2001-03-09 - 10:07pm

Who's Who Cheat Sheet
Who I Read

On the internal soundtrack: "Bohemian Rhapsody", Queen

OK, so I am LIVID at the things Dave Kopel is reporting in his column:

Upon hearing the shots at Santana High School, one student grabbed a still camera and another grabbed a video camera to record the carnage. No one tried to tackle the killer during his three reloading breaks. Is it because the national media failed to tell the story of the heroic high-school student who tackled the killer in Springfield, Oregon, while the killer was reloading?

The killer became nationally famous. The hero didn't. The media lost interest in him when they found that the hero's father belonged to the NRA, and the family opposed gun control.

At Columbine, teacher Dave Sanders was justifiably lionized for dying while trying to help students flee. Most people have never heard about the adults who saved lives in Pearl, Mississippi, or Edinboro, Pennsylvania, by confronting and subduing the rampaging killers.

To the national media, civilians who take forceful action wrestling a shooter to the ground, or pointing a handgun at the shooter's head apparently teach the wrong lesson: that we're not all helpless; that brave people can stop criminals. That's a lesson which conflicts with the enraged helplessness promoted by the "Million" Mom March and its mean-spirited message that the only way for children to be safe is for the government to crack down on law-abiding gun owners.

This is crazy. Why is it more newsworthy to shoot a bunch of people than it is to prevent someone from shooting? Who's the brave person here? The one risking his life to stop the shooter, or the one "solving" his problems by shooting defenseless people with a gun?

Not only that, but I am appalled at the very idea that it's somehow excusable for this kid to go around shooting people. Some people have protested that he shouldn't be tried as an adult, and have more sympathy for the killer than for the people who died.

Don't get me wrong -- I deplore the kind of abuse he endured and have tremendous sympathy for the pain he must have felt. Later on in this entry I'll discuss that a little. The people he felt he was exacting revenge upon were not blameless by any stretch of the imagination.

Nevertheless, do you mean to tell me this kid didn't KNOW that what he was doing is WRONG?! Didn't he stop to think for one second that maybe his chosen punishment didn't fit the crime? Tell me how, by any standard of logic, it is okay to KILL a bunch of people because they picked on you. I can see wanting to teach them a lesson, maybe even beat 'em up a little, but KILL them?!?!

My only answer to these questions is that if the kid hated himself, and hated his life, to the point that his own life or anyone else's mattered very little to him, then maybe it didn't seem so extreme. If he wanted to make them feel the way he did, killing might seem a reasonable way to do that.

But that doesn't justify his actions.

At this juncture, I would like to point out that all the "common sense" gun regulations in California did nothing to prevent this crime.

Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong on any of these counts.

By the accounts I've heard so far, the father owned the gun legally -- jumped through whatever waiting-period and registration hoops he needed to. He even kept it in a locked case.

Meanwhile, the boy himself broke a number of laws. He stole the gun from his father. He was a minor. He didn't have a concealed carry permit. He took the gun into a school, a place where firearms are forbidden.

How do "common sense" gun laws prevent crime?

I truly don't believe they do.

Sigh. All right, now for the middle school thing.

Middle school and the beginning of high school are, for most people, the worst stage of their life. For some of them, it's hell.

I personally don't have too many bad memories of middle and high school, aside from knowing I was only one step above the untouchables on the popularity scale. I think I was protected quite a bit by my inability to hear many of the insults I'm sure were hurled in my direction. I don't remember being physically hurt in any way.

My husband, on the other hand, was punched, kicked, tricked into sitting on a tack, and stabbed with a pencil. He says the worst part, to him, was constantly being ignored. He went through a fairly lengthy stage where he had absolutely no friends.

Just thinking about it makes me sick. It makes me sick to think of the tremendous pressure to conform, of the way people judge you from outward appearances or your "reputation", which was set in stone years before. The rigid social stratifications that can't be breached.

If I change my mind about having children (or nature changes it for me), there are several things I would do to try to ease this particular rite of passage. One would be to give the kid exposure to another group of people completely unrelated to school -- an activity group, a church group, anything to get the kid into an environment where the social stratifications are not set in stone and they have a chance to be accepted for themselves. I would try to impress upon my kid from a very early age that what other people think does not matter. He won't believe me, of course, but in the back of his mind I think it'll sink in and have a subconscious effect on how he thinks about himself.

I have read a fair number of comments from people who support people like the Santee kid in the fatal punishment they give their tormenters. They feel that the tormenters deserve it. Others, while not necessarily agreeing with the killers, feel that this is an unfortunate but necessary wake-up call: America needs to know about and take action against this kind of bullying.

While I can definitely agree that we could do more as individuals to prevent bullying -- parents and teachers paying more attention to what kids are doing to each other, for starters -- the idea that killing the bullies is acceptable in any way is repulsive to me.

I guess I'm a big believer not stooping to their level.

A few things I've been wondering about:

- Millions of children go through this sort of thing every year. I daresay some of those millions grow up in homes with guns. Yet only a handful actually end up killing them tormenters or even plan to do it. What keeps them from killing?

- This is a common liberal question, but I wonder about it too. Why is this only news when it happens in affluent white suburbs? Why is it not national, we-interrupt-this-broadcast news when it happens in the inner city? Is it because it's poor black kids nobody cares about? Is it because the inner city shootings are too commonplace? If white suburban shootings start to happen more often, will people stop caring?

- How are we supposed to help people like the school shooters when people who are depressed are so good at hiding how they feel? One would HOPE that parents or teachers or friends could pick up on it, but the depressed people I've read about are masters at hiding their mental state. I can't tell you how many accounts I've read where depressed people said they put on a happy face for the world and hold their misery tightly to themselves.

Well, let's switch gears.

Jonah Golberg over at NRO got himself into a little ... hm, it was a flame war at first but became a little more civilized eventually. He wrote an article Thursday in which he rebutted a few things Harry Browne said.

One thing that bugged the hell out of me in this article was that he's perpetuating the idea that libertarians support all kinds of unsavory behaviors by humans.

This is not the case at all. Libertarians often have extremely strong opinions against certain behaviors. The only difference between them and any non-libertarian is that they believe that if the behavior does not intrude upon the rights of others, then individuals should not be punished by a government for engaging in those behaviors in the privacy of their own home. Instead, people can try to discourage these behaviors through societal forces, most notably my personal favorite, free speech.

I, for example, think drug use is just plain stupid. I have never in my life felt the slightest urge to try them. They seem, primarily, to be used as an avoidance technique. In some cases they can be detrimental to your health and relationships. I just don't get it.

Nevertheless, that is MY OPINION. I'm aware that many people use drugs recreationally and still function well at their jobs and in their relationships. People who have problems with chemical addiction should not be a reason for non-addicted folks not to occasionally take their favorite chemical vacation. Most importantly, I believe that the illegality of drugs is causing far more problems -- problems of a very violent nature -- then it solves.

So, I think drugs should be legal, and if they were, I would strongly discourage their use.

Jonah's pedophilia comment was just plain stupid. Libertarians do not support nonconsensual activities, or activities that infringe upon the rights of others. Pedophilia is both.

Libertarianism, to be fair, is something of an ideology. In practice, in its purest form, I'm not completely convinced it will work. If nothing else, all those private entities and the necessity of constantly choosing among them could get pretty chaotic. I have no illusions that this or any country will ever be purely libertarian, because it's human nature to want to tell other people what to do, and government is an extremely popular way to do it.

Nevertheless, I firmly believe that we could do with a LOT LESS government. The Libertarian Party is a good place for people who believe in smaller government, AND believe the government should stay out of people's private lives. And as Jonah said, it's always good to have people there saying, "Do we really need the government to do this?"

So for that reason, and because I will never understand why people make laws about private consensual behavior, I'll continue to say I'm a libertarian.

I should warn you, though: In writing the above I struggled mightily to give examples of how privatization under libertarianism won't work. Every time I thought up an example of why privatization of public services -- roads, for example -- is unworkable, I found a way around it. At some point in the future I may decide that the only thing keeping libertarianism from working is that we're not allowed to try it. I do have great faith in the ability of humans to get things done -- for themselves and to help each other -- when left to their own devices.

God, I'm exhausted. This entry was a BITCH to write. I think I spent more time on it than I did many school papers. Sometimes trying to make rational arguments is just too damn hard.

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