Like most liberals, I've uttered sentences like this more than once: "After this, the momentum will finally turn in favor of gun control." And so far, I've been wrong every single time.
This afternoon, I read about a twenty-year old who appears to have killed his mother and also -- and I can't even believe I am typing this -- her entire class of kindergartners.
I've been thinking way too much about this, and decided I'd share the one idea I've had about it. Write it up in case it was a good one, or -- more likely -- let negative comments or ambivalence sentence it to obscurity.
So, below the squiggle is 1) one problem with the basic liberal approach to gun control, and 2) an idea for changing it.
One problem with the way we're arguing gun control
The time has come to stop trying to argue rationally with gun rights absolutists. And by "absolutist" I mean anyone who comes to the topic of gun control with an argument that negates the very possibility of having a discussion. By that I mean:
• if somebody wants to kill you, they will kill you with or without a gun
• it is atheism/video games/liberalism that causes violence so gun control doesn't get to the root cause
• any gun control measure in unconstitutional
• any gun control measure moves us along a slippery slope toward totalitarianism
These are arguments that basically say "I won't talk with you about gun control," and they are all standard NRA talking points. They exist to shut down debate. I see them start to sprout up like mushrooms in the hours after a mass shooting, and while they are all false or misleading, they are also insidiously effective, not in the least because they wear down everyone on our side.
People who make these arguments are zealots. I'm sure some of them actually believe what they're saying. But when faced with people who have a deep abiding religious faith in the importance of not regulating guns, when faced with absolutist arguments like these, liberals tend to clam up and give up. It is sort of our own article of faith: well, people believe what they want they want to believe -- it is a free country. We tend to walk away from absolutists because they seem irrational.
Why we need to change
When you're debating someone and they deny the basic tenets of your position in a way that voids the possibility of having a discussion, you've just lost your voice. It is like having an election and the winner takes power and then cancels all further elections. You can't walk away and let them do that if you really believe that elections are important.
Extreme anti-gun control arguments are like that. They say: we're not negotiating. And then people on the left start saying: "it isn't politically feasible." And we're done.
The thing is that there is a discussion to be had. Many gun rights people are willing to have a discussion. They, more than liberals, know there is a difference between a hunting rifle and a semi-automatic. But we're never going to have that discussion if the gun rights absolutists aren't marginalized.
What we need to do to change this
We need to drive a wedge between the gun rights people who we can negotiate with and the ones that won't even acknowledge our position is at all legitimate.
Gun rights absolutists have shut down the gun control debate. It is gun rights absolutists who have let the Federal Assault Weapons Ban expire, and have prevented the discussion of common sense gun control techniques like banning large capacity ammunition feeding devices and background checks at gun shows. The seven people killed in an Aurora movie theater were killed with a semiautomatic that could have been regulated by an assault weapons ban, and this ingenious diary points out that no, knives empirically don't kill as many schoolchildren as well as weapons that can spit out a hundred rounds before the police arrive. But we can't even get to debate this because no one wants to call the zealots out.
So they should be blamed for each and every mass killing from now on.
Does that sound irrational?
It isn't. Rational people know that weapons technology has advanced so far that there are just some weapons that increase the amount of killing a deranged person can do. Yet there are bunch of true believers that are keeping us from making public policy to address this basic fact. Do we walk away and say "well, people believe what they want they want to believe"?
Or do we respond like this:
• if somebody wants to kill you, they will kill you with or without a gun
Comments like yours have kept us from having a rational debate about gun control in this country. You have blood on your hands.
• it is atheism/video games/culture that cause violence so gun control doesn't get to the root cause
Comments like yours have kept us from having a rational debate about gun control in this country. You have blood on your hands.
• any gun control measure in unconstitutional
Comments like yours have kept us from having a rational debate about gun control in this country. You have blood on your hands.
• any gun control measure moves us along a slippery slope toward totalitarianism
Comments like yours have kept us from having a rational debate about gun control in this country. You have blood on your hands.
In other words, we need to make it socially unacceptable to for gun rights absolutists to make those arguments.
We need to stigmatize these points of view, call these people out, and get past their stupid debating points so we can talk with the reasonable gun owners.
I know, not a groundbreaking idea, but as I read the comments sections on these stories, I am always surprised that a small set of extreme voices can troll enough to muddy the whole issue (feel this way about climate change, too -- but that's another diary).