Im-Politic: Hyper-Partisans Across the Spectrum are Wrong; the Terrorist Threat is “All of the Above”

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gun violence, Im-Politic, Islamic terrorism, jihadism, left-wing terrorism, mass shootings, September 11, terrorism, Trump, white supremacist terrorism, white supremacists

As if we needed another one, the latest upsurge in the intertwined national debates about gun violence, mass shootings, and terrorism provides another example of how hyper-partisan, encrusted thinking is obscuring the road to dramatically improved policies – and greater public safety. Specifically, way too many Americans are still mired in a dangerously distracting debate over where the biggest terrorist threats come from, rather than admitting that the nation faces numerous types of violent groups that fit any sensible definition of terrorism.

And as a result, way too many (including most prominent political leaders) are ignoring a crucial lesson of America’s post-September 11 experience – that concerted, innovative, well-funded national campaigns against terrorist movements actually work.

After the attacks of 2001, the focus understandably was Islamic terrorism. And if you doubt the impact, ask yourself why else no hijacked jetliners have crashed into U.S. skyscrapers and similarly big targets for nearly 20 years. And why in 2018, the last full data year, exactly one homicide in America was connected with Islamism.

Dumb luck? But as golf immortal Ben Hogan once said to an exasperated less successful rival who accused him of getting the lion’s share of the breaks, “[T]he more I practice, the luckier I get.” In that vein, surely massive American anti-terrorism efforts abroad and at home have played an important role. If you’ve forgotten what they’ve been, here’s a quick summary (from the Los Angeles Times article linked above):

“Despite horrifying abuses and mistakes, from torture to secret prisons, [the George W. Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations] have largely destroyed Al Qaeda and its most dangerous offspring. The U.S.-led war against Islamic State has killed thousands of militants and broken the group’s hold on territory in Iraq and Syria.

“Domestic law enforcement has monitored extremists at home and interrupted dozens of plots (including some that turned out to be insubstantial). And common-sense security measures have made us less vulnerable; no U.S. plane has been hijacked since 9/11.”

I’d add that, despite numerous calls for sharp increases from Democrats and others on the Left, U.S. admissions of asylum-seekers from Middle Eastern countries and elsewhere around the world remained exceedingly modest under former President Barack Obama, and have dropped sharply under President Trump.

The clear meaning? Yes, as President Trump’s critics have claimed, Islamic-inspired terrorism has been on the wane. But it looks glaringly obvious that deserving much of the credit have been measures many of them strongly opposed – and still oppose, mainly because they’ve been so determined to smear Mr. Trump and others backing such hard-line policies as simple Islamo-phobes who have long been chasing a mirage.

But don’t think this lets the President and many of his supporters off the hook. For until recently, they’ve acted as if they’ve been so bent on defending the anti-jihadist campaign and on justifying its continuation that they’ve soft-pedaled its clear success, and have been slow to acknowledge the more recent emergence of an unmistakably serious violent white supremacist threat.

Chiefly, there’s compelling evidence that since his inauguration, the President has reduced funding for government efforts to fight domestic terrorism springing from racist and other extreme right-wing roots, and increased the resources devoted to fight violent jihadists. That shift might have been justified early during the Trump presidency – shortly after two major Islamist-inspired shootings in San Bernardino, California in December, 2015, and in Orlando, Florida in June, 2016. But since then, the domestic racists etc have been much more dangerously active, and it’s not enough for the President to condemn them explicitly and emphatically. His money needs to move where his mouth is.

Not that anti-jihadism budgets need to be cannibalized to achieve this aim. Vigilance on that front remains essential as well, lest America be caught by surprise again a la September 11. Washington also needs to move much more decisively against violent leftists – like the Dayton, Ohio shooter seems to have been, along with antifa. 

In other words, U.S. anti-terrorism policy needs to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time – and be as agile and continually evolving as the sources of terrorism themselves.

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: Listen Closely to the Florida Students

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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: 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.