Home // 2015 // October

How Dare You Use Logical Thought at a Time Like This!

Bath School Disaster/Public Domain photo from Wikimedia Commons

Bath School Disaster/Public Domain photo from Wikimedia Commons

If you’re looking for a sociology experiment in fear-driven policy, the current frenzy of calls from some quarters for more restrictions on personal ownership of firearms is a good example. Not that I enjoy marinating in it, but it’s a good example. I walked away from a “debate” the other day with a woman who told me to get my “head out of [my] ass” if I thought mass shootings are not becoming more common, talked about how afraid people like her are, and said she was “tired of statistics” and just wanted to get something done, as if invoking feelz is the ultimate trump card in a conversation.

Because for her, and many people like her, it is. All that matters is raw, animal emotion.

Fore the record, to evoke tired statistics and inconvenient facts, mass attacks are not on the rise, while violent crime continues to decline and is less common in the United States than in (supposedly safer) Europe. Mass killers tend to be very deliberate and long-term planners, plotting their actions according to the situation. They do not share an as-of-yet easily distinguished psychological profile, and rarely have criminal records. This means they’re hard to detect and deter, and they’ll take existing precautions as a given and work around them. Anders Behring Breivik reportedly plotted for almost a decade, starting a farming business to acquire fertilizer for explosives, and negotiating all of Norway’s legal hoops to purchase firearms.

One more law won’t fix that. To which I hear: you’re saying there’s nothing we can do; there must be something we can do. Well, yes. But “we” will have to do it ourselves. Nobody can protect us by waving a wand or passing a law.

But guns are scary.

So are knives when a mass attack in China (where blades are the weapons of choice) kills 33 people at a train station. The weapon is a choice–the real danger is the intent of the attacker(s) and the passivity of those victims and bystanders who are physically capable of reacting to defend themselves and others.

And guns and knives are going nowhere. Gun restrictions have never elicited much in the way of compliance, anywhere. New York’s recent assault weapon registration law drew in about 5 percent obedience from gun owners. Such weapons are increasingly easy to manufacture at home, even by those with minimal skills.

In a horrible way, we should be thankful mass attackers usually confine themselves to personal weapons. The worst school attack in U.S. history remains the Bath School Disaster, planned over many months by the disgruntled school board treasurer and perpetrated with dynamite. Thirty-eight people died.

The Happy Land fire killed 87 people after the jilted boyfriend of a coat check girl at the social club torched the place with a jug of gasoline.

And then there’s the Oklahoma City bombing and 9/11, both horrors committed with unconventional weapons by people who put a lot of time and planning into their crimes.

This all reminds me of what security expert Bruce Schneier has said in the context of travel security: “Exactly two things have made airline travel safer since 9/11: reinforcement of cockpit doors, and passengers who now know that they may have to fight back.” Everything else is “security theater” that violates innocent people’s liberty while doing nothing to deter bad actors who just work around checkpoints and restrictions.

Mass attacks strike me as being much the same: Hard to detect, perpetrated by malicious people who tailor their plans to the situation, and requiring a willingness to react by the intended targets without waiting for “the authorities” to show up. There’s no easy fix, and rejecting rational thought in favor of indulging fear won’t accomplish a damned thing.

In Defense of ‘Seditious Traitors’

The Constitution should be up and running again in no time

The Siege (1998)

Not long ago, a poll by the British outfit YouGov purported to demonstrate that roughly a third of Americans could imagine a scenario under which they would support a military coup against the U.S. government. I say “purported” because any question that asks respondents if they “can imagine” a scenario is dependent for its results on whatever alien invasion scenarios or political fever dreams people might cook up. Still, YouGov did come up with some interesting data:

The proportion of the country that would support a military takeover increases when people are asked whether they would hypothetically support the military stepping in to take control from a civilian government which is beginning to violate the constitution. 43% of Americans would support the military stepping in while 29% would be opposed.

And we have headlines! Or at least a press release to send around — which YouGov did.

An acquaintance promptly sent around an article about the poll, prompting this odd response by an old college classmate: “Interesting. Nearly 1/3 of Americans are seditious traitors? I find that surprising and alarming.”

I suggested that the problem might be a government that alienates huge swathes of the population, and that throwing names at the ticked off recipients to a survey wasn’t helpful.

Calling them seditious traitors is the literal truth. They support overthrowing the government, which would make them traitors, and since they’re ‘supporting’ it, I presume that means encouraging it, which is sedition. No hyperbole there.

I wasn’t getting anywhere. So I transitioned to explaining the legal requirements for treason and sedition charges under U.S. law, and that he might have a hard time making charges stick.

So we never got around to an important point: Even if he’d been right that “nearly 1/3 of Americans are seditious traitors,” would that have been the damning condemnation that he intended? Or just a description?

What is “sedition“?  It’s “overt conduct, such as speech and organization, that tends toward insurrection against the established order.” Likewise, “treason” is a more extreme point along the same continuum: “‘…[a]…citizen’s actions to help a foreign government overthrow, make war against, or seriously injure the [parent nation].’ In many nations, it is also often considered treason to attempt or conspire to overthrow the government, even if no foreign country is aiding or involved by such an endeavor.’

In both cases, you can definitely see why governments would dislike sedition and treason, but they’re not like murder and rape, which are inherently wrong. The moral content of an act of sedition or treason is entirely dependent on the quality of its target. If a government is good, working to overthrow it is morally wrong; if it’s evil, committing sedition and treason against it might constitute your righteous deed for the decade.

Presumably, people contemplating seditious treason against the government have lost respect for the institution and think it might need to be tossed out. Pointing out their seditious, treasonous ways isn’t a criticism; it’s just a description. They’re potential revolutionaries intending to replace a government they dislike with one they think will be better.

You know, like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and company.

This poses a problem for people like, I’ve come to realize, my old classmate, who personally identify with the state. They believe, like Bernie Sanders, that “The government, in a democratic society, is the people” and that if you resent intrusive officials in any way “You’re assuming that the government is some kind of foreign entity.” To them, to challenge the state is to challenge their sense of selves. That strikes me as freaky to the point of pathology, but it explains responding to the YouGov poll with charges of “treason” rather than a more reasonable, “I’m having trouble imaging a committee of colonels as a better alternative to anything.”

But much of the population does see government as an “other.” When it offends us, we no longer want to be subject to its abuses. That doesn’t mean that every “solution” somebody answering a survey might imagine is an improvement. But it does mean that contemplating something other than the political status quo is not a bad thing.