The League of Ordinary Gentlemen

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(Previously: The Knock Down, Part 1 and Part 2,and a Placeholder)

James Fallows, after Aurora, The Certainty of More Shootings:

“[T]he additional sad, horrifying, and appalling point is the shared American knowledge that, beyond any doubt, this will happen again, and that it will happen in America many, many times before it occurs anywhere else.”

Fellow Leaguester Jason Kuznicki, in his post Great Fact, Little Fact:

“Suppose I were to find a $100 bill on the street in Washington, DC. That’s an exceptionally rare event, but not an unwelcome one.

“Afterward I would not — I mean, not ever — think to have an Important Family Conversation about whether I should quit my job and devote more time to searching the gutters of our nation’s capital. I’d probably buy a bottle of champagne, or give the cash to malaria prevention, or maybe just put it in Alice’s college fund. I might consider finding the money’s owner, but I don’t seriously think I’d be able to. So there things would stand, just as they should.

“I would take what happened, not lose my composure, and recall the words of Chrysippus: “We must live according to the experience of what usually happens in nature.” And not by whatever grabs our monkey brains in a given moment.”

Yours truly, in my post The Knock-Down, Part 1:

“We are hit by a blast of wind, 40 or 50 knots I’d guess, and an instant INTEMPERANCE goes from sailing upright to horizontal, spreaders in the water, a 16,000lbs bluewater cruiser (with a 6,500lbs deep keel) laid on her side like a children’s toy caught by a summer zephyr.”

Me again, in Feasibility, Normalization, Carbon Footprint, and Buyer Beware:

“[For a USCG Inspected Passenger Vessel] there’s a mathematically determined maximum sailplan, and that sailplan is not calculated against the sort of 5kts light-air days that had us putting up those big bright sails on INTEMPERANCE; the sailplan calculation is made to make sure the boat stays on her feet when she’s hit by the unexpected gust, or when (mis)handled by a skipper unfamiliar with her sailing characteristics.

“Or put another way, the Coast Guard is saying: Six pack is kind of a wild-west, seat of the pants designation. It puts most of the burden on the skipper to maintain his vessel and operate it properly, and on his paying customers to exercise their judgement about whether or not they should even step aboard in the first place. And whatever happens, people are only going to get killed six at a time.” Continue reading this post…

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Note: This post is part of our League Symposium on Guns In America. You can read the introductory post for the Symposium here. To see a list of all posts in the Symposium so far, click here.

After today, we’ll be winding down the Guns In America symposium.  There are a few other contributors who have said they may post an additional piece over the next week or so, but you can probably expect the days ahead to be more typical League fare.

This seems like as good a time as any, then, to thank everyone involved for making this symposium a success:

We posted more than thirty compelling pieces of writing we were proud to publish; we received twice that number of submissions, any of which we’d have been equally proud to publish had we the space.  So thanks to everyone that took the time and effort to put your thoughts forward.

Guns are an easy enough topic to discuss when everyone is of like mind; however, it is one of the most difficult to tackle with all sides at the table.  To be honest with you, we were a little concerned that the topic might attract commenters more comfortable with the hostile, crazy, ALL-CAPS style of discourse.  Instead, the new voices we’ve heard from have been both thoughtful and respectful.  So thanks as well (and as always) to those that kept the dialogue going in the threads.

I also want to acknowledge the League regular contributors that not only wrote front-page posts, but also took the time to act as hosts in the threads – but perhaps a special shout out is owed to Mike Dwyer for providing yeoman’s work from beginning to end.

Lastly, of course, a thanks to everyone that stopped by to read what we all had to say – and our stats suggest there were a whole lot you.  If you’re already a League regular, thanks for your continued support.  If you’re new and only dropped in because of the symposium, we’d like to invite you to stick around as we discuss every other topic under the sun.

Follow Tod on Twitter, view his archive, or email him.

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