Do you feel safe?

I've long been suspicious of huge amounts of security; maybe I'm just weird, but it makes me more nervous than anything else.

Something along the lines of, "terrorists might end my day very unpleasantly, but that's very unlikely. You guys most certainly will inconvenience me," I think.

Along a similar line, I don't have any fear of 9/11 being repeated, even if airport security drops off to pre-9/11 levels (which will never happen, I know). The calculus for hijackees changed, that day, in a way that will keep it from ever being possible again.

The calculus used to be, "just go along with them. It's likely to be highly inconvenient, because I'll end up in a city where I don't want to be, but nobody will die." Now, the calculus is, "If I don't do anything, not only will I die, but hundreds or thousands of others will as well."

It's not an accident that the last of the incidents that day was the one that failed. And that's the worst case of what I expect from any 9/11-type incident going forward. (As a side note, it's kind of odd that the NRA hasn't tried to say that the solution to the airline terrorist problem is to just arm everyone on the plane.)

So I don't worry about it.

But I do worry about the costs of ever-increasing amounts of "security" (I put that in quotes because lots of security is actually just theater, to make people feel like something is being done. Not all of it, of course, but a lot of it. And that lot costs a great deal of money), so I do read a fair bit about security measures.

When my favorite sportswriter went to talk about it, in the context of the Boston bombing, I couldn't stay away. And this part really rang a bell for me:

I told someone how odd this all seemed to me as an American — this was before 9/11, back when you didn’t have take off your belt or put your shampoo in plastic bags before boarding a flight — and she shrugged and said: “We deal with this all the time. Don’t worry. It’s almost always a false alarm. That’s why people are so ready for it be over. … It’s just a different life. In America you have other things. You have crime. We don’t have violent crime here. You learn to live with what you have.”

The incident reminded me of a facet of 9/11 that I haven't thought about often, since then. I used to subscribe to The New Republic, and 9/11 was what got me to drop it. It was because they had several articles that were along the lines of, "Yes, this is how we feel all the time in Israel", and I found the attitude deeply disturbing. Enough that I couldn't read the magazine anymore, in fact.

I don't have any dog in Israel's fights, but I think there is enough provocation on both sides that I can't say that anyone comes out of the fights looking innocent, or good. So trying to say, "We're all Israel now" just wasn't ever going to work for me. Hopefully, in the years since, the magazine has moved on from that position. I rather doubt it, though.

But the key to it all, for the nation as a whole, is where Posnanski ends:

“If this [sports-related terrorism] was happening on a yearly basis, we might be having a different conversation,” he said. “Fortunately, it has not. I do think it’s very important to remember that.”

Thoughts on the recent tragedy

I haven't posted anything about the Newtown massacre, as I don't think I've got anything to say that hasn't been said many times.

One thing was kind of weird, though.  When I first read about it, at work that day, it didn't really register what had happened.  It was just... another school shooting, I guess.  But then they talked about it on the radio on the way home, and it really got me upset.  I started thinking about my own kids (not quite that old), I guess, and I got a lot more emotional than I usually do.

The whole thing just seems so senseless, and my heart goes out to the parents and friends of those children.  And the staff killed, as well.

The NRA's suggested response, putting armed guards in every school, seems stupid, at best.  Meeting violence with violence has only succeeded in stopping violence when one side has nothing left.  Given the supply of crazy (or sociopathically desperate for attention) people around, there will never be nothing left.

But we should be cutting down on the supply of guns.  The number of people killed is tragically high.  In fact, I didn't realize how high until the last week or so, but it's over 10k people a year.  There needs to be regulation, maybe similarly to how cars are regulated.

It's just... this can't go on.

I grew up in a house with guns (not a lot, but they were there).  I learned to shoot at a young age.  I've never owned a gun, but in high school I had a couple of guns on long-term (I think it ended up being a couple of years) loan.  For all intents and purposes, they were my guns for that time period; nobody told me when or how to use them, and I took care of maintenance and care.  I even bought the ammo.

More recently, I've fired fully automatic submachine guns.  It was fun, but it was in a very controlled environment, and that was definitely a good thing.

And I've even considered buying a pistol for target shooting and home defense.

But this easy access to weapons made solely for killing people (there's a big difference between a hunting rifle and an AR-15) is just crazy.  It's too easy, and too many people are dying.  Something has to be done.  I think there are a number of steps that can easily be taken.  One, modernize what records ATF keeps (ie: not on cards).  Two, 100% background checks (yes, it isn't perfect, but it'll help).  Three, get rid of easy access to large-capacity magazines (5-10 rounds is plenty, even for self-defense situations).  Four, these "stand your ground" laws are nuts; they're just designed to make it easier to escalate a situation to where someone gets killed.  Five, limit the number of guns people can buy in a small timeframe.  One a month is plenty for any sane situation

I'm sure there are even better ideas, but that's some easy, low-hanging fruit that will cut down on deaths.