Friends With the Mayor

Brandon Johnson has just been elected mayor of Chicago. Except Byrne we have always elected lawyers, even prosecutors, in the hope that they would avoid indictment. So far, they have. Johnson is the first schoolteacher. As a teacher Johnson is trying to approach crime from a Confucious perspective, systemically. Here are some obvious concerns:

A court clerk just made the mistake of self-publishing a book about a recent case. In general police, prosecutors, judges and even clerks should be cautious publicly expressing opinions that could be thrown back at them, endangering testimony, and convictions. It is unfortunate that people closest to issues are precisely the ones constrained from public discussion.

Police are not screened for clerical aptitude. Clerical tasks are a major part of police work, especially investigations. Back in the 90’s the federal government confronted domestic violence. Their solution was the development of a form that must be filed if the husband was not arrested and removed from the incident. This had the consequence of saving a lot of men’s lives. The legislators understood full well that police will do anything to avoid filling out a form.

You may be puzzled that police sometimes ventilate suspects. Imagine you are a responsible person training police. You are not training multi $100,000 SOCOM warriors who wound their opponents to entice their comrades into further casualties. Hopefully, it is unlikely that a police officer will ever be in a gun battle. You train to the exception. Your officer will undergo inquiry and may lose their job. Your objective is that the officer survives. You will train said officer to start shooting the moment they clear the holster, correct as they go, keep shooting and don’t stop till they drop. It is not common, but there are people who when shot pull out their gun and kill you. It is not a good look, but police should also receive baton training. Police should have options.

It used to be that police were the biggest street gang, they coordinated with each other, set it up and take it down. Just as Catholic school graduates make the worst public-school teachers, military are the worst police. Warrior mentality is dangerous to police survival. Running to the gun fire didn’t work against one way glass at the Tennessee bank shooting.

I don’t know if they are intentionally disingenuous, but the best argument for gun control is the You tube video channels Garand Thumb and She Equips Herself. If you have any critical faculty watching man children play in the desert, shoot hogs from helicopters, and practice with grenade launchers should give pause. I don’t mind people who are raised having guns. Trained isn’t raised. Stavroula from She Equips Herself may not be raised but she is being trained by people who were. She considers serious issues. At some point you may wonder why you need to conceal carry:

-Everyone else is.

Hmmm.

The underlying justification for all this is crime. Why are people so prejudiced against criminals? You may need a criminal someday. Boosters get shot; gangsters pardoned.

In Chicago, teachers won against police in the mayoral election. This is another click in the Officer Krupke cycle from West Side Story.  They are even considering sending social workers instead of police. Department of Children and Family Services does not have a good reputation. Every time a child dies, a social worker should be killed. It is true that criminals are created. Once they are created, they are dangerous.

Crime is intrinsic to society. Take the Barbary pirates. British and American tribute stopped any other competition with their trade. Saudi ransoms to Somali pirates encourage instability and forestall oil development. Developers encourage street gangs to clear neighborhoods. Without crime there would be no police. Wildings could not occur without police encouragement. The various prohibitions are gang subsidies. Recently Oregon tried drug legalization with dubious consequences. I was disappointed. The lesson is that legalization alone is not sufficient in America. The snap back is too great.

Most people are not carrying cash. The only people worth sticking up are poor people who can’t qualify for credit. Using stolen credit cards gets you caught. The only way violent personal crime can be profitable is if it is receiving subsidy.

I am terrified of nostalgia. In the past minority populations were deprived of police services. Even when minorities were arrested, they would likely be released unless they had violated social order and murdering each other didn’t qualify. If you didn’t deal justice on the spot it didn’t happen. I don’t want to return to two-gun Pete, and we stomp drunk drivers. I have seen social justice; I am not a fan.

Part of the difficulty is that we have seen the man behind the curtain. I don’t know how many have been freed because of DNA, records aren’t kept, but they are coming out of jail like popcorn. Circumstantial evidence, ha, eyewitness, chortle, confession, horse laugh, doesn’t leave much. In Oak Park IL most murders are unsolved. Just don’t park wrong.

People like charter schools because they don’t want their kids in class with Huck Finn. It has little to do with parental control, values, uniforms, quality… Huck Finn is a nuisance. There is no charter school for the bad kids. We used to kid Huck Finn along until he was 18 and his brain had slightly congealed. We had social promotion, outposts, tracking… He probably didn’t get a degree, but we had kept him somewhere. Now, not only is Huck Finn out on the street but we told him he was worthless. Please don’t be shocked at the consequence. From the news reports it would appear that it is often the shining kids, college bound, athletes, adept who get shot. Think Huck might have a grudge?

Whenever you get confused, ask yourself:

-What would happen if those kids were white?

Resources would be found. The children would be placed in structured environments. Chicago has an abundance of lawyers. Huck is making videos. His sponsors are violating laws against delinquency and RICO. Put the lawyers on commission.

The right has suddenly discovered mental health. It is fun to see the ill take umbrage. The right wants mental health without national health care.

We are a military imperial nation. Violence abroad reflects as violence at home. Rather than excusing military adventures we should have treated terrorism as a police concern. FBI is far more vicious than marines.  

This is a lot to put on a mayor. It would be good to get our mental health centers restored.

It Is Just a Gun

 

I recently learned about pistol compensators. These are vents you can install on your pistol to lessen recoil. Since the recoil is what drives the reload, you have to be careful the compensator doesn’t jam the gun. This is a variant of the gas operated action on assault rifles that allows them to be the small plastic toy looking guns that are so popular. Shooting guns used to be more difficult. You can find YouTube videos of people shooting old rifles that hit them in the face because they are not used to the recoil.

There are also laser pointers you can attach to the gun. Fire a round into the target at the range you expect to use. Fix the laser dot on the bullet impact. From then on, within range, your shots should hit the dot.

Eventually we will have the Tom Swift electronic rifle. The gun won’t need a hammer anymore because it will fire with a spark. This will allow the cartridge to be held still and contained with no blow back. The cartridge may not have a case. Even if it does, ejection will be handled by battery driven actuators, motors, just as artillery sometimes is. The reload will also be actuator. Abandoning the pistols slide means that guns can be vented solely to minimize noise and recoil. Rifles will be defined only by the length of the barrel and stock.

There are already expensive computerized rifles that fire the trigger automagically once the target is selected. These guns are as self-focusing as cameras. You can set up a fire plan, inventory your targets, and their ranges, then move back through it. As the guns become popular, they will drop dramatically in price. We are talking about the same chips and optics that are in your phone.

Large magazines are passe. The gun lobby objective will be belt ammunition.

Don’t forget drones, the sport of drone hunting. If people want the game, the drone could hover until they get there. If someone shoots at your drone, is it legal to shoot back?

Imagine what massacres we will have.

Gas Operated

I recently attempted to drive clutch again. For those who can, it is perfectly easy to depress the clutch while pressing the gas. For the rest of us, it is difficult. Without automatic transmission the roads would be far safer, bicycles and public transportation far more popular and spouses more faithful.  Whether or not you do so, if you can’t drive stick you are not a competent human being and shouldn’t have a car.

Guns today are different than they were. That is why all the quick draw McGraw’s and shootemup  Joes are out there. I don’t mind the people who have been raised with guns and understand the culture and behavior that requires. But those people are a very small group, and you probably won’t hear from them.

All guns are artillery in the sense that their projectiles have a parabolic trajectory. In order to have any range bullets have to go up and come down. It is horrifying to see the Drill kids, called that because they are proud that they don’t know how to hold a gun and hold it like a power drill. All guns have to have an upward inclination in order to achieve any range, so they kick up. In the past guns were heavy, in part to counter this recoil.

Now if you purchase a 22 caliber rifle for your twelve year old. It doesn’t have much recoil and if she shoots it outside she probably won’t need ear protection. But once she starts shooting 22 long rifle rounds, with greater acceleration, she will notice it. Larger than that, either the round or the acceleration is less fun. To circumvent this all military rifles, from the M1 on, have a hole in the top of the barrel near the muzzle.  The point of this is to counteract and lessen the recoil. This means that the guns no longer have sufficient recoil to reliably drive the reloading mechanism. The solution is to take the escaping gas from the hole at the top of the gun and use that to push the mechanism loading the next round. That is what gas operated means.

This is why all these morons and kids can shoot these heavy rounds without grabbing sky. The problem is that legislating gas operated is telling them they have to drive clutch and they are big pussies. But at least if you want to shut down the mansplainers, just say “gas operated”.

Vegas Conspiracy

Danley, Paddock’s girlfriend, appears to be receiving undue attention. Perhaps because she and Campos are the only ones involved who aren’t white. Vegas police haven’t presented well. I’m thinking that Reno 911 is more real than satire. Paddock seems to have given Danley the opportunity for a fat lawsuit. Maybe it’s just that all parties are concerned with liability but there is smoke. Did Paddock belong to somebody?

Odd that Paddocks tax returns have not yet been released. I doubt that he was operational, those guys been there, done that. He could have been in a support function.  The only operational goofs I can think of are Oswald and McVeigh.

Some of the smoke is Paddock as “professional gambler”. Supposedly, with comps, if you play big slots you can profit. This is why Vegas has so many rich gamblers and the casinos are broke. When gamblers play for comps they identify themselves to the casino. Everyone knows the machines are throttled. There is nothing illegal about this. When the house has volume it makes sense to throttle forward the machines, more big payouts and dings, to generate excitement. Likewise low volume is an opportunity to tighten the throttle and improve margins. Once a player is identified it is possible to tailor the throttle strategy to that player, keep them playing, and milk them for maximum return. It is a natural AI application. This would be legal as long as the percentage payout would be over the required amount. So Paddock was a chump. Did Paddock change his life style and investments only to realize he had been suckered?

It is likely that Paddock was a victim of child abuse. His dad was caught when Paddock was seven. Bad people, such as his father, often do bad things.

However Paddock got his stake and whatever his gullibility, he entered the real estate market at an auspicious time. In a boom market a persistent fool may do far better than a cautious investor.

The Korean War was voted down because of casualties and supply scandals. In Vietnam the military kept casualties down and when stories of the ArmaLite rifles jamming came out the military reacted with hysteria. To this day soldiers regard a rifle jam as a personal failure. Now that these rifles are widely available, you can see shooters clearing their jams while insisting that their guns are reliable.

-Look how easy it is to clear the jam.

Once a gun starts jamming it is best to clean it. It is now obvious that the guns jam because they are designed to minimize recoil. Why did the shooter have so many rifles? Because he knew that they would get hot and jam. Why did he stop shooting? Initially I thought maybe all his guns had jammed. But mass killers often become disgusted with the reality and are frightened of capture.

If you must have conspiracy, Campos, the hotel security responder, might have shot Paddock. Given Vegas he would have deemed it better to avoid attention.

Why is there so much violence? Violence is endemic. Constant immigration takes its toll. Our violence is quantitatively less than other places but it doesn’t have the same level of institutional acceptance. Why so much shooting? Shooting has gotten easier; the equipment is improved. The lone shooter reminds me of domestic violence. They are attacking people because they feel isolated, abandoned and betrayed.

Action Movies

This should be read at poetry slams, open mic events, or wherever writers might congregate.

All movies, romance, comedy or drama are really horror movies. The one thing that cinema does well is draw you into their premise and then surprise and shock you.  That sense of outrage as you find yourself sympathizing with the loser, cheering for some victorious social deviant and then realizing its absurdity is what makes movies so entertaining.

The last good action movie I saw was Heathers, the humor, violence and sex seemed believable to me. I liked the premise that adults would accept a rash of teenage suicides that were really homicides. Body Heat was good; the combination of mystery and sympathy for the villains enchanted me. The Three Stooges shorts were a respectable depiction of violence. Most action movies suck.  The hero gets captured, the villain gets killed.  This is because they have to have the dialogue between the hero and villain. In what way is that realistic?  All problems are solved by Karate, guns, or if creativity is called for, large pieces of falling scenery.  When has an action movie said, as really happens:

-Quick, get the cash and the lawyers!

I can’t stand the constant monotonous bang-bang boom-boom yell thud scream of the typical action sound track pounding the intelligence out of its jaded audience in perpetuum.  It would be difficult to make an audience suffer through the explosion of a real gun shot.  Guns are loud.  One of the problems with shooting a gun is that an explosion has gone off in your hand and it is difficult to keep it steady for the next shot. The famous Dirty Harry “five shots or six” sequence in real life would have gone something like:

-…so the question is, do you feel lucky?

-What?

-What?

One was firing a magnum .44 the other a 12 gauge pump; their ears were ringing. They weren’t talking to anybody.

I think everybody should have the experience of actually firing a gun and trying to make that little bullet go where you want it to in a consistent fashion. It’s not that easy and if you are not wearing ear protection it is not that fun.

Most depictions of hand to hand combat are ridiculous. As Jim Harbaugh learned punching Jim Kelly, your hand has a lot of little bones in it and your jaw is a large solid piece of bone.  I suppose if you have sufficient practice with various formalized, ritualistic forms of martial arts, it will be possible for you to administer enough impact to the jaw to rattle the brain and bring on concussion without breaking anything in your hand. But I think most people who have experience in such matters would rather use a tool, preferably one that will extend your reach.

Fights are not stylized choreography but a panting crying screaming mess between people who are very upset and scared.  Part of the difficulty is that it is almost impossible for cinematography to have enough frames to capture the speed of real movements.  So we are given a series of frames resembling animation.

My biggest complaint is the setting.  The Old West or a modern metropolis is not particularly violent.  There are times and places in America that were dangerous.  If you were a Native American in California during the gold rush your prospects were bleak.  Chinese immigrants were often the victims of crimes.

 The nature of discrimination was usually that those areas did not receive adequate police protection and enforcement of the law, even when people were arrested, was lax.  This meant that if disputes were not settled immediately they were never settled: 

-We stomp drunk drivers.

What the movies have done is taken characters and plots out of their original context in order to give them broader appeal.  There may have once been a Dirty Harry, but that Irish stereotype was back in the 1930’s at the latest. More recently, in the 40’s and 50’s there was a Two Gun Pete, Sylvester Washington, but you will not find him on the screen. Two Gun Pete was a Chicago policeman who realized that there was little point in making arrests as the courts didn’t care if black people were killing each other.  If you were one of the Jones Boys, the gang that ran policy, he would call you up and tell you to turn yourself in.  But if you were a common thug he would leave you bleeding out, on the street.

In order to give it broader market violence is stripped of its class, ethnic, racist and gender qualities. For instance, saying a police officer was dirty meant he was on the take. Violence is most often a top down rather than bottom up endeavor. Offering it as the general solution to social problems only adds further confusion.