Guns don't kill people, people kill people: if that's the case, we need to restrict people's access to guns

Was a slogan, coined I think by the NRA, to misdirect attention away from gun control proposals of various sorts.\

If people, not guns, are the problem, then we shouldn't be making it so easy for "people" to buy guns without adequate checks, and to buy assault weapons that are more appropriate for theaters of war.

Many states, including Texas, are legalizing gun carrying without permits being required, limited checks on purchases, limited restrictions on people buying guns who have "issues," few if any restrictions on high capacity weapons, etc.

Yesterday's incident in Uvalde, Texas is beyond horrific, with 19 children and 2 adults dead, killed by a troubled and once bullied 18 year old, who was subsequently killed by law enforcement ("Texas shooting: How a sunny Uvalde school day ended in bloodshed," BBC).

Somehow, he was able to buy two rifles just the day before.

It's insane that people have to worry about being shot when they go to church or temple ("One dead, multiple injuries in Laguna Woods church shooting"), a supermarket ("Gunman Kills 10 at Buffalo Supermarket in Racist Attack," New York Times), shopping center, nightlife district ("3 alleged gang members charged with murder in Sacramento mass shooting," ABC News, "FBI releases final report on investigation into motive behind Dayton mass shooting," WLWT TV), or school ("Victims, parents of Oxford school shooting victims sue school employees," ABC News).

I've been thinking lately, in response to all the incidents of mass shootings, certainly multiple events every week, that we are reaching "peak gun," and there are so many incidents because of "the nexus of guns, perpetrators, and people."

The Second Amendment is supposed to ensure gun access wrt use in "organized [community] militias," not wanton access to guns in ways that reduce public safety rather than enhance it.

A comment on the gun deaths in Boulder, Colorado

10 Dead yesterday, in a shooting at a supermarket in Boulder, Colorado.

A man held a sign for the victims of the mass shooting on Tuesday.

Credit:  Eliza Earle for The New York Times

Ironically, just last week, courts struck down an attempt by the City of Boulder to limit access to automatic guns ("A judge recently blocked Boulder from enforcing its assault-weapon ban," New York Times).  From the article:

Judge Andrew Hartman ruled that under a state law passed in 2003, cities and counties are barred from adopting restrictions on firearms that are otherwise legal under state and federal law, The Denver Post reported. Gun advocates made that argument when they sued to overturn the Boulder bans shortly after they were adopted. 

The judge rejected the city’s arguments that the home-rule provisions of the state constitution gave it the power to adopt the bans as a matter of local concern, and that they were necessary because the state did not regulate such weapons. As of last week, lawyers for the city had not said whether they planned to appeal. 

Given the number of mass shootings in Colorado, you'd think they could have had a reaction more like Australia's ("How Australia All But Ended Gun Violence," Fortune) or New Zealand's ("New Zealand tightens gun laws further in response to mass shooting," Reuters), where after mass shootings, the countries imposed strict limits on guns. Instead, in the US the reaction is to do nothing.

There is a serious disconnect between governments ensuring "public safety" and how modern interpretations of the Second Amendment have allowed for the wanton ownership of guns, especially high powered guns like assault weapons, which have no real public benefit or purpose outside of waging war.

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Interestingly, while federalism is often touted as supporting innovation by the states, so called "Laboratories of Democracy," with conservative groups like the American Legislative Exchange Council, Club for Growth, other lobbying organizations creating platforms to disseminate and pass conservative legislation ("You elected them to write new laws. They’re letting corporations do it instead," USA Today), and state attorney generals seeing an opportunity to sue the federal government to support political ideology instead of policy ("Republican AGs take blowtorch to Biden agenda," POLITICO), it's difficult for there to be a lot of, let alone any, innovation at the state scale. 

New York Post front cover 8/5/2019, Ban Weapons of War, gun control

Just as Republican Congressman representing urban areas with transit systems will usually be supportive of transit, I guess it makes sense that the Conservative, Republican supporting Rupert Murdoch owned New York Post, which is a city-serving newspaper, would come out in favor of certain types of gun control as a pro-urban, pro-city policy.

-- "The Post urges Trump to take action on assault weapons"

WTF? Gilroy, El Paso, Dayton

I just got a review copy of the second edition of the Project for Public Spaces publication How to Turn a Place Around: A Placemaking Handbook which is about making great places where people want to be -- to live, work, play, visit, etc.

The book is all the more timely given how there have been three mass killings in about a week -- 3 people dead and 13 injured at the Gilroy California Garlic Festival, 20 people dead and 26 injured at a Walmart connected to a shopping mall in El Paso, Texas, and 9 dead and 27 injured in a shooting at the Oregon arts district in Dayton, Ohio ("A week of bloodshed underscores a spate of mass shootings," New York Times).

Being afraid to congregate in public spaces defeats urban and community revitalization.

It defeats community.

The Second Amendment and the right to bear arms

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. 

-- The Second Amendment to the US Constitution

It's so obvious that the conservative refashioning of the Second Amendment as an individual right to bear arms as opposed to a community right embodied within the organization of community protection forces ("militias") isn't working so long not only do people have the right to own guns, but there are few restrictions on such ownership, such as concerning assault weapons, etc.

-- "So You Think You Know the Second Amendment?," The New Yorker, 2012
-- "How the NRA Rewrote the Second Amendment," POLITICO Magazine
-- "The Heller Decision and What It Means, Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence

Fifth Street is the heart of the Oregon Historic District in Dayton and in 2015 the street was desigated a "Great Place" by the American Planning Association.

What's crazy about this week's killings in Gilroy and Dayton is how quickly the police took down the perpetrator, in both cases in about one minute, and yet there were so many casualties.  Why?  Because they used powerful assault weapons capable of firing many bullets in extremely short periods of time.

Speaking of the imbalance in US political structures, including the Supreme Court, decisions in Citizens United, Heller concerning gun ownership, the recent decision saying federal courts had no standing to hear cases concerning gerrymandering of political districts have had incredibly deleterious impacts on democracy.

Killings in public spaces or near public spaces like a food festival (Gilroy), a retail store (El Paso), or a commercial retail and entertainment district (Dayton) remind me of the status of public spaces in the bad days of cities, including DC in the 1980s and 1990s.

One of the ways to prevent people from using public spaces was to vandalize them. If you break lots of glass bottles on playgrounds, if playground equipment and benches are broken, you can be assured kids won't play there, their parents won't come out, and you can use the spaces for drug dealing and other illicit activities.

Mass killings in public places could have an incredibly negative impact on people's willingness to live in cities and to go out in public.

For a project I hope to work on, yesterday I went to some competitive destinations: DC's Navy Yard; DC's renewed Southwest Waterfront, now called the Wharf District, and the Alexandria Waterfront, where they held a pizza and craft beer festival (although by the time I got there most vendors had sold out and they were pretty much packed up, even though the festival had almost two hours to go).

I can't imagine these spaces full of people if they were fearful of being shot.

But I guess making people afraid as a way to reduce a concern for "community" may be a key Republican political strategy. Fearful people support ideologically charged positions.

Children's play area at the Waterfront Park, Alexandria, Virginia.


Alexandria


I told these people their crabfeast looked awesome and they invited me to join them (District Wharf).


Making s'mores at the outdoor fire pit at District Wharf/Southwest Waterfront, DC




Wading pool, Yards Park/Southeast Waterfront/Navy Yard, DC


Hanging out at Meridian Hill Park, DC

Why more people are dying from shootings: bigger guns, bigger bullets

It wasn't clear to me why murder rates have been going up in those cities with a higher propensity for violence, including DC (although the murder rate in the city is about one-third of what it was in the early 1990s).

Recently, DC's police chief Peter Newsham was quoted as saying that the number of shootings has been relatively constant, but more people are dying.

Then the New York Times reported ("'Type of Weapon Matters': Linking Caliber Size to Death Rate") on a study of homicides in Boston over a six year period.  The study found that the number would have been 40% less if smaller bullets would have been more prevalent.

Quote of the day: wanton death and political inaction | Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo

In the aftermath of the high school shooting in Santa Fe, Texas, which killed 10 and wounded 13, Houston police chief Art Acevedo wrote a Facebook post lamenting political inaction:

“This isn’t a time for prayers, and study and inaction, it’s a time for prayers, action and the asking of God’s forgiveness for our inaction — especially the elected officials that ran to the cameras today, acted in a solemn manner, called for prayers, and will once again do absolutely nothing,” Acevedo wrote Friday on Facebook.

Acevedo wrote that God “hasn’t instructed me to believe that gun-rights are bestowed by him,” and asked people not to write “anything about guns aren’t the problem and there’s little we can do.”

From the Austin American-Statesman article, "SANTA FE SHOOTING: Chief Acevedo says elected officials should ask God’s forgiveness for their inaction."

More guns, more deaths

Re: the mass shooting yesterday at a high school in Florida, where 17 people were killed

It doesn't take a genius to figure out that the more guns there are the more they are used and the more people are killed. It ought to be obvious that access should be restricted to guns that have as their only purpose killing a lot of people very quickly.

-- "More Guns, More Mass Shootings—Coincidence? | America now has 300 million firearms, a barrage of NRA-backed gun laws—and record casualties from mass killers," Mother Jones Magazine

It's not a coincidence that during the period when there was a ban an assault weapons, there were fewer mass shootings, and fewer deaths.

Guns, guns and cities and public space

There are many defects in the governance system in the U.S.  The biggest is how rural interests have been favored in the creation of legislative districts and concomitantly legislatures.  Access to guns is one of the many areas of policy where vastly different needs concerning gun access in urban areas vs. rural areas are subsumed within "the lowest common denominator" of policy favoring gobs of access.

-- "Why more than 100 gun control proposals in Congress since 2011 have failed," CNN
-- "Congress vs. the States on Guns," New York Times
-- "Open Carry for All: Heller and Our Nineteenth Century Second Amendment," Yale Law Journal, 123:5 (2014)
-- HeinOnline Second Amendment search term

At the very least, there should be a recognition for the need for differentiated laws between urban and rural areas.

And a limit on how many guns people "need" to express their Second Amendment Rights.

It's amazing to me that the Branch Davidians purchase of a large quantity of guns (300+) drew attention from the ATF ("Davidian Compound Had Huge Weapon Cache, Ranger Says," Los Angeles Times), but an average person can amass an arsenal of more than 40 high powered rifles and other weapons that can easily be converted to shoot "automatically" and this draws no notice.

Trump's campaign quote about "you Second Amendment people":

TRUMP: Hillary wants to essentially abolish the Second Amendment. By the way, and if she gets to pick -- if she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although, the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don't know but. (CNN transcript of a Trump campaign event)

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The Onion's fifth use of the same headline on a parody article about gun massacre in the U.S., "No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens,"

In the hours following a violent rampage in Las Vegas in which a lone attacker killed more than 50 individuals and seriously injured 400 others, citizens living in the only country where this kind of mass killing routinely occurs reportedly concluded Monday that there was no way to prevent the massacre from taking place. “This was a terrible tragedy, but sometimes these things just happen and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop them,” said Iowa resident Kyle Rimmels, echoing sentiments expressed by tens of millions of individuals who reside in a nation where over half of the world’s deadliest mass shootings have occurred in the past 50 years and whose citizens are 20 times more likely to die of gun violence than those of other developed nations. “It’s a shame, but what can we do? There really wasn’t anything that was going to keep these individuals from snapping and killing a lot of people if that’s what they really wanted.” At press time, residents of the only economically advanced nation in the world where roughly two mass shootings have occurred every month for the past eight years were referring to themselves and their situation as “helpless.”

-- "Another worst mass shooting in the United States," New Yorker
-- "Want Gun Control? Learn From the N.R.A.," op-ed New York Times
-- "Preventing Mass Shootings Like the Vegas Strip Attack, column by Nicholas Kristof, New York Times

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Mass casualty events are becoming all too frequent in cities.  This is a public safety and freedom of assembly matter.

It's obvious that there need to be more restrictions on guns, but the privileging of rural interests in our political system seems to make this impossible ("Why the Majority Doesn't Rule on Guns," Washington Post).

-- Guns on the Roof, lyrics, The Clash

How many more Republicans have to be shot before the U.S. Congress will consider stronger gun control laws?

See "James T. Hodgkinson: Illinois Man Identified as Suspected Gunman in Virginia Shooting," NBC News.

I don't believe today's shooting of a number of Republican legislators in Alexandria will have much effect on Congress passing tougher legislation on gun licensing, access, and use. Despite the fact that more people are killed in the US as a result of gun violence than any other country in the world.

-- "Why more than 100 gun control proposals in Congress since 2011 have failed," CNN
-- "Congress vs. the States on Guns," New York Times

At the very least, there should be a recognition for the need for differentiated laws between urban and rural areas.

-- Guns on the Roof, lyrics, The Clash

Will the wanton killing ever stop? Will the US take gun control seriously?

Given the racist animus against him on the part of some segments of the US population ("Did Obama Lose Votes Because of His Race?," The American Prospect"), it's unlikely a post-presidency Barack Obama would be the right person to lead a national campaign for stronger restrictions on gun ownership ("U.S. gun sales hit a record high since Obama's re-election," McClatchy Newspapers), but someone of his stature needs to take this on.

50 dead!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Early this morning in Orlando

-- "Orlando Pulse nightclub shooting: About 20 dead in act of terrorism, police say," Orlando Sentinel

Friday in Orlando

-- "Florida authorities say Christina Grimmie killer showed up at concert to attack her," Fox News

Orange County, Florida, where Orlando is located

-- "Orange homicides reach 50 in first four months of 2016," a story from early May

Chicago

-- "A Weekend in Chicago," New York Times, the article analyzes every shooting in Chicago over Memorial Day Weekend, more than 60 shootings left 6 people dead.  The murder rate in Chicago is the highest of any city in the US ("Chicago's Murder Problem," NYT; "
Chicago's murder rate soars 72% in 2016; shootings up more than 88%" USA Today).

Homicide up across the country

-- "Murders Are Up in Many U.S. Cities Again This Year," TIME Magazine, although much of the rise is concentrated in 12 metropolitan areas

Columbia native and artist Tripp Barnes, joined by Jennifer Pinckney, unveiled a wall mural at Redux Contemporary Art Center Friday, honoring her husband the late Rev. Clementa Pinckney.  Photo: Grace Beahm/Charleston Post and Courier.

Next Friday is the sad anniversary of the mass murder at an African-American church in Charleston, SC

"Artist unveils new mural of the Rev. Clementa Pinckney," Charleston Post and Courier

Alexandria, Virginia vs. Washington, DC

Earlier in the week, a man was murdered in Alexandria near a housing project and the local television news programs reported on the outpouring of anger and angst by Alexandrians (Alexandria community meeting planned after daytime murder"," WTOP radio). It was the city's third murder of the year...

So far this year, DC has 53 homicides, with 21 in Ward 7 ("'It's crazy out here,' resident says of violence in one D.C. area," Washington Post).

Australia

-- "Did gun control work in Australia?," Washington Post. A law banning certain types of guns was passed after a mass shooting in 1990. Some Australian states also engaged in gun buybacks in response to the change in the law. From the article:

So what have the Australian laws actually done for homicide and suicide rates? Howard cites a study by Andrew Leigh of Australian National University and Christine Neill of Wilfrid Laurier University finding that the firearm homicide rate fell by 59 percent, and the firearm suicide rate fell by 65 percent, in the decade after the law was introduced, without a parallel increase in non-firearm homicides and suicides. That provides strong circumstantial evidence for the law's effectiveness.

Guns, guns

News items in the last week include the killing of six in Kalamazoo, Michigan, by an Uber driver, a workplace shooting in Kansas, which killed three and wounded fourteen, and the killing of a family in rural Washington state--four family members plus the shooter died, a teenage girl was wounded.

And in Arlington County, Virginia, residents are upset about a gun store opening up in the Lyon Park neighborhood across from Fort Myer ("Gun store faces opposition in Arlington," Washington Post.

WRT this matter, apparently gun stores are a matter of right use in Arlington County's zoning ordinance, even though Arlington County is fully urbanized.  In my opinion, rather than being considered a "matter of right" retail use, it's reasonable to not allow gun sales in cities/urban areas, from the standpoint of the New Urban Transect and land use context, gun use should be de-prioritized, particularly in T4-T6 urban zones.

It's also one of the fallouts of "mixed use" commercial and residential districts being created juxtaposed with existing single family residential, where what we might term "noxious" uses are legal and are one of the unintended consequences of more intense urbanism.

According to an article on the Washington state shooting:

Americans are 25 times more likely to be murdered by a gun than people in other developed nations, according to a study released earlier this month.

Overall the death rate involving guns in the United States is 10 times higher than 22 other high-income countries, researchers from the University of Nevada-Reno and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health found.

-- "Violent Death Rates: The US Compared with Other High-income OECD Countries, 2010, American Journal of Medicine, 129:3, March 2016.

Also see "Americans are much, much more likely to be killed by guns than people in other countries," Washington Post, and "U.S. gun violence: The story in charts and graphs," CNN.

In about 23 years, maybe we'll have gun control in the US

Around when I first moved to DC, 1987, I thought that there was a strong likelihood of the creation of a national health insurance program, something like the Affordable Care Act, which passed in 2010.

It wasn't because I thought policymakers were motivated by improving the state of the nation's health but because in an increasingly globalized economy, large US companies were at a disadvantage compared to their competitors elsewhere, because they provided health insurance to their employees, while in other countries (if they have insurance) that cost is borne by the national government.

Chrysler had gone through bankruptcy, in part because of their health insurance obligations, but also for many other reasons.  And many steel companies had by that time gone out of business as well, for similar economic reasons.  And we were a couple years out from Caterpillar reducing health and wage benefits.

And there were lots of articles and editorials about the health insurance crisis.  I remember one by Joesph Califano, who was on the Chrysler board of directors, and he had been US Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare during the Carter Administration.

It didn't happen then, but took 23 years later, and in a final form that is still not optimal.

In the meantime, wrt guns, roughly 33,000 people die each year in shootings of various sorts (not just murders, also accidents and suicides), and so far in 2015, there's been at least one major shooting--defined as at least four people being shot in one incident--every day.

Instead of focusing on gun control, theaters, stadiums, arenas, and even churches are deploying security and search protocols.

See "The blasé acceptance that you might get shot is a fact of American life" and "Gun control is political: So is refusing to address the politics of gun violence" from The Guardian and Courtland Milloy's recent column, "We've ignored a reason for homicides of blacks," in the Washington Post.

Outside of war zones, the US is perhaps the most dangerous country in the world as it relates to death from violence.

If people believe they are only safe when carrying a gun, they shouldn't live in a city

Generally, I argue that no one should ever be made to feel guilty about advocating for public safety and taking reasonable precautions, asking to be walked somewhere, etc.

However, I realize after reading a letter to the editor in the Washington Post that there is no blank check on this, because some people have unreasonable definitions of what being safe means.

Maggie Starks (pictured at left) wrote this letter, "D.C. residents would feel safer if they could carry a concealed weapon",which is reprinted in full:

The Aug. 3 Metro article “Struggling to feel safe in rising tide of violence” showed why D.C. residents need more freedom to carry a concealed weapon. As a Mississippian, I grew up feeling safe because I knew I could defend myself if my life was threatened.

Unfortunately, I do not feel safe in the District.

Similar to the victim presented in the article, who was seriously injured in a shooting while visiting a friend in the District, I must rely on emergency responders with notoriously slow response times to save my life in the event of a shooting. Although the Second Amendment guarantees my right to bear arms, the District is infringing upon this right.

According to the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department’s concealed-carry application, a resident must have a documented threat against his or her life to obtain a permit. If the Second Amendment alone were not enough, then living in one of the most dangerous cities in the United States should give me the ability to apply for a concealed-carry permit.

Even if 100 percent of the police department’s resources were committed to stopping gun violence, criminals would continue to obtain guns illegally and use them violently. Law-abiding citizens with appropriate background checks and training should be allowed to protect themselves and feel safe in the District.

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While it is terrible that the woman profiled in the article "Struggling to feel safe in rising tide of violence," was shot, the reality is that this is an infrequent occurrence, even in the most violent areas of the city, which is where the lady was shot, and is an area not likely to ever be frequented by Ms. Starks.

cf.Toddler reaches into purse and gun goes off, killing mom," USA Today and wrt what I thought was a more suburban mentality in a blog entry from 2012, "Sub-urbanism: guns in public | Downtown Birmingham, Michigan."


Gun supporters march in downtown Birmingham, Michigan. David Guralnick /The Detroit News via AP. Chris Combs, of Troy, left, and Stephanie Locke, of Clawson, cross the street in downtown Birmingham, Mich. while participating in a protest by gun enthusiasts Monday, June 11. The protest is in support of eighteen-year-old Sean Michael Combs, of Troy, who was arrested in Birmingham on April 13 while carrying a rifle. Combs was charged with brandishing a weapon, disturbing the peace, and obstructing a police officer.

Before I could drive, usually with friends, I used to bike to Birmingham--maybe 5 miles away from where I lived--when I was in high school. It is 6 miles north of Detroit, with an intact downtown core still thriving in the face of competition from enclosed shopping malls. Until about 8 years ago, it still had independent department stores functioning as part of the retail district. It's incredible to me that people would openly carry guns there.

Chance favors the prepared advocacy group

The Clash, "Guns on the Roof," from Give 'Em Enough Rope, 1978.  Lyrics.... "Guns guns they're made to shoot."

I have a blog entry from 2008 ("How will Obama relate to DC?") that opines about the local reaction to the successful candidacy of Barack Obama for president.  The talk was about what would Obama do for DC?  I countered that if you had plans and agenda at the ready, you could shape the discussion and get a lot more of what you wanted.  Leaving your hopes to the good graces of others is usually a losing proposiotion.

Similarly, I met with some college students in a project involved on Georgia Avenue NW around the same time, and this came up, about how do you engage people, get action, etc.  I said, you need to have a good idea of what you want beforehand, and be prepared to take advantage of events as they unfold, not unlike how the Bolsheviks seized opportunity in 1917 to foment revolutionary change in St. Petersburg and Russia.

Note that the line I use is "chance favors the prepared city" which is just a riff of the line from Pasteur, "chance favors the prepared mind."

So the NRA's call that all schools should have armed police officers to protect them from crazed gunman (I don't know why they left out shopping malls and movie theaters) makes me ponder this as it relates to gun control.

It makes no sense.  If we need to pay 55,000 to 110,000 people to sit in a school armed and ready, then we really need gun control.  That's $5+ billion per year in wages.  I guess that's the kind of jobs program that conservatives can get behind--hiring armed conservatives.

And that doesn't include paying more armed guards to stand in every movie theater (think about the multiscreened locations with 20 or more separate theaters) with night vision headsets, and in public squares, at universities, and in shopping malls, where you'd need dozens of armed "officers" in the not quite 1,100 enclosed malls (probably strip shopping centers and grocery stores are ok so far without such coverage) to guard us.

This is one of the dumbest proposals I've ever heard.  If guns are that much of a problem, the logical response is to restrict access to guns.

Or at least make it very expensive (not unlike smoking), for example the suggestion of a tax on guns and bullets, this came up over the summer.  See "If Guns Do Not Kill, Tax the Bullets" from the New York Times and "Chicago Area Proposes First Local Tax on Guns, Bullets" from the Wall Street Journal.

In short, I don't understand why the handgun control lobby isn't prepared with an agenda, call to action, etc., to put into play after a particularly egregious massacre.  Taxes on guns and bullets, and extremely high excise taxes (for example in the Netherlands the excise tax on new cars can be as much as 100% of the cost of the car) on assault weapons might be another way to make it harder for the nefarious to use guns for killing.

The NRA's call for armed guards in schools is not like Speaker of the House John Boehner's "Plan B."  Are these serious proposals, or just faux proposals designed to add noise to the discussion, to make it impossible to get to any resolution?

"Prepared" advocates have to be prepared for that as a contingency as well.

Another example of why gun control should be considered and that pro-gun organizations have unhealthy control over national policy

See the Associated Press story, "18 children among 27 dead in Conn. school shooting

Sub-urbanism: guns in public | Downtown Birmingham, Michigan

Photo: David Guralnick / The Detroit News.Shaun McElroy, left, of Chesterfield, shakes hands with Sean Michael Combs while participating in a protest on Combs behalf in Birmingham, Mich. on Monday, June 11. Combs, of Troy, was arrested in Birmingham on April 13 after strolling the downtown area while carrying a rifle. He was charged with brandishing a weapon, disturbing the peace, and obstructing a police officer.

Birmingham, Michigan is a traditional town located in Oakland County, Michigan, about 6 miles north of the City of Detroit.

In the Detroit metropolitan area, it's one of the suburban towns that has managed to maintain the integrity and success of its town center--Downtown--in the face of displacement of retail from towns to shopping malls (the Detroit area's once leading department store company, Hudsons, pioneered the development of the shopping mall to ensure its continued prominence as a retailer in the context of suburbanization).

For decades Birmingham managed to maintain two small regional chain department stores, although both companies finally failed--everywhere, not just in Birmingham--a little more than 10 years ago, and I don't know how the city responded.

I used to live a few miles from there.  Before we learned how to drive, as teenagers we could and did bike there.

I have to believe that observing how this commercial district functioned and was highly successful has influenced my thinking about commercial district revitalization, including the issue of tax incentives for retailers (a long story that I won't recount).  And Bob Gibbs, a leading national retail consultant, has his business based there.

This week, Birmingham is famous for different reasons.  In April, a teen was arrested for walking around the Downtown with an M1 rifle and earlier this week, a bunch of suburbites/exurbanites protested--by also prominently displaying guns in public.  See "Gun-toting advocates protest charges against teen in Birmingham," from The Detroit News.

The present level in bifurcation in social behavior and attitudes--what people think is right and what we think is wrong--in the US between conservatives and progressives is so pronounced and so scary.

I can't imagine that rational people would think it's a good idea for overly engaged and enraged and troubled people to carry guns around in public places (e.g., how former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was shot and others were killed in Pima County, Arizona, see "Representative Gabrielle Giffords and 18 Shot Near Tucson" from the New York Times).

But a lot of people aren't rational.  And the idea that the 2nd Amendment of the Constitution regarding militias being the justification for widespread arming of the population and the right to carry--and display!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!--guns in public is strictly a modern interpretation of the law as promoted by gun advocates.  ("Gun Control, the NRA and the Second Amendment" from FAIR)

The two words the Tucson mayor won't say: gun control

I was amazed to watch an interview with the Mayor of Tucson, Bob Walkup, yesterday on PBS Newshour. He talked on and on (not very well, he almost convinced me that Mayor Fenty is a good public speaker by comparison) about the need for civility, without discussing that Glock handguns with extended magazines aren't purchased for protection, but for their potential as killing machines.

People kill people. They use guns to do it.

Many people are disturbed. Making it easy for people to buy guns or extend the power of guns as killing machines increases the likelihood that people will be killed.

It's pretty simple.

One of the rare discussions about gun control thus far in the context of the Tucson shooting is in today's Post, in a column by Eugene Robinson, "Guns and responsibility." From the article:

We may not be sure that the bloodbath in Tucson had anything to do with politics, but we know it had everything to do with our nation's insane refusal to impose reasonable controls on guns.

Specifically, the rampage had everything to do with a 9mm semiautomatic Glock pistol - a sleek, efficient killing machine that our lax gun laws allowed an unstable young man to purchase, carry anywhere and ultimately use to shoot Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in the head. The weapon also was used to shoot 19 bystanders, killing six of them, including a federal judge and a 9-year-old girl.

The right to bear arms and gun-related crimes in center cities

is put into perspective in the June cover story of Governing Magazine, "Gundemic." From the article:

... In the first half of 2007 (the most recent period for which data are available), nationwide violent crime rates were essentially flat. But many big cities have been hit hard. The worst numbers, says University of Pennsylvania criminologist Lawrence Sherman, are in cities with highly concentrated, racially segregated poverty, lax gun laws, and relatively few of the immigrant newcomers who seem to make dangerous areas safer.