Hysteria, Thy Name Is Wingnut

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Some rightie bloggers have their knickers in a knot because the Canadian Broadcast Corporation (apparently; none of them link to the original article, but this guy provides a screen shot) used what was probably a stock photo of factory smokestacks to illustrate a global warming article.

Why is this scandalous? Apparently the CBC has used the same stock photo in other stories — possibly they own it — and they tweak the colors and crop it different ways to make it work with the story. But the photo isn’t anything but an eye catcher, something graphic to break up text. From what I can tell the CBC never put a caption on it and aren’t claiming it stands for anything in particular except factory smokestacks in a generic sense.

Some people need another hobby.

The site linked above says “Set aside for a moment the journalistic misrepresentation on display in using a photo depicting air pollution to illustrate a story on the costs of meeting Kyoto mandated C02 reductions… ” Right, factory emissions don’t have anything to do with C02 … oh, wait …

Reid to Bush: Bring It On

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The carnage in Iraq continues. Shashank Bengali, Laith Hammoudi and Nancy A. Youssef write for McClatchy Newspapers:

At least 173 people died in Baghdad on Wednesday in a series of major explosions, making the day the capital’s deadliest since the onset nine weeks ago of a much-touted U.S.-Iraqi security plan.
The violence capped a dreadful seven days that began with a stunning suicide attack in the Iraqi parliament building in the heavily fortified Green Zone. At least 363 people have died in Baghdad in the past week.

And Polly Toynbee writes for The Guardian:

It’s been a good week for death. In Iraq, 200 people were blown to bits in what witnesses called “a swimming pool of blood” with “pieces of flesh all over the place”. Remember that the dead are only part of the story: add to each of the war’s hundreds of thousands of civilian corpses all those burned and crippled survivors, far beyond Iraqi medical facilities’ ability to cope, breadwinners and babies lost. Few families are untouched by the sheer scale of slaughter.

Naturally, today officials at the Pentagon said that violence in Iraq is diminishing. Of course, this depends on what you mean by “violence” and “diminish.” And “Iraq.”

Just to show how secure the Pentagon is in its assessment — National Journal reports (subscriber only material, so I don’t have a link):

Pentagon lawyers abruptly blocked mid-level active-duty military officers from speaking Thursday during a closed-door House Armed Services Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee briefing about their personal experiences working with Iraqi security forces.

The Pentagon’s last-minute refusal to allow the officers’ presentations surprised panel members and congressional aides, who are in the middle of an investigation into the effort to train and organize Iraqi forces.

Clearly, the Pentagon is proud of what it is accomplishing in Iraq.

Also on Wednesday, President Bush met with congressional Democrats to discuss the “emergency” supplemental appropriations bill, which Democrats in Congress are calling the Iraq Accountability Act. Greg Sargent provides a peek at what happened:

A source familiar with the meeting — at which no compromise of any kind was reached, though Speaker Nancy Pelosi said publicly today that it had been “productive” — shares a few interesting tidbits. First, the source says, Bush bristled and was taken aback when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid compared the current situation to Vietnam; he also appeared irked by those who said the war couldn’t be won.

Second, according to the source, Reid told Bush that he understood that the White House would come after Congressional Dems after the veto of the bill with everything they had; Reid vowed to respond every bit as aggressively.

“Reid talked about a recent conversation he had with a retired general where they talked about the similarities between the current situation and Vietnam,” the source relates. “He talked about how the President and Secretary of Defense [during Vietnam] knew that the war was lost but continued to press on at the cost of thousands of additional lives lost.”

“The analogy to Vietnam appeared to touch a nerve with the President. He appeared a little sensitive to it,” the source continued. “And he clearly didn’t like to hear people in the room say that the war couldn’t be won militarily.”

More: “Reid made it clear to the President that he understood that the President and Vice President after the veto would come after him and Speaker Pelosi with everything they have. Reid said that he and Pelosi would respond just as aggressively. He said he was convinced that they were on the right side of the issue.”

Yesterday’s Dan Froomkin post:

There were no pyrotechnics, but according to multiple reports Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid compared Iraq to Vietnam at one point in a closed door meeting with Bush. Specifically, Reid suggested that Bush was pursuing a lost cause at the cost of American troops in order to protect his legacy.

Bush’s reaction: He was “visibly angered” says the New York Times; he “bristled” according to the Associated Press. And he “denied this forcefully, after which Mr. Reid touched his arm in a gesture of friendliness,” write the Wall Street Journal.

Meanwhile, the Iraq Accountability Act makes its way toward completion. Last night some Republican House members attempted to to strip provisions in the Act holding the Iraqi government accountable and providing for a “responsible redeployment from Iraq” (nice phrase, that) before the bill goes to conference committee for reconciliation with the Senate version. This attempt failed.

Although the Act is still a work in progress, after slogging through a number of news stories I get the impression that the House might defer to the Senate regarding the timetable language. The Senate bill has a non-binding goal of March 31, 2008 for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq. The House version has a firm deadline of September 2008.

The war at home is over public opinion, and all signs are that the Dems are winning for once.

Dan Froomkin wrote on Tuesday:

President Bush’s public campaign to push back against Congressional demands for withdrawal from Iraq is becoming highly reminiscent of his failed effort two years ago to win support for a radical overhaul of Social Security.

The meticulously choreographed settings, the carefully controlled audiences, the mind-numbing repetition of hoary talking points (with a particular emphasis on stoking fears) — it’s like deja vu.

And so is the result: A public that is apparently more turned off to Bush’s ideas the more he talks about them.

As it was last time, Bush’s Bubble may be the central problem. Bush seems to think that through sheer force of will — and repetition — he will convince people that his cause is just — in spite of all the evidence to the contrary. And why does he think that? Quite possibly, because virtually everyone he talks to — and virtually everyone he sees — is already in his camp.

Via Atrios — here’s one of those famous Bush “town hall” meetings in front of a group of hand-picked drooling idiots with scripted questions. Bush says insightful things like “death is terrible.” Don’t watch on a full stomach. Continue reading →

Grilling Gonzales

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The day of the Alberto Gonzales hearing has finally arrived, and I regret that I won’t be able to stay home and watch. Slate has a list of questions the Attorney General is likely to be asked. Answers — or nonanswers — will be filled in as the hearings progress. If you want to follow along on the web, that’s one option. I’m sure other bloggers will be liveblogging. I may be able to catch part of it.

More Gonzales-related links:

Greg Gordon, McClatchy Newspapers: “Campaign against alleged voter fraud fuels political tempest.”

Peter Baker, Washington Post: “On the Hill, Gonzales Gets His Chance at Redemption: Insiders Say Loyalty Bought Him Time”

David Iglesias, Steven Calabresi, Ron Klain, and Jeffrey Rosen, New York Times: “A Dozen Questions for Alberto Gonzales”

Mark Follman, Salon: “The U.S. Attorney Scandal Gets Dirty”

Update: Home again for a little while. There’s good running commentary at TPM Muckraker.

Channeling Atrios

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At Media Matters, Eric Boehlert asks, “Can conservative bloggers tell the truth?”

No.

Simple answers to simple question, eh?

They can’t even tell the truth when they’ve been pinned to the ground with their falsehoods. Boehlert caught John Hinderaker of Power Line in a lie — just plain nailed him — and Hinderaker’s response is a study in weaseling. He got caught fibbing, so to defend himself he shifts to a different set of lies. Unreal.

The lie was that the stories told about John Kerry’s Vietnam service by the Swift Boat crew had never been disputed. Cough.

The Jawa Report defended Hinderaker by publishing the fact that David Brock, the founder of Media Matters, had made campaign contributions to John Kerry. However, it’s anyone’s guess what this is supposed to “prove.” In this bloggers sick little — very little — mind, campaign contributions to a a Democrat are evidence of sedition and conspiracy, evidently.

TV Highlights

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For what it’s worth — I’m watching the NBC series “Crossing Jordan,” and they’ve introduced an interesting plot twist — one of the main characters, definitely a “good” guy, was “disappeared” by Homeland Security on suspicion of being a terrorist, which was not true. The good guy was interrogated by a sinister agent, and there was suggestion he was tortured. The other characters first had to learn where he was and then tried to get him “sprung,” to be told by a judge there was nothing that could be done because habeas corpus didn’t apply. At the very end of the episode the character was released, but he looked rattled.

It was a nice dramatization of why habeas is necessary. I also think it’s interesting that NBC felt comfortable making Homeland Security the villain of the episode.

Late-Term Confusion

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From Wizbang, which is always a reliable source of examples of rightie stupidity:

Most Americans, even those who are pro-choice, understand how sick this procedure was. If a late term pregnancy was so harmful to the mother’s health, then the mother should just deliver the baby and give the baby a chance to survive. But this procedure wasn’t really about saving the life of the mother. It was about killing an unwanted baby.

I’m seeing many variations of this opinion drizzled around the Right Blogosphere, and it reveals that, once again, righties lack a grasp of basic facts.

Firat off, calling D&E procedures “late term” never was correct, because it’s a second trimester procedure performed before the fetus is developed enough to be viable. Roe v. Wade permits states to ban elective abortions by any means after viability as long as there is an exception for life and health of the mother, and it is very unusual to have to sacrifice a viable baby to save the mother. “Very unusual” is not the same thing as “never happens,” however. The point is that it’s illegal to abort a viable fetus without medical cause in most states already, and has been for years.

The Wizbang post continues —

Here’s a feminist whose first comment was “We’re f***ed.” Sure, lady, if you mean that you can’t go to an abortionist when you’re 6+ months pregnant and have your unborn baby almost completely delivered except for his head and have his brains sucked out while he’s still alive because you just don’t feel like being pregnant any longer, then yes, I suppose you’re f***ed.

And, in fact, what this guy is talking about has been illegal in most states all along, and is no more illegal today than it was yesterday. When you say 6+ months you’re talking about after the 24th week of gestation, and that’s clearly within the time that a fetus might be viable. Therefore, that procedure wasn’t protected by Roe v. Wade unless there was medical need. Also, my understanding is that what procedures are performed after the 18th week or so of gestation are done by another means than D&E anyway.

I’ve seen some arguments that today’s ruling might end up hurting the Right. That’s a complicated subject. I do suspect the Fetus People might be thrown into confusion when it finally dawns on them that second-trimester abortions are still being performed, but that depends on what happens in the states. As I wrote in the last post, I think we can count on conservative state legislators to use today’s ruling as an excuse to write abortion laws that are even more restrictive than the one covered in the case decided today. We can also expect that in some states the ruling will be used to intimidate abortion providers from performing second-trimester abortions by any means. It’s going to get interesting.

Update: Here’s another example of profound ignorance. The rightie assumes that “partial-birth abortion” is a catchall term for all abortions performed after the first trimester:

… after running through some of the reactions on the left, it is clear that many that write those blogs are men because they seem to have no understanding of the differences between an abortion performed in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy and a partial birth abortion.

Unfortunately, as Kennedy pointed out, neither do some women. Then you have women that DO understand the differences between abotion and partial birth abortion and simply do not care. Some seem to feel that it doesn’t matter if the baby is alive or not ater 12 weeks or even after 6 months, they feel their rights should trump the rights of an unborn child, even if the child is already displaying a heartbeat, movement and other signs showing it is alive.

An embryo/fetus is just as “alive” in the first trimester as it is in the second. The writer confuses “alive” with “viable.” Recently an infant survived that was believed to have been born at 21 weeks gestation. This made international news because she was the first baby ever known to have survived after a gestation period of fewer than 23 weeks. That’s very late in the second trimester. About 10 percent of abortions are performed during the 13th to 20th weeks of gestation, and no fetus is viable in that period.

Do not let some of the over heated reactions confuse the two issues, women can still have abortions, that has not changed, they just need to make that decision in a timely manner before a fetus actually becomes a baby that is alive.

The only rights that have been harmed here is a womans right to have her doctor murder her child.

I’d encourage any woman who plans to have an elective abortion to do this as early as possible, for her own safety. But what this dimbulb doesn’t grasp is that many serious complications can occur in the second trimester that can put a woman’s life at risk, and if the pregnancy has to be terminated before 23 weeks gestation (with one exception) the infant is not going to survive no matter how it is delivered. For example, preeclampsia, or pregnancy induced hypertension, is a common complication that can put the mother at risk of convulsion and death. In extreme cases the only way to save the mother’s life is to terminate the pregnancy, and sometimes this must be done before the fetus is viable. Terminating a pregnancy to save her own life doesn’t make a woman a monster, in my opinion.

A great many severe birth anomalies cannot be diagnosed until the second trimester. These include anencephaly, Tay Sachs, and other conditions that will take the baby’s life, with no exceptions. I believe strongly that when these diagnoses are made it must be up to the mother, and preferably her husband or partner also, to decide whether to carry the pregnancy to term. Not the government.

Here’s a heartbreaking story in which one twin might have been saved by sacrificing the other, which had no realistic chance to survive. But this procedure violated the hospital’s abortion policy, so the laboring mother was transported to another hospital several miles away, and both twins were stillborn. The father of the twins writes,

But the greater tragedy here, to my mind, is the straitjacket that a religious worldview imposes on the complexity inherent within clinical medicine. Our world sometimes presents us with situations that cannot be simplistically categorized as pro-choice or pro-life, and other patients across the nation will be faced with decisions like the ones we made on that fateful day.

This is why hospital policies that originate in religion rather than science can be unhealthy and unsafe. Personal religious beliefs can and should guide the lives of clinicians of faith. The extent to which they guide a clinician’s professional life is the clinician’s personal matter, and I hope that clinicians will choose specialties and practice settings that ensure that patients receive needed care regardless of the clinician’s religious beliefs. However, the extent to which these beliefs guide hospital policy is a matter of concern to all of us, whether we are patients or clinicians. The extent to which the US medical establishment succeeds in circumscribing the circle of influence of religion-based medicine will determine the quality of health care that phsycians can offer their patients. Clearly, irrespective of what religion each of us belongs to, this is the very least that our patients deserve.

But no; this twit thinks that people like this father are heartless murderers who kill their babies just because they’re having a bad day.

Update 2: Scott Lemieux explains it all for you.

Pandora’s Box

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I’ve just learned that the Supreme Court upheld the national “partial birth” abortion ban passed by Congress in 2003. The five justice who made up the majority are Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, Alito, and Kennedy.

The repercussions of this ruling will depend a great deal on how the various states interpret the ban. Physicians have complained that the ban, as it is worded, could be interpreted to ban just about any type of abortion. If that’s the case, I think this will bring about a huge public backlash against the Fetus People, which is something I don’t think they realize.

On the other hand, if it is interpreted to ban only the dilatation and evacuation (D&E) procedure, which is commonly used in the second trimester, then nearly 90 percent of abortions, performed in the first trimester using other methods, would not be affected. And second trimester abortions would still be performed, but by other means that pose greater risk to women. Even so, abortions performed by physicians in sterile environments would not likely result in the carnage that a return to “back alley” abortions would cause. It’s hard to know if a ban on D&E only would create much of a public stir at all.

But I think we can count on conservative state legislators to go for the more expansive interpretation of the ruling. I’m sure that many Red State politicians are busily writing up new and more oppressive abortion laws that go beyond today’s ruling even as I keyboard, and I strongly suspect this ruling has just opened a big can of damn ugly worms.

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) filed an amicus brief in support of the challenge to the ban. I’m going to paste an ACOG press release about the brief here, because I think it explains the issues clearly.

For Release: September 22, 2006

ACOG Files Amicus Brief in Gonzales v. Carhart and Gonzales v. PPFA

Washington, DC — The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) has filed an amicus brief in support of the challenges to the federal Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003. The United States Supreme Court will hear arguments on November 8, 2006, in two cases that dispute the constitutionality of the Act, which was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Bush in November 2003. The ban has not taken effect because of the legal challenges.

Almost immediately after the Act was signed into law by President Bush, physicians and medical groups filed three separate lawsuits challenging it in federal courts in New York, Nebraska, and California. In each case, the court ruled the Act unconstitutional and the decision was upheld on appeal. The government subsequently sought review of two of the cases by the US Supreme Court: Gonzales v. Carhart (Nebraska) and Gonzales v. Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) (California). Any further appeals in the New York case would be initiated after the US Supreme Court rules on the Nebraska and California cases. [I assume this is moot now — maha]

“The courts were correct each time they struck down such ill-conceived and unconstitutional restrictions on physicians’ ability to provide patients with the safest possible medical care,” according to Douglas W. Laube, MD, MEd, president of ACOG.

The Act purports to ban so-called “partial-birth abortions;” however, “partial-birth abortion” is not a medical term and is not recognized in the field of medicine. The Act defines “partial-birth abortion” in a way that encompasses a variation of dilatation and evacuation (D&E), the most common method of second-trimester abortion, in which the fetus remains intact as it is removed from the woman’s uterus. The Act’s definition also encompasses some D&E procedures in which the fetus is not removed intact.

Over 95% of induced abortions in the second trimester are performed using the D&E method. The alternatives to D&E in the second trimester are abdominal surgery or induction abortion. Doctors rarely perform an abortion by abdominal surgery because doing so entails far greater risks to the woman. The induction method imposes serious risks to women with certain medical conditions and is entirely contraindicated for others.

The intact variant of D&E offers significant safety advantages over the non-intact method, including a reduced risk of catastrophic hemorrhage and life-threatening infection. These safety advantages are widely recognized by experts in the field of women’s health, authoritative medical texts, peer-reviewed studies, and the nation’s leading medical schools. ACOG has thus concluded that an intact D&E “may be the best or most appropriate procedure in a particular circumstance to save the life or preserve the health of the woman, and only the doctor in consultation with the patient, based on the woman’s particular circumstances can make that decision.” [ACOG Statement of Policy on Abortion (reaffirmed 2004)]

ACOG objects to the 2003 federal ban because it exposes women to serious, unnecessary health risks and does not include any exception to protect women’s health. In addition, ACOG objects to the Act’s vague and overly broad terms because doctors will be unable to determine whether their actions are prohibited by the Act. As a result, the Act will deter doctors from providing a wide range of procedures used to safely perform induced abortions.

“The term ‘partial-birth abortion’ was purposely contrived to be inflammatory,” said Dr. Laube. “While proponents of this law say that it addresses a particular procedure, it has been specifically written to describe and encompass elements of other procedures used in obstetrics and gynecology.”

In 2000, ACOG filed an amicus brief in Stenberg v. Carhart on behalf of the challengers to a Nebraska law that attempted to ban so-called “partial-birth abortions.” The US Supreme Court struck down the Nebraska law, ruling that it violated the US Constitution by failing to provide any exception “for the preservation of the health of the mother” and being so broadly written that it could prohibit other types of abortion procedures such D&E, thereby unduly burdening a woman’s ability to choose to have an abortion.

“Decisions involving pregnancy termination are among the most serious and personal that a woman will make in her life. As the medical specialists in women’s reproductive health, we will continue to fight attempts to criminalize legitimate medical procedures,” said Dr. Laube.

# # #

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists is the national medical organization representing over 51,000 members who provide health care for women.

Let’s hear from the only woman on the Court:

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, speaking in the courtroom for the dissenters, called the ruling “an alarming decision” that refuses “to take seriously” the Court’s 1992 decisions reaffirming most of Roe v. Wade and its 2000 decision in Stenberg v. Carhart striking down a state partial-birth abortion law.

Ginsburg, in a lengthy statement, said “the Court’s opinion tolerates, indeed applauds, federal intervention to ban nationwide a procedure found necessary and proper in certain cases by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. For the first time since Roe, the Court blesses a prohibition with no exception protecting a woman’s health.” She said the federal ban “and the Court’s defense of it cannot be understood as anything other than an effort to chip away at a right declared again and again by this Court — and with increasing comprehension of its centrality to women’s lives. A decision of the character the Court makes today should not have staying power.”

That final comment, concluding remarks delivered without an open display of emotion, clearly was a suggestion that the ruling might not survive new appointments to the Court — just as the arrival of Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., and, especially, Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr. — had led to the switch she claimed had come about this time. Ginsburg pointedly noted that the Court is “differently imposed that it was when we last considered a restrictive abortion regulation” — in Stenberg in 2000.

In the course of her dissenting opinion, Ginsburg accused the majority of offering “flimsy and transparent justifications” for upholding the ban. She also denounced the Kennedy opinion for its use of “abortion doctor” to describe specialists who perform gynecological services, “unborn child” and “baby” to describe a fetus, and “preferences” based on “mere convenience” to describe the medical judgments of trained doctors. She also commented: “Ultimately, the Court admits that ‘moral concerns’ are at work, concerns that cdould yield prohibtions on any abortion.”

I have a lot of questions about today’s ruling. For example if the Court has affirmed an abortion law that doesn’t have a “life and health of the mother” clause, what does that do to Roe v. Wade?

And may I say that if even one woman dies or is needlessly impaired because the government has “tied the hands” of physicians, it’s an injustice.

Update: Interesting commentary at Hotline on Call.

A Message From the Gun Guys

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I didn’t know this, but violent crime rates are going up in parts of the Midwest. Tim Jones wrote in the Sunday Chicago Tribune:

Since 2004, aggravated assaults are up a whopping 86 percent in Milwaukee and 42 percent in Minneapolis. Homicides are up 41 percent in Cincinnati, 26 percent in Kansas City, Mo., and 38 percent in Cleveland. Detroit’s robberies have leapt by 40 percent since 2004. And the incidence of aggravated assault with a firearm in St. Louis jumped 45 percent, according to a recent study by the Police Executive Research Forum, a Washington law-enforcement think tank.

I noted in the “Safety First” post that some people (Michelle Malkin among them) have determined that black people cause crime. I hadn’t heard significant numbers of black people were moving to Milwaukee. Oh, wait …

The decline of the manufacturing economy is a common factor linking many of these communities. Most of the breweries that defined Milwaukee are gone, as are the automobile parts factories, and that has dealt an economic body blow to tens of thousands of unskilled workers in the city.

But what about George Bush’s roaring economy?

At a gathering of law-enforcement officials in Chicago last week, Barrett complained that Washington has cut federal funding to local police agencies and turned a deaf ear to the crime problems of American cities. Washington, Barrett said, is more concerned about “homeland security than hometown security.”

“Many pro-gun advocates talk about themselves being freedom fighters. But I think the people in this room,” Barrett told the police chiefs, “are the real freedom fighters, because we are the ones that are fighting to allow the grandma to sit on her front porch and not have to worry about a drive-by shooting.”

Bushies are pretty much all talk, no walk on homeland security also, in my opinion. Anyway, I got this from a link on the Gun Guys site. The Gun Guys add,

The NRA talks a blue streak about freedom and rights. They complain all day long about how their gun guys should have the right to own any kind of weapon they want, and how it’s just tough for us that we have to deal with all the gun violence. They claim that the Second Amendment gives them a shield against any kind of regulation. They just want us to suffer through the tragedies, to just deal with the gun deaths, while they continue to erode any power our authorities have against firearms.

Meanwhile, in New York City — home of all those rampaging black men that Michelle Malkin says it’s OK to shoot — violent crime continues to decline. Cara Buckley reported in the New York Times (March 28, 2007):

The recent fatal shootings of two auxiliary police officers and a restaurant worker in Greenwich Village hark back to a time when New York City’s streets were far more deadly. But the city’s year-to-date homicide rate is at its lowest point since before the Police Department started tracking crime using current record-keeping techniques in 1962.

According to the department figures, 84 homicides were reported citywide from Jan. 1 through Sunday, an average of exactly one killing a day. That was down 28 percent from 117 during the same period last year.

The first-quarter numbers continue what has been a downward trend in overall serious crime in the city.

Although the number of homicides in the city increased last year to 596 from 540 in 2005, total figures for all the major crimes the department tracks — including murder, rape, robbery and assault — dropped 4.7 percent in 2006.

By early indications, the decrease in violent crime in New York City continues to defy nationwide trends. After falling for several years, homicide, gun assault and robbery rates across the country rose by double-digit percentages in 2005 and 2006, according to a recent report by the Police Executive Research Forum.

”There isn’t any other big city that continues to show these remarkable results for such a long time,” said David M. Kennedy, director of the Center for Crime Prevention and Control at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. ”The national crime decline is over.”

And did I ever mention that New York City has about the strictest gun control laws in the U.S.? I believe I have.

Anyway, I just want to say to all of you in the Midwest who are being terrorized by cowboys and farmers (that was a joke; see the “Safety First” post) should come to New York City and be safe. These days it’s a lot safer in Central Park than in downtown Milwaukee.

Safety First

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In the wake of today’s horrific shootings at Virginia Tech, some on the Right are calling for looser gun control laws. Although Virginia itself is one of the least restrictive states in the Union regarding guns, the campus was supposed to be a “gun-free” zone.

“Just imagine if students were armed,” writes one. “We no longer need to image what will happen when they are not armed.”

I got to that site from a link on Michelle Malkin’s blog, who quotes one of her readers: “Imagine if sensible CCW [concealed carry weapons] laws allowed people to defend themselves, this tragedy could have been avoided.”

Gun enthusiasts (they do take offense if you call them “gun nuts”) have a pure and transcendent faith that those states that allow citizens to carry concealed weapons for their own protection have enjoyed a dramatic drop in crime. Some of these states have seen a drop in the rate of violent crime, but so have states with stricter gun control laws that don’t allow citizens to carry a concealed weapons. Violent crime rates have been dropping all over for the past several years.

A few years ago I spent some time digging through the FBI’s uniform crime stats by state to see if there was a correlation between violent crime rates and gun laws. There wasn’t one, either way. Some states with lax gun laws had higher violent crime rates than some states with strict gun laws, and some states with strict gun laws had higher violent crime rates than some states with lax gun laws. I assume that’s still true.

For example, Texas, which has allowed concealed carry of weapons since 1995, has a murder/manslaughter rate (per 100,000 inhabitants) of 6.2 and a forcible rape rate of 37.2. Gun-unfriendly New York state has a murder/manslaughter rate of 4.5 and forcible rape rate of 18.9 (FBI, 2005). But, as I said, if you were to compare two other states you might see something very different. There are just too many variables affecting crime rates to say categorically that any particular gun law makes any measurable difference.

That said, if you want an argument for not allowing concealed carry of weapons, just check out Michelle’s previous post. Her theme today is that black people are scary and cause crime. Her link for “the truth about black crime rates” leads to this utterly reprehensible article by a Heather Mac Donald which says, in effect, we can’t blame the NYPD for shooting and killing innocent black men by mistake, since black crime rates are so high.

Her example is Sean Bell, a young man who was gunned down by NYPD last year as he left his own bachelor party. Ms. Mac Donald takes umbrage at the suggestion that the NYPD are “trigger-happy racists.” The neighborhood was a high-crime area, she says, and Mr. Bell and his companions were behaving erratically (having just left a bachelor party, remember).

Mr. Bell was not wanted for a crime and was not armed at the time of his death. He was killed for celebrating while black, in other words.

Ms. Mac Donald says blacks committed 68.5 percent of all murders, rapes, robberies, and assaults in New York City last year, a statistic that seems to her to justify shooting boisterous black men first and asking questions later.

However, did you know that men commit 88.7% of all homicides in the United States? And without looking it up I’ll assume men commit a whopping majority of forcible rapes, too. Does that mean unjustified shootings of men are more forgivable than unjustified shootings of women?

It is true that African Americans commit violent crimes at a higher rate than whites. But Did You Know that if you are ever murdered or assaulted, the odds are that your murderer/attacker will be the same race you are, whatever that is?

Lo (click here for bigger picture):

A stroll through the Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, can tell us a lot about people who commit crimes. For example, renters commit more crimes than homeowners. Women are considerably more likely than men to be murdered by a current or former spouse or lover, especially in rural areas. Next time some farmer’s wife offs her husband, she should use that statistic in her defense.

Hmm, rural guys. Texas guys. Ladies, watch out for cowboys.

I’m sure if we kept looking we would find correlations between income, level of education, and several other factors and crime rates. I found a study that claimed children who went to high-quality preschools are less likely to become violent criminals than those who don’t. Information like this is useful if you’re trying to figure out ways to reduce crime.

But when you’re dealing with an individual, you need to look at an individual. It is simply not true that every black man is more dangerous than any white man. Serial killers are nearly always white men, for example.

Which takes us back to gun laws. The NYPD has a sorry history of killing black men who weren’t doing anything wrong. And the cops get training; they get guidelines; they have a chain of command. And they make mistakes. Wouldn’t yahoos carrying concealed weapons to deter crime make mistakes, too? How many mistakes are we willing to tolerate in the name of “safety”?

If someone wants to keep a firearm in his home or behind the counter of his convenience store that’s his business. But people who are frightened or excited make bad judgments. If Virginia Tech students had been armed today, would there be fewer dead? Or more? I think either is possible.

If someone wants to keep a gun in his home or behind the counter of his convenience store for protection, that’s his business. I’ve said many times that if I lived in some isolated cabin in Montana I’d keep a loaded shotgun on the wall, too. But the world is full of guys with Rambo fantasies and poor impulse control. The thought of those guys carrying concealed weapons does not make me feel safer.

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On a related note — MSNBC and CNN keep saying that today’s shooting is the “worst massacre” or “worst mass shooting” in American history. It isn’t. If you stipulate “worst massacre/mass shooting with one perpetrator,” then maybe. But there have been many worse massacres with multiple perpetrators. For example, there was a nasty little episode in 1866, in New Orleans. At least 48 men at a peaceful meeting — mostly black men, btw — died at the hands of a gang of white men who broke into the room and started shooting. More than a hundred more were wounded. There were reports that some of the dead were executed after they were found hiding in closets and under floor boards. That counts as a worse mass shooting than today’s tragedy, I’d say.

There have been a number of worse mass killings than that, although all the ones I can think of involved multiple means of killing, such as fires or axes. Wounded Knee might not count because it was called a “battle” even though most of the 300 Sioux killed by soldiers were unarmed and unable to defend themselves.

Of course we all hurt because of what happened today, and I’m not saying the shootings at Virginia Tech were less terrible than past incidents. I just want to set the record straight.

Update: E.J. Dionne provides some more stats in his column today:

According to the U.S. Census, black households in 2005 had a median income of $30,858, compared with $50,784 for non-Hispanic white households. The black poverty rate was 24.9 percent. The white poverty rate was 8.3 percent.