Notes

The reason guns cannot be regulated in the USA is because of the violence, not in spite of it. The violence is necessary to maintain the fear, and the fear is necessary to maintain white male privilege. The idea that white men can and do shoot people causes every interaction with a white man to carry a tinge of threat: If you disrespect him, or merely fail to please him enough, he just might explode. When they say that two dozen dead children are the price we pay for freedom, what they mean is that they are willing to pay that price to preserve white male privilege. As recent events demonstrate, white male privilege is the preeminent policy goal for them, outweighing even honor, truth, and democracy. That they pursue it through terrorism should not be surprising; it was ever thus. That they cannot admit their true goal, even to themselves, is a side-effect of the defeat of the Confederacy. They cannot bear to be called a "racist" because to them, that term evokes "loser." When the South lost, we tied the shame of defeat to the cause of racism, hoping to kill it. Instead, it appears we have killed shame.

The supreme irony, of course, is that Australia still has plenty of white male privilege. While it is in retreat, it can hardly said to be dead. It's just not purchased with the blood of children.

More on the international comparison, from a reader who emigrated from the old Soviet Union to the U.S. and now lives in the Pacific northwest:

Having been born in USSR, part of boys’ education in high school included handling assault rifles (the notorious AK47), which are scarily elegant in the simplicity of their design. I shot air guns in the ranges, and enjoyed playing war, as all little kids do. But possessing most weapons wasn’t legal, and even hunting guns were heavily regulated.

When I came to America, one of the first—and weirdest—experiences was me and my brother being taken to the Cascades by two gun enthusiasts to go shooting. The truck was full to the brim with guns and ammo, anything from handguns to large, impossible to lift sniper rifles. While fun, it was very strange. One of the guys even had an AR-15 with grenade-launcher attachment at home. What he expected to do with this in [his suburban Seattle community], I have no idea.

In my time in America, I’ve seen and heard so much crazy crap that it boggles my mind. This obsession with weaponry in this society so rich and brimming with opportunity and devoid of danger is for me impossible to understand. There are no more Indians to protect yourself, wild bears and boars to kill, and there never were any invaders to repel….

I am now opposed to guns in civil society on principle. Having shot handguns, assault weapons, and shotguns, I understand their appeal. But I see absolutely no reason to have one myself. I don’t mind police having, but I do not believe private citizens should be allowed anything other than licensed hunting rifle… You want guns, join the armed forces, or go to the shooting range.

More on white male insecurities, from a reader in the U.S.:

I am a fatalist on this topic although something does seem (for now) to be different after Parkland. Its heartening to see these kids (as the kids say) dunking on politicians and the NRA.

My folks live in Tucson and last week I was there on my yearly visit and, as always, tucson is emblematic of the insecure, toxic masculinity that permeates so much of 'real' america. The amount of "Punisher," Gadsen Flag, Molon Labe, NRA, etc., window decals, and bumper stickers is astonishing.

I went hiking one morning at a lovely state park north of town and after I was done hiking I went to the local Starbucks. While I sat around looking at the mountains three young men showed up in a giant lifted F-250 pickup and all three were open carrying handguns of some sort...

A table of four people who looked to be affluent, middle-aged snowbirds (this is in an rich part of town) were behind me and one of the women mentioned calling the sheriff because some kids were being rambunctious in their neighborhood. As the woman related it to the others, the sheriff told her that the kids weren’t breaking the law and there was nothing to be done. She then said, with a laugh, that her husband went and got one of his guns and went outside and brandished his gun at the kids and at that point the kids “knocked it off.” Everyone laughed.  

Well-off white people and scared, insecure, white men of all classes are going to kill us all.

Similarly:

We do nothing after a mass shooting because , for many of us,  available options challenge our national identity.

Our nation was founded on violent action. Our founding fathers gave us the right to own guns so militias could handle defense in lieu of a standing army. Our frontier expansion required guns to protect settlers and eliminate native resistors.

A national persona developed lauding the rugged individual, who takes matters in his/her own hands, often using violence to obtain justice.  The Colt 45, Winchester rifle, AR-15,  John Wayne, Rambo, Film-Noir private eyes, even gangster films, are icons to this persona. When this persona meets a disgruntled, mentally disturbed individual, a perfect storm can develop. A gun or multiple guns are readily available, legally or illegally. Internet connectivity has added instant-notoriety attraction to this volatile mix.

Countering this plague will require us to alter our national identity, which won’t happen. We Americans cherish this identity.

Finally, on a possible solution at the local rather than national level.

I've been very active in the gun debate, but I've been mostly hopeless. The debate was over, the NRA won. But watching these extraordinary, exemplary kids in Florida speak out so clearly and unambiguously has made me consider re-evaluating that position.

Here's why. The path forward is blocked at the federal level due to a Congress that doesn't want to act and a constitutional guarantee that provides them cover for their craven attitude, and drives endless one-sided judicial decisions.

But there's another venue. A few years ago, almost out of the blue, Gavin Newsom, the mayor of San Francisco, just started handing out marriage licenses to same-sex couples and daring the feds and the courts to stop him. And they did, but it moved the ball and today, amazingly, same sex marriage is the law of the land.

So I want to see states (like California and Massachusetts) just pass the strong firearms legislation that protects their citizens and forces the courts to act again and again. Eventually there will be progress, and it won't be in the form of useless or pointless 'feel good' acts like background checks and assault weapons type bans.

It will merely come as an erosion of the absolutist definition of 'infringement' in the Second Amendment. If state and local governments can pass and enforce restrictions that do not amount to blanket gun bans, then you'll end up with a patchwork of gun laws, sure, but you'll have people at least able to determine what they'll allow in their own neighborhood...

Mainly this is a story of the effect of hyper-local-level civic engagement—even in a place like the District, which is not fully in control of its own affairs (because of the Congress’s continued control over its governance), which is the center of so many other consequential issues, and which has so many divisions within it. What has happened so far falls into these categories:

Local support and involvement. The closest-to-the-citizen unit of government in the District is its set of Advisory Neighborhood Commissions, which answer directly to local people and which report up to the City Council. Our effort began with an 8-1 vote in favor of the phase-out from our own ANC. Over the past year our members (mainly one heroic member) have gone from ANC to ANC, made the presentation, and gotten support, usually by lopsided positive votes. Six ANCs have endorsed the measure, with more continuing to vote. You can read samples of their statements of support here.

Environmental data. The underlying technical problem with gas-powered leaf blowers is their reliance on a technology so obsolete, so polluting, and so primitive that it has been outlawed or phased out in most other uses. These two-stroke engines burn a slurry of gasoline and oil—and burn it so inefficiently that some 30 percent of the fuel is sprayed straight out as polluting aerosols. The fuel that is burned is done so crudely that one little leaf blower can be vastly more polluting than a fleet of modern cars—as cars and trucks have gotten dramatically cleaner, and this old tech has stayed the same. One famous study found that running a leaf blower for half an hour was, in terms of certain kinds of pollution, the equivalent of driving a truck for thousands of miles. Some old-tech industry lobbyists complain about these studies, but anyone who recalls tobacco industry denials will recognize the tone of the discussion. And the major manufacturers are moving ahead to promoting their cleaner battery-powered models.

Public health data. The CDC says there is an incipient epidemic of hearing damage, for which nuisance noise like this is a major contributor. Acoustic studies have documented the unusually penetrating qualities of very loud and low frequency noise from leaf blowers. Other studies have identified the carcinogenic, asthma-inducing, and other disease-causing elements in the engine emissions and the clouds of fine particulates the blowers produce. These effects extend across neighborhoods, but of course are most intensely concentrated, in much of the country, on hired lawn crews. The members of these teams are usually low-wage, often foreign-born, often not English-speaking. Overall they are much more vulnerable than the people who are paying them, and are far from guaranteed to have good health coverage a decade or so in the future when the pulmonary and auditory effects of their work take their toll.

Technological progress. All the major manufacturers know where technology and policy are leading them, and are featuring new battery-powered models. The revolution in price-and-performance for batteries that is being driven by Elon Musk’s Tesla and many other firms is affecting this business as well.

As a cumulative effect of trends in all these areas, the most dramatic change is probably in the battlefield of ideas. Several years ago, the standard response to even talking about leaf-blowers was, “Seriously? This is what you’re concerned about?” Now more and more media mentions treat the acceptance of leaf-blowers as an inexplicably unsafe, dirty, socially destructive, easily correctable  artifact of modern life.

For instance, from the Wall Street Journal:

From the Washington Post:

From The Week magazine:

From the New York Times:

Finally from NJ.Com, the editorial board of the Newark Star-Ledger.

There is much more about the policy and legislative background of the bill, which you can read in detail here. The political reality now is this:

ANCs from across the District have approved the proposed anti-leafblower bill. A majority of members of the City Council have either co-sponsored the measure or indicated their support of it. But before anything can finally happen, the relevant committee of the City Council must hold hearings. And, by decision of City Council Chair Phil Mendelson, the committee that will handle the bill and conduct hearings is the “Committee of the Whole”—the entire City Council.

Will Chair Mendelson, up for a re-election run this year, agree to schedule hearings on a measure that most Council members support, and that many ANCs have already endorsed? So far more than 900 people have signed a Change.Org petition requesting that he do so.

Because The Atlantic’s site is meant for analysis and description rather than advocacy, I’ve said nothing in this space about the D.C. campaign since we got serious about it in the fall of 2016. Instead our group has posted updates—on environmental and public-health research, technical improvements, legislative developments—in the News section at our  own independent site, called QuietCleanDC.com. I invite you to visit that site for further news. It’s been a rewarding stage of engagement, which is bound to have a positive outcome—soon, I hope.     

You, who do not shoot AR’s (or at all as far as I know) do not see these rights as important, and therefore see it as no big deal to take them away, regardless if it infringes on any rights, which you reject anyway.

To give you an example of why the gun people disagree with you, consider something you do enjoy: Flying.

Most people who shoot AR’s view it like you view flying—something that they enjoy; the act of going to the range and shooting targets or “plinking” cans at home or whatever, is just an activity they like to do.  It then gives them the added benefit of being usable for home protection and the admittedly whacked out perspective that they will fight the oppressive government should it ever come to that.

Again, the last is probably ridiculous, but it is a psychic benefit important to many people; the home protection aspect is real and the enjoyment of shooting is real.

You would probably say that all may be true, but is not worth the deaths.  The pro-gun response is that the deaths from AR’s are a small, small proportion of overall gun homicides, despite the high profile cases.

Again, lets compare it to flying, something you love.  Every year, roughly 400-450 people die in general aviation accidents.  For rifles total, not AR rifles alone, but total rifles, the latest year (2014) had 248 people murdered.  (suicides are unknown, I’d suspect they are a similar percentage with homicides, i.e. under 5%; accidental death are almost exclusively handguns).

To put this in context, there are somewhere around 5,000,000 AR style rifles in circulation, meaning in any given year, there is (at most) about 1 murder per 20,161 AR rifles in 2014.  By contrast, there are roughly 210,000 private planes, so that would equal 1 death per 525 planes.  So from a purely statistical standpoint, private planes are about 80 times more deadly than AR rifles.

I realize that these stats are not apples to apples and if you include suicides and accidental deaths the AR might be as deadly or more deadly than private planes (although on a per unit basis, I would say owning a plane is far likelier to kill someone than owning an AR).  But imagine if the government took these statistics and banned private planes and non-commercial aircraft.  What would your response be?

I’m sure you can come up with all kinds of reasons why flying is important and useful and banning planes would be a complete over-reaction, but I can also point out that the vast majority of people don’t fly private planes and do just fine (plus you destroy the environment and suck up gobs of government money with regional airports and below market landing fees).

What if [the Las Vegas murdered] instead of buying a bunch of AR’s instead rented a Beechcraft Barron 58 (or something much larger, I’m not a plane guy), filled it up that barrels of gasoline and flew into an NFL stadium or concert full of people, something it seems he had every capability of doing?  Could there have been as many deaths?  If there had been, and the government banned private aircraft and you could no longer fly, wouldn’t that piss you off?

You are now prevented from doing something you love (and you only do it because you love it, there is no economic case to be made for private planes) because some evil act committed by someone unknown to you.

Again, I’m sure you don’t see it this way because you see no use to AR rifles.  But I see no use to private planes;  I think there is no reason for people who are not commercial aircraft carriers to fly, not to mention the vast and ridiculous subsidies private planes receive.  One of the great things about America is you can do things other people don’t approve of; that you can do things like shooting guns or flying just because you enjoy it.

I realize planes are heavily regulated, I guess my point is that despite the heavy regulation there are still deaths and despite the low regulation of AR’s there are relatively few deaths compared to other weapons.  Again, God forbid the Vegas shooter flew his plane into an airliner (which is actually quite difficult to do, but you get my point.  None of those regulations can prevent that sort of act).

That is what frustrates many gun folks is the attention on AR’s when the vast majority of gun deaths come from cheap handguns in the hands of criminals (which is illegal anyway) but the focus is banning guns used by legal gunowners, who are responsible for a fraction of a fraction of the harm.  And as many people have mentioned, with 300 million guns in circulation, regulation is largely futile; the focus should be enforcing current laws IMO.

If it makes you feel any better, I’d imagine we’ll be heading for a ban in the next 40 years or so if for no other reason that the hard core gun people are such profound assholes (as I’m sure your e-mails will attest to) they will alienate everyone eventually, so give it time.  I like to shoot guns for enjoyment and use them for personal protection and the only AR I own is a 22LR which on a good day can kill a large rabbit, but seriously think the left focuses on symbols (scary looking guns) in the gun debate rather than facts.

***

I appreciate the reader laying it out in this detail. Here are two obvious differences in the plane-versus-AR-15 comparison, from my (no doubt biased) point of view:

Number 1: small airplanes kill a lot of people, but they very rarely hurt anyone who hasn’t chosen to get on board.

Several years ago near my then-home airport, the Montgomery County Airpark in Gaithersburg, Maryland, a private jet crashed, in bad weather, into a nearby house and killed a mother and two children who were inside. (In addition to killing the pilot and two others aboard the plane.) It was so horrific an incident, and so universally understood as a grotesquely “unfair” extension of damage to people who had not knowingly accepted the risk, that the entire flying community recognized it might change the future of the airport and flying practices there. (This was so even though the airport had been up and running many years before the nearby subdivisions went in and people moved to the area.)

The episode was horrific—and rare. On average, there’s about one fatal crash a day, year round, involving small airplanes in the United States — a rate that has slowly but steadily decreased.  But in the course of an average year, very few of those episodes involve anyone on the ground. Some years it’s four or five people. Some years it’s none. By contrast: an average of around 90 people per day die of gunshot wounds, or a little under four per hour (not per year). Even after you remove gunshot suicides, which are around 60 percent of all U.S. gun deaths, there’s still an enormous difference between the damage done by guns to people who hadn’t knowingly accepted that risk, and the damage done by planes.

So: the undeniable dangers of small-plane aviation are almost completely limited to their own pilots and passengers. In this way aviation is like scuba diving, or motorcycle riding, or other statistically risky pursuits whose risks are concentrated on the practitioner. If the same were true of guns—that people using them were the only ones getting hurt or killed—the public debate would be quite different.

Number 2: If gun use and ownership were even 1 percent as tightly regulated as anything involving aviation, the landscape would also be entirely different.

Pilots are licensed, registered, subject to recurrent checks of everything from what prescription drugs they are taking to whether they have had any brushes with the law, apart from myriad regular checks of proficiency. (Sample: want to come with me for a night-time plane ride? Fine—but I need to have made three full takeoff-and-landing cycles at night time, in the previous 90 days, before I can legally take anyone with me in a plane at night. Do I want to use my instrument rating to make a flight when the weather is bad? Fine — but only if I have maintained legal “currency” by doing a certain number of instrument-conditions approaches and maneuvers in the previous six months. Do I want to fly at all? Let me tell you about the Biennial Flight Review, and the mandatory annual very detailed inspections of the plane itself.) Even a few of the federal regulations that apply to pilots would, if applied to gun ownership, be portrayed by today’s NRA as a catastrophic step toward totalitarian state control.

To answer the specific hypothetical: I couldn’t fly a gasoline- or bomb-laden plane over a crowd at a sports stadium, because there are no-fly zones over most such places now. Just as an illustration, from the FAA’s real-time map, here’s the (permanent) no-fly zone shown right over Disneyland. It’s the bright red circle with lines radiating inward from its border:

Yes, a determined and suicidal pilot could fly right through that and do damage. But everyone in the flying world knows that if that happened even one time, everything about flying “rights” and restrictions would change. Society would figure that it could not take that risk again. Here’s a real world illustration: after the 9/11 attacks, even though small airplanes had nothing to do with it, small airports around the country were shuttered for extended periods. Gaithersburg, where my propeller plane was at the time, was totally closed for about three months. No one could land or take off from there. The flight schools, maintenance shops, charter operations, and other businesses there were cut off cold, and of course many failed. Such is the public-risk/individual-privilege balance as it applies in aviation. Imagine the parallel with guns.

The balance between public risk and individual right/privilege is again coming into focus with guns. People who did not choose to expose themselves to gun risks, who were just going to a day at school, now lie dead, barely into their teens. That’s different from airplanes, it’s different from anything else. And it’s wrong.

There has been no counterweight to this culture of death. No one seems to be able to answer the question: What are men good for? What are the qualities that make a good man … good? Instead this enormous vacuum is filled by people with products to sell. Men are warriors with tactical sporks. What else could they be if they can’t be providers?

Caregivers? I read that most of the jobs in the near future will be in the Healthcare field. Don’t we owe it to these men who have been displaced by the loss of manufacturing and other blue collar work to, at the very least, acknowledge that this will require a different sort of mindset than hammering or shoveling? It will require a different sort of definition of what men are and what they might be.

Mental illness in this context means the inability to adapt to new circumstances but shouldn’t we at least admit the difficulty of what we are asking of men? I fear by not posing the question we are opening the door to a fascist mentality whose answers we cannot tolerate.

And a shorter version of a similar point:

I think the Californian reader [who previously argued that American culture has decayed] is onto something.Indeed, his tone of resentment against big and centralized government captures a lot of the anger common to shooters and the cultures in which they grew up.

The world has changed, they haven’t.  And we see what can happen when we add a gun to that equation.

All these are well-argued points. For now I’ll simply add that working-class men around the world are subject to similar pressures. Only in one country are they routinely vented through mass gun slayings.

Another reader on a different cultural underpinning of America’s gun culture:

One of the pieces that you wrote on Japan that stayed with me was the article on Japanese rice policy. [JF: It’s no longer available online, but was included in my book More Like Us.] The gist of the piece being that Japan goes to great lengths to ensure that the country will always be able to grow enough rice to feed itself.

The result of that policy being that the Japanese pay a much higher price for rice than they would if they just imported it from Thailand or any other South Asian country for that matter.  The premium put on self-sufficiency contributed to the extreme density of Tokyo, the relatively small number of large cities in the country as a whole and the comparably small housing that the growing Japanese middle class accepted.  All these sacrifices made in order to preserve as much arable land as needed to provide for a rice harvest large enough to feed all of the island.The reason for the practice, you noted, is rooted in a famine the country suffered in the 1700s which nearly denuded the country.

That observation stayed with me and it has informed my opinion about many practices common in other countries whose origins and sustaining motive is lost on non-natives.In fact, I think you can see prominent practices in many countries that have these kind of atavistic roots, rituals and traditions where the cost far outweighs any current benefit.  The maintenance of the British Royal pageantry, the extraordinary efforts of the French in defense of their language, bullfighting in Spain which has no parallel in the developed world.

I think that the one feature all of these practices have in common is that they reference something that the citizens of that country see as a symbol of their particular grit.  The “thing” that has been responsible for their culture’s ability to survive in its worst moments. The character feature that modern citizens fear would result in their ruin if extinguished. (There is more than a bit of this in the movie Dunkirk which I took as a long homage to the English will to carry on, despite all.)

I’m afraid ours is guns.

***

After Sandy Hook I wrote a few things supporting gun control on FB that put me in touch with a few people who were eager to defend their adamant pro-unrestricted gun rights views.  We were able, surprisingly to me, to have some extended and civil exchanges.

What I learned from those conversations is that guns and, more specifically, the ability to get and use a gun(s) at any time is, for one’s defense is for many the core of being American.  Against all reason, all available evidence that unlimited access to guns causes more harm than good, the likelihood that you—if you do own a gun—will ever use it in your own or anyone else’s defense, or any of the other thousands of myths about owning weapons, pro-gun advocates will not waver in that core belief. If belief is the best word for it. It is probably more accurately termed a faith.

The gun horror we now endure is a result of the imprinted experience of the 19th-century Indian wars, the vast destruction and death toll of the Civil War in the South and the general distrust and fear of African Americans, still strangers here after more than 400 years.  If you look at regions of the country where these themes are dominant you see the strongest, the most adamant defenders of gun ownership and the sanctity of the 2nd amendment.

If this were an issue for the Northeast and the West Coast, gun regulation would hardly be contested. In the southern, western plains and mountain states, it has and never will have any chance of being adopted.  And, thanks to the 2nd amendment, we cannot, as we are currently doing with marijuana, conduct real time experiments on a local basis.  We can’t even test the truth our assertions….

I am resigned to the reality of living with this gory theater to the end of my days unless something extraordinary comes along to change the landscape.  I still believe that the U.S. is far more malleable than any of the countries cited above.   But, apparently, the grizzly death of 20 small children in New England, masses of people in Las Vegas and 17 high schoolers in Florida just doesn’t seem to have moved the needle.  I’m not sure I want to live to see the tragedy that finally does.

Finally for now on American exceptionalism, a note from a reader in Melbourne, Australia. (Readers in Europe, Canada, and Australia have not held back on the “What is wrong with you people??” messages.)

Although I’ve no doubt that at this tragic and fractured time you and your fellow citizens do not need a sermon from the far-off beaches of Australia, I must say this:

I walk the streets without fear. My wife walks the streets without fear. My child plays at the park and the library and everywhere else and I hold no fear for him. No fear, that is, that any of us will ever be the victims of a gun.

Sure, I’m terrified of a traffic accident taking away those I love. I’m constantly vigilant for the everyday dangers of a big city. But I do not - ever - fear that a bullet will be the cause of unexpected, terrible grief.

And that is the outcome of gun control. There are bad guys here with guns, sure. But not many, because there aren’t many guns. It’s very, very simple.

I was 16 when Martin Bryant shot and killed 35 people in Port Arthur, not far from where I grew up in Tasmania. I went to the memorial service a week or two later, felt the raw pain. And felt the commitment to never allow it to happen again.

I can’t begin to imagine what the parents of Parkland are going through. Or the families of those who were in Las Vegas so recently. Or the mothers and fathers in every city and town of your country, every single day of the year, who open the door to a police officer saying “ma’am, sir, I’m sorry to tell you that....”

But I can imagine what it’s like to not fear that awful reality. Because I live it.

Gun control works.

More to come, including from readers making a conceptual anti-gun-control case.

I used to be a soldier. I served, mostly in the U.S. Army Cavalry, from 1992 to 1996. I was on guard duty at the front gate of our post in Tongducheon, South Korea, the night we went on war alert that we getting read to attack the North Korean reactor complex at Yongbyon. I carried an M60 machine gun while I was there, and I was the door gunner for my helicopter. That was a long time ago: before I was badly and permanently injured [in a civilian job], before earning [advanced] degrees, before earning a lot of grey in my hair. I turned 50 last year.

Like I said, I enjoy shooting my rifles. I also said they mostly sit in my closet untouched. I don't need them. Nobody needs them. Many other people, like me, simply enjoy the hobby aspect of shooting them as I do. However, Red Dawn Wolverine fantasists who dream of Civil 2.0, and unreconstructed racists fending off the hordes of Michael Brown teens who menace their fever dreams are a very large part of the equation. They are the ones who largely drive the extreme margin of the gun rights debate.

In any event, we know the truth. The truth is the gun lobby, many of their supporters, and their lap dogs in government will willingly sacrifice our children...my students...and me as well...to their atavistic god of American military myth rather than just live with only a lever action rifle or a bolt action deer gun.

This is the sheer insanity of it. They want me to go back to being a soldier. They want my colleagues who never even went to boot camp to now be soldiers with me on the new classroom battlefield so that they do not have to even stop selling any more of these things. This is how deranged and perverse our debate has become.

It won't do any real good to unilaterally turn my weapons into police at this point, although I would do so if that is what we decide to do as a society without hesitation. Few other owners of similar weapons would do so. All too many have been prepping themselves for their guerilla war against gub'mint tyranny for 35 years and they will certainly not cheat themselves of their shabby uprising if we hand them the opportunity.

However...

We cannot dissuade ourselves that we must, at the very least, stop additional sales now! No more AR platforms in gunshops. No more Kalashnikovs or H&K carbines or whatever. No more detachable magazines of more than ten rounds. No more pandering to the nuts who dream of their own movie that they star in every night. No more attention paid to their sophist arguments on how to define what an assault rifle means, or insistence that killers will always find a way, or that silly liberals don't know the difference between a real military weapon and (insert whatever AR clone here)...

My teenaged son is not up for the gun sacrifice lottery. My students are not up the gun sacrifice lottery. My colleagues and I are not up for the gun sacrifice lottery. I am not going to go back to being a door gunner in the hallway of my school so that an 18 year old unstable kid, or a 30 year old angry man, can buy a weapon, come to my place of mentorship and learning and then kill my students and my friends.

I'm not going to do that for you, fellow gun owners. I'm not going to do that for you, gun makers. I did my rifle carrying bit for the US of A. I am not going to do it now. My colleagues are not going to do it now. My students deserve a classroom where the threat is kept away in the first place. So do I and every other teacher.

We are not going to shut up. We are not going to go away. We are not going to be nice or polite. That cow left the barn.

We are angry, and we are going to make sure you know that we are angry. We are going to make sure you know that your right to buy a weapon of war does not outweigh our right to live and work in our classrooms.

I can already hear the cries of hypocrisy directed at me, and maybe they are right. But I say I don't need the assault rifles I have, and I say that if we all need to turn them in, then we need to turn them in. That is a decision we need to discuss and make. We already banned sales once before however, and we can do that right now if we have the will. Whatever we do from here, though, we are going to be in your faces and telling you that it is time to stop the insanity.

The picture is quite difficult to find online now, but it prompted a substantial amount of backlash against the Courier and ultimately a lawsuit by the family of the victim (which the Courier won). I asked a few people about this over the weekend and, to a person, everybody remembered this photograph. It had an impact.

There's no question images like this can affect public opinion. While I'm a bit young to remember Vietnam in real time, the resistance to showing even flag-draped coffins today is generally recognized as an effort to hide the cost of our seemingly endless wars (my wife pointed out that this is not necessarily true of the carnage that those wars cause to others overseas). Even this weekend, The New York Times declined to publish even an edited version of the video supporting its two-page story on the death of four soldiers in Niger. Today's helmet-cam is Vietnam's AP photographer.

I certainly can't say that I want to see photographs like this every day when I pick up the paper, but stuffed animals, candles, and crosses are not the real story.

From another reader, about the media deciding to be more brutally shocking (about brutal events):

I too have thought about the need to set aside concerns of media decorum and, with survivors' permissions, show all the brutal realities of mass shootings. A stark contrast is needed. In view of their dead, bloody bodies, the public should come to know something of the persons who were.

Even after the phrase “shithouse countries” was uttered, many media were knee-jerk reluctant to repeat it or to take pains to say its verbatim usage in the reporting would be one-time only, although doing so, without prelude, would have been entirely newsworthy and non-gratuitous.

And finally for today on the “carnage” theme, a complaint about “carnage-lite”:

A couple notes about the reader recommendations to "show the carnage" and to have a "change of heart."

The former echos what my senior high school English teacher said about violence on television and in the movies during the 1970s, that it wasn't real. Show real violence, he speculated, and people will be repelled and repulsed.

I'm not certain he was right, but he may have had a point; the carnage-lite media coverage we now get after mass shootings doesn't seem to be having a deterring effect.

And there's a kind of precedent for this too, though I hesitate to even bring it up--so much as even an allusion to the Third Reich is reacted to with the outcry "Overreaction!" But I think "show the carnage" was exactly the point of forcing German civilians to visit concentration camps during denazification. Collective guilt can have a powerful effect. But only if it's collectively accepted that there's something to feel guilty about.  

Maybe this collective guilt can be the catalyst for that change of heart. After all, the civic heart has been changed about all sorts of things. It's now in the process of changing about sexual harassment, though I think automobile safety and especially smoking are more instructive recent examples.

In my lifetime, smoking has gone from being the marker of masculinity to more the tag of a weak will. The very idea of an airplane flight so much as hinting at the smoke-filled back room where Warren Harding became a presidential nominee is today all but unimaginable. This, however, didn't happen overnight, and not all by itself either. Government action helped to foster this change of heart, the kind of meddling that's derisively referred to as social engineering by those who fear the nanny state. And indeed, I'm certain that there are people who smoke on principle, because they have the right and freedom to do it. I wonder how many people own guns for this very same reason.

But I'm encouraged by this: In the last 50 years, the pendulum has swung so far on tobacco that the public sight of once ubiquitous smokers is now limited to those few in ever-shrinking designated smoking areas. So perhaps in time we as a people will indeed have a change of heart about gun violence and ownership.

***

Culture  is the problem. A reader who, like me, grew up in California in the Baby Boom era, argues:

After each of these mass shootings I ask myself what has happened to American culture and Americans over the past 50 years to bring this about.

I turn on the TV, read the newspapers and all people are talking about is gun control.

I think about the old Wall Street Journal 'No Guardrails’ editorial which cites 1968 and the Democratic Convention as a critical point when our nation began to devalue self restraint.

Mr. Fallows: you and I grew up during the period of self restraint that preceded the late 1960’s, a time when family, religion, community had more importance in American culture and greater effect on individual behavior than today. We can’t turn back the clock but we should at least be honest with ourselves about what has changed in America over a 50 year period such that mass shootings are happening with increased frequency. I submit that is has more to do with behavior than with guns and gun availability.

Atlantic magazine is featuring stories about 1968 this year. Maybe this is a good opportunity to examine the cultural changes in America since 1968 and to try to honestly analyze the consequences for American culture of the shift from a dependence on local institutions for our unwritten rules and codes of behavior to the impersonal forces of big and centralized government. It might also be productive to examine the consequence of rejecting judeo-christianity as a part of our cultural infrastructure.

As I wrote back to this reader, I do indeed recognize that culture continually changes, and has since the time of my youth.

But it’s changed all around the  world, in many places more dramatically than in the United States. (Compare the China of the 1960s to this era — or Japan, or Korea, or South Africa, or Russia.) Only in the United States are the cultural changes expressed through nonstop mass shootings.  

Don’t Tell Us the Killer’s Name:

Your article did touch on the media's role in these shootings, but I believe that the media coverage is just encouraging  the next shooter who watches the scenes of crying classmates, horrified parents etc... and thinks about all the people that have wronged, or bullied him. The shooter’s name should never be used by the media.

Strike a realistically fatalistic note:

I share your despair and frustration. That said, I wonder if your publication, as well as the other mainstream media, should not adopt a new approach.

Just report the facts, not the outrage or the questions. Explain that you’ve said it all before and it does no good. Conservative politicians and the NRA have won. Repeat after the next killing. Repeat again. Repeat again….

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing but expecting different results…. The hopelessness is numbing.

***

Gun owners taking responsibility. In polls most gun owners say they support “responsible” use of weapons. (That certainly was my own father’s position: he trained as an auxiliary police officer and carried a pistol when making night time house calls as a doctor, but he stressed that everything about firearms needed to be approached with utmost care and gravity.) Some readers suggest that gun owners need to lead the effort for changed policy.

“Do you know any gun owners who support rational gun control?” A reader asks that question, and adds:

That’s what’s needed.

Learn a lesson from J Street taking on AIPAC.  I think a lot of gun owners would be for this.  A single spark can start a prairie fire!

Change of heart. Similarly:

One thing we are not seeing the slightest sign of: People who own these AR-15s (or like weapons) having a change of heart, deciding they really don't NEED such a firearm, realizing that by owning them they are actually setting a bad example and contributing to the problem, and who thus decide to forsake these things and surrender them to the police for safe disposal.

This by itself would not constitute a solution to the problem. It would change the whole psychology surrounding it, however, and could be the game changer that would allow us to start having a productive conversation about this whole issue of firearms.

I am not going to hold my breath while waiting to see if something like this will happen, for I have grown very fond of oxygen.

However, it would perhaps be revealing to ask ourselves: Why is it that we are NOT seeing such a thing anywhere? And why is it so outlandish to think that we might ever see it?

***

The political opposition. Mike Lofgren, who has a long background in congressional politics mainly working for Republicans, says that citizens and politicians who say they support gun control have to play as tough as Mitch McConnell and his allies do:

What you say about McConnell is all very true and well argued, but Democrats have more leverage on the issue than they think -- if only they would use brass knuckles  instead of powder-puffs.

They simply must, day after day, take to the House and Senate floors and say that Republicans in general, and McConnell, Ryan, and Trump in particular, would prefer to see school children massacred than face the wrath of the NRA. To repeat, McConnell and company would prefer to see kids murdered rather than annoy the gun lobby.

Brutal? yes. But is it true? Demonstrably. Etiquette enforcers, particularly in the media, would moan that Democrats were violating decorum, ripping asunder the fragile threads of civil society, and on and on.

Let them moan: the charge is true, and in any case, Trump (with the rest of the GOP following close behind) has so thoroughly demolished whatever standards of decorum had existed that accusations of incivility would be merely a hypocritical variation on media both-siderism.

I have argued before that any politically engaged American who wishes to oppose Trumpism and the attendant Republican racketeering will at some point have to get his hands dirty, just as principled pacifism was not a viable response to the rise of aggressive totalitarianism during the 20th century. The question is, are Democrats up to publicly calling a creature like Mitch McConnell an accessory to murder?

Because that's what it will take. To assume that anything less would be effective is to engage in magic thinking.

To close for today, another reader on decorum and politeness:

C.S Lewis once commented that "the greatest evil is now... conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices."

It is to weep.

From a reader who grew up in a “shithole” country but has lived in the U.S. for many years:

I agree with you and Mr. Riemen that it’s fascism.  Additionally, I’d like to offer that it is ‘Corporate’ fascism....

Re-watch The Firm by Grisham. Corporate is actually much more corrupt than the Republicans. All those management training programs exist only to brainwash and corrupt young college and graduate students to cheat, lie, steal, be greedy, become adulterous, etc. For many of them, these training programs are their first introduction to corporate life. Those chosen (when not friends and family) must have exhibited some quality that said ‘you can corrupt me’ and I am fine with it, and in fact I want it.   

I watched it for over 30 years at [a series of major banks and corporations]. The corporate autocracy is well, alive and still thriving.  In fact, whenever they are being challenged, they dig in. I saw it as it happened at [a major international bank] 2007-2012. They closed ranks after the financial meltdown and during the money laundering investigation and subsequent fine…. No one on the staff challenged the corporate autocrats, they want their paychecks and bonus. My manager at the time constantly reminded us how she wants her bonus this year, every year.

To me Trump is corporate fascism… The republicans just want their paychecks and post-government contracts, right? So, they continue to support him.

Please keep me confidential. I am from [a shithole], though citizen and New Yorker for 40 years.

* * *

Focus on the GOP:

It's pointless to conduct the debate on Trump's turf.  The best strategy is to ignore him and hammer away relentlessly at the Republicans for treason, corruption, and malfeasance.

The rot did not set in with Trump…. The only questions the media needs to ask our politicians are: how are you not corrupt, how isn't this treason, and why are you hurting your own constituents?

* * *

Foam:

I  have tried another approach about Trump with a number of people. Responces have been rather interesting. Even, I suspect, a Trump voter was stopped short and had to think about it.

I have said in various forms:  "Trump is foam on the surface of a great wave called digital media and globalization. It will be with us for the next 30 years, long after Trump is dead and buried."

* * *

A darker view of historical parallels:

I’ve been reading the Volker Ullrich biography of Hitler - The Ascent, which covers up to 1939. The period up until 1933 is fascinating, and I am struck again and again by the parallels to what is happening in the U.S. under this administration…

I definitely come down on the side of Riemen that, but for the longevity and roots of our institutions (and the press!), we could be sliding towards Fascism. I’m trying to stay positive…

Any comparison involving Germany is of course perilous. It’s so difficult for those hearing it to resist conflating generic “fascism” with the specific exterminationist horror of Nazism. So while the German descent from Weimar democracy, to fascism, to the black night of Hitler is more fully documented than other cases, comparisons with Franco in Spain and Mussolini in Italy leave more of the spotlight on the fascist system itself.  

* * *

And finally for today, a view from Canada on the collective American responsibility for what is happening to American values:

As a lawyer, a student of history and a very concerned observer from just across the border in what Trump would presumably call a "non-shithole" country, I agree fully with your analysis of the threat posed by Trump to the American values of constitutional democracy and the rule of law.

I am appalled by the "drip, drip, drip" assault on these values by Trump and his enablers. I suspect that the public, even the best informed among us, is slowly becoming numb to the daily assault - beaten down to the point that we're ready to throw up our hands and dismiss each new assault as: "it's just the President being the President". This is, of course, exactly what Trump wants. But, as you and others have pointed out, the movement towards autocracy and fascism by stealth is too dangerous to be shrugged off. It really is the slow death of a once-glorious idea by a thousand cuts.

One of the most frustrating things to a foreign observer (aside from the fact that we have no capacity to directly intervene to try to help) is the irony that the assault on democratic values and institutions is being lead by the nation that has done so much throughout history to foster and protect those values throughout the world.

Although other liberal democracies (such as Canada and the European democracies) eventually developed similar values and institutions through gradual evolution, America was the first to enshrine, glorify and apply those enlightenment values. As you pointed out, they have become part of the American psyche, the basis of its pride and the American brand abroad. It is this moral authority - not just military power - that enabled America to rebuild Europe and Japan after WWII with modern democratic constitutions and institutions; retool their economies; and construct and lead a system of international alliances, trading rules and financial institutions that have fostered peace and prosperity for 75 years.

The contrast between the America that was willing to lead on the basis of democratic values and institutions and the current Trump Administration is startling…. To say that America will pull back from NATO, the UN and multilateral trade agreements unless other countries "pull their weight" misses the point entirely: America when it was truly great was willing to take the lead and bear the disproportionate burden of a leader because it recognized that its own peace and prosperity depended on fostering and protecting its values throughout the world….

One thing that I've learned as a student of history is that that there is indeed an "arc" to history and that historians tend to judge harshly those people who made conscious decisions to put themselves on the wrong side of that arc. If Americans sleepwalk while their elected President, aided by his enablers, consciously undermines democratic values and institutions, fosters racism and nativism, thumbs his nose at environmental protection and debases America's position in the world, I fear that they will eventually be looked upon in the same way that we now view the German people in the 1930s: complicit in the rise of fascism and the Nazi party.

As I said, I am a frustrated foreign observer.  

Shamocracy. From a reader on the West Coast:

If we're just looking for ingenious words, I would suggest "Shamocracy," which combines the notions of "sham" and "shame."  A quick online look suggests that those two are not eymologically related.  "Sham" seems to have emerged only in the late 17th century, with no lengthy pedigree before it, while "shame" goes back to Middle This and Old That.

* * *

No, just ‘fascism’. Another reader:

The OED:

“fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization.

“The term Fascism was first used of the totalitarian right-wing nationalist regime of Mussolini in Italy (1922–43) the regimes of the Nazis in Germany and Franco in Spain were also Fascist. Fascism tends to include a belief in the supremacy of one national or ethnic group, a contempt for democracy, an insistence on obedience to a powerful leader, and a strong demagogic approach.”

Well OK then.

And, similarly:

I've been a bit reluctant to toss around the term "Fascism." In the back of my mind it kinda seems that some specific historical figures own the branding.

Then I see this from Trump's speech on Monday: "Somebody said treasonous. Yeah, I guess, why not? Can we call that treason? Why not? I mean they certainly didn't seem to love our country very much."  Fascism.

It would be interesting to find out who "somebody" is—and if they happened to be on Fox sometime before Trump gave the speech.

* * *

Ochlocracy. From a reader at a well-known university:

I would propose that we have witnessed a shift into ochlocracy, or mob rule as it is informally known. Here's some [very] cursory research I did on the subject. Hope you are curious enough to give it a gander.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/322437634_a_primer_on_the_Trump_ochlocracy

And from another reader:

I have a suggestion for what to call this era: attempted democracide

* * *

A view from overseas.

Shithole America.  That's how I feel.  Don't believe me: take a look at your President.

Also:

I have started calling the Trump presidency “The Era of Bad Feelings” with an apology to President Monroe and the “Era of Good Feelings”.

* * *

Please stop saying ‘populist’. From a well-known writer:

The Populists were strong believers in localism, in financial regulation, in the breakup of large economic entities, and in a strong role for the state, including nationalization of the financial system. They began as cross-racial coalition builders and fell later into racism

I covered the last great Southern populist and knew him and his voters well. To read over and over that Trump is a populist would make he tear out my hair, had I any.

* * *

A historical comparison: the under-valued Gerald R. Ford.

I’d like to cite Gerry Ford to amplify your point about perfunctory “America is an idea” rhetoric in inaugurals. (Re: Calling the Trump Era...”)

Younger Americans with fresh memories of the charismatic Obama may pine for another shimmering hero to follow this orange menace. Great leaders are rare. Often it’s miracle enough to find some modest enough to admit he is “a Ford, not a Lincoln.”  

The last time we woke from a “long national nightmare” we had Gerry Ford at the helm. In his inaugural he spoke of professing the “same oath as George Washington.” And transfer of power rhetoric was not perfunctory but explicitly addressed in multiple ways for effect. “I am acutely aware,” he said “that you did not elect me with your ballots, and so I ask you to confirm me with your prayers.” Continuing, Ford admitted he did not win office through “secret ballot,” but neither did he ascend through “secret deals,” unequivocally denying what the most cynical were assuming. “I am indebted to no man, and only one woman, my wife Betty.” These statements exemplify the “America is an idea” point you briefly addressed, and the often taken for granted truth that the president’s first duty is to serve the common good.

Thirty days later, Ford committed political suicide by pardoning Nixon, was vilified for it for 20 years, and lost a close election (to another decent man) because of it. It wasn’t until 20 years later when his fiercest critics, led by Ted Kennedy, acknowledged that in 1974 only Ford saw the national need so clearly.

[JF note: For the record, Jimmy Carter—who fought bitterly against Ford in the 1976 campaign, and of course unseated him—used the very first words of his own inaugural address to thank Ford “for all he has done to heal our land.” Those words were meant to acknowledge Ford’s judgment and public-mindedness. (I know about this first-hand.)]

I’d pay any price to have in waiting a man as honest and steady, if plain and dull, like Gerry Ford right now. Presidential greatness comes in many forms and is not always shiny and charismatic.

* * *

A historical comparison from Europe:

I wondered if you might find it useful to look up Umberto Eco’s essay: Ur-Fascism? Eco discusses the diagnosis of fascism in clear and simple language (by his standards anyway). It was published in The New York Review of Books (June 22, 1995) and is now available as a pdf to download ...

Perhaps it’s only the famed politeness of Americans that leads to the avoidance of using fascist and racist to describe Trump and his followers. I hope so.

There is a similar muffled debate this side of the Atlantic: a weird hesitancy in public discourse when it comes to the far right. However, I fear it is nothing more than a textbook example of sticking your head in the sand. If you pretend it’s not so then it cannot be so. For example, when British MP Jo Cox was assassinated by a fascist gunman, even the BBC veered away from using ‘assassination’ in its bulletins. Instead they opted for less politically weighted words like ‘murder' and ‘killing’, yet the political motive was brutally clear.

* * *

And finally for now:

Great job of slinging mud at our president and the man who may one be known as the greatest president this country has even had and the greatest statesman the would has even known.

One has to wonder where how you will be graded… will it be on a lists of journalist or a list of mud slingers.

Stop crying and sucking your thumb! Hillary lost! Get over it! Get out of bed and do something positive for your country.

The reader writes:

I’ve thought about talent in two worlds: chess and academic philosophy.

In chess, Hou Yifan [JF note: the young Chinese player who has been women’s world champion, whom I have met and interviewed] is more of an outlier; the effects of Chinese culture, in which modesty is highly prized, should not be underestimated…. Magnus Carlsen doesn’t behave like Trump (who else does?!), but that his ego is enormous isn’t exactly a Norwegian state secret. Likewise with Garry Kasparov, and the late Bobby Fischer was a poster child for the Dunning-Kruger effect in realms outside of chess….

One can debate whether chess is a sport, but even if it’s not there are an awful lot of ways in which it is sports-like. Ego is one of them, and while there are competitors who are genuinely humble, a lot of them aren’t. Some hide it somewhat for the sake of propriety and sponsorship, while others don’t (again, in some cases, for the sake of sponsorship!). This is true in other realms as well, where the arrogance of entitlement is seemingly boundless. (Harvey Weinstein, anyone?)

Two of your examples struck me as counter-examples to your thesis: Roger Federer was arrogant about his tennis talent (I think he tried hard not to show it, but it would leak out in comments [JF: agree]) until Nadal started beating him on non-clay courts, followed by Djokovic knocking him down another notch. And Streep’s willingness to make public pronouncements on policy (in this she is far from alone, as Hollywood and Broadway are filled with offenders) is a lovely example of the D-K effect.

In the realm of philosophy, both sorts of behavior appear among elite philosophers. By the nature of the discipline one would expect a deep sense of humility and self-awareness, and in some cases that expectation is fulfilled. But not always, and plenty of truly great philosophers have been as arrogant as the day is long.

Now, I don’t think I’ve known anyone as cartoonishly over the top as Donald Trump. He is in a class by himself, but it’s also very much worth considering that a significant proportion of what he’s doing is shtick. Muhammad Ali (a sometimes but not always “charming” exception [calling Joe Frazier an “Uncle Tom” isn’t a high point]) and Ronda Rousey, for instance, both thrived on being heels. It was good for them both competitively and in building their brand. It’s a risky approach, but as it stakes out a space where few dare to tread it offers the chance to clean up if it works. For Trump, it has worked. (See for instance Scott Adams’s writings on Trump, including his recent book Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don’t Matter.)

By the way, about the D-K effect, I’m not sure that Trump is guilty of it. What I mean is this: he says a lot of things to the effect that “I’m great at this, everyone says I’m brilliant at that,” but when we look at what he actually does he generally sticks to things where he has some competence: business and (especially) self-promotion. Of course Trump has a colossal ego, but the fact that he so openly shares his self-love with the world doesn’t by itself make him incompetent at what he does. [JF note: Yes, if “what he does” is show business. No, if it is governance.]

To summarize, there are lots of arrogant people at the top of any profession, some of whom hide it and some of whom don’t. And how one presents oneself is often (at least in part) a matter of persuasion rather than a reflection of one’s character, and while it’s usually a safe strategy to come across as humble, bombast can be effective.

Let me walk you through my process for checking this short section of “What ISIS Really Wants,” Graeme Wood’s March 2015 feature for The Atlantic, the story with the highest engagement time in the world on the internet that year. In the piece, Graeme explores the ideology of the Islamic State, arguing that the group is rooted in carefully-considered religious beliefs.

How do I go about fact-checking a piece like that? Here are the basic steps.

1. Get familiar with the material. I read the piece a few times and educate myself on the topic. Then the author either annotates the piece with sources in footnotes or simply walks me through it. This gives me a sense of how the piece was put together: What or who are the sources? Who might be difficult or sensitive to deal with? What did the author read? Then I ask the most important question: What is the author most worried about? Often it is the understandable fear that a highly sensitive source might not want to cooperate with the checking process. More on that soon.

2. Break down the piece with a red pencil. Every checker has a different system but I’m old-fashioned and still work on paper. I format the piece with wide margins so I can clearly keep track of which source is responsible for which fact. Months later, I need to be able to see the backup for everything. I then underline all the facts that have to be checked in red pencil. Proper names are highlighted. Legal sections are noted in red marker with lots of circled stars to indicate a need for triple-checking. Anything that I have confirmed gets a check mark through it—and, oh, the lovely satisfaction of making a check mark! The checked text disappears into the background, allowing me to focus on the lingering unchecked text. If I’m worried about a detail and want to discuss with the author, I’ll highlight it in yellow, and list possible solutions on a sticky note. After Graeme and I agreed on a change, I circled it with a red pen.  

3. Plan interviews with the author’s sources. Next, I figure out who to contact and what to ask them. For a primary source, this could mean hours of conversations or pages of emailed questions. For a difficult or sensitive source, I create a script of what I need to find out and confirm, since these conversations are too important to leave anything to chance. Once a source hears the checking questions, and they realize what the author has or hasn’t chosen to include, they often sense the focus of the piece in a way that wasn’t clear in initial interviews. This is one reason why checking is not a job for the faint of heart. The next-to-last thing that a checker wants is to endanger a piece’s prospects for publication—but the last thing a checker wants is to allow publication of a piece that cannot withstand factual scrutiny. So it is utterly imperative to know about any potential issues prior to publication. It’s a controlled explosion, of sorts, when we still have enough time to sort out problems or at least prepare ourselves for the fall-out.

4. Start talking. One of Graeme’s main sources for this article was a young Australian named Musa Cerantonio, who, at the time, had been called one of the two most important “new spiritual authorities” guiding foreigners to join the Islamic State. And while Graeme had had hours of interviews during which to build remarkable trust with Cerantonio, I had to do the same in much shorter order. When Graeme and I first spoke about this, our fear was that Cerantonio might be reluctant to speak to a Western woman about anything, never mind spend hours confirming his philosophical beliefs. When we did finally speak, perhaps because of his confidence in Graeme, Cerantonio was surprisingly cordial and quite candid, especially given that he was being closely watched by the Australian government, under suspicion of promoting terrorism.

5. Review quotes with the author’s sources. Occasionally I will paraphrase quotes for sources, but generally I read the quotes to them. Invariably many explode (and not always in a controlled way). But if someone objects, that doesn’t mean we aren’t going to publish. We just need to make sure that the quote is accurate, that it is attributed to the appropriate source, and that the context is fair. In the second paragraph of his article, Graeme notes that, according to Cerantonio’s friends, ISIS leaders have an obligation to declare the caliphate. When I asked Cerantonio about this, he was coy, clarifying that it wasn’t “a friend” but someone he communicated with in chat rooms. Graeme immediately realized who he meant and we changed the line to say “a Western convert within the group’s ranks who Cerantonio had described as ‘something of a leader.’”

6. Call on a few experts. I went through all of the facts in this section with Cerantonio, but it was also crucial to make sure other experts agreed with him. To confirm whether or not ISIS supporters considered it “sinful” for their leaders to delay the establishment of an Islamic caliphate, I spoke to two others quoted elsewhere in the piece: Anjem Choudary, a U.K. preacher and ISIS supporter, and Cole Bunzel, a Princeton scholar of Islamic State ideology. In my notes, you can see where they confirmed various details. In one instance—in the second paragraph, where I circled “they would remove themselves from Islam,” referring to the consequences for ISIS leaders if they did not appoint a caliphate—Choudary and Bunzel felt the wording was too strong. Although Cerantonio had originally said this to Graeme, when asked about these comments directly he moderated his stance.

7. Talk everything over with the author. People often ask me if the process with the author is confrontational. It shouldn’t be. A checker should never assume to know all without giving an author the benefit of the doubt. I always try to be respectful and kind. The author has been swimming in these waters for a long time before I jump in. We never keep score. One of the best ways to avoid problems in going over questions with an author: Offer suggestions for alternative language that would solve each checking issue. If I can’t come up with an easy solution, it’s often because I don’t fully understand the problem. I need to keep digging.

Part detective, part therapist, part comrade-in-arms, fact-checkers should, above all, be guardian angels sitting on an author’s shoulder, making sure that their arguments are based in fact, rather than supposition. Such intensive scrutiny may make it seem like we are trying to tear down an argument—but our intention is opposite. We tease the argument apart only to build it back up with even greater strength. Our work requires diligence, tenacity, diplomacy, patience, and pretty much constant fear. But it is always interesting. And in a too often careless world, it can even feel noble. Check please!