Real America: Dan Baum's Sexy Gun
Earlier today we linked to a selection of questions answered by author Dan Baum about his latest Harper's cover story, "Happiness is a Worn Gun." Baum's examination of the feelings about carrying a concealed handgun may on the surface appear reasonable and inoffensive. A deeper look proves this is not the case. That's not all that surprising from a writer who starts his reasoning on gun research, "Why do we need to explain why we like guns? Nobody feels a need to explain why people like guitars, or radios, or model trains. What makes guns different?" The obvious answer to Baum's dumb question is "because guitars and model trains don't kill people." But Baum's is the wrong question.
The right question (besides "This guy really had a job at The New Yorker?") is "Why does Dan Baum like guns so much?"
Baum's argument (in the latest Harper's magazine (subscription-only online), in a Harper's Q&A and on his blog Our Gun Thing) is that there is not a net positive or negative to an increase in relaxed concealed carry laws.
But this ignores his own citation that the massive increase in shall-issue concealed carry regulations led to a massive increase in handgun sales. This means there are now millions more guns floating around out there. And these guns are largely not carried because, like Baum admits at the end of his piece, the vast majority of those who get their permits never carry because they feel uncomfortable doing so. Of course, these un-carried guns don't return themselves to the store. Guns purchased by enthusiastic CC-movement tourists types like Baum sit in homes just waiting to be stolen, one of the most common ways that guns make it to crime scenes, according to the FBI. Also more guns in homes means more guns for kids to find.
In Baum's Q&A he says, "Every child killed accidentally by a gun is an unimaginable tragedy, but to say the statistics on such incidents are ‘horrific' is a misstatement." He backs up this statement by reasoning that "in 2007, 137 Americans, aged 0 to 19, were accidentally killed by firearms – a rate of 0.17 per 100,000. That's about half what it was in 1998, so an already-rare event is getting, happily, even rarer."
That sounds so low because it is drilled down to be only "accidental" and only "killed."
The CDC actually reports that in 2008, 4,165 children between 0 to 19 were injured by firearms. That was a significant decrease from the 6,706 in 2000. But, for the last seven years, these numbers, in tandem with increased handgun ownership, have been averaging up, since hitting a low in 2003 of 3,611. There were 3,998 in 2007.
The firearm suicide number for those aged 0 to 19 in 2007, the year Baum picked, was 683. Is that "horrific"? While not damning in and of themselves (unless one of these kids is yours), the numbers paint a different picture than Baum's little 137 number.
(Side note: I assume Baum's 137 number is from the CDC data for firearm deaths in that age bracket, even though the CDC lists 2007 deaths between 0-19 as 138. But what's one more?)
Of these accidents, Baum argues for better gun security in the home, saying, "Failing to secure one's guns against children's curiosity or burglars should be as uncool in this society as smoking indoors." Does Baum, who repeatedly refers to guns as "sexy," realize that smoking indoors, thanks to bans, is cooler now than it has ever been?
In Harper's, Baum also introduces, and endorses, the scenario of an armed populace possibly being more effective than a policeman at taking down a crazed shooter: "An armed civilian might be even more useful during a massacre than a police officer." While there is absolutely no evidence to suggest this is even remotely true, Baum completely ignores the possibility that police responding to a shooting may, fairly reasonably, shoot anyone they see with a gun. He also ignores the obvious problem of a herd of frightened and confused "condition yellow" Americans all drawing weapons and all at once scrambling to un-safety, identify and blow away the "next Virginia Tech-style shooter."
Baum's purported goal to find nuance within, and in the process explain, gun culture is sometimes honest but usually comes off as a put-on. At every turn, Baum finds ways to torpedo reason by leaning on tired stereotypes, massive generalizations and the worst of one-dimensional observations. The characters of his gun world are cops who joke about farting and shooting criminals in the back and tinfoil-hat instructors who speak in "platitudes, Obama jokes and belligerent posturing." My own CC instructor, Rusty, was a heavy-set guy who was friendly, jovial and mannered. He read a novel most of the time we were completing our test. But then, that doesn't make for very interesting copy.
Baum finds lazing into caricature and trope easy. He's done it before, upsetting Jews. And his romantic liberty-taking in the service of New Orleans storytelling has seen him on the working end of "noble savage" accusations.
Maybe most damning of Baum's take on guns is that it appears to have the support of John Lott, even though Lott admits to not reading it yet. Lott writes, "Baum is able to clearly and credibly get the basic point across to those listening to the radio show that he was on about permit holders not posing a risk to others." Lott, whose gun research data is not replicable, and who has forged at least one identity to support his pro-concealed carry work, is only condemned as "weird" by Baum in Harper's.
Baum also buys the argument of the Cooper Color Code-a scale of states of alertness-never once challenging that a person can exist in a "white" (or "unprepared") condition and still be observant of his or her surroundings. He contends that condition white which "may make us sheep" is where we "daydream" and is "where art happens." One might just as easily argue that better art happens when people are hyperattentive and observant of their environs. Baum buys and promotes this Homeland Security war-on-terror crayon coding system uncritically.
He has to, because somehow Baum must justify to a liberal reading audience why his love of guns goes deeper than his assertion that they are "sexy." (Ask the woman whose husband has threatened her with his gun how sexy they are, Dan.) Baum is meta-enabling his own "guilty pleasure."
Why Baum really likes guns is evident in his tale of how he first came to shoot one, at summer camp. "Within a day of arriving at summer camp, it was clear I'd be forever consigned to right field, ignored by quarterbacks, left jiggling and huffing in the rear during capture the flag. I was five-the youngest kid ever at Sunapee-an over-mothered cherub in a tribe of lean savages." And therein is the greatest misfire of Baum's look at guns. Not once in his nine-page Harper's piece does Baum use the word "power."
His reasons for leaving the New Yorker should be mentioned: Making 90 grand a year was okay, but those offices were so darn dour.
Stings a little.
Seeing everything in the world through the sights of a gun.
Abe Sauer! You have written something interesting about guns yet again.
This was good. I would like to know more about the power thing, also. I have never understood that the slightest bit.
Is this the same power we were discussing in the Burroughs piece?
Exactly! (is it?)
I don't know! I'm as terrifyingly alone and confused as you are.
Some people are gearheads – defending "performance" (read speed) or loud pipes as necessary for safety. Some people transfer their anxieties to sometimes deadly MMA fights – they knew the risks and besides, football is more dangerous probably.
I wonder if he geeks out on his bicycle as much as he does his guns.
The production of a gun, a bullet, a bomb, and a nuclear weapon all have one thing in common. If used correctly, they are designed to kill. Whether or not each and every one ends up doing so is far beside the point. They are meant for it, and the longer they lay around in wait – the longer they are in existence – the more and more likely it becomes that their intended purpose will be fulfilled.
Oh, and by the way, how long has it been since a nuclear weapon has been set off? The statistical clock is ticking.
That is not how statistics work.
All I can really say is, yes it is?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gambler's_fallacy
No, it's really not. And for more than just this reason. E.g. the number of nuclear weapons has declined precipitously in the last 30 years, and also nuclears weapons being set off is not a bayesian statistic, and etc. etc. etc.
Alternatively snarky answer:
"Oh, and by the way, how long has it been since there was a missile crisis in Cuba? The statistical clock is ticking."
We're not talking about an incident in specific though. We're talking about something that does happen. A nuclear weapon has actual potential energy (just like the proverbial rock at the top of the hill), it's ready to roll, click of a button. I am not relying on the classic gambler's fallacy here (like a roulette player would) but in the same statistical logic used by the Rand Corporation in developing their model of the likelihood of further terrorist attacks as time goes by without them (since you have set-points of past incidents – just like we have set-points for past nuclear detonations – you have a statistical model). The longer we go with no nuclear detonation, even with mildly declining stockpile numbers, the more our chances of detonation increase.
Except that the Rand model is built on something that happens relatively commonly (more than, uh, twice ever?) and are still making some extremely beefy assumptions – e.g. that terrorism targets are selected economically. The point is that there have been two non-testing-related nuclear attacks, both happened during a time of war more than fifty years ago. There's no statistical model to cover it, and there's certainly no statistical reason to think that more time without nukes means an increasing likelihood thereof.
You're right, except, that there have been more than 2 nuclear detonations in the world. You can say tests don't count, but I disagree.
I'm glad that the statistical clock is ticking, because that means there should be another war fought by people using swords and bows and catapults!
And DINOSAURS! The we're WAY overdue for dinosaurs! Isn't that right, Statistical Clock?
Oh wait…dinosaurs were eliminated. Sorta like nuclear weapons are.
But does any of that really matter? What does the Statistical Clock have to say about doomsday asteroids?
(Why doesn't someone just unplug the Statistical Clock?! Problem solved, I say!)
Correction – did not mean to imply that nukes have been eliminated…but that they're being eliminated.
It runs on Energizer batteries though
Don't get me wrong, gun people are wacky, but this post is a master class on rhetorical fallacies. It isn't so much a critique as a list of reasons not to like Dan Baum.
As a minor point I would add that the armed populace taking out crazed killers, even if successful, would not really change much, as crazed killers, though quite scary, don't actually kill many people. Here are the numbers for all multiple homocides:
In 2005, of all homicide incidents–
4% involved 2 victims
.6% involved 3 victims
.1% involved 4 victims
.05% involved 5 or more victims
Most of these, of course, were not "crazed." So, arming everyone for these rare events would cause a lot more death than it would prevent.
Calling a gun "sexy" is about as open a proclamation of who and what one is as I can imagine.
"And his romantic liberty-taking in the service of New Orleans storytelling has seen him on the working end of "noble savage" accusations."
Well, that's one way to put it, though the page you linked yields mostly a series of hosannas for his coverage of, and salute to, the peculiar qualities of New Orleans. How was he taking liberties? Noble savage what now? A Times commenter brought out that old chestnut? A first, I'm sure.
His coverage of NOLA after Katrina was, outsider quibbling aside (because if you ever spend real time there, you learn real quick that some NOLAns will never be happy with any characterizations of their own beloved city), fantastic. And his book of nonfiction Nine Lives, a Terkel-esque weaving of personal histories in the city, which I'm halfway through right now, is expansive, heartfelt, deeply researched, and beautifully written. (The Times liked it too, hey!)
Anyway, yeah, you were making a point, so, wouldn't wanna interrupt.
I also like this parenthetical: "(Ask the woman whose husband has threatened her with his gun how sexy they are, Dan.)" POW.
"Ask the woman whose husband was hit by a Mustang how sexy cars are."
That being said, yeah, his gun thing is just weird. I have no idea how to understand it.
But why tar the rest of his writing? I'd gladly take one Dan Baum for six Adam Gopniks.
Burroughs' wife probably thought his gun was pretty sexy. At first.
"Ask the woman who's dying of tuberculosis how sexy tuberculosis is."
nice
I enjoyed this.
As others have pointed out, the issue isn't fear or powerlessness, it's a realistic assessment of risk. There is a sizeable chunk of gun owners who will never secure their guns because of the everyday scourge of the armed prowler.
How many seconds wasted on fumbling with a trigger lock? Are you sure you can punch in the gun safe code in one go? Besides, it's electronic, and everyone knows how that kind of thing fails at the worst moment! Why do you want the criminals to win?
I find this post exceedingly frustrating, because 95% of its readers (due to Harper's paywall) will not be able to read the article that he is criticizing. As the sort of liberal gun non-owner Baum is trying to address, I found his piece to be an effective explainer of what gun people like about guns. The article is generally an emotional, not statistical argument in favor of guns. Baum does not seem convinced that concealed carry necessarily reduces crime, and he goes further than Sauer claims he does in criticizing Lott, pointing out his sock puppetry and the lack of reproduction for his findings.
Clearly our country would be better off with a gun ownership rate closer to Britain's (that's why they get all the knife crime). However, guns are a key part of our country's culture, and they're not going away anytime soon.
Finally, Sauer's paragraph on the Cooper Color Code is just bizarre. Condition White is defined as being unaware of possible threats. So Sauer in attacking for not "challenging" Condition White is making one of three claims: either one can be unaware of threats but aware of certain other surroundings (a purely semantic issue), or there is no such thing as different levels of awareness of possible threats, or that there are different levels of awareness but that greater wariness does not lead to greater safety. I find all three claims to be unsatisfying. One hardly needs to be a gun nut to believe that it's important to be aware of when one might be in danger.
The worst Baum says of Lott's data set is "a heated round of my-data-set- can-beat-up-your- data-set ensued." He then says "Lott turned weird, first by claiming to have conducted a large national survey that he couldn't prove to have done, and then by invent- ing an online alter ego named Mary Rosh to blog his praises."
"Weird?" Likely falsifying research that is still widely used by legislators to pass more lax CC laws and creating false aliases to defend him in charges of this falsified data is "weird?" He never says anything about "sock puppetry" and it's hardly an inability to "reproduce" his findings, it's his inability to produce his findings at all. That's "weird?" I suppose Bush and Co.'s drive to war in Iraq data presented to the UN was "weird?"
It's not that he does not challenge "condition white," it's that he buys and then pushes the whole bullshit color-coded threat system to begin with. Here's Baum's soliloquy on condition white: "Condition White may make us sheep, but it's also where art happens. It's where we daydream, reminisce, and hear music in our heads." He says that "condition white" is where we are when we are "sleeping, being drunk or stoned," but then he says "I can attest that there's no way to lapse into Condition White when armed." You can't get drunk and or stoned while armed? Please. The whole "system" is absurd.
As for the paywall. Subscribe to Harper's. At just $17 a year or less it's worth it. Or, you know, go steal it off torrent.
Thanks for responding. It was clear to me–and, I imagine, most Harper's readers–that Lott's data is not to be trusted, and that by providing some extremely damning ways in which Lott was "weird," Baum is engaging in ironic understatement. (Incidentally, an online alter ego blogging one's praises=sock puppetry.) To use your facile Iraq analogy, if I were to list several calamitous consequences of the war in Iraq, and then refer to it as "perhaps not America's greatest foreign policy triumph," I would be risking indulging in facetious understatement, but I wouldn't be an apologist for the Bush regime.
As for the color coding, we both have an ingrained dislike for color-coded alert systems. I would venture that most concealed carry holders feel very differently. It seems clear to me that (for better or worse) I am in a different sort of mental state–of wariness, of alertness–when I am stumbling home from the nearest bar than when I am leaving work late and walking through the projects. Some people have decided that it's worthwhile to demarcate these different levels of alertness. Baum makes two claims about "Condition White" that are unsupported but strike me as rather plausible. 1) A tradeoff for being warier is that one is less introspective (almost certainly) and more creative (arguable). Baum is making the questionable point about creativity to increase Condition White's side of the ledger. 2) Carrying a (legal) concealed weapon makes one more aware of one's surroundings, and less likely to impair oneself. (Baum provides examples of how he is more aware while carrying his gun, and I find them persuasive that many concealed carriers feel likewise. I know I would.) As far as the issue of armed under the influence goes, some states do not allow concealed weapons in bars. Clearly some people drunk and high in public have legal concealed weapons, but I would imagine most do not, and that many armed, impaired people are not have their guns legally.
P.S. I bought a newsstand copy of this issue to read the Bissell piece on The Room. Normally I find Harper's boring, but this issue was quite good.
But you would also probably be referring to something with which your readers had knowledge. This is certainly most Harper's reader's first introduction to Lott. If you want to talk ironic understatement, start with Baum's mentions that Lott's data is "widely quoted," giving the impression that it is just one set of data used. The truth is that from DC to state legislators to nearly every pro-CC and pro-gun organization, Lott's data is THE data, not just one of several equals. I don't think Baum is any fan of Lott's (though Lott seems to find him digestible which should be worrying alone); but I don't think he did his readers any favors by bringing up Lott and then letting him settle like a fart in the room. If Lott is going to be mentioned, the whole story must be told.
I never doubted that fans of CC are gaga for the color code system, only that Baum himself bought it without asking, "Isn't this a little pointless?" As for his logic explaining it, I think I spoke to that above.
And again, I'm not saying Baum doesn't believe what he says he FEELS. I just think he's finding a lot of ways to justify it without addressing what is certainly the largest one, which just happens to be why a lot of people love guns. He writes "I got hooked on guns forty-nine years ago as a fat kid at summer camp-the one thing I could do was lie on my belly and shoot a .22 rifle-and I've collected, shot, and hunted with guns my entire adult life." Are we to believe that after he goes on about being the chubby prey for all those camp kid wolves, that his attraction to guns was that he was "a good shot?" That he doesn't even touch on the power aspect anywhere in his piece makes him either blind or dishonest. Either way.
Boring?! Oh, really, give it a chance. It's generally got 5,500 great words per issue.
Or go and buy the magazine. They have it on the rack at Border's.
I think it's intellectually lazy to pass judgment on Jeff Cooper's Color system by relying solely on Baum's description and subjective interpretation to understand it. And it doesn't help if you're going to draw inane inferences from it either.
"If I am drunk or stoned, then I am in Condition White. If I am armed, I cannot lapse into Condition White. Therefore, I cannot be drunk or stoned while armed. We all know that being drunk and being armed are not mutually exclusive; ergo, the Color System is bullshit!"
Seriously? Could you perhaps be more deliberately obtuse?
One of my mother's students walked into a gun shop with a bullet, loaded a gun, and blew his head off.
Guns are not sexy.
Goons, I really really don't want to diminish the tragedy of events like that, but I want to know why guns are excluded from aesthetic appreciation but other deadly things are not. Cars, e.g., or even knives. (I've heard chefs/aficionados wax rhapsodic about a good knife.)
I'm not talking about aesthetics, but I see what you mean.
But still, a car is not designed to kill and you have to either have the balls to slit your own wrists or really want to kill someone to get that up close.
Guns make death easy and faceless, in many cases.
And I enjoy shooting guns, and support responsible gun ownership, but guns are not sexy and to talk about them in that language is irresponsible and frankly immature.
You know what's sexy? Showing respect for a very powerful tool and weapon.
From an engineering standpoint I understand a fascination. But the main reason is because cars and kitchen knives only kill people when their purpose has malfunctioned; guns kill people as a matter of manufacturing purpose.
@Goons – Gotcha. I can agree with that!
@Abe – This argument has always seemed a bit begging the question to me, but maybe I'm just too post modern for it to stick. I don't really care what the "purpose" of something is, just what it's being used for. And there are a lot of historical and aesthetic appreciators of guns who do not intend or want to use them to kill people!
Well, point taken. Though I'm not sure guns are full excluded from such appreciation as much as it is taken as suspicious any gun fanatic who largely claims his (and it's almost always his) is an aesthetic appreciation. Indeed, the .50 Desert Eagle is an odd gun of beauty, phallic really, but as a gun it is pointless, Like with the Hummer, owners' claims of fandom are not always the real reason.
Am I the only one seeing some pretty hilarious ads going with this?
WARNING WARNING CRAZED KILLERS WILL EAT YOUR WIFE AND KIDS
"My own CC instructor, Rusty, was a heavy-set guy who was friendly, jovial and mannered. He read a novel most of the time we were completing our test. But then, that doesn't make for very interesting copy."
Abe, you accuse Baum of making lazy and one-dimensional observations, contrasting his caricatured figures with your own experience with a CC instructor. Your instructor, for example, was round(ed) individual named Rusty. He was lovable, and he read books.
Now let's look at your own nuanced characterization of Rusty in your piece on 2/24: he read a Tom Clancy novel for the duration of the test period. This was the sole detail provided about this individual. It was a lengthy piece, and perhaps this minor unnamed character didn't merit more attention. You were able to let a single detail (dare I say dimension?) paint a broader picture of your instructor. We can infer something about his political views. His attraction to violent fantasy. His tolerance for shitty prose. It was interesting, this copy of yours!
As Bo Diddley would have it (er, as spoken by Dan Baum, I guess?): Before you accuse me , take a look at yourself.
I'm responsible for how readers stereotype Clancy readers?
No one but Tom Clancy is responsible for how readers stereotype Tom Clancy readers
No. Is Bret Easton Ellis responsible for how readers stereotype 80s brand name wearers? You gave your readers a effective shorthand for understanding this minor character. In doing so, you added interest while keeping the story moving. You did not find it necessary to stop to flesh out your instructor's inner life, or provide a name or physical description.
Perhaps Baum was doing the same? I recall the piece having a large cast of characters. If some were presented in a rather impressionistic fashion, was that necessarily lazy or un-nuanced writing?
I don't think either of you are guilty of such.
"Why do we need to explain why we like guns? Nobody feels a need to explain why people like guitars, or radios, or model trains. What makes guns different?"
Dude's clearly never visited an Apple fanboi site.
A lot of the stats were some real whatever shit.
So what if x number of people killed themselves with guns? the means chosen to commit suicide is only relevant for the person tasked with clearing up afterwards. GUNS DON'T COMMIT SUICIDE, PEOPLE DO. You just got fucked up by a slogan.
Plus your criticism that the only reason his stat is so low is because it is not this different, larger stat was fucking retarded.
If you made these kind of dumb anti-gun arguments to my face id shoot you.
The real criticism of Baum is that he tried to explain his enthusiasm for Guns to the liberal readers of harpers in the hope that should they find it sufficiently deep they might think better of him. Pure lame. This is the only thing that any gun owner need to explain to the readership of harpers: FUCK OFF. Seriously, fuck off.
Leftists, who are at heart, abject Statists, just cannot stand that anyone would take the responsibility for themselves and their family's safety more seriously than the guy in the Brink's commercial, peeing down his leg while on the phone to the monitoring center.
Look, Citiots, there's a big ol' area out here, where working people live, you know…the ones whose extorted funds from the fruits of their labors help to subsidize all that you think you're "entitled" to?
Yeah…those folks.
Well, we're not all cousin-humpin' missin' chromosome hillbillys. Some of us actually "read dem dere book thangs", including this KA-RAAAZY old dusty tome called "The US Constitution".
In that old relic, you know, the Supreme Law of the Land, or somethin', it clearly states that the Right (some kind of permission at Government discretion, to some) to keep and bear…(disassemble and lock away, to some) arms…akin to the type we fought for, and won our ever-eroding Freedom from the most powerful Empire of the face of the earth, at that time…"shall not be infringed".
Firearms don't have to be "sexy". They don't have to satiate a "need". They are…because we CAN. We have a Right, even in King Daley's fiefdom, to own, keep and bear.
Without registration, indexing, numbering, taxation, and other efforts to marginalize and dehumanize those who are engaged in a Tradition older than America itself.
(Oh, and while we're hand-wringing about "the Children"…it is interesting to note that most of these little Darwin award winners are the children of City dickheads who treat guns like porn…shoved under the bed, because "kids shouldn't be in there".)
To a Lefty's mind, Education and familiarization are the key to enlightenment…except firearms…in which case ignorance is utter bliss.
D.
"Without registration, indexing, numbering, taxation,"
Actually no. It doesn't say that at all.
More revision by a Statist. Apparently "infringement" means whatever a hoplophobe wants it to mean.
Way to dodge all the rest, ya hack.
D.
Hey, I'm refurbishing my survival Cabin, and was wondering if you have any ideas about Insulation?
I would be more willing to listen to 2nd amendment literalists if there weren't so many of them that wanted to add amendments banning gay marriage and removing the 14th to keep Hispanic children born here from becoming Americans.
I'm searching for a thoughtful rejoinder to Baum's article. This isn't it. I'm on your side, but this isn't it.
Insulting the writer ("this guy wrote for the New Yorker?") is not a helpful strategy. Nor is the dripping sarcasm.
Study his piece, why it is compelling and sympathetic — and answer in kind. We need a good response, not a screed.
"I would be more willing to listen to 2nd amendment literalists if there weren't so many of them that wanted to add amendments banning gay marriage and removing the 14th to keep Hispanic children born here from becoming Americans."
Excellent. Top-drawer. A smear by association with a straw man. The author's mental processes should be pretty clear to all.