Risk

Is America really dumbing down or is the body of knowledge just outpacing the public's desire or ability to keep up?  When I see 'documentaries' on  very liberal Free Speech TV like

Resonance: Frequency of Beings. "This spectacular documentary uncovers our relationship to the frequency of Earth and our bodies; and how cell phones can affect these and cause cancer."

I have to wonder if spectacular and speculative have a special relationship here.  What the hell is the frequency of Earth? Would that be mechanical resonance, orbital period or some electromagnetic phenomenon that has some supernatural relationship to Maxwell's equations?  I sure as hell don't know and I'm very skeptical  about my body or yours sharing any of those things. I do wonder if the producers know why police radios at vastly higher output power and at adjacent wavelengths don't give you cancer, but then people who talk about "cell phone frequencies" usually don't know what they are, or where.   Still it sounds good if you're one of those people who talk about energy as though it were something mystical contained in crystals and pyramids, arrangements of furniture, chakras or one of those 'As Seen on TV' bracelets "tuned to natural frequencies."  

Then there are devices like the "Electromagnetic Frequency Protector Shield" selling for 5 bucks on eBay which  protect you from "streams of energy with electrically charged particles released from electrical devices." which 'continue to flow' even when the device is turned off.  It's a few inches of wire wrapped in a coil and does absolutely nothing whatsoever to deflect, subdue or protect you from the imaginary, nonexistent dangers described. Not a damned thing and no, your hair drier isn't emitting radiation when it's turned off:  neither particulate or RF.  Sweet Jesus, but maybe I should be grateful that they're no longer trying to sell you the idea that TV will make you blind and give you cancer. Remember that?  Remember when canvass shoes would ruin your kids' feet and Rock music would cause premature puberty.  Maybe we shouldn't laugh when the far right idiots tell us that Teletubbies will make the kids gay.

Whatever the frequency of beings might be, the frequency of belief in mystical properties and mystical phenomena amongst people who call themselves both liberal and enlightened is appalling. The propensity to believe without critical thought is not restricted to those without a monkey's knowledge of physics. It's not restricted to those who fear radios and believe in mysterious energies that either radiate away into oblivion or float around hallways at night scaring people. We all do it.

If some study, whether truly scientific and objective, randomized and double blind or a collection of dubious anecdotes designed to sell a product of no merit, we're likely to believe it, quote it and use it to support our opinions.   Take the oft-cited study that came out in Early March that purports to show that there is a positive correlation between "more gun laws" and fewer gun deaths. I was tempted to think it lent support to the conclusion it claimed, but does it?  Or does it show a correlation not with severity or comprehensiveness of gun legislation but simply with the number of separate laws?  The latter would fail to support the arguments it's being used to support and that seems to be the case. Lumping suicides into the equation takes it further from credibility as we cannot know how many potential suicides chose another option.  

Frankly, the phrase "studies show" is a red flag.  It's part of  the headlines of innumerable scams, deceptions and marketing strategies, but the public knows little more about statistics and about what constitutes a scientific study than it knows about electronics and electromagnetic propagation.

So are we really at risk from gun violence and are we all at equal risk?  Yes and no. Here's a study that ranks places and risk, now versus a decade ago. Is it surprising that the odds of becoming a victim of violent crime are one in seven in certain areas of Detroit and that other areas of equal population density that once were as bad have since fallen off the charts?  Who knows? studies show what you hope they show, but this one argues that demographics may play a vastly larger part than legislation or enforcement in reducing violent crime. Gentrification may control gun use more than legislation.  Affluent people may not be any more honest, but they don't need a gun to do business.

 As concerns the risk of gun violence, the gun friendly South has improved enormously in the last decade, Some Northern neighborhoods with their handgun bans and registrations have got a lot worse. Miami is not only no longer the murder capital, it's far safer than Chicago on a per capita basis.  New York, however, with it's strict gun control of many years' standing is much  safer as well. The risk seems to have more to do with immediate neighborhood conditions than with what metropolis the neighborhood is in or what laws the state or city may have.

So am I buying this study because I'm prejudiced?  Maybe I am, everyone is, but to a gun control activist, all problems of violence are the same and can only be addressed by gun control laws.  I'm not so simplistic.  I think problems like violence in America are complicated and have many factors of varying importance and are more appropriately treated as such.  

Why is Miami where virtually anyone of good character can legally carry a concealed weapon -- a city with poverty, with many ethnic minorities and all the urban problems of Chicago -- a far safer place than a city with complex, rigid gun control where only the police can own a handgun and carry permits are not permitted at all and gun ownership is lower?  Some decades ago, it was quite different.  What has changed? Don't we need to know?  Maybe I am prejudiced, but I think there are more questions than certainties and as has long been the case in America the center cannot hold because there is no center, because the other side is the enemy, is crazy and dishonest and all interchangeable and we don't listen to them.

When it comes to studying the effects of radiation I try to give weight to what physicists and engineers have to say over the opinions of gadget salesman and crystal therapy gurus. When it comes to slaughter, I try not to start with a conclusion, a solution.  I'm open to the idea that we have more than one type of violence with more than one dominant cause. I'd rather hear from real statisticians, from law enforcement experts and from objectively gathered and interpreted data and a good deal less from activists, propagandists creating collages of observation, anecdote, myth or whatever it takes to support a program that's far too fervently supported, too aggressively marketed to  be scrupulous about data or its interpretation.