WHAT TO DO IN MASS SHOOTINGS: Lots of people are emailing and want to talk about this subject. Maybe later. But here’s a book on self-defense that some people like. And you can’t go wrong with Jeff Cooper’s Principles of Personal Defense. And here are some thoughts from the Insta-Wife on the psychology of self-defense.
Archive for 2007
April 17, 2007
JOHN TIERNEY: “After reading reactions from more than 300 readers to my previous posts, I think it’s safe to conclude that research on dating has not inspired great joy among daters. So let me offer some cheerier tidings today.”
SUING A BLOGGER: Bill Hobbs has a roundup on the latest on the JL Kirk affair. Plus, more thoughts from Brittney Gilbert.
HOW COMMON ARE MASS SHOOTINGS AT U.S. SCHOOLS? Not very. And they don’t appear to be getting any more common, though 24/7 cable news coverage may give that impression. Ilya Somin writes: “The extreme rarity of such incidents should be kept in mind as we decide what, if any, policy changes should be made in response to the Virginia Tech tragedy. Some changes may well be warranted, but we should guard against costly overreactions such as the draconian ‘zero tolerance’ policies implemented in many schools after the Columbine attacks in 1999. As a professor in the Virginia state university system (of which Virginia Tech is a part), I hope we can resist the temptation to enact similar measures.”
ANOTHER STUPID GUN EDITORIAL, this one in the New York Daily News. Don’t they bother to get anything right?
Ah, but there are so many people with guns. And their guns are so easy to come by.
Particularly, not to put too fine a point on it, in places like the great State of Virginia, which, you’ll recall, is a state so annoyed by the crackdown efforts of such anti-homicide types as New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg that it recently passed a law making it a crime for undercovers to run stings on the great state of Virginia’s fine gun dealers.
Actually, it’s a federal crime to lie on firearms purchase forms, and there’s no exception for “undercover” private investigators working for a mayor from another state. Bloomberg’s investigators did that, and the usual people who complain about “vigilantism” seem to endorse this particular instance. Given that the Daily News has covered Bloomberg’s troubles in this regard, this error is particularly unforgivable.
A BAD REVIEW FOR ABC NEWS on its coverage of the Virginia Tech story.
HILLARY CLINTON, LIBERALTARIAN? “It hurt just typing that. And it’s really just a shameful ploy to get you to read this post.”
ROGER SIMON (THE OTHER ONE) ON WHY GUN CONTROL IS POLITICALLY DEAD: “Had Gore won his home state of Tennessee, Clinton’s home state of Arkansas or the Democratic state of West Virginia, he would not have needed to win Florida in order to gain the presidency. But he lost them all. And guns had a lot to do with it.”
I DON’T LIKE THIS: “Internet radio broadcasters were dealt a setback Monday when a panel of copyright judges threw out requests to reconsider a ruling that hiked the royalties they must pay to record companies and artists. A broad group of public and private broadcasters, including radio stations, small startup companies, National Public Radio and major online sites like Yahoo Inc. and Time Warner Inc.’s AOL, had objected to the new royalties set March 2, saying they would force a drastic cutback in services that are now enjoyed by some 50 million people. “
IMAO CALLS FOR “Common-sense restrictions on the right of assembly.”
UP TO #884: Thanks, JL Kirk!
SORRY, BUT I’M WITH HIM: Maybe it’s because people are always dissing my haircut. Okay, by “people” I mean “snarky blog commenters,” but still . . . .
FORMER PROSECUTOR RANDY BARNETT ON WHY DEFENSE LAWYERS MATTER:
For better or worse, we have an adversary legal system that relies for its proper operation on having competent lawyers on both sides. In every case I knew about where an innocent person had been convicted, there had been an incompetent defense lawyer at the pretrial and trial stages. . . .
The crucial importance of defense lawyers was illustrated in reverse by the Duke rape prosecution, mercifully ended last week by North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper’s highly unusual affirmation of the defendants’ complete innocence. Others are rightly focusing on the “perfect storm,” generated by a local prosecutor up for election peddling to his constituents a racially-charged narrative that so neatly fit the ideological template of those who dominate academia and the media. But perhaps we should stop for a moment to consider what saved these young men: defense attorneys, blogs and competing governments.
Particularly after the O.J. trial, a lot of people seem to think that defense lawyers mostly use clever tricks to get guilty people off. In fact, that doesn’t happen nearly as often as popularly believed. Instead, as Randy notes, they play an important role in keeping the innocent from being convicted. “Our criminal justice system does not rely solely on the fairness of the police and prosecutors to get things right. In every criminal case, there is a professional whose only obligation is to scrutinize what the police and prosecutor have done. This ‘professional’ is a lawyer.”
Just another reason why Randy Barnett is my pick for the next Attorney General of the United States . . . . though I’m pretty sure he won’t be George Bush’s.
MICKEY KAUS: “Obama has climbed to within 2 points of Hillary in the latest Rasmussen robo-poll. Hillary has a big problem with men–Obama leads her by 11% among men.”
I AGREE THAT TIM LAMBERT makes a poor spokesman for, well, . . . anything.
HOW (AND HOW NOT) TO FIGHT A FLU EPIDEMIC:
Scientists are still studying the 1918 pandemic, the deadliest of the 20th century, looking for lessons for future outbreaks — including the possibility that H5N1, the avian influenza virus, could mutate into a form spread easily from human to human. This month, researchers published two new studies in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences comparing public-health responses in cities like St. Louis and Philadelphia.
Using mathematical models, they reported that such large differences in death rates could be explained by the ways the cities carried out prevention measures, especially in their timing. Cities that instituted quarantine, school closings, bans on public gatherings and other such procedures early in the epidemic had peak death rates 30 percent to 50 percent lower than those that did not. . . . A two-week difference in response times, according to the researchers, is long enough for the number of people infected in an influenza epidemic to double three to five times.
Read the whole thing.
WELL, YEAH: “The powers-that-be at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport — the Metropolitan Airports Commission — have voted unanimously to require airport taxis to serve all comers, regardless of their compliance with sharia law. . . . In other words, the MAC is requiring airport taxis to fulfill their responsibility as common carriers; that’s what Curt Brown dubs a ‘crackdown.'”
If these were Christian “bible-thumpers” wanting to refuse passengers carrying alcohol, they’d get a lot less sympathy.
April 16, 2007
AND I’M SURE THE COMPETITION WAS STIFF: Extreme Mortman notes the dumbest White House press corps question of the day.
UPDATE: Video here.
ONE OF MY FORMER STUDENTS who blogs for Kos’s sportsblog network sent this image, and said that a lot of the sports bloggers are observing a moment of silence for Virginia Tech. That’s a nice gesture, and I’ll do the same. Back later.
MORE ON THE Kathy Sierra case.
YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK, flying members of Congress around over spring break.
Actually, I’d rather we did this about 51 weeks out of the year. It’s bound to work out cheaper in the end. . . .
LOTS OF PEOPLE WANT ME TO SAY MORE about the Virginia Tech shootings, but I don’t have a lot more to say at the moment, particularly as it’s still unclear exactly what happened.. However, Helen knows much more about school shootings, mass shootings and the like and you can read some of her writings on the subject here.
UPDATE: Rand Simberg has thoughts, though, starting with “Get ready for the political posturing.”
Meanwhile, Mary Katharine Ham says that GOP candidate websites dropped the ball by, er, not posturing fast enough. You just can’t win. (This was pretty fast.)
And here’s more from A.C. Kleinheider.
And while I’ve been busy, Eric Scheie was rounding things up in spite of being without power.
Lots more from the Bitchgirls. Including this: “My cousin is fine. Her friend was shot in the leg. We probably won’t know more for a while.”
359 comments at Radley Balko’s post.
There’s also much more at BoingBoing, including a — very legitimate, I think — worry about copycat attacks.
And there’s lots of discussion in the comments here. In answer to one question about professors — the University has never given me any training on what to do in a mass shooting situation, and I’d be surprised if very many universities train their professors in that sort of thing. These events are, of course, very rare, but in fact I haven’t had any disaster or attack training from the University at all, though I’ve had some from other sources.
FleetAdmiralJ, a Kos diarist from Blacksburg, has been blogging this all day.
More thoughts at Hog on Ice.
And, speaking of “copycats,” a Virginia Tech alumna in Kabul blogs: “Eight years ago, after Columbine, a group of students (including myself) from my high school met with then-President Clinton to talk about gun violence. I made a comment that the media was largely responsible, with the glorification of violence in big-budget blockbusters, and constant bombardment of violent images as ‘fun.’ Clinton shook off my comments, and it’s funny, because now something on the same terrible scale has happened at a place close to me, and I still stand by them.” I actually think that the sensationalized news coverage 24/7 is worse than the entertainment products.
More thoughts here. Plus, some history. And Roger Kimball has thoughts, too: “Of the many things that can be said about the horrible shooting at Virginia Tech today, one thing that we have already heard too often is that the shooting is offers a compelling argument against citizens owning guns. . . . A famous Roman military historian noted that si vis pacem, para bellum: if you want peace, prepare for war. Good advice, that. And if you want domestic tranquillity, an armed and responsible citizenry ready and able to protect life and property is not a bad way to start.”
Virginia Tech alumnus Jonathan Wilde has more thoughts over at Catallarchy.
MORE: The New York Times doesn’t get it. You think?
Plus, thoughts on campus security in response to the murders. “Campuses don’t need more security. Although simply reassuring the student body probably will require some beefed up security in the short run, neither Virginia Tech nor any other college campus needs to make any long term commitment on the basis of this shooting.”
STILL MORE: “McCain backs gun rights after shootings.”
“Like clockwork:” The vultures are arriving.
THOUGHTS ON TRAGEDIES, and discussing ways to prevent them, from Eugene Volokh.
CELL PHONE VIDEO from Blacksburg.