A good question

from my talented musician friend Dean Hall. I'd like to forward it to all our legislative "leaders" in Nashville and in Washington, as we prepare to hear the conclusions of the Veep's commission on gun violence.

Huntsville

It's my old undergrad college pal's birthday. We met in a philosophy class not long before each of us turned 21, on consecutive days in the '70s, and cemented our lifelong friendship by going out and getting legally unfit to drive together on my birthday and then walking home.


Last night, driving (soberly) home, I heard the news on the radio of yet another senseless campus shooting. On his campus. So my annual birthday greeting was pre-empted by urgent concern. Was he ok? Did he know the victims?


Looks like I'll make 53. Too damned ornery and too much work to do to die.
We don't know who the victims are yet, or even how many of them there are--at least three, possibly five--but I do know the alleged shooter and I am virtually certain to know most of the victims. We are a small campus. This was one crazy, fucked-up day, my friend.


This morning we know: It was about tenure?!


It's also about too damned many handguns in general circulation, too casually available to people who can't or won't govern their own emotions. 


That happens to be my father-in-law's view as well as mine, and he's a gun-owning sportsman with a deer-head on his wall. Enough coddling of criminals and emotional loose-cannons, NRA. Enough!


Update. (2.15.10) Why wasn't this woman already in jail?!


The Chronicle of Higher Education says this raises troubling questions about the tenure process. Really? My friend in Huntsville says the tenure process there is fair enough. You can't expect administrative policy to anticipate and disarm a deranged crazy person. My friend actually recalls discussing tenure strategies with her years ago. She struck him as "naive and a bit unfocused, but did not seem deranged. Chalk up another failure to folk psychology, which comes up with easy explanations but precious few predictions."


Update nyt 2.16.10, Chronicle ("Heroic Professor")


Update nyt 2.21.10 "Fury Just Beneath the Surface"


Update nyt 2.23.10 "A Killer's Value to Science"


Update Chronicle 2.11.11 "Shattered Dept"...Leahy...Bishop

Guns and lunatics

Only a lunatic could seriously believe that more guns in more homes is good for America’s children.

So concludes Thursday's Bob Herbert column in the Times. Two of my recent posts have separately discussed violence and children. Herbert forces our attention to their tragic, inevitable confluence in today's gun-addled America.

Herbert: Only motor vehicle accidents and cancer kill more children in the U.S. than firearms... Children in the states with the highest rates of gun ownership [are] 16 times as likely to die from an accidental gunshot wound, nearly seven times as likely to commit suicide with a gun, and more than three times as likely to be murdered with a firearm.

I'm sorry to report that more than a few of my students endorsed the lunatic position, and some even thought Newt Gingrich was onto something when he suggested giving concealed weapons to all the profs -- people like me. Way to go, NRA. The lunatics really are in charge now, aren't they?

There is no reason that any private citizen in a democracy should own a handgun. At some point, that simple truth will register. Until it does, phones will ring for dead children, and parents will be told not to ask why. (Adam Gopnik, New Yorker 4.30)

I'm asking.

Violence in America

Today's post was supposed to just be an upbeat appreciation of Jackie Robinson, the barrier-breaking ballplayer who transcended sports and epitomized courage in the face of racist hostility and hatred. Sixty years (and two days) ago he stepped onto Ebbets Field in Brooklyn in the Dodger uniform, and changed America. Defying threats of violence against himself and his family, he paved the way for integration not only in baseball but in American life generally. Martin Luther King, Jr. said the successes of the civil rights movement would not have been possible without Jackie Robinson. He was a splendid athlete, but far more importantly he was a man of resolute and fearless grace who made our country a better place.

But Jackie Robinson's America was murderously violent, and it still is. The massacre at Virginia Tech yesterday is just the latest illustration. Firearms proliferate here, along with the disturbed assailants who use them. It was especially shocking for those of us who live and work at similar large institutions of higher learning, but we can't really be surprised when such atrocities happen in America anymore.

"Life is not a spectator sport," Jackie Robinson said. It's time for us to decide, as a nation, that we're not any longer going to tolerate the level of violence we've become inured to. It's time to revoke the misconstrued personal "right to bear arms" once and for all. Guns do kill people. A truly civilized nation would impose sane restraints on their prevalence and accessibility.

We have to stop feeding the monster. One source of its sustenance is the culture of verbal brutality so much on exhibit in the popular music culture. A student played a snippet of rap music by a musician called "Nas" in class yesterday, contending that it exemplified an acute contemporary philosophical sensibility. But what it instead exemplified to me was an alarming level of insensitivity to violence and verbal aggression: a rap imploring "N--gers" to live intensely, in anticipation of an early and violent death. This is the insight and inspiration of a generation? It's appalling.

Why do so many young people now venerate vulgar thugs and punks and misogynists, while ignoring genuine heroes like Jack Roosevelt Robinson? How can we help them reclaim his legacy? This is a practical challenge for parents, educators, musicians, producers of popular entertainment, and everyone who cares about our future and would nurture the spirit of the children who must become its stewards.