Broader Consideration of a Specific Appeal
Kittamaru said:
So even though when I would go hunting with my grandfather and we'd get, say, a Deer... then have the head mounted (if it was one worth mounting), have it processed to get Venison (which we would use for everything from burgers to jerkey), had a pelt made into a throw cover for a chair, etc... we're a pair of "reprobates"...
#NotAllMen ...
... or, how about ...
...
#NotAllPoliticians ...
... or, maybe ...
...
#NotAllGunOwners?
I guess that's a bit of shorthand compared to,
#NotAllResponsibleGunOwners, but it works well enough.
The first is highly controversial because of the particularly pointed devastation about the discourse in which it arises. We've been through this one before, here at Sciforums; we need not peel off this issue at this time, since there are plenty of other opportunities to address it despite the best efforts of the hashtag's supporters to suppress those discussions.
The second seems almost unimaginable, though if you watch closely (or, in truth, it's not exactly difficult to see) we might note that whatever else is wrong with politicians in general, a Republican filibuster of their own damn bill, or the Speaker of the House not being able to get
his own damn bills through the House, is frequently written off by the voting public, and reinforced by the talking heads and would-be reporters of the so-called "Fourth Estate" as a problem facing "both parties". Historically speaking, the "both parties" story we've been hearing in recent years is, objectively false; many of the reporters and commentators pushing the line
know it is objectively false; their refusal to acknowledge that reality is merely a matter of political correctness.
And, yes, it is true that the conservatives who took part in the "libertarian" backlash against the idea that it is simply inappropriate to call students in your classroom "nigger" or "bitch" or "kike" or "spic" or wtf-ever, are actually the ones who demand the greatest PC protection. If you review the detail of press coverage, watch how long it took
any "msm"[sup]†[/sup] to actually call out the Romney campaign for lying, and watch how limited the application of the word was. On the Democratic side, sympathizers watched Maddow and her staff hedge around the issue for a couple of weeks before they finally threw down and called him a liar on the air. Very few reporters did, but when, say, the guy from Fiat called out Mitt Romney for lying, there's a reason many mainstream news outlets put screaming headlines on it to make sure their readers would see it. Because, as Jim Lehrer put it, a proper reporter
would not call out a lie. Or, as Rob Corddry joked, it is not a reporter's job to "stand in between the people talking to me and the people listening to me". It really
is cowardly, but I digress; the "both parties" lie is pushed by many fake libertarians, closet conservatives trying to decieve us into believing that prohibition is freedom and supremacism equality, but it is carried by news organizations in order to promote an image of journalistic integrity while forfeiting as many responsibilities as possible. It's a business decision; journalism has abandoned the Fourth Estate. Still, though, to whom does it actually matter that it's #NotAllPoliticians?
As to the gun owners: To what degree does the idea of a NAGO hashtag or what it asserts important to someone who's just been killed as a result of a "responsible gun owner" enjoying some "responsible" recreation? How is it that a parent can go to jail for leaving alcohol or marijuana out where the kids can reach it, and someone finds out the kids got loaded, but one can leave their firearm sitting around for the kids to accidentally kill one another or themselves with, and you know, it's tragic, but this is how things go sometimes, and
we're somehow supposed to weary of people "exploiting the issue" and "attacking" "responsible gun owners". The "responsible gun owner" who merely bounced his slug off my building and landed it in my garden will never actually have to answer for that one when he calls himself a "responsible gun owner".
And I think I actually made it a whole calendar year in 2013 without hearing of a person wounded or killed by celebratory gunfire falling from the sky. Certes, there are places where this sort of thing is common, but these are the United States, not the Failed States. Congratulations, "responsible gun owners"!
Super job! Or else, well, I just missed the story amid the constant murmurs of death rippling from Sea to Shining Sea and beyond.
Here's the thing, Kitt, and to use Iceaura and TCS as examples: They could very well be ideal "responsible gun owners", and for that I wouldn't knock them; I would thank them. My note to TCS is that it is not that Fraggle is trying to offend gun owners specifically, but that he is offended enough by the state of the societal discourse in some sectors that he is willing to sometimes skip the
diplomacy political correctness.
Now, I actually appreciate that TCS and I have struck a better tone for this round of engagement, and we do have an issue we can explore together. And I say it quite bluntly in my own right, that it isn't about the right to keep and bear arms—that is to say, it's not so much about the guns themselves—as it is about
killing other people.
Thus I would ask you directly:
Do you believe that you, as a responsible gun owner, have the right to "responsibly" shoot the wrong person and be shielded from legal consequence?
Is the right to keep and bear arms also the right to shoot people to death for reasons of accident, negligence, or other
mere mistake?
To the one, it seems something of a jaw-dropping question. To the other, consider the gun culture Iceaura described seems pretty idyllic; it's one that I think you, TCS, and even Fraggle, could also agree sounds like responsible gun culture. But I've been ripping on Ice of late because of a disagreement we're having in which he would back the NRA's position on stalkers needing guns. Which brings us back 'round the circle. A #NotAllGunOwners argument is simply wearying, because in the end the
policy discourse is representing "responsible gun ownership".
Analogously, think of the Cold War. I can tell you that Karl Marx himself wasn't a Marxist; he publicly declared himself as such. Does it really matter, though, by the time we get to Kruschev banging his shoe, that the Soviet Union isn't properly communist? It's not a matter of defending the Soviet Union, but it is also true that no matter how much we might loathe the old Bear and wish to identify communism—the very Apostles of Christ, even—with Stalin and Kruschev, it matters less what Marx actually said and wrote than it does that we ought also recall that the Soviets had every reason for loathing the United States, which responded to the Russian Revolution by invading the new Soviet Union and fighting as part of the counterrevolution. But by the time we got to the verge of nuclear war,it didn't matter. The "Communism" we were dealing with was threatening to bury us. There's a lot we could have done differently, but I give Kennedy proper credit for getting us out of the jam once we were in it. Hell, even I would have been tempted to simply erase Cuba from the map. The Cold War is over. "Communism" lost, and Communists, instead of trying to justify the Soviets, have plenty of other things to worry about. Was it really Communism? No. Does that really matter? No, not really. At least, not in the context of the reality that experience helped shape. Abstractly, it matters. But practically? As I've noted before, the Revolution is inevitable; it's just a question of how often and severely the passions and interests of society result in the people having no place to go but "hard left"; we'll finally get single-payer after we've gone out of our way to destroy every other healthcare solution in the name of what's good or bad for the economy, or, more bluntly, what makes the rich people richer. But the face of Communism we had to deal with in the policy discourse is the one that stuck. No matter how
I as a Leftist, feel about that, it's simply the way things work. There is a
reason the threatening face with great influence has stronger influence over the public discourse than the sunshine idyll.
So when the NRA plays its role and starts complaining about the idea of keeping guns out of the hands of some of the most dangerous criminals in our society, yes, we have to deal with that, because the argument is actually influencing our public policy discourse. But when sunshine idealists then turn around and back the NRA and the stalkers because, you know, nanny state, and foul gits, and all that? Well, yeah. Guess what? That sunshine idyll means exactly
zero in the public discourse.
And it is also worth recognizing that there is exactly
nothing that
I can do to change this. I'm not part of the gun culture. You know, I don't do coke or heroin, but I've long been in the drug subculture, so it's not like the druggies don't trust me; if I have to establish my street credentials as such, it's true that I can. But I'm not part of the gun culture; save for a few longtime friends, few in the gun culture trust me at all, as I simply cannot establish my shooter's credentials. As a policy discourse note, however, please recognize that we never defended the crack dealers or the gang wars; we tried to offer society policy solutions, and they're only just now getting around to testing them, and only because enough teetotalers and former drug warriors are exhausted, and can't figure out where to go next—given an avenue of retreat, they've got nowhere left to go but to try it. And we've been quietly seeing it work for
decades.
From the outset the needle exchanges were documentably successful, nearly beyond belief, at slowing the transmission of HIV and other pathogens via heroin use. Flooding the sector with condoms has been somewhat effective; legalized and regulated prostitution is observably safer, in general, and also helps separate the dangerous black-market risk factors where prostitution and drugs intersect. The monetary costs of fighting the drug war. The only reason "my side" of the argument is winning is because the "other sides" have no place left to go.
But they also had this public face of the drug-use advocacy to work with. Can you imagine how it would have gone if the kingpins walked front and center, and their policy solution was to stay the fuck out of their way or simply deal with the consequences?
#NotAllGunOwners might be appropriately true, but it is of exactly zero effective value;
and this is because it is not the gun culture defining firearms advocacy in the public discourse.
The one we have to deal with, and for which we see so many innocent people dying, is the one we have to deal with. The difference between a point that TCS and I will be exploring, regarding what the current "gun" debate is actually about, will go where it goes. But Iceaura has, in the recent past, chosen to take the "liberal libertarian" identity and assert that this is a dealbreaker, that "we" "need" "them", so what "they" say is the way it has to go. And that means stalkers need to have guns. Because, you know, nanny state, foul authoritarian gits, responsible gun owners,
ad nauseam. As I don't expect to be convincing our neighbor anytime soon, it would seem he and I will continue to disagree on certain aspects of what needs to happen.
I would also suggest a strange coincidence between this issue and labor law. To the one, labor laws haven't killed business the way we hear whenever a new labor paradigm achieves authority. To the other, those labor laws came about in the first place because circumstances demonstrated that they are necessary.
Stalkers need guns because after we take the guns away from these exceptionally dangerous criminals, the next stop is disarming the "responsible gun owners"? Well, much like the labor laws, if stalkers weren't so damn criminally dangerous we wouldn't be having this question. Hell, even in
Texas, the people have deemed it acceptable to suspend the firearms access of those who have merely been
indicted for, and not yet tried or convicted of, a felony. (Yes, that's right; the Governor of Texas has to surrender his firearms.) But these convicted stalkers? Oh, hell, they need their guns because the next step is tyranny. And yet if stalkers—the
violent criminals—weren't being so violent, the question would not arise.
Which is kind of like labor law. If working children sixteen hours a day in the mines wasn't producing such appalling human results, we wouldn't have passed the labor laws that prevent such behavior.
And consider, please, a recent discussion I recall you having an opinion in. That a guy who killed his own seven year-old son through negligent handling of an illegally possessed firearm has been punished enough, and shouldn't be prosecuted? I get the compassionate argument, but I've also lived through decades where a black man who would otherwise be legitimately defending himself but for the fact that the firearm is illegally possessed goes up for gang violence. There's a reason why it seems the question isn't really about firearms but, instead, the right to kill other people.
Consider an aspect that has nothing to do with Second Amendment protection, insofar as the alternative is that there is absolutely nothing under the sun one can do to relinquish their right to keep and bear firearms, which is observably
not how things go. If you mishandle your car in certain ways, you lose your license to drive, period, regardless of whether or not you hurt anyone. If, on the other hand, you mishandle your gun and kill someone? I have no objection to taking licenses away from people who cannot safely operate their transportation device. What I don't understand is the logic of the proposition that someone should be able to mishandle a
killing device and not face similar suspensions or rescinscions.
And, yet, this is the public policy face we must deal with.
If you guys can get the sunshine idyll to the head of the class, so it can be the public policy face we deal with, then I'm quite certain we'll be happy to deal with it.
But in the meantime, it doens't matter whether or not it's #NotAllGunOwners if you're dead and therefore can't have an opinion on the matter; and there are too many people dying for the right of "responsible gun owners" to conduct themselves and their firearms with great negligence.
So just like every other "responsible gun owner" hears from me at some point in a common discourse:
Congratulations. I'm glad you're not accidentally part of the problem. What we need is for you and your fellow genuinely responsible gun owners to put Old Yeller down.
We can actually make good, responsible progress toward everyone's safety and pursuit of Life, Liberty, and Happiness, if the "responsible gun owners" would tell the NRA/Homicide Rights coalition to stop going out of its way to discredit "responsible gun owners".
It's hardly a litmus test; rather, it's simply something that needs to happen, at some point in the discourse, in order that the discussion moves past ripping on assertions of the homicidal special needs of "responsible gun owners".
And please consider this question:
Does the "responsible gun owner" take offense to the phrase "homicidal special needs", or is the "responsible gun owner" both able and willing to acknowledge what it responds to? This is why appeals to one's own responsibility and goodness, such as you have offered, don't have any functional value in toward resolving the challenge facing society. That is to say,
So you're offended. Fine. Take a number, and get in line behind the dead. Your goodness and responsibility, for all its wonderfulness, will be accounted for, according to its value, after
we account for the dead, according to their
value.
And that's just the way it has to be, or else this is going to keep happening in growing numbers. Of course, there are plenty of so-called "responsible gun owners"—and firearms manufacturers, sellers, and lobbyists—who want exactly that.
And as long as
they are the principle advocates for firearms rights in the American public policy debate, I'm sorry, but the sunshine idyll and bruised egos of "responsible gun owners" just don't count for as much as would the positive contributions they could choose to bring to the discourse.
____________________
Notes:
[sup]†[/sup] Yet more evidence that many right-wing conspiracy theorists are closeted homosexuals, since a bunch of people who just also happen to be homophobic spent years rushing to use the phrase "m-s-m"; it's not just a botched branding effort that moves Sarah Palin to use the phrase "lamestream media"—someone in her family or organization was smart enough to know that with such a stupid stamp square and center on her forehead, it wouldn't be long before people started asking her why she's complaining about gay men not reporting the news the way she likes it. Much like metrosexualist fad, closet cases who are also conservative politicians or activists really should stay as far away from the public issue of the Queer Question, because that's when their true fabu shines through.
