Safety depends on consent

A piece on NPR this morning about Squirrel Hill and the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting mentioned that it was a "safe" neighborhood.

The devotees of armed force like to remind the rest of us that no place is safe. And they are right. Unless you are in some super-fortified safe room -- in which you are a prisoner of fear -- you may encounter an evil person any time, anywhere. But the odds are better in some places than in others.

I lived in a safe neighborhood in West Annapolis in the 1980s. Just a few doors up the street, someone was murdered in their home. As I recall, that was a spousal murder. It was still a murder. A couple of years later, on a slightly sketchier residential street in Edgewater, the guy next door wigged out on PCP and fired off a few rounds at something imaginary before sprinting up the street stripping his clothes off. Years before that, in Coral Gables, Florida, I found a .32 slug from our crazy neighbor flattened against the wall of our house. She was a drinker, who kept the pistol at the head of her bed. Good thing the houses in that neighborhood had thick masonry walls. We never heard a shot. She could have done it any time, even before we moved in. Just another day.

Mass shootings and ideologically motivated murder have increased in this country since the mid 20th Century, adding to the ongoing death toll that merely stems from the ugly side of human nature. Our own citizens subscribe to enough homicidal ideologies to supply us with atrocities that require no invaders or sneaky terrorists from abroad. We rate the safety of a neighborhood on its record of crime and violence. But ideological violence leaps over the local customs between neighbors, the consensual agreement to live and let live.

Safety depends on consent. The residents of a place agree that they will work with and around each other without resorting to forceful confrontation. They will respect each other's boundaries. In the best cases, they will enjoy the experience and expanded point of view brought to them by a diverse population. But even lacking a diverse population of residents, people can cultivate a peaceful attitude if enough of them choose to do so.

All this is for nothing, the armed and dangerous crowd tells us. The only path to peace is through the threat of mutually assured destruction or by eradicating everyone who holds an opposing viewpoint. Anything less is cowardly.

For decades now, the promoters of an armed society have been telling us that anyone must be prepared for a gunfight. As the rhetoric creates an ever more paranoid and volatile population, their prophecy fulfills itself. I see armed men all the time, just going about their lives: shopping, gassing up the truck, serving on town boards, with at least one gun visible. With permitless concealed carry, they could have a couple more tucked in various crevices on their person. A couple of weeks ago it was a scrawny young dude with a 12-pack of beer under one arm, and a handgun bigger than his skinny thigh almost pulling his jeans down as he climbed into his truck.

The Second Amendment cancels out the First, if the threat of armed response is what makes people shut up and ignore each other's behavior. Flip the bird at someone who drives like a sociopath and you may find out just how much of a sociopath he is. It was always true. Anyone might have a gun, regardless of the laws. But the more we enable and encourage the idea that deadly force is normal, the more of it we will see. Deadly force may be a last resort, but feel free to hop right to it with only the briefest glance at other options on your way by. Homicidal ideology plus an arsenal of firearms leads you right to Squirrel Hill, or a grocery store in Kentucky. It breaches the agreement of safety wherever it arrives.

Every time I've considered carrying a gun I've decided that it would probably make a situation worse rather than better. Because we do not yet live in an actual war zone, by the time you know that deadly force is justified you have probably already lost that battle. Our stereotypical movie cowboys of the mythical old west weren't fighting off muggers. They were calling each other out in duels. Or the sodbusters were engaged in guerrilla warfare with the ranchers. Or the gang of outlaws would sweep down on the town, where the brave sheriff and his deputies would pick them off. In every case, the participants knew that they were in a defined conflict. It was right there in the fictional script.

The racists and antisemites in this country who want to eliminate people they deem undesirable are eager to define the conflict and declare war. They have no use for conventions of safety. Perhaps they would feel differently if they were immersed in a lengthy conflict that destroyed a lot of property and killed a lot of their friends, but you'll never convince them of that by imagination alone. They imagine glorious victory and rivers of blood from their enemies. The same optimism has ushered in every war since the first pre-human picked up a stick and showed his tribe-mates how great it was to bust heads.

That first war led to the proliferation of sticks. A secret weapon is only a secret until you use it. Then everybody wants one. And no one imagines themselves on the receiving end of it. That reality sets in later, when the glorious conflict turns into a quagmire. And people start to yearn for peace, rest, and safety.

The militia next door

Self-styled patriots have seized a federal government building in Oregon to protest land use regulations they feel represent federal overreach. They're heavily armed and promising to defend themselves with deadly force if the government starts any trouble.

The substance of their grievance is not important. But it got me wondering what it might be like if they'd done it in the woods behind me, rather than in a small structure grandly and misleadingly described by the media as "a federal building."

Consensus among the many experts who fill social media and chat rooms, is that the authorities should simply turn off the water and electricity to the building and ignore the militia men until they give up and go home to hydrate and thaw out. But what if they didn't?

I imagined a patrol of armed men trooping out of the woods to request or requisition supplies from me.

My first move would be to politely refuse them any aid. They got themselves into this, they can put up with the hardships until they figure out how to get themselves out.

In response, they would probably claim to be a revolutionary army and say they would commandeer whatever they needed from me, an enemy combatant branded by my obvious sympathy to the tyrannical central government. Or they might go looking for better luck at a neighbor's house, but let's say my house is the only one convenient to their little revolution fantasy camp.

My next move might be to display, or even use, a weapon in response to their threat of physical force. Or I might already have called in law enforcement to do their job protecting peaceful citizens from armed hooligans.

This is a watershed. If I engage the militia in a firefight, I am acting more like they say they act, taking the law into my own hands to serve a higher cause. The fact that I am using my Second Amendment right to bear arms to shoot at them as they exercise theirs to try to coerce me puts us both strangely on both sides of the law at once. As the aggressors, they are more wrong than I am, but once the firefight starts it comes down to skill and accuracy, no matter who might be "right."

If law enforcement shows up and shots are exchanged, we have another skirmish for the militia set to add to their list of federal acts of tyranny. Remember Waco! Remember Ruby Ridge! Tyrants and Patriots! Win or lose, they've picked up another piece of propaganda to use later.

Once citizens decide that the threat or use of deadly force is acceptable as a routine part of conflict resolution, in accordance with the holy scripture of the United States Constitution, we make government law enforcement agencies an instrument of tyranny and vigilantes the real arbiters of dispute. The money we save on taxes that used to fund law enforcement can be spent on armament, personal fortifications, medical supplies and funerals.

Any quick skim of news outlets turns up plenty of misbehavior by law enforcement personnel as well as trouble made by gun-worshiping freedom fighters. You can't point at either side and say they're the bad guys or the good guys. All you can say is that they are incapable of expressing themselves in a less destructive way. You can be in the cross hairs or the cross fire, but either way you're neither free nor safe. The enemy of freedom is violence, no matter who instigates it.

Your Chilling Thought for the Day

When George H.W. Bush chose Dan Quayle as his vice president, many of us joked that it was Bush's life insurance policy. Who would take out the president if that would simply put the photogenic but mentally void Quayle in the Oval Office?

Now it is 2012. Mitt Romney has chosen ultra-conservative poster boy Paul Ryan as his vice president. Since the far right would love to have a zealot like Ryan in full command, doesn't that give a faction already known for gun-toting, threat-spouting and blowing up federal buildings a huge incentive to remove Romney from office as soon after the inauguration as possible, in a way that automatically places Ryan in charge?

In an article yesterday, Bill Moyers pointed out all the ways in which Paul Ryan meets the far right's strongest expectations. He did not venture that this choice presents a physical risk to Romney. I came up with that myself. But if I, a tree-hugging peacenik, can think of it, so can people more inclined to act on the impulse.

A more patient approach for conservatives would simply let Ryan call the shots from the copilot's seat and then run him for the presidency of whatever is left of the country after two Romney terms. He's young enough and in much better health than the country's previous leader from second chair, Dick Cheney. Romney could even come up with an excuse to step aside after one term for Ryan to run that much sooner. Romney barely has a quarter of a billion dollars. He's really the poor boy in the wealthy elite. With all the money funding the right wing, I'm sure he can be bought. Someone with real wealth can provide a very nice severance package for him.

None of this matters if he does not get elected. If Barack Obama remains in office for a second term the right wing will have to continue to inflict their damage through lower offices and obstructionist tactics to keep the economy tough so the majority of citizens will perhaps be more susceptible to persuasion or coercion next time.