Via Ezra Klein, Adam Serwer takes dim view of conservative attempts to blame the Mumbai attacks on Indian culture, specifically the relative lack of guns among the geenral population:
This is a really strange and immature coping mechanism that manifests on the right in times of high profile tragedy. Rather than contemplate being a victim of a terrorist attack, the subject imagines him or herself as the star of a Jerry Bruckheimer movie. I’d say it’s simple racism, but it really is fear masquerading as bravado, a cultural chauvanism that directs itself at other Americans as readily as it does at foreigners. It is the “short skirt” theory of violence. If it happened, you must have been asking for it.
This turned up in my RSS feeds while I was listening to Mike and Mike talking about Plaxico Burress’s decision to try out for the Cowboys. They went on a long rant about the claim (on Burress’s behalf) that he needed to be carrying a gun to protect himself. As they asked rhetorically, if you’re voluntarily going to a place where you need a gun to be safe, why are you going there? Burress was at a nightclub, of his own volition– it’s not like he was required to be in an unsafe neighborhood as part of his job. If he didn’t feel safe without a gun, he was perfectly free to choose a different club, or stay home.
There’s something of the same psychology here as in the right-wing gibberish Klein and Serwer link to, and I’ve never understood it.
The right-wing position on concealed weapons requires a mix of machismo and pants-wetting terror that I’ve never really been able to comprehend. You need to simultaneously believe that you’re in mortal danger at all times (or at least likely to be put in mortal danger at any moment), and also that when confronted with said mortal danger, you will turn into an action hero, and coolly use your gun to kill or frighten off the terrorists/ muggers/ evildoers/ lost tourists asking for directions.
It’s really kind of baffling to me. I mean, look at the surprisingly miserable record of trained police officers panicking and shooting unarmed civilians. Or the number of soldiers who don’t fire their weapons, even in wartime. Guns don’t have the magical power to turn ordinary people into action heroes– people with guns are as likely to overreact or just freeze as people without guns.
(Of course, as I’ve said before, guns aren’t magical corrupting talismans that turn normal people into stone killers, either. The rhetoric from strongly anti-gun people is as fatuous as that from the pro-gun people.)
It’s particularly puzzling to me in the case of Burress, who is, after all, a professional football player. The number of people who might physically challenge him is pretty small. And if he’s worried that someone will pull a gun on him, he’s got more than enough money to hire a professional bodyguard who will 1) have the necessary permits to carry whatever weapons he needs, and 2) know enough about guns to not shoot himself in the leg by accident.
Feh. He’s a champion knucklehead, full stop. The Giants will be better off without him.
One line of argument that often appears in Gnu debates is that just producing the Gnu and waving it around will deter whatever pant wetting incident is about to occur.
Then statistics on a very impressively large number of averted crimes are produced based on people randomly waving Gnus at each other without killing each other.
The one time I had the inclination to dig into the statistics, they turned out to be based on oral reporting in informal interviews and the aggregate number was very heavily weighed by a very small number of respondents claiming to have averted a very large number of crimes by waving Gnus about.
Which proved something, but not to my mind what was being claimed.
Steinn’s message induces the following response (It must be said. This is simply beyond my control — a non-response is not an option)
You need a deterrent that’s not Gnu, but is as good as Gnu.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled broadcast (or broadcats, as the case may be).
Tom@2
Although you know what they say: No gnus is good gnus.
leiam;http://teoriasdomiguel.blogspot.com/
Coupla’ points as the resident gun nut:
1. Pro football players can’t be physically beaten in a fair fight by many people, but that doesn’t mean they’re invulnerable. Cf. Sean Taylor, Richard Collier, Eddy Curry, Antoine Walker, Dunta Robinson, etc. Being big is no real safeguard against robbery or violence, even in their own homes.
2. Fear as a motivator to concealed carry is like fear as a motivator to buying fire insurance. You’re not actually in some constant mortal terror, you’re just improving your odds in extremis.
3. “people with guns are as likely to overreact or just freeze as people without guns” I couldn’t say, but the raw numbers make it look doubtful. There’s literally millions of ordinary civilians with concealed carry permits, and there’s been no rash of crazed firing, gunfights over parking spaces, or hitting innocent bystanders. There is nothing magic about police firearms training either. Find a police officer friend and ask him how much time the average cop spends at the range.
4. “He’s a champion knucklehead, full stop.” Absolutely. If you own a gun, you must follow the rules, every time, without exception, no excuses.
The only claim I’ve seen so far is that security guards weren’t allowed to carry weapons, and that imperiled the safety of everyone, which is a much more legitimate claim (although I’m not going to comment on its veracity). So I think you might be fighting a straw man here.
Most security guards/bouncers that I am aware of do not carry weapons (both for simple liability and the issue of a drunk getting their hands on the weapon), and I can’t see that as imperiling the safety of the patrons (unless the club in question has a history of armed violence within the club). Somehow I see the “safety” excuse as just that – an excuse. Odds are Plexico just wanted to feel like a man by carrying the gun – it’s definitely considered macho and whatever the current term is for cool or manly. I used to have a weapon handy (in my car) when I went out, but it stayed there, and the fact that I did have one made me more cautious and less liable to get into fights for that reason. I never took on in the clubs, nor did I ever feel it was necessary. To me, it’s more about image and feelings rather than safety. Just opinion, natch.
In response to Matt (since, while I don’t own a working gun, I am generally in favor of gun rights), check out what Mike Celizic said over at MSNBC: http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/28004631/
Burress is an idiot plain and simple. He’s lucky it only hit his leg…
look at the surprisingly miserable record of trained police officers panicking and shooting unarmed civilians
That’s a pretty broad statement, do you have some numbers to back it up? My estimate is different, I would expect that that given the number of times per year police officers draw a weapon that the number of innocent civilian injuries or deaths is vanishingly small.
#Steinn, Tom, Michael: People say they want to discuss gnus rationally, but all I hear is “yak, yak, yak.”
“I didn’t know how many bouncers it would take to stop me, but I did know how many they were going to use.”
Dustin Hoffman, Marathon Man. He needs a chattel from his apartment being watched by a bad person with a gun. He offers a local gang everything else if they fetch the chattel. They waltz toward the apartment. The bad person pulls his gun. They all pull their guns. The inevitable event transpires: peace.
“An armed society is a polite society.”
…eventually.
I thought the most interesting part of the story was what was reported, in all places, on The Daily Show. He was wearing sweat pants, with the gun in the elastic of the pants. [Side comment: The heck with concealed carry. He needed a holster.]
OK. You Know You Are A VIP When: you get into an exclusive NYC club’s VIP area even if you show up in sweat pants.
He did, of course, wear a suit for the perp walk.
I like your connection to the Mumbai “defense” argument. Even highly trained commandos had trouble dealing with those gunmen, who were seen firing their AK-47s accurately from the hip like well-trained commandos when they weren’t throwing hand grenades. Not exactly a shootout at the OK corral. What citizen, or cop, would fire at a police car on the street? Neither would believe their eyes. Much the same applies to a celebrity if someone got the jump on them with their gun out first.
The fearfulness you discern is real. People with stronger startle reflexes and those who are shocked more easily are more likely to hold socially conservative attitudes. This was reported once again a few months ago in Science. Basically, scared people vote Republican. People who do not scare as easily vote Democratic.
The hero with a gun fantasy is probably very comforting for a lot of people. Weren’t the Die Hard movies a lot of fun. Of course, they weren’t very realistic. More importantly, the villains were criminals with specific goals, not terrorists simply trying to do as much damage as they could before they were stopped. Different villains require different responses.
As a child I often wondered why negroes couldn’t just shoot the KKK-ers when they came to burn a cross or lynch someone. As I grew up, I realized that owning a gun was just not enough. Lots of people in the Soviet Union owned guns, but other things were lacking, like free speech and freedom of assembly, so security and freedom were more than just a matter of firearms.
Responding to terrorists like the ones in Mumbai requires a rapid, coordinated response. The terrorists have to be cordoned off, or they will just flee to a new site and resume killing. At least a few bloggers have commented on the New York City police drills which involve a large number, often on the order of a hundred, police vehicles suddenly converging on a particular block. Officers, SWAT teams, and probably guys off duty, all ordered to report en masse.
The Mumbai police were flummoxed for a critical period of the attacks, just as the U.S. air defenses were unable to respond to the 9/11 attacks. I’m not exactly sure of the original motivation for those NYPD massings, but I’m betting that the NYPD planners are studying Mumbai and learning from it. Let’s hope that the Mumbai police are as well.
“People with stronger startle reflexes and those who are shocked more easily are more likely to hold socially conservative attitudes. This was reported once again a few months ago in Science. Basically, scared people vote Republican. People who do not scare as easily vote Democratic.”
Alternately, Democrats get eaten in the wild. Republicans survive and reproduce. 😉
Chad: “The number of people who might physically challenge him is pretty small.”
Wise people recognize this, but what about the unwise? There are a lot of people of abbreviated intelligence, perhaps further abbreviated by alcohol or testosterone, who get to thinking just how awesomely bad-ass-cool they would become if they punched out a famous tough-guy athlete.
Sometimes an immature low-ranking baboon in the troupe decides to challenge the alpha. Usually ends very badly for the challenger, but that doesn’t mean weaker baboons never try it.
So, the more an athlete has a reputation as the toughest head-knocker in town, the more likely some jealous moron will show off to his friends by taunting the athlete, or even taking a swing at him, hoping to gain bad-ass cred.
So, yeah, Plaxico is an idiot as you described, but given the above, I can understand a little of the temptation to pack heat. I don’t _condone_ it – just understand the temptation.
Wise people recognize this, but what about the unwise? There are a lot of people of abbreviated intelligence, perhaps further abbreviated by alcohol or testosterone, who get to thinking just how awesomely bad-ass-cool they would become if they punched out a famous tough-guy athlete.
I recognize the phenomenon– I’m about the same height as Burress, and somewhat heavier. While nobody will ever mistake me for a world-class athlete, I’ve had guys try to pick fights with me because I was the biggest guy around.
The thing is, not a single one of those situations would’ve been improved by me having a gun. In fact, I think I can safely say that I’ve never been in a situation that would’ve been improved by having a gun. That includes a couple of famously stupid trips into NYC in the wee hours.
Chad: “In fact, I think I can safely say that I’ve never been in a situation that would’ve been improved by having a gun.”
Oh yes you have too! You’re an experimental physicist. You work with complicated vacuum systems and persnickety lasers, ferchrissakes. Yeah, tell me you’ve never wanted to shoot a vacuum system full of lead. Tell me those pumps wouldn’t fully deserve _every single one of the slugs you’d fire into them_.
In the words of the great experimental psychologist Clint Eastwood, “Are ya feeling lucky, pump?”
When I was a physics student at the U. of Maryland, we were taught that it is an absolute safety requirement to have either a gun or a very large sledge hammer in every lab. Failure to provide this frustration relief valve creates an unacceptable risk of a severe mental-health injury. Did you skip class the day this was covered?
Now, you start keeping a 12-gauge next to the fire extinguisher, or I’ll be forced to report your lab to OSHA.
Setting aside the issues of whether Plax should have gotten a permit, or should have hired a trained bodyguard (and also whether Mayor Bloomberg is tainting the jury pool with his loud pontificating on the matter); there’s the issue of gun safety here. If you really, really must carry an unlicenced gun into a crowded club filled with people, where booze is presumably flowing, you probably shouldn’t carry it loaded, with the safety presumably off, in the band of your sweatpants. One must wonder if Plax is trying for a Darwin Award.