In Pittsburgh We Know Better: Remarks on the War on Coal

Recently FirstEnergy Corp., a mid-Atlantic power company, announced it was closing two coal-fired power plants in my home state of Pennsylvania. FirstEnergy blamed the closings on the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) tougher new air pollution regulations, known by the acronym MATS (Mercury and AirToxics Standards). These are neither the first nor will they be the last plant closings blamed on the new EPA rules. 

For the record MATS covers conventional air pollutants, such as particulates, mercury and other heavy metals, SO₂, and NO_x, not greenhouse gases. 

Blaming the closings on the EPA is at best a half-truth. While MATS would require upgrades to these power plants—upgrades FirstEnergy deemed a lousy investment—the demand for electric power remains weak, putting pressure on energy companies to close less efficient plants. What’s more, to the extent that decommissioned power plants need replaced, they will likely be replaced by gas-fired plants, which run cleaner, produce less CO₂, and enjoy a robust fuel supply from the Marcellus Shale formation. 

Bottom line: New EPA regulations + weak power demand + new natural gas reserves = the demise of older technology coal-fired power plants.

Despite the complex reality surrounding the FirstEnergy plant closings, Pennsylvania Senator Pat Toomey made the following public statement:

I am very disappointed that—due to the Obama administration's policies—FirstEnergy is deactivating coal-fired power plants in Fayette and Washington counties today and leaving hundreds out of work. These unemployed Pennsylvanians are unfortunate casualties in the President's ‘war on coal,’ which I will continue to fight against in the Senate.

Coal is a domestically sourced, low-cost form of energy which helps sustain jobs for Pennsylvania and beyond. Over the decades, coal-fired plants also have gone to impressive lengths to reduce emissions. Nevertheless, the Obama administration continues to implement policies that will make energy more expensive for hard-working Pennsylvanians while destroying good, family-sustaining jobs.

When I read such stuff, typically I assume it's a pro forma jab in the ribs of a political opponent. In Toomey’s case it seems to come straight from his political heart. There is nothing in his political record that suggests he believes environmental regulations serve the public good. Remarkably, his official website doesn’t directly address the “environment” at all.

The Republican Party embraced the notion of a "war on coal" as a wedge issue during the 2012 election, potentially dividing the Democratic working class from Democratic environmentalists. But in Pittsburgh and western Pennsylvania the public debate over the burning of coal has informed local politics for more than a century. 

Corner of Liberty & Fifth Avenues in downtown Pittsburgh
at 10:55 AM in 1940

In this iconic photo of Pittsburgh from 1940, the sky is dark and the buildings and streetlamps illuminated. The clock at the corner of Liberty and Fifth Avenues stands at “10:55,” only it is 10:55 AM. Smoke from coal combustion—used to heat homes, move trains, and make steel—obscures the sun.

For Pittsburghers of my generation and social niche, primarily the baby-boomer offspring of the business and professional class, this photo represents the nadir, when the city for practical purposes became unlivable. It is the benchmark against which subsequent environmental progress is measured.

In truth, the year 1940 wasn’t exactly a eureka moment. Pittsburghers had complained about air quality from the early days of industrialization. In 1895 the city passed its first smoke control ordinance. The Ladies Health Protective Association (LHPA), an early women-led organization promoting public health issues, advocated strongly for the enforcement of this ordinance (we must assume it was widely flaunted). In any case a state court invalidated the ordinance in 1902. Another smoke ordinance was passed in 1906 and subsequently invalidated in 1911.

Aside: While the LHPA lost its initial battle to improve air quality, it successfully advocated for the end of garbage dumping in the Pittsburgh rivers. In the last years of the 19^th century women may not have had the vote, but they were becoming a potent political force.

Pittsburgh's Strip District 1906

You cannot easily ignore smoke pollution. In the 1940s Pittsburgh office workers reportedly brought an extra shirt to work knowing that the first shirt would be discolored before day’s end. It was intuitively obvious that such air wasn’t healthy. Nevertheless the politics were complicated. For working class Pittsburghers coal was a cheap fuel for home heating. Coal generated electricity. It powered locomotives. It ran the mills. Coal is a key ingredient (coke) in steel manufacture. The smoke-filled air of the 1940s was literally a sign of prosperity. Presumably the air was cleaner during the Depression years. In purely money-making terms everyone benefited from unrestricted coal burning; and everyone feared he would bear the biggest financial burden of cleaner air.   

And so, for many years, nothing happened.

In 1941 Pittsburgh passed another smoke control ordinance. Initially, like all its predecessors, it was largely ignored. Substantive change finally came after the end of WW II in 1945. There is a myth-like quality to the story: David L. Lawrence, the new Democratic mayor of the city, partnered with Richard K. Mellon, representing the Republican business and money interests, to clean-up and re-invent the city.  Undoubtedly the real story is more complex, but Pittsburghers, at least those familiar with the city’s history, revere both men for their ability to align competing interests and make positive change.

In 1947 the city mandated that all one- and two-family dwellings switch from coal to natural gas heating (natural gas came into the city via pipelines from the southwest U.S.). Train locomotives and river boats switched from coal to diesel fuel. In 1949 Allegheny County passed its own smoke control ordinance (most of the steel operations of the day were located outside the City of Pittsburgh). Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, the city and county incrementally stiffened the rules on  air emissions. In 1960 Allegheny County passed the strictest air particulates law in the nation. Gradually the air grew cleaner.

Donora, PA in 1948

For those who may have questioned the direction the city was taking in the late 1940s, a horrific event in the town of Donora swept aside (or should have) such concerns. Donora lies about 24 miles south of Pittsburgh in the Monongahela River valley. At the time it was home to a steel mill and zinc smelting operation. A weather inversion, typical for western Pennsylvania river valleys, trapped air in the town for four days. The intense acrid smog that resulted sickened over 7,000 of the town’s 14,000 residents and killed 20 (it also killed pets and livestock). It wasn’t until the fourth day of the emergency that US Steel ordered the zinc mill manager to shut down operations. 

Subsequent autopsies revealed lethal levels of fluorine. Hydrogen fluorine, a byproduct of coal combustion, is one of the pollutants regulated by the EPA’s new rules.

The Donora disaster is often cited as a rallying cry for the 1970 Clean Air Act and the creation the same year of the EPA. The 1970 Clean Air Act passed the Senate 73-0, passed the House 375-1, and was signed into law by Richard Nixon, a Republican president.

The cynical may say that it was environmental regulations that shuttered the area’s steel mills in the 1970s and 80s, which, in turn, eliminated the primary source of smog.  But this isn’t even a half-truth. By the 1970s, the domestic steel industry had grown weary, cautious, and complacent. The risk takers and the smart money that originally built the industry had moved on. The steel execs were content to milk the profits from their aging facilities and let foreign competitors build the next generation of steel plants. 

For a fascinating story of how an entrepreneur re-invented steel making in the mid-1980s, read Richard Preston’s 1991 American Steel.

So what to take-away from Senator Toomey’s response to the FirstEnergy plant closings?

Implicit in his public statement is the notion that we have done all that we should do regarding  air quality. Any further action, he believes, constitutes an unjustified “war” on a traditional domestic industry. As far as the science that supports the new EPA regulations…well, presumably it’s not good enough. In truth, for today's Republicans the science is never good enough. And we haven’t even touched on climate change science. It goes without saying Toomey doesn’t give it any weight.

Toomey suggests that coal-fired operators like FirstEnergy have been such good corporate citizens for their past “impressive lengths to reduce emissions” that we should not burden them henceforth with new regulations.  Left unsaid is that power companies do only what is required by law and nothing more. Generally there is no competitive advantage exceeding emission standards. In any case a company doesn't get a regulatory free pass just for obeying existing law.

Perhaps the biggest headscratcher is Toomey’s lack of faith in the ability of the free enterprise system to adapt to new business conditions. He clings to the status quo, seeing in change only the downside. He focuses only on the loss of jobs at FirstEnergy’s aged coal power plants, ignoring the promise of higher efficiency and cleaner emissions at prospective new gas-fired plants.

The Pittsburghers I grew up with believe that you must be an active steward of the earth. We reject the Tea Party notion that environmental regulation is a socialist conspiracy to deprive hardworking Americans of their personal freedom. That Senator Toomey deems the “environment” not worthy of comment on his website is at once unfathomable and disheartening. You want to shout: “Don’t you know what happened here?” “Don’t you know we almost destroyed our home?” 

In Pittsburgh we know better: coal may have built Pittsburgh, but it also almost destroyed it.

What If It Had Been Me?

George Zimmerman, the creepy-ass cracker

What if George Zimmerman had gotten out of his car and followed me on that fateful evening? OK, I’m a white 50-something guy. I don’t usually wear a hoodie (but I do occasionally). I tend toward khakis and polo shirts. I’m not particularly menacing. So, you think, what possible reason would Zimmerman have for following me? Well, that’s the point, isn’t it: he wouldn’t have. 

He likely followed Trayvon Martin because Martin looked like Zimmerman’s idea of a young man up to no good, or, in his own words to the police dispatcher, one of those “fucking punks.”

But let’s suppose that Zimmerman was feeling unusually vigilant the evening he sees me walking the streets of the Twin Lakes community and decides to follow. Trayvon Martin’s girlfriend testified that Martin told her that he was being followed by a “creepy-ass cracker.” I suppose this was a case of reverse profiling: Martin assuming bad intentions based on Zimmerman’s appearance. Of course, I would not have employed the term “cracker” to describe Zimmerman.  I would have thought, “Who is this creepy asshole following me?”

  

Following someone is not innocent or neutral behavior. It is predatory. It is threatening. In a different context we call it stalking or hunting.

 

Trayvon Martin, the fucking punk

One of the things we learn in Biology 101 is that under a perceived threat an animal will either fight or flee. Humans are animals. Our “fight or flight” instinct is hard-wired into us. Most likely, if some creepy asshole tracked me around a neighborhood, I would challenge him. After all I’m a white guy in my 50s. Generally I believe that I have the right to be where I am and act accordingly.

I wouldn’t have been particularly polite or deferential towards George Zimmerman. “What the fuck are you doing?” are my likely words. Maybe he identifies himself as the “neighborhood watch.” But he’s not wearing a uniform, he doesn’t carry a badge, and, in fact, he has no legal authority whatsoever. I know this and likely tell him to “piss off.” Maybe I threaten to call 911 if he doesn’t cease & desist, but that’s a white-guy-in-his-50s reaction. Trayvon Martin wouldn’t have called the cops.

Perhaps the confrontation ends then & there. Or maybe George Zimmerman doesn’t like his “authority” questioned. He is, after all, the self-appointed fist of the homeowners association and protector of the community. He’s carrying a loaded 9 mm automatic pistol. He is empowered. He’s not a man to be trifled with. 

So Zimmerman strides towards me. He’s five feet away, four feet away, three feet away…I drop down and attempt a two-legged takedown. It’s a basic wrestling move I learned in 7^th grade and practiced a thousand times. Now we’re rolling on the ground. Things are out of control. Zimmerman reaches for his pistol, presses the barrel against my chest, and pulls the trigger. Bang, I’m dead.

It’s worth taking a close look at the timeline for the killing of Trayvon Martin. As Zimmerman exits his truck against the wishes of the police dispatcher, Trayvon Martin is on the phone to his girlfriend, telling her he is being followed by this creepy-ass cracker. The phone call ends about 7:16 PM, presumably the moment Zimmerman comes upon him. At 7:16:11 PM there is a 911 call reporting a fight. A gunshot is heard on the 911 recording at 7:16:55 PM. The fight between this 29 year old adult man and the 17-year old boy lasts less than a minute. Before another minute has passed a police officer arrives on the scene, but Trayvon Martin is already dead.

If you believe that my scenario, the one where I am killed by George Zimmerman, is ridiculous, then the likely “ridiculous” part is Zimmerman following me in the first place. Everything else is typical of the string of unintended consequences, the unraveling of reasoned behavior, which often happens when human beings confront one another and try to decipher each others’ intentions. 

And, if you don’t believe that Zimmerman would have followed me, a white guy in his 50s, then you must also accept that he profiled Trayvon Martin. That is, he presumed Martin’s malicious intent and my benign intent based on our appearance.

It’s crazy.  George Zimmerman initiates the confrontation, and then, after things spin out of control and he shoots Trayvon Martin, he is allowed to claim self-defense. I argue that he voided any claim of self-defense when he got out of his car to pursue Martin. Is this really the behavior Florida's "Stand Your Ground" legislation was designed to protect?

As proverbs says, when you sow the wind, you reap the whirlwind.

Juror B-37 has spoken out publicly. She believes Zimmerman’s “heart was in the right place,” but he exercised poor judgment. I suppose she means his intent was to protect the community, and, thus, good & pure. But there is a reason that police officers go through extensive training before they are issued a badge and gun. It’s to prevent events like this. 

As is often said, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

What juror B-37 doesn’t acknowledge is that Zimmerman’s actions were reckless. Because he chose to carry a gun and act like police, he should be held accountable for his reckless behavior. Whether this is 2^nd degree murder, manslaughter, or some other infraction, I cannot say, but it is an injustice that he walks away from this trial a free person.

Get Aboard

When President Obama announced his evolving position on gay marriage, he spoke for me. I, too, have seen my position on gay people move slowly, steadily towards full acceptance, including marriage.

I was borne in the 1950s. Like many kids of my generation, I learned the derisive terms “faggot” and “fairy” before I knew what a homosexual was (probably before I knew what a heterosexual was).

My thinking began to change when I came to understand that being gay wasn’t a choice. How could it be otherwise? Throughout my life, you certainly didn’t improve your prospects by announcing that you were gay.

As an adult, I came to know gay people and found we shared common values. They cared about their families, their homes, and their communities. So did I. In business they were often successful. As a group they seemed unusually creative. I respected all this.

I didn’t see that in any way, shape, or form, gay people diminished my life one iota. In fact, it seemed the contrary.

A few years ago I helped my daughter and her roommate look for an apartment in the D.C. area. At one point we discussed neighborhoods in transition, and my daughter’s roommate mentioned casually, “...and first come the gays.” Apparently it is now accepted knowledge, taught in college classes, that gay people are the most likely demographic to revive failing urban neighborhoods. How remarkable I thought? And something, I’m sure, not lost on big city mayors.

In the near term the country will likely remain split on the gay marriage issue. But gay people will move where they feel welcome and that includes where they can marry. I think that young, talented, straight people will follow, seeking out the same tolerant communities as their gay friends.

Ultimately it may come down to economics. States that resist this new paradigm will watch their youth depart, and then, sometime later, wonder why there’s so little happening in their cities.

It’s simple: we want the same good things in life for our gay friends and gay family members as we want for ourselves. One of the good things, for most of us anyway, is the right to marry the person we love and make a life together.

The train is leaving the station, get aboard.

Gun Stories

Everyone has a gun story, even if it’s “I never touched a gun in my life.” 

On the Nature of the Thing

There is much debate about the essential nature of guns. Here’s my take. In itself a gun is neither good nor evil, but its possession carries a “moral weight” commensurate to its lethal purpose. A gun kills. A gun is not equivalent to a screwdriver or a tape measure. If you’re not willing to heft this moral weight, don’t buy a gun.

 Greetings Neighbor

My brother-in-law lives in a comfortably prosperous neighborhood.

A few weeks ago he rang a doorbell in search of the owner of a lost dog. The homeowner greeted him with a handgun, presumably loaded. “You never know who to expect this time of night,” the homeowner said. My brother-in-law politely agreed before he got the hell out of there.

You don’t make new friends with a gun in your hand. A gun fundamentally alters the relationship between neighbors. Next time my brother-in-law finds a little lost dog, he probably won’t go ringing doorbells.

The Truth

Truth is I don’t know.

I don’t know whether—as the National Rifle Association (NRA) asserts—the answer is more guns in the hands of citizens. I don’t know whether it’s a ban on certain types of weapons. I don’t know whether it’s a ban on certain types of ammunition or large-capacity magazines. I don’t know whether it’s universal background checks, censorship of ultra-violent video games, enforcement of gun laws already on the books, or better care for the mentally ill.  

What I do know is that the status quo is unacceptable: too many people die at the hands of deranged young men with high-powered weapons, too many nominally legal gun purchases find their way into the hands of criminals, and too many lives end violently because a gun is readily available.

It’s not that I don’t have an opinion. My gut is universal background checks, a limit on the size of magazines, and a limit on the number of weapons purchased at one time make perfect sense, and do not meaningfully impinge on anyone’s 2^nd Amendment rights.

Research = Politics

One problem is we don’t have sufficient hard data on gun ownership and gun violence to develop effective public policy. The act of conducting research on guns is itself seen as a political act. According to a December 21, 2012 article in the Wall Street Journal, public and private funding for gun research has largely dried up. This didn't just happen. Since 1996 pro-gun Congressman have added language to appropriation bills that effectively restricts any agency of the federal government from conducting research that might be construed as promoting gun control.

I Shot a Gun and I Liked It

Almost everyone who has ever commented on the gun issue feels a need to demonstrate his or her bona fides.

At age 12 I went to a summer camp where one of the activities was trap shooting. The first real gun I fired was a pump-action 20-gauge shotgun. I “killed” a clay pigeon. It was fun.

Later, I was gunnery officer on the USS Charleston (LKA-113). The ship carried an assortment of small arms, all of which I routinely fired: M-14 automatic rifle, M-79 grenade launcher, M-60 light machine gun, and .45-caliber automatic pistol. We also carried .50-caliber heavy machine guns that could be mounted around the ship.

There’s an undeniable adrenaline kick when you fire a high-powered weapon; in my case it soon passed and usually left me with a headache.

Fathers, Sons & Guns

In Pennsylvania, where I live, fathers usually introduce guns to their sons, and sometimes daughters, through deer hunting. My father did not hunt, so not surprisingly neither do I.

This isn’t to say he was unfamiliar with guns. He joined the Marine Corps as a 17-year old near the end of WW II. His older brother was already serving in the 15^th Armored Division in Europe. He qualified as an expert marksman and carried a Browning Automatic Rifle, a light machine gun. Fortunately the war ended before he had opportunity to use it.

My father kept a small caliber revolver of indeterminate make in his dresser drawer. He dutifully instructed me never to play with it. Still, by age 9 or 10, I would take it out of his dresser drawer and pull the trigger at make-believe bad guys. Fortunately by this time the ammunition had disappeared. I remember well the weapon’s heft and the stiff trigger pull, so different from the toy guns my friends and I played with.

Years later the revolver passed to me after his death, but no ammunition came with it. I had no use for the gun. It resides in some landfill today.

The only gun I ever considered my own was a Daisy air BB gun that I received for my 8^th birthday (essentially it was the same as the “Red Ryder” gun that Ralphie so desperately wished for in The Christmas Story). For many years I shot it at paper targets, tin cans, plastic soldiers, and what-not in my back yard. My father forbade me to shoot at small animals, so I never did.

Why did I obey my father when it came to animals, and not when it came to the revolver in the dresser drawer? I have no idea.

Notwithstanding the many years my dad kept a revolver in his dresser, I sensed that its presence made him uncomfortable. He never thought that gun ownership was a rite of passage. He never discussed the 2^nd Amendment as a right under attack. He never suggested that you should own a gun to prepare for some apocalyptic future, whether a societal breakdown or Big Brother government.

By the way, when did this notion of going to war with the U.S. government become part of the conservative mainstream? I never read it in the pages of William Buckley’s National Review, to which I subscribed for many years. Yet, today, it is bedrock Tea Party doctrine. 

But ideas have consequences...

In 2009 three Pittsburgh police officers were killed and two wounded responding to a domestic disturbance. The shooter was a 22-year old man, who, according to friends, purchased his firearms, including an AK-47, "because he felt the quality of (his) life was being diminished," and feared newly elected President Obama would take away his right to own weapons.

At one time I would have called this guy a wacko, but I have heard much the same thing from people I now call friends.

No Gun Mulligans

The first “gun enthusiast” I encountered was a shipmate on the USS Charleston. Reportedly he was testing the trigger pull on a 9 mm automatic pistol that he had modified for a shooting competition when he blew a hole in his hand. He was alone in his apartment. His name has slipped my memory, but privately my shipmates referred to him as “that fucking idiot.” You see, you don’t get a second chance to screw up with a loaded weapon.

Last December a father’s 9 mm Beretta accidentally discharged in the parking lot of a western Pennsylvania gun shop killing his 7-year old son. This guy is a fucking idiot too.

Gun Sex

Another shipmate of mine, not the one who blew a hole in his hand, was robbed in Hampton, VA, while he and his fiancé slept in their bedroom. They heard but never saw the intruder. The next day he purchased a hand gun. I assume the gun provided some peace of mind. Still, I wonder, was he ever robbed again? Did he keep the gun at his bedside after he married and had children?

Justin Cronin, a self-described Texas liberal, wrote about his come-to-Jesus moment regarding gun ownership in a January 28, 2013 NY Times editorial. Attempting to flee hurricane Rita with his family, Cronin found himself stuck, 50 miles from home, at 2 AM, amidst a multitude, like him, trying to get the hell out of Houston. Although he didn’t observe any outright lawlessness, he experienced a crisis of vulnerability, i.e., it being Texas, he figured most of the people milling about were armed, and, well, he wasn’t. Despite the threat of an oncoming hurricane, he and his family hightailed it back to Houston.

Subsequently Cronin purchased a .38 caliber handgun. But then, he bought another gun, and another, and another, until he owned six; and today he’s planning his next purchase. So what to make of this? Do six guns provide six times the personal safety? Or, as seems more likely, guns are just his adult toys, and personal safety a mere ruse to explain a creepy fascination with guns.

Somebody that I Used to Know

 In middle school I car-pooled with a boy who lived nearby. His mother drove a large Mercedes sedan. We were friends but didn’t hang out together. I think he was a rung or two higher up the social ladder. Several years later, after I had moved away, I learned he had killed himself with his dad’s pistol. And so it goes.

About a year ago a childhood friend disclosed in a profoundly sad public email that he had Huntington’s Disease. Briefly, it is caused by an insidious genetic defect that often does not manifests itself until mid-life. Essentially your brain wastes away. The progression of the disease varies; cognition, mood/behavior, and physical movement all eventually deteriorate.

His end story was relayed to me by mutual friends—I cannot independently confirm it. When one of his adult children came to check on him, he brandished a shotgun at the door. A 911 call followed and a SWAT team arrived on the scene. Negotiations ensued, and ended abruptly when he turned the shotgun on himself. And so it goes.

About 20% of Huntington patients attempt suicide; 7% succeed. Huntington patients should not possess guns.

So Little Time, So Many Gun Deaths

At this point the many mass gun killings blur together. Of course, the memory of Sandy Hook Elementary is still fresh, as is the Aurora movie theater shooting. Columbine stands out, because of the number of fatalities and the creepy partnership between the two socio-pathic teenage shooters. Then there’s the Nickel Mines School in Lancaster, PA, the Gabby Giffords shooting in Tuscon, AZ, et cetera, et cetera.

The online magazine Slate and Twitter feed @Gundeaths have started a crowdsourced tally of U.S. gun deaths since the Sandy Hook massacre on December 14th. At this writing, 69 days later, the tally stands at 1,999 or about 29 gun deaths per day. I'll let the reader decides what this means.

The Strange, Sad Tale of the 2^nd Amendment’s Poster Child

Meleanie Hain at her
daughter's soccer  practice

In 2008, Meleanie Hain, a woman from Lebanon County, one county east of where I live, brought a loaded handgun to her 5-year old daughter’s soccer game. It was legal. She had a permit to carry the gun. Many of the other soccer parents objected. In the ensuing brou-ha-ha, the Lebanon county sheriff revoked her gun-carry permit on the grounds that she displayed poor judgment. By the way I’ve seen fights break out between mothers at youth soccer games, so I tend to think this is the last place you want loaded weapons. In due course a judge returned her permit. For the next several months Meleanie was a poster child for the 2^nd Amendment movement.

Meleanie was all about her right to carry a gun, regardless of any identifiable threat. After the soccer game incident, she complained “the way people look at me sometimes when I am out running errands, I feel as if I am wearing a scarlet letter, and really it’s a Glock 26.”

I suppose that was a witticism. Either she couldn’t see, or didn’t care, that a gun strapped on her hip changed her relationship with the community. As my brother-in-law will attest, you don’t make friends with a loaded gun at your side.

A year later her husband murdered her in their home with his 9mm handgun. Then he took his own life. Her loaded Glock 26 was a few feet away in a backpack hanging on the door. Her three children were unharmed.

The Elusive Truth

When I look back, guns have played a minor part of my life. I am grateful that I never felt compelled to own a gun for personal protection. For me, not needing a gun is a hallmark of civilized society.

As I reported earlier in this post, two people I once called friends used guns to kill themselves. I wonder, is this about normal for someone who has lived 58 years? It seems a lot.

Within my circle of friends, I have never had anyone recount how a gun thwarted a crime or protected their family from harm. I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but apparently it doesn't happen often. My gut is that a gun is much more likely to be involved in an accidental shooting, a suicide, or a domestic homicide than it is to protect anyone. 

The more I listen to people comment on the gun issue, the more convinced I become that we are talking past each other. People, like me, see guns as a personal safety issue that should be judged on a cost-benefit basis (people killed versus protection afforded); we have little in common with people who see guns as somehow fundamental to liberty and their sense of what it means to be an American.