Why "gun control" is doomed

Humans have been losing their temper and killing their own kind since before we were humans. We just keep improving the technology.

The AR-15 was created to secure a military contract by providing a more effective weapon for the style of combat American troops were encountering in jungle and urban warfare. It was designed to kill not just people, but people reduced to the status of varmints in the underbrush: dehumanized humans.

Beginning with the American Civil War, mechanized slaughter in warfare started generating shocking numbers of casualties that were quickly rationalized and normalized by supporters of the conflict. Combatant deaths and collateral damage have always been accepted as part of the cost of the revered practice of war. We accepted that we will always have wars, so we'd better keep improving our weaponry to improve our odds of success.

The sale of personal guns reflects on an individual level the defense industry's sale of large-scale weapons to government military forces. Between nations, those arsenals present a deterrent to potential aggressors, or intimidate potential resisters to a powerful nation's overtures to a weaker one with deals that they can't refuse. The dynamic is different on a personal level, where some gun owners like to wear their firepower openly, while others prefer to take advantage of concealment. With an ample supply of guns in the United States, anyone who is fully clothed could have one or more weapons in easy reach. Thus, almost anyone you see could be an unstable dictator with nukes.

When the world entered the Nuclear Age, in which country after country developed doomsday bombs and missiles, we counted on the threat of mutually assured destruction to keep any single state actor from starting The Big One that would blow us back to the Stone Age. Indeed, research indicated that we would go farther than the Stone Age, to a nearly completely lifeless planet. As appealing as that may sound to nihilists who say that the destruction of our species and all other life sounds great, no one of that bent has yet succeeded in gaining enough control over a country with a nuclear arsenal to make the dream a reality.

On the individual level, the prospect looks completely different. How often do we hear that the instigator of a mass shooting either commits suicide or accepts that the armed response will kill him? Because the motives for mass shootings vary, some shooters do survive, or might have hoped to. But anyone initiating an act of slaughter has to accept the risk that it will end their story at the same time that it ends the lives of their victims. Mutually assured destruction isn't a deterrent, it's an enhancement.

A 2017 article from CNN provides a convenient history of the AR-15 and statistics on gun ownership in general. It reports that a 1999 Pew Research survey found that 50 percent of gun owners said that they owned theirs for hunting, and 26 percent said it was for protection. By 2017, 67 percent said they owned firearms for protection, and only 38 percent said it was for hunting. Put another way, the balance shifted from hunting animals to hunting each other. But the article also stated that gun ownership in the US had been steadily declining. The article is from 2017, with a graph showing data ending in 2014. That graph ends with a rising line indicating that could have continued to rise in the eight years since 2014. As with so many things, a lot can go unreported. Based on what I hear around my neighborhood on a regular basis, gun ownership is thriving.

Among my acquaintances I know heavily armed people and adamantly unarmed people. Because I'm not involved in shooting as a hobby or occupation, the subject comes up very little. I find a lot of helpful information and analysis at a YouTube channel  presented by a southern journalist who discusses this topic extensively.

According to more recent statistics reported in a BBC article, Americans use their guns to kill themselves more often than to kill others. But homicide is the next largest segment, followed by law enforcement, unintentional discharge (negligence), and uncategorized.

In the United States we are uniquely hampered by the Second Amendment when it comes to  restraining the supply and use of firearms. Other countries that supposedly provide examples of how easily it could be done with sufficient political will do not have the scriptural basis that the gun culture claims here. There is no "right to life" explicit in the Bill of Rights, but there is a right to the power of instant death.

Gun culture couldn't exist without guns. But guns already exist in huge numbers, leaving us to figure out how to address human attitudes toward them and their appropriate use. Bans promote sales. During the 1994-2004 ban, sales of the AR-15 and similar rifles increased. The rifles were simply reconfigured to comply with the wording of the ban. The prohibitions in the ban did little or nothing to reduce the lethality of the weapons, and absolutely nothing to stem the production of them or the demand for them. It created a scarcity mentality among people inclined to want a gun, and made them a sort of forbidden fruit that fed into anti-government rhetoric. True patriots stand up against their government, because you know we never really wanted or needed one in the first place, but back the blue and salute Old Glory and support our troops.

Mental health accounts for only a fraction of homicides. Human volatility combined with an implied challenge from popular culture makes people wonder all the time how they would stack up in a confrontation. The hero doesn't win every time, but they never quit. There is no distinct line between normal human violence and pathological expressions of it. Just by stepping onto the continuum you open yourself up to further experimentation. What would it be like? Could I take it? Is this my time to be the righteous fist of justice? Or maybe you're just pissed off that day.

Any time someone cites a progression of events in a conjectural way, the dive bombers of logical debate will descend in a swarm, shrieking "slippery slope fallacy! Slippery slope fallacy!" You know what? Fuck them. Slippery slopes exist, and the refusal to consider them as a thought experiment is intellectually dishonest and cowardly. One thing does lead to another. Not every progression proves true, but dismissing them out of hand because you learned, in some class you took or book you read, to scorn them shows an ironic lack of creative and critical thinking. As someone who has slid off of a number of them, I offer you my one-finger salute.

The problem with the political process is that we get buried in statistics and arguments from all sides, amplified or suppressed depending on where the lobbying money is being applied. There's a whole lot of rhetoric before the energy dissipates because everyone is too confused to move forward. If something does get enacted, its more likely to be ineffective political theater, because that's what the American people actually want. A simple and inadequate solution, or the attempt to impose one, is much easier for the public to understand than a data-driven, somewhat complicated long campaign to address the behavioral basis of our problem.

Safety depends on consent

A piece on NPR this morning about Squirrel Hill and the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting mentioned that it was a "safe" neighborhood.

The devotees of armed force like to remind the rest of us that no place is safe. And they are right. Unless you are in some super-fortified safe room -- in which you are a prisoner of fear -- you may encounter an evil person any time, anywhere. But the odds are better in some places than in others.

I lived in a safe neighborhood in West Annapolis in the 1980s. Just a few doors up the street, someone was murdered in their home. As I recall, that was a spousal murder. It was still a murder. A couple of years later, on a slightly sketchier residential street in Edgewater, the guy next door wigged out on PCP and fired off a few rounds at something imaginary before sprinting up the street stripping his clothes off. Years before that, in Coral Gables, Florida, I found a .32 slug from our crazy neighbor flattened against the wall of our house. She was a drinker, who kept the pistol at the head of her bed. Good thing the houses in that neighborhood had thick masonry walls. We never heard a shot. She could have done it any time, even before we moved in. Just another day.

Mass shootings and ideologically motivated murder have increased in this country since the mid 20th Century, adding to the ongoing death toll that merely stems from the ugly side of human nature. Our own citizens subscribe to enough homicidal ideologies to supply us with atrocities that require no invaders or sneaky terrorists from abroad. We rate the safety of a neighborhood on its record of crime and violence. But ideological violence leaps over the local customs between neighbors, the consensual agreement to live and let live.

Safety depends on consent. The residents of a place agree that they will work with and around each other without resorting to forceful confrontation. They will respect each other's boundaries. In the best cases, they will enjoy the experience and expanded point of view brought to them by a diverse population. But even lacking a diverse population of residents, people can cultivate a peaceful attitude if enough of them choose to do so.

All this is for nothing, the armed and dangerous crowd tells us. The only path to peace is through the threat of mutually assured destruction or by eradicating everyone who holds an opposing viewpoint. Anything less is cowardly.

For decades now, the promoters of an armed society have been telling us that anyone must be prepared for a gunfight. As the rhetoric creates an ever more paranoid and volatile population, their prophecy fulfills itself. I see armed men all the time, just going about their lives: shopping, gassing up the truck, serving on town boards, with at least one gun visible. With permitless concealed carry, they could have a couple more tucked in various crevices on their person. A couple of weeks ago it was a scrawny young dude with a 12-pack of beer under one arm, and a handgun bigger than his skinny thigh almost pulling his jeans down as he climbed into his truck.

The Second Amendment cancels out the First, if the threat of armed response is what makes people shut up and ignore each other's behavior. Flip the bird at someone who drives like a sociopath and you may find out just how much of a sociopath he is. It was always true. Anyone might have a gun, regardless of the laws. But the more we enable and encourage the idea that deadly force is normal, the more of it we will see. Deadly force may be a last resort, but feel free to hop right to it with only the briefest glance at other options on your way by. Homicidal ideology plus an arsenal of firearms leads you right to Squirrel Hill, or a grocery store in Kentucky. It breaches the agreement of safety wherever it arrives.

Every time I've considered carrying a gun I've decided that it would probably make a situation worse rather than better. Because we do not yet live in an actual war zone, by the time you know that deadly force is justified you have probably already lost that battle. Our stereotypical movie cowboys of the mythical old west weren't fighting off muggers. They were calling each other out in duels. Or the sodbusters were engaged in guerrilla warfare with the ranchers. Or the gang of outlaws would sweep down on the town, where the brave sheriff and his deputies would pick them off. In every case, the participants knew that they were in a defined conflict. It was right there in the fictional script.

The racists and antisemites in this country who want to eliminate people they deem undesirable are eager to define the conflict and declare war. They have no use for conventions of safety. Perhaps they would feel differently if they were immersed in a lengthy conflict that destroyed a lot of property and killed a lot of their friends, but you'll never convince them of that by imagination alone. They imagine glorious victory and rivers of blood from their enemies. The same optimism has ushered in every war since the first pre-human picked up a stick and showed his tribe-mates how great it was to bust heads.

That first war led to the proliferation of sticks. A secret weapon is only a secret until you use it. Then everybody wants one. And no one imagines themselves on the receiving end of it. That reality sets in later, when the glorious conflict turns into a quagmire. And people start to yearn for peace, rest, and safety.

A dark truth becomes ever more obvious

As a Baby Boomer, I accepted without question that the human race wanted to last a long time and grow ever more friendly toward each other. How could I have been so blind to the fact that nearly half of all people are outright hostile to such a utopia? I joined vast numbers of others who bought into a vision of a world beyond hatred and divisiveness, unaware that the very concept fostered deeper and more bitter divisions.

The descendants of that world view continue to work toward it in spite of the continuing opposition. We dig through the muck of hostility and greed, thinking we're building a permanent road to higher ground, only to see the mire close behind us and grow deeper in front.

Believers in a higher power have an advantage when it comes to organizing. That's the way in which they will gather and march forth to destroy a secular society created by ethical -- but non-religious -- citizens who may come to outnumber the believers in a specific, narrow version of religious doctrine. The believers in their small groups can plan their campaigns of violence and sabotage in the name of goodness and righteousness. With the stamp of God's approval they can dedicate themselves to destroying the enemies of their belief system. These enemies include religious people who believe that believers in different faiths can and should get along.

Any way you look, you can see a final confrontation brewing. Obstinacy and superstition demand it.

In the Christian tradition, God will whisk the virtuous true believers straight to heaven before the shit hits the fan. It would be interesting if this roster included a lot of people who were not scripture-waving churchgoers.

Meanwhile, in another Abrahamic religion, the self-styled Islamic State is trying to bring about their own version of the final battle, as described in an article from 2016 about the attacks to date in Europe and America.

No religious narrative has to be true for religious warfare to bring about the end of our species. Everything does happen for a reason. Unfortunately, the reason turns out to be that humans are suckers for suicidal delusions.

The Flipside of The Greatest Generation

Never underestimate the value of a good bad example.

Well-deserved praise has been heaped on those who answered the call of duty to defeat militarily the Axis powers in World War II. If you ignore the fact that we couldn't have done it without our own ally, that sweetheart Joseph Stalin, it really was a clash between Good and Evil.

The Nazis in particular did future generations a favor by being so categorically and undeniably evil. Of course they didn't view it as evil. They considered it an admirable rigidity of principle, and the iron will to carry out a ruthless plan to impose a virtuous monoculture across the globe. The urge itself is evil, but it has its adherents even now.

Because World War II came along when humans had developed film, broadcast, and recording technology, and because the Nazis were so stuck on themselves that they kept meticulous records, we have a lot of detailed history about who did what when. We can rapidly draw parallels to current events and show without a doubt what can happen when the logic of a hateful ideology is drawn out to its grimmest conclusion.

Mass killing is a human tradition. Some instinct impels us to try to wipe out rival DNA, to compete for global domination, starting right in our own back yards. It doesn't happen everywhere, all the time, but it recurs enough throughout history to show that we have a chronic problem. Returning to the bloodbaths of the mid 20th Century, we find plenty of historical records related to every theater of war and land under occupation.  Other examples than the aggressive Nazi regime haven't had the great marketing that makes the Third Reich such a strong brand, but the idea of killing people who don't agree with you needs no introduction, wherever it arrives.

It is this very archive of evil that gives us the graphic rebuttal to plans put forward now in countries that once considered themselves bastions of freedom. The hypocrisy of the United States is unfortunately evident in the persistence of official and unofficial racial segregation after the Second World War, but at least some efforts were made to acknowledge the rights of more than just white guys as the 20th Century passed the half. Those very efforts solidified the core of evil that predated the Nazis by a couple of centuries in our great country, and that sympathized with the actual Nazis in their rise to power.

Recognizing an evil does not automatically cure it, but it is the vital first step. Parallels to the Nazis are too freely drawn, but the sensitivity to Nazi-like encroachments is an early warning system for the advancement of a truly free and inclusive society.

The monoculturists consider the desire for a free and inclusive society to be the evil. They despise the weakness of accommodation. They pride themselves on their admirable rigidity of principle and iron will. That's why we keep having this argument. They must be refuted on principle, not just bested on the field of combat. In fact, combat merely obscures the real issues in a cloud of smoke and a spray of blood. That's why hardasses would rather fight a war than lose an argument. War is exciting, and some day they might win. Until then, they'll take whatever beating they have to, and retire, grumbling, if it goes against them again.

The real Greatest Generation will be the one that confronts and vanquishes its own evil in quiet meditation, and never inflicts its misery on the rest of the world. While I would welcome that at any time, I'm not holding my breath. Every generation has to interpret the world they find, and choose a way through it.