IF IGNORANCE IS BLISS, 'TIS FOLLY TO BE WISE

I just saw a Tweet which featured a photograph of an AK-47 and carried the inscription (hashtags omitted): "AK47 stands for Automatic Killer, 47 bullets per pull of the trigger. Much deadlier than an AR15."

Let me explain the problems with this tweet using words of one syllable wherever possible:

(1) "AK" does not mean "Automatic Killer." It means "Automat Kalashnikov," for the type of gun it is (full auto) and the inventor (Mikhail Kalashnikov).

(2) "47" does not mean "47 bullets per pull of the trigger." It stands for 1947, the year it was first made.

(3) The AK-47 available on the American market is no "deadlier" than an AR-15, and not as "deadly" as a semi-automatic .308 or .30-06, both of which can reach out and touch at greater distance with a heftier punch. Back in the last century when I was a deer hunter, I preferred a WWII surplus bolt action .303 Lee-Enfield sniper's rifle to a semi-automatic .308. It made you aim more carefully and didn't waste nearly as many cartridges when you missed.

In the comment meme following the tweet, I read a comment that the "AR" in AR-15 means "Assault Rifle." No, it doesn't. It means "Armalite Rifle," for the company which first made it.

If you want to be 100% absolutely correct in the use of the term "assault rifle," you should confine the description to a rifle capable of full automatic fire, which fires an under-powered rifle cartridge. At the beginning of WWII the Germans equipped their paratroopers with full auto high powered rifles, but the guns kicked so badly that they were near impossible to control. The Germans later improved the full-auto rifle by reducing the cartridge size and power, and the first true assault rifle was born, the Sturmgewehr 44--"sturm" meaning "assault" and "gewehr" meaning rifle. And just to be perfectly clear, "44" does not mean "44 bullets per pull of the trigger," it means 1944, the year the gun was put into production.

Here is a paradoxical fact about the deadly fully-automatic assault rifle: It is actually intended as a life-saving tool as much as it is a life-taking weapon. The main purpose of high-volume small arms fire on the battlefield is not to kill. It is to make the enemy keep his head down so he cannot kill you. The longer your enemy keeps his head down to avoid your full-auto fire, the less time he has to carefully aim and shoot at you. See the Wikipedia article on Suppressive Fire. I saw a documentary a while back which re-enacted a firefight in Iraq. A squad member with a SAW was covering his comrades against fire from a sniper. (A SAW is a Squad Automatic Weapon, usually an M249 light machine gun, which is capable of massive sustained full-auto fire). The soldier with the SAW fired what seemed like thousands of rounds of ammunition keeping the sniper's head down, thereby saving the lives of his fellow squad members. Unfortunately, when his SAW ran out of bullets, the sniper killed him with one shot. In other words, the man armed with the ultra deadly latest model fully automatic assault weapon eventually succumbed to a man armed with a bolt action rifle.

CAVEAT: I don't mean by my title to disparage the intellect of the tweeter by pointing out the tweeter's ignorance. Everyone is ignorant, we're just ignorant on different subjects. The point I am trying to make is that it is best to speak on matters of which one has knowledge and remain silent on matters of which one is ignorant. 

QUESTIONS CONCERNING THE NFL AND THE NATIONAL ANTHEM

Q: What are NFL players protesting when they refuse to stand for the National Anthem? A: Police brutality.

Q: What entity saw to it that the officers who abused Rodney King were punished? A: An agency of the Federal government (the United States Department of Justice).

Q: What entity came down on the Ferguson Police Department like a ton of bricks after the shooting of Michael Brown? A: An agency of the Federal government (the United States Department of Justice).

Q: What entity has a long-standing track record for working to punish police violation of civil rights, including police brutality? A: The Federal government.

Q: What does the National Anthem symbolize? A: The Federal government.

Q: How do you show respect for the Federal government? A: By standing for the National Anthem.

Q: How do you show disrespect for the Federal government? A: By refusing to stand for the National Anthem.

Q: When NFL players refuse to stand for the National Anthem to protest police brutality, what are they actually doing? A: Showing disrespect for the entity most committed to punishing police brutality.

Q: Does it make sense to protest police brutality by disrespecting the entity most committed to punishing police brutality?

REGULATING BUMP STOCKS

Although I've been an NRA member for several decades, I haven't always agreed with every stance taken by the NRA or the NRA-ILA. I wondered what position the NRA would take on bump stocks when the post-Las Vegas Shooting conversation got around to discussing a ban. I am happy to see that they favor strict regulation of such devices. I wholeheartedly agree.

For as long as I can remember, anyone who wanted to own a fully automatic weapon had to jump through a number of hoops which had a very small diameter. This is as it should be. Very few civilians have any need to own or possess a fully automatic firearm. I'll be the first person to admit that they're a lot of fun to shoot. However, the fact that it's a lot of fun to shoot off fireworks doesn't prevent the government from severely limiting the shooting of fireworks by just anyone.

It seems reasonable to me that if you're going to purchase a bump stock, you should have to jump through the exact same hoops that you would if you were purchasing a Thompson submachine gun.

An another thing: Bump stocks aren't the only devices that can be used to make a firearm mimic full auto. Certain crank devices can be attached to triggers which allow you to literally "crank out" shots as fast as full auto. There may be other devices which can be attached to firearms to simulate full auto. Tomorrow morning some brilliant gunsmith may invent a new device to simulate full auto fire. Any kind of device which can be used to make a firearm simulate full auto fire ought to be regulated as stringently as truly full auto firearms are currently being regulated.

A MODEST PROPOSAL RELATING TO THE PREVENTION OF MASS SHOOTINGS

It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything. Although during my hiatus I have often had the urge to say something about current events, I never felt that I had anything productive that I could add to any discussion. With what has happened in Las Vegas, I believe that I can add something to the conversation. I have previously voiced the opinion that the problem with mass shootings is not gun control but people control, and I traced the origin of the trend toward mass shootings to the United States Supreme Court’s tightening of the requirements for involuntary hospitalization of the mentally ill. O'Connor v. Donaldson, 422 U.S. 563, 95 S.Ct. 2486 (U.S.Fla. 1975), made it nearly impossible to hold a mentally ill person for more than a few days. After that, the patient was often back out on the street acting strangely and getting into more trouble.

Most with mental health issues do not become mass shooters, but most mass shooters (excluding those with political motivations) have mental health issues. It hasn’t yet come out that Stephen Paddock had mental health issues, and the media have portrayed him as someone who was normal to all outward appearances. Other than the fact that he was a loner, his father was a professional bank robber on the FBI’s Top Ten Most Wanted List, he was a high-stakes gambler, and his brother said he was “not a normal guy”, Paddock was just like anyone else and nobody who knew him could have seen this coming. I don’t buy it. I predict that Paddock will have a history of mental health issues. All that investigators have to do to find out about that history is to penetrate the veil of secrecy thrown up by HIPAA and the patient-psychotherapist privilege.

If Paddock proves to have a perfectly normal mental health history, then there may be something to the Islamic State’s claim that he converted to Islam and carried out the attack “in response to [the Islamic State’s] calls to target coalition countries.” I, however, seriously doubt that the Islamic State’s claims have any truth value whatsoever. If an Islamic State spokesman were to tell me that the sun was shining, I’d go get my umbrella.

It is impossible to 100% completely prevent such incidents as happened in Las Vegas, and O'Connor v. Donaldson makes it even more difficult than it otherwise could be, but I think I know of a way to predict whether someone has a potential for acting out in the way that Paddock did. It will take some explaining. There is a school of thought in the field of statistics called predictive analytics or predictive modeling that employs the use of statistical algorithms to predict future behavior.

My first contact with such predictive algorithms came when I was a Sexually Violent Predator prosecutor. The predictive algorithm (which was called an “instrument”) was called the Rapid Risk Assessment for Sexual Offense Recidivism, or the RRASOR. The psychiatrist or psychologist (hereafter “psych”) simply looked to the RRASOR’s checklist, and checked off the boxes on the list. Each box had a number value. At the end of the checklist the psych added up the numbers for each box checked, and the total score gave a prediction for how likely it was that the sex offender would reoffend. The higher the score, the more likely the person was to reoffend. At that time the RRASOR was touted as being more accurate a predictor of recidivism than a traditional psych evaluation.

Another predictive algorithm that was used in connection with Sexually Violent Predator prosecutions was the Hare Psychopathy Checklist, which is now in a revised second edition (PCL-R). Its mechanics were similar to the RRASOR. The psych goes down a checklist, giving points for each variable, and totals the points at the end. The higher the score the more likely that the patient is a psychopath. The more likely it is that a person is a psychopath, the less likely it is that the person will respond to traditional psychiatric treatment.

Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, in their book Super Freakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance, describe how the UK’s antiterrorism agencies used such an algorithm to thwart terrorist attacks. They come across a person who looks suspicious, run him through the algorithm, and the algorithm tells them how likely it is that the person is going to make a terrorist attack. Go down the list, check off the boxes, and add up the points, and the higher the score, the more likely the person is to make a terrorist attack. One of the criteria was whether or not the person had any life insurance. Life insurance policies are not going to pay off if the insured kills himself in a suicide attack, so why buy life insurance? The only reason to do so would be to lower your score on the terrorism algorithm.

Now, we’ve got enough data on enough mass shooters to look into their backgrounds and find the common characteristics that all or most mass shooters possess. Assemble a checklist like the RRASOR or the PCL-R, run the questionable individual through the checklist, and if the individual scores high on the algorithm, that person bears watching. We could call the algorithm the Gun Violence Assessment of Risk (GunVAR).

How would you apply it? Use a methodology similar to that used in Sexually Violent Predator prosecutions (See Fla.Stat. §§ 394.910-394.932). When a sex offender is released from prison, the offender is examined and a determination made as to how likely that person is to reoffend. If it is determined that the person has a high likelihood of reoffending, then a Sexually Violent Predator commitment proceeding is initiated. The flaw of Sexually Violent Predator commitment, is that the individual can be committed with no real prospects of being cured and consequently no real hope of release. I would propose a different protocol for proceedings relating to risk of gun violence.

When an individual has been involuntarily committed for mental health issues, upon his release, he will be assessed using the GunVAR. If he scores high enough on the GunVAR, then the psych has a duty to report this fact to the authorities. Proceedings can then be instituted to insure that the person is placed under a form of probationary supervision, he receives outpatient therapy to curb his violent tendencies, and maximum efforts are made to keep him separated from guns (including periodic unannounced inventories of his living quarters to make sure he hasn’t acquired any guns). When a psych certifies that he has a clean bill of mental health, then a judge can release him from supervision.

As I said at the outset, there is no 100% foolproof method of preventing mass killings. A truly determined killer doesn’t need a gun—a pressure cooker and some home-made explosives or a rented van loaded with ammonium nitrate and fuel oil will work just as well. But I do think a procedure similar to that described in the Sexually Violent Predator laws would cut down on such violence.