At least, that's what I was told the other day on a HuffPo comment thread. (I really need to stay away from there; it's getting depressing and disheartening.) The individual was trying to make the point that, just because a device can be misused and such misuse can cause harm, we cannot "ban things" for that reason. After all, computers can be used by "hackers" for nefarious purposes; should we "ban" computers just to stop "hackers"?
There is a concept in products liability and tort law, that of the inherently dangerous instrumentality. Generally, an inherently dangerous instrumentality is an object, device, machine, &c. that creates a substantial risk of harm just by its mere existence or use, irrespective of whether it is or can be misused. I made the point that a computer is not an inherently dangerous instrumentality, and that a person can avoid being a victim of computer crime by, inter alia, not owning a computer, whereas a person cannot avoid being a victim of other people's guns by not owning a gun of his own.
There was some more back-and-forth on this that I don't want to get into here. The individual's response was to throw out an example of how a person could be harmed by computer hackers without owning his own computer (viz., they could hack into his bank account), but then made what I thought was the rather incredible statement that "firearms are not inherently dangerous either."
I'm still trying to process how a device whose sole function is to use explosive force to propel solid metal projectiles through the air at supersonic speeds over long distances, the sole purpose and intent thereof being to instantly damage, destroy, wound or kill whatever or whoever is struck by the projectile, is not inherently dangerous, let alone no more so than a MacBook. Someone later reminded me, and I'm surprised I didn't think of it right away, that gun safety requires gun owners to know and understand that their weapons are inherently dangerous; any police or military training officer or gun safety instructor worth his salt would doubtless instruct his students to treat and handle them accordingly. I'm reminded of Nic Cage's line in The Rock: "The minute you don't respect this, it kills you."
Maybe it's my own bias talking; after all, I've had my own statement that "there are certain varieties of 'arms' that ordinary civilians should not and must not be allowed to 'keep and bear,'" characterized as, quote, "astonishing." After all, how can anyone with such an outrageous, audacious and utterly wrong belief possibly engage in honest, reasonable debate about the Right to Bear Arms, when he obviously has no appreciation whatsoever for the value and importance of any Constitutional Right?
But I don't want to get into that right now. The context of the discussion above was a more general proposition I made at the top of the thread in question. Even if we stipulate to the fact that The Founding Fathers™ wanted an armed population and thought it important to ensure that we have one, irrespective of the reasons why, they had to have realized that having firearms of any kind and quantity in circulation among the general public, a private market in weapons of war, would create societal risks, and that some of those risks might not be acceptable. The function of the law has always been to ameliorate and apportion risk in order to minimize danger to the public and require those who create risk to bear that risk and take responsibility for it. All rights of all kinds have always been limited at the point where they cause harm to others or put the public at risk.
The risks associated with firearms and private gun ownership, in the aggregate, are different today than they were in 1780. Whether they are greater or lesser is not the point, nor is whether or not any particular gun-related event that can happen now, could have happened then. Weapons are different, they operate differently and are used differently, have different uses and capabilities, they can be mass-produced, shipped and sold in mass quantities, concealed, trafficked, etc., in ways that did not exist 230 years ago.
But the weapons themselves are secondary; what is critical is the risks they create. My friend over at HuffPo insisted that the risks associated with guns and gun ownership are precisely the same today as they were in 1780. Indeed, it would have been "far easier" for Adam Lanza, all else being equal, to have perpetrated the Sandy Hook massacre in 1780 with a barrel of gunpowder (and any of whatever devices existed back then to set it off), than it was in 2012 with a semiautomatic assault rifle. Therefore there is no reason to re-evaluate anything The Founding Fathers™ may have said, written, thought or believed about the Second Amendment and the need for an armed population, because they understood the risks then, and the risks have not changed since then in any way.
Let's even stipulate, for now, that the reason the Founders™ gave us a Right to Bear Arms was to deter, fight and/or reverse "tyranny" from our own government, just in case the Constitution, representative democracy, rule of law, tripartite government, coequal branches, separation of powers, checks and balances, an independent judiciary, federalism/dual sovereignty, full representation in multiple legislative bodies, regular free and lawful elections, habeas corpus, due process, separation of church and state, a free press, and the complete absence of anything resembling hereditary monarchy or nobility, weren't enough, or just in case each and every one of these things broke down and failed at the same time (hereinafter, "Total Systemic Failure"). Let's also stipulate that Total Systemic Failure is possible or likely to occur in anyone's lifetime, and set aside the questions pertaining to what could, would or should happen afterward.
In the here and now, we have a Right to Bear Arms, we have substantial societal and public-safety risks created by the existence and proliferation of all manner of personal weapons, we have gun control laws to manage those risks, and we have the risk of Total Systemic Failure, which is why we have a Right to Bear Arms.
Proponents of that last idea (which, again, I am not challenging here) always have their "quotes" from The Founding Fathers,™ which have been carefully selected, edited, and in some cases invented, for them by whomever is being paid by the gun lobby to do so, on hand and ready to deploy in case anyone suggests that the Second Amendment requires anything less than unfettered access to unlimited weaponry (a position which, invariably and paradoxically, they will immediately and forcefully disclaim), or that the purpose of that Amendment was anything other than the prevention of "tyranny." But even if we stipulate to all of it, none of the "quotes" I've seen include any accounting one way or the other for the societal and public-safety risks that would inevitably be created by guns and gun ownership.
Whoever and whatever they were, the Founders were not fools or fanatics. If they recognized the risk of Total Systemic Failure and "tyranny," they had to have recognized that having weapons of war circulating among the broad public, unsupervised, unregulated and unaccounted for, would create risks to society and public safety, including risks beyond what society could or should accept. Are we willing to entertain the notion that the Founders™ would have held the Right to Bear Arms so important, and the risk of Total Systemic Failure so critical, that both outweigh the societal risks created by guns? More to the point, would they have believed that the risk of Total Systemic Failure would always, invariably, res ipsa loquitur, outweigh any risk to public and personal safety associated with firearms?
I'm not sure I know the answers to these questions, but it may mark an important difference between reasonable proponents and opponents of gun control. Proponents believe we need gun control laws to manage the public-safety risks; opponents believe we need guns to manage the Total Systemic Failure risk and that gun control laws prevent us from doing that. Proponents believe that the public-safety risks are more important and immediate; opponents believe that the Total Systemic Failure risk is more important than any other risk could possibly be, so its immediacy is irrelevant. Proponents doubt that the Total Systemic Failure risk even exists, let alone that it can be managed by personal firearms; opponents doubt that the public-safety risks can be managed by gun control laws.
I'm less interested in who is right and wrong here than with the framing of the issue, viz., balancing rights with risks, and balancing one category of risk with another, while accounting for all. As long as each "side" keeps accusing the other of wanting things it doesn't actually want and of motives it doesn't actually have, or making absolutist arguments while denying absolutism, not only will we keep ignoring the salient issues and balancing of interests that we will ultimately need to resolve, but we'll keep twisting ourselves into pretzels and making utterly idiotic statements like, "It would have been far easier to carry out a Sandy Hook or Aurora-style mass killing with 1780s-vintage firearms than with modern weaponry," or "Firearms are not inherently dangerous." It's when you have to start believing completely unreasonable things like that, rather than acknowledge an indisputable fact that may undermine but doesn't defeat your position that you, at least in my view, lose the argument, because if your argument depends on things like that being true, then you have no case. And it's disheartening, too, because we can't have the honest, reasonable discussion we need to have when so many arguments depend on unreason.
Jon Stewart made a case for this in his "imaginary Hitler" takedown on The Daily Show, which was just another way of saying that gun-control opponents view the Total Systemic Failure risk as paramount, whereas proponents want to address what they regard as the more immediate, trenchant and salient public-safety risks. I think each "side," to one degree or another, suspects the other of not recognizing or caring about the risks it regards as important. To what extent that's true, and to what extent the other "side" needs to do better, I'll leave to individual perception.
In the end, with respect to my friend over at HuffPo, there are two things I do know: (1) firearms absolutely are inherently dangerous; and (2) we absolutely can "ban things" that create substantial, unreasonable, unacceptable risks.
Speaking of risks, I realize I'm taking one by writing another diary about guns and rights and the arguments being made about them, given how acrimonious the comment threads around here have gotten lately. But it's a risk I'm willing to take anyway, because writing helps me hash out my thoughts and the community can always be counted on to point out things I've missed or neglected to consider, or an alternative point of view, although sometimes less politely than might be called for.
In any event, thanks for reading.