Trump announced that he’s going to nominate the former attorney general of Florida to be US attorney general. The attorney general is the head of the Department of Justice, an organization with over 110,000 employees. Most federal law enforcement agencies (including the FBI, ATF, and DEA) and most federal prosecutors (including everybody working in a US Attorney’s office, which are the offices that prosecute federal gun laws) report to the attorney general.
Three weeks ago, everyone was excited about what the new administration would do for gun rights. So let’s check in on that. Forget the boss of the ATF. What does the incoming ATF’s boss’s boss think?
Hmm. Well. Maybe MAC is exaggerating? He’s just one guy. Let’s see what an institution like the National Association for Gun Rights thinks.
Ah.
We wrote something two weeks ago that got some pushback:
There’s a thing that gun-friendly presidents do when they get into office: nothing.
This observation is mostly driven by the fact that America has never had a pro-gun-rights president. Many of them have said they value gun rights, but once they’re in the chair, zero out of the 45 people to hold the office have done anything significant to protect gun rights. The first 31 guys didn’t need to do anything, since there were no federal gun laws to speak of. There were such laws starting with FDR, and since then presidents have either ratcheted them tighter or done nothing.
What we didn’t talk about is why that happens. Sure there are court appointments and some lip service, but why is it an uphill battle to get even that? Why aren’t pro-gun-rights actions the default from presidents who say they like gun rights? Rather than something where after vigilant oversight, much sturm und drang, and several betrayals, gun rights might occasionally eke out a symbolic advance? (And that’s what happens with presidents who say they like gun rights.)
Well, what is the president of the US? He’s the chief executive of an organization with 2.25 million civilian employees and 2.25 million military employees. That’s 4.5 million people ultimately reporting (in an employment sense) to one person. For comparison, the world’s largest private sector employers are Walmart and Amazon, with 2.1 million and 1.5 million employees, respectively. Unlike those companies, the executive branch of the US federal government doesn’t exactly make its own rules for how to manage the organization. Its rules are, on paper, made by Congress, and then interpreted by successive administrations, each of which layers on its own rules and tries to set them in stone. Future administrations find it nearly impossible to tear up the old rules, so instead they place their own sedimentary layer on top. And unlike in the private sector, there is no garbage collection mechanism like bankruptcy to remove the cruft and start over. (The closest analogy to bankruptcy for governments is losing an all-out war, but that doesn’t tend to lead to good clean governance.)
The president is part of a system. That system has antibodies against decentralization. The system interprets decentralization as damage and routes around it. That isn’t to say that a president is powerless. But it is to say that even if he did want to do something about this (big if, as very few presidents have wanted to reduce the federal government’s overall power, and all of those guys were pre-FDR), he will be doing so in spite of the efforts of 4.5 million people. Crucially, it plays out that way even if the vast majority of the 4.5 million — even extremely senior people — aren’t personally opposed. The system has emergent behaviors independent of its individual members.
Culture is upstream of politics. Technology is upstream of culture. So focusing on politics is like trying to win a football game by doing great on the final play. Sure there’s a chance it’ll work, but there are much easier ways to win. If tech makes self-defense products undeniable, that shapes the culture. If the culture around self-defense is vibrant and growing, that shapes the politics. And then you get the laws you want automati—well, not quite automatically, but close to it.
Let’s make civilian defense tech that people love. Over time, the rest will fall into line.
A slick new site that lets you search for parts across all the major retailers. Especially worth checking out the very cool loadouts feature, which lets you create/share/shop specific loadouts.
NSSF does not maintain a database of gun owners. This was specifically told to ProPublica [directly to Corey G. Johnson] on several occasions.
Despite this, the reporter chose to accept misrepresentations of the truth as fact. NSSF used information to reach gun owners for the #GUNVOTE voter education program that was supplied by a very limited number of firearm manufacturers. That information was purged after those elections were complete. NSSF uses commercially-available data to reach voters for #GUNVOTE program to educate voters on how to vote, where to register, and where to vote on Election Day.
I really like the line "The system has emergent behaviors independent of its individual members." To me, this sums up how people in office can seldom get anything done because there must be continuity on all levels below them in order to make moves.
There must be some critical mass of departments, committees and employees from which the property of complacency emerges. It seems to me that executive action (or losing a war, as the article mentions) is the only power that can successfully cull the system down to below critical mass. Of course many of the 4.5m employees will resist this cut to cover their own ...
JK I bet it's super awesome, at least when it doesn't explode in your face. I'd like to do it some day.
"Go to drivetanks.com and spend a hundred thousand dollars" is literally #2 on my "what to do when I'm rich", after "buy a property and an ultralight and fly around legally without filing a flight plan"
I really like the line "The system has emergent behaviors independent of its individual members." To me, this sums up how people in office can seldom get anything done because there must be continuity on all levels below them in order to make moves.
There must be some critical mass of departments, committees and employees from which the property of complacency emerges. It seems to me that executive action (or losing a war, as the article mentions) is the only power that can successfully cull the system down to below critical mass. Of course many of the 4.5m employees will resist this cut to cover their own ...
> I shot an RPG and it was awesome
/me laughs in ballistic high speed
JK I bet it's super awesome, at least when it doesn't explode in your face. I'd like to do it some day.
"Go to drivetanks.com and spend a hundred thousand dollars" is literally #2 on my "what to do when I'm rich", after "buy a property and an ultralight and fly around legally without filing a flight plan"