Gun Violence Isn’t the Problem, Violence Is the Problem
Howard
Wetsman, Medium, Feb 25, 2018
Guns,
free association and where your rights come from
(Photo illustration by Joe Raedle/Getty
Images)
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I’ve been
seeing a lot in the news feeds I read about companies cutting ties with the
NRA. I also see people advocating boycotts of other companies that have not cut
ties with the NRA. I think that’s great.
In
America we have the right of free association. In fact it’s enshrined in the First
Amendment of our Constitution. I support free association. I support
your right to buy from whom you want, to associate with whom you want, and to
not associate with whom you don’t want. You can boycott Delta, not watch Oprah,
not talk to your neighbor, and not friend me on Facebook. I think that’s great.
Each of
us gets to pick whom we associate with, and that right is enshrined in the
First Amendment. That’s just one amendment up from the one that is at the
center of the recent controversy about guns. Americans are arguing about what
rights our Constitution gives us regarding guns and free association. There’s a
misnomer in all this arguing about the Constitution that I’d like to clear up.
It has to
do with where these rights come from. The Constitution? No, I’m afraid not. The
Founders did not say that they were writing a paper that gave us our rights.
They wrote down a document to enshrine the rights we already had. They believed
these rights were inherent; that is, these rights are ours because we exist.
The US Constitution enshrines the rights we have and limits government’s
ability to take away those rights by force. It doesn’t give us our rights. Those
are ours already.
I don’t
know anyone who isn’t sickened by the recent mass shootings. It’s a terrible
problem that we need to solve as a society. But I personally can’t see it being
solved by gun control. That’s my position because I don’t see gun violence as
the problem. I see violence as the problem.
Sure, if
we get rid of guns that fire fast, or don’t have as big a magazine, fewer
people will die when a deranged or evil person, who also decides to abide by
the gun laws, decides to kill a lot of people. To me that’s a cop out. We don’t
want to see the real problem, we don’t want to tackle the hard problem, so
we’re willing to limit an inherent right, not even to keep people from dying,
just so that fewer will die. I just can’t sleep at night thinking I’m doing
something that will doom some to death just to take the easy route.
What will
stop the violence? Is it true that in countries without semi-automatic weapons
that mass killings don’t happen? No, about a year ago, a man named Dimitrious
Gargasoulas drove a car into a crowd in Melbourne, killing 6 and wounding more
than 30. Also last year a man used an axe to injure 9 people on a train in
Germany. Also last year in Germany, a man used a knife that could be purchased
in the grocery store to stab several people in the store, killing one. In 2014
in Canada, a schizophrenic man went to a party, found a knife there, and
stabbed five people to death. Last year in Turku, Finland a man stabbed 10
people, killing two. Between 2010 and 2012, there were seven mass stabbings at
Chinese schools in which children were killed. The list could go on.
I don’t
think anyone, on the left or the right, wants school shootings to continue.
I’ve also been confronted lately with hyperbole from both left and right about
the issue. Many of my liberal friends got fooled into believing that the recent
shooting was the 18th mass school shooting of the year. Many of my conservative
friends got fooled into thinking that some of the students were paid actors.
It’s said in Theory of
Constraints that you really don’t know a problem unless you can
state that problem as a conflict between two necessary conditions.
Let’s
try. For those on one side, it is a necessary condition that children be free
to go to school without threat of harm from guns. They see clear and convincing
evidence in other countries of the correlation between gun violence in schools
and the free availability of guns in the society. For those on the other side,
it is a necessary condition that their right to bear arms is not infringed.
They see registration as a first step to confiscation. They see tests for gun
ownership such as mental health evals and having a “real reason” to own a gun
as a first step to limiting the right entirely. For them, the unrestricted
right to freely keep and bear arms is all that separates us from a totalitarian
future.
But why
does one side see it necessary to protect children in school from guns and the
other sees it as necessary to protect their right to have the guns of their
choice? Is there no common goal between these two groups of Americans? I
believe there is.
Both
sides want children to be free to learn and grow freely to be free Americans in
a free country. The Signers of the Declaration said that the rights of life,
liberty, and pursuit of happiness are inalienable. Both sides agree on that.
So, Jim
wants his children to have life, liberty, and be free to pursue happiness. For
that to happen he sees it necessary that they be free from threat of guns at
school, and because of that and sound evidence that gun violence is related to
gun availability, Jim wants to put new limits on gun ownership.
And
Walter wants his children to have life, liberty, and be free to pursue
happiness. For that to happen he sees it necessary that he and his children
after him have free access to guns that they feel will help them protect their
rights. Because of that, Walter doesn’t want any new limits on gun ownership.
Are we at
an impasse? No, I don’t think so. I see two well-meaning Americans not checking
their assumptions. So, let’s check them for them.
Walter
assumes that if he does not have access to semi-automatic weapons his rights or
his descendants’ will eventually be limited by a government that is no longer
afraid of its people. Even if Walter is right, that semi-automatic weapons in
the hands of the populace limits a politician’s wish to take autocratic power,
is it the only way?
Jim
assumes that his children need to be free from gun violence. Why not all
violence? Can his children grow up free if they are living and learning under
threat of violence from other means? Jim also assumes that the only way to rid
the schools of gun violence is to limit gun ownership. Even if he is correct
that it is an effective way, we can’t assume it’s the only way.
Let me
talk to Walter. Walter, you’re right. Bullies don’t mess with anyone who might
be as strong, and the millions of Americans with AR-15s are probably a
moderating force for any politicians who want to take too much power. But while
you’ve been focusing on guns, there has been another shift in something the
Founders wanted us to keep. The soundness of money and independence of money has
changed. We were supposed to have money based on something that didn’t lose
value over time, something we could save so that we’d have more power than
government. What’s happened since is that government freely borrows what it
needs from a bank it partly controls that just makes it up from thin air. So, I
can see why you are feeling your freedom more threatened now than your
grandfather did, but it isn’t because people want to limit your magazine
capacity. It’s the money. If you really want a smaller government that has less
ability to limit your rights, let’s work together with other Americans to get
honest money back. Will you help me with that?
Now let
me talk to Jim. Jim, you’re right. The fewer semi-automatic weapons there are,
the fewer that will be used to kill masses of children in schools in a brief
period. The data’s pretty clear. But while this is a growing threat lately,
these weapons have been around a long time. There seems to be something else
going on as well. What do you think it might be that is causing people to
recently act so violently rather than talk their problems out? Have you ever
heard of the Non-Agression
Principle? It’s a well known ethical stance that goes back even
before Thomas Jefferson, but has been the hallmark of our democracy since the
beginning. But for some reason we don’t teach it anymore. When we want
something to change, we’ve been asking government to change it for us. We talk
to each other less, and resort to power more. Whoever is on the other end of
that feels slighted and small. People who feel small naturally gravitate to
something that equalizes the playing field. Is an equal playing field so bad?
Don’t we all want that? If we taught the NAP to kids in school. If we taught
people to use Conflict
Resolution instead of appealing to a more powerful authority to fix
their problems, maybe we could create a non-violent society where it didn’t
matter how many guns there were or what kind. Will you help me with that?
I wish
the problem was guns. I wish the problem was a certain kind of gun. I wish the
problem was a certain kind of mental illness. I wish the problem was any single
easy thing to fix. But it isn’t any of those. When you can’t resolve a problem
quickly, it is likely you don’t understand it. It’s likely you have assumptions
that aren’t correct. It’s likely that you are focusing only on part of the problem,
the part you want to change and not the part you don’t want to change. But
solving problems actually requires changing the conditions that brought them
about, and often those conditions are things we like, things we’re not willing
to look at. But we won’t solve our problems by demanding that only the other
guy lose what he wants; We have to be willing to look at our assumptions as
well. And we’ll never solve any problem by taking away the rights of others,
even if we assume those rights came from a law we wrote in the first place,
because they did not.