Interesting Comments

On occassion TypePad acts up in incomprehensible ways.  For example, on more than one occassion, I have been unable to leave a comment on my own Blog.  David Bogner at Treppenwitz noted the same problem and discovered that TypePad was placing comments in the spam folder.  Following his lead I have discovered the same thing occuring here.  For future reference, if you attempt to post a comment and it never appears, send me an e-mail and I will check the comment spam folder to see if your comment was snared. 

Unfortunately, in the last week or so, two excellent comments were captured in the spam folder and both deserve to be read.  The first was from Joanne in repsone to the Sanity Squad Podcast on Guns; the second comment was from Jimmy J and will follow tomorrow.  (Note the clever way in which I induce you to check back tomorrow by mentioning Jimmy.) 

Here is Joanne's story, an instrcutive one from a confirmed New York Liberal:

I had two experiences that underline the point made in this Sanity Squad podcast about kinder, gentler "pacifist" people turning out to be clueless, ineffectual people when the chips are down. I live in an upscale "brownstone" neighborhood in

Brooklyn

, but I was mugged twice right in front of my apartment building, once in 2002 and again in 2004. Both times occurred at night, about 11 pm, as I was returning home.

I'm well left of center politically, but I couldn't help thinking of these incidents as I listened to your podcast. Specifically, I couldn't help thinking of the contrast between the two times.

THE FIRST TIME:

There were two young guys, one of whom held me down on the sidewalk while the other relieved me of my handbag. I saw that no violence was going to happen, so I took the calculated risk of yelling loudly, hoping that someone would hear me. Someone did. There was a couple across the street. The man chased the muggers down the block but they got away on a bus. He later said that he couldn't have challenged them directly anyway, as he had no police backup, but he did retrieve all my important things: credit cards, driver's license, etc, to the point where my losses caused me no great inconvenience.

While he chased the muggers, his girlfriend came over to me and comforted me. Their help and kind words lessened the material and emotional impact of the event. It turned out that my male helper lived on my street, but I had a hell of a time finding out the address. Someone in my building who knew him told me that he wanted no reward (I was going to send flowers addressed to the two of them), but I managed to wrangle an address and send a thank-you card.  Note that he wasn't a vigilante; he acted bravely but also intelligently. The point is that he and his girlfriend acted to help me. It turns out he was in the US Marines!!

THE SECOND TIME:

I was about to enter my door when a woman approached me. She was casually dressed, but in no way unkempt. She said in a friendly way, "Oh, I hope I didn't startle you. It's just that when you see black people you're bound to think..." And I said, "Well, no, not really...it's not like that...no problem." I thought she was passing by or was waiting for someone, perhaps. Then she asked me if I had a dollar or two to spare, and I thought, "Oh, so that’s it, oh well, no harm done." But when I opened my wallet to give her a couple of dollars, the expression on her face changed. I didn't have much money in my wallet, but her expression suddenly took on a mean expression, and she fiercely grabbed the wallet. I was stunned.

Then, just my luck! A couple came along, this time on my side of the street, and I thought "I'm saved again!" Except that I wasn't. This couple appeared rather like—I hate to say this—liberals of my cast, for which my trendy neighborhood is well known. (I think they also lived on my block) The woman who had grabbed my wallet was now after my handbag. What else she thought she could get of value, I'll never know. I expected the couple to yell at her, I expected that she would just take the wallet, quit while she was ahead and run like hell, just like those first two muggers. She didn't! She persisted in yelling at me and in trying to yank my handbag away by the strap. I shouted out to the couple that I was being robbed. “Help!” They stopped but then my mugger said something like, "She know me, she owe money to my

Man.

" Yes, she started speaking a kind of ghetto language.

Now, anyone with any street sense would have realized that I was hardly the type to know her Man, least of all owe him money. And it should have been obvious that anyone trying to grab someone else's handbag was a mugger! Even if I had owed money to her boyfriend (in some alternate universe), that wouldn't have justified a mugging. But the couple didn't want to appear unfair to the woman mugging me. They didn't want to jump to any conclusions in her favor or mine. So they just stood there, hesitating, not sure whose side to take.  In the meantime, a wasted lowlife of a guy (her Man?) came up to me, threatened me, and ran away with the woman mugger and my handbag. And the couple just stood there, saying nothing to me!!

Oh well, in that instance I wouldn’t have minded making the acquaintance of  another marine. Or someone from the army, navy or coast guard.

Of course, I don't want to jump to conclusions about the second couple. For all I know, they may have both been Republicans who supported the war in

Iraq

, though I doubt it. And I don't want to resort to stereotypes. But I couldn't help thinking of these incidents when you were talking about pacifists and that series "Serenity."  Life imitates art...or artlessness.

Although a Conservative is often defined as  a Liberal who has been mugged by reality, Joanne is not yet ready to re-assess all of her politics, but she does see much more nuance today than before the events she describes; after an exchange of e-mail she sent me this note:

I am a political liberal and I'm for more gun control, specifically for handguns, not for hunting rifles. But I realize that the question is not a simple one. A policeman I once met told me that many cops are against greater gun control because such laws would only give rise to a black market. Ironically, the only ones getting guns would be criminals getting them illegally. He said it would be like another Prohibition, when the trade in liquor was given over to bootleggers and Mafiosi.

If I'm not mistaken, your podcast mentioned the fact that guns were commonly owned in Canada and Switzerland with no ill social effects. This was an astute point, and it highlights another dimension to the issue: that high murder rates fueled by guns may not be the fault of guns, but of the surrounding culture. You cannot discuss the issue of gun control without discussing the cultural context, but by that I don't only mean the American tradition of individual independence and self-sufficiency, or of the Second Amendment. [Note that the meaning of the Second Amendment is debated. Did did it only mean the freedom to raise militias? Did it mean that individuals could be their own armies of one, with minimal oversight?]  By "context" I also mean the social dysfunctionalism that we have because of the large degree of poverty (including the working poor) that exists in this country, as well as the noxious ghetto culture that has taken root over several generations. This is something that Canada and Switzerland do not share.

I'm afraid that we cannot just argue about gun control in terms of laissez-faire philosophy or individualism; we have to take into account the practical consequences of any policy we would adopt. If more aggressive gun control is not the answer (I'm not sure on this point), then less assertive gun control isn't, either. I don't think everyone should own a gun. I'm sorry, I know that opens up a can of worms. After all, how do we decide who should own one without being arbitrary or dictatorial? I frankly don't know.

When it comes to gun control, the answer for the United States isn't an easy one.

I could not agree more with Joanne that the resolution of gun control will not be an easy one.  At the same time I have personally progressed from a position strongly in favor of gun control, especially hand gun control, favoring the rather draconian limits on gun ownership that New York has long championed to a position in favor of concealed carry laws for law abiding, well trained, licensed citizens.  I do not think New York will descend into mindless violence (we already had that in the 70s and 80s when no one was allowed to have a gun; apparently, there were some people who were not deterred by the laws!) and I think concealed carry laws will eventually become prevalent throughout the country.  At some point the realization that "Gun free zones" have great potential as shooting galleries for murderers and terrorists, and are "zones of safety" only in our fantasies, will hit a threshold and we will take the most obvious measure available to make us all safer.