Fish Fear Me

On And On It Goes

Another mass shooting and the all too predictable aftermath. At times I wonder if Satan sets these lunatics off and then sits back and gleefully munches popcorn while we tear at each other like starved wolves. 

One would have to have a heart of stone not to be touched by watching the grief stricken father of Christopher Martinez, but he's mostly wrong here:

"Why did Chris die?" he screamed. "Chris died because of craven, irresponsible politicians and the NRA. They talk about gun rights. What about Chris' right to live?"

Chris died because a lunatic shot him, but also because the politics of gun control didn't give the lunatic's family, doctors, and law enforcement the tools that might have stopped him, even though they came heart-breakingly close. However, it's not fair to just blame the politicians, because we the people are the ones who are deeply polarized and kind of stuck on stupid here. Our politicians simply reflect that.

I've watched that lunatic's last video and I've read the tail end of his "manifesto" that details his grotesque plans. He was one very sick but determined individual, one who was going to go on a rampage one way or another.

Now, we always seem to assume that if some crazy person was denied access to guns he will simply choose a less deadly method to carry out his plot. Not this guy, he would have gone bigger. I can't prove it, but read what I did if you have the stomach and tell me if you think I'm wrong.

This is an important point that is getting lost in all of the screaming about gun control, but that's what always happens after mass shootings. The gun grabbers hijack the conversation and start screaming about the NRA. The gun rights crowd screams back with arguments that are, sadly, becoming less and less paranoid. And a significant chunk of the public screams "DO SOMETHING," even if they don't know what "SOMETHING" is or if it will make a difference, before they quickly slip back into their normal self-obsessed stupor. The end result is a lot screaming and little or no lessons learned, and consequently no truly effective policies.

Sorry to be so cynical, but that's what is happening again. And it's the reason, in part, that Chris Martinez is dead.

From the Department Of Lies, Damn Lies, And Statistics

Michael Bloomberg is at it again:

Billionaire Michael Bloomberg announced Wednesday that he's pumping $50 million into a new umbrella gun-control group that will include "robust" field staffs in at least a dozen states, including Oregon and Washington.

The former mayor of New York, Bloomberg announced the merging of two organizations he has funded, Mayors Against Illegal Guns and Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, into an organization called Everytown for Gun Safety.

Of course, the "Get big money out of politics" crowd rose up in outrage over this. Er, any time now. Uh...(crickets chirping). Well, maybe not. Could it be that all of those people complaining about money in politics just hate the big money on the other side?  

Bloomberg's effort is doomed to fail and once again leave gun control advocates frustrated and befuddled, just like Joe Biden's asinine efforts a year ago. And for the same reasons. A quick look at the "Learn" tab of the new website shows why.

The first thing that greeted me there was "Americans are 20 times more likely to be murdered with a gun than people in other developed countries." What a shocking number. No wonder Americans go about their day in mortal terror, zigzagging as they sprint from place to place, desperately praying that they aren't gunned down in cold blood.

Or not. 

As I noted over a year ago, in the wake of the Newtown shooting, a hugely disproportionate amount of gun violence and murder in this country takes place in a very distinct and geographically small set of urban areas around the country. When that's taken into account, the rest of America's homicide rate drops dramatically and in many areas is even less than that of some European nations. For the vast majority of Americans, "20 times more likely" is hysterically false, and many of them realize it.

The flip side, of course, is also true. By mushing all of America together when it comes to gun violence and murder, Bloomberg and friends not only make 99% of America appear to be more violent than it really is, they end up obscuring and downplaying just how ultraviolent those bad neighborhoods really are. "20 times more likely?" A gun murder rate 30 times that of Europe in those areas would be a huge improvement, let alone a rate that is way down with the rest of the nation. How fuzzing all that up could possibly help the people bearing the brunt of gun violence in this country is a mystery to me.

Here's another piece of deceit:

"Surveys show that 92 percent of Americans—including 82 percent of gun owners and 74 percent of NRA members—support criminal background checks for all gun sales."

It's true that the general concept of "universal" background checks polls very well. What Bloomberg and friends won't tell you is that consensus falls apart the minute you start defining "universal" into something meaningful and effective.

"You want to include my family?" Boom, support takes a plunge. "You want to include my next door neighbor?" Boom, support takes a plunge. "You want me to get a background check on my coworker if I loan him one of my shotguns for a few weeks in the fall?" Boom, support plunges. And if you try to win back support by making exceptions, you may have enhanced background checks, but only a liar would call them "universal" anymore.

I could go on and on. Don't even get me started on the utter stupidity behind the effort to ban "assault" weapons.

I think there are a lot of well-meaning people who sincerely want to do something effective about gun violence who get side-tracked by gun banners like Bloomberg(Yes, I think that's his real goal). They buy into the bullshit without really thinking about it and then are baffled and angry when nothing happens. Well, nothing happens, and all that energy is wasted, because the entire effort is founded on falsehoods and deception. This latest from Bloomberg is no exception.

If we want to do something about day-to-day gun violence in America we have to be willing to face up to the social and cultural pathologies at work in the neighborhoods that see the highly disproportionate amount of that violence. Just cutting the gun murder rate in half in those neighborhoods would save thousands of lives each year. But that would be a difficult and painful task and our political elites are clearly not up for it. Half of them are too dishonest to properly define the problem and the other half are scared shitless of being called racists.

If we want to do something about mass killers we need to learn the lessons from their actions and implement policies that might have a chance of actually preventing future killers from carrying out their plans. Instead of that, after Newtown we were greeted with the spectacle of Joe Biden gathering and presenting all sorts of gun control wish lists, none of which would have prevented the Newtown shooting or the next mass shootings down the line. There's no magic bullet here either, but once again our political elites are nowhere close to being up to the task.

It's a free country, so Bloomberg can waste his $50 million if he wants. Apparently there's going to be a Minnesota chapter of Everytown for Gun Safety at some point and I look forward to engaging them down the road, if they'll be open to an honest discussion. Based on the website, I strongly doubt it.

Mike Lupica And The NY Daily News: Synonyms For "Epic Fail"

As bad as it gets sometimes, only rarely do journalism and punditry sink to this level of hysterical foolishness:

Mike Lupica chimed in with this:

Lupica: AR-15 is the rifle for the 'sport' of hunting humans

They call semiautomatics like this sport rifles. You bet. Mostly for the sport of killing innocent people, and killing them fast.

It turns out that reports of the shooter using an AR-15 style rifle were false. According to the FBI he used a shotgun and then took a pistol off of a security officer he shot. There's now a note above Lupica's rant explaining that he wrote it when "reputable law enforcement sources" were saying the shooter used an AR-15. Maybe, but I bet those weren't "official" law enforcement officials who were authorized to speak to the media.

Everybody knows that initial reports are almost always wrong to one extent or another. The prudent thing to do before jumping in with both feet would be to wait for official confirmation. But journalistic malpractice comes easy to close-minded people who are eager to push their agenda. I might cut them some slack if they didn't have a history of deceiving their readers on multiple occasions. 

And to Lupica's point, estimates vary widely, but there are millions of AR-15s or similar variants in the hands of the US public. According to the FBI, in 2012 all rifles combined(meaning tens of millions more) accounted for 322 murders out of 12,765.

"Mostly for the sport of killing innocent people, and killing them fast," eh? No, not even close. 

I'm open to listening to gun control advocates who sincerely want to examine options for helping to end, or at least reduce the likelihood of mass shootings. But people like Lupica and his editors actually lesson the chance of finding common ground when they spew out this sort of ignorance and vitriol.

More: CNN tries to match them with this:

The AR-15 is a semi-automatic rifle, which is vastly different than a shotgun. I've said this before and I'll say it again: If you want to have anything you say in the gun debate dismissed out of hand, make an egregious mistake like the one pictured above and then compound it by refusing to understand why it matters. 

Another Mass Shooting

The details are still getting sorted out in the Washington Naval Yard shooting, but the one that matters most is known: 12 dead victims(plus the gunman) and several others wounded. My heart goes out to those having to cope with the grief and loss from another seemingly incomprehensible mass shooting. 

Yesterday was another example of rumors and wild speculation running rampant through the news media as events unfolded. I would wish for more responsible coverage, but I've given up on that.

As of this morning there is still some confusion about the shooter, his history, and what may have been his motivation. Until we can fill in some of those blanks, I don't have much more to say.

Why Gun Control Is Failing

It's been two weeks now since various gun control measures went down in flames in the US Senate, prompting President Obama to don his petulance pants and lecture us from the Rose Garden. In that time I've read quite a few pieces by Democrats seeking to explain, in one way or another, how gun control could fail in the wake of the Newtown mass shooting. Some blame the NRA, of course. Some blame Republicans, of course. Some even blame Obama, but not for the reasons I'm going to cite. Pretty much all are long on self-pity and short on self-examination, so here are my criticisms of the pro-gun control side, because they are every bit to blame, if not more, than the NRA and Republicans.(This is a long one, so I'll put most of it below the fold)

Obama's poor leadership

When Obama outsourced the issue to Joe Biden, the probability for meaningful action took an immediate and negative hit. At that moment Obama signalled that it was really going to be business as usual, in other words it was going to be "inside the beltway politics." In the short term that was probably smart politics for Obama personally, but it was also another missed opportunity for him to match the greatness of his office.

He could have taken the role of an honest broker between the two sides and step by step publicly guided the conversation toward what was possible. That would have meant swallowing his own personal preferences for the moment and acting as President of all of these United States to bring both sides together. I suppose many in both party establishments would consider that idea naive, but my gut tells me the less ideological on both sides and independents would have eaten it up. Besides, isn't that the Hope and Change president we've been promised twice now?(I know, I know, that was always phony, but I couldn't resist) 

Biden's Poor Leadership

Many projects fail before they even begin because the problem and/or the scope of the solution are not properly defined from the start. I've seen it countless times over the years to the point where I can smell a looming clusterf*ck from a mile away. As I noted here and here, the problems of overall gun violence and mass killing are related but also distinct, and they have related but also distinct solution sets.

A tightly focused effort on Biden's part might have had a chance, but instead we got what was basically a free for all of gun control wish list items, regardless of how effective they would be in preventing the next mass shooting or daily gun violence on the streets.

To be fair to Biden, the Washington Post back in January noted how Obama had tied his hands somewhat from the start. Still, he wasn't just Obama's puppet on this issue. He fully embraced Obama's strategy of foregone conclusions, emotion over reason, and divisiveness through demonization. That worked in the last general election with the media covering their backs, but as shown in the results two weeks ago, it's a disastrous way to try to govern.

Details On Sandy Hook

Connecticut State's Attorney Stephen J. Sedensky III released some documents and issued a statement regarding the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School last December. It is important to read the statement and not rely solely on the documents because further investigation has proven that some of the stated facts in the warrants issued immediately after the shooting were incorrect. Unfortunately some of that incorrect information is being repeated in news stories today.

For example, here are a couple of corrected items:

Subsequent investigation revealed that shootings took place in two of the classrooms, not three, and that the shooter was not wearing a bullet-proof vest...

The claim that the shooter was wearing a bullet-proof vest has been used by some gun control advocates as evidence that an armed guard, police officer, or other adult with a permit to carry would probably not have been effective in stopping the shooter. There may be other arguments along those lines, but we can rule out a bullet-proof vest in this case. There is a similar issue with the Aurora, CO shooter, but I have not seen anything definitive and with the case still active it may be awhile still on that score.

As far as new information, reports are focusing on the number 30-round magazines and bullets fired, but there may be something more telling in this:

Recovered from the person of the shooter, in addition to more ammunition for the handguns, were three, 30-round magazines for the Bushmaster, each containing 30 rounds. Located in the area of the shootings were six additional 30-round magazines containing 0, 0, 0, 10, 11, and 13 live rounds respectively. One-hundred-and-fifty-four spent .223 casings were recovered from the scene.

That's in addition to one more magazine in the rifle that contained 14 rounds and one round in the chamber.

The numbers don't add up if Lanza walked in with 10 30-round magazines, but any number of reasons could explain that. However that, combined with the partially filled magazines left "in the area" and not on his person, suggests that his rifle jammed at least several times.

That doesn't matter to the victims, of course, but it may be a real world data point in the discussion about the effectiveness of limiting magazine sizes. My experience back in the day with that type of ammunition and rifle was that 30-round magazines were far more likely to jam than the 10 or 20-round ones. We may still want to ban the 30-rounders, but one perverse consequence might be to make it less likely that a mass shooter's weapon would jam in an attack.  

Regardless, we need to continue to get more details about what actually happened at Sandy Hook and that theater in Aurora so we can make informed policies, not ones based on speculation. While we should spare the families and guard legal cases as much as we can, if we can't get the info to learn real lessons from actual events we are not very likely to come up with effective policies to prevent or limit the next one.

Gun Control Theater

As you probably have heard, this week Harry Reid declared Sen. Dianne Feinstein's assault weapons ban to be dead in the U.S. Senate. Oh, it will have its "Weekend at Bernie's" moments until it is finally planted for good in April, but it's dead. More thoughtful gun control advocates welcomed the death of this worthless bill because it distracted from efforts that might actually be effective. Less thoughtful gun control advocates, think Mike Bloomberg as Larry and Joe Biden as Richard, have decided to continue to drag this corpse of a bill from one event to another. The batshit crazy gun control advocates, as exmplified by Mike Lupica, predictably let loose with unhinged rants.

We can go back and forth all we want on the details of Feinstein's bill, but the fact of the matter is that the core of the bill is a falsehood. And that falsehood is that cosmetic features like barrel shrouds and pistol grips alter the basic lethality of these rifles in any meaningful way and banning them would make our society safer. It will not, and the falsehood is easily illustrated.

This gun would be banned under Sen. Feinstein's bill, in fact it is specifically named:

 

This rifle is not classified as an assault weapon under Sen. Feinstein's bill:

In the same way that automakers put different body styles on the same engineering frame, Sturm Ruger offers different looks on the same guts of these rifles. The same holds true for the Bushmaster series that Lanza is said to have used. That's why Mike Lupica is absolutely wrong when he says something like this:

Any fool knows that Lanza couldn’t possibly have killed as many children as quickly as he did on the morning of Dec. 14 without an assault weapon in his hands. 

And this:

Again: Ask any gun owner if Lanza could have killed as many children as he did in as short a time as he did — before he was a sure shot putting a bullet from one of his handguns through his snake-filled brain — if he didn’t have an AR-15 in his hands. Then go ask the gun lovers to explain all over again how a ban on weapons like this wouldn’t have saved three young lives that morning, or five, or maybe even more than that.

Lupica can deny the truth all he wants, but the reality is that those kids were killed with a semi-automatic .223 caliber rifle and they would be just as dead whether Lanza used one with a flash suppressor(or any other cosmetic feature) or not. To say otherwise is not true, and to insist on holding that position in the face of that overwhelming truth is frankly stupid, intentionally deceitful, or some form of madness. So is claiming that stopping future production, but not the possession of the millions of such existing weapons, will have any real effect at all.

I guess some gun control advocates see value in the symbolism, but symbolism would not have shielded those kids nor will it save anybody in the future. There are lots of things around firearms that we can do, big and small, to make society safer, including what would have been most effective in the Newtown shooting, a better way to identify people who have become dangerous and know if they have access to firearms or anything else that can be used for mass killings. It's too bad that the work that has gone into Feinstein's futile effort wasn't used on something that would actually be effective.

One final note. I've pretty much had it with people like Lupica. It's one thing to be well-meaning but wrong. It's another to be aggressively, militantly, rudely stupid. I wish I could peer into his mind to know if he is just cynically callous to the truth, intellectually incapable of grasping it, or actually suffering from some sort of mental illness. My default position is to always give the benefit of the doubt to people I disagree with, but Lupica, with his grossly false and churlish attacks on gun owners doesn't deserve that anymore. There's something seriously wrong with the man, and Mort Zuckerman should be ashamed to publish his "work."

Gun Control

As usual, I took my sweet time going through what the President proposed last week. My general impression now is the same as my initial impression: underwhelmed. It's not that it is just the predictable pledges to make bureaucracy work(this time!) and the sops for the "Do Something" crowd, it's the lack of imagination and vision toward doing something meaningful about both mass killings and what has become the background noise of violence on our meanest streets.

The devil is in the details, as always, so until there are specific pieces of legislation or specific regulations it is hard to gauge exactly what we are talking about. For example, banning the manufacture of ammo magazines that hold more than ten rounds is nothing but fluff if it grandfather's in the millions and millions of larger capacity magazines already out there. A total prohibition though, is almost certain to turn out like every other prohibition in society: Most law-abiding citizens will comply, those already disposed to commit gun crimes will not. The same goes for banning so-called "assault weapons."

We can see a few things though, and about 12 of President Obama's 23 executive actions I categorize as basically bureaucratic in nature, and some of those a bit irritating. Take #1:

1. Issue a Presidential Memorandum to require federal agencies to make relevant data available to the federal background check system.

Not that there's anything wrong with that, but the National Instant Criminal Background Check System has been around since the last part 1998. Why the hell isn't that happeneing already?

Ditto for #11: "Nominate an ATF Director." Good idea! That's long been a standoff between the President and the Senate, but I see no evidence that either party has done a damn thing to deal with each other's concerns and get the job done. That's an utter lack of leadership on the part of the President and the senior members of both parties in the Senate.

#13 is "Maximize enforcement efforts to prevent gun violence and prosecute gun crime." That seems to be an admission that one of the strongest arguments of the gun rights side, enforce existing laws before adding more, has more than a little credence. If Dawn Nguyen is actually guilty of "straw purchasing" the guns for the man who murdered two firefighters on Christmas Eve last year, I want first to see an example made of her and second to see many more highly visible prosecutions for the same crime. If someone legally buys a gun and then hands it off or sells it to someone they know is prohibited from possessing firearms, they ought to fear a ten year sentence for just one infraction. (more on universal background check in a minute)

As for the rest, #3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 14, 15, are things that mainly work around the edges, not that they are bad ideas, just don't expect much(#14 I hit the other day). 

#2, 16, 17, 20-23 focus on mental health resources and reporting. They are all worthwhile efforts to explore, but we need to tread lightly when it comes to involving mental health professionals working outside of the criminal justice system. We don't want some guy who is feeling a little depressed to be afraid of getting help for fear that he will have his guns taken away just for talking to a counselor of one kind or another. At this stage I would be thankful just to see guys like Christian Oberender, who the criminal justice system already knows are mentally unstable, not slip through the cracks. 

#7 and 19 are right out of the NRA playbook, and #18 is what the NRA proposed that ignited so much indignation three weeks ago. Funny how quiet it's been the last few days on that score.

Like #12 though, 18 is really a local issue and not a federal one. I realize that Uncle Sugar is always there with his magical "federal dollars," but local cities and states need to be accountable for their own police funding. I know, the 10th Amendment is dead, but I still honor it.

The idea of universal background checks has some merit, but it will be resisted because it will be difficult to enforce without the record keeping to go along with it. That record keeping could easily result in the much hated and feared national registration system. Let's face it though, such a registration/tracking system combined with a much improved NICS system could do a lot to create accountability and help keep guns out of the hands of criminals. It might be the one thing that could have alerted police that Adam Lanza was disturbed and lived in a house with three guns. 

I'm sure that any gun rights readers are getting a little nervous here, and as a gun owner I understand that, but hang in there for a minute, because this is where the failure of imagination comes in. What if we could come up with a solution that would get much of what the gun control proponents want, but would also formally assuage the fears of gun rights groups?

What I propose is a grand bargain that would allow much tighter registration and tracking of guns, and gun owners, in return for a Constitutional Amendment that would explicitly end the still festering debate about the meaning of the 2nd Amendment. Gun control advocates would get real visibility and regulation of guns, and gun rights advocates would get an unambiguous Constitutional right to individually keep and bear arms.

I know some gun rights advocates will instinctively object to registration as the first step to confiscation, but what I'm saying is that such an amendment would actually make confiscation an act of treason and morally indefensible. With unambiguous language no government or Supreme Court majority could overturn it and allow confiscation without losing all moral authority over the people, with all of the deadly serious connotations that go with that.

It's something to chew over at least. Most gun control opponents claim they don't want an actual ban on guns, just reasonable control over deadly weapons. Most gun rights advocates claim they agree with reasonable restrictions so people who shouldn't have firearms can't get them. Maybe it's not that hard to do both. 

Meet Christian Oberender(updated)

While I finish my take on President Obama's proposals for gun control, whatever we end up doing has to effectively address the case of convicted murderer Christian Oberender, the 13 firearms he has just been arrested for possessing, and the truly frightening note investigators found when they searched his home.

Oberender, 32, was convicted of shooting and killing his mother in 1995 when he was 14. It appears that he was institutionalized until he was 21 and then released despite continuing mental problems. Apparently his name was never added to the list of individuals barred from gun ownership and he was able to amass a small arsenal over the years. At this point I haven't seen any other details of his recent activities, if he was under a doctor's care or working, etc.

With his most recent interaction with the local law enforcement, it clicked with the Carver County Sheriff that this guy shouldn't have guns, despite a check with the Minnesota BCA yielding no red flags, and he was right. They also found this recently written note in his bedroom:

"I feel the good part of me fade away. I don't know how long I can hold it in for. I think about killing all the time," the note said. "The monster want out. I know what happens when he comes out. He only been out one time and someone die. ... The monster want to hurt people. There is so much pain in my heart and soul. Me want others to feel it."

Wow. If this isn't a situation that everybody agrees needs to be learned from and fixed, then such a thing doesn't exist. You can never be certain with these things, but I'm pretty sure that sheriff has saved a few lives.

Update: The Strib has a more detailed article this morning about the cracks that this guy was able to slip through. It looks like there is a whole bunch of work that needs to be done in properly accounting for people the state has already determined shouldn't have guns before we start adding other mental health professionals to that list. 

Focus, Part 3(Why Can't We?)

I've done a couple of posts trying to define the problems of violence and mass killings in America in such a way as to make arriving at solutions more likely and more effective. I'm not, however, naive enough to think that anything of the sort is likely to happen. Why is that?

As far as general violence goes, first there's the race and poverty factor. Our most violent neighborhoods tend to be poor and mostly minority populated and I think some of our leaders fear that those characteristics will drive the conversation even though the overwhelming majority of the residents in those areas are not violent at all. It's a reasonable fear, but the solution is to push back against the racists and classists and not muddy the waters by pretending the problem is more widespread than it really is.

Second, for some Democratic politicians and activists it is easier to pretend that the problem is widespread because those neighborhoods are the "left behind" of 50 years of social policies that were successful for many, but not others. The policies that have helped to lift some people out of poverty or right their lives aren't working in most of these violent cities and neighborhoods, yet many Democrats are stuck on the same old ineffective prescriptions. In addition, it's not hard to see that some of the likely solutions are going to involve judgments about behavior and lifestyle that many progressives aggressively resist these days. 

Third, I think a few very cynical politicians on both sides love these violent neighborhoods and would hate to see them disappear. For those that are Democrats it's an opportunity to muddy things up and impose widespread controls that aren't really needed. For those that are Republican, those violent neighborhoods are an opportunity to point at them and strike fear into their own constituents. 

Then there's the news media. On an individual basis I'm sure nearly all of those who work in the news media were horrified at what happened in Newtown a month ago. As an industry though, they eat that stuff up. It's what they live to cover, and the brutal truth of the matter is that horrors like what happened at that school bring eyeballs, and eyeballs bring advertisers, and advertisers bring money. I don't think that equation goes through the minds of journalists in the heat of the moment, but you can bet your sweet ass that the senior editors and the publishers are always aware of that. They certainly aren't out there promoting violence or mass shootings, but tragedy and controversy sell and clarity often helps to avoid tragedy and diminish controversy. In that sense, clarity is often their enemy and confusion and controversy their friend. Business is business for them just as much as any corporation in the country.

Finally, there's us. When politicians and activists start talking about how violent America is, many Americans recognize the disconnect with their own life, and the lives of family and friends, and dismiss the problem as BS. It would be better if we were to care about the real problem and demand that our leaders focus on those violent hellholes, but reality is that the vast majority of Americans are never touched by that violence. When they talk to their various representatives, if they talk to them at all, I think it's understandable that the violence in some far away neighborhood is going to be the last thing on their mind.

As far as properly defining the problem of mass killings, the biggest obstacles there are the gun control groups who hijack mass shootings to promote broad and controversial gun control measures. They are easy to spot, because their proposals(short of mass confiscation) would have done nothing to stop whatever current or future mass killing from happening. That's because for them it's not about reducing the risk of mass killings, it's about gun control. 

That's not say that there's no place for discussing the role of the NRA and other gun rights groups, but they might be less defensive if the gun control groups would be less aggressive and try to build some trust(though the latter is probably now impossible today). 

Rob made a good comment this afternoon about people defining problems in such a way that their team wins regardless if the problem actually gets fixed. That's what an awful lot of it boils down to and what I'm trying to avoid here. I think there are some meaningful things we can do to address both violence and mass killings in the US, but we need to have the courage and the integrity to be honest about what problem is being addressed and what kind of impact any given proposal would have. It's a shame, but I think there's is very little chance of that happening.