For some reason, TJ’s book made me want to play liberal Devil’s Advocate and revisit the gun control impulse.
Impulse is indeed what it’s all about. Return once again to this remark by Philadelphia’s Police Commissioner:
At this point, right now, we have over 32,000 people in Philly who have permits to carry (and) actually walk the streets of Philly with a gun. We only have 6,400 police officers. We’re outnumbered nearly 5-to-1 with people who are on the streets with guns…
The liberal impulse is to take away all guns, starting with the most law abiding of all gun owners — the carefully selected and screened group of citizens who are allowed to carry concealed.
Yet I think if they were honest, they’d recognize that these people are not the problem. They are not the ones with the oft-described penchant for getting into arguments which can only be resolved by gunfire. (Or, as the chief’s equation goes, argument plus presence of firearm equals murder.)
What I think is being missed is the central moral aspect of the argument for gun control. A communitarian one, and an often unacknowledged one, but one which we disregard at our peril. I do not mean to make the case for gun control here, but I think there is something that no one wants to admit, and it is highlighted by the stark absurdity of Commissioner Johnson’s sincere plea to go after the law abiding gun owners.
Some people are, for lack of a better word, impulsive. Ruled by impulse. Whether you call it “victims of the emotions,” whatever it is, they exist. In fact, they’re all over the place, and their numbers are growing. Lest anyone think I’m referring to uneducated people or poor people, think again. For years I lived in Berkeley, one of the best-educated cities in the world, and never have I seen so many impulsive people. People I’d never trust anywhere near a gun.
People who (ironically) wanted to take away my guns.
Just as there are people who should never take a drink, there are people who should never own a gun. Yet we allow the sale of liquor, and we allow the sale of guns. Why? Because this is a free country, and one which believes in the right to keep and bear arms, the right to self defense, and whose founders once hinted that there might be such a thing as the right to pursue happiness.
What that means is that people who can’t control their impulses will buy guns, they will get into arguments, and they will then use the guns to settle these arguments.
Communitarians argue that the presence of irresponsible people alongside responsible people means that we must take away all guns — in a top-down manner — from the most responsible first, and then work our way down. I think this is a dangerously irresponsible argument, but we can’t begin to address it unless we recognize the problem.
Impulse.
I hate to think that this country is on a collision course between the more-impulsive (the irresponsible) and the more controlled (the responsible), but I do think it lies at the center of the gun control debate.
To not recognize it is to not recognize reality.
That’s irresponsible in itself.
Anyway, this division lies at the heart of so many problems which plague me and which cause such bitter divisions between “responsible” libertarians (who think the communitarians encourage irresponsibility by having government nanny statism) and the “irresponsible” communitarians (who think libertarians encourage irresponsibility by opposing government nanny statism). I see this hopeless division in debates over so many things. Like cell phones, pit bulls, Internet pornography, even tolerance for gays. (Let’s face it, some people can handle shit, others can’t.)
My own view is that there are people so impulsive that they’re in need of protection. There always have been, and always will be.
But they’re not going to protect me, are they? Does that mean I should protect them from themselves (supposedly to avoid my having to protect myself against them)?
Even if this comes at the cost of my freedom?
I can’t think of anything more irresponsible.
Others disagree, and think I should give up freedom to protect people from themselves.
I understand the impulse, but understanding it doesn’t make it right.
Comments
5 responses to “But who’s responsible for impulses?”
Excellent post. The Cheif doesn’t go on to say that almost no CCW holder uses their weapon to commit a crime. Recent studies by Gary Kleck, Don Kates, and Joyce Lee Malcolm found that permit holders are nearly 100 times less likely to commit any crime than non-permit holders. Those gun carrying, CCW holding, people on the streets of his city are helping the cheif’s crime figures stay way down. The FBI estimates that guns in private hands stop between 500,000 and 2,000,000 crimes every year. They go further and say that very few of these defensive or protective uses of firearms are ever reported and than less than 1% of them involved a discharge of the weapon. The feds have also determined that when we fire our private weapons we shoot the wrong individual (or shoot an individual wrongly) far less often than do uniformed police. While we cannot stop evil impluses, it is nice to know there are good people out there who are vetted and proven to be good citizens who are capable of interceding between the impulsive and their victims.
Philidelphia Police Commissioner comments make it sound like people liscenced to carry conceiled are criminals!
WHERE ARE THE OUTRAGED REBUTTALS?
Hugh
Never thought of it that way. But I have to take one little issue with one of the tiny, side notes.
Dogs are not machines. As a dog owner, you know that. They do have personalities, and to the extent that their personalities exist (or, I guess, the depth at which their personalities exist) they are capable of things independent of the owner.
A gun is not. If you ignore your gun, it sits in the closet doing nothing but count criminals. In order for a gun to do good or ill it must be acted upon by a person.
But when it comes to animals, it’s more difficult. We train animals (whereas we train ourselves in the use of the gun). By training them we try to reign in their impulses, giving permission and denying it depending on our preferences to be sure – but as best as we are able (hopefully) not as best as our impulses allow.
That’s one of the reasons why dog owners (I have two) lavish so much attention on them and treat them as near family members. It’s because they really have treated them like family members: bargaining, raising, taking care of, feeding, playing with and bathing their dogs.
Put another way: would you keep a crocodile for a pet? Probably not. Yes, there are people who would – and have the skills and training in order to – but they are exceptions. Similarly, only a sheer buffoon couldn’t manage a Golden Retriever.
But dogs are not “dogs.” They are bred for different purposes, and ideally, the body was bread with the brain in mind. Most very large breeds, for example, are docile. This is no accident: who the hell wants an aggressive 160lb deer hound? But then, who cares if the Shi Tzu is belligerent? (I think it’s been theorized that some small dogs were bred to be yappy because, let’s face it, no breed of dog is going to do any good against a tiger, lion or bear, but a small, peppy one will make enough noise to wake the spears and torches.)
It is said that the problem with wolf hybrids isn’t the wolf, but the mutt that’s in it. The reason is simple: we killed off all the pushy wolves. We did not kill off all the pushy dogs. So when you put the two together, you have the will of the dog and the means of the wolf to cause problems (not, of course, that they always will). My point is that it’s a feature of the dog.
(This in an admittedly gruesome vein, is my feeling about “creating terrorists in Iraq.” Good. We will only “create” ones out of those who have a will and a way to harm us. Keep creating them and killing them off until we don’t have to worry about them anymore, and we can go about living in relative peace with all the others, just as wolves in the wild are much less likely to harm us today than they were four hundred years ago.)
Is it an accident that dalmations (or dalmutations as some veterinarians call them) have the highest rate of owner-aggression? They’re aggregiously inbred. That’s bound to cause other issues.
In the case of pit bulls, they were bred with mischief in mind. I agree that many, many people are quite capable of managing them. But I also agree that many people are quite capable of managing a school bus. A school bus doesn’t have a will of its own. It won’t leave the parking lot unless somebody wants it to. (And in New Orleans, it still won’t leave.)
The pit bull does have a will of its own. And yet, is it a bad idea to limit how many and who can drive a school bus? How about a crocodile?
The pit bull has a will of its own, but it also has an owner who is RESPONSIBLE for anything the dog does. And he must take responsibility. That, in my view, is what’s being increasingly disregarded by this process of pre-judging responsible citizens according to the behavior of the irresponsible citizens. We’re being reduced to a national kindergarten.
I’d have no problem owning a crocodile, and I’d love to own one. I’ve owned many reptiles over the years. I’ve had pit bulls since the mid 1970s. The common theme is responsibility, and it’s similar to owning a gun or a car, although not exactly the same. If I kept a venomous snake, I’d be especially careful. There are some people who should never own or get anywhere near venomous snakes, but I don’t see why laws have to be passed preventing ALL people from owning them. If I find a rattlesnake in my yard, I think it’s safer for the neighbors if I keep it in a locked snake cage inside my house than allow it to remain loose near children. Others might disagree. But unless what I do results in harm, who’s to say that I shouldn’t keep the snake because someone else wouldn’t know how? Isn’t the law making an assumption that everyone is incompetent and treating them that way? (That’s like saying that because some people are inherently unable to drive while using a cell phone, then no one should.) There are more and more children getting into cars and causing accidents because their parents irresponsibly let them drive before they know how. Is this an argument against allowing parents to own cars?
Driving a school bus is not quite analogous to owning a gun or a snake or a dog, though, because the safety of other people’s children is entrusted to the driver in a very personal manner.
Actually, I have no problem allowing any properly licensed driver to simply drive a school bus (they can be purchased used). But a license to drive is not a license to drive a bus full of other people’s children.
Remember, in the case of Philadelphia citizens who have concealed carry permits, they’ve already proven that they’re trustworthy. Yet that matters not at all to the police commissioner, who just doesn’t think anyone should have guns.
Eric, you’re simultaneously proving and missing my point.
First, let me start by pointing out I didn’t say anything about having kids in the bus. You have to have a license to drive a bus regardless of whether or not you have kids in it.
Because there are also kids on the street, and a bus is a pretty tough thing to drive if you’ve never had the training.
Similarly, you have to have a license to drive a tractor-trailer regardless of whether you’re carrying freight. Because there’s something inherent – and publicly – dangerous about both of them.
All I was pointing out was that there are limits – and some necessarily so. (And you agree, somewhat – thus the “properly” in “properly licensed driver”.)
Let’s put it another way: do you want to remove limits for private citizens to own Anti-Aircraft missles? Why not? What about all the law-abiding, responsible people who wouldn’t use the anti-aircraft missle to shoot down planes? What are you, some kind of nazi?
Of course you want limits on that. So do I.
A gun in your home does not rise to quite the same level, and in theory, a gun on your person won’t either. There are, of course, other good reasons why more of us should be armed, including reducing crime and real tyranny. So there are positive effects to having all kinds of people with their own guns – even when nobody knows about it.
I agree that private citizens should not have their rights to arms infringed upon – I don’t even think there should be registration. I don’t want the gestapo to know it’s me on the rooftop shooting at them. I’m not even sure I think you should even have to have the permit.
Now, you’ve said you’d have no problem owning a crocodile. Would you object to having your neighbor – whoever he thinks he is – own, say, a black mamba farm next door to you? If so, why is that?
Got any kids?
What you’re missing is that you are responsible for the gun going off. That’s different from an animal. In that case, you’re responsible for it NOT going off. In the case of the gun, you have to make it do something ill. You are therefore the prime motivator with the gun.
In the case of the animal – particularly ones that are more inherently dangerous – you have to be able to stop it from doing something ill. You are not the prime motivator of the animal. You’re a secondary motivator.
When you talk about being responsible, in what sense are you talking? That you trained the dog well? Or that you’re going to pay for the 8-year-old’s plastic surgery when you find out that you didn’t? (That’s not fair, because what you may find is that you couldn’t. Animals are not infinitely malleable.)
Again, the responsibility for pets is a cautionary one. You train the animal (I’ve trained sled dogs, so I’m pretty familiar with what it entails). But training isn’t the same as locking in your closet or keeping under your mattress.
Or keeping it in your belt for that matter.
An animal that gets out or misbehaves is not a matter of impulse, which is much of what the topic was, wasn’t it?
There are people with far more experience than you, I’m willing to bet, who have had animals become dangerously willful (Seigfried and Roy… the Orca trainers at Marine World…). But in theory, those animals are not going to get out into the public. (And even in those special cases, the owners have to have a permit to own them.)
So the question is how dangerous of an animal is a municipality willing to let people have – or at least require people to register or pass a competancy exam for.
In some cases, that’s not an issue: which is why any fool can own a Golden Retriever, why deer hounds are friendly and nobody cares what a shi tzu thinks.
But a pit bull isn’t a shi tzu and (exceptions duly noted about what I’m sure is your particular loving, wonderful pitbull, thank you) they have a tendency – way outside of the norm – to do mischeif. That has nothing to do with the owner’s impulse.
Why can’t any old fool go out and have a bunch of lions or crocodiles in his yard? Why isn’t there a law targeting “some people who should never own or get anywhere near venomous snakes?”
Is it because a) you can’t craft a law like that very well, and b) the snakes will get out, just like pit bulls do, regardless of how “responsible” you thought you were. Which obviates the whole “or get anywhere near venomous snakes” caveat.
And they will get there on their own unlike your gun or the bus – and they will get there regardless of how impulsive you are or, often, how responsible you are.
Unless you’re going to assert that you’re more responsible than the countless professional animal trainers whose charges have gone nutty and loose.
This isn’t like gun owndership, retirement savings, health care or primary schooling. In all those cases I agree that a law that infringes on everyone for the sake of the idiots is unjust. But you can be the biggest, baddest, reptile-owning, animal trainingest person in the world, and your crocodile may still find his own way into the playground down the street.
Your gun or your bus will only get there if you bring it, or if someone else steals them from you. The crocodile and the pit bull will steal themselves. Oh, and the mambas, too.