Posts by Hines Brian

Thank you, Elisabeth Rosenthal, for reminding us of an obvious truth that, sadly, is ignored by a disturbingly large percentage of the people in our gun-crazed country: nations with more guns have more gun deaths.  Duh...  But sometimes those duh... truths which seemingly shouldn't need to be said so often, do need to be repeated over and over -- when there's a willful attempt to ignore the truth. The thousands of needless gun deaths in our country, including the recent twenty-six at Sandy Hook Elementary School, scream out Don't ignore me! So read Rosenthal's "More Guns = More Killing." She's a physician…

Oh, yeah! I'm almost a writer for The New Yorker! My dream. This might be as close as I get, parallel thinking about gun control between The New Yorker's hugely talented Hendrik Hertzberg and way-less-talented me.  But, hey, we're on the same track when it comes to making fun of the absurd contention, "Guns don't kill people, people do." Which is so, so, so wrong. Here's what I said in a blog post on December 29, 2012. Why don't we legalize surface-to-air shoulder fired missiles? After all, people shoot down airplanes; shoulder fired missiles don't shoot down airplanes. If terrorists…

There's a simple way to save thousands upon thousands of lives needlessly snuffed out by gun violence in the United States: reduce the availability of guns.  This is so obvious, it's difficult to understand why so many people say, 'the problem is complicated." No, it isn't. That's a lie, mostly spread by people who aren't interested in saving the lives of innocents -- including the twenty children and six adults killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School last month.  So says, Fareed Zakaria, one of this country's clearest-sighted fact-based commentators in The Solution to Gun Violence is Clear. Read the whole…

I'm glad that President Obama is vowing to stand firm on not negotiating over an upcoming increase in the federal debt limit.  “I will not have another debate with this Congress over whether or not they should pay the bills that they’ve already racked up through the laws that they passed,” the president said Tuesday night after he successfully pushed Republicans to allow tax increases on wealthy Americans. This is the Obama that progressives hoped we'd see after his re-election victory. He's a lot more realistic about how you negotiate, or don't negotiate, with unreasonable fanatics who care much more…

To me, and lots of others, it's obvious that guns kill people. My first blog post on this subject contains inarguable facts to that effect. The United States has 35-50% of the world's civilian owned guns, but only about 5% of the world's population. We rank #1 in firearms per capita. Our intentional homicide rate is three times that of Canada. Our firearm-related death rate is five times that of Canada.  State comparisons lead to the same conclusion: guns kill people; people don't kill people. States with strong gun laws and low rates of gun ownership have the lowest firearm…

I gave myself Antifragile for Christmas. My wife wrapped it up after I handed her the Amazon box. I've been happily reading the book for the past few days.  The subtitle of Nassim Nicholas Taleb's lastest work (he wrote The Black Swan) drew me in: "things that gain from disorder." What a marvelous notion. Fragile things break when stressed. Robust things stay the same when stressed. And antifragile things benefit when stressed -- like Hydra, which grows two heads whenever one is cut off, or bones, which get stronger when they support heavy weight. Several chapters in, Taleb is well…

I just finished watching Lawrence O'Donnell's spot-on commentary about the NRA's shameful commitment to arming mass murderers with the most powerful available weapons.  Watch it. Especially if you're a NRA member. This is what you're supporting with your NRA dues: mass murder. If you don't want to be an accomplice to the next killing of innocent children, cancel your NRA membership. Truth is powerful. O'Donnell speaks the truth. Truth-telling can change the world. I sure hope it brings about changes in our gun laws. Other countries have the same video games we do. Other countries watch the same Hollywood movies we…

I'm happy John Boehner's "Plan B" approach on the fiscal cliff was shot down by his fellow House Republicans. Now we're back to zero, pretty much, which is a good place for Obama to be. Progressives have been increasingly irritated at Obama for doing what he said he wouldn't: negotiate with himself. Like Obama said, he's come more than halfway in his talks with Boehner.  Republicans like to forget that Obama campaigned for re-election on letting taxes go up on the richest 2% of Americans, those couples making more than $250,000 a year. The remaining 98%, which includes 97% of…

Here's the most disturbing image that sticks in my mind after all the media coverage about the killing of 20 children and six adults at a Connecticut elementary school: Television footage of people right here in Oregon buying record numbers of military-style assault weapons similar to, if not exactly the same as, the Bushmaster .223 semiautomatic rifle used in the killings. A gun store owner said that he had amazing sales after two people were killed at the Clackamas Town Center attack in my state. But the day after the Connecticut massacre, he said sales were even higher, record-breaking. That's…

When Americans talk about gun control, as, thankfully, we're back to doing after the horrific murders of twenty children and six adults at an elementary school in Connecticut, plus the killer's mother at her home, two irritating features of political discourse in this country bug me. First, too many people approach social problems with a religious sort of attitude. Meaning, they cling to supposed transcendent principles without grounding them in here-and-now reality. Example: talking about the Second Amendment and gun rights as if these were unalterable sacred truths, rather than choices made by fallible humans. Second, too many people refuse…

Today its being reported that 26 people, including 18 children -- eighteen children, NRA! -- have been killed at an elementary school by a gunman. This follows two people, plus the shooter, being killed at a mall here in Oregon a few days ago. But, hey, we keep hearing, "It's too soon to talk about policy implications, about ways to reduce gun violence, about stronger gun laws." Including from the White House. Like I've said before, and will keep saying, because it's an unarguable fact: Guns kill people. People don't kill people. This is a lie: "guns don't kill people;…

Raising the federal debt ceiling should be automatic. That's how things worked before the Tea Party crazies got into Congress. Consider the facts, from Wikipedia: Every President since Harry Truman has added to the national debt expressed in absolute dollars. The debt ceiling has been raised 74 times since March 1962, including 18 times under Ronald Reagan, eight times under Bill Clinton, seven times under George W. Bush and three times (to August 2011) under Barack Obama.  ...The process of setting the debt ceiling is separate and distinct from the regular process of financing government operations, and raising the debt ceiling neither directly…