David Erik Nelson's Blog, page 35

In which we are reminded that a gun is an instrument, not a tool

Proof that Concealed Carry permit holders live in a dream world, Part One - YouTube

Over the Winter Holiday of Your Choosing we visited my in-laws--who live on a bunch of fallow acres in West Michigan--and I brought my pistol, a Belgian-made Browning Challenger. These .22LR target pistols were made in the '60s and '70s; mine was a gift from my father, the gun he learned to shoot on, and on which he subsequently taught me to shoot. He was the original owner, and bought it in the mid-1960s, back when these pistols were still hand-machined from a single block of steel by an actual human. Primarily I'd brought the pistol to my in-law's because my father-in-law had recently purchased a Browning Buck Mark (which is descended from the Challenger, but is CNC-machined from 7075-T6 aluminum), and was curious about the comparison between the two. But also my son, who is in first grade, had taken an interest in the war games my nephews (who are older--middle school and high school) play on Xbox, and had been regaling me daily with accounts of the "HALO" games he and his friends re-enacted on the school playground. If he wanted to talk about guns, to imagine guns, to play at what guns are and do, then I wanted him to shoot a gun. He'd seen me shoot plenty of times, but had never pulled the trigger himself.

As it turned out, this foray was wonderfully instructive. We went out into the field, where my father- and brother-in-law have built their shooting range. The day was bitter cold. I hadn't shot my .22 in several years, and it kept misfeeding, only squeezing off three rounds successfully (I later discovered that the barrel screw was a touch loose; these guns are accurate because they are built to tight tolerances, so even a little shifting will muck things up). The Buck Mark similarly misfed and misfired (although at a lower rate)--this, I think, because of the lighter aluminum unevenly contracting as it made the shift from a warm house to a cold field. But my boy got to shoot (with my father-in-law guiding his hand). And what he found was what is true: Shooting can be stressful. A gun--even a plinky little .22--is *loud*, and it jumps in your hand like something live and nervous. It's hard to use; most of his shots sailed into the dirt two yards in front of the target, even with an adult steadying his hand. And guns are unpredictable: Many shells turned out to be bad (they were bought bulk, cheap), or were crimped useless when they were slammed crookedly by the misfeeding slide. And even though we were shooting at a steel target made for .45s, I broke the damn thing with a "lucky" shot that was a touch high and happened to catch the ironwork at its seam, sending the heavy target sailing away. Even this little gun was fearsome; it brought a touch of dread to the boy.

Because a gun isn't a tool--it's not a hammer or a drill that you can pick up, use to solve a problem, and put away until you have the next problem you want to solve. It's an instrument, like a guitar or piano, it requires constant care, it requires checking and tuning before each use, it requires an intimate relationship with its mechanisms, with its parameters, with what it can do and what it should do and what it is meant for. It requires care and feeding. And it requires *practice,* near constant practice for you to be any good at doing anything with it.

It's not a tool, and it doesn't solve problems; it is an instrument, and it expresses feelings. When I'm shooting skeet, I have to feel that clay in my heart before I can smash it, I have to feel how it soars. The hard part isn't the shooting--that's just a swing of the arm and twitch of the finger; I never even think about it. The hard part is the *seeing*, really seeing the orange disk, not just assuming I see it, or thinking I see it, or seeing my idea of the disk and its location, but really and truly seeing the world for what it literarily is. It's harder than you think, because most of us go most of our days without beginning to appreciate how little we see the world, and how completely we rely on our *ideas* about the world without checking them against what our senses are actually reporting. (In light of this, it should come as no surprises that the most natural shots I've ever met have all been artists, 'cause that's the only other human endeavor that's so much about perceiving the world as it is, rather than as we'd have it be.)

When you pick a gun up--just like when you pick up a ukulele or a violin--even if you are "just practicing," you are saying something about yourself, about the world and your place in it, about the connectedness of things, about our human tendency to build things beautiful and destructive.

So the shooting--out in the cold, with real guns that were loud and destructive and erratic--was stressful for my son, and reminded me of the first time *I'd* gone shooting with my dad, when I was in my 20s. I'd never touched a gun--although he'd always kept them in the house--but I'd grown up an American, and so I had *ideas* about guns. And the gun I used that day was *his* preferred gun at the time, a Beretta 9mm. I couldn't hit a thing with it--literally. As I recall, the paper target was entirely unscathed. And I'd had to force my finger to curl around the trigger each time, because each explosion was tremendous, each felt like the Worst Thing I'd Ever Done, and with each shot I couldn't help but imagine that bullet tearing into me, piercing my chest, breaking my bones.

But afterwards, I'd wondered, and we went back with the .22--an impractical gun, in many regards, low-caliber, too bulky to conceal, the barrel long for accuracy, the grip thick for comfort and steadiness, the sights absurdly pronounced for a pistol in America. But it fit my hand like no other object I'd ever touched, and every shot went exactly where I wanted it, where my eye placed it. I never thought about my hand or my chest or my heart or my bones, just my eye and the sights and the target. Just the world.

After we were back inside and warmed up, I asked my little boy what he'd thought of the shooting, expecting he'd repeat what he'd said when he was three and watched me shooting skeet with my dad--"Too loud!" he'd cried, despite wearing my big spare ear protectors.

But he didn't. He was thoughtful, and he smiled, and he said it was good. And since we've been back home, it doesn't seem like he's been playing "HALO" at school.

Anyway, that's what this video got me thinking about, how maybe the most fundamental flaw in our national discussion about guns is that so many of us think of them as tools that we can--or should, or might, or must--use to solve problems, instead of seeing them for what they are: Instruments through which we express ourselves, for better or worse.

Dave-o Has a Story in the Current Asimov's!

"Table of Contents" - Asimovs

What with all the seasonal hubbub, I totally forgot to shamelessly hype that my short story "The New Guys Always Work Overtime" is in the current issue of Asimov's (technically the "Feb 2013" issue, it's on newsstands now and will stay there until mid-January-ish). It's your standard time-travel/labor relations/supply-chain management/crappy corporate job/boy-meets-girl story, and leverages basically every bit of German I know (Yes, *both* phrases!) It's available in dead-tree format only, which is actually pretty quaint for a time-travel story set in an iPad factory. Better hustle on down to your local bookstore and trade paper money for paper stories.

CORRECTION: Duh; things have changed a little since the last time I had a story in Asimov's. The magazine is now available for Kindle with a *FREE* 30-day trial--so if you just wanna check out "The New Guys" you can do so with no risk *and* no leaving the house. Score one for leaving in the terrible dystopian future! Asimov's is a pretty solid magazine--if you're into "soft" SF--so it's worth the $3 "risk" if you flake out on canceling the trial subscription:

Happy Christmas Whatever to All-Y'all that Happen to Be into that Sort of Thing!

P.S. Never too late to get your special someone an ebook. Just sayin':

Westboro Baptist Church: Religion or Business Model?

A Kansan’s thoughts on the Westboro Baptist Church -- Occupy 316

As I said, the church is really nothing more than a front for the law firm. The Phelps family and their hate group do not protest based on any belief system. This is a business model for them. They purposefully seek to protest in the most offensive places so that municipalities will infringe upon their First Amendment rights.

Once this happens, they sue, and they win. Most people in Kansas tend to ignore the Phelps family and their church, because we do not want to give attention to these people.

This claim started popping up on Facebook today, and got me googling. Verdict?

The Phelps Chartered law firm is sorta old news; they started out doing a lot of solid civil rights work, and then Phelps himself got disbarred for being a seething dickweed when cross-examining someone he was suing. As for the above claim, that the Westboro Baptist Church doesn't really believe the terrible things they say, but is really just a con to make money? Frankly, I'd *love* to believe that--but a spate of articles from 2011 (here's just one) tend to indicate the opposite:

The Phelps firm is large and does a *ton* of business for folks who hold their noses when they need a vicious courtroom attorney. Meanwhile, the First Amendment cases amount to just a few "tens of thousands of dollars in court fees." That sounds like a lot, but keep in mind that even a mid-grade lawyer charges $250 per hour--in other words, their First Amendment work over the years amounts to just a couple weeks of regular old lawyering, and is probably break-even, in terms of work.

In other words, these aren't canny, unscrupulous business people; they're a nauseating family of hate-mongers. Frankly, I'd rather have a country full of good ole criminal lawyers than folks like these.

Handmade Letterpress Editions of "Tucker Teaches the Clockies to Copulate"--THE PERFECT HOLIDAY GIFT! (for certain persons of ill-repute and refined tastes)

Still looking for that literary, yet semi-obscene, gift to give to your favorite brass-goggled poindexter? May I suggest he or she might really and truly enjoy a personalized, handmade chapbook of my celebrated novella "Tucker Teaches the Clockies to Copulate"? The cover is handset and printed on the *very same* Chandler & Price 10x15 New Style Printing Press featured in Wikipedia!

The illustrated ebook pack is the same as the Kindle version available through Amazon, but DRM-free, and in formats suitable for almost any device. Includes mobi, ePub, PDF (in several print-ready layouts) files, and digital extras(!!!) Buying at the “Patrons” level gets you an exclusive, handmade, signed and numbered print edition (like the one in the pic)! Details on Pick-What-You-Pay options

Pick-What-You-Pay:
Candy Money $0.99 USD
Market Value $1.50 USD
Steampunk $5.00 USD
Patron! (print edition) $15.00 USD

Domestic shipping is free; international folks: we'll have to figure that out. It's a big, crazy world.

Oh Yeah, Syria

Until very recently an old pal of mine was living and working in Syria. She's since split, because her momma raised no fools. When I hear American folks--both progressive and conservative--start to get lathered about what's happing in Syria, the talk turns pretty quickly to sending troops, and I've got to level with you: Even if the citizens of the United States had the stomach for a new and exciting war, I'm pretty sure that Syria's problem right now *isn't* an insufficiency of bullets and bombs. There are currently half-a-million Syrians in refugee camps and snow will be coming soon, I'm told. Meanwhile, I live in Michigan, where we don't get snow any more. In other words, I've got some extra blankets. I've got some extra money that I won't need for heat this winter. I've got an extra special Xmas Wish that someday folks who speak languages I can't even readily identify will recognize "MADE IN U.S.A." as the thing stamped on the sides of crates full of peanut butter, woolens, and water purifiers, not the motto stamped on the side of tear-gas canisters and unexploded ordinance.

But, so, here's a little bit about Iran and Syria and Russia and China and Us and them:

Every Place is Khalidiya < Killing the Buddha

“Everything is in Farsi,” B. points out. “I speak to them in Arabic, and they answer in Farsi.” If he were a Syrian against the government, he adds, he would do something here. “Because Syrians know what our [the Iranian] government is doing.” Then he jokes nervously: “35 Iranian pilgrims have been kidnapped already; today there will be 37, and one American.”

“No, she’s fine,” W. quips.

“Because if they kill her, Obama will make a war on Syria,” B. rejoins. “But us—10,000 people make no difference.”

Though America is not really a consistent enemy. It sanctions Syria as a sponsor of terrorism, but also renders terrorists there for interrogation on its behalf. Syria, too, has excelled at double-dealing: after backing Iran in its war against Iraq, the rival Baathist next door, Assad senior then backed the U.S.—no friend of Khomeini—in its 1991 war against the same. In return, the U.S. tacitly allowed Syria to increase its influence over Lebanon—including its world-class hash production, thus guaranteeing Hezbollah a lucrative market among the pot-smokers of “The Zionist Entity.”

It's a long read, but worth it, and worth meditating on, because the situation is complex. It reminds me of my favorite sinister joke from back in the G.W. Bush years:

So I went into the bar the other day where I found Bush and Rumsfeld bellied up to the bar sipping their beers. I was so amazed to find them there I had to go up and ask "Hey aren't you guys the leaders of the free world? What are you doing here in my neighborhood bar?" To which Rumsfeld replied "We like going to out of the way places like this to plan big things like our invasion of Iran."

"Whoa" says I, "How is that going to happen?"

"Well," says Rumsfeld, "We plan to kill five hundred thousand Iranians and one bicycle repair man."

"No way!" says I, "Why would you kill a bicycle repair man?"

Bush then smacks Rumsfeld on the arm and says "See, I told you no one would care about five hundred thousand dead Iranians!"

Yikes! Michigan's Legislature Has Gone Caca-KoOko0--Contact Your Reps RIGHT NOW!

Yesterday the Ann Arbor Chronicle published my latest column, which is about how Michigan's lame-duck lawmakers are cramming through several laws that will privatize education--and doing so without public debate, and despite wide ranging protest from families, educators, and freaked out citizens. The column begins:

It’s the letter writing season.

I’d like you to add at least one more letter to your list: I need you to drop a line to your state reps, senators, and the governor telling them that you’re opposed to any expansion of Michigan’s Education Achievement Authority during the current lame duck session.

You’ll want to tell these folks to oppose or veto House Bill 6004 and Senate Bill 1358 (which expand the Education Achievement Authority) and House Bill 5923 (allowing for the unlimited formation of new publicly-funded charter and cyber schools).

More than that, though, I want you to activate your whole network – that Facebook thing you do, that Twitter thing and even LinkedIn. Because I bet you have friends, family members and colleagues who live in Kalamazoo, Traverse City, Grand Rapids, Bad Ax or wherever else in Michigan, who you can move to action by nudging them with social media. What we want to do here is activate the entire state.

And is followed by a template letter and contact info for your reps, plus 3000 words explaining whats wrong with this specific education scheme. Since this column went live *yesterday* our Governor has pulled a 180 on right-to-work legislation (a confusing double-speak name; it means that the Governor and state GOP are now aggressively anti-union and passing laws to hobble collective bargaining) and our State Senate has pushed through draconian, bigoted anti-abortion laws.

These bills are being raced through without debate or public comment. They locked the capitol yesterday afternoon--in contempt of a court order *not to do so*--in order to keep out the People out yesterday, and maced protestors on the capitol steps.

So, *damn*; if there was ever a day to email your reps and the governor, it's *TODAY* Go. Go now. DO THIS!

UPDATE: VICE Magazine and Per-pupil Spending in Detroit Public Schools

In response to this post (Poor Mojo's Newswire: Detroit schools are worse than you can possibly imagine) astute Mojonaut JP Pagán writes:

First off, LOVE your site. I check the news feed daily and you guys have a very very signal to noise ratio.

That said, I have one issue with the link to the VICE story on Detroit Public Schools. I don't know much of anything about DPS, but the fact that VICE had no source for the claim that DPS spends the most money per student (a claim you guys highlighted) got me wondering and sofa-googling.

There is data here (http://www.mackinac.org/depts/epi/fiscal.aspx), not that it's easy to comb through, but I also found this article that places DPS spending at 5th-highest in the state (http://www.michigancapitolconfidential.com/17280) and this one, which again takes Detroit out of the top spot (http://www.theoaklandpress.com/articles/2012/07/29/opinion/doc5010760ba77b9432361166.txt?viewmode=fullstory). You'll probably notice both of those articles come back around to the Mackinac Center data I linked to the first time.

Anyway... it may be a minor point, but I'd take VICE's claim with a grain of salt. The overall point is hard to deny though: the schools suck.

Thanks again you guys (and gals) for what you do.

And thank *you* for keeping us honest, JP! This sounded off to me, too (I'd been poking around school spending numbers a little for me next "In It for the Money" column on the Ann Arbor Chronicle--SHAMELESS PLUG!) I checked with my wife--a Metro area high school teacher who did her training in DPS--and she says there's *no way* DPS is currently the top spender. She further notes that their high rank--among the top five--largely has to do with the fact that they're saddled with old, collapsing facilities, which cost an *enormous* amount to heat and maintain. That's a big part of why--absent fraud--little of the money makes it to the classroom: the bulk of it is wrapped up on patching the roof and keeping the boilers minimally functional.

*thanks jp!*

STEAMPUNK III: Steampunk Revolution Launches Today! Features Fiction by Poor Mojo's Giant Squid (as well as some humans)!

We're pleased as punch to note that today is the official launch (check out the cake!) of Steampunk Revolution--the third steampunk anthology edited by Ann VanderMeer (widely praised for the last two volumes in the series, as well as her past work for Weird Tales and on a slew of other anthos). This go 'round Ann is looking at the post-steampunk end of steampunk, the bits that push past the tight aesthetic focus on dirigibles, steam, brass goggles, and white people in Victorian England. According to Ann, breaking a genre's most cherished conventions is about as punk as you can get, so that's where this book aims to go.

Stories include an instructional tale for writers by our own Poor Mojo's Giant Squid (written with an assist from Poor Mojo's editors Morgan Johnson, David Erik Nelson, and Fritz Swanson), as well as fiction by Cherie Priest, Bruce Sterling, Jeffrey Ford, Lavie Tidhar, Jeff VanderMeer, and plenty more. Check it out:

For the squid-obsessed or steampunk-enthusiastic, I also have a different squid-themed story in the VanderMeer's previous anthology Steampunk II: Steampunk Reloaded:

Genocide and Israel and Hamas and Rockets and Rockets

Running Chicken: Words Continue To Matter

My friend Jonathan Cunningham has spent a lot of time over the past few days writing about Israel and Gaza in a state of understandable rage. He reblogged a couple of my posts, furious that I refused to comdemn only Israel for what he termed a genocide against Palestinians.

We’ve gone back and forth on this issue on Twitter, but I wanted to take a few minutes to write a bit about the problem that Cunningham faces, as well as to provide my reasons for refusing to go nuclear on the topic of Israel.

First, I should begin by noting that I don’t think Hamas rockets and Israeli airstrikes should be thought of as being similar in any way. I condemn both of them, but they aren’t comparable. I’m tired of seeing Facebook and Tumblr posts about the terror of Hamas rocket attacks, as if a) they occur in a vacuum and b) they are somehow terrorizing the Israeli populace in even a remotely similar way that Israeli airstrikes are terrorizing Gazans. But I’m also tired of the Facebook and Tumblr posts about how the ineffectiveness of the rocket attacks somehow means that they are the equivalent of not shooting rockets at civilians.

In other words, it’s possible for the Israeli government to be acting immorally and it’s possible for Hamas to also be acting immorally … even if the results of their immoral behavior are not equally terrible. There’s no moral high ground here. The fact that Hamas rockets aren’t killing more Israeli civilians doesn’t negate the fact that the intention of the shooters is to kill Israeli civilians. The fact of Israel’s reprehensible treatment of the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza doesn’t give Hamas carte blanche to attempt to terrorize and kill Israeli citizens. But nor do Hamas rockets give the Israeli government carte blanche to terrorize and kill Gazans. Nor is there any reason, as far as I’m concerned, for Israel to maintain its abusive treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. . . .

I'm gonna level with you: Even setting aside the Hamas charter as a "historical document," and accepting that its weird anti-Semitic screeds don't *really* represent the *real* positions of the *current* Hamas leadership, I still don't know what to do with the fact that Hamas leaders like Ismail Haniyeh are met with adoring chants of "Death to the Jews," and that they make hay with that. I mean, maybe it's hard to be really specific in an Arabic political slogan--maybe the throngs really *do* mean something more like "Death to the Jews Who Are Enlisted in the IDF and Actively Shelling Our Communities!" But all I'm hearing them say is "Death to the Jews"--which includes me and my children, which includes Kohen (who is an ethics prof in Nebraska, and an admirably more even-keeled thinker than I), and which *kinda sorta* sounds like advocating genocide--but, whatevs. Just saying'.

Frankly, that chant (and the weird conspiracy stuff in the Hamas charter--which I know, I know, I said I was gonna let be water under the bridge) makes me feel bad in exactly the same way as Ann Coulter saying something like "We should invade their [Muslim] countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity" makes me feel bad. In fact, now that I think about it, both statements make me feel *threatened* in roughly the same way--with the obvious proviso that Hamas is unlikely to build a rocket that can reach me, while Coulter might well (inadvertently?) rile up a brain-addled patriot who'll take it upon himself to wreck some havoc domestically.

*sigh* I guess that's Thanksgiving for you. My, I'm thankful to be largely out of range of all of this. Amen.

*DISCLOSURE* I know Ari from way back in knucklehead days.