Paul Barrett

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“I Think That Security Does Deter Crime In General And Mass Killings In Particular”

February 5, 2013 in Books, Excerpts, Politics, Urban Studies | Permalink

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At the Los Angeles Review of Books, Shaun Randol interviews Paul Barrett, author of Glock: The Rise of America’s Gun, who agrees with David Mamet that we should have armed security in schools. An excerpt:

“Shaun Randol: 

You mention how we’re not going to have policing in public spaces anytime soon —

Paul Barrett: 

I said a ‘police state.’ We, of course, have plenty of policing of public spaces. We have public spaces that are basically locked down. You can’t get into a federal courthouse without getting thoroughly searched. It would be very, very difficult to get in there with a firearm. You can’t get past security in an American airport without being pretty thoroughly searched. We have lots of security in lots of situations.

I think that security does deter crime in general and mass killings in particular. With this debate about what we do about schools, the proposal [by NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre] that has been lampooned by a lot of people, I personally think is a very reasonable proposal.

Shaun Randol: 

Please elaborate.

Paul Barrett: 

I’ve written about this for Businessweek. We have grown accustomed, in this country, to having a fair amount of security in many kinds of public and private venues where a lot of people gather. There is security in the building that you and I are sitting in right now. Not just anyone can walk in.

When you go to Yankee Stadium to see a baseball game, you can’t just walk into Yankee Stadium. They channel you through certain entranceways and, if you’re carrying a bag, they’re going to search your bag. The guys who take your tickets are there to also look you over, and there’s both uniformed and plainclothes security throughout the stadium.

I think all of those steps are rational steps. I don’t think they’re perfect, but I do think they do deter crime and they would deter a mass suicide-killing episode in those venues. Therefore, if you are truly anxious about securing schools, I can’t see the serious argument against having armed security at schools. It doesn’t seem to me to be a distraction. It doesn’t seem to me to be a panacea, either. It’s not perfect, but few social policies are perfect.”

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“For Most Of The 20th Century Dinosaurs Were Viewed As A Dead End”

April 5, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

I never realized the timeline of the reemergence of dinosaur studies in academia until reading this passage from paleontologist Paul Barrett at the Browser:

“It’s really only from the 70s onwards that we start to get this change in view and only from the 80s that we had a crystallisation of this view that dinosaurs were very exciting animals. For most of the 20th century dinosaurs were viewed as a dead end – an evolutionary dead end that was kind of interesting because they were big and odd-looking, but that never really went anywhere. It was the recognition in the 70s that dinosaurs and birds were closely related, and that dinosaurs were more like birds than like other reptiles, that suddenly led to a new burst of interest in them and new research programmes. If you spoke to a student in the 1940s or 50s they would just view dinosaurs as curiosities, but these days they’re viewed as an integral part of a greater knowledge of how animals are related to each other and how animal behaviour has changed through time, not just as a side-show oddity.”

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