An Intelligent Debate About Guns
(Which isn't to say I agree with everything being said, but there's an exchange, sans spittle, and that's refreshing.) Jeffrey Goldberg and Ta-Nahisi Coates talk in The Atlantic, in "More Guns, Less Crime: A Dialogue." An excerpt from the beginning:
Ta-Nehisi Coates: Do you own a gun? Are you a gun person, at all?Jeffrey Goldberg: It doesn't make much sense to tell people that you are unarmed. Many businesses and institutions around the country advertise themselves as "gun-free zones." This is a ridiculous policy -- not to be gun-free, but to tell people you are. It's akin to posting a sign on your front door stating, "No burglar alarm here." Our colleague Jonathan Rauch, who, as you know, inspired the "Pink Pistols" movement of gays and lesbians who arm themselves against bullying and assault, told me last week he thinks that universities should post signs on their campuses that state, "Be warned: Many of our students and faculty members are armed."
The theory, obviously, is that violent criminals, or the dangerously mentally ill, are not generally stopped by signage declaring their target to be a gun-free zone, and indeed they could be encouraged by such signs. All that said, I will remind you that I live in Washington, D.C., and Washington has very tough gun laws, and as you know, I'm a very law-abiding person.
To your second question, am I gun person? -- the answer is no. I respect guns and I know how to fire guns (and indeed, target practice is quite fun in the same way that darts are fun, though I haven't done it very much), but I'm not very interested in them and I don't quite understand the desire of some people to collect them. I'm certainly no hunter -- I know we're all supposed to pay fealty to hunters -- at least, presidential candidates are expected to extol them -- but I never understood the impulse to gun down defenseless herbivores, especially if you're not going to eat them afterward.
More from Goldberg:
I came to this issue in part because, as I wrote in the article, I had a revelation about armed self-defense after the LIRR massacre 20 years ago, and also because I'm always attracted to polarizing issues. I'm dispositionally centrist, in that I believe, as a pretty steadfast rule, that most issues are ambiguous and contradictory, and that no one ideology provides all the answers. Hence, my belief that people (qualified people) have the right to armed self-defense, and that the government has the right (and responsibility) to regulate the sale and carrying of guns. This issue divides red America from blue America like no other, and, since I'm a uniter, not a divider, I'm trying to figure out if there's common ground here. One more note, so we're clear: I have a blue-stater's belief that government should be engaged in public safety questions like this one, and I have a red-stater's belief that individuals should not rely on the government overly much to provide them with security, both because the government cannot, in fact, protect some people; and because it feels undignified to sub-contract out your personal defense, if you're at all capable of taking care of yourself.
Coates:
It is not enough to have a gun, anymore than it's enough to have a baby. It's a responsibility. I would have to orient myself to that fact. I'd have to be trained and I would have to, with some regularity, keep up my shooting skills. I would have to think about the weight I carried on my hip and think about how people might respond to me should they happen to notice. I would have to think about the cops and how I would interact with them, should we come into contact. I'd have to think about my own anger issues and remember that I can never be an position where I have a rage black-out. What I am saying is, if I were gun-owner, I would feel it to be really important that I be a responsible gun-owner, just like, when our kids were born, we both felt the need to be responsible parents. The difference is I like "living" as a parent. I accept the responsibility and rewards of parenting. I don't really want the responsibilities and rewards of gun-ownership. I guess I'd rather work on my swimming. And I think, given the concentration of guns in a smaller and smaller number of hands, there's some evidence that society agrees.
Goldberg:
You didn't answer the key question that Saint Augustine poses to all those who swear off violence. I really do think it's important to ask yourself this: At what point is it justifiable to meet violence with violence? At what point is it immoral not to respond to violence with violence?
Goldberg's previous piece.
Comparing concealed carry/gun-ownership is a bad analogy. Comparing it to a drivers license/car ownership is a better comparison.
(And later he admits to not having a car (not the DL though.))
Another issue that sort of scares me:
You have rage black-outs? I don't want you anywhere near a firearm. Or a knife, baseball bat, crowbar, axe or anything else that can be used as a weapon. I don't know anyone around me that has rage black-outs. If they did I would be trying to take them to a psychiatrist.
In a way Ta-Nehisi Coates did get to the issue though. It isn't the gun, but the person holding it. But he is trying to dismiss that CCW will help, and it must all come beforehand.
Jim P. at June 30, 2013 8:15 AM
" And I think, given the concentration of guns in a smaller and smaller number of hands, there's some evidence that society agrees"
Does anyone have any legitimate evidence that validates this?
Is gun owndership really on the decline,with fewer and fewer individuals owning guns, or is it just that this is one of those questions, in a survey, where a lot of people will lie in any poll that asks them if they own a gun?
There are a whole shit load of guns in the US, and my guess is that at least half of them have never been through a transfer involving an FFL.
Isab at June 30, 2013 8:31 AM
An intelligent debate on guns...as opposed to using them to shoot each other.
Patrick at June 30, 2013 9:00 AM
Based on the lines and waiting times in Colorado to get guns this past December, I find it hard to believe fewer people have guns. And yeah, I'd lie on any survey that asked me that too.
Daghain at June 30, 2013 11:01 AM
I saw Stephen King on CBS this morning. He was talking about "Under the Dome." (I wonder if he ever saw the 1966 horror movie "The Bubble"?)
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-3445_162-57591492/stephen-king-and-his-compulsion-to-write/
From the second half of the interview:
All of King's books are still in print -- except one.
"That book is 'Rage', yeah," said King. "It's not in print because it's a novel about a kid who goes to school one day and shoots his Algebra teacher and holds his class hostage."
In 1997, "Rage" (published under the pseudonym Richard Bachman) was found in the locker of a high school student who shot three of his classmates in Kentucky.
"That was enough for me," King said. "I don't think books or movies are ever the cause of this sort of violence."
But he believes they can act as an accelerant. "I didn't want 'Rage' to be one of those accelerants, so I pulled the book," he said.
"Even though you didn't think it caused it, you didn't want the book to be out there?"
"I felt it was part of what became a fantasy scenario with these people. And I didn't want it to happen with anybody else. So it was not gun control, it was book control in this case.
"And I think," King continued, "there are a lot of pro-gun people, like Wayne LaPierre [executive director of the National Rifle Association], who can take a lesson from that and show more responsibility. I have no patience with people of the LaPierre stripe who say the deaths of innocent children, or the deaths of unarmed bystanders, is just part of the price we pay for our Second Amendment freedoms."
lenona at June 30, 2013 1:21 PM
This crap makes me furious.
I tire of people who have no idea whatsoever ("...but I never understood the impulse to gun down defenseless herbivores, especially if you're not going to eat them afterward") being given any credence on this subject. Name anyone who does this, Goldberg.
Consider the malfeasance of office of IRS agents, TSA, and even the President as he supports lies about Benghazi. Consider the edict, in the form of The Affordable Health Care Act, that you WILL DO AS GOVERNMENT SAYS or be penalized - and the lying going on about that.
Consider the outright lying and political pandering which continues as promises to protect individuals spring from the mouths of city, state and Federal officials.
They have no concept of reality. You really want these people to be the only ones with guns? You are an idiot if you do, and that's not a personal opinion: that's a lesson you should have taken from history.
The bottom line: unless you have a crime problem, you cannot have a "gun problem". If you are unwilling to do the hard work of stopping crime, then you have no hope of doing anything with guns except make things worse.
Radwaste at June 30, 2013 1:48 PM
If guns are such a terrible thing then why do we call people who have them to come protect us (police) even when according to the law they have no duty to do so?
Why do we give them to our allies and the enemies of our enemies?
lujlp at June 30, 2013 6:21 PM
I always like bring this up to those who support celebrity endorsements on gun control
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=keHLNXCwkLE
lujlp at June 30, 2013 7:08 PM
Clue that you are speaking to an idiot: they use the term, "gun person".
And Stephen King is an idiot. Someone else is supposed to be "responsible" for crimes in which guns are used. Oh, hell, no - it can't be the shooter! That poor, defenseless boy was seduced into killing people by that evil gun!
No nation has ever thought their leaders were pulling them into an age of war and poverty, but such unrealistic babble has preceded several such events in world history.
Radwaste at July 1, 2013 2:51 AM
"You have rage black-outs? I don't want you anywhere near a firearm."
Leftist hold that their own anger is self-justifying, and they are angry a lot. What people like Coates are afraid of is not that they will actually kill someone, but the fact that using a gun (even in self-defense) would be a politically incorrect act (well, depending on who the victim is) and might harm their status in the tribe.
Cousin Dave at July 1, 2013 6:35 AM
Is gun owndership really on the decline,with fewer and fewer individuals owning guns
No. In fact, the opposite is true.
The recent gun buying spree was not just to people who already owned guns. There were a lot of new purchasers in the mix.
And yes, there is going to be more lying going on, like when your doctor questions you about your firearm ownership.
I R A Darth Aggie at July 1, 2013 6:45 AM
"and that no one ideology provides all the answers. Hence, my belief that people (qualified people) have the right to armed self-defense, and that the government has the right (and responsibility) to regulate the sale and carrying of guns."
Who's exactly qualified there Jeffery? Oh, the government says who's qualified. Like the IRS and tax exemption, that means whoever is in the king's good graces gets guns. Like the king's enforcers. Jeffery can take his centrism and shove it where the sun don't shine. There are some things that aren't grey. Self-defense is one of them.
Sio at July 1, 2013 7:26 PM
"Oh, the government says who's qualified."
Sick irony exists. Realize that when the President backs this idea, he backs the principle which once allowed him to be considered an animal because of his skin color - an animal who would be told what to do by white men with guns.
Radwaste at July 2, 2013 2:45 AM
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