"The American Way of Killing: The Invention of an Epidemic": https://bit.ly/4zbkMky Everyone should read this book. I'm burned out on Gladwell, he's so into his shtick that oftentimes he rewrites reality to fit his thesis, and he can never admit he's wrong, and his holier-than-thou delivery...have you listened to his podcast? I stopped, after he refused to admit he was wrong after Bowdoin called him on his inaccurate reporting and when he said that L.A. is famous for its golf courses...have you ever heard ANYBODY say this other than Gladwell himself? It's like he drank his own kool-aid. Believes he is dropping morsels of truth upon us, the great unwashed. And "The Bomber Mafia" was close to crap and "Talking to Strangers" was not much better. And his whole act of saying that history is wrong and delivering new insights...he's become a one-trick pony, seeing everything through the lens that we've missed the truth and he's going to clue us in, but we're all not that dumb. So why did I read this book? Because it's short and it's a fascinating topic. Have you ever fired a gun? There's incredible power in holding one and firing off a bullet. You can't believe this power lies in your hand. I couldn't wait to put it down, fearing if I continued to hold it I'd get addicted. Which many Americans are. Let's be clear, it's not about the Second Amendment, people just love their guns. As for the Second Amendment... Gladwell parses the words in a very convincing argument. You think the Supremes are so damn smart, like their crap doesn't stink. But anyone will see that Gladwell's interpretation of the Second Amendment is correct, that's it about having guns for militias, you can't separate the two. But alas, they have! Because people want to own their guns. As for those who have a gun in the house...be afraid, be very afraid. I would never have one, for fear of shooting a friend I mistake as an intruder or myself. And that's another one of Gladwell's points. We believe there's an epidemic of shootings during crimes, and if we can just take the damn guns from the criminals, everything will be hunky-dory. But the truth is the number of homicides involved in the act of committing a crime are de minimis. Most killings are in moments of agitation, by people who believe they've been infringed upon and in the heat of the argument they blow the other person away. Don't get in an argument with an unknown person. You never know who they truly are and clashes can escalate in a minute. Let me repeat that, most shootings do not occur in the act of criminal activity, rather the shooters are mostly reasonable people who are morally offended and say something and stand their grown and what started out as a calm event, waiting in line for food, turns into a conflagration and someone ends up dead. Or in a dark moment of the soul, they kill themselves. But all the focus is on robbers and other bad actors, premeditated stuff. As for the homicide statistics... Numbers have gone down because doctors have gotten so damn good at saving firearm victims. Unless you happen to be Black. The institutionalized racism evidenced in this book is staggering. But don't we live in a post-racial society? Don't minorities and special interest groups need to stand on their own two feet and fight it out with everybody else? If only the playing field were truly level. And then there's the Supreme Court. If you've been alive long enough, and most people have not, you remember the Warren court, which in the sixties delivered justice through the eyes of the era. Which those on the right abhorred, because they didn't like the results, they wanted to stay in the past, even though the future was here. This is the essence of the MAGA movement, that if only we could return to yesteryear...which wasn't so good to begin with! So you've got Clarence Thomas, who rarely speaks, asking about analogies to the past... Yes, New York's century old Sullivan gun control law is up for debate, since you should not be able to prevent someone from owning a gun. And the discussion devolves to hundreds of years ago, Merry Old England, were there cases where people were allowed to have their guns? Up to the challenge, Gladwell goes deep and illustrates how the fact pattern the Supreme Court is relying on is patently untrue, but don't let the truth get in the way of the result you want, all the while telling us that you're an originalist getting into the heads of the Founding Fathers. What did they think about AI again or Uber? I'm sure we can look to the framers for insight. Yeah, right. And in America, we've got fewer police per capita... Once again, you've got liberal whites out of control, believing they're helping minorities when in truth they are hurting them. Like Latinx. But it's been well-documented that people in Black neighborhoods want more police, not less. But you've got liberal whitey saying to Defund the Police...where does that make sense? Not in Europe, where they have many more police people and less homicides as a result, the officers are baked into the community, there's a relationship that is not inherently adversarial, like in the U.S.A. What do I think the end result of the publication of Gladwell's tome will be? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING! And there you have today in a nutshell. Everybody's baked into their opinions, and living in an echo chamber where they only hear information that aligns with their viewpoint. They don't want the truth, they don't care what's right, they want that which reinforces their beliefs, which could be completely out of touch with reality, never mind factually wrong. Gladwell has done us a service here, by addressing the issues head-on without pulling any punches. Once this book is read, it's a good basis for debate. But most people won't read it and they don't know how to debate, they were taught to the test and now are going to college to be successful in business. The liberal arts are frowned upon, and that hurts society in general. No liberal arts, no most of what Steve Jobs delivered us, typography and elegant design... But I don't want to muddy the issues here. I just want to say that this book is a well-reasoned starting point. Even declaring that assault rifles are not the problem, that they're mostly a distraction from the real issue...which is, once again, people who own guns who whip them out in everyday situations to reinforce their belief that they've been morally harmed. We need a national debate on guns. Which we never get. We've got the right saying everybody has the right to bear arms and the left in most cases saying nearly the opposite. I don't know about you, but open carry scares me. Oh, don't tell me about that guy in Bend who shot the shooter. You've got to go deeper than that, what was the underlying issue here, why was this kid doing it and can we prevent this behavior in the future, and Gladwell makes a good argument that in many cases we can. We can't see the forest for the trees, we are missing the plot, and Gladwell tells us this over and over again in this book. This is required reading. You read, don't you? -- Visit the archive: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/ -- Listen to the podcast: -iHeart: https://ihr.fm/2Gi5PFj -Apple: https://apple.co/2ndmpvp -- http://www.twitter.com/lefsetz -- If you would like to subscribe to the LefsetzLetter, http://www.lefsetz.com/lists/?p=subscribe&id=1 If you do not want to receive any more LefsetzLetters, http://lefsetz.com/lists/?p=unsubscribe&uid=0eecea7b60b461717065cbde887c8e25 To change your email address http://lefsetz.com/lists/?p=preferences&uid=0eecea7b60b461717065cbde887c8e25
