A few days ago, I asked the Polk County Sheriff’s Office two questions about Polk Sheriff Grady Judd:
1) Is Grady Judd a member of the NRA?
2) How many personal weapons does he own?
I did this because Judd routinely expresses deep sympathy with the NRA and its mission. I wanted to nail down his relationship with precision. Here’s the answer, relayed to me by Scott Wilder, Judd’s exceedingly honorable and competent spokesman:
“[The sheriff] owns several guns, but he respectfully declines to say how many or what kind. He also respectfully declines to say whether or not he is a member of the NRA.”
That answer is consistent with Judd’s view of privacy for gun ownership, Wilder said: “The Sheriff supports privacy rights of those owning guns.”
Readers can judge for themselves the irony of tough-talking, plain-spoken, non politically-correct Grady Judd — who rushes to hold lurid press conferences and release videos of barely teenage cheerleaders misdemeanor girlfighting — using privacy as a shield.
You’ll have to decide for yourself if he cherishes our privacy in sex, communications, religion, or political opposition. Or if he reserves privacy solely for death machine ownership and public affiliation with private political pressure groups designed to very publicly bully the unarmed.
Wilder also provided a longer statement from Judd that answered several questions I did not ask. I’ll post it at the end of this piece.
The correlations Grady Judd cannot acknowledge
We’ll come back to Judd in just a moment.
But first, in considering American gun violence in all its forms, four vital dynamics come into play. Three of them are measurable.
1) More regulation of guns correlates with fewer people dead from guns. It’s a simple fact represented in the image below. More gun regulation equals fewer dead people. By all appearances, gun regulation saves lives. Period.
2) Fewer and fewer Americans, most of whom are white, own more and more guns. And the more guns you have, the more confrontationally political you are about it.
Please read this short little essay if you get a chance. It’s very important lays this out in detail.
3) There is no human scale correlation between homicide rate and incarceration rate. Also, the threat of gun death — and violent death generally — for civilians and police alike is down significantly over the last 20 years for most people. There is no evidence that state violence or incarceration caused this downturn. I wrote about this extensively in this piece. And you can see the core measurement of these general trends here. Prohibition of alcohol and drugs correlates much more meaningfully with the long-term rise and fall of murder rates than anything else. But even it does not explain the general, but geographically uneven, drop of last 20 years.
4) Police empathize with the armed, not the unarmed
The three measurable dynamics above bear closely on the fourth, which is both the hardest to prove and the most obvious if you simply listen and observe.
American police, who are ostensibly charged with protecting America’s unarmed households from the violence of its armed households, overwhelmingly sympathize/empathize with the armed households. American police, who receive their livelihood primarily from the taxes of the strong majority of unarmed American households, generally look at unarmed households with suspicion or loathing. Listen to them, if you doubt me.
This emerges much more in police politics and rhetoric than in their on-the-ground operations — at least in most non-segregated neighborhoods. But I believe, from observation, it colors every aspect of the general national approach to policing and gun regulation.
This sympathy/empathy causes them not to know — or even try to know — the correlations I cited above. That, in turn, drives both the prohibition policies and the Drug War policing approach that created mass incarceration and have decimated so many segregated neighborhoods.
Why there’s no gun in my house
I grew up in a house with five hunting rifles and some sort semi-automatic weapon (a mini 14, I believe) mounted on the wall above my dad’s chair. We had a handgun stored somewhere. This not-quite-an arsenal mostly reflects the legacy of childhood hunting that lost its charm for my dad after Vietnam. I shot some of those weapons at various times growing up; but they weren’t any regular part of my life.
I lived comfortably through the crack era in small-town Florida in a neighborhood that sometimes got iffy. Only one time do I ever remember my parents brandishing the handgun for self-defense. And it turns out there was nothing there but a phantom noise.
I recently wrote a book that revolves largely around heroic, armed self-defense — both by citizens and a few outstanding law enforcement officers. Armed self-defense is a family legacy. So I do not fear or despise guns. I was taught reverence and deep respect for them. But I won’t have one in my house.
I will not have a gun in my house for the same reason my family wears seat belts when we drive somewhere. For the same reason we lock the door to our house. For the same reason I don’t smoke cigarettes. For the same reason we vaccinated our children; or would evacuate a beachfront home if a hurricane were coming; or make sure my son wears a baseball helmet when he’s at bat. There are a million practical nods to safety and health that we embrace as a society because the empirical evidence tells us we’re crazy not to.
I will also acknowledge that at various moments in my life I’ve thought “I’d sure like to have a gun right now.” Every single moment turned out to be a false alarm or just a passing feeling. And of course, you can’t only have death machines in your house at the precise moment when you feel acute anxiety at 3 a.m. after watching The Walking Dead and hearing a creak.
You must have those death machines in your house at all times. In trade for the feeling of defense in your hand, you must expose yourself and your family to the mechanisms of suicide and accidental death. Those utterly dwarf the vanishingly rare instances of real self-defense. I’m capable of using my mind to assess this balance and act accordingly. Moreover, if you secure your weapons legally and responsibly, you diminish their effectiveness in one of those vanishingly rare moments of self-defense.
I will acknowledge that the cost benefit equation of guns for some people, though not that many, is different, depending on where they live. I also would never question someone’s basic right to own a death machine for feelings of personal protection. I think it’s foolish, for most people; but it’s still a basic right. And hunting I completely respect, although I don’t do it myself.
Yet, I guarantee you, a massive majority of police officers will tell me I’m the foolish one — and probably unmanly — for not having a gun in my house to “protect my family.” I’ve heard enough of them talk and seen enough stuff on Facebook. I don’t think it ever occurs to most of them that I am protecting my family.
Law enforcement’s open cultural sympathy for the armed faction of American society against the unarmed is the key dynamic in America’s debased gun culture. That’s because actual police generally come from the 35 percent of American households that own guns. And more importantly, I think most of them probably sympathize with militant arsenal owners because many of them own their own arsenals. I define “arsenal,” as the essay above does, as owning 10 or more guns.
As long as police rhetoric and moral sympathy rests with armed arsenalists and not the unarmed, nothing is going to change. Police overwhelmingly support the laws that allow our debased gun culture to thrive. Moreover, they generally indulge or enjoy this debased, debauched culture that keeps the NRA rolling in money. As an institution, American law enforcement does nothing to stigmatize culturally the endless hedonistic excesses of the gun culture in which its individual members often take part.
Doubt me? Try to imagine a “Click it or ticket” type campaign aimed at gun safety, even without the ticket.
The macro politics of American police is a massive problem — probably the single worst problem we have in American criminal justice. It’s a worse problem than on-the-ground operations because it too often drives those operations.
It’s why we are, generally, the most stupidly and brutally policed developed country in the world. It’s why we have a Drug War. And it’s a major part of our national gun violence problem because it causes police, generally, to resist addressing gun violence with anything but heavier, freer weaponry. Gun mania, on the whole, prevents police from using their minds strategically and productively.
Grady Judd’s true constituents — and his true boss
No law enforcement officer in America embodies this more perfectly than Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd, who has quite a mind to use, when he chooses to.
He recently said this in response to Marion Hammer, the psychopathically powerful Florida lobbyist for the NRA.
“I would tell you I suspect the majority of the Florida Sheriffs are NRA members. We’re all staunch supporters of the 2nd Amendment,” responded Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd, the Florida Sheriff’s Association President.
Ironically, Judd said this in the context of a mild disagreement between Florida sheriffs and the NRA, which was pushing an open carry law that even Grady Judd — Grady-freaking-Judd — thought too extreme and vague. Think how psychopathic you have to be to push a gun bill too extreme and vague for Grady Judd to support. And then you criticize him for hesitating to support it. That’s Marion Hammer, the most powerful woman in Florida politics, which says a lot about our state.
Just this week, the open carry bill moved forward through a Florida House committee. And Grady Judd said nothing, to my knowledge. Now, it’s not clear to me that open carry is any more dangerous than concealed carry. But it’s infinitely more powerful for its real purpose — which is empowering the armed faction of American society to publicly bully and intimidate the unarmed faction. Bullying the unarmed faction is the most important function the NRA serves. Bullies have power. Bullies make money. It’s nothing but gangsta.
And American police, by and large, are the deputized wing of the NRA, which Grady Judd’s simpering quote to Hammer, which has since retreated into silence, makes clear. He might have well have said, “Please don’t be mad at us. You know you own us.”
The NRA itself is nothing more than a chamber of commerce for gun hustlers. That makes Grady Judd a writ-large bagman for gun dealers. He cares far more about their rights and property and approval than mine. He’s shown this endlessly in his public statements.
Mass shootings — or really any instance of controversial and wrenching gun death — are always good for the gun business, especially during Democratic administrations. And that is when Sheriff Judd truly shines in his role.
I observed this firsthand as a reporter after Columbine, before Judd was even sheriff. Lawrence Crow appointed then Col. Judd to a Polk County gun safety committee that wanted to hold gun shows to standards similar required of federal dealers (which aren’t very demanding.) With incredible skill, Judd maneuvered that committee of well-meaning but overmatched citizens into doing nothing. It was my first encounter with Judd’s audacious brilliance as a political operator. And I have never, ever, ever underestimated him since. The Southern Poverty Law Center, I suspect, confused the character Judd plays in public with the administrator he is in reality. And that’s most likely why he recently kicked their butt in court.
After Trayvon Martin, Judd led the charge to defend the vigilante madness of “Stand your ground” from any changes. And, as an exclamation point, he sent agents of the state to surveil and harass men and women exercising their First Amendment rights to discuss the verdict critically. I’d bet my house he has never sent an agent of the state to surveil the death peddlers of gun shows or gun shops.
And just a few days ago, following Oregon, Judd immediately took to the cameras, as he always does, to blame anything but guns. Guns are literally the only thing, human or otherwise, that Judd ever absolves of responsibility. Seriously, from webcams to MySpace to weed, Grady has made a career of blaming non-human entities for human behavior. Not guns, though.
Here’s a link to his most recent interview. Listen to the vague platitudes designed to achieve nothing. He talks about “working together” to build “infrastructure” linking mental health to guns. Excellent. Propose and define the “infrastructure,” sheriff. If it looks like a licensing system or a registration list, your boss, Marion Hammer, who you and your fellow sheriffs support soooooo strongly, will kill it. You know this quite well. So don’t talk to me about working together; talk to her.
Rampage spectacle shootings are the lynchings of the 21st century
I see three broad kinds of mass shootings. Two of them — family or workplace destruction and beef shootings (drive-bys, etc.) — revolve around conventional domestic/workplace rage and/or turf rivalries. There is usually some familiarity between killer and at least some of the specific victims.
The third I call rampage spectacles — Sandy Hook, Aurora, Oregon, Charleston, etc. They are more psychologically traumatic to society because they tend to do the most spectacular damage. They come with no real observable motivation beyond nihilistic madness (Oregon) or group hatred (Charleston).
In their spectacle and capacity to traumatize, in the way they’ve almost become custom, these shootings strike me as inverted versions of lynchings.
The analogy isn’t perfect. Lynchings happened more frequently than rampage spectacle shootings (but not overall mass shootings.) And law enforcement almost never violently confronted a lynch mob until the late days of lynching. Today, obviously, police officers take on active spectacle shooters, often with great bravery. Neither lynchings nor rampage shootings posed or pose demographic threats; but both are outsized psychological threats to our notions of civil society.
So I think it’s a useful comparison.
It’s also useful to remember that law enforcement and respectable people long supported lynching as a necessary and inevitable tool of social control. Indeed, law enforcement, especially in Florida, often led or took part in lynchings. The language of unavoidability that people of power often used after lynchings is very similar to Grady Judd’s language after rampage spectacle shootings.
Here’s a quote from Hatton W. Sumners, a Texas congressman, arguing against a federal anti-lynching law in the 1920s, on basically the same grounds that gun hustlers reject background checks today.
“I say to you that you cannot pass this bill unless you pass it under the influence of the same spirit which this bill denounces, viz., the mob spirit,” Sumners said to laughter and applause on the House Floor. “You say that the folks down in the South are not doing this thing fast enough, and the folks in the South say the officers are not doing this thing fast enough, and you each get ropes and they go after the criminal and you go after the Constitution.”
And here’s the editor of the Gainesville Sun writing about the infamous Rosewood massacre/lynchings in 1923.
“Congressmen may rave and froth and pass laws as they please but the time will never come when a southern white man will not avenge a crime against innocent womanhood.”
In truth, a truly heroic sheriff named Peter Hagan of Palatka became the first 20th century Florida law enforcement officer to violently confront and defeat a lynch mob in 1923. That marked the grudging beginning of police confrontation with lynch mobs. Hagan’s stand marked the moment when police began to switch sides in mob justice. It took 25 to 30 years for police to fully switch sides and truly stamp out lynchings in Florida. But they were the key players, through the moral authority they communicated and their capacity for violence against the mob. When police moved, so did the respectable people.
A hero to white supremacists
As was the case with lynchings, the political power today that drives resistance to action aimed at reducing gun violence of all kinds has a powerful white supremacist streak. You see it everywhere from Donald Trump’s popularity to the white nationalist website Stormfront. Household gun ownership is a very white phenomenon. Arsenal ownership is hyperwhite.
And Grady Judd is a hero to Stormfront. Go google “Grady Judd + Stormfront.” See for yourself.
Its community members often quote him reverently. A dude calling himself “Proud White Chap,” was very fired up about some Grady gunfight trash talk back in January. See it here.
There are many more. Spend some time there.
I am not calling Grady Judd a white supremacist. But it’s a fact that the political and cultural character he’s chosen to play in public is a hero to white supremacists. Stormfront is on his side, not mine. It would be “politically correct” to say otherwise. And we all know Grady Judd rejects the politically correct.
Let me repeat this to you directly, sheriff: Stormfront considers you a great ally in the struggle for armed white nationalism. Stormfront considers you a much better political and moral leader than I do. Marion Hammer treats you like her vassal. Does all of that please you?
If you would like to answer, publicly or privately, I’m very, very easy to find.
A challenge to law enforcement
You would think that American police would thank the great majority of Americans who have chosen not to personally arm themselves and thus haven’t added millions of death machines to the volatile situations police are sworn and paid to confront. After all, the hint of a weapon in a moment of tension with police is enough to justify your violent death. That’s been shown over and over again.
You would think police would consider this choice an expression of support. You would think they would respect that the unarmed trust and empower them to provide, on our behalf, the armed defense sometimes required in a society.
But you would be wrong. Listen to police officers talk. On the whole, with plenty of exceptions, my observations tell me that rank and file police officers more or less consider the unarmed sheep. They consider us burdens. They complain about us all the time. Personal security welfare queens, or something.
It doesn’t mean they won’t perform their duties when called, often with great bravery. But I think they generally resent my unwillingness to expose my family to death machines or add more death machines to the earth with my money. They consider it morally irresponsible, even though virtually all rational analysis shows the opposite. Police leadership, embodied by Grady Judd, does not effectively correct them, although some, perhaps many, are trying, I believe.
If I am wrong about this, police officers, if I have misheard you, please correct me. I mean this sincerely. I would love to be wrong. But I don’t think I am.
As of right now, for the most part, law enforcement has only one specific policy for reducing all gun violence: arrest or kill more shooters, faster; terrify the public into thinking that’s the best we can do.
The idea of preventing shooters in the first place does not really occur to them; or at least they offer no concrete proposals for doing that. That’s because preventing shooters of innocent people could mean reducing shooters of animals or targets or bad guys. That’s not a trade most police officers, in my experience, are willing to make — even rhetorically. Shooting animals or targets or bad guys is too much part of who they are. Again, listen to Grady Judd talk.
Because they’re so completely unwilling to even mull such a trade, they can’t honestly assess either the gun culture in which they take part or the clear correlations between gun death and gun laws — or between prohibition and gun violence.
They cannot consider the fact that Hawaii, with lots of gun regulations, does a much better job protecting its citizens from gun death than Alaska, Mississippi, or Louisiana, which have few if any regulations.
This should matter to police. But, generally, it does not.
So here’s my challenge to Grady Judd, rank and file police officers, and gun owners alike: simply acknowledge the correlations I cited at the beginning of this piece.
Say “You’re right, it is clear at the state level that gun regulations correlate with reduced gun death.” Or say, “I see your correlation; but it’s wrong. And here’s why.”
Say, “I see that no act of government has ever affected the national murder rate like the prohibition of drugs of alcohol.” Or say, “I see that correlation, but it’s wrong. And here’s why.”
After you’ve done that, with honesty, then let’s talk about working together on safety “infrastructure.”
If you can’t bring yourself to do that, why not at least start a “Click it or Ticket”-type media campaign related to responsible gun citizenship? Try to exert some moral control over the hedonistic gun culture in which so many officers take part. When law enforcement finally turned against lynching as a custom, lynchings subsided. That’s historical fact.
How about an anti-bullying campaign related to dudes who talk trash about “second amendment solutions?” For Grady Judd, bullies are little girls on Facebook and people objecting to the Trayvon Martin verdict. He will unleash the fury of the state on them. Angry white men have a free hand to brag about their “tactical” arsenals.
If you want to change this sheriff, you could publicly oppose Marion Hammer’s open carry law. Not because it’s particularly dangerous. Not because it’s vague, and you might wrongly arrest somebody. Oppose it publicly and morally because you oppose the bullying and libertinism it represents.
Pick a moral fight with someone who has power for once in your life. Marion Hammer is not a little girl. She’ll probably beat you. It’s ok. I lose all the time. Peter Hagan lost his next election after beating the lynch mob. What are you willing to lose?
Which side are you on, sheriff?
You will notice I haven’t said a word about new laws here. I’m talking about culture, as validated by the most vital institution of state authority. And I’m much more interested in establishing whether the unarmed, law abiding majority can rely on our police to protect us from the heavily armed minority if push comes to shove.
When the NRA and Stormfront and The Oathkeepers order their angry white followers to turn their millions of hoarded weapons on a government elected legally and democratically by the unarmed majority, which side will the police take?
I think that’s a very open question.
And it’s not really a far-fetched scenario. It’s happened before. That mix of tribal power and locally-based authoritarianism is essentially what overthrew Reconstruction in the South. I see no real reason that couldn’t happen again, especially if that coalition can expect police support. My observations tell me it probably can — at least in some places. See Bundy Ranch.
Make no mistake, with ever more and deadlier guns concentrated in ever fewer, angrier, whiter hands, some sort of confrontation between the unarmed majority and armed minority is coming. I don’t know what form it will take. I hope it will be peaceful. But I’m not smug about it. Not at all.
I am a thoroughly law-abiding citizen — at least as thorough as anybody else. And I worry about what my police are willing to do me and my family because of their personal loyalty to arsenalists. I’m worried simply because I listen to them, and I take them seriously.
So here are my final questions to Grady Judd:
1) Will you enforce with the power of your office gun regulations and laws enacted by a lawfully elected government?
2) When and if Marion Hammer and the NRA and Stormfront and Oathkeepers call on their heavily armed followers to wage armed insurrection against my country, when they finally pursue that “second amendment solution” they’re always threatening, will you join them? Or will you fight for me and with me and my family?
I need the answers to these questions, so I can prepare accordingly. And yes, sheriff, I’d like actual yes or no answers. They should be easy to give. And like I said before, I’m easy to reach.
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Postscript
Here’s the full text of what Scott Wilder sent me:
“I talked to the Sheriff. He is a strong supporter of the second amendment and strongly advocates for the rights of private citizens to purchase, own, and possess guns for any lawful purpose. He strongly supports responsible citizens to use guns to protect their own lives and the lives of their families. He supports Florida’s concealed carry law & he supports and encourages citizens to get quality training related to gun safety, personal safety, and how to keep themselves and their families safe from violent criminals. He supports laws prohibiting felons from purchasing, owning, or possessing guns.
“The Sheriff supports privacy rights of those owning guns. He believes we should strongly punish those who use guns in the act of committing a crime.
“The Sheriff is very interested in the issue of mental health and finding ways we can come together to help those who need therapeutic interventions to improve their quality of life and also to improve public safety. By looking at the facts surrounding “mass shooting” tragedies, it is absolutely clear that mental health plays a central role in virtually all of these shootings. He would support common sense and effective strategies that can be implemented to attempt to prevent these tragedies related to mental illness while preserving responsible gun ownership.
“He owns several guns, but he respectfully declines to say how many or what kind. He also respectfully declines to say whether or not he is a member of the NRA.”
Again, I say to the sheriff: propose something specific; and signal your willingness to fight Marion Hammer for it publicly. I’m happy to stand side-by-side with you then.
For now, it’s just empty talk. And my input won’t matter.
And just remember this, sheriff: one of these days, some addled patriot with an arsenal whose privacy we cherish is going to go off on a Polk County school or hospital or movie theater or Planned Parenthood Clinic. Your guys will kill him eventually. (It will be a him.)
We’ll tally the death lottery. And whether you want to name him or not, I’ll bet you $100 we’ll find a cool Grady Judd quote somewhere in the shooter’s social media trail. Mark it down. Your condolences and prayers will be as empty as your statement above.
Oh, and here’s a note for the cowardly, rootless, faceless man who writes boring Sean Hannity-lite editorials that no one can finish for The Ledger — and for his bosses. You’re welcome to call me a cop-hating libtard again if you want. But you might consider taking a few of the questions raised in this piece and doing some actual reporting on them. You have some talented writers and reporters on staff. They are not, sadly, sitting in the editorial editor’s chair.