken alive and will turn the gun on themselves at the first sign of resistance, which we have seen many times. Again, advantage Joe. Objectively, if we look at past events, these killers haven’t exactly displayed proficient use. Their hit rate is probably even lower than the NYPD. If someone is trying to kill you, it is a good thing to have your own gun to try and kill them right back. That’s the cold reality that you guys struggle with addressing.

      But all you are doing is confirming that I am pretty much right about what you say. You guys go through every length to talk about how deadly efficient guns are, and call for severe felony punishments around silly restrictions (like the number of rounds a magazine can hold, or the shape of the grip on a rifle), and claim these silly restrictions would save countless lives by lowering their deadly efficiency somewhat. But then you have to reverse course and talk about how guns are “pretty much useless” for self-defense. Keep it up, Mike. This floor dance routine of yours should win the gold in mental gymnastics at the 2016 Everytown Games.

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    9. Listen guys, your argument is weak. Just look at all the mass shootings we've discussed. How often does a good guy with a gun intervene? Almost never, and for the very reasons I said.

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    10. It's not almost never.

      https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2015/04/20/uber-driver-with-gun-apparently-stops-would-be-mass-shooter-have-civilians-stopped-such-mass-shootings-before/

      Contrast this list with how many times a CCW holder was killed in a mass shooting to match you claim they would easily be mowed down. I can't think of any. Do you have any examples? I'm not saying guns guarantee safety as we know there are certainly examples of cops being killed while trying to stop a mass shooting (and the soldier at the recruiting center in Tennessee), but so far armed citizens have a pretty good record at stopping these when given the opportunity. Seems you're the one with the weak argument.

      As a side note, I am not claiming citizens have a duty to stop these. Personal firearms are for personal protection, not public protection, but sometimes those two cross.

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  2. So let me see, putting people on a secret list with no judicial oversight or due process to be used for preventing the excercise of individual rights qualifies as a GOOD idea? Didn't we get rid of that sort of thing as a result of the black-listing thing during the Red scare days?
    Or is there some belief that it's ok to violate a person's rights if the Democrats do it as opposed to the evil Republicans? Setting a precedent such as this will assure its expansion into areas that will make the Patriot Act look lame.

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    1. "Rahinah Ibrahim, a Stanford University doctoral student, arrived at San Francisco International Airport with her 14-year-old daughter for a 9 a.m. flight home to Malaysia. She asked for a wheelchair, having recently had a hysterectomy.
      Instead, when a ticket agent found her name on the no-fly list, Ms. Ibrahim was handcuffed, searched and jailed amid a flurry of phone calls involving the local police, the F.B.I. and the Department of Homeland Security. Two hours after her flight left, Ms. Ibrahim was released without explanation. She flew to Malaysia the next day.
      But when she tried to return to the United States, she discovered that her visa had been revoked. And when she complained that she did not belong on a terrorist watch list, the government’s response came a year later in a form letter saying only that her case had been reviewed and that any changes warranted had been made."

      "The standards for adding names to the lists have gone through a cycle of tightening, then relaxing. After the Sept. 11 attacks, hundreds of names were added with few guidelines, eventually leading to complaints that too many innocent travelers were being stopped. Two years ago, the government developed a reasonable suspicion standard and secret protocols for applying it; their last major revision was outlined in a 72-page memorandum in February 2009 that clarified the “minimum substantive derogatory criteria.”

      http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/07/us/07watch.html?_r=0

      Interesting, now we're to feel ok about denying rights to people based on reasonable suspicion, which is the level required for the police to perform a "Terry stop", but still isn't up to the level of the probable cause requirement for an actual arrest.

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    2. What we should do is fault on the side of caution when it comes to the most efficient tools for killing.

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    3. "What we should do is fault on the side of caution when it comes to the most efficient tools for killing."

      I'm afraid I have to disagree with you Mike. Formalizing secret lists that have the force of law with no due process or appeal process is a very dangerous precedent. I'm sure you can imagine several potential ways such a procedure could be misused.
      And your fault on the side of caution argument is now being used when addressing the issue of allowing Syrian refugees into this country. The only difference being that it's a program backed by the current administration. And after doing some research into the vetting process, I'm ok with it. First, there's no 100% reliable process for vetting. Some will leak in.
      However, it's something that the US has been doing for god knows how many years. Often to our detriment.

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    4. Here is what the ACLU is saying about the watchlist. As you can imagine, they aren't supportive of it and rightly so,

      "The government is adding people to its already bloated watchlisting system at breakneck pace, and it's still hungry for more. That's the unavoidable conclusion from documents published yesterday in The Intercept.

      Those documents vindicate our concerns and warnings about a massive, virtually standardless government watchlisting scheme that ensnares innocent people and encourages racial and religious profiling.

      The documents confirm what we have long suspected: It doesn't take much to get yourself on a terrorist watchlist. The government's recently leaked Watchlisting Guidance starts with a poorly defined "reasonable suspicion" standard and then subjects it to so many exceptions and caveats as to render it virtually toothless. The unsurprising result, as is clear from these documents, is a set of watchlists experiencing explosive growth."

      "The government is adding people to its already bloated watchlisting system at breakneck pace, and it's still hungry for more. That's the unavoidable conclusion from documents published yesterday in The Intercept.

      Those documents vindicate our concerns and warnings about a massive, virtually standardless government watchlisting scheme that ensnares innocent people and encourages racial and religious profiling.

      The documents confirm what we have long suspected: It doesn't take much to get yourself on a terrorist watchlist. The government's recently leaked Watchlisting Guidance starts with a poorly defined "reasonable suspicion" standard and then subjects it to so many exceptions and caveats as to render it virtually toothless. The unsurprising result, as is clear from these documents, is a set of watchlists experiencing explosive growth.

      Of course, it is impossible to quantify the stigma and loss of liberty experienced by individuals who are wrongly or mistakenly watchlisted. The plaintiffs in our No Fly List case, for instance, have been suffering the consequences of their placement on the list for years. The impact on their personal and professional lives has been devastating.

      A federal judge has already agreed that the government's failure to provide our clients with a meaningful way to clear their names is unconstitutional. We will be back in court on Tuesday, arguing that there is an immediate need for a fair process."

      https://www.aclu.org/blog/numbers-tell-story-our-governments-watchlisting-binge

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    5. The individual rights abuses defended by national security, is a Republican policy, not Democratic.

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    6. "The individual rights abuses defended by national security, is a Republican policy, not Democratic."

      Howdy Anon, sorry but while you may be justifiable in dining the GOP in the passage in say the Patriot Act, if you don't look too hard at the Democrats that voted for it in both houses to pass it with a supermajority, the current President signing a reauthorization of the act in 2011 also made it his.
      Let's also not forget that if he did disapprove of how people are selected to be included on the terrorist watch list, he's now had seven odd years to fix it. Since it's happening on his watch so to speak, he gets the credit, or blame. That's part of being Commander in Chief. He get credit for getting bin Laden even though using your logic, it was a Republican policy, and he also gets credit and/or blame for this mess.
      Here's a question for you, since by your lack of criticism of this policy, one could infer that you approve of it. Does this mean we should mark this day on our calendars as the day you actually came out as approving of a Bush policy?

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    7. You're right about the secret lists and the due process. I suppose the only way to deal with this is to appeal the 2A. It should never have been a right in the first place but it didn't matter much until you guys started with the individual twist. Now, I suppose there's no alternative but to scrap the whole thing. If owning guns were a privilege things would work much better.

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    8. I've mentioned before Mike, I would truly like to see such an attempt.

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    9. I suppose the only way to deal with this is to [re?]ppeal the 2A.

      Good luck with that. Only 13 states have to stand up against tyranny to block that heinousness. Turns out we have some successful history of 13 states standing against tyranny.

      It should never have been a right in the first place . . .

      Complain to whatever deity you believe in, then, because that fundamental human right is ours not because of the Constitution, but because of our individual autonomy.

      . . . but it didn't matter much until you guys started with the individual twist.

      Hmm . . . when would that have been, when "[we] guys" noticed that "the people" consists of individuals, and is not restricted to the National Guard? Maybe around February, 1788, when Tench Coxe wrote:

      My friends and countrymen, it is not so, for The powers of the sword are in the hands of the yeomanry of America from sixteen to sixty. The militia of these free commonwealths, entitled and accustomed to their arms, when compared with any possible army, must be tremendous and irresistible. Who are the militia? Are they not ourselves?

      Tell, em, Mr. Coxe.

      Now, I suppose there's no alternative but to scrap the whole thing.

      And again, good luck with that--and if you somehow pull it off, you're still in a bind, since the right to keep and bear arms isn't bestowed by the Constitution, but merely secured by it. We'll still kill anyone who tries to disarm us, Second Amendment or no Second Amendment.

      If owning guns were a privilege . . .

      And if earthworms were packing machine guns, the early bird would make different breakfast choices, or soon depart the world of the living--but that ain't happening, either.

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  3. I want everyone who supports this heinous evil dead.  But that's not enough.  I want them to die screaming, in unspeakable, excruciating agony, stripped of every last shred of human dignity--dignity to which they, as subhuman filth, have no legitimate claim, anyway.  And that's still not enough.  I want their children, and/or anyone else so intellectually and morally bankrupt as to love or care about them, to be present to witness their hideous deaths.  And I want the survivors' memories of the deceased to be dominated by the ghastly sights, sounds, and smells of their final endless, dreadful hours, so that every pleasant memory of them is blotted out by the horror.  And I want them to be so psychologically scarred by the experience, that even if they can never admit it, even to themselves, that they will hate and despise the deceased, for exposing them to the anguish and trauma of their passing.

    If all that comes to pass, then I can be satisfied that there is indeed some small justice in the world.

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    1. I hope you've had a day to calm yourself down. That was quite an outburst. Were you referring to the terror watch list thing or the universal background checks. I don't remember you reacting quite that strongly to either one in the past. What's up?

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    2. I hope you've had a day to calm yourself down

      I wasn't "excited" when I made that comment.

      Were you referring to the terror watch list thing . . .

      Mostly.

      I don't remember you reacting quite that strongly to either one in the past.

      That's been my position for some time. Guess I didn't manage to articulate it quite as strongly before now. Writing is like any other skill--it improves with practice.

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