I have a
loose theme this week, relating to issues where the way we talk about them
misses the point.
I am aware
of the problem with people thinking that the passing of any gun restrictions at
all is automatically equivalent to the government doing a house to house search
and confiscating all guns and ammo and you can never get guns again. It does
not matter how crazy that sounds, people's minds go there, and it has been very
profitable for gun manufacturers as people keep stockpiling waiting for Obama
to come for their guns. (He is going to have to hurry if he is really committed
to that.)
It's
probably hopeless to try and convince the crazy, so I am not going to go there,
but there are a few things that get said, even by sensible people, that are
wrong, and I would like to hit on that.
There are
some things that are offensively stupid. One state senator recently suggested
it was a good thing that the Aurora shooter used a large clip because
it jammed; if he were using smaller clips he might have killed more people.
I have
heard the large clips jam argument many times. I know I'm going out on a limb
here, but I think if they really had that high a failure rate, they wouldn't be
so popular. The large clips used at Sandy Hook didn't jam.
Perhaps we
need to collect more data on the use of large clips, but that leads to one of
the other false statements - "The data is in and gun laws don't
work."
No, the data
is not in. Not only is the data not it, we can't even do a great job of
collecting the data because Congress won't even allow a central database of gun
transactions which not only affects what you can figure out statistically, but
slows down crime-fighting.
We do have
data on what Australia did, and that sounds pretty
promising, but if you want something more permissible than that, it might make
sense to quit pushing so hard against any attempts at gun responsibility,
including closing the gun show loophole.
"Well
his guns were purchased legally anyway. You couldn't have stopped it."
Some of it
comes from this focus that we have on school shootings. The emotions run high
when this happens, so maybe that's why it's harder for people to think
realistically, and the refrain becomes "If they are really determined, you
can't stop them." (Except, of course, with a good guy with a gun.)
This
thinking is wrong. First of all, sometimes you can stop a lot. I recently read
about a bookkeeper in a Georgia elementary school who talked a
gunman into giving himself up. She did this not by threatening him but by
showing love.
Perhaps he
just wasn't that determined, but a lot of people aren't really that determined
to kill someone. When two brothers, or an uncle and a cousin, get into a
dispute over the holidays, no one came planning on a death. Yes, the alcohol
was a factor, but it is easier to take guns away from family gatherings than
alcohol.
It is a
factor in suicides too. People think that if someone is really bent on taking
their life, you can't stop them. Actually, you often can. If you can stop the
attempt, or the attempt fails, that is often enough to get them through.
Attempts with guns don't fail often enough.
I don't
think the popcorn shooter was planning on killing anyone at the theater. I
guess you could say he was determined to be macho, and not let anyone push him
around, and the natural result of that is that eventually he is going to kill
someone. That explains George Zimmerman and Michael Dunn too, but if the
natural result of easy access to guns and our current society is additional
violence and grieving families, I think we need to reconsider.
I will tell
you the natural result of some of my frustrations. Trayvon Martin's death, and
Zimmerman's acquittal, hit me hard, and I have written about that, and ALEC, at
times. Another thing that has been going on has been the attempt to deny more
people their votes. Some of the laws focused on IDs, making many forms of
identification that are perfectly reasonable unacceptable, but concealed
weapons permits were still going to be okay.
In my angry
mind, I was thinking that every person of color, male and female, should line
up for concealed weapons permits, and let that put the fear of God (and man) in
the minds of the people who think Stand Your Ground is a good idea.
The problem
with that is that it will be even more shootings. I have a friend who would
always say that "An armed society is a polite society." That sounds
good; I see no proof that it's true.
I suppose
people could still get the permits and not carry guns, but it is still creating
a more fear-ridden, trigger-happy society that perpetuates ugly stereotypes.
It's still not the answer.
There
totally is a lot that can be said about how our society runs, in terms of the
strength of the economy and the safety net, and how that affects how many
people are in distress and despair, and how we treat the mentally ill, and
racism, and all of those factors.
We can't
have good discussions if we get hung up on lies, and we shouldn't get hung up
on lies that fall apart so easily.
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