You want to read a book that will make you uncomfortably reexamine the kind of rhetoric you use, right down to your choice of metaphors? Well, if you don’t, you should: Jeffrey Feldman’s new book Outright Barbarous: How the Violent Language of the Right Poisons American Democracy. It’s a convincing argument that the right wing punditry has adopted a violence stance, tone, and choice of words and media battles that undermines the concept of deliberative democracy. And while deliberative democracy can be unbelievably frustrating for liberals, a step back shows that it does work in our favor, because slowly over time, Americans have really become a more liberal (read: gentle, considerate people).
I can hear the bristling, but think about it. Liberals, for instance, have won the ideological war about equality. Conservatives have to find another way to frame issues when they’re arguing against equality, and thus have created empty concepts like “abortion is murder” or “reverse racism”. Those phrases burn, but it’s wise to remember that they’ve been forced into a dishonest territory because liberals have won the argument over equality. Conservatives can’t win in a fair debate where all sides present their views to be hashed out in the public forum, and they clearly know it, because instead of submitting themselves to the debate, the right wing pundits have instead turned to fear-mongering and reimagining our objectively peaceful country as a war zone. Think of how the gun control debate goes down, an example Feldman turns to early in the book. There’s not much of an honest debate about gun control in this country, because right wingers skip the facts and go straight for the mythologizing about how every Republican man is besieged by a bunch of gun-wielding maniacs, attacking him in airports and fast food joints, and even coming into his home to rape his wife, and if he wasn’t able to periodically litter the landscape with bullets, it would be worse. That this doesn’t reflect reality seems inconsequential to this image, probably because the image of violence has so much power over reason.
Feldman proceeds over areas of debate in this country that have become weighed down with violent rhetoric—and believe me, we advocates for reproductive rights know how easily a discussion of women’s basic rights becomes overwhelmed by violent imagery and threats*—but the chapter that really won me over was the examination of the creation of the phony War on Christmas. The debate over church and state separation was slowly being won by the side of right through civilized arguments—even though the creationists tried to create a circus atmosphere in Dover, PA, for instance, the fact that people were still shoved into witness boxes and asked to explain themselves made it obvious that the creationists were spewing bullshit and they lost. So the War on Christmas, fictional as it may be, was an opportunity for right wingers to recast the situation in violent language. It’s not a little alarming, because the War on Christmas is about cultural dominance for a strand of Protestant Christianity versus religious tolerance, and no good comes from convincing people that they’re waging a religious war. It’s a testament to how far liberals have managed to pull this country along towards peace and tolerance that the rhetoric creating the War on Christmas hasn’t resulted in actual violence done to religious minorities or atheists who have a special interest in keeping public spaces secular. If you’re interested in framing, language, or rhetoric—and if you’re not, you should be—then this is quite an interesting book and a quick read for blogging fans, who are probably up on much of the background on the various topics.
The other book for review today is Natalie Angier’s The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science. Some science bloggers, I remember, were sent review copies and were under-impressed, but part of that might have been because they are already scientists or well-educated in science, and thus the material was boring. I like science and reading about science more than your average American, I suspect (I have like half a dozen podcast subscriptions at least that are science podcasts of some sort), but I’m far from well-educated on these subjects. And I can say I liked it a lot better, because it gave me more of a grounding in these subjects than I had, so it worked as intended. Even the cutesy-poo language Angier sometimes succumbs to didn’t grate as much as it should, because she imparts information so fast that the garbage language just gives your brain a chance to absorb it.
That said, the book is uneven, especially compared to her prior book, which is a classic that everyone should read, Woman: An Intimate Geography. That book had a much more narrow scope—describing the biology of women’s bodies tip to toe—and if anything, the hole it filled in the public consciousness was bigger, because it was a rare and genuine celebration of women’s bodies from a biological, science geek perspective, and therefore managed to counteract harmful messages without dipping into hippy-dip language so common to “Celebrate Womanhood”-type feminist messages. Angier organized The Canon by interviewing scientists in fields ranging from physics to biology to astronomy, getting a sense of what they most wanted the public to understand about what they do, and then telling you, Jane Public.
The results range from kind of boring to absolutely fascinating. For various reasons, the chapters on biology, molecular biology, astronomy, and geology—conveniently located at the end of the book—are the best. Maybe Angier loves these subjects the best, or maybe just this reader does. (Which would surprise me, because I would have thought chemistry would have fascinated me more than it did.) Maybe it’s because these are the areas where the hole in public knowledge allows social strife to fill in the blanks. People don’t understand the laws of thermodynamics, but that doesn’t get the religious right all puffed up about filling in the blanks with god. But biology, geology, and astronomy all bring up the uncomfortable issue of how old the universe is, and how it (and we) got here, so that controversy energized these chapters. It probably also meant the scientists she was working with were a lot more clear on what exactly they know that the public must know, because the public’s ignorance is both more obvious and more dangerous in these areas.
This is where Angier’s talents at making forbidding topics easy to understand really comes in handy, because the theories that she explains are ones you probably need to know if you’re going out there to fight the good fight on the politicization. She accepts that evolutionary theory, some parts of geology, and the Big Bang theory are all counterintuitive to your average person, and working from that vantage point, nonetheless explains how scientists really do know what they claim to know. Especially on the contentious issues of evolution and the Big Bang, I would recommend Xeroxing her explanations and giving them to anyone who thinks there’s a genuine debate between religion and science on this, so they can see there’s not. (And not just because the evidence falls so overwhelmingly on the science side—most religions accept the scientific evidence without a real fight, and it’s only the few fundie nuts that spoil things.) I myself wasn’t aware how sound a theory the Big Bang really was until Angier explained it in her lucid manner. And nor was I aware that the way DNA mutates is a major factor in why evolutionary theory makes so much sense—what initially seems like a random sequence of events starts seeming organized if you really understand it, albeit organized by itself and not by a guiding hand from the outside. Again, anyone who accepts that a child is a combination of the genetic coding from both its parents has, whether he’ll admit it or not, already given up the major reason that descent with modification is a fact. Angier has the arguments to show why that’s so.
As usual, I don’t review books I can’t recommend whole-heartedly, and so both books come highly recommended.
*They can’t argue against a woman’s right to contraception, so now anti-choicers are suggesting that the pill kills babies, which is the equivalent of saying that because I didn’t take a walk to the grocery store today to give them a few dollars, I lobbed a grenade into the middle of the store.
48 Responses to “Deliberative democracy and the scientific method go together like chocolate and vanilla and these two book reviews”
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“Think of how the gun control debate goes down, an example Feldman turns to early in the book. There’s not much of an honest debate about gun control in this country, because right wingers skip the facts and go straight for the mythologizing about how every Republican man is besieged by a bunch of gun-wielding maniacs…”
That’s actually the third or even fourth place gun advocates go.
1. Constitutional guarantees the right to bear arms - always #1 with a bullet
2. Americans need guns to portect themselves from the government - the Founding Fathers left repressive regimes argument
3. Sportsman need guns to hunt
4. The savages will attack us and rape the women and the state will do nothing to prevent it
Granted, I live in MN, a very gun friendly state with a conceal and carry law on the books. Perhaps the argument is framed differently in NYC or LA.
Dr. T, the cult of trading stories about incidents of violence nearly averted by wielding weapons is well known, and also largely mythological. I’ve never owned a gun in my life and somehow never come across all these attackers that NRA types always go on about. And I know a lot of people who do pack, and they have never had a reason to pull a weapon. It’s a lot of attention paid towards incidents that are statistically rare, especially compared to other threats that they don’t treat with the same gravity, such as the danger of a car accident.
“Perhaps the argument is framed differently in NYC or LA.”
As far as LA goes, it’s framed pretty much the same. The real difference is in more rural states (and to be fair, rural parts of CA) the populous is more willing to grant a modicum of legitimacy to those arguments. In LA (at least, but I’m guessing NYC, Chicago, etc., too), not so much.
I think the strong recognition that you yourself are much more likely to be a victim of a shooting, rather than “overthrowing the government” or “stopping the savages from raping and killing”, informs the Big City line of thinking…
The best reaction to wild-eyed nasty asshattery is mockery, and demanding to see the evidence in their own lives. BS internet chain letters don’t count.
I support the right to hunt and right to have (hunting) guns in the house. Rural folks often supplement their diets with deer and other game.
BTW, Dr. T, the “I don’t know how you Nooo Yakers do it” argument won’t fly with me. I’m from Texas, live in Texas, and am from a very rural part of the state. And so you can’t pretend that I’m simply ignorant of the gun culture of rural areas. It’s mainly about preening masculinity, which is why the mythical tales of violence have such cachet, because it feels very manly to think that you could take out an assault on your family with a gun. Meanwhile, we never locked our own doors. It was very bizarre.
I remember how the paranoia about crime really came into play any time we’d go visit a city, and suddenly the tales of crime traded back and forth came into play. To hear people talk, city folk get mugged every time we cross the street, and unarmed women especially are targets. I’ve walked around the streets of El Paso, New York, San Francisco, Houston, Austin, whatever by myself and yet have encountered the violence that people back home seemed to believe was thick on the streets.
Since you reviewed a book that talked about “reframing” Amanda you seem to have got a bit stuck on that idea. The fact is The Rabid Right have not “reframed” their arguments on anything, they have merely modified their language in line with the politically correct tone required by the law.
The right set out to appeal to the most base of human instincts, a political tactic Niccolo Machiavelli would have recognised immediately.
If America’s liberals wan to beat the right, you have to define the argument, not “reframe” it.
FWIW, in Georgia, the gun lobby recently promoted a law that would allow gun owners to keep their gun in their car in the parking lot of their workplace. (Currently, employers can forbid that.)
The argument that they should be permitted to keep them was the one Amanda described - and a few high-profile workplace shootings were referenced as evidence of the necessity of having . . . more guns in the workplace.
Amanda -
I spend my days and nights in the midst of gun owners. I don’t have any friends who don’t own more than 1 gun. I don’t have any neighbors who don’t own guns. I don’t work with anyone who doesn’t own a gun. Our wives shoot, our kids hunt with us. I’ve never heard anyone speak in the way you are potraying conservatives to speak about guns.
I appreciate that the media covers the nuttiest gun advocates. The media force feeds us society’s violence, and then shows cowboy gun owners who say they’ll shoot first and ask questions later. But the myth is that those people are in any way representative of the vast majority of convservative gun owners who are sportsman or simly believe in gun rights as Constitutionally protected. The liberal/conservative departure on gun control sizes up as a rights vs cost to society for that right debate. Over 40% of US household have guns and 59M individuals own one. The vast majority of them do not live in places where they are likely to by attacked, therefor the vast majority of them do not think they are nor need to be Dirty Harry.
Hate to agree with Dr T but I worked in government and the slime that was my boss was only stopped by the thought that someone would end him. Think about that, the only restriction on his behavior was the fear that an armed citizen would shoot. Policies, procedures, laws…meant nothing.
If you research many of the shootings, you’ll find that the SCLM left out the long periods of bullying behaviors. Mostly by supervisors. Think sexual harassment at a job you can’t afford to leave and how much fun that can be.
Dover is a very Christian area with Amish, Mennonite, Dunkard, Brethren, and others. It is also left behind in the new economy. You used to be able to leave school at ninth grade and work in a plant for a decent wage. Now, if you stoopid, you work WalGod and live with mom. This was revenge of the stoopids.
Amanda, you’ve certainly convinced me to read Feldman’s book but doing a little reading on his website gives me a little doubt that I’ll accept his premises. So far I cannot accept that words are violence, though I’ve read several arguments that thay can be. Here’s what Feldman says (in small part) about Limbaugh’s “Operation Chaos”, which encourages rabid Republicans to vote in Democratic primaries for Hilary, to prolong the indecision:
In states that permit voters to cross lines in primaries, voting for someone you despise in a primary to help your favored candidate in the general election is completely fair game. It happened in 1994 in Virginia with Oliver North’s primary win over Marshall Coleman. Colemen ended up running as an independent in the general, split the Republican vote and Democrat Chuck “I just got a massage” Robb was reelected to his Senate seat.Feldman was also talking about Limbaugh’s expressed wishes for riots at the Democratic Convention, reflective of the 1968 convention. Limbaugh’s comments were deplorable on two grounds: first by mischaracterizing the Chicago riots as the fault of dissenters and demonstrators instead of the police riot that it was, and second by openly wishing for physical harm to come to his political opponents (and incidentally to law enforcement officers who might be hurt keeping the peace).
Deplorable as Limbaugh’s words were, they were neither violence nor incitements to violence.
I also disagree that the phrase “reverse racism” is an empty concept. I fully understand the argument that prejudice against whites cannot be racism because the minority is not part of the “power structure”, I just don’t agree with it.
I’m so bored, now, Dr. T. You fail to understand that I’m not a dreaded East Coast elitist, and you got egg in your face. Move along, and take your prejudices with you.
Actually, creationists love to say that evolution violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics.
Ian, your call for definition fits Amanda’s call for reframing rather well if you understand the origins of the term “framing”. I recommend this article. Salient quote:
There is no deliberative democracy, because the electorate is too disengaged and disorganized to prod officials to vote the public interest. An interested and organized advocacy group can always gain a disproportionate degree of influence in the political process.
That’s not a Democratic or Republican thing. It’s true if you are the NRA, it’s true if you’re the AARP, it’s true if you’re AIPAC, it’s true if you’re hedge fund managers or trial lawyers, or farmers or labor unions or gay rights.
The rational perspective on the gun control issue is that a textualist reading of the second amendment does not give the gun industry special protection from regulation. But the gun industry is by far the most motivated and well-funded player in the gun control issue.
Despite what the Mearscheimers and Walts of the world will tell you about the uncommon clout of Jewish cabals, many lobbying groups are extremely successful at influencing the policy in their areas of concern because a concentrated and engaged private interest will always defeat a diffuse and unconcerned public interest.
There is nobody who is for gun control as strongly and effectively as the gun industry opposes it, just like nobody opposes farm subsidies as strongly and effectively as farmers support them, just like nobody opposes defense spending as strongly as various defense contractors support it.
There is a tax loophole that predates current hedge fund structures, and allows fund managers to categorize their fees as capital gains instead of income, so some of these guys are taking home hundreds of millions of dollars and paying 15% in federal taxes.
Nobody has seen fit to close that loophole because the fund managers advocate strongly for keeping it open, and there are no forces marshalled on the other side who make it worthwhile for politicians to side against the fund managers.
This isn’t a conservative or liberal problem. It is a problem of the political process being subject to influence by anyone with the incentive and resources.
I am actually a pro-gun liberal. Sure, there should be reasonable restrictions on who buys them. Sure, there should be limitations on what types of weapons you can own. Yes, I have never had to face down an armed assailant or multiple assailants, and I may never.
But I have been threatened. I have been in situations where I think I was very vulnerable to attack, and fortunately, my would-be attackers have wussed out. I think that’s just luck, on my part.
And, if I’m ever in the situation where they don’t wuss out, it is much more likely to end favorably if I have a gun. I know a guy who started carrying (illegally) in a bad part of CA after two of his buddies got jumped by groups of men. Against a group, particularly of armed men, or against someone with a gun, it is about the only reasonable method of self-defense. And there is no indication that gun control has kept muggers, white supremacists, or gang members from having guns.
Of the people I met in my concealed carry class, some had pulled their weapons in self-defense, but most were focused on doing their best to avoid conflict while carrying. Because they knew that would end one of two ways. They display the gun, situation deescalates or, they display the gun, and they have to use it.
The only argument I find even remotely convincing. This administration has very clearly demonstrated the danger of undermining Constitutional guarantees, and doing so to any one of them just pushes us further down the slippery slope.
Of course, the question then becomes why people who will fight tooth and nail for their Constitutional right to bear arms generally don’t have a problem with the Executive overreaching his authority, warrantless wiretaps, and the gutting of habeas corpus.
Americans cannot protect themselves from the government with personally-owned guns. Your home-defense handgun doesn’t help much against a tank, let alone F-16’s. Hell, if it ever came to that point, what makes you think the government won’t turn to chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons to make some nasty examples?
By definition, a sport is something you don’t need to do. Besides, you’ve never heard of bowhunting?
Don’t kid yourself. This may be the least-reasonable (i.e. not at all) argument, and thus the one you would bring out last in a debate, but it’s always the one that comes up first, loudest, and often on its own when rallying the troops (especially when it comes time to shout down some effete lib’ruls).
You know, the funny thing is this: I don’t actually have that much of a problem with people owning guns. But most gun advocates are such rampaging assholes (Argument 4) and so clearly wrong (Arguments 2 and 3) or inconsistent (Argument 1) that it took me a while to realize that I didn’t necessarily agree with my “side” on this one. Still, fighting against people instead of for a cause is a bad way to approach the situation.
I have never known vanilla or chocolate to go well with book reviews.
Ugh… tastes like paper.
I think this Onion article speaks most eloquently on the issue…
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/28181
I mean, I’m very much opposed to gun violence, but there’s a little part of me which is still fascinated by the technology…
“Of course, the question then becomes why people who will fight tooth and nail for their Constitutional right to bear arms generally don’t have a problem with the Executive overreaching his authority, warrantless wiretaps, and the gutting of habeas corpus.”
Don’t be silly. The people you’re talking about had an enormous problem with it when that Executive was Clinton.
I took a personal day Monday and saw a daytime commercial from Dr. Alveda King that to me really embodies the disingenuous nature of violence based language. It used stats to try to link a disproportionate number of abortions being provided to black women to being a genocide against blacks in Georgia. The commercial pointed viewers to this site.
The site further conflates choice with “Class based Eugenics” policy at the capitol, and lists abortions as “death clinics,” neatly organized by county.
My mouth sits agape just from retrieving the memory.
Most of the gun owners I know are perfectly nice people.
The smarter ones are pissed about the way that everyone assumes gun control and no concealed carry permits lead to less crime, when they do not.
My fiance has pointed out that not one concealed carry permit holder has used it to commit a crime. Not one.
This is the one place where I think that some liberals (since we are usually so pro-rights) have blinders on because not many know gun owners. (Amanda, clearly, does not fit within this pattern.)
Amanda, do you think the DC law is wrong? And how do you feel about concealed carry permits (with background checks, cert. classes, etc.)?
Actually, it has resulted in some. Remember that group of four or five Jews who were attacked by a group of ten or so Christians on a NYC Q train last December when they responded to a “Merry Christmas” with “Happy Hannukkah” (during Hannukkah)?
Makes you want to go up to someone who promotes the “War On Christmas” rhetoric, point, and say “Look at what you helped do!”
I live in Illinois, grew up in the burbs and then moved out to a college town in the middle of a cornfield. Out here, the “dark men will come into your home and rape your wife” is very much the primary argument of gun owners. We have these obnoxious “guns save life” signs all over the place that pretty much all boil down to that argument, my dad the gun nut used that argument all the time, etc. The 2nd Amendment was relatively low on their reasons for wanting guns.
Jeez! Are we talking about gun-control or Feldmann’s new book? Here’s what Feldmann has to say about it:
You can read the full excerpt from Jeffrey Feldmann’s new book here.I find myself aligned with Ismone on the gun issue, though I do not own a gun and do not need one. I do think that those of us who want everyone to take the 1st and 4th amendments seriously should take the 2nd Amendment seriously, even if we might disagree with it. I am quite interested in the current case before the Court, since it is one of a homeowner wanting one in his house for protection.
My somewhat unformed view on the 2nd Amendment is that legislatures do have the power to pass gun control legislation. Otherwise, a broad interpretation of the 2nd Amendment would allow me to park a tank in my suburban driveway or a missile launcher with a nuclear warhead in my backyard. So while I think the D.C. gun control laws are unwise, they may not run afoul of the 2nd Amendment. It could be the court may fashion a ruling that the D.C. statutes are overly broad in that prohibiting carrying of guns in public is OK but prohibiting ownership or possession of guns in one’s own home is too restrictive.
I’m a left left left liberal AND a measured supporter of gun ownership. This is partly influenced by the fact that I was raised in GUNGUNGUNS Oklahoma, and partly because my GF happens to own more than one gun and I live in terror of her marksmanship ways. But seriously, I do support gun ownership but I also strongly favor reasonable limitations on said ownership.
That said, what Amanda says, and what Dr. T dishonestly refutes, is factual. I myself was raised around my father and his posse of right wing gun lovin’ “sportsmen.” And all of them, except my Dad who, right winger he may be, is not a liar, have stories about how they were in a bad (read: minority, usually black but now increasingly Mexican) part of town, or how they were in a dark parking lot, or how they were once at the DMV, and a bad (see above) person suddenly appeared holding a rock or knife or some other kind of weapon.
LO! AND BEHOLD, they had their firearm handy, which of course they were able to use not only to scare off the darkie, but also to refute whatever it was I’d just said about guns and prove once and for all that OMGZBBQWTFBLACKPEOPLE, I mean, the second amendment.
Seriously, the anecdotes could be, and frequently were, used in discussions of race relations or guns. Right wingers may be rigid, doctrinaire authoritarians, but no one can say they aren’t flexible.
They remind me of how in Shopping Malls throughout the south and midwest, you’ll find protelyzing Christians who all seem to have been abortion having, drug addicted satanists until they found jesus.
Point is, every single right wing nut job couldn’t give a fuck about the constitution, else they’d be strong supporters of amendments #4 and #1, at the very least. It’s really about projecting their impotent power fantasies and reveling (I mean literally, reveling. They enjoy being scared.) in fear. They expect society to break down any minute now and for it to revert back to something resembling the west, where of course, the white man with the gun is king.
And even my dad, who is scrupulously honest enough never to claim that he himself has experienced one of these magical guns-justifying attackoftheblacks stories, still repeats the stories other people have told him, and believes them to be factual.
But SL, the DC gun laws are an outright ban on owning a handgun, even in the home. I think that is pretty unreasonable. (How could people use handguns in their own home to hurt people? And yes, I know guns are dangerous, but when I went through basic, it was the NRA members who were safe, and the ignoramuses who had never handled a gun who were not.)
I think it is also interesting that a lot of people are criticizing gun owners, and their stated reasons for why they want guns, while seemingly conceding that the 2nd amendment protects some form of gun ownership. So who cares if they make bad arguments? Even dumbasses deserve rights.
I’m a left left left liberal AND a measured supporter of gun ownership. This is partly influenced by the fact that I was raised in GUNGUNGUNS Oklahoma, and partly because my GF happens to own more than one gun and I live in terror of her marksmanship ways. But seriously, I do support gun ownership but I also strongly favor reasonable limitations on said ownership.
That said, what Amanda says, and what Dr. T dishonestly refutes, is factual. I myself was raised around my father and his posse of right wing gun lovin’ “sportsmen.” And all of them, except my Dad who, right winger he may be, is not a liar, have stories about how they were in a bad (read: minority, usually black but now increasingly Mexican) part of town, or how they were in a dark parking lot, or how they were once at the DMV, and a bad (see above) person suddenly appeared holding a rock or knife or some other kind of weapon.
LO! AND BEHOLD, they had their firearm handy, which of course they were able to use not only to scare off the darkie, but also to refute whatever it was I’d just said about guns and prove once and for all that OMGZBBQWTFBLACKPEOPLE, I mean, the second amendment.
Seriously, the anecdotes could be, and frequently were, used in discussions of race relations or guns. Right wingers may be rigid, doctrinaire authoritarians, but no one can say they aren’t flexible.
They remind me of how in Shopping Malls throughout the south and midwest, you’ll find protelyzing Christians who all seem to have been abortion having, drug addicted satanists until they found jesus.
Point is, every single right wing nut job couldn’t give a fuck about the constitution, else they’d be strong supporters of amendments #4 and #1, at the very least. It’s really about projecting their impotent power fantasies and reveling (I mean literally, reveling. They enjoy being scared.) in fear. They expect society to break down any minute now and for it to revert back to something resembling the west, where of course, the white man with the gun is king.
And even my dad, who is scrupulously honest enough never to claim that he himself has experienced one of these magical guns-justifying attackoftheblacks stories, still repeats the stories other people have told him, and believes them to be factual.
I bought a gun one time. Unfortunately it didn’t actually make my penis any larger, so I returned it.
Because the whole point of the post is about how Conservatives frame their arguments, with fearmongering and fightin’ words. Gun control is just one example, one that’s rather taking over the thread. The point is not whether Americans should have the right to bear arms, but that the primary argument against any restrictions on that right is “dark-skinned people will come and invade your home and take your stuff and rape your wife and daughters. And then government troops under the command of the UN will sweep in in their black helicopters to mop up the survivors.” Even this wouldn’t be that important if it weren’t part of a much larger pattern. Right-wingers use this kind of rhetoric on every issue.
Personally, I think the “War On Christmas” is a much better example, as no actual rights are at stake (for the “oppressed Christians”, anyway), and it has resulted in at least one incident of actual “war”.
I was trying to agree with you. Sorry if I wasn’t clear. Your quoted statement is why I think the DC case before the Court is so interesting. I was trying to suggest that banning gun possession in the home was an overly broad ban. I am leaning toward a belief that localities (or states) should be allowed to restrict or permit gun possession in public according to the majority rule in those locations.I remember watching the “Wyatt Earp” and “Tombstone”movies and thinking about gun control. The filmmakers certainly sided with Earp on banning guns in the town except in the hands of officers. Keeping guns in the house wasn’t addressed (nor was the idea of a store owner in town keeping a gun behind the bar or store counter).
Interesting discussion, and it goes to show that Dr T’s conceit of “convservative gun owners” and a “liberal/conservative departure on gun control” is a vast oversimplification if not an outright lie.
So, are leftist gun advocates the only Americans who care about the whole Bill of Rights?
A shotgun is a better home-protection weapon than a handgun. The noise it makes is nice deterrent. That alone will scare off many baddies. Second, when scared & in the dark, you do not have to aim it very well. So I do not have much of a problem with handgun bans.
I don’t think that is in violation of the second amendment because of the often-overlooked phrase “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State…”
That said, I do favor well-regulated personal gun ownership. I think two levels of licensing is needed. 1 for the gun owner, who should have to pass regular safety checks, like driver licenses. The second would be for the gun itself, similar to the vehicle registrations required by most, if not all states. It too should have to pass regular inspection like vehicles.
Erp. Good point, seraph. I get on a tangent and sometimes forget about the ACTUAL POST I AM COMMENTING ON. My bad.
And that is so true about the war on Christmas. I find it utterly ridiculous. The funnier thing about it, is my fundie relatives are so against commercial displays of Christmas that they walk out of stores because they think it is a travesty. (But, they’d like to replace the first 10 amendments with the 10 commandments, and more importantly, selected passages from leviticus, so I guess I shouldn’t point to them as being in any way reasonable.)
I have heard those OMG blackattack! stories mostly in the context of straightforward race baiting. My response was to point out that the men who have threatened me have all been WHITE. But just like that doesn’t mean I get to go around hating on all white men, they don’t get to go around hating on all members of their pet group.
Ron O–I won’t go into the meaning of that phrase, cuz I don’t want to threadjack, but I think the handgun v. shotgun thing is mixed (clearing a room with a shotgun = more likelihood intruder can grab barrel and gain control of weapon).
And Amen about the war on science thing. It makes me CRAZY. My dad (a physicist, and bio. aficionado) doesn’t understand why I am so ANGRY over the whole evolution thing. These people are not smart enough to lead, and yet, they do.
I’m not big on gun control. However, the vast majority of people I’ve met who have concealed carry licenses creep me the fuck out. I remember how men would come to the bank when I worked there and present that as identification, and it always had this vibe to it like they were showing you their penis. In a sense, I suppose, that’s what the thrill was for them.
But I have a question. Does he address the violent language that Liberal men often use toward women? Or does that just get a pass?
yeah, that makes a lot of sense. There was one obnoxiously macho woman in the class, and a few of the men (one wore a bullet around his neck) so I see your point. Most of the men I met were older and low key and responsible-seeming.
That’s the problem with blowhards. . .
“Americans cannot protect themselves from the government with personally-owned guns. Your home-defense handgun doesn’t help much against a tank, let alone F-16’s. Hell, if it ever came to that point, what makes you think the government won’t turn to chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons to make some nasty examples?”
Five years ago I could see how people would buy into this argument, but now? We have before our eyes a very clear and very costly refutation of this. If the Iraqis don’t need tanks or F-16s to cause serious trouble for the US Gov’t it stands to reason we wouldn’t either.
“Five years ago I could see how people would buy into this argument, but now? We have before our eyes a very clear and very costly refutation of this. If the Iraqis don’t need tanks or F-16s to cause serious trouble for the US Gov’t it stands to reason we wouldn’t either.”
So, when was it exactly that the Iraqi populace rose up all on their own against Saddam and overthrew him?
I must have missed that one…
Lack of brute force has never been our problem in Iraq. Whenever the militias present us with an actual target, we stomp it flat. Of course, the friends, neighbors, and kin of the militia members we just killed, who may have been neutral or even friendly toward us before, then turn against us…
Our problem in Iraq is that we’re trying to establish an independent, secular democracy where all of the assorted tribal and religious groups settle their differences peacefully in a place that has no tradition of any of the above. Worse, we’re trying to impose these changes, which require cooperation and the winning of hearts and minds, as an invading force.
It was doomed from the get-go.
If we wanted, we could rule Saddam Hussein style: annihilate the populations the militias disappear into and draw their numbers from. Use the nastiest weapons at our disposal (in his case chemical, in our case nuclear) to make examples of whole communities. We could do it. We’ve done it before. And it would work. But we’re not quite that far gone. Yet.
If it ever came to brave, pistol-packin’ American homeowners fending off the tanks outside his home, we would be.
The biggest problem with the whole “I need a weapon to protect myself from the government” is that using weapons against the government is broadly recognized as illegitimate political power. Walking into town hall with a loaded weapon and demanding political change would have you condemned by… well… everyone.
Look at how far the Bush regime has gone, and yet there’s no violence in the streets. No rioting. We still run into a significant portion of the populace that either support Bush, and an even larger portion that will elect McCain for more of the same. Even if the president declared martial law and suspended the constitution, enough of the populace would support the president to make any attempted revolution into a bloody and protracted civil war. The guns will be used often as not on your neighbours as your government.
When it comes down to it, the second amendment will never defend the Constitution the way the first amendment does.The ability to participate in, change, and hold accountable the government is a far more effective control than all the privately stocked munitions in the world. I think the Founding fathers, in their infinite wisdom, made a mistake in listing the right to bear arms without infringement a core principal of the US constitution.
Of course, trying to convince people of that one is a lost cause. =P I’m also not for a total ban on weapons. I think they should be licensed, registered and the owners subject to training in their use, care and safety. But with the power of the NRA and the paranoid style of American politics, I can’t see that happening.
How could people use handguns in their own home to hurt people?
Is that a joke?
Considering how many (most?) deliberate shootings, not accidents, involve immediate family members, I’d think the answer to this would be obvious. Point and shoot, just like you would outside the home.
Of course, you’d have to really, really hate someone to do that. To hate someone that much, it’s almost necessary that that person be blood kin or a spouse.
I believe guns are not a problem in the rural areas where I grew up. I started shooting one when I was ten, and got my license at that age. The fact that I haven’t shot one in a decade and am STILL eligible for the damn concealed carry license creeps me out.
In the city where I went to college, they are a huge problem.
In the countryside, everyone had guns. We had several lying around in our house, until there was an “incident” with us that made my parents lock them up. People did stupid things with them, (like shooting out the windows of local cars), but there weren’t really lots of homicides or accidental killings. And having a gun to “protect yourself” from criminals? Please. No one would bother to lock their door at night!
On the south side of Chicago, teenagers got shot every week.
In the countryside, if I freaked out because I heard noises downstairs and started shooting, there was a lot of space between me and the neighbors.
In the city, where there was actual crime, if I had a gun and shot four bullets into an actual criminal in my apartment (who was probably just there to steal my TV), the other two would go… where? Into the downstairs apartments, where my neighbors slept, or across the hall where six people were eating dinner.
This is how four-year-olds die in gang-shootings. Gangbangers don’t aim at four-year-olds. Their bullets go astray where one city block contains as many people as my hometown’s downtown, and it’s much more likely that there’s a person in the way. Namely, they go astray into nearby basement apartments where local four-year-olds are doing homework.
Besides, the NRA always told *me*, in my education programs, that I should store my gun locked up and my ammunition locked up seperately. By the time I wake up, identify that the person in my apartment is not actually my roommate, unlock the gun safe, unlock the ammo safe, load the gun, and take aim, I could have been swinging away with the baseball bat.
I know that smoking is not as constitutionally protected as guns are, but I’d really rather take my chances with your secondhand smoke than your stray bullets. And please don’t kid yourself about your aim, people. Handguns, in the dark, when you’re freaked out and trying to hit a dude who’s moving around quickly? They won’t all hit, and my walls are thin.
I propose a compromise: Have them in Rednecksvillia, but don’t bring your guns to town.
Okay, that really was a dumb question. I meant more along the lines of committing crimes against others, but it is true that people do commit crimes against their partners, children, parents and other cohabitants.
As far as the guns used in drivebys–how many do you think were legally purchased? There is a huge black market for guns, and I don’t think it is average people who buy guns legally who are going about shooting up neighborhoods.
Thank you, Amanda. I had never heard of this book. I have never felt like I had an adequate response to the taunting excesses of Coulter, Savage, and sometimes Limbaugh. At least, I may gain a little understanding. It seems like I am being trolled whenever I encounter their words, tempted and dared to lower myself to their level where the shedding of civility and any pretense of listening is passing for honesty.
I sometimes enter the shouting matches and later notice that just by entering, I lost. These are awfully fucked up people and the propagate their illness.
the feldman book is a clear must-read for me.
You may be right about the wan reception the science book got but it only illustrates the growing divide between adequate scientific literacy and where most people are at…the science even leaves a few scientists behind now and then. Unlike the territory covered by Feldman, I feel fairly strong and happy to wade in to the fray for the sake of science.
ms anon. my gun-life was almost a carbon copy of yours.
My dad was an NRA life member and saftey instructor. i grew up on a farm and owned a rifle the day I turned 12 [the legal age for hunting in CA back in the day]
I wouldn’t care one way or the other if one were in the house…it would be locked down. but the ms won’t have them. No big deal.
every month when National Rifleman magazine arived I drooled over the mech-eng. porn of the exploded drawing of semiautomatic gun mechanisms. I read the one story each issue had of some brave home owner or shop keeper whose gun had foiled a break-in. When I started grad school in Boston, the facts were all around me and in the news. On a farm you never hear that over a thousand people per month are injured and 300 kids DIE per month from handgun accidents and suicides…that is just people under 19.
the illusion of saftey conjured by a gun grows from the illusion of danger conjured by “news” that assumes only homicides are of interest and science, academic pursuits, art and successful cooperations are booooring.