A few random thoughts about the recent terrorist attack in New York City.
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President Trump has gone after the fact that the terrorist came in on a "diversity visa". Well, while Trump will now be attacked for mentioning that, visas for the purpose of achieving diversity are flat out odd, particularly for the United States which is the most diverse nation on Earth.
What's a diversity visa?
Well, according to the US:
Section 203(c) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) provides for a class of immigrants known as “diversity immigrants,” from countries with historically low rates of immigration to the United States. A limited number of visas are available each fiscal year. The DVs are distributed among six geographic regions and no single country may receive more than seven percent of the available DVs in any one year.
Why do we need to do this? We don't. It's not the business of the United States to try to make immigration "diverse". A sane approach would be to base immigration on something else, which we've already discussed. That may cause diversity to occur accidentally, as in when refugees are taken in, or people with particular needed skills, and that's fine. But to decide that "gee, nobody comes here from there, and we got to address that" isn't an immigration policy. It's just a feel good, and naive, social policy.
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The New York policeman that hit the suspect fired nine time.
The press has been quick to declare the policeman a hero, and he may very well be, but I have to wonder, why do big city policemen exhibit such crappy marksmanship? Nine times and he hit a man sized target once? Not that this is unusual. The New York City Police Department some time ago infamously shot a Haitian man nineteen times after firing forty one times. Pretty bad.
Now, I may not know a lot about his shot. Maybe it was at long range, which with a pistol is tough. Maybe the target was seeking to evade skillfully.
But it seems to be the case that any time we read about New York City policemen using their firearms, they shoot a lot but hit little. That would frankly not occur in most of the Western states in the same circumstances (I wrote this, I'll note, before the recent incident in Texas).
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On the last item, while I don't know the circumstances so I'm commenting only in general, the modern definition of hero has become so loose that simply being subjected to violence causes somebody to be branded a hero.
The last big Eastern city to be attacked by deluded Muslim terrorist who hailed from a former Soviet republic was Boston, and the entire city was branded as "heroic" for that. But the city basically holed up for a day while the police eventually found the guilty parties. That's not cowardly, and it may be wise, but it's not heroic.
It's also likely not the result the authorities would have received in most localities West of the Mississippi, FWIW. That might not be heroic either.
Anyhow, this policeman might be a hero. I don't know. Or he may have just been doing his job which, as harsh as it is to say, doesn't make you a hero.
On this, by the way, there was a situation back East where a policeman being held at gunpoint begged for intervention from a passerby who was armed and who shot the hostage take (it didn't take him nine shots either). That strikes me as heroic, but I haven't heard it proclaimed to be. Maybe it has, however.
Last night when I turned on the news, I saw where later Entertainment Tonight was going to have an expose on how easy it is to rent a truck.
Seriously?
This is a bit of a revelation as it shows the same mindset that tends to go into ever instance of there being a shooting. A truck used in a crime? Gosh, we have to do something about the lack of truck rental policies in this nation!
Like what?
Fill out a form where you promise not to use a pickup in an attack?
As a local wise sage I'm related to closely pointed out, if you can't rent one. . . you can probably steal one.
Sheesh.
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Okay, I know that this is an ISIL/ISIS inspired attack and I've been quick to point out again and again that Islam has a problem with violence, but as I noted the other day, when you are at this level I think you are forfeiting your Holy Warrior card. That is, no matter what Mohamed thought about jihad, I'm pretty sure he didn't have this in mind.
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On Islam having a problem with violence, I'd note that it seems well established that some of the people who attended Islamic services with this fellow thought he was a really unhinged radical. They said nothing to anyone.
Nor can we expect them to. Violent extremists of every stripe are very rarely exposed by their ethnic fellows. Most Sicilian immigrants were not in the mafia but it took forever to crack the mafia. Criminal organization from Boston Southies has been hard to expose forever even though most Southies are not in criminal organizations. Strong ethnicities, particularly recent arrivals, generally will not reveal problems amongst their own. They just won't.
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And some random thoughts on the assault in Texas.
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This dude had a violent domestic assault on his record, had escaped from a mental health facility in 2012 after he was caught
sneaking guns onto an Air Force base and had been regarded by the USAF as having attempted to carry out death threats towards his military superiors.
Given all of that you'd think that the USAF would have made sure that he ended up in the records for criminal searches so that he was ineligible to purchase a firearm, right?
Nope. They didn't managed to get that done.
Not that this is really uncommon. It isn't. We pretty much let loonies be loonies until they do something really bad. And that's nuts.
We'll have lots of talk now about banning instrumentalities, but the fact of the matter is, this guy should have been in prison or a mental institution already.
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I wonder how many shots the armed citizens, who hit this guy twice, took?
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The Texas assailant wouldn't have been stopped as soon as it was but for two civilian Texans, one of whom was armed.
Of course, you can argue that if the assailant didn't have access to arms, the attack wouldn't have happened (although you really can't be sure). But then, he wasn't supposed to have access as he was in the category of people that can't legally own firearms.
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Some Takeaways:
We live in the least violent era in history, ever.
That's easy to forget due to stuff like this, but we do need to remember it. Of course, that doesn't mean that we have license to ignore real problems.
But not having license to ignore real problems also means actually analyzing the problems.
And what would that teach us?
Maybe somethings that are true, but which don't fit the cuddly view we in the west have of the world.
One thing it would teach us is that even if most of the world is in its least violent period ever, some big patches of the world, characterized by a lack of development and close adherence to the Islamic faith, remain in the 7th Century more or less, in terms of their world outlooks and willingness to be violent. There's really no reason for everyone else to participate in that by importing it.
Immigration can be to aid the oppressed, but its more properly to aid the country where people are immigrating to, in most of the world. As the world isn't infinitely large, taking that approach, with allowance for humanitarian reasons to other goals, is the sensible policy. Taking in radical nutjobs in the name of diversity is stupid.
People can talk about gun control all they want, but what you have at the end of the day, in regards to the type of violence we still have, is control of a really violent element. Islamic radicals are some, but people who are just flat out nuts and violent are another. Waiting until they become unglued before anything is done is really not very smart.
Both of these acts could have been entirely avoided. One by leaving the disgruntled Islamic radical in his home of origin to be a pest there. The other by putting a violent mental deficient in the stockade for years.
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