Robert David Sullivan

Don't shoot in the subway, darling

I have a new column at America magazine on why packing heat is a bad idea in big cities like New York. But the Supreme Court may soon force us urbanites to live with concealed weapons wherever we go.

The full essay is here.

Gun violence has rattled subway riders in New York this year. But a pistol for every straphanger is not the solution. https://t.co/Jl9sUgoic4

— Robert David Sullivan (@RobertDSullivan) June 3, 2022

Rocks thrown at "broken windows" theory

On the occasion of Bill Bratton's return as New York City police commissioner (and he was Boston's commissioner first, you Hub-haters), Pacific Standard's Lauren Kirchner notes that the "broken windows" theory has lost some of its shine since Bratton first served under Rudy Giuliani. The gist of the theory is that when low-level crimes (graffiti, subway fare evasion, etc.) go unchecked, the atmosphere of decay emboldens criminals to commit more frequent and more serious offenses.

Kirchner writes that academics have dialed back the praise for the Giuliana-era crackdown on taggers and panhandlers:

Many critics of broken windows have pointed out that violent crime fell in New York at the same period of time as unemployment dropped and the economy strengthened — surely factors at least as important as the disappearance of squeegee guys. An influential 2006 article in the University of Chicago Law Review by Bernard Harcourt and Jens Ludwig argued that the falling-crime trend in 1990s New York ran parallel to the natural waning of the crack epidemic that had ravaged the city in the years before. Other researchers found from their experiments that disorder does not cause crime; rather, disorder and crime co-exist, and are both caused by the same social and economic factors.

The broken-windows theory was certainly overhyped. But perhaps it was also a successful bluff, or self-fulfilling prophecy.

Don't tread on me, gun owners

OK, it's going too far to say that Sarah Palin's crosshairs prompted Jared Loughner to shoot US Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and more than a dozen other people in Tucson. I mostly agree with Jonathan Chait that an insane individual doesn't need to hear gun metaphors in order to go out and do something insane (though, as I posted before, I'm more concerned about "illegitimacy" rhetoric than violent language, anyway.)

But I think the Giffords shooting has released a lot of pent-up frustration about the glorification of gun culture in the United States. And the worst aspect of gun culture is the persecution complex that kicks in every time there's a mass shooting.

Hey, gun owners: No one is taking your firepower away. Hardly anyone even brings up gun control anymore, even after a massacre like the one in Arizona. You almost always win, and when you suffer a small political loss, you almost always turn things back around to your favor.

So I'm not going to put up a bunch of statistics on gun deaths or post photos of shooting victims. They won't change anyone's mind on the issue. But I do ask one thing of gun advocates: Please leave me alone.

Specifically:

*Don't tell me I need a gun to protect myself. I'm not going to shoot anyone over my wallet or whatever junk I have lying around my apartment, and I'm not going to carry a weapon that could be used against me or an innocent person.

*Don't tell me you need a gun to save my life. If I'm ever near a crazy person with a gun, the last thing I want is to see is a dozen other people whipping out guns to shoot at anything that moves. (Don't be so sure you'd know who to shoot.)

*Don't tell me not to be such a pussy about firearms. I'm not going to a shooting range. And I don't care what the local laws are; I'm not patronizing a bar, church, or bowling alley that has a sign out front saying "Welcome gun owners."

*Don't tell me I have to vote for NRA-backed candidates because the third of Americans who own guns are more politically important than the two-thirds who don't. I'm not voting for someone with a campaign ad like this or certainly not this. Marksmanship is not a relevant qualification for elected office.

*And don't call me an elitist because I don't like guns. Most Americans do not keep guns in their homes, and that's not going to change even with the post-Tucson Glock craze. You might not believe this if you live in a small town and everyone you know has hunting rifles, but guess what? Most Americans don't live in small towns, either. I grew up in a thoroughly patriotic, working-class Catholic neighborhood, and I can't remember anyone bragging about their firearms collection. There's nothing un-American about my mother, and she would never allow a gun in the house.

So let's not waste our breath on each other. If you choose to arm yourself, you don't need my approval. Just respect my right not to be anywhere near you while you're packing heat. 

And for God's sake, quit whining. 

 

 

Impure thoughts about Bart Simpson could land you in the pokey

The A.V. Club reports on the latest of several cases involving arrests for the possession of porn involving animated minors (or minor animations?):

A former middle school teacher in Idaho is facing up to 10 years in prison for downloading Simpsons porn—that is, pornographic cartoons depicting child characters from The Simpsons engaged in sexual acts. After a search warrant led to the discovery of more than 70 such images on his computer, 33-year-old Steven Kutzner immediately resigned and pled guilty at a subsequent hearing.

This begs a few questions:

• Could Simpsons creator Matt Groening be arrested if he drew pornographic images of his own characters? (I'd bet anything that the show's animators have produced obscene images of Bart and Lisa SImpson for their own amusement, but presumably they're safe in Korea.)
• Would it be against the law to possess pornography involving Huey, Duey, and Louie? Sure, they're ducks who don't wear pants, but we're obviously supposed the Disney characters as akin to human children. Or would it be OK because mouths with beaks, by definition, can't be interpreted as "purty"? What's the age of consent for animated waterfowl, anyway?
• If I took the image at right, identified as "Muppet Babies Kermit Hand Puppet" on Amazon.com, and photoshopped a hand going up his posterior, could I be prosecuted for child pornography? Maybe the case would hinge on my state of mind while adding the hand. That is, it would be OK if I were merely illustrating how one operates a hand puppet. But if I had made the leap (sorry) into thinking of Kermit as a real being and decided to illustrate what put that smile on his face...

I don't even want to think about what people are doing to the South Park kids with just a few snips of cardboard.

My Little Ankle Bracelet

I wish my mother had put one of these in my lunchbox as a kid. From the Boston Business Journal:

Best Buy Co. Inc. will sell a GPS device that parents can use to track their child’s location.

The Minnesota-based electronics retailer is marketing the product, called Little Buddy, under its in-house brand, Insignia. The gadget is priced at $99 and is sized to fit “easily into a backpack, lunchbox or other receptacle,” according to Best Buy’s (NYSE: BBY) Web site.

The product has the ability to alert parents via a text message when their child moves outside a “designated area,” such as school, during a particular time of day. Parents can monitor a child’s location using a cell phone or computer.

I would have hung my Little Buddy around the neck of the family cat. Better yet, I would have attached it to a balloon. 

The newest crime drama from CBS?

The New York Times reports that "garbage collectors" have become an important source of information for local police:

Drivers’ tips have led to drug-trafficking arrests, Mr. Henschen said, and to the discovery of a corpse in a home that had gone so long without having any trash that a driver grew suspicious...

Riding high in the cab of a garbage truck, it is impossible not to notice things. Signs of family life are evident in trash: a birth is announced by a crib’s big cardboard box, the aging of children shown in the abandonment of a kiddie pool. Garbage collectors are also informal, hands-on economists, [collector Gary Garcia] said, explaining that when times are good, everyone produces more garbage and that the absence of trash is often a sign of a foreclosed home...

I can't wait to see Dross, a crime drama about a sanitation worker who's also a special consultant to the police, and who can see things in the trash that escape the attention of everyone on CSI. The cross-over episode with Monk should be hilarious.