The sound volume on our gun debate is intermittent. We turn
it up to about 5 after an attention-grabbing mass shooting – for a few days.
Then it goes back down to about negative 3. Thus begins another interim of
inertia until another mass shooting occurs. People who consistently support
reasonable gun restrictions find themselves flummoxed at how nothing gets done in spite of a healthy consensus for
some kind of action on gun control. I’m not flummoxed at all. I know what the
problem is. What little debate we do have stakes an extreme
position of “we need even more guns” against a moderate and reasonable position
of “some gun regulation.” The extreme position has won and will win every time.
If there is going to be any movement on in the discourse on firearm
proliferation in America, there has to be a more hearty notion on the table to
balance the heft of the “more guns” stance. That would be the position of “ban
all guns” whose volume in the gun debate is consistently on negative 11. There ARE people who want to ban all guns, but they are treated like lepers because of the establishment liberals who fear accusations of guilt by association with people espousing extreme positions. Many of them have a sickening need to try to
ingratiate ourselves to the people that argue that the reason we have so many
gun deaths is because we don’t have even more guns. Basically this large proportion of liberals are saying "hey you totally insane gun nuts who we completely disagree with, we're just like you!" At the same time, they say to supporters of gun bans "get away from me so no one thinks I'm crazy like you." This nuttiness is a regrettable
part of the liberal psychological profile. The one position that has any chance of moving us from
ceremonial discussion to any reasonable action, is snuffed out because of congenital liberal fear
of seeming liberal.
How did we get here? One thing that helped is the right’s
inadvertent genius strategy of setting “ban all guns” as a pariah position. As always, the
left took the bait. So this is how the debate goes:
Right: You want to ban all guns, commie pinko?!
Left: No no no no no. We just want some reasonable….
Right: They want to take our guns!!!
Discussion over. Mass shooting two weeks later. Same ceremonial debate that dies down in days.
Meanwhile, not only do conservatives not mind
taking extreme and unpopular positions, they go so far as shutting down the
government, or refusing to let the country pay its bills over unpopular stances.
They might be wrong, but at least they fight.
I’m not suggesting Democrats shut down the government until
all guns are banned. At this point, I really don’t expect much of anything out
of dem pols. They are far too cowed by polls and elections to do anything
unsafe. What I do suggest is that people who consider themselves concerned
about the loss of life from gun violence be more willing to simply discuss
a gun ban rather than be scared from even uttering the words “gun ban.” What
would be good about a gun ban? What would be bad about a gun ban? How did they
do it in Australia? What does our Second Amendment really say? What are the
options of limiting guns? These are things that should be brought up in a
normal debate on national firearm control. Instead, concerned people have essentially
been trained by the NRA to keep the discussion limited to a narrow sliver of
market-tested options that have no chance of advancing in this political climate.
An America in which people aren’t afraid of
talking about banning guns has the potential to change everything. Here is how that
conversation would go:
Right: You want to ban all guns, commie pinko?!
Left: My name isn’t commie pinko and I would love to
entertain the notion of a total ban on my guns and your guns. I want to hear
what people who support gun bans have to say and I want everyone to talk about
it.
Right: (suffers apoplexy from show of lefty spine)
Honestly, I don’t think a ban on guns would poll well enough
for establishment Republicans to rush to the table to compromise, but there are
several possible effects. It just might increase the public urgency on tackling
what we currently call reasonable gun restrictions. This is what introducing an
extreme argument does. It creates shifts. In this case we are talking about a
shift from doing nothing to doing something. It might not happen over night,
and there is a chance that it might not happen at all. Let’s face it, America
is like the first grade where everyone is trying to be cool and fit in. No one
wants to be a wuss or an outcast. But every once in a while in America, courage
gets just enough traction to move the needle - eventually. I'm not talking about the kind of courage it takes to do something that people will marvel at and want to throw you a parade for. I'm talking about the kind of courage it takes to defend unpopular arguments in the face of name-calling, threats of violence, and even actual violence.
As clarification to the cursory reader (who probably still
won’t get this) This is not an attempt to convince everyone that we must ban
guns. This is a call to drop the fear of expressing curiosity over a gun ban. I
have already been misunderstood after by one raging liberal who, in spite of my
explanation, kept arguing why he was against banning guns. I had to drop the
discussion. Clearly, it’s an uphill battle, but here is one way of looking at
it; even if you’re a liberal and you think banning guns is crazy, it’s not
nearly as crazy as trying to seem cool to people who advocate reducing gun
violence by increasing gun ownership.
YES!
ReplyDeleteI totally track with your rationale here, Chip. We need to match the wacko gun lobbylists' utterly irrational approach with one of our own and then hopefully meet somewhere in the middle. Because there has to be a middle. Great post.
ReplyDeleteThey even had to cross a river! This of course did not discourage the State Artillery and they reached the area of Ladysmith. https://www.optics1.se
ReplyDelete