American Crosscut: Disagreeing to Agree?

This time Joel and Charlie tell stories about how people manage to not talk about what they might have in common.

Joel: When we left our heroes, they — we — had explored, if not come to complete agreement, on the two bills we set out to discuss, and while I'd be happy to go into more detail on that, I'm not sure that it would serve much of a didactic purpose for our readers.  They've already gotten, I trust, that two folks with different orientations can discuss stuff that they don't agree on without throwing stones or epithets, although apparently not without a snarky comment from time to time.

I'll ask you to point our readers at your last posting, as that's where I want to start off, with the difficulties that you say that folks like me run into in trying to persuade folks like you, 'folks like you' being defined, for the purposes of this discussion, as people who aren't pro-gun, but are willing to listen, and consider other positions than the one you start off with. 

I dunno, Charlie.  And some of this stuff breaks my heart.  I really don't worry a lot about most folks who always and only react to their stereotypes and/or neurotic fears about gun owners, and won't hear anything to the contrary; there's nothing I can do about them.  (I'm not saying that all folks who disagree with me on these issues fall into that category, but I am saying that some do — and while I'm not going to go into detail, I'm including some people who I love dearly, including members of my family of origin.  Almost got me killed once -- and no, I'm not exaggerating; anti-gun neurotics can be dangerous, and all the moreso if they're merely naive and hysterical, rather than malicious.  But I digress.) 

The rest of it frustrates the hell out of me.  If I want to write or say something that goes kind of long — it takes a while to describe, say, the history of "shall issue" gun laws in the US, as part of the argument that they're not only mainstream, but working just fine — many folks don't read it.  Hell, you'll worry about going long, and fret over whether or not your readers will be willing to follow a discussion that takes thousands, or tens of thousands, of words, and you've agreed to be open-minded in this discussion.

But going long has its problems.

So sometimes I go short, and pull out a picture like, say, this one, to illustrate a point.  Or to help make one.

And therein lies a story.  It may or may not have some relevance to this discussion.  But it's going to be long.  Bear with me; I'll try to tell it entertainingly. 

Nationally, Joss Whedon's fans have put on a charity showing of Serenity <http://csts.mnfirefly.com/sponsors.htm> , in celebration of his birthday, every year for the past few years.  It raises money for Equality Now <http://www.equalitynow.org/> , one of his favorite charities.  You can look at their website and decide for yourself whether or not you're on board with their agenda. Me, I am in part, and not in other part.  Hell, I don't even agree with me all the time . . .

So, there I was, siting at my desk getting some work done, and minding my own business, when Felicia calls me up and asks if I want to go see the charity showing with her; it'll be few bucks, but will go to a charity that I'm probably generally comfortable with, and I do love that movie, for a lot of reasons, and not just the hot babes with guns.  (That I like hot babes with guns isn't a problem for Felicia; we've been married for close to thirty years, and I've long been out of the closet as a heterosexual.)

And then I took a look at the sponsors page.  Regular tickets were something like ten bucks each, but there were several levels of sponsorship packages, culminating in the Big Damn Hero package.  $250; buys you something like four tickets, a t-shirt, and a halfpage program book ad. 

This, to me, sounded like too much fun to miss, and while $250 isn't always easy to come by, I figured I could probably get a few of my gun nut friends to kick in.  Some of them are fans of the movie; others might like to see it.  Yup, there would be some conservative folks who would have problems with Equality Now's pro-abortion-choice position, and what they should do, I said, is decide if, on balance, they're willing to support the event, or not.  No problem, either way.

My friends quickly came up with $250, and kept giving.  So I bought another Big Damn Hero package.  And another.  And another. 

Lots of individuals and groups contributed to the event.  Some bookstores and writers sent books; some stores contributed discount coupons and merchandise to be raffled off.

But there were a grand total of five of these $250 packages bought.  Four of those five were bought by my "gun nut" friends and me.  My suggestion to the local anti-gun group that they match our contributions to the event were ignored.  Figures.

As you can probably imagine, the folks running the benefit — media science-fiction fans, whose main interest, or at least one of them, is Joss Whedon's Firefly — were rather pleased that I kept coming back to buy more of the two hundred and fifty dollar packages.  My fairly modest requests — and you know me, Charlie; these were requests and not demands — that our four half-page ads be consolidated into two one-page ads, and that my bunch of folks get a reserved seating block so that we could all sit together were things they were happy to do.   

Oleg Volk produced the two ads, on a very short deadline, and they were great.  I already showed you the one that ended up gracing the back cover; the other one is here.

So, come the night of the show, my crowd gathers across the street, to have coffee and dinner before the show, and then walk over.

About two dozen of us, and I don't think many of them were unarmed,  walk up to the Riverview theater.  With one exception, nobody was carrying openly — the one exception was me; I had a knife on my belt, but my handgun was, as it usually is, carried discreetly.

Appearances can be deceiving.  The tallest of us, Bruce Krafft, is about 6'6" tall, 300 pounds or so with a long, fiery red beard, and a shaved head.  He looks like a Viking ax murderer, except for the pleasant smile (not having actually met any Viking ax murderers, I'm just guessing that most of them don't smile pleasantly), but is actually a very nice, very bright, very soft-spoken guy.  Seismic Sam looks like the sort you wouldn't want to meet in a dark alley — and, truth to tell, if you were to mean him or his family any harm, you wouldn't — but by profession he is a scientist, whose medical inventions have saved thousands of live.  (That is not a figure of speech.)  Greg's a pilot; Felicia is a librarian. 

When we'd received our packages in the mail, we were told that we shouldn't be standing in line — we should just proceed directly into the theater, because we already bought our tickets, after all.  As we did, the very nice woman running the benefit spotted me — she recognized me from my pictures; we'd never met — and shouting, "You must be Joel!" she ran over to give me a hug. 

There was a moment of street theater.  The very pleasant, shaved-headed black guy walking out of the previous movie, said, "oh, hugs.  Cool."  and gave me a quick hug, much to the amusement of all. (I don't know if he hung around to find out what that all was about.)

So we proceeded to our seats to wait for the show.  The program books were handed out as people came in and bought tickets...

And then the unfortunate incident happened.  I'm still irked about it.

Ten people, led by some middle-aged woman, took allowed exception to the self-defense poster that was our back cover ad — the link that I opened this story with — and they stormed out of the theater in a huff. Seems they objected to the gun she was wearing.  In the ad. 

I missed the unfortunate incident; I'd stepped outside the theater for a cigarette, and heard about it as I came back in.  I don't know if that was just as well; I'd have been tempted to say something like, "You're worried about a picture?  Lady, there's a couple dozen people in the theater actually carrying guns" — which would probably have been wrong, and I probably would have resisted the temptation.

I was, to say the least, a little irked.  Just as I was about to dash back into the theater — the movie hadn't started — to take up a collection so that the charity wouldn't suffer a $100 loss, which hardly seemed fair, the woman running the event told  me that there was nothing to worry about; they hadn't refunded the hysterics' money, and the seats had resold, anyway, so the charity was going to, rather than suffer a loss over that, actually make a little more profit.

So, still irked but feeling a little smug, I walked back in and sat back down.

Before the show, the various banner ads that various sponsors had purchased were flashed on the screen, and every time that one of the TwinCitiescarry.com ads showed up, it was met with applause from the entire theater.

And then we watched the movie, and enjoyed it thoroughly.

Honestly, I don't know how many peoples' views on issues around carrying guns in public were affected that night.  Maybe none; maybe several dozen.  But I'll score that night as a win.  A bunch of gun folks, identified as such, contributed their money and their time and their presence to a charitable event, and had a lot of fun doing it.  It's entirely possible that we did nothing, that night, to change anybody's prejudices about the sort of people who routinely carry handguns for personal defense.

Then again, maybe a few minds were changed, and a few hearts were softened.

I guess we'll have to see.

Me, I'm working on another t-shirt.  It's got the twincitiescarry logo -- a snubby revolver over a carry permit on the front -- and the words

ASK ME ABOUT MY SECRET AGENDA

On the back it says:

TRUTH, JUSTICE, AND THE AMERICAN WAY.  WHAT THE HELL IS YOURS?

Charlie: I think our topic is about how, if we share some values or positions, can we communicate with those who aren’t disposed to our view of the gun issue. The people in your story who walked out of the showing might represent a certain inflexible and intolerant subset of anti-gun people. They might also represent people who were outraged that you had tried to exploit their cause to advance yours, one they didn’t support. We’ll never know how you might’ve been able to reach an understanding since you didn’t talk to each other about it.

I don’t think that hijacking the Equality Now benefit was your intent, but can you see how people might think so? Unfortunately, when we send messages out into the public domain, we don’t get to decide how other people interpret them. Let me give you a different example.

Here’s an image from the same fellow who produced your ads. Now here’s my tale.

My father committed suicide with a firearm 24 years ago this month. He had begun treatment for a serious mental breakdown, but after some false starts, there was reason to hope he could be helped and recover. He was a tremendous human being and a pillar of the community, he had a loving family and the resources to get better. He also had a number of guns, all of which we thought had been located and secured out of the house. He had started medication to stabilize his condition, but the drugs took time to work.

One morning, he got up early and went into the dining room to do his crossword puzzle. Once my mother rose and went to take a shower, he went back to the bedroom, pulled his pistol hidden in their closet, went down into the family room and put a bullet in his brain. The account by my brother, a trained crime investigator, was at once dispassionate and heart-rending. He was staying at the house, heard my father come downstairs, heard the shot and ran in to discover our father’s body. Too late.

Now, ask yourself whether my family might feel that the poster — which was not aimed at persuading me, obviously — was just a bit lacking in sensitivity, not to mention lacking a refined understanding of the circumstances related to suicides. That message may pass muster with the faithful, but makes it a little harder to find common ground with me, don’t you think? And consider there are more Americans who’ve experienced a family member’s suicide than belong to the NRA.

I’m willing to assume the creator would be horrified to know how offensive his image could be and move on from there. But I’ll also insist on pointing to some facts that contradict the poster’s “they’ll just find another way to kill themselves” propaganda.

Most firearms deaths are suicides, and localities with supposedly overly restrictive gun laws have much lower suicide rates. Washington, D.C., has the lowest rate in America, one-fourth the rate of No. 1 Alaska. New York ranks 49th or 50th. California is 42nd, standing out among western states that account for 10 of the top 12 highest suicide rates.

I don’t even need to go into the statistics on accidental deaths and abusers murdering spouses to be able to claim that guns are a major public health issue. I’m not willing to dismiss this aspect of gun ownership from a discussion about the impact of regulations. The proper role of guns in self-defense against criminals is only one part of the issue. I want to look at this systemically, believing we can work out our differences over time, as long as we remain open to all the information and all possible solutions — maybe not getting to perfection or universal satisfaction, but better for all.

In our last post, I connected sex education with gun safety. Let’s extend the metaphor a bit. In both debates, everyone is concerned about prevention — preventing unwanted pregnancy and injury or death. Both debates have advocates for abstinence, and those who say abstinence isn’t realistic and doesn’t work. In my mind, if we insist on abstinence from guns instead of focusing on prevention, we’ll never reach agreement, much less a solution.

Back to your story. The people who walked out focused on the gun and missed a potentially provocative discussion about how a shared commitment to equality could be expressed differently. Over the past month you and I — and our respective readers — have done pretty well engaging in respectful discourse. I’ve personally done more listening than talking, in part because I want to better understand your point of view and because gun control is really not a burning issue for me; I’m more interested in how it stands for more fundamental differences about the limits of individual sovereignty in a free country. 

I hope we have opened eyes on both sides, and maybe the minds will follow.

Comments

[Jeff Dege]

"I don’t even need to go into the statistics on accidental deaths and abusers murdering spouses to be able to claim that guns are a major public health issue."

Have you read this?

http://www.guncite.com/journals/tennmed.html

You talk about the difficulty of reaching agreement. The public health aspects of gun control are a wonderful example of this.

It may be that someday I'll find someone with whom I'll be able to discuss the public health aspects in a reasonable way. But to date, the discussions always seem to start with accusations of gun ownership being perverse, followed by uninformed citations of studies in the public health literature that range from being fundamentally flawed to being intentionally fraudulent.

[Charlie Quimby]

I've skimmed it, but I'll read it at some point. The authors, who were published in a law journal, not a medical journal, did strike me as a wee bit opinionated themselves.

I know some of the studies and claims are controversial; that's why I said I didn't even need to get into them. In my view, classifying something as a public health issue does not get into moral judgments or automatic prescriptions of cures. It identifies something that needs research about causes and effects.

I won't deny your experience or the fact that there are people out there with the attitudes you describe. As for me, I don't think gun ownership is perverse; I didn't make claims based on someone else's claims, fraudulent or otherwise. I pointed to statistics that indicate to me that public health aspects of gun ownership ought to be part of the discussion. We ought to try to understand why those different suicide rates exist, for example, and see where that knowledge leads, not start by trying to refute the facts based on a particular position on guns.

As a lover of beer and other alcoholic beverages, I don't deny that alcohol is public health problem, and admitting that doesn't make me in favor of Prohibition.

[Joel Rosenberg]

No, but, in fact, if "guns are a major public health issue", wouldn't there be some good evidence to that effect that could stand up to scrutiny? Alcohol certainly is, and there certainly is; ditto for swimming pools and cigarettes.

If you want to get into that question -- not whether some people feel that it is, but whether or not it is -- let's go to it.

[serns]

The thing about sex education is everyone comes with a "gun." It's reckless not to teach about it.

[Charlie Quimby]

Joel, you write a blog about these issues, work in the field and have made it a major cause in your life. Guns and gun rights are on the far periphery of mine. If there's a gun-friendly explanation for the differences in suicide rates that I posted, I'm interested in hearing it. But don't ask me to defend every claim made by every gun opponent. It's just not that important to me.

My purpose here is not to debate every time someone drops a hat, but to say let's listen to the other side as we form our views and be wary of the agendas on both sides. Beware of absolutism that reinforces your prejudices as well as absolutism that contradicts them.

I've tried to model that attitude rather than pretend to be an authority on gun issues.

A reader sent me an email to tell me he'd stopped reading these dialogs. Let me know if they ever concede a single point, he said. I haven't had to write that email.

[Grace Kelly]

I am pro-gun when one lives in the country, where the Sheriff has to drive an hour to provide help. I am more anti-gun when a missed shot can kill the child living next door. What does that make me?

[serns]

Grace: practical? or pro-shotgun? (since, I believe, the pellets don't go as far if you miss and hit the wall or something)

[Joel Rosenberg]

Charlie, I'll be happy to concede any point when I think that you've made it. But you didn't do that with the issue you're referring to -- you just asserted it, without examination, as though it were true. I'll be happy to get into the issue of guns and suicide, if you'd like to. Let me know; probably the best place to start would be with the CDC's review of all of the academic literature, and with Kleck.

Grace Kelly, if you think that response times in the country are lacking, ask the MPD what the average response time is to a Priority One these days. (I don't know how they'd average in the response to a friend's recents "shots fired" call -- the gangbangers down his street were having at it again -- as the MPD never responded to the call.) I know that some rural Sheriffs Departments do a LOT better than that.

What does your flip answer make you? Well, not terribly thoughtful, at the moment. But I'm willing to listen.

[Hal Davis]

This is a sobering sentence:

==there are more Americans who’ve experienced a family member’s suicide than belong to the NRA.==

[Jeff Dege]

You want me to concede a point?

I'll concede that keeping guns away from individuals at risk of suicide is probably a good idea.

But I will not concede that the presence of guns puts someone at risk of suicide, which is what some of the public health advocates seem to be claiming.

And I will not concede that restricting access to guns by people who are not at risk of suicide is reasonable, which is the public policy that your discussion of suicide rates seems to be leaning to.

I had an uncle who committed suicide a number of years ago, and I did some reading at the time on suicide, suicide prevention, etc. And in the literature by people who were working in the field, gun control did not seem to be a major focus. It was one means among many, and reducing access to means in general didn't seem to be considered much more than a temporary stop-gap, to provide time in which the actual issues could be considered.

OTOH, I've seen plenty of gun control advocates talking about suicide prevention as a reason for gun control. It strikes me, from having read and listened to both gun control advocates and suicide prevention advocates, that the former are far more interested in excuses for controlling guns than they are in actually preventing suicides.

I'd be very surprised if you were to find a suicide prevention professional who would agree that the best use of $30 billion with respect to reducing the prevalence of suicide would be to spend it on a gun registry.

[Joe Doakes]

I can’t pretend to know the emotional impact of your father’s passing, Charlie. It must have been a life-altering tragedy, one to upset your worldview and with it, your perception of firearms. The fact you’re in this conversation at all is a testament to the strength of your character.

That said, I think we all agree that those too young to handle guns wisely, those who’ve proven their inability to follow society’s rules; and those who suffer from mental illness, should not have guns. The devil, of course, lies in the details of deciding who is too young, which crimes are too serious, and how far is too far to go to protect a person from himself.

I do not mean to belittle your experience when I say that it’s important to the discussion but not dispositive. A thoughtful society must consider both the tragedies it sees and the tragedies it does not see – the women not raped, the shop clerks not crippled, the homeowners not killed – because they were saved by lawful defensive use of a gun. You powerfully remind us there are millions of people whose lives have been harmed by guns; I quietly remind you there are millions whose lives have been helped.

And that’s the quick of the conversation, in all its manifold iterations: the balance. Are privately owned guns more help than harm? Would a government registry of gun owners risk more harm than good? Do gun-free zones save more lives than they cost? Should citizens have a legal duty to run away from deadly peril? Discussing principles in the context of consequences means weighing both the good and the bad, the seen and the unseen, the personal and the public.

The study of centuries of experience of Western civilization convinced the Founding Fathers that the right to own and carry guns was a fundamental right given to us by God and merely affirmed in the Bill of Rights. Before modern society rejects their analysis, we would do well to assure the weight of hard evidence tips the balance away. Personal tragedies, peaceful wishes of coexistence, wealthy insular lifestyles – are these enough to counter the mayhem we saw after the Rodney King verdict, Hurricane Katrina, the Omaha shopping mall, the Virginia college? When civil order breaks down, will good intentions be enough to protect my family, or will hard men carrying hard weapons be required?

I'm sorry your other readers have fallen away from the conversation. It would have been nice to see some well-reasoned responses to the points raised - the legal cost of self-defense weighed against immunity, or the outrage of a government registry of people who exercise their fundamental rights - but that hasn't happened. Maybe it isn't possible in this format. Maybe it isn't possible at all.

.

[Charlie Quimby]

Joe,
Thanks for your comments. I'd like to clarify a couple things here.

I didn't mean to tell of my family's experience to assume greater moral or factual authority on these issues, but to provide an example of how not to win people to your side, as well as why public health arguments about guns have greater resonance for me than say, their usefulness in preventing muggings. Learning about these differences is part of being able to discuss the issues more fully and honestly.

I didn't have my attitudes toward guns changed by my father's suicide; I remain reasonably ambivalent. However, I am not ambivalent about any frame that would dismiss suicide or exclude it from the discussion. Mostly, though, I would reverse things — let's look at the suicide numbers and make sure we understand the role guns might play.

While I share your hope for more discussion of the sort we've had here, I will say I'm pleased with what has occurred. You and some of Joel's other regular readers have contributed positively, and I don't think you should discount the impact on the lurkers. We've tried to show what a better kind of conversation might look like. But actually carrying it out is a LOT of work. It's hard to have your cherished positions challenged, especially by very passionate and informed people. Responding on an issue that's not core for you places you at a disadvantage, something I accepted when I invited Joel; but most of my readers didn't necessarily sign up for that work detail.

You ask good questions, and good questions lead to better understanding. I'm sure we won't see eye to eye on everything, but unless more of us engage with each other at a higher level, we won't get anywhere.

[Charlie Quimby]

Jeff,
I'm not inclined toward a solution, because I don't have one. I'd agree that suicide prevention strategies should not start from the premise that wholesale restriction of guns would work.

But I would like someone to study why Washington DC has the lowest suicide rate. Is it because of its restrictions on guns; because blacks commit suicide at a much lower rate than whites; because it's an urban population being compared to states that have a more diverse mix? And then look at other anomalies between gun laws and gun deaths. Does the suicide data tell us anything useful?

Could money be effectively spent on "family gun control," for example, as a way of reducing suicides? When we draw hard lines between get rid of guns and no restrictions on freedom, we're bound to miss some good ideas.

[DiscordianStooge]

I find it odd that a fan of Firefly (and Serenity) would object to a gun ad. The Browncoats were the ultimate freedom fighters, and guns were the only way they could do their work.

[Jeff Dege]

"And that’s the quick of the conversation, in all its manifold iterations: the balance."

Actually, it's there where I disagree.

We live in a free society, there are issues beyond the simply utilitarian.

Is it right to tell a nurse working third shift in an inner city hospital that she cannot carry a gun on her long, lonely walk back to the car, because we have decided that society in general would be better off?

Even if it were true that in a society with fewer guns there'd be fewer people injured, on balance, how much does that balance mean to her, when she hears those footsteps coming up behind her? Is it right that we put her at risk because of vague concerns of what other people might do?

Even if we think she's wrong, in her determination that she'd be safer carrying a gun, why should we think our judgment better than hers? It is her life, and she's the one most intimately familiar with her circumstances.

We're dealing with fundamental issues of life and liberty, here. And I reject the utilitarian premise that "the greatest good for the greatest number" has any relevancy.

If we are going to restrict the freedom of one individual, it should only be based on the nature, and behavior, and history of that individual. That is, after all, what defines a free society.

Now you may be less strident. I don't expect everyone to agree with me. But even if you accept the idea that restrictions on individual behavior may be appropriate, should the offer a social benefit, the least I'd expect is solid evidence that the proposed restrictions will actually have a social benefit.

But in the conversations I've had, there seems to be an absolute blindness to the idea. People toss around proposals that would significantly inconvenience millions of people, that would place thousands at risk of victimization or criminal prosecution, without even the slightest consideration of whether the proposals in question might have any chance of accomplishing their purported goals.

[Charlie Quimby]

Jeff, I haven't proposed anything yet. As for imposing something that would significantly inconvenience millions, I'd say death is the ultimate inconvenience.

I guess we see the definition of a free society differently. You set individual freedom as the ultimate measure; I think a free SOCIETY allows for some limits on individual and corporate behavior, arrived at through an open and reasoned process.

You may have a beef about how reasoned it's been, and yes, we should insist that measures achieve the right right goals. But if you don't buy any restraints on individuals at all, maybe Alaska is better than Minnesota.

[Joel Rosenberg]

Straw man, Charlie; there are no societies where there are no restraints on individuals at all. Alaska? Doesn't even come close.

[Charlie Quimby]

Okay, I overstated what Jeff said, which was any social restraints should be based on the individual. I don't know any societies like that, either, but if you want to live a less restrained life in the U.S., Alaska is going to be a better bet than Minnesota. Plus, it's easier to shoot yourself there without do-gooders trying to butt in.

[late to supper]

Guns and suicide:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/17/health/17risk.html

[Hal Davis]

For those too lazy to click:

NYTimes
April 17, 2007

Vital Signs
At Risk: Availability of Guns Raises Suicide Rates, Study Finds

By ERIC NAGOURNEY
People who live in communities with a lot of guns are more likely to kill themselves, a new study says.

The findings, the researchers say, add weight to the argument that when people have less access to guns, they are less likely to commit suicide. Earlier research raised the question of whether people intent on suicide would simply switch to another equally lethal method if unable to find a gun.

In the new report, in the current issue of The Journal of Trauma, researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health said they had found evidence that “the ready availability of firearms is likely to have the greatest effect on suicide rates in groups characterized by more impulsive behavior.”

The researchers, led by Dr. Matthew Miller, compared statistics on gun ownership by state with statistics on suicide. They also took into account factors like poverty, mental illness and drug abuse.

When they looked at the 15 states with the highest firearm ownership, the researchers found that twice as many people committed suicide as in the six states with the lowest firearm ownership. The population in each group of states was about the same, the researchers said.

In 2002, more than 30,000 Americans killed themselves, with just over half using a gun.

Firearms are used in only 5 percent of attempts, the study said, even though, with a 90 percent fatality rate, they cause more than half the deaths. So even a small decline in the number of attempts involving guns could mean many fewer deaths, the researchers said.