A Community of Individuals vs Individuals within a Community - the Gun Control / Gun Rights Divide

Originally published on the Daily Kos: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/7/5/1778163/-A-Community-of-Individuals-vs-Individuals-within-a-Community-the-Gun-Control-Gun-Rights-Divide

“We just went through a soft lockdown. [Several second pause as the next text comes through.] But everything’s good now.” I had just slid into my driver seat, ready to head home from the office when my phone buzzed with this text from my sixteen-year-old. They were at the FIRST Robotics Competition Heartland Regional being held at the MCC Business & Technology Campus in Kansas City, MO. Apparently an armed individual at another location on campus triggered the lockdown, but fortunately no one was hurt. I sat there behind the wheel with the car door still open, awash in a mix of worry, fear and relief. And anger. Anger and frustration at our inability to collectively address gun violence.  

That was March 9, 2018, not even a month after the Parkland shooting. Since then there have been 11 high school and middle school shootings (as of July 5). Gun control isn’t the only answer to this, but it’s certainly a necessary part of solving this problem. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how to converse with those so vehemently opposed to any type of gun control. For many of these individuals, their identities are integrally woven not just to the ownership of firearms, hunting, or shooting sports, but to the idea that any type of firearm restriction is antithetical to the U.S. itself. While I grew up in southcentral Kansas exposed to guns and gun culture - my dad and granddad taught me how to shoot and I enjoyed target shooting – this world view of minimalist gun restrictions, and really gun proliferation, is hard for me to grasp.

From conversations with gun rights advocates, it seems there are at least three areas where my worldview and theirs significantly diverge – 1) embracing the individual over the group, 2) a second amendment interpretation focused on the individual, and 3) a comparatively strong distrust of government. These also seem to be common points of divergence underlying a lot of society’s controversial issues. Perhaps these need further exploration.

Many Americans embrace the idea that individual success and failure are primarily attributed to one’s own prowess and effort, or lack thereof. We pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps, we reap what we sow, or insert whatever your favorite cliché is. Individuals are responsible for their own successes and failures, and the contributions from others are downplayed, whether positive or negative. It’s probably safe to say those on the political right tend to embrace Individualism more than those on the left, but it’s nevertheless a common thread weaving throughout American culture.

Of course, there’s some truth in this. We should reap rewards and bear responsibility for our individual choices and actions, whether that’s doggedly working day to day to provide for one’s family, developing a revolutionary computer operating system, or carrying out the mass shooting of a school. It plays out in the stories of individuals overcoming adversity to achieve great things on the court, in the board room, or in service to others. It also plays out in the stories of those falling from grace due to their own poor choices and selfish decisions. It’s U.S. roots go back to before the American Revolution, deriving in part from the Puritanism that eventually came to dominance in the early American colonies.

Individualism has a powerful allure to it – the idea of being master of one’s own destiny is appealing. To think that based on our own merits we deserve the $100,000+ salary we have with full benefits, or that someone barely scraping by, homeless, or in jail is there only because of their own poor choices and actions, increases one’s sense of self-worth and control, as well as minimizes one’s guilt. But Individualism doesn’t fully reflect reality. The fact is we’re social creatures. Our evolutionary past has optimized us to work together solving complex problems to meet our daily individual and collective needs. Our ability to effectively cooperate in groups, whether that’s hunting big game in our prehistoric past, forming farming cooperatives, or building complex trade networks, is a primary reason we’re the dominant species on this planet. Our own safety, survival and success have always directly or indirectly depended largely on the other people in our group, as well as the overall success of our group.

The number of people and institutions who have contributed to where I am today are almost too numerous to mention. Parents, family, friends, mentors, community members, public schools (k-16+), foundations, research institutes, private companies, city/state/federal governments, and the list goes on. Contributions I’ve benefited from over the course of my life have included physical protection, nourishment, financial support, emotional support, respect, encouragement, forgiveness, knowledge/skills/education, advice, infrastructure, skin color, and the list goes on. Taking large portions of this away, could I have made it to where I am today? Potentially, but at the very least it would have been harder. And there’s a good chance I wouldn’t be in the fortunate (and privileged) position that I am now.

This also means that other people, institutions, and the overall group itself can negatively impact our own safety, survival and success. People of color’s success and safety are certainly negatively impacted by the institutional racism that still pervades our society. Whether that’s falling prey to unconscious biases while seeking employment, experiencing a greater potential for incarceration, or even being killed by law enforcement’s use of force, institutional racism and implicit biases add significant barriers to safety, health and success. In some ways, the fear that many White American parents feel with respect to public shootings gives them a small taste of the fear parents of color face every day. And the burden of poverty, greatly increased over the last several decades because of the growing economic divide, adds significant barriers as well.  

Admitting you owe part of your success to others (sometimes a significant part), can be difficult for some. Even more difficult is admitting your success could partially be the result of an unfair playing field, or even obtained at the expense of the success, health and safety of others. Such an admission can turn one’s internal world upside down. Individualism offers a way out of facing this and experiencing any associated discomfort and guilt, or potentially having to give up one’s privilege in pursuit of social justice, environmental justice, or other forms of equity. Individualism can also provide hope (often false) for the burdened, that they may eventually escape the chains of institutional racism, poverty, mental illness, addiction, etc., if they simply work hard enough.

I’m not denying we bear responsibility for our choices or the efforts we make. I’m only asking we recognize those choices and efforts, and their resulting implications, are also influenced by our social networks. And that the actions we take directly and indirectly impact others, both in and outside of our social networks. Policies, whether we’re talking gun control, taxes, racism, education, etc., that don’t take this into account and are developed only within the framework of Individualism, will weaken society in the long run, negatively impacting all of us. Kansas’s recent tax cut experiment, or fiasco, is a state level example of this.

For those farming in small, rural communities, you know how your own wellbeing often depends on the generosity of your neighbors. In fact, the success of these small, rural farming communities often depends on everyone occasionally pooling together efforts and resources. Fixing fence, corralling escaped livestock, harvesting crops, or even taking care of a neighbor’s farm as they recover from an accident, or worse, struggle with opioid addiction. Cooperatives at their core are about pooling resources. In California, Farmers’ Guilds have formed across the state, providing local networks for farmers to “… share resources, talk shop, exchange ideas, and build community.” Even government provided farm subsidies function in part to “pool resources” at the national level with the intent of stabilizing farming income.

However, those who point out the sometimes heavy handedness of government do make a valid point. Policies, decisions, etc., that have or appear to have been imposed on local communities or individuals without any of their input, or in complete defiance of their input without clear reasoning given, are likely to create pushback, resentment and divisiveness. Such top-down actions do interfere with local decision making. A level of Individualism is necessary for groups to successfully operate. And in fact, research has shown that consensus decision-making and sufficient autonomy are both necessary for individuals, communities, states, etc. to successfully cooperate in the pursuit of common goals.

So yes, Individualism has a role in society. But while a school shooter is responsible for his/her actions, it’s also important to ask how their social networks, or lack thereof, may have influenced the course of their lives or the level of support they have. Viewing the actions of such violent perpetrators only through the lens of Individualism without recognizing the influence of their social networks ensures such violence will continue. And making firearms easily accessible, particularly weapons of war, to such people only makes it more likely they’ll take deadly action before being identified. Which leads to my second area of divergence – a second amendment interpretation focused on the individual.

The 2nd amendment states the following: A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. The nuanced meaning of this sentence is often hotly debated. Nevertheless, for most of our history, the interpretative focus relative to gun ownership has been on the first half of the of the sentence – a well regulated Militia. Beginning in the 1960’s, though, the focus began to shift to the second half of the sentence, interpreting it relative to the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, with minimal restrictions. Radio Lab provides a good overview of the shift – it’s origins with the Black Panther Party, the NRA's transformation to a gun rights lobby, gun rights viewed as a proxy for standing up to the government, and culminating with the 2008 supreme court ruling that the 2nd amendment protects an individual's right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia.

It’s an interpretation rooted in Individualism. In a dangerous world, if the good guys/gals don’t have guns, then only the criminals will. Such anecdotes, no matter how rare, tap into our emotions and our fear, and easy gun ownership seems to provide a means of taking control of our own safety and those we love. If you believe the world’s a dangerous place (contributed to by a 24 hour news cycle that tends to increase our exposure to comparatively rare but traumatic events, like mass shootings and terrorism), if you think violent crime is increasing (even though it’s really not), or if you do happen to live in a pocket that actually does have comparatively higher crime, this is a perfectly normal response. In rural white America, where gun culture, smaller populations, and ideals of self-reliance are more common, the good guy/gal with a gun narrative can be a relatively easy sell. And for people of color, who actually do suffer from gun violence at higher rates on average than white people, and don’t necessarily feel protected by law enforcement, it’s even more of an understandable response.

But the anecdotes, or stories, are only single points of data, not the large dataset needed to develop effective policy. Many gun rights proponents balk at this, but the evidence we do have (albeit limited) indicates the easing of gun restrictions and the general proliferation of firearms increases gun violence and gun deaths. They balk because in the world view just described, gun control generally doesn’t make sense. How can I protect myself against the bad guys without a gun? If every good guy has a gun, then the bad guys will be afraid to show their weapon – they won’t know who does and doesn’t have a gun and gun deaths will decrease. Except this ignores the accidents that inevitably happen (even among the best trained people), the arms race in destructive power that’s occurred, the use of guns in suicides, the dehumanization and fear resulting from “othering” (making it easier to pull the trigger), and the emotions, drug addition, etc., that override “rational” thought when impulsively deciding to pull the trigger. This all contributes to the fact that the more guns there are, the more gun violence and gun deaths there inevitably will be.

More research is certainly needed, but Congress’s 1996 Dickey Amendment, spurred on by the NRA, effectively blocked federal funding of such research for the last 21 years. Arming more people is good for the gun industry, and there is a risk that more gun policy research could contribute to a shift in how we collectively view guns, leading to more legislated gun control and ultimately less profits. By the way, Jay Dickey, the Republican Congressman who led this 1996 effort, before his death in 2017, changed his mind and publicly stated that gun violence does need to be studied by the CDC.

Effective gun control doesn’t have to mean an end to aspects of gun culture that are a part of our nation’s history. I fully admit there are communities where the intellectual traditions of hunting, marksmanship and responsible gun ownership are part of their local DNA, and that such things as allowing certain types of guns on their school campuses in a controlled manner for teaching gun safety and marksmanship potentially make sense. But in the current climate of extremes, where the NRA and other gun rights activists stand against practically every form of gun control proposed, including the limitation of assault rifles, it’s difficult for those promoting gun control to concede any ground.

Ultimately, the pendulum needs to shift back to a more balanced interpretation of the 2ndAmendment. The rights of the individual can’t outweigh the safety of other members of society. The evidence suggests you “protecting” yourself with a gun, particularly an assault weapon, does not make me safer. And the more people out there with a gun “protecting” themselves, the more likely I’m going to get shot (even more so for people of color). To live together among others requires that we give up some level of individual rights for the safety of others and the overall security and longevity of the group. That’s how we evolved. That’s what we’re adapted to do. But this requires we have a level of trust in our other group members, and in those leading the group – in modern societies that would be our governments. Which leads to my third area of divergence – a comparatively strong distrust of government.

Distrust of government has been a part of the American psyche since the founding of our nation – it helped spawn the American Revolution itself. Throwing off the yoke of control imposed by those across the sea whom we had little connection with, and who taxed us with no seeming benefit provided in return. Our answer to this divorcing of the governed from those who govern was the establishment of a representative government “by the people, for the people.” Even though not directly intended, this idea derived greatly from how our hunter/gatherer ancestors lived together in smaller groups for millennia.

The various levels of American government are to be composed of our friends, neighbors and fellow community members. It should be composed of people whom we know personally or know of in some manner, and/or who are known by people we do know and trust. These are people we may see in the community and interact with, and who share a lot of the same day-to-day struggles and concerns as ourselves. Under such conditions, the same social control mechanisms used by our hunter gatherer ancestors to promote prosocial behavior can also be used to keep our elected officials in line. Some of these include transparency of behavior, monitoring of behavior and various informal and formal sanctions to correct behavior (like peer pressure).

In practice this is obviously most effective for local government and increasingly less as one proceeds upwards from the local to state and federal levels. Higher levels of government are composed of individuals from other communities, states and regions, with different day-to-day struggles and concerns, often from a different class. Your representative will also be in your local communities less as they spend time governing in the seats of power and campaigning or conducting listening tours across larger geographic areas. Over time such elected officials may begin to identify more with the body of government they are a part of, or with the lobbyists and special interests who aggressively compete for their attention and loyalty, than with their own constituents. Special interests with deep pockets can help elected officials maintain power and win elections in return for favorable legislation and votes (greatly exacerbated by the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision). This has only gotten worse as the economic divide between the have and have-nots has risen over the last few decades to the current grotesque level.

Under these conditions, the social control mechanisms employed by constituents lose their effectiveness in promoting the actions, decisions, and votes that are generally beneficial to these constituents over the long term. A critical function of our free press is to help extend the effectiveness of our social control mechanisms at higher levels of government. Unfortunately, the increase in sources of information (some of questionable quality), the need to fill a 24-hour news cycle, the trend towards consuming information via soundbite or tweet, the ability to self-isolate our news feeds to information that doesn’t challenge our preconceptions, and attacks from those in power, have all undermined the ability of the free press to amplify these social control mechanisms.

In this hyper partisan environment, where so many struggle to deal with anemic local economies, income disparity, varying mental and physical health concerns, institutional racism and other forms of discrimination, and the government is perceived as either ineffective in addressing, or actually the cause of these items, it’s not surprising that distrust exists. Messages from the NRA and gun rights lobbyists/activists that gun control legislation will lead to a tyrannical state where no one is allowed to own any kind of personal firearm are able to gain traction. Good guys/gals with a gun aren’t just protection against the bad guys, but also against an overreaching government either deliberately out to run over the “little guy” or simply blind to the “little guy’s” concerns. Operating from this world view, where the larger “group” has apparently failed you and yours (whether you’re a white rural farmer or an urban minority blue-collar worker), an interpretation of the 2nd Amendment that focuses on individual gun owner rights isn’t unreasonable. Nevertheless, it’s still an interpretation that weakens a functioning democracy.

Ultimately, to move forward in addressing gun violence as well as other critical social issues, there needs to be a more equitable distribution of political and economic power, and less isolation among our political and ideological tribal camps. We must converse with those who disagree with us (“the other”), and the voices of those few with the most political and economic power can’t drown out everyone else’s. Prosocial World (the Prosocial Commons) and The Village Square are two existing models for engaging others to find common ground on controversial issues. Others no doubt exist. How successful they are depends on how well they’re able to facilitate thoughtful discussion and shift a view of “the other” to “ourselves.”

But not everyone is up to this challenge, including elected officials unable to stand up to their base and big donors. Reaching across economic, ideological, racial, or other divides, whether in the family dining room, a legislative chamber, or the public square, is hard, messy, uncomfortable work. Tensions will rise between those who believe any degree of gun proliferation decreases their safety, and those who believe it’s their God given right to own any type of firearm known to man. Yelling may sometimes be involved. Personal relationships may change. Your sense of self may be challenged. But I don’t see any other way forward. So, start having these conversations. Find candidates on both sides of the political divide willing to have these conversations, and vote for them.

If we don’t solve this, gun violence and gun deaths will continue at needlessly high levels. Suicides by gun will continue, accidental deaths will occur, minorities will continue to be plagued by gun violence at higher levels, mass shootings will continue, and our students will continue to wonder if they’ll make it home every day they head out to school. A few weeks after my eldest was in the soft lock down, they texted me the Pearls Before Swine comic linked to below during the middle of the school day.

March 23, 2018 – Pears Before Swine by Stephan Pastis on GoComics.com

No explanation or description in his text, just the comic. A sobering picture of the state of things. A plea for change. So fellow adults, what’s it going to be?