Late Wednesday afternoon, one of the Mules asked me if we were still planning to have our book club meeting at the cigar club, as planned. I replied, “Why wouldn’t we?”

He said, “Because of the storm.”

I said, “Oh, that. When is that supposed to hit?”

He said, “Tonight.”

I said, “Well, the cigar club is basically a cement bunker filled with booze. I’m going. So is Frank, the bartender. And Olio, the restaurant down the street, is delivering the food.”

He said, “I’ll be there.”

It was raining when the meeting began at six. And it was raining when it ended at ten. There were apparently gusts of wind here and there, but we never noticed them. When I went to bed, it had stopped raining. I woke around two in the morning and looked outside onto the beach. It was beautiful and calm.

Thursday morning, it was bright and sunny.

This is what happens 9 out of 10 times that we are alerted to an impending hurricane. That’s why it’s difficult for long-term Floridians to put much stock in weather reports, especially urgent ones. And that’s why we get a kick out of coverage like this:

What Are My Thoughts? 

JS, my editor, thought I should write something about the election results. So, I’ve been thinking about what I think and, so far, I don’t have any thoughts worth writing about. But I do have a feeling about the results. On both a state and a federal level, I feel a bit safer about the future than I felt a week ago. With more of a balance in the House (and maybe the Senate), there should be a slightly better chance that Congress will do an overall better job by passing fewer laws and spending less money and generally reducing their power and presence. Okay. Maybe that’s optimistic. Still, as Hem said, isn’t it pretty to think so?

What I Believe: About Gun Control

I think everyone should have the right to own a gun. Or guns. But I also believe in gun control. I can’t, for the life of me, understand the arguments against, at the very least, banning assault weapons.

The best argument in favor of assault weapons is a political and theoretical one. It’s based on the second amendment, which states that “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” But the primary rationale for the second amendment was not for protection against robbery or personal assault. It was for protection against tyranny. Our founding fathers had risked their lives defending America from tyranny, in large part with state militias. They recognized that the government they were establishing could one day devolve into tyranny. To prevent that, they wanted citizens to be armed.

So, if that was the intention, and we want to hold fast to the intention, it’s difficult to argue with the right for all Americans not just to be armed, but to be armed to the hilt so they could militia-up and fight governmental tyranny.

But as a pragmatist, I can’t see that playing out in the real world.

Tyranny is a real threat. And we should be on guard against it. I just don’t think the answer is a deluge of automatic weapons.

That’s where my thinking is now. And I would be wasting your reading time if that was all I had to say on the subject. But, in researching assault weapons, I discovered something interesting. It’s something you may not know.

I assumed that assault weapons were responsible for most of the homicides in America. It turns out, that’s not true.

According to FBI data, handguns are the weapons of choice for most killers in this country. In every one of the past 20 years, the overwhelming majority of murders involved handguns. And an NIH study confirmed that, depending on the year, assault rifles accounted for between 2% and 12% of all homicides.

In the chart below, you can see that, in this particular year, automatic handguns and rifles were used in 329 murders, or about 2% of the total.

Conclusion: This is not to say that assault weapons are not a problem. When it comes to mass shootings, they are, indeed, the weapon of choice. Assault weapons are involved in more than 80% of mass killings, according to FBI data. (Interesting: The greatest mass killer in American history must certainly be Charles Cullen – i.e., The Good Nurse. And he didn’t use a weapon of any kind.) Given my thoughts on applying the death penalty to serial killers and mass murderers (see what I said about capital punishment in Tuesday’s issue), logic compels me to favor significant restrictions, including serious psychological screening, for owning assault weapons.