Virginia goes too far in preventing child abuse

         Last year, authorities in Virginia arrested Kevin Ricks—a teacher whom, for the past three decades, molested young boys and documented his exploitation.  Ricks bounced around between school systems, states, and even countries, preying on foreign exchange students and breaking professional boundaries to woo his pupils.  Because of loopholes in state laws, no school district reported Ricks’s questionable behavior after he quit each time.  Each new principal had no idea that Ricks was a predator.

         The Virginia Board of Education is proposing a series of guidelines to crack down on perverts like Ricks.  The meaningful requirements include a mandatory report to police when abuse is alleged or suspected (and not simply after the abuse is proven); and notification of the state superintendent when an employee resigns or is fired because of child abuse.

         But then the Board proposes to regulate the conduct of teachers in and out of the classroom in a way that could adversely affect twenty-first century teaching techniques.  Being a teacher is more than being an instructor: sometimes, teachers have to be social workers, therapists, or advocates for individual students.

            The Board wants to prohibit “interactions unrelated to instruction” and dictate the types of physical contact teachers may have: a hand on the shoulder or pat on the back is okay, but a “spontaneous hug” is “not appropriate with older children.”  So a distraught high school junior who discovers she is pregnant cannot seek an extended embrace from a trusted teacher?

            Or what about the requirement that “conversations with students should focus on matters related to instruction and school activities?”  Does this forbid a teacher and student of Arab descent from talking about their shared heritage and culture once a week after class

            The Board should consider dropping language like this, which seeks to absolutely prevent abusive contact by a miniscule number of instructors at the expense of healthful student-teacher interaction.  Reasonable guidelines seem to warrant simply a prohibition on romantic relationships and inappropriate verbal and physical contact. 

        Another worrisome area is the Board’s treatment of electronic communication.  Because social media are transforming rapidly, it is true that teachers and students may not readily comprehend the possible impropriety of online interactions.  However, I am not sure that Board of Education members understand the potential for good that these technologies may offer.

            Imagine the heinous “offenses” that Virginia would outlaw if these social media restrictions were approved.  A low-income student without an at-home computer could not text her teacher questions about homework assignments, in lieu of sending an e-mail.  A teacher who posted pictures of a class project on Flickr could not respond to comments or inquiries by her students.  And a student who wanted to quickly alert a guidance counselor to questionable content on Facebook could not correspond with him through a Facebook message.

            Kevin Ricks was able to molest so many students not because MySpace made it easier—but because school systems’ nonsensical hiring, firing, and reporting policies allowed him to walk away without consequence.  Ricks was able to transfer schools with a clean record because no authority ever investigated him. 

         Lowering the threshold for reporting abuse should ensure that school systems can better track alleged molesters.   However, prohibiting teachers from using their discretion when counseling, connecting with, and reaching out to students injects the state Board of Education needlessly far into public school classrooms.

America’s priority: guns or education?

In the United States of America, it is easier to purchase a gun than it is to get a student loan.

            In 2009, Americans purchased approximately 14 million firearms.  This is according to the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System, which processed 14,033,824 background checks by the federal government and states equipped to conduct checks.  Not everyone passed the background check: the NICS denied 1.4 percent of people the right to purchase firearms (some were successfully appealed).  Still, that represents 13.8 million firearms.

          For student loan data, the numbers get murky.  In fall 2007, 18.2 million students were enrolled in institutions of higher learning, which includes full-time, part-time, graduate, and undergraduate students.  According to a survey by the U.S. Education Department, 69.6 percent of college students obtained student loans from federal, state, institutional, or private sources (the average amount borrowed was $47,500, which includes the possibility of multiple sources).  So, that translates to 12.7 million students receiving college loans.

            While these numbers are similar, they also overlook some unknowns.  A huge factor is the number of firearms sold at gun shows.  The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives estimates that 2,000 to 5,200 gun shows occur annually in the U.S.  It is possible to exceed 1,000 gun sales at some shows in a single weekend.  Only 16 states have laws requiring some basic background check for prospective purchasers.  But there is no way to track how many guns these people buy, if the purchase involves a handgun or some other firearm, or what happens at all in the other 34 states.

            Second, guns are stolen, lost, or inherited with greater ease than a student loan.  There is no black market for student loans like there is for guns.  And student loans cannot be trafficked over our borders.

            Finally, the gun statistic is a flow rate—number of purchases in a given year.  The loans figure accounts for the number of current students with loans in any given year, rather than the number of new loans per year.  The calculations would be quite complex and would stray from accuracy if we tried to compute the number of new loans per year.

            In conclusion, the assertion still holds: it is easier to obtain a dangerous weapon in than it is to receive tuition assistance for higher education in this country.

Guns, violence, and America’s unfortunate apathy

                Politicians and commentators like to stroke Americans’ collective ego.  They say that the United States is the greatest nation on Earth, that it is a shining city on a hill, that it is the freest and most prosperous nation in the history of the world.  Sometimes, the speakers are simply trying to promote their own agendas.  But they all undoubtedly believe America’s grandeur to be real.

                And that is where the problem begins.

                The United States of America has serious defects.  Our healthcare system is inefficient, our class divide is huge, our foreign military policy is bankrupting us, we are losing economic ground to China, and we cannot stop using oil that we do not own in cars that we do not build. 

               The Sarah Palins, Rush Limbaughs, and Glenn Becks would prefer that our government not address these problems.   They feel that any coherent public policy which might right-size our country is unacceptable if Americans are somehow inconvenienced.  (Never mind the inconvenience to future generations when the United States struggles to pay back its debt or tries to cope with the effects of climate change.)

               Yesterday’s shooting in Tucson offers Americans an opportunity to look at another festering sore in our culture.  Every few weeks, some guy walks into a school or church or shopping center and opens fire on bystanders.   Why is this normal in the United States?  We hear about political assassinations and extremists in Afghanistan on a weekly basis—but our society grows terrorists just like any other.

               Mass shootings will never stop because Americans are not mature enough to discuss the malignant effects of our permissive gun laws.  In fact, I never understood recreational gun ownership to begin with: if some guy wants to play around with handguns and automatic weapons, he should join the Army and fly over to the Middle East to explore his “hobby.” 

               Instead, our lackadaisical attitude toward guns allows any closeted maniac to get his hands on a weapon of mass destruction.  No one in yesterday’s shooting—in a state with pretty loose firearms laws—pulled out their personal weapon to disarm the gunman and prevent loss of life.  Isn’t that the reason why gun fanatics and the National Rifle Association oppose all sensible regulation of firearms, so people can protect their life, liberty, and property?  Americans should stop holding vigils and start holding hearings.   

               We let scapegoats distract us from any meaningful change in the status quo.  For example, we are spending billions of dollars on airport security and violating people’s constitutional rights to prevent a hypothetical Middle Easterner from detonating a bomb on a plane.  And we feel threatened that Hispanics are traversing our southern border and bringing violence into our communities.

               But when it comes to white men who grab a few deer rifles and kill their families or friends, we take that in stride.  Americans have trouble recognizing home-grown terrorism, even when it stands up and shoots them in the face.  What is the use of spending money in Afghanistan and Pakistan to understand why young men become extremists when we don’t even know what drives our own citizens toward terrorism?

               As long as conservatives deny that our culture is sick, and as long as they hide behind the flag and the second amendment, random mass shootings will continue to define the United States of America.  I doubt that we can have a conversation about our gun policy, our mental health policy, and our priorities as a country without acknowledging that some threats to our country’s wellbeing stem from ourselves, not our enemies.

Democrats must keep Pelosi

            If Barack Obama was elected two years ago to provide universal healthcare, tackle climate change, stimulate the economy, and reform Wall Street, then Nancy Pelosi was the person who got it done.

            The House of Representatives bore the brunt of this year’s Tea Party backlash against progressivism and the speaker was especially toxic for scores of conservative and moderate representatives.  But she is hardly to blame for the Democrats’ problems.  The White House provided little direction in crafting the legislation and practically no public defense of its priorities.  The Senate watered down, slowed down, and bogged down its version of the major policies.

            If the unemployment rate had fallen any faster or the healthcare bill been implemented any sooner, the Democrats probably would have fared better.  But those problems are bigger than Obama, Pelosi, or Sen. Harry Reid alone.  And given the fact that legislating is complex (special interests have to be satisfied, people’s egos have to be assuaged, and backroom deals have to be cut), there is no plausible argument for how the House’s imperfect legislation could have been passed any differently.

            Pelosi genuinely had a more difficult majority to work with than John Boehner now probably does.  Democrats (at least the ones in Congress) come in many more flavors today.  There is a little overlap between people like Olympia Snowe and some Democrats, but most Republicans fit into one category:

            Almost fifty years ago, the party breakdown was different.  If you look at a significant piece of legislation from the 1960s, the Civil Rights Act, a bipartisan coalition of socially liberal Republicans and Democrats was responsible for its passage.  Social liberals believed in the power of the government to ensure racial equality.  Economic liberals believed in the ability of the government to lift up the working class—i.e. much of the New Deal.  Social conservatives were segregationists and economic conservatives were against interference in private enterprise.  Back in the days of Lyndon Johnson, this was the party split:

            For those who complain about Pelosi’s partisanship, the reality is that she could never work with Republicans who have little overlap with her worldview.  She may be a liberal lightning rod, but only because the GOP is on the far-right fringe ideologically.  If a substantial portion of the incoming Republican majority believes that climate change is fake or has doubts about where the president was born, I most certainly want the Democratic leader to be unquestionably progressive in her outlook.

            I hope Pelosi wins back her gavel in two years.  But until then, she should stay in the leadership to work with John Boehner on the tiny sliver of issues where they agree, then draw stark contrasts on the majority of other policy positions.

Crime and gun prevalence

         A large amount of firearms used in crimes in the Washington, D.C. area over the past two decades were sold by a small number of stores.  That is the conclusion of a yearlong investigation by The Washington Post.  What’s more, a law enacted in 2003, known as the Tiahrt Amendment, makes it extremely difficult for the public to see federal tracing information and know which gun stores are the worst offenders.  The law was proposed after a Northeastern University analysis discovered that one percent of gun dealers sold 57 percent of guns used in crimes.

            While this information is disheartening, so are the crimes The Post detailed that were committed with guns of this nature: a gun used in an act of road rage.  A gun used to execute a sister’s boyfriend in an altercation. A gun used to kill a wife and her suspected love interest.

            The link between these events: an agitated person used a firearm that was at his fingertips.

            Of particular interest is the use of “straw purchases”—people who buy guns for felons or others who are unable legally or unwilling to buy their own firearms.  To me, the low barriers to gun ownership and use are unwise.  Straw purchases, shops where it is easy to obtain a crime gun, and the lack of a waiting period or regulations for storage are all bad ideas.

            It’s all about access.  Two years ago, The New York Times Magazine probed the psychology of suicide.  It turns out that people who don’t spend a lot of time planning their own deaths are more successful at killing themselves.  The reason?  It is harder to survive impulsive methods like a shot to the head or jumping from a bridge than, say, overdosing on pills or slitting your wrists. 

          In fact, states with higher rates of gun ownership also have higher rates of gun-induced suicides.  While we might expect this, the disturbing twist is that in a 2001 survey of 153 suicide survivors, 70 percent contemplated their death for less than an hour.

         So, when people argue that an aggressive man who didn’t have access to a firearm might have stabbed his wife or strangled his neighbor, that explanation isn’t entirely valid.  Having a loaded gun in your car or on your waist enables an overreaction.  Even if the gun is inside the house, but it is unloaded or in a safe, that is still a barrier to wrongdoing.  People are funny like that.

         I have no problem with gun ownership in principle.  As a practical matter, imposing regulations on the purchase of a firearm and its storage may seem intrusive to most gun owners.  But if a deadly weapon wasn’t so readily available in a heated moment, it is possible that the number of suicides and murders could decrease.