This week we saw some sensible gun control measures swatted away by a recalcitrant Senate – and a bomb blast in Boston. It was also a week that showed politicians and pundits in all their inanity.
Nate Bell – “feel-good” texter and wrong on guns.
Predictably the gun absolutists conflated the Boston bombings with 2nd amendment rights. Typical was the reaction of Arkansas State Senator Nate Bell (R), who tweeted, as Watertown was shut down by the police, “I wonder how many Boston liberals spent the night cowering in their homes wishing they had an AR-15 with a hi-capacity magazine?” It makes for a nice sound-bite but it is wide of the mark if Bell thinks that guns prevent crime.
Obviously no AR-15 would have stopped the bombs going off. Both the security officer, who was murdered, and the cop, who was wounded during the manhunt for the suspects, were both armed. And the driver of the vehicle the bombers car-jacked (an unarmed Boston liberal?) was released unharmed.
Presumably Arkansas, with all those AR-15 toting citizens, is a lot safer than Massachusetts. (You know where this is going – and you’re right). No it isn’t. The murder rate in Arkansas is almost twice that of Massachusetts (5.5 vs. 2.8 per 100,000). and you are twice as likely to be murdered in Little Rock than Boston (19.0 vs. 10.0)
Chris Wallace – “unfair and unbalanced”.
Fox News piled on, using its “fair and balanced” reporting to weigh in on the gun debate. Chris Wallace, host of Fox News Sunday, also wondered how many people in the locked-down neighborhoods might have liked to have a gun.
It is fair to argue for a promiscuous approach to gun ownership based on the 2nd amendment. But you cannot argue that in the whole guns make America a safer country.
The bombing also brought to the fore how the war on terror has steadily restricted our freedoms. The surviving bomber, for better or worse, is an American citizen. His presumed crimes are shocking and inhumane. If found guilty he should be severely punished. But in our rush to bring this worm to justice we should remember that if we change the rules for one American we change them for all.
The right to be “Mirandized” is not absolute. The Supreme Court reasoned that there is a “public safety exception”. In cases where a suspect might have knowledge of an imminent threat he could be questioned without being read his rights or having a lawyer present.
But in the case of the bomber no evidence of a wider plot has been uncovered, and the suspect is too badly injured to speak anyway. People should be concerned that the “public safety exception” becomes a “fishing licence”. (To be fair I am aware that this argument could be characterized as the “slippery slope” kind that conservatives are so fond of)
Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC) went one step further in suggesting that the bombing suspect be treated as an enemy combatant – the Constitution be damned.
Greg Bell – “feel-good” tweeter and wrong on torture.
NY State Senator, Greg Ball, widened this attack on civil rights by tweeting, “So, scum bag #2 in custody. Who wouldn’t use torture on this punk to save more lives?” Leaving aside that torture is widely regarded as counter-productive, it doesn’t behoove us to establish a right for the authorities to torture citizens.
Because the bombers were foreign born the immigration debate has also been dragged into the bombing story, with some conservative politicians suggesting that immigration reform be put on hold, until we get to the bottom of the matter of how these Chechen brothers got into the country. But it makes little sense to cleave to those policies that have already been shown to have failed.
The immigration debate is overwhelmingly about Latinos who are illegally in the US. And the bombers didn’t come here illegally. That they were “radicalized” after coming here – and then were able to detonate bombs in Boston – was an intelligence failure, not an immigration one.
The worst thing about the bombing was the death and injuries – then the expense and inconvenience of the manhunt. But also on the list of deleterious effects is the assault on reason that politicians and pundits seem compelled to indulge in – as they do after every shocking event.
(Note: Although the article refers to “the bomber” he is presumed innocent until proven guilty. It would have been boring to read “alleged” multiple times)
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