Reflections on Guns and Internment

 For the past couple of years I have gotten together with my two brothers for a couple of days each summer.  Last summer we went to the scout camp that they went to from Berkeley and we based that trip in Murphys which is a cool town in the Gold Country.

This summer, at the invitation of my oldest brother, we flew to Twin Falls where he lives part of the year and where his medical practice was.  

We went to the Japanese internment camp near Twin Falls.  No doubt about it Minidoka and the other nine camps established during WWII are a blot on our common history.  The two I have visited were in desolate places. Minidoka is not as impressive as Manzanar, which Quinlan and I visited several years ago.  Manzanar, after the Japanese reparations bill was signed, was substantially restored.  In one sense both of these sites should be akin to Pearl Harbor - solemn places.  Both camps need to be preserved to remind us of the excesses that government can engage in - we should approach them with reverence and awareness.   One of the impressive stories out of both camps is how many young men left the camps to join the 442d which was the legendary battalion made up of former internees after FDR authorized them to join the Army.  They fought with valor in Europe - gaining a ton of decorations (4000 Bronze Stars and 4000 Purple Hearts).

The next day we went out to Hagerman to do a day course on handguns at Shaw Shooting.  Shaw Shooting has two locations - the Idaho one is in Hagerman.  My oldest brother is a gun enthusiast, my middle brother is not and I been mostly indifferent to firearms. Even with that indifference I feel very strongly about the efficacy of the Second Amendment.  It is important to remember that the Bill of Rights, including the Second Amendment, they are designed as negative not positive rights.  Most all of the language in those first 10 Amendments were intended to limit government activity, not encourage it.   The language is pretty clear - “A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.“  When the Amendment was written the context was clear, both the creation of a militia AND the individual right to own firearms was seen as a deterrent to an out of control government.    But beginning in the 20th Century some began to interpret the first clause (A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State) as defining the second (the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed) - that argument has never been persuasive to me.   But it also has never meant to me that any civilian can possess any kind of firearm.

I have lots of friends who, if they could, would prohibit private ownership of any firearm.  I strictly disagree.   At one point a professor published an article arguing that firearms were not important in colonial America by claiming to have reviewed colonial probate records. Luckily a researcher asked to verify the “data” and when the first author obfuscated and then refused to offer proof went back to the same records and found the first researcher had made up his data.  The first guy was trying make the case that the Second Amendment is limited to arming militias. It was a great example of politically inspired research, which in this case was exposed.    The most recent decision by the Supreme Court (which involved a horrible law in DC) called the Heller case made a pretty clear statement that the syntax supports individual rights to possess firearms.  

I have one revolver but have never been much of a shooter - although in college a fraternity brother and I would sit on the back porch of our fraternity and hand launch clays out over the Calaveras river.  There always seemed to be a bottle  of Jack Daniels involved.    For someone who is relatively indifferent to firearms, I seem to have been pretty wordy about my thoughts!  But back to the course at Shaw Shooting….

Shaw Shooting is legendary - they train everyone from rookies like me and my middle brother to military and police.  Shooting a pistol with any skill begins with figuring out how to sight the weapon but also how to squeeze the trigger.   Our instructor was absolutely superb.  He spent an hour in the morning explaining hand gun and range safety.   After the safety discussion we went out on the range and practiced with paper targets. I  got the chance to shoot a 40 caliber, a .22 and a Sig Sauer 226 although I liked the 9MM best.    In the last part of the day we went to shoot at metal targets.   By then I was getting tired physically and mentally so my accuracy declined

At the end of the day I was surprised that the process of learning how to shoot a pistol requires both physical and mental capabilities; one might say it is a like golf with bullets.  The picture is of a cluster I achieved with a 9MM at 7 yards.  The target I was shooting at was about 5-6" - with the center white space about an inch.   Our instructor used those smaller circles as his target.  While I was relatively pleased at my clusters - he added a couple of handicaps (shooting the pistol upside down).  Even with those handicaps he could shoot out the little white circles with one clip of 10 shots.   It was a good way to establish just how far an amateur like me was from proficiency.

While I was in Idaho I started a book by a UVA professor named Jonathan Haidt (The Righteous Mind) where he created a typology of six moral scales which animate our feelings and thoughts about politics.  For example he discusses a continuum of care >>> harm and liberty >>>0ppression ; fairness >>>cheating.   Haidt argues that liberals, conservatives and libertarians value the individual variables with different weights. They also consider some of the variables more important than others.  That helps to explain why we have such a hard time talking civilly to each other.    Haidt’s matrices remind me a lot of Thomas Sowell’s  landmark work A Conflict of Visions where he argued that liberals and conservatives may use the same terms but with fundamentally different meanings.

There are many examples where we seem to be stuck in thinking about solutions to problems which most Americans would acknowledge.  The day after our class at Shaw there was another shooting in the US.  Immediately many in the political class came up with utterly predictable and completely useless statements trying to hook their constituencies but not doing anything to think about how to reduce the number of incidences like the one on that day.    Haidt's book gives one a good idea about how we could potentially improve our civil communication.   What concerns me is that with the 24 hour media cycle, social media and politicians who may well gain from keeping us apart - there may be no incentive to creatively think about getting back to civil talk.

UPDATE on the Book - I have one more chapter to edit from my editor’s comments.  I will then spend the rest of this month and July re-reading the manuscript and formatting the pictures in it. The first section of the book has a ton of pictures.   Each needs to be checked for quality and then a placeholder needs to get added to the manuscript.  The designer then places each in their proper place.