Newtown and the Bipartisan Police State
By Anthony Gregory • Friday January 11, 2013 10:17 AM PDT • 23 Comments
In immediate response to the Newtown massacre, every pundit began pointing fingers and giving their answers. The problem was gun culture. No, the problem was feminism. Violent video games. Insufficient funding for programs for the mentally ill. Hollywood. Rightwing paranoia. And so on.
Now, I have my own views about the cultural conditions in America that coincide with our high levels of violence. I think both liberal and conservative commentators probably make some good points along the way. I think the most conspicuous problem is the glorification not of guns or fictional violence, but of actual violence. America is a militarized society, seat of the world’s empire. The U.S. government is always at war with a handful of countries. We glorify killing and dying in our patriotic parades. Our Nobel Peace Prize winning president has bombed Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, and Libya. The fact that Tim McVeigh was a Gulf War veteran who saw his mass killing in military terms was lost on those who attempted to blame the Oklahoma Ctiy bombing on talk radio.
I think there are many cultural phenomena that have contributed to mass shootings and American violence, from militarism to public schools and the welfare state. And of course, most such shootings occur in “gun-free” zones where security has been socialized and has failed.
But there is no panacea, and I wish this was something acknowledged before people began pointing fingers. It might very well be that in a society culturally and politically oriented in the way I’d want, there’d still be the occasional atrocity. No perfect solution exists. And although there have been more school shootings in the last couple decades than before, the data set is still far too small to draw solid conclusions.
At least as alarming as the finger pointing have been the particular solutions most commentators have immediately gravitated toward. Progressives immediately began accusing conservatives of cutting mental health funding, and conservatives immediately fired back that civil libertarians have eroded the capacity of government to involuntarily commit those suspected of mental illness. This is, I think, perhaps the most disturbing reaction in the long run. Great strides have been made in the last half century to roll back the totalitarianism of mandatory psychiatric commitment. For much of modern history, hundreds of thousands were denied basic human rights due to their unusual behavior, most of it peaceful in itself. Lobotomies and sterilization were common, as were locking people into hellish psychiatric gulags where they were repeatedly medicated against their will, stripped of any sanity they previously had. The most heroic libertarian in recent years may have been the recently departed Thomas Szasz, who stood against mainstream psychiatry’s unholy alliance with the state, correctly pointing out that the system of mandatory treatment was as evil and authoritarian as anything we might find in the prison system or welfare state.
In particular, those with Asperger’s were immediately singled out as potential threats in the wake of Newtown. This was especially disgusting scapegoating to behold. Such people, along with the vast majority of those deemed “mentally ill,” are no more a threat to society or other people than anyone else is. There is simply no way—no way—for a free society to weed out the dangerous based on “mental illness” and force them into treatment, and there is no reason to think this will stop the next mass killing. Every single high school in America has an eccentric who, if he ended up killing a bunch of people, everyone would say, “Yes, we knew he was dangerous.” Yet 99.9999% of these people will never harm anyone. More coercive psychiatric treatment is a recipe to destroy what liberty there is left in this country.
Meanwhile, statists on both the left and right called for the national security state to put armed guards in every school in America. More militarized policing is not the answer. Barbara Boxer, California’s hyper-statist Democrat, called for National Guard troops in the schools. Yet the spokesman of the NRA, instead of doing what it could to diffuse the hysteria and defend the right to bear arms, added his voice to this completely terrible idea, demanding utopian solutions and scapegoating when he should have been a voice of reason. The main difference between his proposal and Boxer’s would be the uniforms worn by the armed guards.
Government armed guards will not necessarily make the schools safer, though. Central planning doesn’t work. The Fort Hood shooter managed to kill twelve people in 2009, despite the military base epitomizing the very pinnacle of government security. And now we see President Obama toying with the exact proposal aggressively pushed by the NRA—more surveillance and police, funded by the federal government, to turn America’s schools into Orwellian nightmares.
Although both conservatives and progressives have responded to this tragedy in generally bad ways, and there seems to be wide agreement on a host of downright terrifying police state proposals, I don’t want to imply that both sides have been equally bad. As awful as the law-and-order conservatives have been, the progressives have been far worse, agreeing with most of the bad conservative proposals but then adding their own pet issue to the agenda: disarming the general population.
The right to bear arms is a human rights issue, a property rights issue, a personal safety issue. The way that one mass murderer has been turned into a poster boy for the agenda of depriving millions of Americans of the right to own weapons that virtually none of them will ever use to commit a crime is disgusting, and seems to be rooted in some sort of cultural bigotry. Nothing else would easily explain the invincible resistance to logical arguments such as: rifles are rarely used in crimes, gun control empowers the police state over the weak, and such laws simply do not work against criminals, full stop. Rifles are easier to manufacture than methamphetamine, and we know how well the drug war has stopped its proliferation, and 3D printing will soon make it impossible to stop people from getting the weapons they want.
I will be doing some more writing about gun rights in the next few weeks, as it appears that not for the first time in my life, I was totally wrong about something. I had suspected that the left had given up on this issue, more or less, and Obama—whose first term was overall half-decent on gun rights—would not want to touch it. We shall see what happens, but it appears that the progressives have been lying in wait for an excuse to disarm Americans and have happily jumped on the chance.
Many left-liberals will claim they don’t want to ban all guns, and I think most are honest when they say so. Polls indicate that 75% or so of Americans oppose a handgun ban. Maybe there has been some genuine improvement on this issue, although I do have my doubts about the honesty of those who claim they would stop at rifles and high capacity mags, which are implicated in a handful of crimes compared to the thousands killed by people using handguns.
In any event, the core mentality of the gun controllers is as dangerous as ever. In response to a horrific mass murder of around 30 people, they are calling for liberties to be sacrificed in the name of security, apparently impervious to the logical problems with their proposals. When terrorists murdered a hundred times as many people in September 2001, many of these same progressives sensibly pointed out that those who would sacrifice liberty for security will wind up with neither, a line from Franklin. Yet the same logic should apply here. If 9/11 should have taught us anything, it’s that you cannot have total security, certainly with the state in charge of everyone’s safety. Nineteen men with boxcutters murdered 3,000 people. In a world with cars, gasoline, fertilizer, gunpowder, and steel, it is simply impossible to eliminate every threat, rifles being one of the smallest ones out there. Since 9/11 we have lost so many freedoms, have seen our police forces turn into nationalized standing armies with tanks and battle rifles, have undergone mass molestation and irradiation at our airports, have seen the national character twisted to officially sanction torture, indefinite detention, and aggressive wars. What will we see happen in the name of stopping troubled young people from engaging in smaller acts of mass murder? Much the way that conservatives led the charge toward fascism after 9/11, with liberals protesting a little at first only to seemingly accept the bulk of the surveillance state and anti-terror national security apparatus, I fear that today’s progressives are leading the stampede toward an even more totalitarian future, with the conservatives playing defense but caving, first on militarized schools, then on mental health despotism, then on victim disarmament.
Perhaps if after 9/11 the conservatives had focused on allowing airlines to manage their own security, even permitting passengers with guns on planes, instead of doubling the intrusiveness of the police state, we’d be in better shape today. But now the progressives are running the show, the SWAT teams have become more ruthless, the domestic drones have been unleashed, the wars abroad have escalated, and the same federal institutions whose gun control measures left American civilians dead at Ruby Ridge and Waco can expect new targets throughout the land. The bipartisan police state commences, now that the left has gotten its own 9/11.
Tags: American History, Civil Liberties, Civil Society, Conservatism, Education, Fascism, Gun Control, Liberty, Military, Property Rights, Second Amendment, Surveillance, The State, Torture, Totalitarianism, War, Weapons 
I’m curious........About your explanation of America’s ‘violent crime’ problem........What violent crime problem? We have the lowest homicide and violent crime rate in over 50 years! We are lower than the homicide rate of the 1920′s and 1930′s.......Violence subsided to the lowest point in the 20th century in 1957 when it dropped to 4.0 per 100,000.......In 1963 it rose to 4.6 per 100,000......It is now 4.8, the lowest since 1963. We don’t HAVE a problem, we HAD a problem, and the fact that rates are falling suggests something is successfully mitigating that problem.
Mac | Jan 11, 2013 | Reply
Asperger’s and autism are NOT mental illnesses. Appreciate the article, but please, please get that one straight!
I’m surprised you didn’t mention the fact that ~80% of our mass shooters have been on (or withdrawing from) prescribed psychotropic drugs well-known to cause aggression, hostility, suicidal ideation, delusional thinking, etc. These very symptoms are *frequently* reported with the drug Fanapt, which Adam Lanza was taking. (source: drugs.com under Psychiatric side effects) Similar effects are found with all of the new-gen drugs of this class.
Prisons have reported a threefold increase in aggressive behavior since they started passing out these drugs to inmates.
The country needs to worry a lot less about autistic people, and a lot more about how powerful drugs intended for schizophrenic and psychotic people are being inappropriately prescribed to just about everyone, for just about anything. Menopause. Children who act out. You name it.
Anti-psychotics are now the most-prescribed class of drugs in America. That is a real ‘drug problem’.
thixotropic | Jan 11, 2013 | Reply
“... our high levels of violence...”
The murder rate and the violent crimes rate in the USA haven’t been this low in two generations. So why write about possible reasons for high levels of violence? Why not write instead about possible reasons for the declining levels of violence?
MingoV | Jan 11, 2013 | Reply
As far as guns in the possession of law abiding citizens is concerned I would suggest reading “More Guns Less Crime,” by John Lott. With that said,I think that America,by design of the Elites,is being turned into an economic and defacto police state. Almost everyone today in America is numbered,catalogued,forced to report to their government all of their economic activities and at the same time have to ask for permission to do what used to be an inalienable right. We are being watched,searched and being made to act like criminals while our Constitutional Rights are being ignored. The last line of defense for the average citizen against tyranny is the possession of firearms. Once that is gone its the gulags. Its happened over and over again throughout history. America will be no different.
libertarian jerry | Jan 11, 2013 | Reply
The issue has been so cleverly framed with a false dichotomy that a good majority of conservative, pro-2nd Amendment pundits are practically screeching for increased scrutiny of the population’s mental health. Because, well, that has been posed as the only alternative to increased gun control.
Result: the right begging a Democratic controlled federal government to increase screenings and interventions on citizens. I don’t know how Rahm Emanuel can stand being out of Washington at this moment.
ddubb | Jan 12, 2013 | Reply
I indeed should have noted the violent crime decline. I’ve written on it before:
http://blog.independent.org/2010/09/13/why-the-violent-crime-decline-and-why-so-high-to-begin-with/
Anthony Gregory | Jan 12, 2013 | Reply
What I get out of this article, that is the most important grouping of words that are affecting my generation and all those that follow are that the American people willing to give up our freedoms for a tiny bit of security.We deserve what we get. From a president elected by the “low knowledge voter” because those with common since stayed home and let those losers choose our leadership, which in itself is a crime. In all my 61 years, I have never (even during Nam where I served 18 months) seen this country so divided to the point many are talking about civil disobedience to civil war (for real, I believe this time). Perhaps it is time to make a stand against all the corruption on the local, State and Federal levels. If this is to be the case,than so be it. If this president decides again to use his executive privilege to slam the past Supreme Court rulings on the 2nd Amendment as well as the Constitution itself, than this time he would have pushed the Good American people to far and what occurs after that will be on his head and that moron VP’s head. As far as mental illness goes, they have even crossed the line with that. There will always be evil people in the world that think up evil things to do against our fellow man.From legally drugged out teenagers that are bullied because they do not fit in the right group,to God knows what. But I am quite sure it is not the weapons that decide to go out a commit these acts of hate, just the owner of the finger on the trigger. These pols stand on the graves of those children from Sandy Hook,just as they did with Columbine and make their silly speeches which I find disgusting. Then obongo went back to that school on a Sunday to launch his anti-gun campaign, he disgraced himself and the office of the president which told me in so few words that he cared little about that tragedy and more about his policies.In closing, it is apparent that this country has lost it’s way and is sick at best. But we are fast heading towards the unthinkable. I do thank the author for bringing up Ruby Ridge and Waco. Those 2 incidents should have been a wake up call to Americans with intellect.
Knightflyer | Jan 14, 2013 | Reply
When it comes to the murder rate the US is below the world average but above the safest places. The situation has improved recently but some of it is because of the implementation of a police state (NYC with its low murder rate & gun control comes to mind). We still have a ways to go on both crime & liberty.
Anthony, very nice article. I’m going to be speaking about this subject in 2 days https://www.facebook.com/events/443544712373370/ You’ve covered many of the points I will, well done.
Darren | Jan 14, 2013 | Reply
This is also true of a number of antidepressant drugs. These drugs (based upon personal observation) do have a “rebound” effect. In other words the individual in question is rendered “hyperactive” and in my opinion, might well become “dangerous” under certain conditions and circumstances...
Jerome Bigge | Jan 14, 2013 | Reply
Interesting since this all swings off a very convenient event for the present government. They must know the rebound effects of these drugs or are they uninformed? If they knew was this the result they sought, so as to further deprive Americans of liberty and their Constitutional rights? The weapons were reportedly CIA in nature. An Inconvenient Truth maybe.
Graham | Jan 14, 2013 | Reply
You have it exactly right. A nation of sheep always begets a government of wolves.
Michael Murray | Jan 15, 2013 | Reply
A few unconnected points.
1) Americans have little understanding of the concept of risk. Terrorism and mass shootings are horrific, but your chances of dying from either of them is vanishingly small. Far more people die in traffic accidents every year, yet nobody is afraid of getting in their cars and going out on the freeway. We could save thousands of lives every year by reducing the speed limit on the roads and enforcing them strictly. Nobody would support this, however, because we are not afraid of cars.
2) I appreciate the concern over gun control, but to suggest that citizens armed with sport rifles or handguns could successfully resist a fully equipped army is ludicrous.
3) What is 3-D printing???
David Smith | Jan 15, 2013 | Reply
David Smith, are American soldiers in Afghanistan indifferent to the possession of a loaded M1911 by a hostile Afghani? Would an American soldier in Afghanistan have no preference, for or against, a hostile local having access to a cache of new M1911s and .45 ACP? And how eager would an American in Afghanistan be to wander into an unfamiliar village if he knew that no enemy of his had a rifle but that there might be an M1911 and boxes full of live .45 ACP for every villager?
Paul T | Jan 15, 2013 | Reply
Anthony, you’ve been writing political critiques for years, yet still you carry water for leftists and progressives by calling them liberal. Why?
Do leftists and progressives need your help to hide their illiberalism? Does the term liberal resonate so well among rightwingers and some centrists that it’s just unbearable not to pander to them by following their usage of the word? Is it because there’s a long tradition of the usage, and we should not contradict traditions established long ago?
It’s difficult to understand your reluctance to abandon misleading rhetoric about illiberals. What’s going on?
Paul T | Jan 15, 2013 | Reply
Most of the “mass shootings” have taken place in public (read “tax funded”) schools. None, so far, have taken place in home schools.
Ergo, shut down the tax-funded “gun-free” schools. Problem greatly reduced, if not eliminated. And reduced into the future as well, because most, if not all, of the shooters have been products of government schools.
Messianic Theonomist | Jan 15, 2013 | Reply
Mr. Smith,
I don’t recall reading where Mr. Gregory, or anybody else, has suggested that Americans armed with sport rifles and handguns could successfully engage a fully-equipped modern army.
Indeed, the chances of success would be almost infinitesimal. What was intended by the Second Amendment was that Americans be armed with the same equipment that the armed forces had, assuming there were a standing army in the first place. At a minimum, the militias of the various States would be as well equipped as any army that could be raised. Under those conditions, the various militias, as initially envisioned, would be more than a match for the regulars.
You are correct in the implication that, since Americans have already been largely disarmed, the outcome of such a contest would be in little doubt. I argue for the Founder’s reasoning and intent for Americans to be fully armed to protect their liberties.
Antonio | Jan 15, 2013 | Reply
Two points:
First, we should heed Justice Louis Brandeis’ warning about government as malign influence: “Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. Louis Brandeis Dissenting, Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438 (1928).
Second, the link between guns and cultural violence might parallel the link between pornography and sexual violence against women. When Denmark legalized pornography, violence declined. It just might be that violent media content in America masks a much deeper problem, one that weakened First Amendment guarantees (forget the Second Amendment) would expose. See Richard Ben-Veniste, “Pornography and Sex Crime: The Danish Experience,” in Technical Report of the Commission on Obscenity and Pornography, U. S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D. C., 1971, pp. 245-261.
J.A. Montanye | Jan 16, 2013 | Reply
Anthony,
It appears that a satisfactory explanation for the decline in crime has finally been determined. See this excellent article.
http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lead-crime-link-gasoline
D. Saul Weiner | Jan 17, 2013 | Reply
David: re “what is 3D printing”, it is a method of manufacturing a 3 dimensional article (eg a gun) by using a special printer to print it – using metals or plastics instead of ink – the same way a normal printer prints out a document in 2 dimensions using paper and ink. Fantastic futuristic technology, but still a little way off for the easy local production of firearms...
Malcolm | Jan 20, 2013 | Reply