Two days ago I wrote a horror story.

While it hasn't exactly gone viral, it has become widespread, going places I didn't know existed. A few people didn't get it. Some thought I was actually advocating the scenario I described (did you motherfuckers not understand the fucking word "horror?"). Others thought I was crying about them damn Democrats in next year's election. I was only called an ammosexual once.

But one person (who I had a rather nice side discussion with before he got nitpicking and douchey about it) wanted to hear my thoughts on how we ~solve~ the problem of gun violence.

Now, my knee-jerk response to this is usually to point out that active shooter incidents, while increasing, are still so statistically insignificant that they're on roughly the same level as powerball jackpot wins, our violent crime rate has been cut in half over the last 20 years as our numbers of those carrying concealed has more than doubled; and of our remaining gun-related homicides, the bulk are being carried out by a professional criminal class that are much more interested in killing each other than anyone else.

...Then I ask if we weren't fixing the problem well enough or fast enough?

But since I have a request, challenge accepted.

Now, in identifying solutions, one must both identify the problem and realize one's limitations.

In this case, the problem is gun violence (though it's already decreasing from what we are doing).

Our limitations are what we are unwilling to do in our society. Looking at the last 30 years, we are expanding firearm access to the lawful rather than decreasing it. The second amendment is going nowhere.

Nor will we wipe out poverty or culture clash, with all of the capacity for violence those bring. We have already decided as a society that the benefits outweigh such liabilities.

Which still leaves us with the problem of gun violence. I, on the other hand, am addressing violence in general, rather than focusing on a weapon or even-tighter applications of said weapon.

Stage one is to learn, know, and accept violence as a force of nature. It has been with us since the dawn of time. It has useful and disastrous purposes. And it is how we channel, use, and treat that force that determines our relationship with it.

Fortunately, we have an example in how we dealt with another force.

Fire.

Fire is both useful and disastrous. In our earliest days, it warmed our bodies and cooked our food. Psychologically, it was our first weapon against the night we feared.

Later we harnessed fire's power. Our civilization grew in the light of cookfires, then forges, then furnaces.

But even as it built, fire consumed. It brought deaths from smoke in the air to flames in the flesh to collapsing buildings around us. We died in the flames from malice, and from accident, and from negligence.

Across the centuries, we burned. London, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Atlanta, San Francisco, the list goes on.
And so humanity fought back. We knew early on that fire could not be eliminated. But it could be controlled, diverted, contained, and fought.

We fought not with extinguishers alone. We fought with departments and extinguishers and alarms and building codes. We fought with some things that were worse and later abandoned (remember asbestos?). We enlisted a godsdamned cartoon bear in a drill instructor's hat and used him to teach our children. We had drills. We have mnemonics (stop, drop and roll, anyone?). We fought that force on multiple fronts.

And so the great fires that destroyed cities no longer happen.

And yet...

3,275 people were killed by fire last year (NFPA).

We will not eliminate a force of nature. We can contain. We can control. We can direct. We can prevent. But we cannot eliminate. And to think so is folly.

Now, violence.

Violence has been with us since the beginning. It has ensured our survival. It has defeated those who would subjugate or annihilate.

And yet, it has run rampant across the globe. It has wiped out families. Cities. Nations. Empires. It has let the strong prey upon the weak.

And so we controlled it. Channeled it. Contained it.

We told our children stories of what violence was for. How villains used it. How heroes did. We told of when it was needed and when it wasn't. We taught how the big bad wolf didn't stop trying to eat little red because he had an intervention, he stopped trying to eat her because some hairy blue-collar fuck that told off-color jokes and farted a lot put an axe through it's hairy skull.

(And yeah, we pointed out there's times when kindness, cleverness, submission, and trust saved the day instead. That's why there's more than one fairy tale. I never said this shit was easy or convenient.)

And then, in living memory, we fucked up.

We told ourselves that we had controlled violence so well, we could eliminate it. We didn't need it anymore.

We were as foolish as someone who thought they could destroy fire by eating raw food.

And to this day we are suffering for it.

We will not eliminate gun violence. Ever.

But we can control it. Channel it. Mitigate the damage.

And we can do so in the multi-stage ways we attacked fire. "Good guys with guns" won't do it alone. But good guys with guns mixed with drills and alarms and police training and children's education. The NRA uses a cartoon eagle to tell kids about gun safety. Why is there not a poster of that feathered fuck in classrooms across America?

We need to teach that the fire warms as well as consumes again.

We need to show that violence can solve some problems even as it can cause more.

And we need to acknowledge that there always will be deaths at the hands of others.

I never said a solution was cheap. Or easy. Or convenient.

Only that it's possible.
~J.

I normally don't go this dark with my work.

But since it is October, and as such the time of horror stories, I may as well get it out of my system. This one in particular dedicated to all those crying, "nobody's coming for your guns!"

Oh, the lies you tell, whether you believe so or not. But your ascertation is rather wrong, my friend. I'm not scared of someone coming to take my guns, be it Obama or Hillary or Bernie or anyone else.

What I fear is something far worse.

Let us start with numbers, shall we? There are, at present, some 320 million people in the United States of America, about three-quarters of which are adults. There is roughly 300 million privately owned firearms.

Figuring out how many gun owners are there is obscure. The most recent study out there claims at least one in three adults. That's certainly an underestimate (let's just say there's a segment of gun owners who are disinclined to be truthful to people with clipboards asking personal questions and leave it at that), but it's somewhere to put our feet.

That leaves 80 million gun owners across America.

Say we were to go about confiscating. Of course we would go about with voluntary turn-in programs and suchlike, grace periods and whatnot.

Of course, we have an example of that today, in fact.

In the wake of Sandy Hook, New York and Connecticut both passed laws requiring, among other things, registration of so-called "Assault weapons." Despite rampant opposition in both states (in NY, all but two counties north of Westchester filed resolutions opposing it), both acts were passed, and grace periods ensued. Violation is a class A misdemeanor in NY, a felony in Connecticut.

Noncompliance was rampant. Less than 45K weapons were registered in NY. It's estimated that an additional million were not. In CT, 50K were registered. An estimated 300K-350K or more were not.
For the math impaired, that's 85% or so noncompliance in NY. 95% or so in CT.

Two states that haven't voted Republican in over 20 years turned around and told their Governors to actively go fuck themselves. Over guns. And not just on principle, but over evil "assault weapons," no less.

On top of that, law enforcement have done squat to actually enforce said law. A grand total of one county sheriff was caught on camera claiming he would go door-to-door if necessary. Of course, he was speaking to a particularly annoying protester.

Supposedly, the CT legislature discovered nearly 70% of their sworn officers were violating the law themselves. Nothing has been publicly spoken, but then again, I wouldn't if I was a politician either.
Thus we come to the first problem. Ignorance of culture.

For those of you not from "gun culture," let me enlighten you. Yes, we do have a number of beer-swilling hillbillies with minimal social skills and discourse that would give a Bitterness Studies major an aneurysm before she was halfway through her morning latte.

But that's nowhere near all of us.

Remember, at least 80 million Americans. From all walks of life, all races, religions, sexual preferences, subcultures, all of which know the gun. If you've been in someone else's home ever, you've been in a home with a gun in it. I can guarantee you. You might be aware of this, and then again you might not. In some cases that's from the "wary of personal questions" bit mentioned above. In the case of our more moderate and liberal brethren (of whom there is far more than you believe), much of them prefer not to deal with the unholy shitfits fired off by their ostensible political allies.

Gun culture. People who like guns. Like shooting them. Like talking about them. Like reading on them.

And we are everywhere.

So, Confiscation.

The only remotely feasible manner of doing so is a house-to-house search across America. Complete. Total. Oh, we could just confiscate current 4473's and go to the listed addresses, but those only go back twenty years. Guns keep. So door-to-door it is.

Only, who does the door kicking and subsequent handling of the armed and presumably irate citizenry?

The police?

Every officer competent in such operations is a member of gun culture themselves to one degree or another.

(Note, I didn't say ~every~ officer. I said every one worth a rat's ass at this sort of thing.)

Remember, in blue-state Connecticut, well over half the sworn officers in the state were defying said laws.

The National Guard? Same thing. Range time is expensive, and reserves get even less of it than active duty. Those who have the competence are those who train on their own time and dime. Gun culture again.

But why stop there? We've fucked the 2nd amendment, let's burn Posse Comitatus while we're at it. Send in active duty troops! Send the Marines! Send mercenaries!

Gun culture. Gun culture. Gun culture.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Now, our hypothetical leader will find ~someone~ to carry out said order. But I think we're starting to see it won't be followed well. Or competently. One way or another, doors would be kicked.

Oh, but you say, you truly think all of those people would fight back? Risk imprisonment, murder, or death?

It doesn't have to be all. Historically, such resistance is usually about 10% of those targeted. Which means about 8 million people.

That's the population of New York City.

That's one hundred and thirty TIMES the size of the largest estimate of the fucking Taliban forces I've ever seen.

And that's just those actively fighting back. That doesn't include those who hide, cover other activities, impede confiscating authorities, or otherwise fuck up the entire operation.

What could happen? Let's see...

... a police chief uses the edict to start taking down a number of known crack dens in his jurisdiction. A fifth of his officers have quit, so he's had to round it out with rookies and shitbags, but he still has the force to do it. On day five of operations, they raid a house and lose two officers, one torn to pieces. One of the gangsters waiting for them was an Army vet, and had rigged the front door with a homemade claymore mine. The chief returns to his desk with shrapnel in his leg and the blood of two brother officers on his uniform to find a notice from the commissioner. She's wondering why he hasn't kicked in the door of a single house occupied by a white family.

...A clerk at a temporary ATF station is visited by her nephew for lunch. Halfway through a wonderful homemade lasagna, her nephew excuses himself and carries a large plastic jug down a hallway. By the time she finishes, she can begin to smell the burning paper from the room of confiscated records down the hall.

... A shut-in widow who doesn't give a hoot about politics has been hearing gunfire in the neighborhood every night. Shaking her head at young people, she loads her late husband's shotgun and leaves it leaning against her nightstand. Her room is just far enough from the front door that she has time to grab and raise it to the charging rookie officer that forgot to identify himself.

... An Army Colonel stands on the outskirts of a small town in Appalachia with most of a brigade behind him. They are tasked with encircling and occupying the small town ten miles off of this state road. Cursing himself, the Col. clicks on his microphone and gives the order to execute. His body then collapses in a ditch beside his command MRAP. His Sgt. Major, born not 20 miles from where they stand, holsters his pistol.

And on, and on, all across America.

The Romans had a phrase. Murum aries attigit. "The ram has touched the wall."

It is in reference to siege warfare. Until the first battering ram touched the walls of the city, it could negotiate and surrender in peace. But the first touch of the ram indicated the inevitability of bloodshed.

At best, an attempt at Aussie-style confiscation means organized crime on a level that makes Murder, Inc look like an SNL cast. At worst, we're talking a second civil war. Where one side has all the worthwhile fighters.

So no, I'm not worried about someone taking my guns.

I'm worried about some fool out there having the political power, personal ambition, and bloody-minded stupidity to try.

Because once that order is given, no matter how or if we ever get out of it, we, as a country, will wade in blood.

That, I think, is far more terrifying than my own disarmament could ever be.

~J.

Some uncomfortable math for those still wondering why the U.S. hasn't come close to having an Australian style gun confiscation.
Because the aussies are a decent analogue for Americans, right? They speak English, drink beer, watch cartoons and lack the natural healing factor and shape-shifting capabilities of the Canadians.
Legal and constitutional issues aside, we haven't come close to being hit as bad as the Aussies have been.
By the numbers now...
By and large, Australia's gun ban was triggered by the Port Arthur massacre. 35 dead, 23 wounded.
In and of itself, this is larger than any American mass shooting. Virginia Tech came close, 32 dead and 23 wounded. Next closest is Sandy Hook, 26 dead and 2 wounded, most of them children.
And even that doesn't take the prize for nastiest school attack. That honor goes to the Bath school bombing in the 1920's. And that one involved a teacher loading every basement of a multiple wing school building with explosives. 43 dead and 58 wounded.
But even that doesn't convey how hard Australia was hit in Port Arthur.
Australia only has about 23 million people.
As opposed to the US, with 320 million.
An adjusted for population shooting the size of Port Arthur in the US would have 490 dead, 322 wounded.
For perspective, that's 4 1/2 times the deaths of the oaklahoma city bombing. And that was done with a truck bomb and pre-9/11 police presence.
So if you want to ask why we're not doing what the aussies did?
Proportionally, we didn't take nearly as hard a hit.

The announcement yesterday that Playboy will soon cease publishing nudes in their print edition (they stopped being on their man website last year) brought my thoughts that way.
And I wonder, are we directing erotica in a way that will hurt us further down the line?
For centuries, new ways to communicate were spearheaded by porn. The first photograph, the first movies, the first videotapes, the list goes on. Porn was the deciding factor in at least two format wars.
Then an abrupt halt came when both Apple and Google banned explicit apps. For the first time in history, porn did not lead the way. It didn't even begin the journey.
But of course, porn finds a way. Either by piggybacking apps like tumblr with somewhat loose guidelines.. or DIY. Now, sexting and suchlike is nothing new, but how much of it has been exacerbated by lack of another option on the platform? How much would not have happened had there been alternatives?
Are we driving erotica underground out of old-school shame mixed with millennial community standards?
Now, I admit that yes, I can find porn at the click of a button. But that's because desktops and browsers still haven't been eclipsed entirely by mobiles and apps. How will that be affected the more they're separated.
I'm not blaming facebook or playboy or apple here, all of these are businesses, and they're following the paths that let them make money. I'm definitely not joining the moonbats who think facebook should be a public utility or anything.
But our own internet laws are clumsy at best and counterproductive at worst. No help from the government level there.
Social activism has done little. No matter how many celebrities have flashed their tits on instagram, those nipples still aren't free.
And of course I can't have a post like this without harping on America's inability to separate eroticism, sensuality, sex, and nudity, instead seeing them as one big gagglefuck to be kicked into the NSFW ghetto.
How long are we going to be able to talk of such things on a platform where we can't show them?

Times being what they are, I'm rapidly getting to the point when I'm only responding when personally invited to comment, debunk, or whatever. But that said, here's the most common reasons why I'm not particularly commenting. Some may fall into one or more categories.
(In General)
- I didn't see it.
It's facebook, people. I do have a life. I don't always scroll through everything. There's over a thousand of you on my feed. And if I read all of you, how will I ever have time to read the ads?
- I'm on my phone.
As such, I don't have the bandwidth or time to look up the various databases to prove, disprove, or check what you're saying.
- You're a proven rant bomb.
For every sentence I respond with, I'm gonna get a couple paragraphs in turn. This might be preaching to the choir or it might be a buzzword bushel. Either way, life is too short to deal with your output.
- I don't know where to begin.
Your chosen piece might deserve a novella-length fisking or it may take a semester's worth of papers to explain and/or debunk. See, "I have a life" above.
(Pro-gun)
- You've posted something so mind-numbingly jingoistic that even a hard-dick trigger puller like me tilted my head and said, "the fuck?"
Seriously, you just posted the Fb equivalent of a boot wearing a moto shirt to the mall. Some wide-eyed yoohoo who don't know any better might still suck your dick for it, but you're not getting long-term credit for it.
- You didn't bother checking your sources or numbers.
You have any idea how fucking annoying it is doing the math to debunk my own allies? Vet your shit, godsdamnit.
- You're going off on a tangent.
I talk guns, violence, self-defense, the police, warfare, and issues surrounding thereof. Grab-bag rants ain't my thing. OK, the joke about how everyone who enters NRA headquarters gets out alive was funny. Once. It's still tasteless and unhelpful.
(Anti-gun)
- We've agreed to disagree.
Rare, but it happens.
- You're posting something so wildly emotional, it's pretty clear that
you're not looking for debate, you're looking for a target to vent your spleen.
No thanks. You want to squeal helplessly at someone, hire a dominatrix. They're expensive, but they'll get the job done.
- Past experience has shown you to be an intellectual coward who will just delete any comments that contradict your position.
Your wall, your rules. Enjoy your echo chamber.
- I've flat-out written you off as willfully ignorant.
This takes time and effort to achieve. It's not that I don't like you (though you've probably frustrated the fuck out of me). Likely multiple conversations have occurred, and you've buried your head in the proverbial sand. Usually you're not a dumb individual in general. Ironically, it takes some smart people to be this actively stupid. But alas, that's where you've fallen.