Maybe he could move to Arizona [updated]

*
It may be the case that George Zimmerman now sees Florida's Stand Your Ground law as a sort of double-edged petard:

His brother said the former neighborhood watch volunteer was still processing the reality that he wouldn’t serve prison time for the killing, which Zimmerman, 29, has maintained was an act of self-defense. A jury found him not guilty of second-degree murder late Saturday night and declined to convict him on a lesser charge of manslaughter.

However, with many critics angry over his acquittal, his freedom may be limited. “He’s going to be looking over his shoulder the rest of his life,” Robert Zimmerman Jr. said during an interview on CNN.

Somebody should have thought about that before, as Johnny Cash once described it, he shot a man in Sanford just to watch him die.

It's a counter-intuitive outcome, though: when you "stand your ground" it comes to pass that your "freedom may be limited." Maybe even as much as Trayvon Martin's.

Update:  now, according to a musician's son, there's evidently stand your ground, freedom-of-expression style:

Lester [Chambers] was just assaulted on stage at The Russell City Hayward Blues Festival by a crazed woman after dad dedicated ‘People Get Ready’ to Trayvon Martin. He is on the way to the hospital now.

Tick tock Tick KOO-koo!

Dave's Delivery Door

Editor's note: Big Rock Head has resumed his visual art enterprise, entitled Dave's Delivery Door. It will be in syndication at most of these same blogs as long as he permits. Click it to enlarge it. All Delivery Doors are copyrighted by the artist sometimes known as Big Rock Head.

"As the nation searches for answers..."

*

The title of this post quotes a rhetorical formulation that I'd already heard too many times long before the nation once again began last week to "search for answers" to the problem of "evil." The media love this formulation because it suggests that mass murders committed with military-style firearms are mysteries (like superstorms!!!) that not even reporters and celebrity pundits can shed light upon. It's convenient---helps editors avoid the assaults that right-wing thought leaders launch against facts, logic, and human decency.

Just because "Wayne LaPierre" goes on TV and presents his vile, deranged point of view, like he did this morning, it does not follow that such opinions "complicate" the task of legislating sane and reasonable arms-control policies. In fact, the NRA company line helps to clarify the matter. The fetishism his organization promotes for the benefit of the gun-peddling syndicate it serves verifies everybody's hunch (including LaPierre's) that some form of mental illness is at the root of gun violence. Josh Marshall assessed the contents of a recent SEC filing by a gun-manufacturing consortium like this:

You’ve got fairly candid discussions of male insecurity as a decent on-going growth opportunity, women as a new source of gun purchases and a general migration from hunting and target shooting toward gun ownership as a way of simply feeling more awesome.

In order that the public doesn't get suckered into turning an impulse to formulate civilized gun-control policy into an amateur witch hunt for the "mentally ill," I'd suggest trying to focus the mental-health piece of the discussion on gun-related mental illness.

In that connection---and considering that a new edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is being prepared---I think it should be a high priority for the mental health community of practice to identify and quantify the particular variety of paranoia that might be called something like "firearms obsession disorder." Yellow flags that indicate the probable need for counseling might include a subject's frequent verbal conflation of "gun rights" and "freedom," or "gun ownership" and "masculinity." Red flags that indicate the urgent need for immediate psychiatric supervision and possible involuntary confinement might include a subject's hoarding of firearms that have no inherent historic, aesthetic, or collectible value (and especially the hoarding of ammunition for such guns), or the repeated public expression that the solution to gun violence is yet more gun violence:

The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.

...

I call on Congress today to act immediately, to appropriate whatever is necessary to put armed police officers in every school — and to do it now, to make sure that blanket of safety is in place when our children return to school in January.

Individuals with Firearms Obsession Disorder believe that "the only way to fight fire is with fire." Most of us regular people think that it is more rational to fight fire with water.

Monsters

*
Wanton marquee-grade killing, whether the media label it as "terrorism" or "tragedy," understandably raises the eternal question of where "evil" comes from, and why. Opinions are diverse, understandably, because this is arguably the central mystery of existence to anyone who believes that life has a moral or spiritual dimension (in other words, that the universe is more than a bin of particles that follows "laws of science" to move from chaos toward order). My opinions on that aren't important; they're as unimportant as, say, Mike Huckabee's.

But around these events, the question of what to do about them always struggles to be considered. Predictably to anyone who knows something about post-70s America, Second Amendment enthusiasts and the politicians who exploit their preoccupation tell everyone else that "now is not the time" to talk about gun carnage because, after all, it is people who kill people. Everyone else is also admonished not to "politicize" tragedy, even though it's legitimate and imperative to discuss whether public policy is partially to blame or whether changes in public policy could reduce the frequency and carnage of mass shootings. Corporate media always propagate this conservative admonition, and are its foremost adherents.

I've got nothing profound to offer, but here is a small survey of media response with a comment or two.

This whole Charlie Pierce piece is worth reading. He ties any discussion of gun "tragedies" to the fundamental conservative fallacy---that (to borrow Margaret Thatcher's radical confession of global conservative principles) "there is no such thing as society":

There are things we must do together, in a political context, because these things are too big — and, in this case, too monstrous — for us to handle alone. Self-government and its institutions — public schools, police and fire departments, the ridiculously underfunded mental-health facilities, and all the people to whom we increasingly begrudge their salaries — are the only things keeping us from falling back into barbarism, and the only things keeping us safe and sane when one of us falls back into it on their own.

I agree. The absolute minimal conversation we should be having about gun violence, whether or not conservatives think any time is an appropriate time, is about the necessity of understanding that America needs fully funded and professional education, law enforcement, emergency response, and healthcare institutions... period. If the well off and the Job Creators don't want to pay for the privilege of enjoying an orderly society, they should repatriate their warty asses to China or Haiti.

Second, there is this piece by Maggie Koerth-Baker about "what science says" about gun control. Here is her profound takeaway:

Some studies are funded by biased institutions. Some studies aren't peer reviewed. Some studies feature poorly thought-out methodology.

All of that leads to a mess of frequently contradictory conclusions that can, frankly, be used to support just about any position you'd like to put forward. So, basically, just because you can support your position, don't think that makes you absolutely correct.

As so-called science writers go, Koerth-Baker is especially useless to me, with her patronizing and pseudo-profundities. But I think her conclusion is typical corporate media treatment: it's all just too complicated for us poor journalists and citizens to make heads or tails of, so let's all just love one another. Thanks for nothing, Maggie.

Speaking of the "media role" in public tragedy, the following is something I stumbled across this morning. It's a Roger Ebert anecdote about an interview he gave to NBC news (never aired) after Columbine (via BoingBoing again) in which the reporter was looking to cherry-pick quotes about violent movies causing gun violence. Ebert wouldn't play along:

The reporter looked disappointed, so I offered her my theory. "Events like this," I said, "if they are influenced by anything, are influenced by news programs like your own. When an unbalanced kid walks into a school and starts shooting, it becomes a major media event. Cable news drops ordinary programming and goes around the clock with it. The story is assigned a logo and a theme song; these two kids were packaged as the Trench Coat Mafia. The message is clear to other disturbed kids around the country: If I shoot up my school, I can be famous. The TV will talk about nothing else but me. Experts will try to figure out what I was thinking. The kids and teachers at school will see they shouldn't have messed with me. I'll go out in a blaze of glory."

In short, I said, events like Columbine are influenced far less by violent movies than by CNN, the NBC Nightly News and all the other news media, who glorify the killers in the guise of "explaining" them.

As much as public policy, this is a piece of the problem that needs to be discussed. Logos and branding---bullseye. Personally, I wouldn't dismiss the media's normalization of violence as sensual and pre-political entertainment as quickly as Ebert seems to, but Hollywood is not directly responsible for Columbine or Tucson or Newtown.

And finally, there's this last word on the topic, straight from the mouth of a genuine monster:

Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee attributed the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in part to restrictions on school prayer and religious materials in the classroom. 

"We ask why there is violence in our schools, but we have systematically removed God from our schools," Huckabee said on Fox News, discussing the murder spree that took the lives of 20 children and 6 adults in Newtown, CT that morning. "Should we be so surprised that schools would become a place of carnage?"

As Rob Bechizza said about Huckabee's comments back on BoingBoing: "Don't be angry. Just understand what he understands: that this is political."

I think the conversation needs to be much more far-reaching than the topic of gun control. It needs to examine how this society has become so detached from its own collective humanity that even a discussion of gun control is taboo within both of our major political parties while kids are slaughtered on their mats in kindergarten.

Multiple choice

*

Here is a pop quiz, based on a fact I learned yesterday. Your three choices are:

a. Bill Clinton
b. Ron Paul
c. Gabrielle Giffords

Which one do you think said this:

I have a Glock 9 millimeter, and I’m a pretty good shot.

Yeah, me neither. I heard it last night on Fresh Air; Terry Gross was interviewing a guy who just published a book about Glock. Here's something else you hit when you google "giffords glock":

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/09/01/gop-in-giffords-district-holds-raffle-for-glock/

Not being familiar with firearms, neither had I heard of "Glock foot," a condition sometimes contracted by law enforcement officials who switch from a Colt service revolver to a Glock and find out the hard way that the Glock's easy trigger action greatly increases the probability that one will shoot oneself when de-holstering the weapon.

Appropos of what, I do not know.

Literally speaking

*

I think this FireDogLake blogger takes John Boehner's "machine gun" imagery too seriously, as if this pickled Ohio sad sack was crafting some cunning subliminal message to god-knows-who about who-knows-what. I think a more straightforward interpretation of Bohener's remark is that people of his ilk are every bit as delusional as Colonel Qaddafi. One is left to wonder why the Times and the Post and NPR and [~] use Quaddafi as the gold standard for insanity and megalomania when we have so many competitors right here in the good old USA.

I'll acknowledge that the previous sentence was a mere rhetorical device: no one really is "left wondering" about that for very long.

Friday Evening Prayer Meeting

*

Convened a day late this week, instead of a Fish Fry, out of respect for five six who died in the Arizona political massacre today, and the rest who were maimed or traumatized. This is Frank Zappa's tender, seething commentary on the consequences of right-wing political violence. Different era and M.O., but the victims are still innocent.



Mom and Dad, Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention (1968, from "We're Only In It For The Money," originally issued on Verve V6-5045X), embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

"Barring info...speculation benefits no one"

*

That is NPR's rejoinder about the Giffords shooter and his motives. They're concerned about "speculation."

Little "speculation" is necessary when facts are available.

Rep. Giffords's Republican opponent Jesse Kelly had campaign rally shoot-in to "help remove Gabrielle Giffords from office."

The federal judge shot dead in today's incident, John Roll, had previously received right-wing death threats by telephone that required intervention by the U.S. Marshals Service.

One account, a second-hand attribution to the Democratic National Committee Western States Director, posted by Atrios, has the perpetrator calling out the name of each victim he shoots.

Anybody following national news for the past several years knows that Arizona has a highly expressive right-wing gun culture that has normalized the concept of bringing firearms to political events. (Sorry, don't have time to find a link right now.)

So, NPR, why don't you take "political junkie Ken Rudin" off the pontification beat this evening and assign him try some real reporting on the alleged shooter's internet ramblings? Based on an initial look at samples posted to TPM, the shooter would seem to have been motivated to a large extent by psychosis. But in the few of his utterances I've glanced at so far there appears to be a stack of kindling cut fresh from the right-wing noise bush. As one would expect, those political assassination attempts that are not the work of paid hit men are typically the finale of a grand vision obsessing an individual who has lost his mind. We don't have to go too far out on the "speculation" limb to write a reasonable first draft of what went wrong in Arizona today.

Hideous

*

And not only hideous, but very much foreseen and publicized by DHS over a year ago.

Do you remember what happened when DHS released that memo about the rising threat of right-wing extremism? And do you remember the howling about this from right-wingers at the time, like the samples captured at the bottom of the HuffPost article linked above?

And do you remember how DHS chief Napolitano fumbled against that right-wing pushback? And, finally, do you remember how, when questioned by TPM this past September about actual examples of right-wing domestic extremism over the year since the original DHS memo had been issued, she referred to it as "ancient history"? I do.

Right-wing celebrity pundits using mainstream communications media fire up haters with eliminationist rhetoric covered by a veneer of sick humor. Right-wing politicians refuse to disavow pigs like Limbaugh or Beck, and will even express sympathy for the seething fans who are infected with this violent, schizoid ideation. How many times have you hears a senior Republican establishment figure say something to the effect of "Well, I may not agree with the rhetoric, but I certainly understand why these people are so angry."

But "centrist" shape-shifters like Napolitano and President North Star, who always approach this topic without candor in order to spare themselves a scolding from John McCain and Rush Limbaugh and Erick Erickson, share in the accountability for this abominable political massacre. I'm sure that all we'll hear about this from Responsible Democrats in the coming days are abstract platitudes about the horror of it all in This Great Nation founded on principles of blah blah blah; and boilerplate expressions of how everyone's thoughts should "be with the families" of the victims. But not a goddam meaningful word about the hate mongers or their mesmerized audience.

Editor's note: yes, I am aware that we don't have many confirmed facts yet about the alleged shooter or his motives. I see no point in being "even-handed" at this point, but I will immediately apologize for jumping the gun when it is proven that the shooter is a smelly, card-carrying ACLU socialist vegan.

Healthcare reform town hall fashion statement

*
In the comments thread of a previous post, Big Otis indicated that he would exercise his Second Amendment Rights at an corn belt healthcare reform town hall meeting next week by brandishing a chainsaw. His reasoning, which appears sound to me, is that it's perfectly legal to carry power tools in public, even ones belching two-stroke engine exhaust. So, therefore, it must be doubly blessed to for Big Otis to defend himself with a nice American-made implement of dual-use technology such as the one hanging there all quiet in his tool shed.

Frequent commenter "Anonymous" calls the idea brilliant. I agree. I'll bet Big Otis could parlay this sincere expression of his Second Amendment Rights into appearances on CNN and FOX, not to mention Colbert and Democracy Now! It could start an exciting new trend in liberal activism, and BO could become the progressive incarnation of Joe The Plumber. Maybe the liberal grassroots also need to be watered with the blood of tyrants... but, oh, I think I already said too much. Never mind. Pass the blowtorch, please.

Above: Artist's rendition of Big Otis departing from his sleepy rural demesne to exercise his freedom of expression. Editor's note: this picture may be protected by copyright law; it is reproduced here under fair use rules solely for purposes of education and social commentary.

They'll shoot your eye out, kid!

*
What do you suppose would have happened if, say, union members arrived packing heat outside venues where President Bush II spoke to carefully screened friendly political audiences in the earlier years of this decade?

The corporate media basically treat this kind of thing as if it weren't even news, let alone very disturbing news that should alarm anyone who prefers civic society to live under a military junta. But just you wait until a Secret Service agent or cop drops one of these assholes in his tracks. That will be all the evidence required by serious pundits to wonder aloud whether Obama really is The New Hitler, on the verge of launching Kristallnacht 2009 in the direction of all average, freedom-loving citizens.

"You'll shoot your eye out, kid."

Stories like this bring out the worst in me, but I don't even care. Rest in peace, kid.

Hat tip to "Dworvin" for the link.

Troubling development that bears watching

At least this is getting some media play, if mostly only in political blogs. If you're younger than 45, you do not know what it's like to see three of the most charismatic leaders of your young life be gunned down in cold blood over less than 5 years. And that doesn't include Malcolm X. The Secret Service needs to know the whole world is watching (as they said in 1968, in Chicago, where there was teargas and blood). As Big Otis notes, we need to hope that Dion DiMucci never sees a need to reissue Abraham, Martin and John with a new verse. (Reproduction of picture believed to be fair use for same reasons stated on Wikipedia, from whence the image was borrowed.)

Shooter sanctimony, part 1

I suppose that people who make their living selling firearms designed to kill humans should find another way to earn their living; I'd always counsel friends and family to stay away from that line of work. But this sort of sanctimony, in my opinion, falls into the category of unhelpful liberal claptrap. Moralistic posturing like this is not a helpful way to start a public policy discussion of campus shootings and how to prevent them. So the visionary Mithras stands firm, against time and tide, in opposition to random mass murder committed by the mentally ill. Bravo!

Despite the warm feelings of moral superiority that often plague us, society's response to school shootings (and workplace shootings and mall shootings) can't be all about confiscating guns and demonizing gun owners. That's the same approach wingnuts use to attack the practice of planned parenthood by demanding to outlaw abortion while demonizing people who have sexual relations with no reproductive intent. The people who actually operate government have to deal with a lot of stuff that people of the right, left, and center wings consider icky, but pragmatism has to win out in order to develop a functional policy.

So what would be helpful in terms of discussing campus massacres? I'll make a suggestion in a follow-on post.