The Unbearable Epiphenomenality of Firearms

Genteel Victorian elite, via Petticoats and Pistols.

Shorter David Brooks, "Guns and the Soul of America":

Well, so according to fellow Canadian and fellow David David Frum, whenever there's one of these grotesque mass shootings, America's state legislatures jump into action to start passing gun laws, only not the way you might imagine. Instead of passing laws to make mass shootings less likely, they start passing laws to make guns easier to get, or easier to carry around. 

In fact Luca, Malhotra, and Poliquin 2016 found that a single mass shooting in a given state raises the number of firearms bills that will be introduced in that state's legislature that year by 15%, and the number of enacted laws that loosen gun restrictions instead of tightening them will be 75% higher, if it's a Republican-controlled state, though not a Democrat-controlled one.

Which really blew my mind, because how are you going to explain this result other than by saying that the Republican party and the National Rifle Association exploit every such shooting as an opportunity to poison the population with fear and the irrational sense that they'll be safer if they just own more guns, and bring them to more different places, like schools, bars, and churches? 

Which is obviously ridiculous, I mean, what could the Republican party and the National Rifle Association have to do with that?

So I think the first thing has to be that it's not about guns at all. Guns are merely an epiphenomenon. The reason Republican state legislatures pass so many more bills loosening gun restrictions after a horrifying gun tragedy must be postindustrialization. The more we keep postindustrializing, the more the voters will demand more restriction-loosening gun laws. That just stands to reason.

And what can we do about this situation? What I've been telling you forever, moar narrativium! We need a new story on the postindustrialization/populism front, like Theodore Roosevelt's new American nationalism, but like different. And I want mine with extra mayo, don't disappoint me.

I know you all hate Frum, but let's just say The Atlantic has much better editors than the Bush administration did and his work is a lot better than it was in the Axis of Evil days. I may disagree with what he says, but I will defend to the death his right to say he did his homework, if I think he did, which I do at least in this case.

Which I can't, as usual, say about David F. Brooks:

Lede, Exhumed

J.E.B. Bush with East Hampton Village mayor Paul F. Rickenbach, Jr., on a fundraising visit in July 2015. Photo by Richard Lewin for the East Hampton Star.

Some cutting-edge reporting by Amy Chozick and Jonathan Martin in the New York Times has unearthed the little-known fact that presidential candidates usually spend the month before Labor Day (when voters are believed to be preoccupied with the Olympics and nostalgic memories of the days when we used to be able to afford vacations) hobnobbing with the wealthy and raising campaign money:

Cash-seeking candidates from both parties often rely on August to reach vacationing donors who open their wallets, and their palatial homes. In 2012, the Republican presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, brought in close to $4 million over a single weekend from events in the Hamptons. And Mr. Trump, while netting $64 million through online and direct-mail fund-raising in July, also made the trek this summer to the eastern end of Long Island to raise cash. (paragraph 26)

Or, as some cunning subeditor put it in the headline,

Voters matter less

Images via the late Needtagger.

Shorter David Brooks, "Money Matters Less", New York Times, October 10 2014:

Silly Democrats, worrying themselves sick over that Citizens United decision. Turns out they got plenty of money out of the deal too! Though not so much secret money, I guess. Anyway it hardly matters, since the more money is involved, the less it influences the voters, so it's all good.

Speech Impediments

Dave Whitlam, The Kindness of Strangers (DeviantArt, 2014).

It's a little bit fun watching the Republicans in the wake of the McCutcheon decision basically trying to think of ways to say how much they approve of it without just running out in the street like kids in a summer rain in their bathing suits, to dance in the gentle Kochfall.

To the editors of the National Review, it's all about demonstrating that money really is speech:

L'égalité majestueuse des lois...

Sleeping sarariman, Tokyo 2011. Photo by Pawel Jawszszuk via DesignTaxi.

...qui interdit au riche comme au pauvre de coucher sous les ponts, de mendier dans les rues et de voler du pain...

The majestic equality of the law, which forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets, and steal bread, by the same token permits the poor, [jump]

Fighting for freedom of money

Portrait of entitlement, peering somewhat myopically into the future. Photo by Cary Norton for the New York Times.

I was interested in the arguments of Shaun McCutcheon, whose lawsuit against the Federal Elections Commission will be heard in the Supreme Court next week, with [jump]