I’ve always been suspect of neat little "ditties" that seek to dwindle complex issues down into simple answers — answers so simple that there always seems to be an implied “look how simple this is, why can’t you get it?” put down attached to it.
A friend of mine posted something on Facebook that really surprised me. It was a graphic that said “If guns kill people, then pencils misspell words, cars make people drive drunk, and spoons make you fat.”
I posted back “If Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold (of the Columbine massacre) only had a fork and a pencil, many people would be alive right now that are dead, and a lot less anguish would have been visited on the slaughtered victims' families.” I was trying to make the point that it wasn’t as simple as that simple phrase was trying to make it out to be. He replied that he strongly disagreed with me and went on to explain why he was against gun control.
I could see that Facebook was the wrong forum to get my point across. My point wasn’t even about guns. My point was that the issue of guns in society and similarly complex issues couldn’t be summed up in one cute little phrase. A complex issue can’t be discussed with a bunch of one liners tossed back and forth. And Facebook is the least of our worries in this regard. Thanks to our media, all we seem to get these days are “one-liners." No real discussion, no depth, no real attempt at a solution.
This is why we have such a hard time making progress on complex social issues in our country. Every issue turns into an argument about the polarities. We don’t live in a world of “yes” or “no”, or “black” or “white”. We don’t live in a world of polarities. We live in a world of grays, and our national debates need to be grounded in this truth.
So to prove this point, I decided to try a theoretical experiment. I put a gun on a table and watched as many people walked by. No one got shot. I guess the “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” side is right! A gun by itself doesn’t kill people. It must be that people kill people.
So I tried my experiment with a person instead of a gun. I put a person at the table and watched as many more people walked by. Again, no one died. So the “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” side must be wrong! But that’s where the simplicity ends.
Next, I put a very angry person, or a person with issues, or maybe even a deranged person at the table and watched again. In the most extreme cases, this person actually got up and strangled a person or two, and then got tackled and stopped. Or maybe they had a pencil or a fork and stabbed several people and then they got tackled and subdued. (By the way, most of the people who were stabbed survived their wounds.)
One last variation of the experiment. I put a gun at the table with the angry/deranged person and things really started to get interesting. In most cases, nothing happened. But in some cases, lots of people died. And how many people died seemed to be in direct proportion to the type of gun I put on the table. Put a revolver at the table and six or so people died. Maybe one or two survived their wounds. Put a shotgun at the table with lots of ammo, and lots of people died. Few survived their wounds. Put a machine gun at the table and a whole lot of people died.
So what did I discover through my experiment?
1) Guns sitting by themselves don’t kill people.
2) People without guns have a very limited ability to kill people. Usually just one or two at a time. No mass killings. Few indiscriminate killings.
3) With a gun, any fool can kill lots of people, and they are very hard to stop until they run out of ammo. And the “bigger” the gun, the more damage they can cause until they can be stopped. You don’t see many “drive by clubbings”.
There will always be the Jack the Rippers and the Jeffery Dahmers in the world who will kill people. There’s no stopping that. But if these guys and those like them have guns, they will do more damage. It’s not about “guns for everyone” or “guns for none.” Let’s get away from those polarities and talk about the real world.
So I’m right back to my main point. You can’t, in one article, one presidential debate, one newscast, or one Facebook post solve the gun or any other complex social issue. My point was that if you’re at the polarity on a subject, you’re not being particularly realistic about that subject and therefore you’re not helping to solve the issue. You’re just trying to be "right," or make someone else "wrong." We need fewer people trying to be "right." We need more people really trying to solve issues that face our great nation — and that’s going to take compromise and reason.
My message here isn’t whether you should be for or against gun control. My message, as always, is that it’s rarely, if ever, as simple as “this vs. that.” We need to stop trying to distill the complex issues of our time into simple “yes” or “no” terms. It’s time to give our complex social issues the respect and deep thought they truly deserve. It’s time to figure out the grays.
This article is a keeper!
K. Dahlquist; please rethink your statement about, "secure protections from law enforcement."
Here is my source.
Would you please give documentation to back up your claim gun control advocates "are against private ownership of firearms, period." I know of no gun control group that advocates against the private ownership of guns. But I do know that the NRA fights every attempt, be it at the state or federal level, to ensure that all gun sales have a criminal background check. Why is that?
Don't forget that the Supreme Court also ruled that "like most rights, the Second Amendment right is not unlimited. It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose."
The problem is that both sides will continue to fight hard for the position they like for fear of allowing the camels nose into the tent. The reason some fight so hard on both sides is a small victory ratchets to further victories if the first victory is in the desired direction. In that argument you fight against the slightest change for an arguable good reason. For example: The Supreme Court in Griswold v. Connecticut struck down one of the remaining Comstock laws, that banned contraception in Connecticut. The reasoning and language of both Griswold and Eisenstadt(1972) were cited in support of the Court's result in Roe v. Wade (1973). I am not saying anything about Roe v Wade or privacy rights, just showing how a small decison moved to become a piece of landmark jurisprudence. The same applies in gun control laws. The fear, right or wrong, is a small change becomes a major change by slow long creep. That is in where the problem lies and both sides of an argument understand this creeping.
Confucius say, “Man walking middle of road gets hit by truck going either way.” “True Believers” in any cause always try to reduce the issues involved to an absurdly simple analogy that favors their extreme point of view. They make it simple, because they know that most people like things simple, even if they are simply wrong. Another technique that is routinely used to block intelligent, middle-ground legislation is the “slippery slope” argument. And both the “right” and “left” make extensive use of it. When any governmental agency tries to regulate the de facto infanticide that is elective late-term abortion, abortion rights activists quickly remind us that if the government is allowed to regulate abortion at all, then they will eventually move to take away a woman’s right to manage her own reproductive organs. The anti gun control activists claim that even legislation to outlaw assault weapons that have no use outside of the military and law enforcement can’t be tolerated because – that’s right – soon after the government would use this loophole to outlaw all guns and take away our constitutional right to bear arms. Truth is, the only real “slippery slope” is the one these fallacious arguments are based upon.
This is such a red herring argument, used by Obama and his enabling lamestream media, who are trying to distract from his record of FAILURE to improve the economy, unemployment etc. Are we to believe that you sympathize with the Georgetown law school student (where it costs some $35,000 or more to attend) who believes that students' promiscuous sex should be "protected" with the $$$ of the University--because these young women are going broke trying to afford contraception?
If you seek to be persuasive at all, perhaps you should take a debate course. You appear totally unable to address the actual points or questions others post, which refute your arguments. Instead, since there is no logical refutation of my point (or those of other common sense conservatives) you evade, ignore the questions, or pivot to totally unrelated rants against men and other groups. Finally, your self-righteous claims of being "a person of conscience" and thus superior to the rest of us are highly revealing about your prideful, disdainful view of those who disagree with you politically. Your smugness and holier-than-thou attitude ill become you. You might do better to spend a little less time 'preaching' to others on Patch, and heed your own advice earlier, in which you posted: ..."listen more and talk less." Beside steeping yourself in huffpo, "media matters" and "think progress," it might be more helpful if you would spend some time each day reading the Bible. One of my favorite chapters is Isaiah 5, which in verse 21 reads: "Woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight!"
In an earlier time, St. Augustine captured the sense of what is required in civil discourse: "Let us, on both sides, lay aside all arrogance. Let us not, on either side, claim that we have already discovered the truth. Let us seek it together as something which is known to neither of us. For then only may we seek it, lovingly and tranquilly, if there be no bold presumption that it is already discovered and possessed." Try it on for size.
She believes that because she is "a person of conscience" she is therefore superior to those of us who believe in the Law of the Harvest (maybe she has not even heard of that). Anyway, Ed, though "not involved in any organized religion" I'm guessing you have heard the phrase "render unto Caesar..." and the Commandment "Thou shalt not steal," both of which come from the Bible. Maria's implied claim to "following" Christian/"New Testament teachings" is belied by her support of the government "redistributing wealth"! I wonder if her "conscience" will allow her to be appalled/incensed over this "dependent" parasite!!!" "She won $1 million playing the Michigan lottery" last fall, is NOT working, but owns "TWO homes" and is SCAMMING the taxpayers for food stamps still!! She excuses herself for this fraud/theft because “I feel that it’s okay because I mean, I have no income and I have bills to pay.” And when asked if she would keep doing it until the state cuts her off, she admitted “yeah,“ adding things are ”hard.” http://www.theblaze.com/stories/hidden-cameras-show-mich-million-dollar-lottery-winner-still-using-food-stamps/