Situational Awareness, Pt. 2

One way of describing the process we can use to transfer SA from conscious to less-conscious control is moving from learning to over-learning. One way of achieving over-learning involves a general strategy to engage in repetition in as many contexts as possible, to facilitate generalization of the process, to make it reflexive and, to some extent, independent of context. Fortunately for us, we are blessed with a brain that does not always effectively distinguish between in-vivo and imaginal experience, a characteristic that we can put to good use. Long-term memory is part and parcel of early recognition, anticipation, activation and expert performance – and transfer to long-term memory is an issue of repetition (long-term potentiation). One way we can train this ability up without having to engage in daily dangerous encounters or gunfights is via the use of visualization. But this is most effective when it is not simply thinking personal defense through with eyes closed in our easy chair. As noted in Part I, we move through our day and the many environments we move in are likely to share commonalities with those in which we might one day find ourselves under threat. To quote General James Mattes - a favorite among personal defense advocates; “Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet”. Everyone, all the time, no matter where you are. This takes work and mental work can be both effective useful, as we move through our day, allowing us to practice the skill of attending to those around us, evaluating their status in relation to us, and anticipating their movements and actions, and considering high-probability responses to their alternative actions – thus we are training the full sequence of situational awareness and the response cycle on an ongoing basis. We can also visualize alternative actions those around us might take and anticipate our possible responses and their effects. In order to effectively create automatic responding we need repetition – to both move from learning to over-learning, from the need for conscious mediation to more automatic processing and to associate these “habits” of attention, search, evaluation and anticipation with as many different environments as possible (common and specific patterns). We also need to link these processes to some number of stereotypical responses. In the end, this achieves an end state that is often called “unconscious competence”.

In general then we want to develop general skills of anticipation; it may be that our best approach to this skill on a daily basis is to play a sort of “what happens next” game. To do so, we have to attend, to see what is happening around us, who is in our AO, what they are doing. Second, we need to accurately ascertain their status in relation to us (make a threat assessment); are they moving toward or away, focusing on us or distracted, looking elsewhere, where are their hands, do they appear hostile, making furtive or rapid movement, moving with purpose, aggressive, passive, do they stand out from the baseline? Are there indications they are armed? In most cases, thankfully, the answer will be “No”, but this is a process we need to ingrain into our daily activities. Lastly, ask ourselves “What happens next?” - can we project their movements in relation to us into the near future? Can we predict these with some degree of probability based on our experience? Can we envision an action we would take based on several different projections as a function of probability? [Assess, alarm, avoid, assault] It has been noticed that this type of exercise can often be done while driving and while it does have some inherent limitations (e.g., it is a less likely scenario for an assault, its similarity to a wide range of assault contexts is limited) it can be useful in honing general skills of attention, awareness, anticipation, and, when required, action. One recommendation made when training situational awareness via driving is the use of Commentary Driving – to actually talk our way through our travels, to notice who and what are around us, and to actively recount them in commentary out loud. Of course, it is a small step from this commentary to adding a layer of prediction, not only that we note behavior in our environment, but predict with some degree of probability that this car will likely move into our lane, that car will probably pull out in front of us, this driver is texting, and so on. So we actively observe, predict, prepare, and act if necessary. Our best bet in such practice is to most often focus, in addition to most probable events, on predictions that present the highest level of threat to our own safety. Hence, we would most closely focus on and prepare for the prediction that a car is going to swerve into our lane than that it will not; our predictions reflect both probability and threat. Low probability events become meaningful when the potential threat (harm) associated with them is high. It is the predicted behaviors that have implications for our safety that are paramount in our SA.

Another way to potentially interpret the reactions that de Becker suggested are important for us to attend to is to see them as expectancy violations. There is ample research that, even in rats, when an expectation is violated (in essence, when an anticipated sequence of events does not follow predictions flowing from accumulated experience – what might be called “anomalies” in the system described in Left of Bang), neurons in the brain fire as signals that something is not right, something not expected has happened, and thus attention is directed toward that stimulus. This, again, may be part of that uncomfortable, unusual sensation that must be explored and entertained rather than rationalized away.

Another issue we must contend with when it comes to awareness is the fact that our ability to exert self-control – such as sustained, focused attention - is a limited resource (as noted in several articles by Baumeister). We cannot indefinitely maintain a high level of vigilance without our attention waning to some degree. Most of us have experienced this phenomenon – we go from listening to a lecture or our significant other to all of a sudden finding ourselves day dreaming and realizing we have missed parts of the presentation (often much to the detriment of grades or relationships). Research has shown that self-control – effortful attention and information processing – functions in a manner similar to our neuromuscular system; just as our muscles use large amounts of energy during exertion and can fatigue quickly, so does and can our ability to sustain mental effort. Also similar to a muscle, there is at least some evidence that we can increase or train this ability to some extent – get better at sustaining attention and concentration for longer periods of time. One way that we can avoid this over-burdening of our attention and self-control capacity is via the successful and appropriate modulation of attention to the situation; this, at least in part, underlies the functional utility of a color code system such as that proposed by Cooper. This system codifies the idea that we need not be in a state of alarm at all times; in fact, we can’t sustain those high levels of arousal and focus for long. Although being in condition white (relaxed and unaware) should be a rarity of us, particularly when outside of areas we control, it is clear that we also cannot maintain orange (on alert to an existing threat stimulus) on a continuous basis and, indeed, our ability to remain in yellow (relaxed but aware) may even be strained over longer periods. Thus part of the lesson here is one we might call “meta-attention” – that is, being aware of our current level of attention and the level called for by the current situation. By “attending to our attention” we can maintain necessary levels while moderating the depletion of this limited but valuable resource.

Thus, two lessons are important; one is to maintain the appropriate level of vigilance for the situation, so as not to consume more resources than are necessary at any one time. This can often be difficult in that we are also naturally inclined to believe that one can never be too cautious or too vigilant. However, to the extent that we know our ability to maintain strict focus will be limited by our available attentional energy, it is important that we use those resources when they are most needed and preserve them when they are not. Part of this distinction is knowing when and where one is and recognizing the differential risk involved. In general, most of us know when the more risky times of day are and where the risks are most critical. As has often been said and was noted earlier, the best defense is “not to be there”. How often do we hear of the “innocent person” (often a male adolescent) who was killed in a dangerous part of town at 2 AM and wonder “What was that person doing there at that time?” We can also moderate this effect by being sure those with us are attending as well; in effect, “covering” for us or “on overwatch”.

The second message we can learn from this need to modulate attention is that we need to ensure down-times, create safe times and zones where those resources can be regenerated, where risk can be more controlled in mechanical ways. This may be easier for the armed civilian than for those who are duty-sworn, but even those whose occupations are defined by risk and states of alarm must find times that the system can wind down and rejuvenate. It is the danger associated with doing double shifts, whether one is a law enforcement officer, a soldier on a perimeter, or an emergency room surgeon; mistakes happen and lives are at risk when attention and concentration are exhausted. Such exposure is also part and parcel of combat stress reactions. As noted above, this can often be done by controlling the environment - identifying safe places (for the civilian, having a safe, secure, well protected home - and, when a safe place is not available, via cooperation among participants; trading off level of vigilance (having “two soldiers per foxhole”). This, of course, requires trust between comrades, a working relationship. One must trust the other members of their team, tribe, community to do their job and each member must know that their comrades’ or principals’ lives are in his hands.

One cannot be distracted from their sector so as to monitor someone else’s.

Well, he wanted to know

So on Huffington Post some State Representative from Massachusetts named Paul Heroux asked the following questions in an article called "What if the Second Amendment were Repealed?"

Well:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-heroux/what-if-the-second-amendm_b_9121822.html

 This is a thought experiment; a hypothetical. There are no right or wrong answers.

•What would you do if all of the requirements of Article V of the Constitution were met and the Second Amendment was repealed?

I would ignore the conclusion.  I have no intention to relinquish my arms.  What those who seek such  an outcome fail to understand is that the Second Amendment does not grant any right, it merely asserts that the natural and pre-existing right shall not be infringed.  Note:  It does not say “The people have the right…”. IT assumes the right – “The right of the people…”  So repeal immediately changes nothing, until someone takes that as a cue to infringe upon this natural right that was accepted to exist prior to the US Constitution. The founders clearly accepted that this was not a right to grant, but a right to protect, a right as sacrosanct as any other right protected by our Constitution.

Should some choose to infringe on it - then there will be trouble.

•What would you do if the Second Amendment was effectively repealed by a US Supreme Court ruling that the right to bear arms does apply to an individual, but only individuals in a militia?

I would ignore it.  I have no intention to relinquish my arms and do not recognize SCOTUS authority to do so as what has become a political arm for partisan policy.  Again, this right predates the US and SCOTUS so no institution created by that Constitution has a right to infringe upon it.

•If the defense of the Second Amendment rests in reference to the Constitution as it stands now, what argument would you use if the Constitution was changed to no longer protect the individual right to bear arms?

None – until someone tried to infringe on it.  I have learned, lo these many years, not to argue with fools or small children and, in this case, both apply.  There is no argument to be made that can persuade those who would take our rights.  So then my argument would come from my disobedience and, if necessary, the barrel of a gun and my timely demise.  The Second Amendment was meant to protect just that right, because that is what was needed to preserve a free state.  

I have no intention of letting anyone take my guns.

•As a law abiding gun owner, would you give up your guns?

No – if guns are outlawed, then only outlaws will have guns.  So I will be an outlaw.

•What do you think would happen to violent crime rates, accidental shootings and suicides?

I suspect violent crime would increase to some extent, since those who commit it – even now – are armed unlawfully.  No change you have alluded to would change their status as outlaws, only the status of those who would fail to comply with the NEW dictate. And those who did comply would change from citizens to victims.

Accidental shootings have been decreasing because people can train themselves and others. The unintended consequences of this foolish notion would likely be to increase them because such law would limit the amount of gun safety training one could engage in without potential consequence.

I suspect no real difference in overall suicides – only a potential change in the means used.

•Would you follow the new law of the land that was legitimately established, just as laws allowing the possession of a firearm have been legitimately established?

No – because no law can truly deny my right to protect myself and my family.  The law did not establish that right – it merely protected it from infringement. If the law that protects it is repealed or replaced, the right still stands.

Not sure what you wanted to hear, but I am too old to start living on bended knee. I do not have enough left that I really need to do, to be cowed into a submissive state.

Yup!

Oh, the Social Justice Ghouls!

Just a brief post to note how those who cry about overreach of government and law enforcement when it involves black protesters can't seem to keep it in their pants when it comes to federal law enforcement shooting white guys. White guys who were not looting or burning people out of house and home, but were "occupying" a large plot of desolate land that no one who is hooting and hollering in happiness over the shooting really gives two shits about.

There was really no reason for this encounter to happen - except for a law-and-order, "I am in charge you redneck morons" mentality that needed to show force.  There was no danger here and left alone, these folks would have squatted to no great effect.  What happened to the idea, in places like Baltimore, of "Letting the protesters have their space, get out their grievances"?

There just can't seem to be one set of rules that everyone lives by; certain lives have to matter, certain rights have to take precedence.

One has to wonder how the reaction would be different if they were native Americans or the POTUS was white.  How much celebration there would be if FBI lives had been lost (then there would have been drone strikes on the "militants" - listen to media with a cynical ear to hear how subtle words are used).

What I find most interesting is that the social justice ghouls who decry gun violence at every turn, anthropomorphize firearms, and want to disarm civilians, are engaging in ghoulish lip-licking in favor of more guns in the hands of government being used against Americans.  I would say fellow citizens, but that is a concept lost on them.

Cop killing Michael Browne in Ferguson?  Outrage!  Cop killing Tamir Rice?  Outrage. Cop killing any armed African-American? Outrage ("He was a good boy!").  Militarization of LE?  Outrage!  No body camera available - then the LEO was lying.  Flash forward to Oregon - Of course SJ Ghouls believe every word of the FBI report  - Militia/militants (media terms) are evil and deserve to be killed if they step out of line - and no one gives two shits that the FBI killed someone.

Wrong is not wrong and rights are not rights.

Shit just keeps sliding down hill.

Zeroing Red Dot Sight?

Now a break from my usual musings and rants to throw a question out there and see if anyone has any ideas about what is going on.

I recently received a Burris Fast Fire 3 red dot sight.  Put it on my AR and went to zero it.

Pertinent information:  I am cross-dominant.  That, of course, means that I am right handed but my left eye is dominant. In shooting handguns this is really a minor consideration, since the handgun is not mounted to a shoulder – all one needs to do is shift the position of the handgun to the line of sight of the (cross) dominant eye.  In shooting long guns, as in during my 10 years in the Army, I always fired right handed but closed my dominant eye so I could sight with my non-dominant eye.  I always qualified as an expert marksman.

With that as background, I mounted the red dot on my AR and went to zero it.  I used my standard approach – close dominant left eye, aim with non-dominant right eye.  Initial points of impact were about a foot low and a few inches left –a good group, but off target. Adjusted windage – shots were now about a foot low, directly below the aiming point – good group but a foot low.  Adjusted the elevation, no change, adjusted the elevation, no change, took elevation change to its limit, no change.  I never could zero point of impact and point of aim. Backed off of the limit and still not change. 

So, I decided to shift over the shooting left handed and using my dominant eye.  Good group, 4 inches high (!?!?!).  Adjusted elevation to bring point of impact down and there it was – shooting left handed, using dominant left eye, rifle zeroed…Shot right handed using non-dominant eye – off target. Shot right handed, both eyes open, blurry double image, but one dot on target – bull’s eye.

Another bit of pertinent information: Although I have presbyopia, I have never had any real vision problems with either eye – no pre-existing right eye issues have my vision tested every year and had the last exam about 2 months ago. Have zeroed by scope on this same AR using my usual right handed/non-dominant eye approach before with no issues.

Anyone have any ideas on what is happening here?  Why would I be unable to get the red dot to zero using my usual, if unorthodox and not highly recommended approach, but then can do so if I fire left-handed and use my dominant left eye?  Shouldn't either eye be able to basically adjust the point of aim (the dot) to match the point of impact?

Would love to read any speculation.

Situational Awareness pt. I

Situational Awareness has been defined and described by numerous sources (e.g., Endsley).  The consensus among the available definitions reflects several critical common elements.  That is, situational awareness involves 1) the ongoing perception of what is happening around us in both space and time (comprised of attention, concentration, tracking, and pattern recognition), 2) the accurate understanding of those ongoing events in relation to ourselves (e.g., accuracy of perception, assessment of relevance, pattern recognition), and 3) the ability to project the status of elements/events into the future based on some level of probability (anticipation, pattern matching).  [A last step involves selection and execution of appropriate action, but that is less a component of situational awareness than a result of SA combined with adequate operational training].  Hence, situational awareness emerges from the ability to attend to, recognize, and accurately comprehend/understand ongoing circumstances and to reliably anticipate the movements and meanings of those elements in our area of operation into the near future.  These abilities precede the execution of the appropriate actions (e.g., avoid/defend, shoot/no-shoot) taken in self-defense and underlie the awareness of the need to activate selected responses; thus they are crucial to our avoidance of conflict and, ultimately, to our effective response to and resolution of conflict when unavoidable.
 
Skill in marksmanship and weapons manipulation come to very little benefit if one is caught unawares and fails or is late to initiate defensive action.  Out-drawing the drawn weapon is hardly a viable or desirable strategy. Although, as a species we expend great energy into post-mortem evaluations, it often adds little to our ability to prevent lethal encounters.  In fact, as has been noted by many trainers, it is clear that well-developed situational awareness can lead to successful problem solving and self-defense through avoidance of the need to take action.  The best answer to surviving a fight is not to be in a fight, not to be there when it happens; situational awareness is a major factor underlying this optimal response (of course, there are those professions – LEO and military – which are bound to move toward the sound of gunfire).  In the best case scenario, much of this process becomes automatic in nature, although the intricacies of self-defense law make it imperative that some conscious evaluation (i.e., decision making) typically mediate between awareness and action, as a function of the nature, degree, and imminence of the threat. The more unconscious some parts of the process become, the more conscious resources can be dedicated to others.

The end result is that much attention has been paid to the concept of situational awareness because it is, ultimately, our most potent weapon for ensuring personal security.  Even in the absence of well-developed action- and survival-oriented skills, awareness increases the probability of survival.  It is a necessary, if not always sufficient, condition for effective personal defense.  If we can be aware of the presence of potential threats and anticipate their movements, we can avoid them or, if not able to evade or escape, be prepared to preemptively act against them.  Such preparation has a number of advantages, the most general of which is to change the action/reaction dynamic.  For instance, cognizance of an impending threat allows us, to some extent, to moderate our natural startle response, to mitigate the element of surprise that a successful assault often involves.  Expecting a threat, both generally and specifically, can help mediate our level of arousal in response.  Such awareness can also allow for physical preparation, such as heightened vigilance, proactively seeking cover and surreptitiously drawing and staging a weapon, again facilitating our ability to act rather than exclusively react, to disrupt the actions of our aggressor.  The closer we can come to proactive defense (offense?) the more likely we are to succeed.

A prominent example of the establishment and maintenance of step one in the awareness process – attention – is found in the use of color-coded systems to reflect levels of awareness or alertness.  Such systems also provide a structured means of describing our level of attention to the world around us (the most famous of these being the white, yellow, orange, and red – sometimes also black - system attributed to COL Jeff Cooper).  Another useful system that encompasses attention, processing of information and responding is the OODA loop, attributed to Boyd, which describes a cycle of observing, orienting, deciding, and acting.  Both provide useful tools in that they give the individual a way of evaluating their level of attention as they move through the environment and organizing a structure for conceptualizing the processing of incoming information when the level of attention/awareness is appropriate to the situation.  Both constitute a useful template to plan for and execute an aware lifestyle. What both may not readily account for is the fact that so much of our information processing is at a level below consciousness; these operations must be trained to a point of moderate automaticity.

The topic that is least often addressed in discussion of situational awareness, yet perhaps the most important to acting in either defense or avoidance, is anticipation or the ability to predict and project the status of current events into a probable future so as to act accordingly.  This element of the situational awareness process, although crucial, is also the most esoteric and least easily codified, trainable and definable part.  It certainly takes the most time to train our ability to anticipate to a level of unconscious competence.  The difficulty in understanding this process and training it is, in some ways, strange; it is, after all, the essence of what we are built to do. The human brain is built to learn (not as in reading books, but form experience), to anticipate – it has been referred to as an “anticipation machine” (Dennett).  In fact, our perceptual systems are designed to project perceptions a brief time (a matter of milliseconds) into the future; this process is hypothesized to be the basis of several well-known “optical illusions”, such as the perception of parallel lines bending outward, as if we are passing between them.  The notion is that our visual-spatial processing system has evolved to account the fact that we are “forward-moving organisms” that we move through space and do so most often in a forward (eyes front –they are there for a reason) fashion – we move most often into our field of vision.  Hence, our visual-perceptual system has evolved a built-in correction for the time it takes to process incoming sensory information, a form of perceptual anticipation/projection that is both adaptable and unnoticeable when we are in motion, but can manifest in illusions when we are stationary.

It is also clear that our neurobiology is built to encode experiences and outcomes of our behavior – good and bad – so that these data can be used to anticipate changing situations and highlight behaviors that are most likely to “work” (function) in the future given circumstances that match some template (pattern recognition).  This is the basis of learning theory.  Lastly, as all of this suggests, most of this process runs most efficiently when it is running occurs outside of our conscious awareness; while it is useful for us to be able to self-talk (as in commentary driving) so as to train/increase self-awareness and build less effortful processing, once a situation is initiated, most of this program is going to run without the aid of conscious commentary.

So what?  At this point I am sure you are wondering why you should care about your brain; you’re looking for ways to be better prepared for personal defense.  Well, all of this suggests that we are designed to learn – not because learning is fun, will help you pass classes, get a good job someday, get a promotion, or so that we can dazzle our friends with knowledge of trivia or do crossword puzzles – not the kind of learning all of those performances imply - but in order to reliably anticipate requirements and respond accordingly, to prepare, to create the memory traces necessary for efficient and successful reaction.  If we think back to where this all started, then that sounds relevant to personal defense to me.  Memory is not really built-in so that we can remember all those glory days of our youth, our first kiss (or more); that conscious manifestation of memory is simply a pleasant by-product of our built-in systems for self-awareness and encoding experience.  Learning and memory reflect the fact that our machinery is made to gather information for the purpose of more efficient and accurate responding when similar future situations are encountered.  That’s what life is all about, is central to all survival; learning to recognize patterns of climate change or local predation so as to prepare is essential to our survival (although modern humans have worked hard to try to overcome this natural tendency).  Of course, a major question then is how can we take advantage of this ability, this machinery, to increase our situational awareness – without having to look for and engage in a large number of dangerous assaultive encounters?

The process of anticipation begins early – from the wide range of stimuli encroaching upon our senses, it directs attention to the pertinent details to process recognizable patterns (stimulus templates) and select response templates that include activation of emotional responses as well.  Gavin De Becker refers, in his notion of Intuitive processing…intuition, the gift of fear…to this idea that much of our processing of threat information in the environment occurs outside of our awareness and sometimes comes to us as vague feelings of unease and foreboding, and other aversive sensations.  In fact, he insists that our conscious intervention in these processes is counter to our safety and security – that we, as noted above, have learned to explain away our concerns as faulty or inappropriate.  This is consistent with the fact that, of the thousands to millions of bits of information that impact on our senses on an ongoing basis, only a small percentage can be consciously processed.  The rest are not necessarily lost, but are processed outside of awareness.  We may only become aware of these stimuli once they have activated certain embodied visceral or physiological systems.  Once this happens, they often garner our effortful attention.  In such cases, according to De Becker’s ideas, it is our explicit or conscious evaluations of these sensations that often take us awry.  That is, as we evolved the ability to consciously monitor our reactions, we have come to talk back to such sensations, explain them away based on explicit lessons we have been taught (“don’t be rude!” “don’t prejudge”), instead of using them as cues to suggest a need to focus attention on the situation and take action. De Becker suggests, in recounting many anecdotal reports of violence, that our tendency to explain away this sense of foreboding as foolish, unfair, or even prejudiced (that’s my word) that can lead to danger.  We convince ourselves NOT to follow our sensations and so put ourselves at risk.

Not buying it

I simply do not buy the tears.  And even if I thought they were real, I would see them as misguided, as a symbol of the emotional logic in play instead of a more rational approach, the sign of someone motivated to do something without thinking.

Let's be clear on this; nothing that your president did - using a decidedly undemocratic process (more on that later) - will make a difference to the incidence of "mass shootings".  I have to believe that he knows this - that he is not so stupid (devious perhaps, but not stupid), not unfamiliar with the particulars of the cases about which he is crying and has read research and data reported by federal agencies that our tax dollars support.  Given that belief, I can only assume that he is being devious, that he is nibbling away at this right with the intention to set the stage for his successor to further infringe on it.

1.  "Gun show loophole".  This is, at best, a misnomer and, at worst, a purposeful deception.  This "loophole" does not exist.  Private individuals, not in business (and there are regulations that define what "being in business" means in this case) can sell their legal and legally-held private property anywhere and at any time.  Sometimes that private property includes potentially deadly products (e.g., cars or firearms).  In the case of firearms, they do not need a gun show to do this, nor the internet.  Having bought firearms at gun shows and over the internet, I can tell you that the vast (really vast) majority of sales at those venues involve dealers (people "in the business") with FFLs and purchasers completing NICS checks.  I have always had to complete a background check.  Data consistently show that a vast majority (over 99%) of firearms used in crimes are not obtained via gun shows, but are stolen or bought illegally on the street (as in from people who have them illegally themselves) - that is, obtained in a manner that is already illegal. Making law-abiding people jump through hoops to legally purchase legal products is not going to change the illegal commerce committed by criminals - it doesn't work with drugs and will not work with firearms.  It is certain that your president knows this - if he is not that well-informed, then he is not qualified to lead.

2.  "Increased investigation and prosecution of gun crime".  This would be a welcome effort given that recent data indicate that such prosecution has declined over Obama's term.  How many cases can we read in the media about straw purchasers who are not prosecuted - even (or especially) when the firearms were used to commit crime.  How long did it take to charge Enrique Marquez with the straw purchase of the weapons used in the San Bernardino terrorist shooting?  As has been noted many times, the crimes being committed by these killers are already illegal.  The problem is that gun laws that are already on the books are not being enforced until tragedy ensues; the result is akin to the "Broken Windows" notion.  If you show by your inaction that you do not care and will not enforce, then you implicitly condone lawlessness.

3.  "Increase mental health treatment and reporting to the background check system."  As a mental health professional, I applaud this to some extent.  However, just as with the "No-Fly list", one needs to be on-guard against misuse and abuse of such processes.  Again, as a professional, I also know that there is a lot of judgement involved and, quite frankly, I would not want many of my own peers making such decisions, as they are like most liberals and consider wanting to own firearms as a disorder in and of itself.

4.  "Smart Guns".  I think most of us will believe that such a thing is feasible, really exists and is sufficiently reliable when we see such firearms used by Law Enforcement, Secret Service, and Military.  Until you (and your president) think it is reliable enough that you are willing to bet your own personal safety and protection in it, then it is not enough for me to do so.

Lots more in there to parse, but as would be expected those whose philosophical positions are in line with the executive orders will find them reasonable while those who think they are over-reach and meaningless will not.  What is clear is that they will not have any effect on crime and I think they are cynical in that they are not really intended to have an effect.  They serve two purposes in the short and long term.  In the short term, they are political statements and strategies, intended to gin up the liberal base; they are meaningless gestures, just like the tears, meant to have an emotional but not actual effect.  Second, in the long term, their most sinister effect is to create an atmosphere that may ultimately lead to larger confiscation efforts - they, at least symbolically, put the government's toes over the line.  I know - some who will read this consider it right-wing rhetoric.  But I think it is true that your president knows that this will not work - that he is purposefully avoiding making or endorsing effective changes that he is philosophically opposed to (e.g., recognizing that lawful gun ownership decreases crime, that lawful carriers stop crimes every day) and instead making ineffective moves which, when ineffective, he can point to as evidence of the need for more draconian changes.

Lastly, all of this is more evidence of the short-sightedness of Americans.  I noted to conservatives, years ago, when GWB and Cheney asserted the notion an imperial presidency, that supporters of this would rue that day when his liberal successors did the same.  People always love over-assertion of presidential power when they agree with the president's goals, when they are philosophical sycophants.  They always decry it as excessive when they do not.

So, as dangerous or useless as the content of these orders may be, the truth is they are more dangerous as a process.  This move effectively violates the nature and structure of our government, the role of check and balances, how the party which is not in power, whoever they may be, is protected against a tyrannical executive.  It is a dangerous precedent and those who would cheer it due to agreeing with its goals should consider whether they prefer a government where a president can exercise that kind of power when they do not share its goals.  For instance, could similar executive orders be used to curtail and interfere with access to abortion?  This is a symptom of a president out of control - has shades of Nixon noting "If the president does it, then it is legal".  Applaud it now, but you may abhor it later.