So, we have a character.
She is considered the greatest spy in the department. Has whatever gadget she needs to get out of the death trap of the day. Causes millions of dollars worth of collateral damage but never has to pay any of it back or worry about losing her job as a result. Manages to bed every attractive member of the opposite sex she comes across, and even gets a few of them to defect after falling in love with her. Can handle any firearm with instant expertise, and can operate any vehicle she happens to find herself in well enough to avoid getting her butt shot off. Oh yes, and she's still considered the world's greatest secret agent despite not being able to go five minutes without being identified (and subsequently setting off a chase and explosions). Has fiercely loyal companions no matter how much of an egotist she is. Has a trail of men willing to die for her despite knowing they're little more than a notch in her headboard.
Sound like the worst Mary Sue ever written? Who the hell could sell a story that bad? Who the hell could read something that bad without going all MST3K on it?
...Guess what, guys?
I just described James Bond. Only, you know, if he was female.
This is why "Mary Sue" is at best a useless critical catchphrase, and at worst a symptom of the misogyny inherent in our culture.
There is no denying that there are badly-written wish fulfillment characters out there, and one trip through the first two pages of Fanfiction.net in virtually any category will turn up pleny of them. But here's the thing: if you are legit criticizing the writing, a badly-written wish fulfillment character being female and fan-created should not make the writing so much worse so as to deserve its own gendered insult. Especially when we have just as many cheesy wish fulfillment characters in published fiction who are lauded and loved while doing everything the Mary Sue is demonized for. They just happen to be male.
When you throw around the term Mary Sue as a pejorative, what you're effectively saying is that women's wish fulfillment is inferior solely because it comes from women. Especially when male characters who are obviously the same kind of wish fulfillment power fantasy -- Superman, Conan the Barbarian, James T. Kirk, Tommy Vercetti, Simon Templar, and yes, James Bond, just to name a few -- are given not just a free pass, but national and/or worldwide acclaim for being such flawless badasses.
This begs the question of why the vast majority of bad original fanfiction characters are female, while the vast majority of just-as-bad published characters happen to be male. And there's a very simple answer, there.
The fiction market, from books to video games, is driven primarily by men. Most writers in the industry are male, and they cater to male audiences. They are men writing stuff for other men. And not even all men at that. They write for a specific subset of men: straight, white, insecure, and with disposable income.
And thus, they either ignore the interests of women and girls wholesale, or superficially pay lipservice to them. So as women, we go on and do what we do best: tell them 'screw you' and we write the stuff we want to see. That's really what fanfiction is. It's women filling in the blanks of published media for other women.
This is why men have no need for fanfiction at best, and find it silly, stupid, weird, and even threatening at worst. Because women exercising agency and doing things entirely for ourselves and making our wants public without caring what men think has always been the subject of ridicule. But that's another rant entirely.
So with most fanfic writers being girls, it's only natural that most characters created by those fanfic writers are also going to be girls. Girls who get to do all the cool shit they see boys do in media. Girls who get to be flawless badasses and steal the show the way the boys do. Girls, like the boys they watch, whom everyone wants to do or be, and the only people who hate them are just jealous.
And they're doing it for free.
So if you want to keep feeding the patriarchal system and dismissing women's wish fulfillment fantasies as Mary Sue drivel? Fine. Just remember that your fantasies are just as shallow, just as stupid, just as ridiculous, and just as badly written.
But unlike Mary Sue? You're paying money for them.
Statcounter
Monday, August 4, 2014
Monday, July 14, 2014
Common Core Is a Better Way of Teaching Math Because It Actually IS Math
This is a post for math nerds, and for those who wanted to be math nerds, but sucked at it. But it's especially a post for those who discovered as adults that they weren't nearly as bad at math as they thought.
Let's pretend for a minute that you're at a store and you only have cash. You have to buy stuff for dinner, and it has to be under $20 because that's all you've got, so you start keeping a running total. You don't have a pencil, pen, or paper, and you also left your phone on the kitchen table at home so you don't have a calculator. The items you choose are $6.99, $5.99, $1.25, and $3.99. You've always sucked at math, but you somehow manage to add up the prices of the items you want in your head and not wind up mortified at the register or out your proper change.
So how do you do it? Lay out the numbers in your head and carry from column to column? Hell no. That takes too long and it's too hard to keep it all straight without writing it down even if you are a visual learner. No, instead, you reflexively start counting them.
You round up the first two items to $7 and $6, respectively, so you get $13 so far. You round up the $3.99 item to $4 and add it, so that gives you $17. You add the $1.25 item to get $18.25. Then you count back $0.03 because of the rounding to get $18.22.
Now, to know that the cashier isn't shortchanging you, you figure out how much you're supposed to get back. You work with the cents first. From $0.22, it takes $0.08 to get to $0.30, and then $0.70 to get to the next whole dollar, which is $19. $20 less $19 is $1, so you should get $1.78 back in change.
This is what common core math is. It's the way we learn to do math as adults after we figure out the way we learned it as kids is bullshit.
The problem with the Old Way of learning math -- in particular, the borrow/carry method of addition and subtraction -- is that it's not math at all. And because of that, all it does is reinforce bad number theory, and teach kids principles that later turn out to be completely wrong.
See, borrow/carry starts off on a bad foot because it uses the "column" theory of numbers. That is, separating multi-digit numbers into valued columns: ones, tens, hundreds, etc. When you're a kid, this kind of visual explanation holds water at first because it's easy to remember and it makes big numbers not seem so scary. But it falls apart like a bad game of Jenga when you start throwing zeros in there. Because you're taught that there's nothing in that column, and the zero is just a placeholder. But we don't do that for every column, because Reasons. And if you're a kid like me, you start thinking that the difference between 13 and 1,300 is a couple of zeros (rather than "1,287").
Borrow/carry continues on an even worse foot because in the course of learning it, you're taught that the reason you have to "borrow" a 1 from the next column over is because you "can't subtract a larger number from a smaller one." That very principle turns out to be bullshit later when you start learning integers and negative numbers. And again, if you're a kid like me, at that point you don't know what to think, because you don't know why the stuff you were taught before is complete lies now, and you're afraid to learn anything new because that will turn out to be more lies in a couple of years. And while you're passing classes, you're only doing so because you're good at memorizing rules, even if you have no clue what the hell you're even doing and wish somebody would teach you something consistent. You start to hate math, not because you suck at it, but because you can't trust it.
Common core, on the other hand, uses the far more sound set theory of numbers. There are no columns; each number is its own set. It's the exact same way we learned to add and subtract single-digit numbers: by counting. Counting doesn't change or become irrelevant just because the numbers get bigger. 410 is 410, not 4 hundreds, 1 ten, and no ones (but we put a zero there anyway, because Reasons). Thus, adding to it or subtracting from it is simply a matter of counting forward or backward (in other words, adding to the set or taking away from it). Common core simply teaches kids to do so in large, easy blocks since they don't have nearly enough fingers.
This goes for multiplication and division, too. Take, for example, 26 x 54. This is the old way you would solve that one:
26
x 54
104
130
1404
Guess what? This is still using the borrowing/carrying number column nonsense. And it's still a pain in the ass to keep straight in your head without the ability to write it down (especially having to shift the second row over one, which I always forgot to do as a kid because I never learned why I had to until I was an adult).
Now, let's look at the common core method of solving the same problem.
First, let's remember what we're doing. We're adding 26 to itself 54 times. So the easiest way to think of it is to first work with 25 instead of 26 (we'll go back to the leftovers at the end). So now we're adding 25 to itself 54 times. And to make 54 easier to work with, we break that down into 50 + 4.
So first we start with the easy stuff:
25 x 10 = 250.
Now, since 10 x 5 = 50, we have to take that 250 and multiply it by 5:
200 x 5 = 1000
50 x 5 = 250
And now the 4:
25 x 4 = 100
So now we add all those neat round numbers together:
1000 + 250 + 100 = 1350
Now, back to the leftovers. We've done 25 x 54. So 26 x 54 would just be adding another 54 to what we've already got:
1350 + 54 = 1404
Sure, it's a few more steps. But those steps are logical. They make sense, and it's clear why what's being done is being done. That's the biggest problem with the Old Way; even if it works consistently, you can't really explain the logic behind it (you have to borrow because you can't subtract 8 from 7, but apparently you can borrow 1 from 0 and get 9...somehow). And if you don't know the logic, it's far easier to miss a step or get the order of steps wrong, and far harder to realize when you've screwed up. And that's especially bad in math, because like all hard sciences, math functions purely on logic.
So if common core is so great, why are so many schools having trouble with it?
Because even the best teaching methods are going to fail miserably if the execution sucks. And in this case? Holy shit does it ever suck. The point of common core is to simplify these lessons, so adding in counterintuitive steps just creates more confusion. But that's where you need to come up with better lesson plans that use this method, not pitch the baby out with the bathwater because Everything New Is Bad.
Really, the idea behind common core math is that as adults, we have learned better ways of doing math than what we were taught originally. So why on earth are we still teaching our children these same cumbersome, nonsense methods that we don't even use anymore? Why not cut out the floundering and just teach them the better way to start with?
It's taken me way longer than it ever should have to figure out that I don't actually suck at math. I never did. I sucked at learning math, because it was being taught to me using faulty, kludged logic. Using bad logic to teach any kind of science is like using water from the toilet bowl to make your coffee; even the most perfect roast in the world is going to taste like shit if shit is what you start with.
Let's pretend for a minute that you're at a store and you only have cash. You have to buy stuff for dinner, and it has to be under $20 because that's all you've got, so you start keeping a running total. You don't have a pencil, pen, or paper, and you also left your phone on the kitchen table at home so you don't have a calculator. The items you choose are $6.99, $5.99, $1.25, and $3.99. You've always sucked at math, but you somehow manage to add up the prices of the items you want in your head and not wind up mortified at the register or out your proper change.
So how do you do it? Lay out the numbers in your head and carry from column to column? Hell no. That takes too long and it's too hard to keep it all straight without writing it down even if you are a visual learner. No, instead, you reflexively start counting them.
You round up the first two items to $7 and $6, respectively, so you get $13 so far. You round up the $3.99 item to $4 and add it, so that gives you $17. You add the $1.25 item to get $18.25. Then you count back $0.03 because of the rounding to get $18.22.
Now, to know that the cashier isn't shortchanging you, you figure out how much you're supposed to get back. You work with the cents first. From $0.22, it takes $0.08 to get to $0.30, and then $0.70 to get to the next whole dollar, which is $19. $20 less $19 is $1, so you should get $1.78 back in change.
This is what common core math is. It's the way we learn to do math as adults after we figure out the way we learned it as kids is bullshit.
The problem with the Old Way of learning math -- in particular, the borrow/carry method of addition and subtraction -- is that it's not math at all. And because of that, all it does is reinforce bad number theory, and teach kids principles that later turn out to be completely wrong.
See, borrow/carry starts off on a bad foot because it uses the "column" theory of numbers. That is, separating multi-digit numbers into valued columns: ones, tens, hundreds, etc. When you're a kid, this kind of visual explanation holds water at first because it's easy to remember and it makes big numbers not seem so scary. But it falls apart like a bad game of Jenga when you start throwing zeros in there. Because you're taught that there's nothing in that column, and the zero is just a placeholder. But we don't do that for every column, because Reasons. And if you're a kid like me, you start thinking that the difference between 13 and 1,300 is a couple of zeros (rather than "1,287").
Borrow/carry continues on an even worse foot because in the course of learning it, you're taught that the reason you have to "borrow" a 1 from the next column over is because you "can't subtract a larger number from a smaller one." That very principle turns out to be bullshit later when you start learning integers and negative numbers. And again, if you're a kid like me, at that point you don't know what to think, because you don't know why the stuff you were taught before is complete lies now, and you're afraid to learn anything new because that will turn out to be more lies in a couple of years. And while you're passing classes, you're only doing so because you're good at memorizing rules, even if you have no clue what the hell you're even doing and wish somebody would teach you something consistent. You start to hate math, not because you suck at it, but because you can't trust it.
Common core, on the other hand, uses the far more sound set theory of numbers. There are no columns; each number is its own set. It's the exact same way we learned to add and subtract single-digit numbers: by counting. Counting doesn't change or become irrelevant just because the numbers get bigger. 410 is 410, not 4 hundreds, 1 ten, and no ones (but we put a zero there anyway, because Reasons). Thus, adding to it or subtracting from it is simply a matter of counting forward or backward (in other words, adding to the set or taking away from it). Common core simply teaches kids to do so in large, easy blocks since they don't have nearly enough fingers.
This goes for multiplication and division, too. Take, for example, 26 x 54. This is the old way you would solve that one:
26
x 54
104
130
1404
Guess what? This is still using the borrowing/carrying number column nonsense. And it's still a pain in the ass to keep straight in your head without the ability to write it down (especially having to shift the second row over one, which I always forgot to do as a kid because I never learned why I had to until I was an adult).
Now, let's look at the common core method of solving the same problem.
First, let's remember what we're doing. We're adding 26 to itself 54 times. So the easiest way to think of it is to first work with 25 instead of 26 (we'll go back to the leftovers at the end). So now we're adding 25 to itself 54 times. And to make 54 easier to work with, we break that down into 50 + 4.
So first we start with the easy stuff:
25 x 10 = 250.
Now, since 10 x 5 = 50, we have to take that 250 and multiply it by 5:
200 x 5 = 1000
50 x 5 = 250
And now the 4:
25 x 4 = 100
So now we add all those neat round numbers together:
1000 + 250 + 100 = 1350
Now, back to the leftovers. We've done 25 x 54. So 26 x 54 would just be adding another 54 to what we've already got:
1350 + 54 = 1404
Sure, it's a few more steps. But those steps are logical. They make sense, and it's clear why what's being done is being done. That's the biggest problem with the Old Way; even if it works consistently, you can't really explain the logic behind it (you have to borrow because you can't subtract 8 from 7, but apparently you can borrow 1 from 0 and get 9...somehow). And if you don't know the logic, it's far easier to miss a step or get the order of steps wrong, and far harder to realize when you've screwed up. And that's especially bad in math, because like all hard sciences, math functions purely on logic.
So if common core is so great, why are so many schools having trouble with it?
Because even the best teaching methods are going to fail miserably if the execution sucks. And in this case? Holy shit does it ever suck. The point of common core is to simplify these lessons, so adding in counterintuitive steps just creates more confusion. But that's where you need to come up with better lesson plans that use this method, not pitch the baby out with the bathwater because Everything New Is Bad.
Really, the idea behind common core math is that as adults, we have learned better ways of doing math than what we were taught originally. So why on earth are we still teaching our children these same cumbersome, nonsense methods that we don't even use anymore? Why not cut out the floundering and just teach them the better way to start with?
It's taken me way longer than it ever should have to figure out that I don't actually suck at math. I never did. I sucked at learning math, because it was being taught to me using faulty, kludged logic. Using bad logic to teach any kind of science is like using water from the toilet bowl to make your coffee; even the most perfect roast in the world is going to taste like shit if shit is what you start with.
Monday, June 30, 2014
The Affordable Care Act Is the Reason I'm Alive
Warning for very frank discussion of suicide and suicidal thoughts and tendencies.
When I walked into my doctor's office last week for a baseline, it was the first time I had been able to see one outside of an urgent care center for the last decade, because I did not have and could not afford proper insurance. Before enrolling in a Marketplace plan earlier this year, the last time I had insurance that even covered doctor's visits was when I was still on my parents' policy. Which meant that I could not see a doctor without one of them in the room, and that one was usually my mother.
This was unfortunate, as my mother has always believed, and still largely does, that certain fields of medicine are strictly quack. Lies and bollocks, meant to fleece patients out of their money by treating medical conditions that don't really exist. She believes this about one certain field in particular: mental health. To my mother and millions of people who think like her, deficient mental health is nothing more than a moral failing, and the only help a mental patient needs is a swift kick somewhere sensitive.
The first time I ever considered suicide, I was seven years old. The first time I attempted it, I was eight. I figured out the hard way that a telephone cord makes an awful ligature.
I do not remember much from when I was that young, except for how I felt like an instigator of terrible things, even if I had no idea how or why I caused them. I felt guilty and responsible for everything around me.
I also remember being too ashamed to say anything about these feelings to a doctor with my mother in the room. Because I did not need reminding that I was a moral failure.
But when I walked into my new general physician's office last week, my mother was not with me. I could talk about anything I wanted. I originally was not going to mention the constant guilt and worthlessness and hopelessness, and how every time I talked about "the future" I got this sick feeling inside because I did not think I had one. I was originally not going to talk about how I was shopping around at funeral homes to get the best deal on prepaid disposal services so that my family would not have to worry about cleaning up a body when I killed myself later this year. I was originally not going to say that my birthday a month ago was the last one I was ever planning to see. I was originally going to keep that moral failing to myself.
But fortunately for me, I was wearing a t-shirt. A shirt which exposed my arms, and the scars on them. Places I had scratched skin off my wrists. Places I had taken razor blades to them, when merely biting the inside of my mouth until it hurt to eat no longer did the trick. Most of those scars were old, but not all. In particular, three prominent gashes from a razor blade that I had given myself just last month. That I blamed on my cat when anybody asked.
The doctor noticed these. Started asking questions. Goodness, that looks painful, how did you get that? But with that look, that tone, that made it obvious he already knew the answer. But in order to do anything, he needed to hear that answer from me.
I was originally going to shut up and keep it to myself. I didn't.
While I did not tell him everything, I told him enough. For the first time, I did not blame the cat. I owned up to the scars. I told him I shouldn't exist. When he asked why I believed that, I didn't have an answer. When he asked how long I had felt that way, I told him I couldn't remember ever feeling different.
There was more to that conversation than could ever fit into a blog post without becoming a novel, of course. But the important part was that for the first time in my life, it was made apparent that my mother was wrong. I wasn't a moral failure. I was simply a sick person with messed up brain chemistry, and there were ways to treat that.
I was told, for the first time ever, that I did not have to suffer anymore.
I walked out of that office with a prescription that cost me no more than a $5 copay at the pharmacy.
But I also walked out with something else. Something free and at the same time priceless. I walked out of that office with hope. With the knowledge that it did not have to end with me at the bottom of a gator-infested canal around the corner from where I worked. Or with me hanging from the old mango tree in my backyard. With the knowledge that it did not have to end, period.
I would not have had this opportunity without the Affordable Care Act. Without my own doctor and my own insurance, without the ability to receive treatment without my mother in the room, without the ability to talk about this and not be judged a failure, I would still be planning to die instead of apartment-hunting.
While we still have a long way to go on mental health in this country -- nobody should have to suffer in silence when help is literally sitting three feet away, because they're too ashamed of what they're feeling to speak up -- but making it part of standardized healthcare rather than a Cadillac feature you have to pay for with a blood sacrifice and your firstborn is a huge step in the proper direction.
Thanks, Obama.
When I walked into my doctor's office last week for a baseline, it was the first time I had been able to see one outside of an urgent care center for the last decade, because I did not have and could not afford proper insurance. Before enrolling in a Marketplace plan earlier this year, the last time I had insurance that even covered doctor's visits was when I was still on my parents' policy. Which meant that I could not see a doctor without one of them in the room, and that one was usually my mother.
This was unfortunate, as my mother has always believed, and still largely does, that certain fields of medicine are strictly quack. Lies and bollocks, meant to fleece patients out of their money by treating medical conditions that don't really exist. She believes this about one certain field in particular: mental health. To my mother and millions of people who think like her, deficient mental health is nothing more than a moral failing, and the only help a mental patient needs is a swift kick somewhere sensitive.
The first time I ever considered suicide, I was seven years old. The first time I attempted it, I was eight. I figured out the hard way that a telephone cord makes an awful ligature.
I do not remember much from when I was that young, except for how I felt like an instigator of terrible things, even if I had no idea how or why I caused them. I felt guilty and responsible for everything around me.
I also remember being too ashamed to say anything about these feelings to a doctor with my mother in the room. Because I did not need reminding that I was a moral failure.
But when I walked into my new general physician's office last week, my mother was not with me. I could talk about anything I wanted. I originally was not going to mention the constant guilt and worthlessness and hopelessness, and how every time I talked about "the future" I got this sick feeling inside because I did not think I had one. I was originally not going to talk about how I was shopping around at funeral homes to get the best deal on prepaid disposal services so that my family would not have to worry about cleaning up a body when I killed myself later this year. I was originally not going to say that my birthday a month ago was the last one I was ever planning to see. I was originally going to keep that moral failing to myself.
But fortunately for me, I was wearing a t-shirt. A shirt which exposed my arms, and the scars on them. Places I had scratched skin off my wrists. Places I had taken razor blades to them, when merely biting the inside of my mouth until it hurt to eat no longer did the trick. Most of those scars were old, but not all. In particular, three prominent gashes from a razor blade that I had given myself just last month. That I blamed on my cat when anybody asked.
The doctor noticed these. Started asking questions. Goodness, that looks painful, how did you get that? But with that look, that tone, that made it obvious he already knew the answer. But in order to do anything, he needed to hear that answer from me.
I was originally going to shut up and keep it to myself. I didn't.
While I did not tell him everything, I told him enough. For the first time, I did not blame the cat. I owned up to the scars. I told him I shouldn't exist. When he asked why I believed that, I didn't have an answer. When he asked how long I had felt that way, I told him I couldn't remember ever feeling different.
There was more to that conversation than could ever fit into a blog post without becoming a novel, of course. But the important part was that for the first time in my life, it was made apparent that my mother was wrong. I wasn't a moral failure. I was simply a sick person with messed up brain chemistry, and there were ways to treat that.
I was told, for the first time ever, that I did not have to suffer anymore.
I walked out of that office with a prescription that cost me no more than a $5 copay at the pharmacy.
But I also walked out with something else. Something free and at the same time priceless. I walked out of that office with hope. With the knowledge that it did not have to end with me at the bottom of a gator-infested canal around the corner from where I worked. Or with me hanging from the old mango tree in my backyard. With the knowledge that it did not have to end, period.
I would not have had this opportunity without the Affordable Care Act. Without my own doctor and my own insurance, without the ability to receive treatment without my mother in the room, without the ability to talk about this and not be judged a failure, I would still be planning to die instead of apartment-hunting.
While we still have a long way to go on mental health in this country -- nobody should have to suffer in silence when help is literally sitting three feet away, because they're too ashamed of what they're feeling to speak up -- but making it part of standardized healthcare rather than a Cadillac feature you have to pay for with a blood sacrifice and your firstborn is a huge step in the proper direction.
Thanks, Obama.
Friday, June 20, 2014
Why Both Sides of the Gun Debate Need to Pipe the Fuck Down
We do not have a gun problem.
Yeah, I said it. This progressive does not think guns are the problem, and has a recurring pipe dream wherein both sides of the gun debate -- both the ammosexuals worshipping Wayne LaPierre as some kind of messianic Rambo instead of the corporate shill he is and the Moms Demand Action reactionaries who can't tell you how the thing they want to ban even works -- sit down and shut up like the children they are and let the adults in the middle do the talking.
"Guns don't kill people" is a stupidly irritating way of phrasing it -- because killing is what guns were originally invented to do; they are not a "misused tool" when you shoot people with them, they are doing exactly what they were built for, so comparing them to cars and screwdrivers and pencils and maxi pads and anything else that was designed for a purpose completely unrelated to killing and wounding is ridiculous -- but the sentiment behind this annoying catchphrase is valid; a gun is an inanimate object. It can't kill anything without a human operator pulling the trigger. But it's far easier for people to blame an inanimate object rather than a functionally broken society that encourages violence against one another, because the inanimate object can't talk back to you and tell you you're full of shit. In the 1950s, it was comic books. In the 1990s, it was video games. Today, it's guns. Tomorrow, it'll be computers. Or porn.Yeah, probably porn.
The problem with the NRA side is that "well just arm everybody" is not going to accomplish anything (other than making gun manufacturers rich, which, let's not kid ourselves any longer that that's really the NRA's mission and has been for a long time). Saying the cure for violence is more guns is like saying the cure for lung cancer is more cigarettes. Guns are not the sole and direct cause of violence, but throwing more of them at the problem sure as fuck won't help.
Because that is why the very concept of "gun control" in this country is an illusion. There are just too fucking many of them.
Policing gun sales, especially with the advent of the internet, is like Bill Murray in Caddyshack with the damned gophers. For a very recent and horrifying illustration of this, look no further than the Las Vegas shooters from a couple weeks ago. Jerad Miller was a felon, thus already barred from legally buying a gun. So what's a militant right-wing bigot to do in order to start the revolution and fight The Man? Buy his guns on Facebook, of course!
Gun sales are against the TOS, but who reads that shit anyway?
My point is that stricter gun control laws would not have stopped Jerad Miller from killing 3 people, because the existing laws had already covered him; he just found a way around them. Granted, that has not been the case for a frightening number of mass shooters, many of whom purchased their weapons legally (not included in the linked article: Elliot Rodgers, the UCSB shooter, who also purchased 3 handguns completely legal), so the "well, crazy people don't care about the law anyway so why bother?" argument doesn't hold up, either; James Holmes and Jared Loughner obviously cared to play by the rules long enough to obtain their weapons clean. And I agree that we shouldn't make it easy for people like them.
But the problem is twofold: 1) we don't enforce the laws we've already got, and 2) we have a far bigger problem of too many people who want to kill other people in the first place.
You want to know what would've actually stopped James Holmes? If the cops had listened to the psychiatrist who was treating him when she told them he was dangerous a little more than a month before the shooting. The Columbine shooters? Parents attentive enough to know what their kids were doing (spoiler: building explosives in the garage). Adam Lanza? A better and more informed diagnosis (we can start with not blindly using Asperger's as a catch-all for every awkward kid that walks through the door). Jared Loughner? Wade Michael Page (the Wisconsin Sikh temple shooter)? Better access to mental healthcare (Loughner was an undiagnosed paranoid schizophrenic at the time of the shooting), and in Page's case, a crackdown on the white supremacist echo chamber that fed his rage machine.
In virtually every shooting of this kind, you'll find warning signs. Signs which went ignored. In Elliot Rodgers' case? A string of Youtube videos and a 140-page manifesto detailing how he was going to get revenge on society for denying him his hot blonde sorority girlfriend. In Lanza's case? A fascination with shootings and killing (particularly his obsession with Columbine). And in Jerad Miller's case? That he was at the Bundy Ranch supporting the waving of guns at BLM agents was a pretty big clue something wasn't right (his begging for a gun on Facebook to start the revolution was the giant neon signboard). Warning signs that, had they been heeded, would've allowed law enforcement and/or the mental health system to intervene before something bad happened.
Problem is, we don't care enough about solving the reasons people kill each other. Caring about who is "right" and how much control they get over people who are "wrong" is a lot easier and more satisfying precisely because it doesn't do jack shit.
That's why we're obsessed with locking up criminals rather than preventing crime (and because the for-profit prison system creates a demand to fill jails, but that's another rant entirely).
Which brings me to my next point: more gun control isn't a magic pill that's going to reduce violent crime rates, either. It may make it slightly harder for people to commit crime with guns, but it won't really stop anyone. Because of the aforementioned problem of having too many guns in circulation to effectively police sales. And because guns do not cause crime; guns are tools used in crimes. Expecting gun control to reduce crime is like expecting Prohibition to reduce alcoholism, and we all know how well that worked out.
If you want to effectively reduce crime, you have to attack that shit at the source. People who point to gun bans and lower crime rates in places like Australia, the United Kingdom, and Japan tend to forget that those countries don't just ban guns. They also have a much better and better-run social safety net than we do here. All three have universal healthcare. Australia has a minimum wage more than twice that of the U.S. The United Kingdom spends the same percentage of its GDP on the health and welfare of its citizens (pensions, education, healthcare, and welfare) that the U.S. spends of its GDP on everything, ever. In Japan, not only are public universities far more respected than private ones -- the University of Tokyo is #23 worldwide -- but the cost is dirt cheap compared to the U.S., and the student loan structure doesn't leave students broke for life.
Bottom line is that countries with gun bans and some of the lowest homicide rates on the planet are also looking after their citizens far better than we are. And when people aren't starving, uneducated/barely educated wage slaves, they tend to have fewer reasons to be violent.
Stopping gun violence isn't about stopping guns; it's about stopping violence, period. If you can curb that, it won't matter who owns a gun because they'll have fewer reasons to point it at anyone.
You want to stop violence? Stop poverty. Stop hatred.
Handing out or taking away a gun will not stop either of those.
If you want to stop poverty and hatred? Don't hand out guns. Instead, hand out living wages. Hand out education. Hand out healthcare. Hand out mental healthcare. Hand out birth control. Hand out compassion.
Don't take away guns. Instead, take away fear. Take away uncertainty. Take away that which makes people feel threatened and rejected.
If you don't want to do that? Then shut up and get out of the way so other people can.
Yeah, I said it. This progressive does not think guns are the problem, and has a recurring pipe dream wherein both sides of the gun debate -- both the ammosexuals worshipping Wayne LaPierre as some kind of messianic Rambo instead of the corporate shill he is and the Moms Demand Action reactionaries who can't tell you how the thing they want to ban even works -- sit down and shut up like the children they are and let the adults in the middle do the talking.
"Guns don't kill people" is a stupidly irritating way of phrasing it -- because killing is what guns were originally invented to do; they are not a "misused tool" when you shoot people with them, they are doing exactly what they were built for, so comparing them to cars and screwdrivers and pencils and maxi pads and anything else that was designed for a purpose completely unrelated to killing and wounding is ridiculous -- but the sentiment behind this annoying catchphrase is valid; a gun is an inanimate object. It can't kill anything without a human operator pulling the trigger. But it's far easier for people to blame an inanimate object rather than a functionally broken society that encourages violence against one another, because the inanimate object can't talk back to you and tell you you're full of shit. In the 1950s, it was comic books. In the 1990s, it was video games. Today, it's guns. Tomorrow, it'll be computers. Or porn.
The problem with the NRA side is that "well just arm everybody" is not going to accomplish anything (other than making gun manufacturers rich, which, let's not kid ourselves any longer that that's really the NRA's mission and has been for a long time). Saying the cure for violence is more guns is like saying the cure for lung cancer is more cigarettes. Guns are not the sole and direct cause of violence, but throwing more of them at the problem sure as fuck won't help.
Because that is why the very concept of "gun control" in this country is an illusion. There are just too fucking many of them.
Policing gun sales, especially with the advent of the internet, is like Bill Murray in Caddyshack with the damned gophers. For a very recent and horrifying illustration of this, look no further than the Las Vegas shooters from a couple weeks ago. Jerad Miller was a felon, thus already barred from legally buying a gun. So what's a militant right-wing bigot to do in order to start the revolution and fight The Man? Buy his guns on Facebook, of course!
Gun sales are against the TOS, but who reads that shit anyway?
My point is that stricter gun control laws would not have stopped Jerad Miller from killing 3 people, because the existing laws had already covered him; he just found a way around them. Granted, that has not been the case for a frightening number of mass shooters, many of whom purchased their weapons legally (not included in the linked article: Elliot Rodgers, the UCSB shooter, who also purchased 3 handguns completely legal), so the "well, crazy people don't care about the law anyway so why bother?" argument doesn't hold up, either; James Holmes and Jared Loughner obviously cared to play by the rules long enough to obtain their weapons clean. And I agree that we shouldn't make it easy for people like them.
But the problem is twofold: 1) we don't enforce the laws we've already got, and 2) we have a far bigger problem of too many people who want to kill other people in the first place.
You want to know what would've actually stopped James Holmes? If the cops had listened to the psychiatrist who was treating him when she told them he was dangerous a little more than a month before the shooting. The Columbine shooters? Parents attentive enough to know what their kids were doing (spoiler: building explosives in the garage). Adam Lanza? A better and more informed diagnosis (we can start with not blindly using Asperger's as a catch-all for every awkward kid that walks through the door). Jared Loughner? Wade Michael Page (the Wisconsin Sikh temple shooter)? Better access to mental healthcare (Loughner was an undiagnosed paranoid schizophrenic at the time of the shooting), and in Page's case, a crackdown on the white supremacist echo chamber that fed his rage machine.
In virtually every shooting of this kind, you'll find warning signs. Signs which went ignored. In Elliot Rodgers' case? A string of Youtube videos and a 140-page manifesto detailing how he was going to get revenge on society for denying him his hot blonde sorority girlfriend. In Lanza's case? A fascination with shootings and killing (particularly his obsession with Columbine). And in Jerad Miller's case? That he was at the Bundy Ranch supporting the waving of guns at BLM agents was a pretty big clue something wasn't right (his begging for a gun on Facebook to start the revolution was the giant neon signboard). Warning signs that, had they been heeded, would've allowed law enforcement and/or the mental health system to intervene before something bad happened.
Problem is, we don't care enough about solving the reasons people kill each other. Caring about who is "right" and how much control they get over people who are "wrong" is a lot easier and more satisfying precisely because it doesn't do jack shit.
That's why we're obsessed with locking up criminals rather than preventing crime (and because the for-profit prison system creates a demand to fill jails, but that's another rant entirely).
Which brings me to my next point: more gun control isn't a magic pill that's going to reduce violent crime rates, either. It may make it slightly harder for people to commit crime with guns, but it won't really stop anyone. Because of the aforementioned problem of having too many guns in circulation to effectively police sales. And because guns do not cause crime; guns are tools used in crimes. Expecting gun control to reduce crime is like expecting Prohibition to reduce alcoholism, and we all know how well that worked out.
If you want to effectively reduce crime, you have to attack that shit at the source. People who point to gun bans and lower crime rates in places like Australia, the United Kingdom, and Japan tend to forget that those countries don't just ban guns. They also have a much better and better-run social safety net than we do here. All three have universal healthcare. Australia has a minimum wage more than twice that of the U.S. The United Kingdom spends the same percentage of its GDP on the health and welfare of its citizens (pensions, education, healthcare, and welfare) that the U.S. spends of its GDP on everything, ever. In Japan, not only are public universities far more respected than private ones -- the University of Tokyo is #23 worldwide -- but the cost is dirt cheap compared to the U.S., and the student loan structure doesn't leave students broke for life.
Bottom line is that countries with gun bans and some of the lowest homicide rates on the planet are also looking after their citizens far better than we are. And when people aren't starving, uneducated/barely educated wage slaves, they tend to have fewer reasons to be violent.
Stopping gun violence isn't about stopping guns; it's about stopping violence, period. If you can curb that, it won't matter who owns a gun because they'll have fewer reasons to point it at anyone.
You want to stop violence? Stop poverty. Stop hatred.
Handing out or taking away a gun will not stop either of those.
If you want to stop poverty and hatred? Don't hand out guns. Instead, hand out living wages. Hand out education. Hand out healthcare. Hand out mental healthcare. Hand out birth control. Hand out compassion.
Don't take away guns. Instead, take away fear. Take away uncertainty. Take away that which makes people feel threatened and rejected.
If you don't want to do that? Then shut up and get out of the way so other people can.
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