A moral world requires moral violence

From the files of Jeff Jacoby at The Boston Globe

Pope Francis had harsh words for the arms industry on Sunday, condemning as "two-faced" those who claim to be Christian while manufacturing weapons or investing in companies that produce them. "It is hypocritical to talk about peace and make weapons," the pope told an audience of young people in Turin. "Doing one thing and saying another. What hypocrisy!"

It's not the first time Francis has blasted the defense industry. In May, he denounced the arms business as an "industry of death," run by people who "don't want peace" because "they make more money from war." In February, he labeled weapons dealers "merchants of death" and blamed them for "furthering a cycle of hate, fratricide, and violence."

So sweeping a calumny would be unworthy coming from anyone; from a moral teacher as prominent as the Bishop of Rome, it is inexcusable. Of course there are hypocrites and charlatans in the arms trade, just as there are hypocrites and charlatans in all professions. But to smear everyone in the weapons business as unethical and anti-peace is sheer demagoguery.

I wouldn't presume to instruct the pope in theology, but if Francis really means to execrate any commerce in weapons, he goes farther than even Jesus did. "Let him who has a purse take it and also a bag," Jesus instructs his apostles in the Gospel of Luke, "and let him who has no sword sell his garment and buy one." In both the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions, Saint Adrian of Nicomedia has long been honored as the patron saint of arms dealers. There is room for good Christians, the church seems to believe, even in the weapons business.

And would the pope want it any other way? Would the world be better off if the industries that make weapons, ammunition, and military equipment didn't employ men and women who aspire to live ethically? The Vatican itself is defended by a military force — the Swiss Guard — that is well-supplied with sophisticated firepower, including assault rifles and submachine guns. When Francis slams weapons-makers and firearms-sellers as "hypocrites" and "merchants of death," does he include those who provide the guns that keep him and the papal offices safe?

In Isaiah's messianic vision of a world in which universal peace and goodness reigns, human beings will "beat their swords into plowshares / And their spears into pruning hooks." But until that utopia arrives, there is nothing moral about pacifism. In the here and now, evil exists and the decent must fight it. And unless they are to fight unarmed, they will need the tools of violence.

In both the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox
traditions, Saint Adrian of Nicomedia is revered
as the patron saint of arms dealers.

The pope knows only too well what happens when good people — or good nations — aren't willing to fight the world's monsters with every available weapon.

At the very same rally in Turin in which he excoriated those who make and sell munitions, Francis retroactively decried the failure of the Western democracies to do more to stop the Nazi genocide and Stalin's terror. "The great powers had photographs of the railway routes that brought the trains to the concentration camps like Auschwitz to kill Jews, Christians, Roma, homosexuals, everybody," he said. "Tell me, then: Why did they not bomb them?"

Does the pontiff hear his own words? He laments the failure to bomb the rail lines and save millions of lives. Who would have made those bombs? Who would have made the bombers to deliver them? Who made the guns and tanks and missiles that did, in the end, defeat Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan? Who supplied the arms that ended the slave trade and eradicated piracy? Were all of them conniving merchants of death?

No, Pope Francis, it is not hypocritical to talk about peace and make weapons. For if the peaceable cannot defend themselves, they will have no peace. "Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition," Americans sang during World War II. A moral world requires moral violence, and the wisdom to know when to use it.

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Could you spot a potential school shooter?

From the Warning Signs of Alan Caruba at Facts-not-Fantasy

Know the Warning Signs

In April 1999, we were all stunned by the news that Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold had attacked and killed students at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado and, more recently, in December 2012, that Adam Lanza, after killing his mother at home, then massacred twenty-six staff and students at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. These events evoke dread of potential events, a quest to understand why they occurred, and ways to avoid further comparable killings.

Peter Langman has authored “School Shooters: Understanding High School, College, and Adult Perpetrators.” It offers very little comfort, but only because this psychologist, widely recognized for his expertise, is refreshingly honest.

“Many people seek to reduce school shootings to a bite-sized explanatory chunk, but the phenomenon defies easy analysis,” says Langman. “There is no one cause of school shootings, there is no one intervention that will prevent school shootings, and there is no one profile of a school shooter.”

He offers a wealth of information about forty-eight shooters He divides them into “Psychopathic shooters” whom he describes as “profoundly narcissistic, arrogant, and entitled; they lacked empathy, and met their needs at other’s expense” and ”psychotic shooters” who “suffered from schizophrenia or a related disorder. They were out of touch with reality to varying degrees, experiencing hallucinations or delusions.”

“Unlike the psychopathic and psychotic shooters, who generally came from well-functioning, intact families, traumatized shooters endured chronic abuse as children. They grew up in violent, severely dysfunctional homes.” Most fell into the first two categories.

I would like to offer the reader some comfort that school shooters can be “spotted” in advance, but in most the cases that Langman cites, they looked like everyone else in any school. Only if one of them was to confide his plan was there any opportunity to intervene and then only if he was reported.

Among the psychopathic category “at least 75 percent (nine out of twelve) had body issues. Many of these physical characteristics had a direct bearing on perceived manliness, including short stature, thin build, chest deformity, and fear of sterility” leading Langham to suggest a link between feeling weak or damaged and extreme narcissism. It is widely believed that bullying is linked to these events, but Langham notes that while about forty percent were harassed only one targeted a bully. While there is concern these days about bullying in schools, it is mostly due to a heightened awareness, not because there is more or less of it than has ever existed.

One thing does stand out, however, “nearly all shooters had bad educational experiences, including academic difficulties (failing classes, repeated grades, not graduating) or disciplinary problems…at least 92 percent had negative academic or disciplinary experiences.” And then there’s this: “At least 38 percent of shooters had relatives who worked or volunteered in schools.”

Another common factor was that “at least half of the perpetrators engaged in substance abuse (illegal drugs, prescription drugs, or alcohol.) In addition, “at least 42 percent of the shooters had a history of legal troubles, including arrests, contempt of court, and loss of a driver’s license.”

“Many shooters had trouble getting or holding jobs.” This was particularly true of the older shooters. Charles Whitman, an American engineering student at the University of Texas, gained infamy when in August 1966 he killed his wife and mother in their homes and later that day went to the Austin campus where he killed sixteen people and wounded 32 others over the course of ninety minutes, firing from the observation deck of the main building before being killed by an Austin police officer.

To academic and employment problems, add romantic failures. “Most shooters either failed to establish any romantic or sexual relationships or else suffered breakups or rejections that contributed to their anguish and anger.”

It should surprise no one that a number of the shooters “had specific role models for violence, including serial killers, mass murders, and other school shooters.” Most of them were psychotic, whereas the psychopaths “felt no need to attach themselves to a source of power; they were the source of power.”

Out of this densely documented book Langham concludes “There is no one way to prevent school shootings.” What also emerges is the fact that “Most school shooters leave a trail of warning signs that are either not noticed or not responded to.”

What the shootings are not about is gun ownership. Many of the shooters came from families that owned guns and used them for hunting or sport shooting. They had little reason to regard them as instruments with which to kill people other than their own twisted psychological interpretation.

What I came away with was the conclusion that the shooters are people we would all easily identify as “losers.” Beyond that, there is no specific way of identifying them, only suspicions of their capability to do the unthinkable.

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Kroger slams anti-gun thug groups

Shop Kroger's Now: Here is how their CFO responded according to Breitbart

Who Would You Rather See Walking Through Your Local Grocery Store?

During a March 25 appearance on CNBC’s Squawk Box, Kroger CFO Michael Schlotman said the retail food chain will not comply with the demands of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, especially as those demands touch on changing store policy to disarm open-carry customers in states where openly carrying a gun in Kroger is legal.

Scholtman responded to gun carry laws with the following public statement:

"That was a group called Moms Demand Action. They were opposed to the fact that our policy is to adhere to the local gun laws. If the local gun laws are to allow open carry, we’ll certainly allow customers to do that based on what the local laws are. 

We don’t believe it’s up to us to legislate what the local gun control laws should be. It’s up to the local legislators to decide to do that. So we follow local laws [and] we ask our customers to be respectful to the other people they are shopping with.

And we really haven’t had any issues inside of our stores as a result of that."

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Gun rights should cross state lines

Gun rights should cross state lines by Jeff Jacoby at The Boston Globe

Read the Jacoby Files at the Boston Globe

Down the street or across the country, a valid driver's license is all you need to lawfully get behind the wheel of a car. If you've met your state's conditions to be issued a license — passed the test, submitted your fingerprints, paid the fee — there's not a state in the country that won't honor it.

A valid license to carry a firearm should be treated the same way.

In many respects, Americans who esteem the Second Amendment have reason to be upbeat these days. In opinion polls, a majority of respondents says protecting gun ownership is more important than enacting stronger gun control. Three out of four Americans would oppose a ban on private possession of handguns.

Putting their money where those convictions are, consumers turned out in droves to buy firearms during the holiday season: Though Black Friday sales generally were down last year, purchases of guns on the day after Thanksgiving went through the roof. The FBI conducted a record 175,000 background checks on Nov. 28 — an average of almost three per second — then set another record the week before Christmas.

The congressional elections, too, delivered a jolt of political adrenaline for Second Amendment stalwarts. Of the 251 candidates endorsed by the National Rifle Association in the November midterms, 229 went on to victory — a success rate of more than 90 percent.

At least in theory, gun rights are more constitutionally secure now than they have been for generations. In landmark rulings in 2008 and 2010, the Supreme Court confirmed that the Bill of Rights secures an individual right to "keep and bear arms" for self-defense, and that no state may categorically refuse to issue carry permits. Consequently, all 50 states now have laws allowing citizens to publicly carry concealed firearms, with permits issued by local or law-enforcement authorities.

To be sure, criteria vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. Most states issue concealed-carry permits automatically to anyone who meets the requisite criteria (e.g., minimum age, safety training, background check); a handful make it more difficult, requiring applicants to show "good cause" for a gun permit, and giving officials broad discretion in deciding which applications to approve.

Of course there are differences among the states when it comes to all kinds of administrative acts and effects — driver's licenses being an obvious example. Oklahoma has its own rules, forms, and requirements for issuing a driver's permit, many of which may differ from those imposed by California, Massachusetts, or New Jersey. Nonetheless, reciprocity and common-sense supersede state lines. Once Oklahoma issues a license to a driver who meets its conditions, every other state defers to its judgment.

The case for reciprocity ought to be just as compelling when it comes to carry permits for guns. Indeed, more compelling: The Bill of Rights makes no reference to driving, but it does command that "the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." Constitutional liberties don't evaporate at state borders. If your driver's license is valid everywhere, the validity of your gun permit should go without saying.

But it hasn't gone without saying. Though many states extend reciprocal recognition to carry permits issued by other states, others don't. An unwary motorist crossing into a hardline anti-gun state can find herself arrested, searched, prosecuted for unlawful possession of a firearm, and threatened with imprisonment as a felon — even though she had scrupulously adhered to her own state's requirements for owning and safely carrying a weapon.

In recent polls, a majority of Americans says protecting gun
ownership rights is more important than enacting
stronger gun control.

That was what happened to Shaneen Allen, a working mother from Philadelphia, who drove to Atlantic City last spring, unaware that the gun she was lawfully entitled to carry in Pennsylvania made her a criminal once she entered New Jersey.

Under the glare of media publicity, prosecutors eventually walked back their threat to jail Allen. Yet it is alarming that anyone should face prosecution for peacefully exercising a constitutional right.

Legislation introduced in Congress would fix the problem by mandating interstate "right-to-carry reciprocity" — effectively requiring any state that issues gun-carry licenses to recognize those issued in other states.

States have always had broad leeway to make their own public policy; the Constitution's "full faith and credit" principle doesn't insist that all state laws be homogenized. But states cannot just disallow Second Amendment rights exercised in good faith by honest citizens from other states.

The driver's license in your wallet is accepted everywhere as prima facie evidence that you are competent to drive. The concealed-carry permit you keep right next to it should be given the same respect.

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