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THIS MOVEMENT HAS THE HUGE POTENTIAL TO BECOME SOMETHING BIG, POWERFUL AND LIFE-CHANGING!

A growing movement in Virginia is declaring cities and counties “Second Amendment sanctuaries.”

A little backstory:

Virginia Gov. Northam is proposing gun legislation that failed last summer.

This time, however, with Democrats dominating the Virginia Senate and the House of Delegates…

The worm is turning for the wannabe gun grabbers.

The laws would…

• Ban assault weapons, silencers, high-capacity magazines and other “dangerous weapons.”
• Require background checks on all gun transactions.
• Reinstate the law — repealed in 2012 — allowing no more than one handgun purchase a month.
• Allow municipalities to enact “ordinances that are stricter than state law.” Among the examples they cite: rules banning guns in libraries or municipal buildings.
• Require lost or stolen guns to be reported to authorities within one day.
• Allow law enforcement to “temporarily separate a person from firearms if the person exhibits dangerous behavior that presents an immediate threat to self or others.”
• Prohibit the subjects of protective orders from possessing guns.
• Toughen punishment for allowing access of a loaded, “unsecured” firearm to someone 18 or younger.

According to many gun advocates, the laws would make millions of Virginians ‘insta-felons’.

While the grandfather clause would allow gun owners to keep the blacklisted guns and accessories, “with the requirement,” says spokeswoman Alena Yarmosky, “that they register their weapons before the end of a designated grace period.”

Registration, says DJ Spiker, the NRA’s state director for Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina, is the “first step to confiscation.”

2nd Amendment Sanctuaries

According to the Virginia Citizens Defense League, a gun-rights organization, over 100 counties, towns, and cities in Virginia have vowed not to enforce any unconstitutional gun laws.

Each sanctuary has promised not to enforce gun control laws that the Democratic-controlled General Assembly may enforce.

Scott H. Jenkins, the sheriff of Culpeper County, has taken it a step further.

He’s offered to deputize thousands of Culpeper County residents, so they can skirt any future gun restrictions.

He said he could deputize 5,000 concealed gun permit holders, and maybe 1,000 more.

Tazewell County is pondering forming a militia that would allow residents to avoid any new regulations.

Democrats are unfazed.

Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring issued a warning that the sanctuaries are bags of hot air: “It is my opinion,” he hedged, “that these resolutions have no legal effect.”

Even so, police, veterans, and residents are joining the militias, signing up to become deputies, and requesting to live in a sanctuary town.

It’s clear, as Molly Carter of Ammo.com outlines below, that the mainstream media has a bias against gun ownership in America.

The Washington Post called the 2nd Amendment sanctuary trends “disturbing.”

What’s not as clear, for this reason, is the positive impact of gun ownership in the States.

Jose Nino, for example, wrote a riveting article for Ammo.com on how the violence in the “Wild West” is entirely overblown…

The Wild West, with precisely ZERO federally mandated gun laws, wasn’t as wild as Hollyweird makes it out to be.

He writes:

“Advocates of gun rights and other facets of limited government would be wise to closely examine the history of the American Frontier and restore it to its proper place. The United States is currently in a narrative war of sorts, where advocates of Progressivism will distort historical events to advance their agenda.”

Today, however, we turn to Molly Carter to outline the largely unseen positive impact of gun ownership.

While mass media makes a killing on reporting mass shootings…

The facts tell a different story about gun owners.

Read on.

American Gun Ownership: The Positive Impacts of Law-Abiding Citizens Owning Firearms

It’s no secret that mainstream press coverage of gun ownership in the United States tends to be in favor of gun control – especially when those reporting on the topic are not firearm owners themselves. Journalists focus on how many people are killed by guns, how many children get their hands on improperly stored firearms, and how many deranged individuals go on shooting sprees.

This anti-gun news bias is widespread among the “urban elite” who have very little personal experience with guns and yet write for influential newspapers like The New York Times, Washington Post, etc. Despite this bias, law-abiding private citizens owning guns does have positive impacts on American society that often go unreported – many of which are significant.

Criminals and the Armed Citizen

Perhaps the most notable impact of gun ownership on American society is how it influences the behavior of criminals.

The fact is, criminals fear armed citizens more than they do the police. There’s many reasons for this, but here are the most prominent:

• Police are rarely onsite during a crime.
• Police are bound by policy and procedures and are trained to only use their firearms if it’s absolutely necessary.
• Civilians are also less trained.

In a research study sponsored by the United States Department of Justice, James Wright and Peter Rossi interviewed over 1,800 incarcerated felons, asking how they felt about civilians and gun ownership. Thirty-three percent of these criminals admitted to being scared off, shot at, wounded, or captured by a gun-owning victim. Sixty-nine percent of them knew at least one other criminal who had similar experiences. Nearly 80 percent of felons also claimed that they intentionally avoid victims and homes that they believe may be armed.

This shows that at least one in three criminals has been deterred because of an armed citizen and that four out five avoid victimizing people that have guns.

Law-Abiding Gun Owners & Defensive Gun Use

Advocates of civilian disarmament tend to scoff at the capabilities of everyday gun owners. Many believe that guns in the hands of normal people are crimes waiting to happen. However, thanks to the research of individuals such as John Lott, we now have evidence showing that gun owners are some of the most law-abiding segments of the American population.

Lott drew the example of concealed license holders when compared to law enforcement:

“Concealed-handgun permit holders are also much more law-abiding than the rest of the population. In fact, they are convicted at an even lower rate than police officers. According to a study in Police Quarterly, from 2005 to 2007, police committed 703 crimes annually on average. Of those, there were 113 firearms violations on average.

With 683,396 full-time law enforcement employees nationwide in 2006, we can infer that there were about 102 crimes by police per 100,000 officers. Among the U.S. population as a whole, the crime rate was 37 times higher than the police crime rate over those years – 3,813 per 100,000 people.”

Not only are gun owners very law-abiding, they are also quite capable of defending themselves against criminals. Criminologists Dr. Gary Kleck and Dr. Marc Gertz carried out a study that found 2.2 to 2.5 million cases of defensive gun use (DGU). Around 1.5 to 1.9 million of these cases involved handguns. There is reason to believe that DGU numbers completely overshadow the criminal use cases of guns.

However, in today’s era of outrage politics, many incidents of DGU go under the radar because of their lack of shock appeal that does not make for good headlines.

A Sense of Security

Most people realize that law enforcement cannot be everywhere, yet so many rely on nothing but a 911 call to protect both their home and those inside it. For those who live in remote areas, it can take an hour or more for first responders to arrive after an emergency call, but in most cases, even five minutes is too long. But when a homeowner is armed and trained, the sense of security increases.

Thanks to modern psychology, we know that people need this sense of security in order to grow and develop into healthy adults. Not surprisingly, privately owned guns provide that. Sixty-three percent of Americans now believe that having a gun in the house increases safety. While some may dismiss the importance of feeling secure and safe or claim that another person’s desire for safety makes them feel unsafe, it is by far the most basic of human needs. And without it, people are left feeling frightened, angry, and defensive – often unable to reach, or even focus on, higher goals.

Gun Ownership and Public Safety

Concerning public safety, the media often portrays guns as the primary problem – stating things like, “Guns kill people” or “Guns are not the answer.” But gun control and restrictions are also not the answer. Whenever a community, city, state, or country has imposed a ban on guns, regardless if it was all guns or simply handguns, it has experienced an increase in murder rates. In 1997, Wales and England saw a nearly 50 percent increase in homicides immediately after implementing a ban on handguns.

Gun control advocates promote the idea that more gun policies and regulations make Americans safer, but it’s naive to believe that any type of law will stop someone set on murder or other criminal activity. The individuals that engage in these types of criminal behaviors do not obey laws and are therefore rarely impacted by policies and procedures. But these implemented gun control laws do impact the law-abiding citizens who are only trying to protect themselves and those they care about.

The fact is, widespread gun ownership does reduce crime. Here are some of the ways:

Home and Business Protection

Every year, one million American home and business owners utilize a privately owned firearm to protect their property and lives. And when it comes to protection, resisting a crime with a gun is the safest route for victims. It’s associated with lower rates of both victim injury and crime completion than any other victim action.

American criminals are also less likely to burglarize an occupied home due to fear of the homeowner being armed. In England, where only around four percent of the general population legally own a handgun due to heavy restrictions, 59 percent of homes are occupied when the burglar breaks in, compared to approximately 28 percent in the U.S. Even if the homeowner did own a gun, he or she would have to unlock it from its safe, then unlock another safe where the ammunition is kept, then load the weapon before self-defense would be possible. In 2009, 13 years after the country’s handgun ban began, its handgun crime levels had nearly doubled.

Public Shootings

After personal and home protection, the biggest impact of gun ownership on American society is mass shootings. Since 1950, all but just over one percent of mass public shootings occurred in gun-free zones. That means perpetrators are likely to know they’re safe and could intentionally be choosing these places to act out their massacres.

Also, immediately after right to carry concealed laws are put in place, the amount of mass public shootings fall dramatically. Not only does their frequency fall, but because people have the ability to carry firearms, they therefore can stop the perpetrator – limiting the impact of violence and destruction. Within the last two decades, this has happened numerous times across the country, including at a middle school dance in Edinboro, Pennsylvania and the Trolley Square Mall in Salt Lake City, Utah.

What’s more, when police were interviewed regarding their position on gun control legislation, around 90 percent stated they believed that during an active shooter incident, having well-trained, armed citizens present would decrease the casualties. More than 28 percent agreed that more permissive carry concealed policies would be beneficial to the public, especially when it comes to large-scale public shootings.

For the counter-argument that states an armed civilian is likely to increase the causalities of a mass shooter incident, there is a risk of this – just as there is an increased risk any time police are involved in a shoot-out. But remember, if there’s an armed shooter, things are already bad. And without interference, things are going to get worse. While the philosophy for protection during one of these situations is always run, hide, fight, if you’re fighting for your life, having a gun on your side is more beneficial than anything else.

The Exponential Impact

Because criminals fear citizens with firearms, gun ownership does have a dampening effect on crime. Not only is it a deterrent, but every time an intruder is shot, injured, or captured by a civilian, he or she is less likely to commit another crime.

Consider this: In 1966, 2,500 women in Orlando, Florida, went through a specific, highly publicized handgun training. Without anything else happening, the prevalence of rapes fell substantially from almost 36 rapes per 100,000 women to four. Other crimes, such as home burglaries, also fell – demonstrating that the private ownership of guns does deter crimes.

Protecting Constitutional Rights

In 2014, America saw a switch in how people thought about gun control. For the first time since gun control became an issue, more Americans believed that protecting gun rights was more important than controlling gun ownership, 52 to 46 percent.

That’s important because according to the U.S. Constitution, the right to bear arms is an inalienable right and an inherent part of the right to life. Once this right is violated by either another individual or the state, the ability to protect oneself from danger and even tyranny is impeded on. And when that happens, the ability of private citizens to protect the Constitution and the rights it enshrines for all Americans is threatened.

Having the ability to forcefully fight back against a tyrannical leader with guns – not just words – is what gave the colonists the ability to overthrow British control of the American colonies. Without guns, we would not have become the United States of America. The Founding Fathers understood this and wanted to ensure that future generations of Americans could defend themselves against all threats both foreign and domestic.

Restraining the Power of Government

It may seem ridiculous to think that in today’s world, citizens could rise up against the government simply because of privately owned guns. Yet the argument stands that citizens having guns does restrain the power of government. History has shown that when gun restrictions and bans are implemented, it leads to tyranny.

Here are a few examples:

• 1911: In Turkey, the Ottoman Empire killed 1.5 million Armenians.
• 1929: Soviet Union implemented gun control, and after 20 years, killed over 20 million dissidents.
• 1935: After 17 years of gun control laws, 20 million dissidents were killed in China.
• 1938: Nazi Germany enacted gun control laws for Jews and by 1945, had murdered 13 million Jewish people.
• 1956: In just two years after gun control laws were enacted, one million people were killed in Cambodia.
• 1964: In a nine-year span after gun control, Guatemala killed over 100,000 Mayan Indians.
• 1970: In Uganda, 300,000 Christians were killed after gun control was implemented.
• 1994: The government of Rwanda disarmed the Tutsi people, and executed almost one million of them.

What has the 20th Century shown us about gun control? That an unarmed country is not a safe country. That when citizens don’t have the right to bear arms, governments can and do grow too large and become a threat to their people. That in the 20th Century, governments murdered four times as many people as those that were killed in all the world’s wars during that same time period. That millions more people were killed by their own governments than by criminals.

Truth Behind the Anti-Gun Rhetoric

Arguments in support of the anti-gun campaign can seem strong. After all, they talk about gun control saving the lives of children, stopping school shootings, and putting an end to terrorist attacks. But the fact is, this is just rhetoric and much of it is exaggerated and skewed.

Here’s the truth behind the most common anti-gun arguments, especially when it comes to individual and public safety.

Suicide

Yes, civilian-owned guns often play a role in suicides. And yes, gun control policies do seem to lower the prevalence of gun suicides. But gun control does not impact the number of people who commit suicide nor the total number that occur.

Research shows that when guns are not available, those intent on hurting themselves find other, just as fatal ways to do it. More gun regulation does not lessen these numbers.

43 to One

A favorite statistic used by those in favor of gun control is that when a person has a gun in the home, he or she is 43 times more likely to shoot and kill a family member than an intruder. This statistic is based off of one study done in Seattle in 1986. Shooting of a family member included firearm murders, suicides, and fatal accidents and was compared to court-ruled justifiable homicides.

Of these 43 deaths, most were suicides. As already discussed, gun restrictions do not impact the number of suicides. Eliminate these deaths from the numbers, and it drops to 2.39 deaths to one.*

Now, of those 2.39 family deaths, some are accidents and some are murders. Just like the absence of guns doesn’t reduce the risk of suicide, when someone is bent on murder, chances are he or she is going to follow through regardless if it’s with a firearm, a knife, poison, or other means.

Lastly, these are deaths compared to deaths, and when discussing self-defense and protecting both yourself and home, it often doesn’t lead to death. Wielding a firearm alone is enough to turn many criminals away. And many who use a firearm in self-defense shoot to injure, not kill. The study also didn’t account for those cases when a homeowner was acquitted on grounds of self-defense. Therefore, this number represents the number of dead criminals, not those that were captured or deterred.

So what does this mean for America? It means that guns and the law-abiding citizens who carry them make and keep it a safer country. It means when a criminal knows you’re carrying a firearm, you’re less likely to become a victim. It means that there are positive benefits of gun ownership for Americans and that gun legislation is not the best way to safer streets.

BAM!

Those within the gun-control movement who like to blithely ask, “What’s the worst that could happen?” should look no further than what happened to Stephen Nichols.

In September, Nichols, an 84-year-old Korean War veteran and retired police officer, was summarily fired from his job as a school crossing guard in Tisbury, Mass. Worse still, Nichols’ guns and firearms license (which he had held since 1958) were seized from him under Massachusetts’ broad “red-flag” law.

Nichols’ crime? He was overheard worrying in a diner that the local school’s resource officer was routinely abandoning his post to go buy coffee and that this might lead someone to take advantage and “shoot up the school.”

Critics of “red-flag” laws have long argued that to introduce subjective criteria into the regulation of the Second Amendment is to guarantee abuse. And so it has come to pass. That a much-beloved, 84-year-old veteran would be stripped of his job and deprived of his Second Amendment rights simply because a server at a diner misheard his conversation and rushed stupidly to judgment is appalling in and of itself. But that the whole process was conducted without anything even resembling due process is frightening.

When confronting Nichols, the local police department confirmed that it had no intention of charging him, even as it stripped him of his constitutional rights. Having been informed of his punishment, he was not asked to fill out any paperwork or given receipts for either his guns or his license. So casual was the process that, having been instructed on the spot to relinquish his firearms license, he simply took it out of his wallet and handed it over.

Thanks to some overwhelming pushback from the community in Tisbury, Nichols has been reinstated as a school crossing guard. But he has not been given back his guns, and he has not been given back his firearms license. As this was being written, Nichols was wholly unsure of the status of the confiscation.

How could he be otherwise? He has not been arrested, he has not been charged and he has most certainly not been convicted of anything. The misunderstanding that led to him losing his job has been cleared up, in no small part because his community made it abundantly clear just how much he is valued, and yet that clearing up has had absolutely no effect on the government.

If there is a process in place for the restoration of Nichols’ civil rights, he is unaware of it.

In the most-recent interview Nichols gave, he said he believed he will be told to sell his guns. He said he would do so with the help of his son, who manages a firearms store. If he is correct—if that is, indeed, what he is being forced to do—then he is being punished for the rest of his life based on nothing more than an ugly misunderstanding.

If that is the case, who among us is safe? If an elderly man who has spent his life protecting others—first as a soldier and then as a police officer—can have his words twisted so dramatically that the government summarily seizes his guns, what chance do any of us have?

Asked why he had criticized the resource officer in the first place, Nichols told the Martha’s Vineyard Times that his view has always been that “if you’re on guard duty, you stay there.” That’s excellent advice for everyone, including those who wish to preserve the integrity of America’s Constitution.

Remember this and never, ever forget it.

If the government can do this to this man, it can do it to you for that and other reasons too, just as they currently do by forcing DCSF into homes and breaking up innocent families.

Just think about that for a moment. It’ll send shivers down
your spine, and if it doesn’t, you’re just plain spineless then.

What The Mainstream Media Won’t Tell You About Violent Crime, is that
Annually, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) publishes national data on the prevalence of crimes of all types. Recently, the FBI’s “2018 Crime Statistics” revealed that, yet again, violent crime in America has declined.

Unfortunately, the mainstream media, in its never-ending quest to promote more gun control, gave this data little to no coverage. Why not? Given their biases, it doesn’t feel cynical to say they don’t want to let people know about this wonderful fact because it runs counter to their narrative that America is an increasingly violent place.

If the mainstream media were to truly examine the numbers and then print what they found, they would have to explain how the FBI’s 2018 statistics mostly show a 30-year decline in violent crimes. A decline, it should be noted, that coincided with a huge increase in the number of civilian-owned firearms and with the expiration of the “assault-weapons” ban. Many in the media told us in 2004, when the Assault Weapons Ban of 1994 sunset, that ending this gun ban would cause the homicide rate to go up.

Data gathered by the FBI tells a different story: “The [2018] violent crime rate fell 3.9% when compared with the 2017 rate; the property crime rate declined 6.9%… The estimated number of three violent crime offenses [murder, nonnegligent manslaughter and aggravated assault decreased when compared with estimates from 2017…. Murder and nonnegligent manslaughter offenses fell 6.2%, and the estimated volume of aggravated assault offenses decreased 0.4%

Violent-crime rates in America hit a low point in 2014, according to the FBI-the lowest since 1970. The violent-crime rate in 2018, by comparison, represented the third-lowest rate since 1970.

To the extent the mainstream media even dealt with the FBI statistics, based on a search of 20 major media outlets, they briefly noted the general decline and then talked about places where violent-crime rates were higher than average—they did this, however, without noting that these areas tend to have the strictest gun-control laws.

Some media outlets opted to focus on the one category where the numbers are up: rape. But these articles didn’t then mention that gun rights also empower women. What a missed opportunity. They could have interviewed victims who have since armed themselves or firearms instructors who teach women how to protect themselves. But again, that wouldn’t fit their narrative.

Meanwhile, another very interesting statistic was circulating among the gun community, though as always, the mainstream media ignored it. According to Dr. John Lott and the Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC), “The number of concealed handgun permits has increased for the third year in a row. The figure now stands at over 18.66 million, a 304% increase since 2007. It’s also an 8% increase over the number of permits we counted a year ago in 2018.”

And the actual numbers are even higher because we don’t have precise data regarding how many people lawfully carry firearms in 16 states. And why is that you ask? Well, I’m very glad that you asked. It’s because those 16 states have some form of ‘Constitutional’ carry.

Constitutional carry means anyone who is normally allowed to carry a weapon because they have no criminal background or felonious history can do so without any application to the state for licensure and granting. It’s their God-Given and Constitutionally backed right to carry if they so wish, and that is exactly how it should be in all 50 states and the way our smart Forefathers meant it to be. PERIOD!

So, the FBI data proves that violent crimes are down, and the CPRC data shows the number of concealed-carry permit holders is increasing fast. Does this mean that the increase in people carrying concealed is making America safer? The mainstream media won’t even entertain that question. Why, you ask again? Well happy you once more asked. It’s because they fear doing so because it ultimately wouldn’t fit their bottom dollar line narrative(s). That’s why.

Scientifically speaking, there are many factors at work here. These include various crime-prevention programs, local economic conditions and a host of other sociological and legal factors that can affect violent-crime rates. Still, it is dishonest of the media to ignore the fact that more people are carrying.

Unfortunately, we don’t often see honest analysis of gun-related issues from the mainstream media. They prefer to push the provably false narrative that violent crime is plaguing America because of the availability of firearms. They like this storyline because they want people to believe we need more gun-control laws.

Another constituency that was silent on the new FBI findings were, surprisingly, <- (not) the gun-control groups. An internet search of the websites for the Brady Campaign, Everytown for Gun Safety and Moms Demand Action found no reference to the FBI crime report and no mention that violent crimes are in a steady decline. Actually, all three websites made rather sensationalist claims about violent-crime increases.

Perhaps that’s not shocking; after all, if these groups admitted the truth about the decline in violent crime, their reason for being would dry up, as would, one suspects, their fundraising efforts as well.

1. The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing. (Albert Einstein)
2. All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent (Thomas Jefferson)
3. Softest on the people who need discipline, hardest on people who need compassion (Unknown)
4. He who does not oppose evil, commands it to be done (Leonardo Da Vinci)
5. What you allow, you encourage (Carrie Heinze-Musgrove)
6. Your silence is consent (Plato)
7. If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. (Desmond Tutu)
8. Silence in the face of injustice is complicity with the oppressor (Ginette Sagan)
9. Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. (Martin Luther King Jr)
10. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere (Martin Luther King Jr)
11. In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends (Martin Luther King Jr)
12. There are times when silence becomes an accomplice to injustice (Ayaan Hirsi Ali)
13. I chose to defend human rights because I cannot maintain my silence in the face of injustice (Chen Guangcheng)

“If you buy into the full-scary narratives promoted by either the political left or the political right,” says Scott Adams in his book Loserthink, “you’re probably experiencing loserthink.”

I’m going to talk about two unconventional ways to get informed in the age of “fake news.”

1] Spotting loserthink

2] Getting skin in the game.

First things first:

Loserthink 101

Loserthink is the phrase Adams’ uses in his book to describe the many ways humans engage in unproductive thinking.

Unproductive thinking, says Adams, is how we accidentally build mental prisons for ourselves.

We do so by mimicking arguments we hear from pundits…

Making bad assumptions about why things happened…

Believing we can manage events in the present to fix the past (and not seeing how paths and opportunities to successfully fix most problems)

Believing someone only because they are an expert, and for no other reason… And on.

Adams asserts that by giving specific unproductive ways of thinking a name — loserthink — it makes them easier to spot and control.

The idea that naming something gives you power over it is nothing new.

The famous Greek philosopher Socrates reminds us that if we want to understand something, we must first give it a name.

Only then can we begin to differentiate it from what it isn’t and move accordingly.

Adams puts it plainly: “If you have a negative word for something, it will be easier to avoid than if you don’t.”

That said, spotting loserthink is all the more important in an age that capitalizes on all forms of unproductive thinking.

The goal is to replace loserthink with more useful ways of looking at the world.

The mainstream media, which have become masters of capitalizing on unproductive thinking, is the easiest place to begin.

Rather than taking the news at face value: “A more useful way to think of the political news,” says Adams, “is that nearly every major story is exaggerated to the point of falsehood, with the intention of scaring the public.” It’s what sells and it’s what creates the bottom line in dollars.

Therefore, news is NOT news, but rather ENTERTAINMENT.

There can not be honest news and reporting from ANYTHING that is funded by the almighty dollar at the bottom line. NOTHING.

It’s easy to forget, but the doom and gloom press is not a reflection of the world.

The mainstream map no longer even tries to show the territory. 

Rather, the current state of the media is a reflection of the way news has changed.

The technological change that fully “broke the news,” says Adams, is our ability to measure audience reaction to every headline.

“Once you can reliably measure the income potential of different approaches to the news,” he writes, “the people who manage the news have to do what works for profitability or else they are abandoning their responsibilities to shareholders.”

ONCE AGAIN. A BUSINESS (ENTERTAINMENT) FUNDING THE BOTTOM LINE WITH THE ALMIGHTY DOLLAR. PERIOD, AND PERIOD AGAIN DAMMIT!

Thus, there’s been a slow creep from presenting the facts (once known as journalism) to outright manipulating people’s brains to garner more views.

But if we are aware of this, we can shield ourselves from its influence.

March for Our Lives, the gun-control group founded after the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., has issued what it has termed a “peace plan.” A better description might be, “A Comprehensive Plan to Abolish the Right to Keep and Bear Arms.” At its core, the program seeks to transmute gun ownership from a liberty that can be asserted against the government into a privilege that Americans can enjoy only with the permission of the state. Or, to put it another way, the program aims to repeal the Second Amendment without going through all that unpleasant “written-amendment” stuff.

That’s not hyperbole. By its own admission, March for Our Lives wants to “re-examine the District of Columbia v. Heller interpretation of the Second Amendment,’ which, would mean asking the U.S. Supreme Court to revise the Second Amendment’s obvious meaning so that “the right of the people” does not mean “the right of the people” anymore. Worse still, the group is demanding that “the next generation of federal judges” must act not as impartial arbiters of the law, but as “champions of gun violence prevention.”

Which they’d pretty much have to if the group’s other ideas are to have a chance of surviving the judicial review they would inevitably provoke. Were the “peace plan” to be adopted in toto by Congress, Americans seeking to obtain firearms would be obliged to go through a multi-step approval process that would be overseen by a law enforcement agency.   They would be required to register their guns, and themselves with the federal government.

They would be forbidden from purchasing standard-capacity magazines, barred from owning the most-popular rifle in America and be subjected to both waiting periods and limitations on the number of firearms they could legally purchase in a month.

They would be on the receiving end of hefty purchase taxes and licensing fees that, in practice, would have the primary effect of making it more difficult, if not impossible, for poorer peoples to own firearms.  And they would be subjected to massive and unprecedented confiscation drives, the unabashed aim of which would be to reduce the estimated numbers of firearms in circulation by at least 30%.

Given the rank extremism of these ideas, it should come as no surprise that at the heart of the agenda, there is also an an open call for the federal government to go after the NRA and to shut it up.

In essence, the March for Our Lives peace plan is a full-scale, non-euphemized version of their agenda that the institutional Demonrat party is, by baby steps, coming gradually to adopt.

Their aims are uncannily alike: First, to clear away the Second Amendment as an obstacle within the courts; second, to remove the NRA as a means by which America’s pro-gun majority can channel its political voice; third, to remove the most popular guns in the United States from the market—and, if possible, from their owner’s homes; and, finally, to introduce so many legislative roadblocks between the individual and the opportunity to bear arms that, at least in the “blue” states, that individual would give up trying.

Until recently, “common-sense regulation” was the language of the hour. Now we are being told that, in fact, there is no right to bear arms—and that, insofar as such a “privilege” will be tolerated in America, it will be on limited, costly, intrusive and  narrow terms.

This transformation has been dramatic.  Almost overnight, the insistence that nobody is coming for your guns as been replaced with the admission that actually they are, and they want the ‘in common-use’ ones too.

This year alone, “all we want is background checks” has been thrown out in favor of  a byzantine system in which prospective gun owners would have to obtain a federal license, personally ‘satisfy’ a so-called ‘peace’ officer and then place themselves onto a national database.

Within the space of a few months, we have gone from hearing warnings about the importance of U.S. Supreme Court precedent to the explicit request that future judges  behave like activists, which includes personal biases. 

If you want to know where Beto O’Rourke, Kamala Harris or Elizabeth Warren are going to end up on this question of guns, then simply look no further than their March for Our Lives movement.  PERIOD!

Let nobody say we weren’t warned. The playbook has been published for all to see.

What we all do with it next is completely up to us.

I DON’T APPRECIATE BEING DEPENDENT ON ANYTHING, BE IT BIG GOVERNMENT, BIG PHARMA OR BIG FOOD SOURCES.

MY INTEREST IS NOT FROM A PLACE OF FEAR.

MY INTEREST IS FROM A PLACE OF FREEDOM.

REMEMBER THIS AND REMEMBER IT WELL.

THIS IS HOW MANY ELECTED OFFICIALS WHO MAKE LAWS THAT RUN YOUR PERSONAL LIFE THINK AND BELIEVE.

ACCORDING TO THE CITY OF SAN FRANCISCO, WHICH HAS DECLARED THE NRA AS A TERRORIST ORGANIZATION, IF YOU ARE A CURRENT MEMBER, THEN THAT MEANS BY ASSOCIATION YOU ALSO ARE A TERRORIST AS WELL.

THAT ALL BROUGHT TO YOU ACCORDING TO THE SAN FRANCISCO BOARD OF DIRECTORS!

ACCORDING TO A RASMUSSEN STUDY DONE IN EARLY SEPTEMBER OF THIS YEAR, IT FOUND THAT NEARLY 1/3rd OF DEMONRAT VOTERS (32%) FAVOR DECLARING THE NRA A TERRORIST ORGANIZATION.

28% OF THEM SAID AMERICANS SHOULDN’T EVEN BE ALLOWED TO BELONG TO THE NRA.

TO THEM AND OFFICIALS, NRA MEMBERS AND SUPPORTERS ARE THE BAD GUYS.

IF EVER THERE WAS A TIME TO STAND UP, IT IS NOW DURING EVERY COMING ELECTION BY CONTROLLING THE FUTURE WITH YOUR VOTE FOR YOURS AND FUTURE GENERATIONS.

The war that now looms largest is a war nobody apparently wants. During his presidential campaign, Donald Trump railed against the United States’ entanglement in Middle Eastern wars, and since assuming office, he has not changed his tune. Iran has no interest in a wide-ranging conflict that it knows it could not win. Israel is satisfied with calibrated operations in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Gaza but fears a larger confrontation that could expose it to thousands of rockets. Saudi Arabia is determined to push back against Iran, but without confronting it militarily. Yet the conditions for an all-out war in the Middle East are riper than at any time in recent memory. 

A conflict could break out in any one of a number of places for any one of a number of reasons. Consider the September 14 attack on Saudi oil facilities: it could theoretically have been perpetrated by the Houthis, a Yemeni rebel group, as part of their war with the kingdom; by Iran, as a response to debilitating U.S. sanctions; or by an Iranian-backed Shiite militia in Iraq. If Washington decided to take military action against Tehran, this could in turn prompt Iranian retaliation against the United States’ Gulf allies, an attack by Hezbollah on Israel, or a Shiite militia operation against U.S. personnel in Iraq. Likewise, Israeli operations against Iranian allies anywhere in the Middle East could trigger a regionwide chain reaction. Because any development anywhere in the region can have ripple effects everywhere, narrowly containing a crisis is fast becoming an exercise in futility. 

When it comes to the Middle East, Tip O’Neill, the storied Democratic politician, had it backward: all politics—especially local politics—is international. In Yemen, a war pitting the Houthis, until not long ago a relatively unexceptional rebel group, against a debilitated central government in the region’s poorest nation, one whose prior internal conflicts barely caught the world’s notice, has become a focal point for the Iranian-Saudi rivalry. It has also become a possible trigger for deeper U.S. military involvement. The Syrian regime’s repression of a popular uprising, far more brutal than prior crackdowns but hardly the first in the region’s or even Syria’s modern history, morphed into an international confrontation drawing in a dozen countries. It has resulted in the largest number of Russians ever killed by the United States and has thrust both Russia and Turkey and Iran and Israel to the brink of war. Internal strife in Libya sucked in not just Egypt, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) but also Russia and the United States.

There is a principal explanation for such risks. The Middle East has become the world’s most polarized region and, paradoxically, its most integrated. That combination—along with weak state structures, powerful nonstate actors, and multiple transitions occurring almost simultaneously—also makes the Middle East the world’s most volatile region. It further means that as long as its regional posture remains as it is, the United States will be just one poorly timed or dangerously aimed Houthi drone strike, or one particularly effective Israeli operation against a Shiite militia, away from its next costly regional entanglement. Ultimately, the question is not chiefly whether the United States should disengage from the region. It is how it should choose to engage: diplomatically or militarily, by exacerbating divides or mitigating them, and by aligning itself fully with one side or seeking to achieve a sort of balance.

ACT LOCALLY, THINK REGIONALLY

The story of the contemporary Middle East is one of a succession of rifts, each new one sitting atop its precursors, some taking momentary precedence over others, none ever truly or fully resolved. Today, the three most important rifts—between Israel and its foes, between Iran and Saudi Arabia, and between competing Sunni blocs—intersect in dangerous and potentially explosive ways.

Israel’s current adversaries are chiefly represented by the so-called axis of resistance: Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, and, although presently otherwise occupied, Syria. The struggle is playing out in the traditional arenas of the West Bank and Gaza but also in Syria, where Israel routinely strikes Iranian forces and Iranian-affiliated groups; in cyberspace; in Lebanon, where Israel faces the heavily armed, Iranian-backed Hezbollah; and even in Iraq, where Israel has reportedly begun to target Iranian allies. The absence of most Arab states from this frontline makes it less prominent but no less dangerous.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu near the Syrian border in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, March 2019Ronen Zvulun / Reuters

For those Arab states, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been nudged to the sidelines by the two other battles. Saudi Arabia prioritizes its rivalry with Iran. Both countries exploit the Shiite-Sunni rift to mobilize their respective constituencies but are in reality moved by power politics, a tug of war for regional influence unfolding in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and the Gulf states.

Finally, there is the Sunni-Sunni rift, with Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE vying with Qatar and Turkey. As Hussein Agha and I wrote in The New Yorker in March, this is the more momentous, if least covered, of the divides, with both supremacy over the Sunni world and the role of political Islam at stake. Whether in Egypt, Libya, Syria, Tunisia, or as far afield as Sudan, this competition will largely define the region’s future. 

Together with the region’s polarization is a lack of effective communication, which makes things ever more perilous. There is no meaningful channel between Iran and Israel, no official one between Iran and Saudi Arabia, and little real diplomacy beyond rhetorical jousting between the rival Sunni blocs.

When it comes to the Middle East, Tip O’Neill had it backward: all politics is international.

With these fault lines intersecting in complex ways, various groupings at times join forces and at other times compete. When it came to seeking to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Saudi Arabia and the UAE were on the same side as Qatar and Turkey, backing Syrian rebels—albeit different ones, reflecting their divergent views on the Islamists’ proper role. But those states took opposite stances on Egypt, with Doha and Ankara investing heavily to shore up a Muslim Brotherhood–led government that Riyadh and Abu Dhabi were trying to help bring down (the government fell in 2013, to be replaced by the authoritarian rule of Abdel Fattah el-Sisi). Qatar and Turkey fear Iran but fear Saudi Arabia even more. Hamas stands with Syria in opposition to Israel but stood with the Syrian opposition and other Islamists against Assad. The geometry of the Middle East’s internal schisms may fluctuate, yet one struggles to think of another region whose dynamics are as thoroughly defined by a discrete number of identifiable and all-encompassing fault lines.

One also struggles to think of a region that is as integrated, which is the second source of its precarious status. This may strike many as odd. Economically, it ranks among the least integrated areas of the world; institutionally, the Arab League is less coherent than the European Union, less effective than the African Union, and more dysfunctional than the Organization of American States. Nor is there any regional entity to which Arab countries and the three most active non-Arab players (Iran, Israel, and Turkey) belong.

Yet in so many other ways, the Middle East functions as a unified space. Ideologies and movements spread across borders: in times past, Arabism and Nasserism; today, political Islam and jihadism. The Muslim Brotherhood has active branches in Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, the Palestinian territories, Syria, Turkey, the Gulf states, and North Africa. Jihadi movements such as al Qaeda and the Islamic State, or ISIS, espouse a transnational agenda that rejects the nation-state and national boundaries altogether. Iran’s Shiite coreligionists are present in varying numbers in the Levant and the Gulf, often organized as armed militias that look to Tehran for inspiration or support. Saudi Arabia has sought to export Wahhabism, a puritanical strain of Islam, and funds politicians and movements across the region. Media outlets backed by one side or another of the Sunni-Sunni rift—Qatar’s Al Jazeera, Saudi Arabia’s Al Arabiya—have regional reach. The Palestinian cause, damaged as it may now seem, still resonates across the region and can mobilize its citizens in a way that arguably has no equivalent worldwide. Even subnational movements, such as Kurdish nationalism, which spreads across four countries, promote transnational objectives.

Accordingly, local struggles quickly take on regional significance—and thus attract weapons, money, and political support from the outside. The Houthis may view their fight as being primarily about Yemen, Hezbollah may be focused on power and politics in Lebanon, Hamas may be a Palestinian movement advancing a Palestinian cause, and Syria’s various opposition groups may be pursuing national goals. But in a region that is both polarized and integrated, those local drivers inevitably become subsumed by larger forces.

The fate of the Arab uprisings that began in late 2010 illustrates the dynamic well, with Tunisia, where it all began, being the lone exception. The toppling of the regime there happened too swiftly, too unexpectedly, and in a country that was too much on the margins of regional politics for other states to react in time. But they soon found their bearings. Every subsequent rebellion almost instantaneously became a regional and then international affair. In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood’s fortunes and the future of political Islam were at stake, and so Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the UAE dove in. The same was true in Libya, where Egypt, once Sisi had prevailed and the Brotherhood had been pushed out, joined the fray. Likewise for Syria, where the civil war drew in all three regional battles: Israel’s confrontation with the “axis of resistance,” the Iranian-Saudi struggle, and the intra-Sunni competition. A similar scenario has played out in Yemen, too.

STATES OF CHAOS

Along with the Middle East’s polarization and integration, its dysfunctional state structures present another risk factor. Some states are more akin to nonstate actors: the central governments in Libya, Syria, and Yemen lack control over large swaths of their territories and populations. Conversely, several nonstate actors operate as virtual states, including Hamas, the Houthis, the Kurds, and the Islamic State before it was toppled. And these nonstate actors often must contend with nonstate spoilers of their own: in Gaza, Hamas vies with jihadi groups that sometimes behave in ways that undermine its rule or contradict its goals. Even in more functional states, it is not always clear where the ultimate policymaking authority lies. Shiite militias in Iraq and Hezbollah in Lebanon, for example, engage in activities that their titular sovereigns don’t control, let alone condone.  

Weak states cohabiting with powerful nonstate actors creates the ideal circumstances for external interference. It’s a two-way street—foreign states exploit armed groups to advance their interests, and armed groups turn to foreign states to promote their own causes—that is all too open to misinterpretation. Iran almost certainly helps the Houthis and Iraqi Shiite militias, but does it control them? The People’s Protection Units, a movement of Kurdish fighters in Syria, are affiliated with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party in Turkey, but do they follow its command?

Hezbollah supporters in Beirut, September 2018Aziz Taher / Reuters

The fact that nonstate actors operate as both proxies and independent players makes it hard to establish accountability for violence or deter it in the first place. Iran might wrongly assume that it will not be held responsible for a Houthi drone attack on Saudi Arabia, a Palestinian Islamic Jihad attack on Israel, or an Iraqi Shiite militia strike on a U.S. target. Saudi Arabia might misguidedly blame Iran for every Houthi attack, just as Iran might blame Saudi Arabia for any violent incident on its soil perpetrated by internal dissident groups. The United States might be convinced that every Shiite militia is an Iranian proxy doing Tehran’s bidding. Israel might deem Hamas accountable for every attack emanating from Gaza, Iran for every attack emanating from Syria, the Lebanese state for every attack launched by Hezbollah. In each of these instances, the price of misattribution could be high.

This is no mere thought exercise: After the attack on Saudi oil facilities in September, the Houthis immediately claimed responsibility, possibly in the hope of enhancing their stature. Iran, likely seeking to avoid U.S. retaliation, denied any involvement. Who conducted the operation and who—if anyone—is punished could have wide-ranging implications.

Even in seemingly well-structured states, the locus of decision-making has become opaque. In Iran, the government and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the branch of the military that answers directly to the country’s supreme leader, at times seem to go their separate ways. Whether this reflects a conscious division of labor or an actual tug of war is a matter of debate, as is the question of who exactly pulls the strings.

THREAT MULTIPLIERS

A series of global, regional, and local transitions has made these dynamics even more uncertain. The global transitions include a newly present China, a resurgent Russia, and a United States in relative decline. There are also the aftershocks of the recent Arab uprisings, notably the dismantling of the regional order and the propagation of failed states. These are exacerbated by domestic political changes: a new, unusually assertive leadership in Saudi Arabia and a new, unusual leadership in the United States. All these developments fuel the sense of a region in which everything is up for grabs and in which opportunities not grabbed quickly will be lost for good.

The United States’ key regional allies are simultaneously worried about the country’s staying power, heartened by the policies of the Trump administration, and anxious about them. The president made it a priority to repair relations with Egypt, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE, all of which had frayed under his predecessor. But Trump’s reluctance to use force has been equally clear, as has his willingness to betray long-standing allies in other parts of the world. 

U.S. partners in the region are both taking advantage of Trump’s tenure and hedging against one of his sudden pivots.

That combination of encouragement and concern helps explain, for example, Saudi Arabia’s uncharacteristic risk-taking under the leadership of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, or MBS: its continuing war in Yemen, its blockade of Qatar, its kidnapping of the Lebanese prime minister, its killing of the dissident Jamal Khashoggi. MBS perceives the current alignment with Washington as a fleeting opportunity—because Trump might not win reelection, because he is capable of an abrupt policy swing that could see him reach a deal with Iran, and because the United States has a long-standing desire to extricate itself from Middle Eastern entanglements. The feeling in Israel is similar. The United States’ partners in the region are both seeking to take advantage of Trump’s tenure and hedging against one of his sudden pivots and the possibility of a one-term presidency, an attitude that makes the situation even more fluid and unpredictable. 

Meanwhile, growing Chinese and Russian influence have given Iran some encouragement, but hardly real confidence. In the event of an escalation of tensions between Tehran and Washington, would Moscow stand with Iran or, hoping to benefit from regional disruption, stand on the sidelines? Will China ignore American threats of sanctions and buy Iranian oil or, in the wake of a potential trade deal with the United States, abide by Washington’s demands? Uncertainty about American intentions could be even more dangerous. Iran senses Trump’s distaste for war and is therefore tempted to push the envelope, pressuring Washington in the hope of securing some degree of sanctions relief. But because Tehran does not know where the line is, it runs the risk of going too far and paying the price.

TWO CAUTIONARY TALES

To understand how these dynamics could interact in the future, it is instructive to look at how similar dynamics have interacted in the recent past, in Syria. Saudi Arabia and others seized on a homegrown effort to topple the Assad regime as an opportunity to change the regional balance of power. They banked on the opposition prevailing and thereby ending Damascus’ longtime alliance with Tehran. Iran and Hezbollah, fearful of that outcome, poured resources into the fight on the regime’s behalf, at huge human cost. Israel also stepped in, seeking to roll back Iran’s growing presence at its borders. Qatar and Turkey backed one set of Islamist-leaning rebel groups, and Saudi Arabia and its allies backed others. Russia—concerned about a shift in Syria’s orientation and sensing American hesitation—saw a chance to reassert itself in the Middle East and also intervened, placing it directly at odds with the United States and, for a time, Turkey. And Turkey, alarmed at the prospect of U.S.-backed Kurdish forces enjoying a safe haven in northern Syria, intervened directly while also supporting Syrian Arab opposition groups that it hoped would fight the Kurds.

With Syria an arena for regional tensions, clashes there, even inadvertent ones, risk becoming flash points for larger confrontations. Turkey shot down one Russian fighter jet (Moscow blamed Israel for the downing of another), and U.S. forces killed hundreds of members of a private Russian paramilitary group in eastern Syria. Turkey has attacked U.S.-backed Kurds, raising the prospect of a U.S.-Turkish military collision. And Israel has struck Iranian or Iranian-linked targets in Syria hundreds of times.

Syria also illustrates why it is so difficult for the United States to circumscribe its involvement in Middle Eastern conflicts. During the Obama administration, Washington backed rebel groups fighting both the Assad regime and ISIS but claimed not to be pursuing regime change (despite supporting forces that wanted exactly that), not to be seeking a regional rebalance (despite the clear impact Assad’s downfall would have on Iran’s influence), not to be boosting Turkey’s foes (despite supporting a Kurdish movement affiliated with Turkey’s mortal enemy), and not to be seeking to weaken Russia (despite Moscow’s affinity for Assad). But the United States could not, of course, back rebel groups while distancing itself from their objectives, or claim purely local aims while everyone else involved saw the Syrian conflict in a broader context. Washington became a central player in a regional and international game that it purportedly wanted nothing to do with. 

A similar scene has played out in Yemen. Since 2004, the north of the country had been the arena of recurring armed conflict between the Houthis and the central government. Government officials early on pointed to supposed Iranian financial and military aid to the rebels, just as Houthi leaders claimed Saudi interference. After the Houthis seized the capital and marched southward in 2014–15, Saudi Arabia—dreading the prospect of an Iranian-backed militia controlling its southern neighbor—responded. Its reaction was magnified by the rise of MBS, who was distrustful of the United States, determined to show Iran the days of old were over, and intent on making his mark at home. Faced with intense pushback, the Houthis increasingly turned to Iran for military assistance, and Iran, seeing a low-cost opportunity to enhance its influence and bog down Saudi Arabia, obliged. Washington, still in the midst of negotiations over a nuclear deal with Tehran, which Riyadh vehemently opposed, felt it could not afford to add another crisis to the brittle relations with its Gulf ally.

Despite its misgivings about the war, Washington thus threw its weight behind the Saudi-led coalition, sharing intelligence, providing weapons, and offering diplomatic support. As in Syria, the Obama administration looked to limit U.S. aims. It would help defend Saudi territorial integrity but not join Riyadh’s anti-Houthi fight or get sucked into an Iranian-Saudi battle. As in Syria, this effort largely was in vain. The United States could not cherry-pick one part of the war: if it was with Saudi Arabia, that meant it was against the Houthis, which meant it would be against Iran.

WASHINGTON ADRIFT

President Barack Obama’s largely fruitless attempt to confine U.S. involvement in the region reveals something about the unavoidable linkages that bind various Middle Eastern conflicts together. It also reveals something about the choices now facing the United States. Obama (in whose administration I served) had in mind the United States’ extrication from what he considered the broader Middle Eastern quagmire. He withdrew U.S. troops from Iraq, tried to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, expressed sympathy for Arab popular uprisings and for a time distanced himself from autocratic leaders, shunned direct military intervention in Syria, and pursued a deal with Iran to prevent its nuclear program from becoming a trigger for war. Libya doesn’t fit this pattern, although even there he apparently labored under the belief that the 2011 NATO-led intervention could be tightly limited; that this assumption proved wrong only reinforced his initial desire to keep his distance from regional conflicts. His ultimate goal was to help the region find a more stable balance of power that would make it less dependent on direct U.S. interference or protection. Much to the Saudis’ consternation, he spoke of Tehran and Riyadh needing to find a way to “share” the region.

But Obama was a gradualist; he was persuaded that the United States could neither abruptly nor radically shift gears and imperil regional relationships that had been decades in the making. As he once put it to some of us working in the White House, conducting U.S. policy was akin to steering a large vessel: a course correction of a few degrees might not seem like much in the moment, but over time, the destination would differ drastically. What he did, he did in moderation. Thus, while seeking to persuade Riyadh to open channels with Tehran, he did so gently, carefully balancing continuity and change in the United States’ Middle East policy. And although he wanted to avoid military entanglements, his presidency nonetheless was marked by several costly interventions: both direct, as in Libya, and indirect, as in Syria and Yemen. 

In a sense, his administration was an experiment that got suspended halfway through. At least when it came to his approach to the Middle East, Obama’s presidency was premised on the belief that someone else would pick up where he left off. It was premised on his being succeeded by someone like him, maybe a Hillary Clinton, but certainly not a Donald Trump. 

Trump’s policies make likelier the very military confrontation he is determined to avoid.

Trump has opted for a very different course (perhaps driven in part by a simple desire to do the opposite of what his predecessor did). Instead of striving for some kind of balance, Trump has tilted entirely to one side: doubling down on support for Israel; wholly aligning himself with MBS, Sisi, and other leaders who felt spurned by Obama; withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal and zealously joining up with the region’s anti-Iranian axis. Indeed, seeking to weaken Iran, Washington has chosen to confront it on all fronts across much of the region: in the nuclear and economic realms; in Syria, where U.S. officials have explicitly tied the continued U.S. presence to countering Iran; in Iraq, where the United States wants a fragile government that is now dependent on close ties to Tehran to cut those ties; in Yemen, where the administration, flouting Congress’ will, has increased support for the Saudi-led coalition; and in Lebanon, where it has added to sanctions on Hezbollah. 

Iran has also chosen to treat the region as its canvas. Besides chipping away at its own compliance with the nuclear deal, it has seized tankers in the Gulf; shot down a U.S. drone; and, if U.S. claims are to be believed, used Shiite militias to threaten Americans in Iraq, attacked commercial vessels in the Strait of Hormuz, and struck Saudi oil fields. In June of this year, when the drone came down and Trump contemplated military retaliation, Iran was quick to warn Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE that they would be fair game if they played any role in enabling a U.S. attack. (There is no reason to trust that the domino effect would have ended there; Iraq, Israel, Lebanon, and Syria could well have been drawn into the ensuing hostilities.) And in Yemen, the Houthis have intensified their attacks on Saudi targets, which may or may not be at Iran’s instigation—although, at a minimum, it is almost certainly not over Tehran’s objections. Houthi leaders with whom I recently spoke in Sanaa, Yemen’s capital, denied acting at Iran’s behest yet added that they would undoubtedly join forces with Iran in a war against Saudi Arabia if their own conflict with the kingdom were still ongoing. In short, the Trump administration’s policies, which Washington claimed would moderate Iran’s behavior and achieve a more stringent nuclear deal, have prompted Tehran to intensify its regional activities and ignore some of the existing nuclear deal’s restraints. This gets to the contradiction at the heart of the president’s Middle East policies: they make likelier the very military confrontation he is determined to avoid.

WHAT MATTERS NOW

A regional conflagration is far from inevitable; none of the parties wants one, and so far, all have for the most part shown the ability to calibrate their actions so as to avoid an escalation. But even finely tuned action can have unintentional, outsize repercussions given the regional dynamics. Another Iranian attack in the Gulf. An Israeli strike in Iraq or Syria that crosses an unclear Iranian redline. A Houthi missile that kills too many Saudis or an American, and a reply that, this time, aims at the assumed Iranian source. A Shiite militia that kills an American soldier in Iraq. An Iranian nuclear program that, now unshackled from the nuclear deal’s constraints, exceeds Israel’s or the United States’ unidentified tolerance level. One can readily imagine how any of these incidents could spread across boundaries, each party searching for the arena in which its comparative advantage is greatest.  

With such ongoing risks, the debate about the extent to which the United States should distance itself from the region and reduce its military footprint is important but somewhat beside the point. Should any of these scenarios unfold, the United States would almost certainly find itself dragged in, whether or not it had made the strategic choice of withdrawing from the Middle East.

The more consequential question, therefore, is what kind of Middle East the United States will remain engaged in or disengaged from. A polarized region with intersecting rifts, where local disputes invariably take on broader significance, will remain at constant risk of combusting and therefore of implicating the United States in ways that will prove wasteful and debilitating. De-escalating tensions is not something the country can do on its own. Yet at a minimum, it can stop aggravating those tensions and, without abandoning or shunning them, avoid giving its partners carte blanche or enabling their more bellicose actions. That would mean ending its support for the war in Yemen and pressing its allies to bring the conflict to an end. It would mean shelving its efforts to wreck Iran’s economy, rejoining the nuclear deal, and then negotiating a more comprehensive agreement. It would mean halting its punishing campaign against the Palestinians and considering new ways to end the Israeli occupation. In the case of Iraq, it would mean no longer forcing Baghdad to pick a side between Tehran and Washington. And as far as the Iranian-Saudi rivalry is concerned, the United States could encourage the two parties to work on modest confidence-building measures—on maritime security, environmental protection, nuclear safety, and transparency around military exercises—before moving on to the more ambitious task of establishing a new, inclusive regional architecture that would begin to address both countries’ security concerns. 

An administration intent on pursuing this course won’t be starting from scratch. Recently, some Gulf states—the UAE chief among them—have taken tentative steps to reach out to Iran in an effort to reduce tensions. They saw the growing risks of the regional crisis spinning out of control and recognized its potential costs. 

MAYBE, and I say MAYBE with the greatest of thought given, Washington should too, before it is POSSIBLY too late.  

I don’t have that answer. Your thoughts?

There comes a point during every American gun-control debate at which the side calling for draconian restrictions gives up on arguing the specifics or proposing detailed legislative change and rushes stupidly to deceit. Often, this rush involves the frustrated and farcical insistence that the U.S. Constitution does not, in fact, protect an individual right to bear arms.

On other occasions, it involves the attempt to destroy the reputation of the Second Amendment by granting that, while the provision may protect the private ownership of guns in some form, it was nevertheless designed for ugly or base reasons, and that it is therefore tainted.

In both cases, the intention is the same: To short-circuit a debate that they know cannot be won. By removing from the discussion one of the core checks upon which the American political system relies, opponents of the right to keep and bear arms hope to demote it from a cherished part of the much-admired Bill of Rights to an embarrassing vestige of an age long gone, and, thereby, to cast it as a mistake that should be rectified as soon as is politically possible.

This tendency is a destructive one, in part because it is a sin to lie about history in order to advance contemporary political goals. It is also destructive because it has the effect of funnel-ing all of our historical attention onto 27 words in the federal Constitution. This, in turn, permits the integrity of one of our core liberties to be rendered contingent upon our opponent’s willingness to accurately read a single sentence of law.

It was, of course, entirely obvious to the men who wrote the federal Second Amendment that its purpose was to protect the individual’s right to keep and bear arms. It was obvious, too, to the commentators who explained it, to the jurists who interpreted it and to the citizenry that ratified it. Nevertheless, contrary to the implications of the “but actually” brigade, it is simply not the case that the Second Amendment has served as the sole, or even the primary, protection of that right throughout American history—or, indeed, that it is the sole means by which the right is legally affirmed.

There are also ubiquitous equivalents at the state level—equivalents that are both numerous and robust. Should they wish to fight back against the straight-to-the-root tactics that are gaining currency and favor, advocates of gun rights must broaden the shoulders of the giants on which they stand and make it clear that they, not their opponents, enjoy the slam-dunk historical case.

That case is strong. If the Second Amendment is either irrelevant to the question of the private ownership of arms because it pertains only to federal authority over the militias, or because it is irrevocably stained by Founding-era motivations such as slavery, then one would not expect to see 44 out of 5o states with their own provisions; one would not expect to see pre-Second Amendment state-level provisions that explicitly mention an individual right; one would not expect to discover that non-slave states adopted the right more enthusiastically than slave states; and one would certainly not expect to see states in the mid-to-late 20th. century willingly adding their own Second Amendment equivalents into their constitutions. (Why would any state, let alone nearly all of them, have enthusiastically echoed a historical accident?)

That we can in fact, see all of these things should show us just how deeply unserious is the idea that the contemporary understanding of the Second Amendment is a hoax. Americans, the record clearly shows, have always enjoyed the right to own guns for their defense. And, crucially, they would have done so nearly everywhere had the federal Constitution never been written.

The first post-Declaration protection of the right to keep and bear arms was introduced into the Constitution of Pennsylvania in 1776, a full 15 years before the ratification of the Bill of Rights. It contains explicitly individual language holding “that the people have a right to bear arms for the defence of themselves and the state; and as standing armies in the time of peace are dangerous to liberty, they ought not to be kept up; And that the military should be kept under strict subordination to, and governed by, the civil power.”

One year later, the wording of Pennsylvania’s provision was copied verbatim by Vermont into the same Constitution with which the state abolished slavery within its borders. If, as Professor Carl Bogus and others have disingenuously suggested, the entrenchment of gun rights in America was the product of a widespread desire to put down slave rebellions, one would not expect to see a free state serving as a trailblazer, nor to see that state’s language being copied literatim into a document of renewal and manumission.

This chronology alone should be sufficient to render as abject folly the oft-repeated suggestion made by Connecticut’s Senator Chris Murphy that the Founding generation did not conceive of gun ownership as anything other than a collective endeavor.  But when one considers that Murphy’s own state, too, has, since 1818, boasted a Constitutional provision recognizing that “every citizen has a right to bear arms in defense of himself and the state,” his approach begins to look somewhat sinister. If, as Murphy suggests, the Founders did not intend anyone but the members of militias to keep and bear arms, they had a pretty funny way of showing it.

Equally inconvenient to the “ancient vestige” theory is that the states have seen fit to add their own protections during all periods of American history—and that, in almost every case, they have made sure to include a clear-cut reference to the rights of the individual. Even when they have not, with the exception of Massachusetts, their courts have.

As a matter of fact, ensuring that the right to keep and bear arms was constitutionally protected was often one of the first orders of business for newly admitted states. If, as a host of gun-control activists now claim, the Second Amendment shows that the right was historically understood to apply only to the members of militias, how should we interpret the language adopted by the vast majority of states after the Second Amendment was approved?

In 1792, Kentucky included in its inaugural Constitution: “That the right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State hall not be questioned.”

In 1802, Ohio declared: “That the people have a right to bear arms for the defense of themselves and the State.”

In 1816, Indiana ensured that “The people shall have a right to bear arms, for the defense of themselves and the State.”

In 1817, Mississippi entrenched that “Every citizen has a right to bear arms, in defense of himself and the State.”

In 1819, Alabama recognized “That every citizen has a right to bear arms in defense of himself and the state.”

In 182o, Missouri affirmed that “[the] right to bear arms in defense of themselves and of the State cannot be questioned.”

In 1835, Michigan confirmed that “Every person has a right to bear arms for the defense of himself and the State.”

In 1836, Texas maintained that “Every citizen shall have the right to bear arms in defense of himself and the republic.” And so on, and so forth.

In 1889, Wyoming declared: “The right of citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and of the state shall not be denied.”

In 1896, Utah certified that “The individual right of the people to keep and bear arms for security and defense of self, family, others, prop-erty, or the state, as well as for other lawful purposes shall not be infringed; but nothing herein shall prevent the legislature from defining the lawful use of arms.”

In 1912, Arizona guaranteed that “The right of the individual citizen to bear arms in defense of himself or the State shall not be impaired.”

Both Alaska and Hawaii copied the Second Amendment verbatim into their constitutions upon joining the Union in 1959. Nevada, Delaware, New Hampshire and West Virginia all realized in the 198os that they had no explicit protections within their state charters and set about remedying that oversight.

Could it possibly be they were all mistaken?

If this is really only a right for state militias, then we are looking here at one of the great mass delusions in American history—a delusion that affected lawmakers, constitution-drafters and judges alike, and that, astonishingly, both predated and followed the ratification of the sentence that allegedly caused all the confusion.

To put it simply, there has been no point in American history in which the states have not moved to protect the individual right to bear arms. They did so before the Constitution was written.

They did so immediately after the Constitution was written. They did so before the Civil War. They did so after the Civil War. They did so in the North and in the South and in the Midwest and in the West. They did so in the 19th. century, and in the 20th. century and have continued to do so as recently as 1998 (Wisconsin).

In all of American history, only six states—California, New York, New Jersey, Iowa, Maryland and Minnesota—have declined to echo or improve upon the Second Amendment in their state constitutions. Isn’t that surprising? And isn’t it more likely that it is they, not the rest, that represent the exception? And don’t answer that question, because it was rhetorical. The answer is of course they were.

That our gun-control debates tend to be marked by ignorance and hysteria is a problem. That, increasingly, they are being soiled by grammatical sophistry and historical revisionism is a crisis. Those who wish to see their Second Amendment rights protected need to arm themselves with the historical facts, as the truth is clearly on their side.

To proceed in any other way is to be sucked into a black hole fallacy of deceit and lies from which there is no escape, and from which no worthwhile deliberation can emerge.

To paraphrase Daniel Patrick Moynihan, we are all entitled to our own opinion, but not to our own history. That history is on our side—if we can keep it.

A tragedy occurred in my home state of Alabama last month. As reported by the local news, a father and his son were involved in an argument that led to the 70-year-old father shooting his 45-year-old son in the chest in what he claims was self-defense.

Soon afterward, the Alabama chapter of Moms Demand Action shared the news — along with a comment — on social media. They posted:

’Investigators said James Adams and his son, Alfred Dewayne Adams, were involved in an argument Sunday night. They further stated they believe James told Alfred he was going to bed. Alfred then walked into the bedroom and James shot him in the chest. Some of the neighbors and some other family members can tell us about stuff that was happening through [sic] the years.’ This life could have been spared by utilizing a red flag law.

Some Questions

“This life could have been spared by utilizing a red flag law?” 

That’s quite a statement. And I wanted to post a few questions to Moms Demand Action. First of all, I wanted to ask: If the father truly used a weapon in self-defense, would a “red flag” law have disarmed him … and then spared the life of his violent son? Would the father be dead, then, in this particular situation? Beyond that, do “red flag” laws cover all weapons in the home? What if the suspect had decided to use a knife? Or what about prescription drugs or poisons? Does it cover a person’s bare hands and/or body? Could we confiscate those weapons, as well, whenever we feel there’s “some stuff that was happening through the years?”

Some Examples

And what about the terrible case in which a son killed his father and wounded his mother with a knife? Two months ago, in Arizona, the Yavapai County Sheriff’s Office reported that when the older couple returned home, “they noticed their 33-year-old son had consumed a large amount of beer. The parents argued with him over their drinking concern. He threw his phone at them and then went into the kitchen and grabbed two large knives. When he tried to stab his mother, his father intervened and attempted to restrain him while he was still in the kitchen. The son began attacking his dad. As the struggle moved from the kitchen into the living room, the son was able to stab his dad in the chest. The father collapsed to the floor.”

Or there’s this recent horror story from Illinois: A man in a Chicago suburb was arrested by local police after killing his own mother by stabbing her repeatedly with a samurai sword in the chest. Park Ridge Police had removed the murderer’s firearms two times, with the last time being in July 2019. So the suspect didn’t have a gun … but he still had evil intent. And he used whatever weapon he could find.

There’s also the atrocity from Nevada a few weeks ago in which a 36-year-old man bludgeoned a woman to death with a sledgehammer in what Las Vegas police said was a random attack at a laundromat.

I could go on. But I won’t. Perhaps you see the point.

Some Red Flags

Beyond the fear of just anyone pointing out someone else with a gun for no good reason or people wrongly having their firearms taken from them because of mistaken identity or possibly just being in the wrong place at the wrong time, there are so many red flags about “red flag” laws. Undoubtedly, we’d love to be able to stop crimes and keep bad people from harming or killing others. But this is not the movie Minority Report, in which police can employ some sort of psychic technology to arrest and convict murderers before they commit their crimes. 

Ultimately, we have to ask: Will “red flag” laws actually target violent people … or just people with guns? Because as the above examples (and countless others) show, the problem isn’t the firearms.

“No… it’s a magic potty,” my daughter used to lament, age 3 or so, before refusing to use a public restroom stall with an automatic-flush toilet. As a small person, she was accustomed to the infrared sensor detecting erratic motion at the top of her head and violently flushing beneath her. Better, in her mind, just to delay relief than to subject herself to the magic potty’s dark dealings.

It’s hardly just a problem for small people. What adult hasn’t suffered the pneumatic public toilet’s whirlwind underneath them? Or again when attempting to exit the stall? So many ordinary objects and experiences have become technologized—made dependent on computers, sensors, and other apparatuses meant to improve them—that they have also ceased to work in their usual manner. It’s common to think of such defects as matters of bad design. That’s true, in part. But technology is also more precarious than it once was. Unstable, and unpredictable. At least from the perspective of human users. From the vantage point of technology, if it can be said to have a vantage point, it’s evolving separately from human use.

“Precarity” has become a popular way to refer to economic and labor conditions that force people—and particularly low-income service workers—into uncertainty. Temporary labor and flexwork offer examples. That includes hourly service work in which schedules are adjusted ad-hoc and just-in-time, so that workers don’t know when or how often they might be working. For low-wage food service and retail workers, for instance, that uncertainty makes budgeting and time-management difficult. Arranging for transit and childcare is difficult, and even more costly, for people who don’t know when—or if—they’ll be working. It’s become absolutely atrocious.

Such conditions are not new. As union-supported blue-collar labor declined in the 20th century, the service economy took over its mantle absent its benefits. But the information economy further accelerated precarity. For one part, it consolidated existing businesses and made efficiency its primary concern. For another, economic downturns like the 2008 global recession facilitated austerity measures both deliberate and accidental. Immaterial labor also rose—everything from the unpaid, unseen work of women in and out of the workplace, to creative work done on-spec or for exposure, to the invisible work everyone does to construct the data infrastructure that technology companies like Google and Facebook sell to advertisers.

But as it has expanded, economic precarity has birthed other forms of instability and unpredictability—among them the dubious utility of ordinary objects and equipment.

The contemporary public restroom offers an example. Infrared-sensor flush toilets, fixtures, and towel-dispensers are sometimes endorsed on ecological grounds—they are said to save resources by regulating them. But thanks to their overzealous sensors, these toilets increase water or paper consumption substantially. Toilets flush three times instead of one. Faucets open at full-blast. Towel dispensers mete out papers so miserly that people take more than they need. Instead of saving resources, these apparatuses mostly save labor and management costs. When a toilet flushes incessantly, or when a faucet shuts off on its own, or when a towel dispenser discharges only six inches of paper when a hand waves under it, it reduces the need for human workers to oversee, clean, and supply the restroom.

Given its connection to the hollowing-out of labor in the name of efficiency, automation is most often lamented for its inhumanity, a common grievance of bureaucracy. Take the interactive voice response (IVR) telephone system. When calling a bank or a retailer or a utility for service, the IVR robot offers recordings and automated service options to reduce the need for customer service agents—or to discourage customers from seeking them in the first place.

Trust me though. It’s to discourage you, plain and simple.

Once decoupled from their economic motivations, devices like automatic-flush toilets acclimate their users to apparatuses that don’t serve users well in order that they might serve other actors, among them corporations and the sphere of technology itself. In so doing, they make that uncertainty feel normal.

It’s a fact most easily noticed when using old-world gadgets. To flush a toilet or open a faucet by hand offers almost wanton pleasure given how rare it has become. A local eatery near me whose interior design invokes the 1930s features a bathroom with a white steel crank-roll paper towel dispenser. When spun on its ungeared mechanism, an analogous, glorious measure of towel appears directly and immediately, as if sent from heaven.

Rolling out a proper portion of towel feels remarkable largely because that victory also seems so rare, even despite constant celebrations of technological accomplishment. The frequency with which technology works precariously has been obscured by culture’s obsession with technological progress, its religious belief in computation, and its confidence in the mastery of design. In truth, hardly anything works very well anymore.

The other day I attempted to congratulate a friend for becoming a  finalist in a program he was pursing application for. I was tapping “Awesome, jughead!” into my phone, but it came out as “Aeromexico, juggalo!” What the hell happened? The phone’s touchscreen keyboard works, in part, by trying to predict what the user is going to type next. It does this invisibly, by increasing and decreasing the tappable area of certain keys based on the previous keys pressed. This method—perhaps necessary to make the software keyboard work at all—amplifies a mistype that autocorrect then completes. And so goes the weird accident of typing on today’s devices, when you hardly ever say what you mean the first time.

The effects of business consolidation and just-in-time logistics offer another example. Go to Amazon.com and search for an ordinary product like a pair of shoes or a toaster. Amazon wants to show its users as many options as possible, so it displays anything it can fulfill directly or whose fulfillment it can facilitate via one of many catalog partnerships. In some cases, one size or color of a particular shoe might be available direct from Amazon, shipped free or fast or via its Prime two-day delivery service, while another size or color might come from a third party, shipped later or at increased cost. There is no easy way to discern what’s truly in stock.

Digital distribution has also made media access more precarious. Try explaining to a toddler that the episodes of “Mickey Mouse Clubhouse” that were freely available to watch yesterday via subscription are suddenly available only via on-demand purchase. Why? Some change in digital licensing, probably, or the expiration of a specific clause in a distribution agreement. Then try explaining that when the shows are right there on the screen, just the same as they always have been.

Or, try looking for some information online. Google’s software displays results based on a combination of factors, including the popularity of a web page, its proximity in time, and the common searches made by other people in a geographic area. This makes some searches easy and others difficult. Looking for historical materials almost always brings up Wikipedia, thanks to that site’s popularity, but it doesn’t necessarily fetch results based on other factors, like the domain expertise of its author. As often as not, Googling obscures more than it reveals.

Most of these failures don’t seem like failures, because users have so internalized their methods that they apologize for them in advance. The best defense against instability is to rationalize uncertainty as intentional—and even desirable.

The common response to precarious technology is to add even more technology and ever more layers to technology to solve the problems caused by earlier technology.  

Are the toilets flushing too often? Revise the sensor hardware. Is online news full of falsehoods? Add machine-learning AI to separate the wheat from the chaff. Are retail product catalogs overwhelming and confusing? Add content filtering to show only the most relevant or applicable results.

But why would new technology reduce rather than increase the feeling of precarity? The more technology multiplies, the more it amplifies instability. Things already don’t quite do what they claim. The fixes just make things worse. And so, ordinary devices aren’t likely to feel more workable and functional as technology marches forward. If anything, they are likely to become even less so.

Technology’s role has begun to shift, from serving human users to pushing them out of the way so that the technologized world can service its own ends. And so, with increasing frequency, technology will exist not to serve human goals, but to facilitate its own expansion.

This might seem like a crazy thing to say. What other purpose do toilets serve than to speed away human waste? No matter its ostensible function, precarious technology separates human actors from the accomplishment of their actions. They acclimate people to the idea that devices are not really there for them, but as means to accomplish those devices own, secret goals.

This truth has been obvious for some time. Facebook and Google, so the saying goes, make their users into their products—the real customer is the advertiser or data speculator preying on the information generated by the companies’ free services. But things are bound to get even weirder than that. When automobiles drive themselves, for example, their human passengers will not become masters of a new form of urban freedom, but rather a fuel to drive the expansion of connected cities, in order to spread further the gospel of computerized automation. If artificial intelligence ends up running the news, it will not do so in order to improve citizen’s access to information necessary to make choices in a democracy, but to further cement the supremacy of machine automation over human editorial in establishing what is relevant.

There is a dream of computer technology’s end, in which machines become powerful enough that human consciousness can be uploaded into them, facilitating immortality. And there is a corresponding nightmare in which the evil robot of a forthcoming, computerized mesh overpowers and destroys human civilization. But there is also a weirder, more ordinary, and more likely future—and it is the one most similar to the present. In that future, technology’s and humanity’s goals split from one another, even as the latter seems ever more yoked to the former. 

Like people ignorant of the plight of ants, and like ants incapable of understanding the goals of the humans who loom over them, so technology is becoming a force that surrounds humans, that intersects with humans, that makes use of humans—but not necessarily in the service of human ends. It won’t take a computational singularity for humans to cede their lives to the world of machines. They’ve already been doing so, for years, without even noticing, just like most other things in life today.