Immoral Equivalence, Self Defense, and Violence
Our descent into moral incoherence is well documented and frequently mourned. But it's still astonishing. I was reading an article about extricating oneself from Amazon's clutches because I would prefer to give Mr. Bezos a little less money. The article in question did not suggest that maybe Mr. Bezos has his fingers in too many pies and ought to have his influence curtailed before he overestimated his importance. No, the article made shooting people and offering NRATV as morally equivalent. This bothers me.
Guns are dangerous. And there are people aplenty who are much too excited about owning them. Others who own them and don't give thought to whether they ought to own them. Or whether their firearms might be accessible to the irresponsible and malicious. If I remember correctly, the Colorado movie theater shooter took his grandma's firearm. My father jettisoned his firearms when my brother became a passionate adolescent with minimal self control. (And he kept all of his guns in a safe and no one else in the family knew the combination. Brandishing a revolver in the name of Constitutional rights is stupid and Constitutional rights do not give you the liberty to be careless -- if anything, quite the reverse. Our rights require us to exercise the utmost care.
In light of the fear over a touchy and overly militarized police force and a libertine, narcissistic, theatrical, self-aggrandizing, myopic president, it does not seem wise to surrender our powers of self-defense to those very same forces. Take Philando Castile. Do we want Officer Yanez to be the only one armed in our cities?
What about the fear of assault by every one of the most minimal female persuasion from anyone of the slightest male persuasion?
Switzerland has placed firearms in the hands of most of its young men. The government doesn't give out ammunition quite so readily. Switzerland is probably less diverse than the U.S. and with a history less fraught. However, the majority of violent crimes are committed by young men and the government has decided to arm those same young men. But with those weapons I would wager that Switzerland has also given its young men a higher purpose than beer pong. Maybe those young men will use those weapons more carefully because they know that these firearms are meant to serve others and not themselves.
This leads me back to my chief misgiving with "gun culture." (I mean, I have been to two NRA meetings in one of my past lives.) There is owning a firearm to protect your family from assault or your person from rape. But then there's owning gun as an offering to oneself, like putting flowers by the icons of the Kim Dictators, or burning a candle at an icon, or leaving food at a shrine. Then when someone suggests that you maybe shouldn't have so much firepower at your disposal and you turn on them like jealous Hera turning poor Io into a cow and chasing her to her death with a gadfly.
And a final note. My husband researched the U.K.'s gun policies out of curiosity around the time we visited two years ago. It was rather strange to watch policemen out on their beat without the heavy gear belts we see on our local U.S. policemen. It made the few armed guards look that much more imposing. But my husband read (probably an opinion and not a national survey) that the armed guards are rather looked down on as wimps. At any rate, even if the nationally broadcast cases of police violence are just a few bad apples, those cases do (I think) point to hole in our law enforcement training: communication and negotiation. Our U.K. friends have learned to negotiate without a gun. Maybe we could too.
[Ed 3/21/18 I had originally misidentified Sweden as the country with universal gun ownership.]
Guns are dangerous. And there are people aplenty who are much too excited about owning them. Others who own them and don't give thought to whether they ought to own them. Or whether their firearms might be accessible to the irresponsible and malicious. If I remember correctly, the Colorado movie theater shooter took his grandma's firearm. My father jettisoned his firearms when my brother became a passionate adolescent with minimal self control. (And he kept all of his guns in a safe and no one else in the family knew the combination. Brandishing a revolver in the name of Constitutional rights is stupid and Constitutional rights do not give you the liberty to be careless -- if anything, quite the reverse. Our rights require us to exercise the utmost care.
In light of the fear over a touchy and overly militarized police force and a libertine, narcissistic, theatrical, self-aggrandizing, myopic president, it does not seem wise to surrender our powers of self-defense to those very same forces. Take Philando Castile. Do we want Officer Yanez to be the only one armed in our cities?
What about the fear of assault by every one of the most minimal female persuasion from anyone of the slightest male persuasion?
Switzerland has placed firearms in the hands of most of its young men. The government doesn't give out ammunition quite so readily. Switzerland is probably less diverse than the U.S. and with a history less fraught. However, the majority of violent crimes are committed by young men and the government has decided to arm those same young men. But with those weapons I would wager that Switzerland has also given its young men a higher purpose than beer pong. Maybe those young men will use those weapons more carefully because they know that these firearms are meant to serve others and not themselves.
This leads me back to my chief misgiving with "gun culture." (I mean, I have been to two NRA meetings in one of my past lives.) There is owning a firearm to protect your family from assault or your person from rape. But then there's owning gun as an offering to oneself, like putting flowers by the icons of the Kim Dictators, or burning a candle at an icon, or leaving food at a shrine. Then when someone suggests that you maybe shouldn't have so much firepower at your disposal and you turn on them like jealous Hera turning poor Io into a cow and chasing her to her death with a gadfly.
And a final note. My husband researched the U.K.'s gun policies out of curiosity around the time we visited two years ago. It was rather strange to watch policemen out on their beat without the heavy gear belts we see on our local U.S. policemen. It made the few armed guards look that much more imposing. But my husband read (probably an opinion and not a national survey) that the armed guards are rather looked down on as wimps. At any rate, even if the nationally broadcast cases of police violence are just a few bad apples, those cases do (I think) point to hole in our law enforcement training: communication and negotiation. Our U.K. friends have learned to negotiate without a gun. Maybe we could too.
[Ed 3/21/18 I had originally misidentified Sweden as the country with universal gun ownership.]
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