reece

Kavanaugh the Folkloric Monster of the Mid-Atlantic

by

In my wife’s country, there is an old folkloric story from the time of small villages and horse-trodden roads of a monstrous woman called la Cegua. She only appeared at nights on lonely roads, asking late-night travelers for a ride to the nearest village. To drunk men returning home from a night at the bar she appeared as a beautiful woman, and would ask to climb atop the horse and sit behind him. Then suddenly, midway into the ride, she would change and reveal her true form as a monstrous demon with a horse skull for a head and eyes of fire. She would then grab tight onto the man, and the startled horse would begin to gallop, until they both fell. Only those men who had innocent intentions would escape alive; the rest would die.

Obviously, no such creature as la Cegua ever existed, but you can imagine how the story came about. You can imagine older men in town swearing to God and the Virgin that they saw la Cegua on a road one night years ago, that they in fact gave her a ride and looked into the flaming eyes in her skull, and escaped only because of the purity of their hearts. You can imagine a man on his way home on a dark night atop his old slow horse, convincing himself la Cegua wasn’t going to come out, until suddenly a woman on the side of the road causes him to send his horse off in a gallop.

You can kind of imagine what he says, breathlessly, as he arrives at his door:

“I saw her, la Cegua! She was on the road, looking like a beautiful woman. She was asking for a ride, but then a cloud shifted and the moon came out to shine full on her face. In a moment she changed, and her flaming eyes pierced out of her skull straight into mine. I don’t know how I made it back, except that I ran the horse as fast as I could.  I’m sure it was her!”

Today, we are beginning to see the formation of a new folkloric monster. It is in the form of Brett Kavanaugh. Not the real Brett Kavanaugh, but the one that exists in the present leftwing imagination.

This folkloric Kavanaugh has evolved in a darker turn from the “Bill Brasky” stories. Rather than just being comically adept at drinking and picking up women, this Kavanaugh is more like a drunken ogre who emerges from a cave deep in the Mid-Atlantic woods and wanders forth into civilization, stumbling into parties, starting fights and assaulting women, before dragging a helpless victim back to his cave. Maybe he’ll show up at your boat party in Rhode Island and get into a fight while groping women.  Maybe he’ll throw ice at you in a bar in Connecticut.  Maybe he’ll drunkenly stumble out of a bar and pin you to a wall.  Or maybe he and his companion Mark Judge (of equally folkloric proportions) will drag you into a cave and take turns raping you all night.

No one can know if or when they’ll be safe from Brett Kavanaugh, or where he’ll appear next.

One thing for certain is that he only appears on dark nights when the moon is hidden, and that he only comes to places with lots of beer. Kavanaugh likes beer. And then in a moment, he’ll rear up to 8 feet tall, an angry monster with poor temperament, beer on his breath and hands that end in knives for cutting off loose clothing. Will he wag his penis at you? Will he drop qualuudes in your punch and summon a gang of rapists to take turns having their way with you? Or will he just throw beer in your face?

It’s Brett Kavanaugh! As unpredictable as he is belligerently drunk!  80’s partiers beware!

More and more sightings are beginning to appear in the press, and I expect even more and more and more as the week drags on and the FBI finishes its investigation and what passes for a press in this country struggles to print anything at all that anyone at all is willing to say to stop Kavanaugh from becoming the fifth (now much more-so) conservative on the Supreme Court.

You can almost imagine an old man in a bar swearing to God and his mother’s grave that he saw Brett Kavanaugh one night in a bar back in the 80’s. Was it ’83? ’84? He came swaggering in, drunk as a goat and mean as sin. Demanded a whole pitcher of Bud Light, which he downed in a single enormous gulp. Then he smashed the pitcher over the head of the guy next to him and just slides over the bar and starts chugging Miller straight out of the tap. Bartender tries to stop him, but Ol’ Man Kavanaugh grabbed him and in a ferocious rage hurled the bartender clean across the room. Then he grabbed the nearest woman he could find, slung her over his shoulder, and with a hideous growl of anger at everyone walked back into the night. We never saw either of ’em again. I’m sure it was him. Brett Kavanaugh.

You can almost imagine, right?

Sorting out meta-narratives around the Kavanaugh question

by

Kavanaugh has been cleared from the committee to the Senate floor. Sen. Jeff Flake, a crucial swing vote, has said he will vote for Kavanaugh on the floor if and only if an FBI investigation of no more than one week is completed into the claims. Trump has authorized such an investigation, saying that it must be no more than one week and may only look into currently pending credible allegations.

In the coming week, our national discourse will center around the issue of whether or not Kavanaugh should be confirmed.

And in all of the talking, we will make points either for or against Kavanaugh’s nomination, some points good and some points bad. These points will form part of a narrative, making up a way to look at the issue. And as we argue, more and more of the narrative will get beaten down to just the central nuggets of it, which I’m going to call a meta-narrative. While the narrative is formed from the arguments we make and the stories we tell about the situation, the meta-narrative is what motivates our formation of those narratives. And so in the interest of pushing us along further, I think I’d like to strip us down to just the meta-narratives in this discussion.

Hopefully, knowing what the meta-narratives are can help us discuss this in a way that isn’t emotionally traumatic to too many people, and get closer to the truth of what we want as a nation.

I’d like to say that there are two, but I think there are four. Two of them I consider beneath consideration. Those two are as follows, with the names I will give them for this post:

  • Liberalizing: Kavanaugh can’t be confirmed because he will be Trump’s second SCOTUS nominee and the 5th conservative on the Court, after which, for a long while, we can expect the Court to rule in favor of conservatives in any major political issue.
  • Conservatizing: Kavanaugh must be confirmed because he will be Trump’s second SCOTUS nominee and the 5th conservative on the Court, after which, for a long while, we can expect the Court to rule in favor of conservatives in any major political issue.

No one would ever say that this is their position; but people do in fact hold these meta-narratives, and they bubble forth in the sorts of arguments that they will end up making either for or against. I think these are beneath consideration because they are sub-rational and purely tribal. Notice that neither of these meta-narratives really cares about whether Kavanaugh is guilty, whether Dr. Ford is telling the truth, whether or not Kavanaugh has been unfairly smeared by the press for the auxiliary other charges, or anything. It only cares about who has the Court. And honestly, it’s a sad disgrace to our nation that we’d go to this level.

In the Liberalizing meta-narrative, any charge, at all, is worth disqualifying him over, no matter how ridiculous. Kavanaugh fighting on a boat in Rhode Island? Sure, why not. Kavanaugh participating in organized gang rape rings as a teenage boy of 15? Sure, why not. Throw whole fistfuls of spaghetti against the wall, see what sticks.

In the Conservatizing meta-narrative, no charge, at all, is worth disqualifying him over, no matter how credible or serious. Ford is probably lying; but if she isn’t, then she’s probably misremembering; but if she isn’t, then it doesn’t matter because it was a long time ago; and it wasn’t even that bad anyway, she should get over it.

So let’s just table these two indefinitely. Real people are driven by these meta-narratives, but they are really only strawmen positions. Let’s look to rational people, who want to examine the issue fairly, if not dispassionately. These meta-narratives, to me, are the ones worth discussing.

  • Victim-Affirming: The confirmation on Kavanaugh is a referendum on how we as a nation respond to survivors of sexual assault and rape. If we deny him the Court, we are sending the message to millions of women (or men) that when you come forward we will hear you and we will take action, even at the highest levels of power. And if we vote to confirm him, we are sending the message to those same millions that we won’t take you seriously and your voice is powerless.
  • Decency-Affirming: The confirmation on Kavanaugh is a referendum on how we as a nation respond to the ritual defamation tactics exhibited by Democrats, the press, and others driven by the Liberalizing meta-narrative. If we confirm him to the Court, we will deny this sort of tribalistic tactic and prevent it from being reinforced and send the message that this will not work. If we deny him the Court, we are sending the message to Democrats (and then to Republicans, and then to the nation more broadly) that when we do not like your opinions on politics, we have carte blanche to descend to the level of the Salem witch hunts in attacking every aspect of you we can find.

Now, if you’re politically liberal, then I know that you’re probably wondering why you should care about the Decency-Affirming meta-narrative. I know that you don’t like Kavanaugh, and you probably think he is actually guilty, and if he is actually guilty then why do we care about his reputation? I’ll get back to that.

The Victim-Affirming and Decency-Affirming meta-narratives provide an outlet that is actually concerned with the factual guilt or innocence of Kavanaugh under the claims.  Even if you think Victim-Affirmation is essential, you might not think it’s that essential when the person is innocent; and even if you think Decency-Affirmation is essential, you might not care all that much if the charges are actually true.  Both meta-narratives are serving ends beyond tribal politics, and ends that I’m going to say are both good.

Here are a few things we can draw from recognizing that both of these meta-narratives exist:

Firstly, if you are a victim of sexual assault, or a strong ally for victims of sexual assault, then please understand that anyone you know who is wavering towards Kavanaugh or firmly pro-Kavanaugh is probably not arguing within the same meta-narrative as you. Which is to say, you are interpreting a support of Kavanaugh within your meta-narrative, where supporting him means telling other survivors not to bother coming forward. Whereas the support may in fact be coming from the Decency-Affirming meta-narrative. No one is intending to send you this message, even though that is unfortunately the message being sent.

Secondly, if you are strongly concerned about the smearing of Kavanaugh in the press, then please understand that anyone you know who is leaning to Dr. Ford’s side or firmly and strongly on her side is also probably not arguing within the same meta-narrative as you. They are not necessarily intending to support the behavior of the Democrats or the press, even though that is also unfortunately the message being sent.

Seeing how both Victim- and Decency-Affirming meta-narratives send a bad message without intending to, I really hope will help both sides understand how this message can be sent, regardless of intention.

Thirdly, as mentioned but really worth reinforcing, the messages get sent regardless of intention. If you only want to send the message that we will believe and take seriously witnesses, then you also send the message that we can perform this same circus again in the future and it will work.  Maybe we’ll do it when it’s your guy up to the bench; or even when you yourself are u to the bench.  And if you only want to send the message that this circus is intolerable, indecent, and a threat to our democracy that we won’t stand for… then you also send the message that we’re not going to listen to future survivors of sexual assault. There’s no way to send both desired messages. There’s no way to send either desired message without sending an undesired message. That’s where we are.

And so I think this suggests a synthesis meta-narrative that will better serve us in this discussion.

  • Synthesis Meta-Narrative: We want to affirm the survivors of sexual assault, but we also want to strongly condemn the tactics of ritualistic defamation and press libel campaigns and set high standards. We can’t do both, and we need to decide which message is more important to send.

Now we are somewhere, at least, because I think reasonable people driven by this meta-narrative can see good and bad on both sides. We can construct points and arguments around this, and not have to assume someone else is holding a strawman position such as “witch hunts are cool” or “I like rapists.”

But hold on, you say. You’re a reasonable person, and you really don’t get the problem in the Decency-Affirming meta-narrative.

I can  understand it.  I am not a Republican, but I do lean conservative. I was very disappointed by Kavanaugh’s nomination. In his past, he has been instrumental in the Patriot Act and ruling on cases that greatly expand the power of the government to invade our privacy and kill us.  Like many on the left, I too immediately thought he looked like a frat-boy douchebag and spoke like he was about to go to a kegger with the broskis (and like many on the left I that means I immediately didn’t like him).  When the allegations came out, I was already indifferent on him, and was ready to put him away and move on to the next judge (hopefully Amy Coney Barrett), without even really caring if the charges were absolutely positively true.

But as the week progressed and more and more people driven either by the Liberalizing or Conservatizing meta-narratives made their arguments, things ramped up more and more. The Conservatizers’ denial that any of it mattered no doubt spurred the Liberalizers to think of even more things to bring out hoping just the sheer volume of charges would make it impossible to look away from them. I actually thought the Republicans on the committee (not the Republicans on random facebook comments; but the ones on the committee) were very accommodating to the charges, while the Democrats were clearly using the charges to their own political ends.

The insanity that gripped our media institutions closely resembles ritualistic defamation, afore alluded to.  This is a process identified by Laird Wilcox back int the 90’s, which describes the mentality of the Salem witch hunts, the McCarthy hearings, the anti-Jewish pogroms of Europe, and the violence of the Inquisition.  You can walk through those points and see how all of them are applicable here.  Some key points of this are: that the defamation is ultimately indifferent to the actual charges presented, and only begins because a social taboo is violated; the subject of the defamation becomes the representation of the worst form of the accusation (such as a leader of organized rape gangs); and any form of defense is irrelevant and interpreted only as further evidence of guilt.

All this withstanding, I decided firmly that I was not going to let the behavior of the Democrats and their press influence my opinion on the truthfulness of Dr. Ford.  I would listen to her present her testimony, and on the basis of the hearings come to my own conclusion on what to think about this all.

And she totally sold me. I can’t not believe that she’s telling the truth. And if I believe she’s telling the truth, the logical conclusion is that Kavanaugh did try to assault her and is thereby disqualified (both for the assault itself and for lying about it under oath).

All of this to say, I understand why you wouldn’t care about Kavanaugh: you think he’s a douchey frat boy who tried to rape a girl.

So then, don’t be worried about Kavanaugh, specifically.  Be worried about yourself, your friends, your family, your future sons or grandsons, or other men close to you. Just like you aren’t worried about Dr. Ford specifically, but worried about all the women in your life who might have been abused in the past or future by someone like Kavanaugh.

Setting aside Dr. Ford and her allegations (as I think they are vastly different), from the time she came forward with her story the press has been breathlessly repeating everything they can get anyone to say. They have canvassed basically the entire population of 1980’s Maryland hoping to find anyone else who is willing to say anything else about Kavanaugh. And the things they came up with were absurd on their face. The charges became so ridiculous newspapers have had to print retractions or clarifications or started refusing to print them in the first place. The Democrats have repeated these and encouraged this behavior. There could have been a way to settle this issue discretely, without a media circus, by means of a confidential Senate investigation. The Senate has those means. The witnesses could have been interviewed in person under threat of perjury, the evidence could have been examined, and a conclusion reached long ago, without having to bring either Dr. Ford or Kavanaugh out into the public for it. The Democrats purposefully did not do that, because they needed the last-minute feeding frenzy to delay the vote. The Democrats’ goal is really simple. They don’t care about Ford, they don’t care about her feelings, they don’t care about whether she was assaulted, they only care about the letter after Kavanaugh’s name (R) and keeping one more of those letters off the court.

Is this an acceptable way for a democracy to work? Is this even a functional way for a democracy to work?

I don’t think it can be. I don’t think we will be able to live together as a society if we can’t agree that this is not an acceptable process.

An acceptable process, as I alluded to, would have respected the confidentiality of Dr. Ford and not brought her name into the press, while at the same time investigated the serious and credible claims to see what other corroborating evidence could be found.

Today it’s Kavanaugh, and yeah, Trump appointed him and Trump’s bad. But in ten years Trump will be gone, and this new norm will remain. In ten years it will be you. And whether you’ve ever sexually assaulted anyone or not, we will know all it will take is the accusation that you did, and suddenly your entire life and career will be over, with global newspapers reporting you guilty of the very worst crimes a private individual is capable of. The standard is not being set at the level of “guilty”; it is going to be permanently set at the level of “accused.”  And while it’s not all that hard to avoid sexually assaulting anyone in your life, it’s a lot harder to be able to prove that you’ve never sexually assaulted anyone in your life.  This will not stay with Kavanaugh. This will become the new norm in all society as we quickly approach an abyss that I’m increasingly worried bottoms out in another civil war.

I realize now that I’m not giving any voice to explaining the Victim-Affirming side. That’s mostly because I consider it self-evident that telling survivors of sexual assault to stay silent is bad, whether we say it unintentionally or not. It’s also because I think I’m largely aiming this at reasonable liberals, who I assume are already there. But just for the sake completeness, rape or sexual assault is a terrible and evil thing, and when a woman (or a man) has suffered it, it is very difficult to come forward. It makes you feel weak and vulnerable, and also ashamed of yourself. The experience is traumatic, and most who suffer it want to just forget it and not give it any more space in their heads. Coming forward is extremely difficult for the survivors, but it is also extremely important that they do come forward. We need a world without rape or sexual assault. And we can move to that world only if the survivors of abuse feel confident in coming forward that they will be accepted and heard. And that respect for victims is also essential to the fabric of our society.  So it is important that we believe Dr. Ford, especially after her very vulnerable sworn testimony.

So what do we do?

I don’t know, really.

We can look at the evidence. If Kavanaugh is guilty, then he’s disqualified. On multiple levels.  No need to worry over negative messages.

But there isn’t a lot of evidence to help us decide this, and the evidence that exists is exculpatory. He kept a detailed calendar-diary of the summer in question that he clearly marked with his ongoings and whereabouts. The only entry that has been found that might the incident Dr. Ford described the entry for Timmy’s house, and it seems that Timmy’s house is actually 10 miles away from the Chevy Chase country club (according to information in the linked thread on democraticunderground), essentially ruling that option out. There were witnesses who Dr. Ford said were there, but they have said they either do not remember it or that it did not happen. We have Dr. Ford’s credible allegation, and Kavanaugh’s credible denial, the denial of witnesses, and a piece of exculpatory evidence.

A further piece of evidence may come in the form of what “boof” means. Many point to this as a possible lie. Kavanaugh said this was a fart joke, but according to many that is definitely not what it means. Since that isn’t what it means, that means Kavanaugh is guilty of perjury, and perjury disqualifies you from being on the Supreme Court. Whether you did rape a girl or not. If Kavanaugh lied during these questions, then we can dismiss him. However, I’m not sure how you can ever prove someone is lying about what he meant when he used a slang word 30 years ago.

Looking at the evidence that exists, it seems that Kavanaugh is probably innocent.

But then how do we make sense of Dr. Ford’s testimony? How can we possibly fit that into a picture of Kavanaugh’s innocence?

I again don’t know. 

Now, I’d like to reiterate. If the Liberalizing narrative hadn’t been spun about Kavanaugh raping puppies in New Mexico while free-basing the ashes of Hitler or whatever else it is, then I would think that Dr. Ford’s testimony, all by itself, would be enough to disqualify Kavanaugh, without new information. I think it wouldn’t matter because there would be no negative message to send by simply voting no on his nomination.

But that narrative was spun, and now there is a negative message to send.  And so I think we need a good reason before sending either.

I think that in the week ahead, we will get to this Synthesis meta-narrative, and start arguing about which message we really need to send. And I think most people are going to side with the Victim-Affirming side. And so I think Kavanaugh will ultimately not be confirmed.

In the meantime, I suppose the FBI investigation is the closest to a kind of compromise we can come to in the meta-narrative. It sends the message that we’re taking the claims seriously, or at least seriously enough to postpone a vote and investigate them. If the investigation finds nothing new (and I doubt it will), then Kavanaugh can be confirmed without necessarily sending the message that the allegation wasn’t taken seriously (obviously some people will still see it that way, but it is not as direct). If the investigation does find something new and finds Kavanaugh is guilty, he can be denied without sending the message that the ritualistic defamation that followed Dr. Ford’s allegation is also good.

Part of the problem, of course, will be when people driven by the Conservatizing or Liberalizing meta-narratives learn this, and begin using these talking points to their own strictly tribal ends. They are served by the fact that we have to send one of these messages, so even if a compromise is pointed out, it is in their interest to convince us that the compromise is not a compromise. They will be very loud about this.

In closing, I hope people of good faith on both sides of this divide can better understand why other people of good faith might be on the other side. I hope you can understand how to better have this conversation, to hopefully move us closer to the truth of the matter and to a best course of action. Disagreement with you doesn’t make someone evil or irratonal. There are irrational people in this discussion, and they exist on both sides. If we can agree on nothing else, let’s at least agree to politely ask the irrational people on our own side to shut up, so the adults can talk about this very serious problem facing our nation.

Moving the Conversation Forward on Common Sense Gun Reform

by

While most Americans support the Second Amendment, and support the rights of hunters and homeowners to own rifles or handguns to defend themselves or bag deer, these same Americans also support restrictions on certain specific guns that are too deadly to be in the hands of civilians, because they lead too-readily to slaughter.

While certain gun-rights advocates take this to be a call to “ban all guns,” it’s really not. It’s only about particular guns, and the distinction is common sense.  It’s so simple I can explain it in pictures.

This is a picture of the rifle used in the 2011 Norway massacre where some 77 were slaughtered.

This gun is fully semi-automatic. While this is not an AR-15, it is based on an AR-15, and fires the same deadly ammunition at the same rate of fire used at both the Parkland shooting and the Las Vegas massacre. It has a detachable magazine that can hold up to 20 rounds and be readily changed. With an attachment like a bump stock, this gun can be altered to fire at machine-gun speeds.

Here is a picture of another rifle.

This gun is dubbed a “ranch gun,” intended for use by hunters and ranchers for life in the American West. It fires a moderate round, the Remington .223, which many believe to be a “varmint round” — that is, a bullet that is suited more to shooting coyotes than to hunting deer. The bullet caliber is nothing compared to more deadly ammunition intended to bring down elk or bears, and some states ban the use of this caliber for deer hunting, since it doesn’t always kill a deer immediately. And unlike an assault rifle, the ranch gun will not fire automatically.

It’s common sense that no one needs to own the first gun, which is intended only to kill, while the second gun has a legitimate use for ranchers. While some individuals may be calling for a blanket ban, most Americans wanting a reform of gun laws still believe in the right to own a firearm like the ranch gun to hunt or defend your property.  Most Americans want sensible gun control laws, that will still allow you to own the ranch gun, but not the deadly weapon used in mass shootings.

But It’s Not So Simple

This is the thing, though, about common sense gun reform: The two weapons shown above are the same gun. They are both the Ruger Mini-14.

Similar to automobiles, which can come in coup, hatchback, or sedan styles, guns can also come in different styles. What I just showed you are two different styles of the same gun: tactical and ranch. Those two guns have the same rate of fire (semi-automatic), fire the same caliber bullet (.223R), they both have detachable magazines that can hold up to 20 rounds. Neither of the guns is capable of automatic fire.

Further, the Ruger Mini-14 uses the exact same caliber bullet as the AR-15 and has the exact same rate of fire as the AR-15. Neither the Ruger Mini-14 nor the AR-15 is capable of automatic fire.

Aside from details of appearance and preference, there is no functional difference between the ranch gun I showed you and an AR-15. They are equally deadly as weapons.

This is where we see a problem with “common sense” gun reform. While I agree it seems obvious which gun to ban, that is a misperception formed from a lack of knowledge. The public is largely misinformed on guns, and it is crucial we clarify what we mean.

The Terms of the Conversation Are Muddled

There is a vocal movement of people calling to ban assault rifles. You hear about it very often in the news. FedEx just released a statement calling for ban on assault rifles, as did Dick’s Sporting Goods.  And it would seem common sense, that civilians do not need assault rifles for hunting.

Common sense gun-reform proponents will then be happy to know that assault rifles are already illegal for civilian use in the United States. Only certain professions are authorized to own assault rifles, and they may only own registered assault rifles manufactured before the ban went into effect.

You may further be stunned to learn that the NRA supported the ban on civilian ownership of assault rifles.

But now you’re wondering: if assault rifles are already illegal, then why is there a vocal movement to have them banned? And if assault rifles are already illegal, then how are these killers able to get their hands on AR-15s?

As to the second question, the answer is easy: it’s because an AR-15 is not an assault rifle.

I know, I know: who cares the terminology, whatever it is, it doesn’t matter what it’s called, you don’t need to own it. But it does matter. It matters because these words have definitions, and we can’t have a conversation about policy if we’re not going to use the policy-defined words to talk about it. It leads to confusion.

The word “assault rifle” already has a definition. An assault rifle is a rifle capable of selective fire between automatic and semi-automatic fire, as defined by the ATF.  Assault rifles (and all automatic weapons) are illegal in the US for general civilian use. An AR-15 is incapable of automatic fire, and so is not an assault rifle, and therefore not included under the ban on assault rifles.

The difference between firing rate is a common source of confusion, so let me explain: automatic firing means that the gun will continue to chamber and fire bullets for as long as the trigger is held down; semi-automatic firing means that the action of releasing the trigger causes a new bullet to be chambered. This is an important distinction. A semi-automatic rifle like the AR-15 or the Mini-14 can only fire one bullet with one pull of the trigger.

It’s important to remember this difference in firing rate, because it matters to policy decisions. For instance, because it is already illegal to own one kind of gun, and perfectly legal to own the other. If you talk about banning assault rifles, someone might think you mean to ban guns capable of automatic fire; someone else might think that guns like the AR-15 are capable of automatic fire. It leads to confusion on what we’re even talking about, and makes people claiming to be following “common sense” appear to not actually understand the issue at hand.

Assault rifles are already illegal, an AR-15 is not an assault rifle, because an AR-15 is not capable of automatic fire.

As to the first question, why the move to ban a category of weapon that is already banned… I think the answer is a lack of understanding.

If You’re Not Familiar With Guns, You Have a Bad Intuition About Guns

There is currently a proposed bill that would criminalize all semi-automatic rifles. When Marco Rubio, at the CNN Town Hall, warned about just this, he was met with defiant applause; as Trevor Noah of the Daily Show put it, that’s what we want to do; we want to outlaw all semi-automatic rifles.

Except think back to the ranch gun from earlier. You probably thought it was common sense not to ban it. And you probably didn’t think of it as a semi-automatic rifle.

The problem is that people are guided by their intuitions on this issue, and those intuitions are formed by a mix of Hollywood images and national news cycle that are at best misinformed, or at worst actively disinterested in accuracy in favor of sensationalism and theatre. In such media, words like “automatic”, “semi-automatic”, “assault rifle”, and “machine gun” get thrown around with reckless abandon, seeming to confuse them all in discussing guns like the AR-15.  We usually see the AR-15 is characterized as some sort of pinnacle of scariness, such as in the recent CNN investigation into them that kept trying to hype up their terror-factor. We’re told that the AR-15 is a toned-down machine gun with superior firepower and devastating ammunition.

I think many people calling for common sense gun reform believe what they hear about the AR-15, and don’t know of any other referent in the discussion of guns, calibers, and firing rate. If the AR-15 is the only semi-automatic weapon you’ve ever heard of, then you probably associate semi-automatic rifles with massacres; less so with ranchers shooting coyotes.

The fact of the situation is that semi-automatic rifles make up one of the most popular classes of hunting rifles (by some estimates more than 20% of all privately-owned guns), and make a larger proportion of gun sales each year. As it turns out, hunters (like video gamers) prefer not having to reload after every shot.

But the only difference between a semi-automatic rifle used for hunting and the tactical gun we need to ban, is the way it looks. There is no meaningful legal category that distinguishes them.

If you ban semi-automatic rifles, you will be banning the Ruger Mini-14 ranch gun. You’ll get the tactical Ruger Mini-14 and the AR-15, but you’ll also get the gun that shoots coyotes and may or may not be able to bag a deer.

So when someone tells you that there is no way to ban the AR-15 without banning all semi-automatic rifles, you, the advocate for common sense gun laws, should be concerned. Most Americans would feel that a rancher has a right to a gun that can defend his property from predators. It’s common sense. If you really feel he has a right to it, then you should oppose laws that infringe that right. And a ban on semi-automatic rifles would do just that.

The point of this has been to try to clarify the conversation, because so much misinformation exists out there. I get people calling for common sense gun reform. One school shooting is too many, and at first glance there is an obvious way to draw the line about weapons. AR-15s are deadly; but so are all guns, including the hunting and defense guns that most Americans think people should be allowed to own.

The point of this is not that stricter gun control is unnecessary. That is a conversation worth having. The point is to make sure we’re being clear what we mean when we say “ban assault rifles” or “common sense gun control.”

To summarize:

Assault rifles are rifles capable of switching between semi- and fully-automatic firing. They are already banned. Any weapon capable of automatic fire is illegal for general civilian use. Ordinary civilians cannot purchase an assault rifle, or an automatic rifle. Modifying or building any weapon to be capable of automatic fire is strictly illegal.

AR-15s are not assault rifles. (The “AR” is for “Armalite Rifle“) They are not capable of automatic fire. They are semi-automatic, which means they fire one bullet for each pull of the trigger. The trigger must be released before a new bullet will load. They fire a Remington .223, which is not a particularly deadly round compared to other ammunition in other rifles. (Update: as a visual illustration of this point about caliber, here is slow-motion video of a ballistics test of an AR-15 vs. a .30-06 hunting round; the AR-15 impact is shown first from two angles, and then the impact from the hunting round)

An AR-15 definitely looks intimidating, but that’s only a style. An AR-15 made with gray metal and a wooden stock would look like a normal rifle, and still be just as deadly. The way a gun looks doesn’t determine how deadly it is; that is primarily a combination of accuracy, rate of fire, and bullet caliber.

Semi-automatic rifles are very popular with hunters, and are available in styles that look more “common sense.” They make up a very large, if not the largest, class of rifles used in hunting. When we’re talking about banning semi-automatic rifles, we’re talking about removing staid-looking hunting rifles from the hands of hunters; we’re talking about going against what we earlier thought was common sense.

There is no way to ban the AR-15 and not ban the ranch gun, because there is no meaningful difference between them. Enacting a kind of “common sense” law that bans the AR-15 and the Mini-14 tactical rifle, but not the Mini-14 ranch gun, would not solve any problems; the next shooter would use the equivalent Mini-14 ranch gun. A ban distinguishing guns by their style would be security theatre; you might feel something was done, but no one is any safer for it.

With all of that in mind, hopefully we can continue having this conversation more intelligently, with a better understanding of the terms, and what exactly it is we’re talking about banning

Speech on the Silent Sam Memorial at UNC

by

I was recently allowed to share my thoughts on the Silent Sam Confederate monument at UNC. Beforehand, I shared my anxiety about this.  The full transcript of my speech is available below.  My own recording can be viewed here, and perhaps an official recording if the University releases it.

The speech:

Way back when, during the America Civil War, a number of students here at UNC left their studies, left school, and went to fight in the cause of the Confederacy.

They fought out of a sense of honor,
a sense of duty,
a sense of loyalty,
a sense of service.

They believed the cause they were fighting was
a just a cause,
a noble cause,
and a worthy cause.

They would have heard from
politicians
and elected leaders
and news media
their families
and fellow students
and even their professors

— every voice in their lives that they trusted —

that this cause was a just and noble and worthy cause.

Today, we can look back and recognize that it was not.
It was not a noble cause they fought for.

Students today are also fighting.

They are LITERALLY fighting.

They are brawling in the streets,
throwing riots on campuses across the country,
setting fires
smashing in windows
and ribcages,
assaulting innocent bystanders and peaceful demonstrators for holding opinions they dislike.

They are shouting down invited guest lecturers with whom they disagree.

They are shutting down important debates and discussions that are vital to our civic life in democracy.

They are silencing through their activism
and violence
their fellow students,
their professors,
and others on campus.

Students are fighting for speech codes, restricting our first amendment rights to outlaw speech that offends them, calling it hate speech.

Students are opposed to our basic freedoms and liberties dear to our democracy.

Freedom of speech,
freedom of religion and worship,
freedom of conscience
freedom of association
freedom of self-determination

Students are fighting to overthrow free market capitalism

— which has brought us unprecedented prosperity —

and instead replace it with the economic system that all the world over has given us nothing

except Supreme Leaders and zoo meat.

Students are being told that these causes are just, and noble and worthy.

We are being told this by
our politicians
and elected leaders
By the news media
and by Hollywood actors and late night comedians who for whatever reason we listen to
By our families
and fellow students
and
— more than any other voice —
by our professors.

Every voice in our lives that we trust is telling us that these causes are just and noble and good.

I think the message Silent Sam has to offer UNC students is very important.

It is not the original intended message.

It is instead a call to sober reflection on the lesson of the past.

You can believe you are acting out of principles of virtue.

You can see your cause as so self-evidentially right only evil tyrants would oppose it.

You can feel Lady Justice’s hand on your shoulder, beckoning you to honor and duty.

You can hear from every voice around you that this is the noble cause.

And yet be so very wrong.

Thank you.

My speech went over about as well as you would think it would.  Looking back, I perhaps could have been more clear on what I was actually speaking about.  For anyone wishing to characterize my speech as one side or another, the full text is there.

Speaking on campus and the ctrl-left

by

Update: the full text of the speech is now online on its own post.

My university is home to a controversial Confederate War memorial.

It is a bronze sculpture of a college student carrying a rifle, commemorating the students at my university who left their studies and went to fight in the American Civil War for the Confederacy. On the base are three inscriptions, the middle of which shows the student in class, hearing the call of a woman representing duty urging him to fight. The side inscription speaks of honor and duty.

The statue has always been controversial, but recent events have brought the controversy back.

The university is holding an open panel, inviting the general public to share their thoughts. You just had to register, and the first 25 get to go.

Well, I have some thoughts on the monument, and I wanted to share them. So I signed up, and I wrote a speech (exactly 3 minutes in length), and I’ve been practicing it. On Wednesday, I anticipate getting to deliver the speech.

I would be pretty foolish to not be worried. Actually, on an issue this incendiary, I am pretty foolish to want to speak out at all.

For starters, there’s a chance my talk could anger white supremacist groups.

I am a white man with pale skin and reddish/blondish hair. I am married to a beautiful woman from Costa Rica, with caramel skin and these gorgeous black eyes you can just get lost in. We don’t have children yet, but we are both excited to meet them. I know they will be beautiful, like their mother. I hope my daughters look like her, with her dark skin and dark eyes and her raven black hair.

If you listen to what white supremacist groups actually say these days, then you’d know this is their raison d’être. They refer to it by the moronic title “white genocide” — the “diluting” of the “white race” through marriage of white people with people of other races.

Me and my family are the main thing that white supremacists march against.

In the speech I have planned, I think I make it clear that I consider the cause of the Confederacy in the American Civil War to be an unworthy cause — it was certainly not worth the lives of the men who died for it.

That might anger white supremacists, who would already have reason to despise my family.

But, I’m not afraid of angering white supremacists; they’re evil, but they don’t frighten me. Because I know they are a powerless group of isolated and outcast individuals with little to no social standing in their own communities, who are resorted to anonymous online forums for human contact. They are pathetic, and I’m not enough of a coward to shrink away from shadows in a basement.

White supremacy is, of course, evil. It cost me nothing to say that, and means nothing when I do say it, as everyone either agrees with it already, or is a white supremacist and doesn’t care what society thinks about them.

White supremacy is also stupid. It is lazy thinking. It is the kind of mental shortcut that the feeble-minded rely on. It is the sort of excuse that the weak-willed cower to, lacking the testicular fortitude to face their own inadequacies. It’s the kind of pseudo-intellectualism the internet is famous for, citing poorly analyzed statistics, when all it would take is meeting one normal, middle-class African American to see the fatuity of it all — that blacks and whites are the same race, because there is only the one race of Adam.

My comments might make them mad, but what are they going to do? Make memes about me?

There is also a chance my speech could anger Progressives on the ctrl-left. Actually, probably a much bigger chance. And that does scare me.

It scares me so much that I’m actually considering if I even want to speak at all. I have a speech written, and I’ve been practicing it, and I’ve shopped it with a number of friends, and I’ve made edits and timed it perfectly. But I’m thinking of not doing it at all.

I’m afraid of what the ctrl-left could do to me.

What is the ctrl-left? The label is a take on the alt-right designation, though the ctrl-left have been around for a lot longer. Maybe since the Bush administration. They are a political activist class — that is, they are a class of people with nothing else to do but be politically active. They are employed in universities, shutting down conservative voices. They are employed in news stations, selectively editing narratives and choosing which stories to give press time. They are employed at online opinion magazines, and spend all day opining on politics and culture. They are employed in Starbucks, and then spend 14 hours a day on twitter and tumblr investigating the lives of people they disagree with, trying to have them removed from their jobs, or shut down their youtube, facebook, or twitter to prevent them from sharing in electronic public forums. They are employed in tech companies enforcing “community standards” with bans and post removals, which on platform after platform seems to conveniently mean removing opinions on the right of American politics.

The ctrl-left, in essence, want to control what you are allowed to say, and punish you when you say what you are not.

The most recent explosion of this movement has been in antifa, the group of emotional children using acts of literal street violence to suppress and silence dissident voices in the public sphere — which is to say, they are a group of fascists. These jackbooted thugs have been taking to the streets, punching people in the face, smashing up their campuses in temper tantrums, setting fires, and generally acting exactly like the goosestepping authoritarians they are in order to stop people from saying anything that they don’t think people should be able to say anymore.

This latest expression of the ctrl-left doesn’t particularly worry me. I can take physical violence. I can take being punched in the face, or maced, or beaten with a club. I would consider it an honor, actually. Make my day.

What does worry me are the online Social Justice Warriors in the ctrl-left who have nothing better to do with their lives, apparently, than to seek new ways to punish people for wrongthink.

I work in academia. Tenured professors cannot get fired for refusing to attend their own classes for two years, but tenured professors have been fired for daring to injure the precious emotions of the ctrl-left. I’m a mere, lowly teaching assistant. I could lose my job, or be dismissed from school. I could be made unhirable in colleges and tech companies.

If my speech offends the wrong person, they could look to dig up all kinds of stuff on me.

It wouldn’t even be very hard to dig up stuff on me. For most of my life, I was a pretty terrible jerk. Just ask anyone who knew me in high school. Since high school, I have been slightly tolerable. If you had nothing to do but look for reasons to say crap about me, you could find crap to say about me. And the ctrl-left has absolutely nothing else to do.

But even if they can’t find dirt on me, the very act of disagreeing with their orthodoxy is a firable offense. They have power in universities and companies to crush whoever displeases them; and not only do they have it, but they use it.

I know this, so I generally go about my day and just grit my teeth and keep my mouth shut. My fellow students don’t have to keep their mouths shut, because they affirm the accepted dogmata of our thought guardians.

I let them talk and express opinions I disagree with and laugh at people who think the exact things I think and endorse ideologies I completely reject and say nothing, because I just want to get out of here alive, get my PhD, and maybe once I have a job I can rely on, maybe then I’ll be able to breathe again.

And the crux of the story is that I’m just sick of it. I am sick and tired of shutting up. I am done with being expected to receive with full docility the ramblings of this tumblr magisterium. I’m tired of feeling like I can’t speak my mind without retaliation and blowback, while others can express their politics unafraid.

I’m done. I’m done being shut up.

Realistically, I can probably expect nothing. I’m probably over-worrying myself. It’s unlikely anyone will really take notice. It’s an indoor event with a few dozen speakers, and who really wants to attend a meeting like that unless you’re speaking? Local news might pick it up, and they might run two seconds of my three minute speech (probably selectively edited to make it sound like I’m saying something completely opposite of what I’m saying), and then that’s probably it. Maybe some person I know might notice and say something, maybe a student would say they heard I spoke or something, but that’s about it.

In a rational universe, maybe that’s all there needs to be about it. I can just say what I think, people can hear it and agree or disagree with it, we can have back-and-forth, and then we go on our merry ways.

But this is not a rational universe, so who knows what I can expect.

(Authors’s Note and General Disclaimer: These are not the only two groups of people with opinions in this country. There are people opposed to the monument who are not part of the ctrl-left and who want civil dialogue and peaceful protest to lead the change. There are people in favor of the monument who are neither white supremacists nor part of the alt-right, and who want all people to be treated with the dignity due all human individuals. There are people on the left who also champion free speech, such as the ACLU, because free speech is not a partisan concern but the birthright of humanity. I know these people exist, because I know them; they are my family and friends and neighbors. With all of these people, I hope to see the American spirit of passionate but nonviolent engagement in the marketplace of ideas continue to drive political discourse. To the ctrl-left and alt-right, I pray that God has mercy on you and grants you repentance from your hatred, violence, and folly.)