My Take on Gun Control, and Why it Won't Work
- A.J. Voiles
- Jun 22, 2016
- 5 min read
"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." The Second Amendment to our beloved Constitution blatantly states the right to bear arms as restrictive. However, many in the U.S. perceive this very clear rule set in our country's original charter, but hypocritically declare that the Constitution is not a living and breathing document. To clarify, the second amendment was extended to all private citizens just in 2008. Prior to that, we lived in a country where some people had guns, others didn't, and not many people really thought about it. Flash forward to 2016. We've had 1,002 shootings with four or more victims beside the shooter since the Sandy Hook massacre. That's on average more than twice the victims of September 11th. So why do we allow common citizens access to weapons that have the capability to slaughter as many people as possible? Why do we require different licenses for different types of vehicles but not for different kinds of weapons. I mean if it were up to me, every class of firearm would require a different license, comprehensive training, and a psyche evaluation?
False Nationalism The biggest argument against regulation of firearms is the Constitution of the United States of America. The same one that our police and military swear to protect. The document that many believe to be the end all and be all license to freedom in America. However what is the biggest threat to these rights thumpers? The United States government. The entity that would put our military to work against it's citizens come the time of martial law. The military that is sworn to protect the same constitution that these people feel bound to. So why yell “Support our troops!” when you feel they will be your ultimate foe? Well we have to go back to when the masses of the U.S. first started stockpiling guns. If you do a Google search for “US gun sale statistics”, or any variant of the phrase, you'll see that the earliest data is around 1960, which is the same time integration was sweeping the nation. Everybody afraid of “the other”. From there on you will notice that polling indicates that the percentage of American households surveyed with at least one gun in the house stays about the same, which suggests that the percentage has averaged close to what the existing data supports for some time now. But things seem so much more violent than they did even ten years ago. Back then the average Joe only got to see whatever the mainstream media showed him, now we have the capability to record every angle in real time; and that's no exaggeration. When something major goes down, we not only have news outlets and police stations, but we have people in the middle of an incident. Victims, perpetrators, accomplices all have social media and many have that basic human urge of wanting to share their experience. The more we see this world the more we fear, even if it is openly shared and praised. We fear what we do not understand, as is human nature. So with this basic understanding of the human mind, whoever is in charge can point you toward what you fear, and in many cases make you lash out against something that poses little to no threat to you.
The Bipartisan Scam Many on the right and left hold Thomas Jefferson's “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” as the inalienable rights to all men. But many don't understand that their interpretation of “the pursuit of happiness” holds truer to the ideology of the originator of this statement of human rights. John Locke argued that the political system only existed to protect a nation's citizens' right to property. In Locke's Second Treaty of Government, property is described as a person's life, liberty, and estates. Over the years, the word “property” was used to justify people's ownership of everything from land to humans. As with most words, the use of property is based on context, and one's own perception of ownership. But this wild west of perception leads to disillusion as far as what is who's. Take for instance you finance a house. A man starts sleeping on your porch so you call the police, who inform him that he must leave due to your authority over the property. This is your property. However you are three months behind on your mortgage, and your house is foreclosed upon. The bank sends the police to evict you, and your argument of this being your property is no longer valid. Ownership is subjective to the one claiming it, while pursuing happiness is a bit harder to regulate. Now the system put in place is controlled by “like minded” groups. These groups give themselves a name, a set of rules, and expect you to turn a blind eye when they are human and act out of ethics. You have to choose one or the other, and it's better to choose the one who yells loudest what you agree with. Enter bipartisanship. The divide and conquer tactic used to create social tension for centuries. No matter how many opinions are out there, an individual only feels two: right and wrong. Be that as it may, the “maybe” and “if I had more proof” are swept into the irrelevant pile, leaving no real room for logic, and only room for ideological progress. The Libertarians and the Progressives are classified as right and left, respectively, even though both share the underlying platform of one's right to live just with different implementations.
Neoism, Generalization, and The Right to Misinformation The ideals of a person can be very specific, where as within a group, morals get blurred to reach a "common" goal. This hive mind architecture can turn a statement into anything a group can collectively agree it to be. Even when your interpretation isn't adopted by your group, you suck it up and work for the interpretation that is. People lose track of what they truly believe in, and instead eat up whatever is fed to them. W.K. Clifford argued that there is no such thing as a private belief. That we all act as advertisers and consumers of each others' thoughts. Some people and institutions use that idea to their advantage, spreading false truths and sucking people into groups that they don't really identify with. Merging ideas and exiling what you are told to, society becomes a one track hive mind. This is where freedom of expression comes in. Although the First Amendment doesn't protect you from "yelling fire in a crowded theater" it does allow you to state "if there were a fire, there are no doors to escape through". While this isn't based in fact (you obviously entered through a door), and can incite panic, it doesn't directly address what the panic is. Instead of causing people to storm through the door, you cause a few impressionable people's minds to storm with the worry of a non problem. Now they don't trust their safety, and in so, become irrational.
Restricting the masses' self belief in safety, no matter how true that belief is, is detrimental to to the sense of freedom. When you base an entire nation's ideology on the notion of freedom, everyone in the world is watching when you start taking freedoms from that nation. It becomes a grand experiment and sets a precedent. So while it may be "right" to stop mass killings at all costs, the end game needs to be there for people to accept a view they refute. A person can only be compelled to do something they agree with, otherwise it is manipulation.
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