Month: November 2009

Remember Professor Brian Anse Patrick?

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He’s a professor of communications at the University of Toledo. I wrote an Überpost largely about his book The National Rifle Association and the Media: The Motivating Force of Negative Coverage back in January of last year, The Church of the MSM and the New Reformation. Professor Patrick’s investigation into the inner workings of “Professional Journalism” (and yes, those are “scorn quotes”) was fascinating, especially in conjunction with the exposé works of outcast journalists Bernie Goldberg and John Stossel.

Well, he’s got a new book out, Rise of the Anti-Media: In-forming America’s Concealed Weapon Carry Movement. He dropped me an email today to let me know it was out. I emailed him back congratulating him on his new book, and informing him that I’d be waiting for the paperback. You can get it now for 20% off, but that’s still $56.00.

I see that college textbooks have still not come down in price.

I asked him about the title, too: why “In-Formed”? He responded:

I wanted to emphasize the old meaning of the term “inform” which at one time meant (and still does) to imbue with shape and spirit, while the modern “informed” person is the saddest and most tiresome creature on earth, who after watching a newscast and reading a newspaper imagines the few facts and allegations he has encountered bear some resemblance to social-political reality.

A main reason the concealed carry movement worked (and gun culture generally) is because it created its own anti-media, alternative media, often computer mediated, that in-formed it, and therefore its people were capable of directed action in concert over time, as opposed to people with vague anti-gun attitudes who had been informed in the only most superficial and ephemeral sense by mass news media. –people who then move on like a browsing goat to the next morsel of news, the last forgotten, with no behavioral correlates to whatever fleeting attitudes the last piece of news may have briefly stimulated . On the other hand, gun people have an attention span because they are in-formed and their beliefs have strong correlations in behavior such as voting and voluntary political association.

“(T)he modern “informed” person is the saddest and most tiresome creature on earth, who after watching a newscast and reading a newspaper imagines the few facts and allegations he has encountered bear some resemblance to social-political reality.”

There’s Quote of the Day material!

Honestly, it does look like an interesting book, and I’d love to read it – I’m just not going to pop $56 on a copy right now.

From Across the Pond

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From Across the Pond

I received an interesting email this morning from across the pond (full name redacted):

I believe in the right of the individual to keep and bear arms in defence of themselves. This makes me a significant rarity, given that I am as British as Cornish pasties.

I heard the standard arguments of the pro-banning-guns community while growing up, but I had an analytical enough mind to know that I wouldn’t be able to conscionably form an opinion without investigating the statistical nature of taking guns away from a community in comparison to communities where guns are not taken away. This missing piece was provided by a friend I gained via IRC who runs a gun shop in Pennsylvania, who linked me to gunfacts.info, and I saw the proverbial light. Beyond that, firearms have never played a central part of my life – I’ve never lived in the areas of the country where gang warfare and violent crime are greatest, and nobody in my family had much to do with firearms in a sporting context or hunting.

As such, I have a question which is likely not quite what you normally get. You’ve characterised the sweep of gun control through the legislation of the UK as a slippery slope, which I don’t disagree with; what can I do to try and reverse the process?

Thomas

Here’s what I sent him in reply:

Thank you for your missive. I wish I had a simple answer for your question, or even some words of encouragement, but with regard to that slippery slope I’m personally afraid that the UK has proceeded too far down it to ever climb back out. “Reversing the process,” in my opinion, requires “renormalization” – that is, making guns and gun ownership if not common, at least not uncommon again. One of my favorite quotes regarding the “normalization” of gun ownership comes from Teresa Nielson Hayden: “Basically, I figure guns are like gays: They seem a lot more sinister and threatening until you get to know a few; and once you have one in the house, you can get downright defensive about them.” Unfortunately, the disarmament of your nation has proceeded well past the point where that can occur – thus guns and gun ownership will remain (in the eyes of the majority of your fellow subjects) abnormal, anti-social and frightening. It’s a cultural change that took over eighty years to accomplish, and the inertia of that effort will preclude the necessary reversal of your gun control laws that will allow renormalization. The British psyche no longer recognizes two “gun cultures” – one of sportsmen and protectors and one of criminals – it only recognizes one – the criminal. Note that many in your culture still object to the arming of police forces even in the face of skyrocketing violent crime. As you yourself noted, your belief in the right of armed self-defense makes you a “significant rarity” in your own culture.

The only way to “reverse the process” is to convince the voting public that guns are not the cause of crime, that gun owners are not violent psychopaths or petty criminals just waiting for the opportunity to criminally misuse their guns, and that they themselves are responsible enough to own one and use it in defense of themselves, their families, and their property. That option has been stripped from you in death-by-a-thousand-cuts legislation dating back to 1920. I think the final step over the brink was the 1996/97 handgun ban.

In Scotland in 2007 there were 26,056 firearm certificates on issue to a total population of 5,062,000. In other words, about 0.5% of the population is licensed to own a centerfire rifle or a shotgun that can hold more than two shells. In England and Wales there were 128,528 firearm certificates on issue to a population of about 54 million, or less than 0.25% of the population there. That’s nowhere near enough to make firearms ownership anything approaching “normal,” and the laws make it extremely unlikely that firearm ownership levels in UK will ever again approach even 5%.

It’s cold of me, I know, but the UK for me now serves as an example of what can happen here if we don’t fight tooth and nail to prevent it.

I wish you luck in your endeavors, though. I’d love to be proven wrong.

Actually, I repeat my entreaty: Get out. Get out NOW.