Why they’re desperate

If setting up and suiciding a drugged-up patsy to take the fall for shooting up a suburban school of sweet, innocent, white elementary schoolchildren isn’t enough to move the dial in favor of gun control, then what on Earth will?

The public’s attitudes toward gun control have shown only modest change in the wake of last week’s deadly shooting at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut. Currently, 49% say it is more important to control gun ownership, while 42% say it is more important to protect the right of Americans to own guns….  However, support for gun control remains lower than before Obama took office.  In April 2008, 58% said it was more important to control gun ownership; just 37% prioritized protecting gun rights.

The increased hysterics we’re seeing from the media is their horror at the dawning realization that a very large and statistically significant number of Americans will never, ever give up their guns, not even if Washington arranges to have a kindergarten shot up every single day.  It unsettles them deeply to recognize that the mere fact of Obama holding office scares more people than elementary school massacres.


That’s a bold move, Obsidian

Let’s see how it works out for him.  Obsidian takes exception to the way I am The Man keeping the Black man down by utilizing the blatantly raciss tactic of citing international crime and gun ownership statistics in response to the media stampede for more gun control:

The reason why 26 WHITE Women and children died last week; the reason why dozens of largely WHITE people died earlier this year at a movie theatre in Colorado; and the reason why upwards of 100 WHITE teenagers met a bloodsoaked end in Olso, was all due to having too many guntoting Darkies in White Lands.

Now, before anyone out there starts sending my hatemail, no one is more aware of gun violence on the streets of urban America more than me. Thus far, no one – not me, not anyone else in the media, not President Obama himself – has ever denied that urban gun violence isn’t a problem, and a huge one at that.

But isn’t it just a weebit fascinating that the Alt-Right, when they can get up the gumption to address the clearly depraved monsters in their midst (read: White Males With Problems), just happen to do it in a manner that would be identified, rightly, as deeply intellectually dishonest and highly disengenuous in any other context? Of the more than 60 mass shootings over the past three decades, some 44 of them have been committed by White Males – and when you have ads like these marketed to said White Males (name me all the gangbangers who use Bushmasters as their go-to weapon of choice? I’ll wait…), well, it all just makes one go, Hmm…

That’s an amusing attempt at rhetorical bluster, but I would be remiss if I did not inform Obsidian that demonstrating a complete failure of reading comprehension is not the ideal way to convince those one suspects of a belief in white superiority that they are incorrect.

But since he clearly did not understand what I was writing about in my recent posts, I will clarify the matter for him.  The reason people died in Connecticut and Colorado in the two mass shootings had absolutely nothing to do with gun-toting Darkies, much less their quantity or location.  Given the Oslo shooter’s confessed rationale, the situation there was caused by the presence of too many Darkies (for various definitions of “Darky”) in Norway, but had nothing to do with their toting of guns.  However, I was not addressing any of these specific situations, (especially not the Norwegian one, as I have no interest in or knowledge of Norwegian gun control laws), I was addressing one of the primary arguments for gun control that has been repeatedly made in the wake of the Connecticut shootings, namely, the idea that the moderate US firearms homicide rate is caused by the very high number of guns per capita in the United States.

There is nothing “deeply intellectually dishonest and highly disengenuous” about pointing out that the difference between the low firearms homicide rate of Canada and the Western European nations and the moderate firearms homicide rate in the USA is not related to the number of guns per capita in the population, but rather is a consequence of the racial makeup of the population.  In fact, it is absolutely necessary to point this out, because reviewing the differences between the various countries with low rates, moderate rates, and high rates clearly demonstrates that the proposed solution to the higher US firearms homicide rate will not, and cannot, be solved by European-style gun control.

Moreover, Obsidian fails to realize that mass shooting statistics he cites make perfect sense.  Why would it make him go hmmmm to realize that 73 percent of the mass shootings of the past 30 years were committed by members of a race that made up a similar percentage of the population over that time.  Is statistically proportional representation truly a deep mystery to him?

There are real problems to discuss with regards to why young white men commit acts of mass murder.  But they are completely unrelated to the arguments that the pro-gun control forces have presented, and to which I have responded.

Bringing nothing but rhetoric to a dialectical discourse is rather like
bringing a knife to a gun fight, then defiantly slitting your own
throat.  But that is what Obsidian is purposefully doing here, as he admits that he has no interest in actual debate.  He is simply trying to shut it down and prevent these straightforward and undeniable facts from being considered.

Here’s that intrepid White Man Blogger, Vox Day, advising his fellow WND readers on how to respond to calls of reason with regard to getting Bushmasters out of the hands of depraved White Guys:

“Don’t give them an inch. Cut them no slack. Punch back twice as hard. When they bring the knife of emotional blackmail to the argument, draw your .50 caliber Desert Eagle of facts, logic and history and blow them away without mercy.”

And they wonder why the Manosphere is regarded as a bunch of f*cking loons?

Really?

A number of my readers, online and off, have asked me: Obsidian, why do you waste so much time and energy on people who clearly have a disengenuous agenda? This is a very good question, and here’s my response:

Because history has shown us, again and again – that Evil – or in this case, downright Foolishness – can only exist, when Good Men, do nothing. By chin-checking these fools in the public square, I am letting them know that their days of just being able to say ridiculous crap with impunity are over. They sh*t all over our cherished freedoms in the name of “keepin’ it real” – yea, like Chris Rock said, keepin’ it real DUMB. These knuckleheads aren’t the next George Washingtons or Patrick Henrys; shoot, they can barely get laid and make a life for themselves, let alone be the standard bearers of freedom or liberty. They are not fit to participate in reasoned and intellectually honest discussion of the issues of the day, and should be roundly shouted down until they sitdown and STFU.

The idea that a man who claims my agenda is “disengenuous” and lacks the most basic reading comprehension skills can declare, with a straight face, that I am “not fit to participate in reasoned and intellectually honest discussion” is incredibly amusing.  The fact that his ancestors were once forced to ride at the back of the bus is no excuse for Obsidian to voluntarily ride on a metaphorical short one.

Obsidian isn’t chin-checking anyone in the public square except himself.  This is like watching a pudgy little kid walk up to Lebron James and threaten to dunk on him; it would be pathetic if it weren’t so damned funny.  He can whine and bluster and cry raciss all he likes, but no amount of the conventional African-American histrionics will alter the international statistics or the clear and undeniable conclusions that logic necessarily draws from them.


Hispanic firearms homicide rate

This statistical beast is somewhat elusive thanks to the FBI’s resolute determination to lump all Hispanics in with whites.  However, it is possible to work out a reasonable approximation of what the statistics would be if the FBI bothered to report them accurately.

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the 20-year gun homicide rate is 41.9% “white” and
56.4% black.  The “white” rate is lower than reported by the FBI for 2010, which, if I am correct, reduces the known black share from 56.4% to 49% due to the rising Hispanic population.  But since there are plenty of cases that are unknown, we will use the 20-year rate in order to avoid the possibility of a single year outlier while considering the 9,146 gun homicides concerned.

We will assume, for the sake of argument, that Hispanic victims are synonymous with Hispanic killers. The BJS supports this assumption, reporting that from 1976 to 2005, 86% of white victims were killed by whites and 94% of black victims were killed by black.  A CDC report states: “Homicide rates in 2010 among non-Hispanic, African-American males 10-24 years of age (51.5 per 100,000) exceeded those of Hispanic males (13.5 per 100,000) and non-Hispanic, White males in the same age group (2.9 per 100,000).”

We’re not concerned with the black homicide rate since we already know that.  What interests us is how the remaining 4,116 gun homicides are divided between whites and Hispanics.  The distribution indicated by the CDC report shows that 3,388 were Hispanic and only 728 were white.  This may be a little skewed by the focus on young males, but nevertheless provides a very credible estimate of 6.8 per 100k population, which would put the US-Latin firearms homicide rate in between Nicaragua at 5.9 and Paraguay at 7.4.  It would also indicate that the US-White homicide rate is 0.32 per 100k population, a per capita rate very close to The Netherlands at 0.33 although still higher than France, Germany, or the UK.

The chart above compares the three primary US racial populations and the rates at which they commit firearms homicide per 100k population, then pairs them with what is more or less their international equivalent.  The interesting thing is that regardless of whether it is the prevalence of firearms or the proximity to a majority white population that is responsible, it is readily observable that the US-Latin and US-Black rates of firearms homicide are much LOWER than the rates at which firearms homicide is committed by non-US Latins and non-US Africans, despite the greater access of the US-based populations to firearms.


Why US gun deaths are high

One of the questions often asked by those supporting gun control and those who are merely uninformed alike is why the US has so many gun deaths, especially in comparison with other Western, industrialized countries.

The first reason is obvious.  There are nearly five times more people in the United States than there are in the largest European countries.  This may seem ludicrously obvious, but most people really are that stupid and don’t take population sizes into account. The fact that the news media covers all the crimes across the country it deems noteworthy means that the 310 million people in the USA are going to produce about five times more big crime stories than the 63 million in the UK.

The second reason is also related to demographics.  The specific question that was asked was why the USA has a higher rate of gun homicides, 2.97 per 100,000 population than Canada, at only 0.51 per 100,000.  After all, the USA and Canada are very similar countries, are they not?  No, they are not.  Only 3.5 percent of the Canadian population is African and Latin American.  28.9 percent of the US population is African and Latin American.  Does this make a difference?  The chart below demonstrates that this demographic difference is not only significant, but conclusive.

As per The Guardian article of July 12, 2012, the USA had 9,146 gun homicides, the fourth-most of the reporting countries.  That was considerably more than Canada or any of the European nations; Canada had only 173.  Even if one accounts for the much smaller Canadian population, it is obvious that Canadians were much less likely to shoot and kill other Canadians.  Was this because there are fewer guns in Canada, only 30.8 percent compared to the 88.8 percent in the United States?  No, it was because there are fewer African-Canadians and Latin-Canadians, as should be obvious from looking at the chart.

There were even fewer guns per capita in the two Latin countries, 11.5 percent, and in the two African countries, 8.3 percent, than Canada’s 30.8 percent, France’s 31.2 percent, or Germany’s 30.3 percent.  And yet, the gun deaths per capita in all four African and Latin countries were much higher than either Canada or the USA; on average, they were four times higher than the US rate despite there being far fewer guns, and guns per capita, in all of them.  Nor did I cherry-pick any outliers; most African nations don’t even report these figures, and based on the news reports, countries such as Congo and Nigeria are even more murderously violent than South Africa and Zimbabwe.  In Latin America alone, there are six countries with higher per capita gun death rates than Brazil, which is six times higher than the USA.

The low rate of gun ownership in these violent countries not only make it clear that the prevalence of guns cannot possibly explain the relatively high US gun death rate in comparison with other European countries, they clearly indicate that gun deaths are a predominantly racial and/or cultural phenomenon.  Since the US is on the track to become a European minority country, it should be readily apparent that as it becomes browner and blacker, it will also become more violent, naturally reflecting the more violent tendencies of the nations from whence the post-1965 immigrants have come instead of those of the European nations who originally populated the country.

If lower gun death rates are a goal, it is clear that reducing the amount of guns will not help, and may even make the matter considerably worse by disarming the law-abiding population and rendering it helpless against the lawless population.  The only way to significantly reduce the amount of gun deaths is to repatriate the immigrants who come from countries where people are disproportionately inclined to shoot other people dead.  Since most Americans presently appear to prefer higher violent crime rates to stopping immigration, much less reducing the percentage of the non-European/Asian/Arab population through deportation, logic dictates that if gun control proponents are successful in their attempts to reduce the guns per capita rate, the gun homicides per capita rate will rise in proportion to the percentage of the African/Latin population in the general population.


Preach it, brother Karl

Karl thunders from the metaphorical pulpit about the shameless hypocrisy of the anti-gun elite:

If you believe that you have a right to life because your creator
endowed you with that right, and that this right is unalienable and thus
cannot be taken from you (although it can certainly be disrespected!)
then it follows that you have not only the right but the responsibility to defend your life.  That is, you have the right and the responsibility to deter to the best of your ability any other person who would take your life from you.

You may choose to delegate this responsibility to others, as Mayor Bloomberg and President Obama have, but your right to life is not inferior to theirs. 
It is equal.  President Obama has no more right to live than you do. 
You are his equal from the standpoint of what your creator, and his
creator, endowed both of you with. So we have established that you
have the right to live, as does the President.  And if the President
has the right to defend his life with deadly force, and indeed the responsibility to do so, then, should it be necessary, so do you.

This
debate should end right there.  Up until all of these people in
political office disband their police forces, their Secret Service
details, throw down their own arms, armored cars, body armor and other
defensive means of interdicting assault they have nothing — not even a moral argument — behind them in their demand that you disarm and become an intentional victim — no matter who you are.

That is true.  That is truth.  As I said in my column last week, if you do not stand up for the right of the American to keep and bear arms, you are not an American.  You are not an adult.  If it weren’t for the genetics involved, you cannot even be considered Homo sapiens sapiens, because you are admittedly and consciously rejecting your God-given and unalienable rights as a human being.


In a hole in the ground….

I understand that someone has made a movie that is of some interest to the Tolkien fans in these parts.  I haven’t seen it yet myself, but those of you who have can discuss it here freely.  Don’t worry about “spoilers”, as I could not be less concerned about spoiling any surprises for those sad, unfortunate few who have not read the book.

I do hope Jackson has put a muzzle on whomever was responsible for all of the “humorous” dialogue in The Lord of the Rings.  One thing filmmakers never seem to understand is that because a lot of the dialogue is being provided by a writer whose work is popular enough to support a film, the chances are very high that any new dialogue is going to suffer badly by comparison.  Therefore, it should be kept to the minimum possible.  This is particularly true when the writer concerned happens to be one of the all-time greats.

I was very conscious of this in writing the Argument in Summa Elvetica.  The reason it worked so well that one reviewer thought the whole thing was actually written by Thomas Aquinas was that I took phrases and even complete sentences from the Summa and his other works.  I connected them together in a coherent manner using as few of my own words as possible.  Those who have read A Throne of Bones will probably be aware that I utilized the same technique there and drew upon ancient historical documents in a number of important places.  Had I more time, I would have liked to have gone through the entire dialogue and done it that way.


Homeschool or die: Part 563

What does a teacher have to do to lose her job?

A teacher tried to hire a gang member to assault her principal because she was being hassled about lies she told to the school, a disciplinary hearing has found. The high school teacher, whose name is suppressed, told a student she would “sort something out” for her if she arranged for her grandfather, who had gang connections, to confront the principal.

The teacher told a colleague she had arranged for the principal to be “capped”, which the colleague took to mean an injury to the knees. Despite her “unprofessional” actions and “serious misconduct”, the Teachers’ Council has given the teacher permission to return to the classroom after a disciplinary hearing last month.  The disciplinary tribunal heard the teacher also fabricated grades for
work not done by students, forged the head of department’s signature,
and lied about what classes she had taught.

It’s a refreshing reminder in the midst of all the Saint Teacher stories coming out of Connecticut that teachers are no saintlier, and on average a little less intelligent, than the norm.  One of the more powerful arguments in favor of homeschooling is that intelligent children will not be “taught” by half-educated women with IQs averaging two and three standard deviations below them.


Theories of collapse

Three rival theories seek to explain the decline and fall of GRR Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire.  If you haven’t read the five books yet and are concerned about spoilers, don’t read this.  The first book has been out for 16 years now, so I think it can safely be discussed in detail.

  1. Martin simply lost the plot and is unable to handle all of his characters and stories.
  2. The seed of Martin’s nihilistic amorality finally blossomed into full flower.
  3. Martin made a foolish decision to change his approach to the story in mid-series and the structural changes that resulted have proven more than he can handle.

There is at least some truth to all three of these statements.  But which is the primary causal factor.  With regards to (1), that is more of an observation than an explanation.  He has lost the plot.  He is unable to successfully juggle all of his characters and stories.  But it doesn’t explain why.  Is it his age?  Is it his health?  Is it simple lack of interest?  Perhaps, but authors in mental decline usually produce work that is simpler and shorter; Agatha Christie’s last book has a vocabulary that contains 20 percent fewer words than her average novel.  NB: Christie cunningly avoided this being her last word on the subject by writing the final Poirot novel, and one of her best, Curtain, years ahead of time.  Since Dragons shows the same meandering bloat that first appeared in Crows, and since there are still flashes of excellence in both novels, I think a decline in Martin’s mental acuity can be ruled out.

What about the idea that Martin’s nihilistic amorality, always apparent, finally overtook the story, as per (2)?  There is some evidence of this.  The nihilism and amorality has certainly continued to increase as Martin kills off well-meaning Starks and replaces them with vicious new characters.  One reader claimed that the theory can’t be true because it was the nihilistic amorality that made the first three books appealing in the first place.  Even if that is what set them apart, (and there is an element of truth to that; no one will forget the scene where Jaime chucks Bran out the window… for love), that appeal can’t possibly explain the decline in the latter two books because Martin has undeniably cranked up the depravity in comparison with the preceding three.

The real problem with this idea is that we know all of this pointless viciousness is just a sideshow, filler for the events of the real story.  While it might explain why the filler is so nasty, it doesn’t explain why it exists in the first place.  And that brings us to theory (3).

As most Martin readers know, the books were originally supposed to be a trilogy.  Then, after the first book turned into three, Martin faced a five-year gap, during which time the dragons would grow and Daenerys would gather the forces necessary to challenge for the throne of Westeros.  (One would think a wedding between Daenerys and Joffrey would have been the obvious solution to the situation inspired by the historical example of Stephen and Maude, but never mind that.)  Instead of simply writing 10 pages of “here’s what happened in the intervening years”, Martin went back to write what was intended as one book, then became two, and has thus created an even more difficult challenge for himself by adding all of the new characters, many of whose stories are of little to no interest to the fans of the first three books.

Instead of proceeding with the 9 living perspective characters from A Storm of Swords, Martin now finds himself saddled with 21.  This is a structural challenge, and if Martin somehow surmounts it to produce books that are on par with the first three, it will be an epic literary feat indeed.  But the very fact that Martin faces it tends to indicate that he is not up to the challenge of defeating it.

Unlike many Martin readers, I very much doubt that Winds and Dream will be as bad as Feast and Dragons.  After all, Martin is now returning to the story that he originally intended to tell, so he probably has a much better idea of what he wants to do.  However, the unnecessary structural challenge created by all the additional characters and their stories likely means the last two – or three – books will not be as good as they would have been had he not given in to the temptation to go back and fill in the blanks of the required five-year gap.  And that is an excellent object lesson for all writers: don’t give in to prequelitis.  Look forward, not backward.  And don’t hesitate to leave some historical blanks unfilled; indulge the reader’s imagination rather than attempt to leave no stone unturned in explaining everything about everyone.

As for the theories of collapse, they may all be true and help explain each other.  The unfortunate decision to go back and fill in the blanks led to a long submersion into the depths of pointless nihilism, which ultimately proved as uninteresting to Martin as it did to his readers.


Blame deinstitutionalization, not guns

Guns don’t kill people, crazy people who don’t want to get locked up kill people:

The gunman who slaughtered 20 children and six adults at a
Connecticut elementary school may have snapped because his mother was
planning to commit him to a psychiatric facility, according to a
lifelong resident of the area who was familiar with the killer’s family
and several of the victims’ families.

Adam Lanza, 20, targeted Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown
after killing his mother early Friday because he believed she loved the
school “more than she loved him,” said Joshua Flashman, 25, who grew up
not far from where the shooting took place. Flashman, a U.S. Marine, is
the son of a pastor at an area church where many of the victims’
families worship.

“From what I’ve been told, Adam was aware of her petitioning the
court for conservatorship and (her) plans to have him committed,”
Flashman told FoxNews.com. “Adam was apparently very upset about this.
He thought she just wanted to send him away. From what I understand, he
was really, really angry. I think this could have been it, what set him
off.”

Sometimes, it really is just the crazy.  And if you let the confirmed crazies run around free until they kill someone, you’re assured that eventually some of them are going to do it.


Mailvox: in time for Christmas

Glad to hear from JB that Marcher Lord Hinterlands was able to keep its word concerning the hardcovers and deliver in time for Christmas:

Received my copy yesterday!  I gave it a quick once over and I have to say, the book looks great on the whole.  The cover is somewhat muted in color in comparison to web images, but that was/is to be expected electronic gamma being what it is.

I’m looking forward to seeing it myself, but I expect I’ll have to wait another week or so.  Thanks again to team OCD, whose speedy proofreading made this possible.