Blocking out the scenery.

Turns out you can ignore everything I’ve been saying. Courtesy of the excellent gun blog Everyday, No Days Off, we have a link to the ultimate answer to the question, “Who you gonna call?" As it turns out, you won’t need to call anyone. And forget all that stuff about the triad of skills, equipment and mindset. Just post a sign.

Indeed, your only responsibility is to somehow choose from a "wide selection of colors, shapes, and messages."

The company's product description explains everything, but before sharing it with you, I'd best post a warning of my own:

STOP

Before reading further, put down now any beverage

you don’t want to shoot through your nose onto your keyboard.

 OK. With that bold and colorful warning in place, we're ready to read on and learn how signs stop crime:

Gun-related crime and accidents are a pressing issue across the country-violence affects us all. A No Weapons Sign and a bold graphic gives a stern warning that violence is not tolerated.* A sign can warn visitors that such activity is illegal, even when you are not there. Protect your grounds with a range of heavy-duty security signs - ideal for a variety of schools, playgrounds, businesses, and other public placed. Send a message to weapon owners: keep your guns at home.

• Promote a serious no-weapons policy on your premises. Don't let the threat of gun incidents or violence undermine the security of your property, or the safety of your patrons.

• A bold red-circle graphic crosses all language borders. A clear sign keeps firearms away.

• A sign is one of the most consistent statements you can make. Signs are hard to ignore, and make your patrons aware of your standards and regulations. 

• Heavy-duty, laminated vinyl and aluminum construction can give you years of security protection.

Well that is all very reassuring, don’t you think? Take that Jared Lougher and Clay Duke.

I'm thinking of running up some signs of my own. Tell me what you think of these:

NO HEART ATTACK ZONE

Heart disease is America's leading killer. But you can protect your family and guests from this scourge with these bold signs. Check out our cancer, diabetes and car crash signs as well. Don't you want your family to be protected?

ENTERING EQUALITY ZONE

NO HATE PERMITTED PAST THIS POINT

Society is a minefield of prejudices, bigotry, sexism, racism, sectarian division, extremism and bad will toward our fellow man. When placed at the entry to your business, school or government office, this sign's strong language and subtle rainbow color scheme will keep all that bad stuff outside.

NORMAL GRAVITY NOT PERMITTED

G-FORCE LIMITED TO ___ WITHIN

Every athlete -- professional, college, high school or club -- wants to perform his or her best. With our customizable G-force signs posted at your your field, arena or stadium, you decide how strong gravity will be on the day of the big game. Signs are available in all sizes and come with enough numbers (decimal points included at no charge!) to allow you to really get home-field advantage. (Increased buoyancy signs available for swimmers.)


*The bold italics are mine. The idiocy is all theirs. As Dave Barry says, i am not making this up.

Beyond parody.

I am still bugged by this "Homeland" business. It's not just that I find the word ominous, it's the particular nature of its ominousness.

 
Besides the Ministry of Truth vibe, it's offensive as a word qua word. You cannot trust a word that can simultaneously ring of both fascism and collectivism. It is a word both cloying and caustic, so that, when used in the phrase "the Department of Homeland Security," it somehow manages to be twee and quinine bitter at the same time.

Still, as bleak as the very word leaves me, I really thought I was writing parody when I suggested that the helpful folks at Homeland Security, with their nudie x-rays and blue rubber gloves,  might be coming soon to an interstate rest stop near you. As it turns out, however, and as this one minute and forty seconds of video demonstrates, some things simply cannot be parodied.*

I know you'll recognize the scary part, but let me tell you the scary part. The scary part is that, just that fast, these fellows have dropped any pretense that this is about the safety of the traveling public or even terrorism. Listen closely, beginning at 0:38, to the list of things they are "looking for" which includes: "threats to national security,"**  "immigration law violators" and "cash." In other words, the folks in charge of Der Vater. . .  er  . . .  домовина . . .  um  . . . the Homeland admit they have turned "traveler safety" into one giant pretext stop. It's  widespread warrantless searches for anything we can turn up. Everyone gets to play. Three lines, no waiting.


If you happen to be a Constitutional law buff, and you want to put a finer edge on your outrage, set down the Fourth Amendment for a moment -- you won't be needing it anyway -- take a look back at Article 1, Section 8, Clause 3, and consider that these bus riders are expressly traveling between destinations within the state of Florida, but are being subjected to screening by a cadre of Federal operatives.


The story goes that, on his way out of the Pennsylvania State House at the end of the 1787 Constitutional Convention, Ben Franklin was asked by a passerby what sort of government the delegates had created in the document they drafted. Ben is said to have answered: "A Republic, if you can keep it."

Sorry Ben.





 *For those with dial-up or a disinclination to click through: DHS, ICE, Border Patrol and Tampa police screening folks getting on a Greyhound and saying why.

** This I understand, actually. I imagine that plenty of baby-faced, traitorous, disaffected, 22-year-old, Army PFCs ride Greyhounds. That is who the fellow is talking about, right?

Bad touch.

One of Robert’s Rules holds that any idea expressed through this formulation – “If we can [verb] just one [noun] then [rule, requirement or restriction] will be worth it.” – is errant nonsense. Always and without exception.

As with most of the Rules, examples are ubiquitous. In many cases the examples, while surpassingly silly, are at least harmless. Unfortunately, as innocuous as many instances are, this formulation can also be the source, justification and means of limitless folly and bottomless evil.

The dangerous power of this particular incantation lies in the seductive, implicit math of the first clause, which renders every such proposal inherently effective. Put another way, with a sufficient number of samples, the proposed action can always be shown to have – in at least the single instance required – the proposed result.  Put still another way, these kinds of rules always “work” on their own terms, and this very “effectiveness” then becomes a basis upon which their proponents will defend them.

For example: “If we can save the life of just one squirrel by mechanically limiting the speed of all motor vehicles to 12 miles an hour, that will be worth it.”

This is going to “work.” Propagate the practice sufficiently, slow down enough motor vehicles, and you will soon be able to identify at least one squirrel spared fatal flattening to live and scamper another day. So, because the proposal is statistically guaranteed to “work,” the only objection available to you – if you’d like to, say, allow an exception for fire trucks and ambulances – is that the single saved squirrel really isn’t worth the other, unmentioned consequences of the proposal. (Which optimistically assumes you can distract the joyful squirrel lovers* from their celebration over passage of the Squirrel Protection Act long enough to consider other consequences at all.) Your objections must all then depend upon subjective assessments of what is "good." In our example, while you’ll perhaps have plenty of human support for your opposition, you can expect that  squirrels – who have no need of  firemen and don’t get to ride in ambulances – will be strongly in favor, and they’ll be joined by a coalition of raccoons, opossums and stray cats.

And so I give you “airport security,” every demoralizing, mind-bending, randomized, futile measure of which is justified in violation of this Rule, which now can be stated thusly: “If allowing us to submit travelers (including their children) to a choice, between  either being photographed in the nude or having their genitals fondled, saves just one life, then it’s worth it.”

Unlike the Squirrel Protection Act above, this is not some exercise in reductio ad absurdum on my part. It is instead precisely the choice you have had since early November if you fly though a large and increasing number of U.S. airports: Submit to backscatter radiation full-body scans (which produce pictures far more detailed than you have been led to believe, which are stored and which have health effects worrisome enough to concern those who fly for a living) or be punished with what amounts to public sexual molestation.

At best, at its most benign, this is security theater – wasteful and ultimately dangerous because it funnels our limited resources into futility and it anesthetizes us to real threats. At worst, at its most malevolent – and, I fear, at bottom – these increasingly draconian measures and mounting humiliations are really about helping the sheep get used to the chutes.




*For the record, I love squirrels. Yes, a squirrel is little more than a rat with a bushy tail and a nose job, but he has personality. As we know from Jules and Vincent, personality goes a long way toward determining the worth -- and edibility -- of an animal.

Updated: Maybe folks are deciding that enough is too much, as my Grandma used to say.

Updated: This. Watch this.