A Few More Quick Thoughts on Gun Control

The gun control debate keeps rolling around in the public consciousness even as the news is dominated by the Fiscal Cliff -- Though it seems we are going to go over that cliff with regards to the spending cuts, but some of us might be saved from tax hikes;  As a beneficiary of the US Defense Budget, I am still worried.  

I know that in my post on the Newton Tragedy I said I was open to arming teachers.  Not so much any more.  A friend of mine pointed out it is possible for one of those teachers to snap and go on a rampage of their own.  The NRA may actually have a good idea with the police officer on station -- I would hope that gun buyers would be willing to pay an extra gun/ammo sales tax to fund the placement of an officer  in every one of our 98,000 or so public schools.  But, as your typical NRA member has something of a tax allergy, I doubt they'd be too happy about that.

In my opinion allowing teachers to carry guns on campus adds an extra layer of unnecessary risk.  What I am going to do next may shock some of you, and I apologize if you feel that applying some numbers to these kinds of horrific events is immoral, but I feel it proves my point.  If you can suspend your moral outrage for a moment and stick with me, I would appreciate it.    

In probability theory, the probability that Event A AND Event B will happen is given by the following formula:

Probability of Event A AND Event B Occurring = P(EventA) * P(EventB)

So what is the probability of a school shooting occurring at your school (or your son's school, or your daughter's school)?  I think the answer is given by asking the question "what is the probability that a school shooting will happen today AND what is the probability that will happen at my school?"

Based on Wikipedia (not the most authoritative source but good enough for this) there were 6 school shootings in 2012.  So the probability that a school shooting will happen today, based on the previous rate, is 6/365 = 1.64%.  

The probability that shooting will happen at my school?  The National Center for Educations Statics says that in 2009 - 2010 there were about 98,800 public schools in the united states.  There are an additional 33,360 private schools, for a total of  132160 schools.  The probability that the school shooting, when it happens, will be at your school is 1/132160 = 0.001%

So based on the formula given above, the probability that a school shooting will happen today and that it will happen at your school is a mere:

P(EventA) * P(EventB) = 0.00164*0.00001 = 0.0000001 = 0.00001%

Which is very small.  

Now, the by the same logic, we could calculate the probability that a teacher will go berserk and go on a similar rampage.  It too will be very small.  But when you introduce a mass of armed teachers on the scene you only add to the risk.  The question now is "Will a school shooting happen today AND will it happen at my school OR will a teacher go on a rampage AND will it happen at my school".  This is expressed in probabilities as:

Probability of Event A AND Event B Occurring OR Event C AND Event D Occurring = P(EventA) * P(EventB) + P(EventC) * P(EventD)

Clearly, all we have done is add to the risks we currently have.  

I will say that the risk is so small that it probably doesn't matter what we do.  For all the measures we could take, your children (my child) are already very safe in their classrooms (at least from something like this happening), and anything we could do is only going to make them marginally safer.  

But of course we should do something.  For all the math I just threw at you, even I recognize that the death of one of those innocent children is one too many.  

So if it really doesn't matter what we do, why NOT arm the teachers?  Because in addition to just adding to one of the (sadly) inherent risks of everyday life, I also believe with every fiber of my being that we should not live in a society where we feel the only way to keep our children safe is to always have someone around them who is packing heat.  I do not think we should live in a society where if I want to I can buy, with relative ease, a weapon more suitable for war than for anything else.  

I support anyone's second amendment right to arm themselves with a pistol, a shotgun, a rifle for hunting or sport or defense.  But an AR-15?  No one needs an AR-15.  If it takes you 45 rounds to kill a deer, well then you're not much of a hunter.  There are those who buy high powered weaponry just for the joy of having them and shooting them - I would argue that it might also be fun to ride a tank down route 17, but that doesn't entitle me to buy one.

If you want an AR-15 that badly, though,  I might be willing to let you have one.  But I am going to subject you to the mightiest background check, make you file all sorts of papers, take all kinds of gun certification classes, and I am going to additionally tax the shit out of it so that I can put an armed police officer in every school.  You want one?  You're going to have to earn it.    

We seriously need to rethink our attitude to the second amendment and our relationship to weaponry.  As I have said before, the second amendment was written in a very different time - I'll bet that one man armed with a Bushmaster rifle and a couple boxes of ammo could probably hold off an entire company or more of His Royal Majesty's 10th Regiment of Foot (at least of the 1776 vintage).  Two men certainly could.  

More fundamentally though, we need to think about the kind of society we are living in.  Why does this keep happening?  What could we be doing better in terms of mental health?  Why is our society so poisoned by violence?  Do we need to, collectively as a society, turn back to God?  Is that even possible to do?

Phew.  Lots of questions.  Few good answers.

In Which Nick Goes to Les Miserables and Cries Tiny, Tiny Tears.

The presents were opened, the turkey was in the oven, and the ghost of Christmas Present had matured into a fine middle age (featuring a rather dignified graying of the temples) when my mother suggested that she and my dad could watch my 4 year old daughter while Trish and I went to the movies.  We agreed to take her up on it, and there was really only one movie I wanted to see:

Les Miserables.

True, if I was looking for a joyful, uplifting capstone to my holiday another movie may have served better, for I knew that Les Miserables wasn't exactly a happy story, but from my memory of seeing it on Broadway about 9 years ago I don't remember it being too bad.

I had gone on my own while co-oping in Red Bank, NJ as a college student.  I remember hoping that maybe I would have the opportunity to sit with one of them thar purty New York girls - how exactly my shy and awkward self would have managed to even speak to one is beyond me, but with a little Big Apple magic I reckoned that anything was possible.

As it turned out, I was flanked by two middle aged menopausal women who were bawling after the first 15 minutes.  I began to fear it was going to be a long afternoon, but they must have got it out of their system because for the rest of the show I don't believe a tear was shed.  I can't say I remember the show that well, but I remember being uplifted and as my wife and I stood in line for tickets I assured her through the murk of the years that there is something of a happy ending.

I couldn't have been more wrong.  The 2012 movie version of Les Miserables is really, really good -  incredibly well done with a number of good performances and one profound one -  but contrary to my memory of seeing the musical it was just emotionally devastating. It's plain to see why - the film has an immediacy and intimacy that watching a Broadway show from the cheap seats just doesn't match. It is one thing to watch an understudy Fantine plow her way through "I dreamed a dream"; quite another to watch Anne Hathaway, with the camera pulled tight to her, sing the song in such a way that will break your heart, as her character rails against the Hell she's living with a full sweep of bitter emotions.  I certainly hope she wins the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for it; it is true that the movie is very fresh in my mind, but I cannot recall a more moving performance by anyone in recent memory.

What else?  The film version - this film version - makes the 19th Century far more visceral.  Again, it is one thing to see costumes and sets from afar on the stage - it is another to see the filth of Parisian street life, the blood of starry eyed revolutionaries being shed, the shit of the Paris sewers.

Ah, but then there is the love story between Cosette and Marius.  Dare I say that this is the stuff of Broadway?  A love built on a mere glance of each other in the streets?  I don't know how Victor Hugo handles it in the book (I have yet to read it, though it's on the list), but on film the love story seems flimsy.  That's probably not the film-makers fault; It's flimsy on stage to.  But it works on Broadway better than it does in a film such this for some reason.  There is honestly no better entertainment than a Broadway show and it is easy to suspend one's disbelief that love could blossom the merest of glances.  It is far more difficult to suspend disbelief when the characters are running around a 19th Century Paris that is rendered with detailed digital clarity.  

So go and see it.  If you like Les Miserables the musical you will probably like the movie - if you don't like the musical to begin with it may be worth going just to see Anne Hathaway's performance alone.  Though $10.00 is probably a lot to pay for one performance.  Maybe if you go by yourself you'll get to sit next to one of them thar purty movie going gals and if you get up the gumption to do so maybe you can ask if she'd like to go for coffee afterwards - or maybe you will be wedged between two aging old men who will constantly gripe about not being able to see and how loud the movie is and how the popcorn is too damn salty (even though they continue to eat it).

Maybe you should just wait until the movie gets pirated, spliced and diced and put up on You Tube.

A Festivus for the Rest of Us!

Growing up, my entire family (even the dog, I think) loved watching Seinfeld, and ever since the Festivus Day episode aired we have made Festivus Day into a sort of a thing.

I say sort of a thing because we didn't make it really a thing - It's not like we used to get the old Festivus pole out of the garage or have the Airing of Grievances or the Feats of Strength or anything like that.  But we always did note the day when it arrived, and it's not uncommon for me to call my parents and wish them a happy Festivus Day.  It does help that my Grandmother's Birthday happens to fall on the Feast of Festivus, and it is in an interesting coincidence given that my Grandmother, God Bless Her, has the art of airing grievances steeped in her old Serbian bones.

Aside from the fact that Festivus Day remains a quirky inside joke with my family, I like to keep the Festivus for two reasons:

1.  It means that Christmas is almost here!

2.  It means the Holiday Season is almost over!

That pretty much sums up what I think about the Holidays in general.  I enjoy Christmas in and of itself; it's a day of food and family and fun, and those are always great things.  I like watching a Christmas Story as much as anybody else (though once a year is plenty).  And Eggnog?  It takes my little two sizes two small heart through some kind of wormhole where on the other side I am wearing a tacky holiday sweater and singing "Hark the Herald Angles Sing" around a blazing fire with 5 or 6 of my closest friends, similarly adorned in yard upon yard of knitted fibers.

But the month long Holiday Season I'd be more than happy to leave behind. The joy of holiday feels to me kind of manufactured and its unrelenting in its tenacity.  But, with advertising so woven into the fabric of our society and with a four year old daughter who is really, really looking forward to Christmas, it has become very difficult to escape.  It may be hard to ask why one would want to escape it all, and that is not something I want to speak to today, but believe you me I'll be quite glad when the decorations get put away and the 2012 Holiday Season is over and done with.

Christmas Day is great, the Holidays kind of suck a little bit, but Festivus Day signals all at one time the opening of Christmas and the death knell of Christmas, and I couldn't be happier.

Ah.  Grievances aired.  Kind of feels good to get that off my chest.  Maybe Frank Costanza had the right idea after all.  I have just been asked to go and cut some green sprigs for Church Christmas decorations, which I think I can count as my Feats of Strength!

It's a little Festivus Day Miracle, and it looks like it just might be the best Festivus Day ever!





 

   

An Ethical Dilemma.

If aliens came down to the planet earth, kidnapped a 6 year old child, and put a gun in your hand and said "we will destroy the Earth if you do not kill this 6 year old child", would you do it?

That is one of the ethical dilemma's posed to me during an Ethics class in Virginia Tech.  The exercise was used to examine different ethical systems and their limitations.  Based on  Kant's categorical imperative, you probably wouldn't -- if killing is wrong than it is always wrong in all situations.  But if you were a Utilitarian, in which actions must be judged based on what is the best outcome for the most people, you would do it without hesitation, though certainly with a heavy heart.

It is perhaps a crass question to raise today, a mere few days after the tragedy in Newton Connecticut that took the lives of 26 people, 20 of them children only 6 and 7 years old.

Yet isn't that exactly what we are doing?  We as a country value our unfettered access to weapons of all kinds so much that we are willing to do nothing to mitigate these kinds of tragedies from happening over and over and over again; only its not the fate of the world that is at stake, but rather our Second Amendment right to bear arms - an amendment written in a very different time when the very best soldiers could fire a mere three poorly aimed rounds a minute.

As I said in the post after the Aurora shootings, I know that we will never ban all guns in this nation, and I don't want to.  I know that banning assault weapons won't keep these kinds of things from happening again.  I also know that probabilistically the chances it could happen to my daughter in her school are infinitesimally small.

But even if these events are mathematically rare, there is no question that they seem to be happening with a sickening regularity, and I know for damn sure our glorious Second Amendment as it currently stands, our "freedom", is not worth the death of one those innocent little children.

So what can we do?  The answer from the right seems to be to just throw more guns at the problem.  Could an administrator with an M-4 taken Lanza out?  Maybe, if he or she knew what was doing.  But by the time the teacher unlocked the weapon, loaded it up, donned her body armor and stormed out into the hall considerable damage would have already been done.

But I'll bite.  You want to make it possible for trained teachers or administrators to keep guns on campus?  I would rather not live in the old west, but okay.  In return, how about banning body armor, or banning 100 round  clips, or requiring special permits for buying assault weapons?  I am not saying you can't have one, if you really want one (though God knows why anyone would actually need one), but I would rather make it very hard to get one.

I don't want to get rid of the second amendment,  but I believe that the nearly unrestricted access to guns we currently have does us no good as a country at large. Closing one's eyes and hiding behind respect for the victims is no answer.  The best way to honor those whose live's were tragically and senselessly cut so short is to work towards a society in which this happens less and less, not more and more.  Something has to change; doing nothing is not worth the cost.

A Grown Man's Thanksgiving in Blacksburg

One Thanksgiving was so much like any other, in those years when the bustling college town of Blacksburg lay momentarily quiet beneath stilled cranes, their naked scaffolding stretching up towards heaven as if in supplication.

My wife, daughter, and I arrived at my parent's house in the late morning to find my father and brother -- arrived from Florida -- on the roof, stringing up Christmas lights.  Years ago my Dad combined an engineer's ruthless desire for efficiency with mankind's never ceasing desire to pierce the darkness; determined to have the biggest light display on the street, he bought hundreds of large multicolored lights and stapled them to 12' x 2" pieces of wood.  Every Thanksgiving, or there abouts, he takes the wooden slats and lights to the roof and simply unfolds the wood, plugs it all in, and with relative ease outlines the house in gaudy Christmas Joy.

Times have changed.  Much as Ruben's sensually curved Venus has been replaced with Flint's purely plastic and manufactured Vikki Vukovockovich, the large colored bulbs of my youth have been replaced by those damn dinky white icicle lights that everyone seems to be putting up these days.  Dad has been slow to adapt, and as he stands precariously perched on the roof, trying to hold the line between tradition and a world that is so rapidly changing all around him, one almost expects him to pull out a fiddle and start playing a sad little gypsy tune.  Grandpa always wanted him to learn to play the accordion, but somehow a man on top of a roof playing a polka doesn't seem to have the same poetical "oomph" attached to it.  Far more comedy, however.

Mom is hard at work, making Turkey, cooking stuffing, putting frozen macaroni and cheese in the oven (which is a shame because Mom's macaroni and cheese is always the best, but there is only so much one can do).  In a sign of caprice which is merely a sign of a woman of Slavic ancestry moving gracefully through middle age, she refuses to watch the Today show since Anne Curry was summarily and tearfully dismissed.  We have to settle for Good Morning America's coverage of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade, which is just not the same.

As the morning wears on the lights are done and I am joined in front of the TV by my brother.  The noon time football game starts but we've both been watching soccer for so many years that a game as slow as football American style just doesn't hold our attention anymore.  We change the channel to watch a replay of a UEFA cup match between Manchester United and Galatasarayayamayara, but we already know that Man U won 4 - 0 (which in American football terms roughly equals a 1,000,000,000 to 12) and so it doesn't really captivate us either.  Yawns are being stifled before even the first drumstick or bottle of wine is polished off, and the day is in danger of being lost in a Thanksgiving haze...

That is when my father escorts my 86 year old grandmother Milka, the прабаба, the стара битка секира herself, into the house and guides her frail frame into a comfortable chair.  She undoes her kerchief to reveal white hair pulled back into a severe bun as my mom offers her coffee, black, with a couple cubes of ice melted in (because hot coffee should not be too hot, you see).

The Prababa has been through a lot over the past couple of years.  Last year when she had breast cancer which should have killed her she also had a stroke which should have killed her; miraculously, through the grace of God and in spite of the miracles of modern medicine (the only Doctor who can really handle my Grandmother is a former Top Gun -- which should say a lot about her as a patient) Grandma Milka keeps pressing on down the path of life.  It's been tough on my parents, I admit, to see to her care.  Though she was born in America she is a Serb until she dies, and while she has her wits about her they seem to be the wits of an immigrant who is not too far from the boat (which is odd as she was born, as I said, in America).  As a consequence everything about her home country is a new and wondrous revelation to her, and she asks many, many questions.

It wears on my father.  But my brother and I love it.  The day is saved.

As we are watching football (a game which my grandmother still cannot come to grips with even after seeing it on TV for the past 50 years) she asks how much all the players make.

"It depends", my brother says.  "They are all pretty well paid, but some make more money than others."

"You mean that they all don't make the same amount?"

"Uh.....no."

Evidently, my grandmother believes that every job comes with a set salary that one who is engaged in that profession makes.  If you work at the mill you get $2.00 a week, no matter how good your performance is or how long you have been there.  If you are a football player, well, you must make $5.00 a week, or something like that no matter how good your arm is or how fast you can run.

My brother then makes a heroic but utterly vain effort to teach free-market principles to my grandmother, to describe the laws of supply and demand and how those rules apply to the market of human capital and how pay relates to performance and ability.  Grandma Milka simply shakes her head at one of the founding economic principles of a country she has lived in all her life.

Dinner was a triumph, except for a gravy that was whipped together at the last moment at my brother's demand and was so viscous it had to be spread over turkey and dressing with a knife like peanut butter.  It didn't matter to me:  as Stonewall Jackson wrote in his book of maxims, even bad gravy is better than no gravy at all.

We never move from dinner straight to coffee and pumpkin pie in my family but always allow for a break to let our food digest a bit.  I'm thinking of maybe taking a nap on the couch when the neighbors walk in with their seven year old son, Andrew.  We have a grand discussion touching on politics, books, bootie pops, but it's no thing for a child to sit and listen to or engage in, so in a lull he asks if anyone wants to play a game of chess.  I accept his challenge and we set up in the living room as Mom puts on a pot of coffee.

I am no great chess player, which makes me timid but conservative and tough to crack.  My general strategy involves covering all my pieces so that if my opponent takes any of my pieces I can take one of his or hers; as my opponent is also not usually a great chess player he or she is rarely bold enough to attack.  Soon the board is a tightly wound web of gambits and finally there is nothing to do but start taking pieces.  A bloodbath ensues, and if I can keep the right pieces I will generally win - protecting those pieces during the mid-game is always the hard part.

Now of course, Andrew is seven.  I have no desire to win.  I am still woozy from wine and turkey and I move my pieces carelessly, lose them, but I don't care.

I don't care, that is, until Andrew starts to get a little cocky.  As he sweeps my second knight from the board he does a little dance in his seat and sings in his little sing-songy voice "Looks like I'm gonna win!"

Oh no you won't, Andrew.  No you won't.  I am about to teach you a lesson, young squire, in humility.

I focus my full attention to the game.  I am so far behind, I have lost so many key pieces, that I am not sure I can actually win.  But I start making better moves and out of frustration he starts making bad ones, and I slowly start to turn the tables.  We both lose many pieces but in the end I still have a queen and rook and the game is mine.  Perhaps the gentlemanly thing to do would have been to ask Andrew to resign, but I want to play it out to the last and finally he is checkmated and Andrew is dancing in his seat no longer.

I at least had the polish to congratulate him on an excellent game (which it was), but Andrew looks glum and in the depths of my little two sizes two small heart I felt an incredible, shameful joy.

The pumpkin pie and the coffee go down well, Andrew thankfully cheers up when Mom (who has a heart three sizes bigger than average and that is without the benefit of EPO and other performance enhancing drugs) gives him double whipped cream on his slice, the neighbors leave, the Prababa is driven home. As Thanksgiving winds towards its conclusion we all consider going to fight it out in the Wal-Mart for whatever merchandise we can get our hands on, but the day has been so good and kept so well it seems a great disservice to end a day for family and food by taking part in any kind of hectic Black Thursday shopping frenzy.  Christmas can wait for a few more hours.

It would be a more fitting end to the day if we were all, Pilgrim style, to gather around and read some Bible verses and give thanks to a God who has given us so much; but the Marickovich's aren't really wired that way either.  Any thanks by those who still believe (and I think most of us do, in some way or another) is offered in the privacy and silence of the mind.

As it was, I put my daughter to bed in the guest room and went back into the living room, kicking back on the couch with Gore Vidal's monolithic but excellent Lincoln in hand.  I didn't get through much more than a paragraph in before I was enveloped by a close and holy darkness, and then I slept.