The Right to Hunt and Fish Does Not Belong in Indiana’s Constitution

Portions of this post were originally published on February 9, 2011 in a post entitled “You Have Got to (Cluck) Be Kidding Me”.

As I think I’ve previously said on an occasion or twelve, constitutions (whether that of the United States or the State of Indiana) are important documents. They represent the basic framework under which our government works and provide a broad description of rights retained by citizens. Constitutions are for the “big stuff” and aren’t the place to deal with the mundane. Thus, I want to look at one of the dumbest proposed constitutional amendments that I’ve ever seen:

(a) The right to hunt, fish, and harvest wildlife:

(1) is a valued part of Indiana's heritage; and

(2) shall be forever preserved for the public good.

(b) The people have a right, which includes the right to use traditional methods, to hunt, fish, and harvest wildlife, subject only to the laws prescribed by the General Assembly and rules prescribed by virtue of the authority of the General Assembly to:

(1) promote wildlife conservation and management; and

(2) preserve the future of hunting and fishing.

(c) Hunting and fishing shall be a preferred means of managing and controlling wildlife.

(d) This section shall not be construed to limit the application of any provision of law relating to trespass or property rights

The proposed amendment was sponsored by eight Indiana Republican legislators and was supported by Gov. Pence. Both the National Rifle Association and Safari Club International support the amendment while The Humane Society and the Hoosier Environmental Council oppose it. If adopted, this provision would be enshrined in Indiana’s Bill of Rights.

There are so many problems with this proposed amendment that it’s hard to pick a good place to start.

First, is this really the sort of provision that needs to be added to our Constitution? And, just in case you’re not sure, here are the titles of all of the other provisions in Indiana’s Bill of Rights, to which this “right” to hunt and fish would be added:

Inherent rights · Right to worship · Freedom of religious opinions · Freedom of religion · No religious test for office · No state money for religious institutions · Religion no bar to competency of witnesses · Mode of oath administration · Freedom of thought and speech · Libal, truth as defense [sic] · Search and seizure · Openess of the courts, Speedy trial [sic] · Rights of accused, Rights of victims · Double jeopardy and self-incrimination · Rights of persons arrested · Excessive bail or fines, Cruel and unusual punishment · Bailable offenses · Penal code and reformation · Criminal cases—Jury determination · Civil cases--Right of trial by jury · Compensation for services and property · Debts—Imprisonment exemption · Equal privileges and immunities · Ex post facto laws · Laws—Taking effect · Suspension of laws · Habeas corpus · Treason defined · Treason, proof · Effect of conviction · Right of assemblage and petition · Arms—Right to bear · Military · Quartering of soldiers · Titles of nobility · Freedom of emigration · Slavery—prohibition

If you’re curious about any of those rights, I encourage you to take a few minutes to read them (I bet very few Hoosiers have ever actually read even a small part of Indiana’s Constitution).

But anyway, does the right to “hunt, fish, and harvest wildlife” belong in that list? How does it compare to things like the right to worship, freedom of religion, search and seizure, double jeopardy, right of trial by jury, and slavery? Think about how our Bill of Rights would read: “… Section 36. Freedom of emigration. Section 37. Slavery—prohibition. Section 38. Freedom to hunt and fish.” Wow, what a modern state we must be!

Query whether there is any real concern that hunting, fishing, or harvesting wildlife are in jeopardy here in Indiana. Has anyone seriously proposed prohibiting hunting, fishing, or harvesting wildlife? And other than discussions about whether we should ban “hunting” animals who are in cages, have there been any real discussions about limiting the right to hunt, fish, or harvest wildlife? If not, why do we need to protect these “rights” and why do we need to do so in the Constitution?

Think of some of the other “rights” that we all know that we have but that aren’t in the Constitution: the right to procreate, the right to name our children as we choose (not true in some European countries…), the right to marry who we want (within limits … sorry … couldn’t resist), the right to speak whatever language we want, the right to play a guitar or piano, the right to put mayonnaise on your roast beef sandwich (though, if you do so, I may never speak to you again). I could go on and on. There are plenty of things that we can do that we haven’t bothered to put into our Constitution. Why are hunting, fishing, and harvesting wildlife so important? There are also many things that are important parts of our heritage that aren’t enshrined in our Constitution. Where is the right to play basketball?

I’m also curious about the meaning of the phrase “shall be forever preserved for the public good”. What does that even mean? Does it mean that the right is a public good or does it mean that hunting, fishing, and harvesting wildlife are a public good? And how are we supposed to preserve either of those things for the public good? If someone doesn’t want to fish or hunt , must we require them to do so? And by “public good” do we mean that the product of hunting and fishing is a resource belonging to the State and its citizens? And how exactly is killing an unarmed deer in the woods or putting a hook through a fish’s gills before throwing it back into the water a “public good”? How do either of those things benefit the public, generally, or me, in particular?

The right of people to hunt and fish includes “traditional methods”. What does that mean? I suppose that shooting animals with guns or bows and using lures for fish are traditional methods. But what about setting traps in the woods or stringing nets across streams and rivers? Those seem like traditional methods, too. So does this amendment provide a constitutional right to stretch a net across the white river or place traps in your local woods? (“Oops, sorry Mrs. Smith, we didn’t mean for little Billy to get caught in our beaver trap; we’ll pay for the surgery to amputate his foot…”)

Note further that section (b) is written quite poorly. Do the limitations set forth in subparagraphs (1) and (2) apply to “laws prescribed by the General Assembly” or only to “rules prescribed by virtue of the authority of the General Assembly”? That sort of ambiguity is likely to lead to disagreement and litigation and could easily have been addresses before the amendment was approved by the General Assembly.

More importantly, look at those two limitations: “(1) promote wildlife conservation and management; and (2) preserve the future of hunting and fishing”. As I read section (b), the only restrictions that can be placed on hunting or fishing are ones to “promote wildlife conservation and management” or “preserve the future of hunting and fishing” (whatever that may mean). Thus, a law that limits hunting or fishing in any way that does not promote conservation (or preserve the future of hunting and fishing) will be unconstitutional. In other words, a designated hunting season would probably be unconstitutional. Prohibitions on cruelty to animals being hunted would probably be unconstitutional. Clearly a law that prohibits hunting animals trapped in cages would be unconstitutional. And I suspect that a law prohibiting the use of dynamite to kill fish en masse would also be unconstitutional. I can even see laws written to preserve safety (e.g., wear an orange vest) being deemed unconstitutional because they might infringe on the right to hunt or fish (hey, an orange vest isn’t “traditional” is it?).

And what about laws that prohibit hunting in certain areas? I suppose that a law banning hunting in a local park might pass as one promoting wildlife conservation (presuming that the legislature that passed that law remembered to identify that as the reason for the law and not, say, the safety of park goers). But what about a law that prohibits the discharge of firearms within city limits? What about a law that prohibits hunting in residential areas? What about a law that prohibits my neighbor from shooting into my yard? Hopefully, the exception for trespass and property rights would cover that. Hopefully. But what will stop my neighbor from shooting squirrels in the common area of my neighborhood at all hours of the day? Oh, and can you hunt a stray dog?

Then, think about that next provision: “Hunting and fishing shall be a preferred means of managing and controlling wildlife”. Really? Why? Why do we want to prefer hunting and fishing over other forms of wildlife management (birth control, relocation, fencing, and other non-lethal methods, for example)? Why are we deciding today that hunting and fishing are preferred? And remember just how difficult it is to amend our Constitution. Perhaps in a few years, we’ll discover a better way to manage and control wildlife. But we may not be able to use that method so long as some people would rather use the “preferred” method of hunting and fishing. Is that really the sort of thing to put in our Constitution? Do we provide a constitutionally preferred method to treat cancer and manage diabetes? Do we provide constitutionally preferred books or religions?

Apparently, groups like the NRA believe that:

Sportsmen have been under attack for many years by well-funded, national anti-hunting groups who demonstrate a clear disregard for both the cherished traditions of many Americans as well as responsible wildlife management in their drive to eliminate hunting and fishing.

Really? Really? So we should amend our Constitution? And query whether this is a true claim or if it is the same sort of “they’re coming to take your guns” fear-mongering at which the NRA excels. Perhaps more importantly, if a majority of Hoosier legislators, in response to the wishes of their constituents, want to impose additional restrictions on hunting or fishing, why shouldn’t we allow that? Are hunting and fishing really the sort of fundamental rights (like freedom from slavery or choice of marriage) that we need to protect in the Constitution (thus requiring a minimum of 3 years and 2 elections to change)?

This proposed amendment is a bad idea that addresses a problem that does not exist. It will create new problems, limit the ability of Hoosiers to protect themselves, and restrict our ability to change the law to reflect changing attitudes or technology. It may even be used as a way to counter efforts to enact additional gun control measures (“hey, you can’t require me to undergo a background check because if I fail the background check, how will I be able to hunt?”). In short, this amendment is nothing more than a ploy by the NRA and like-minded groups to encourage a particular hobby and to sell more guns.

Please vote no.

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Back in 2011, the General Assembly passed a slightly different version of this amendment, but it was amended before being passed a second time. Here is the language of the original amendment that I wrote about:

The people have a right to hunt, fish, harvest game, or engage in the agricultural or commercial production of meat, fish, or poultry, which is a valued part of our heritage and shall be forever preserved for the public good, subject to laws prescribed by the General Assembly and rules prescribed by virtue of the authority of the General Assembly.

So what happened to the right to engage in agricultural or commercial production of meat, fish, or poultry? Why did the legislature decide that hunting and fishing were important rights but that agriculture wasn’t? I suppose that growing kale and raising a coop full of chickens doesn’t sell many guns for the NRA.

Donald Trump and Second Amendment People

Hillary wants to abolish — essentially abolish the Second Amendment. By the way, if she gets to pick, if she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don't know.

— Donald Trump, August 9, 2016.

There is so, so much to say. So I’ll start at the beginning.

First, notwithstanding what Donald Trump may say (and say over and over), Hillary Clinton does not want to abolish the Second Amendment. Nor does she even want to essentially abolish the Second Amendment. This one is easy. Let’s look at Politifact (the second time they have reviewed the claim by Trump, this time after he began using the word “essentially” to describe what he claims Clinton wants to do):

We found no evidence of Clinton ever saying verbatim or suggesting explicitly she wants to abolish the Second Amendment. The bulk of her comments suggest the opposite: She wants to enact stricter gun control, but has no objection to responsible gun ownership.

Note that Politifact originally reviewed and found the claim that Clinton wants to abolish the Second Amendment to be false in May 2016 (before Trump added the adverb “essentially” to his claim). Yet here we are, three months later, and Trump is still making the false claim. But lying about what your political opponent intends is standard political operating procedure, so it’s hard to get too worked up over that, though most politicians when called out on perpetuating a falsehood will usually drop that attack and pivot to another issue. But Trump can never admit to being wrong, so…

But that brings me to the next point in my analysis of Trump’s comment. He says that Clinton wants to essentially abolish the Second Amendment. I wonder if Trump has any understanding of how the process to amend the United States Constitution even works. I ask that because, if he did, he would know that while the President may have a loud voice he (or she) has literally no role to play in the amendment process. None.

The Congress, whenever two thirds of both houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose amendments to this Constitution, or, on the application of the legislatures of two thirds of the several states, shall call a convention for proposing amendments, which, in either case, shall be valid to all intents and purposes, as part of this Constitution, when ratified by the legislatures of three fourths of the several states, or by conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other mode of ratification may be proposed by the Congress; provided that no amendment which may be made prior to the year one thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any manner affect the first and fourth clauses in the ninth section of the first article; and that no state, without its consent, shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate.

United States Constitution, Article V. See any role for the President in the text of Article V? I didn’t think so. So even if Clinton did want to abolish the Second Amendment, she couldn’t without a whole lot of help from Congress and three-quarters of the states.

Then Trump doubles down on the fact that he doesn’t understand how the Constitution works when he says that there is “nothing you can do” if Clinton “gets to pick her judges”. Apparently, besides having never read Article V of the Constitution, Trump is also unaware of the provisions of Article II Section 2 of the Constitution:

[The President] shall have power, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to make treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, shall appoint ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, judges of the Supreme Court, and all other officers of the United States, whose appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by law: but the Congress may by law vest the appointment of such inferior officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the courts of law, or in the heads of departments.

Trump seems to have forgotten the fact (or perhaps never knew) that after the President nominates a candidate to be a judge, the Senate must consent to the nomination. Of course, it’s somewhat hard to believe that Trump doesn’t know this given that one issue in this electoral contest is the fact that President Obama exercised his constitutional right and obligation to nominate a judge to replace Justice Scalia but the Senate has refused to take up that nomination with Republicans arguing that the American people should elect a new President to make that nomination. In other words, the Senate is preventing President Obama from appointing the judge that he picked. So tell me again, Donald, why it is that there will be “nothing you can do” if President Clinton were to pick her judges? Elected Senators could vote down the nomination or be like today’s Republican-led Senate and refuse to even consider the nomination (and thus avoid their constitutional responsibility). So perhaps we should take Trump’s claim of “nothing you can do” as an admonition against the Senate for refusing to consider the President Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland. Yeah, I didn’t think so either.

Which of course brings us to the final part of Trump’s statement. I’ll repeat it:

if she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don't know.

(Emphasis added.) Now I think that it is important to consider the temporal arrangement of words and thoughts here. Trump begins the thought with the hypothetical statement “if she gets to pick” before moving on to what can be done. So if she gets to pick then nothing you can do. But then he modifies that. If she gets to pick then nothing you can do but maybe Second Amendment people can do something. I mention this because one of the responses from the Trump campaign and Trump supporters is that what he meant was for gun rights advocates (Second Amendment people) to unify as a voting block to vote to elect Trump. But that formulation doesn’t really work with Trump’s actual words because the way he framed things was with regard to what could be done if she gets to pick her judges. He didn’t frame it in terms of stopping her from becoming President and thereby preventing her from picking judges; rather, he framed it as what could be done after she is the President and has the right to nominate judges: “[N]othing you can, folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is…”. In other words, if we read what Trump said and not what his campaign or supporters want us to think he said, then it should be obvious that he was talking about what people can do once she is President. And his answer was, at first, “nothing” only to be modified by “maybe” — for the Second Amendment people.

Thus the question becomes what, precisely, could Second Amendment people do, after Clinton has become President and picks judges. Add to the query the further question of what it might be that Second Amendment people could do that others (like First Amendment people or Nineteenth Amendment people or just people) could not? What differentiates Second Amendment people from the larger body politic or of groups who may frame and focus their issues around other amendments or provisions of the Constitution. Hmm. What could it be? What is different about the Second Amendment?

Guns.

Or, perhaps expressed differently, guns and the desire to hold and use them to stop the paranoid fear of government tyranny. (Consider my previous posts Do I Have the Right to Take Up Arms Against the Government? or Guns in America (part 2) [sorry for the missing images…].)

Trump’s comment, no matter how his supporters may want to spin things, was a dog whistle (belling of the cat?) to those who oppose any reasonable gun regulations. In our supposedly civil society, we are (or should be) reluctant to believe that anyone would use exhortations to violence as a part of a political campaign. But we’ve seen repeated examples of violent rhetoric from Trump (not to mention actual violence playing out at and around Trump rallies with Trump acting as cheerleader- or instigator-in-chief). You and I may not want to hear Trump’s words as an incitement to violence, but to those who believe that that Kenyan Muslim Barrack Hussein Obama or Hillary “Lock Her Up” Clinton are coming to take their guns, that is exactly how Trump’s words are likely to be perceived.

References to “Second Amendment remedies” and similar gun-based or violent rhetoric have become more and more common on the right. It was just back in 2011 when Sarah Palin said to her supporters, “'Don't Retreat, Instead – RELOAD” and included Rep. Gabrielle Giffords on a list of legislators to be targeted. Rep. Giffords, you’ll recall, was the target of an assassination attempt. Perhaps the best known example was the statement by Sharron Angle who was running for Senate in Nevada when she said, “if this Congress keeps going the way it is, people are really looking toward those Second Amendment remedies.” Or there was the statement by Joni Ernst during her successful bid to be elected to the Senate from Iowa (before she made Trump’s short list for vice presidential nominees), talking about her right to defend herself “from the government, should they decide that my rights are no longer important”. There is a strong undercurrent among Republicans (and, I presume, Trump supporters) that violence may be necessary to stop a government with which they disagree. Trump’s dog whistle politics won’t do anything to calm the situation (especially not when he is also telling his supporters, in advance, that the election will be “rigged”).

And it is to this last point that Trump was really … um … aiming. As I’ve referenced numerous times on this blog, there is a cohort of Americans that really believe that the government is tyrannical (or will soon become so) and that it is coming for them. Now Trump is adding to that fire by telling them that the election will be rigged and that once elected, President Clinton will be coming for the guns when she abolishes the Second Amendment. These people believe, in essence, that they need to keep their guns to prevent the government from coming to take their guns. Or something.

Brett Lunceford, a former professor who has researched the political discourse around guns, said these sort of remarks and actions feed into a belief that “the Second Amendment was put in place to overthrow the government if need be."

“[Trump’s] throwing a bone to that mythology, that, if the government is tyrannical, ‘Well you guys are the ones that can do something about it,’” Lunceford told TPM. “There’s this idea that they’re the ones that can stop tyranny. It’s not about self defense, it’s about defense from the government.”

Gun control advocates say that purveyors of such language take their cues directly from gun industry lobbying groups. Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, pointed to NRA Board member Ted Nugent—who has said President Obama, Hillary Clinton and other Democrats should “suck on my machine gun” — and to Gun Owners of America executive director Larry Pratt, who in June said voters may “resort to the bullet box” if they don’t like Supreme Court decisions.

“We have seen the radicalized behavior of the NRA leadership, also impact lawmakers and other gun extremists to speak in rhetoric that is dangerous,” Watts said. “The Second Amendment is not a suicide pact. It’s not a manual for vigilante justice.”

For victims of gun violence themselves, Trump's comment had a very specific and acute connotation.

"Responsible, stable individuals won't take Trump's rhetoric to its literal end, but his words may provide a magnet for those seeking infamy. They may provide inspiration or permission for those bent on bloodshed," former Rep. Gabby Giffords (D-AZ) said in a statement with her husband, Mark Giffords.

Trump Just The Latest On Hard Right To Call For ‘2nd Amendment Remedies’, Talking Points Memo, August 11, 2016.

After receiving condemnation for his comments, and not just from Democrats, Trump and his supporters tried to “fix” his comments with all sorts of explanations (some discussed above), including suggesting that it was a “joke gone bad” (according to Speaker Paul Ryan). The problem is that this fits into a pattern with Trump; one day he says something outrageous and totally unacceptable and then, when criticized or called out for the statement, he claims it was a “joke” or “sarcasm” or misunderstood or simply blames the media. Today he used the defense of sarcasm to try to walk back his repeated claim that President Obama was the “founder of ISIS” (even after he had repeated that statement several times and even after a conservative radio host had given him a chance to walk back that claim yesterday, a chance Trump took to, instead, repeat his claim and express that it was, indeed what he meant). Or remember when Trump appealed to Russia to hack into Clinton’s computers only to suggest that it was a joke when the nearly universal response was condemnation of his call for a foreign power to become involved in the American electoral process?

Trump never apologizes, never acknowledges mistakes, never accepts blame or takes responsibility; rather, in virtually every case in which he crosses one proverbial line or another, he blames the listener for not understanding that it was a joke or sarcasm or blames the media for reporting on what he said. But query what happens if this sort of language is used by a President. What happens if President Trump says, “The Chinese are killing us in trade; killing us. We should bomb their factories to level the playing field.” Saying, “Gee, I was only joking” a few days later after isn’t going to fix the problem that his flippant and dangerous words may have caused.

Words have meanings, but that is a lesson apparently lost on Donald Trump.

Again and again and again, Donald Trump has demonstrated that he has no respect for the political process. He has no respect for civility. He has no respect for the truth. And he certainly has no understanding of the Constitution or the effects that words can have. The man is completely unfit, both in terms of mental stability, intellectual capacity, and general temperament to be allowed anywhere near the White House.

Please help me be sure that he doesn’t win in November.

Please.

Some of My Previous Posts on Guns and Gun Control

In the days and months following the mass shooting at Sandy Hook, I spent a lot of time writing about guns. In the wake of the most recent shooting in Orlando, I thought that I’d gather the links to some of those and other posts on gun control. I really hope that finally there will be enough public anger to compel Congress to do something, but if nothing else, perhaps linking to these prior posts will offer a chance for a discussion and debate about the issues.

Of particular interest should be the post Guns in America: Background Check System Excludes Those on the Terrorist Watch Lists (April 24, 2013) which is obviously highly relevant to the current debate.

• Guns in America
• Guns in America (part 1) (December 16, 2012)
• Guns in America (part 2) (December 18, 2012) [sadly, some of the images used in this post are long gone; I’ll see if I can update the post with new images]
• Guns in America (part 3) (December 19, 2012)
• Guns in America (part 4) (January 2, 2013)
• Gun Owner and Firearms CEO: “I’m Going to Start Killing People” (Guns in America [part 5]) (January 10, 2013)
• Guns in America (part 6) (January 23, 2013)
• Guns in America (part 7) – Absolutism (January 29, 2013)
• Guns in America: Background Checks (April 17, 2013)
• Guns in America: Background Checks (redux) (April 18, 2013)
• Guns in America: Background Check System Excludes Those on the Terrorist Watch Lists (April 24, 2013)
• Guns in America: “Just One of Those Crazy Accidents” (May 2, 2013)
• Guns in America: “Just One of Those Crazy Accidents” (update) (May 7, 2013)
• One Child Is Holding Something…
• One Child Is Holding Something That’s Been Banned in America to Protect Them: Powerful Gun Control PSAs from Moms Demand Action (April 16, 2013) [I think I’ve received more comments and feedback on this post and it’s follow-up posts than almost any other post that I’ve written]
• One Child Is Holding Something That’s Been Banned in America to Protect Them: Commenting on a Comment (April 22, 2013)
• One Child Is Holding Something That’s Been Banned in America to Protect Them: Commenting on Another Comment (November 5, 2013)
• Guns in Dorms
• Guns in Dorms! (January 22, 2009)
• Guns in Dorms (redux) (January 9, 2013)
• Guns in Schools (April 9, 2013)
• Other Posts
• Do I Have the Right to Take Up Arms Against the Government (February 25, 2013)
• Guns: A Fable (October 13, 2009)
• Should Justice Alito’s Views on Evolving Technology in the First Amendment Context Also Be Applied to Second Amendment Jurisprudence? (June 29, 2011)
• Votes and Guns (July 27, 2012)
• Supreme Court Hears 2nd Amendment Case (March 18, 2008)
• One Year Since Newtown: What Have You Done to Stop Gun Violence? (December 13, 2013)
• A Few Initial Thoughts Following the Tragic South Carolina Church Massacre (June 18, 2015)

Syrian Refugees (and Terrorism)

I started this post a week or ten days ago with a somewhat different focus; I may get back to the broader issues that I was going to discuss. But for now, I want to focus on the issue of refugees.

America is a nation of refugees. For centuries, people have found their way to our shores, often to avoid persecution, violence, or economic privation. Most of my ancestors came to America in the late 1800s, in large part to avoid institutional anti-Semitism and pogroms, but also to try to make a better life than the abject poverty found in the Eastern European shtetl. Recently, America has seen waves of Central American children trying to escape gang violence and poverty. In years before that, America has accepted refugees from war zones across the world, from the Hmong to the Somalis, from Afghanistan and Iraq to Cuba. America has accepted refugees and worked to integrate them into the broader fabric of a ever more diverse American culture.

Sadly, I can’t say that America has always welcomed refugees. Even a cursory review of our history will show a degree of discomfort that waves of immigrants and refugees caused in the American population, whether it was the Irish, the Chinese, the Mexicans, or others, we have a history of not living up to our ideals when it comes to our treatment of and the welcome shown to refugees. And, of course, we have true stains on our history when we think about some of the refugees that we turned away, most notably (perhaps) the Jews who were fleeing Nazi Germany but who could find no refuge and were thus forced to return or Americans of Japanese descent who we imprisoned on the basis of their race (while Americans of German and Italian ancestry were fully integrated into our armed forces).

Today, many in America, including many governors, want to turn their backs on refugees from Syria. I think that is wrong. I think that is un-American. I think that flies in the face of the very concept of American exceptionalism of which we are so proud.

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses, yearning to breath free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
Send these, the homeless, tempest tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

That poem by Emma Lazarus is inscribed upon the Statue of Liberty. That is who we are and who we must aspire to remain.

Let me be clear: I don’t think that it is America’s job to solve every refugee crisis; nor do I think that it is our obligation to accept every refugee. But as the world’s sole remaining superpower, as the largest economy on the planet, as a country with vast resources and vast territory, as a people who are more diverse than any other population on the globe, then I think that we have a duty to help when and to the extent that we can. It is part of the role of being that economic and military superpower. It is part of the role of being American. It is part of the role of being human.

“But, many of these Syrians are Muslim!” I hear many of you say. Yes. They are. So what? Are you honestly arguing that all or even most Muslims are terrorists who want to harm you or America? Seriously? Let me remind you that our Constitution has a specific prohibition on religious tests for public office. Do you really think that the Founding Fathers would have included that prohibition if they wanted a religious test for immigration or admission of refugees?

I understand, especially in the wake of the terrorist attack in Paris, that people are nervous about accepting refugees who might have among them members of ISIL or other groups who intend to do harm to Americans. I get that. And I think that it is a legitimate concern for which we must take appropriate cautions. But on that point, I think that there are several things to consider. First, the comparison between Syrian refugees flooding into Europe and those who might be admitted to the United States is a flawed comparison. For one thing, refugees have been walking into Europe in the hundreds and thousands, completely overwhelming the ability of governments to account for and deal with those refugees, let alone take the necessary time to do thorough background checks and isolate those will bad intent. Compare that situation to those seeking sanctuary in the United States who must undergo background checks often taking several years before they are permitted entry. If you were a terrorist intent on acting against Americans, would embedding yourself into a multi-year asylum process (with no sure success) that included detailed background checks be your best choice?

Furthermore, Germany alone is estimated to be taking in somewhere between 800,000 and 1,000,000 refuges compared to a far, far smaller number that has been proposed for the United States (about 100,000 over the next few years). Don’t forget that Europe, especially Germany, France, the UK, and the low countries, already have enormous Muslim populations that are often segregated (self-segregated in some instances, economically in others) and exist as a sort of permanent underclass in those societies. Compare that to the United States where Muslims of Arab descent are a much smaller percentage of the population and much more dispersed throughout a much more diverse population. While Muslims and Arabs may be disfavored by many Americans, there isn’t the degree of underclass quality that defines America’s Muslim and Arab populations.

On that note, take a guess as to just how many Syrian refugees have already been settled in Indiana. Go on. Take a guess. 10,000? 1,000? 100? How many? According to Indiana’s Family and Social Services Administration, since 2010, Indiana has been the refuge for forty Syrian refugees. Forty. But that may be overstating it. According to the Indiana State Department of Health Refugee Report Federal Fiscal Year 2014 (page 5), the number from 2012-2014 is just twelve. Review that report to see how relatively few refugees are settled in Indiana and where they originate.

Consider further how we treat other refugee populations and others who simply want to visit the United States. Visitors from the European Union don’t need a visa to enter the United States. Query then, whether we have more to worry about from terrorists bearing the passport of a European Union nation or a Syrian refugee who has undergone a multi-year background check? Most of the 9/11 hijackers traveled on (I believe) Saudi Arabian passports; none of them were here as refugees. Yet I don’t hear calls for bans on Europeans or Saudis from traveling to the US. Similarly, a refugee from Cuba need merely get his or her feet onto American soil to be entitled to claim asylum and stay in the United States. Yet until earlier this year, Cuba was on the United States’ list of state sponsors of terrorism. So how did we know that a Cuban refugee wasn’t here as an agent for the Cuban government to engage in terrorist acts? But I guess the Cuban lobby is more powerful than the Syrian lobby, even if Syria has never housed nuclear armed missiles pointed at the United States.

I think we also need to remember that, while it is possible for ISIL to embed a terrorist within the Syrian refugees seeking shelter in the United States, the brutality of ISIL is one of the things that those refugees are seeking shelter from. It would be a bit like telling a boat load of Jews fleeing the Holocaust that they aren’t welcome in the United States because we are worried that there might be a few Nazis hidden among them.

Consider further our role and reputation within the international community, both in terms of other nations and in terms of Arab and Muslim (and related) populations around the world. At least to some, the so-called “War on Terror” (and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq) are part of a larger clash of cultures between Christianity/Western democracies and Islam/repressive regimes. While that is far too simplistic for most purposes, it is a lens through which many may look at the United States and our actions. When we stand up and claim to be the shining beacon on the hill and a nation and system to which others should aspire, do our actions match our rhetoric or do we appear as hypocrites who allow for repression of people that we either fear or can be perceived to simply not care about? Ask the question more simply: If we turn away Syrian refugees, will we make America more or less popular among the Arab Street? Will more Muslims turn to America as a sign of hope and strength or will they turn to ISIL as the force standing up to America? I believe that we need to show that our interest is not just in those who look and pray like the majority of Americans; rather, we need to show that American idealism and exceptionalism can extend to all people, no matter their race or religion.

I want to note two other points. First, I understand the fear of Islamist terrorism directed at America and Americans. We need to be vigilant and cautious. But we also need to take serious the threat of far right domestic terror. When Muslims destroyed the World Trade Center, we went to war. But when Christian nationalists destroyed the Federal building in Oklahoma City … we yawned. Four Americans were killed in Benghazi and we’ve had hearing after hearing after hearing and investigations ad nauseum. Nine Americans were killed in a church and, after much gnashing of teeth, we took down a flag. And what will we do after yet another attack directed against an abortion provider? Probably nothing. But what would we have done had that attack been by a Muslim and targeted a church or Hobby Lobby or Chik-fil-A? For that matter, what is the likelihood that we will hear a Presidential candidate suggest that Christian immigrants, Syrian or otherwise, be asked about their views on abortion or other social issues to be sure that they are not potential terrorists? What is the likelihood that we’ll hear a Presidential candidate suggest that Evangelical Christians be registered with the government or that their churches be monitored for radicalization or incitement speech?

Finally, there is one reason why we should be more concerned about the prospect for terrorism in the United States than should Western European countries: Guns. Those who perpetrated the attacks in Paris apparently had to smuggle their weapons from Eastern Europe. Compare that to America where even al-Qaeda has recognized and publicized just how easy it is for a prospective terrorist to acquire weapons. And don’t forget that the NRA — and those who accept NRA blood money — continue to allow those who are on the “no fly” or terrorist watch list to buy guns.

We should accept Syrian refugees. To be certain, we should subject those refugees to a vigorous background check so that we can be confident that we’re accepting refugees who mean us no harm. But we should apply that same rationale to other refugees seeking shelter on our shores. And, while we should certainly take seriously the threat of terrorism, we should be rational in our understanding of from where that terrorism may emanate and act accordingly. We can’t simply equate Islam to terrorism, just as we can’t preclude some Christians from those that we need to be cautious about. Our approach to refugees and terrorists must be both cautious and broad, without jumping to conclusions or making broad assumptions about huge groups of people on the basis of just a few and without ignoring potential threats because of a failure to directly line up to preconceived notions of who might be a terrorist.

Victim Shaming, Invented Stories, Ignorance of History, and Comparisons to Lucifer: The Scary Worldview of Ben Carson

When I wrote my initial analysis of the Republican Presidential candidates, one of my critiques of Ben Carson focused on some of his previous statements.

I think that he’ll have an extremely hard time convincing voters (other than those on the far right) to vote for him, in light of statements like these:

• “Because a lot of people who go into prison go into prison straight — and when they come out, they’re gay. So, did something happen while they were in there? Ask yourself that question.”
• “I mean, [our society is] very much like Nazi Germany. And I know you're not supposed to say ‘Nazi Germany,’ but I don't care about political correctness. You know, you had a government using its tools to intimidate the population. We now live in a society where people are afraid to say what they actually believe.”
• “You know, we live in a Gestapo age, people don't realize it.”
• “I think most people, when they finish [AP history], they'd be ready to go sign up for ISIS.”
• “You know, Obamacare is really, I think, the worst thing that has happened in this nation since slavery. And it is, in a way — it is slavery in a way because it is making all of us subservient to the government.”
• “They've [ISIS] got the wrong philosophy, but they’re willing to die for what they believe, while we’re busily giving away every value and every belief for the sake of political correctness.”
• Carson said he couldn't be sure “there will even be an election in 2016” if Republicans didn't go on to win [in 2014]. (His wife also said they were keeping their son’s Australian passport handy if the election didn’t go their way.)

Recently, Carson, who is currently polling second behind Donald Trump, has decided to add to this list of memorable statements. His most recent pronunciations make for great sound bites and may be delicious red meat to the base that he’s trying to capture. However, a politician who offers such blatant bullshit as a path to success is, I think, a danger to how our system is designed to operate, unless, of course, the media starts doing actual journalism and calling out candidates for the bullshit that would otherwise be accepted as truth by a voting public that often doesn’t have the means or the time to dig into each and every thing that a candidate says.

So what has Carson said lately?

First, let’s look at some of his responses to the most recent one of the more recent school shootings, this time in Oregon:

"I would not just stand there and let him shoot me," Carson said on "Fox and Friends" Tuesday morning. "I would say, 'Hey guys, everybody attack him. He may shoot me, but he can't get us all.'"

I don’t know about you, but I’m kinda thinking that maybe Carson has watched Die Hard a few too many times. Or, perhaps he thinks that the way heroic characters behave on TV and in the movies is a reflection of real life. As one of the survivors of the Oregon shooting said, “Nobody could truly understand what actions they would take like that in a situation unless they lived it”. Carson tried to walk his remarks back a bit later by saying that he wasn’t “judging” the shooting victims. But isn’t that just what he was, in fact, doing, by saying that he would have been more heroic than they had been?

Carson also offered this memorable statement in response to renewed calls for increased gun control measures:

“As a Doctor, I spent many a night pulling bullets out of bodies,” he wrote. “There is no doubt that this senseless violence is breathtaking — but I never saw a body with bullet holes that was more devastating than taking the right to arm ourselves away. Serious people seek serious solutions.”

Think about that one for a minute. People killed by guns are not more devastating than “taking the right to arm ourselves away”. I don’t know. Dead bodies, ripped apart by gunfire, seem pretty devastating to me, especially when we remember that nobody is looking to take away the right to arm ourselves. Rather, people are looking for ways to reduce gun violence, looking for ways to limit access to guns by those with mental conditions or who are a danger to themselves or society, looking for ways to limit access to military style weapons or to armor piercing bullets, all in order to have fewer bodies for doctors like Carson to pull bullets out of. What I find devastating is that people like Carson are so willfully blind to what the real issues are or are so willing to fear-monger and give voice to those who really do fear a government attempt to take away all guns.

Carson talks about “serious people” seeking “serious solutions” but he can’t even seriously articulate the issue. And what is Carson’s “serious solution” to the problem of gun violence in America? Let’s read what he says on his website:

It was no accident that our Founding Fathers enshrined the right to own firearms as the 2nd element of the Bill of Rights, immediately after establishing our free speech rights. I cannot and will not support any efforts to weaken The 2nd Amendment.

The 2nd Amendment is a central pillar of our Constitution. Our Founding Fathers added it explicitly in order to protect freedom in the United States of America. It provides our citizens the right to protect themselves from threats foreign or domestic.

That’s it. That’s Carson’s “serious solution”. Hmm. Perhaps he’s not really one of those “serious people” about whom he speaks? Or perhaps he doesn’t really think that people being slaughtered in our schools, churches, and movie theaters is a serious problem.

Anyway, Dr. Carson was just getting started…

You see, to prove that he wasn’t judging victims of mass shootings, Carson decided to “share” the episode of the time that he went to Popeye’s for dinner and was held at gunpoint (he had to explain, further, why he, a vegetarian, was going to Popeye’s in the first place). Others have written about this episode in more detail, so I’ll just provide a quick recap of the important bits. When pressed, Carson’s campaign explained that the details about the episode were contained in Carson’s book. Only, they aren’t. And when pressed for more details, the campaign said that they wouldn’t take any more questions on the subject. And when others, like the Baltimore police (where the incident is said to have taken place), looked into the episode, they could find no evidence of it. Plus, it’s worth noting that Carson didn’t fight the alleged assailant; rather he told the guy with the gun to target the Popeye’s employee behind the cash register. For more details, read this full recap from Snopes. But, hey, it must be true because Carson said that he is a “God-fearing Christian, it’s something that happened. It’s not something I made up.”

Carson also wants kindergarten teachers to have access to guns in their classrooms:

“If I had a little kid in kindergarten somewhere would feel much more comfortable if I knew on that campus there was a police officer or somebody who was trained with a weapon. I would feel more comfortable,” Carson said in a new interview with USA Today’s Capital Download. “If the teacher was trained in the use of that weapon and had access to it, I would be much more comfortable if they had one than if they didn’t.”

Educating a group of 30 six-year-olds is easy, so let’s give the teacher the responsibility to be able to defend those children from people armed with military-style assault rifles, too.

Furthermore, apparently Carson doesn’t limit his victim-shaming just to victims of mass shootings (I wonder if he blames the Sandy Hook kids for not attacking their murderer). Nope. That would be too easy. No. “God-fearing Christian” Ben Carson also thought it would be a good idea for a little ahistorical victim shaming aimed squarely at the Jews who apparently allowed Hitler to kill them in the Holocaust. Seriously.

Ben Carson, a candidate for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, blamed the Holocaust on Nazi gun control in an interview on CNN Thursday.

Host Wolf Blitzer read a section from Carson's book, A More Perfect Union, in which Carson writes:

German citizens were disarmed by their government in the late 1930s, and by the mid-1940s Hitler's regime had mercilessly slaughtered six million Jews and numerous others whom they considered inferior … Through a combination of removing guns and disseminating deceitful propaganda, the Nazis were able to carry out their evil intentions with relatively little resistance.

“I think the likelihood of Hitler being able to accomplish his goals would have been greatly diminished if the people had been armed,” Carson elaborated in the interview. “There’s a reason these dictatorial people take the guns first.”

The Anti-Defamation League, which monitors and responds to anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry, has long opposed the use of Nazi comparisons in the U.S. gun control debate. “The idea that supporters of gun control are doing something akin to what Hitler’s Germany did to strip citizens of guns in the run-up to the Second World War is historically inaccurate and offensive, especially to Holocaust survivors and their families,” Abraham Foxman, the ADL’s national director at the time, said in 2013.

Conservatives have a history of comparing gun control advocates to Hitler and the Nazis. The ADL’s 2013 comments were provoked by The Drudge Report’s choice to use an image of Hitler to illustrate news that President Barack Obama was pursuing limited gun control measures after 20 first-graders and six school staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, were murdered by a gunman.

Many historians disagree with the idea that armed German Jews could have prevented the Holocaust. And as Alex Seitz-Wald, a journalist then writing for Salon, explained in 2013, the full story of Nazi gun regulation is more complicated than Carson and his ilk might like:

University of Chicago law professor Bernard Harcourt explored this myth in depth in a 2004 article published in the Fordham Law Review. As it turns out, the Weimar Republic, the German government that immediately preceded Hitler’s, actually had tougher gun laws than the Nazi regime. After its defeat in World War I, and agreeing to the harsh surrender terms laid out in the Treaty of Versailles, the German legislature in 1919 passed a law that effectively banned all private firearm possession, leading the government to confiscate guns already in circulation. In 1928, the Reichstag relaxed the regulation a bit, but put in place a strict registration regime that required citizens to acquire separate permits to own guns, sell them or carry them….

[Hitler’s] “1938 revisions completely deregulated the acquisition and transfer of rifles and shotguns, as well as ammunition,” Harcourt wrote. Meanwhile, many more categories of people, including Nazi party members, were exempted from gun ownership regulations altogether, while the legal age of purchase was lowered from 20 to 18, and permit lengths were extended from one year to three years.

The 1938 law did ban Jews from owning guns. But as the ADL explained in 2013, “the small number of personal firearms in the hands of the small number of Germany’s Jews (about 214,000) remaining in Germany in 1938 could in no way have stopped the totalitarian power of the Nazi German state,” which eventually conquered most of Europe.

I could go on and on, cite historian after historian about just how wrong Carson is (not to mention how offensive his comments are). Allow me instead, to offer just a few articles for you to read: Ben Carson Is Wrong on Guns and the Holocaust by Alan E. Steinweis, professor of history and Holocaust studies at the University of Vermont, From Guns to Migrants: Not Everything Is Like the Holocaust by David Frum, and Why Ben Carson's Rant About Gun Control and the Holocaust Is So Dangerous by Jay Michaelson. And this statement from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is worth noting:

Nazism represented a singular evil that resulted in the murder of six million Jews and the persecution and deaths of millions of others for racial and political reasons. Comparing contemporary situations to Nazism is not only offensive to its victims, but it is also inaccurate and misrepresents both Holocaust history and the present. The Holocaust should be remembered, studied, and understood so that we can learn its lessons; it should not be exploited for opportunistic purposes.

Of course Fox News’ favorite purveyor of psychiatric malpractice, Dr. Keith Ablow (and really, how does he still have a license?) thinks Carson is precisely right: Why Ben Carson is right about Jews, the Holocaust and guns. After reading the articles cited above, it may be instructive to read Ablow’s essay to try to understand the mindset of the far-right gun advocates who, I think, would prefer a society in which every one of his is armed 24/7.

Carson, for his part, isn’t backing down (despite what Jewish groups and historians are saying); instead, he said of arguments that gun control was not responsible for the Holocaust:

“That's total foolishness,” Carson told George Stephanopoulos on Good Morning America. “I’d be happy to discuss that in depth with anybody but it is well known that in many places where tyranny has taken over they first disarm the people. There’s a reason they disarm the people. They don’t just do it arbitrarily.”

Oh, how I’d love to hear that “discussion” … but of course, you know that it will never happen.

And before I finish, it’s probably worth sharing another interesting statement from Dr. Carson, this time on the subject of evolution his views of those of us who do believe in science:

“Ultimately, if you accept the evolutionary theory, you dismiss ethics, you don’t have to abide by a set of moral codes, you determine your own conscience based on your own desires,” Carson told Adventist Review, the magazine of the Seventh-day Adventist Church of which Carson is a member for a 2004 cover story.

…

“You have no reason for things such as selfless love, when a father dives in to save his son from drowning,” Carson continued. “You can trash the Bible as irrelevant, just silly fables, since you believe that it does not conform to scientific thought. You can be like Lucifer, who said, ‘I will make myself like the Most High.’”

I see. So because I believe in science, then I dismiss ethics, don’t have a set of moral codes, don’t selflessly love my children, and am “like Lucifer”. Yes, a leading candidate for the office of President of the United States said that people who accept evolution or don’t believe in the Bible are “like Lucifer”. Good to know. And I really hope someone asks him about that statement during one of the debates.

So let’s tally things up, shall we?

Carson wouldn’t let a criminal shoot him; rather, he’d either rush the gunman or, more likely, tell the gunman to shoot someone else. He also made up a story to prove his bona fides regarding experience with gun violence and then refused to answer more questions when people started to question his lies (by the way, bona fides based on lies aren’t really bona fides, are they?). He insists that he doesn’t judge people as he judges them. He wants kindergarten teachers to be armed. And he blames the Holocaust on gun control and the failure of Jews to properly defend themselves, even as historians tell him that he is wrong. And finally, for good measure, he trashes as Satanic those who believe in science (remember that he is a neurosurgeon).

And this man wants to be President?

No thank you.

Movie Theater Checking Bags for “Security” of Patrons Looks More Like a Cheap Ploy to Sell More Overpriced Candy

When our family went to see “Fantastic Four” last week (don’t bother…), the teenage girl taking tickets asked to search my wife’s purse. When we asked her why, she explained that it was for “security”. Oddly, while she searched my wife’s purse, the rent-a-cop (actually, an off duty police officer from a small town nearby) stood nearby and looked on, but didn’t offer the teenage employee any assistance in her search of the purse.

Subsequent to this episode, we learned that Regal Entertainment Group (owner of Regal Cinemas) had enacted a security policy:

Backpacks/Packages/Bags:

Security issues have become a daily part of our lives in America. Regal Entertainment Group wants our customers and staff to feel comfortable and safe when visiting or working in our theatres. To ensure the safety of our guests and employees, backpacks and bags of any kind are subject to inspection prior to admission. We acknowledge that this procedure can cause some inconvenience and that it is not without flaws, but hope these are minor in comparison to increased safety.

Now, I have no problem with reasonable enhanced security. In part as a result of the massive quantity of guns in our society, we now live in a country where any place can become a scene of mass carnage at virtually any time. So if a brief check of bags and backpacks will help keep me and my family safe, then I’m all for it.

However, when it comes to this new policy enacted by Regal Entertainment Group (hereafter referred to just as “Regal”), I have only one response: Bullshit.

This policy has nothing to do with real security. Rather, it is either a cynical way to exploit fears of violence in theaters (“Look, we’re doing something about it!”) or, more likely, a subterfuge for enforcing a different policy altogether:

Outside Food or Drink:

No outside food or drink is permitted in the theatre.

What leads me to these conclusions? Let’s consider the policy and its implementation. I think that it’s fairly safe to presume that the “[s]ecurity issues” that “have become a daily part of our lives” is a reference to the 2012 Aurora, Colorado, theater shooting and the two theater shootings (or attempted shootings) this year in Lafayette, Louisiana, and Nashville, Tennessee.

So, my first question is whether a search of patrons’ bags and backpacks would have stopped any of these incidents? In the case of the shooting in Aurora, the shooter left the theater via an emergency exit which he propped open in order to retrieve his guns from his car. So obviously, a bag search would not have turned up anything, would it? In the Lafayette shooting, the shooter was armed with a handgun. I have been unable to determine whether it was in a bag or just in his pocket, a holster, or otherwise concealed on his body. In the case of the Nashville attempted shooting, the shooter did have two bags. One had an Airsoft BB gun and a hatchet; the other bag had what appeared to be an explosive device. And that leads inevitably to the next question: What would have happened had a teenage employee (especially a very slight girl, like the one who searched my wife’s purse) asked to open one of those bags?

Thus, consider the efficacy of a bag search by a teenager (or any employee not given appropriate training). Will that deter someone intent on committing mass violence? And ask what sort of training that teenage employee has taken. What are they told to do if a patron refuses a bag search or gets belligerent? What are they told to do if the patron claims that they are being discriminated against? What are they to do with a backpack that appears to contain jackets or sweatshirts? Are they expected to pull those out to be sure that no weapons are hidden in or below them? What are they told to do if they find a gun or knife, let alone an explosive device? Run screaming? Calmly tell the patron that they can’t bring the gun into the theater?* Go ahead, roll that scenario through your mind and tell me how it ends. Oh, and ask yourself why Regal is entrusting this sort of “security” to its teenage employees instead of to (hopefully trained) security guards or off-duty police officers?

*By the way, I read through Regal’s Admittance Procedures (so you don’t have to). There is the aforementioned prohibition on outside food and drink. And there are prohibitions on smoking and on the use of recording devices.There is even a request for patrons to avoid using their cellphones. But guess what? There is no prohibition on bringing firearms, knives, or any other sort of weapon into a Regal theater. So even if that employee finds a gun in a woman’s purse, the woman can argue that she should be entitled to admission to the theater because there is no prohibition against bringing a gun.

But that isn’t the end of the problems with the security policy; far from it.

Consider this: Who is most likely to carry a bag into a theater? The answer to that would seem to be women with their purses. How many men carry a bag, even a backpack, into a theater? Not many, I’d wager. Yet the one factor that all of the theater shootings (and most of the mass shootings, no matter where committed) have in common is that they were committed by men. Thus, by limiting searches to backpacks and bags, Regal is selectively targeting for inspection those who seem least likely to constitute security threats. Will men with bulky jackets be searched to see if they have a gun secreted on their person? Will men with cargo pants be asked to empty their pockets to be sure that they don’t have a gun or knife? Will men be asked to raise their shirts to allow the theater employee to see if they are wearing a holster or have a gun stuffed into the waistband of their pants? Of course not.

And think about this: There is no attempt to profile the type of person who might be likely to commit an act of mass violence. I’m not talking about racial profiling; rather, how about profiling people who come into the theater by themselves, especially if they look … oh, I don’t know … crazy? Or maybe single people who come into the theater after the movie has begun. Perhaps groups of young people who appear to be part of a gang or anyone who appears to be under the influence of alcohol or drugs. Compare that sort of profiling to the search conducted of my wife’s purse; is there really a suspicion that a family of four, including two children, intends to commit an act of violence or threaten the safety and security of other patrons?

Oh, and one Indiana-specific side note: As a result of some of the NRA-inspired idiocy from our General Assembly, Regal is allowed to prohibit patrons from bringing guns into the theater (even if they don’t appear to have adopted such a policy) but cannot prohibit employees from having guns in their cars in the parking lot. In fact, Regal cannot even ask employees about possession of a gun. I wonder whether Regal is searching its employees when they come to work to be sure that they left their guns in their cars. And if not, why not? That’s a good question to ask a manager at Regal.

If a bag search isn’t likely to deter someone intent on mass violence and isn’t aimed at those most likely to commit mass violence, then what is its real purpose?

Perhaps Regal just wants people to think that Regal takes security seriously. Perhaps the thinking in the Regal boardroom went like this: “Hey, if people think that they are safer in our theaters, then maybe they’ll come to our theaters instead of those owned by our competitors where they don’t check bags. Who cares if our safety is bullshit, so long as it helps us sell more tickets!” Yeah, I know that sounds unfair. But if that isn’t the explanation, and if Regal really cared about safety, then wouldn’t the security policy be designed so as to be effective and be implemented in a way that might work without putting teenage employees at risk? For that matter, wouldn’t Regal have also enacted a “no weapons” policy?

Which brings me to what I believe is the real intent of the security policy: Regal wants to make more money by selling more candy and drinks and the best way to do that is to search bags and backpacks to be sure that people aren’t bringing contraband food and beverages into the theater. It’s hard to hide an AR-15 in a backpack or purse, but it’s easy to hide a box of Sno-Caps and a bottle of Coke; similarly, it’s easy to hide a handgun in a pocket or the waistband of a pair of pants, but it’s not as easy to conceal that same bottle of Coke.

I don’t think the security policy is really designed to keep anyone safe; if that is the intent of the policy, then someone really didn’t think it through very well (I wonder if Regal purchased extra insurance for the employees tasked with searching bags). Instead, I think that the intent is to be sure that patrons don’t try to sneak candy or drinks into the theater in hopes that Regal can sell a few more boxes of horribly overpriced goodies.

Incidentally, I’m not the only one to reach these conclusions. I came across the following after I’d written the bulk of this post (while I was checking some of the information related to the prior theater shootings):

Jeff Bock, box office analyst for theater-industry research firm Exhibitor Relations, predicted the policy will lower the anxiety of theatergoers but could pose other problems.

“Implementing this is probably a good idea,” he said. “But it seems undercooked. How is this going to work? The protocol needs to be defined. Exactly what are they doing and what kind of training are you giving to employees?

“It’s a pretty big thing to ask for 16-year-old employees to search through bags for possible firearms. This kind of changes the duties of a theater employee from making popcorn and sweeping floors to basically being a low-rent security guard. Maybe this falls to the manager of the theater to search … We now have to deal with the consequences of what if they find something in the bag.

“Obviously, all the people who sneak in Subway sandwiches are going to be mortified,” Bock added. “Maybe that’s the Regal ulterior motive. Stopping illegal Milk Duds from getting into theaters.”

One more quick point: If you are a woman going to a movie at a Regal theater and an employee asks to search your purse, I’d ask for the manager and then ask why only women (seemingly, at least) are being subjected to the policy. Ask why your husband or boyfriend isn’t being frisked or made to empty his pockets. Put the onus on Regal to explain why they’ve implemented a policy which, in effect, discriminates against women (especially women with children!) and subjects them to a heightened degree of scrutiny and an invasion of privacy to which men are not subject. Yes, Regal may claim that it wants to keep its patrons safe, but I doubt very much that it will relish a backlash from angry women who have had their purses ransacked by teenagers.

I can’t end this post without disclosing and noting my own prior history with Regal Entertainment Group: Regal Cinema's Disregard for Patrons and Films (June 30, 2008) and Regal Cinema's Disregard for Patrons and Films (update) a/k/a When Disney Talks, Regal Listens (July 2, 2008).

Updated August 25, 2015 to correct a typo.

A Few Initial Thoughts Following the Tragic South Carolina Church Massacre

It’s too early to say much about the tragic shooting at a church in South Carolina last night. We’ve seen, all too often, that the earliest news about these sorts of events is wrong in some or many details. So I don’t want to dive deeply into motivations, revisit my previous discussions about gun control, or talk generally about the state of race relations in America. But I do want to make a few very brief observations.

First, the subject was captured. Alive. Perhaps it’s merely coincidence; perhaps there are far more variables involved… But I find it interesting that Dylann Roof was captured alive, just like James Holmes (the Aurura Colorado theater shooter), F. Glenn Miller, Jr. (the neo-Nazi who shot three people at a Kansas City Jewish community center), Eric Frein (the man who hid in the woods to assassinate police officers in Pennsylvania), Jared Lee Loughner (the Tucson shooter who wounded Congresswoman Giffords and killed 6 others), Ryan Elliot Giroux (the white supremacist skinhead who killed several people in Arizona earlier this year), and others. Each of those people was (I believe) armed when apprehended. Now, compare that to the repeated stories that we’ve seen recently of unarmed African Americans, often teens (or younger), who are killed by police, sometimes for a minor infraction, other times after committing no crime at all. It’s just one of those things that makes you say, “Hmm.”

Second, if a shooting like the one in South Carolina took place in Iraq and the shooter was a Sunni and his targets were a group of Shiites, we’d have no trouble calling the shooter a terrorist. If the shooter was a Muslim and his target was any group of Americans, we’d have no trouble calling the shooter a terrorist (especially if those Americans were in a church praying). But when the shooter is a white man, the kneejerk reaction is to say that he was “troubled” or suffered from mental illness. That may be true; he may have been mentally ill. But if, as early reports indicate, he expressed his desire to kill African Americans simply because they were African Americans, then isn’t that the exact sort of conduct that we would classify as terrorist if the shooter wasn’t a white, Christian American?

Finally, when I heard members of South Carolina’s government speaking about the shooting this morning, it made me wonder whether South Carolina would lower to half staff the Confederate battle flag that flies in front of the State Capital.

I mean, it’s not like the Confederate battle flag could ever be thought of as a sign of racial division or prejudice, right? And I’m sure that those who support flying a Confederate battle flag would think it appropriate to lower the flag to half staff to commemorate African Americans who were killed in a church that was once burned down by those who supported slavery and which later served as a stop on the underground railroad. Am I right?

Updated June 26 to correct typos.

One Year Since Newtown: What Have You Done to Stop Gun Violence?

One year ago tomorrow, 20 young children and 6 adults were killed in their elementary school by a man with an assault rifle. Following the massacre, Congress made an effort to adopt some reasonable additional gun laws including expanded background checks that might help prevent further murders and massacres. Yet the NRA and its Congressional servants (i.e., those members of Congress who accept NRA blood money) were able to defeat legislation that was popular with the American public.

In the year since the massacre at Newton, nearly two hundred children, aged 12 and under, have been killed by guns. Some were killed when they played with a gun they found in a house. Some were killed by a sibling or friend playing with a gun. Some were killed as a part of a murder-suicide. 84 were accidents; 103 were homicides. 127 of those children were killed in their own homes.

But does any of that really matter? No. What matters is that children keep dying.

Back in May, I published two posts in which I looked at the frightening number of children who were killed or wounded by guns (or who used guns to kill or wound others): Guns in America: “Just One of Those Crazy Accidents” and Guns in America: “Just One of Those Crazy Accidents” (update).

Anyway, as anyone who reads this blog will recognize, gun violence has always been of concern to me and the shooting at Newtown touched me deeply. In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, I became a contributor to the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, I began calling my Senators and Congresswoman regularly to demand action, I’ve worked to help organize a community dialog on gun violence and gun laws (which may or may not happen early next year), and I’ve used this blog to write post, after post, after post about the horrors of gun violence and the need for better gun laws. Yet here we are, a year later, and nothing really has changed. If anything, it’s worse, as many states have actually made it easier to get a gun and expanded the rights that gun owners have (often at the expense of the rest of society, I’d argue).

So here is my question to you: What specifically have you done since the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School to be sure that no more children are killed in their schools by gunfire? What specifically have you done to be sure that people with mental illness don’t have access to guns? What specifically have you done to help get assault rifles and other military-style weaponry off of our streets?

And, if you haven’t done something to project our schools, our homes, our families, and our children from the scourge of gun violence … why the fuck not?

Nothing is going to happen unless and until those of us who don’t worship at the altar of the gun say “enough is enough” and demand that our legislators take real action. While you’re enjoying the holiday season with your families, think about all of those families who are missing a loved one this year because of a gun. Then ask yourself how you would feel if the gun violence had touched your family.

And if that’s not an appealing prospect, then stop letting others be responsible for doing something; stop bemoaning violence while you do nothing to stop it. Instead, take action. Give to the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence or to Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America. But don’t think that money alone can win this fight. Money doesn’t vote (though it does buy legislators); you need to call your state legislators and your members of Congress. Don’t call once. Do it again and again and again until they start to get the message. Go to the town hall meetings that your legislators host and ask them the tough questions. Ask how many more children have to die before they’ll do something. Ask how much blood money they’ve accepted from the NRA. As if they’d feel different if it was their child that was murdered.

Talk to your friends, too. Sure, some may be gun rights advocates, but try to find common ground. Help them understand the issues. Every little bit of support, every little bit of change will help. Will it keep every child safe? Of course not. But we owe it to our children and to our society to try.

So, think about those families in Newtown (and Aurora and everywhere else that has been touched by gun violence) and then take a moment out of your holiday joy and festivities and try to be sure that next year you and your family won’t be grieving because gun violence touched close to home. Pick up the phone or your checkbook, whatever. Just do something.

And remember: 2014 is an election year. We have the power to make our country better, to make it reflect our wishes and values, and to do something to keep our children just a little bit safer. But nothing gets done unless we make it happen.

Dangerous Intersection: The Knockout Game and Stand Your Ground

By now, I’m sure that most everyone has heard about the “Knockout Game”. For those who’ve been living under a rock, the “game” involves teens walking up to innocent passersby and attempting to knock them out with a single punch.

This is obviously a frightening situation.

So query the following: Let’s say that you’re like the man in the video above, walking down an alley on your way home from work or maybe on your way to lunch, when you see a group of teenagers walking toward you. You don’t know if those kids are “playing” the knockout game, but you’ve heard about the game and scene videos of the “game”. Is is reasonable for you to be concerned that the teenagers approaching you might be playing the knockout game? Should you take steps to avoid those kids? Should you go into a defensive posture, just in case?

Can you draw your gun and kill them before they attack you?

Yes, you read that last question right. If you’re worried that an approaching group of teens might be playing the knockout game, can you kill them to prevent them from attacking you?

I’m going to come back to that last question in a moment. But first, I want to take a moment to address the simpler (well, not really…) question about evasive or defensive actions. Obviously, we should all be aware of our surroundings. That is a basic rule for safety. And there is nothing wrong with avoiding an obviously dangerous situation or taking defensive precautions if a situation is unavoidable.

What concerns me is the question of which groups of teens will (or should) cause people to take avoidance or defensive precautions. I remember when President Obama spoke about the Trayvon Martin shooting and about growing up black in America. I was really struck by his reminiscences of what it was like to be a young black man in America:

I think it’s important to recognize that the African-American community is looking at this issue through a set of experiences and a history that — that doesn’t go away.

There are very few African-American men in this country who haven’t had the experience of being followed when they were shopping in a department store. That includes me.

And there are very few African-American men who haven’t had the experience of walking across the street and hearing the locks click on the doors of cars. That happens to me, at least before I was a senator.

There are very few African-Americans who haven’t had the experience of getting on an elevator and a woman clutching her purse nervously and holding her breath until she had a chance to get off. That happens often.

And, you know, I — I don't want to exaggerate this, but those sets of experiences inform how the African-American community interprets what happened one night in Florida.

And it's inescapable for people to bring those experiences to bear.

And that just felt so … wrong … to me. Obviously, I didn’t grow up as a black teen. I can’t imagine what it must be like to know that others, especially whites, look at you with suspicion in their eyes, solely on the basis of the color of your skin. I can’t imagine the pain that must cause or how much that must make you feel like an outsider in your own country, your own city. It saddens me that we live in a society where that sort of racial profiling still exists.

And yet I’m also saddened that we live in a society where random acts of violence like the knockout game exist. And when I hear that, at least in Brooklyn, it appears that there is indeed a racial, religious, or cultural element to the targeting in the knockout game — a sort of reverse profiling, if you will — then I’m honestly not sure how I should feel. I don’t want to look at a group of teens and worry that they might choose to hurt me; yet wouldn’t I be stupid not to take precautions, just in case?

Which brings me back to the uglier question: Can a person who is worried that a group of teens might be playing the knockout game and might be sizing that person up as a target, take preemptive action and kill the teens before they have a chance to attack? To answer that question, let’s take a look at Indiana’s “stand your ground law” (Indiana Code § 35-41-3-2):

(c) A person is justified in using reasonable force against any other person to protect the person or a third person from what the person reasonably believes to be the imminent use of unlawful force. However, a person:

(1) is justified in using deadly force; and

(2) does not have a duty to retreat;

if the person reasonably believes that that force is necessary to prevent serious bodily injury to the person or a third person or the commission of a forcible felony. No person in this state shall be placed in legal jeopardy of any kind whatsoever for protecting the person or a third person by reasonable means necessary.

I’m not sure if racially profiling a group of teenagers qualifies as a “reasonable belief” … but I’m also not sure, especially in light of news of the “knockout game”, that someone would be unreasonable if they were to look at a group of teenagers, especially if the teens looked “dangerous” and conclude that the imminent use of unlawful force (i.e., a knockout punch) was likely. Moreover, I’m not sure precisely how the first sentence and the second sentence actually work together in application. The second sentence grants a person the right to use deadly force (without retreating or seeking to avoid the confrontation) if that person “reasonably believes that that force is necessary to prevent serious bodily injury”.

So, again, consider a person walking down an alley — with knowledge of the existence of the “knockout game” — and seeing a group of teens approaching. Does that person have a reasonable belief that those teens might be planning to “play” the knockout game? Is that belief more or less reasonable if we take into consideration how the teens are dressed or the color of their skin or the neighborhood in which our protagonist is walking? In a perfect world, certainly skin color should play no part whatsoever in that analysis. Unfortunately, ours is not yet a perfect world and I (shamefully, I’ll admit) think that it probably would be unreasonable to suggest that the appearance of potential assailants be ignored. Moreover, we can’t ignore both what we’ve seen in the videos about the knockout game or the fact that those “playing” endeavor to make their attack one of shock, awe, and, most of all, surprise.

So can that hypothetical man, seeing a group of teens walking toward him, a group of teens who, on the basis of their appearance, just might be playing the knockout game, take preemptive action to keep himself safe, even if that preemptive action involves a gun?

My conclusion? I don’t have one. Not really. I don’t want to see anyone get killed, especially innocent teens doing nothing more than walking down a street with their friends. By the same token, though, I don’t want to see innocent people attacked by teens intent of causing mayhem or injury as a show of machismo or something. I think that we need to take reports of the “knockout game” seriously. But we also need to understand what might be fueling this sort of violence. Is it rage? Is it a devaluing of human life? I don’t know. We need to find ways to fight the causes of this sort of conduct. And we must be sure that we are taking appropriate efforts to keep people safe on our streets. But, at the same time, we must be vigilant against vigilante justice or the shoot first mentality that laws like “stand your ground” promote.

I fear that as word of the knockout game spreads and as further incidents are discussed in the media, it won’t be long before people begin to act in preemptive self-defense. And once we start down that road, how long will it be before innocent black teens begin to die for the crime of walking down a street while black? For that matter, how long will it be before innocent teens begin to stand their own ground against those they worry might act on the mistaken belief that the teen is playing the “knockout game”. What is the old cliché? “Violence begets violence?” I worry that the intersection of fears, both rational and irrational, the easy access to firearms, and “shoot first” laws like “stand your ground” will prove a fertile ground for yet more violence and mayhem on our streets where the likely victims will be the innocent and our own sense of safety.

(For my previous posts on Indiana’s “stand your ground law” please see Stand Your Ground: An Analysis and Stand Your Ground: A Further Analysis.)

One Child Is Holding Something That’s Been Banned in America to Protect Them: Commenting on Another Comment

Back in April 2013, I posted One Child Is Holding Something That’s Been Banned in America to Protect Them: Powerful Gun Control PSAs from Moms Demand Action, one of my numerous recent posts on guns and gun control. That post has been one of the most widely viewed posts that I’ve ever written (and it continues to receive a large number of views from readers outside of the United States). You may remember the post because of the three remarkable images:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A week or so after that post was published, I took some time to look at one of the comments written in response: One Child Is Holding Something That’s Been Banned in America to Protect Them: Commenting on a Comment. Well, today I want to spend a little time looking at another comment thread to the post. I think that the comments are illustrative of several problems, hence my decision to share and discuss them. Please remember, that I do not edit or moderate comments (except that I delete comments that are obviously spam).

About a month after the post was published, a user identified as “leon” (clicking on the link takes you to a page about “opaque” [i.e., anonymous] users) posted the following comment (misspellings in original):

this is a terrible awful and moronic excuse. if he kids where to put the gun down and tell it to shoot, the guns wouldnt do ANYTHGIN! statistics show that of all the ways people are getting killed, its people with basball bats that are doing most of the killing. that is proven by reports from the FBI and the CIA why not ban THOSE?! “baseball bats” this whole crappy thing about guns killing people is just all bull-crap! guns dont kill people PEOPLE kill people WITH guns!

Did you note the obvious fallacy in the comment? Just days before the comment was posted, I’d heard a similar argument, recognized the fallacy, and looked it up. Thus, when leon left his post, I was ready and responded just about an hour later:

Leon:

Thanks so much for taking the time to regurgitate bogus right-wing, pro-gun talking points. Before repeating your statistic, did you even, you know, stop a think? Baseball bats “are doing most of the killing”? Does that even sound plausible? Of course not. Because it’s simply not true.

Here’s what Snopes has to say about this meme that has been in use by pro-gun advocates:

In any debate about gun control in the U.S., someone will inevitably make the argument that “[X] kills more people than guns do” (where [X] is anything from automobiles to scissors to sharks), with the implication that gun control advocates are too narrowly focused on one issue while ignoring other, greater threats to public safety.

One common form of this argument which is often invoked after a prominent incident brings the subject of gun control to the forefront of public discussion (such as the December 2012 shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut) is the claim that more people are killed by baseball bats than by firearms, an assertion typically cited as a truism which is borne out by FBI statistics.

However, information gathered by the FBI does not support this claim. The Uniform Crime Reports made available on the Crime in the U.S. section of the FBI's web site includes homicide data that breaks down killings by the types of weapons used. In 2011, the percentages for weapon types used in homicides throughout the U.S. were as follows:

Firearms: 67.8%
Knives or other cutting instruments: 13.4%
Personal weapons (hands, fists, feet, etc.): 5.7%
Blunt objects (clubs, hammers, etc.): 3.9%
Other dangerous weapons: 9.2%

The FBI doesn’t offer data showing the latter categories broken down into more detail, so it isn't possible to determine from this source exactly what percentage of homicides in 2011 involved the use of baseball bats. But even if one were to assume that every single homicide in the “blunt objects” category was committed with a baseball bat (almost certainly a very large overestimate), firearm-related homicides would still outnumber bat-related homicides by a ratio of more than sixteen to one.

Next time, Leon, try doing a little reseach [sic] first.

Not surprisingly, neither leon nor any other gun rights advocate responded … until last week, when a comment was left by staplehead3 (an apparently anonymous user on Google+ who uses a cross for an avatar); I don’t know if leon and staplehead3 are one and the same (though I have my suspicions…):

Lol “Next time, Leon, try doing a little reseach first.” you may want to take your own advice. I looked at the website you linked and I cannot figure out from which orifice in your body that you pulled those stats from. You are trying to skew statistics in your favor just because you know you can’t win without doing so.

Well, you know me. I couldn’t help responding to staplehead3 (in my comment, a link didn’t display properly; I’ve corrected that below):

I’m not sure how hard it is to do a little research. The table that I included in my comment was copied verbatim from the Snopes article that I linked to. But if that isn’t good enough, you can look at that link for homicide data from the FBI (http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-8). If you look in the top row of the far right column (I’m trying to make this easy for you…), you will see that there were 12,664 homicides in 2011. In the row just below that, you’ll see that of those homicides, 8,583 were committed with a firearm (the rows below that break down the type of firearm). If you divide 8,583 by 12,664, you’ll get 67.8% which just happens to be the number that Snopes used. If you then look down a few rows, you’ll see a row labeled “Blunt objects (clubs, hammers, etc.)”. I presume that baseball bats are included in this row as “clubs”. Anyway, if you once again look across that row to the last column, you'll see that in 2011, there were 496 homicides committed with blunt objects. Dividing 496 by 12,664 gives us 3.9%, once again the same number quoted by Snopes.

Now, I recognize that you probably don’t want to accept the FBI crime data as authoritative. So let’s try this: Provide me with concrete empirical evidence from a legitimate data source that shows “of all the ways people are getting killed, its people with basball bats that are doing most of the killing” (those were your words on May 17). You also alleged that your claim “is proven by reports from the FBI and the CIA”. So please provide me the links to those reports proving that “people with baseball bats … are doing most of the killing”. Take your time. I’ll wait.

I wanted to include the following graphic in my response comment, but apparently Blogger doesn’t allow images in comments:

That is a screenshot that I took of the FBI crime statistics page — the very same page linked to in the Snopes article that I quoted in my first response. I added the red circles to make it that much easier for the statistics to be understood. Also, if you’re interested in the 2012 data (the table above and the data quoted in the Snopes article is from 2011), that information is also available on the FBI’s crime statistics pages. And to nobody’s surprise, the 2012 data shows that, similar to 2011, 69% of homicides were committed with firearms while only 4% were committed with blunt objects (like baseball bats). In fact, since 2007, the highest percentage of homicides by blunt instrument was just over 4½% in 2009.

So, no, “people with basball [sic] bats” are absolutely not “doing most of the killing”. One final point on the statistics themselves: It occurred to me when I was writing this post that the FBI crime statistics deal only with crime; that is, the statistics do not include accidents that were not ruled to be homicides. And I think it’s safe to say (though I’m sure leon and staplehead3 would object) that far, far more people are the victims of accidental shootings than accidental bludgeoning by baseball bats.

With those facts in mind, query a few things:

• How is it that the meme that leon repeated, that baseball bats rather than guns are responsible for most homicides, is so easily accepted as true and then regurgitated without even applying any common sense thought to the idiocy of the claim?
• How is that staplehead3 could look at any of those links that I provided and not find the relevant data, concluding instead that I had pulled the statistics from a bodily orifice and skewed them (and did I make up the stats or skew them … I’m not clear on that accusation)?
• Why are those on the right (and I’m going to presume that both leon and staplehead3 are on the right given the positions that they’ve expressed) are so, seemingly, allergic to statistics and can only comprehend statistics that demonstrate a truth with which they disagree if they tell themselves that they numbers have been “skewed” (recall the claims from the right before the 2012 election that polling data showing President Obama ahead of Mitt Romney must have been skewed)?
• Why can’t people use comment threads like these to engage in civil discussion and dialogue without name calling?

I don’t have answers to these questions. I do suspect that cognitive dissonance plays some role; that is to say that some people are so tied to and invested with their particular worldview and understanding of how things should be, that data and evidence to the contrary must be wrong. After all, it’s much easier to say “the data is wrong” than to admit that you were wrong or, even worse, re-think your positions. Similarly, I think that may also explain the easy spread of the baseball bat meme. Those who harbor strong pro-gun views may be shocked by mass killings like that at Sandy Hook, and so need an outlet or a scapegoat for their own concerns. Thus, if there is someone or something that can be blamed instead of easy access to guns or the ease by which guns can kill multiple people, then misplacing that blame allows the true “villains” of the story (i.e., guns and the easy access to guns) to be left off of the proverbial hook.

The discussion of whether “guns kill people” is an interesting discussion. It’s a discussion worth having. Dialogue about whether additional gun control laws are needed is worth having. Dialogue about crime in America and keeping our children safe is worth having. But, as I say in reference to so many other things, we can’t have that dialogue if we can’t first agree on basic facts. When people are willing (with a degree of vitriol, no less) to spew obviously bogus “factual” talking points or are able to look at hard statistics compiled by what should be unimpeachable authorities and not comprehend what they’re looking at (or conclude that the statistics are “skewed”), then we’ve reached a point where common sense, meaningful dialogue is, essentially, impossible.

Some of us live in a reality-based world where logic and empirical evidence have value. But too many people have left reality behind, no longer trust empirical evidence, cannot fathom simple logic or rationale arguments, and seek, instead, to try to warp reality to fit into the fantasy that they’ve created for themselves. The question is whether we are going to let them drag us, our country, and our world down that rabbit hole with them … or whether thinking people will say “enough is enough” and try to reclaim the importance of truth as a basis upon which reality exists.