The shooting at U.S. Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords’ meeting with her constituents is currently dominating the news. My reaction: yawn. I consider the story of how the Nazis were concerned about a dog that was a “paw-raising parody of Germany’s Fuehrer” more interesting, but I should explain my reasoning because my disinterest is not solely due to apathy.
The current Wikipedia article about this seems poorly named: the 2011 Tucson shooting. There are probably going to be other shootings in Tucson this year unless Tucson is a very low crime area. Regardless, my reasoning:
Many people are killed each day, but the second a Congressperson is killed, the U.S. news media gives persistent coverage. The reactions to it are typical and predictable: sadness, condemnation, anger, and other negative emotions. This violence is unacceptable is the popular message, but the U.S. government has killed how many innocents in its wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, and possibly elsewhere in the past few years? I do not know the answer because the U.S. news media is too busy keeping accurate body counts of U.S. military personnel, but not foreigners. Depending on the country one is born in, one’s life has more value according to news coverage? Can that be openly admitted? Nope. Why is a congressperson’s life considered more valuable than the constituents who, if killed, would likely get much less news coverage? Isn’t the politically correct view that congresspersons are servants, not masters, thus they should not be revered more than the people they represent?
What is the motive for this shooting? Smart people will wait until an investigation occurs, but others lack patience. Patience has ceased to be a virtue (if it ever was a widespread virtue). The current suspect is political language: it’s too harsh, violent, and bad.
Most political rhetoric is about who should use violence against whom. Force everyone to pay X% of their income in taxes or else. Tax this group to benefit that group. Force this person to buy health insurance. Force consumers to pay higher prices because of tariffs established to help domestic producers. Force low skilled workers to struggle more due to a higher minimum wage. Prosecute Bernie Madoff for doing what only the Social Security Administration is allowed to do: run a Ponzi scheme. Clearly, violence is politically acceptable, but on the condition the government does it.
However, I believe there is more than that. I speculate many people do not want to see the violence, although they advocate it. If Bob wants to take Steve’s money, Bob could do so more easily by using an intermediary than by doing so himself. By robbing Steve directly, Bob could see Steve’s anger. Suddenly, a human face on the special interest group with almost no political clout: the taxpayers. However, Bob could be severely beaten by Steven, so best to use an intermediary.
The Bush administration restricted dissemination of photos of U.S. coffins during the Iraq war. It was an attempt to avoid negative media coverage. People can cheer for war, but seeing the causalities could dampen the enthusiasm. To see a human face on the suffering could cause people to weight the costs of war instead of the regularly repeated benefits. Best to prevent that calculation by hiding the costs of war. Best to hide political violence by using an intermediary. Best to hide the political violence by not reporting its occurrence every day.
Now that the violence so routinely advocated has occurred in the open, there is outrage. Pardon my unpardonable lack of tears.
Did this shooter convince you of his ideology which may be the reason for this shooting? I doubt so. Education, discussion, debate – those should have been the first steps to changing people’s views, not gunning people down. Even if the shooter had all the justification in the world for killing each person, the long-term result is to reinforce government power because public perception will only see innocent victims. Without a clear and compelling reasoning for the shooter’s actions, the public can easily assume he was insane.
The only suspect, Jared Lee Loughner, is currently remaining silent. The Associated Press reported Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik says Sunday that there is no evidence that anybody besides 22-year-old suspect Jared Loughner (LAWF’-ner) was involved. Authorities earlier cleared a suspected accomplice, a cab driver, of involvement.
I know many libertarians do not care about the U.S. constitution: they did not consent to it, it is viewed as sacred text (not a human creation), and it comes no where close to justifying the existence of the U.S. government. However, one can use it to defend oneself if one is prosecuted. The right to remain silent is excellently explained and defended in the 2-part lecture Don’t Talk to Cops (Part 1, Part 2). I urge you all to watch it. It will be more educational than the ongoing coverage of this news story.
By the way, were not most of the people who were shot unarmed? Couldn’t the people have better defended themselves if they were not sitting ducks? I am happy that murder and illegal use of a weapon will become crimes, so this will never happen again. I am so glad that insightful political pundits believe removing the means to accomplish violence (the weaponry) is enough to stop the motive from finding another way. This has clearly worked in the ongoing Mexican drug war where drug cartels have extreme difficulty finding any weapons to fight against the Mexican military which has been beating them since December 2006 and completely protecting Mexican civilians. Wow. Thank goodness the right lesson has been learned. I mean, who could justify thousands of civilian deaths due to a flawed government policy? The person who advocated that policy, wow, I can only imagine how much they would be hated. The punishment would probably be death. But we all know the 30-year long war on drugs has not cost 1 innocent life or destroyed countries, families, or in any way caused physical harm. If thousands of people were killed due to drug cartels being empowered by flawed government policies, that would be 24/7 news, with one pundit after another calling for the foolish politicians to be assassinated just like the Big Bad Terrorist Julian Assange.
Back to the reason for the shooting. What about insanity? Was the suspect insane? Libertarian Sheldon Richmann rejected the insanity defense when applied to John Hinckley, Jr. who tried to assassinate President Ronald Reagan:
Could he [John Hinckley, Jr.] have chosen otherwise? To answer no, one would have to believe that Hinckley had no choice but to purchase a gun, book a flight, board an airplane to Washington, ascertain the whereabouts of President Reagan on March 30, 1981, wait for him to exit the Washington Hilton, and pull the trigger several times. Are we to believe that an illness made him do all this?
Thomas Szasz, the foremost psychiatrist-critic of psychiatry, has been a relentless critic of the insanity defense and verdict for 50 years. He writes, “Regardless of whether a person is deemed sane or insane, a person has reasons, not causes, for his actions. If we reject the actor’s reasons as absurd, crazy, or meaningless, then we consider and call him mentally ill. That, however, hardly constitutes proof that his alleged condition caused him to commit the forbidden act.”
The unsubstantiated claim that the insane suffer from a brain disease cannot salvage the insanity defense. “A brain disease may, indeed be a cause,” Szasz writes. “But a cause of what? Typically, of a functional deficit, such as weakness, blindness, paralysis. No brain disease causes complex, coordinated behaviors, such as the crimes committed by John W. Hinckley, Jr.”