Clayton Cramer makes a good argument that Some People Shouldn't Have Guns:
A point that I often make to reporters--and they are usually surprised to hear me say this--is that not everyone should have a gun. There are people who the law prohibits from having guns--and I agree, such as violent felons. There are also people who the law does not prohibit, but whom I discourage from owning guns.
If you find yourself coming back to consciousness after a night of Jack Daniels wearing a leopard skin loincloth, holding a chicken, and a crowd of people around you is shouting, "Kill it! Kill it!" Well, maybe having a gun wouldn't be wise.
What a coincidence. Last night I saw "Gonzo:The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson" and he immediately came to mind as I contemplated the Jack Daniels (in his case Wild Turkey), the leopard skin loincloth, the chicken, and the crowd of people shouting, "Kill it! Kill it!"
Of course, Thompson shot himself, so disarming him is a moot point. But Cramer is right, of course. The problem is, people who would be well advised not to have a gun are often incapable of being well advised, because they won't advise themselves, nor will they listen to advice from others.
Cramer continues:
If you are prone to severe depression, or you have a history of severe mental illness--even if you are doing okay now--having a gun might not be a good idea.
If you are short-tempered, and prone to flying off the handle, having a gun might not be a good idea.
If, like the person in the news report below, you lack anything approaching the common sense that an electric toaster has...
Cramer quotes a July 8, 2008 Santa Rosa Press-Democrat news story about a woman who shot herself while attempted to kill mice with a .44-caliber Magnum revolver. (The mice had been scurrying across the floor of a small travel travel. The bullet went through her kneecap and grazed a man in the groin.)
Warns Cramer, shooting mice with a .44 magnum is a bad idea -- in a moving trailer or not.
For those of you not familiar with guns, shooting a mouse with a .44 Magnum, assuming that you actually hit the mouse, will create a large red splatter where the mouse was. This is the right caliber for black bear, PCP-crazed body builders, moose, and (in a pinch), grizzly bears. This is clearly a person with a serious judgment problem, and she would be well-advised to not have guns. Or power tools. Or cars. Or ladders. Or maybe anything but a pacifier and a blanket.
I am reminded of the numerous statements made by Philadelphia Mayor Street and his anti-gun Police Commissioner Sylvester Johnson about the root cause of "gun violence" being "arguments." The idea is that because impulsive people get into arguments, they shouldn't have guns.
Trouble is, we all argue. Few of us would allow arguments to turn into fistfights. Fewer still would use a gun to settle an argument.
But if we factor in UPenn professor Elijah Anderson's "Code of the Street" (and his related argument that opposition to gun control is "racist") and the unmistakable subtext of their message is that black people (at least, those who adhere to the "code of the street" -- whoever they are) should not be allowed to own guns.
But because of the nature of identity politics, black leaders can make that argument, while claiming that any white person who disagrees is a racist.
What has long fascinated me is that many the white people who most want gun control are often liberal racists of the dissembled condescending variety. Like my Berkeley neighbor who after a long argument finally admitted to me that she wanted to take guns away from black people, but couldn't admit it:
Despairing of getting anywhere with me, my neighbor finally confessed that her problem really wasn't with educated middle class people owning guns; it was with "the poor." Urban minorities. People "on welfare." But she quickly admonished me that she was not talking about race, and that laws had to be fair. And the only way to be fair was to take away all guns, from everyone. The "educated classes," in her view, should "set an example."
Sorry, but I consider that to be racist thinking, dissembled though it may be. It is based on the same statistics which gun control advocates want compiled so they can blame large urban gun dealers for the subsequent conduct of their guns.
Actually, I'm willing to admit that maybe impulsive people should not own guns. But that's advice, and there's no way to enforce it. However, I'm going to repeat what I said in that post, because I think this goes to the heart of the gun control debate:
What I think is being missed is the central moral aspect of the argument for gun control. A communitarian one, and an often unacknowledged one, but one which we disregard at our peril. I do not mean to make the case for gun control here, but I think there is something that no one wants to admit, and it is highlighted by the stark absurdity of Commissioner Johnson's sincere plea to go after the law abiding gun owners.
Some people are, for lack of a better word, impulsive. Ruled by impulse. Whether you call it "victims of the emotions," whatever it is, they exist. In fact, they're all over the place, and their numbers are growing. Lest anyone think I'm referring to uneducated people or poor people, think again. For years I lived in Berkeley, one of the best-educated cities in the world, and never have I seen so many impulsive people. People I'd never trust anywhere near a gun.
People who (ironically) wanted to take away my guns.
Just as there are people who should never take a drink, there are people who should never own a gun. Yet we allow the sale of liquor, and we allow the sale of guns. Why? Because this is a free country, and one which believes in the right to keep and bear arms, the right to self defense, and whose founders once hinted that there might be such a thing as the right to pursue happiness.
What that means is that people who can't control their impulses will buy guns, they will get into arguments, and they will then use the guns to settle these arguments.
Communitarians argue that the presence of irresponsible people alongside responsible people means that we must take away all guns -- in a top-down manner -- from the most responsible first, and then work our way down. I think this is a dangerously irresponsible argument, but we can't begin to address it unless we recognize the problem.
Impulse.
I hate to think that this country is on a collision course between the more-impulsive (the irresponsible) and the more controlled (the responsible), but I do think it lies at the center of the gun control debate.
To not recognize it is to not recognize reality.
This collision course between the responsible and the irresponsible lies at the center of a lot of debates.
People who shouldn't own guns probably shouldn't talk on their cell phones while driving. Or drink while fornicating.
Or do a lot of other things that they do....
I'm afraid it's one of the many contradictions of life.
posted by Eric on 07.09.08 at 11:22 AM
Comments
I, for example, should not be allowed to posess a large order of fries, as demonstrated by my previous history with them.
In seriousness, it is an interesting puzzle. If we pretended for the sake of argument that there are two groups of people, a 10% who should not own guns and a 90% for whom it's okay - and here in NH that 10% would be almost entirely white - which door do we close? The gun-rights people would say "give us access to guns so we can protect ourselves from the 10%," while the gun-control people would say "do everything we can to reduce the number of guns those 10% have access to."
I am leaving out the really irritating gun-control argument that owning a gun can turn a 90%er into a 10%er. I'm trying to argue against their best points, not their worst ones.
If the crime difference really were what gun-control people feel it must be, they would have the beginning of a reasoned argument. Courts and legislatures sometimes limit even a legitimate right in the face of a compelling public interest. If, as they apparently think, allowing guns really did double the murder rate, the suicide rate, or the violent crime rate, they would at least be worth listening to.
The problem is, there's no evidence for that. The various studies that purport to show an increase in violence fail to prove this on two counts: 1. They measure proxies of the real question, because it's impossible to do the clean experiment of finding two identical communities and taking all the guns out of one of them. 2. Even the proxies do not suggest a doubling of the murder or suicide rates. Whatever public interest there may be falls short of compelling.
It is a great irony that the left wants abstinence for guns but not for teen sex. The kids are going to own guns anyway, so we should show them boring movies about guns? We should remove food temptations in the schools but let them make up their own minds about abortion? It would be amusing to hear a politician declare they find gun ownership personally repugnant but want others to have their choice, instead of the current opposite: Democrats who bang around in a duck blind just before election time but vote to limit gun ownership.
There is an enormous inherited-culture factor in violence. Northern New England has had low homicide rates since colonial times, no matter what laws were on the books. Why do you think all those New Yorkers moved to Vermont? (This is changing now that the rest of you are moving up here.)
I often think that many, perhaps not a majority, of anti-gunners are projecting. They don't think they are responsible enough to own a firearm, therefore nobody else is. The statistics from Shall Issue states contradict their thesis that people with guns are naturally more prone to violent solutions to conflict.
I suppose that one could draw a useful parallel from the military. I know of one fragging incident in recent times, and it didn't involve a firearm. How many soldiers and Marines shoot each other in arguments in the mess tent?
In any event, I like to ask anti-gunners why they are afraid of me, personally, and if they don't think locking me up would be safer for society than simply denying me a Constitutional right. They always respond that they aren't talking about me, and I say yes, they certainly are. The discussion usually ends right there because they find themselves in a dead end with no obvious way out.
Steve Skubinna · July 9, 2008 1:21 PM
When the government comes for my guns, they will make a law abiding citizen an automatic criminal.
Robohobo · July 10, 2008 3:26 PM
The basic issue is “can people be capable and rational enough to govern themselves?” This country was based on the answer “Yes”. So since the basic assumption is that people are able to govern themselves, we have no choice but to accept that risk. Now our present culture has not instilled good lessons on self-reliance, personal responsibility, independence, and ideas of duty and obligation. Perhaps in a different popular culture we can get back to those lessons. In the meantime we have to accept the risk that idiots will shoot mice with a 44 magnum revolver and have a round in the chamber, when they drop the pistol.
Injury by misadventure. The losses are acceptable for the freedom of self-governance. I accept that idiots will have accidents with firearms same as they have with cars and power tools.
RAH · July 11, 2008 9:29 AM
The basic issue is “can people be capable and rational enough to govern themselves?” This country was based on the answer “Yes”. So since the basic assumption is that people are able to govern themselves, we have no choice but to accept that risk. Now our present culture has not instilled good lessons on self-reliance, personal responsibility, independence, and ideas of duty and obligation. Perhaps in a different popular culture we can get back to those lessons. In the meantime we have to accept the risk that idiots will shoot mice with a 44 magnum revolver and have a round in the chamber, when they drop the pistol.
Injury by misadventure. The losses are acceptable for the freedom of self-governance. I accept that idiots will have accidents with firearms same as they have with cars and power tools.
The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler
Don?t bang your head!
I, for example, should not be allowed to posess a large order of fries, as demonstrated by my previous history with them.
In seriousness, it is an interesting puzzle. If we pretended for the sake of argument that there are two groups of people, a 10% who should not own guns and a 90% for whom it's okay - and here in NH that 10% would be almost entirely white - which door do we close? The gun-rights people would say "give us access to guns so we can protect ourselves from the 10%," while the gun-control people would say "do everything we can to reduce the number of guns those 10% have access to."
I am leaving out the really irritating gun-control argument that owning a gun can turn a 90%er into a 10%er. I'm trying to argue against their best points, not their worst ones.
If the crime difference really were what gun-control people feel it must be, they would have the beginning of a reasoned argument. Courts and legislatures sometimes limit even a legitimate right in the face of a compelling public interest. If, as they apparently think, allowing guns really did double the murder rate, the suicide rate, or the violent crime rate, they would at least be worth listening to.
The problem is, there's no evidence for that. The various studies that purport to show an increase in violence fail to prove this on two counts: 1. They measure proxies of the real question, because it's impossible to do the clean experiment of finding two identical communities and taking all the guns out of one of them. 2. Even the proxies do not suggest a doubling of the murder or suicide rates. Whatever public interest there may be falls short of compelling.
It is a great irony that the left wants abstinence for guns but not for teen sex. The kids are going to own guns anyway, so we should show them boring movies about guns? We should remove food temptations in the schools but let them make up their own minds about abortion? It would be amusing to hear a politician declare they find gun ownership personally repugnant but want others to have their choice, instead of the current opposite: Democrats who bang around in a duck blind just before election time but vote to limit gun ownership.
There is an enormous inherited-culture factor in violence. Northern New England has had low homicide rates since colonial times, no matter what laws were on the books. Why do you think all those New Yorkers moved to Vermont? (This is changing now that the rest of you are moving up here.)