I want to have productive conversations about gun violence in this country, in part because I want my children to be safe and healthy and alive--and if we just shout at each other every time there's another mass shooting, we won't be able to take the steps that it makes sense to take.
When I first started seriously wrestling with this issue in the wake of Sandy Hook, I discovered that many of my own thoughts on guns were deeply naive and based on misunderstandings. This is not surprising. I grew up in a family that would never even consider owning a gun. I have not only never fired a gun but I have never physically handled a functional gun. I have absolutely no interest in ever doing so. But living for close to two decades in Oklahoma, I am immersed in a gun culture where gun ownership is routine and living without guns is as unthinkable to many as possessing one is to me.
I learned that as someone who has never physically touched a gun, I am understandably ignorant about them. I've made some effort to overcome this ignorance on a theoretical level (I now know, for example, that a semi-automatic AR-15 is not functionally very different from a standard hunting rifle), but I can imagine very few conditions under which I would be willing to actually touch a real gun. To me, they are symbolically bound up with human death in a way that makes the very thought of touching one fill me with nausea. And each new mass shooting--especially when the victims are children--only increases my aversion.
But guns are tools. They have legitimate uses. Some people use them to hunt, and the traditions of hunting give meaning across generations. Some find legitimate pleasure in target shooting, testing and improving their marksmanship in competitive sports. While I think the protective power of guns in private hands is overrated compared to other ways of staying safe--good locks on your doors, cultivating strategies of nonviolent conflict resolution, affirming the dignity and humanity of everyone you meet--there are occasions when a gun in the right hands could save lives.
And there are occasions when a gun in the wrong hands could turn vibrant young adults with their futures ahead of them into corpses. And while a culture that treats guns with respect, as tools that should be used with due care, has value, there exist subcultures that seem to fetishize guns in a way that is almost pornographic--subcultures that take twisted pleasure in the very things that make me nauseous.
We need to have honest conversations that distinguish between law-abiding users and those who would do violence, between a culture in which guns are a dangerous tool to be treated with caution and respect and a culture in which guns become a focus for feeding unhealthy and dangerous psychological urges. We need to make distinctions so that we can make changes--changes that keep us and those we love safer but respect our diverse heritages and traditions and experiences.
How can we have these conversations? What steps can we take to open ourselves up and have meaningful, productive dialogue with people whose views on guns are very different from our own?
I would discourage any answers that are only about how "they" have to change, how "they" are too unreasonable to talk to. What can "we" do to open up conversations in ways that inspire reasonableness and honesty and, hopefully, progress?
Showing posts with label gun regulations. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gun regulations. Show all posts
Thursday, February 15, 2018
Wednesday, June 15, 2016
Orlando: What I Want to Say
The problem is that I don't know what to say. Or maybe it's that I don't know how to say it.
I'm in the midst of writing a book on same-sex marriage and Christian love. I was just starting a chapter on the use and misuse of the "love the sinner/hate the sin" slogan when Orlando happened. I went to bed thinking about philosophical arguments and woke up to reports of horror.
The basic facts are now familiar to everyone. An American-born Muslim man--possibly wrestling with same-sex attraction, undoubtedly immersed in the idea that homosexuality is evil--went on a shooting rampage at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando. If we don't include the slaughter of Native Americans at Wounded Knee, it was the deadliest mass shooting in American history. And the perpetrator was armed with a handgun and an assault weapon--that is, a semi-automatic rifle modeled after military assault rifles but lacking the capacity to fire automatically.
For days I have been a bit numb. I have watched the unfolding national conversation on social media--although at times it has more the look of a national shouting match. The themes of that debate are ones I've written about extensively on this blog: homosexuality and homophobia, Islam and Islamophobia, guns and gun control.
The charge of hypocrisy has been flying from both directions, and everyone has been busy producing unfair and oversimplified memes to justify their own position. In the midst of all the noise, of course, there have been thoughtful expressions of opposing views. And there has been grief. And there have been unprecedented displays of support for the LGBT community. Oklahoma City, a city in the heart of the Bible Belt, illumined a bridge in rainbow lights to show solidarity for the Pulse victims.
And there have been expressions of hate. If you want to find the hate, just click on any online article and then read the comments section.
I've felt the need to add my voice, but it all seems too much. There are too many things to say and too many ways to say it wrong. I want to say something that encourages thoughtful discourse, not self-righteous denunciation of opposing views. I want to say something that encourages love, not hate.
I want to lift up my gay and lesbian friends and relatives, to say something that nurtures them at a moment when they stand witness to the reality of homophobic hate and the violence it can engender, when they feel afresh the vulnerability to harm that is always part of being an LGBT person. I want to say something that shows my solidarity and invites others to express it, too. I want to find a way to show the connection between explosions of homophobic violence and the more mundane and widespread forms of disgust and social marginalization out of which such violence can grow--find a way to say this without being promptly caricatured as saying that Christians who refuse to bake cakes for gay couples are as bad as mass murderers.
I want to acknowledge that most of the Christians who call homosexuality a sin do not mean harm to their gay and lesbian neighbors. But I want to say this in a way that makes it clear that we can do harm without meaning to. I want to speak in a way that doesn't enable more mundane homophobes to use the acts of extremists as a form of cover. I want to make it clear that when the Family Research Council publishes pamphlets implying that gays and lesbians are a threat to children, the fact that they would never think of shooting up a gay nightclub doesn't make their slander okay. The fact that the deadliest single attack on the gay community was carried out by a Muslim does not vindicate the many ways that Christians have magnified the suffering of sexual minorities.
At the same time, I want to find a way to say these things that doesn't fuel the rhetoric of militant atheists, those who want to blame religion as such for the kind of hate that tore through human lives in Orlando. I want to find a way to target the beast of homophobia without doing collateral damage. I want to acknowledge that prayers and moments of silence are not the only thing that religion can offer, while also acknowledging the power that prayers and moments of silence can have in symbolizing and strengthening human solidarity--at least when these things are offered as a framework out of which to act rather than an alternative to action. I want to find a way to remind us all that the civil rights movement was rooted in the black churches of America, that not all faith is toxic faith.
I want to lift up my peace-loving Muslim neighbors and say something that nurtures them at a time when, once again, some very loud voices are holding up a violent extremist as representative of what Islam is about at its core. I want to find some new and better way to say what I've been trying to say for a very long time: the problem of religious extremism is a species of the problem of violent ideology that divides the world into "us" and "them" and treats "them" as a fundamental threat to "us," a threat that must by stopped by any means necessary. When Christians and others in the west fail to distinguish between the Muslim extremists and the vast majority of Muslims who denounce the extremism, they play into the us/them ideology that is the source of the worst kind of violence. They make part of themselves a mirror of the extremism they're reacting to. Like the person bitten by the zombie, they start to become the thing that has attacked them. Our own horror stories, the mythologies of our time, tell us where this kind of spreading infection leads.
I want to find some way to talk productively about the relationship between the accessibility of guns and the violence that is perpetrated using guns. I want to avoid ignorance and mischaracterization, acknowledge the complexity the issues, and steer a course between the extremes of draconian bans on gun ownership and the kind of free-for-all that makes it so easy for someone with violent intentions to arm themselves to the teeth with high-capacity semi-automatic rifles and ammunition. I want to acknowledge that the AR-15 is functionally no different from most guns on the market but still have a conversation about the social implications of selling guns that are deliberately designed to look, not like the weapons traditionally used to shoot deer, but like the ones traditionally used to shoot people as efficiently as possible in a theater of war. I want to have a serious conversation about the role that symbols of human-against-human violence can play in tipping some vulnerable psychologies over that line--without ignoring the many ways that this happens (including in movies and video games), without forgetting that most gun owners don't go on killing sprees, but also without ignoring the way that guns figure into the story of violence in America.
I want to talk about comprehensive policies for reducing violence without either fixating on or hiding from one piece of the puzzle. And when the conversation turns to that piece, I don't want to be mischaracterized as saying that this one thing will solve the problem.
I want to find ways to articulate the nuances and qualification that are impossible in memes and slogans, and I want to find a way to do that without my comments being caricatured or distorted or turned into an oversimplified slogan for the sake of launching an unfair attack on a straw man.
It would be easy, in the face of the challenges of pursuing thoughtful and loving conversations in a polarized world, to remain silent. This post, for what it's worth, is one alternative to the extremes of easy slogans and easy silence. I encourage all of you to offer your own, while I return to working on a book that I hope will offer a richer reflection on at least one of the issues raised by the horror in Orlando.
I'm in the midst of writing a book on same-sex marriage and Christian love. I was just starting a chapter on the use and misuse of the "love the sinner/hate the sin" slogan when Orlando happened. I went to bed thinking about philosophical arguments and woke up to reports of horror.
The basic facts are now familiar to everyone. An American-born Muslim man--possibly wrestling with same-sex attraction, undoubtedly immersed in the idea that homosexuality is evil--went on a shooting rampage at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando. If we don't include the slaughter of Native Americans at Wounded Knee, it was the deadliest mass shooting in American history. And the perpetrator was armed with a handgun and an assault weapon--that is, a semi-automatic rifle modeled after military assault rifles but lacking the capacity to fire automatically.
For days I have been a bit numb. I have watched the unfolding national conversation on social media--although at times it has more the look of a national shouting match. The themes of that debate are ones I've written about extensively on this blog: homosexuality and homophobia, Islam and Islamophobia, guns and gun control.
The charge of hypocrisy has been flying from both directions, and everyone has been busy producing unfair and oversimplified memes to justify their own position. In the midst of all the noise, of course, there have been thoughtful expressions of opposing views. And there has been grief. And there have been unprecedented displays of support for the LGBT community. Oklahoma City, a city in the heart of the Bible Belt, illumined a bridge in rainbow lights to show solidarity for the Pulse victims.
And there have been expressions of hate. If you want to find the hate, just click on any online article and then read the comments section.
I've felt the need to add my voice, but it all seems too much. There are too many things to say and too many ways to say it wrong. I want to say something that encourages thoughtful discourse, not self-righteous denunciation of opposing views. I want to say something that encourages love, not hate.
I want to lift up my gay and lesbian friends and relatives, to say something that nurtures them at a moment when they stand witness to the reality of homophobic hate and the violence it can engender, when they feel afresh the vulnerability to harm that is always part of being an LGBT person. I want to say something that shows my solidarity and invites others to express it, too. I want to find a way to show the connection between explosions of homophobic violence and the more mundane and widespread forms of disgust and social marginalization out of which such violence can grow--find a way to say this without being promptly caricatured as saying that Christians who refuse to bake cakes for gay couples are as bad as mass murderers.
I want to acknowledge that most of the Christians who call homosexuality a sin do not mean harm to their gay and lesbian neighbors. But I want to say this in a way that makes it clear that we can do harm without meaning to. I want to speak in a way that doesn't enable more mundane homophobes to use the acts of extremists as a form of cover. I want to make it clear that when the Family Research Council publishes pamphlets implying that gays and lesbians are a threat to children, the fact that they would never think of shooting up a gay nightclub doesn't make their slander okay. The fact that the deadliest single attack on the gay community was carried out by a Muslim does not vindicate the many ways that Christians have magnified the suffering of sexual minorities.
At the same time, I want to find a way to say these things that doesn't fuel the rhetoric of militant atheists, those who want to blame religion as such for the kind of hate that tore through human lives in Orlando. I want to find a way to target the beast of homophobia without doing collateral damage. I want to acknowledge that prayers and moments of silence are not the only thing that religion can offer, while also acknowledging the power that prayers and moments of silence can have in symbolizing and strengthening human solidarity--at least when these things are offered as a framework out of which to act rather than an alternative to action. I want to find a way to remind us all that the civil rights movement was rooted in the black churches of America, that not all faith is toxic faith.
I want to lift up my peace-loving Muslim neighbors and say something that nurtures them at a time when, once again, some very loud voices are holding up a violent extremist as representative of what Islam is about at its core. I want to find some new and better way to say what I've been trying to say for a very long time: the problem of religious extremism is a species of the problem of violent ideology that divides the world into "us" and "them" and treats "them" as a fundamental threat to "us," a threat that must by stopped by any means necessary. When Christians and others in the west fail to distinguish between the Muslim extremists and the vast majority of Muslims who denounce the extremism, they play into the us/them ideology that is the source of the worst kind of violence. They make part of themselves a mirror of the extremism they're reacting to. Like the person bitten by the zombie, they start to become the thing that has attacked them. Our own horror stories, the mythologies of our time, tell us where this kind of spreading infection leads.
I want to find some way to talk productively about the relationship between the accessibility of guns and the violence that is perpetrated using guns. I want to avoid ignorance and mischaracterization, acknowledge the complexity the issues, and steer a course between the extremes of draconian bans on gun ownership and the kind of free-for-all that makes it so easy for someone with violent intentions to arm themselves to the teeth with high-capacity semi-automatic rifles and ammunition. I want to acknowledge that the AR-15 is functionally no different from most guns on the market but still have a conversation about the social implications of selling guns that are deliberately designed to look, not like the weapons traditionally used to shoot deer, but like the ones traditionally used to shoot people as efficiently as possible in a theater of war. I want to have a serious conversation about the role that symbols of human-against-human violence can play in tipping some vulnerable psychologies over that line--without ignoring the many ways that this happens (including in movies and video games), without forgetting that most gun owners don't go on killing sprees, but also without ignoring the way that guns figure into the story of violence in America.
I want to talk about comprehensive policies for reducing violence without either fixating on or hiding from one piece of the puzzle. And when the conversation turns to that piece, I don't want to be mischaracterized as saying that this one thing will solve the problem.
I want to find ways to articulate the nuances and qualification that are impossible in memes and slogans, and I want to find a way to do that without my comments being caricatured or distorted or turned into an oversimplified slogan for the sake of launching an unfair attack on a straw man.
It would be easy, in the face of the challenges of pursuing thoughtful and loving conversations in a polarized world, to remain silent. This post, for what it's worth, is one alternative to the extremes of easy slogans and easy silence. I encourage all of you to offer your own, while I return to working on a book that I hope will offer a richer reflection on at least one of the issues raised by the horror in Orlando.
Thursday, December 10, 2015
Guns and Islam: A Philosophical Public Service Announcement
The mass shooting by a pair of radicalized Muslims in San Bernardino fueled two ongoing conversations in this country: one about guns, the other about Islam. And I've noticed that a few of the arguments tossed about in the gun conversation have some logical parallels in the conversation about Islam (and vice versa).
I think these parallels are worth pointing out in the service of our collective effort to be more consistent thinkers--a kind of quick Public Service Announcement of the sort philosophers are especially suited to offer. If you don't care about logical consistency, feel free to ignore what follows (and be ignored in turn by those who do care). But if you care about consistency, then here are some things you might want to think about.
PARALLEL 1
Suppose you think along the following lines, as many advocates of gun rights do:
"Most gun owners are law abiding citizens who don't kill innocent people. Therefore, when it comes to the problem of innocent people getting killed, guns aren't the problem."
If you think that, then as a matter of logic you should accept the following reasoning:
"Most Muslims are law-abiding citizens who don't kill innocent people. Therefore, when it comes to the problem of innocent people getting killed, Islam isn't the problem."
PARALLEL 2
Suppose you think along the following lines, as many advocates of gun rights do:
"Even if we were to grant that taking away all guns would make our society safer, you can't justify such a policy on those grounds alone because people have rights. We have to protect the rights of law-abiding gun owners even as we aim to keep ourselves safe from the criminal ones."
Setting aside the fact that no political leader is talking about taking away all guns, if you accept this reasoning, then as a matter of logic you should accept the following reasoning (which, unfortunately, refers to something that a current candidate for President is seriously talking about):
"Even if we were to grant that closing our borders to/deporting/tracking all Muslims would make our society safer, you can't justify such a policy on those grounds alone because people have rights. We have to protect the rights of law-abiding Muslims even as we aim to keep ourselves safe from the criminal ones."
PARALLEL 3
Suppose you think along the following lines, as many advocates of gun rights do:
"Even though some gun owners occasionally kill innocent people, it doesn't follow that gun owners are the enemy. Most gun owners would never do such things, and so we should treat them with respect, focusing our outrage at the individuals who actually commit these crimes."
If you think along these lines, then as a matter of logic you should accept the following reasoning:
"Even though some Muslims occasionally kill innocent people, it doesn't follow that Muslims are the enemy. Most Muslims would never do such things, and so we should treat them with respect, focusing our outrage at the individuals who actually commit these crimes."
(I'm sure I've only scratched the surface of the parallel arguments here. Feel free to share any that occur to you in the comments section.)
CLARIFYING REMARK: INADEQUATE RESPONSES
In each of these cases, you may be tempted to respond along the following lines: "But wait! There's more to the story! While most (gun-owners/Muslims) aren't violent or dangerous, there's something about (guns/Islam) that contributes to the problem even so, something that is present in the one case that doesn't apply in the other."
But if you say that, you have conceded that the reasoning in both of the parallel arguments is unsound, because there is more that you need to know in order to draw the inference made in either argument. If you think Islam is a problem even though most Muslims are peaceful and law abiding, then you can't logically hold that guns aren't a problem just because most gun-owners are peaceful and law abiding (and vice versa).
In general, if you think the reasoning in one case is incomplete and unpersuasive, you should think the reasoning in the other case is likewise incomplete and unpersuasive. And so you should reject the argument in favor of something more nuanced.
I think these parallels are worth pointing out in the service of our collective effort to be more consistent thinkers--a kind of quick Public Service Announcement of the sort philosophers are especially suited to offer. If you don't care about logical consistency, feel free to ignore what follows (and be ignored in turn by those who do care). But if you care about consistency, then here are some things you might want to think about.
PARALLEL 1
Suppose you think along the following lines, as many advocates of gun rights do:
"Most gun owners are law abiding citizens who don't kill innocent people. Therefore, when it comes to the problem of innocent people getting killed, guns aren't the problem."
If you think that, then as a matter of logic you should accept the following reasoning:
"Most Muslims are law-abiding citizens who don't kill innocent people. Therefore, when it comes to the problem of innocent people getting killed, Islam isn't the problem."
PARALLEL 2
Suppose you think along the following lines, as many advocates of gun rights do:
"Even if we were to grant that taking away all guns would make our society safer, you can't justify such a policy on those grounds alone because people have rights. We have to protect the rights of law-abiding gun owners even as we aim to keep ourselves safe from the criminal ones."
Setting aside the fact that no political leader is talking about taking away all guns, if you accept this reasoning, then as a matter of logic you should accept the following reasoning (which, unfortunately, refers to something that a current candidate for President is seriously talking about):
"Even if we were to grant that closing our borders to/deporting/tracking all Muslims would make our society safer, you can't justify such a policy on those grounds alone because people have rights. We have to protect the rights of law-abiding Muslims even as we aim to keep ourselves safe from the criminal ones."
PARALLEL 3
Suppose you think along the following lines, as many advocates of gun rights do:
"Even though some gun owners occasionally kill innocent people, it doesn't follow that gun owners are the enemy. Most gun owners would never do such things, and so we should treat them with respect, focusing our outrage at the individuals who actually commit these crimes."
If you think along these lines, then as a matter of logic you should accept the following reasoning:
"Even though some Muslims occasionally kill innocent people, it doesn't follow that Muslims are the enemy. Most Muslims would never do such things, and so we should treat them with respect, focusing our outrage at the individuals who actually commit these crimes."
(I'm sure I've only scratched the surface of the parallel arguments here. Feel free to share any that occur to you in the comments section.)
CLARIFYING REMARK: INADEQUATE RESPONSES
In each of these cases, you may be tempted to respond along the following lines: "But wait! There's more to the story! While most (gun-owners/Muslims) aren't violent or dangerous, there's something about (guns/Islam) that contributes to the problem even so, something that is present in the one case that doesn't apply in the other."
But if you say that, you have conceded that the reasoning in both of the parallel arguments is unsound, because there is more that you need to know in order to draw the inference made in either argument. If you think Islam is a problem even though most Muslims are peaceful and law abiding, then you can't logically hold that guns aren't a problem just because most gun-owners are peaceful and law abiding (and vice versa).
In general, if you think the reasoning in one case is incomplete and unpersuasive, you should think the reasoning in the other case is likewise incomplete and unpersuasive. And so you should reject the argument in favor of something more nuanced.
Tuesday, December 8, 2015
I Fixed It! Gun Slogan Edition
I don't pretend to know how to solve the epidemic of gun violence in this country. Even if, in theory, our country would be safer if far fewer people had guns and guns were much harder to acquire, the reality is that the guns are already out there in huge numbers. And the gun culture in the US pretty much ensures that any attempt to forcibly reduce the number of guns that are out there would be met with entrenched resistance--not just political resistance but other forms, in some cases armed resistance that could magnify bloodshed in this country rather than reduce it.
It seems to me that some policies make sense, even if they don't make a huge dent in the problem: closing the gun-show loophole, instituting mandatory training and licencing for gun owners, registering guns and keeping track of ownership in something like the way we do with cars.
But while I don't have a clear sense of how to solve the problem, I do know that certain slogans don't help us to think clearly and carefully as we collectively pursue a solution. So I've decided to correct a few of these problematic slogans. Here goes:
Slogan 1: "Guns don't kill people. People kill people."
Correction: "Guns don't kill people. People kill people--but they frequently do it with guns, at least in the US, since guns are one of the most efficient tools for killing people and they are readily available. Since guns are tools specifically designed to kill things, they make it so much easier to quickly and efficiently (or accidentally, in the case of careless owners and toddlers) turn a living human being into a corpse."
Comment: The slogan above trivializes the killing power of guns. But the first step in responsible gun ownership is to respect the deadly potency of these weapons. Just as with cars, a gun in the wrong hands is a tragedy waiting to happen. It is recognition of this fact which inspires us, as a society, to train would-be drivers and test and license them before we let them operate a car unsupervised. Promulgating slogans that obscure how dangerous guns are is a bad idea if we want to come up with sound public policies and encourage private responsibility.
Slogan 2: "If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns."
Correction: "If guns are regulated such that everyone who purchases a gun (even at a gun show) is required to undergo background checks designed to block those we all agree shouldn't be entrusted with a gun, everyone will still have access to guns, but those who can't get them legitimately will have to rely on the black market and so will be guilty of a crime for which they can be arrested--meaning law enforcement will have a legal basis for taking action in cases where, had the guns been available for legal purchase, police hands would be tied until the guns were actually put to use in tragic ways."
Comment: Outlawing guns is not seriously proposed, nor is it politically feasible in the US. Arguably, it's also unconstitutional. More careful regulation of gun sales to keep guns out the hands of "outlaws" will, in a perfect world, mean that outlaws won't have access to guns but law-abiding citizens will. In our less-than-perfect world, "outlaws" might still get them from the black market. But if they do, they've committed a crime. And that magnifies the options that law enforcement has for preventive action.
Slogan 3: "The surest guard against tyranny is a well-armed citizenry."
Correction A: "The surest guard against tyranny is a military with a conscience."
Correction B: "The surest guard against tyranny is an informed and engaged citizenry with a conscience."
Comment: If the US government decides to impose tyrannical rule, armed citizens won't have much of a chance against the US military. Really. They'll get slaughtered. If the government decides to turn its formidable coercive power against its own citizens, our best hope is that our military, made up of our own young men and women, will say no.
But of course, tyrannical regimes tend to know that soldiers won't happily start shooting their own. They know that their power depends on the obedience of the soldiers who kill for them, and that these soldiers come from the very communities the tyrants want to control.
That's why tyrants are much more sneaky and incremental. They use ideological indoctrination and propaganda that plays on our fears and insecurities, selling their repressive system bit by bit as an essential means of promoting safety. They'll be especially interested in winning the allegiance of those who are most angry and most well-armed. They do this by pandering to these groups and carefully directing their fear and anger towards scapegoats who are blamed for everything that's wrong with the country. Pretty soon, the well-armed citizenry has been absorbed into the tyrant's forces and is kept busy herding Muslims into concentration camps (or something along those lines).
But if we live in a society that refuses to be sucked in by these us/them ideologies, a society whose citizens stand for human rights without discrimination and who keep themselves informed about current events and engaged in political life, then these indoctrination tactics are far less likely to work. Tyranny will be stripped of one of its most tried-and-true strategies for taking control.
In short, reasoned discussion about guns requires each of the following:
(a) Appreciation of and healthy respect for the lethal power of guns.
(b) Recognition that the choice is not between unrestricted access and a ban; the aim, instead, is to find a regulatory scheme that reflects the kind of balance between public safety and individual rights that is in play with automobiles.
(c) Setting aside naive fantasies that large-scale gun ownership is an effective safeguard against tyranny, and replacing it with the more realistic view that our best guard against tyranny is a citizenry committed to fairness and human rights and politically aware and engaged in our democratic processes.
It seems to me that some policies make sense, even if they don't make a huge dent in the problem: closing the gun-show loophole, instituting mandatory training and licencing for gun owners, registering guns and keeping track of ownership in something like the way we do with cars.
But while I don't have a clear sense of how to solve the problem, I do know that certain slogans don't help us to think clearly and carefully as we collectively pursue a solution. So I've decided to correct a few of these problematic slogans. Here goes:
Slogan 1: "Guns don't kill people. People kill people."
Correction: "Guns don't kill people. People kill people--but they frequently do it with guns, at least in the US, since guns are one of the most efficient tools for killing people and they are readily available. Since guns are tools specifically designed to kill things, they make it so much easier to quickly and efficiently (or accidentally, in the case of careless owners and toddlers) turn a living human being into a corpse."
Comment: The slogan above trivializes the killing power of guns. But the first step in responsible gun ownership is to respect the deadly potency of these weapons. Just as with cars, a gun in the wrong hands is a tragedy waiting to happen. It is recognition of this fact which inspires us, as a society, to train would-be drivers and test and license them before we let them operate a car unsupervised. Promulgating slogans that obscure how dangerous guns are is a bad idea if we want to come up with sound public policies and encourage private responsibility.
Slogan 2: "If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns."
Correction: "If guns are regulated such that everyone who purchases a gun (even at a gun show) is required to undergo background checks designed to block those we all agree shouldn't be entrusted with a gun, everyone will still have access to guns, but those who can't get them legitimately will have to rely on the black market and so will be guilty of a crime for which they can be arrested--meaning law enforcement will have a legal basis for taking action in cases where, had the guns been available for legal purchase, police hands would be tied until the guns were actually put to use in tragic ways."
Comment: Outlawing guns is not seriously proposed, nor is it politically feasible in the US. Arguably, it's also unconstitutional. More careful regulation of gun sales to keep guns out the hands of "outlaws" will, in a perfect world, mean that outlaws won't have access to guns but law-abiding citizens will. In our less-than-perfect world, "outlaws" might still get them from the black market. But if they do, they've committed a crime. And that magnifies the options that law enforcement has for preventive action.
Slogan 3: "The surest guard against tyranny is a well-armed citizenry."
Correction A: "The surest guard against tyranny is a military with a conscience."
Correction B: "The surest guard against tyranny is an informed and engaged citizenry with a conscience."
Comment: If the US government decides to impose tyrannical rule, armed citizens won't have much of a chance against the US military. Really. They'll get slaughtered. If the government decides to turn its formidable coercive power against its own citizens, our best hope is that our military, made up of our own young men and women, will say no.
But of course, tyrannical regimes tend to know that soldiers won't happily start shooting their own. They know that their power depends on the obedience of the soldiers who kill for them, and that these soldiers come from the very communities the tyrants want to control.
That's why tyrants are much more sneaky and incremental. They use ideological indoctrination and propaganda that plays on our fears and insecurities, selling their repressive system bit by bit as an essential means of promoting safety. They'll be especially interested in winning the allegiance of those who are most angry and most well-armed. They do this by pandering to these groups and carefully directing their fear and anger towards scapegoats who are blamed for everything that's wrong with the country. Pretty soon, the well-armed citizenry has been absorbed into the tyrant's forces and is kept busy herding Muslims into concentration camps (or something along those lines).
But if we live in a society that refuses to be sucked in by these us/them ideologies, a society whose citizens stand for human rights without discrimination and who keep themselves informed about current events and engaged in political life, then these indoctrination tactics are far less likely to work. Tyranny will be stripped of one of its most tried-and-true strategies for taking control.
In short, reasoned discussion about guns requires each of the following:
(a) Appreciation of and healthy respect for the lethal power of guns.
(b) Recognition that the choice is not between unrestricted access and a ban; the aim, instead, is to find a regulatory scheme that reflects the kind of balance between public safety and individual rights that is in play with automobiles.
(c) Setting aside naive fantasies that large-scale gun ownership is an effective safeguard against tyranny, and replacing it with the more realistic view that our best guard against tyranny is a citizenry committed to fairness and human rights and politically aware and engaged in our democratic processes.
Wednesday, February 13, 2013
Assault Weapons as Symbols
I think human societies often underestimate the power that symbols have to shape the world around us. Too often, to call an act or gesture "purely symbolic" is to dismiss or trivialize it. But if there's anything that religion has taught us through the centuries, it's precisely this fact: symbolism matters.
I wrote a post awhile back reflecting on the importance and power of religious symbolism in light of the Sikh symbols of faith, or "kakars," that baptized Sikhs carry on their person at all times. There's no question that such symbols can have the capacity to shape our understanding of who we are and, by implication, how we live.
Or consider religious worship: rituals, images, songs, an arrangement of physical space, evocative stories and parables, physical gestures like kneeling or raising ones arms toward the sky, incense and candles--symbols designed to orient us towards a certain way of thinking about and living in the world. If you don't think symbols matter, then you don't think weekly worship can make a difference in a person's development, in their view of the world and their approach to life.
I've been thinking about this issue recently in connection with the "assault weapons" ban being considered as part of a more comprehensive public policy response to gun violence in America. The guns classified as assault weapons are functionally not much different from other semi-automatic rifles that no one is talking about banning. The differences are mainly historical and cosmetic: the former are civilian variants of weapons originally designed for military use and which retain a military styling that other rifles don't have.
Based on this fact--and the additional fact that assault weapons are implicated in a very small percentage of gun homicides in this country--there is some reason to think that a ban on these weapons would be itself a largely symbolic gesture. And in that case, an assessment of it needs to take into account what the symbolism means.
I wrote a post awhile back reflecting on the importance and power of religious symbolism in light of the Sikh symbols of faith, or "kakars," that baptized Sikhs carry on their person at all times. There's no question that such symbols can have the capacity to shape our understanding of who we are and, by implication, how we live.
Or consider religious worship: rituals, images, songs, an arrangement of physical space, evocative stories and parables, physical gestures like kneeling or raising ones arms toward the sky, incense and candles--symbols designed to orient us towards a certain way of thinking about and living in the world. If you don't think symbols matter, then you don't think weekly worship can make a difference in a person's development, in their view of the world and their approach to life.
I've been thinking about this issue recently in connection with the "assault weapons" ban being considered as part of a more comprehensive public policy response to gun violence in America. The guns classified as assault weapons are functionally not much different from other semi-automatic rifles that no one is talking about banning. The differences are mainly historical and cosmetic: the former are civilian variants of weapons originally designed for military use and which retain a military styling that other rifles don't have.
Based on this fact--and the additional fact that assault weapons are implicated in a very small percentage of gun homicides in this country--there is some reason to think that a ban on these weapons would be itself a largely symbolic gesture. And in that case, an assessment of it needs to take into account what the symbolism means.
Monday, January 28, 2013
Guns, the Gospel, and the Message of the NRA
In the effort to push back against the post-Sandy Hook drive for greater gun control, NRA president Wayne LaPierre has said a number of things. But his core message seems to be summed up in these words from his December response to the tragic shooting:
“The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”
What should Christians think of that message? Given how many Americans self-identify as Christian, this a question that should interest anyone engaged in the gun debate, whether they are Christian or not. So, what does LaPierre's message mean from a Christian standpoint?
“The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”
What should Christians think of that message? Given how many Americans self-identify as Christian, this a question that should interest anyone engaged in the gun debate, whether they are Christian or not. So, what does LaPierre's message mean from a Christian standpoint?
Thursday, December 20, 2012
The Gun Control Conversation: Things Not to Say
I think there may be hope for a serious conversation about enacting sensible gun regulations in this country. But there is also a real danger of that conversation being quickly derailed. If the former is going to happen and the latter avoided, there are certain things people tend to say in these discussion that it would really be better to avoid. This is true of people on both sides.
I already talked, in an earlier post, about one such unhelpful remark: The accusation that gun control advocates are "politicizing a tragedy." Here are a few other remarks that it is better to leave behind:
1. "Our children are more important than your guns."
This statement is clearly true. Children are more important than guns. The problem is not with the truth of this statement. The problem, perversely, is that the statement is so obviously true...but is put forward as if this were what opponents of stricter gun regulations disagreed with.
Imagine that you enjoy tennis, and some child in your town was murdered with a tennis racket. Then imagine that a small group of people started arguing for restricting access to tennis rackets. You start to argue that tennis rackets aren't the problem and your opponents suddenly shout you down with "Our children are more important than your tennis rackets!" How would you feel?
I offer this example not because I think guns are comparable to tennis rackets. They're not. Many guns are specifically designed for the express purpose of efficiently ending the lives of human beings. Tennis rackets are designed to hit tennis balls. I offer this example to highlight how stating the obvious as if it were a matter of contention--in effect accusing your opponent of disagreeing with you on something about which no decent human being would disagree--doesn't settle the argument. It just gets your opponent more angry and less willing to engage in a serious conversation.
We all need to focus our attention where the disagreement actually lies. In the case of the safety of our children, the disagreement is not over whether their lives are more valuable than guns. So where does it lie? A big part of the debate is about whether stricter gun regulations will keep our children safer--and if so, what sorts of gun regulations will optimize their safety and what sorts will needlessly restrict gun owners to no good effect.
Much of the debate also turns on an ideological disagreement about the extent to which public safety should be secured by government institutions (police, military) and policies (such as various airport security regulations) and the extent to which it should be secured by extending to individuals the right to secure their own safety by the means they judge best. When it comes to such things as locks and security systems, we all agree that full autonomy should lie with the individual. When it comes to guns the debate becomes complicated because guns both pose a threat to the public safety (when in the wrong hands) and can be used by individuals to defend themselves and those they love from such threats. The conflict here is a case study in broader ideological disagreements about the right balance between individual liberty and communal action for the common good.
2. "In such and such a case of gun violence, greater gun control failed to stop the killer/ ready access to guns by private individuals failed to stop the killer/ ready access to guns by a private individual prevented the gun violence from being worse."
Here's one example of what I have in mind:
I've been trying to track down another one I saw--this one from the other side of the issue--but can't find it. I remember the gist of it well enough, though. It features an image of Nidal Hasan--the shooter who killed 13 people and wounded 29 others at the Fort Hood military base in 2009. It cites the number of people killed and injured and notes that this occurred on a military base, where presumably there were lots of armed people about with lots of training in how to use their weapons...and then it draws the conclusion that arming people more heavily won't stop mass shootings.
A facebook post by a philosophy colleague at another university called my attention to the extent to which specific anecdotes like these are being invoked on both sides as if they settled anything. They don't. The question is whether a particular policy or other will save lives--not whether it will bring an end to all gun-related deaths, all mass killings, etc. No matter what policy we adopt, there will be people who get hold of guns and succeed in taking human lives. We don't live in a perfect world, but we might be able to achieve a better one.
Anecdotes have a powerful impact on our imagination and can shape our thinking, but there is a reason why "anecdotal" evidence is treated with suspicion. And one needs to be careful about the anecdotes one chooses, since it may be a matter of debate whether they make the point you want. For example, according to a Mother Jones article, the Pearl shooting was apparently over by the time the vice principal got his gun. What he managed to do was hold the shooter at gunpoint in the shooter's car until the police arrived.
Of course, it may also be that the shooter was heading off to another location to shoot up some more people. The point is that now you're in a debate about what happened and what would have happened in a particular case when, in fact, the anecdote doesn't really speak to the broader issue. The substantive conversation about what policies are best both in terms of outcomes and in terms of other ethical considerations has been derailed.
3. "If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will lave guns."
This statement assumes that the subject of discussion is nothing but whether a sweeping ban on private gun ownership is the best policy. But it is precisely this sort of all-or-nothing thinking that polarizes discussions and makes more nuanced conversations about sensible policies so difficult.
What we have to ask is not what the effects of a total ban would be, but what the effects of the more nuanced and realistic policy proposals on the table would be. We have to say, for a range of policy proposals, "If this proposal were enacted, then what?" And we have to decide which of these various proposals--proposals which regulate gun ownership in various ways as opposed to outlawing them--is the best policy given the social realities of our country, its history, the evidence of various policy effects on violence, the legitimate moral claims of individuals, and fidelity to our constitution (which requires a serious discussion of what a right to bear arms for the sake of well-regulated militias actually means for us today).
Besides which, even those who propose a ban on guns don't mean for that ban to extend to law enforcement and the military--so it's simply false that only outlaws would have guns.
I already talked, in an earlier post, about one such unhelpful remark: The accusation that gun control advocates are "politicizing a tragedy." Here are a few other remarks that it is better to leave behind:
1. "Our children are more important than your guns."
This statement is clearly true. Children are more important than guns. The problem is not with the truth of this statement. The problem, perversely, is that the statement is so obviously true...but is put forward as if this were what opponents of stricter gun regulations disagreed with.
Imagine that you enjoy tennis, and some child in your town was murdered with a tennis racket. Then imagine that a small group of people started arguing for restricting access to tennis rackets. You start to argue that tennis rackets aren't the problem and your opponents suddenly shout you down with "Our children are more important than your tennis rackets!" How would you feel?
I offer this example not because I think guns are comparable to tennis rackets. They're not. Many guns are specifically designed for the express purpose of efficiently ending the lives of human beings. Tennis rackets are designed to hit tennis balls. I offer this example to highlight how stating the obvious as if it were a matter of contention--in effect accusing your opponent of disagreeing with you on something about which no decent human being would disagree--doesn't settle the argument. It just gets your opponent more angry and less willing to engage in a serious conversation.
We all need to focus our attention where the disagreement actually lies. In the case of the safety of our children, the disagreement is not over whether their lives are more valuable than guns. So where does it lie? A big part of the debate is about whether stricter gun regulations will keep our children safer--and if so, what sorts of gun regulations will optimize their safety and what sorts will needlessly restrict gun owners to no good effect.
Much of the debate also turns on an ideological disagreement about the extent to which public safety should be secured by government institutions (police, military) and policies (such as various airport security regulations) and the extent to which it should be secured by extending to individuals the right to secure their own safety by the means they judge best. When it comes to such things as locks and security systems, we all agree that full autonomy should lie with the individual. When it comes to guns the debate becomes complicated because guns both pose a threat to the public safety (when in the wrong hands) and can be used by individuals to defend themselves and those they love from such threats. The conflict here is a case study in broader ideological disagreements about the right balance between individual liberty and communal action for the common good.
2. "In such and such a case of gun violence, greater gun control failed to stop the killer/ ready access to guns by private individuals failed to stop the killer/ ready access to guns by a private individual prevented the gun violence from being worse."
Here's one example of what I have in mind:
I've been trying to track down another one I saw--this one from the other side of the issue--but can't find it. I remember the gist of it well enough, though. It features an image of Nidal Hasan--the shooter who killed 13 people and wounded 29 others at the Fort Hood military base in 2009. It cites the number of people killed and injured and notes that this occurred on a military base, where presumably there were lots of armed people about with lots of training in how to use their weapons...and then it draws the conclusion that arming people more heavily won't stop mass shootings.
A facebook post by a philosophy colleague at another university called my attention to the extent to which specific anecdotes like these are being invoked on both sides as if they settled anything. They don't. The question is whether a particular policy or other will save lives--not whether it will bring an end to all gun-related deaths, all mass killings, etc. No matter what policy we adopt, there will be people who get hold of guns and succeed in taking human lives. We don't live in a perfect world, but we might be able to achieve a better one.
Anecdotes have a powerful impact on our imagination and can shape our thinking, but there is a reason why "anecdotal" evidence is treated with suspicion. And one needs to be careful about the anecdotes one chooses, since it may be a matter of debate whether they make the point you want. For example, according to a Mother Jones article, the Pearl shooting was apparently over by the time the vice principal got his gun. What he managed to do was hold the shooter at gunpoint in the shooter's car until the police arrived.
Of course, it may also be that the shooter was heading off to another location to shoot up some more people. The point is that now you're in a debate about what happened and what would have happened in a particular case when, in fact, the anecdote doesn't really speak to the broader issue. The substantive conversation about what policies are best both in terms of outcomes and in terms of other ethical considerations has been derailed.
3. "If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will lave guns."
This statement assumes that the subject of discussion is nothing but whether a sweeping ban on private gun ownership is the best policy. But it is precisely this sort of all-or-nothing thinking that polarizes discussions and makes more nuanced conversations about sensible policies so difficult.
What we have to ask is not what the effects of a total ban would be, but what the effects of the more nuanced and realistic policy proposals on the table would be. We have to say, for a range of policy proposals, "If this proposal were enacted, then what?" And we have to decide which of these various proposals--proposals which regulate gun ownership in various ways as opposed to outlawing them--is the best policy given the social realities of our country, its history, the evidence of various policy effects on violence, the legitimate moral claims of individuals, and fidelity to our constitution (which requires a serious discussion of what a right to bear arms for the sake of well-regulated militias actually means for us today).
Besides which, even those who propose a ban on guns don't mean for that ban to extend to law enforcement and the military--so it's simply false that only outlaws would have guns.
Monday, December 17, 2012
Mental Health Care Reform
Yesterday, I read this post from a mother of a boy with a mental illness--a boy she loves, a boy who frightens her, a boy who might one day do the kind of thing that causes a nation to weep. For now it is the mother who weeps. If you haven't read it yet, do so. Now. Don't even finish this post. It will change how you think.
I said in an earlier post that we need a serious national conversation about easy access to guns in this country. We also need a serious conversation about how to improve access to and quality of mental health care for those who suffer.
The gun lobby has this slogan: "Guns don't kill people. People kill people." The obvious response is that people kill people with guns. And guns make it so much easier to kill. The more powerful the gun and the more ammunition it holds, the easier it is.
The person with suicidal thoughts is so much more likely to act on those thoughts if there's a gun in easy reach. A person in a jealous rage is so much more likely to kill if there is a gun right there.
If a tornado rips through a school, children's lives are at risk. But there are people with tornados in their heads. Whether they become as dangerous as actual tornados depends on what weapons they have available.
But there is something right about the gun lobby's slogan. A gun, without a human at the trigger, is inert. When death happens it is because something human has been added to the mix: negligence or malevolence, hate or jealousy, fear or desperation. Or madness. In a perfect world, a wold purged of all sickness and sin--that is, in a world that we will never see this side of death--guns would pose no danger to anyone.
Because a perfect world is impossible, we need to talk about sensible ways to make it harder for guns to fall into the hands of those who would use them to harm the innocent. But because we can do better even if we can't purge all the forces that drive people to murder, we need to talk seriously about doing what we can to reduce impulses to violence--not only to nurture a more nonviolent spirit among those of us who are of sound mind, but to extend desperately needed help to those of us who are not.
This is a dimension of health care reform that must be explored seriously by everyone. The invocation of mental illness and mental health care reform cannot and must not be reduced to a diversion tactic by opponents of greater gun regulations--a way of turning attention away from one of the issues we need to wrestle with. It must be something that all of us regard as a high priority. And those of us who favor greater gun regulations cannot ignore the cry of the mother who finds herself struggling to help a beloved child who terrifies her. We cannot think that all has been solved by making sure her child can't get hold of an assault weapon. We cannot leave that mother out to dry.
In a world where the mental health care of children depends on the benefits package that the parents might or might not receive through their employer, our world will have more people growing up with tornados in their heads than there have to be. We can do better. We must do better for the sake of children like those slain at Sandy Hook, for the sake of those mothers who find themselves responsible for children who seem like ticking time bombs. For the sake of those children who don't know what to do with the tornado in their heads, and who sometimes imagine it will all be better if they just let it loose in the world.
I said in an earlier post that we need a serious national conversation about easy access to guns in this country. We also need a serious conversation about how to improve access to and quality of mental health care for those who suffer.
The gun lobby has this slogan: "Guns don't kill people. People kill people." The obvious response is that people kill people with guns. And guns make it so much easier to kill. The more powerful the gun and the more ammunition it holds, the easier it is.
The person with suicidal thoughts is so much more likely to act on those thoughts if there's a gun in easy reach. A person in a jealous rage is so much more likely to kill if there is a gun right there.
If a tornado rips through a school, children's lives are at risk. But there are people with tornados in their heads. Whether they become as dangerous as actual tornados depends on what weapons they have available.
But there is something right about the gun lobby's slogan. A gun, without a human at the trigger, is inert. When death happens it is because something human has been added to the mix: negligence or malevolence, hate or jealousy, fear or desperation. Or madness. In a perfect world, a wold purged of all sickness and sin--that is, in a world that we will never see this side of death--guns would pose no danger to anyone.
Because a perfect world is impossible, we need to talk about sensible ways to make it harder for guns to fall into the hands of those who would use them to harm the innocent. But because we can do better even if we can't purge all the forces that drive people to murder, we need to talk seriously about doing what we can to reduce impulses to violence--not only to nurture a more nonviolent spirit among those of us who are of sound mind, but to extend desperately needed help to those of us who are not.
This is a dimension of health care reform that must be explored seriously by everyone. The invocation of mental illness and mental health care reform cannot and must not be reduced to a diversion tactic by opponents of greater gun regulations--a way of turning attention away from one of the issues we need to wrestle with. It must be something that all of us regard as a high priority. And those of us who favor greater gun regulations cannot ignore the cry of the mother who finds herself struggling to help a beloved child who terrifies her. We cannot think that all has been solved by making sure her child can't get hold of an assault weapon. We cannot leave that mother out to dry.
In a world where the mental health care of children depends on the benefits package that the parents might or might not receive through their employer, our world will have more people growing up with tornados in their heads than there have to be. We can do better. We must do better for the sake of children like those slain at Sandy Hook, for the sake of those mothers who find themselves responsible for children who seem like ticking time bombs. For the sake of those children who don't know what to do with the tornado in their heads, and who sometimes imagine it will all be better if they just let it loose in the world.
Friday, December 14, 2012
Guns and Tragedy
When a mentally ill man, armed to the teeth, walked into a movie theater in Aurora, CO and started shooting, I thought to myself: We need a national conversation about gun regulations.
I thought it. Others said it aloud and were shouted down for "politicizing a tragedy." And I thought, "Maybe now isn't the right time. We should grieve, honor the dead, get over this. Then we need to talk."
A few weeks later, when a hateful ideologue gunned down people in a Sikh temple, I thought to myself: We need a conversation about gun regulations.
I thought it. Others said it aloud and were shouted down. And I wondered if now wasn't the right time.
Not long after that, here in Stillwater, an adolescent walked into the local junior high school, pulled out a gun he'd gotten from somewhere, and killed himself in front of his peers. And I thought about this boy who, for some reason, needed to scream, to scream as loudly as he could, and who found a lethal way to do it.
I wrote about that tragedy, and I brushed against the issue of guns--but I hesitated to make it the focus. I didn't want to "politicize" the tragedy.
And now. Now after listening to horror while my wife and two children--my whole heart--were all together in the nearby elementary school; now as we confront the bloody aftermath of madness; now as the nation faces the corpses of babies, killed so easily; now, after I come home and hug my children and my wife and imagine some mentally unbalanced kid somewhere out there, here in Oklahoma where anyone may privately sell their gun to anyone else without background checks or waiting periods, where the tools for mass murder can so easily fall into the hands of those who are contemplating mass murder; now when it hits my heart, when I imagine my own children cowering in a classroom, my little girl who is so effortlessly and exuberantly affectionate, my son who is so endlessly creative; now, again, I find myself thinking that we need a national conversation, a serious and sober one, about what we can do, if anything, to make it harder for the lunatics to acquire the weapons that make unthinkable horror so easy to do.
It needs to be thoughtful and informed and realistic. It needs to take into account the reality of the gun culture in America, the fact that the guns are out there in large numbers already, the fact that most gun owners are responsible citizens, and the fact that there are legitimate reasons ordinary citizens have for wanting guns.
But it also needs to take into account the fact that it is painfully easy in this country for persons who are homicidally insane to get their hands on weapons that enable them to efficiently murder classrooms full of children.
It needs to be a conversation that takes seriously the middle ground, a conversation that's not a shouting match between the forces of total prohibition and the forces that treat every proposed regulation--even something as simple as a background check--as a fundamental assault on human liberty. It needs to be a practical conversation that integrates the interests of gun owners, the social and historical and cultural realities of contemporary America, and the desire to keep our children safe.
Such a conversation is both possible and necessary. But if it is going to be an intelligent conversation, there are things we need to stop saying. One of them is this:
You’re politicizing a national tragedy.
No.
When our nation confronts tragedies like today's massacre of children in Newtown, CT, or the massacre of movie-goers in Aurora, CO, we are shocked. And we mourn for the lost. And we try to find ways to honor the dead, to lift up the heroes who died protecting others, to tell the stories, to weave some semblance of meaning out of the horror.
But something else we do is think about how to stop tragedies like it from happening again. This is not "politicizing a tragedy." It's responding to a tragedy in a natural and normal human way: We ask ourselves, "How do we stop this sort of thing from happening again?"
It is precisely with respect to this question that there is such a great divide in America. There are those who think we can reduce the frequency and severity of such tragedies by making it harder for madmen and hate-filled ideologues to get their hands on guns. And there are those who think that if more decent citizens have guns in their possession, the bad guys would be more quickly stopped.
More gun control will solve it. Less gun control will solve it. I suspect these alternatives oversimplify a more complex reality and create a this-or-that perspective on solutions that leaves out the range of creative alternatives that integrate concerns and insights from both directions. We need to think about these complexities.
National tragedies can and should be catalysts for that—events that move us to think about what we could do differently to reduce the frequency or severity of such tragedies in the future, and to act accordingly.
I suppose there are those who see tragedies as opportunities to further their own political career or score wins for their political party, because they see that the tragedy plays into their political platform. But that is not what is going on when a father hugs his child, thinking that it could have been his little girl or little boy, and then asks what can be done before the next time, the time when that's exactly who it might be.
To be moved by a spate of mass shootings to ask serious questions about what can be done about it isn’t politicizing a tragedy. It's confronting the reality of tragedy in one of the most pragmatic, useful, forward-looking ways that one can. Americans are historically pragmatic. We're problem solvers. The death of our children is a problem, and like it or not, ready access to guns is implicated in that problem.
And we affirm a principle of democratic government, in which civil discourse about our problems, public conversations about the issues that matter, are encouraged as a way to help produce wiser public policy.
To seek to silence willy-nilly those who raise these concerns by accusing them of politicizing a tragedy seems an attempt to shut down conversation--the conversation that needs to happen--perhaps out fear of where that conversation might lead.
If you have legitimate interests that you want protected, then participate vigorously in the much-needed conversations that tragedies can help to catalyze. Don’t try to shut down their catalyzing power by mislabeling the motives of people who are as horrified and grieved by the tragedies as everyone else.
I thought it. Others said it aloud and were shouted down for "politicizing a tragedy." And I thought, "Maybe now isn't the right time. We should grieve, honor the dead, get over this. Then we need to talk."
A few weeks later, when a hateful ideologue gunned down people in a Sikh temple, I thought to myself: We need a conversation about gun regulations.
I thought it. Others said it aloud and were shouted down. And I wondered if now wasn't the right time.
Not long after that, here in Stillwater, an adolescent walked into the local junior high school, pulled out a gun he'd gotten from somewhere, and killed himself in front of his peers. And I thought about this boy who, for some reason, needed to scream, to scream as loudly as he could, and who found a lethal way to do it.
I wrote about that tragedy, and I brushed against the issue of guns--but I hesitated to make it the focus. I didn't want to "politicize" the tragedy.
And now. Now after listening to horror while my wife and two children--my whole heart--were all together in the nearby elementary school; now as we confront the bloody aftermath of madness; now as the nation faces the corpses of babies, killed so easily; now, after I come home and hug my children and my wife and imagine some mentally unbalanced kid somewhere out there, here in Oklahoma where anyone may privately sell their gun to anyone else without background checks or waiting periods, where the tools for mass murder can so easily fall into the hands of those who are contemplating mass murder; now when it hits my heart, when I imagine my own children cowering in a classroom, my little girl who is so effortlessly and exuberantly affectionate, my son who is so endlessly creative; now, again, I find myself thinking that we need a national conversation, a serious and sober one, about what we can do, if anything, to make it harder for the lunatics to acquire the weapons that make unthinkable horror so easy to do.
It needs to be thoughtful and informed and realistic. It needs to take into account the reality of the gun culture in America, the fact that the guns are out there in large numbers already, the fact that most gun owners are responsible citizens, and the fact that there are legitimate reasons ordinary citizens have for wanting guns.
But it also needs to take into account the fact that it is painfully easy in this country for persons who are homicidally insane to get their hands on weapons that enable them to efficiently murder classrooms full of children.
It needs to be a conversation that takes seriously the middle ground, a conversation that's not a shouting match between the forces of total prohibition and the forces that treat every proposed regulation--even something as simple as a background check--as a fundamental assault on human liberty. It needs to be a practical conversation that integrates the interests of gun owners, the social and historical and cultural realities of contemporary America, and the desire to keep our children safe.
Such a conversation is both possible and necessary. But if it is going to be an intelligent conversation, there are things we need to stop saying. One of them is this:
You’re politicizing a national tragedy.
No.
When our nation confronts tragedies like today's massacre of children in Newtown, CT, or the massacre of movie-goers in Aurora, CO, we are shocked. And we mourn for the lost. And we try to find ways to honor the dead, to lift up the heroes who died protecting others, to tell the stories, to weave some semblance of meaning out of the horror.
But something else we do is think about how to stop tragedies like it from happening again. This is not "politicizing a tragedy." It's responding to a tragedy in a natural and normal human way: We ask ourselves, "How do we stop this sort of thing from happening again?"
It is precisely with respect to this question that there is such a great divide in America. There are those who think we can reduce the frequency and severity of such tragedies by making it harder for madmen and hate-filled ideologues to get their hands on guns. And there are those who think that if more decent citizens have guns in their possession, the bad guys would be more quickly stopped.
More gun control will solve it. Less gun control will solve it. I suspect these alternatives oversimplify a more complex reality and create a this-or-that perspective on solutions that leaves out the range of creative alternatives that integrate concerns and insights from both directions. We need to think about these complexities.
National tragedies can and should be catalysts for that—events that move us to think about what we could do differently to reduce the frequency or severity of such tragedies in the future, and to act accordingly.
I suppose there are those who see tragedies as opportunities to further their own political career or score wins for their political party, because they see that the tragedy plays into their political platform. But that is not what is going on when a father hugs his child, thinking that it could have been his little girl or little boy, and then asks what can be done before the next time, the time when that's exactly who it might be.
To be moved by a spate of mass shootings to ask serious questions about what can be done about it isn’t politicizing a tragedy. It's confronting the reality of tragedy in one of the most pragmatic, useful, forward-looking ways that one can. Americans are historically pragmatic. We're problem solvers. The death of our children is a problem, and like it or not, ready access to guns is implicated in that problem.
And we affirm a principle of democratic government, in which civil discourse about our problems, public conversations about the issues that matter, are encouraged as a way to help produce wiser public policy.
To seek to silence willy-nilly those who raise these concerns by accusing them of politicizing a tragedy seems an attempt to shut down conversation--the conversation that needs to happen--perhaps out fear of where that conversation might lead.
If you have legitimate interests that you want protected, then participate vigorously in the much-needed conversations that tragedies can help to catalyze. Don’t try to shut down their catalyzing power by mislabeling the motives of people who are as horrified and grieved by the tragedies as everyone else.
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