Cumulative Risk and Complacency

Jared Diamond, a professor of geography at UCLA, has an interesting essay about our comprehension of risk in the New York Times.

His thesis is that in our society we become inured to everyday risks that are more likely to hurt us and overemphasize risks that are extremely unlikely. We're more afraid of events that we can't control — extremely low-probability occurrences such as crazed gunmen, terrorist attacks and plane crashes — than we are of much higher probability events that we can control, such as falling in the shower, dying in a car accident, lung cancer, heart disease and diabetes.

My mother-in-law recently broke her hip crossing the street (falling can be fatal in the elderly), so his point about falls hits close to home:

Life expectancy for a healthy American man of my age is about 90. (That’s not to be confused with American male life expectancy at birth, only about 78.) If I’m to achieve my statistical quota of 15 more years of life, that means about 15 times 365, or 5,475, more showers. But if I were so careless that my risk of slipping in the shower each time were as high as 1 in 1,000, I’d die or become crippled about five times before reaching my life expectancy. I have to reduce my risk of shower accidents to much, much less than 1 in 5,475.

This logic applies to all sorts of events in our lives besides showering: driving, chopping wood, cleaning the gutters, cutting tree branches, and so on. I know three guys, one of whom nearly died, who have suffered extremely serious injuries either falling off a roof or getting hit by heavy tree branches.

This means that you're more likely to get hurt performing a small-risk mundane task repetitively that lulls you into a sense of complacency and carelessness. Like carrying a gun everywhere you go.

If, for example, there's a 1 in 10,000 chance that you'll accidentally shoot yourself or someone else each day you carry a gun, over a ten-year period the chance grows to 30% (1 - [1 - 0.0001] ^ 3650), and 52% over 20 years.

What determines that basic chance? Basically, how smart and careful you are. Consider the Kansas man who accidentally shot his wife at dinner in a steakhouse when he reached into his pocket. Why was there a round in the chamber? Why wasn't the safety on?

If the NRA has its way, we will have far more to fear from getting shot at dinner by poorly trained gun owners scratching themselves than we do from nutcases like James Holmes shooting up movie theaters.

People who love guns like to think they make them safer, but they actually become a menace to everyone around them. But most of all, you endanger yourself: you're much more likely to commit suicide or accidentally discharge the weapon and hit yourself or a family member than you are to stop a gunman. And even if you do encounter a gunman, the very act of pulling a gun puts you at greater risk.

Consider the case of Dan McKown, who was carrying a legal concealed weapon in 2005 when a shots rang out at a Tacoma Mall in Washington state:

Gun drawn, McKown scanned for the shooter. But the gunshots stopped. Unsure what had happened, McKown tucked his pistol back under his coat — just as the shooter walked right in front of him.

"So anyway, I'm standing there like Napoleon Bonaparte, with his hand, you know, in his jacket," he recalls. "So I said, 'Young man, I think you need to put your weapon down.' "

That moment of vulnerability gave the other guy just enough time to shoot McKown. The bullet hit his spine, and he found himself unable to aim his own gun.

"I prayed the most un-Christian prayer of my life, which was: 'God, please let me shoot this guy before he kills somebody else.' Because I was sure I was dead," McKown says. "Then he hit me again, again, again. And he spun me like a pinwheel."

McKown made himself a target and got himself shot. He may have also prevented further bloodshed, because after that the shooter holed up in a store with hostages.

Arguably the right thing to do in that case was to take cover, keep the gun out until the shooter's location was established, and then plug him in the back without warning. The problem is that McKown had no badge or police uniform, and any cop or other person with a concealed weapon coming onto the scene should follow that same advice and unknowingly shoot a "good guy" with a gun.

Which brings us to the real point: untrained amateurs should not be walking around with loaded guns in their purses, pockets or waistbands, like Plaxico Burress or the idiot who shot himself in the penis. If you're going to be armed with concealed weapons in public, you should be required to follow the same training and safety standards as law enforcement professionals. That doesn't mean some hokey two-hour training course. That means dozens of hours of training, drills, target practice, tests and live-fire simulations. And anyone caught with a gun in his pants should have a mandatory three-month stint in the workhouse.

The Second Amendment does, after all, speak of a well-regulated militia.

Even West Point?

I've been taken to the mat many times on here for talking too much about conservatives. So has Nikto. Both of us have said many times that the far right in this country, which more or less dominates the GOP, is dangerous and should be taken more seriously. Now the premier military academy in the school agrees with both of us.

In a report entitled, "Challengers from the Sidelines: Understanding America’s Violent Far-Right," author Arie Perliger discusses the rise in attacks (since 2007) by people aligned with far right groups. He centers his paper on three key questions.

(1) What are the main current characteristics of the violence produced by the far right? 

(2) What type of far-right groups are more prone than others to engage in violence? How are characteristics of particular far-right groups correlated with their tendency to engage in violence? 

(3) What are the social and political factors associated with the level of far-right violence? Are there political or social conditions that foster or discourage violence?

Good questions to start and he does an excellent job of identifying the three key elements of the far right: a racist/white supremacy movement, an anti-federalist movement and a fundamentalist movement.

There's quite a bit to pour over so I'm just going to highlight some points that I thought were interesting and encourage everyone else to read the whole thing.

If there is one ideological doctrine about which there is almost full consensus regarding its importance for understanding the far-right worldview, it is that of nationalism. 

Yep. This is where I get my valid comparison to Nazis. I realize this ruffles many feathers here but no one can deny that the Right are more nationalistic than the left. After all, the left hate America, right? So how can they be Nazis?

More specifically...

In the context of the far-right worldview, nationalism takes an extreme form of full convergence between one polity or territory and one ethnic or national collective. Two elements are required for the fulfillment of this version of the nationalist doctrine. The first is that of internal homogenization, i.e., the aspiration that all residents or citizens of the polity will share the same national origin and ethnic characteristics. The second is the element of external exclusiveness, the aspiration that all individuals belonging to a specific national or ethnic group will reside in the homeland. 

It's always puzzled me that the Right can't see how collectivist they act on a daily basis. Everyone has to think like they do otherwise they are not pure. We've seen this with the GOP primaries in the last two elections.

So how is this manifested?

The first includes concepts that complement the rationale of internal homogenization throughxenophobia, racism and exclusionism. Xenophobia involves behaviors and sentiments derived from fear, hate and hostility towards groups which are perceived as alien or strange, including people with alternative sexual preferences, styles of living and behavior;  racism refers to the same sentiments, but based on racial grounds, such as belief in the national and moral significance of natural and hereditary differences between races, and the conviction that certain races are superior to others. 

Finally, exclusionism is the practical manifestation of these sentiments on the communal or state level. Practically, outsiders are excluded from specific spheres of the social, economic and political arena, such as the labor market, the educational system and residential areas. 

I don't think there is a better summation of the GOP today.

Whither Sarah...

We don't hear much from Sarah "she scares the 'hell' out of Markadelphia" Palin these days. Every few weeks, she'll pop up, say something predictable and boring, and then retreat to her Alaskan bunker to wait out the "coming apocalypse."

But the recent news that her and Fox News have parted ways has left a whole lot of sour grapes in her mouth which have translated into some..ahem... interesting remarks. First of all, she's calling for a "larger audience." But wait, I though Fox News had the largest audience of the news networks. What happened? Oh yes...the election last year. Of course, this comment could just be her way of covering herself for being ousted at Fox. But I think it's more than that. The GOP does need a larger audience but in order to do that, they are going to have to change and, thus far, they are refusing to do that.

She also called for "more truth telling in the media" which made me laugh so hard I think I broke a rib. Considering that most the words out of her mouth are complete lies, maybe she should start with herself. The real money quote, though, was this.

“I encourage others to step out in faith, jump out of the comfort zone, and broaden our reach as believers in American exceptionalism,” she told the conservative news site in a short Q&A. “That means broadening our audience. I’m taking my own advice here as I free up opportunities to share more broadly the message of the beauty of freedom and the imperative of defending our republic and restoring this most exceptional nation.”  

“We can't just preach to the choir,” she said. “The message of liberty and true hope must be understood by a larger audience.”

Yes, please, by all means DO broaden your audience. I have encouraged many of conservative friends and commenters here and on Kevin's site to leave the bubble and stop preaching to the choir. As of yet, they have declined. So, maybe Sarah can be the trailblazer!

I'm looking forward to her explaining how our country needs to be "restored" considering we have the largest economy and the most wealth of any other nation on the planet. I'd like to hear how we can better defend our republic when are armed forces are already larger than the next 20 countries combined. This doesn't even include America's soft power in the world with products like the iPhone. I think her message of "restoration" is going to be a wonderful juxtaposition to our impending energy independence in the next decade.

And I'd really like to hear her try to convince the American people that Democrats don't believe in American exceptionalism. It's a lie that hasn't worked in the last four elections.

So, please, Sarah, do take your message of liberty and true hope outside of the bubble. My question for you and any others that follow suit is this

What are you going to do when reality smacks you upside the head? 

Now This Is Embarrassing...

Shit that happens when you're taking a shit:

PLYMOUTH, Minn. (WCCO) — Plymouth Police say a man is in the hospital after he accidentally shot himself inside a Rainbow Foods Sunday afternoon.

The shooting occurred inside the bathroom of the grocery store, which is located at 4190 Vinewood Ln. N. at 4:26 p.m.

The man suffered a non-life threatening injury to his lower leg.

Police are not sure how the gun discharged. There is no indication that this is anything other than an accident.

No one else was injured.

Police say the man has a conceal and carry permit.

Plymouth is a quiet suburb of Minneapolis. There is something ... unstable about a person who thinks they need a gun to go to Rainbow on a Sunday afternoon.

Though I have to admit that there is another possibility: maybe he uses his pistol to get off instead of Playboy centerfolds and couldn't wait till he got home. That would make this incident about mental health instead of guns.

Guns in the hands of incompetent people are a public health menace and should be treated as such. One man's right to play vigilante ends when he presents a danger to the public. This guy's permit should be revoked and he should made the object of ridicule by competent gun owners everywhere.

Instead of minimizing and excusing such incidents the NRA should get on the stick and demand higher standards for gun ownership.

The Good News Keeps Rolling In

For all the talk about how broken our health care system is, the world as a whole is actually doing much better than in the past. Some examples.

• Dr. Benn singles out Rwanda as an example of stunning progress: More than 90 percent of eligible Rwandans were receiving ART by the end of October. "This is fantastic ... historical. That is beyond our expectations from a couple of years ago," Benn says. 
• Kazakhstan is the site of another moment of global public health progress this year. In March, it was certified malaria-free by the World Health Organization, joining only four other malaria-endemic countries with that designation. 
• Nigeria heads the pack of 17 countries poised to eliminate malaria. Their antimalaria agenda includes a $50 million bed-net program, underwritten by The Global Fund, which hopes the country will offer two bed nets per household. 
• The Republic of the Congo, meanwhile, has made massive strides in combating maternal mortality. The number of women dying in childbirth dropped 60 percent between 2010 and 2011, from 740 deaths per 100,000 live births to 300 deaths.

There are many more examples like this happening around the world and the best part about all of it is that it is happening exponentially. Juxtapose this with the sharp reduction in extreme poverty and it's clear that we are heading in something more than the "right direction." 

Honestly, it's becoming more and more apparent every day that we are heading towards that Star Trek vision of the future and it's largely due to the leadership of the United States. 

No Liberal War on Science

A new charge has been leveled in the ongoing media campaign of false equivalences between conservatives and liberals. A piece by Michael Shermer, the resident skeptic in Scientific American, claims that there's a liberal war on science.

The conservative war on science has been well established: they don't believe evolution is real, they don't believe global warming is real, they have crazy ideas that women can't be impregnated by rapists unless they want to or God wills it. More to the point, they have passed laws to prevent the teaching of evolution, deny the facts of sea level rise and other effects of global warming and campaigned for office on a platform to take away the rights of women who have been raped, justifying it with bogus science.

Shermer's charges against liberals start with "41% of Democrats are young Earth creationists and 19% doubt Earth is getting warmer." This line of reasoning is fraught with error. Saying "I'm right because a poll said so" is a very weak start to an argument.

First, this is a voluntary poll: a self-selected sampling of people. Self-selected because many people just hang up on pollsters, or don't even bother to answer their phones. Only certain kinds of people are willing to endure the tedium of responding to a bunch of inane questions: some would call them pleasers. Even though anonymous, telling someone that you don't believe in the Bible's creation myth is tantamount to admitting you're an atheist. People who take the time to answer polls obviously place importance on what others think about them, and may be more likely to give the "right" answer to please the questioner, skewing the results. Furthermore, bias is inherent in socially sensitive surveys and their results simply cannot be trusted without knowing the specific questions asked: you can word a survey to get any result you want.

Second, being a Democrat does not mean you're a liberal. The majority of Democrats have moderate views. Many Democrats are conservatives and vote Democratic for purely partisan or tribal reasons (east-coast Irish Catholics and Jews, or example), or refusing to ever vote for Republicans because they perpetuate racism against blacks and Latinos. The Democrats who hold conservative religious beliefs are by definition religious conservatives and not liberals. Citing these statistics equates "Democrat" to "liberal," making the statement misleading and meaningless.

Third, holding a "liberal" or "conservative" view on one issue says nothing about what you believe on another issue. Conservatives have been pushing the false conservative/liberal dichotomy because they think it gives them traction. Dick Cheney believes that gays should be allowed to marry, but that doesn't make him a liberal. Indeed, many people believe the conservative view on gay marriage, drug use, contraception and abortion is that employers and the government shouldn't be telling people what to do in their private lives.

Fourth, owning a belief does not require that you work to foist that belief on others or sabotage others who hold contrary beliefs (the "war" part of the equation). In other words, having an opinion does not require that you be intolerant and oppress those with different opinions. If you believe the earth was created in a 24-hour day, but your faith is strong enough that believe your kids will be able to make the right decision after learning about evolution in school, you are not engaged in a war on science. If you think the earth's climate is not getting warmer, but you accept kids learning the facts about climate change, fuel efficiency standards, compact fluorescent light bulbs, and electricity generated by wind turbines, you're not engaging in war against science. The campaigns against evolution and climate science are led almost exclusively by Republican politicians and religious zealots.

The meat of the complaint against liberals is that they have declared "Armageddon" on science because the most extreme ones oppose things such as nuclear power, hydroelectric dams, wind turbines, genetically-modified organisms, etc. Again, more false equivalences. It's like saying that all Republicans are racist because former Ku Klux Klan member David Duke is a Republican (though like many southern conservatives, he was previously a Democrat).

First, people opposed to these technologies don't claim that the science behind them is a hoax. They believe that these technologies -- particular applications of science -- are dangerous, inappropriate,  ineffective or not worth the tradeoffs.

In particular, people who oppose nuclear power don't believe nuclear fission is a hoax. They believe that the current state of nuclear technology is not safe. Our nuclear power plants are nearing the end of their safe lifespans and we have nowhere safe to store the highly toxic radioactive waste. It's sitting in spent fuel pools or dry casks sitting outside nuclear reactors across the country, waiting for a tsunami or earthquake like the one that hit Fukushima Daiichi in Japan. And we're still creating 2,000 tons of nuclear waste a year, with no permanent safe place to store it. Oh, and what if terrorists get hold of that waste just sitting around in those dry casks?

However, if a national storage facility with safe and permanent storage is created, or technology is developed that eliminates these problems (fusion, for example), I and probably most Democrats will cease to oppose the expanded use of nuclear power. And I and most Democrats have no problems with properly sited wind turbines and hydroelectric dams, or even natural gas fracking as long as it's done without contaminating groundwater or causing earthquakes and environmental disasters disposing of fracking fluids.

Second, the number of "liberals" who consider wildlife more important than humans and therefore oppose wind, solar and hydro energy technologies is vanishingly tiny. The vast majority of Democrats are fine with the technologies that the strawman liberals oppose. By comparison, the Republican party is entirely controlled and financed by people pushing anti-evolution, anti-global warming, anti-gay marriage, anti-women's reproductive rights agendas. To win a primary every Republican now has to toe the line on all these issues, or be crushed by ads from those vested interests.

In the end, the Republican war on science has nothing at all to do with science. It all comes down to money: keeping oil company profits and donations from religious zealots and other vested interests flowing. Since they cannot win the argument on the basis of science, they have chosen to incite anger and cast doubt over the cost of alternative solutions and the science itself, because conservatives respond more to uncertainty and fear.

At least that's what the scientists say.

That Strange Yet Familiar Feeling

Deja vu. We've all experienced its mystery and I've always wondered if the phenomenon is related to the possibility that our minds could function outside of linear time. Are we remembering things that happened in the past? Or is it the future? As a recent piece by Amy Reichelt notes, the explanation is much simpler and less nerdy.

Many researchers propose that the phenomenon is a memory-based experience and assume the memory centres of the brain are responsible for it.

The medial temporal lobes are vital for the retention of long-term memories of events and facts. Certain regions of the medial temporal lobes are important in the detection of familiarity, or recognition, as opposed to the detailed recollection of specific events. It has been proposed that familiarity detection depends on rhinal cortex function, whereas detailed recollection is linked to the hippocampus. 

The randomness of déjà vu experiences in healthy individuals makes it difficult to study in an empirical manner. Any such research is reliant on self-reporting from the people involved.

This touches on something far greater than a routine phenomenon. In so many ways, we are computers. The bio-hardware in our minds act as hard drives and when we experience events that we may have experienced before, the memory stick engages and we remember. But perhaps the recollection is fuzzy and we can't quite place where or when it was. Imagine for a moment that we could have access to all of it whenever we wanted and in stark clarity.

With recent gains in technology and the ever present smart phone in the hands of nearly everyone, the merging of biology and hardware seems inevitable. This may mean that those memories could be accessed quickly for retrieval making the deja vu phenomenon a thing of the past. We'd know why we are experiencing that feeling that we've done something before. We'd also have clear and uncut access to everything we'd ever experienced. Reliving a long memory with a lost loved one...think about that for a minute.

Wouldn't that be amazing?

Bubble Translated!

Let's put the following headline

President Obama pushes to fill ATF's top spot

through The Bubble Translator, shall we?

(processing....processing...processing)

Ah, yes...here it is...

Ex-Ghetto Organizer, Current Negro Named Head of Federal Gun Grabbing Department

Big Babies

To give you an idea just how childish the Right are these days, take a look at these numbers.



And these numbers...



And now, take a look at this...



So, they support all the policies that President Obama has presented but if his name is attached to it, then they hate them. Yep, that's just about right.

And they wonder why the American people voted to keep the adults in charge...

At Least It Was A Woman This Time

I think as the rest of the country moves on without them we are going to see increasingly erratic behavior from conservatives. With this, they have taken "Do it again, only harder" to a whole new level.

New Mexico GOP Repesentative Cathrynn Brown has introduced a bill in the State’s House of Representatives that would prohibit women who have been raped from obtaining an abortion—or face a sentence of up to three years in prison as punishment for committing the offending act. The legal theory behind the proposed legislation? Tampering with evidence of a crime…seriously.

Part of me has to wonder if these people are secret Democratic plants that will the left win election after election. The alternative is that they really are this disgusting and, if that's the case, they can never be allowed to be in charge of anything significant. People that are this mentally unbalanced should simply retire quietly to Shady Meadows, be given their soup, and left alone to spout their insanity.

No wonder Bobby Jindal is calling Republicans the stupid party.

Bill Nails It

Interesting...many of my libertarian friends have made this exact point...

Musings and Perceptions

I went to the club to work out on Monday and ran in to my ol' buddies Reverend Ed and Doctor Sean. They couldn't wait to start screaming at me about liberals and how they are going to destroy our country. They repeated, verbatim, many of the same arguments I see in comments on here. In fact, Reverend Ed used the same style as well as theme that my regulars here deploy  (e.g. a weasel question framed in such a way that the only response is a "win" for them).

For example, Ed asked me, "Where in the Constitution does it say anything about abortion?" When I informed him that I don't answer weasel questions, he huffed and puffed and said that I couldn't answer because that would mean I would be proved wrong and Roe v Wade should be overturned. I then explained to him that if he really wanted to reduced abortions in this country, he'd stop talking about the evils of fornication and and start educating people on family planning and making more emotionally intelligent decisions with their lives. In essence, work together to reduce unwanted pregnancies and take away the demand.

Sadly, he did not agree and I realized, like everything else with the Right, they don't want to actually solve problems. They just want to argue about them, "win" said argument, and implement policy in EXACTLY the way they dictate, never wavering or compromising in any way. Of course, this is never going to happen with the abortion issue. That topic, like gay marriage and climate change, has evolved to the point where it is no longer an issue. Guns aren't far behind.

This was evident when I asked each of them about the election and why conservatives lost. "People are stupid" they both replied. "Any reflection on your own party or perhaps some things that you might want to change? Immigration policy, perhaps?"

"Nope. Nothing."
"So, do it again, only harder?" I asked, chuckling to myself of course.
"Yep."

I then asked them if they cared if they lost election after election as it's pretty clear that the country is moving on without them.

"Nope."

As long as they are ideologically pure, continue to see compromise as a weakness, are unmoved by facts, intolerant of dissent, and are undeterred by new information, all is well in wingnut land, I guess. I told them they should find some more old white guys with 2 dollar haircuts to talk about rape some more. That seemed to work out well for them last year:)

Pastor Ed informed me that he would be home schooling his child. I applauded him for taking such a proactive effort in his child's life. He then went on to say that the reasons why he was doing it were: he wants to teach his child Hebrew and Greek  so he can know what the Bible really says (out of the bubble translation: so he can win the argument by claiming superiority over those who don't know Greek and Hebrew and thus say that HIS interpretation of the Bible is the RIGHT one); he wants to teach him logic (out of the bubble translation: so he can sound intelligent while lying in order to win the argument and claim superiority); he wants to teach him science (out of the bubble translation: so he can learn how evolution and climate change are myths perpetrated by liberals who are striving to achieve world domination); and, of course, civics, meaning an "accurate" interpretation of the Constitution. I almost laughed out loud at the science remark but politeness go the better of me.

Before Ed left to go home, I noticed how every time I countered what he said, he would go and try to find someone else to back him up. The other patrons at the gym would usually laugh or shrug and say they didn't want to get involved. Like my regulars here, he couldn't stand alone and discuss a particular issue. Bullies always need a gang, I suppose.

After Ed left, the best part of my time there occurred. Doctor Sean's son was hanging out with us off and on as he had the day off as well. After a long mouth foam and stomp off that included many topics, among them how bullshit it was that Martin Luther King day is a national holiday (and people think he's prejudiced...go figure!), how we are going to become like Greece (an oldie but a goodie:)), how China was going to overtake the world, and how Barack Obama is a communist, Doctor Sean's son, a freshmen in high school, turned to me and said,

"I'm sorry."

I smiled and saw in him what I see in my students: the future. More specifically, progress. Sean's son recognized how his old man was not really well in the head, politically speaking, and felt rather embarrassed. Obviously, somewhere along the line, he had some good teachers. Of course, Sean sends all four of his kids to a prestigious private school in the area which, according to him, is really, really liberal. When I asked him why, if he and his wife were so conservative, they send their children there, he shrugged and said, "It's the best school in the Twin Cities."

Hmm...perhaps the only way to cut through that ideological blockage is the perceptual framework of "status." Cool...

Staking the Vampire?

Is Texas putting a stake in the heart of the vampire that is sucking the life blood out of education? The Texas House, in the state where George W. Bush's No Child Left Behind education program was born, has eliminated all funding for standardized testing in the 2014-2015 draft budget.

Standardized testing in Texas has become a bloodthirsty monster that devours children's lives:

Texas schools and students are strongly impacted by the testing schedule; during the 180-day school year, high school students now spend up to 45 days taking various standardized exams.

Yes, you read that right: Texas students spend 25% of their days in school taking standardized tests. Knowing how important these tests are for funding and teacher compensation, it's likely that much of the rest of the school year is spent in preparation for these tests. How do they have time to learn anything real?

We're out of Iraq, we're getting out of Afghanistan and we're slowly pulling out of the Bush recession. The days of No Child Left Behind appear to be numbered. It may take years, but there's hope that we will eventually undo the "legacy" of eight years of George W. Bush.

Next on the agenda: cutting off the head of the zombie in Bush's Medicare Part D that prohibits the government from negotiating with drug companies: Medicare often pays almost double what the Department of Veterans Affairs does for some drugs, like Lipitor.

Colbert Channels the Boiling Pit of Sewage

The last minute of this hilarious clip from Colbert is truly a gem. The boiling pit of sewage!

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Obama's Inauguration & Class Warfare
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog Video Archive

Yes, where was the hopelessness, dammit!? If you aren't talking about America's impending doom, then you must be a commie!

Can It Get More Ironic?

Last Saturday, on "Gun Appreciation Day," Nehemiah Griego, a 15-year-old boy, murdered his parents and three siblings. At 1:00 AM he went into his parents' closet and got a .22 rifle, which he used to kill his mother. He shot his nine-year-old brother and his five- and two-year-old sisters in the head. Then he waited until his father Greg came home, whereupon Nehemiah ambushed and killed him.

The house has a sign outside saying: "Protected by Smith & Wesson Security Services."

Nehemiah texted a picture of his dead mother to his 12-year-old girlfriend, loaded up the family van with an arsenal of rifles and shotguns, then spent the day with the girl. He contemplated murdering her parents as well as going to Walmart and shooting the place up and dying in an exchange of gunfire with the police. Somehow he got sidetracked and went to the church where has father was a pastor. After initially saying his family had died in a car accident, 911 was called and he eventually confessed to the murders.

If this had been a weekday this might have been Sandy Hook all over again.

Comments from the right are typical: reader responses on the New York Daily News site blame secular society for the breakdown of the family. The kid's dad was a pastor and a chaplain. Then they start talking about demonic possession. Seriously. Then it's violent video games. Then it's his father's violent past: he was a former gang member with an arrest record a mile long.

Comments from the left aren't much more charitable: this is the predictable outcome for people who glorify guns and violence. We should just let these nuts have their guns and natural selection will take its course as they all kill each other.

Me, I still have questions.

Why are there so many incompetent nitwits who store guns where their kids have easy access to them? Why does a former gang member with a long arrest record have an arsenal of weapons in his closet? Why are so many parents oblivious to fact that they're raising murderous little monsters? Is is really wise to give impulsive teenagers training and access to weapons of mass murder? Why didn't Pastor Griego learn a damned thing from Sandy Hook? How many other Nehemiahs are out there with stupid and complacent parents?

Maybe we should start treating stupid gun owners as a public health hazard, like people infected with turberculosis.

Smart gun owners should get after all the idiots who can't control their own weapons. They should demand action from their own numbers to rein in problems of their own making.