Gun-free zones

The New Neo Posted on by

I had a doctor’s appointment the other day, and as I arrived I noticed a huge sign on the door announcing that I was entering a gun-free zone.

As I sat in my chair waiting, I pondered—not for the first time—what the purpose of such an announcement might be. Because to me it seems that it’s tantamount to a great big sign saying: “Defenseless sitting ducks here.”

I truly cannot imagine a scenario where such a sign would deter a would-be troublemaker or killer, and I can certainly imagine a situation where it would encourage such a person. Is there any would-be perpetrator planning to barge into a doctor’s office with a gun, eager to blast people away, who would see that sign and stop in his/her tracks and think, “Oops, I better go somewhere else to do some massacring. They don’t allow guns here!”?

Of course not. Au contraire.

In this case we’re talking about a gynecology office, by the way, so it’s a roomful of women. As I said, sitting ducks.

Another scenario that the sign makers may have had in mind is the person who carries a gun for defensive purposes, enters the office peacefully, but suddenly becomes enraged there. Maybe it’s a guy accompanying his wife and they suddenly have an argument in the waiting room. Maybe it’s a woman who doesn’t like being kept waiting (gynecology offices are notorious for waiting, although mine is very good that way). The idea is that gun owners—or people in general—are inherently unstable and might fly off the handle easily and then use those guns. But again, would such people ever be deterred by a mere sign? If they ordinarily carry, and left their weapons in the car, for example, all they have to do is go out there and get it and then re-enter the office.

However, there is one logical reason for having a gun-free zone, and that is to prevent the accidental discharge of a loaded weapon. But most of these incidents (called “NDs” for “negligent discharges,” or “ADs” for “accidental dischares,” depending on the circumstances) occur when a gun is being handled, often for cleaning. I doubt anyone is going to clean a gun while waiting to be called on in the gynecologist’s office by the nurse, however boring the wait might be.

Where do NDs take place? Here’s a rather large study, and it appears that they occur either in the home or at gun ranges or gun shows or gun stores:

Now there are many reasons why we saw that the home was the most common place for these discharges to take place. A LOT”¦ and I mean FAR TOO MANY of these incidents happened when a child picked up an unsecured firearm that was not stored properly. There were also accidents while cleaning, or sometimes just playing around with the gun. But the overall motif behind each shooting is the same: It was simply due to a lack of care being taken at home and people letting their guard down.

I just spent quite a bit of time trying to ascertain how often, and under what circumstances, a concealed weapon that is not being handled goes off and injures someone. So far I don’t have the answer, and I’m going to give up for now (you’re free to keep looking, of course). I did encounter a great many articles that agree that a properly concealed weapon (properly holstered, for example) just about never goes off accidentally. But how many weapons are carried improperly, how many of them do go off, and if they do, is the only person ordinarily injured the gun owner?

I don’t have definitive answers to those questions, but if you look at articles such as this, for example, it seems fairly clear that a properly concealed weapon just about never go off accidentally, and the problem is encountered far more frequently when people take out concealed weapons and handle them improperly. But who takes out a weapon in a doctor’s office without meaning to use it? And would someone so negligent and reckless as to carry a firearm improperly (unholstered gun in a pants waistband, for example) really be obeying those “gun-free zone” signs, anyway?

By the way, quite a few firearms accidents that do take place in public areas that are not gun shows or firing ranges occur in public bathrooms and injure no one but the gun owner. Here’s the story of how it happens, in case you’re interested.

I haven’t found any incidents of the sort that advocates of gun-free zones seem to have in mind: where a concealed weapon is accidentally discharged in a public place such as a doctor’s office, for example, and injures others. Certainly I have never seen any that involve a properly carried (holstered, etc.) concealed weapon. That doesn’t mean such incidents never happen, but I just haven’t located any.

Yeah, it’s playwright

The New Neo Posted on by

When I write posts about grammar or spelling I try to be extra extra careful not to make any grammar or spelling mistakes, because it’s almost inevitable that I will.

Almost. We’ll see.

Today I was using the word for “the person who writes plays” and I had to pause for a moment and look it up to make sure it was “playwright” and not the more logical “playwrite.” Not to mention the fact that a careless person might even think it’s “playright,” although that would clearly be wrong.

It’s “playwright,” of course, although intuitively most people must think “playwrite” and people often spell it that way (Spell Check just reprimanded me when I typed the word).

The reason it’s spelled “wright” is that the word is an old-fashioned one for “fabricator,” a crafts person who creates something. There was even a Playwright’s Guild to designate that fact.

Now that we’ve cleared that up, back to our usual programming…

Why was the Ferguson grand jury testimony released?

The New Neo Posted on by

I noticed yesterday in the “Ferguson, the play” thread that there seems to be some confusion about the way the grand jury testimony in the Ferguson matter was obtained by the playwright. So I thought I’d try to clarify.

No, the author didn’t have to do any special sleuthing to have access to the Ferguson grand jury proceedings. And yes, these things are usually sealed.

Ferguson was considered an extraordinary case in which public interest was intense and there was grave risk of riots and other violence at the announcement of the grand jury’s decision, particularly if it went against what the crowd wanted.

If the grand jury indicted Wilson, there would ordinarily be a trial and the evidence would come out publicly. In addition, the mob would be happy about an indictment. But what if there was no indictment? In that case, not only would there probably be violence, but the public would never know on what the grand jury had based its refusal to indict. There would be a very volatile situation in terms of public safety, and this was understood at the outset.

So before the grand jury even began its work, this announcement was made [emphasis mine]:

The decision to indict Wilson rests with the grand jury.

“If there’s an indictment of any charge, then all of the information would come out during the course of the prosecution,” [prosecutor] McCulloch said. “If there is no indictment, normally it’s a closed record, a closed file unless the judge agrees to release it. And the judge has told me that she will order that everything be released.”

All testimony is being recorded, McCulloch said, It is being prepared for release as the grand jury progresses, and is being shared with the federal government, which is conducting an independent investigation.

Such a release is unusual but not unprecedented and within the discretion of the judge. The MSM covered the release, and the full text of the proceedings was not only available to the playwright but to anyone with access to a computer.

Ferguson, the play

The New Neo Posted on by

I haven’t followed the story of this play too closely till now, but it sounds fascinating:

McAleer told me about Ferguson: The Play, a crowd-funded courtroom drama he wrote based strictly on grand-jury testimony following the shooting death of Michael Brown by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014. McAleer has a Michael Moore-style impish streak and a Moore-style knack for creating controversy: When the play was in the workshop stage in Los Angeles two years ago, according to Deadline, cast members staged a mass walkout because they “felt uncomfortable in what they described as a play overly sympathetic to the police officer.” McAleer says the play simply lays out the facts, with no spin. Those facts tend to be inhospitable to the left’s narrative.

It may seem hard to see how a play that merely dramatizes courtroom testimony can be criticized. But where there’s a will there’s a way.

This particular run of the play ends on November 5, but it is hoped that there will be another run. I’d certainly like to see it. More information here:

McAleer, who is Irish but now lives in Los Angeles said growing up in Northern Ireland during the Troubles meant he felt compelled to write the FERGUSON play stating: “Growing up in Northern Ireland during troubled times taught me that the truth is very important – that no problems can be solved, no injustice righted, until we know the truth about contentious events or issues. That is why I was so strongly drawn to the Ferguson story. I was shocked when I read the transcripts of the Grand Jury investigation, there is so much truth about the shooting of Michael Brown that people don’t know and that was not being made public. I have an opportunity to bring to the stage the truth about what happened in Ferguson, Missouri the morning police officer Darren Wilson shot Michael Brown dead. I have been a journalist for 25 years and this is one of my most important projects and, also one of the purist. I have deliberately excluded the “journalistic voice,” from this project, there is no filter, no bias – just the voices of eyewitnesses. The truth is not necessarily what the public came to believe, it is full of shocks and surprises, but is unbelievably compelling. I hope the audience appreciates it and joins me on my journey to the truth.”

The magic of diversity, even for jihadis

The New Neo Posted on by

So now we learn that the New York truck terrorist came here from Uzbekistan on a “diversity visa” in 2010. Have you ever heard of this program before? I hadn’t, but it’s also known as the “green card lottery,” and that sounds at least somewhat familiar.

You or I may not have heard of the program prior to its gaining notoriety from this terrorist’s actions, but there are some Republicans who’ve been trying to end it for some time:

Trump, though, along with Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) and Sen. David Perdue (R-GA), has been calling for an end to the Diversity Visa Lottery program since August. Under the RAISE Act, introduced in February and endorsed by Trump in August, the Diversity Visa Lottery would be eliminated altogether.

The Trump administration took eliminating the Diversity Visa Lottery even more seriously earlier this month when they introduced the president’s immigration priorities, which like the RAISE Act called for the elimination of the program.

In an interview with Breitbart News, Cotton said the Diversity Visa Lottery does not serve the national interest, as it arbitrarily rewards random foreign nationals with visas to come to the U.S.

“The diversity lottery serves no discernible humanitarian or economic interest,” Cotton explained to Breitbart News.

A man whose writing I’ve come to rely on more and more these days for all things legal—Andrew C. Carthy—has been critical of the diversity visa policy for a decade. Today he writes a must-read column on the subject; I strongly suggest you read the whole thing, but here are some excerpts:

I wrote about the Diversity Visa Program in The Grand Jihad, my book about the sharia supremacist strategy for infiltrating and “destroying the West” (to quote the Muslim Brotherhood). As detailed there: “Since the Bush 41 administration, the State Department has also been running a “Diversity Visa” program, the very purpose of which is to promote immigration from countries whose citizens resist coming to the United States ”” i.e., to encourage our cultural disintegration. It is a hare-brained scheme, concocted by hard-Left Senator Ted Kennedy, because the Irish (yes, the Irish!) were purportedly underrepresented in our gorgeous mosaic. Mark Krikorian, the director of the Center for Immigration Studies, describes the consequences: Fully one-third of the annual diversity-visa lottery winners now come from Islamic countries, which means that the program has become a disproportionately important immigration vehicle for Muslims.”…

As night follows day, we learn that, in the years leading up to yesterday’s attack, Saipov gravitated to the Omar Mosque in Paterson, N.J. Sharia supremacism’s inroads have made the community the object of counterterrorism investigations for over a dozen years. Because of the centrality of immigration issues to the Trump campaign and presidency, we have been debating visa and refugee policy. I’ve thus tried to point out, any number of times: While the potential that trained jihadists could enter the country by masquerading as good-faith immigrants is serious, it is not the primary danger. The overarching threat is self-created: an immigration policy that promotes assimilation-resistant enclaves in which sharia supremacism embeds…

…[a]s we’ve been contending here for months, the ill-considered, ineffectual “travel bans” have pushed the Trump administration into a posture that makes screening for sharia supremacism much more difficult…

I revisited this problem after the Supreme Court allowed these travel restrictions to go into effect last summer: “As I have been arguing, the executive orders in question have been a disaster because they provide no meaningful improvement in security, yet the litigation over them has done serious damage to the overarching goal of an improved vetting system. In order to defend the president from the claims of anti-Muslim bias, the administration has argued that the travel-ban orders have nothing to do with Islam. Thus, the administration has been lured into supporting, at least tacitly, the proposition that restrictions on alien admissions would be constitutionally invalid if they took Islam into account. Yet, without taking Islam into account ”” i.e., without sorting anti-American sharia supremacists from pro-American Muslims supportive of the Constitution ”” there is no way to restrict the entry of Muslims who would increase the threat of jihadism and undermine our society.”

When Trump was a candidate and first proposed his Muslim travel ban it created a storm of disapproval. Nearly two years ago, when that happened, I suggested that ideological vetting was the way to go (and I quoted Andrew C. McCarthy at length on the subject). I haven’t changed my mind.

“Diversity” is one of those words that has come to be considered by the left to be good in and of itself, and it’s been drummed into us that if we’re against it we’re racists. Well, I’m all for racial and ethnic diversity, but I draw the line at ideological diversity in which people who espouse belief systems antithetical to the ideals and traditions and laws of America are let into this country. Such people can come in all shapes and sizes, but Islamic jihadism is one of the most dangerous of the ideologies and only Muslims espouse it.

There are plenty of Muslims who are just fine (I’ve written about that many times before, for example here, so if you disagree with me go read my posts on it). But there are some who are not, and we need to figure out who they might be. What’s more, in the meantime, programs that encourage more and more Muslims to come from countries where terrorism has a significant presence are programs that need to be suspended or substantially changed. And above all, the vetting process needs to be designed to explicitly weed out those who might want to destroy this country—and that includes all such ideologies of that sort, not just jihadism. If we are unsure how to do that, we need to err on the side of caution until we figure it out.

And yes, people can also be radicalized after moving here. That’s another knotty problem. But it’s true of the millions of people already here, and it’s of jihadism even true for converts to Islam. So later ideological radicalization will remain a risk. But the way to deal with that—and one I strongly advocate—is the approach McCarthy alludes to when he writes [emphasis mine]: “The overarching threat is self-created: an immigration policy that promotes assimilation-resistant enclaves in which sharia supremacism embeds.” There are mosques that are known to be recruitment and propaganda centers for jihadism, and something more needs to be done to infiltrate and crack down on this phenomenon.

But for starters, it’s time to end the diversity visa system, an outdated policy that has too much risk built into it—and that was the case even before this attack. Let’s see whether Congress manages to tackle this one, because it was an act of Congress that created it.

Some additional details on the New York terrorist attack

The New Neo Posted on by

In the aftermath of the New York terrorist attack, there are two companies that must be especially unhappy about this particular attack: Uber (the perp had been an Uber driver) and Home Depot (the truck was rented there and had a large Home Depot logo on it). That’s not the sort of product placement you want.

It seems quite clear that this terrorist wanted to be killed. Why else would he wave two fake guns around after jumping out of the vehicle? The police didn’t quite oblige him, and hopefully they’ll learn something from him:

Shortly after Saipov crashed into the bus, Nash, a uniformed officer, “confronted the subject and shot him in the abdomen,” Police Commissioner James P. O’Neill said during a press conference following the attack.

A pellet gun and a paintball gun were recovered from the scene, officials said…

Officers were able to talk to him before the surgery, the source said. It is unclear if he told them anything.

My guess is he has not told them anything important. Not yet, anyway. He has reportedly bragged, though, about his fine day of work:

The suspect in Tuesday’s terrorist attack in lower Manhattan bragged to police about the deadly attack from his hospital bed, saying he would have continued mowing down bikers and pedestrians had he not crashed.

Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov, 29, told police he is pleased with his actions and is unapologetic for the attack, sources tell CBS News. One source said Saipov made “no bones” about the attack, which killed 8 people and injured at least 12.

I wonder what led to the crash.

And in a very strange twist of fate, the killer happened to plow into part of a group of 10 Argentinians on holiday, celebrating the 30th anniversary of their school graduation with a trip to the states. Five of the eight victims of the attack were Argentinians from this group. One victim was a Belgian national vacationing with family. So only two of the victims (unnamed so far, so we don’t know their identities) may have been Americans.

I doubt the terrorist cared—one dead infidel was probably just as good as another to him.

Possible terrorist attack in lower Manhattan

The New Neo Posted on by

This is a breaking news story, but it certainly looks like there’s a good chance this could be a terrorist attack:

Police and witnesses say a motorist drove onto a busy bicycle path near the World Trade Center memorial and struck several people, then emerged from the vehicle screaming and firing something that appeared to be a gun.

An Associated Press photographer on the scene Tuesday witnessed at least two bodies lying motionless on the path beneath tarps.

CBS News reports at least six people died in the incident.

The New York Police Department posted on its Twitter feed that one person was in custody. The department says it’s unclear whether anyone was shot.

We really don’t know very much about this attack yet, but in the next couple of hours the situation should become more clear. Reports on TV just now are that all the dead were killed by the vehicle rather than a firearm.

This is the modus operandi of terrorists, but it also could be a copycat perp who thinks this looks like a really nifty way to murder people.

Candy corn time again

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: The following is a slightly edited version of an old post.]

On Halloween I’ve often noticed that, when kids came to the door, they seem to grab the little packets of candy corn first. That doesn’t surprise me, since I’m a huge fan of the disgustingly sweet stuff myself and have absolutely no ability to resist it. The only resistance I can muster is at the grocery store, or after I’ve eaten enough to feel ill.

I’m hardly alone in this; it’s estimated that twenty million pounds of the classic treat (invented in the 1880s) are sold every year in the US. I personally might be responsible for approximately a ton of that if I gave in to my worst impulses. However, I keep my addiction in tightly-controlled check.

Once I even went to a Halloween party dressed as a piece of candy corn, and I was already a grownup at the time. And apparently I am not the only adult who has dressed up as candy corn on Halloween. And no, I didn’t look like this—more’s the pity (although to be technical, isn’t she dressed as two pieces of candy corn, the body and the hat?):

candycorncostume.gif

Even some fanatically health-consciously vegans seem to crave candy corn although alas, the treat is off-limits to them because of its animal-related ingredients. Animal ingredients? If you doubt my words, just take a look:

Sugar, Corn Syrup, Salt, Honey, Soy Protein, Gelatin, Confectioner’s Glaze, Dextrose, Artificial Flavor, Titanium Dioxide Color, Artificial Colors (Yellow 6, Yellow 5, Red 3, Blue 1)

Gelatin and honey must be the big no-nos. But happily, a thoughtful vegan (are there any other kind?) mother has come to the rescue with a recipe for candy corn so complex and labor-intensive that it undoubtedly reflects a devotion to the stuff even more intense than mine. Try it if you dare—and if you are insane.

There are various gourmet variations on candy corn, and I’ve sampled quite a few in my day. To my mind they can’t compare to good old Brach’s. But after watching the following highly informative video, I may just try some Goelitz:

And here’s a burning question I was reminded of by the video: do you eat your candy corn in sections? And, if so, do you consider the top to be the yellow part or the white part? I’ve always seen the little white triangle as the “foot” of the candy corn, but I learned when I designed my costume years ago that most people see it the other way. For those who might be inclined to disagree with me, I offer the following exhibit from the realm of science:

corn-components.jpg

One of these things is not like the other??

The New Neo Posted on by

Kevin Spacey’s “House of Cards” (which I’ve never seen) has been suspended by Netflix (which is their prerogative) after Anthony Rapp revealed that Spacey had attempted to molest him at a party about 30 years ago and was successfully fended off by Rapp, who was 14 at the time.

In 2003, Hollywood gave an Oscar to Roman Polanski for Best Director and one for Best Picture for “The Pianist” while Polanski was living abroad in order to avoid prosecution for drugging and raping a 13-year-old girl about 40 years ago.

Polanski still holds that accolade, and others, for the film. He’s also still avoiding prosecution for the crime. He seems to have remained in Hollywood’s good graces nevertheless. Why?

That’s somewhat of a rhetorical question but it’s also somewhat of a real question. Polanski’s offenses seem so egregious that I’ve long wondered—long before the post-Weinstein frenzy—how they can continue to stand by him.