via Bring It On!One thing that would really improve political discourse, and maybe even lead to some better results, would be for all of us to stop oversimplifying issues. Our culture has fallen into a bad habit of trying to turn nearly every subject into a simple duality, with two opposite positions and no gray areas, no third or fourth or fifth possibilities, no troubling ambiguities. It makes life easier in the short run. We don’t have to think, all we have to do is try to yell louder than the obviously evil or crazy people on the other side. But it doesn’t work most of the time. There aren’t many issues that are really that simple, because if they were, they wouldn’t be issues. The only way either liberals or conservatives can turn them into such exercises in obviousness is to omit big parts of the picture, and that guarantees that we’re not seeing it accurately.
One example close to my heart is gun control. I find myself on the opposite side of this issue from a lot of liberals, and agreeing with some conservatives with whom I disagree on nearly everything else. It puts me in the position of voting for candidates I dread seeing take office, because though they stand for nearly everything else I believe in, some of them are pretty stridently advocating ending or drastically reducing a freedom that means a great deal to me. And yet I can’t vote for their opponents, because they’re equally determined to wreak havoc on a number of other freedoms I also value very highly.
As George Lakoff pointed out in his new book and in the excellent interview Austin did with him, it’s a question of how we frame the problem. To listen to the two sides (that false dualism), it sounds as if two completely different discussions are taking place because they’re framing it so differently. So the first step would be to boil it down to what it’s really about, what’s underneath the details, what’s at a deeper level than guns or abortion or whatever else we’re upset about.
In the case of gun control, it’s a matter of the tradeoffs between freedom and security and between the rights of the individual and the community. There are people who would argue that no one should have guns, period. Why? Because they want everyone to be safe. There’s nothing wrong with that—it’s a noble idea. But complete safety is impossible. On the other side of the divide, some would argue that there should be no restrictions on gun ownership. Why? Because they want everyone to have as much freedom as possible. Nothing wrong with that either, and that’s also impossible.
The solution that a democracy hopes to find is a balance, a degree of safety and feeling comfortable on the one hand and a degree of freedom and feeling unfettered on the other hand that everyone can accept, even if it doesn’t satisfy the most extreme desires at either end of the spectrum. So the question is, how much control should a government be able to exert over its citizens in order to carry out its obligation to try to protect the community at large from individuals who would otherwise run amok? And how much freedom is an individual entitled to, despite the fact that it reduces the feelings or reality of safety or comfort of the neighbors? This is the same question that causes people to come to blows over whether the neighborhood association should be able to tell someone what color they can paint their house, whether a liquor license will be granted at a given address, whether a street should have speed bumps, and so on. When it comes to guns the feelings about both freedom and safety/comfort are more visceral and intense.
So what would be a reasonable compromise? Well, maybe we could look at other situations that have something in common with this one and are being handled more or less successfully and see whether we could adapt those solutions.
Guns are very dangerous. They are also very useful for self-protection and hunting for food, and for people who enjoy target shooting or other recreational gun sports, a great deal of fun. They’re deeply embedded in our culture, at least in large parts of it. Guns are a big part of what many people think of as the American way of life.
What else does this describe? Well, cars, for one thing. Cars are very dangerous; they are very useful, and for some purposes, necessary, and to a lot of people a source of great pleasure. Cars are as deeply embedded in American culture as guns. Hell, they name cars after guns, along with warships, edged weapons, and predatory animals, and you could probably find a gun named after a car although I can’t think of one off the top of my head.
So how do we handle cars? Not ideally, but we have a way that works. We don’t say, “Cars are dangerous, so we can’t let you have them because you might hurt someone else or yourself with them.” Neither do we say, “There are no restrictions on owning and operating cars, because this is a fundamental American freedom.”
We have some pretty stringent rules. Before we let someone own or drive a car, we require that he or she demonstrate the ability to do so safely and competently and get a license documenting that accomplishment. We require cars to be registered and maintained in safe condition, and we require people operating them to carry minimum amounts of liability insurance. We make it a serious crime to operate a car when drunk, high or just too tired. We have speed limits, traffic signals, and other controls on how and where we can drive. But we pretty much guarantee that unless someone has demonstrated that he or she can’t be trusted in a car, that person can buy and drive any car that he or she has the money to get, and can drive it anywhere and in any manner that is not against the law in order to protect the community.
Gun owners strongly resist the idea of having to register their guns, because they have the very reasonable fear that if they are registered, sooner or later someone from the government will show up to confiscate them. I say that’s a reasonable fear, because there are a fair number of politicians who advocate exactly that. You can bet that very few people would want to register their cars if they thought that might lead to their being arbitrarily taken away, either.
So—would it work to treat guns the way we treat cars? Place restrictions on their possession and use to protect the public, but guarantee that as long as they’re used responsibly, ownership will not be threatened? That might be a Constitutional amendment worth taking up. The Second Amendment is a marvel of ambiguity, and it would be good to clear it up.
Personally, I would have no problem with complying with any of the restrictions I mentioned about cars when it comes to my guns. I’ve undergone decades of training and I did go through a licensing process to get my concealed carry permit; any time I buy a gun, I submit to an instant background check that for all intents and purposes, lets someone somewhere know I just bought another one; and I accept the fact that I can only shoot them in legally sanctioned places in a carefully controlled manner. Further, owing to their portability and potential for theft, I accept the fact that in order to be a responsible gun owner, I need to keep them locked in a safe when they aren’t in my direct personal control, i.e., in my hands, on my person, or within reach. I keep them unloaded except when I’m going to use them, I don’t point them at anything I don’t intend to shoot, I don’t put my finger on the trigger until I’m ready to pull said trigger, and I have to make sure of what’s behind my target so I don’t shoot through it and hit someone or something that shouldn’t be subjected to that danger. I don’t drink or use recreational drugs anyway, but if I did, I wouldn’t shoot under the influence, and I don’t go shooting if I’m not rested. Although I have a concealed carry license, it has restrictions on where I can take a gun, and I don’t take one where I shouldn’t (places that sell alcohol, schools, government buildings, anyplace posted as not allowing them, Native American reservations, national and state parks, and some other odds and ends). If we did require liability insurance for gun owners, I’d qualify for the “little old lady from Pasadena” rate.
Within those limits, my personal opinion is that I ought to be allowed to own and shoot any gun I want and can afford, again as long as I am responsible and safe with it. George Lakoff talked about automatic weapons as a problem and as legal restrictions as a solution. That’s not valid—he was talking about gang members using them to shoot people, and those gang members don’t buy their guns legally anyway. I could legally own and shoot a machine gun if I chose to pay a fairly hefty fee and if I passed a fairly stringent background check, and I think that’s the way it should be. That’s already too limited for me; the government banned the importation or manufacture of any new machine guns for the civilian market years ago, so the ones that already exist are all there are, and they keep getting more and more expensive. To argue that I shouldn’t be able to own a machine gun because I don’t need it for hunting or target shooting makes no more sense than arguing that people shouldn’t be able to buy fast cars because no one really needs one. Should we put a ban on manufacturing any more Corvettes, so that only those already on the road could be sold or resold? Actually, that would make more sense, because a performance car is a lot worse for the environment than a machine gun.
With guns, as with cars, the freedoms they help provide are important ones. In America, we’re free to pick up and head for the other side of the country if we want, but unless we have the means to do so, that freedom is meaningless. One of the telltale signs of a totalitarian system is tightly restricted domestic travel. When I was a teenager my family went on vacation in Mexico, which was certainly not North Korea but not exactly as free as we’re used to here either. It struck me as weird and creepy that every hour or so, we’d come to a roadblock where people in uniforms and sunglasses with guns would carefully look us over and inspect our papers before letting us go on our way. I’d never seen anything like that here (I have now, which doesn’t make me happy). I want to be able to take it for granted that if I can afford to do so, I can get in my car and drive to Maine, Washington, or Florida without needing an internal passport or having to justify my trip to anyone.
The freedoms that guns provide are, if anything, even more visceral. I know that if I’m carrying my .45 I can protect my family and myself in situations where it would be patently unrealistic to think that the police could get there in time, even if I was able to call them. I don’t look for trouble, and I go out of my way to avoid it, but if I get cornered in a situation of last resort, I’ll have the means to protect myself. And the private ownership of guns has historically been a safeguard against tyranny, and something that tyrants hated. When the Minutemen fired the “shots heard round the world” at Lexington and Concord, they were fighting British troops who had been sent to their communities to confiscate their guns. The rifles they owned were pretty much the state of the military art at that time—obviously, that’s no longer the case. I don’t have a Blackhawk attack chopper, an M1 tank, or a rocket launcher, and I don’t know anyone who does. But the weapons we do have would be enough to give any would-be President-For-Life pause. And that’s the way it should be. I tend to be suspicious of bumper-sticker philosophy, since it lends itself to the kind of oversimplification I started out talking about, but I agree with the sticker that says, “I fear the government that fears my guns.” What it really boils down to is that guns are a potent form of raw power. Mao said that power comes from the muzzle of a gun—it’s only one form of power, but in that limited sense he was right. So the question is how much power should individuals have, and how much should be reserved for the government? Personally, I think that equation is already far out of balance in favor of the government.
So perhaps part of the solution is an explicit, formalized tradeoff in which gun owners would accept certain requirements and restrictions in return for guarantees of certain freedoms, in perpetuity.
Another part of the solution is education. When most people didn’t have cars and had never even ridden in one, they were scary, and a lot of people wanted to ban them. Familiarization eased their concerns. I’ve watched my wife go through a similar process with guns. She had very little experience with them and was kind of spooked with having them around, but rather than simply say, “They’re evil! Get rid of them,” she said, “I want to learn how to handle them safely and use them competently.” She did so, and though she has a very healthy respect for the dangers they pose if treated recklessly, she doesn’t lose any sleep over their presence. One of the problems with this issue is that so many of the people who yell the loudest know the least about what they’re talking about. Makes me think of the Web site where some smartass has a live cam sitting watching a rifle—one of the notorious assault rifles at that—that is loaded and cocked, but sitting in front of the camera with no one touching it. It’s been there for a long time, and that rifle hasn’t gone off yet. A lot of legislators and voters base their opinions about guns on appearances or on sensationalist news coverage of isolated incidents. For example, I could walk into a store tomorrow and buy two rifles, a Colt AR-15 and a Ruger Mini-14. They are functionally identical—both are semi-automatic, meaning you get one shot per pull on the trigger; they both use detachable magazines, meaning you can quickly reload them with anywhere from five to a hundred cartridges; they have the same kind of sights and about the same effective range; they even fire exactly the same ammunition. But the Colt looks sinister—it’s the civilian version of the M-16 we’ve seen a thousand deranged criminals and terrorists using in TV dramas; whereas the Ruger has a respectable-looking wooden stock and looks kind of tame – a kinder, gentler looking semi-automatic rifle. One got classified as an assault rifle, and was illegal to buy from partway through the Clinton administration until a few years ago, and the other didn’t get that classification and had essentially little more restriction placed on it than a BB gun. Why? Because the Colt has a black plastic stock and a pistol grip, neither of which make any functional difference whatever. This makes no sense. This is the kind of law passed only by people who either don’t know what they’re doing or are cynically counting on the voters not to figure it out. Would we want some cars being banned because they’re painted the wrong color or have a stick shift instead of an automatic transmission?
Although gun control is my pet issue—partly because I really do not want anyone trying to take away my guns if I haven’t done anything to demonstrate that I’m not a responsible owner; partly because I don’t trust that I will always be able to count on the police to protect me and the government to respect my civil liberties; partly because in this area, a lot of liberals who normally think in what Lakoff calls a “nurturant family” mode suddenly go all authoritarian and “strict-father,” and I think they’re unthinkingly betraying their own principles out of intellectual laziness; and partly because I know a lot of sensible, moderate, enlightened people who vote Republican because and only because they are afraid the Democrats will take their guns if they get into office—there are a swarm of comparable issues. On each of them, a lot of us liberals are jerking our knees rather than thinking, and betraying the principles we claim to uphold; and we’re losing credibility and voters by doing so. It’s too much to ask the majority of the voting public to suddenly start reflecting on the nuances of social questions, when they’ve never been taught to do so and all the media they’re being exposed to are yelling at them to just keep chanting simple-minded slogans and treating every issue as a kindergarten yes/no question. But we here at BIO, and other blogs, are trying to be leaders. We need to lead by example. I believe that if we get some analysis with some meat to it out there on a number of issues, and point out to the public that a lot of politicians and most of the mainstream media are assuming they’re morons and treating them accordingly, we may be able to get more people to start actually thinking. And I believe the more thinking that happens, the more people will start voting more progressively, because I really believe that our values are in tune with those of most Americans.
So maybe we can start with gun control. If not, let’s pick another issue. But no matter where we start, let’s try to really boil things down to the true paradoxes that lie at the bottom of all real controversies, and looking first for common ground and then for acceptable third paths.
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