Didn’t you feel a twinge of something deeply gratifying — and inspiring — in the way ordinary crowd members chased down a suspected gunman and collectively smothered him? They undertook momentary personal risk and sacrifice and then found greater safety in numbers, as helper after helper piled on until the suspect disappeared under their collective weight.That’s real authority, and it didn’t come from a law or a cop.....There is no easy resolution to the gun debate. It’s estimated that there are about 398 million guns in the United States, and about 397.9 million of them are kept peaceably and responsibly for home protection or sport. Maybe gun haters need to start talking to those gun owners as allies rather than enemies.
The author apparently is a sports journalist rather than an opinion columnist as a rule, and that may be why she is able to see the issue more clearly. Those reared to produce commentary on this topic have been taught clear lines, but her fresh eyes are far clearer.
10 comments:
A couple disagreements with her commentary.
1) There is no easy resolution to the gun debate.
Sure there is. Our 2nd Amendment is very clear on this, and Supreme Court rulings in the last 10 years, or so, make that clarity clearer. There is, though, no easy end to the gun argument.
2) ...kept peaceably and responsibly for home protection or sport.
And for any other purpose beyond theft and murder. That 2nd Amendment is equally clear on the lack of authority of Government to specify the acceptable purposes or needs for our keeping and bearing. "Defense" in particular is not at all limited to "home protection."
Eric Hines
From X, (Twitter)
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Dr Strangetweet @lone_rides
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Feb 15
1. enforce the current laws on the books. All of them. To the strictest penalty.
Just doing this will end a large portion of gun violence.
2. unannounced searches of felons'/prohibited owners' residences, vehicles, persons, etc. Possibly some 4th amendment questions, but if we're going to infringe on someone, why not the most likely person to commit gun violence?
3. fund mental health
Do those three things and gun violence will just about disappear overnight.
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I had concerns and made suggestions regarding proposal 2. Interested in similar thoughts from the philosophers here.
#1 is highly effective by itself. There are very punitive Federal laws about felons who commit further crimes with guns, including possession. When the Federal Government has enforced these aggressively, as in Project Exile, the resulting drop in gun crime has been substantial.
#2 is a non-starter. However, selective enforcement in public spaces with high rates of gun crime makes sense. There are a very few neighborhoods in a few cities across America that are responsible for much of the gun homicide problem. Focusing on legal searches and encounters with police there would be effective without being unconstitutional; and while such policing would be onerous elsewhere, residents of those neighborhoods might really appreciate the relief that it brought from the gang violence.
I have substantial doubts about #3, which are related to my philosophical doubts about the legitimacy of psychology as a mode of inquiry (e.g. lack of falsifiability, replication crisis, untestable theories of mind, etc). I also think that funding just results in more unnecessary treatments, as with any government spending program; people find a way to get money, rather than the money actually being spent where it was really needed.
I often do recommend interventions that are similar to therapy, though, in that they aim to get you out of your head and to develop better methods of encountering the world and its difficulties. I’m more likely to recommend horseback riding or the practice of Stoicism, Zen meditation or martial arts, backpacking or just volunteering to help others. So in a way yes, but not necessarily what we normally think of when we say “mental health.”
Also there’s the old “Social Harmony” post on the sidebar, which is a dovetail for her point about the citizens coming together to stop crime and enforce a legitimate order. If the good people of society are brave and strong and dangerous, the young will be trained towards harmony and virtue more readily. Sometimes this will be because of action to enforce order, but often it will be because of respect.
Her estimate of 397.9 out of 398 million is way too low, but the point still stands. There are lots of people who are careless, or prone to anger, or planning a crime. It's still a right to own, and we accept much greater risks with people who are stupid or aggressive drivers, and different risks from people who cut down trees near electrical lines or near roads. We put up with such things because the alternative of a state which attempts to fix such things is much worse.
She gets it essentially right, that anti-gun people should get to know their opponents. S should we all, on every issue. But the fact that this simple sanity is uncommon gives away the game. The gun regulators could easily know this, and likely suspect it without admitting it to themselves. Yet at the last moment they have to look away and pretend something else is true.
I care not for another's opinion on MY RIGHTS.
They can exercise or leave their RIGHTS at the door whenever they wish...obeying what they deem as the authoritative...legal lawz...lol. When they opine on MY RIGHTS (in a collective sense) they are not speaking FOR me.
I have completely disassociated myself from all their laws in the same manner they have disassociated (by their lawz) themselves from me. That is not to say I don't still have the same good moral & ethical code I have always had toward others, it's just that some of their morals & ethics have changed...not mine ;-)
nmewn
I'm no philosopher, but regarding #2 as cited by Mr Melcher, one of the problems I have with the idea goes far beyond our 4th Amendment: when do we deem a felon to have paid his debt to our society? The social--law-based in our society--definition is when he's completed his sentence: served out his confinement, served out his parole, and made whatever restitution the court ordered. That suits me just fine, provided there's a satisfactory answer to my second problem.
When do we give the felon an opportunity for rehabilitation and to redeem himself? Simple imprisonment, as we currently do it, is badly inadequate to that task. It's not even very good at punishment, being more suited to state vengeance. Punishment is a fine purpose, and it wouldn't be too hard to adjust imprisonment to favor that rather than vengeance, but punishment without rehabilitation and redemption won't work very well.
The chance for that, including assistance in achieving that, is more a social problem than it is a government problem. And part of the virtuous and moral society that our Founders said was a prerequisite to keeping our republic must include that.
Eric Hines
Her estimate of 397.9 out of 398 million is way too low...
I assumed it was a back-of-the-envelope calculation by a journalist, which I don't expect to be quite right; but what matters here is really less perfect accuracy than a sense of the scale.
There are about 400,000,000 (400MM) guns in America, and there are about 40,000 gun violence deaths. If we assume that every death is associated with a different gun (which is not true, but for the sake of argument) that means that 1 in 10,000 guns is an issue in a given year; or, you could say that 399,960,000 guns were not.
So really, she should have said something like, "379.96" according to those rough numbers. That's an order of magnitude and more off, but this isn't her field and Americans are rarely very interested in numbers. I'm glad to see her get sort-of close.
(More precision is possible; more than half of those deaths are suicides, rather than homicides per se; many deaths occur from single guns, reducing the number of guns that are part of the problem; you could add in other crimes with guns, which would increase the figure somewhat; but you also have to account for the fact that the ~400MM is the number of legal guns, and most gun crime is done with illegally possessed guns. The percentage of legal guns associate with gun crime is thus even lower yet: it's so low that it's almost hard to imagine how small the percentage is going to be if you make all these adjustments.)
I don't care, for this case, about how precise and fine she got. She's got the right idea, and that's a nice thing to see for a change.
I have completely disassociated myself from all their laws in the same manner they have disassociated (by their lawz) themselves from me. That is not to say I don't still have the same good moral & ethical code I have always had toward others, it's just that some of their morals & ethics have changed...not mine...
It's a founding principle of the United States that anti-constitutional legislation is null and void. It's still enforceable, and often enforced, but there's certainly nothing immoral involved in ignoring such laws. You may end up in prison, but lots of people end up in prison without doing anything wrong. It's just a question of how much displeasure you are willing to court (or suffer) to defend an older understanding of right and wrong.
You won't hear me say you're wrong to ignore laws you think are flagrant violations of the constitution or of your natural rights. You just have to know that you're taking your fate in your hands when you do, which I trust you do know. A green beret I know calls that 'big boy rules' -- you do what you think is right, manage the negative consequences according to your abilities, and accept the ones you couldn't otherwise manage.
He also said the same thing as you: "I don't recognize anyone having the right to disarm me."
Why should Dr. Strangetweet's #2 be a non-starter? Most Felons/Prohibited people are already remaining under the jurisdiction of the court by condition of their release (unless they've been deemed to have completed their debt to society) so it's not any kind of Constitutional barrier. It seems a practical focus of limited resources to address the problem.
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