Secrecy then and now

This is an important event to remember:

there were eight people with suitcases who broke into an FBI office housed in a suburban apartment building.

They knew the building superintendent would be preoccupied that night. Like  millions of Americans on March 8, 1971, he was next to his radio, transfixed by  the “Fight of the Century” between heavyweight champion Joe  Frazier and challenger Muhammad Ali.  They stuffed the luggage full of documents, which within days were slipped into  large envelopes headed for the desks of journalists, politicians and  activists.

More than 40 years after the break-in, which revealed a spying program run by  J. Edgar Hoover that targeted antiwar and civil rights activists, some of the  burglars went public Tuesday to discuss an event that they say is more pertinent  than ever in this age of ramped-up surveillance.

…

The theft revealed that under Hoover, the FBI conducted an illegal spying  operation that included blackmail, opening of personal mail and forging  documents, with the aim of disrupting student antiwar groups, black civil rights  organizations, suspected communists and others. The revelation  led to congressional hearings and reforms that scaled back the government’s  freedom to spy on U.S. citizens.

This is what happens when programs are kept secret without oversight. A small crime to expose a bigger crime was and is a good thing.

Credit cards

This is typical of most reporting about the theft of credit card data from Target:

Q: It is time for the credit card companies to come up with something new to protect their customers. Short of millions of customers canceling their credit cards, what can we do to protect ourselves? Just because crooks have the information doesn’t mean they will use it right away. It could be months before they use anyone’s information, so checking now for activity could miss it.

Singletary: In its most recent identity theft report, Javelin said one in four people notified of a breach ended up becoming a fraud victim. So if you shopped at Target during the period its system was compromised, you need to take steps to protect yourself. If you see any unauthorized activity, contact your credit card company or your financial institution. In addition, call the FTC at 877-438-4338. You can find information about other steps you can take at www.consumer.gov/idtheft.

Most important, you will need to monitor your credit reports from all three major credit bureaus: Equifax, Experian and TransUnion. You should be checking your reports as a routine precaution. You can get free copies of your credit reports from www.annualcreditreport.com or by calling 877-322-8228. You are entitled to one free report from each bureau every 12 months. Additionally, identity theft victims are entitled to a free credit report from each of the credit bureaus.

If you do become a victim or are worried about your information being stolen, you can place extended fraud alerts or credit freezes on your credit files. To find out more about how those work, go to www.ftc.gov and click on the link for “Tips & Advice.” Under the consumer section, you will find an identity fraud link that includes information on placing both extended fraud alerts and credit freezes on your credit reports.

Every time we hear of one of these data breach cases, the companies involved tell their customers that they deeply regret the inconvenience it might cause. They pledge to enhance security procedures. But no matter how many firewalls are built to protect our information, the con artists and hackers are actively working to outsmart the companies that store consumer data.

Notice two things that aren’t mentioned: the fact that credit cards in the US are insecure compared to those in most other countries:

When Target (TGT) said last week that the personal information of 40 million of its customers had been stolen, it pointed attention toward a quirk in the U.S. credit system: American businesses haven’t adopted widely available technology that would make it far more difficult to commit credit-card fraud. And while the credit-card industry says a solution will be in place in late 2015, skeptics say the U.S. could lag global practices for much longer than that.

The issue is the continued use of magnetic stripes on the back of credit cards. Most other countries abandoned this technology long ago. They’ve switched to cards with embedded chips that generate a new code for every transaction, making cards very difficult to counterfeit. On the other hand, it’s easy to make fake magnetic stripes. It’s not clear how  Target was hacked—the company isn’t telling—but the U.S. is a great place to cash in for whoever got that information.

The technology in the computerized cards, known as EMV, has been around since the 1990s. It took off first in Europe, largely because telecommunications costs there were so high. While cards with magnetic stripes are validated by sending information to—and then from—the card issuer, EMV cards are checked at the credit-card terminal itself. As the rest of the world adopted the new technology, the U.S. became the world capital of credit-card fraud. Last year it accounted for 47 percent of global fraud, while processing just 24 percent of the payments by volume, according to the Nilson Report, an industry newsletter.

and it’s up to the consumer to deal with identity theft even if they did nothing wrong:

In addition, credit-card companies and other credit lenders–banks, oil companies, and department stores, among others–rarely exercise significant oversight before signing up new customers. So, when thieves apply for a new credit card using pilfered information, they are rarely turned down.

Finally, and most devastatingly, credit-reporting agencies routinely add negative information to credit scores without checking whether all those unpaid bills might have been the result of identity theft. And they’re slow and uncooperative when it comes to correcting their mistakes.

The credit industry and other data-handlers behave as they do because in many cases, no one but the victim cares about identity theft. Despite the passage of ID theft legislation last year, institutions that handle personal data pay a very small price when that data is stolen. And when credit card companies and others offering credit fail to look adequately into applicants and end up extending credit to thieves, they also go largely unpunished.

Now there’s a double standard

This, unfortunately, is not that uncommon:

Anne Sullivan testified that she hadn’t told anyone of the teacher who had abused her in seventh grade until she came face-to-face with Christopher Kloman in the hallway of her son’s school more than 40 years later.

Sullivan, now in her mid-50s, said she was so sickened by the fear that the teacher might be abusing other girls that she broke her long silence and alerted the administration of Washington Episcopal School.

Kloman, 74, was sentenced to 43 years in prison Friday in a Fairfax County courtroom for molesting five girls, including Sullivan, at McLean’s elite Potomac School in the late 1960s and ’70s, when he was a teacher and administrator. Sullivan’s chance encounter in November 2011 and tip sparked the lengthy investigation and criminal proceeding that brought the decades-old abuse to light.

For this type of crime, this isn’t unusual either:

One woman testified that some girls at the Potomac School nicknamed him “the Wolf,” but family and friends said they had no inkling of that man. They testified that Kloman was a caring father, a great educator and a volunteer with Habitat for Humanity.

More than 90 people, including former ABC News anchor Charlie Gibson and Ken Starr, the special prosecutor who investigated the Whitewater matter during the Clinton presidency, wrote letters on Kloman’s behalf.

People can be very good at hiding who they are and there is no person who is absolutely good or bad, so it’s not a sign that the people who wrote letters of support are bad people. That’s why you should read the letters (the article from Gawker is here) in support of him with some sympathy–think how you would react if someone you have known for 40 years turned out to be a molester. I thought of that when I read this letter:

I personally have known Mr. Kleman since 1982, as we both served on the Claude Moore Colonial Farm Board in Mclean for thirty years together. He was very helpful to the farm for special projects and market days and had an excellent rapport with all the board members. Not once, in the thirty years I have known him, has Mr. Kloman demonstrated any abusive behavior.

My husband Ken always found him to be a gentleman and sincerely interested in our children’s education and well-being during parent-teacher conferences each year. We would occasionally see Mr. and Mrs. Kloman on social occasions, and again, there was no evidence whatsoever of inappropriate behavior.

In short, all of us in the Starr family have admired Mr. and Mrs. Kleman for many years. We do not know of any occasion when he was abusive to women or children. Thus it is possible that once Mr. Kloman had children of his own in the 1970s and once he was promoted to head the intermediate division, he made a concerted effort to correct his behavior of the past.

Although we in no way condone Mr. Kloman’s actions, we are aware that his family has suffered the consequences of his past behavior, including his wife being fired from her job, even though she had no knowledge of his misdeeds. Since Mr. Klaman has apparently conducted himself in an acceptable manner for more than thirty years, with no other violations, and he has ·cooperated with the police and accepted responsibility for his actions, we hope the Court will provide leniency in his sentence.

Mr. Klaman is currently repenting for his past sins and will continue to do so if given a chance to serve his community and neighbors . Community service would be a far better punishment than having him languish in jail.

I sympathized with the sentiment a bit and then remembered that this was Ken Starr and his wife. That would be the Ken Starr that led the witch hunt against President Clinton in the Whitewater/Lewinsky scandal–so I have no problem with the start to the Gawker article:

What’s Ken Starr up to these days? According to Virginia court documents, the famously pious former Clinton prosecutor recently pleaded with a Fairfax County judge to let a confessed child molester go free. Because he’s a family friend.

Your home is your castle

This is good to see:

A suburban Detroit homeowner was charged Friday with second-degree murder in the death of a 19-year-old woman who was shot in the face while on his front porch nearly two weeks ago.

Theodore P. Wafer, 54, of Dearborn Heights, also faces a manslaughter charge in the death of Renisha McBride, who was killed on Nov. 2, Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy said.

Police say McBride was shot a couple of hours after being involved in a nearby car accident. Family members say she likely approached Wafer’s home for help.

I wonder if this is one of those times when having a gun prevented a crime, in this case knocking on someone’s door. This, though, is obviously wrong:

The shooting has drawn attention from civil rights groups that called for an investigation and believe race was a factor in the shooting — McBride was black; prosecutors said Wafer is white.

because race is never a factor.

If you’re innocent, you don’t have to worry

Wow, this is wow (via here):

While there, Eckert was subjected to repeated and humiliating forced medical procedures. A review of Eckert’s medical records, which he released to KOB, and details in the lawsuit show the following happened:

1. Eckert’s abdominal area was x-rayed; no narcotics were found.

2. Doctors then performed an exam of Eckert’s anus with their fingers; no narcotics were found.

3. Doctors performed a second exam of Eckert’s anus with their fingers; no narcotics were found.

4. Doctors penetrated Eckert’s anus to insert an enema. Eckert was forced to defecate in front of doctors and police officers. Eckert watched as doctors searched his stool. No narcotics were found.

5. Doctors penetrated Eckert’s anus to insert an enema a second time. Eckert was forced to defecate in front of doctors and police officers. Eckert watched as doctors searched his stool. No narcotics were found.

6. Doctors penetrated Eckert’s anus to insert an enema a third time. Eckert was forced to defecate in front of doctors and police officers. Eckert watched as doctors searched his stool. No narcotics were found.

7. Doctors then x-rayed Eckert again; no narcotics were found.

8. Doctors prepared Eckert for surgery, sedated him, and then performed a colonoscopy where a scope with a camera was inserted into Eckert’s anus, rectum, colon, and large intestines. No narcotics were found.

Throughout this ordeal, Eckert protested and never gave doctors at the Gila Regional Medical Center consent to perform any of these medical procedures.

This guy must have done something really bad:

The incident began January 2, 2013 after David Eckert finished shopping at the Wal-Mart in Deming. According to a federal lawsuit, Eckert didn’t make a complete stop at a stop sign coming out of the parking lot and was immediately stopped by law enforcement.

What the hell?  It  can’t get worse can it?

107. Defendant Gila Regional has billed Plaintiff for the ‘services’ it provided at the request of law enforcement.

108. Plaintiff still receives medical bills for thousands of dollars for these illegal, invasive and painful medical procedures.

Umm, yeah. At least this is an isolated incident.

Police reports state deputies stopped Timothy Young because he turned without putting his blinker on.

Again, Leo the K-9 alerts on Young’s seat.

Young is taken to the Gila Regional Medical Center in Silver City, and just like Eckert, he’s subjected to medical procedures including x-rays of his stomach and an anal exam.

Again, police found nothing, and again the procedures were done without consent, and in a county not covered by the search warrant.

Ok, this has got to be from the Onion, right? Right?

What happens when banks break the law?

The Boston Globe has a little blurb about a letter that Senator Warren sent to the Federal Reserve, the SEC, and the OCC. The letter is short but includes some important information:

According to a recent analysis by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, the crisis cost the United States up to $14 trillion in lost economic productivity. While we must continue working to create jobs and accelerate our economic recovery, we also must look back to ensure that those who engaged in illegal activity during the crisis and its aftermath are held accountable.

$14 trillion is a lot of money and yet all too few banks were held criminally responsible–many people became rich using methods that helped to crash the economy. That’s why the information that she requests is extremely important:

1.       The number of individuals your agency has charged criminally, including the number of senior officials you have charged;
2.       The number of criminal convictions your agency has obtained;
3.       The number of prison sentences your agency has secured;
4.       The number of individuals your agency has charged civilly, including the number of senior officers you have charged;
5.       The number of individuals your agency has suspended or permanently banned from working in the financial industry or elsewhere; and
6.       The total amount of funds your agency has obtained through civil judgment or orders of restitution.

If a bank or an individual only has too pay a fine without admitting guilt, then that won’t change their behavior because the individuals still make money–lots of money. So, this is a very important move by Senator Warren.

Murder and revolution

The situation in Egypt has gotten worse yet again:

More than 50 supporters of Egypt’s ousted president were killed by security forces Monday in one of the deadliest single episodes of violence in more than 2 ½ years of turmoil. The toppled leader’s Muslim Brotherhood called for an uprising, accusing troops of gunning down protesters, while the military blamed armed Islamists for provoking its forces.

The early morning carnage at a sit-in by Islamists outside the Republican Guard headquarters, where ousted President Mohammed Morsi was first held last week, further entrenched the battle lines between the ousted president supporters and his opponents. The uproar weakened the political coalition that backed the military’s removal of the country’s first freely elected leader.

Far away in Honduras, they’re worried that

Ousted four years ago in a coup, former Honduran leader Manuel Zelaya is angling for a return to the presidential palace, once more setting up a proxy fight in this country between Latin America’s left and right.

Zelaya isn’t eligible to run in the Nov. 24 presidential election. But his wife, Xiomara Castro de Zelaya, formally launched her campaign last month and has a narrow lead in polls. The couple say she’ll carry forward with Zelaya’s Venezuela-backed tilt toward “democratic socialism,” the course that put him at odds with conservative elites and ended with his forced expulsion in June 2009.

…

Zelaya said his wife was not available for an interview because she was recovering from knee surgery. But in a recent speech to supporters, she said Honduras had become “a sanctuary of paramilitaries and drug traffickers, where justice is bought and sold,” and described the country as stricken by “debt, poverty, death, systematic human rights violations and the murder of journalists, peasants, lawyers, students and businessmen.”

Castro and Zelaya say they want to wrest power from the military and wealthy elites and give it to the people through greater “participation.”

“Xiomara is going to give Honduran women a place in society that has always been denied to them,” Zelaya said.

So, they are both countries that have been wracked by revolution in the past few years but the amount of violence is much worse in Honduras despite the fact that the revolution there happened in 2009. The murder rate in Egypt in 2009 (the last year given) was 1.2 per 100,000 for a total of 992 murders. In Honduras the in 2011 was 91.6 per 100,000 for 7104 murders, the highest rate in the world (the rate in 2009 was 70.7). Given that the population of Egypt is about ten times the population of Honduras, the rate in Honduras would mean 70,000 murders per year. The terrible things going on in Egypt would be barely a blip on the murder rate in Honduras. That’s a sad commentary on the state of the Central American countries.

The NSA is watching you

So, the NSA is grabbing some information from millions of phone calls. Like Kevin Drum, I assumed they were still doing this but it would be nice if there was a general outcry about this. The problem is that most people don’t think this is a big deal–after all they’re not criminals and only criminals care if they’re being watched, right? Here’s why you should care:

The government, like every other organization in existence, responds to pressure and because of that, they will never voluntarily give up added security powers. This is because of the way the public reacts to security issues–if there are civil rights infringements the public doesn’t respond that loudly, but it responds very loudly indeed to security break-downs (such as the bombing in Boston). This means that the default will be to add surveillance to a person that is suspected of a crime even if there’s no real reason for this suspicion.

Think of this example: I call the number of someone who is an actual high-level criminal. The response very well might be to put me on security lists which will mean that I will start to have very real difficulties, for example if I want to fly anywhere. If I called the number by mistake (maybe I know someone who has a number similar to it), then I’m going to be very upset by all this added scrutiny (especially because it’s almost impossible to get off such lists  since they and the whole program will be secret, so I can’t prove I’m on one) but most people will assume I must have done something wrong and ignore me. On the other hand, if I really am a terrorist and end up committing some atrocity there will be a huge outcry if I wasn’t put on such a list. So, on the list I go … unless there is also a large outcry when innocents are put on the list.

I think I’m going to have to start calling numbers like 672-968-7825 and 672-382-5633.

Violence is way down

A report on gun violence came out yesterday. It shows that gun violence is way down, but that’s part of the general picture where violence and crime have dropped considerably since 1993 (violent crime is down about 71% and serious violent crime is down about 75%–from here):

That’s pretty stunning. Homicides have also dropped but not as dramatically (the number is down about 38% but that underestimates the decrease because it isn’t adjusted for population; from here–I found the numbers for total homicides by dividing the number of gun homicides by the percent given in the file, thus the number could be off a bit; note the blip in 2001 is from 9/11):

The numbers aren’t dropping as quickly now as they did from 1993 to 2000, but it’s still dropping–it’s always niceto see some good news.

Crime and punishment

This article has some intriguing information and ideas about crime and punishment. There are too many to mention (so, go read it), but here’s one bit:

The obvious (but hard-to-administer) common-sense alternative is to make the rules less numerous, the monitoring tighter, and the sanctions swift, certain, and reasonably mild, and to clearly tell each probationer and parolee exactly what the rules are and what exactly will happen, every time and right away, when a rule is broken. Mildness—or proportionality, if you like—is essential to making the threat credible, and severity turns out to be unnecessary. Experimental evidence from the HOPE program in Hawaii showed that two days in jail is as good a deterrent to drug use as six weeks, as long as the two days actually happen, and happen every time. We don’t know yet whether a day in jail, or a couple of hours in a holding cell, or a weekend of home confinement, or a week of a 9 p.m.-6 a.m. curfew, would do the trick, but we ought to learn.

The evidence seems to be that this type of justice system will decrease crime, reduce the number of people in prisons, and help the people who commit the crimes. The problem is that it needs money upfront and shows results later. Also, the new money would come from localities while the savings would go to the state. It’s the type of thing a federal government is needed for: it’s easier to borrow money, is insulated a bit from local politics, and can organize large-scale experiments. Of course, in our current environment, this isn’t likely to happen, but wouldn’t it be interesting if someone with influence (President Obama for example) pushed for it?

Guns and murder

I missed this article when it came out which ranks countries by guns per capita. The US is number one by a lot. Here are the top ten (data from here which got it from a UN survey–the rates are per 100 people)

United States	88.8
Yemen	54.8
Switzerland	45.7
Finland	45.3
Serbia	37.8
Cyprus	36.4
Saudi Arabia	35
Iraq	34.2
Uruguay	31.8
Sweden	31.6

It’s a weird mix: free and unfree, stable and unstable. One thing to consider is that the US is even further ahead in number of weapons–the US has an estimated 270 million guns, while the next country is India with 46 million. The US owns an astounding 35-50% of the world’s guns. These top gun countries are not near the top in murder rates (from here, as a comparison the rate in the US is 4.8 per 100,000):

Honduras	91.6
El Salvador	69.2
Côte d’Ivoire	56.9
Jamaica	52.2
Burundi	50.7
Venezuela	45.1
Belize	41.4
U.S. Virgin Islands	39.2
Guatemala	38.5
Saint Kitts and Nevis	38.2

A few things to consider: first the murder rates here are astounding, the rate in Honduras is almost 20 times that of the US which is one of the highest for developed countries, second, according to the definition, this does not include death in conflicts which means countries like Iraq and Yemen look much better than they should with their murder rates of 2 and 4.2.

I don’t have much to say about this, it’s just data to consider.

More gun data

Slate has a project where they are trying to gather together all the gun related deaths since Newtown. As they note, it’s pretty difficult to get this information so this is just an attempt to get an idea of the scale of the problem. I looked at some of the relations as I did before and I would guess that it is undercounting suicides, because I get a correlation of -.137 between the rate of gun deaths and the Brady campaign’s score for the states (I got a correlation of -.66 (although this was age adjusted) when I looked at the full set of data, but that broke down as -.05 when looking at assault and -.75 for suicide). Still, this is a good project–it’s always better to have more data.

Assault, suicide and guns

This is a very interesting article:

In 2010, the last year for which complete numbers are available, the number of gun deaths by suicide in the United States outnumbered homicides 19,392 to 11,078. If you add up all American gun deaths that year, including accidents, 3 out of 5 people who died from gunshot wounds took their own lives. Those figures are not an anomaly: With just a few exceptions, the majority of gun deaths in the United States have been self-inflicted every year since at least 1920. This is a startling fact, and one that forces us to realize that, no matter what we may believe about the Second Amendment, the debate over how to reduce the death toll from guns is, to a great extent, a debate about suicide prevention.

…

“To some people, it’s just totally counterintuitive, because it’s so obvious that if you want to kill yourself, you can always find something else to kill yourself with,” said Barber. “What they assume is that once you’re suicidal, you remain suicidal.” But a preponderance of evidence, including interviews with suicide survivors, indicates that most suicidal acts come during a surprisingly short period during which the person is suffering an acute crisis.

“When you ask people who’ve made attempts and survived,” Miller said, “even attempts that are life threatening and would have proved lethal [without emergency medical care], what they say is, ‘It was an impulsive act, and I’m glad that I’m alive.’”

The central insight for public health researchers is that a lot of lives could be saved simply by making sure that people don’t have access to an extremely lethal weapon during that high-risk period. One striking illustration of this principle can be seen in the experience of the Israeli Defense Forces, which saw a 40 percent drop in suicides after a new rule was introduced forbidding soldiers from taking their guns home with them over the weekend. Though some soldiers may have tried to kill themselves using some less lethal method instead, it appears that scores of lives were saved.

I then went searching for more information. I found that Harvard has compiled a list of studies on gun research and specifically its connection to suicide. I then found a couple places that had compiled some gun numbers (the first link also looks at the correlation with a bunch of other variables) and that led me to the CDC and its data compiler Wonder.

Once there I played around with the numbers and got a bunch of graphs (All courtesy of: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics).

First I looked at the relation between the level of gun rights in a state (as compiled by the Brady Campaign) and the total number of deaths in 2010 caused by guns (assaults, suicide, and accidental):

The correlation is -.66, which is pretty strong (the rates of death are age adjusted, but otherwise I did not try to adjust for possible confounders). It looks like more regulation reduces the number of gun deaths, but because of the article, I also looked at gun rights and suicides by gun:

Here the correlation is -.75, even stronger, so I wondered about the relation between gun regulations and murders (officially this is the number of assault deaths):

which has a correlation of only -.05. That’s pretty stunning to me. The Globe article noted that the probability of a suicide depends on the availability of a gun, so I went to look for the percent of residents who are gun owners. Using the data from here, I looked at its correlation with gun deaths and found:

a correlation of -.77 with gun regulations, a correlation of .83 with suicides by gun, a correlation of .72 with all gun deaths, and a correlation of -.03 with gun assault deaths.

Obviously this is very rough data (using grouped data like this will usually inflate the correlation, I made no attempt to control for other variables, I made no attempt to check the data (I assume the CDC data is ok), didn’t try to look at the type of gun used and made no attempt to see if the same pattern holds for counties or other region types), but I still think this can tell us that guns and suicide might be what we should look at.

Aside: here are some other correlations I found:

all deaths by gun from 1999-2004 and 2005-2010: .97 (and .9 between  1999-2004 and 2010)

assault deaths by gun and by other means: .78

suicides by gun and other: .13 (!)

total number of assault and suicide deaths: -.3 (!)

Executive orders

President Obama introduced his plans to combat gun violence including 23 executive orders:

Gun Violence Reduction Executive Actions

Today, the President is announcing that he and the Administration will:

1. Issue a Presidential Memorandum to require federal agencies to make relevant data available to the federal background check system.

2. Address unnecessary legal barriers, particularly relating to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, that may prevent states from making information available to the background check system.

3. Improve incentives for states to share information with the background check system.

4. Direct the Attorney General to review categories of individuals prohibited from having a gun to make sure dangerous people are not slipping through the cracks.

5. Propose rulemaking to give law enforcement the ability to run a full background check on an individual before returning a seized gun.

6. Publish a letter from ATF to federally licensed gun dealers providing guidance on how to run background checks for private sellers.

7. Launch a national safe and responsible gun ownership campaign.

8. Review safety standards for gun locks and gun safes (Consumer Product Safety Commission).

9. Issue a Presidential Memorandum to require federal law enforcement to trace guns recovered in criminal investigations.

10. Release a DOJ report analyzing information on lost and stolen guns and make it widely available to law enforcement.

11. Nominate an ATF director.

12. Provide law enforcement, first responders, and school officials with proper training for active shooter situations.

13. Maximize enforcement efforts to prevent gun violence and prosecute gun crime.

14. Issue a Presidential Memorandum directing the Centers for Disease Control to research the causes and prevention of gun violence.

15. Direct the Attorney General to issue a report on the availability and most effective use of new gun safety technologies and challenge the private sector to develop innovative technologies.

16. Clarify that the Affordable Care Act does not prohibit doctors asking their patients about guns in their homes.

17. Release a letter to health care providers clarifying that no federal law prohibits them from reporting threats of violence to law enforcement authorities.

18. Provide incentives for schools to hire school resource officers.

19. Develop model emergency response plans for schools, houses of worship and institutions of higher education.

20. Release a letter to state health officials clarifying the scope of mental health services that Medicaid plans must cover.

21. Finalize regulations clarifying essential health benefits and parity requirements within ACA exchanges.

22. Commit to finalizing mental health parity regulations.

23. Launch a national dialogue led by Secretaries Sebelius and Duncan on mental health.

Given that these are executive orders none of them are big actions, but some of them are instructive: Issue a Presidential Memorandum to require federal agencies to make relevant data available to the federal background check system; Release a DOJ report analyzing information on lost and stolen guns and make it widely available to law enforcement; Nominate an ATF director; Issue a Presidential Memorandum directing the Centers for Disease Control to research the causes and prevention of gun violence; Clarify that the Affordable Care Act does not prohibit doctors asking their patients about guns in their homes. All of these are things that we should be doing now: share and publish crime data, study gun violence, allow doctors to ask about guns in the home. The reason we’re not is the NRA. Things are so ridiculous that President Bush wasn’t able to appoint an ATF director.

A waiting period would also be nice:

A gunman enraged by a domestic dispute bought a gun and ­fatally shot his former girlfriend, her uncle, and a 12-year-old girl in a parking lot of a small southeastern Kentucky college, ­police said Wednesday.

…

He said the gun believed to have been used was purchased the same day at a pawn shop.

Update: Brad Plumer has a good post on why it’s important to do research.

NRA really wants no facts

As I noted before, facts have an anti-gun bias so we can’t have studies about guns:

Kellermann found people turned those guns on themselves and others in the house far more often than on intruders. “In other words, a gun kept in the home was 43 times more likely to be involved in the death of a member of the household than to be used in self-defense,” he says.

Kellermann says the National Rifle Association and other Second Amendment advocates leaned on his then-employer, Emory University, to stop the research. That didn’t work.

So, he says, “they turned to a softer target, which was the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention], the organization that was funding much of this work. And although gun injury prevention research was never more than a tiny percentage of the CDC’s research budget, it was enough to bring them under the fire of the NRA.”

Lawmakers — both Democrats and Republicans — held back some money from the CDC and made clear that no federal funds should be used to promote gun control.

…

In 2003, Rep. Todd Tiahrt, a Republican from Kansas, added language to the Justice Department’s annual spending bill. It says the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives can’t release information used to trace guns involved in crime to researchers and members of the public. It also requires the FBI to destroy records on people approved to buy guns within 24 hours.

Separately, guns mean freedom (via here):

Patriots: The following represents a voluntary set of conditions to which every single Patriot who accepts a residence in the Citadel must agree, in writing. This is a voluntary Agreement. The Citadel is a martial endeavor designed to protect Residents in times of peril (natural or man-made).  The Citadel will be built as a fortified bastion of Liberty. The Citadel is not the best housing solution for everyone. Read carefully.

The purpose of this agreement is two-fold. Firstly, it informs all Residents of their obligations to their fellow Patriots. Secondly, this Agreement will assist individuals/families in making an informed decision to opt-out of residency in the Citadel Community in the event our lifestyle is incompatible with you and/or your family.

Preamble: We the People come together in this covenant of our free will and do pledge our Lives, our Fortunes and our Sacred Honor to defend one another and Jefferson’s Rightful Liberty, defined as unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others.  We further affirm our intent to abide all Constitutional laws of the United States of America and our State of residence.

One: Once ratified, this list of conditions may only be altered by unanimous consent of all parties governed by this Agreement, i.e. full-time Residents. Full-time residency will be defined by a select panel of full-time Residents who will also establish guidelines for acceptable exceptions for absences.

Two: Every able-bodied Patriot aged 13 and older governed by this Agreement shall annually demonstrate proficiency with the rifle of his/her choice by hitting a man-sized steel target at 100 yards with open sights at the Citadel range. Each Resident shall have 10 shots and must hit the target at least 7 times.

Three: Every able-bodied Patriot aged 13 and older governed by this Agreement shall annually demonstrate proficiency with a handgun of choice by hitting a man-sized steel target at 25 yards with open sights at the Citadel range.  Each Resident shall have 10 shots and must hit the target at least 7 times.

Four:  Every able-bodied Patriot of age within the Citadel will maintain one AR15 variant in 5.56mm NATO, at least 5 magazines and 1,000 rounds of ammunition. The responsibility for maintaining functional arms and ammunition levels for every member of the household shall fall to the head of household.  Every able-bodied Patriot will be responsible for maintaining a Tactical Go Bag or Muster Kit to satisfy the Minuteman concept. Details TBD and posted elsewhere.

Five: Every household within the Citadel will remain stocked with sufficient food, water, and other preparedness essentials (to be detailed elsewhere) to sustain the needs for every member of the household for a duration of one year.

Six: Every able-bodied Patriot aged 13 and older shall pass a class every three years sponsored by the Citadel on basic emergency medical care; the courses shall focus on battlefield and wilderness environments.

Seven: Every child attending Citadel schools — with parental discretion for maturity — shall have as part of every semester’s class curriculum basic marksmanship and firearms safety training leading to the proficiency test on the child’s 13th birthday as a “Coming of Age” rite of passage (a parent may attend the classes or personally train the child if so desired). Children attending schools beyond the Citadel, or home-schooled, are required to meet the same proficiency standards at age 13.

Eight: All Patriots, who are of age and are not legally restricted from bearing firearms, shall agree to remain armed with a loaded sidearm whenever visiting the Citadel Town Center. Firearm shall be on-the-person and under the control of the Resident, not merely stored in a vehicle.

Nine: Each household will provide ONE able-bodied Patriot (aged 13 or older) who shall muster one Saturday per month for Martial/Support Training for neighborhood-level training & musters, as set forth by the Militia Commanders of the Community. No single Patriot shall be required to muster more than once per quarter. In the course of every calendar year every able-bodied Patriot and every full-time resident in each household must participate in at least three musters (one neighborhood-level and two full-scale).  Part-time residents must participate, in good faith, to the best of their ability.

Ten: Twice annually a full-scale Town Defense Drill will be held for all households and all residents (once in winter weather & once in summer weather).

Eleven: The Town Militia will hold an award/recognition ceremony on April 19th each year to celebrate Patriot’s Day.

Twelve: Violations of this Agreement will result in review by an arbitration panel consisting of Citadel Residents with appropriate and proportional disciplinary action taken.  The most severe disciplinary action may include the loss of Lease and expulsion from the community.

Thirteen: All Citadel Citizens agree to accept dispute resolution by an arbitration panel in the event a problem that cannot be resolved between residents.

Rape in India

There have been some high-profile rapes in India recently and that means we get the rape apologists:

Sharma said the male companion of the murdered 23-year-old was ‘‘wholly responsible’’ for the rape as the unmarried couple should not have been on the streets at night.

‘‘Until today I have not seen a single incident or example of rape with a respected lady,’’ Sharma said in an interview at a cafe outside the Supreme Court. ‘‘Even an underworld don would not like to touch a girl with respect.’’

…

A spiritual guru, Asharam, sparked an outcry earlier this week when he said the New Delhi victim was equally responsible and should have ‘‘chanted God’s name and fallen at the feet of the attackers’’ to stop the assault.

Mohan Bhagwat, the head of the pro-Hindu Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh that underpins the country’s main opposition political party, said rapes only occur in Indian cities, not in its villages, because women in cities adopt Western lifestyles.

Sharma said the man and woman should not have been traveling back late in the evening and making their journey on public transport. He also said it was the man’s responsibility to protect the woman and that he had failed in his duty.

The sad thing is this isn’t something that would be all that unusual in the US. Rape is fairly widespread and most rapes do not lead to convictions. There is also the perception that it’s not that big a deal:

In one  case, an Army Reservist says two male colleagues raped her in Iraq and videotaped the attack. She complained to authorities after the men circulated the video to colleagues. Despite being bruised from her shoulders to elbows from being held down, she says, charges weren’t filed because the commander determined she “did not act like a rape victim’’ and “did not struggle enough’’ and authorities said they didn’t want to delay the scheduled return of the alleged attackers to the United States.

…

Bertzikis, 29, of Somerville, Mass., says she was raped by a Coast Guard shipmate while out on a social hike with him in Burlington, Vt. Bertzikis complained to her commanding officer, but she said authorities did not take substantial steps to investigate the matter. Instead, she said, they forced her to live on the same floor as the man she had accused and tolerated others calling her a liar and whore.

and:

When a course critique revealed that a senior enlisted marine in his company was systematically assaulting “dozens and dozens” of female trainees, Jacob investigated, got more than 80 corroborations of the behavior, and sent the report up along the chain of command. Less than a week later, the offender was sent to Camp Lejune and subsequently deployed for Iraq. When Jacob asked why he hadn’t been prosecuted, Jacob says he was told, “He’s a good soldier. He just can’t handle an integrated training environment.”

There is also the victim blaming (go here and here for more):

The 11-year-old Texas girl was allegedly gang-raped in an abandoned trailer. The suspects — 18 of them — range in age from middle-schoolers to a 27-year-old. The story came to light when a classmate of the girl told a teacher of seeing video of the attack on a cellphone. And if you think somebody can’t make the rape and exploitation of a child about victim blaming, you didn’t read the slanted, ill-conceived piece in Tuesday’s New York Times.

In a feature by James C. McKinley Jr., the paper of record speculates on how the small town of Cleveland, Texas, has been rocked by the story, and the torturous question of “how could their young men have been drawn into such an act.” How, indeed? It’s surely a horrifying scenario when 18 young men are implicated in a crime of violence and degradation. The victim’s affidavit says the assault began when a local 19-year-old offered her a ride in his car, and escalated to a protracted group assault, featuring “threats she would be beaten if she did not comply” and participants recording the abuse on their phones. How could these boys have been “drawn into such an act”? Was it drugs, sociopathy, coercion? Or was that little girl just asking for it?

After all, as the Times helpfully points out, “Residents in the neighborhood where the abandoned trailer stands — known as the Quarters — said the victim had been visiting various friends there for months. They said she dressed older than her age, wearing makeup and fashions more appropriate to a woman in her 20s. She would hang out with teenage boys at a playground, some said.” Gosh, I wonder if she’s pretty or you know, developed, because that’s relevant too.

If you have followed any rape trial, you know this is typical–the victim is almost always blamed. So the US might want to try to improve itself before mocking other countries–still, it’s always good that we can agree that gang rapes are bad.

Facts have an anti-gun bias

This is instructive:

Gun violence is just one of many factors contributing to lower US life expectancy, but the report took on urgency because it comes less than a month after the shooting deaths of 26 people at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn.

The United States has about six violent deaths per 100,000 residents. None of the 16 other countries included in the review came anywhere close to that. Finland was next, with slightly more than two violent deaths per 100,000 residents.

…

The National Rifle Association did not immediately return calls seeking comment about the report, but in the past gun-rights advocates have fought any suggestion that firearms ownership has public health implications, and they have won cuts in the government’s budget for such research.

The NRA is so sure that guns aren’t the problem that they are against research to see if guns are part of the problem. Facts like this are obviously biased:

The researchers said there is little evidence that violent acts occur more frequently in the United States than elsewhere. It’s the lethality of those attacks that stands out.

NRA says more guns are the answer

The NRA has stated their solution to the Sandy Hook massacre and amazingly (I bet you’re shocked) it doesn’t involve any restrictions to guns. Since guns aren’t the problem, what is:

Politicians pass laws for gun free school zones, they issue press releases bragging about them. They post signs advertising them. And, in doing so, they tell every insane killer in America that schools are the safest place to inflict maximum mayhem with minimum risk.

so we should allow gang members to bring guns to school, check. And:

How many more copycats are waiting in the wings for their moment of fame from a national media machine that rewards them with wall-to-wall attention and a sense of identity that they crave, while provoking others to try to make their mark.

A dozen more killers, a hundred more? How can we possibly even guess how many, given our nation’s refusal to create an active national database of the mentally ill? The fact is this: That wouldn’t even begin to address the much larger, more lethal criminal class — killers, robbers, rapists, gang members who have spread like cancer in every community across our nation.

Also, we should build a national database of the mentally ill but as the NRA says a national database of gun owners would be terrible. And we should be extremely paranoid and expect any one of us could be a killer. That’ll build a civil society. And:

And here’s another dirty little truth that the media try their best to conceal. There exists in this country, sadly, a callous, corrupt and corrupting shadow industry that sells and stows violence against its own people. Through vicious, violent video games with names like “Bullet Storm,” “Grand Theft Auto,” “Mortal Combat,” and “Splatterhouse.”

And here’s one, it’s called “Kindergarten Killers.” It’s been online for 10 years. How come my research staff can find it, and all of yours couldn’t? Or didn’t want anyone to know you had found it? Add another hurricane, add another natural disaster. I mean we have blood-soaked films out there, like “American Psycho,” “Natural Born Killers.” They’re aired like propaganda loops on Splatterdays and every single day.

1,000 music videos, and you all know this, portray life as a joke and they play murder — portray murder as a way of life. And then they all have the nerve to call it entertainment. But is that what it really is? Isn’t fantasizing about killing people as a way to get your kicks really the filthiest form of pornography? In a race to the bottom, many conglomerates compete with one another to shock, violate, and offend every standard of civilized society, by bringing an even more toxic mix of reckless behavior, and criminal cruelty right into our homes. Every minute, every day, every hour of every single year.

A child growing up in America today witnesses 16,000 murders, and 200,000 acts of violence by the time he or she reaches the ripe old age of 18. And, throughout it all, too many in the national media, their corporate owners, and their stockholders act as silent enablers, if not complicit co-conspirators.

Many of those are on the news which is bad, so the news should stop reporting when guns are used to kill people. And the solution?

I call on Congress today, to act immediately to appropriate whatever is necessary to put armed police officers in every single school in this nation. And, to do it now to make sure that blanket safety is in place when our kids return to school in January.

Before Congress reconvenes, before we engage in any lengthy debate over legislation, regulation, or anything else, as soon as our kids return to school after the holiday break, we need to have every single school in America immediately deploy a protection program proven to work and by that I mean armed security.

Hmm, if we’re going to do this immediately there will be no time for background checks. I’m sure that won’t be a problem. There is the possibility of violence everywhere in this country, so I assume there will be an extension of this program to put an armed officer on every block in the country.

To make this even more interesting, not too long after noting that there are possibly hundreds of people plotting to copy this tragedy, he wonders:

Now, I can imagine the headlines, the shocking headlines you’ll print tomorrow. “More guns,” you’ll claim, “are the NRA’s answer to everything.” Your implication will be that guns are evil and have no place in society, much less in our schools.

But since when did “gun” automatically become a bad word? A gun in the hands of a Secret Service agent protecting our president isn’t a bad word. A gun in the hands of a soldier protecting the United States of America isn’t a bad word. And when you hear your glass breaking at three a.m. and you call 9/11, you won’t be able to pray hard enough for a gun in the hands of a good guy to get there fast enough to protect you.

Is it not bad when one of your hundreds gets the guns?

Via Kevin Drum, there’s also this:

The nation might be in a better position to act if medical and public health researchers had continued to study these issues as diligently as some of us did between 1985 and 1997. But in 1996, pro-gun members of Congress mounted an all-out effort to eliminate the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Although they failed to defund the center, the House of Representatives removed $2.6 million from the CDC’s budget—precisely the amount the agency had spent on firearm injury research the previous year. Funding was restored in joint conference committee, but the money was earmarked for traumatic brain injury. The effect was sharply reduced support for firearm injury research.

To ensure that the CDC and its grantees got the message, the following language was added to the final appropriation: “none of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may be used to advocate or promote gun control.”

Precisely what was or was not permitted under the clause was unclear. But no federal employee was willing to risk his or her career or the agency’s funding to find out. Extramural support for firearm injury prevention research quickly dried up. Even today, 17 years after this legislative action, the CDC’s website lacks specific links to information about preventing firearm-related violence.

When other agencies funded high-quality research, similar action was taken. In 2009, Branas et al published the results of a case-control study that examined whether carrying a gun increases or decreases the risk of firearm assault. In contrast to earlier research, this particular study was funded by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. Two years later, Congress extended the restrictive language it had previously applied to the CDC to all Department of Health and Human Services agencies, including the National Institutes of Health.

These are not the only efforts to keep important health information from the public and patients. For example, in 1997, Cummings et al used state-level data from Washington to study the association between purchase of a handgun and the subsequent risk of homicide or suicide. Similar studies could not be conducted today because Washington State’s firearm registration files are no longer accessible.

…

The US military is grappling with an increase in suicides within its ranks. Earlier this month, an article by 2 retired generals—a former chief and a vice chief of staff of the US Army— asked Congress to lift a little-noticed provision in the 2011 National Defense Authorization Act that prevents military commanders and noncommissioned officers from being able to talk to service members about their private weapons, even in cases in which a leader believes that a service member may be suicidal.

The NRA and pro-gun politicians claim that guns reduce violence, so why exactly are they trying to stop research on the link? It’s baffling.

Gun laws

Now that we are talking about gun control:

President Obama launched an interagency task force Wednesday to develop immediate reforms to cure what he called a gun violence epidemic that is plaguing the United States.

With last Friday’s massacre at a Connecticut elementary school spurring him to take the first formal steps of his presidency to confront gun violence, Obama vowed to act on concrete proposals “without delay.”

Obama established gun violence as a top priority for the start of his second term, setting a January deadline for recommendations from his task force, to be led by Vice President Biden, and saying he would discuss the issue in next month’s “State of the Union” address.

we should talk about what we want. I think the regulation of cars provides a good starting point with the following all possible:

• mandatory insurance
• mandatory license and registration
• some kind of test to get a license and periodic tests afterward
• revocation of the license for certain crimes or actions
• periodic inspection of the gun(s)
• safety requirements for all guns (so certain types of guns would be outlawed)

I don’t know what the specifics should be, but notice that none of these specifically will reduce the number of guns just as these types of laws don’t reduce the number of cars.

We also need to start enforcing current laws and that means we need to fund the ATF:

The gun lobby, concerned about government regulation of firearms ownership, has taken steps to limit the resources available to ATF and to prevent the agency from having a strong leader, according to former and current ATF officials.

For decades, the National Rifle Association has lobbied successfully to block all attempts to computerize records of gun sales, arguing against any kind of national registry of firearms ownership. And despite the growth of the gun industry and the nation’s population, ATF has fewer agents today than it did nearly four decades ago: fewer than 2,500.

…

No permanent ATF director has been on the job in the six years since Congress required that the position be confirmed by the Senate. That action allowed the gun lobby to have a say on Capitol Hill about the agency’s leadership, according to ATF officials.

Even Michael J. Sullivan, a former U.S. attorney in Boston nominated by President George W. Bush, could not get confirmed. He was blocked by three senators who accused him of being hostile to gun dealers. One of the senators was a member of the NRA’s board of directors.

We also need a real conversation, which means we need to ignore the NRA until they come up with a real proposal, not something like this:

“The National Rifle Association of America is made up of four million moms and dads, sons and daughters — and we were shocked, saddened and heartbroken by the news of the horrific and senseless murders in Newtown. Out of respect for the families, and as a matter of common decency, we have given time for mourning, prayer and a full investigation of the facts before commenting. The NRA is prepared to offer meaningful contributions to help make sure this never happens again,”

Notice that the NRA that always says it wants the current laws to be enforced, tries very hard to stop the ATF from being able to do this. If you think the NRA is really prepared to offer any meaningful contribution, you haven’t followed the NRA.

Guns are sacred

From yesterday’s Boston Globe:

His death changed the way Judy Palfrey looked at her responsibility as a physician, as a pediatrician. Guns were killing children as surely as any malignant tumor, as any virulent virus. She felt as ethically and medically obligated to remove guns from the lives of her patients as she was to remove Charles Copney’s toe.

The organization of which she later served as president, the American Academy of Pediatrics, issued guidelines requiring pediatricians to ask children’s parents or caregivers whether there were guns in their house.

A reasonable requirement, aimed at reducing the number of accidental discharges that kill and injure children. Except that in Florida, legislators passed a law in response to those guidelines that exposed doctors who had the temerity to ask such a question to sanctions by the state board of medicine.

Think about that, Florida tried to make it illegal for doctors to ask whether there were guns in the house. If the smoking lobby was this strong, doctors wouldn’t be able to ask if you smoke. We live in a weird country.