Reply To A Great Comment
Chris Campa whose blog is The Oridinary Mystic (well worth reading!) commented on my last entry about the Virginia Tech shooting. Chris’ comments and his blog are always well thought through. So, instead of giving him a more cursory reply. I decided to reply to him in this post.
Chris said:
With the “what if” scenarios you mentioned that would have affected the outcome, you didn’t mention one - what if, because of a collective decision made by society, Cho did not have easy access to firearms to begin with? I do agree that sometimes strong acts must be taken to prevent more harm from coming to others, and I agree that such would be an act of love. But I’m not sure if arming everyone is the way to go.
The idea that stricter gun laws, gun control for lack of a better phrase, might have prevented the tragedy at Virginia Tech is well worth considering. After all, Cho apparently bought the two hand guns he used from a local gun shop, and if the news is correct (which it’s probably not) he had no trouble doing so. Make guns harder to acquire and you make it more difficult for the Cho’s of the world to execute 32 innocent people.
I have a great deal of practical difficulty with this argument.
One problem I have is that we as a society have decided that certain pharmaceutical substances need to be controled–crack cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, to name a few. Before 1913 you could buy morphene and heroin mail order in the United States. Due to rampant drug addiction, we changed the laws making these drugs illegal to sell and possess.
Yet I could get in my car and buy any one of these in about two hours. I never touch anything stronger than a glass of wine, yet even I know the exact parts of my city I would have to go to to score drugs. I know people who know people who could sell them to me. (I work in a public school, an environment where drugs are plentiful.)
I think it’s safe to assume that if owning or selling handguns were illegal, they would be at least as easy to find and buy as illegal drugs. You could argue that guns would become more expensive because of supply and demand, just as drugs are more expensive.The poorest American can figure out how to get addicted to drugs and feed that addiction; so, I see no reason why a relatively poor student could not figure out how to buy a gun or two.
Okay, what if you actually couldn’t get hold of a gun and you wanted to kill a lot of people. Last time I checked, you can still buy fertilizer, diesel fuel, and cell phones in this country. You can even find the instructions on how to make a fertilizer bomb on the Internet. (A law enforcement buddy of mine showed me a site with just such instructions.)
From the point of view of Cho and friends, a fertilizer bomb a la Oklahoma City might actually have been a better choice. Sure you wouldn’t get the zing of actually seeing portions of people’s skulls explode, but just think how many more innocent people you could kill and how many more innocent families you could destroy!
I might be mistaken, but I think part of the anti-gun thinking goes something like this: what if we all just decided to throw away our guns?
Okay, I’m game. Look, I’m a Southerner. I grew up with guns, but I don’t need them. I don’t hunt. (I do fish.) I’m rarely in a place where I feel physically at risk. And, just in case I am, I’ve got my handy can of OC spray. I’ll take my .22 and bury it in the backyard.
While we’re at it, let’s get rid of some more issues at the same time. Might as well clean house all at once!
Let’s all promise to stay faithful to our spouses–you know not covet thy neighbor’s wife. Let’s not steal anything any more. (This includes employees stealing their employer’s money by goofing off at work.) Let’s not be greedy anymore–despite what Gordon Gecko said. Let’s not be jealous, either.
Let’s just all decide to behave!
Ain’t gonna happen.
Now, for all you new agists out there (and I share a lot of your beliefs), I’m not the cause of the “ain’t gonna happen” part. True, I don’t believe this could happen. False, I’m the only one who doesn’t believe.
I didn’t project this out into the world. The world is just like this. It’s the way it was set up.
Evil exists!
Evil exists within every one of us!
If you’re a Buddhist, you know that we’re flawed because we’re not looking at things right. The beginning of healing yourself starts with “right thought, right action, etc.” If you’re a Christian, you just accept that we’re flawed, and hopefully you accept Christ, too, so that the fact that you are flawed will be washed away.
I didn’t make the world–I just live here.
The article that I wrote wasn’t even supposed to be about gun control, it was supposed to be about personal responsibility. I can understand why some readers focus on the gun control aspect, however, because at base your stance on gun control reflects your stance on personal responsibility.
Who is responsible for protecting you, yourself or the State? If you see you as your primary protector, then I suspect gun control doesn’t make a lot of sense. I think I can protect myself and my family quite a bit better with a gun than without. If, however, you think your safety and the safety of your family is more a matter for the State to take care of, then yeah! Let’s just get rid of the guns. Let the police deal with it.
It’s been tried.
I found this article on The Evangelical Outpost blog. Read the part where the European criminologist talks about how the number of gun crimes actually grew after gun control was put in place in Britain. Also, read where there are more assaults on Brits than on Americans! Of course there are! A certain number of us will just pull out the .45 and blow the perp’s head off!
Gun control doesn’t work. It’s not going to work.
Not everyone is going to behave. Through the advance of capitalism, the poor may not always be with us, but predators will be.
I suspect I hate this as much as anyone reading this blog.
I accept the fact there is evil, and I avoid bringing it into my life. If it comes, if, however, it gets down to where it’s between me and my family or the perp. Baby, the perp’s going down!
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April 24th, 2007 at 3:58 am
Hey lee, don’t hold back or anything. Just say how you really feel!
I see where you are coming from, and I’ll try to stay close to your original point regarding personal responsibity.
First, I agree that in the world that you and I observe today, stricter gun laws will not prevent someone intent on harming others from getting a gun and doing so. Whether there is absolutely nothing that can be done to change that situation is another matter. But as it stands now, a thriving underground resource for firearms is a fact of life.
My concern is whether “the solution” is for more citizens to walk around armed themselves. Teachers and school administrators? College students? Doesn’t this imply that only responsible, good people will have guns to defend themselves against the bad guys? But that’s not realistic, either. Are only “criminals” subject to road rage?
I can appreciate your willingness to defend your family, and how you wouldn’t want the right to defend your family taken away from you - leaving you at the mercy of the perp (hey, I watch Criminal Minds, too).
But as much as I might be tempted to want the same thing, I’m not sure I am willing to find out what kind of society would result if more people walked around armed, or how much safer I would feel.
April 24th, 2007 at 4:06 am
I forgot to mention, you made some excellent points in your post. Thanks.
April 24th, 2007 at 9:26 am
Chris, Your comments are always welcome here! As usual, very well thought out points. You know in Hegelian philosophy you have thesis and its opposite, antithesis. You put the two together and something new occurs called synthesis. Dialog, such as the one you and I are having creates this synthesis, which is what changes the world, hopefully for the better.