Re: Black Swans and the Challenge of Mitigating the Unknown

[Rich Kulawiec <rsk () gsp org>]

It's a decent piece, but it asks the wrong question and the answers
it proposes are too late.  Much, much too late.

By the time that someone has become so disconnected from society that
they'll consider a mass shooting and they've acquired the weapons to
do so, there is really nothing effective that can be done: there is
NO viable defense against a heavily-armed attacker for whom personal
survival is not a priority and who doesn't really care who they kill.

Oh, sure, yes, eventually enough people with enough weapons will show up
and prevail by force, by that's hardly a "defense", as it won't prevent
mass casualties (inflicted either by the attacker or by the responders
or both, see [1]).

The idea that a single or even multiple security guards, police officers,
and/or school administrators can stop such an attacker is beyond merely
idiotic: it's full-blown batshit insane. [2] [3]

The idea that select locations can be hardened is equally ludicrous:
there are hundreds of millions of "select locations", e.g., "a rural
road in Pennsylvania" last Friday.

The idea that more background checks will work is also ridiculous.
Like security clearances, they're pure theater.  And note that nobody
has to pass a background check to take weapons from someone else who did.

The idea that deterrents like the death penalty will work ignores
reality: someone who has already planned their own death doesn't care
what the justice system might have in store for them.

The idea that the assholes in the gun industry/gun lobby will take care
of this is offensively stupid, given that their existence is driven by
(a) profit (b) juvenile fantasies (c) delusion and (d) paranoia.


What needs to done, needs to be done much earlier: years to decades earlier.

Part of what needs to be done is making sure that the social safety net
is working...and it's not.  We are now reaping what's been sown by
systematic defunding of social programs at all levels over decades, because
our national priorities have been focused on useless crap like the F-22
and the military adventures in Iraq/Afghanistan and the "war on drugs"
instead of taking care of every child in the country.  We have become
an incubator for people like Adam Lanza and Eric Harris and Dylan Kliebold
and Charles Carl Roberts IV, and we need to stop being one. [4]

And part of that is outlawing assault weapons, which obviously have no
place in an allegedly civilized society.

The former is an attempt to reduce the number of people who will go
so far off the rails that they'll engage in mass shootings.  The latter
is an attempt to make it more difficult for them to be effective if/when
they do.  Neither is a "solution" per se, but both (and much more)
are necessary.

---rsk

[1] As noted in:

        http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/22/opinion/the-nra-crawls-from-its-hidey-hole.html

        "In August, New York City police officers opened fire on a gunman
        outside the Empire State Building. They killed him and wounded nine
        bystanders."

[2] Reasonably competent attackers who have the element of surprise on 
their side and/or who bring overwhelming force to bear can often inflict
significant casualties.  I don't think a single bored police officer
standing watch on day #723 at a middle school in Ohio stands much chance
against a sudden attack launched by someone with an assault weapon and
body armor.  He/she will simply be casualty #1, unless he/she is *extremely*
lucky or the attacker is very careless.  And his/her weapon(s) will
shortly thereafter belong to the attacker.

[3] I'm not a fan of defensive strategies that involve adding more
easily-used weapons (such as, in this case, the possibility of arming
adminstrators or teachers, or as was debated several years ago, arming
pilots).  I think these run a high risk of lowering the bar for attackers,
because they reduce the problem set.  To wit: "how do I get a gun and bring
it into X?" becomes "how do I take away the gun that you brought into X
for me?"  and of course in some situations the latter is a much easier
problem to solve.

I note with interest that this is the strategy that the NRA is advocating:
add more people with more guns.  Unsurprising.  But it won't work,
because it has never worked, e.g.:

        http://citypaper.com/news/columns/nothing-changes-1.1418123

        "If being heavily armed and willing to shoot back was the only
        thing keeping us from mass shootings, then there'd be an empty
        wall in Washington where it lists all the police officers killed
        in the line of duty."

A gun does its possessor no good in these kinds of situations unless
the holder (a) has it loaded (b) has it in their hand (c) has the
safety off (d) sees or hears the attack coming (e) has the ability
to quickly figure out which target to shoot at (f) has the ability
to hit the target under duress (g) has the ability to miss non-targets
(h) manages to do all of the above before running out of bullets
(i) manages to do all of the above before being shot enough times
to be incapacitated or dead.

Outside of Hollywood fantasies, this is a VERY low-probability sequence
of events.  Even very, very well-trained professionals often can't pull
this off, viz.:

        http://citypaper.com/news/columns/nothing-changes-1.1418123

        "I used to work for and with a guy who was shot in the head by a
        guy who was trying to kill the president of the United States;
        you know, a guy who is surrounded almost 24-7 by some of the
        most heavily armed, best-trained law enforcement officers in
        the world.  Didn't stop Jim Brady or Ronald Reagan from taking
        a bullet."

[4] http://www.childstats.gov/americaschildren/tables/pop1.asp reports a
2012 estimate of 76 million children in US, ages 0-17.  The F-22 program
cost estimate was $62B in 2006, and no doubt that number has gone up
significantly since.  So, roughly speaking, that's $1K/child just from
one program.

Also note that the combined cost of the pointless military adventures
in Iraq and Afghanistan is somewhere in the $4T ballpark (see
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/29/us-usa-war-idUSTRE75S25320110629)
which comes out to something like $50K/child.

Estimates of the cost of the equally pointless "war on drugs" vary,
but it's also in the trillions range over the past several decades.
(See: http://www.mattgroff.com/questions-on-the-1315-project-chart/
for one look.)
_______________________________________________
Fun and Misc security discussion for OT posts.
https://linuxbox.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/funsec
Note: funsec is a public and open mailing list.