On guns

© Joshua Stark 2015

First off, I must admit it -- I am a gun nut.

This may come as a surprise to many, many of my friends and colleagues, since I don't work in a field where guns get talked about much, I don't have a political affiliation where being a gun nut is held in high regard, and I don't often even pick up magazines or books anymore that refer to guns.

Contrary to what many may think -- and my birth certificate -- I'm also an 80 year-old man (on the inside), and so set in my ways, and I haven't kept up with all the newfangled gun stuff ("newfangled" probably being any caliber that came out after the .280).  I am especially turned off by the latest fetish with the AR platforms -- maybe because I'm a bit of a gun snob (guns are metal and wood, not a bunch of plastic molding), maybe because I'm concerned about high-capacity magazines, and maybe because I'm turned off by the less-than-subtle racism, rampant indignant victim mentality, and rabid anti-American, pro-Confederacy bluster that all-too often comes along with it.  Also, the .223 is a worthless cartridge for my uses (I don't seal hunt or varmint hunt).
flx1247rg
But, I do own a large number of guns.  These include two deer rifles (one bolt-action .270, one lever-action 30-30), five shotguns (two side-by-side double barrels in 12 and 20 gauge, one over/under double barrel 12 gauge, one single-shot 20 gauge, and one pump-action 12 gauge), and one pistol (a single-action .22/.22 magnum).

To my liberal friends, this may be considered a not-so-small arsenal.  To my conservative friends, it is dangerously lacking in anything appropriate for personal defense.  To my gun-snob friends, the cache has no caché (apart from my not-quite-yet-functional 1887 Greener side-by-side, which would be given a slight nod).

Not one of my guns is available for home defense, should the need ever arise (pray God it doesn't).  No, they are all locked in a safe -- unloaded, and separate from the ammunition.  Instead, we have the standard strategically-placed Large Stick, various long knives, and a hatchet I'm sure I could find if I had the time to spring out of bed and dig through the backpacks.  We also have a MagLite (not the mini version, mind you, but the full-on model made so popular by Ben Stiller in "Night at the Museum").

The purpose for my guns is that I hunt with them (except one).  But I would be lying if I didn't say that I really, really like my guns.

To be completely honest, like most kids, I've liked guns ever since the first time I heard about them, and I have no idea when that happened.  All I can say is, from the time I can remember, I was already fascinated by ballistics, the fit and finish of wood to metal, and the various capabilities, provenance and mystique of certain calibers, gauges and models.

This love didn't come from my family.  My Dad only had one gun -- a Winchester model 20 single-shot 20 gauge that kicked like a 12.  He'd hunted some when he was younger, but he wasn't a "hunter".  He was (and remains) a working-class intellectual -- an English major mud-logger -- but the tomes filling his bookshelves are not Ruark nor Capstick.  Hemingway, yes -- but moreso Shakespeare, Faulker, Vonnegut, Merton; treatises on religious philosophy and ethics, and the Great Works.

My interest in guns did come naturally, inextricably linked with my being completely head-over-heels in love with the Outdoors.  We fished all the time, and I ran barefoot through miles of corn fields, ditches and levees.  I read National Geographics, Field & Stream and Outdoor Life cover-to-cover, along with Olaus Murie's "Field Guide to North American Mammal Tracks".  I watched for birds, and we bought a handheld spotlight and drove the empty levees in search of foxes, coyotes, skunks and other marshland denizens.

And I hunted.  And hunted.

I also kept up with gun-tech.  In high school, I did four years of rifle team, and earned my varsity block my Freshman year.  I hung out with a couple of gun nuts, guys with modified Ruger 10/22's, guys shooting 22-250's and Thompson/Center pistols.  I can still make a cop feel comfortable by rambling on about the good points of a .40 cal over a 9mm.  Target practice and shooting clays is fun -- really fun!

But, I am torn today.

Yes, guns are just tools -- and tools have special purposes.  Hammers are really good at nailing; drills are really good at drilling. I think you know where this leads...

I see the horrific impacts of so many guns on streets, amid rampant poverty and powerlessness.  I do not believe that the 2nd Amendment guarantees a right to private ownership of any and every weapon  (else we'd have to allow for nuclear armaments owned by private citizens), so I'm okay with drawing lines (though I don't know where those lines are).  But, I also find myself cheering on the female Peshmerga Kurdish troops and women demonstrating empowered equality on U.N. missions in Africa.  If I'm happy to see women empowered through being armed (and to be honest, in these cases being armed is a vital part of their empowerment), then why not my own sisters here at home?

I know that gun ownership carries with it a tremendous power and responsibility, and, as a leftist, I don't completely trust that power in the hands of government (especially where I see that government failing to protect many poor folks).  As a Christian, however, I see the gun as a crutch and an obstacle to real power and transformation.  I guess I'm torn like Hamlet, only I don't have to deal with it face-to-face like that poor bastard.

I don't have an answer to the violence of our society.  I know fewer people would be harmed, physically, with fewer arms, but I don't see the disarming of American society going so well in reality.  In the meantime, I see the weak preying on the weaker with arms, and I wonder how best we might protect them.

But when it comes to my own guns, it has little to do with ideas of protection.  I enjoy guns like I enjoy knives and cast-iron pans, binoculars and bows. I like to look at the really nice ones, then, when I can afford one, I might pick up one of the cheaper ones.

The Vatican takes a stand on climate change

© 2011 Joshua Stark

The Catholic Church recently published a report from its scientific arm - a non-denominational organization, and one of the oldest scientific bodies on Earth - showing its concern over the indisputable fact of mountain glaciers retreating all over the world. 

From the introduction:

"We call on all people and nations to recognise the serious
and potentially irreversible impacts of global warming caused
by the anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases and other
pollutants, and by changes in forests, wetlands, grasslands, and other
land uses. We appeal to all nations to develop and implement, without
delay, effective and fair policies to reduce the causes and impacts of
climate change on communities and ecosystems, including mountain
glaciers and their watersheds, aware that we all live in the same home.
By acting now, in the spirit of common but differentiated responsibility,
we accept our duty to one another and to the stewardship of a planet
blessed with the gift of life.

We are committed to ensuring that all inhabitants of this planet
receive their daily bread, fresh air to breathe and clean water to drink
as we are aware that, if we want justice and peace, we must protect
the habitat that sustains us. The believers among us ask God to grant
us this wish."

The Secret of NIMBY

© 2010 Joshua Stark

Okay, so I have a 'problem' with silly, obscure titles.  Sue me.  But there is a secret of NIMBY (Not-In-My-Back-Yard'ism)... that secret is... we all use it, and it ain't all that bad.

I'm sure you've heard NIMBY excoriated as a concept at one time or another.  Usually, hateful language is aimed at the concept when tied to limousine-liberal-elite-hippie-tree-hugger hypocrisy, like when a wealthy, left-leaning neighborhood turns down a waste facility in their county, and it gets located in a poor backwater.  You can also hear it when people argue about the future of greenhouse gases, as in the case of David Zetland's post here. (if you read the comments section, that's me defending NIMBY.)
flx1247rg
However, there are many logical, ethical reasons for the value of NIMBY, the value of protecting your own back yard.  And I'll start this defense, as many ethical philosophers do, with a claim, and then use a thought experiment (a pretend set-up used to illustrate a particular idea) to support it.

My claim:  People prioritize their values, and people who do not value the safety and well-being of their own physical places are stupid.

Yes, I'm blunt - this is a blog, not Harvard.  (And although I didn't include a "should" or "ought" claim in the sentence, it's inferred.)

Now, to support this claim with a thought experiment couched in a series of questions:

First, would a reasonable person allow a threatening murderer to live in their actual back yard?  No, a reasonable person would not.  Then, would a reasonable person allow a threatening murderer to live in the back yard of someone living 10,000 miles away?  Yes, a reasonable person would allow that.  That second claim sounds silly, but it is true.  Many bad people live in other countries, other states, even other towns.  Where we are able, people move those bad actors out of their own back yards, and others do not begrudge them this, (with one nuanced exception which I will address later).  But the reality of the world is that we must prioritize our values, and our limited resources demand that we prioritize the safety and well-being of our location.  That is NIMBY in a nutshell.  Now, let's see this concept in environmental ethics, with another thought experiment/claim.

A person has every reason to keep open, seeping toxic waste from being dumped in their physical back yard.  A community of these same persons has every reason to keep open, seeping toxic waste from being dumped in their public places.  In fact, as I claimed above, it would be stupid for a community to allow open, seeping toxic wasted to be dumped in their public places, or, to put it more broadly, and kindly, it is perfectly reasonable, even expected, for a community to prioritize its own physical safety and well-being.  If you agree with this, then you agree with some form of NIMBY'ism, and your problem isn't with the concept, it's with the application in particular circumstances. (If you don't agree with it, stop reading here.)

Take another example, more positive this time:  When a California community pays local taxes, should they expect those tax revenues to pay equally for roads built in North Korea?  India?  New York?  Arizona, then?  It is perfectly reasonable, even expected, that a community will prioritize its own infrastructure.  In fact, one may go so far as to make the ethical claim that a community should prioritize its own infrastructure, its own physical safety and well-being, and that to do otherwise (to build an equal amount of roads all over the Earth) would be... well, stupid.

Interestingly, attacks on NIMBY'ism almost always occur in only two circumstances.  One is when arguing about the general notion of externalities (effects upon society from production and consumption).  The other, more common time, is when specific communities pressure a particular enterprise (say, liquor stores or waste facilities) out of their location, or export their own problems, thus putting pressure on neighboring communities.   The latter is actually a form of NIMBY'ism, and it falls under that "nuanced exception" I referred to.  The former, however, is typically an off-hand remark that does little to further an understanding of the real world, and it fails whenever specific examples are provided.

"Opponents" of NIMBY'ism typically make an argument analogous to "an eye for an eye leaves everyone blind".  If you push a bad thing out, they say, then you push it into somewhere else.  "Opponents" also add that if you extend some sort of NIMBY'ism into the universal (that is, treat the whole world like your back yard), then you create an untenable place, because our bad stuff has to go somewhere.  Usually, anti-NIMBY arguments assume both that the selfish nature of NIMBY'ism is wrong, and that the particular problems being exported are inevitable problems with no other solutions. 

Did you notice opponents in quotation marks?  That's because these folks only oppose NIMBY when it involves others' back yards - NIMBY-as-universal - not NIMBY as applied to their own communities.  Nobody says, "yes!  I'll take your open, seeping toxic waste in my physical back yard"; they always have a reason for why their place is no good for it.  This is not unreasonable, but it is hypocritical.

These "opponents" also believe that bad things are inevitable from production and consumption, but they are unwilling to allow those bad things into their own back yards, so they basically become NIMBY-people, with a dose of hypocrisy, topped by an unwillingness to deal directly with the bad things they believe they must create through their own production and consumption.  What they have really done is fall into that nuanced exception.

Really what angers people, the unethical behavior that gets labeled NIMBY, is when individuals or communities export their own messes into other people's back yards.  This is usually made worse by the fact that the wealthy can buy their community's safety (economic NIMBY, and the reason why people want to be rich), while poor folks cannot.  The recent fight between Kern County and L.A. over the latter's dumping their literal crap in the former's back yard offers a prime example.  L.A. residents do not want to deal with their own poop.  Kern counters with a firm, "Not In My Back Yard".  Both represent NIMBY, but only one has breached an ethical line here.  L.A. needs to learn to deal with its own waste.  But, whoever wins this argument, NIMBY is not the bad guy here.

People need to prioritize the safety and well-being of their communities.  Rather than excoriating the notion when arguing over who and where gets to deal with our waste, we should understand the value of NIMBY and instead look for ways to internalize external impacts -say, by pricing or capping pollution levels to a much greater degree.

Enviros? Conservationists? Tree-huggers? Killers?

I love the political realm, for the most part, though I also hate it. In fact, my fascination with it probably has nearly as much to do with the emotions it stirs as it does with my personal belief that we are all responsible in our democratic republic. But, one place that really bothers me about political 'discourse' is the prevelance of half-formed ideas, urges and reactionism that get rolled up and kneaded into little soundbites, or worse, labels.

People are labeling creatures, we are ordering creatures. We create boxes of meaning into which we place ideas about people and things. Then we attach words to these boxes, for ease of use. This is very helpful in remembering, for example, that a particular mushroom killed Joe-Bob, or that cars with the word "Hyundai" on them may not be solid purchase decisions. However, when it comes to labeling groups of people in the political realm, we can really step on our own feet and hinder good management decisions.

Let me be perfectly clear here: The number one threat to the environment right now is unfettered development. Were we to efficiently manage our future development, and re-configure existing development, we could:

1) Help to effectively mitigate greenhouse gasses;

2) Much more effectively protect habitat and wildlife corridors;

3) Improve the health of our people;
4) Provide more opportunities for healthy outdoor connectedness, and more of a sense of place.

I could go on, but those are the big four when it comes to our future.

So, why am I seemingly jumping from one topic to another? Because our current political climate has so polarized us on environmental issues that we cannot even speak in civilized tones about the environment, much less push effective legislation.

Hunters, think about it: What is the bigger deal, that you can't shoot a lead round in condor country, or that you can't shoot ANYTHING?
Nonhunters, think about this: Hunters killing deer in a forest managed mostly through their dollars, or no deer at all, because the forest is now a string of Kinkos, Targets, and ticky-tacks?

The political upheavals of the 1960's & 70's completed a great schism in the community of people who love nature. This schism has reached such heights, that now, when I write about these topics, I have to write convoluted sentences about the "environmental-conservation community", and probably stay away from words like "natural resources" or "movement". Even the words "environment" and "conservation" are loaded!

It's downright ridiculous.

Of the four major groups spawned by the first folks loving nature in the late 1800's, three of them can share in an honest attempt to rein in sprawl, protect valuable habitats and corridors, re-establish watersheds, wetlands and prairies, and any number of other important goals for places. These three groups are hunting organizations (like the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, SCI, Pheasants Forever), conservation groups (like Defenders of Wildlife, the Nature Conservancy), and environmental groups (like the Sierra Club and the Center for Biological Diversity).

The fourth group, believe it or not, is another symptom of unfettered development. In our expanding suburbs, with no real rivers or wild places, there grew a group of people who 'love' nature. They often have had little or no contact with it, with particular places or creatures, because of where they live and how they were raised. They have no experiences with death and life, realities of our world. They only think of these things in the horrific. In this vacuum, fed by an honest longing for nature and the wild, but with no way of getting the genuine experience, the animal rights movement was born. Of course, I'm labeling, and I know that many animal rights' proponents have had many experiences with the wild, but for the most part, of the folks I've run across, most have come from urban or suburban environs, and may have worked in healing or rescuing animals, but haven't really seen a cat catch a bird, and do not understand that death must occur for even their continued survival.

If the three major groups who care about the environment and have experience with it could honestly engage young people by helping to curb sprawl and create living places where kids can respectfully experience the wild, then we can also help develop people with a true understanding, and therefore appreciation, of that wild. To do that, we don't need to put down our differences about other conservative/liberal ideas. We just need to meet and stick to the subject.

Where do you see connections that can be made?

White House Conference on Wildlife

Does anybody know about this conference taking place in Reno, October 1st-3rd? I've just heard about it, and hope to attend.

Dr. Krasny's fine show

Perchance you were able to listen to Dr. Michael Krasny's radio show "Forum" a couple of weeks back, say, August 5th? No? Well, in the 10 o'clock hour the show covered "the future of hunting" for an hour, with guests from Ca. Fish & Game, the Orion Institute, and Born Free. Guess which guests were pro-hunting, and which were against. Well, after some incessant telephone calling, I was able to get in and say about a half a cent (my two cents, as you know, tend to be long-winded). I did get a follow-up question from Dr. Krasny, who I respect and admire, but I don't think it was his best question: He refers to a middle-school short story and subsequent Ice-T thriller. You can hear the radio show here; I'm at the very end, the last four minutes or so.

Well, the program was purported to be about the "ecology and ethics of hunting", in light of the opening of deer season the following Saturday. They didn't get the date for opening day of "deer season in California" exactly right, as it was just opening day of the A-zone rifle season, archery having opened a month earlier. Unfortunately, they didn't get to the ethics of hunting, either. This is where I was frustrated, and my call in was an attempt to bring a little bit of the ethical conversation back.

The two gentlemen who defended hunting, with Fish & Game and the Orion Institute, focused almost exclusively on two important contributions of hunting to conservation: 1) the creation of the conservation movement by hunters like Roosevelt, and 2) the continuing contribution of the lion's share of conservation dollars and volunteer time to habitat restoration and protection. The lawyer for Born Free, and to a bit of an extent, Dr. Krasny, focused on the personal act of killing something, and of human's effectively trespassing on wild land. At one point, the Born Free rep. says that wild animals should be left in the wild, and that people shouldn't be bothering them.

Needless to say, most of the time the folks just talked past each other. Animal rights folks called in and said that hunters were probably exhibiting psychological disorders, and that people should be leaving animals alone (I've got a blog on that here), and pro-hunting folks called in and said that hunters are the backbone of conservationism, and either they or the ones they know are very respectful of their game. Anti-hunters couldn't come up with an alternative to hunting as a revenue stream for real conservation measures, and pro-hunters shied away from the personal experience that includes killing something.

My call was to bring up the personal ethical implications of hunting vs. vegetarianism, and when I was asked by Dr. Krasny if I'd ever thought what it would be like to be the animal, I responded that everybody dies, and that the act of killing and taking responsibility for one's food and the sacrifices that requires can make a person more human. I'd hoped the whole show would look clearly at the ethics of hunting, at the nature of death and life and food and sacrifice, in addition to conservation and heritage and a true, real, and contemporary understanding of wildlife and the wild. I was disappointed, because everybody just went back to their safe corners, instead of really stepping out. But, I'm glad this topic was broached in a broader venue, I learned one sad statistic from it, that fewer than 1% of Californians hunt, and I re-learned an appreciation for Mr. Posewitz of the Orion Institute. He's a good guy.

More on ethics and hunting

There has been much controversy of late around hunting. Over at a wonderfully written blog, the Hog Blog (just google it), the author posted a defense of hunting as a response to some pretty nasty stuff written to him by an anti-hunter. His response is a good response, and the ensuing conversations are wonderful to read.

The conversation spins round the ethical question of hunting. Many, many arguments pro- and con- are made to the management of hunting, but most often these arguments spring from an ethical decision about the nature of hunting. People seem much more comfortable arguing the 'objective' criteria of management, probably as a result of our attempts at basing our society on science. Very often this is a good thing, but at times it too effectively hides the ethical component, the very impetus for our decisions. Our choosing science as the determining factor in management (game, land, or otherwise) is in itself an ethical decision. Aristotle hit on this point when, in his Nicomachaean Ethics, he determines that politics is the greatest good, as it determines the nature and direction of all other endeavours. It is important to bring to the fore, to discuss, argue, and come to understand the nature of our ethical decisions. In this light, here are some thoughts about hunting as an ethical activity:

Just as one cannot help but impact the environment, so one cannot help but kill. The nature of the physical world is such that things die, and that many living creatures gain or maintain life by killing other creatures. Our very bodies kill living beings every second of the day, and if they did not, we would die. So the question cannot be: should we kill? "Should" implies "can." Because we cannot help but kill, we must ask more thorough, more nuanced questions, because we understand killing as the finality that it is, and we understand that death and dying often brings sorrow, often goes hand-in-hand with suffering, and we are sympathetic creatures.

Before we single out hunting, consider all of the times and places in which we are responsible for killing: Driving is a direct action which kills countless animals, insects on the windshield; eating farm-raised meats kills animals for our sustenance; eating grains, fruits and vegetables kills countless plants, animals, insects, and fungi, through pest eradication (even organic farms need to keep pests down), harvesting and sowing methods, and the taking of millions of acres of habitat; electrical generation kills many thousands of birds each year, as do skyscrapers. So many ethical questions come from lists like this. Many of these questions are easy to answer, but difficult to carry out truthfully. Many others are difficult choices in and of themselves. Here are a few:

Should people allow other people to do their 'dirty work'? Should people move so quickly through the world that we become a danger to others? Should people use electricity at all?

As for hunting, for me it answers many important ethical questions: Should I take active responsibility for the consequences of my existence on this earth? Should I understand, truthfully, the nature of sacrifices for me? Should I incorporate myself more naturally into my local environment? Hunting is just one "yes" answer to this question. I cannot in good conscience allow others to kill for me, to kill secondarily, as a result of transportation or television, and not, at least occasionally, take up the responsibility for myself.

Hunting answers other questions as well, and hunting opens my eyes to the nature of, well, nature. It gives me a real, physical place in this world, a niche we have filled for untold millenia. We have relationships with others of the wild, as creatures in the wild. Our conscious minds offer us the opportunity to know this on a grand scale. Sometimes we succomb to our baser tendencies (to avoid pain, hunger, heat or cold or sadness), we suppress these lived experiences, and begin to believe that we are no longer a part of the world. Later, to justify our actions (the gentleman who writes the Hog blog stated that, "man is the only animal who rationalizes", a great quotation), many elevate this illusory distance to the level of ethics, and deride actions which have "impact" on the "resource."

But, when we lose understanding of our real, physical connections and relationships, we begin to cloud the nature of our ethics. Ethics are not mere words, but lived experiences.