Saturday, April 21, 2018

More Alike Than We Realize

In a comment thread on Facebook, I saw a commenter named Craig say, "Anti second amendment people simply aren’t very bright, just look at the nonsense they believe." That prompted me to reply with the following:

Craig, that's simply not true. I know several very intelligent, highly educated people who favor some degree of gun control. What they all have in common, besides being compassionate people who frown on any sort of violence, is that they've never had to rely on weapons to defend themselves or anyone else. In every instance they've personally experienced, when weapons were used against a human being by someone other than the police, they were generally being used to CAUSE trouble, not resolve it.

There's an old saying that a conservative is just a liberal who's been robbed. I think that's what's going on here. These people have been safe. Or if they have encountered danger, they felt helpless to do anything to counter it. They're not trained gunfighters, and they believe an untrained person trying to use a gun for self-defense is about as safe and effective as an untrained person performing brain surgery. (And when it comes to a firefight against skilled tactical shooters, they're absolutely right, like it or not.) What they don't understand--from lack of exposure--is that a civilian CAN become a competent gunfighter without joining the police or military, just as surely as one can become proficient in martial arts without becoming a Shaolin monk.

But let's be honest--most of us cling to that "shall not be infringed" like it cancels out the "well-regulated" part. And yes, I know what that term means and how the Founders used it. They made it crystal clear in the Militia Acts of 1792. So how many overweight armchair warriors would be comfortable with their right to bear arms being contingent on turning out for drill and doing PT on the courthouse parking lot once a month? How many of us would be comfortable with "big government" REQUIRING us to buy an M-4, grenades, Kevlar, night vision, and all the other kit commonly used by infantry troops today? How many would like to be fined for failing inspection? Or jailed for missing drill or failing to report to muster when summoned? Imagine having no police patrol, and instead, whenever your sheriff needs help serving a warrant, he'd draft random gun owners into helping him, and they'd get in trouble for ducking out of it the same as if they failed to report for jury duty. (I can already hear the Libertarians whining, "But that's SLAVERY!") This is what it means to have a well-regulated militia. I wish we still had one (instead of the standing army we ended up with), but I'm guessing the vast majority of pro-2A people don't agree with me on that.

The problem isn't that the anti-gun people are unintelligent. It's that, like everyone else, they suffer from normalcy bias. They want to think of themselves as reasonable and rational. They don't want people to see them as wild-eyed lunatics ranting about paranoid delusions, so they automatically dismiss possibilities so far outside their day-to-day experience that it sounds like science fiction. Some people react that way to warnings of environmental harm, while others react that way to warnings of civil unrest, robbery, or military invasion. They dismiss it as fantasy until it happens to them or someone close to them, and by then, it's too late to prepare.

How do you feel when you're aware of grave danger and others dismiss your concerns as ridiculous "conspiracy theories" or pointless worrying? You might get quite emotional pleading with them to see reason, right? That's how the gun-control folks see us when we react to their proposals to limit gun rights: "gun nuts," mentally unhinged, paranoid freaks who probably shouldn't be trusted with a gun. And of course, that just amplifies our fear that we're about to be disarmed, so we get even more emotional and even belligerent. They do the same thing when we respond to their fear of getting shot by suggesting that the answer is to have even more bullets flying around from more directions. Calling each other stupid isn't going to get us anywhere. It just shuts down conversation.