James Fallows

The whole episode lasted about 2 hours.  While the officers who questioned me were not overtly or personally threatening, the situation was intimidating and threatening.  I was never told details of the "profile", so I don't know how to prevent this from happening again, aside from talking to federal employees at all times while flying.  I am concerned that DEA and DHS now have files on me.  This distresses me GREATLY.  I am equally concerned that my plane's tail number is now suspicious in the eyes of law enforcement....

[He adds this caveat in a follow up note:] Although my adrenaline gets going when I think about this whole mess, and I can read the US Constitution, I have ENORMOUS respect for the rule of law and for the men and women who put their asses in harm's way to help assure my safety.  That includes local, state, & federal law enforcement agents, as well as our military.  The people who should answer for this crap are the cowardly bureaucrats who sent all those men, vehicles, airplanes, dogs, and guns out there - not the men dispatched to the scene.

His full account after the jump. After that is the second case, from Clay Phillips, a retired Navy officer who had a similar experience.

To say it again: I am not contending that the aviation world is being inordinately picked-upon. Overall it is a privileged part of society -- and demographically it skews toward older white males who are politically conservative, have money, and often have military experience. Ie, these are people who are not generally the object of police profiling for terrorist or other criminal tendencies. So if the security state is leaning heavily on them, you can extrapolate to other groups. The stories begin below.

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 Silverstein, the pilot in command, raised objections and was given three options: wait inside the FBO [the "Fixed Base Operator," the little office that exists at most small airports] or  wait quietly outside, or be detained in handcuffs. An instrument-rated private pilot and AOPA member, Silverstein is also an active real estate investment banker who has never committed a crime, he said.

We won! ...Our voice combined with other voices of journalists, traveling parents, and organizations like the Campaign for a Commericial Free Childhood made this happen.

I hoped to get the full policy from United Airlines to share with you.  But I am satisfied with this for now:

"From: "CustomerCare@united.com" <customercare@united.com>

To: D... 

Sent: Friday, May 3, 2013 12:57 AM

Subject: United Airlines - 

Dear Ms. xx:  

The policy change is that the standards are in line with guidelines of  

PG-rated movies.  More review may be underway, however this is internal 

company information.

Regards, 

Cxxxx 

Customer Care

Now who wants to contact American Airlines and Delta?!?"

Congratulations to the families that asked for the change. Apart from revising its movie policy, as best I can tell United has never apologized for or acknowledged the original over-reaction -- that of humiliating the family by turning them over to the police. I've had no followup beyond the opaque statement I quoted a month ago.  I appreciate the care that went into this note, and want to take the chance to say again that when there is a troubled corporate culture, the tone is almost always set at the top. I'm also grateful to the other United employees with whom I've had interesting and revealing talks in the (many) trips I've taken in the past month.

On re-entering Internet land after 24 hours, I see a zillion responses to the mysterious case of United flight 638. This is the one on which parents traveling with young children complained about a movie they considered too violent and risque being played on the overhead projectors. The flight was headed from Denver to Baltimore, but the pilot made an unscheduled landing at Chicago O'Hare so police could remove the family from the plane. The three background installments are here, here, and here. To put it mildly, at face value this is a strange episode, and there must be some further backstory on how and why it happened. After I sort through the latest responses from pilots, flight attendants, regulators, etc. I'll put some up.

For now, here is a message from the man who directed the movie in question. His name is Rob Cohen, and the movie was called Alex Cross. I turn the floor over to him:

>>I'm the director of "ALEX CROSS' and I'm writing to you to add my perspective to this United Airline matter should you care to know it.

The film is rated PG-13 due to the level of violence and some very intense content.  By definition,  it is not meant to be shown to people under thirteen unless accompanied by an adult. To me, this clearly defines a box office situation where you are voluntarily purchasing tickets to view something that has been clearly rated as not kid-friendly. It does not, however, really accurately cover the airplane experience.

An airline showing on all the cabin monitors is clearly no longer a voluntary situation but one where the content is being shown indiscriminately to those who wish to view it or those who don't. It's impossible to avoid the images, even if you are not using the headphones in such a situation.

There is something unfair and, in my opinion, unwise about such a policy. I did NOT do an airline edit although I did a TV version. My assumption was that the film would be either further edited from that by the airlines or shown only on systems where a passenger can select specific films for his or her seat.

When I read your piece this morning, I felt extremely sympathetic to the family involved and, in some ways, quite apologetic. I never made the film to cause anyone this kind of discomfort. It seems to me they (the family) were well within their rights to request some control as to what their two young children were exposed. As a father of five year old triplets, I, too, would not want them to absorb some of the images we created for my film. It's a thriller based on the work of James Patterson and accurately captures the milieu, content, and characters of his many "Alex Cross" books.

These books are not for young people, either.

I cannot comment on the Captain's decision as I don't know all the facts but I do know this: there should be another standard of judgement or set of editing guidelines for airline consumption. PG-13 should mean what it does at the box office, at the very least meaning no one under 13 should be exposed to it. If the airlines cannot accommodate a more flexible presentation giving seats the option of viewing or not, they shouldn't show the film unless it meets what we could call "general cabin" suitability.

If the film cannot be edited back to a more general audience presentation, then it shouldn't be shown on the cabin monitors. If that means the loss of air line revenue, so be it. Protecting children from things they were never meant to see should take priority.

Rob Cohen <<

>>I just read your article about the family being kicked off the United Airlines flight that was airing the Alex Cross moving throughout the cabin. It reminded me that on our last flight from SFO to Chicago (February 23rd or 24th, not sure if it was the flight going or coming back) they were playing the same film and I was very put out that they were showing it in cabin. I had a two year old with me that was thankfully too busy with her crayons to notice the screen, but if she had I would have probably raised my concerns as well. I just wanted to highlight that the Alex Cross showing was not an isolated incident, even if the removal of the family was.<<

>>I am an economics graduate student, and my partner has family working for Delta. She is thus able to fly standby for free, and me for a discount (and the economist part perhaps induces a certain line of thinking..). I'm in Los Angeles; our families are in Colorado and the Chicago suburbs. To get between LA and Denver, we have to fly via the Delta hubs of Salt Lake City or Minneapolis. To get to Chicago from LA, we have to fly from LA to Salt Lake or Minneapolis and then onward...  On a bad day, it might involve Atlanta, Memphis, or Detroit--Delta's other hubs.

Now, this is partially just due to having family in Delta-inconvenient places, but look at the list of major United hubs: Los Angeles, San Francisco, Denver, Chicago, Houston, Dulles, and Newark. [JF note: And don't forget its international connections through Seattle.] Newark is probably the least-awesome of these, but United has hubs in the 4 largest American cities, two of the richest metropolitan areas that are also hubs of technology and government, and the largest city in the middle of the Mississippi and the Pacific. It's hard to beat, and the odds of United having the most (and most direct) options for a wide range of long-distance flights seems quite high for a quite large fraction of Americans, and especially for Americans in wealthy and travel-heavy metropolitan regions. 

As to the customer service angle: if your business has a particular advantage that induces a great number of customers to default to it, then skimping on customer service won't cost you much, and investing in it won't gain you as much. I'm not sure how plausible this is as the fully story, but it seems plausibly part of it.<<

Many world news agencies carried this wonderful map, via NKNews.org, of the strike plan Kim Jong Un is preparing so as to make good on his threat to engulf U.S. cities like Austin and Washington D.C. in "a sea of fire." Note the paths shown for missile-strike assaults on North American cities.This doesn't mean there's no reason to worry about current tensions on the Korean peninsula. But it might mean that Kim Jong Un has some "Hey, wait a minute... " questions to ask his strategic planners. Or perhaps he should buy them a globe. I should probably add that I didn't manage to get this posted before March 31 had ended and April 1 began, but it very definitely is not an April Fool's Day item. The straight-line map was real. Or "real."

To see this item in "classic" view, as I very much recommend you do, please click here.

Recently I mentioned a Baja California-brewed "Runaway IPA" whose label cheekily mocked the famous "immigrants crossing" sign on I-5 and other roads just north of the U.S.-Mexican border. A reader in Southern California says that the signs weren't really so preposterous:

I don't want to "harsh your mellow", as Charles Pierce is fond of saying, but having driven that stretch on and off (mostly on) for 15 years commuting to Santa Ana I've seen my share of people darting across the road, almost hitting one.  I also saw a man stretched out in the middle of the highway one night coming home from work who appeared dead when I passed by (he was already being attended to).  So yes, I laugh at the sign too but it was put there for a serious reason. 

Actually, once they built the fence down the middle median most of the pedestrian crossing attempts stopped.  I think the major reason for the crossings was when drivers, seeing the Border Patrol checkpoint open ahead, stopped to kick out their passengers. ...

That wasn't the only dangerous behavior I witnessed over the years.  Once getting off the Amtrak in Santa Ana, I saw two men standing on the outside ladder rungs between two cars.  This was during a period when the Border Patrol would board in Oceanside and check passengers as we headed north.

Offered for the record.

 I agree with your correspondent [above].  I did my grad work at Irvine in the late 80s and then lived in San Diego for a couple of years in the early 90s. I had a good friend in SD so I drove I-5 with some frequency.  At this point, I can't say how many deaths there were in that period, but certainly more than a few, and between he possibility for setting off a chain of accidents in reaction to people dashing out into traffic (which I certainly did see more than once) and the trauma of running someone over, even if it's not your fault, the warning was reasonable.

 

The image, on the other hand, is something I'd like to see explained.

This animated graphic by T-Mobile is surprisingly interesting. What you see below is a static screen shot; the site itself says it offers a depiction of ongoing cyber-attacksUPDATE There is of course a reason why Chinese hacking has gotten more attention than intrusions from Russia, Nigeria, etc: of the intrusions from China appear to be government- or military-directed than from most other countries.

I trust the statistics are for attacks wherein there has been at least one complete exchange of packets with the purported source.  Eg the attacker has sent a packet, the destination has sent a packet in response, and something based on that response bas come from the purported attacker - such as happens with the TCP connection establishment handshake.   If it is based solely on the source IP address of a single inbound datagram it will be very vulnerable to IP address spoofing.  In that case, for all we know it could be the Duchy of Grand Fenwick spoofing IP addresses in their quest for Internet Domination (™).

William R. Polk's first installment in this series, about the Soviet experience in Afghanistan, is here; the second, about Afghan realities constraining U.S. options, is here. This is the third and last for now, an analysis of the least-bad way for the U.S. to manage its extrication from Afghanistan. For completeness, his 1958 article on "Lessons of Iraq" is here. The points below follow "Point I. Basic Facts" from earlier today:

By William R. Polk

II. The Essential Objectives of the Afghan People and The World Community:

The fundamental objective shared by the Afghans and foreigners is a peaceful and secure country, able and willing to manage its own affairs and to act as an independent member of the world community;

This objective is brought into sharp focus by the insistence of the member nations of the NATO alliance that Afghanistan, under any government, prohibit the use of its territory or other facilities for acts of terrorism or subversion in member countries and their allies.  This, after all, was the justification for the overthrow of the Taliban regime in 2003.  This is the second objective;

The third objective is particularly important for, but not necessarily understood by,  Americans.  It is not only to eliminate or cut down on the vast expenditures of money (much of it borrowed) and human resources (much of it wasted in battle or used in unproductive ways) but also to avoid a "blowback" by the warping or degradation of their institutions, comity and laws caused by fear, apparent necessity for drastic action and excessive concern with "security;"

The fourth objective of the member nations of the NATO alliance and particularly of the United States is to end or at least diminish the costs to them of the war. Member nations of the NATO alliance are already acting to accomplish for themselves this objective.   Afghans generally do not share it:  the Taliban movement, fractured though it may be, is determined regardless of  cost to induce the foreigners to leave and to reestablish something like the regime that was destroyed by the American invasion.  The Karzai government wavers between the NATO/ American and the Taliban objectives.  In principle, it seeks total independence but its power brokers (aided and abetted by influential outside participants) are making vast amounts of money off the occupation and are in no hurry to end it.   That is to say, there is a small but significant area of agreement on the objectives but not on timing, on the means to achieve them and on whom will control the action.


III. Objectives Desired By The Afghan People and The World Community:

Although, in current conditions they have not uniformly or vigorously articulated it, we may assume that a desired objective of all the Afghan people is a more adequate standard of living with both an improved diet and an enhanced level of health as well as a level of education that will enable to achieve and sustain a strong economy;

Both the majority of the Afghan people and concerned foreign powers desire a level of stability sufficient to prevent civil strife and invite further foreign intervention;

Member countries of the NATO alliance as well as China and Russia would like for Afghanistan to take a place suitable to its capacities in legal world trade.  Specifically, they would like to profit from Afghanistan's mineral resources, to make use of its routes of trade and to get its help in interdicting the drug trade;

Since some aspects of Afghan society, notably the position and role of women, appear to outsiders as ugly and "medieval," they would like to foster the "evolution" of the society along contemporary Western lines.  This objective is not widely shared in the country today although, briefly in the 1960s and 1970s, it was the policy of the then Afghan government and was approved by a wide swath of urban society.  Under conditions of peace and independence, especially if these are brought about through negotiations, it is likely gradually to re-emerge.

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From the inbox -- actually, my wife's email inbox. Fortunately we live in a community-property state.

From: <datdave@centurylink.net>
Date: Sun, Feb 24, 2013 at 10:38 AM
Subject: MGH
To: Dxxx

The Microsoft is glad to pronounce you as the lucky winner of Eight crores Thirty Four lahks and Thirty Two Thousand INR,send us the following details for claims.

Sex:
Full Address:
Full Name:
Age:
Telephone Number:

Thank you.
Dave Robinson.

To be precise, we live in a taxation-without-representation District rather than a state of any sort, and here the marital-property principle is called "equitable distribution" rather than community property. Either way, I'm looking forward to my share of the loot, knowing that one crore is equal to ten million rupees, which in turn is worth about $200,000. 

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1) Whoever helped former Senator Chuck Hagel (AP photo) prepare for today's hearings should retire from the hearing-preparation business. It is hard to imagine how Hagel could have walked into that hearing room without bulletproof (or at least confident-sounding) replies ready on three of the questions he was sure to be asked: about his opposition to the Iraq "surge," about his comments on "the Jewish lobby," and about his policy toward Iran.

Maybe this was the same team that prepared Barack Obama for his first debate last fall? Just a thought.

2) Whatever mistakes Obama may have made as president, today's hearings reminded us of one very important accomplishment. Because of him, the choleric and bullying figure that John McCain has become does not sit in the White House.

3) Virtually none of the hostile questions for Hagel reflected awareness that a secretary of Defense, no matter how influential, does not set U.S. foreign policy, does not decide where and whether to commit troops, does not decide on boycotts versus engagement with Iran, does not make war-or-peace decisions, and in countless other ways is not the President of the United States. We're used to "security theater" at the airport. "Hearings theater" is a far longer-established practice.

A little more than a year ago I mentioned the case of Shoshana Hebshi, a young American woman who lives in Ohio, is married, and has twin sons. Hebshi was born in California to a Jewish mother and a father originally from Saudi Arabia.

On September 11, 2011, she took a Frontier Airlines flight from San Francisco through Denver to Detroit. You can read her whole account of what happened once she got to Detroit, but this is the summary: After the plane landed, it parked for a while without going to the normal gate. Then heavily armed security forces came onto the plane and came to the row where Hebshi was sitting. They handcuffed her and the other two people in that row. The three passengers were marched off, searched, detained,  and interrogated as possible terror threats. On what grounds? The two men sitting next to Hebshi, whom she didn't know and who didn't know each other, were dark-skinned South Asians, and another passenger or a member of the crew became suspicious of them. As Hebshi said in her initial post:

Someone on the plane had reported that the three of us in row 12 were conducting suspicious activity. What is the likelihood that two Indian men who didn't know each other and a dark-skinned woman of Arab/Jewish heritage would be on the same flight from Denver to Detroit? Was that suspicion enough? Even considering that we didn't say a word to each other until it became clear there were cops following our plane? Perhaps it was two Indian man going to the bathroom in succession?

The FBI's attitude at the time was, Better safe than sorry. According to the AP:

Detroit [FBI] spokeswoman Sandra Berchtold said ultimately authorities determined there was no real threat.

"Due to the anniversary of Sept. 11, all precautions were taken, and any slight inconsistency was taken seriously," Berchtold said. "The public would rather us err on the side of caution than not.

Today the ACLU filed a complaint against Frontier Airlines, the local airport authorities, and various FBI, TSA, CBP, and other federal agents for abusing Hebshi's rights. You can read the ACLU's news release here, and the formal complaint in PDF here. Samples from the complaint:

 2. An American citizen born in California, Ms. Hebshi was arrested and detained because of her ethnicity and her seat assignment: she has an Arab last name and was seated next to two men of South Asian origin, who each allegedly used the lavatory for ten to twenty minutes during the flight.  Ms. Hebshi did not know these men, nor did she speak with them or leave her seat at any time before landing in Detroit.

 
3. Although Frontier Airlines never suggested that Ms. Hebshi had engaged in any suspicious behavior, Frontier Airlines staff provided her name to federal and state authorities when reporting the allegedly suspicious conduct of the men seated next to her on the plane.... 

5. During her several hours in detention, Ms. Hebshi was subjected to an invasive and humiliating strip search, which required her to strip naked, bend over, and cough.

6. Ms. Hebshi, by her attorneys, now challenges the discriminatory conduct of Frontier Airlines, which identified her as a "suspicious" passenger based on her ethnicity, race or national origin, resulting in her arrest and detention.

Good news from our friends at TSA: they are getting rid of the hated (by me) Rapiscan "backscatter" screening machines like the one shown at right. These are the scanners in which you stand between two big, opaque boxes, raise your hands, and have X-rays shot at your body. The systems measure the "backscatter" radiation that reflects back from hard and soft surfaces on your body and clothing. Radiation in such backscatter systems is much weaker than medical X-rays, which are of course meant to go right through your body. Still, it is ionizing radiation, which is guilty until proven innocent in terms of possible health effects. 

As I mentioned two days ago, tech people I take seriously are themselves taking seriously the threat of computers being hacked through a vulnerability in Java code. For the record, some updated info:

A few days ago I mentioned the glider pilot in South Carolina who was handcuffed, arrested, held overnight in a cell, questioned by the FBI and DHS, and finally released after 24 hours all for doing something (a) that was completely legal and (b) that he had no reason to believe was not legal. I offered this as one more entry in the ongoing chronicles of the security state: I'm very well aware that this and much worse has happened to a lot of people, and that the novelty in this case was that the "possible terrorist" was a septuagenarian white man from the professional class.

Readers weigh in. First:

Shocking -- and yet another event that further convinces me that the sort of Big Brother we're facing is more like Terry Gilliam's Brazil [right] than the ominous near-omniscience of 1984, Minority Report etc.

From Michael Ham:

I think it's worth pointing out that that the aggressive (and to my mind, egregious) actions of DHS and the FBI are perfectly legal--indeed, they could have locked the pilot up indefinitely in a prison (a secret prison, if they chose) with no access to lawyers or due process.

That's allowable if they suspect him of terrorist inclinations, thanks to the PATRIOT Act, which the Senate recently continued with no discussion at all. In fact, it would be perfectly legal for Obama to have him killed on suspicion (a "signature strike"). Once dead, since he's an adult male, the Obama administration would identify him as a militant: any adult male killed in a drone strike is ipso facto a militant--this is explicitly in accordance with the doctrine of the Obama Administration.

When I say "perfectly legal", I mean that Obama does it and it cannot be considered in court (just as the US kidnappings and torture of innocent people cannot be considered in court), because the Obama Administration uses the state-secrets loophole to keep these things out of court: no recourse for injured parties.

From Mark Huddleston, the president of the University of New Hampshire:

Thanks for spreading the word on this nonsense to the non-aviation community.

I used to fly out of Delaware, and, post-9/11, worried about being shot down for inadvertently trespassing on the (admittedly well charted) new no-go areas around the Chesapeake, my once-favorite VFR  meandering area. I basically quit flying VFR. This is the (il)logical extension.

From a reader in California:

First, did the local officials understand how gliders function?  You know, using thermals to get lift which requires them to circle.  Also, a cursory inspection of the glider would show nothing dangerous and I doubt crashing into the plant would do anything more than disintegrate the glider without endangering the plant.

Second, is it legal to refuse to release someone in custody until they sign a promissory note not to sue?  On it's face, that appears to be an admission of wrongful arrest (or what ever the legal term is as I'm not a lawyer).

Finally, I assume he didn't have a gun with him or there would be hell to pay for abridging his 2nd amendment rights.  Just kidding!

From Lee Harrison of the University of Albany:

I'm a sailplane pilot ... got my privates in gliders in 1971, didn't get a power ticket till '73.  I like flying sailplanes more than I like flying power, and I own a Ka-6 (antique wooden and fabric sailplane from the early 60s, nothing like competitive today, still safe and fun to fly). [Ka-6 photo at right.]

You can bet this story has gone through the soaring community like wild-fire.... There must be some sort of acknowledgement that this was nuts, some sort of progress on it not happening again.

The idea that someone would use a sailplane to attack a nuclear plant is NUTS!  And the idea that someone intending to attack a plant would circle over it is nutty too...  For the record, I keep my sailplane at Saratoga Airport (5B2) where there is vigorous soaring activity, and the Navy's Milton training reactors are about 5 miles SW.  We fly over those reactors all the time; indeed when they are operating they often generate useful and reliable lift.  And there's never been a problem, they are entirely blase' about it

In Europe, particularly the low countries (Belgium, Holland, northwest Germany) it's completely routine for sailplanes to use the updrafts from power plants, nuclear or fossil, and nobody worries about it.  ... Scariest damn flight I've made as a passenger was riding in a Duo-Discus (high-performance two-seater) with an ace Belgian soaring pilot as he set out insouciantly on a jaunt -- with a cloud base at about 1 km, crappy erratic lift, and over thickly settled land with damn few places I'd have wanted to try to land that sailplane.   He knew exactly where all the power plants were, knew we could use one later in the afternoon to get that last lift to get home .. and did.

I'm skeptical about many of the "worst virus ever!!!" warnings that storm across Internet-land from time to time. But the latest advisory, about a potentially very serious vulnerability in the Java plugin for all major browsers, has gotten my attention. Mac users: keep on reading. This applies to you too.

• In Firefox, select "Tools" from the main menu, then "Add-ons," then click the "Disable" button next to any Java plug-ins.

• In Safari, click "Safari" in the main menu bar, then "Preferences," then select the "Security" tab and uncheck the button next to "Enable Java."

• In Chrome, type or copy "Chrome://Plugins" into your browser's address bar, then click the "Disable" button below any Java plug-ins.

• In Internet Explorer, follow these instructions for disabling Java in all browsers via the Control Panel. There is no way to completely disable Java specifically in IE.

I am mentioning this story precisely because it occurs in a self-contained little corner of American life that most people would never think of or hear about. But it illustrates some broader changes in American life worth reflecting on.

When you have time, I hope you'll watch the first six minutes of the 19-minute video at the bottom of this item. Or you can read a summary here. The video and story come from the AOPA -- the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, which as I've explained is "my" version of the NRA. That is, it is an unyielding and at times unreasonable advocate for what it sees as its members' interests. In this case, I really support its vigilance.

The story in brief: Robin Fleming, a 70-year-old glider pilot in South Carolina, was out for an afternoon's flight last summer. From the AOPA story here's the pilot and his craft, to give you an idea of who and what we're talking about:



He left in the early afternoon. By late afternoon his colleagues at the glider club were getting very worried, because he had not returned as planned. He finally emerged late the following day, having been arrested, handcuffed, held overnight in jail, and questioned by the FBI and Homeland Security officials.

His offense? While circling over a lake to gain lift for a return to his home airport (this is what gliders have to do), he passed about 1,000 feet above a nuclear power plant that adjoins the lake and a nearby airport. This may sound ominous, but, as the AOPA story lays out, it's not illegal and of course has never led to any kind of security problem. In the years since 9/11, pilots have been told to "avoid" nuclear facilities, but most plants are not surrounded by any formal no-fly zones. The two plants I most often encounter when flying northward from the DC area are the famed Three Mile Island near Harrisburg, and the Limerick site outside Philadelphia. Each is very close to a small airport, just like the one in South Carolina  -- you look for similar away-from-residential-zone territory when siting airports and power plants -- and thus the coexistence of air traffic and normal plant operations is routine.

From the piloting world's point of view, the crucial fact is there is absolutely no formal indication of a "no-fly" zone in the area where the pilot got in trouble. Here is the FAA's "VFR Sectional Chart" (via SkyVector) for the scene of the crime. The pilot was circling over "Lake Robinson" in the upper center of the chart. The magenta circle next to the lake, marked with a cross symbol, is the Hartsville airport where the pilot landed, was swarmed by at least a dozen police vehicles, and was immediately placed under arrest. 


And if you skip to the last minute of the video, you'll see a surprise that doesn't involve this glider pilot but does bring you ... James Lipton.

Following post-Newtown massacre items #1, #2, #3, and #4. 

During the chaos immediately after Giffords was shot, a well-meaning and armed citizen bystander unholstered his pistol and almost shot an undercover cop from close range (story from the Denver post here).  

This is an example of what I think is the biggest single reason for stronger gun control--that making lethal decisions "under fire" is a very hard and complicated thing to do.  It's hard for our police and military to get the decision right every time, as we sometimes sadly see in the paper, and they are highly trained forces who do this for a living.

People who believe the only way of halting gun violence is to equip every American adult with a weapon may be well meaning. But they envision a United States populated by Jack Reachers. I think we'd get a United States populated by Barney Fifes.

Regarding the comments by a reader at a university who is also a gun owner. I know next to nothing about firearms. If, as your reader says, too many proposed gun laws have been drafted by people who don't know enough about firearms, then that's a problem that needs to be addressed. 

However, I'd ask your reader: during this and other gun debates, we often hear complaints about knee-jerk liberal anti-gun bias and ignorance.   But what have thoughtful gun owners done to address gun violence? Have they pushed for legislation they could support? Have they voted for candidates who supported such legislation? In practical terms, how have they separated themselves from the knee-jerk pro-gun insanity represented by the NRA?  And more to the point, what are they willing to do now to craft and pass into law effective gun legislation they can support?

I do have a sense that there is at least a sliver of possibility that "this time will be different" with regard to gun safety in the wake of the Newtown tragedy.  If nothing else, the emergence of reporting on the hard life of gun rights advocates (for example this piece in the Post today ) and their increasingly strident advocacy of a "more guns will make us safer" policy seems to be driven by concern that a shift in the political possible has occured.

I wanted to offer a response to your reader from last night regarding why those in favor of greater restrictions appear to have limited knowledge of fire arms.  

First, to establish my gun-totting bonafides (which seems to have become requirement for one's opinion to matter in this debate), I grew up in rural New England in a household that hunted and target shot.  My brothers and I learned to shoot rifles and shotguns when we were in elementary school.  Handguns were a big taboo for us, as my father felt they served no practical purpose for a sportsman (there was quite a scandal in my family when my uncle bought a pistol because he was going to try bear hunting and was told he should have one in case he ran into a bear and his rifle wasn't enough to take it down).  I've since moved to Virginia, and live down the road from NRA headquarters.  My wife and I do not have any guns, but go to one of the local ranges to shoot for fun at least a couple times a year.

Your reader is right that there are a limited number of people with serious gun knowledge heard advocating for stricter gun regulation.  But the reason isn't because Michael Bloomberg or any snooty liberals are excluding them.  It is because the "reasonable" gun owners like your reader have chosen to withold their voices from this conversation.  When they do arrive it is to cast a pox on both houses and then recede into the background.  And the best they ever have to offer, after whining about how of course they don't think anyone should be able to buy a rocket launcher, is "let's look at magazine size" when that is already the most heavily regulated aspect of guns (alongside the full auto ban).

As the father of a young daughter, I for one do not want her growing up in a world where she is told she has to carry a gun to be safe.  The reason why - because it is a recipe for violence.  While gun rights activists are happy to talk about the potential for a fellow citizen to live out a Hollywood sequence, they are mute on the thousands who die from gun-related accidents.  There is an incredible parallel to those who reacted to 9/11 by advocating people drive more, even though the odds of dying in a car wreck are orders of magnitude higher than dying in a terrorist attack on a plane.

There is another reason against the "more guns at school" argument.  My personal lesson from the tragic Trayvon Martin case earlier this year is a reminder of the danger of an armed citizenry that thinks they are empowered to exercise the state's monopoly on violence.  My brother is a police officer back in New England, and they go through hundreds of hours of training before they get close to that responsibility.  The reason isn't because it is hard to shoot straight or learn how to cuff someone, it is because it is really hard to tell whether someone is about to commit a crime and what is the appropriate level of force and approach to minimize danger for the officer, suspect, and surrounding community.  

If someone were to propose giving concealed carry permit holders a 500 hour course with continuing education requirements before they walk into my child's classroom, I will think about it.  But even that is the pragmatist in me.  If people really think cowboys and posses are the key to public safety try taking a trip to Iraq or the Congo and ask their citizens how that is working out.

Here is a serious proposal for gun safety:

- Privately owned handguns should be limited to revolvers.  If you can't defend your home or persons with 6 well placed rounds, squeezing off a dozen in rapid succession isn't going to save you.

- Rifles should be limited to bolt and lever action.  Rifles have no place other than hunting or target shooting.  If you can't take the kick - and frankly anyone who is properly trained can shoot just about any rifle or shotgun short of a .50 caliber - get something smaller.

- A mandatory safety training course specific to the class of weapon and provided by a state-licensed provider should be required before someone can purchase a gun.  Feds should allow portability across State lines, but online courses should be banned.  Instructors should receive training in spotting and reporting a high risk student.

- State and federal firearm laws should be fully extended to gun show sales.  Seriously, have you ever been to a gun show in the South?  I've literally seen a grenade launcher (for $25k!) at one with the seller noting "honey, if you buy this gun we make sure you never have to worry about finding ammo."

Taken together these have the effect of limiting the availability of more dangerous weapons as measured by the number of bullets some one can squeeze out in a minute.  That is the real enabler of mass shootings.

I also want to push back on you and many others fatalism that since we already have 300m guns we can never reduce the number.  Through out Africa and Asia in a lot of post conflict societies a critical piece of the DDR process is reducing the supply of weapons. How is it done?  It is a simple, free market solution. The government offers to buy back anything that is no longer legal to manufacture and sell new post-ban.  An AR-15 can be bought for about $1k these days.  Offer $2k a piece and they will dry up fast, and the price of one on the resale market will go way up.  This also has the added benefit of making them less accessible to unemployed 20 year olds suffering from mental illness.  If no one takes the offer - which I doubt, arbitrage is a powerful force - then you take a step back and think about the implications and adjust course.  

Sometimes the Atlantic is on the news for upbeat reasons -- for instance, our two current stories, by Charles Fishman and me, on positive manufacturing trends in the US. These fortunately appeared just before announcements from Foxconn and Apple of manufacturing-expansion plans in America.

I have been getting in trouble with many of my friends for asking them to think about what is politically possible, actually effective and might find agreement among reasonable gun owners. Full disclosure - I am a gun owner myself but very much in favor of stricter controls.

It frustrates me to no end that no one on the gun control side of the debate knows anything about firearms, the differences between them, or precise ways to differentiate between them in law (or for that matter, in conversation). So all we hear are knee jerk cries to 'ban assault weapons'. And to hear that again after a horrible event in which an 'assault weapon' wasn't even used is just inane. It's like calling for a ban on convertibles after a truck accident.

Here's my problem with the focus on 'assault weapons': what people are really talking about are not weapons that are designed to look like military weapons- that's merely cosmetic and it always diverts the conversation. What they are really talking about are three features - the fact that these rifles are semi automatic, that they are designed to accept high capacity magazines and that they are often - not always but often - chambered for small, high velocity rounds, rounds designed to break up in the body and cause maximum damage.

Whether they have flash suppressors or a handle on top or look like an AK47 is absolutely irrelevant. There are other rifles that have some or all of the above features and not all weapons styled after 'assault weapons' do. It is critically important in this argument to be very precise.

Furthermore, many people still talk as though these weapons are fully automatic, which none of them are, at least legally.

If we concentrate our gun safety efforts on those specific features I listed, I truly believe that we would not only gain traction among the public who do not own guns, but also some respect from those who do. Most gun owners can see the sense in restricting those features - especially in rifles like the Bushmaster .223 that Lanza carried (but apparently did not use). [JF note: later information indicates that the Bushmaster was in fact used.]

With handguns it would be trickier. Nearly all handguns currently sold are semi auto and there is a good reason - they are lighter and easier to control. The force absorbed by ejecting the spent shell and re-cocking the gun reduces the recoil considerably, making it possible for example, for a woman or a smaller man to shoot in a controlled way. While there is a great deal of support for eliminating semi-auto rifles it might be harder to find the same support for handguns. Magazines, however, might be a place to start.

Importantly, there is a consensus on some points and those are the points where new legislation should concentrate.  Also even the NRA has agreed in principle to stricter background checks, more diligent checking on mental health and above all better enforcement of current laws before the creation of new ones.

I apologize for the rant, but I am a pro gun control/safety gun owner and I am crazy frustrated with the current debate, the language in which it is framed, and above all the idiotic assumption that people can legislate or petition to change something which they can't be bothered to understand or know anything about.

Nearly twenty years ago, Erik Larson -- now known for Devil in the White City and other books -- published Lethal Passage, which was a carefully reconstructed narrative history of the weapons used in a school shooting.