It isn’t just the body count: Why the gun debate in the US is so important for America today.
Anyone with a social media account, TV, or radio is well aware of how emotionally charged and passionate the debate about guns in America is today. The passions felt in this debate are not just contained by the borders of the United States. For years now, I have lived in Europe and found that they also have very strong opinions and empathy for the victims of gun violence. For many people (myself included), the gun violence debate in the US is vital, particularly for the United States, and the reasons why go far deeper than just a body count and address how we — as a nation — want to debate and enact changes in our country.
In the US, we are thrown into fits of political rage every time a mass shooting occurs. Our social media pages immediately convert into a battleground of opinions, statistics, and debates. While most of us will tend to see positions that agree with us because we 1) tend to associate with like minds and 2) are subject to the algorithms of Facebook and Twitter that tend to promote congruent information for advertising purposes. Yet, we are all aware of the few people who do not share our view.
Oftentimes, I am one of those people. Many of my friends (if not most) online and in reality, are gun-control supporters. When a mass shooting occurs, my news feed becomes painted with news reports of the atrocity, shortly followed by a flurry of opinion pieces suggesting how tighter gun control measures will solve the issue. This more recent shooting in Florida has started to show something else to me though. That we are further from rational debate in the US than ever.
I’ve seen, from multiple sources now, allegations that the second amendment was only put in place for the repression of minorities, that whites only own guns to kill unarmed blacks, that the second amendment is part of a complex of hyperactive white privilege, and that no “civilized” person would ever support the second amendment.
These narratives, however they might “feel” to a certain political demographic, are quite dangerous. For example, the idea that the second amendment was ratified to support slavery. This notion seems to fall apart when you realize that Virginia (the largest historical slave holding state in the US) was one of the last to ratify the second amendment, while Vermont (a state which had constitutionally abolished slavery) had ratified it before Virginia. The idea that white people are only owning guns because they fear minorities doesn’t hold up. FBI statistics demonstrate that most murders are within the same race, a black man is far more likely to be killed by another black man than he is a white man.
These narratives are not just dangerous because of their factual inaccuracies. Factual inaccuracies can be corrected. The issue is that they are ideological narratives that utilize single uses to support an idea that those who disagree with them are not a part of their outgroup. This, is the true danger.
America needs the gun debate now more than ever because mass shootings take the ideological extremes of the US and push them deep into their respective corners, and as they do so, they circle the wagons, looking for any possible “defector” or “apostate” who doesn’t believe as they do. After the non-believer has been found, a multitude of individuals can then barrage them with small, often logically inconsistent, anecdotes and points that are in themselves rather weak but “feel” as if they work toward a single argument.
However, this is not how a strong argument is made. This is related to a fallacy colloquially known as “kettle logic” where multiple inconsistent positions are used to defend a position. More recently, some have begun saying that the second amendment is the result of white privilege when there are no aspects of the second amendment extended exclusively to any one racial demographic. Noting that counterargument then makes you personally guilty of defending white privilege in the eyes of many. This trends toward a logical fallacy known as Kafkatrapping, which is when denial of guilt becomes evidence of guilt (as in cases where white people note that they may not have been privy to some type of white privilege it makes them guilty of white privilege).
Yet, violating a sacred flag such as the identity politics of modern America can sometimes be akin to poking a proverbial hornets nest. Doing so can bring out friends of friends so distant even the original host of a social media debate doesn’t know who they are — or why they’re choosing their social media page to defend an idea. The resulting barrage can — at times — result in what is called “gish gallop”. Gish gallop is when a bunch of erroneous points are presented quickly, creating the illusion of a good argument. As when someone might post something questioning the how useful it is to state that all gun-rights supporters are guilty of wanting children to die (something a quick twitter search can easily exemplify for you). Stating that you don’t can result in a backlash of 200-character snippets, memes, and images (none of which need to be true) that combined, give the illusion of a massive takedown. Death by 1000 stings.
The most dangerous trap that the US risks today though aren’t these nuances of debate and logic, its simple hard-headedness. In philosophy there is a thing called “argumentum ad nauseam” which basically means that the same argument is stated over and over again and the argument should be taken true because it is so often repeated. The clearest example of this that I can think of is the idea that the second amendment doesn’t cover anything more dangerous than a musket because the founding father’s didn’t know about machine guns. This is patently false.
Yet, people appear to believe it because it is constantly repeated. This repetition doesn’t make it more correct, it makes it more popular. But we can all think of popular, country wide movements that were wrong, despite being supported widely (such as slavery or fascism)
The issue here though is that, in the US today, the arguments being presented are becoming increasingly ideological. Presenting or sharing news, opinions, or memes signalling support for gun control or gun rights is not about provoking debate or trying to make a factual statement. This information is spreading because it signals to others that we hold a certain ideological position and, if they too share this position, we are part of the same group.
This is increasingly dangerous. What it does is create the effect of: “you’re either with me or against me”. You are either in the group and signal that you support _______ regarding guns, or you do not. There is therefore no foundation for debate because the information we spread isn’t open to debate, its “sacred” in our minds and therefore, much like the beliefs of a devoutly religious man, they are immovable, unquestionable, and unassailable. If one attempts to suggest otherwise, they are a heretic or an apostate.
In the US, like it or not, part of the country wants to regulate guns — this includes total bans on firearms. Part of the country doesn’t want to regulate guns — this includes the right to own anything. Somewhere between one extreme and the other is a rational position that is worth entertaining. The issue is that if we only focus on guns when we’re emotionally charged and preoccupied with signalling about our political in-group (and dehumanizing any dissent) then we will never have progress on the issue.
So, I think the first thing that we have to do is start caring about the gun debate more. This sounds counterintuitive, I know. But at the moment, we only care about guns when the body count rises in a suburban white neighbourhood. Thousands of people are dying in economically depressed areas in the US, many of them minorities. The US desperately needs to have a real debate about the topic, but it needs to be an honest and factually based debate. Not one fuelled by emotional arguments and in-group signalling.
Before you think that this is just something happening on social media, stop and see what is happening in state houses throughout the country. In a now-viral speech by Virginia Delegate Nick Freitas, he discusses how instead of having a debate, in-group slandering and ad hominem arguments (personal attacks) are promoted at the expense of the debate we need to have.
Now, you don’t have to agree with Freitas’ support for guns or with his solutions (I don’t agree with him either). But the fact that the gun debate in the US requires that a delegate stand up and request basic respect, decency, and facts is deeply troubling. It may well be the case that he identifies with a different political party than you and I, but how does that make his argument any less valuable than ours? The logic of his argument might not be as should or his ideas may be flawed — but that is the level where the debate should be.
So, I think the key now is to have the debate when its “out of season”. Don’t just wait to debate firearms and policy laws when the body count bumps up through a tragic loss of lives. Debate it every day, every day when there are young black men killed on our inner-city streets, every day when someone takes their own life, every day when an accident maims an untrained person. Our constitution doesn’t enshrine “fair-weather” rights, they don’t take days off. Our duties as citizens don’t get days off either.
