Oh, fine, let's take break to get disgusted at conservatives.

[prog]

The meme that the victims were a bunch of mincing cowards too sissified by their liberal environment to attack the gunman bare-handed seems to be rapidly spreading through the other camp. See comments by John Derbyshire, Nathaniel Blake, and Rush Limbaugh (as paraphrased by derspatchel).

Of tangential interest is a striking thought-experiment by bradhicks of what would have happened had any of the students been armed. I have no personal experience with guns or their use, so I don't know how accurate or relevant this is, but it made me think. (Gun control is an issue I stand absolutely neutrally on, and no recent events have changed this.)

Comments

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Kaine (who, as one commenter said, is actually a Democrat) came across as wonderfully sane and compassionate on the radio, but I do have some problems with the "decent interval" theory of political response to tragedy that he was endorsing, as I said right after Hurricane Katrina when I was one of the horrible people politicizing that tragedy. I and other Democrats were all nice and nonpartisan in the wake of the Sept. 11th attacks, and our respect for that decent interval just meant that a lot of horrible panic legislation got passed and Bush got to ruin the country unfettered for years to come. If other people are kneejerking around in bad ways, or if your political opposition unambiguously contributed to the tragedy, I think you ought to speak out.

That said, I do find compelling some of the arguments that gun control really doesn't have a lot to do with this particular horror. The shooter here wasn't legally allowed to have the guns he had, since he'd been committed to an institution previously; the Montreal Ecole Polytechnique shootings happened under a very different gun-control regime. It's hard to imagine a reasonable gun law that, by itself, could have presented this, though maybe we could talk about better enforcement of the laws on the books.

[radtea.livejournal.com]

the Montreal Ecole Polytechnique shootings happened under a very different gun-control regime.

As did the Dawson College shootings (also in Montreal) last year.

It seems to me very difficult to argue based on the statistics that gun control laws are a major factor in crime rates. The murder rate in Canada, for example, rose steadily through the 70's and 80's when the first gun laws were passed. On the other hand, it began dropping sharply in the early 90's, well before the long gun registry and associated licensing changes were implemented. On the gripping hand, I've never owned a gun, and I'm just as happy to know that people who do own them are required to be licensed and pass some basic safety tests.

Why perform a thought experiment...

[radtea.livejournal.com]

...when you can refer to the real thing?

<rant>

The thing about thought experiments is that they tell you absolutely nothing about reality, but a great deal about one person's thinking. As a means of exploring individual psychology they are great. As a means of informing policy debate they are worse than useless, because they do nothing but distract the discussion from the real issues, which are always about what really happens in reality, not what happens in some made-up fantasy.

I didn't follow the link so I don't know if it's pro or anti, and in any case it is an issue I'm on the fence about. But I'm not neutral on using thought experiments as a tool to investigate reality or start policy discussions. They simply have no place there.

</rant>

Re: Why perform a thought experiment...

[dougo.livejournal.com]

I didn't follow the link so I don't know if it's pro or anti

It's rather vehemently neither.

Re: Why perform a thought experiment...

[kahuna-burger.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, the real life example doesn't tell us anything about what would have happened here either. Neither of the students was carrying their guns on them, and they couldn't do anything about the situation until the gunman had exited the building. We have no idea if the gunman intented to continue shooting people, had accomplished his goals and was running or was looking for a nice place to off himself. I mean, kudos for them in their situation, but they were not "carrying" in the way that people are claiming would have helped here, and it is only speculation that they stopped him from killing more people, unless he stated further goals in his confession.

My problem with these thought expereiments is that they take this tiny moment of time, see what might happen then and declare a judgement on a long term major change. What would have happened if the students at that university were armed? Well, a lot of people would not work, teach or attend there, or send their children there, based on comments on a fairly conservative board the hubby reads. You would have guns as an everyday part of a 'culture' that includes alcohol abuse, hazing, competing mascismo and generally very poor judgement. (Note that in the real world example it was a law school, not undergrad and at least one of the students was a trained police officer who also grabbed his bullet proof vest.)

I mean, hell, I went to school with people who when they couldn't bring alcohol into a day long concert, would duck out between sets and try to chug enough alcohol to keep their buzz through the band they liked. The local emergency room told our EMS crew one year that they would not take any more alcohol poisoning cases that day because they were unable to treat non-university cases in a timely fashion. How often would a tradgedy like this have to occur and how certain would we have to be that armed students would help to make introducing guns into this little microcosm a good long term strategy?

Re: Why perform a thought experiment...

[radtea.livejournal.com]

My problem with these thought expereiments is that they take this tiny moment of time, see what might happen then and declare a judgement on a long term major change.

With a real experiment you at least have all the details of what actually happened, rather than people simply making stuff up. In contrast, a thought experiment is rhetorical or psychological device, not a means of investigating reality. With a real experiment the obvious problems of generalizing from an isolated incident become clear to everyone, so it at least starts the ball rolling in the right direction, toward reality.

That said, the only rational policy guidance is based on statistics, not on exceptional cases. And the statistics show that gun control and crime rates are pretty much uncorrelated over a broad range of policies and crime rates, pretty much the same way capital punishment and crime rates are uncorrelated.

It shouldn't really surprise me, because I used to be full of moral certainty myself back in the day before I had to make any really hard life-or-death moral choices. But I am still surprised that so many people--not just young people, either--are so full of certainty that what they believe is the One True and Correct Solution to All Our Problems, when even the most cursory review of the data simply does not justify anything like that belief.

Human beings are probability-blind, which is the logical equivalent of colour-blindness. Yet we live in an uncertain world where an understanding of the nature of probability can make all the difference between good and bad policy. It is as if we are a colour-blind species living in a world where the only thing that distinguishes between food and poison is a single shade of green. And while scientists have developed some imperfect spectrophotometer that could go some ways toward solving our problem, people prefer to ignore it for ancient myths and hallucinations.

[dictator555.livejournal.com]

Yeah, as thought experiments go, that one seemed pretty ill thought out and not terribly educated. Or so it seemed to me. I don't know a ton about guns or SWAT operations, but I know enough to think the scenarios presented aren't necessarily the most likely, and certainly not the only ones.

[chocorisu.livejournal.com]

After the initial shock wore off I rapidly came to the same conclusion; that it was a one in a million tragedy and I'm far more likely to die from being run over by a bottle-blonde trophy wife in a giant Range Rover while she chats on her diamanté-encrusted RAZR, like nearly happened this lunchtime.

And having a gun in that situation would not have helped anyone, especially not her. My views on gun control stem mostly from the feeling that if I had one, I probably would have shot someone by now.

[grr-plus1.livejournal.com]

I've been annoyed at the continuous reporting, Bush speachifying, flags half-mast, Boston schools & police doing shooter-preparadness training, etc. over the shooting. 30 people dead is less than 1% of people killed by car accidents (or gun accidents for that matter). It was clearly a very rare event & will continue to be so.

I mostly agree with the Brad that gun control won't eliminate these rare events. However, if the irrational hooha over VA Tech causes people to enact better controls on gun sales - great! Thousands fewer kids & family members killed by gun accidents. If the irrational hooha leads to legislation that gives more seriously depressed (or otherwise psychologically crippled) access to treatment, that would be fantastic!