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| The American Dream |
Introduction
I’ve mentioned before that philosophers distinguish between lumpers and splitters. Splitters take a category of things, actions, concepts and show that there are important distinctions to be made within that category such that we should really see it as two (or more) distinct categories. For example, someone might argue that ‘motor vehicle’ should be treated as two categories because cars and motorcycles are importantly different in the skills required to drive them.
Shortly following the news of the mass shooting in Las Vegas Reason magazine, a Libertarian publication, published an article predictably calling for restraint (i.e., do nothing) with respect to gun control legislation. All the standard arguments were there for why gun control legislation is bad. What stood out to me, however, was the euphemistic lumping of guns as mere tools. Here are a few prominent examples :
The unwillingness to leap to a legal solution to mass gun murders requires recognizing that guns are tools, with genuine uses for personal safety, personal fulfillment, and convenience, just as are cars, as well as noticing that a tiny number of people who own or have access to these specific tools ever use them to harm another human.
For the vast majority of their owners, guns are no more worthy of banning than any other element of their peacefully enjoyed liberty, one tool among many to shape their chosen life and leisure. Banning something that tens of millions of people innocently value and imposing onerous costs on American citizens, generally downward in socioeconomic terms, is a recipe for disaster.
Notice the effect on our emotional response to ‘guns’ when we lump them in with ‘tools’ (and refer to them as such). Much of the emotional charge runs out of the word. I have no doubt that this is what the writers at Reason magazine intended. I assume their thought is something like this: [Read in your learned teacher voice lecturing to students] “If we are to understand the issue of gun violence we must take a cold reasoned approach to the issue. There is no room for irrational emotion.” This is Reason magazine, after all.
Example:
P = some person;
a = apples
b = bananas
P {a>b} means that some person prefers apples to bananas.
The main idea here is that whatever we choose, we make that choice in the context of available alternatives. How we rank our preferences is an expression of what we value relative to other things.
In 2013, there were 73,505 nonfatal firearm injuries (23.2 injuries per 100,000 U.S. citizens),[2][3] and 33,636 deaths due to “injury by firearms” (10.6 deaths per 100,000 U.S. citizens).[4] These deaths consisted of 11,208 homicides,[5] 21,175 suicides,[4] 505 deaths due to accidental or negligent discharge of a firearm, and 281 deaths due to firearms use with “undetermined intent”.[4]
In 2010, 67% of all homicides in the U.S. were committed using a firearm.[7] In 2012, there were 8,855 total firearm-related homicides in the US, with 6,371 of those attributed to handguns.[8] In 2012, 64% of all gun-related deaths in the U.S. were suicides.[9] In 2010, there were 19,392 firearm-related suicides, and 11,078 firearm-related homicides in the U.S.[10] In 2010, 358 murders were reported involving a rifle while 6,009 were reported involving a handgun; another 1,939 were reported with an unspecified type of firearm.[11] (Wikipedia)
I will add without argument, because you’re all capable of googling, that the per capita numbers of all kinds of gun deaths, gun crime, and gun injury are much higher in the US when compared to other Western democracies even when crime rates are controlled for.
Let’s Get Philosophical
With the empirical and technical out of the way, let’s get into the philosophy. The pro-gun lobby argues that we should do nothing in the face of gun violence because they want to own and purchase guns in a way that is unrestricted. Let’s express that in the cool unemotional language of economics. Given a choice between
a = easy access to tools.
b = even attempting to reduce loss of human life.
The anti-legislation person’s (P) preference ranking looks like this:
P: {a>b}
Easy access to tools is more important than any attempt to reduce the loss of human life.
Let me reframe that. The average annual death toll from guns is 30 000. Now suppose some piece of legislation could reduce the average gun-related death toll by a paltry 10%. That’s 3000 human lives saved every year. Now, imagine we put 3000 people into a theatre and we say to someone who loves tools:
You have a choice: we can make everyone wait [insert some trivial number of days] to receive a tool or we can let these 3000 human beings die unnecessarily, and repeat the same thing every year.
Really? How do you know? Most (but not all) of the evidence points in the other direction for some but not all kinds of gun violence. The exceptions to this trend in the literature are outliers which the pro-tool lobby cites ad nauseam, ignoring the general trend. Why not introduce targeted legislation to address the kinds of violence that seem to respond to legislation in other countries?
a = easy access to tools
b = even bothering to try to prevent the loss of 3 000 lives/year
P: {a>b}
In everyday English, this preference ranking expresses the following:
It’s more important for me have easy access to tools than it is for me to even try saving 3 000 human lives per year from preventable death. That is, me owning a tool and being able to buy tools with minimal restrictions has more value than even trying to prevent the (preventable) loss of 3 000 human lives.
What the gun-control advocate fails to see is that life’s meaning, purpose, and value comes from owning tools. Tools, not human relationships, not cultivation of ones virtue nor talents, not contribution to one’s community, not preventable human death, are what matter for the good life. A purposeful and meaningful life depend on, above all else, easy, unrestricted, and unfettered tool ownership.
In support of this view, Aristotle, in The Nichomachean Ethics famously argues that certain external goods are required in order to live the good life. He writes
But nevertheless happiness plainly requires external goods too, as we said; for it is impossible, or at least not easy, to act nobly without
some furniture of fortuneGUNZ. There are many things that can only be done through instruments, so to speak, such as friends and wealth and political influence AND GUNZ: and there are some things whose absence takes the bloom off our happiness, as good birth, the blessing of children, GUNZ, and personal beauty; for a man is not very likely to be happy if he is very ugly in person, or of low birth, or alone in the world, or childless, and perhaps still less if he has worthless children or friends, or has lost good ones that he had, OR CAN’T BUY A GUN IMMEDIATELY WITHOUT A BACKGROUND CHECK.
a = Maintaining tool-loving at the epicenter of American culture
b = attempt something to reduce the 30 000 lives/year that are lost.
P: {a>b}
In plain English, there is more value is continuing to place some kinds of tools at the center of cultural identity than there is value in the lives of the very people who inhabit this community.
For the vast majority of their owners, guns are no more worthy of banning than any other element of their peacefully enjoyed liberty, one tool among many to shape their chosen life and leisure. Banning something that tens of millions of people innocently value and imposing onerous costs on American citizens, generally downward in socioeconomic terms, is a recipe for disaster.
Hypothetical: You and your family are less safe with a gun-tool in the house.
a=have gun tool in the house.
b=you and your family’s safety.
P: {a>b}
If they hypothetical turns out to be true then the preference ranking says this: There is more value in having a gun tool in my house than there is value in the safety of myself and my family.
For every time a gun in the home was used in a self-defense or legally justifiable shooting, there were four unintentional shootings, seven criminal assaults or homicides, and 11 attempted or completed suicides.http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9715182
Domestic violence assaults involving a firearm are 12 times more likely to result in death than those involving other weapons or bodily forceLinda E. Saltzman, et al., Weapon Involvement and Injury Outcomes in Family and Intimate Assaults, 267 JAMA, 3043-3047 (1992)
Abused women are five times more likely to be killed by their abuser if the abuser owns a firearm
More than half of youth who committed suicide with a gun obtained the gun from their home, usually a parent’s gun. U.S. children and teens made up 43 percent of all children and teens in top 26 high income countries but were 93 percent of all children and teens killed by guns.
In 2010, children and teen gun death rates in the U.S. were over four times higher than in Canada, the country with the next highest rate, nearly seven times higher than in Israel, and nearly 65 times higher than in the United Kingdom.
U.S. children and teens were 32 times more likely to die from a gun homicide and 10 times more likely to die from a gun suicide or a gun accident than all their peers in the other high-income countries combined. A child or teen dies or is injured from guns every 30 minutes.
The anti-even-bother-to-try any legislation position always prefers owning a tool to saving human lives. That is, easy access to a tool is always more valuable than human lives.
No irrational emotions needed. This is the cold-hard language of reason.
Mass shootings represent only a very small fraction of gun-related homicides (about 1% depending on the study you read). Even if we increase this number by a factor of 10 we’re still only looking at 10% of gun-related homicides. From the point of view of policy then it makes sense to argue that preventing mass shootings shouldn’t be the primary focus or starting point of gun policy. (Not to say it shouldn’t at all be the focus of policy, only that there are perhaps better starting points, and lower hanging fruit).
Consider: Suppose policy aims to reduce mass shootings but not other forms of gun violence (primarily from hand guns). Even if that policy reduces mass shootings by 50%, of total gun homicides it’s a hollow victory. If however policy reduces other homicides by just 10%, as an absolute number of lives saved, that policy is much more successful. (Assumption: gun violence policy ought to reduce total homicides and injury from guns).
Wrestling with Philosophy 