Another Policy Debate We Should Be Having

It's being reported that Adam Lanza, the gunman who killed his mother Friday morning at her Connecticut home before driving to an elementary school and gunning down another 26 people, including twenty children, ended his rampage by taking his own life.

Thank God.

Suicide is an ugly thing, but it was a fitting end to this incomprehensible monster. First, because it is, by its nature, a very cowardly act. Second, because no one else had to be the one to end Lanza's life.

Taking a life, even when it’s totally justified and necessary to save others, can be a nerve-racking experience, so I’m glad that no one was put in the position of having to take Lanza out. For all we know, he wanted to be brought down in a hail of gunfire. 

Even if Lanza had not died by his own hand, it's good that the survivors and the families and friends of the people he murdered will not have to endure his continued existence, as the surviving victims of other mass shootings (e.g., those perpetrated by James Holmes in Aurora and Maj. Nidal Hasan at Fort Hood) must.

Think about what it would have been like for the bereaved families of those Lanza killed, knowing that the man who visited this unimaginable horror upon them still walked the earth, living, breathing, while they laid their dead to rest.

Had Lanza lived to be prosecuted, he would not have faced the death penalty. Connecticut abolished capital punishment earlier this year. (Oddly enough, the law, passed by a Democrat-controlled state legislature and signed into law by Gov. Dannel Malloy (D), did not apply to the sentences of the eleven inmates currently on death row in the state.)

I'm not one of those death-penalty proponents who believe that deterrence is the only justification for capital punishment. There are some criminals so dangerous that life imprisonment alone is inadequate to eliminate the threat they pose to society. (One good example is the case of Gary Tison, an Arizona man who was sentenced to life in prison for killing a guard but managed to escape with the help of his family and later murdered six others before dying of exposure in the Arizona desert.)

Suppose Lanza were still alive. Suppose he was tried for and convicted of murdering everyone he had killed. Even if he spent the rest of his life in prison, the length of his incarceration wouldn't come close to the sum total of all the years he took off the lives of his victims. (The same, of course, could be said if he were sentenced to death and executed, but at least then he would have been subject to something comparable to the heinous acts he committed--having his life ended prematurely, against his will.)

The Sandy Hook massacre has, predictably, evoked calls for government action to prevent future mass shootings or at least reconsider our gun laws. But Connecticut already has some of the strictest gun-control laws of the U.S., and they didn't do a damn thing to prevent the most deadly shooting at a grade school in our country's history. What's more, the firearms Lanza used apparently belonged to his mother Nancy, who by all accounts was a responsible gun owner. Should we forbid the purchase or ownership of deadly weapons by anyone with a potentially dangerous relative? 

The efficacy of gun-control laws is debatable, as are the deterrent effects of the death penalty. I for one am willing to discuss both. Never mind the issue of whether it’s appropriate to make earnest policy arguments in the wake of such an atrocity; the debate has already begun. Those who abstain from policy discussions so as not to be seen as politicizing a tragedy risk not having their voices heard.

The late Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis famously wrote in his concurring opinion in the 1927 case of Whitney v. California, "If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, [then] the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence." If you see or hear someone making a false or fallacious statement in furtherance of what you regard as bad policy, then don't silence yourself out of some obsolete sense of decency. As another right-wing genius once said, "Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice, and moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue."

Tragedy, Unadulterated

 

(REUTERS/Adrees Latif) 

Let's start by acknowledging a painful reality: There's no way to make sense of what happened this morning in Newtown, Connecticut. It was a senseless act of violence that killed over two dozen people, most of them children, right before Christmas. Even if we’re able to ascertain the shooter’s motive, there’s no justification for his actions.

I tried to find the right words to appropriately address this mass shooting, but then I realized that it really doesn’t matter. Anything that is said about this could do no more than incrementally alleviate or compound the pain it’s caused.

I was reminded of another horrifying calamity at a schoolhouse. One that occurred close to home, but far back in time.

On March 18, 1937, the London School in New London, Texas exploded. 311 people were killed, mostly children. Never before and not since has a single occurrence at a U.S. school taken so many lives. 

Like Newtown, New London was (and still is) a quiet community nestled in rural arcadia. One could hardly have blamed its denizens from feeling insulated from the worst of the world. The London School Explosion, of course, was caused by a gas leak, not an act of human malice, but I don't suppose that made it any easier for the hundreds of bereft to take. 

If you crave something therapeutic, some words that might soothe or comfort your soul in the wake of this awful news, then I'm afraid I won't be of much use to you, but here’s a sentiment from one of my old college chums, via Facebook:

My heart is broken to hear about the horrible tragedy in Connecticut. How sad it is to think that even the most innocent children are not safe from the horrors of the world. As we pray for all those involved, please take a moment to cherish your own loved ones.

Do not feel guilty if your appreciation of getting to spend time with your loved ones this holiday season is in any way enhanced by what happened at Sandy Hook Elementary this morning. Any good that can come of this tragedy will be in affront to the unmitigated evil that perpetrated it.

Yeah, It Was a Stupid Thing to Say. Can we PLEASE Stop Talking About It?

 Its been less than three full days since NBC sportscaster Bob Costas used his halftime segment on Sunday Night Football to expound on the tragic murder-suicide perpetrated by Kansas City Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher, and I'm already sick of hearing about it. If you watched FOX News in the last 48 hours, then you've probably seen or heard about Costas's remarks. Basically, Costas stired up a controversy when he echoed the sentiments expressed by Fox Sports columnist Jason Whitlock in his Sunday column. Here's a piece byan excerpt of what Whitlock wrote:

Jovan Belcher, a starting linebacker for the Chiefs, murdered the mother of his child shortly before 8 a.m. Saturday. He hopped in his car, drove to the Kansas City Chiefs practice facility, thanked Romeo Crennel and Scott Pioli — and shot himself in the head in front of his coach and general manager around 8:10 a.m.

Within two hours, the NFL instructed the Carolina Panthers to travel to Kansas City as scheduled in preparation for Sunday’s noon kickoff. By 3 p.m., the Chiefs announced that Crennel and team captains had decided to play Sunday’s game as planned.

Short of terrorist attack and weather disaster, nothing slows the NFL.

A 25-year-old kid gunned down his 22-year-old girlfriend in front of his mother and three-month-old child, and all he could think to do in the immediate aftermath is rush to thank his football coach and football employer. Belcher’s last moments on this earth weren’t spent thanking the mother who raised him or apologizing to the child he would orphan. His final words of gratitude and perhaps remorse were reserved for his football gods.

It should come as no surprise that Crennel, Chiefs players, Pioli, owner Clark Hunt and NFL commissioner Roger Goodell quickly agreed not to delay Sunday’s football congregation at Arrowhead Stadium.

Football is our God. Its exaggerated value in our society has never been more evident than Saturday morning in my adopted hometown. There’s just no way this game should be played.

Twenty-eight hours after witnessing one of his starting linebackers take his life, Crennel will stand on the sideline as young men play a violent game. Twenty-eight hours after one of their best friends killed the mother of his child and himself, Chiefs players will take the field and play a violent game.

Football is a game of emotion. Football is a game in which the coaches and players preach about treating each other as family.

How can they play Sunday? Why should they?

Belcher and his girlfriend didn’t die in a car accident 30 minutes away from Arrowhead Stadium. This isn’t some tragedy Crennel and Pioli heard about. Belcher crashed his car through the gates of the Chiefs practice facility. He pointed a gun to his head in front of Crennel and Pioli. He killed himself within a quarter of a mile of Arrowhead Stadium, where the players and coaches work.

I just don’t get it. And I’m not trying to vilify the Chiefs for choosing to play Sunday’s game. It shouldn’t be their decision. Roger Goodell should’ve made this call. Crennel, Pioli and Kansas City players are justifiably still in a state of shock.

I wholeheartedly agree, and if these were the sentiments Bob Costas chose to repeat on national TV Sunday night, then he wouldn't have evoked the ire of the emotive Right. But Costas didn't question the wisdom/sensibility/propriety of going ahead with a football game the day after one of the teams' star players killed his girlfriend in front of their child and then committed suicide in front of his coach and GM. Instead, he chose to quote or paraphrase the following lines from Whitlock's article:  

Our current gun culture simply ensures that more and more domestic disputes will end in the ultimate tragedy, and that more convenience-store confrontations over loud music coming from a car will leave more teenage boys bloodied and dead.

In the coming days, Belcher’s actions will be analyzed through the lens of concussions and head injuries. Who knows? Maybe brain damage triggered his violent overreaction to a fight with his girlfriend. What I believe is, if he didn’t possess/own a gun, he and Kasandra Perkins would both be alive today.

Costas made it clear that he shared Whitlock's view, telling the audience that, while he did "not always agree" with Whitlock, the columnist had "said it so well that we may as well just quote or paraphrase from the end of his article." 

Bob Costas’s little speech didn’t prevent me from enjoying finally watching my Cowboys win a game. Truth be told, I didn’t even watch it when it aired. Like most football fans, I spend halftime not watching whatever filler material networks come up with to fill time in between the second and third quarters. I only learned about what he had said Monday morning on the news. It seemed to be a hot topic, at least on cable news.

Now I'm getting sick of hearing about it. What Bob Costas did on Sunday night wasn't right, and it wasn't wrong. It was stupid. It was stupid because he chose to adopt as his own the opinions of a man who in other venues has called the NRA "the new KKK." It was stupid because Costas himself, like many anti-gun celebrities, benefits from the protection of armed guards. It was stupid because "our current gun culture" is not characterized by an increase in violent crime, at least not if you believe in statistics. 

I live in Texas. Actually, I live in Arlington, about four miles west of the stadium where Costas gave his little speech Sunday night. We have a right-to-carry law. Since the law was passed in 1996, our violent crime rate has dropped 20%, and the murder rate is down 31%. In 2010, there were actually 229 fewer murders, 748 fewer rapes and 9,011 fewer aggravated assaults than in 1996. (Our population increased by about 6 million, or 31%, in the same time span.) If handguns don't make us safer, then the knowledge that a murderer/rapist/robber's would-be prey might be packing surely has.

Finally, because Costas's controversial comments were, in his own words, prompted by a desire to get some "perspective" on this tragedy, here's another perspective on this hubbub by Whitlock's fellow Fox Sports columnist Jen Floyd Engel, with whom I do not always agree: 

This is not simply about guns. This is about rights. It is a slippery slope from doing something in the interest of public safety to giving up what we hold dear. The slope is greased with fear, with a self-righteous belief that we know better than the framers of the Constitution. And it is all based on informal fallacy.

The idea that if we just ban all guns then Kasandra Perkins doesn't die and a 3-month-old baby is not orphaned is the very essence of a stated premise that fails to support its proposed conclusion. Yes, guns are dangerous and people such as Belcher sometimes use them to do awful things. What I believe in my heart is Jovan Belcher was going to find a way to wreak havoc that day whether he had a gun or a knife or only his fists. And even the potential to stop him is not justification for willingly handing over rights guaranteed to us.

If this makes me a gun nut or a wing nut or a preachy PITA, then I'm OK with those labels. Although, I prefer Constitutionalist.

I prefer Doctor. (Seriously, I'm an M.D., but that's neither here nor there.) Whatever your take on this tragedy and guns in general, can we at least agree that there's better things for the media to fixate on right now? Oh well, if Bill O'Reilly would rather talk about this than the "War on Christmas," then so be it. I'll just watch CBS. (Their football coverage sometimes includes Lily Aldridge.) 

When Something Like This Happens...

I first became aware of the mass shooting at an Aurora movie theater that left at least a dozen individuals dead and dozens more injured on Friday afternoon, as I was finishing up some work at the law school before heading back to the Metroplex for a family reunion. As is often the case with these sudden, horrific events, I learned more as the day went on. Predictably, some initial reports turned out to be erroneous or misleading, but the tragic facts remained mostly the same.

In a way, I suppose it was fitting that I could spend the weekend with my extended family--some of whom I only see once a year--after learning of such a gruesome tragedy; people react to this kind of news differently. If you weren't among the injured or bereft or those who escaped (physically) unharmed--that is, if you have no personal connection to the shooting--then it's natural to feel helpless; this wasn't something on par with 9/11 or Pearl Harbor (in terms of consequence and the number of casualties), so there's not a sudden need for hordes of volunteers. Humanity compels us to want to do something and feel disappointed/helpless when we realize there's not much we can do but pray and offer our condolences and try to get on with our lives.

I'm reminded of that familiar refrain, "When something like this happens". It may be a prelude to a condolence offered by a friend/neighbor/relative of someone who lost a loved one in the slaughter. It may be how a grief counselor begins his/her effort to console a survivor. Such words were probably spoken at churches, temples, mosques, tabernacles etc. across the country in the past 72 hours. It's just such a common way of beginning a sentence when you know words are powerless to cure the sufferring wrought by such a senseless and devastating act of violence. 

I was blessed to enjoy a weekend in the company of some of the people I love and care about most in the World. As usual, four generations were present in the flesh, and we had several first-timers at the reunion this year: there was Timmy, my youngest 1st cousin, born last September; Samantha, who was born to my second cousin Chad and his wife Krista in January; Jeremy, who just got engaged to my cousin Jenna last weekend, and his brother Ryan; and a small group of locals who knew my grandmother and her siblings growing up. (This was the first time we had held the reunion in Boyd, my maternal grandmother's childhood home. Her parents moved there from Arkansas in the 1920s and lived there until their deaths. She was the fourth of eight children, seven of whom survived infancy. Five of them are still alive today, and four showed up for the reunion.)