In the recent debates and discussions on the politics of gun rights in USA, I’ve noticed a distinct pattern. Both sides have their fears, and as in all arguments – both sides need to be listened to. Ultimately, (and this is not happening now), you need to address and appease both…. but before you get to appeasing, you have to ACKNOWLEDGE the root cause of the fear.
Unfortunately, that’s where we are stuck now. I suspect, as a society.
Here’s a breakdown of the fears; as I see them, on both sides :
PRO-GUN :
I. Fear of a tyrannical organized entity (government) overstepping
2. Fear for self defense
3. Fear of other rights being eroded, using the 2A as a gateway (this is different from first one. this is dealing with the bureaucracy… first one deals with government violent reactions to civilians).
ANTI-GUN :
I. Fear gun folks will go crazy and hurt people with said firearms
2. Fear gun folks make a mistake and hurt people with said firearms.
Most of these are acknowledged. doesn’t mean resolved. pro Gun folks often talk of training, and understand the need for background checks… ya know, to see if someone crazy. so Pro-Gun, at least TRIES to acknowledge the fears of Anti-Gun (debatable how successful).
Anti-Gun tries to also acknowledge the fears of the Pro-Gun folks. For #3, they state repeatedly, that not all rights are absolute, and surely some amendments get changed over time. Plus they bring up how the founding fathers never imagined the guns in existence today. May not solve the issue, but they acknowledge the existence of the concern of more rights being eroded.
also, #2… they acknowledge. just the statement “you don’t need xyz to defend yourself. no one needs that many bullets!” again, while we may disagree… it’s an acknowledgement of the issue that one needs some form of self defense. they offer alternatives and solutions. whether good or not is different topic.
the problem is #1. Whenever this comes up… it’s blatantly ignored. the answer, almost always … when one is given… is “how would a pistol protect against a tyrannical government with tanks and drones?” see…. the issue with that; is that it’s saying “yeah if feds wanna terrorize us…. we just screwed”. that’s NOT acknowledging the problem. there’s zero attempt to even deny the issue or to appease the fear. I’m not going to go into how feds are afraid of civilians in USA… because that’s not the problem.
If anti-gun folks want to make any traction, I believe they need to try to start acknowledging this fear- that we are at risk of a tyrannical government overstepping. without that… pro-gun folks won’t even begin to hear the conversation.
after these things get acknowledged… then the actual bickering and arguing can begin.
For Reference, the Bill of Rights : https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/bill-of-rights-transcript