Right Wing: I'm the Real Victim Here

by bert

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords is on tape from last spring agreeing with an interviewer that Sarah Palin's crosshair map is troubling. Her office was vandalized. A protester brought a gun and dropped it at a Giffords appearance in Douglas, Ariz. last August. Her campaign opponent Jesse Kelly ran an event "to get on target" and "remove Gabrielle Giffords from office" that attracted people by offering them the chance to fire M16s.

Then Mrs. Giffords was shot in the head.

I didn't like this kind of crap before, and I like it even less now. I guess I am heartened that the right wing suddenly believes in intellectual rigor and making careful distinctions. We've all been lectured about blame and told the suspect Jared Loughner did not actively conspire with any of the folks they always defend no matter what.

Whatever. The fact remains that Mrs. Palin and all the goons mixing politics with gun play should be ashamed of themselves. I'm talking about decency, not blame. And I don't care if stating the obvious hurts their feelings. They don't get to be the victims right now.

The Shooting

by folkbum

I don't have a lot to add that hasn't already been said. In cases like this, the more important factor is always that the shooter seems to be a plain-old nutjob, not a ___-wing nutjob (with the blank being right or left). From the distance of a couple of days now, it seems that there is no connection between the shooter and the kind of eliminationist rhetoric that is real and exists and literally targeted Gabrielle Giffords last year. That's just a gut-wrenching coincidence. This shooter is just plain stoner-crazy. Based on the kinds of things on his youtube channel (and that he seems to believe a lot of the same things as this Milwaukee man), we're deep into Time Cube kinds of insanity, not partisan meanness.

But I do have to wonder: If Congressional elections were to be held two months from now, instead of two months ago, would Sarah Palin have released a map with Congressional districts in gunsights? (And they were gunsights--Palin admitted as much last year.)

If the debate among candidates for chair of the Republican National Committee were held this week instead of last week, would Grover Norquist still have asked the candidates how many guns they own?

If the "tea party" movement started today, instead of two years ago, would they proudly bear signs and wear t-shirts proclaiming, "We came unarmed--this time"?

If Sharron Angle were a candidate for Senate this year instead of last year, would she still tell a radio audience that people who disapprove of their government may have to resort to "second amendment remedies"?

Again, there is obviously no connection between any of those things and what happened on Saturday. But all of these people, in retrospect, must be feeling incredibly sick and guilty about what they have said. Or at least, they ought to be, if they are remotely human.

Thank jeebus that political assassination in this this country is rare. However, I think it is that rareness itself that allows people to shrug off violent rhetoric and imagery from candidates, campaigns, media figures, and elected officials. It's all fun and games and metaphor--until someone gets shot in the head. Again, there is no reason to believe any of those things made the shooter do what he did, but this is the time for reflection. Does it help, does it do any good, does it add one positive ounce to the universe to run around spouting that kind of violent rhetoric and promoting guns? Think about Gabby Giffords--no, better, think about Christina Taylor Greene.

Where did they get that idea? WISGOP.

by folkbum

When George W Bush was re-elected in 2004, I reacted badly, I know (you can search the archives yourself!), and I did have a significant fear that Bush with a re-empowered Republican Congress would act to restrict rights and freedoms. I did not, however, rush right out to get an abortion or burn a flag or gay marry a terrorist. I don't think anyone did--although I doubt anyone was tracking the gay terrorist stats at the time. And, fortunately for all of us, Bush chose to spend his "political capital" on reforming Social Security, a move that bombed worse than An American Carol, and some of my most paranoid fears were never realized.

In the weeks since Barack Obama's election, fearful conservatives and Republicans have been rushing right out to do stuff that they fear will become illegal, including--as many people have noted--buying a lot of guns.

This confuses me, somewhat, as it does others, because gun control as a legislative or campaign issue has fallen from among Democrats' top priorities a decade or two ago to somewhere below the free-ponies-for-all level. In other words, it's just not something big anymore. It was not an issue in the presidential campaign, and I don't even recall seeing references to it as part of the national Congressional campaign. Even here in Wisconsin, the most you hear about legislative gun issues is whether or not to allow concealed carry--not how many and which guns to start banning.

Mike Plaisted raises the question too: "Somehow, I missed the 'Obama will come for your guns' part of the hysterical right-wing message during the campaign." Well, I didn't. It didn't come from the Obama campaign, of course, but I saw it. Remember the half-dozen mailers I got from the Wisconsin GOP? I'll refresh your memory on the word frequency table:

40 Obama
17 Gun/ Firearm/ Arms
9 Rezko
8 Special Interest/ Political Favor/ and variants
7 Lead/ Leading / Led/ Leadership (to suggest Obama doesn't lead)
2 McCain

Mentioned more than the economy, more than Tony Rezko, more than even the GOP's own candidate John McCain--guns. So where would Wisconsin Republicans get the fear that a Democrat would take their guns away? From the Wisconsin Republican party, that's where. The Wisconsin GOP, supported by the NRA, which is supported by gun manufacturers, has spurred a run on guns, a certain boon to those very gun manufacturers. It's quite the clever self-supporting loop they have running there. I'm sure the NRA is seeing a boost in individual donations now, too, and in the next election cycle, as the NRA works to elect Republican candidates across the state, everyone's back will have been fully scratched.

Half Cocked -- Church Cancels Gun Giveaway

Keith R. Schmitz

Get a gun, get saved.

A small bore idea for gettin' the kids into church.

OKLAHOMA CITY, July 14 (UPI) -- An Oklahoma City church called off plans to give away a semiautomatic assault rifle at a weekend gathering of teenagers, the church's pastor said.

Plans called for Windsor Hills Baptist to give away the weapon as a way of encouraging attendance at the gathering but plans changed when one the event's organizers was unable to attend, KOCO 5, Oklahoma City, reported Sunday.

The church's pastor, Bob Ross, said officials anticipated hundreds of teenagers from as far away as Canada would attend.

"We have 21 hours of preaching and teaching throughout the week," Ross told KOCO 5.

The church Web site featured a video showing the shooting competition from last year's conference. A gun was given away last year, but this year organizers decided to highlight the giveaway in promotions for the conference.

Ross told the TV station the church was not "putting a weapon in the hand of somebody that doesn't respect it who are then going to go out and kill."

The gun giveaway has been taken down from the Web site, but Ross said the church will give the gun away next year.

Granted, just because someone has a gun doesn't necessarily mean they are going to use it on others, but this move in connection with a faith-based organization has all the cachet of handing out copies of Grand Theft.

WWJS -- what would Jesus shoot?

Scalia v. Irony

by folkbum

I'm not Constitutional scholar or lawyer, which means I don't have a lot to say about the decision in Boumediene v. Bush other than that it seems pretty consistent with the Court's previous rulings on detainees. It should not, then, have come as such a great surprise as it seems to have been for a lot of the right yesterday.

I am, however, well-trained in irony, which means I look very much forward to seeing whether Justice Scalia's "[i]t will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed" rationale will mean he upholds the DC gun ban. At the very least, I think Justice Breyer ought to throw that line into his opinion, just to rub it in Nino's face a bit.

Gun Ownership -- You Know What I'm Driving at

By Keith Schmitz

As a dovetail to 3rd Way's post below, I read a great analogy but it is driving me nut where I saw it so pardon me to the originator.

The gun lovers think they are very clever when they bring up that cars kill people just like guns, so why aren't we trying to limit access to cars as we are with guns.

Nevermind that the intent of a gun is to maim and kill (and get your jollies shooting and listening to it go off), while cars have 100,000 uses and the taking of life is not at all the primary intent.

So be it. Let's treat guns like we treat cars. So therefore a gun owner would have to be licensed and ownership recorded, a gun would have to have a traceable serial number and every time that gun changes hands there must be a transaction recorded with the state.

Oh, and the ower of the gun would have to carry insurance in case someone is accidentally injured or killed by the gun.

Works for me.

It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Election Season

by capper

As if all the coverage of the presidential campaign wasn't a warning, today's MSJ gives another sign that elections season is fast approaching, if not already here. The story is about the pandering of state legislators to the NRA and their paranoid members. The state Assembly has already passed and the Senate is expected to pass a bill that would put severe limitations on authorities to confiscate guns from people acting poorly.

The bill was sponsored by Rep. Scott Gunderson (R-NRA's right pocket) who said, "I just think it's important that if there ever is a disaster similar to Katrina, that citizens are able to defend themselves, their families and their property and not be worried about government coming and confiscating their firearms." Yeah, right. I clearly remember the hurricane of '83 that wiped Sheboygan right of the face of the map. And if there was such a calamity to hit Wisconsin, I'd be a bit too worried to worry about whether my gun rights were protected.

As one might expect, the local gun enthusiasts are more than pleased with this. Dad29 has even put up a NRA film showing interviews and even a lady get taken down by police, because she wouldn't give up her gun. When I challenged Dad on that, he threw up the predictable straw man challenging me to prove that the NRA was less than honest with their propaganda. Well, I can't. Most states with CCW and under the NRA's thumbs also having laws that forbid the public knowledge of data such as how many gun crimes were committed by licensed owners.

So instead, I looked a little into why the cops were taking peoples guns. As you could imagine, I found tons of articles about Katrina and guns. About two thirds were by the NRA or gun enthusiast sites echoing the NRA verbatim.

The other third were stories about the chaos, the violence and the troubles faced by the police and the National Guard members that were trying to restore order, rescue workers being shot at by looters or by freaked out homeowners, and stores being pillaged for their guns.

I can't speak for Dad29 or any of the other gun enthusiasts, but if I am trying to help someone, I'd be less inclined to if they started shooting at me. And if I was trying to help restore order in the face of such devastating and unimaginable chaos, I wouldn't be taking time to see if the people shooting at me were legal gun owners.

But that's just me looking at the other side of the equation.

And before the rabid NRA acolytes come after me with their pitchforks and torches, I am not advocating for the complete abolishment of guns. First of all, the right would have more luck cleansing the country of illegal aliens that the left would be getting rid of all the guns. Secondly, I do own some shotguns and a rifle that I inherited, that I use at our place in the country. So far, I have only had to worry about a rabid raccoon and two rattlers in six years. No looters, no thugs. (And yes, I keep them unloaded and locked up.)

So why is the legislature taking going through the motions of passing an unnecessary bill? I can only think of two reasons. One, it's a step closer to concealed carry law, which I would oppose. Two, it's an election year and the NRA has deep pockets.

Half Cocked

by krshorewood

The notion that somehow if more guns would be available rampages such as the one last week at Virginia Tech would have been cut short Rambo style by a "law-abidin'" citizen packing heat. That's one of the pleasing myths peddled by gun nuts and the Republicans that love them.

First off, I am glad that this debate has still got some steam despite the ease with which we move on from events. It was a little irritating to hear people, mostly gun supporters, to puleeze, puleeze not politicize this incident out of respect for the dead. No, this was out respect for what many of them amounts to either their pleasure or paranoia, and they were hoping a week out people would lose their intensity on the incident.

An example of some of the thoughts still being generated this week is today's Bob Herbert column in the New York Times.

The notion of more guns means less violent is just bat crap crazy. Increasing something that is harmful in the first place only really works for things such as preventing small pox, not so smart when it comes to human behavior.

What propels the gun lust crowd is that mental picture of the "bad guy" they like to invoke. Just that term alone seems to lock someone into the skull of a six year old boy. But as one Virginia Tech student put it so well on a blog, it's not the person in the back alley you have to fear but the student sitting next to you in class who snaps.

The gun lovers like to point to those rare occurances when a gun is actually used for self defense. But at what cost?

In Herbert's column he cites a conversation with Marian Wright Edelman, president of the Children’s Defense Fund. She says:

that since the murders of Robert Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, well over a million Americans have been killed by firearms in the United States. That’s more than the combined U.S. combat deaths in all the wars in all of American history.

That's certainly many times more than the number of people who have defended themselves with firearms.

Herbert concludes his column talking about who really pays the price for our outlandish gun owndership:

Those who are interested in the safety and well-being of children should keep in mind that only motor vehicle accidents and cancer kill more children in the U.S. than firearms. A study released a few years ago by the Harvard School of Public Health compared firearm mortality rates among youngsters 5 to 14 years old in the five states with the highest rates of gun ownership with those in the five states with the lowest rates.

The results were chilling. Children in the states with the highest rates of gun ownership were 16 times as likely to die from an accidental gunshot wound, nearly seven times as likely to commit suicide with a gun, and more than three times as likely to be murdered with a firearm.

Only a lunatic could seriously believe that more guns in more homes is good for America’s children.

If someone believes they are playing the big hero in defending their family by having a gun in their house the figures don't bear them out. Worse, the one-issue minds of many gun owners compel them to support the Republican Party -- like the NRA tells them to do -- and vote against not only their own interest but the future of their family.

A Mini-McIlheran Watch: His Readers Ain't As Stupid As He Must Think

by bert

I haven't seen any of my able comrades give Pat McIlheran his always deserved upbraiding this week. They still will, hopefully. Let me just point out one thing within the target-rich environment of his column. He said this, while attacking any proposals for legal changes after the Virginia Tech massacre:

Other notions range from the marginal, such as legislating smaller ammo clips (so Cho would have put more in his vest), to the counterproductive, such as banning guns, which Britain's slowly done since 1920. Its disarmed citizens now suffer a higher violent crime rate than we do. The use of guns in crime soared 40% in the years right after its final ban. Even its customarily low homicide rate has risen as ours fell.

Notice how he slips in there at the end a comparison of homicide rate changes? Britain's homicide rate may be trending upward while in the U.S. it is going down. But let's be clear here. The recent rates in Britain are still around 14 people murdered per million of population (in 1997, according to a Parliament website) while in the U.S. it is down from about 100 in the early 1990s to now 60 per million (in 2002, according to the Dept. of Justice). That means there is still a lot more murder in the country that has not banned guns.

I'm not saying my stats prove anything in the gun control debate. But McIlheran's numbers don't say what he wants us to think they say. This fits a pattern: I am often spurred to respond to gun-lobby operatives mainly because they are as smug as they are specious. I've written before about the dishonesty of their drive to keep all information about concealed carry permit holders secret. Once again, finding holes in their arguments is like shooting fish in a barrel.

The If Onlies

Whenever an event like the one in Blacksburg happens, it just makes me feel ill even thinking about it. I work in a school and just can't imagine the horror in a scene like that.

But these kinds of events also leave us with some bad cases of what you might call the If Onlies. If only this, if only that. And when the event involves a gun, you can bet the most prevalent If Onlies will center around the guns: if only we could magically make the guns disappear, if only everyone in that building had been carrying, if only.

Such If Onlies inevitably lead us away from what's important to remember about these events: They are rare, they are random, and they are as unpredictable as they are impossible to stop. Any attempts to fix public policy around them would be as imbicilic as basing your family budget on expected lottery winnings. This was one nut, one disturbed person, one freak who cracked or snapped. Instead of remembering that and mourning the carnage, instead we snipe and try to score cheap points.

Of course, the If Onlies I come up with have nothing to do with guns: If only someone had identified this nut as someone who needed help sooner, if only he'd sought counseling instead of revenge, if only.

None of those make any of the events of yesterday any different, either. But, speaking only as someone who works in a school and who never wants to have to face the horror of a scene like that, let me remind you all: Be the person who asks if someone needs help before they go off on a rampage. Seek help for yourself or others, positive outlets for stress, effective techniques for easing rage.

And keep your thoughts with the families in Virginia, not on the politics.

(Also, Barbara O'Brien, at the end of the post, tells us that this is not, as some are calling it, the worst shooting rampage in US history.)

Guns for teachers is quite possibly the Stupidest Idea Ever

The recent, depressing, regretable--and remarkably anomalous--rash of school violence has led to what has to be the most hare-brained and addle-pated idea since Uncle Herb decided to let Homer design a car. (I know that was on a TV show. But I can't even think of an example in real life that even comes close.)

That idea--sprung like a sadly defective Athena from the shiny forehead of Representative Frank Lasee (R-Bellevue) (the town, not the mental hospital)--is to arm teachers and other school personnel.

I wonder if Lasee asked a single teacher about the idea, because just about every teacher I know would have told Lasee where he could stick his guns (hint: not the holster).

The Cheddarsphere's gun fetishists have all taken firm hold of the proposal and are pumping away. In typical run-on fashion, Chris pictures it in his mind, saying "Hell I am not saying you have to meet them in a hall way like Gary Cooper in High Noon it isn’t that hard to shoot someone in that back or even force the gunman to flee." Whew! Our halls don't have to be the Old West! Owen unsurprisingly calls it a good idea. Dad29 befouls the memory of Principal John Klang, who died in last week's Weston School shooting here in Wisconsin.

Notice, none of them are teachers, work in a school, or have as their primary responsibility the safety of hundreds or thousands of kids. They, like Lasee, are happy to impose their own twisted fantasy ideal on those of us who have to live with the consequences of their decisions.

What, then, makes this so stupid? The first reason is simple: In every school shooting of late--and I'm thinking in terms of years, now, not just last week--the perpetrators wanted to die. In fact, some of them, like the teens plotting a Columbine redux in Green Bay, specifically planned for "suicide by cop." The man who executed five girls in Pennsylvania Monday wanted to die. The man who took students hostage in Colorado last week killed himself, too. Owen, admittedly, tries to address the point by saying that armed teachers might hasten that last plank of the plan. But the fact remains: There will be no deterrent effect. In fact--and perhaps I know too many of the wrong kind of teenagers--I worry that it might encourage more suicidal kids to "take people with them," as the Green Bay students planned.

Also, I know the frequency with which things turn up stolen at school. Well, you might say, we'll only give the responsible teachers guns. Horse pucky. Believe me, there are many people who think they're responsible--or are labeled as such by their supervisors--who simply are not. Again, maybe I'm generalizing based on what I know from working so long in such a messed-up district. But even the teachers I think are responsible have things turn up missing--sometimes as small as bus tickets, sometimes as large as stereos or DVD players. Safety aides and administrators regularly have their walkie-talkies or other personal effects stolen during melees. I once had a smooth student swipe my clip-on ID right off my clothes. And if you think the lawsuits are a potential problem now, just wait until the first time a group of kids surprises an armed teacher, knocks him or her down, and steals the gun to do whatever it is they might otherwise have done with just fists.

And, among the best reasons against the proposal is one I heard expressed by my union president Dennis Oulihan on the radio this morning (listen here). The schools, he said, are very often the safest places in our students' lives. School may just be the one place where our kids go regularly where the people around them aren't packing heat, and the kids count on that measure of safety. Since I've been in the district, a number of my students or former students have been murdered outside of school, but not a single student has been killed inside an MPS school. Carrying guns around, besides creating the possibility of a loose gun in the building, sends an implicit message to the students that you are no longer safe here. I don't want any part of that.

Lasee's legislation probably won't go anywhere. There's that pesky federal law against carrying on school grounds, and the fact that, no matter who wins the governor's race next month (reminder: vote Doyle), the proposal may well face a veto. Plus his cousin, Senate President Alan Lasee (ironically, the one who wears the cowboy hat), has basically said "over my dead body."

But dead bodies we may get: Frank Lasee, in the news article, recognizes that his idea is a longshot, but holds out the hope of more school violence, to jumpstart support for the idea ("support could build in the future if school violence continues"). Not my wish, but I guess sometimes we have to make sacrifices, don't we, Frank?

--

Additional reading: Michael J. Mathias and Barry Orton.

Crybaby

Hey, did you hear the one about the bill in the Senate that Hillary Clinton (or, as the stable among us call her, Shrillary) voted for, the one that would make it harder for big cities like New York to track criminals and criminal activity? Yeah, Michael Bloomberg, the Republican NYC mayor, was in utter disbelief that Hillary would vote to tie the hands of his police force like that. Did you hear what Hillary called him?

Crybaby! She called him a crybaby!

And of course the right is screaming bloody murder. How, they wonder, can reasonable Democrats anywhere possibly support such a moonbatty, shrill, vile, and immature excuse for a Senator? The demands for an apology--if not her resignation--have been relentless from talk radio, the newspapers, and, of course, FOXNews. My friends tell me it's been hard to be a Democrat in New York these last couple of days, with the embarrassing and childish crybaby hanging over you.

You haven't heard? Really? Oh, right--that's because I think I reversed a fact or two here.

We're not talking about a shrill Democratic member of Congress calling the Republican mayor of her state's largest city a crybaby. No, no, no, that really would have sent the Limbaughs and Hannities and Fred Barneses into screaming rages demanding that Democrat's head on a platter with a side of crow.

The players are actually F. Jim Sensenbrenner and Tom Barrett:

The mayor of Milwaukee and the congressman representing most of its suburbs engaged in a heated and somewhat personal long-distance exchange Wednesday over crime and its effect on the city.

The argument began with House Judiciary Committee passage of legislation that would prohibit the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives from releasing data used to trace guns used in crimes back to the dealers who sold them. Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, a Republican from Menomonee Falls, is chairman of the committee.

Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett [and former Democratic member of Congress] called the approval of the bill "appalling," saying that "the federal government is turning its back on our fight to get illegal guns off the street."

Sensenbrenner, who voted for the bill, called Barrett a "crybaby" who is "attempting to use legislation pending in Congress to cover up his sorry record of controlling crime."

The story goes on from there.

There has been some small outrage; some of us liberal Milwaukee bloggers have hit on the story. Xoff posts twice at Sensenbrenner Watch. Logan (profanity alert) notes that "Sensenbrenner should lose his seat for not having better stock insults."

And it's true that the daily paper today did both blast the bill and wagged its finger at F. Jim over his temper. There's been a small level of tsk-tsking from community leaders, and WAVE, the Wisconsin Anti-Violence Effort, issued a press release.

But there is no wide-spread embarrassment among Sensenbrenner's supporters (he was just "speaking bluntly") or overwhelming media demands for an apology or resignation. Sensenbrenner, as is his wont, is stuck in the mud and won't budge, either from his puerile behavior or his NRA-bought position on the bill. No one is gathering people to march on his offices or organizing email drives (hint, hint--especially constiuents) demanding he start acting like a grown-up and a committee chair.

Of course, since my example above was purely hypothetical, I have no way to know for sure that this is the kind of reaction the right would really have against a Democrat--although I lived through the Howard Dean primary campaign, so I saw all kinds of manufactured outrage over more minor flubs. I don't know if the current lack of a firestorm here is a result of this being a rather parochial battle--who in the national media cares about us in flyover land?--or a lack of liberal outrage infrastructure--talk radio, astroturf campaigns, and so on.

In either case, this incident is just a sad reminder that Sensenbrenner has gone native out in DC, and doesn't really give a rip anymore about what's good for the provinces. The NRA takes precedence over the law-enforcement needs of his dstrict. Yet the elements necessary to hold him accountable--from a tenacious media to competitive redistricting--are sorely lacking. I'm trying to get my hands on a copy of this poll, but if its results are accurate--that F. Jim's net approval rating is negative in his district--it's a signal that the 5th CD could be ready for a change this November. But if there's not even going to be a fuss over his calling Mayor Barrett a crybaby, there's little hope of harnessing that negative sentiment and using it against him.

No Carry for Me

Last week, a conservative acquaintance emailed that he’d recently realized that “few, if any, opponents to concealed carry had ever heard a presentation which addresses the responsibilities and consequences of carrying a concealed weapon.

“Seemed to me,” he wrote, “that were someone who opposes concealed-carry to hear such a presentation, it might be an ‘AHA!!’ moment.”

I am, in fact, an opponent of concealed-carry legislation. But I doubt sitting through a presentation like that would change my mind. My opposition has little to do with not knowing all the responsibilities and consequences of carrying; it has everything to do with the kind of place I want to live in.

I’ve always appreciated that Wisconsin’s motto is “Forward”; it means my adopted state ought to spend its time thinking about how to progress as a society. Regression towards the Old West runs, I believe, counter to the motto.

More importantly, I don’t want to live in a society ruled by fear.

At a town hall meeting last month with my state senator and representative, an advocate for concealed weapons wanted to know why the two had opposed concealed-carry bills in the legislature, and had voted to uphold Governor Doyle’s vetoes.

After complaining that Wisconsin was one of a dwindling handful of states yet to allow concealed carry, and claiming that crime rates had fallen in other states after the measure’s passage, the gentleman finally got to the heart of why he felt he needed a gun.

“These people,” he said—and everyone in the room full of white South Side faces knew exactly whom he was referring to—“these people will get so bad they’ll drive everyone out of town!” Here was a man, a Vietnam veteran, according to his hat, letting fear and prejudice drive his desire for a concealed weapon.

I’m not suggesting that everyone who favors concealed-carry has the same kind of underlying issues he does; but a common argument among advocates is, “We need to protect ourselves.”

I can’t tell anyone not to be afraid—it just doesn’t work that way—especially given last summer and the kind of summer we seem headed toward this year. But I can say that it’s unlikely our law-abiding, class-taking, responsible-seeming gun-toters will ever need to defend themselves against a violent crime. There’s something soothing, maybe, in knowing you’re packing, but you are probably not going to be a victim of a violent crime perpetrated by a stranger—“these people,” as some might say.

The FBI’s crime statistics repeatedly tell us that, more often than not, violent crime is not random, and victims usually know perpetrators. Even the violent Memorial Day weekend just passed bears this out: Most victims knew the person who pulled the trigger.

As to the claim that carrying reduces crime, it is suspicious at best. (The author of a book with a similar name is a demonstrated fraud.) Yes, violent crime rates fell during the 1990s in states that liberalized their carry laws. But to believe the changed laws cause the drop in crime is to fall for the oldest social science fallacy. Just because two things happen sequentially does not mean that the first caused the second.

Because guess what happened to violent crime rates in Wisconsin during that same time period, with the same restrictions in place that the NRA and my email correspondent now want changed? If you guessed that they fell, you win.

In fact, in 2000, only four states had less violent crime reported to the police than we did, with our rate being half that of the US as a whole. Last summer’s murder rate notwithstanding, Wisconsin continues to have one of the lowest rates of violent crime, all without concealed carry.

Sure, maybe we could drop a few more points in the ratings—though there is not that far to fall—if we thought criminals would be afraid every potential victim of theirs was carrying.

But in the same way that I don’t want to let fear drive me to carry, I think there are better deterrents for criminals than fear. The same things that probably lowered crime rates in the nineties—expanded economic opportunity and money for more police on the streets—will work just as well now.

And I don’t need a presentation to tell me that.