The Disturbing Trend in the 2nd Amendment Debate

With regard to the Second Amendment, we are struggling with the debate because we assume solid logic will win an emotional debate.  

The first thing any marketing or sales training teaches is that emotions motivate people, not logic. 

When defending the Second Amendment, often the defense is presented as a litnay of logical facts.  Meanwhile the anti-gun folks, make an emotional plea about the lost life of a child, even though it may be a violent 17 year old gang banger. 

We can discuss statistics all day long.  Unarmed cities have higher violent crime rates.  There is probably a statistic out there that says less than .00x% of all gun deaths were caused by guns without human involvement.  (ie got bounded around in a car or something.)  Hence, statistically we can prove guns don’t kill people; people kill people.

We can point out that there are hundreds of gun laws on the books and that adding more will no more make violent crime go away than making droughts illegal will prevent crop failures.

The arguments fall on deaf ears.  To someone who has bought into the emotional arguments about gun violence, the last thing that will reach them is logic or statistics.  For them, it is impossible to get past the lost child.

It is not unlike the debate over DDT.  Until it was banned, death from mosquito borne malaria was all but eradicated.  Since being banned, millions of people, including children suffer and die from malaria.   But there is no outcry because we have saved some poor insects that were suffering at the hands of the evil western chemists.

Maslow and the Tombstone Syndrome
Consider Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs.  The farther we get away from survival, the more our attention is drawn to self-actualization and fulfilment.  

When survival is at stake, we want Wyatt Earp and his brothers  in our town cleaning up the bad guys.   And, we are glad to have them there . . . Until, lacking evil bad guys, the Earp’s coarseness stands out in deference to our refined, kinder, gentler, self-actualized society.   So we run them out of town.  Good riddance!

As gun owners and enthusiasts, are we not a bit like the Earps?  

The fact that we believe people have the right and responsibility to defend themselves offends the “evolved” citizen that decries “can’t we all just get along?”

The fact we feel (on occasion)  it takes deadly force or at least the threat of deadly force to protect ourselves, makes us appear savage to our kinder, gentler, neighbors who feel there is no greater protection than having 911 on speed dial.

So Why Do Guns Get the Bad Wrap Instead of the Bad Guy?
Like it or not our brains are wired up to take random events and ascribe some logic or meaning.  Pure randomness offends our thinking. 

Have you ever know someone who, after an accident, tortured themselves with “if only I had done X, this would not have happened?”  

They feel that if they would have left earlier, later, had more sleep or whatever they could have avoided the accident.   They believe their actions (or lack of them) caused the  event.  Brains want a cause for every effect, and lacking a “real” cause, they fabricate their own.

So as people evolve, and in their minds, rise above violence, their perception of the world gets distorted.  From their perspective it is easy to assume that people are always good.   And, good people cannot possibly succumb to violence without a cause.  

To them, genetic dice cannot randomly turn out a truly bad person, therefore there must be a cause.  Hence, GUNS are the problem, if we didn’t have them, people wouldn’t shoot people? Children wouldn’t die. 

But, if there is violence, it must be because we have just not tried hard enough to love each other.  Randomness has nothing to do with violence, it must be lack or nurturing, poor parenting, some other misfortune. 

Personally, I don’t care if Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, or some low life home invader was forced to eat shoe leather as a two year old.   Millions of people consistently rise  above incredible suffering to live within society. 

So if the scumbags are suffering so much that they feel compelled to commit horrific crimes, put them out of their misery and move on.  They will be happier and society will be better for it.

The Disturbing Reality: Facts Mean Nothing
Are you familiar with the  Civilian Gun Self-Defense Blog?  It is a great site full of the information we instinctively understand, but is completely lost on the “ban the guns crowd.“

If logic and facts fail to persuade, what are we to do?

• How do you argue with people who will gladly sacrifice freedom for a false sense of security?
• Why is it becoming a seemingly more “conservative” issue, when in fact no ideology is safe in an unarmed society?
• How do we discuss self-defense and gun issues with those who prefer to take no personal responsibility for their own safety or actions?
• How do we change the thinking of people who are too lazy or unwilling to think for themselves?
• How do we have an honest debate when the need to fil 24 hours of news results in endless rehashing of random acts?
• How do we have an honest debate, when political camps are so homogeneous, they must trump up divisive points of view just to carve out a niche?

Granted, the battle is not over.  Maybe, given Obama’s slippery positions on many issues, people will realize what’s at stake.  Certainly gun sales are on the rise.

Have you ever known someone who had a near fatal heart attack?  All of a sudden they are telling you how you should eat.   Will it be the same with the people who feel a diet of mainstream media is a source of relevant news?  Will they have a change of heart as the Constitution suffers a potentially fatal attack of apathy?

Why is it, people spend a fortune on insurances to mitigate some potential damage of some statistically improbable catastrophic event, but in the face of losing Constitutional Freedoms, will not even invest the time to understand the issues.