Bad As Bad Can Be

Trey Smith

As I like to do from time to time, today and tomorrow I will parse and comment on one article throughout the day. This article comes from The Guardian.

"Guns don't kill people, people kill people."

That line of defense from gun proponents comes up again and again in the wake of mass shootings, like last week's at Sandy Hook elementary school that left 20 children and seven adults dead. It's true, in a sense: when holding objects that are specifically designed to be the most effective killing machines possible, people do, in fact, kill people.

And yes, people have gone on murderous rampages for all of human history, and have used whatever tools were at their disposal – rocks, knives, swords, their own hands – to inflict violence. The problem comes in when the tools at their disposal are really good at killing others without much work on the part of the killer, which is why lots of folks would like to see the United States institute some reasonable laws regulating gun ownership.

Time and again, though, the pro-gun right's answer is the same: people will find a way to kill, and violence is inevitable, so taking away guns won't work. Their solution seems to be a society where every citizen has a gun in one hand and crossed fingers on the other.

That perspective represents not just an intense cultural tie to guns, but a typically conservative view of humanity: people (other than me) are fundamentally bad and our time on Earth is in preparation for the afterlife, so why worry about making it better?

As we've seen in the debates on issues from climate change to gender equality to foreign policy, facts, statistics and rational arguments don't really matter if the goal of offering them up is to improve things in the here and now. It's a deeply pessimistic view of humanity that projects a strong sense of fatalism.
~ from The Conservative Philosophy of Tragedy: Guns Don't Kill People, People Kill People by Jill Filipovic ~

Filipovic presents us with the keen distinction between classic conservatism versus liberalism. The former views humankind as inherently evil, while the latter sees humankind as inherently good. This difference easily can be seen in the act of governance. Conservatives seek to constrain the masses -- not the rich, of course, because their wealth is a sign that they have risen above the primordial morass -- while liberals seek to constrain the powerful because they desire to victimize the masses in order to block their ascension up the ladder.

While conservatives like to talk about gun ownership as a right for everyone -- including the unwashed masses -- I think their true motivation is the fear that one day the masses will be coming for them and their riches. While the rich DO have the police state at their beck and call, if that fails, they desire to have the ability legally to defend theirs from all comers and they want to be able to accomplish the deed with the least expenditure of time and energy possible. 

You can kill defend against a lot more intruders with an assault rifle than with a musket or a .22 rifle!