Sharon Lafraniere and Emily Palmer at The New York Times wrote an important article last week, What 130 of the Worst Shootings Say About Guns in America. The newspaper “examined all 130 shootings last year in which four or more people were shot, at least one fatally, and investigators identified at least one attacker.” And what they found highlighted something I’ve argued for years: we need real gun law reform; the problem can’t be addressed by nibbling around the edges.

Let’s start with this finding: “In more than half the 130 cases, at least one assailant was already barred by federal law from having a weapon.” This is devastating. But it is hardly surprising. There are roughly as many guns in the United States as there are people.

Getting Guns Is Easy

Guns are everywhere. I live in the suburbs, and if I really needed a gun, there are a large number of people I could get one from. And I don’t make it a point of hanging out with gun freaks. But a lot of people have been convinced that they are safer to have a gun than to not. So they are just around. I’m not saying these people would sell me a gun. But if I told them I was in danger, they’d probably loan me one. And if not that, I could just steal one.

So in order to address gun violence, you have to look at the guns that are already here. Stopping more of them from flooding into our society is important. But even if you completely banned the manufacture of guns, it would not be nearly enough to successfully address the problem.

Maybe I’m just too cynical, old, and tired, but I can’t imagine us doing anything about our huge stockpile of guns. As it is, every widely publicized mass shooting only makes gun purchases go up. And every time a Democrat is elected president, gun purchases go up. There seems to be little that doesn’t cause gun sales to go up. So the idea of reducing the number of guns we have seems out of the question.

But if we are going to seriously discuss gun law reform, we need to start talking about this.

Handguns Are the Big Problem

Then there is the issue of gun types. Today, everyone focuses on assault rifles. But when I was younger, we discussed handguns. There was a reason for that. As the article says: “Only 14 shootings involved assault rifles, illustrating their outsize role in the gun debate. Nearly every other assailant used a handgun.” That’s not to say that assault rifles and high capacity magazines aren’t a problem. But the much bigger problem is handguns.

I think the reason we’ve backed off on handguns is that they seem more respectable to the middle class. If you are going to have a gun for self-protection, it is almost certainly going to be a handgun. A shotgun is almost certainly a better choice, but people think what they think.

On the other side, assault rifles look like they were designed for war. That’s because they were! And so it is easier to convince the middle class that there is no reason to have them around.

Real Gun Law Reform

These days, it seems that what we talk about regarding gun law reform is all about what is easy (or at least possible) to do. But that’s a mistake. For one thing, it isn’t a good negotiating strategy. Liberals have proposed that we do the bare minimum on gun control and the conservatives have offered nothing. But if we had spent the last decade talking about something more meaningful than closing the gun show loophole, we might be able to have moved the playing field in our direction.

But what I fear even more is that we do get a smaller limit on magazines and we do close the gun show loophole and it doesn’t make enough of a difference to show a decrease in gun violence. Then what? We have to make the argument that we always knew that these measures would have little effect on the problem. And that more must be done.

That’s why we need to be honest today. There are too many guns in the United States. Handguns are the most dangerous guns. Let’s close the gun show loophole, by all means. But let’s not kid the nation (Or ourselves!) that it will have a large impact.

As for me, I will go on making the argument that I always do. The American fetishization of guns is indicative of how cowardly we are. We think we need massive firepower to deal with anything. But anyone can pick up a machine gun and kill anyone they feel threatened by. It takes courage and self-assurance to go out into the world and manage difficult situations with finesse and intelligence.

I haven’t done that many live blogs. And to be honest, I always feel bad doing them. They don’t strike me as very useful. I like what I do in the hours leading up to the debates. Then I have time to post related things. That is probably useful to people who are excited about the debate and who find me vaguely interesting. But once the debate is on, there is so little time. It’s hard to write more than a sentence before the topic moves on. But I felt a lot better after reading, Andrew Sullivan Liveblogs the Final Presidential Debate.

For a contrast, you can check out my own, Live Blog: Third Presidential Debate 2016. What you will see if you take the time (I don’t recommend it!) is that Andrew Sullivan wrote a good deal less than I did and didn’t make a single point that I didn’t. Don’t get me wrong: this doesn’t mean I’m a good live blogger. It means that Sullivan sucks at it. But this shouldn’t come as a surprise.

Why Does Anyone Care About Andrew Sullivan?

The truth is that I’ve never much understood why people thought Andrew Sullivan was a big deal. He’s never been very insightful. In fact, he is the very definition of what Digby calls a Villager. For those who don’t know, The Village:

And I think that explains Sullivan’s popularity. In the early days of blogs when people called them vanity websites, you found a lot of people like, well, me: idiosyncratic and ranty. But where could establishment types go when they wanted to tune into this trendy new thing called a weblog? Well, there was Andrew Sullivan: the walking, talking embodiment of Very Serious Thinking.

You know, Andrew Sullivan gets a lot of negative attention because of what he wrote shortly after 9/11:

He gets the attention because of what he says about the coasts. And rightly so. But notice who easily he speaks for “the great red zone” in the middle of the country. This is a place that Sullivan knew precious little about. But that’s what makes him a Villager: he tells the power elite that what they want to hear is what the average Joe is for.

Andrew Sullivan Used to Be Good at Something

The one thing that Andrew Sullivan was ever really good at was provocation. He was the James O’Keefe of his day. And the things he’s know for — publicizing The Bell Curve and Betsy McCaughey’s attacks on Clinton healthcare reform — were mostly wrong and extremely damaging. But being right or helpful or good doesn’t matter in our economic system. He sold a lot of magazines.

So it is no surprise that he would watch the presidential debate and have less insight than I do. He never has had insight into anything.

Afterword

I found it interesting that Sullivan’s live blog at New York Magazine used no live blogging software. Instead, at the top of the article it said, “Please refresh to update.” That really is pathetic.

Welcome to the third presidential debate! Could this get any worse? Given what Trump has been saying on the campaign trail, it’s hard to imagine this thing being anything but worse than the second one.

Trump’s new thing is claiming that the election is rigged. This is, of course, what losers say. It’s also what children say. And that about sums up Trump. The main thing I remember from the second debate is Trump complaining that the moderators were going easy on Clinton and giving her more time. It turned out that he actually spoke for more time. He also interrupted her 13 times compared to her interrupting him once. And he spoke over the moderators twice as much as she did.

Trump’s Whining

If you haven’t see Obama talking about Trump’s claim that there will be a rigged election, you should. It is very thoughtful — very Obama. But it has some good lines, especially, “You start whining before the games even over?!” And: “I’d advise Mr Trump to stop whining and go try to make his case to get votes.”

Under normal circumstances, I would think the third presidential debate would be changed because of this. Certainly I am known to get over excited about things. And when people say things like Obama did about Trump, I am ashamed. And Obama isn’t the only one. Elizabeth Warren is openly mocking him. She even clucked at him! But I don’t see this having any effect on Trump.

Trump in the Third Presidential Debate

Trump will do in the third presidential debate what he did in the second one: play to his base of supporters. And that seems to be all that Trump is interested in at this point. That is what all this “rigged election” whining is about. It gives Trump a way to maintain his delusion that he is still a winner even after he loses the election. What’s amazing is that his supporters believe all this nonsense and don’t see it as the face-saving maneuver that it is.

Of course, it isn’t hard for Trump to make this argument, given that Republicans have been pushing this whole voter fraud nonsense for at least the last seven plus years. So perhaps these pathetic angry white men can be forgiven. Of course, they bought the lie with ease at the beginning. They’re big on buying lies.

Trump TV?! Trump Vlog!

For months I’d been assuming that all this would end in Trump TV. But an article by Brian Beutler made me rethink that, Donald Trump’s Media Conglomerate Already Exists. People like Ryan Lizza and Josh Marshall are pouring cold water on it. The problem isn’t just that the market is saturated. Starting up something that would compete with Fox News would be unbelievably expensive. Trump doesn’t have the money to go toe-to-toe with Rupert Murdoch.

I like what Marshall said, “If there’s a post-campaign Trump media vehicle it’s far more likely to be a bargain-basement but perhaps high traffic website on the model of Breitbart.” And such a sad ending to Donald Trump would be perfect. It would give me a small bit of evidence that there is a just God. Or at least one with a sense of humor!

I’m not looking forward to the third presidential debate. It will probably be interesting. But it won’t be edifying.

But stop back by throughout the day and during the debate itself for my gloomy thoughts.

Live Blog

From Charlie Pierce I learned that The Omaha World-Herald broke with an 84 year run by endorsing the Democrat, Hillary Clinton Is Prudent Pick for President. But the endorsement is lukewarm at best. And it doesn’t make a lot of sense, to be honest.

The endorsement talks about how people don’t trust Clinton. There’s the email scandal and Benghazi! and (inexplicably) her support for single-payer healthcare. And then they lay on the good ol’ third-way line. “If Secretary Clinton is elected, Americans will need her to be a uniting president, working from the center, and not advancing an agenda that will further alienate moderates and conservatives.” I despair for our nation!

That’s where they leave the endorsement. But how exactly is Clinton moving to the center going to help? One reason people don’t trust her is that they think she talks populist to the people, but when alone with the banks, she’s her real plutocratic self. So if Clinton governs the way The Omaha World-Herald wants her to, it will prove that the people saying she’s duplicitous were right.

Omaha World-Herald Does Care About Trust

And that just shows that this conservative newspaper isn’t at all concerned about Clinton being trustworthy. They know that Clinton is as trustworthy or more than any other politician. This is just a way for them to call for Clinton to do what all the conservatives and third’way pseudo-moderates call on Democrats to do: move right!

Of course, I’m very used to this kind of nonsense. What most bugs me is this idea that somehow Clinton could be a “uniting president.” Obama tried very hard (and for far too long) to be a uniting president. And all that happened was that the Republicans rejected it. If Obama moved to the right one step, they moved to the right two. And the new, more extreme, conservative position was duly disseminated to the Republican base.

We Democrats have spent the last 35 years trying to find common ground with the Republicans. And all that has happened is that the country has gotten more and more conservative. Wages have stagnated, even while corporate profits have steadily increased. More people than ever are jailed, most effectively having their lives ruined. Aid to the poor has been savagely cut.

Just More Third-Way Nonsense

Yet Hillary Clinton is supposed to work “from the center.” And who exactly is this supposed to make happy anyway? The one remaining moderate Republican who is on life-support in an unnamed hospital in the great Omaha area? Certainly the Trump base (AKA: the Republican base) isn’t interested in some kind of third-way, corporate-friendly policy. Unless she starts calling Mexicans rapists, I don’t see her winning over this group.

Right now, FiveThirtyEight estimates that she will beat Donald Trump and Gary Johnson combined. And remember: Johnson is taking as many votes from Clinton as he is from Trump. So where exactly does The Omaha World-Herald get this idea that the onus is on her to reach out to conservatives? Nowhere.

The truth is that the editors at The Omaha World-Herald are endorsing Clinton but they want the world to know that they expect her to be a Republican. Anything else will be her fault. Damn all the liberals who support her. The Omaha World-Herald’ editors must be mollified! It’s too embarrassing to support the nominee who is a perfect reflection of the party they’ve supported these last 84 years. But you can expect more editorials over the next few years where they complain about how Clinton has failed because she didn’t united the country. And what they will mean by that is: didn’t do what they wanted.

I happened upon an article from earlier this year by Helaine Olen, Buying Coffee Every Day Isn’t Why You’re in Debt. It’s actually from her 2013 book, Pound Foolish: Exposing the Dark Side of the Personal Finance Industry. And it gives me an opportunity to discuss this issue, which I think is very important. I am sick to death of this idea that if the poor were only thrifty (No latte for you!) all their problems would be solved.

It’s hard enough being poor. But most places outside this country where you run into poor people, you notice something: they don’t reek of shame. But here in the United States they do. (We do, since I’ve been a fellow sufferer a couple of times.) Being poor is mostly a matter of bad luck. But here it is portrayed as justice. “If only the poor acted more like the rich!” In fact, this is exactly the argument made by prominent rich people like David Brooks and Charles Murray. But note: neither of them are racists. It’s just that their Great Brains lead them inextricably to the racist conclusions they draw.

The Latte Lie

You probably know the old saying, “Look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves.” Well, no one much uses it anymore because it is so obviously false. But Olen noted that today, you will hear the same advice. She focused on the Starbucks latte. Many personal finance gurus explain that you aren’t poor because you’re out of work or making minimum wage. No: you are poor because you splurge on Starbucks lattes! And they justify it with highly distorted mathematics:

Note the many problems here. The $5 per day is actually not $2,000, but $1,825. That matters a lot when you are compounding interest. And it isn’t just the latte but also a biscotti. Otherwise, you couldn’t make it to $5. Who these people are who have lattes every single day of their lives I can’t say. But then he adds that this is all going to be invested and make 11 percent a year! Amazing.

Olen reported on a more reasonable analysis that assumed $3 per latte and took into account things like taxes and inflation. The result? After 30 years of Starbucks deprivation, $50,000 would be saved. Time to retire in Grand Cayman, am I right?!

Shame the Poor!

The truth is that the power elite love this kind of lie. It works on two levels. First, it gives them an excuse to not pay workers more. After all: just cut out those lattes and you’ll retire a millionaire! Second, it gives them an excuse to not pay workers more. Because the reason they are rich is because they are frugal. Or they are when it comes to paying workers. When it comes to little things like a daily latte to make life bearable, they don’t deprive themselves. After all: they know that this business about the latte is just a useful lie.

The whole thing reminds me of Randy Newman’s “God’s Song.” In it, all the religious people of the world get together and they ask God, “If you will not take care of us, won’t you please, please let us be?” And that’s the thing here. The rich are lucky to be so and the poor are unlucky to be so. (If you want to think of this in terms of genes, be my guest; but that’s not what I mean.) As a result, the rich should count their blessings. And they shouldn’t come up with stupid theories like the latte lie to make the lives of the poor harder than they already are.