Structural Problems With The Living Constitution

As interpreted the U.S. Constitution has various problems:

* The insurrection clause was gutted by making it not self-executing.

* Presidential immunity from crimes was a horrible mistake.

* No one has standing to pursue too many violations of the law, such as the emoluments clause, the bar on increasing Congressional compensation, some kinds of religious establishment (e.g. not enforcement the ban on political action by religious groups).

* The pardon power is too easily abused.

* Limiting campaign finance by corporations in a partisan neutral way is prohibited (although Citizens United is less of a problem than it is given credit for being IMHO). 

* Term limits for Congress would be good.

* The filibusters has done more harm than good.

* Gerrymandering is an intractable problem and the first past the post system also leads to spoiler effects and a two party system instead of a multiparty system.

* Grounds for impeachment are too feeble and impeachment is too hard to accomplish for genuine crimes.

* The veto power is too strong, undermining Congress.

* The electoral college has proven to be a bad idea.

* The Senate is too distorting.

* The Second Amendment is a bad idea.

* Treaties are too often found to be not self-executing.

* Treaties are not subordinate to domestic laws.

* Given Congress control over election disputes in their own houses was a bad idea. Their roster should be out of their control.

* The unitary executive theory is incredibly harmful and should be actively overruled. The ban on legislative vetos is less of a big deal but also deeply problematic.

* The 25th Amendment on Presidential disability was a good idea, but was executed poorly.

* It should not be possible to be President as your first political position. Prior statewide office, a cabinet post, a top generalship, or service in Congress should be required first.

* The franchise should be affirmatively defined.

Could The Military Remove Trump In A Coup?

The number one trigger for military coups is the military not getting paid, which the U.S. is doing right now. And, when Trump has called up the national guard, he has done so for time periods one day short of what is necessary for them to receive full compensation for being called up. VA spending has also been slashed.

Corruption and incompetence are also major factors. But you have to go back to Andrew Jackson to find a President who rivals Trump 2.0 in those dimensions. It doesn't inspire confidence to talk about conflicts between Albania and Azerbaijan, or a European country and Cambodia. His dementia is apparent and was on full display at his unprecedented speech to all generals and admirals.

Humiliation and disrespect for the military can be factors, and Trump has shown both towards soldiers, and in particular, POWs and military casualties. The meeting of all generals and admirals where Trump, a repeat draft dodger, and a Fox News commentator, calling them out for being fat and woke, didn't help.

The meeting, met by stony eyed silence from the assembled military brass to the last man, also potentially broke down the single biggest barrier to a military coup in the U.S., which is the collective action problem of figuring out which officers are on your side. This is why numerically smaller militaries are much more likely to carry out coups. But by showing unanimity of distaste for Trump, he may have inadvertently overcome some of that barrier.

There are other signs that the military has distaste for Trump. For his birthday Army parade in D.C., he wanted a communist style show of force and got a boring historical display. Morale was brought very low when the National Guard gardened and cleared trash when occupying D.C. The National Guard has not been effective in L.A. or Chicago or Portland or Memphis at reducing crime and multiple judges have held that Trump is illegally deploying the military. But when rule of law is the only thing keeping the military subordinate to the civilian government of the U.S., Trump's flouting of the rule of law undermines that singular force. The military didn't get involved in January 6 and like most law enforcement is probably dismayed by the January 6 pardons. Trump's rogue attacks on "drug dealing" boats in international waters in the Caribbean without legal authority is another example.

The military has spent a lifetime opposing enemies like Russia, and supporting traditional allies, but Trump has turned that on his head, making war with NATO, coddling Russia, envying North Korea, threatening Greenland, Canada, and Panama.

The idea that an armed public discourages tyranny behind the Second Amendment is empirically not true historically, and obviously not true now. Gun owners in the U.S. today, not only aren't resisting tyranny, they're the ones welcoming it.

Is a coup likely? Probably not. But it is more likely now than at any other point in U.S. history.

The HR Zeitgeist

So, today was my first day at a new job as a senior assistant city attorney with the City and County of Denver.

As usual, as a lawyer, I can't talk about the substance of what I actually do at work, due to attorney-client privilege and confidentiality rules and so on. 

But, as in any big organization (the City and County of Denver has at least 11,000 employees), day one at a new job is not mostly about the substance of the work that day. I probably only did about two hours of actual legal work on my first day. 

Day one at a new job in a big organization is about getting your employee ID, completing employment related paperwork, getting accounts with various workplace software systems set up, learning where the bathrooms and break rooms are located, figuring out the layout of your part of the building so you don't get lost, introducing yourself to your co-workers while trying to match their names to faces in your memory, watching orientation videos, and reading orientation materials.

This wasn't my first rodeo. I'm a middle aged man and I've been through this drill before in my life. But I haven't done it recently, since I've been self-employed and worked in small offices for a couple of decades. 

A couple of things struck me as very different from my prior experiences.

Preparing For Mass Shootings

The last time I went through the "onboarding" drill, in 2004, was five years after Columbine, and three years after 9-11. At the time, we were more concerned about international terrorism in high profile locations, than we were about the era with a never ending wave of school and workplace shootings, even though, in hindsight, that era really began with the Columbine High School shootings in 1991.

On the day of the Columbine shooting, in 1999, I had just recently moved to Denver and lived close to downtown before moving to the Washington Park neighborhood after which this blog is named the next year. I saw the Denver bomb squad's truck rush right by me, sirens blaring. I recall thinking at the time that something really bad must be going down, although I hadn't listened to the news yet that day and didn't know what was going down at the time. The Denver bomb squad truck was headed for Columbine High School. Not much later that day, the news confirmed my suspicions. It was a massacre. Thirteen students and one teacher were killed before the two shooters committed suicide (one died a quarter century later from these injuries, while the others died almost immediately); twenty-three more people were injured (twenty by gunfire) in a spree that lasted 49 minutes, even though a police office had responded within five minutes.

But back in 2004, during my last onboarding to a larger employer, five years after Columbine, our society's response to "active shooter situations" still hadn't really jelled yet.

Before Columbine, police and institutional administrators had doctrines about responding to armed threats that favored the cautious approach appropriate for situations where an armed person had taken multiple people hostage, but wasn't actively shooting anybody. 

After the fact recognition that the institutional and law enforcement response to Columbine had been inadequate, crystalized the recognition that a different response was appropriate in an "active shooter" situation. In an "active shooter" situation, the right approach is to minimize harm by denying the shooter targets, and by boldly doing everything possible to neutralize the threat as quickly as possible. But it took years for a consensus to emerge around the best law enforcement and institutional response to an active shooter situation.

"Lockdown" and "active shooter" drills only started when my children were in early elementary school, in the late aughts. None of my onboarding experiences in 2004 or earlier had imagined the possibility. 

The mostly small law firms that I worked at over the years devised skeletal security plans on an ad hoc basis when there were specific security threats (usually from a client's ex-spouse, or soon to be ex-spouse), like keeping shades drawn to deny someone with a rifle a target in our office, or thinking about escape routes out back doors and how to stall threatening people while everyone was trying to flee.

Fast forward to 2025. Onboarding and HR materials still have the old mainstays. A brief history of the institution you're beginning to work for. A review of various nuts and bolts considerations related to sick days, employee benefits, and other employee policies and procedures. Strong cautioning against sexual harassment.

What is new to me is the new, major focus on how to head off violence in the workplace, and how to react in the event of an active shooter, even though it has been a part of my children's lives for as long as they can remember. There was even once a shootout unrelated to their school, that took place just outside their high school, during which their high school was locked down. 

For me, this hit hard. Unlike my children, this was not something that I had ever been systemically prepared for before. Even in years in the Boy Scouts, with its "be prepared" motto, all of the way to becoming an Eagle Scout, we'd never considered these scenarios. But, this issue was raised in two or three different sessions in my orientation activities today, consuming almost an hour on my first day of work.

This isn't by any means a criticism, even though it was unsettling. This instruction is necessary in our day and age when these kinds of shootings are weekly, if not daily occurrences. There were two school shootings on the same day on September 10, 2025 last week.  And, the instruction works.

At the Evergreen High School shooting in Colorado last week, which involved an active shooter who emptied and reloaded his revolver many times, all over the school, firing dozens if not hundreds of times, and trying to attack students in many different classrooms, only two victims other than the shooter were shot.

One victim was in the school at the time. This victim was a casualty of one of the first shots fired, and was probably one of the intended primary targets of the shooter. He was shot with little or no warning, and until then, no one at the school knew that the shooter had a gun with him that day.

No amount of training about what to do when an active shooting incident starts could have saved this first victim, although someone might have taken action to prevent it from happening in response to the shooter's disturbing social media activity (which his parents appear to have been aware of, at least to some extent, but didn't act upon). The FBI had started investigating the shooter's social media postings in July, but wasn't able to identify who was making them prior to the September 10 shooting.

The other student was shot by the shooter while fleeing, outside the school. This student was probably a target of opportunity after the shooter was thwarted in his attempt to find his other intended targets in the school, and instead shot someone else at random out of frustration, not long before the shooter shot himself. The active shooting episode (as is often the case) was all over before law enforcement could confront the shooter. This second victim was, realistically, the only conceivably preventable casualty that all those drills were not enough to completely save. 

Both of the victims who were shot were initially in critical condition, but have survived for more than five days so far (as of early this evening one victim was in critical but stable condition, and the other victim was in serious, but not critical, condition), as a result of extremely rapid and decisive medical responses once the shooting stopped (or maybe even earlier, the details aren't perfectly clear). The two victims were brought to a specialized trauma center, while receiving emergency care en route, well within the "hour of power" when a serious trauma victim can often be saved. While this is speculation on my part, I suspect that the less seriously wounded victim was probably the second one who was shot while fleeing, and that the distance that this victim put between him or herself and the shooter was probably decisive in preventing that shot from killing this victim.

The only life that wasn't saved was the shooter, who died from his self-inflicted, point-blank, gunshot wound which he intended to be suicidal and which ultimately did cost him his life. But even he survived in critical condition for hours due to the rapid medical response, and the quality of care that a Level One trauma center can provide. 

There were eight hundred or more people in Evergreen High School school at the time the shooting started. But, the active shooter training and lock down drills paid off. The shooter would almost certainly have killed many more people, as the shooters at Columbine did in 1999 in another affluent part of the same suburban Colorado county, if everyone in the school hadn't done what they had learned in their annual drills. 

Evergreen High School's students, teachers, and administrators, almost instantly after the first shots were fired, turned the school into a fortress of locked or barricaded doors. The shooter repeatedly tried to break into classrooms to kill more people, some of whom were probably his intended targets, but he failed. People who couldn't lock themselves into a safe place hid out of sight if they couldn't flee and weren't shot. The rest of the students, including those in a cafeteria near where the shooting started, and some hallways full of high school students, successfully fled to safety purposefully and without hesitation, mostly getting out within a minute or two after the shooting started. They ran far away, beyond the range of the shooter, to safety. 

Everyone who wasn't shot was promptly accounted for, to make sure that there were no victims who were shot, but not found, who needed medical attention.

The world has changed. Twenty-five years ago, an active school or workplace shooting of multiple people was shocking and almost unthinkable. Now, while it is still much less common than other kinds of murders and attempted murders, school and workplace shootings are a routine fact of life that we have accepted as a society (even though many of us urgently want policy reforms to address them), and we prepare for them in much the same way that we prepared for tornados when I was a kid in school, and in much the same way as we prepare for plane crashes in advance of every commercial airline takeoff.

Preparing For High Rise Fires

Another change today was more thorough and vivid instruction from HR on what to do if there is a fire in a high rise building than at any place I've worked before now. 

This is a direct offshoot of the 9-11 attacks in 2001, as well as the fact that I'm working on the 11th floor of a downtown office building.

I don't recall ever even thinking about fire safety when I worked near the top of a high rise office building in Glendale, Colorado from 1999 until the summer of 2001, a few months before 9-11. No one ever even mentioned the possibility.

My office at the time of 9-11 was a single story steel framed building with a brick facade, multiple exits, and a window that could be opened and escaped from in every room, so escaping a fire wasn't a concern there either. And, nobody was worried that our tiny suburban office building, which was also home to a miniature golf course and a drive though coffee kiosk, was a terrorist target. 

This threat wasn't a big deal at the workplace I joined in 2004, the last time I had a thorough onboarding at a new job in a large organization, since our offices were on the second floor of a modern, up to code, sprinkler equipped, three story concrete, steel and glass building in a suburban office park. It also wasn't much of a concern in 2005 when I worked on the first floor of a two story converted Victorian era mansion with a fire escape from the second floor, and many windows in every room from which people inside could safely escape if need be.

I did get a little fire emergency training from 2010 until 2019, when I worked on the 20th floor of a high rise office building in downtown Denver (on the same block as downtown Denver's signature "cash register building"). Within a year of starting to work there, I was appointed to the unpaid position of fire marshal for our little office suite with a peak occupancy of about six people that took up about half a floor of the building. We went through annual drills where we walked down twenty flights of stairs and assembled at our office's appointed regrouping site in front of the Warwick hotel a couple of blocks away. But my duties were communicated to me in a low key manner, face to face, from our previous office fire marshal to me. I served in this role until the office suite's lease ended, and so I never had to pass that hat to anyone else. My subsequent offices were also small and low rise.

But, now I work on the 11th floor of a downtown office building for a large, bureaucratic organization that employs everyone in the building. And, the horrors of people trying to escape the World Trade Center still seem almost as fresh as they did twenty-four years ago, even though the threat of foreign terrorism has slipped to the back of our consciousness. So, this was, rightfully, a significant focus in our orientation, even though it was also unsettling.

Midweek Rants And Observations

* It was 101º F today in Denver. Fortunately, we have a brand new swamp cooler, so this is survivable. I'm honestly a little surprised that our power stayed on. We've had two power outs for more than an hour each on hot afternoons in the last few weeks.

* My office suite is having a potluck next week. There was a sign up sheet for names and what you are bringing. A majority of people who signed up said they were bringing "TBD". Suck it up my office neighbors. Commit to something.

* Why does it take the City of Denver weeks for a deed that is recorded and digitally processed by the Clerk & Recorder's office weeks to be reflected in the Assessor's Office records?

* A recent new report stated:

Church stands by call to execute gay people: “I will not apologize for preaching the Word of God.”: A men's night sermon said gay people should "blow yourself in the back of the head."

Just what I would expect a Baptist church in Indiana to say. The most vile people in America are Christians.

"Not all Christians are this bad" you say? Then why aren't they picketing outside the steps of this church for heresy and blasphemy? It isn't my place to do that. Not my monkeys, not my circus. But it is hard to take any Christians seriously when this isn't the instant and vigorous response of Christians who say they're wrong.

* There is a tornado warning in Washington D.C. right now. WTF?

* There are too many crazy people in this country, and not just in the White House.

A group that calls itself an anti-government militia told News 9 it’s “absolutely” targeting Oklahoma weather radars, claiming they control the weather. The warning comes just days after a vandal knocked out News 9’s live radar.

* I don't doubt for a minute that the allegations of this complaint, which was later dismissed (not on the merits), were true:

* The people who leave anti-immigration comments on social media posts and news story (and there are lots of them) are among the most vile people you'll see on the Internet. These people would have been pro-Holocaust, pro-segregation, pro-slavery, and pro-witch burning.

It is a reminder that the evil that is Donald Trump runs deep. There are there millions, if not tens of millions of these monsters in the United States.

Stupid hurts people. But this level of vile goes far beyond that. They are as bad as the most culpable violent criminals in our prisons. Where do these people come from? What can we do about them?

* It just doesn't stop.

* Anti-aging, life extension drugs are a real possibility, if not in my lifetime, in the lives of my children.

A simple monthly injection allows mice to live 25% longer and free from diseases: The strategy — the injection of a simple antibody — has already begun to be tested in humans in an attempt to cure age-related illnesses.

* The Texas floods have are already the fourth most deadly floods in Texas history. There are still 161 people missing, so they could easily rise to #2, and floods in San Antonio are ongoing.

 

Most of these deaths were preventable. The part of Texas hit has consistently had the highest concentration of flood deaths in the United States since the 1930s. State and local officials rejected a proposal in 2017, in the wake of Hurricane Harvey, to install flood detection devices and warning sirens but weren't willing to spend the money to do so. Trump's cuts to NOAA and the National Weather Service impaired the warning that people at risk in the flood received. Trump gutted FEMA which only started to take action to help 72 hours after the floods when it was already too late (the U.S. Coast Guard, in fairness, stepped in anyway and saved about 165 lives at the insistence of a brave rookie over the indifference and waffling of his supervisors). The Texas Governor and its top emergency response official have urged Trump to cut or eliminate FEMA.

* Gun homicides are down, but gun suicides have reached a record high.

The CDC reports 27,300 gun suicides in 2023, constituting 58% of all gun deaths, a record high. Wyoming led the nation with about 19.9 gun suicide deaths per 100,000 residents — nearly 10 times the rate of Massachusetts, which had the lowest at about 2.1 per 100,000.

Gun homicides fell for the second year in a row, dropping from 20,958 in 2021 to 19,651 in 2022 and 17,927 in 2023. Despite the decline, the 2023 total ranks as the fifth highest on record for gun homicides.

Civilian Gun Ownership Doesn't Prevent Tyranny

The trouble with this meme is that it is utter bullshit. While the political theory of the Second Amendment is facially plausible, it turns out that it is actually just plain wrong.

How is an armed public preventing tyranny in the United States right now? 

It isn't and it won't. 

Armed citizens are no competition for the U.S. military if it is deployed. They aren't even competition for law enforcement.

The U.K. and Japan both have near complete bans on gun ownership. 

Do they have far fewer murders than the U.S. does? 

Yes. 

Do they are far fewer mass shootings and mass killings? 

Yes. 

Are they tyrannies? 

No. Both are more democratic and show more respect for the rule of law than the United States does at the moment.

Armed intimidation by private citizens was actually one factor of many that made the Third Reich possible. 

Germany saw significant political violence from the fall of the Empire and the rise of the Republic through the German Revolution of 1918–1919, until the rise of the Nazi Party to power with 1933 elections and the proclamation of the Enabling Act of 1933 that fully broke down all opposition. The violence was characterized by assassinations and by confrontations between right-wing groups such as the Freikorps (sometimes in collusion with the state), and left-wing organisations such as the Communist Party of Germany.

Between 1919 and 1922, there were at least 354 politically-motivated murders by right-wing extremists, primarily Freikorps, and a minimum of 22 murders by left-wing extremists. Compared to right-wing murders, left-wing motivated murders were criminally prosecuted much more frequently and received significantly harsher sentencing.

And, of course, there was armed resistance by Jews, most famously, in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, which failed.

The reality is that there are really no examples in world history of an armed civilian population preventing tyranny. Even the American Revolution, which inspired the Second Amendment, was fought by state organized militias that banded together to form a state sponsored military insurgency, not by armed private citizens organizing themselves privately.

Civilian Gun Ownership Rates

The state by state breakdown may be using a different methodology than the international one.

Seemingly, five U.S. states have lower gun ownership rates than England and Wales, which I am skeptical of, although the relative rates of gun ownership should be solid. Utah, an ultra conservative red state in the "cowboy west", remarkably, has the third lowest gun ownership rate.

 (Source)

Civilian gun ownership rates are surprisingly low in Switzerland, which is used when looking at gun control measures internationally as a country with widespread gun ownership, yet low crime.

Canada has gun ownership rates less than 30% of those of the U.S. 

Russia has gun ownership rates just barely more than 10% of those of the U.S.

 (Source)

In Europe, civilian gun ownership rates are highest in Scandinavia, especially rural Scandinavia, although it is below U.S. rates everywhere.

(Found on Facebook without a citation for its source, probably E.U. statistics prior to Brexit)

Pro-Gun Sentiment Is Religious Not Just Rational

An important subset of gun owners view gun ownership as a magical or religious thing, rather than just a rational means of securing certain ends like personal security.

Gun culture is properly measured by a population's emotional and symbolic attachment to guns and not by rates of gun ownership. Using data from the Baylor Religion Survey (wave 6), we find that nearly all gun owners feel that guns provide them with a physical sense of security (Gun Security), but a distinct and crucial sub-set of owners express an additional and strong attachment to their weapons (Gun Sanctity). Gun Sanctity measures the extent to which owners think their guns make them more patriotic, respected, in control, and valued by their family and community. We propose that Gun Sanctity is a form of quasi-religious or magical thinking in which an object is imbued with unseen powers. 

To assess this proposal, we look at the extent to which gun ownership, Gun Security, and Gun Sanctity are related to traditional religion and various forms of magical thinking, namely, (a) conspiratorialism, (b) the belief that prayer can fix financial and health problems, and (c) support for Christian Statism, a form of American theocracy. We find that Gun Sanctity is highly predictive of different forms of magical thinking but is often unrelated to more traditional religious practices and beliefs.

Paul Froese, Ruiqian Li, and F. Carson Mencken, "The sacred gun: the religious and magical elements of America's gun culture", Politics and Religion, First View (February 27, 2025). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1755048324000312

The Shooting In Washington Park

The Shooting

The description of the events in this section is compiled mostly from multiple news reports at the Denver Post (including this one), the Denver Gazette, and three TV news channel websites (7 News including this one, 9 News, and Fox 31 News).

My previous post on middle class crime, was motivated by, and a prelude to, this post about the February 2, 2025 shooting in Washington Park, in Denver, Colorado, about three blocks from my home, that took place around 2:30-2:40 p.m. on a sunny warm day in broad daylight, just minutes after my wife decided to take another route home from the Washington Park Recreation Center than she had been planning to take. 

The shooting took place roughly Downing and Kentucky streets near a major west entrance to the park (it may have taken place a block further south at Downing and Tennessee, there are conflicting reports and there is a park bench there that could have been the one central to this story).

Twenty-eight year old Ryan Martin Egelston is suspected of having gotten into an argument with another man over a park bench at this location. 

As a Denver Post story explains:

Egelston got into a fight with another man in the park around 2 p.m. Sunday after the man asked if he could share a park bench with Egelston, according to an arrest affidavit released by the Denver Police Department.

Witnesses told investigators that Egelston spat on the man, pushed him in the chest and punched him in the lower back, according to the affidavit.

The man was walking away with his bike when Egelston allegedly pulled out a gun and shot at him. Egelston didn’t hit the man, but police said the bullet punctured one of the bike’s tires.

About 90 seconds later, Egelston shot at a second, unrelated victim from behind, striking him near the jaw, according to the affidavit. Witnesses told the Denver Post on Sunday that the bullet entered the man’s neck and went out his face.

“At no point did the second victim and (Egelston) appear to have any sort of disagreement or altercation prior to the shooting,” Denver police officials said in the arrest affidavit.

Chaos erupted in the crowed park in response. A medical doctor who was in the park nearby provided first aid to the man who was shot until an ambulance arrived and took him to a hospital. The man who was shot is expected to survive despite these serious injuries.

UPDATE: February 14, 2025:

A silver lining to the fateful day was the presence of Lakshmi Karra, Denver Health family medicine doctor, who was also at the park. She rushed to help Ben without hesitating. "I noticed that there was what looked like a gunshot wound on his neck," she said. "I took his picnic blanket out of his bag and I held pressure on his wound." Karra called 911 after which the Denver Health Paramedics rushed Ben to the hospital.

From 9 News.  

Egelston was muttering and cursing to himself and displayed his handgun to two women nearby telling them not to photograph him. He then tried to flee in his red Hyundai sedan.  

The 7 News story adds some details from the arrest affdavit and criminal case:

Moments after the second shooting, Egelston was seen walking southbound on S. Downing St. from E. Kentucky Ave. before he got inside a red Hyundai Sudan with Colorado license plate CIS-K97.

Denver Police officers who responded to the scene chased the vehicle with their sirens blaring before they rammed the car at E. Kentucky Ave. just west of S. Downing St. “due to the active threat to the public and in an attempt to limit a high-speed chase,” according to the affidavit.

At least two Denver police patrol cars surrounded the vehicle and took Engelson into custody. A black Glock handgun was then recovered from the passenger seat of the vehicle, according to investigators.

Egelston was taken to Denver Police Department headquarters where he was interviewed by police about two hours later following the shootings, though it’s not clear why Egelston got into an argument with the first victim and why he reportedly shot the two men, as the affidavit obtained by Denver7 Monday is heavily redacted.

The suspect is currently being held for investigation of attempted first-degree murder on a $1 million cash-only bond.

He was also carrying a concealed weapon in a Denver park, which is itself illegal.

UPDATE (February 10, 2024) from the Denver Post:

Ryan Martin Egelston has been charged with four counts of first-degree attempted murder, one count of assault and one count of vehicular eluding, all felonies, according to court records. He is also charged with six sentence-enhancing charges related to violent crimes and weapons.

Egelston told police he didn’t intend to shoot anyone, that he thought the two victims were involved in psyops and he was previously hospitalized for mental health concerns.

A GoFundMe has been established for the shooting victim Ben Varga, who is 23 years old, by his family. As I write this, it has raised $34,935 towards a $40,000 goal from 530 donors. Varga was taken to Denver Health, a level one trauma center. The GoFundMe page explains that:

On February 2nd, 2025, our friend, brother, and son, Ben Varga, was the victim of a shooting in Wash Park, Denver. Ben was shot from behind while waiting to meet up with friends. The bullet traveled through the back of his neck and straight through his jaw and chin. We are incredibly grateful that he survived. In what can only be described as a miracle, the bullet narrowly missed critical structures like his trachea and spine, preventing even more devastating consequences. The visible impact on his face is minimal, given that the bullet traveled in a way that left his facial structure largely intact on the surface. Since the incident, Ben has been in the Surgical Intensive Care Unit (SICU) at Denver Health, undergoing multiple surgeries and receiving round-the-clock care. His recovery will be long, but we remain hopeful. . . . 

Ben, a lifelong Coloradan, has always had a deep love for his home state and the community around him. He graduated from CU Boulder's Leeds School of Business last May, is a dedicated Buffs fan, and recently moved to downtown Denver to start a new job. Ben is also a big fan of all Colorado sports, including the Broncos, Avalanche, and Nuggets. When he's not cheering for local teams, he loves skiing, playing pickleball, trying new restaurants, and traveling the world. As a triplet, he shares a special bond with his brother, sister, and family. His love extends deeply to his friends and his dogs, Tatum and Bernie.

Ben's picture appears on his "recovery" blog: 

About Shooting Suspect Ryan Egelston

The suspect in this case is not much of a fit to stereotypes about random shootings in big cities.

Egelston attended the University of Dayton, in Ohio, from 2015-2019 where he got decent enough grades, after graduating from Buffalo Grove High School in Buffalo Grove, Illinois (a Chicago suburb) on schedule, starting in August of 2011. He was born sometime in 1996. While he was in college, in the summer of 2018, he was an intern with Respire Ministries, helping to teach English to Haitian immigrants (probably the ones made famous in the 2024 Presidential race).

After he graduated with a bachelor's degree in accounting and finance he became a CPA for the Big Four accounting firm of Deloitte, which he rose to the position of senior auditor over a period of two years and four months. He moved to Denver in 2021 to work as a senior associate for a financial consulting firm involving "interim financial assistance primarily to Fortune 1000 companies during critical times of need" performing accounting, auditing and compliance functions for a year until November of 2022, and was admitted as a licensed CPA in Colorado by reciprocity.

Before moving to Denver and until shortly after he moved to Denver, he was a treasurer and trustee on the board of the mother church, called "Destiny Church" and an "inherited church" called "Risen Church" and was a youth ministry leader at Destiny Church that served more than 100 members. At these meetings he "casted vision." He also worked in their addiction ministries.

Then, his ordinary and highly successful career path shifted. He took what he described as a "gap year" and "career break" for nineteen months, until May of 2024, during which he "authored over 4 unpublished books and numerous business consulting articles and thought leadership." Over the last nine months he has been working remotely providing accounting and finance consulting services for "One10" which I suspect, but don't know, is the entity in which he engaged in self-employment.

He describes himself as revivalist preacher and a Revelations 11 witness, maintained a blog until September of 2023, and made a dozen or two TikTok posts. The blog posts were pretty out there from the perspective of the uninitiated. For example, his September 25, 2023 blog post (the last one on his site) he said: 

Moore’s Law is the prophetic fulfillment of Daniel 12:4, which is prophecy on the end time’s that detail that knowledge shall increase stating, “Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall increase.”

The pictures and videos on his website and TikTok posts depict a clean cut, fit, white young man, who is almost frenetic with impatient energy.

The "about me" section on his webpage says (fancy formatting in the original not fully preserved):

Passionate About Revival, Writing Books, Teaching the Word of God,

Empowerment, Leadership Development,

Business Development/Consulting Services, and Public Speaking

I am a small business owner who is 'sold out' with a deep passion to preach and teach the Word of God with all my chips on the table, and I offer speaking arrangements where I hope to be the spiritual thermostat for you, your business, or your church! When not speaking or writing books, I love to consult with companies and would love the opportunity to help take your business to the next level and be a sounding board of wisdom in your room, a voice of reason, a voice that you can trust that will come in looking out for your best intentions with the utmost excellence. Business is my passion, people are my concentration, and the Word of God is what I belt out and yearn to live out with the very actions of my life. I choose to live 'under the Word,' apply it in every area of my life, and yearn to see an on-fire and burning church ready with oil for the return of Christ.

Currently, I am writing books believing God to impact thousands of people in whatever manner possible and dream of speaking all around the world. I am deeply passionate about client service and love adding value in the consulting sphere solving complex problems and being the sounding board for decision makers like you! Moreover, I'd love to come speak at your church or organization and inspire and build up one anothers' faith, usher in a spirit of revival, and preach LIGHTS out. If you think I'd be a great fit to speak, please do not hesitate to reach out!

A Reddit thread provides some more insights about him. One comment states:

Went to college with this guy. He became super religious after moving to Colorado and started going a little nutty. We always knew he was a little off, this is taking it to the next level.

Another comment in the thread states:

I'm almost certain I saw this dude tweaking around 1st and Emerson like two weeks ago. Same red hyundai parked in the alley, same build/look. He was trying to get into the abandoned homes on that block. I remember it now because the dude looked really wound up and had something he kept pocketing/holding. i got the fuck away ASAP. It confirms my initial suspicions that it was a gun. freaky shit.

A third comment in the thread states: 

OMG this dude came through the gas station one night and was having some kind of schizophrenic episode. He did the gesture of a rifle in his arms and I asked him if he was doing alright. He like snapped out of it said he’s going great and then went back to his episode.

Analysis

Looking at all of the facts and circumstances, including his own statement to police, I have to concur with the final Reddit comment quoted above that this shooting is probably a result of Ryan Egelston developing schizophrenia symptoms (or if not that, some other form of psychosis).

His life apparently started to go off track sometime between late 2021 when he left his job at Deloitte and November of 2022 when he left the position that he took in Denver after only a year to take a "gap year." He would have been 25-26 years old at the time, which is a very typical time for men with schizophrenia and other forms of psychosis (whose brains develop at a somewhat later age than women) to have their symptoms reach a point where they become unmanageable. These symptoms probably presented themselves at a more manageable level, perhaps even at such a slight level that one could doubt that they were real, several years earlier.

Inability to function in a highly structured conventional business setting like an accounting firm, paranoia and overreaction to unaggressive conduct from others, claims to see "visions", and making seemingly bizarre connections between ideas that other would see as unrelated, are all classic symptoms of schizophrenia.

He probably didn't self-diagnose his situation as a mental health issue (although his claim that he was previously hospitalized suggests otherwise), and his religious peers probably didn't either, as it seemed to be consistent with his self-image as a religious prophet or witness. 

His behavior as reported at Reddit and his lack of work history according to LinkedIn, also suggests that he may have been nearing the end of his rope financially, after being on the top of the world financially briefly after college as an accountant at a big national accounting firm, and then apparently exhausting his savings. This may have further fueled his paranoia and desperation.

From the perspective of criminal law, his behavior seems to belie the state of mind (typically associated with severe schizophrenia) that is necessary for him to present an insanity defense to his charges, although his lawyers, once hired or appointed, will probably have no choice but to present this defense in the criminal prosecution arising from this incident. The statement he made to police after the shooting might support this defense.

If he is not found to be incompetent and involuntarily committed as a threat to himself and others, he will probably plea bargain down from attempted murder to aggregated assault and received a fairly lengthy prison sentence in connection with that charge.

As a result of the quick response of the police to the incident, the numerous witnesses, and the ample physical evidence, a defense strategy claiming that he wasn't the shooter, or that he had a legal justification for the shooting, such as self-defense, would almost surely be futile. 

It is also plausible that an investigation will link him to other crimes for which he may face additional charges for which an insanity defense is not available (such as burglary, or carrying a concealed weapon in a Denver city park).

The Unattainable Possible

Lots of the things I'd like to see in the United States already exist elsewhere.

If you want to look at societies with almost no civilian gun ownership, you need look no farther than Japan and the United Kingdom. No other country is as gun ridden as the U.S.

Just about everyplace in the developed and developing world has more affordable, universal healthcare that also happens to produce better results. Most developed countries also make higher education more affordable than the U.S.

There are dozens of countries with society in general, and the election administration and the courts in particular, are less corrupt and partisan.

Lots of countries are better at not punishing innocent people in their criminal justice systems. Few countries are so extremely punitive in their criminal punishments.

Only a handful of societies have as many Evangelical Christians or comparable religious fundamentalists as the U.S. does, and a great many societies have more secular populations than the United States.

Few Western countries are so plagued by having massive shares of their electorates that are deeply disconnected from reality.

Many countries translate the popular will into legislative power more accurately in their political systems than the U.S. does.

Many countries have lower drinking ages and don't have almost fully criminalized prostitution. A number of countries have less punitive approaches to drugs.

Most developed countries treat workers better, and have a better work-life balance.

Japan does a better job of providing affordable housing in major cities. Lots of countries are better at land use regulation. China does a better job of building major construction projects quickly and efficiently.

France and many other countries use more nuclear power and use less coal than the United States. Several countries have a bigger market share of EV vehicles. Many countries have better high speed rail systems.

Most developed countries do a better job of taxing the rich, maintaining a social safety net, and discouraging extreme income inequality. Few developed countries have the serious homelessness problem that the U.S. does.

All but a couple countries use the metric system, while the U.S. is one of the countries with a mostly non-metric hybrid system.

Many countries do a better job of preventing consumer/investor/ordinary person oriented fraud and deceptive trade practices. Most countries have posted prices that are the real price of a good and services being purchased, which are not adjusted up to reflect sales taxes and tips. 

The U.S. is hardly the worst place in the world. It is affluent and economically productive. It has a grossly disproportionate share of the best colleges and universities in the world. It has the most advanced air force, the largest navy, and some of the most well-trained ground troops. It's financial markets generally work pretty well. It has a large foreign born population on a percentage basis that is quite well integrated into society (which isn't to say that it doesn't have political tensions over immigration). There are developed countries where the far-right movements are worse and more powerful although the U.S. is right up there among them. The products of its entertainment industry are world class. The U.S. is among the most protective in the world of free speech and religious freedom (even to a fault). The U.S. is one of the best places in the world to be a Jew and is home to about 40%-45% of the world's Jews.

But knowing that goals for the U.S. are attained elsewhere, but are unattainable in the U.S. despite being possible, is very frustrating.

Where Do Police Most Often Shoot People?

As explained in a story reporting on it, new study "looked at police shootings from 2015 to 2020 and researchers found that 45% happened in rural areas and 22% happened in the suburbs." This leaves 33% in urban areas.

About 20% of the population of the U.S. is rural, according to the census bureau. In a three-way urban-suburban-rural split, according to the Pew Research Center, the nation is 31% urban, 55% suburban, and 14% rural. So, police shoot people with an average frequency in urban areas, with a highly elevated frequency of 2.5-3 times the average in rural areas, and a far below average frequency (about 60% below average) in suburban areas.

Introduction 

Much research on shootings by police has focused on urban jurisdictions, but most U.S. law enforcement agencies are not located in cities. Prior research suggests that rates of fatal shootings by police are comparable between urban and nonurban areas. Yet, shooting characteristics across the urban–rural continuum are unknown. This study describes and compares fatal and nonfatal injurious shootings by officers in U.S. urban, suburban, and rural areas from 2015 to 2020. 

Methods 

Characteristics of fatal and nonfatal injurious shootings by police were abstracted from Gun Violence Archive. In 2023–2024, using ZIP-code and county-based rurality designations, the national distribution, incidence, and characteristics of injurious shootings by police were compared across urban, suburban, and rural areas of the U.S. 

Results 

Rates of injurious shootings in rural areas approached or exceeded those of urban rates. As rurality increased, proportionately more injurious shootings involved single responders, sheriffs, or multiple agency types. Across the urban–rural continuum, characteristics of precipitating incidents were similar. Injurious shootings were most frequently preceded by domestic violence incidents, traffic stops, or shots-fired reports; co-occurring behavioral health needs were common. After accounting for local demographic differences, Black, indigenous, and Hispanic residents were injured at higher rates than White residents in all examined areas. 

Conclusions 

Shootings by police represent an overlooked and inequitable source of injury in rural areas. Broadly similar incident characteristics suggest potential for wide-reaching reforms. To prevent injuries, crisis prevention, dispatch, and response systems must assure proportionate rural-area coverage. In addition, legislative prevention and accountability measures should include sheriffs’ offices for optimal rural-area impact. 

Ward, et al., "Characteristics of Injurious Shootings by Police Along the Urban–Rural Continuum" American Journal of Preventive Medicine (June 4, 2024) (open access).

Best Case Scenarios

We spend a lot of time thinking about worst case scenarios. But we shouldn't discount the likelihood of better outcomes. Smart people of goodwill all over the world are trying to achieve them. And, by "best case scenarios" I mean outcomes that have some plausible chance of happening within time frames that people who are adults today can live to see.

China

China joins the rest of the world in backing away from coal as a power source and shifting to renewables like solar, wind, and tidal power, to nuclear power, and to improved energy conservation. Its high speed rail network and growing fleet of electric vehicles suggest that it isn't as indifferent to the environment as we might think.

A new generation of political leaders eases its authoritarianism and censorship, curbs its excessive use of the death penalty, checks China's territorial ambitions. It also cuts off tactic support for North Korea if it isn't conditioned on North Korean demilitarization and reforms.

Russia and the former Soviet Union

Putin dies. The Ukraine War is abandoned on terms not materially more favorable than the 2014 status quo. The Black Sea is demilitarized in a multi-lateral agreement. Maintaining a Soviet scale military becomes unsustainable and is curtailed. Ukraine joins NATO. Most autonomous regions of Russia gain more autonomy or gain independence.  

The declining importance of oil and gas in the global economy weakens autocratic powers in Russia and strengthens urban commercial and technology sectors. A grass roots political movement curbs the power of the oligarchs. Russia stops supporting North Korea, which together with Chinese tough love weakens that regime.

Former Soviet Republics continue to go their own ways with weaker ties to Russia and Russian expeditionary military activity is curtailed.

Sub-Saharan Africa

Belatedly, sub-Saharan Africa follows in the footsteps of Mexico, China, and Southeast Asia and becomes a global center for manufacturing, initially fueled by cheap labor and lax regulations, which leads to economic development, greater affluence, and a demographic transition. Improve rail, roads, and air travel link the continent. The declining importance of oil and gas weakens authoritarian regimes.

Regimes will start to leave the highly unstable coup and civil war prone phase of the transition to democracy and agricultural production in Africa will also improve and rise to global standards. So far, Africa has increased output by increasing the amount of land farmed, rather than by increasing productivity per acre, but this could easily change in the decades to come.

The Islamic World

The declining importance of oil and gas undermines the oil monarchies and authoritarian regimes of the Middle East, North Africa, Brunei, and Aceh. Without oil money to prop it up, fundamentalist Islam fizzles. Guest workers in the Arab world are replaced by domestic workers ending massive unemployment among young people in the region. Power shifts to commercial and technology sector firms forcing a transition to democratic regimes, peacefully or by revolutions.

The Islamic world, now in something of a Victorian era stage of cultural development, progresses, with less restrictive dress codes, less repression of women, less use of corporal punishment, and more commercial activity. Iran remains nominally a theocracy but with a great shift in the balance of power in favor of reformist politicians and away from religious leaders, until finally disestablishment arrives tracking the religious diversity and growing secularization of ordinary Iranians.

Latin America

More sensible regulation of guns and decriminalization of drugs in North America deflates and disarms the cartels of Latin America and opens the door for less corrupt government. Drug prohibition driven waves of homicides end, and a well-educated population comes to the fore. The disaster that is Venezuela eases as the declining importance of oil and gas in the global economy makes top down communist rule infeasible.

Climate change

We won't end the causes of anthropic climate change soon enough to prevent or reverse it. Sea levels will rise faster than expected, but not so fast that coastal urban centers can't be protected with sea walls that become island redoubts to a great extent, especially in places on the brink like Venice, southern Florida, and southern Louisiana.

Ski resorts move north with Alaska and the Yukon taking the center stage once held by Colorado, Utah, and Switzerland.

The great U.S. migration to the Sun Belt reverses itself as the heat in the Southern U.S. becomes intolerable and the winters in the Midwest and Northeast become more tolerable. The southern U.S. shifts in the direction of tropical and deep desert from subtropical.

The Sahara continues to expand before reaching a stabilized peak as fossil fuel use is discontinued worldwide. 

Petroleum and coal become as archaic as merchant and naval sailing fleets, while merchant ships start to universally rely in part upon wind power for propulsion. Natural gas fades more slowly but is eventually replaces by electrical grids fueled by wind, solar, tidal, geothermal, and nuclear energy.

U.S. political divisions

As Baby Boomers die off and younger generations come to great power in society, Christianity withers, anti-LGBT sentiment fades, reproductive roots overcome a decade or so long stumble, anti-science movements return to crackpot status, and the Rehnquist court goes down in history as a second, regrettable, Lochner court. The filibuster is abolished, court packing ends the ultra-conservative Supreme Court, and the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico and other U.S. territories gain their rightful political rights. The U.S. adopts a popular vote for the Presidency either by interstate compact or by constitutional amendment, or by the former leading to the latter. Gradual cultural homogenization, and continued migration to major cities eventually undermines the worst facets of Southern/Country/Western culture.

The global economy's shift away from fossil fuels undermines the worst political factions in places like West Virginia, Wyoming, Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi.

The U.S. will finally get high speed rail in select, regional high traffic corridors, but will probably not develop a national high speed rail network.

New Colorado Laws

Many Colorado laws take effect on July 1 each year. This year is no exception:

Twenty-one new laws that the legislature passed this year will kick in at the start of July. Among them are laws covering the state plumbers board, creating a new Colorado Disability Opportunity Office and adding gender identity to the state’s protected classes in bias-motivated crimes.

Several laws passed in previous years will also go into full effect Monday, including a measure approved in 2021 that allows Colorado consumers to opt out of having their personal data sold or used to generate targeted advertising. 

Another bill passed in 2021, which banned single-use plastic bags at checkout lines at the start of this year, has another provision taking effect Monday that will allow local governments to enact even stricter plastic bag limits.

Here are six other new laws set to go into effect: 

Occupancy limits . . . 

House Bill 1007 prohibits local governments from limiting how many unrelated adults can live together in an apartment or housing unit. For college towns like Boulder or Fort Collins, that means cities generally can’t cap how many roommates can live together, except for health and safety reasons. Roughly two dozen Colorado cities and towns had occupancy limits, though only a few — including Fort Collins — actively enforced them. . . . 

Sexual assault cases . . . 

House Bill 1072. . . . It blocks defendants and defense attorneys from using what a sexual assault victim was wearing as evidence of consent in court. The new law also tightly limits how the victim’s previous sexual history, including with the defendant, can be used in court. . . .

Limit on poison

Sodium nitrite is a preservative used often used in curing meats. But in higher concentrations, it can be fatal when ingested by people, and it’s increasingly been used in suicides here and elsewhere in the United States. That’s made easier by the availability of the higher-potency substance for purchase online or in sporting good stores. Starting Monday under House Bill 1081, those higher potencies will no longer be available in Colorado except for approved commercial purposes. . . . 

Fewer guns in sensitive spaces

One of several gun-reform bills passed this year, Senate Bill 131, prohibits the open or concealed carrying of firearms in public or private schools, on university and college campuses, and in child care centers. The new prohibition also covers certain government buildings and the state Capitol. . . .  The bill . . . does allow local governments to opt out of its provisions. The Douglas County Board of Commissioners did so in May. 

Elections protections . . . 

House Bill 1147, requires political ads and messaging to prominently disclose when they include a “deepfake,” meaning an artificially generated picture, video or voice that replicates a real person. . . . 

House Bill 1150, extends existing criminal penalties and fines to people who participate in attempts to organize false slates of presidential electors. Essentially, that means anyone who attempts what a group of lawyers and officials tried in 2020 in support of then-President Donald Trump will face specific criminal liability in Colorado. . . . Colorado’s new law takes existing crimes like perjury or forgery and expands them to include a person seeking to participate in a false elector scheme.

A Horror Show One Step Removed

It feels like the early scenes of a horror movie.

Dobbs has led to a dramatic rollback of abortion rights in half the country, but not where I live, not where my children or siblings or nieces and nephews live.

Louisiana and Oklahoma are blatantly defying constitutional law on separation of church and state, and might get away with it with the current U.S. Supreme Court.

Trump has been in a narrow lead in the Presidential race for months despite being the most dishonest, idiotic, and chaotic evil Presidential candidate ever, and a convicted felon with three more criminal trial around the corner, although not necessarily before election day. MAGA could just as well be the followers of Voldemort, and yet, 40% of the country doesn't notice, doesn't care, and embraces the evil. President Biden is doing good that is going unnoticed in the face of a gridlocked Congress, and campaigns very poorly as we were reminded after the first Presidential debate of this season.

The U.S. Supreme Court has been consistently pro-corruption in its rulings, and undermined January 6 accountability, and nullified the 14th Amendment insurrection clause contrary to the constitution's clear language. It is, of course, deeply corrupt itself, particular Justices Thomas and Alito.

The high court has also made our national suicide pact of the Second Amendment worse and is trying to gut federal government regulatory power.

Yet, here in Colorado, most of it is one step removed. Our state government is solidly moving in the right direction and isn't wallowing in gridlock. Our ever shrinking GOP is whiny and irrelevant in state politics. Our state supreme court took the lead in interpreting the insurrection clause correctly, and our courts in general, while not perfect are less political and more competent than most. We have meaningful protections against corruption and our scandals arise because they are being enforced. Our electrical grid is getting greener and we are using more and more electric vehicles. We are using our water more wisely. We are reintroducing wolves. We are trying to prevent gun violence. We are expanding access to education. We are making it harder to ban books. We are taking action to make housing more affordable and house the homeless. We have raised the minimum wage. We have strengthened tenants rights. We have created a right to paid sick leave. We have expanded our federal parks. We are treating migrants blown to us decently. We are making it easier to vote. We are curbing some of the worst excesses of the criminal justice system, for example, by abolishing the death penalty, by toning down felony murder, by curtailing solitary confinement, and by eliminating qualified immunity for law enforcement officers at the state level. We have led the nation in legalizing marijuana and are following that by legalizing some psychedelics. We are so gay friendly that we have a married gay Governor, have had a lesbian speaker of the state house before that, and have same sex common law marriage. We have cast away place names that are derogatory or exalt KKK members. We have done it with less bureaucracy and lower taxes than California. Our economy is mostly thriving.

Another four years of Trump looks, surreally, like a real possibility, with all the ruin that is likely to bring to our nation if it doesn't end democracy entirely, and tip the balance in favor of autocrats on the global stage.

We haven't reached the point where all hope is lost, but we could end up there in a matter of months.