Ta-Nehisi Coates on The Seductive Dream of Standing Your Ground.
I actually find this part oddly encouraging:
The man in me knows how macho imaginings usually outstrip reality. He also knows that this may not have even been a threat. He further knows that kids, in general, do dumb shit. But that wasn’t the man in me talking. It wasn’t the father who knows he needs to be around for his child. It wasn’t the husband, who knows his wife is back in New York depending on him. It wasn’t the writer who hopes that his best words are still in front of him. It was some little boy who got jumped repeatedly more than two decades ago, back in West Baltimore, and has spent the rest of his days just “wishing a nigger would,” as my people say.
That boy is a damn fool. And part of any adults maturation must be keeping the idiot in them under wraps. But I can’t kill the boy. Nor should I. It’s that same boy who tells me not to punk out when I’m doing my miles, not to be a chump and take a day off from writing. The boy reinforces the man. But he needs guardrails.
Growing up as a girl in Westchester, rather than as a boy in a neighborhood where you were expected to show you were tough, I probably don’t have as quick a fight response to keep under wraps as TNC. But, actually, in grade school I *was* the little girl who was determined to hit back every darn time anyone hit me first (and did). And I’ve grown up to be Quaker and pacifist. So I sort of like, in a “Meg, I give you your faults” way (quote from A Wrinkle in Time), the idea that the part of the little girl who was spoiling for a fight on the playground, who once swung a boy so hard she made him fall down, square dancing, because she was convinced he was trying to do the same thing to her, might have an appropriate adult outlet as the girl who tells me not to punk out on my exercise even when I’m going through chemotherapy, and the girl that made me hit the ground running and go out and get a job the time I was laid off.
But also, he’s totally right about needing to keep the idiot part of that child under wraps, give the boy guardrails, and not be in too much haste to stand your ground when people are depending on you to be responsible.
From where I stand, the key passage is this one:
I suspect that a good way to remove the guardrails is to put a gun in my hand.
At least some gun-rights supporters apparently take the opposite view: E.g., Dave Kopel:
Kopel argued that a law-abiding citizen is less likely to get into a confrontation after a traffic accident or an exchange of insults if he or she is carrying a weapon: “You’re aware of the power you have, and you naturally want to use that power very carefully.” (*)
Eric Raymond:
the bearing of arms functions not merely as an assertion of power but as a fierce and redemptive discipline. When sudden death hangs inches from your right hand, you become much more careful, more mindful, and much more peaceful in your heart — because you know that if you are thoughtless or sloppy in your actions or succumb to bad temper, people will die. (**)
I’m not sure whether these views or TNC’s are more representative of gun-owners generally, but I found the dichotomy notable.
(*) theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2012/12/the-case-for-more-guns-and-more-gun-control/309161/
(**) catb.org/esr/guns/gun-ethics.html
My own experience is not what I would have predicted prior to owning guns.
While both Madame Stuart and I have carried for some time now and train regularly enough to produce at least 6-inch groups at up to 75 feet on demand, the most salient fallout has been greatly intensified situational awareness and flight potential: the next to very last thing either of us wants to do is to pull and use that weapon, the very last being, of course, failing to do so.
I suspect the difference may have to do with what may be a vague grasp of what guns are and do among those who have never handled, fired, disassembled, or cleaned one, one perhaps far more rarified than a comparable everyday lethal tool, electricity. I would wager that far more people have had an instructive encounter with electric shock, which can kill one far more quickly and easily than the average gunshot, than they have with even the momentum of a cycling automatic pistol slide and why it will always defeat one’s thumb.
In entertainment media guns are experienced far more as symbols than as what they are, hand-held and hand-directed bombs. The flash is muted, the sound is extremely muted, and there is no physicality at all; thus guns for the uninitiated can easily collapse into the facility of becoming simplistic, abstract ideas: safety=nogun, anger->bang, police/Batman are a smart phone thumb push away, &c, rather than the very real calculus every moment that the alternative you may be finally forced to choose over imminent severe injury or death out of nowhere is likely to be a psychotic personal psychological and civil-judicial nightmare that will make that entire day you spent at the DMV seem like the best night of sex you ever had.
H. M. Stuart
Alexandria
“My own experience is not what I would have predicted prior to owning guns.
“While both Madame Stuart and I have carried for some time now and train regularly enough to produce at least 6-inch groups at up to 75 feet on demand, the most salient fallout has been greatly intensified situational awareness and flight potential: the next to very last thing either of us wants to do is to pull and use that weapon, the very last being, of course, failing to do so.” (HMS)
.
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“From where I stand, the key passage is this one:
“I suspect that a good way to remove the guardrails is to put a gun in my hand.
“At least some gun-rights supporters apparently take the opposite view: E.g., Dave Kopel:
“Kopel argued that a law-abiding citizen is less likely to get into a confrontation after a traffic accident or an exchange of insults if he or she is carrying a weapon: “You’re aware of the power you have, and you naturally want to use that power very carefully.” (MI)
.
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Such observations DO seem to be the case for more thoughtful, responsible people, but just as vital an observation is that those intent on violence are almost NEVER deterred by the absence of guns.
In 1990, Julio Gonzalez made history (for the largest mass murder in NYC…prior to 9/11…STILL the largest single-perpetrator mass murder) when he slaughtered 187 people in the Happyland Social Club with a small jar filled with less than $1 worth of gasoline and a makeshift wick (an old hanky).
In the absence of guns killings often become less targeted and often impact far more victims.
Costas’ really dumb remark was his asserting that absent our “gun culture” Kassandra Parker and Jovan Belcher would be alive today.
That is entirely baseless speculation that is almost certainly wrong. Absent a gun, Belcher would’ve more than likely simply bludgeoned Ms Parker to death with a hammer, or something like it…then killed himself either in his car or by jumping from a building. People INTENT on violence are generally NOT deterred by the absence of a specific tool, especially when many other viable tools and methods are so readily available.
The NFL has made personal counseling available to its players, has a free rides program so that those who go out CAN avoid driving drunk (as Joshua Price-Brent recently did)….people intent on violence are usually NOT deterred.