Following Up: Still No Signs That Abortion, Guns — or January 6th — Are Democratic Midterms Lifesavers

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abortion, Biden, Buffalo shooting, Democrats, Donald Trump, election 2022, election 2024, Following Up, gun control, January 6 committee, mass shootings, midterms 2022, polls, RealClearPolitics.com, Republicans, Roe v. Wade, SCOTUS, Supreme Court, Uvalde shooting

Since early May, American politics has been rocked by the kinds of major shocks that I can’t recall coming so fast and furiously since at least the Nixon impeachment summer of 1974, and maybe since the spring of 1968 — when the Vietnam War’s Tet Offensive led to Lyndon Johnson’s withdrawal from that year’s presidential race,and was followed by the assassinations of civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King and New York Democratic Senator Robert F. Kennedy (for starters).

The last two months of this year alone have been marked by the leaked draft and final release of the Supreme Court ruling that ended nearly fifty years of a national right to an abortion, two appalling mass shootings (one racially motivated in Buffalo, New York, and one of school children in Uvalde, Texas), and televised Congressional hearings that have bombarded the nation with reminders of both the disgraceful January 6^th Capitol attack and former President Donald Trump’s reckless behavior that day.

On net, these developments would seem to damage Republicans’ chances of an midterms election landslide of epic proportions this November. As I’ve noted, even though the abortion developments could motivate heavily Republican anti-choice voters, too, the overturning of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision at least gave Democrats one reason for optimism where none could plausibly be detected – because everything we know about public opinion tells us that Americans decisively favor keeping Roe. (The same arguments hold for mass shootings, IMO, as do poll results on gun control).

But at the end of May, I reported the absence of polling evidence that the guns and abortion issues were turning the tide. Now, a month later, they — along with the January 6th Committee hearings — still haven’t shown any midterms lifesaving potential for the Democrats. In fact, some survey measures suggest that the Republican position has strengthened somewhat.

As often, my sources are the averages of poll results compiled and updated on an ongoing basis by RealClearPolitics.com. Let’s start with an important indicator of midterm outcomes – presidential popularity.

The Politico.com scoop on the Supreme Court abortion draft leak appeared the evening of May 2, so May 3 seems like the baseline to use for measuring how the aforementioned news shocks have changed midterms prospects.

On May 3, according to the RealClearPolitics average, President Biden was underwater in terms of job approval ratings by 10.5 percentage points. As of today, the share of Americans admiring his performance in the White House stood at 38.4 percent and the share giving him thumbs downs was 56.9 percent. So his net negatives have nearly doubled, to 18.5 percentage points. In addition, that gap is only slightly narrower than the record 19.5 percentage points registered just yesterday.

And worse for the President, and his party: His popularity has deteriorated both because his approval ratings are as of today (38.4 percent) just off their all-time low and the disapproval numbers (56.9 percent) are just shy of their all-time high (both also set yesterday).

Pollsters also offer respondents a “generic Congressional ballot” – asking them whether they’d be likelier to cast ballots for Democratic or Republican candidates for House and Senate whoever the specific candidates on their ballots are. Although it deals with the elections that will actually determine which party winds up with majorities on both ends of Capitol Hill, its readings need to be viewed with caution because Congressional elections aren’t national but state-by-state and district-by-district. In fact, because of the Constitution’s approach to apportioning Senate and House seats, Republicans enjoy a built-in edge here, meaning that at least when it comes to the generic ballot, Democrats need to be winning by several percentage points to justify election day optimism.

According to RealClearPolitics, they’ve made some progress since May 3, but still have a ways to go.

The day after the Supreme Court leak, Republicans led the Dems by this measure by 4.1 percentage points. By May 29, that margin had shrunk all the way down to 1.5 percentage points. But as of today, though, it’s back up to 2.2 percentage points, and has remained stable overall since June 5.

Finally, and perhaps most discouraging for the Democrats given their efforts to portray most Republicans as backers of an extremist, Trump-y “ultra MAGA” agenda, the former President continues to lead Mr. Biden in polls asking about a head-to-head match-up in 2024. The website doesn’t post averages over time – just a single average figure that shows a Trump lead of 1.8 percentage points as of today.

Changes revealed in individual surveys can be interpreted as either favorable or unfavorable to President Biden depending on your baseline starting date. Specifically, in late April (just before the Politico leak), two polls showed him leading his predecessor by one and two percentage points. So since then, the President has lost ground. But a mid-May survey reported a three percentage point Trump lead. So since then, Mr. Biden has gained ground, though he’s still behind.

What does seem fair to say, though, is that no polls report any burgeoning public disenchantment with Trump since recent events that can credibly be argued have placed him, his views on gun control, and the Supreme Court Justices he appointed, in more negative lights. And revealingly, the latest set of Biden-Trump election results, in this Emerson (Massachusetts) College survey, showed Trump with his biggest edge (five percentage points) since late March – even though it was conducted the day of former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson’s explosive anti-Trump testimony before the January 6^th Committee, and the day after.

All of these trends could easily reverse themselves in the months remaining before November – if only because more politically charged shocks could easily be in store. In addition, voters’ views on the recent shocks could grow more intense and likelier to influence their voting. (Here’s some new evidence for that proposition.)

But what seems most striking to me at this point is how stable the polls have been despite the recent string of arguably pro-Democratic bombshells – and consequently how dim their November prospects remain.

Im-Politic: The Court’s New Abortion Decision is Egregiously Wrong Itself

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abortion, abortion rights, Constitution, Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, gun control, Im-Politic, Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, privacy, Roe v. Wade, Supreme Court

The Supreme Court has finally decided to overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling supporting a Constitutional right to an abortion based on the majority’s vigorously argued position that “Roe was…egregiously wrong and on a collision course with the Constitution from the day it was decided” and that the follow-on 1992 Casey decision “perpetuated its errors.”

Maybe so, but at least based largely on the official summary (the Syllabus) of today’s ruling released by the Court, the six Justices who backed the Dobbs v. Jackson (Mississippi) Women’s Health Organization decision expressed some views themselves about what government can and can’t regulate that look pretty internally contradictory at first glance and that seem – eggregiously – at variance with ideas about Americans’ liberties that – to quote a legal standard they cite – are “deeply rooted in [our] history and tradition” and “essential to this Nation’s ‘scheme of ordered liberty.’”

Perhaps first and foremost, the Dobbs ruling states that “the authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people and their elected representatives.” And at least since a draft of the decision making this point was leaked in May, any number of pro-life supporters have argued that rescinding the right to an abortion by no means amounts to a nation-wide ban on the practice, and that states will remain perfectly free to keep or enact permissive abortion policies.

But in Dobbs, the Court has also called abortion a “critical moral question” because it “destroys what Roe termed ‘potential life’ and what the law challenged in this case calls an ‘unborn human being.’” Today’s Dobbs decision emphasizes this point in order to insist that their judgement poses no intrinsic challenge to other rights concerning highly personal behaviors, like the availability of birth control or gay marriage – which presumably don’t rise to abortion’s level.

All of which raises the question: If abortion is in a morality class by itself because of its devastating effects on the unborn, why do the six Justices supporting the Dobbs decision believe that states should have the any authority to regulate it? What satisfactory definition of morality could permit such a uniquely heinous practice to be permitted anywhere in the United States? Why, indeed, should it not be banned nationally – with or without whatever exceptions this or future Courts happen to allow.

In fact, contrary to the majority’s views, today’s Dobbs decision leaves in place many of the gravest threats to Americans’ freedom from government’s reach that appeared to receive support in the leaked draft version. Principally, the Court has now affirmed that not only does the Constitution grant no right to an abortion. It also holds that there’s no right to privacy having to do with the freedom to make “intimate and personal choices” that are “central to personal dignity and autonomy.”

To be sure, the six Justices in the majority correctly contend that no Constitutionally granted rights are absolute, observing that this founding document creates a system of “ordered liberty” that “sets limits and defines the boundary between competing interests” – and also, by extension, between competing rights, since many regularly clash with each other in real life.

But if the American system of government and law aren’t distinguished fundamentally by the assumption that a substantial burden of proof lies with government for infringing on the freedom to make “intimate and personal choices” related to “personal dignity and autonomy,” then it’s difficult to imagine fundamentally what it is distinguished by. In other words, if you can’t find something like a “right to privacy” in the Constitution, you’re not looking very hard.

And ironically, just yesterday, the Court supported this kind of argument when it struck down New York State’s “concealed carry” gun control law. That majority argued that this statute unconstitutionally “required law-abiding, responsible citizens to ‘demonstrate a special need for self-protection distinguishable from that of the general community’ to carry arms in public.” That is, an excessive burden of proof was placed on ordinary Americans, when it should belong to government. Why shouldn’t this kind of reasoning apply to abortion?

Finally, how can anyone believe that “a State’s regulation of abortion is not a sex-based classification” that “violates the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause?” What men does the Dobbs majority believe will be affected by its decision? And how can these Justices reject the – inevitably gender-based — logic of the Casey decision’s statement that

“The Roe rule’s limitation on state power could not be repudiated without serious inequity to people who, for two decades of economic and social developments, have organized intimate relationships and made choices that define their views of themselves and their places in society, in reliance on the availability of abortion in the event that contraception should fail. The ability of women to participate equally in the economic and social life of the Nation has been facilitated by their ability to control their reproductive lives”?

One claim made by many Dobbs supporters is true — the practical, on-the-ground effects of the decision will be limited for the time being , mainly because the total numbers of legal U.S. abortions have been falling significantly in the last three decades, and because practically all of these have taken place during a pregnancy’s first trimester. (See here for the data.) Interestingly, that’s after Mississippi’s proposed abortion near-ban would go into effect.

Moreover, some other so-called “trigger laws” will allow abortions early in pregnancies, too. But others (see, e.g., here) will significantly narrow this window (even outlawing the procedure before most women even know they’re carrying), and in some of these and others, the lack of exceptions for instances of rape and incest, for example, are truly abhorrent. And now with Dobbs the law of the land, who knows what other outrages may lie in store?      

At one point the Dobbs ruling, the majority wrote that “In interpreting what is meant by ‘liberty,’ the Court must guard against the natural human tendency to confuse what the Fourteenth Amendment protects with the Court’s own ardent
views about the liberty that Americans should enjoy.”  As far as I’m concerned, that advice about leaving personal beliefs out of judicial decisions is a vitally important rule of thumb across the legal board, and as indicated by the above examples of tortured reasoning in today’s abortion rights decision, it’s one the Dobbs majority just threw under the bus.    

Im-Politic: The Mysteries Behind Mass Shootings Keep Growing

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Andrew R. Morral, crime, Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, gun control, gun violence, homicides, Im-Politic, mass shootings, RAND Corporation, school shootings, The Globe and Mail

Mysteries continue to abound about mass shootings like the recent atrocities in Buffalo, New York and Uvalde, Texas. Chiefly, as I’ve previously noted, for most of its history, the United States was even more awash with guns than today. Yet Buffalo- and Uvalde-type shootings — the kinds of gun violence perpetrated by individuals against innocents completely unknown to them – are very recent phenomena.

Yesterday, thanks to my friend, the political commentator Mickey Kaus, I came across several more, in the form of a graphics feature from the Canadian daily, The Globe and Mail, and especially, the combined, and deeply confusing, story that seems to be told by charts four and five (below).

Let’s start with the chart on the bottom, chart five, which shows U.S. “Firearm-related homicides per 100,000 people, by county (2001–2020).” Unfortunately, the individual state names don’t show up on this reproduction, but as the original makes clear, the swathes of the country with by far the most gun-related homicides are Alaska, Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, and North and South Carolina. They’re the states with the biggest concentrations of dark brown counties (which signify the areas with the highest rates of such gun violence), along with big cities like Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Detroit, and Chicago, which show up as little dark brown dots.

Moreover, according to the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, which is an ardent supporter of stronger gun control laws, the states mentioned above have all earned failing grades in terms of gun control measures – except for North Carolina, which merited a “C.”

So it’s easy to conclude that the above states are those where it’s easiest to get a gun – and where guns’ prevalence is most dangerous because they’re also logically the states with the biggest relative numbers of residents likely to use these weapons with deadly results.

Now, however, look at chart four, which illustrates “Deaths in mass shootings since 1982, by location [and] type.” The bigger the circle, the higher the numbers of fatalities that have resulted from each of these incidents. And what I see is that, with the (possible) exception of the Carolinas, those states with the highest levels of firearms homicides adjusted for population have suffered scarcely any mass shootings of any kind, and only one mass school shooting (depicted with grayish-blue circles) – in Arkansas.

Viewed from the opposite perspective, look at the states with the biggest concentrations of mass shootings of all types. They look very much like California, Texas, Florida, and New York. Just behind them are New York, Colorado, and Georgia, along with the D.C. area and the Chicago area.

Yet going back to the homicide chart, you can see that California, Texas, Florida, Colorado, and New York seem pretty tranquil on this front, with Georgia standing as an exception. (It’s true that Texas contains big areas of gray, where no data is supposedly available. But can anyone reasonably doubt that if these regions were homicide-heavy, we would know about it?)

Even more puzzling: The Gifford Center awards an “A” on gun control laws to California, Colorado, and New York, a “C” to Florida, and the aforementioned “F” to Texas.

These and other ongoing mysteries and paradoxes further convince me of the argument most recently advanced by Andrew R. Morral, who heads the Gun Policy in America research project at the RAND Corporation, a leading think tank: that “although some laws that reduce gun violence in general may also reduce mass shooting” (for example, restrictions on magazine capacity) “It’s an unfortunate fact that mass shootings are sufficiently rare that it is hard to establish with scientific rigor whether policies affect them….”

 

 

Im-Politic: Gun Sense Urgently Needed in Chicago

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Chicago, crime, gun control, gun violence, guns, Illinois, Im-Politic, Lori Lightfoot, Ted Cruz

That was some Twitter exchange Monday between Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz and new Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot! Not only was it scorching (especially on Lightfoot’s part), but it was crucially important for clarifying a major problem with how Americans have been debating the issue of gun violence and what to do about it.

The problem concerns how to classify the kind of gun violence that has plagued low-income neighborhoods in big cities like Chicago for so long, and therefore how best to reduce it, and here’s why Cruz emerges as a clear winner.

Right after a Labor Day weekend in the Windy City that saw 41 shootings that resulted in seven deaths, Cruz took to social media to tweet

“Gun control doesn’t work. Look at Chicago. Disarming law-abiding citizens isn’t the answer. Stopping violent criminals—prosecuting & getting them off the street—BEFORE they commit more violent crimes is the most effective way to reduce murder rates. Let’s protect our citizens.”

Lightfoot was incensed. Her response:

“60% of illegal firearms recovered in Chicago come from outside IL—mostly from states dominated by coward Republicans like you who refuse to enact commonsense gun legislation. Keep our name out of your mouth.”

And she backed up her claim with a graphic.  (See this post for both tweets.)

But here‘s what Lightfoot overlooked: Let’s grant her apparent assumption that the share of these out-of-state guns that have been seized in the city roughly matches their share of Chicago’s total illegal gun supply. Let’s also grant her apparent assumption that better gun laws could actually reduce this supply meaningfully. Even so, it would still be a humongous stretch to conclude that Chicago would become significantly more peaceful.

Just look at these numbers: Chicago’s 2.71 million population came to just over 21 percent of the Illinois total as of last year. But according to the latest (2016) figures, Chicago’s homicide rate of 27.7 per 100,000 residents was 355 percent higher than Illinois’ homicide rate of 7.8 percent per 100,000 residents.

Even more striking: In 2016, 997 murders took place in Illinois that year. Of those, more than 76 percent (762) occurred in Chicago. That is, the number of murders in the city was nearly four times greater than what you’d expect if such violent crimes happened uniformly throughout the state. If out-of-state guns were the main problem, you’d expect their effects to be spread much more evenly, if not perfectly evenly.

What the Lightfoot-Cruz debate boils down to is the former’s claim that Chicago’s main gun violence-related problem has relatively little to do with Chicago, and the latter’s claim that something about Chicago matters critically – including in terms of attracting the out-of-state guns responsible for such an outsized share of Illinois murders. The data not only clearly vindicate Cruz. They powerfully remind that the term “gun violence” nowadays is too often used in America to describe a wide variety of behaviors, and that many of them aren’t remotely likely to be solved solely or mainly with tighter gun laws.

Im-Politic: The Adolescents’ Crusade

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Establishment Media, Florida school shooting, gun control, guns, Im-Politic, mass shootings, mental health, National Rifle Association, NRA, opioids, Parkland, school security, school shootings

How to say this delicately, without coming off as a callous old fogey? Those stunningly eloquent and impassioned Parkland, Florida students who survived Valentine’s Day’s appalling massacre, and Americans of all ages flocking to the anti-gun violence movement they’re creating, are unintentionally giving their compatriots a reminder of why we don’t let high school-ers run the country.

Although my life has never been in danger from any source, and I have never had to attend burials of dozens of my peers within days, I have no difficulty understanding why anyone with these experiences, and especially impressionable young people (yes, a cliché, but no less true for it), would want to do everything possible to make sure that they and no one like them suffers this ordeal again. Further, who can blame them for trying to shame politicians and others into supporting their various favored policy responses (which appear to focus on tighter gun restrictions and to a lesser extent on improving mental health care), and threaten those office-holders who they believe oppose their desired gun curbs in order to keep their National Rifle Association (NRA) campaign contributions flowing?

Improvements on all fronts, including gun accessibility, obviously can and should be made. For example, I’m impressed with proposals to set 21 as the minimum age for any gun ownership. And closing the “Charleston loophole” in the national background check system? Absolutely. And these on top of the other measures I blogged about last Wednesday – including tighter school security along with longer-term measures to provide better and more comprehensive mental health care and, maybe most important of all, whatever changes are needed to transform a culture that has so slighted family and community, and has so glorified so many forms of instant gratification – including violence.

But the Parkland students whose tough demands and often strident statements have attracted the most attention are going to run into a big obstacle as they seek political and policy change – which of course they have every right to do. They’re going to find out that, as important as preventing or reducing the number of school and other mass shootings undeniably is, it’s not the only problem facing the nation. Arguably it’s not the gravest problem facing the nation. More important, that’s what the vast majority of Americans to date believe.

The proof, in this case, is in the polling. We’ve had a few surveys that gauged public opinion in the immediate aftermath of Parkland, and they do contain good news for the students and others pushing for more effective gun control. For example, a Washington Post-ABC News poll found 50 percent-46 percent support for a national assault weapons ban, and agreement by a 58 percent to 37 percent margin that the Florida high school shooting could “have been prevented by stricter gun laws.”

But the far more important results – and the ones that politicians will be zeroing in on – make clear that, even when memories of Parkland couldn’t have been fresher, Americans have recognized the importance of other priorities, too. Specifically, a CBS News sounding asked respondents the following question:

“In this year’s Congressional elections, how important will the issue of gun laws be to your vote – will it be the single most important issue, will be important but so will other issues, or will it not be important to you?”

The results? Only 18 percent described gun issues as their most important. Seventy percent said it was one of numerous priorities. Even 72 percent of Democrats, who most strongly favor tougher gun laws, agreed with this proposition.

A Quinnipiac University survey reported much the same. It asked respondent, “If you agreed with a political candidate on other issues, but not on the issue of gun laws, could you still vote for that candidate, or not?”

By a 54 percent to 34 percent, respondents said that they could support a candidate regardless of their gun laws stance. Forty-two percent of Democrats and 55 percent of independents agreed.

And before you start throwing a fit, if you think about it, this perspective is entirely justified. Consider the following: According to an organization that runs a “Mass Shooting Tracker,” 590 Americans last year died in such incidents. And this database defines mass shootings relatively broadly – as incidents in which at least four people are shot (as opposed to at least four killed). Everyone of good faith should agree that that’s 590 too many.

But here’s the human toll of another national problem: opioid addiction. According to the federal Center for Disease Control, in 2016 (the latest figures available), 63,600 Americans died of overdoses from such drugs. Fatalities are growing fastest, moreover, among Americans in the 15-24 years age group.

To be completely and emphatically clear, I am not depicting any of these other national challenges as excuses for business-as-usual about school and other mass shootings. We rightly expect our elected leaders to walk and chew gum at the same time. Instead, I’m observing that, as the Parkland students seeking to concentrate Americans’ attention tightly on these issues wade into national politics, they’ll (continue to) discover not only that there are reasonable arguments on the other side that so far have convinced people who are not moral monsters and who do not have “blood on their hands,” but that there are plenty of other fish in that sea. And many are not only just as big. They’re just as virtuous.

P.S. – recognizing this perspective goes double for most of the Establishment Media members who have covered this story.  For unlike the Parkland students, they don’t deserve any slack. Because they’re supposed to be adults.     

 

Im-Politic: Gunsense

Tags

Florida school shooting, gun control, guns, Im-Politic, mental health, open campuses, Parkland, school security, school shootings, Trump

Monday’s post on the Parkland, Florida high school shooting generated some vigorous debate both in RealityChek‘s comments section and on other social media platforms on which it was posted. And since for the foreseeable future, we’ll all rightly be discussing this tragedy and how to prevent or cut the number of repeats, here are some further thoughts, in no particular order.

First, I have no credentials as a moral or any other kind of philosopher, but it strikes me that President Trump’s characterization of the shooting as an “evil massacre” misses the point, and in fact clashes with his focus on dealing with the gun violence issue largely through improving the nation’s mental health system. For nothing could be more obvious to me, anyway, than that Nikolas Cruz is an example of a deeply disturbed, and probably broken, individual, not a villain. Of course, that’s not to excuse his actions, but can anyone seriously doubt that he fits the description made – and pretty compelling so, in my opinion – in the President’s initial post-Parkland remarks of children “who feel lost, alone, confused or even scared,” and who need to know that “You have people who care about you, who love you, and who will do anything at all to protect you”?

Second, despite the clear mental health dimension of the school shootings problem, no one should assume that even massive action on this front will solve or even ease it any time soon. After all, therapy is an imperfect science at best. When it succeeds, it tends to work slowly. It’s especially difficult with youth who don’t fully buy in – which young people in need almost by definition tend to resist, at least at first. (The same of course applies to adults.) Requiring suspects to submit to treatment necessarily entails curbs on their individual rights, and therefore a society that prizes such rights naturally sets relatively high bars. Incidentally, these rights considerations apparently greatly slowed the process of transferring Cruz from a regular public school to a special school for kids with serious psychological issues.

I have no doubt that expanding the treatment system will solve some of these problems, and that it’s possible to somewhat ease the barriers to mandatory treatment, and to improve the communications among schools, law enforcement, and social service agencies tasked with identifying “red flag” situations. But I’m also impressed by the conclusion of this California mental health professional that “Even if all potential mass shooters did get psychiatric care, there is no reliable cure for angry young men who harbor violent fantasies.” (I disagree with her claim that “mental illness is rarely the cause” of mass shootings due to my aforementioned belief that committing violence on this scale, especially against the innocent victims of these attacks, is prima facie evidence of mental illness.)

Third, I strongly disagree with calls responding to the school shooting outbreak by arming teachers or school administrators. Even if these educators were experienced with firearms, the vast majority surely would have no experience conducting what could well wind up being protracted gunfights. Moreover, in order to succeed, schools would have to be harboring lots of guns. Even if virtually all were securely stored virtually all the time, the inevitability of exceptions creates the possibility of discharges, accidental or not, by students, along with serious injuries or fatalities.

There’s obviously a real school problem with school security, but it overwhelmingly entails overly easy access to campus by outsiders, and by enrolled students carrying guns. So the best response would seem to be ending the practice of open campuses, and monitoring and restricting access via limited numbers of entrances and exits and professional armed security guards who would be authorized to search any students or visitors. In principal, students could still be exposed to shooters during outdoor recess periods, but other armed guards could be regularly patrolling schools’ perimeters.

For those concerned that the nation’s private security services couldn’t be trusted to handle these responsibilities because their own profit motives would bring onto school grounds too many guards with threadbare training or dicey backgrounds, the National Guard could be made available. Alternatively, taxes could be raised to enable local police forces to get the job done adequately.

None of these insights or measures would address the social and cultural problems I emphasized Monday. But they do hold the promise of saving lives, and at an eminently reasonable cost – i.e., of making sure that the perfect isn’t made the enemy of the good.

Im-Politic: Listen Closely to the Florida Students

Tags

adolescence, families, Florida school shooting, gun control, guns, Im-Politic, mass shootings, mental health, Nikolas Cruz, Peggy Noonan, pop culture, Ron Powers, school shootings, The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal

As I’ve written before, the upsurge in school shootings and other mass shootings in America must surely stem from multiple causes. Aspects of U.S. gun laws clearly are defective. But broader social and cultural trends are at work as well.

The student survivors of last week’s Florida school shootings who are demanding that their elders more effectively protect them and their generation – and of course all other potential victims – deserve major credit not only for the passion and eloquence with which they are pressing the case, but for recognizing that better mental health care is essential along with better ways of keeping guns from the other Nikolas Cruz’s in U.S. classrooms.

Nonetheless, there’s a gap between their clear prioritization of gun control on the policy level, evident in their anger at the National Rifle Association, and an emotion that seems much more elemental – and compelling. Moreover, it’s doubtful that any single new law or set of new laws will make a major difference on this particular front. Consider the following statements:

>From a student survivor: “We had been doing drills on this in the past month. In every single class period, my teachers had gone through safety protocols. We have safety zones, we have protocols for every single emergency….”

>From another student survivor: “If our legislators don’t take action, how can we ever feel safe?” (Same source.)

>From that same survivor: “…I will not feel safe going back to school myself until reasonable mental health care legislation and gun control legislation is passed. Because, at this point, it’s unacceptable. How many more students are going to have to die and have their blood spilt in American classrooms, trying to make the world a better place just because politicians refuse to take action?” (

>From a student at a neighboring school: “I’ve seen these shootings happen my whole life. I’ve grown up with them. I remember Sandy Hook. I remember every single one.” (Same source as the second quote.)

It’s painfully obvious, at least to me, that what we’re being told here is that these young people are literally terrified that the kid sitting next to them, or the one sitting alone at the far end of the lunchroom, or the one who was just expelled, or one of the aimless, surly slightly older kids or twenty-somethings hanging around the neighborhood or the mall, literally is a ticking time bomb capable of exploding at any times. Moreover, the adults who have raised them and teach them are alarmed by these threats, too.  And these (all too believable) fears reinforce can’t help but reenforce the contention that something terrible has happened in America in recent decades that has turned entirely too many adolescent boys in particular into actual or potential killing machines.

Columnist Peggy Noonan made this point with her characteristic common sense and eloquence in The Wall Street Journal last week. It’s definitely worth your while. (For the record, however, I’m not entirely convinced about the abortion point.) And if you think such claims are simply right-wing talking points, take a look at this 2002 piece in The Atlantic – no conservative stronghold.

As I’ve written, it’s absolutely true that school and other mass shootings don’t happen in other high-income countries where young people are exposed to the same kind of toxic pop culture that prevails in the United States (although where the breakdown or family and community haven’t been nearly so advanced?) – which strongly supports the belief that tighter gun control is the key to stopping them or dramatically reducing the numbers. But it’s also true that these tragedies were much rarer earlier in American history, when guns were much more widespread.

So again, I strongly applaud the activism of the Florida students. I hope it doesn’t fade. I hope it helps shame American leaders into taking more productive action. But I also hope the students, their peers, and other Americans start asking more persistently not only why so many young people can so easily buy or otherwise access shockingly destructive weapons, but why they want to.

Im-Politic: First Thoughts on Orlando

Tags

2016 election, Donald Trump, gun control, Hillary Clinton, homeland security, homophobia, Im-Politic, Islamic terrorism, LGBT, Muslims, Obama, Orlando, Orlando attacks, radical Islam, terrorism

We’re still learning about many of the specifics surrounding the horrific Orlando shootings early this morning, but some facts are now clear, and warrant some preliminary thoughts and observations.

First, we now have confirmation from the FBI of a link between killer Omar Mateen and Islamic terrorism. Until a press conference held in Orlando by Florida state and local officials and Bureau agents, the media had been filled with reports – some claiming to be from eyewitnesses – that Mateen had shouted “Allahu Akbar,” a phrase often heard during attacks and on other occasions from ISIS and other Islamic terrorists and extremists.  Other connections were mentioned in the press as well.

But these accounts were simply reports – and especially in the immediate aftermath of an event, reports can be completely inaccurate or misleading. Even ISIS’ claim of responsibility for this atrocity isn’t necessarily definitive proof of a radical Islam angle. Such announcements can be made simply for propaganda purposes.

At the press conference, though, at a little after 3:15 in the afternoon local time, FBI agent Ron Hopper stated that during his call to 9-11 before the attack, Mateen made comments that were “general to the Islamic State.”

Second, it’s now a little after 4 PM, EST, and there’s been nothing from President Obama or the White House on this now unmistakable Islamic terrorist connection. Yet just before 2 in the afternoon, Mr. Obama felt comfortable blaming inadequate gun control in part for the shooting. Based on what was known at the time, I don’t blame him for not rushing to judgment on ISIS et al. But in my view, he does deserve blame for seizing on the opportunity to advance a political view that is anything but obviously central to this incident.

He also deserves blame for waiting so long to go back before the nation and discussing the Islam issue – specially Orlando’s implications for his policy of open-arms welcomes for Middle East refugees, and for his determination (expressed most recently last week) to vilify Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s insistence that Islam and its adherents pose special problems for homeland security that require special approaches.

Third, ever since Trump became the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, it’s been clear to me that his rise to the presidency could be little more than one major domestic or Europe terrorist attack away. Now we have the attack. It will be fascinating to see what the polls tell us about its effect on his candidacy. (Keeping in mind of course how flawed they remain as measures of public opinion.)

Similarly, his likely Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, has enthusiastically heaped Obama-like scorn on Trump’s emphasis on the extremist Muslim threat to homeland security. Today, she’s already beaten the president to the punch in linking the Orlando attack to “international terror groups.” But her failure to refer to Islam signals her continuing unwillingness to acknowledge its prominence in global terrorism and therefore a homeland security issue – now more than ever at least partly for fear of seeming to vindicate Trump.

Fourth, it’s a tragic fact of history that shocking violence against persecuted groups has often been needed to turn public opinion significantly towards greater tolerance. The Holocaust, for example, greatly weakened (but did not end) anti-Semitism around the world. Violence against black Americans in the Deep South during the 1960s powerfully advanced the cause of civil rights. We can only hope that the Orlando shootings help rid the United States, and the rest of the world, of homophobia. For denying or even downplaying this attack’s nature as an assault on gays and the broader LGBT community is as unacceptable as denying or downplaying the attack as an act of Islamic terrorism.  And that goes for Donald Trump, too.

Im-Politic: Would Less (Talk) be More (on Gun Control)?

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gun control, guns, Im-Politic, mass shootings, Obama, Second Amendment, terrorism

Thanks largely to President Obama’s actions and words this week, it’s been impossible for anyone following the news not to think at least a little more about gun-related issues – even if they’re not your highest priority. Since I’m in that category, the following thoughts on a national debate that seems to keep getting more heated and less productive are presented in a spirit of humility.

First, I wonder if the president’s passion about the issue is blurring his focus and judgment. In his remarks announcing his new gun control measures, Mr. Obama made clear that his target (no pun intended) was the number of American lives (30,000) that each year are “cut short by guns….Suicides. Domestic violence. Gang shootouts. Accidents.” And don’t forget mass shootings, whether by the mentally ill or by terrorists (including domestic terrorists like Colorado Spring, Colorado Planned Parenthood clinic attacker Robert Dear).

Yet all these types of incidents have almost nothing in common aside from the use of firearms. They’re not even all tragedies – acts of terrorism should be described as outrages. Small wonder it’s been difficult for the president to convince many of his critics that he’s not ultimately seeking to limit gun access even to law-abiding citizens. And small wonder that Mr. Obama has been unable to persuade the vast majority of Americans that gun violence deserves so much of his attention. It continues to rank so low as a national priority in the polls no doubt because the public views these disparate challenges at least largely as symptoms of other problems.

Second, I suspect that the critics’ suspicions are also animated by the president’s analysis of mass shootings. On the one hand, Mr. Obama has upbraided those who charge that he doesn’t believe in the Second Amendment and that his support for expanded background checks, for instance, is “the first step in some slippery slope to mass confiscation….” On the other hand, whenever he talks about genuine tragedies like the killings at Sandy Hook or Aurora, Colorado or Charleston, South Carolina, he bemoans the fact that “we are the only advanced country on Earth that sees this kind of mass violence erupt with this kind of frequency. It doesn’t happen in other advanced countries. It’s not even close.”

What he doesn’t mention, though, but what many gun owners surely know, is that there’s nothing like the Second Amendment in those other advanced countries. So it’s reasonable to suppose that when the president is holding up these countries’ public safety records as a model for America to emulate, he’s also implicitly endorsing their qualitatively different legal gun regimes.

Third, there’s a strong case that the Obama – and mainstream liberal and thus media – view on those mass shootings and how they can best be significantly reduced is fatally flawed. I’m not talking about the large number of specific proposals coming from any number of quarters for keeping guns out of the wrong hands. Any number make perfect sense. Instead, I’m talking about the deeper belief that a major increase in gun regulation would make a real difference.

Here’s the problem. When you look at the situation today internationally, Obama unquestionably is correct. There’s much less gun violence of all types in Western Europe and Japan than in the United States nowadays, including fewer mass shootings. And as Mr. Obama has noted, mental illness is evenly spread all around the world, and violence-saturated popular culture is being guzzled by young men (and others) in most high income countries. The big difference between America and the rest is, as indicated above, that their gun regimes are much more restrictive.

But if you look at American history, this faith in regulation – short of seriously compromising the Second Amendment – seems completely unjustified. For guns were much more widely available in the nation’s earlier days, and even once the population became much more urbanized and therefore more concentrated. But mass shootings were almost unknown even though the first federal gun control laws weren’t enacted until the 1930s, and even though the only state-level curbs were short-lived post-Civil War regulations passed by southern states to keep firearms away from newly freed blacks.

As I suggested above, many worthwhile measures can be taken to alleviate some of the gun-related aspects of the disparate forms of violence lamented by President Obama and all Americans of good will. But the more I think about how to advance them, the clearer it is to me that a lower-profile approach, and often a shift in focus from role of guns to the conditions so often ultimately responsible, would bring much faster and better results.

Im-Politic: The Times Goes Off the Deep End on Guns

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gun control, guns, Im-Politic, mass shootings, mental health, mental illness, Obama, Second Amendment, terrorism, The New York Times

Here’s my first attempt at crowd-sourcing: Can someone out there explain to me why this week’s New York Times editorial on gun control isn’t proof positive that the paper’s bottom line isn’t enhancing public safety but simply turning America into a gigantic fire-arms-free zone for its own sake?

First, let me make clear that guns aren’t atop my issue list. Partly that’s because although I’m sure that more useful steps can be taken to keep guns out of the wrong hands, I’m skeptical that public policy can make a decisive difference. Nonetheless, my jaw nearly dropped out of my head when I read The Times editorial board’s claim that mental illness shouldn’t be blamed for gun violence.

Of course, that’s true – in a debating-point sense. “Gun violence” encompasses a wide range of incidents, including crimes, suicides, and accidents. Nor does The Times totally absolve mental illness of any responsibility for these outrages and tragedies, or oppose addressing mental health “as part of a broader effort to reduce gun violence.” But its overarching point is dismissing the mental illness focus as a cynical gun-lobby ploy to convince Americans that mass shootings are the country’s main gun violence problem.  That should make clear that the paper’s anti-gun campaign mainly stems from emotion, not reason.

The Times position flows from that claim that “mass shootings represent a small percentage of gun violence.” But this reality couldn’t be more irrelevant to the current debate on guns – which results from and which has intensified because of those mass shootings themselves. These events have certainly been what’s mainly motivating President Obama, at least judging by both his words and deeds. He’s addressed the nation no less than 15 times after mass shootings (not counting the San Bernardino, California attack, which he fairly quickly recognized was an act of terrorism). And one of his own leading arguments for more effective gun control is the assertion that such shootings happen much more often in the United States than in countries with tougher gun laws.

Even The Times itself has concentrated on mass shootings. Its front-page editorial on gun violence – the first of its kind since the 1920s – was sparked by San Bernardino, which it immediately linked to the horrific recent gun killings in “Colorado, Oregon, South Carolina, Virginia, Connecticut and far too many other places.” Not all of these tragedies were triggered simply by individuals who were simply deranged. But even the perpetrators of the Colorado Springs assault on a Planned Parenthood clinic and the Charleston atrocity against black church-goers no doubt were seriously disturbed as well as avowed crusaders against abortion and racial integration, respectively.

Moreover, right after the paragraph listing these events, The Times targeted “weapons designed specifically to kill people with brutal speed and efficiency” and “spree killings.” Other than terrorists, who goes on spree killings? People with balanced, healthy outlooks on life?

From the opposite perspective, how often has The Times railed against all those other forms of gun violence plaguing the country, including the ongoing murder wave in inner cities like Chicago’s and Baltimore’s? Or about gun suicides? Or crimes of passion? All are no doubt made easier to contemplate and carry out with weapons that can kill at a distance, or with minimal physical effort. But they haven’t been in the gun control spotlight because they’re not marked by the combination of scale, suddenness, randomness, and irrationality of mass shootings by the mentally ill. And indeed, the complexity and variety of the causes strongly cautions against lumping all these incidents and trends under a single “gun violence” or “gun epidemic” label.

So although it’s undeniable that treating mental illness more effectively is no panacea for gun-related problems, a focus on psychological maladies can absolutely be justified by the distinctively terrible characteristics of mass shootings by the mentally ill, and because single causality means that solutions are within reach. That is, meaningful progress can be made on this score precisely because responses don’t need to deal with deep-rooted social and economic problems, or imagined or real Constitutional issues, or technical definitions of assault weapons.

At the same time, it’s high time for advocates of the mental health-centric strategy to come up with proposals that go far beyond establishing more and better enforced barriers to gun acquisition by this population. Requiring health insurers to handle mental illness on a par with physical diseases would be a great place to start, and the longer avowed Second Amendment champions delay in backing such measures, the more their own motives deserve to be questioned.