{"id":8585,"date":"2018-02-24T20:22:15","date_gmt":"2018-02-25T02:22:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/?p=8585"},"modified":"2018-02-24T20:23:22","modified_gmt":"2018-02-25T02:23:22","slug":"ostracizing-gun-owners-not-fast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2018\/02\/ostracizing-gun-owners-not-fast.html","title":{"rendered":"Ostracizing gun owners? Not so fast."},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/p>\n

It\u2019s all over the news lately \u2014 or all over twitter, anyway:\u00a0 the reports cheering various companies\u2019 announcements<\/a> that they are pulling out of NRA discount programs.\u00a0 And there are calls to repeal the Second Amendment and proposals that the right path forward to end the scourge of gun violence is a gun confiscation program like that of Australia or Great Britain, plus \u201cmodest proposals\u201d to succeed in the long term\u00a0by, in the short-term, placing a stigma on gun ownership similar to that of cigarette smoking, as something no civilized person would do, with the end goal that gun owners become the minority and, as such, no matter how politically active they are, lose their power, so that, eventually, Congress can implement all gun control regulation that the Supreme Court sees fit to permit and, eventually, either by means of 2A repeal or by placing on the Supreme Court justices who overturn decisions that find in favor of an individual right to gun ownership, can ban gun ownership entirely.<\/p>\n

Now, I don\u2019t have links \u2014 for as much as I\u2019ve seen on facebook and twitter, nothing\u2019s popping up as google-search hits.\u00a0 And maybe this just means that a few fringe posts\/tweets are getting passed around, and it signifies nothing.\u00a0 Maybe the ones who win the day will be people who simply believe background checks should be tighter and uniformly applicable, and something akin to a \u201cgun violence restraining order<\/a>\u201d should be put into place.<\/p>\n

But CNN\u2019s nonstop promotion of the gun control activists\u2019 cause has me spooked.\u00a0 My worry isn\u2019t even that we\u2019ll have some sort of mass confiscation effort.\u00a0 And the Second Amendment isn\u2019t something that I\u2019m particularly passionate about \u2014 in a way, the idea of repealing it and establishing gun control legislation worries me more insofar as it would signal a dramatic change in the very character of America.\u00a0 But my greater worry is that the impact of the new energy the gun control movement now has will produce greater divisions in American society.\u00a0 Rather than legions of American gun owners, who use those guns for hunting, recreational target-shooting, or who carry them or keep them at home for self-defense, re-committing themselves to safe gun storage or choosing alternate hobbies, will they instead feel threatened by \u201cgun grabbers\u201d?\u00a0 Will this be yet another unbridgeable divide, as gun rights supporters believe their rights are under attack, and gun controllers believe that gun owners, by refusing to surrender their weapons, are doing wrong and deserve condemnation?<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll go back to Megan McArdle\u2019s concluding thoughts in her column on Friday<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Which means that whatever Danish-style institutions you like, you can\u2019t get them by angrily vilifying the half of the country that disagrees with you. These institutions, it turns out, can\u2019t be built with policy papers or political activism. They can only be built through better interactions with each other, one neighbor at a time.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Maybe it\u2019s just the middle child in me \u2014 I really don\u2019t like confrontation.\u00a0 But it worries me that this new \u201clisten to the students\u201d activism could end up marginalizing a significant portion of the population and categorizing them as \u201cpeople whose well-being doesn\u2019t matter because they are wrongthinkers,\u201d in the same way as the white working-class Bubbas had been discarded as not morally worthy because of their (presumed) racism.\u00a0 And it has the potential for creating another us vs. them division, or magnifying existing divisions, when we really need to begin to repair them.<\/p>\n

So what do we do, then?<\/p>\n

Anti-gun types are saying, of the proposal to allow teachers to be armed, \u201cit wouldn\u2019t do any good.\u201d\u00a0 But I\u2019m not convinced there would be any harm in allowing that subset of teachers, however small it is, who already concealed-carry and have a good grounding in gun safety, to choose, if they wish, to carry at school, perhaps with some additional certification requirement so as to ensure that they have an appropriate level of training.\u00a0 Claims that they might injure someone in the cross-fire, or that they wouldn\u2019t be able to take down a well-armed shooter, or that they would put their own life at risk \u2014 well, the last of these is the point, really, isn\u2019t it, to allow those teachers who view themselves as protectors to have a greater chance, at least, than without any arms at all?\u00a0 And in a situation such as that in Parkland, every life counts, and if, instead of 17, only 16 might have died, it\u2019s still \u201cworth it,\u201d isn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n

At the same time, gun-rights supporters are saying, of proposals to ban high capacity magazines, that they would do no good, because (a) there are too many out there already, (b) it\u2019s possible to fashion such a magazine with a 3D printer, and (c) skilled marksmen can change magazines quickly.\u00a0 But I\u2019m not persuaded that such a ban would actively do harm, and maybe, at the margins, there would be some benefit.<\/p>\n

Likewise, anti-gun folk say that we need to require background checks for every single gun sale or transfer, even among private parties?\u00a0 Is this really such a terrible idea \u2014 if the system could be set up to be minimally burdensome, rather than maximally so?\u00a0 And the pro-gun-rights folk say that we need to get a lot better about enforcing existing laws, and to be honest, it\u2019s not clear to me whether failures in enforcement are due to generic bureaucratic incompetence, or fundamental indifference, or an intentional decision to avoid imprisoning people.<\/p>\n

So it seems to me that we need a \u201cboth\/and\u201d approach, at least at the margins, no?<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Own image \u2013 from the post, \u201cMy husband, gun owner<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s all over the news lately \u2014 or all over twitter, anyway:\u00a0 the reports cheering various companies\u2019 announcements that they are pulling out of NRA discount programs.\u00a0 And there are calls to repeal the Second Amendment and proposals that the right path forward to end the scourge of gun violence is a gun confiscation program […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[252,644],"class_list":["post-8585","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-guns","tag-mass-shootings"],"yoast_head":"\nOstracizing gun owners? 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