A Western Liberal's Views on Guns

It kind of blows my mind that the second amendment to our Constitution is (now, explicitly) about an individual right to bear arms.  It just doesn't seem like that big of a deal to me.  Freedom from search and seizure (e.g.) seems like it would come before that.  

But I grew up in country where people care.  

My spouse once idly mentioned that in Idaho, prosecutors can be issued firearms as part of their office.  I said that he would not be reviving that quaint tradition, because I want to keep the risk of in-home gun injury as close to zero as possible.  I do admit to having a little bit of residual culture-war distaste for guns, since I associate them with Republicans and toxic masculinity.  Frankly, they seem sort of tacky.  

Then again, that is a sort of appeal. A Republican's concealed-carry license is a hipster's ironic moustache that raises your risk of suicide by at least three times.  So if you want to push the standards of cultural signifiers and taste, a firearm is not a prudent way to do it.     

I'd think this might increase your suicide risk by a lot more.
CC Timo Luege from Flickr.

But prudence is not everyone's watchword.  A lot of people have dangerous hobbies, but we try and keep them dangerous only to the participants.    I am not about to go out hunting, but I respect a person's desire to be that intimately involved with feeding her or himself*.   

Accidents happen to everyone, including the responsible and well-trained.  It's folly to rely on them not happening.  (The only person I can think of that I've known to die by a gun did so by accident.)  I'm really really risk-averse, so I tend to try and keep myself away from situations where the stakes of accidents are as high as they are with weapons.   

But the really sticky part when it comes to firearms for personal use is self-defense.  It's only sticky because of how hard it is to assess the risk of really scary stuff.  My experience with people who really push this is that they're willing to tolerate or ignore the risks that come with firearm ownership for the extremely small likelihood that they will truly need a gun to defend themself.  I have some pop-psychological theories as to why this is, but they're so uninformed that I will just skip those in favor of simply saying that it does not add up for a person like me, or indeed most people.  There are almost certainly circumstances in which having a gun around for self-defense is going to help you a lot more than the risk of suicide or accident is going to hurt you.  

These numbers are kind of hard to untangle, since there are a lot of things that make you "the kind of person who would keep a gun in their house" that are also things that make you likelier to be in a violent conflict.  So, I'll leave sorting this out to the professionals.  A study in the American Journal of Epidemiology says 

 

Those persons with guns in the home were at greater risk than those without guns in the home of dying from a homicide in the home (adjusted odds ratio = 1.9, 95% confidence interval: 1.1, 3.4). They were also at greater risk of dying from a firearm homicide, but risk varied by age and whether the person was living with others at the time of death.,

I like this bit because it acknowledges the way that the risk factors affect each other.  Young people die due to injuries (violent, interpersonal, or not) a lot more than people who live long enough to acquire diseases.  In fact, young people die almost exclusively due to injuries.  

I am talking about "kinds of people" as in statistically-important populations.  I am "the kind of person" whose marriage doesn't last, since I got married pretty young (among other things).  I hope I'm an exception (It was just my 11th anniversary this weekend), but what happens is what happens.  So don't feel like I'm painting a picture of who you are with this stuff.  

As it happens, I am not the kind of person to keep a gun in her home, and I am not the kind of person likely to die by shooting.  Anyone could have told you that, but when you put together my demographic profile, common sense is born out.    Neither were Mayci Breaux or Jillian Johnson.  

TL;DR Guns are dangerous and I don't really want one around me when I can help it.  People assess risk in wildly different ways, and that's natural.   I'm willing to live and let live, but it's irresponsible to mince words about the risks that guns present.  Again from that paper: 

Results show that regardless of storage practice, type of gun, or number of firearms in the home, having a gun in the home was associated with an increased risk of firearm homicide and firearm suicide in the home.

*This is about as far as I respect hunting.  If you feel like testing your coordination, play ping pong or Nintendo.  If you want some fun explosions, find a place where you can enjoy them in safety.  

The Elephant in the Drawing Room

I work with animals in captivity, and I love it.  There are things about it that make me uncomfortable, and I've been wrestling with them for a while now.  I found a movie on Netflix called The Elephant in the Living Room which told the story of a pretty impoverished guy who kept a lion as a pet.  My first reaction to the idea of a guy keeping a pet lion in Ohio was, "That's horrible!"  The movie also followed the activity of a police officer who responds when exotic animals kept in situations like that get into trouble.  He was portrayed as the enlightened savior, the reasonable one.

Then I got to thinking that there are lions at "my zoo" whose lives aren't very much like the lives of wild lions.  What makes it so much better for a zoo to keep an exotic animal than for some schlub in middle America to do that?  He's not a zoologist or vet, but that doesn't mean he's not a clever and sensitive guy with a sense for what animals need.  My intuition tells me that he can't provide for a lion what it needs (namely, space and other lions).  I'm just curious about how much of my intuitive revulsion at the idea of keeping a lion as a pet is informed by my social class.  My experience among animal lovers tends to have been that the more affluent an animal-lover, the more they feel like an animal needs its space.  But even people who take the hardest line against pettification of animals have a hard time resisting nuzzles from an animal who's giving them.

Overall, the movie really seemed like a study in class-differentiated attitudes towards animals among Americans.

The thing that blew my mind was when Lambert's owner ended up taking in a female lion, and since he didn't really have the right facilities for Lambert (the original lion he'd raised) and the female, he ended up keeping them in a grimy horse trailer for a period of time.  The female lion got pregnant and ended up having a healthy baby.  I was shocked that things turned out so seemingly well in what looked like deplorable conditions.

The real shock came when Lambert was accidentally electrocuted.  The movie depicted this, and it was sickening and terrible.  I think it just goes to show that caring for exotic animals requires a lot of resources.  Accidents happen, but the rules that accrediting agencies come up with will help prevent them.

I don't think wild animals should be treated like pets and hand-raised to be human companions.  People really get excited about animals, and want to snuggle them and keep them as pets.  I don't believe that an animal necessarily needs to be in its natural environment to be "happy."  It's a difficult thing, when the natural environments aren't as available as animals need them to be.

Then there's the issue of access to the animals: I think zoos do a good service in giving people the chance to see animals close-up and really understand what it is we're working to conserve in the wild.  There are lots of people out there who are driven to be up close and personal with wild animals, and I'd prefer they do something like get educated and maybe become a vet or find a wildlife sanctuary to work at.  But there are people who don't have access to that kind of thing and will do things like bring home a lion cub.  I'm glad that the law doesn't side with them, but I just wish that the man in this movie had a better outlet for his desire to be with animals.        

Despertainment

I watch an appalling amount of TV, through Netflix and Hulu.  It turns out that I love Toddlers and Tiaras, and have a shameful enthusiasm for Intervention on A&E.  Hoarders is so-so, but I'm just emerging from a really nasty cloud of fatigue wherein I watched at lot of TV and am getting kind of sick of it.  

I know it's exploitative, and I was thinking about how bad to feel about watching this stuff, and I realized that the fact that Americans will go on television at their lowest point just to get the help they need is a pretty serious indictment of the American mental health care system.  It's more like an expose than entertainment.  

I'm just surprised that I've never heard anyone say this.  I don't think Americans think about mental health as something that a community needs to step up and take care of on a public scale, like we kind of do with physical health.  Unless someone with a mental illness makes a major imposition on the life of the public at large, we think we can ignore it.  

It's really exciting to think about a country in which people had access to the mental health services they needed.  The way mental health and incarceration and poverty intersect in our country is very complicated and sad.  

The major conflict I feel about expanding the reach of mental health services is what would be imposed on people who don't want or need "help."  I'll think about this for a while, and if I come to any conclusions, update my thoughts.  

Domestic deja vu

Idaho lawmakers have convened a task force to envision a world where women and children are beholden to the men of their households, where divorce is costly and difficult to obtain, and gender roles are enforced with a vengeance.

That's why, as chairman of the Idaho House of Representatives' Family Task Force, he [Rep. Steven Thayn R-Emmett] and others are considering controversial solutions such as repealing no-fault divorce laws and finding ways to encourage mothers to stay home with their children.

Visionary, I know. Who could have ever thought of such a thing?

I was shocked back in February when Idaho lawmakers shot down statewide regulation of child care centers with the intent to scare parents (who am I kidding - they wanted to scare women) into forgoing careers and staying home with their children. It was an embarrassing episode for the state, and it earned Republican busybodies little love from working parents and their supporters. And yet, they're at it again, not even attempting to disguise their retrograde attitudes about women and families.

Several advocates urged the task force to adopt legislation to strengthen day-care regulations and make early childhood education part of public schools, two hot-button issues on which the House and Senate have clashed.

However, the task force report does not recommend tightening regulations for day-cares with fewer than 13 children. It does not mention early childhood education.

Sen. Gary Schroeder, R-Moscow, a proponent of early childhood education and
stronger day-care regulations, has been at odds with Thayn. Schroeder said stronger day-care regulations, including mandatory background checks for providers, are about keeping children safe from pedophiles and that research shows early childhood education helps children.

"Basically, we have in my opinion, and I stress in my opinion, a group of people who are living in the past," he said.

"Basically, they are people who think women ought to stay home and take care of the kids."

Thayn does not shy from this view, calling pre-kindergarten education a "free
babysitting service" and suggesting that early childhood education, day-care and Head Start may hurt families by keeping mothers away from home.

Please note that there is zero discussion of men as primary caregivers, not even an acknowledgement of their growing presence in Idaho families. What's astounding is when after threatening working families with physical harm of their children, Rep. Thayn comes out with statements like these:

"It seems to be (proponents of such programs) just assume that mothers
have to work, and they're not really asking the question, ‘What can we
do to help them stay home?' " he said.

Excuse me Mr. Thayn, but it's pretty clear that you're not asking that question either. You're asking what we can do to entrap women into the role of unpaid primary caregiver. And kudos, because making divorce harder to obtain and childcare impossible to trust are excellent ways of doing just that.

If Idaho lawmakers are actually serious about making stay-at-home parenting a comfortable reality for more Idaho families, they'll start to think more critically about the problems that families face than Dick Harwood, R-St. Maries,

"Divorce is just terrible," Rep. Dick Harwood, R-St. Maries, said. "It's one of Satan's best tools to kill America."

and start to consider what statements like the below really mean.

Controversially, the group is using the typical family of 1950 as its benchmark, though Thayn says it's simply a baseline and not a suggestion that families were perfect in 1950.

"I don't think the family structure was really ideal at that time, either," he said. "I don't think the family ever in the history of the world has reached its potential."

This is because the tactics we've tried, the tactics you are advocating, have not worked. Tactics like disallowing women economic independence, creating barriers out of bad marriages, and leaving caretakers vulnerable to the whims of their partner have made many people downright miserable. If in thousands of years of practice at a compulsively patriarchal, heterosexist family structure haven't arrived at anything resembling a reliably functional family, it's really time to try something new.

It's time to create social and economic support networks to empower stay-at-home caretakers - moms, dads and all others who hold their families together alike. It's time to start thinking of divorce not as a disease, but a symptom. It's time to listen to families of all kinds, and to make policy decisions according to the needs and desires of actual Idahoans, not an impossible and to many undesirable picture of a nuclear family.

We can't make progress by repeating our mistakes over and over. We have to think bigger, for the sake of Idaho's families.

Cross-posted at Red State Rebels.

Rules for rules' sake?

I'm awfully late to this story, but Huckleberries Online has been buzzing for days about the exceedingly frustrating case of Kendra Goodrick, a recovering meth addict who may soon have to return to jail. The prosecutors on her case and the Idaho attorney general argued successfully that her probation release was illegal, and that she should serve out the rest of her sentence. (Kind of like a certain case we've been hearing a lot about lately. But, uh, not exactly.) In the time since she's been out of custody, she's gotten her meth habit under control, gotten a job, and even married and had a child. Should the order for her return to jail be completed, she would have to be parted with her 6-month-old infant for six months before she could even be granted a clemency hearing. The link above gives a much better picture what's going on than I do, so go ahead and follow it.

I'm somewhat comforted to know that there's more to this story than plain old evil: the judge whose ruling was in the wrong, John Mitchell, has a history of overstepping his bounds in these kinds of decisions. It's fair that the AG would want to keep an eye on Mitchell's misdeeds, and breaking the law is a problem, but given that there's plenty of evidence in other cases I have to question the importance of taking this case so far. My estimation of this situation isn't helped by my general disapproval of drug laws and how addiction and drug use are addressed in this country, but still. A legal system should benefit the lives of the people it regulates, not simply perpetuate itself. Consistency does not trump kindness. We make up the rules in a Democracy, so we don't have much of an excuse for making bad ones.

If you'd like to appeal to our governor, Butch Otter, on behalf of Kendra, you can email him here.

The Accidentally Good Feminist

This gigantic thread at Feministing about name-changing and this Pandagon post about marriage had me thinking about the "feminist" things I do, and what separates me from the people who don't do them.

For instance, I'm not hugely into shaving. I wear skirts almost daily during the summer, but only shave a few times a week at most. I don't pluck my eyebrows, and I don't really think about it much. You might think it's transgressive to live happily with my stubble and my unkempt brows. On the other hand, I'm of Scandinavian stock, and not very hairy to begin with. For someone whose body didn't comply so naturally with the standards for female hairiness, it would probably be a bigger social challenge to keep the shaving schedule I do. And for that matter, I'm also lazy. I do consciously try to only wear enough makeup that I don't think I look terrible without it, but it's more likely that I come in to work without makeup because I was more interested in 2 minutes of sleep than putting on makeup. In other words, these "feminist" grooming habits are only partially something I work at - the rest is really just me doing what's easiest.

And a lot of the "feminist" things that I do are really no problem for me. Keeping my maiden name really hasn't caused me any trouble. I've always been encouraged to pursue my education, in the field of my choice. I happened to fall in love with a strident feminist. Sometimes I pat myself on the back for these things, but it's really not fair to. All this basically is the result of being in the right place at the right time.

As for the not-so-dogmatically-feminist things I'm attached to, sometimes it's random and sometimes it's selfishness that determines what gets past the feminist filter. I wore a white (well, cream) strapless wedding gown to my formal wedding. I loved it. I still love flouncy formal wedding gowns, and I love them more than I hate the sexist symbolism around them. Is that influenced by a sexist culture? Sure, but it's also not a manifestation of some secret desire to be dominated by patriarchy.

I've also defended the sexualization of breasts in American culture. But I've got big ones, which are dude-approved. And I've never tried to nurse in public. So while I still maintain that the more potential for arousal out there the better, I understand that my perspective may be a little biased.

All this is not to say that I'm some sort of feminist hedonist - I make some conscious and uncomfortable choices because they fit into my moral view of the universe. It's everything from tearing myself away from displays of diamond engagement rings to telling my Grandmother why I stand up for abortion rights. But if I'm going to be honest in my assessment of other women - other feminists - I need to realize what influences the decisions I make, and think about what I'd do with my unibrow or flat chest.

Time is money

Via slashfood, there's a blog chronicling one home cook's attempt to eat mostly organic on a "thrifty" budget (as defined by the USDA - the idea is the "supplemented" food budget of someone surviving on food stamps) for a month. It's a really interesting read, and as far as "pretend like I'm poor" stunts go, is at least a little more compelling than the "surviving" for one week on a food stamp budget stunt in which a few politicians have been engaging lately.

If you haven't seen already, kactus is generously letting us peek into her bank account as she spends her assistance money on food this month, which gives us a much better picture of how the numbers work for someone who is trying to eat and not prove a point, someone who can't treat poverty like a camping trip.

Another blogger who decided to try the food stamp budget discussed her approach, and included a really sobering list of the privilege-related factors that would have to go into her actually sticking to the budget. The list includes six reasons, like this one:

1) We have options on grocery stores. I can easily get to five chain grocery stores, a mom and pop, and the discount warehouse. One of my friends said she could easily spend $20 on gas to drive to get her $12 of groceries. Those with fewer options are likely to pay more. Those whose only option is a convenience store probably can’t live on what can be bought there for $21.00 per week.

The thing that sticks out to me about all of this is the amount of time that it takes - and what little payoff the privileged expect those in poverty to be satisfied with. The budgeting organic eater is taking up canning - something that requires knowledge and equipment and planning and time. Getting the best prices requires going from store to store to find the best deals. Pre-processed and packaged foods aren't an option, so you have to chop those onions and knead that bread yourself. I can't find the original link, but luckily kactus quoted a very memorable passage from brownfemipower's Poverty Diaries:

Life is so much slower for poor people. A bus ride to anywhere is going to take at least 40 min’s. Cooking everything from scratch means supper is often started the night before. A quick trip the grocery store is replaced with a day long biking marathon to buy as many groceries as can be stuffed into the kid carrier. Dial up often takes minutes to load pages (seriously, the best thing we did was put the computer into the kitchen–I can clean/cook while a page loads). Clothes hang dry on the line out back, and microwavable food must be cooked in the oven.

All this time and effort, and the only payoff is survival. I'm not knocking survival, but with my privilege and wealth and education, I can obtain a lot more with the same amount of time that it takes to soak the beans so they can be cooked tomorrow. (Me, I almost always used canned beans.) So when the privileged architects of public policy regarding poverty ask the "beneficiaries" of welfare to spend their time chasing jobs they'll never get or working at McDonald's instead of watching their children grow up, they ought to bear in mind the value of the time they're demanding.

Jr. high kids marked with a scarlet P

Via The Mountain Goat Report, we learn that Idaho Falls schools are engaging in humiliation tactics to get Junior High kids to pay off lunch bills:

TWIN FALLS - Students who fell behind on school lunch payments were stunned Monday afternoon when their lunch trays were taken from them and dumped in the garbage.

Cafeteria workers then gave them a sack lunch and two words of advice - pay up.

The Twin Falls School District refused to serve hot lunch to more than 150 students at Vera C. O'Leary Junior High School on Monday because they were not paying for their school lunches. Cafeteria workers threw out the students' hot meals and replaced them with sack lunches while charging them full-price for a hot lunch.

District officials say the purpose of the brown-bag lunch was to encourage students to pay their delinquent lunch accounts, but others say the district was coercing students into paying off their debt by humiliating them.

These school officials might as well tell the kids that if they don't fork over their lunch money that they'll be stuffed into their lockers after school. That's pretty harsh treatment of a child for something that's the responsibility of their parents.

Poverty sure is funny

This isn't funny. I'm looking at you, Andrew Sullivan. An uncomfortable plane ride (something I generally can't afford anyway) is not a good analogy to dying of complications from diabetes because your minimum wage job doesn't offer health insurance and you can't afford your insulin, while rich jackasses make light of your demise over an afternoon drink or two.

Man, the poor get all the breaks

I don't know if I've ever seen a dumber question posed:

If you think it's OK to redistribute income but repellent to redistribute leisure, you might want to ask yourself what—if anything—is the fundamental difference.

While I agree that "leisure time" can be an important measure of quality of life, there are qualifiers that are important, too. For example, if you're in a high-money-earning position, you're a lot more likely to enjoy your job than someone who isn't. Working the counter at a dry cleaner's is not as interesting or rewarding as researching new vaccine possibilities or running a groundbreaking company. And then there's the quality of the "leisure time" (which apparently includes childcare), which I think would be affected by things like your health, or the environment in which you spend it, or the possible ways you can spend it - all things that almost always are affected by income.

I would define the fundamental difference between the way leisure time and income affect quality of life in terms of power. Increased income generally means increased power over how you spend your time and how you live your life. Increased time that one might spend sitting in front of the TV does not.

In related news, The Onion has an article about Slate this week.