Today in weather, weaponry, and Wozniacki

Some quick thoughts for the day. First on guns, then on white media and black hair, and then on why Caroline Wozniacki is not a racist (as far as I know).

1.  Yesterday's disaster in Portland has me thinking about gun control. There is some evidence, considerable evidence, apparently, that there is a strong negative correlation between rates of gun ownership and crime rates - and, more interestingly, between gun ownership and murder rates. Crudely: more guns = fewer crimes and murders, apparently. More guns = more gun crimes, to be sure, but fewer crimes overall. (That last link goes to the inestimable Fareed Zakaria's blog, but his problem was stealing facts, not making them up, so I don't mind.) This is intuitively plausible in a way, as gun control opponents know. One common argument: a mugger is less likely to step to you if you're more likely to be strapped. I get all that. But... I can't help wondering what happens if we drill down into the data some more (which I freely concede I've not done). What are the trade-offs? If crime rates overall go down but mass shootings at theatres and malls and schools become more frequent, is that an acceptable trade-off? (This is not yet an argument for gun control as we practice it, since mass shooters can get their weapons illegally.) If someone had been packing at the Portland mall and opened up on the shooter, would that person be a hero now? Or would he or she have taken out five or six more innocent people in the crossfire? I confess that I don't know how to think about this. 
2. A meteorologist was fired from an ABC station in Shreveport for responding to what one story describes as "racial remarks regarding her hair." The internet buzz has been that her employers did not support her against a racist attack, and that this is very much like what got another woman nationwide praise some weeks back when she defended herself against comments about her body. The station has since released a statement claiming that the meteorologist and another employee (a white man) were fired for violating company policy regarding social media. According to the station, there is a protocol to follow when things like what happened happen, and "Ms. Rhonda Lee was let go for repeatedly violating that procedure and after being warned multiple times of the consequences if her behavior continued. Rhonda Lee was not dismissed for her appearance or defending her appearance. She was fired for continuing to violate company procedure." Even so... it's not hard to imagine a more complicated backstory here, or to wish that the station declined to hide behind neutral policies when confronted with something like this. No acknowledgment that the commenting viewer had crossed a line, nothing like "while the comments were inflammatory and we understand Ms. Lee's eagerness to respond, we enforce our policy in order to ensure that public exchanges maintain a level of civility" - nothing like that. I can't help thinking the calculus on the station's side includes the realization that meteorologists are cheap, or altogether dispensable, since they can find a cheerleader at the local college or university and train her up (again, cheaply) to be a 'weather girl' (a station in Philly just did this, and I'm sure it's not the only one); and that this black woman will be nothing but trouble going forward.
3. Finally, Caroline Wozniacki is catching heat for this 'impersonation' of Serena Williams. Having written on the Nina Simone business, and having been involved in the campus response to the recent 'Mexican-themed party' at Penn State (you know, the one with mostly white sorority girls confusing Mexicans with a cross between Speedy Gonzales and Cheech Marin's movie persona), and having explored the peculiar investments that various segments of society have in black and brown butts, I'm sensitive to the thought that this might be racist. But I just can't get too worked up over it. For one thing, all the female players in the original wii "grand slam tennis" looked like Wozniacki's impersonation, which is surely a much bigger problem (only women have butts, apparently - the men were built like rain barrels with legs and arms). For another, well, I won't go through all the reasons, since the article I've linked to does a decent job of it. Suffice it to say that it's no more appropriate to assume that all cross-racial fun-poking is racist than it is to assume that none of it is. Context matters and intentions matter (though they are not dispositive), and those things matter in this case in a way that leaves me thinking we've got better things to worry about.