Reply #93: confusion

[iverglas]

Over the course of the last 45 or so years, I have made numerous trips to the US, varying in length from a few hours (when I decided to drive part of the Montreal-Toronto trip on the US side of the border, out of boredom with the 401 on this side, or to go for dinner in Port Huron, out of the paucity of decent restaurants in Sarnia at the time) to three weeks or so. I've spent time in Boston, New York, DC, Chicago, and various other large cities in the east. I've vacationed on the east coast of Lake Michigan and up and down the Atlantic coast. I've spent time in the tri-city area of Illinois and Iowa on the Mississippi, and the surrounding area, like Wisconsin. I've camped in at Town Lake in Austin, and stayed with friend's family in Plano and Richardson, and slept in the room where the homemade bullets were made, by the father who couldn't get treatment for a serious injury a couple of years later because his wife's company had been sold and the insurance plan hadn't kicked back in yet. I've driven the highways and biways of the desert and hills around Las Vegas (when you're not a gambler, the cheap casino packages are still useful) and spent time around Lake Champlain and throughout New England. I've stayed with friends on the outskirts of Detroit and Baltimore. I've listened to the bluegrass NPR station at a university in Tennessee and every other NPR station that I have passed or stayed within earshot of (sometimes on this side of the border, along those boring miles of the 401 near the border). Speaking of which, let us not forget that on basic cable here I get NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN and Fox (and BBC World and France's TV5), and I subscribe for digital MSNBC. A Canadian can be intimately familiar with things in the US without ever getting up off his/her chesterfield.

Sunset/moonrise over Death Valley was one of those peak experiences. Almost running out of gas before reaching the one pump in the valley kind of was too. So was sitting at the edge of the continent in Eastport, Maine, at sunset, surrounded by pink clouds obscuring the ocean.

And so were sunset and sunrise on the main square where the musicians gathered in Santiago de Cuba, and the 12-hour overnight domestic bus trip back to Havana and being stopped before dawn by people in military uniforms with torches and required to disembark and re-embark for reasons unknown, until you inquired of your seatmate and learned they were implementing measures to prevent the spread of pig diseases from province to province. And being interrogated by a one-armed colonel with an eyepatch when you inadvertently started snapping pix of a military camp, and being let off with a warning (and your xmas photo film intact) because you're obviously just a moron, albeit a good socialist moron. And standing in the presence of Stonehenge.

And of course here at geopolitical home there have been the rainy drive through the old old mountaints while hitchhiking up the east coast of Newfoundland, the stunningly cloudless and starry summer sky over the midnight drive from Edmonton to Calgary, the northern lights over my own house, the frozen expanse of northern Lake Superior in mid-February as seen from a U-drive car whose heater has died.

Geography isn't politics. And people aren't their governments. And travel anywhere is always worthwhile, if you pay attention to all of what is opened up to you.



Regardless, which aspect of the problem do you focus on exclusively?

The problem being ... I'm not sure. In any event, I seldom focus on one aspect of a problem exclusively, and I don't think I do in this instance, whatever it is.

Harm reduction is the idea that the harms present in a situation can be reduced without having to eliminate those "root causes", while at the same time working on the root causes.

The spread of disease via contaminated IV drug use equipment can be reduced by providing free needles. That doesn't mean you don't offer treatment, and don't do prevention work. But you don't ignore the fact that contaminated needles are a source of a serious problem and can be addressed independently.

Death, injury, crime and the terrorizing of communities can be reduced by reducing access to firearms. That doesn't mean you don't work to develop the economy, increase equity in the distribution of resources, empower women and protect them from violence, eliminate racial discrimination, develop community resources, and so on and on. But you don't just ignore the fact that inappropriate access to firearms is a source of problems and can be addressed independently. Reducing the influence of one factor in a complex equation really can affect outcomes.


firearms obtained through straw purchases are never obtained legally, firearms acquired on the black market are never obtained legally.

My statement actually was:

And every firearm that is illegally obtained ... was first obtained legally by someone.

What are you disagreeing with? If there was a straw purchase, the person who made the sale had acquired the firearm legally. If a firearm is acquired on the black market, it had already been obtained -- whether through sale or theft -- from someone who obtained it legally. No such thing as an "illegal firearm", right? There is a point in the life of every "illegal firearm" where it was "legal", and that is the point at which control is required: measures that prevent the illegal transfer or theft of "legal" firearms, i.e. that can be expected to reduce the incidence of such transfers and thefts. Anything else is just locking the barn door.