My loyal readers will of course remember my comparison of the NRA to AIPAC, in the sense that both organizations represent points of view that are so settled in Washington that there is virtually no chance that either can lose. Liberals had apparently given up on any hopes of enacting serious gun control since the Clinton years, and it's been nowhere on the agenda.
In one sense my analysis looks silly now, with the NRA locked in a real debate they may very well lose. In another sense, however, we should keep in mind that there is absolutely zero suggestion of any legislation that would limit the ability of law-abiding citizens to purchase handguns and rifles. In spite of the hysteria of the Gun Lobby, nobody is coming to take away anyone's guns. The President starts off every proposal with a paean to gun ownership and how great it is that people love their guns. For a liberal like me, who would favor serious prohibitions on gun ownership, there's no national politician even in my universe.
So we have the current proposals- closing the gun show loophole, tightening up background checks, banning assault rifles and large magazines that have no hunting or self-defense function- which are supported by most Americans and even most gun owners. And we have the NRA's Director going on the Sunday talk shows with spittle-drenched rants about guns being taken away and about how "the only answer to a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun".
This is so self-evidently crazy that I don't even know where to start. But I think I understand where this fantasy- that if we just arm lots of people, the good guys will be able to outgun the bad guys and we'll be safer- comes from. It's the movies!
I recently saw Django Unchained, the latest Quentin Tarantino movie, a blood-drenched slave revenge flick. I want to make it clear that I liked it. In the movie, an ex-slave in the pre-Civil War south becomes a bounty hunter and successfully manages to kill ridiculous numbers of "bad guys" while saving his wife. I saw an interview with the director, and he said that he felt his movie was in many ways more realistic than previous Hollywood treatment of slavery in America (such as Roots), in that the slaves aren't magnanimous and forgiving but rather rageful and out for revenge.
But of course Django isn't the least bit realistic. It's fantasy. Fun, mind you, but in an escapist sort of way. And Hollywood makes lots of action movies that are fun and absurd- the Die Hard franchise, any of the old Schwarzenegger movies, Star Wars, the list goes on and on. Generally in these movies, bad guys are cartoonishly evil and have an amazing combination of high competence on one hand and the tendency to narrowly miss the hero with every shot on the other hand. Bullets fly all over the place, and innocents almost always narrowly escape harm thanks to the hero.
But real life is not remotely like that. When there are shootouts in public squares, innocent people get hit all the time, even by highly trained police. It's not hard to imagine how many more people would be shot and killed if even more untrained civilians were packing heat in public, waiting for the chance to help take down a terrorist or common criminal. I think Lapierre has watched too many Hollywood action movies, and actually believes the world works that way.
The thing is that the NRA has won every battle, and in fact there remains no threat whatsoever to the Second Amendment. I guess that by fighting all-out against even very reasonable restrictions, there's even less chance that anything more draconian will be passed. But meanwhile, people are being killed every day and it doesn't have to be that way.
Who is more trustworthy, the government or the people?
ReplyDeleteFew public policy debates have been as dominated by emotion and misinformation as the one on gun control. Perhaps this debate is so highly charged because it involves such fundamental issues. The calls for more gun restrictions or for bans on some or all guns are calls for significant change in our social and constitutional systems.
Gun control is based on the faulty notion that ordinary American citizens are too clumsy and ill-tempered to be trusted with weapons. Only through the blatant abrogation of explicit constitutional rights is gun control even possible. It must be enforced with such violations of individual rights as intrusive search and seizure. It most severely victimizes those who most need weapons for self-defense, such as blacks and women.
The various gun control proposals on today’s agenda—including licensing, waiting periods, and bans on so-called Saturday night specials—are of little, if any, value as crime-fighting measures. Banning guns to reduce crime makes as much sense as banning alcohol to reduce drunk driving. Indeed, persuasive evidence shows that civilian gun ownership can be a powerful deterrent to crime.
The gun control debate poses the basic question: Who is more trustworthy, the government or the people?