Logical Fallacies

In my last post I brought up something that has been irking me for quite some time, people who use Chicago's high murder rate to make the point that relatively strict gun control laws, which this city also has, do little if anything to prevent murder. I mentioned that were there any credence to the conclusion , I'd support it, but pointed out that the argument is flawed in many ways and is not at all credible. 

For starters, the argument uses a single piece of evidence to draw its conclusion. In this case, using only the data of murder rates and gun laws in one city is insufficient because many other examples (those of other cities), need to be studied in order to come closer to a valid conclusion. Using only one example to draw a conclusion is known as an anecdotal fallacy. Every high school freshman learns in science class that you cannot make a conclusion based upon the evidence gathered in one solitary experiment.

The term cherry picking is also relevant here because data in the form of crime statistics for every city in this country, are readily available and not all of it backs up this particular conclusion. Instead, advocates of this theory select Chicago's anecdotal evidence of a high murder rate combined with strict gun laws specifically because it fits into their theory, while purposefully not bringing up comparable cities with strict gun laws and low murder rates or cities with high murder rates and lax gun laws. 

Another logical fallacy which often goes hand-in-hand with the anecdotal fallacy has a fancy Latin name: "post hoc, ergo propter hoc", in English: "after this, therefore because of this." It's the classic cause and effect question, assuming that if one event precedes another, it must be related to the subsequent event. In this particular case it is assumed the first event, strict gun laws, do not affect the murder rate, which is high despite them. This is a like a student who does poorly on a test despite studying for it, concluding that studying for all tests is useless. Never mind that there may have been dozens of reasons why the student didn't do well on the test, or the proposition that had he not studied at all, he may have done even worse on the test. 

I became interested in the subject of logical fallacies while writing that post. I looked it up and found hundreds of websites devoted to the subject, (no, I didn't look at them all). My philosophy class in college over forty years ago probably covered much of this material, but like the subject of how to factor a quadratic equation, the Spanish subjunctive and many other things I learned in school, I forgot. 

Yet another popular fallacy is the strawman fallacy. The premise of the SF is that someone making an argument misconstrues or exaggerates the opposing position, then uses arguments based upon those  faulty assumptions. This exaggerated position is designed to be easy to take down rhetorically, hence the term "strawman."

A classic example of the Strawman Fallacy can be found in my penultimate post where I talked about Tucker Carlson's evaluation of Joe Biden's address to the nation on the importance of gun control a couple weeks ago. In his rant, Carlson accused Biden of wanting to "disarm" Americans, which the president took great pains in his speech to make clear was not true.  Carlson went on to use the fallacious idea of "disarming Americans" (in this case, the strawman) to go in several directions, including portraying Biden as a tyrant who wants to take guns away from the American people in order to gain total control of them, as disarming the public has been the first act of tyrants throughout history. That last part is an example of another logical fallacy, the slippery slope. More on that one later. 

The point of this exercise is not to find more "gotcha" moments in the news to criticize a certain sector of our population which I've done a lot of lately if you hadn't noticed. Rather, I'm trying to clean up my own act, hoping to be aware of logical mistakes in my own arguments. 

Turns out I make them all the time. Here's a doozy from the last post:

I guess it shouldn't be surprising that (Texas governor Greg Abbott) would bring up Chicago while blocks away, grieving parents were in the process of receiving the remains of their murdered children who had to be identified the night before by DNA samples as the bullets from a high-powered military grade weapon ripped apart their bodies and destroyed their faces.

That's an example of the appealing to emotions fallacy. It's debatable whether or not my statement itself constitutes a fallacy as nothing in it is untrue, in fact I may have even downplayed the gruesome nature of the aftermath of the Uvalde tragedy. Nor was any of what I said not relevant to my argument as the slaughter of innocent people, in this case children, is precisely why I believe we need more gun control. Yet the statement obviously is manipulative. I could have left out the gore and just said the governor brought up the Chicago fallacy while he was in Uvalde attempting to lend support to the people of that community in their time of need, then left the judgement of the appropriateness of the governor's words up to my readers. 

Just one paragraph earlier, I brought up Governor Abbott's blaming wind energy for the crippling Texas power grid crisis of last year, despite the fact that wind accounts for a very small amount of the energy produced in Texas. 

I originally led the paragraph quoted above with: "I guess it shouldn't be surprising that such a great mind, this modern-day Don Quixote..." (going after windmills, get it?), "would bring up Chicago..."

This is a good example of the ad homiem fallacy, or an attack not against the argument, but "against the man" making the argument. In this case, the subject of Abbott's statement about energy last year had nothing to do with his statement in Uvalde, and my ironic "great mind" line attacks the governor's intelligence (really his sincerity), rather than the argument at hand.

A couple weeks ago I was reading the comments section of an article about the highly publicized mass shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde. The comments were predictable, many of them pro-gun control, many of them anti. After one fairly strident comment emphasizing the need to keep our children safe from being killed in their schools, someone commented to that remark by saying this: "But you have no problem with abortion?"

I was partially appalled and partially stymied by that one as I had no good response for it. OK yes, they are two separate issues, but they are both issues concerning life and death and I can understand that some people see an inconsistency with people who are concerned about preserving the lives of school children but unconcerned about preserving the lives of unborn children. Conversely, I've read comments from the other side that say anti-abortion people are only concerned about children's lives if they are not born yet. I've made that argument myself on numerous occasions.

These are both examples of another logical fallacy with a fancy Latin name, tu quoque, or the "you too" fallacy. It's also referred to as the "look who's talking" or my personal favorite: "the pot calling the kettle black" fallacy. Tu quoque is avoiding an argument by turning it around on the opponent by pointing out his or her inconsistency or flat-out hypocrisy. In recent years it has become so common in political discourse that a new word has been coined to describe it, "whataboutism." 

Whataboutism is a favorite tool of Vladimir Putin, who descends from a long line of Russian dictator whatabouters. He has used it consistently during his war against Ukraine, excusing his actions by saying other nations, especially the United States have invaded countries as well. Another great whatabouter is Donald Trump whose most infamous use of the fallacy concerned none other than Putin. In a 2017 interview with Bill O'Reilly, the former FOX News personality questioned the new president about his admiration of the Russian dictator, referring to him as a "killer." Trump's response was chilling: 

There are a lot of killers. We’ve got a lot of killers. What do you think — our country’s so innocent?

 That line prompted this astute response from the current U.S. National Security advisor Jake Sullivan:

The American president is taking Putin’s 'what about you' tactic and turning it into 'what about us?'

Supporters of the exPOTUS are famous for using whataboutism in their defense of 45, saying things like: "yeah he may be a crook with no moral or ethical compass, but so are all politicians."

Logical fallacies are not the exclusive domain of one political ideology. Case in point, in one of the web sites I checked out dealing with the subject, the author used this quote from Barak Obama to illustrate the false dilemma fallacy:

What choices are we going to make to reach that goal? (a balanced budget). Either we ask the wealthiest Americas to pay their fair share of taxes, or we are going to have to ask seniors to pay more for Medicare.

As we saw above, logical fallacies needn't be limited to one category; here Obama is clearly guilty of appealing to the emotions, after all, who doesn't have more compassion for seniors on a fixed income than for the "wealthiest Americans"? But the false dilemma fallacy which this quote also illustrates, poses one of only two possible outcomes to an action, one very bad, and the other good or at least, not as bad. There is no middle ground.

The slippery slope fallacy mentioned above, is related to the false dilemma in that it is poses an exaggerated assumption of the outcome to an action. The slippery slope argues that one thing inevitably leads to another, that is, if a particular action is taken, it will cause another action that will result in a bad outcome which will in turn result in another action resulting in a worse outcome, and so on. The classic example of this is a parent warning a child that if he doesn't do well in school, he'll end up being homeless because if he gets bad grades, he won't into a good college, then won't get a good job, etc.

I used the slippery slope in a piece I wrote about abortion. I posed the hypothetical suggestion that banning abortion in selected states may lead to a situation where an act that is perfectly legal in some states may land someone on death row in another. While there have been rumblings of a few people who say they might support the death penalty as punishment for those who perform abortions, there is no evidence to suggest that is a real possibility. Yet. So my statement would fall into the slippery slope category. 

Perhaps one of the most insidious of fallacies is the appeal to common sense fallacy. Anyone who has successfully lived through years of life on this planet has learned through personal experience certain things that will greatly improve their quality of life, things like knowing if you go out into the rain without an umbrella or protective clothing, you will get wet. We call the kind of knowledge that does not have to be taught, common sense. Of course, not everybody's personal experience is the same, someone who grew up in an arid zone may actually welcome getting wet in the rain because it is so rare where they come from and would never consider covering up to stay dry. 

Sometimes we see our own experience as transferrable to everybody else and don't even consider the possibility that other's may see things from a different perspective. 

Appealing to common sense is a way of avoiding an argument by saying the argument is so obvious it needn't be elaborated upon, and anyone who isn't on board with it is either unreasonable or stupid. A hypothetical example would be saying it is common sense that the combination of Chicago's strict gun laws and high crime rate is proof that gun laws don't work. How could any reasonable person not see that?

I am guilty of abusing the appeal to common sense fallacy in my own arguments, in fact there's a good example in this very post, see below.

It's important to remember that some arguments may technically fall into one of the categories of logical fallacies, but still constitute reasonable arguments. A borderline example is the appeal to authority fallacy. In this one, the committer of the fallacy uses the statements or beliefs of a third party, "the authority", to make an argument. 

A relevant example of this one is the use of Dr. Anthony Fauci as an authority figure on the subject of infectious diseases. An argument may go something like this: 

• Person one: How do you know that wearing masks helps prevent the spread of COVID?
• Person two: Because Dr. Fauci says it does and Dr. Fauci says...

Here person two is letting Dr. Fauci's expertise make the argument rather than making the argument himself. Is this a fallacious argument as it is clearly an appeal to authority?

Well, Dr. Fauci has spent an entire career, over fifty years, studying infectious diseases so he should know something about the subject. 

• Does this mean his opinions on the subject are infallible? No. 
• Is he immune from making errors of judgement? No.
• Is his the only credible opinion on the subject? Certainly not. 
• Is his opinion on the subject more valid than that of a layperson who has spent a couple hours reading articles on the web questioning the efficacy of wearing masks? YES, IT CERTAINLY IS!!!

So while saying: "Because Dr. Fauci says so" may not be a particularly elegant, well thought out argument, as far as the subject of infectious diseases goes, it is a reasonable argument.

If on the other hand the argument at hand is who is the most valuable player in the National League this year or what is the best wine to serve with Weiner Schnitzel, Dr. Fauci's opinion may not carry much weight, and the appeal to the authority of Dr. Fauci on those subjects would indeed be fallacious. 

The fallacy that usually wraps up discussions on logical fallacies is the fallacy fallacy, which assumes that because a person uses fallacious logic to make an argument, the argument itself is wrong.

It is possible that strict gun control laws don't affect crime very much, despite the fact that the evidence supporters of that theory promote is flimsy. If we really wanted to prove that gun laws don't affect crime here in Chicago, there is a straightforward experiment we could conduct to see if that has any merit. 

Get rid of our gun laws and see where that takes us. 

In an ideal world, I think few reasonable people would be willing to conduct that experiment. But we're living in a less than ideal world with fewer and fewer reasonable people (a whopper of an appeal to common sense fallacy), and as of this week in its infinite wisdom (ooh an ironic comment that could be considered an ad hominem attack), the Supreme Court has shown it is willing to conduct that dangerous experiment as reflected in its overruling New York State laws preventing people from carrying guns in public. 

Yes, there was another notorious ruling released by the court this week also promising horrendous consequences for our nation (do I detect a slippery slope here?), but that's an issue for another day. 

I don't want to get involved in yet another logical fallacy by comparing the two, although I'm not exactly sure which category it would fall into. 

Or by simply bringing it up, maybe I already have.

Oh well, so be it.

The Chicago Line

In terms of pure numbers, there have been more murders in Chicago this year, and in many previous years, than any other any American city. It comes as little relief that because of its large population, Chicago ranks anywhere between #10 and #30 (depending on which day and where you check the stats), in murder rate in this country, in other words the number of homicides in relation to the size of the population.     

One could argue because of that second statistic, Chicago is not the "murder capital" of the nation as it is so often referred. That's hardly a bragging right.

Some would diminish the significance of our increasing murder rate as it is concentrated in certain "bad" neighborhoods and not the entire city. High crime rates have historically been associated with areas of poverty combined with ethnic and racial segregation, unemployment, the breakdown of families, the predominance of street gangs and other factors. As the crime and murder rate in much of the city has remained fairly stable, it stands to reason that the murder rate in the poorer neighborhoods of Chicago has skyrocketed, well out of proportion with the overall rate of the city as a whole.

Despite not living in a neighborhood with a particularly high murder rate, I don't find any comfort in that. On the contrary. This is my city and every murder, whether it be in affluent Lincoln Park, the economically challenged Englewood, or my neighborhood somewhere in between, Rogers Park, is an unspeakable tragedy.

There is no way to sugar-coat it, we cannot spin the situation to make it better, we are all affected by the horrific number of murders in our city.

Therefore, I'm not averse to Chicago's murder rate being openly and honestly discussed by those who have a legitimate concern for the wellbeing of this city and its inhabitants, preferably accompanied by some useful thoughts addressing the tragedy.

What I have no tolerance for are politicians and pundits who use violence in Chicago as a distraction from one of the pressing issues of our day, gun control. 

You hear the trope every time there is legitimate outrage after a mass shooting. Defenders of not doing anything to control the obscene availability of guns in this country will predictably drop the Chicago Line in order to "prove" that gun laws do nothing to prevent crime.

This is the Chicago Line: "Despite having the toughest gun laws in the nation, Chicago also has the highest murder rate."

Strictly speaking, neither of those points are accurate, but that's not a problem for me. If there were a legitimate argument for Chicago being an example of strict gun laws having little or no effect on crime, it would be a valid point.

But it's not a legitimate argument and therefore not valid. The bottom line is that in Chicago's case, the correlation between its relatively strict gun control laws and its high murder rate, is purely anecdotal, much like the tentative correlation many people make between vaccines and autism (a story for another day).

The problem with the correlation between Chicago (more appropriately Illinois) gun laws and the murder rate is quite simple. While Illinois gun laws are fairly strict by US standards (ranked eighth strictest in the nation), the laws in its neighboring states are anything but. Given that, it stands to reason that a state with strict gun laws being an island surrounded by states with lax guns laws is no more effective than a no peeing section in the middle of an open swimming pool. It turns out that well over half of the guns used in crimes in Chicago come from out of state, the majority of those from Indiana, which is literally across the street from some parts of Chicago. 

The state of Illinois requires all gun purchases to be accompanied a Firearm Owners Identification (FOID) card on the part of a buyer, issued by the State Police which must be presented to the seller for verification at the time of purchase. That process alone takes a few days so you can't simply walk into a gun shop in this state and leave with a shiny new weapon. This FOID card can be rescinded any time its holder is considered a risk such as having committed a crime or determined to be mentally unstable.

None of this is true in Indiana or Wisconsin where almost anyone with absolutely no business having a gun can make the easy drive across state lines to buy one.

But the real problem with this nation's lax gun laws insofar as crime is concerned, is the that they enable guns to be manufactured at a staggering rate. I looked at one of my previous posts a decade old and recalled that ten years ago, there were as many guns as people in the United States. Today it is estimated that there are about twenty percent more guns than people in this country. That translates to (if my math is correct) roughly 80 million more guns in circulation today in this country than ten years ago.

Sure there are lots of responsible gun owners who take pains to prevent their firearms from getting into the wrong hands. But what happens when they sell those guns which are later re-sold or stolen? That's not to mention all the irresponsible gun owners out there.

Since guns are so plentiful in this city, one needn't bother making the trip to Indiana or Wisconsin, they can be had right here, mostly illegally of course. As the gun crowd rightfully points out, criminals aren't going to let a mere law prevent them from getting a gun. But if there weren't so many guns around in the first place, it wouldn't be so damned easy for criminals to get their hands on them. Sorry gun guys but this one is on you.

Another inconvenient fact debunking the correlation between Chicago's murder rate and gun control is that cities with comparable or higher murder rates than Chicago such as Birmingham, Little Rock, New Orleans and St. Louis are all in states with far more lenient gun restrictions than Illinois. In contrast, cities like Los Angeles and New York, both in states with stricter gun laws than Illinois, have far lower murder rates than Chicago.

Unfortunately there is a segment of our society who seems to be immune to reason and facts. That's why anti gun control politicians and pundits keep getting away with using the Chicago Line as their main line of defense in arguing the failure of gun control.

You may ask why Chicago is singled out as the gold standard of American murder and mayhem. Could it be that all those other cities are in solidly red states that typically oppose gun control? Oh I dunno, just a hunch.

The Chicago Line was a favorite of the exPOTUS who was fond of trashing the blue state of Illinois and especially Chicago, home of his predecessor and favorite target, Barak Obama. 

In a bit of horrendous timing, days after the mass shooting of fourth graders and their teachers in Uvalde, Texas, an NRA convention was scheduled to take place in Houston, 278 miles away. Many folks who planned to attend either as speakers or entertainers, cancelled their appearances out of respect for the dead and their families. Not the exPOTUS who danced a little gig at the end of his address to the crowd, after paying "homage" to the victims of Uvalde by mispronouncing most of their names. Also present at the gun-lovers' orgy in Houston was Texas senator Ted Cancún Cruz who predictably used the old reliable Chicago Line in his speech. Here is what he said: 

Gun bans do not work. Look at Chicago. If they worked, Chicago wouldn’t be the murder hellhole that it has been for far too long.

Which is interesting because in 2019, Cruz was excoriated by Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot after he dropped the Chicago Line in slightly different words, after a particularly brutal holiday weekend in this city. It's bad enough to extol the virtues of guns by exploiting Chicago violence in reaction to a tragic weekend in the Windy City, but it's a whole other level of bad to use it in the wake of another town's tragedy.

Perhaps the most tasteless use of the Chicago Line to date came from Texas governor Greg Abbott at a press conference in Uvalde, the day after the shooting. You may remember it was Abbott who famously blamed windmills for the disastrous power grid failure last year after an unusual snap of cold weather in the Lone Star State. Never mind that wind power generates only a minuscule amount of Texas energy. 

I guess it shouldn't be surprising that this modern-day Don Quixote would bring up Chicago while blocks away, grieving parents were in the process of receiving the remains of their murdered children who had to be identified the night before by DNA samples as the bullets from a high powered military grade weapon ripped apart their bodies and destroyed their faces.

In order to assure his fellow gun toatin' Texans that he wasn't moved by the unspeakable tragedy that befell his constituents in Uvalde enough to keep weapons like the one used at Robb Elementary School out of the hands of people likely to use them against ten year olds, Abbott said this:

I hate to say this, there are more people that are shot every weekend in Chicago than there are in schools in Texas.

Perhaps he was bemoaning the fact that there aren't enough schools in Texas but I don't think so. Not giving him the benefit of the doubt on that one, his statement is so wrong on so many levels. 

Beyond the errors in logic, by comparing numbers of murder victims in Chicago and Texas, Abbott is treating human lives as if they were commodities. He may as well have been talking about spark plugs or widgets. 

Not only did Abbott receive the wrath of the Mayor of Chicago, but also that of Jay Pritzker, Governor of Illinois for his thoughtless remarks.

As pointed out by Mayor Lightfoot, worst of all, Abbott's statement downplays the tragedy he was on hand to address. Uvalde is a small town where practically everyone has a connection to at least one of the victims of the massacre. I'm guessing that not a soul in Uvalde was comforted by learning that a lot of people are murdered in Chicago too. 

But these gun-loving yahoos press on with their empty rhetoric about good guys with guns, people killing people, not guns, and about that hellhole, Chicago.

You don't hear Ted Cruz or Greg Abbott, both with presidential aspirations of their own calling Indianapolis, Tuscaloosa, Menphis or Baton Rouge murder hell holes, even though those cities have higher murder rates than Chicago. 

For them. Chicago is an easy target as this city's violent reputation as every Chicagoan who has ever traveled abroad knows, precedes it. Besides they have nothing to lose as neither of them have a snowball's chance in hell of winning Chicago or Illinois in a presidential election. 

As I said, if there were any credence to the Chicago Line, it would be fair game. But there is not, it is a simplistic logical fallacy, deliberately cherry picked by unscrupulous politicians and their masters, the gun lobby, to empower and enrich themselves off the blood of innocent children, and to further divide the American people. 

So we can expect to keep hearing the same old bullshit Chicago Line ad nauseam.

Not that it will make a bit of difference but to that I will quote our mayor while adding a few choice embellishments of my own:

If you don't give a rat's ass about this city or its people, keep our name out of your fucking mouth.

With all due respect. 

Compromise, What a Novel Idea

Last night President Biden delivered a passionate address to the nation on the issue of gun control in the wake of two highly publicized mass shootings and several other less publicized ones that have taken place over the last few weeks in our country. In the message he spelled out his plans to send before Congress: bills to raise the legal age for purchasing firearms, strengthening background checks, enacting safe storage and red flag laws, as well as repealing the immunity protecting gun manufacturers from liability for their deadly products, a privilege Biden pointed out, no other industry enjoys.

The president also expressed his desire that the assault weapon ban Republican members of Congress allowed to expire in 2004, be put back into effect, putting a cap on the number of bullets a single magazine can hold, as well as other measures he readily acknowledged were very unlikely to pass.

As predictable as flies on a pile of poop in summer, the ultra-MAGA troll Tucker Carlson weighed in on Biden's remarks as if they were a genuine affront to all good, God-fearing, law-abiding, patriotic Americans.

Biden had the nerve to address the nation during Carlson's prime time slot, so FOX "News", the network that broadcasts Carlson's nightly bile to his adoring fans, took the unusual step of broadcasting the president's speech in its entirely, all the while showing an inset of Carlson's trademarked, dumbfounded facial reactions to Biden's remarks in real time. Didn't watch that.

But I did give him his due by reading his rebuttal to Biden on FOX's website. If you can stand it, you can read it here.

Carlson analysed Biden's address this way:

So, to summarize the president's remarks tonight, your constitutional rights are not absolute. But in taking them away, we're not actually taking away your rights, we're protecting children. To which you might ask, am I a threat to children? That question is never answered by the president.

It would seem from this statement, that Tucker Carlson believes that constitutional rights ARE absolute, that it's perfectly OK for example to yell fire (when there isn't one), in a crowded theater or that there is no limit to the kind of weapons an individual can have at his disposal, machine guns, bazookas, nukes, you name it.

That's interesting because the president seemed to anticipate that response. He quoted the most revered of all Supreme Court Justices by members of the far right, Antonin Scalia, who wrote the majority opinion in the District of Columbia v. Heller case which overturned Washington DC's ban on handguns. In that opinion Scalia wrote this:

Nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.

 In other words, again Scalia's:

...like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited. (emphasis mine)

And it is...

not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.

Of course our boy Tucker didn't mention any of that because it doesn't fit into his narrative.

Also not fitting into his narrative is that gun control should not be a political issue, but a common sense issue of public safety. The gun-nut crowd (as distinguished from reasonable and responsible gun owners), loves to complain that people who want to see the manufacture and sale of guns controlled in this country use mass shootings as an excuse to further their "political agenda" at a time when they should be mourning the victims.  

At the top of Carlson's piece he says this:

(Biden) decided to leverage the murder of 19 children in Texas last week for political advantage. 

That is moronic. A few days after I was born, there was a horrific fire in a school not far from where we lived. Many of the victims of that fire were brought to the hospital where my mother and I were still admitted. 92 children and 3 nuns died in that fire. Yes there was terrific grief in the days, months, and years that followed and even to this day. But there was also tremendous anger. People in the community and in fact all over the world said: "how the hell could something like this happen?"

That anger was put to good service as fire codes and design standards were completely overhauled to prevent another such disaster. Even though this involved expenditures of a good deal of tax money and proved a great inconvenience to many, to my knowledge, for the sake of saving the lives of children, no one whined about having to sacrifice or that their rights were being taken away.

Obviously I have no direct memory of the event but have a hard time believing those angry people were castigated for leveraging those deaths to advance a political agenda.

If it ended there, Tucker Carlson's response could be considered merely self-serving and idiotic. But as usual, he goes beyond that. Carlson is famous for distinguishing between his audience, whom he refers to in the collective, "you, the American people", and "them", the so-called political elite, presumably the Democrats, and by extension anybody who supports them.

Here are some chunks of Carlson's comments found in his piece:

The point of this, of course, is to disarm people who did not vote for Joe Biden.

Democrats in the House of Representatives spent the day debating ways to disarm you, Americans, who've committed no crime at all and want only to protect themselves and their families.

Anyone who tries to disarm you, by definition, considers you an enemy. That's what you do to your enemies, you disarm them. Your friends, your allies, your children, people you love. why would you want to prevent them from defending themselves? You never would. You certainly wouldn't scream at them from the podium about how they're killing children if they want to protect their own families. That's what you do to your enemies. 

If you think these quotes are not to be trusted because I've taken them out of context, please feel free to read the whole piece that I linked to above. 

First of all, it's ludicrous to say that Biden is proposing these new measures to effect only people who did not vote for him. Where is the evidence of that?* Law abiding Democrats as well as law abiding Republicans own guns. 

Secondly, "disarm" is a term bandied about quite liberally in this piece. Biden made it abundantly clear that he is not against guns and is not interested in disarming Americans, he simply proposes going back to a ban that already existed on very particular weapons, namely AR-15 style assault rifles which have been used in nearly all the mass shootings we've witnessed recently. 

Third, protecting oneself and one's family is a valid concern, and it is also thrown about quite haphazardly in all the rhetoric of the gun-nut crowd. But is that what these people really and truly care about? Does anybody really need an AR-15 style gun to protect himself? Read on.

The gist of Carlson's rhetoric can be found in the next line that says "anyone who tries to disarm you considers you an enemy." Clearly Tucker Carlson is saying here that Joe Biden by "disarming" the American people, considers the American people his enemy. Therefore it follows that Joe Biden the president of the United States, and those who support him, are the enemy of the true American people.

So the American people, according to the gun-nut crowd, need weapons such as the AR-15 not to protect themselves from the miscreants, prowlers, burglars, and other run-of-the-mill criminals, but from a hostile government who wants to enslave its people. And as we all know, the very first thing that dictators have done from time immemorial, is disarm the people, or so they say.

This is the narrative that Tucker Carlson wants to convey to his audience: the Democrats, and the people who support them, are not your fellow Americans who happen to have a different point of view, but your enemy who wants to take from you everything you value. First it's your guns, next your religion, then what? A particularly nutty legislator from the great state of Georgia who shall remain nameless, recently suggested that the way things are going, straight people will soon be extinct. And when that happens, there's the end of the species. 

I've said before in this space that Tucker Carlson is not an idiot, he just plays one on TV. Frankly I don't think he believes half of the rubbish he tells his viewers. In a defamation case against Carlson and FOX, the network's defense (which was successful) was that no one in their right mind should take anything Tucker Carlson says seriously. 

We can laugh all we want at the nonsense, but a lot of his viewers believe him and what he tells them. Carlson is the most public advocate of "white replacement theory", the idea that the Democrats are purposefully increasing the number of illegal immigrants of color crossing our borders for the sole purpose of gaining votes at the ballot box. In a rambling creed written before his racist attack on a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, the killer of ten, while not naming Carlson directly, attributed WRT  as the inspiration for his crime.

I've also heard Tucker Carlson say that if the Democrats try to take away our guns, there will be a Civil War. Is that pure hyperbole? Well maybe for him, if there is a war, rest assured that Carlson would stay as far away from the front lines as possible. But rumblings of a Civil War in our future are not too infrequent in the world of social media, a former president, can you guess which one, reposted one.

With this attitude, it's not surprising that the Republicans are so intransigent in trying to cooperate with the Democrats, after all, why cooperate with your enemy? As far as gun control goes, despite efforts on the table that no reasonable person should object to, it seems that the attitude of the gun-nut crowd is "give 'em an inch, and they'll take a mile." 

A democratic government doesn't work that way. You compromise.

I suppose if I were king of the United States, I'd get rid of the Second Amendment as I feel it has become obsolete in an era when we have a standing army and local and state police departments whose job it is to protect us. 

But here's the thing, I'm not king (thank God) and furthermore, I don't believe in kings. I believe in the rule of law and I believe in our constitution, imperfect as it is. Given that, as a citizen, I would not advocate for the repeal of the Second Amendment because I feel it would create a slippery slope which would weaken the constitution to the point where every one of our rights as American citizens could be in jeopardy of being revoked. 

As the president pointed out in his address, there are things he wants to accomplish that have a chance of succeeding, and others that won't. That's how negotiations work, each side brings to the table more than they know will be accepted, issues that can be given up in the interest of getting concessions from the other side. There's no way in hell that the assault weapon ban will be reinstated at this time, everybody knows that. But if it is brought to the table and the Democrats are hesitantly willing to give that up, perhaps, so the theory goes, the other side may be willing to accept other restrictions that could possibly save a few lives. 

Or maybe not; given the way things have been going, I'd give the Republicans making any concessions a less than a 50/50 chance. 

Fortunately there are reasonable people who believe in the Second Amendment with all their hearts.

By chance, yesterday morning I found an article by a Mississippi writer named Sid Salter. From all indications he is a conservative Republican who may (or may not) have voted for Donald Trump. The article is titled "Justice Scalia’s words on Second Amendment absolutism are true and prophetic" and it was published on a site called "Y'all Politics." Given all that, I opened up the article fully assuming the writer's opinions would be diametrically opposed to mine. 

It turned out that Salter focused on the words of Scalia that Joe Biden quoted later that day.

Here is a link to Sid Salter's piece. 

Much to my surprise, the article is spot on.

Sid Salter and I might have plenty to argue about, which is just fine, because at the root of it, we are both Americans who love our country and want to see it succeed. Because of that we both despise the division sewn by certain politicians and pundits like Carlson, who have plenty to gain for themselves and their pocketbooks as our country is torn apart limb by limb. 

As for the rest of us, the real American people, Republican, Democrat and Independent, we have nothing to gain but plenty to lose.

And right now, we're losing big time. 

* Carlson's "evidence" is that the proposed measures to limit the amount of bullets a magazine is capable of holding, would not apply to the bodyguards of politicians, therefore the politicians would have proper protection, but regular citizens would not. He seems to be implying this only applies to Democratic politicians not Republicans, which is of course, pure nonsense. 

The Lives They Lived

On Memorial Day we remember and honor the sacrifice of the men and women who gave their lives in service to our country. It is entirely appropriate that we do this. Memorial Day is even more poignant today as through the war raging in Ukraine, we are reminded on a daily basis of something we often take for granted, the ravages of war and the price that sometimes needs to be paid to maintain justice, democracy and liberty over the forces of oppression.

It is just as appropriate in my opinion, to remember and honor the people who through no fault of their own, get caught up in war. 

From my last post: 

Up until a couple months ago, the people of Bucha were going about their lives just as we do here, going to work, taking their kids to dance class, walking their dogs, doing the grocery shopping, in short, all the mundane things we do every day and take for granted. 

I wrote those words on the morning of Saturday, May 14. Later that day, a bunch of people were going about their lives on the east side of Buffalo, New York, when everything would change for them in the span of roughly six minutes, which to those who survived, must have seemed like an eternity.

The people shopping at Tops Grocery Store that tragic day were not caught up in a war between nations, but in a shooting war just the same. The man who killed ten Americans and wounded many more that day, is an avowed white supremacist who targeted his victims because they were black. He is by every definition of the word, a terrorist. 

Today is Memorial Day, May 30, 2022. I wrote the words you just read last weekend. My original intention was to devote a post to the victims of the Buffalo massacre.  But as I pointed out in the previous post, just like Rome, my posts aren't built in a day. In this case, I didn't know exactly which direction to go. Should I devote the post to the myth that we live in a "post-racial" America; should I write about the evils of white supremacy; should I write about the cancer of gun violence in this country; should I write about gun control or the lack of it; or should I write about the pandora's box of other issues that horrific crime brought up?

AP Photo/Joshua Bessex

In the midst of contemplating all this, the Buffalo tragedy was all but eclipsed by an even deadlier mass shooting, this one at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. Last Tuesday, May 24, two teachers and 19 students, mostly fourth graders, died, and several more were injured but managed to survive.

I've checked the archives of this blog and after practically every mass shooting in our country, I wrote about my frustration over our nation's inability to come to a compromise over the issue of gun control. Frankly it shouldn't be that difficult, I don't think any reasonable person should object to things like background checks and registering gun owners. We do just that for automobiles. And how on earth can it be legal for an 18 year old who can't legally buy a beer, to walk into a store and buy a high powered military grade assault style weapon, whose bullets cause catastrophic damage to human tissue and organs which makes survival of a wound to the head or torso unlikely, and are capable of indiscriminately killing as many people as the amount of time it takes to pull the trigger? Frankly I don't think any private citizen should be allowed to own a weapon such as this, after all, lawn darts are illegal. I understand that neither automobiles nor lawn darts are specifically mentioned in the Constitution, (neither are assault weapons), but if you are against things like registering guns and gun owners, what part of the words "well regulated", the first words of the Second Amendment, don't you understand?

Don't get me wrong, I don't think for a second that even if the courts eventually override the Second Amendment, (which will never happen), would we see an end to these mass shootings. They have sadly become imbedded into of our nation's fabric, and anyone who wants to carry one out badly enough, will find a way. Besides, thanks to our supremely misguided and foolish interpretation of the Second Amendment, there are currently more guns than people in this country, and even if guns were banned, there would still be plenty of them around. 

And as long as we continue to permit these weapons of mass destruction to be manufactured and sold on the open market, there will be more and more of them available to young men (and I suppose women too) with a chip on their shoulder, to kill us and our loved ones. 

As I mentioned before in this space, there are many issues that need to be addressed if we intend to seriously tackle the issue of mass shootings which are an epidemic in this country and nowhere else. Mental health certainly is a big one, as is improving school security. 

But those are complicated and expensive fixes that are often fraught with peril and questionable results. Were it not for the obstinacy of a minority of people in this country, the pure greed of gun manufacturers and sellers, and the cowardice of the politicians they have in their deep pockets, the same cannot be said of controlling guns. As we saw at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas last week, "good guys with guns" even if they are fully trained professional police officers, are sometimes no match for a guy toting a military grade weapon who is prepared to die. 

Getting rid of these weapons, or at least taking them out of the hands of people who have no business with them in the first place, is the very least we could do to honor the lives of those we lost this month and in the years since Bill Clinton's ban on assault style weapons was allowed to expire by Congress in 2004.

We could and should do something about this but unfortunately we won't. If nothing was done after Sandy Hook, Connecticut where even younger children and more of them, at Christmastime no less, were slaughtered, sadly nothing will be done now. 

This is a war as well, and unfortunately the good guys are losing. 

I wasn't going to go into all of that, after all, what's the use? So I'll stop my rant for now. Instead I thought on this Memorial Day, I'd devote this post to the victims of guns in our country, especially to those who died so tragically in Buffalo and Uvalde this month. 

Here are their names, their ages, and links to part of their stories:

Nevaeh Bravo, 10 Go Fund Me page for the family of Neveh Bravo.

 

Jackie Cazares, 9 Texas Shooting Victim Weeks Away from 10th Birthday, Father Says.

Celestine Chaney, 65 What the Racist Massacre in Buffalo Stole From One Family.

Roberta A. Drury, 32 Buffalo victim Roberta Drury, 32, is remembered as a great help to her family.

Makenna Lee Elrod, 10 Fundraiser for April Elrod by Allison McCullough : Our Precious Angel Makenna Lee Elrod.

Jose Flores, 10 Family remembers 10-year-old José Flores Jr. who was killed in the Texas elementary school shooting.

Eliana “Ellie” Garcia, 9 Eliana "Ellie" Garcia.

Irma Garcia, 49, 'Joe died of a broken heart': Husband of beloved teacher killed in Texas shooting dies two days later - CNN

Uziyah Garcia, 10, 10-year-old Uziyah Garcia, "the sweetest little boy," identified as one of the victims killed at Texas school.

Amerie Jo Garza, 10 , Girl Scouts Honor 10-Year-Old Uvalde Victim Who Died Calling 911

Jayce Luevanos, 10 'They're so young:' A grandfather in Uvalde, Texas, mourns 10-year old Jayce Luevanos.

Xavier Lopez, 10, 10-year-old school shooting victim received an honor roll certificate just hours before he was killed.

Andre Mackniel, 53 Andre Mackniel recalled as someone who 'loved his family'.

Katherine Massey, 72 Katherine Massey, Buffalo Shooting Victim, Wrote Passionately About Gun Control.

Tess Marie Mata, 10 How Tess Mata's family came to learn she'd been slain in Uvalde.

Maranda Mathis, 11 School shooting victim Maranda Mathis, 11 described as a "bright" and "spunky" girl.

Eva Mireles, 44, Texas teacher Eva Mireles died shielding students: daughter.

Margus D. Morrison, 52  Margus Morrison, a 'jokester' who loved to smile, celebrated at service.

Heyward Patterson, 67 Heyward Patterson, Buffalo shooting victim, a man of worship.

Alithia Ramirez, 10, Uvalde victim Alithia Ramirez remembered for her kind heart.

Annabell Guadalupe Rodriguez, 10, Jackie Cazares and Annabell Rodriguez were cousins and best friends. They died together in the Texas elementary school shooting.

Maite Rodriguez, 10 Mother of child killed in Texas: "Her favorite color was green".

Alexandria Aniyah Rubio, 10, 'There Is an Emptiness.' Uvalde Shooting Victim Lexi Rubio's Great-Grandfather Remembers Her 10 Years of Life.

Aaron Salter, 55 Aaron Salter Jr. remembered for heroic action in Buffalo mass shooting.

Layla Salazar, 10  Shooting Victim’s Family Moved to Uvalde for ‘a Safer Place for Her’ – NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth.

Jailah Nicole Silguero, 10, Jailah Silguero Didn’t Want to Go to Robb Elementary School on Tuesday—She Died Beside Cousin Jayce Luevanos.

Geraldine Talley, 62 Celebrating the life of Geraldine Chapman Talley

Eliahana Cruz Torres, 10 Softball, Baseball Teams Honor Little Leaguers Killed in Uvalde Shooting.

Rojelio Torres, 10, 10-year-old shooting victim Rojelio Torres was an "intelligent, hardworking and helpful person," his aunt says.

Ruth Whitfield, 86  Oldest Buffalo massacre victim Ruth Whitfield honored at funeral service.

Pearl Young, 76  Remembering the victims: Pearl Young

We remember the dead on this day but should be ever mindful of the survivors who had to fight for their lives while personally witnessing their neighbors, friends, family members, colleagues and classmates and teachers being mercilessly slaughtered. 

We especially remember and honor those whom the dead left behind, their parents and grandparents, their children and grandchildren, and all who loved them. 

Then there is the collateral damage, much of it only to be revealed in the future when we least expect it.

And finally there is our troubled nation turning against itself, becoming less United every day.

If an act of home-grown genocide and nineteen dead fourth graders and their teachers can't bring us together as a nation, I'm afraid nothing will. 

This Memorial Day as much as anything, I'm mourning the loss of my country.

But all is not lost, I'm sending thoughts and prayers. 

The Case for Repeal

The March for Our Lives in Washington and other cities around the country this Saturday was by most accounts a tremendous success, at least if you are of the opinion that our children deserve to be heard on the issue of safety in their schools. Dozens of speakers, none of whom from what I could tell were above the age of twenty, gave harrowing accounts of their personal experiences with gun violence. Along with that, wrapped up in understandable emotion, some of the speakers got lost in the moment and let loose with rhetoric that didn't exactly stand up to rigorous scrutiny.

That point wasn't lost on the gun-toting members of the ulra-right who continue to make the accusation that the motivating force behind the march and the speeches is not the young people themselves, but adults on the "Left" who are using the kids to promote their own agenda. You can see for yourself as Fox News's Tucker Carlson leads off his story, broadcast the day before the march, with the headline "Gun Control March Backed by the Wealthy."  Carlson, who believe it or not, is one of the more level-headed of that network's talking heads, takes pains to rip into the logic of several Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School students, survivors of the mass shooting that took place on February 14.

Carlson tried to drive home the point that the anti-gun rhetoric of the students should not be allowed in public discourse because it is fueled by emotion and naturally, the people uttering it are only kids. I imagine his ire (whether it is genuine or not I have no idea), was only fueled by the actual speeches from the platform located on Pennsylvania Avenue between the Capitol Building and the White House, many of which called for the repeal of the Second Amendment.

Now to some Americans, the Second Amendment is as sacred as mother, the American flag and sweet baby Jesus. "Mess with my Second Amendment..." many Americans will defiantly tell you, "...and you're going to have to answer to three of us, me, Mr. Smith and Mr. Wesson."

I get it, nobody likes being told, especially by a bunch of teenagers that a right they enjoy should be taken away. While I've never owned a gun, I've shot them, and have to say this, it's really fun. My years as a photographer helped make me a pretty good shot, and it's quite satisfying to nail tin can after tin can with a pistol or a rifle. I've even used a shotgun to shoot a plastic milk container, thrown skeet style by a friend who was standing behind a tree, (cue the Duck Dynasty music). I can only imagine how irritating it would be, after investing a good chunk of money on a private arsenal,  to listen to kids a third my age tell me that their friends would be alive today if only I wouldn't be allowed to own my guns.

Given that, I seriously wonder which is the greater offense to gun owners, the thought that our constitution might compromised by examining the limits of one of its amendments, or the idea that someone wants to take away their stuff.

Rightfully we've come to accept that our constitution, from to each cross on every "t" to each dot on every "i" is sacrosanct. But few of us stop to really question what the document means, or why certain concerns are addressed while others are not. Sometimes it all boils down to the authors addressing issues that were specifically pertinent in their day. Take for example, the Third Amendment:

No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.

This tidbit was written to forever put to rest a British law known as a Quartering Act, requiring local American governments, and even private citizens, to provide food and housing to British soldiers. These Quartering Acts, there were more than one, particularly irked the colonists and were one of the major grievances that led to the American Revolution. While the Third Amendment may come in handy one day, one never knows, no case has ever been brought before the Supreme Court which has used the Third Amendment as an argument. The amendment is irrelevant in our day as it addresses a matter that was settled with the founding of the U.S. Army, which has a policy of feeding and housing its own soldiers.

In much the same way, the Second Amendment was written to address an issue that was relevant at the birth of this nation, but not today:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

At the time of its writing there was still grave concern that the power of the Federal government would usurp the rights of state governments. The second amendment was written as a means to keep any potential standing federal army (there was none at the time of the creation of the Bill of Rights), in check by state militias which would be comprised of private citizens. An armed citizenry, so the theory went, would be an insurance policy for a general public weary of a central authority, against the theoretical possibility of losing their liberty as a result of a tyrannical federal government. Eventually these militias were organized into the state run reserve military units known as the National Guard.

Gun advocates continue to use the argument that the second amendment is a necessary tool for the citizenry to defend itself against the threat of a tyrannical government. However today, while the threat of tyranny certainly remains, it's a rather quaint pipe dream that a militia of citizen soldiers armed with AR-15s and other semi-automatic weapons, would be any match for a government backed by the firepower of the U.S. military. Not that fringe groups like the Branch Davidians, and the Oregon Militia haven't tried it, typically with disastrous results to themselves and their supporters.

Which brings me to the point of this post: is the Second Amendment relevant or necessary in our day and if not, is there a legitimate case for repealing it?

Former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens thinks there is. In an Op Ed piece published in the New York Times this morning, Justice Stevens writes that he considers the Second Amendment to be nothing more than aa "relic" of the eighteenth century that has zero relevance in our day.

Speaking with admiration of the events that took place last Saturday, Justice Stevens writes:

These demonstrations demand our respect. They reveal the broad public support for legislation to minimize the risk of mass killings of schoolchildren and others in our society. 

That support is a clear sign to lawmakers to enact legislation prohibiting civilian ownership of semiautomatic weapons, increasing the minimum age to buy a gun from 18 to 21 years old, and establishing more comprehensive background checks on all purchasers of firearms. But the demonstrators should seek more effective and more lasting reform. They should demand a repeal of the Second Amendment.

He then gives a little history of the way that courts have treated the Second Amendment though the years. The Second Amendment was virtually left alone until 1939 when the court unanimously ruled in favor of banning sawed-off shotguns as the weapon had "no reasonable relation to the preservation or efficiency of a 'well regulated militia.'"

The precedent of that ruling led to the understanding that government could indeed regulate the sale and posession of firearms. That understanding stood until a 2008 case, District of Columbia v. Heller, which in a 5-4 vote, the court overturned Washington D.C's ban on the sale of handguns, In that ruling, the court essentially declared that militias and individuals were indistinguishable. Justice Stevens was one of the dissenting voices in that ruling and Justice Antonin Scalia wrote the majority opinion in that case. As one of the most conservative voices of the Supreme Court in memory, and a self-declared champion of basing his decisions on the "original intent" of the framers of the constitution, Scalia was ironically responsible for one of the more radical, precedent changing rulings in court history, one that in Stevens's words: "has provided the N.R.A. with a propaganda weapon of immense power."

Stevens quotes former Chief Justice Warren Berger a conservative judge if there ever was one, characterizing the NRA's advocacy of the individual's (as opposed to the militia's) right to bear arms, as “one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word fraud, on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime.”

In a PBS interview made after his retirement, Berger also said that if he were writing the Bill of Rights in 1991 when the interview was conducted, "there would be no such thing as a Second Amendment."

Indeed, given the fact that there are as many guns as people in this country, that we have one of the highest rates of gun violence in the world, and that we are currently experiencing an epidemic virtually unhead of anywhere else on the planet of mass shootings, can anyone with a straight face seriously claim that we are better off with our Second Amendment?

There are valid reasons to own a gun. People legitimately use guns for hunting or target shooting. But those are hobbies, certainly not activities deserving protection from the constitution. Some people feel they need a gun for self-protection, although odds are that the gun they own is more likely to be used on themselves or their loved ones than used in fending off a bad guy.

It must be noted that a potential repeal of the Second Amendment would not mean that guns would be banned. It would simply remove them from the unreasonable protection they now have, that no other consumer product enjoys. Without the protection of an outdated constitutional amendment and a very questionable Supreme Court decision, a repeal would mean that common sense would dictate the regulation of the manufacture and sale of firearms, including what types of guns could and could not be produced, and the licencing of users who are competent enough to own them, just as other dangerous consumer products are regulated and licensed. It would enable buy-back programs that would allow people to be justly compensated for turning in their weapons, meaning fewer guns in circulation. And it would encourage studies from bodies such as the National Institute of Health into the causes and effects of gun violence in our society which are currently blocked by politicians who are under the thumb of the NRA.

Ah but those criminals aren't going to care about any laws or studies are they? Of course not. But it must be noted that the more guns that are manufactured, the more guns there are in circulation. Combine that with laws that are lax in determining who gets to own one, the more easily guns become accessible to people who have no business having them.

No, a repeal of the Second Amendment alone is not going to SOLVE the gun problem in the United States. Frankly I am loathe to tamper with our constitution at all, given the tremendous pandora's box it would create in regards to other parts of the bedrock of our democracy. If I had my druthers, I'd work with the tools the authors of the Bill of Rights have already provided within the framework of the Second Amendment. To the gun crowd who uses the Second Amendment as an argument to reject any enactment of gun control no matter how tame or reasonable I say this bluntly: "What part of the words 'well regulated' don't you understand?

Unfortunately those sentiments go unheard. Pleas for reasonable regulation of the manufacture, sale and ownership of guns are ignored by politicians beholden to the NRA, the gun industry that organization serves,  and their gun toting constituents, despite the bloodshed that occurs in this country on a daily basis due to guns.

Perhaps a new strategy is in order because the strategy of playing nice with the gun crowd by agreeing to work within the framework of the Second Amendment falls upon deaf ears. Perhaps the only way to reel in the madness that is overtaking our country as far as guns are concerned is to fight to remove an obsolete and irrelevant road block to making American sane again.

Along with that of couse is to work to elect like-minded public officials who are brave enough to take on what would certainly be a massive struggle fraught with peril.

To those who say that the ownership of guns is a fundamental liberty afforded to the American people by their constitution, I say this: no liberty comes without limits and responsibility. If you cannot accept the limitations and responsibilities that naturally come with a liberty, perhaps regretfully, you are not equipped to handle that liberty.

If it takes threatening to take away the Second Amendment like an adult might threaten to take a toy away from an spoiled, obstinate five year old child, well so be it.

Perhaps then, and only then, will the people in power start to listen. Perhaps then and only then will we begin to see results.

For What It's Worth

If you've been paying attention lately and are old enough, something seems vaguely familiar. There was a song from the sixties* that to me perfectly defines that bygone era. Over fifty years after it was released, the song continues to be played frequently, and its lyrics ring true in our day; so much so it could easily be adopted by young people today as an anthem for their own generation:

There's something happening here
What it is ain't exactly clear
There's a man with a gun over there
Telling me I got to beware

The refrain of that song always brings me back to early June, 1968. Two months earlier, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Menphis and as a result, much of the West Side of Chicago, a couple miles from from my home, was in flames. The National Guard, whose armory was in Humboldt Park a couple blocks away, mobilized along the parkway right in front of our apartment building on Humboldt Boulevard. To them, Mayor Richard J. Daley issued his infamous "shoot to kill" order, directed at would be arsonists.

That year the Vietnam War escalated after the Tet Offensive which took place in January. A regular feature of the evening news in those days was the death counts of soldiers on both sides of that war. "Radicals" as Middle America called them, for years had been protesting our inolvement in Vietnam. But on February 27, when the famed network TV anchor Walter Cronkite called for a negotiated peace after visiting the front lines, President Lyndon B. Johnson knew it was time to leave office. "If I lost Walter Cronkite..." he told his confidants, "...I've lost Middle America."

It was an election year. The void Johnson left as his party's nominee for president was filled by two Democratic anti-war candidates, Eugene McCarthy and Robert F. Kennedy. I distinctly remember watching with my parents, a June 1st televised debate between the two candidates, held in advance of the California Primary. It was a Saturday night. In case you're interested, here is an audio recording of that debate. Kennedy won that primary the following Tuesday, but he didn't have long to celebrate his victory.

The next day, I was awakend early in the morning by my sobbing mother phoning my grandmother who lived in an apartment downstairs telling her: "Bobby Kennedy's been shot."

Simply put, violence, war and death were very much a part of the world in which I grew up. What I just described was only the tip of the iceberg of the state of the world in 1968. My parents did little or nothing to shield me from all of that, and for that I thank them, because it made me conscious of the big world outside of my very little world at 1850 Humbolt Boulevard. I'd say it was a scary time to be a child but the truth is, it was all we knew as kids. But something hit me that morning of the 5th of June, 1968. The coincidences of Kennedy being shot (he died the next day) right after I had watched him on TV,  just two months after Dr. King, and five years after his brother the president, hit me profoundly. I remember lying in bed that morning, with the words of the refrain to For What it's Worth going through my head:

I think it's time we stop, children, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down

Later that year, the Democratic National Convention was held in Chicago and all hell broke loose. Anti-war protestors from all over the country descended upon Chicago. The Dada infulenced leftist group known as the Yippies, who took joy in being a thorn in the side of the establishment, threatened to spike the city's water supply with LSD. That, and other antics got the attention of Mayor Daley who was still reeling from the King riots and the unwanted national attention they brought to him and his city. Daley hunkered down with his police commanders in an effort to ensure that the convention would come off peacefully, without a hitch. His efforts backfired.

The convention was held at the old International Amphitheater on the south side. Police cordonned off the area like an armed camp. But they couldn't cordon off the whole city, so protestors gathered Downtown in Grant Park, across the street from the Conrad Hilton Hotel where many of the convention delegates were lodged. Nobody agrees exactly who's to blame for the Grant Park riot, but there is no question that the Chicago Police, reacting to the taunting of the crowd which included having bags of human feces thrown at them, went bat-shit crazy.

There's battle lines being drawn
Nobody's right if everybody's wrong
Young people speaking their minds
Getting so much resistance from behind

While there were well established people from all walks of life who were active in the anti-war movement of the sixties, that movement will always be remembered by the overwhelming number of young people in its ranks. These were the baby boomers, children of the generation who lived through the suffering of the Great Depression and World War II, folks who didn't want to see their children live through the hard times they experienced. So they tossed out much of the old world and created what they believed would be a new and better world, one of single family homes in new communities called suburbs, connected by superhighways which tore old communities (and the human connections they made) apart limb from limb. The parents who lived through the war, well most of them anyway, saw to it that their children would have what they didn't, and would want for nothing. For their part, the children of the fifties and early sixties became restless and dissatisfied with the complacency of their isolated communities, and the boredom of what they considered their meaningless existence.

Many of them found meaning in the struggles for civil rights and against the Vietnam War. It wouldn't be an overstatement to say that the history of both those struggles would have been much different, were it not for the grass roots activities and protests involving a great number of young people.

As a result, my peers and I, only a few years behind, followed in our immediate elders' footsteps in being passionate about world events and participatting wherever we could in activities that we saw could help change the world for the better.

In many ways, things did get better; the war eventually ended, and the enormous racial divide grew smaller, or at least, so we thought. Although the world was far from perfect, gains were made in other battles fought by activists in areas such as equality for women, protecting the environment, LBGT rights and many others. Eventually we got older, and complacency set in amongst ourselves; our direction shifted from egalitarianism to self-interest, while cynicism began to replace youthful idealism. But most of us continued at the very least, to vote, so ingrained in us that it was the very least we could do to improve our communities, our nation, and the world.

In retrospect, with the excpetion of atrocities that took place in specific corners of the world, things trended up in the last quarter of the twentieth century. Prosperity grew for most people, hostilities between East and West lessened as the Cold War warmed up, and with notable exceptions, the years between 1975 and 2000 were relatively peaceful. Children who grew up in the eighties and nineties, at least in the develpoed world, did not live with intractable wars, or were subjected to the great social upheavals that rocked the sixties and early seventies. For all intents and purposes, the period that led up to the turn of the millennium was a pretty good time to be alive and consequently, there was no great urge to change the world, or for that matter, at least for young people, to vote.

Then came 9/11.

My son is the same age as the students seen in these pictures, as they gathered around Senn High School on the north side of Chicago last week. They stood together with locked arms and formed a complete circle around the school's enormous front lawn, in solidarity with the students from the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida where exactly one month before, a gunman opened fire and killed seventeen students and faculty members. Unlike the generation before them, today's high school students, born around the time of 9/11, have never known a world without war, without terrorist attrocities graphically depicted on the internet, and without mass shootings at schools. The latter is particularly relevant, as none of today's children have experienced going to a school and not being subjected to a terrifying lockdown drill, in preparation for an unlikely, yet still very possible horror that could befall them.

The Stoneman Douglas shooting was similar to the roughly 50 school mass shootings (in addition to mass shootings that have occured at other venues), that have taken place in this country since 1999, when two students walked into Columbine High School in suburban Denver, and killed 13 of their classmates and teachers, as well as themselves.  Unlike Columbine and the vast majority of school mass shootings, the students at Stoneman Douglas banded together to do something about it.

Their public actions in starting a nationwide student movement to push for responsible, common sense gun control as a means to address the calamity of mass shootings in this country, has been an inspiration to adults and students alike, all over the world. Their actions have also been roundly criticized by some, as an alterior motive, taking advantage of a tragedy in order to persue a political agenda, one that of course, the critics don't agree with. Some have gone so far as to say that the young people who passionately articulated their message at rallies and on radio and TV interviews, were not actually students from Parkland, but "crisis actors", hired guns paid by left wing activist groups to stir up public support of gun control. The ultimate goal of these groups, so the argument goes, is nothing short of a complete repeal of the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution which guarantees the right of Americans to bear arms.

What a field-day for the heat
A thousand people in the street
Singing songs and carrying signs
Mostly say, hooray for our side

The accusations that the kids weren't who they said they were are verifyable rubbish. It stands as proof that there are people in our country who will stop at nothing in order to promote their own political agenda, not even attacking children who witnessed their friends and teachers die before their very eyes.

Wednesday, March 14 was dubbed, National Walkout Day. Students all over the country were encouraged to walk out of school at precisely 10:00 AM local time, in commemoration of the Parkland Tragedy. The demonstations were to last about one half hour and would include seventeen minutes of silence, one for each life lost in the Parkland shooting. School officials and faculty, at least here in Chicago, are explicitly prohibited from promoting a political agenda, so the principals who were sympathetic to the cause, supported it by looking the other way, not penalizing the students who chose to leave their classes at the appointed time. The walkout was entirely voluntary, those who chose not to walk, stayed in their classrooms. Those principals who did not support the effort, either banned their students from leaving the school building altogether, or imposed punishments such as detentions for the students who walked out. 

The walkouts took on many forms. From the coverage I read about and saw dipicted in photographs, many included singing songs and carrying signs of protest against groups such as the NRA who steadfastly opposes any form of gun control, politicians who take money from that organization and sheepishly bend to its will, and the current administration which has so far been wishy washy at best on gun control. 

But by and large, the protests stuck to the message of making it possible to go to school without having to worry about getting shot. That included, but was not limited to stricter background checks on potential gun buyers and restrictions on the sale and possession of firearms such as the AR-15 rifle, which has been the weapon of choice among many mass shooters, because of its ability to kill a large a number of people in a short period of time.  

Huffing, puffing, ranting and raving, members of the far right cried foul at the thought of schools allowing kids to leave class to particpate in what they felt amounted to a political assault against ideas and values they hold dear, namely that the Second Amendment to our constitution has no limits and no responsibilities attached to it.

Cleo Shine and Rory Hayes, the leaders of Nicholas Senn High School's contribution to National Walkout Day 

As you can see from the photographs I posted, no one carried signs at the walkout at Senn High School. What you can't see, you'll just have to take my word for it, is that there also was no chanting, no breast beating, no berating of politicians or even the NRA. Most importantly, what you don't see are adults. Including myself, I'd say that out of about 1,000 people on the Senn lawn that morning, I could count on my fingers the number of adults present and still have a few fingers to spare. Yes the principal and one of her assistant principals were present as well as a few security people to insure the safely of the students. And yes the two young women who were the organizers of the event held bullhorns; they used them to direct the throng of students in a circle around the campus, no easy task. Then they used them to announce it was time for the seventeen moments of silence, which they pulled off. Imagine one thousand teenagers without any adult supervision standing silent for seventeen minutes. At the end of that, one of them used her bullhorn to read off the names of the Parkland victims. Fianlly the two women used their bullhorns to remind everyone to return peacefully to their classes.

Now some might have seen it as a lost opportunity, after all what kind of a demonstration doesn't have picket signs and chanting? But in my mind, the silence, dignity and respect that diverse group of Senn students showed at an event that was first and formost a commemoration of lives tragically lost, spoke louder than ten thousand words.

Indeed, not all of the school walkouts played out as Senn's did. I saw many inages of events staged around the country, including my son's high school a few miles away, where the adults seemed to be leading the charge.

Does the extreme right have a valid point when they say that adults are having children do their own bidding by encouraging them to go out and protest? Well, perhaps in some cases, yes. We'd like to think, some of us anyway, that our children have the initiative and intelligence to think for themselves. A little while ago I asked my eleven year old daughter if her feelings about the current president were entirely her own or if they were shaped by her parents' views. I was foolishly surprised and a little taken aback when she told me a little of both.

So yes, children are influenced by their parents, that should go without saying. What naturally follows then is the question, are parents setting a bad example for thier children by encouraging them to walk out of school, or even break the law, to demonstrate for a cause they believe is right?

Obviously that's a personal decision that every parent must make for him or herself. My personal feeling is that the core of our democratic republic and the spirit of our nation lie at the feet of people who willfully broke the law for what they believed was right. We owe our very existence as an independent nation to law breakers who started a revolution in order to rid ourselves of colonial rule. In the ninteenth century the injustice of slavery was met head on by abolitionists who defied what they believed to be immoral laws, as labor activists did who fought for the rights that today we take for granted at the workplace. Suffragettes defied laws in the early twentieth century so that women could have the right to vote, as did civil rights activists in the middle of that century who fought the battle to once and for all fulfill for all Americans, the promises made in the Declaration of Indepenence and the U.S. Constitution. And so it goes in our day as people continue to fight, sacrifice and when necessary break the law, to promote justice and decency.

Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep
It starts when you're always afraid
Step out of line, the men come and take you away

Implementing change takes will, courage and sacrifice. The men and women who shaped this country, from George Washington to Harriet Tubman, Albert Parsons to Susan  B. Anthony, Rosa Parks to Martin Luther King Jr., Coretta Scott King to Caesar Chavez, were no shrinking violets. Our nation was forged out of the actions of brave, heroic people who would not simply accept things as they are.

Critics of the school walkout claim that students would be better off by staying in their classrooms and learning, rather than being off marching outside. My question to those critics is this: what could possibly be a better civics lesson than having students follow in the footsteps of these great Americans, participating in an action that promotes a worthwhile cause?

Clearly we're not going to all agree on which causes are worthwhile and which are not; it's all in the eye of the beholder. Folks on the right lately seem to have a problem with the idea of activism and protest marches. But as this article by arch-conservative writer Pat Buchannan makes clear, nobody seems to have a problem with social activism, even acts of civil disobedience, when they promote ideals in which they believe.

Therin lies the rub. Would those of us who as I did, support National Walkout Day, feel the same if high school students walked out of school for a cause we did not believe in? That is the dilemma of life in a democracy, which is becoming more and more apparent  every day. We all love the First Amendment when it protects our own voice, but not so much when it protects the voice of others,

On the other hand, who on earth could possibly say the cause of keeping our children safe is not worthwhile?

Today a nationwide protest is scheduled called "March for our Lives." The focal point of the demonstration will take place on the streets of Washintgon D.C. where there will be a march led by several of the Stoneman Douglas student activists. The permit granted by D.C. authorities to the marchers was for 500,000 people, but many more are likely to show up in front of the U.S. Capitol Building at noon local time. In addition there will be satellite marches in cities all over the country including New York, L.A,, Portland and Chicago.

From yesterday, the following is an NPR interview with Cameron Kasky, the defacto spokesperson for the students:



Kasky's face and voice have been all over the media, social and otherwise for the past month. His strident demeanor may turn some off, but one cannot deny his eloquence in tackling head on, the tough questions thrown his way. It is clear he and his peers have an agenda, and they are not going to let anyone, not critics of their movement, nor adult supporters bent on giving them unsolicited advice, get in their way.

Clearly, we adults in America have dropped the ball when it comes to protecting our children in thier schools, so who is to say that children have no right to fight for their own lives?

Having just said that, I hope this adult who has seen a lot in his life, is not out of line by providing some unsolicited advice of his own:

Banding together to organize great public events in support of a cause is a worthwhile and wonderful thing, but it is only the first step. The next step may not be as glamorous, it may not provide for good photo-ops or get you nearly as much attention, but it will be a far more effective way to achieve your goal.

Organize a nation-wide voter registration drive for kids turning 18 before the national election this coming November. The balance of power in Congress is at a tipping point right now and with a crop of millions of passionate, driven new voters, the balance of power in our government may shift. At the very least, you will get the atention of politicians who for years could not care less about issues that affect young people for the simple reason that young people don't vote.

If there is any silver lining to our current political situation, it is that few of us will ever again take for granted the power of the vote, and perhaps more profoundly, the peril of not voting. That is a message that we adults must pass along to future generations, and a message that young people today simply can't let pass by.

You have the momentum and our attention now; grab it, and run with it. You are our hope for the future, and from what I've seen in the past month, I'd say our future is in very good hands.



* For What It's Worth, written by Steven Stills, performed by Buffalo Springfield, released January 1967