This isn't supposed to be about guns so much as something I saw on social media regarding last week's shooting inspired me to write this. I will use some relevant examples, but this is not going to be a rant against people who do nothing but pull on others' heartstrings in order to achieve some goal that makes them feel safe or righteous or wealthy and powerful.
As I said in my last post, logic and facts aren't the only vehicles to truth; you just haven't arrived at it if right reason contradicts whatever your epiphany is (setting aside cases where maybe you just don't have enough data or brainpower to navigate some conundrums; I mean no insult or condescension as this world is big and complicated enough that even our brightest sometimes disagree and even get shown up by more humble minds), then maybe the revelation you had wasn't so fully true after all.
On the other hand, it can cut through a lot of the sophistry we use to lie to ourselves to make life a little easier to bear or our sins a little easier to ignore.
That's what people are feeling when they they experience a sort of mental "waking up" after some major life or society changing event.
The only problem is, it's often misdirected or just wrong.
Actually that's not the only problem. In a phenomenon related to confirmation bias, if one relies too strongly on emotional revelations to take shortcuts around empirical analysis and logic, one will be inclined to take shortcuts around everything, and any effort or meme that resonates with the original emotional experience will be used to attempt to further whatever the goal is. Thus we have widely circulated "statistics" like "there have been 18 school shootings already in 2018," but you only get that number if you include shootings in the same neighborhood and shootings between people who are neither faculty nor students at times that are not during school hours but happen to be in the parking lot (how such an altercation is supposed to meaningfully contribute to students' collective sense of fear is based entirely on empty, forced association, like if I say "Ivanka Trump" and "Founders Brewery" a lot people will start connecting the two in their minds just because I did it so many times first). The real number of school shootings in 2018 so far is 7, and 5 have resulted in casualties (not all fatalities). That's still horrible, but it's not the epidemic people want us to think it is. Three thousand people died on 9/11, but you don't hear anything about an epidemic of religion-motivated terror attacks, even though those still hit the news, do you?
But I digress. I was talking about how these epiphanies people have when they're smacked in the face with a tragedy often motivate people to espouse or do something unhelpful or counterproductive or useless. Well, I was about to make that point, anyway.
The morsel on social media that stirred me to post yet again this month went something like this:
So, what's your plan? To drive the kids yourself? Gun homicides are competitive with vehicular homicides. Homicides in general are the cause of death for school aged children roughly one fifth as often as accidents.
Ah, but that's not really what you meant, I know. Like I said Thursday, gun deaths are offensive, but children's deaths by other means, in any quantity, lie somewhere between acceptable and unremarkable.
When I point something like this out, the only I answer I get is something in the shape of "it's easier to ban unnecessary and dangerous things like guns than stop everyone from using the cars they need because some people can't bear the responsibility." There's some irony there I won't unpack today, but what they're doing is describing the problem and its solution as very simple things, and then hoping you'll confuse "easy" for "simple."
So, sure, there haven't been school shootings in the UK since guns were banned. But knifing deaths (and survived injuries) are up. And the homicide rate is lower...wait, no it's not: the UK reports murder rates for these things, not homicide rates. Murder is a homicide that a court of law has conclusively determined was unlawful, and thus is a significantly smaller number even if the total death rate is comparable or potentially higher.
So, like I would ask a slacktivist who puts a Hillary 2018 sticker on his car and goes to an election party to celebrate the historical inevitability instead of participating in it at the poll:
Sometimes they have answers to a few of these questions, but they're all solutions that are worse than the problems. It's someone else's job to do the hard work. But usually that doesn't get done either; we get something slipshod hypothetically run through Congress and then everyone clutches their pearls when unrefined details turn out to be show stoppers. Then we're buying pre-owned AKs from Mexico and pulling contraband of various calibers out from the floorboards, because we knew the bad guys were already doing that.
But that's another problem they're hoping will just go away in the sweep.
As I said in my last post, logic and facts aren't the only vehicles to truth; you just haven't arrived at it if right reason contradicts whatever your epiphany is (setting aside cases where maybe you just don't have enough data or brainpower to navigate some conundrums; I mean no insult or condescension as this world is big and complicated enough that even our brightest sometimes disagree and even get shown up by more humble minds), then maybe the revelation you had wasn't so fully true after all.
On the other hand, it can cut through a lot of the sophistry we use to lie to ourselves to make life a little easier to bear or our sins a little easier to ignore.
That's what people are feeling when they they experience a sort of mental "waking up" after some major life or society changing event.
The only problem is, it's often misdirected or just wrong.
Actually that's not the only problem. In a phenomenon related to confirmation bias, if one relies too strongly on emotional revelations to take shortcuts around empirical analysis and logic, one will be inclined to take shortcuts around everything, and any effort or meme that resonates with the original emotional experience will be used to attempt to further whatever the goal is. Thus we have widely circulated "statistics" like "there have been 18 school shootings already in 2018," but you only get that number if you include shootings in the same neighborhood and shootings between people who are neither faculty nor students at times that are not during school hours but happen to be in the parking lot (how such an altercation is supposed to meaningfully contribute to students' collective sense of fear is based entirely on empty, forced association, like if I say "Ivanka Trump" and "Founders Brewery" a lot people will start connecting the two in their minds just because I did it so many times first). The real number of school shootings in 2018 so far is 7, and 5 have resulted in casualties (not all fatalities). That's still horrible, but it's not the epidemic people want us to think it is. Three thousand people died on 9/11, but you don't hear anything about an epidemic of religion-motivated terror attacks, even though those still hit the news, do you?
But I digress. I was talking about how these epiphanies people have when they're smacked in the face with a tragedy often motivate people to espouse or do something unhelpful or counterproductive or useless. Well, I was about to make that point, anyway.
The morsel on social media that stirred me to post yet again this month went something like this:
"When I have to wonder as I put my kids on the school bus if I'll ever see them again, it's time for things to change."
So, what's your plan? To drive the kids yourself? Gun homicides are competitive with vehicular homicides. Homicides in general are the cause of death for school aged children roughly one fifth as often as accidents.
Ah, but that's not really what you meant, I know. Like I said Thursday, gun deaths are offensive, but children's deaths by other means, in any quantity, lie somewhere between acceptable and unremarkable.
When I point something like this out, the only I answer I get is something in the shape of "it's easier to ban unnecessary and dangerous things like guns than stop everyone from using the cars they need because some people can't bear the responsibility." There's some irony there I won't unpack today, but what they're doing is describing the problem and its solution as very simple things, and then hoping you'll confuse "easy" for "simple."
So, sure, there haven't been school shootings in the UK since guns were banned. But knifing deaths (and survived injuries) are up. And the homicide rate is lower...wait, no it's not: the UK reports murder rates for these things, not homicide rates. Murder is a homicide that a court of law has conclusively determined was unlawful, and thus is a significantly smaller number even if the total death rate is comparable or potentially higher.
So, like I would ask a slacktivist who puts a Hillary 2018 sticker on his car and goes to an election party to celebrate the historical inevitability instead of participating in it at the poll:
How do you think, if someone put you in charge or asked for your suggestion like I'm doing now, we could get as a country from where we are now to a place where people prone to mass murder are unable to get this one type of tool for scratching whatever crazy itch they have that makes them do this?
Do you want the police to be armed so they can use decisive force to protect you from someone attacking you with a bat or a knife or a jar of battery acid or their brute strength and gang members?
Do you think they will be available to help you any more than they are now? What would you do to make that happen?
If you want the whole country a gun-free zone, what are you going to do to prevent something like when Prohibition fomented a lively black market for liquor and organized crime? Why do you think any efforts you made now for this would be more successful than what turned out to be the only Constitutional amendment to be repealed? Sure, gunsmithing is harder than brewing beer or distilling, but there are lots of other necessary things to society that require machining equipment, and if you've got that and the raw material you'd be using anyway and a little expertise, you're a week away from arming a small militia.
Sometimes they have answers to a few of these questions, but they're all solutions that are worse than the problems. It's someone else's job to do the hard work. But usually that doesn't get done either; we get something slipshod hypothetically run through Congress and then everyone clutches their pearls when unrefined details turn out to be show stoppers. Then we're buying pre-owned AKs from Mexico and pulling contraband of various calibers out from the floorboards, because we knew the bad guys were already doing that.
But that's another problem they're hoping will just go away in the sweep.
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