DownWithTyranny!: The horror in D.C.

Here's video from this morning.

by Ken

At the moment, the day's confusion in and around the Washington Naval Yard is still a long way from being sorted out. The last I heard, from washingtonpost.com's Rachel Weiner at 8:22pm ET:

Fourteen people were wounded in today's shooting, according to the latest count from the Navy. Along with the 13 killed, including the gunman, that makes 27 casualties. All were civilians, Vice Adm. William French told reporters at a press conference just now.

At 7:49pm Carol Leonnig posted ("Alexis had security clearance):

Aaron Alexis had been working much of this year as a computer contractor for The Experts, and appeared to have a government contractor access card that would have allowed him onto the Navy Yard and other military installations, according to the company's CEO, Thomas Hoshko. He was working as an hourly technical employee on a massive subcontract with Hewlett Packard to refresh computer systems worldwide at Navy and Marine Corps installations.

Alexis had a security clearance that was updated in July, approved by military security service personnel.
"There had to be a thorough investigation," Hoshko said. "There is nothing that came up in all the searches. "
Alexis had finished a contract with the company in Japan as part of the work and was about to be reassigned to do additional contract work at the Navy Yard.

"Nobody could have done anything to prevent this except Aaron Alexis," Hoshko said. "Maybe he snapped. I don't know. It's just the most unfortunate incident I've seen in all my career."

"Discharge from the military does not automatically disqualify a person from getting a job as a military contractor or a security clearance. It depends on what the circumstances are," Hoshko said, adding that he and his co-workers are still reeling. Alexis received a general discharge. "Obviously he was well-qualified. This really came out and shocked all of us."

(There's a later post concerning the circus that has developed outside the Brooklyn home of the confirmed shooter's mother, which I find repulsive.)

Mr. Hoshko's assurance notwithstanding, we can hardly know now what could or couldn't have been prevented. Nor can we know what sorts of issues come into play regarding the country's gun craziness or the massive non-governmental in our now-massive national-security industry, but it's hard not to think about them either. While we think, here is E. J. Dionne Jr.'s Washington Post column today:

The Colorado recall's morality lesson on guns

By E.J. Dionne Jr.,

You have to hand it to the gun manufacturers lobby. Children may be slaughtered, the death toll from firearms may keep mounting, but these guys are unrelenting and know how to play politics.

Last week's successful recalls of two state legislators in Colorado because they supported their state's new, carefully drawn gun law gave the National Rifle Association (NRA) and its allies exactly what they wanted: intimidating headlines. The one on ABC News' Web site was representative: "Colorado Recall Elections Chill Push for New Gun Laws."

This is how self-fulfilling prophesies are born. If matters stop there and the idea takes hold, the gun extremists will, indeed, win.
It would be great, of course, if all politicians were like Colorado Senate President John Morse, a former police chief, and state Sen. Angela Giron. Despite being recalled, both Democrats have been unrepentant about championing background checks and limiting gun magazines to 15 rounds.

"I spent years as a paramedic treating people who have been shot," Morse said in a telephone interview. "I spent years as a police officer investigating situations in which people have been shot. I have been shot at myself. . . . I may have been voted out of office, but the bill stays, the law stays."

Morse also cautioned proponents of stricter gun laws around the country not to read too much into a low-turnout election. He stressed the impact of a court decision that effectively barred mail-in ballots in the contests. Since 70 percent of Coloradans normally vote by mail, the ruling gave the highly energized opponents of the law a leg up. The latest count showed that Morse was defeated by only 343 votes, although Giron's margin of defeat was wider.

Yet the intensity gap is precisely the problem.

Shortly after a background-check bill failed to get 60 votes in the U.S. Senate last April, a Pew survey found that 73 percent of Americans still backed the proposal while only 20 percent opposed it. But when respondents were asked if they'd refuse to vote for a candidate who disagreed with them on guns, those whose priority was to protect gun rights were more likely to say yes than those who thought it more important to control gun ownership. Even more significant, 12 percent of the gun-rights partisans said they had given money to groups on their side of the issue, compared with only 3 percent who believed in regulating gun ownership.

The gun lobby has a large base. Those seeking more sensible gun laws still need to build one.

Doing so requires them to grapple with the fact that political issues can carry meanings far beyond the specifics of policy. These days, we tend to celebrate the autonomy granted us by technology, geographical mobility and an economy of free agents. Yet a pollster who conducted focus groups on gun control told me recently of her surprise that talk about guns quickly turned into a discussion of what participants experienced as a weakening of solidarity and shared commitment.

Neighborhoods, they said, were no longer alliances of parents collectively keeping watch over the area's kids, and they mourned the absence of a common understanding of the values that ought to be passed on to the next generation. Perhaps paradoxically, the stronger bonds of community they see unraveling had once given them more real control over their own lives.

The gun lobby responds to this lost world by saying: If you feel your power ebbing, grab a gun, and don't let the elitists disarm you because they disdain your values and your way of life.

How to answer? Certainly Colorado shows that when sane legislation is enacted, its supporters need to sell the benefits far more effectively and to persuade more voters to see gun sanity as a make-or-break issue. And they should follow the NRA in never allowing setbacks to demobilize them.

But they also need to be clear that they seek background checks, smaller magazines and the like not to disempower gun owners but to liberate all of us from fears that madmen might gun down our children and wreak havoc in our communities.

Those of us who support gun regulations share with most gun owners a devotion to a rather old-fashioned world. We believe that the possession of firearms comes with responsibilities and that we need to take seriously our obligations to protect one another. Ours is the real fight for liberty. For if we become a society in which everyone has to be armed, we will truly have lost the most basic freedom there is.