The entire mythology of the N.R.A. and its supporters is based on the idea that if a person is armed, he or she will be capable of shooting accurately. That the big problem is lack of gun availability, not gun owners who are sloppy, inept and occasionally psychotic.
If we required that anyone who wants to buy a gun first demonstrate the ability to hit a target, sales would plummet overnight.
Defend our Law and Culture, Not George Zimmerman
I think Zimmerman behaved foolishly. Looking at the situation from Trayvon Martin’s perspective, he was being followed first by vehicle then by foot — after dark — by a strange man who is neither law enforcement nor obviously a member of a uniformed security force. That’s unsettling at best, terrifying at worst — and leaves Martin with few good options. Should he presume Zimmerman’s good will and approach him for conversation? Should he keep his head down and walk as quickly as possible home? Should he try to hide? Should he run? Or should he take the worst of the series of bad options and turn and fight — even before Zimmerman makes an overtly threatening move? Some courses of action were safer than others, but all carried a degree of risk.
Zimmerman put Trayvon Martin in a difficult situation, and the fact there was strong evidence that Martin took the worst possible course of action — attacking Zimmerman — doesn’t vindicate Zimmerman’s foolishness. There is not one single concealed carry permit holder in the United States who should look to George Zimmerman as a model of proper conduct . . .
I Fooled the Internet with a Petition to Allow Guns at the Republican Convention
This week, an anonymous internet person calling himself the “Hyper Rationalist” launched a Change.org petition calling for guns to be allowed at the GOP convention this July. It went viral, gathering more than 50,000 signatures and launching a bevy of incredulous news articles. Some people assumed it was a joke, or supported it jokingly, but others took it seriously enough that Donald Trump said he would consider it, and the Secret Service had to clarify that no guns would be allowed at the event.
It was, it turns out, a piece of satire from a self-described liberal, but you can’t blame people if they weren’t sure whether they should laugh—in 2016, it’s increasingly difficult to sort out satire from fact.
.. The goal was to write something earnestly in the words of somebody on the pro-gun side of the debate. Not the furthest right person on that side, not the most easily caricatured—I imagined someone who could easily get a guest spot on Fox News. I tried to use that sort of language, for the most part, with little tweaks, like the capitalization of “HUSSEIN” in “Barack Hussein Obama,” as clues for people who might be in on the joke. I wrote what I think Republicans should have written without me, in order to not be in contradiction of their own stated principles about guns.
.. My sense was that the vast majority of support was from people who knew that it was satire. But I don’t know. That’s very unscientific; I’m not going to comb through 50,000 comments and try to figure that out. I don’t necessarily think it took off because Republicans supported it—but I think it’s absurd that most Republicans were silent on it.
The number of ‘mass shootings’ in the U.S. depends on how you count
Wednesday’s massacre in San Bernardino was the latest mass shooting in America. By some counts — including a heavily cited version — it was the 354th of the year. By a narrower definition, it was the 40th. In light of the headlines about mass shootings, there’s been a growing debate about what should count.