Voldemort shouts the Killing Curse over and over, and every time he expects that he will win.
And every time, Harry moves to disarm.
The March For Our Lives was this weekend. I didn’t bring a sign, just a body that could be counted in a tally. This isn’t for me, I thought to myself. It’s for the children around me. Children who are standing with parents and friends and doing their best to still smile and laugh and make the day triumphant. That’s what we expect of children. That they must continue to be children in spite of everything. They must maintain some semblance of innocence, no matter how callous the world has become.
These children were raised on dystopia, we are told. They are growing up with Resistance fighters in Star Wars and superheroes who avenge. With Katniss Everdeen’s love for her little sister. With Maze Runner and Divergent and Uglies and The Giver and Shatter Me and Unwind and… That quote from G.K. Chesterton comes up now and again: “Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.”
But sometimes the parallels are so exact that they’re not comforting in the least.
Emma Gonzalez, standing at the center of this movement with her friends, is reading Harry Potter. She has said that the fight between Dumbledore’s Army and Death Eaters at the Ministry of Magic is what they are going through right now. Their teachers are on their side, but the government isn’t interested. Their primary goal is to keep themselves and others safe, just as Harry taught his classmates do in the Room of Requirement.
We take solace in these cues, despite the terror in the source material. We shore each other up by casting ourselves as the heroes we love and recognize. Sometimes this is the only way to make nightmares bearable. I can see the lines, the broad strokes that get to these particular connections. But there are subtler ones, too. The subtler ones dig deeper, they hurt more. And when I see felt tip marker signs at these marches and rallies that invoke Dumbledore’s Army or Voldemort, these are the thoughts that preoccupy me:
When Harry is in the cemetery at Little Hangleton with Death Eaters surrounding him, Voldemort shouts “Avada Kedavra!” and he shouts “Expelliarmus!”
Harry lives.
Though I was the same age as Harry when the books were first published, my generation is not Harry’s anymore. In fact, I am the same age as Snape, as Lupin, as Sirius Black would have been when Harry started school. We didn’t have to contend with Grindelwald or a world of unrelenting global conflict—my parents’ generation were the ones who hid beneath their desks in preparation for nuclear devastation after fascism threatened civilization. My generation didn’t have to worry about that.
Instead, my generation remembers the fight over gun control as its ever-present reality. We were sitting at our desks as the Columbine massacre happened in 1999. We watched adults convince one another that it was an anomaly, that it could never happen a second time. We watched them blame video games and mental health. We saw the ridiculous and inadequate measures put in place that were meant to make us “safe.” Any attempt to speak up about it resulted in more blaming of video games, or sometimes music. White suburban parents really loved to chalk things up to Marilyn Manson back then.
None of the Parkland kids are mollified the way we were. And they aren’t content to be the only ones talking either. They invited a survivor of the Pulse Night Club Shooting to speak beside them. At the march, they had eleven-year-old Naomi Wadler talk to the crowd in D.C. in an attempt to recenter the conversation on those who need the platform most. Because this isn’t just a problem for students. As a part of the framework of our society, it goes far deeper than one school, or even every school. It is about communities going unaided and ignored while friends and children and loved ones are taken from them.
Wizarding society has much the same lesson to learn. From the “Mudbloods” and Muggles who can’t expect aid during Death Eater attacks, to the house-elves and werewolves and centaurs and goblins and giants and countless more who are meant to hold with the status quo and let things continue as they always have. Harry Potter is, in part, about giving voices to your allies, about knowing that you’re stronger together. It is about assuring a better future for everyone, not just the lucky few.
***
When Harry is being chased by Voldemort’s supporters as he escapes to the Tonks household, and comes across Stan Shunpike under the Imperius Curse, Harry shouts “Expelliarmus!”
Stan lives.
***
When I was nine years old, my fourth grade class went on a short field trip to visit some local business owners—to learn a little about entrepreneurship, I guess. We went to a flower shop and the chocolate shop next door to it. I bought a carnation with some pocket change, and the chocolates were heart-shaped and delicious. The woman who owned the flower shop loved her storefront and her neighborhood. It was her passion, the shop a perfect manifestation of that “American dream” I was always hearing about.
A month later, that same woman was dead; she and her daughter and sister had been gunned down in her store. Her daughter was a year younger than I was. Their shop was one block away from my apartment building.
No one really knew what to say, except “how depressing” or “how shocking.” I suppose it was, but I didn’t have the emotional vocabulary for that kind of tragedy. I buried my terror and did my best not to think about it—there was no better option presented. And the strange thing is, I think of that flower shop owner and her daughter often… yet I never say so out loud. What the hell does that even mean, that over two decades later it still seems forbidden to remember them?
At that march on Saturday I realized—I am not a member of Dumbledore’s Army. My generation, we’re the Order of the Phoenix, at best. Faces on a picture waving up at them. Some of us are gone and some of us remain. The most I can hope for is Remus Lupin status: Here are a few spells to combat evil. Here are the fights we tried and failed to win. Here is my unflagging support. Here is some chocolate; eat it, it helps, it really helps. Forgive me for not doing more, for not ending this before you had to lose your friends and hide in a dark room and listen to adults tell you how to feel instead of telling you how they will stop this from ever happening again.
***
During the Skirmish at Malfoy Manor, Hermione Granger is being tortured by Bellatrix Lestrange. Ron Weasley bursts into the room and shouts “Expelliarmus!” Harry physically disarms Draco. Dobby snaps Narcissa Malfoy’s wand from her grip with a flick of his hand.
Hermione lives.
***
These teenagers stand up and they hold rallies and they speak about what happened and they encourage others to do the same. A new narrative emerges; Parkland was staged, and these children are “paid crisis actors.” Perhaps the people who buy and perpetuate this narrative expect that all children should be too frightened to put their grief into words and actions. They share obviously photoshopped pictures of Gonzalez tearing up the Constitution, and the kids begin receiving threats for speaking out. These kids survived a massacre and are receiving death threats for asking for help. These brave young people are berated for standing up to their state senator in a town hall, for asking him if he will continue to take money from the nation’s most powerful gun lobby, if he will continue to side with the people trying to delegitimize the death of school kids, to delegitimize the fury that their friends and classmates righteously feel. Their detractors try to gaslight a nation into ignoring the very real danger that exists in the United States, not everywhere, but potentially anywhere.
Harry Potter tells Cornelius Fudge that Voldemort is back after the Triwizard Tournament, and the government and frightened adults make moves to discredit him. The Daily Prophet becomes a newspaper full of propaganda. The Boy Who Lived is framed as unstable and dishonest. He craves attention, or something much worse.
Harry takes Defense Against the Dark Arts with Dolores Umbridge in his fifth year, and he is done with keeping truth to himself. He speaks out in the middle of the class and refuses to be gaslit by a Ministry-appointed teacher. He tells everyone that he saw Cedric Diggory die and that he saw Voldemort return. Umbridge puts him in detention and forces him to carve out words on the back of his hand with the help of a sadistic magical tool, the same words over and over each evening:
I must not tell lies.
Harry isn’t lying, and nothing that Umbridge forces him to do will change that. But the scars from that quill are the only scars that Harry carries out of the war aside from the trademark lightning bolt assigned to him by Voldemort. To put it more succinctly: Aside from the initial attack enacted on Harry by the Dark Lord, the only other physical scars he bears for the rest of his life come at the behest of someone who wants to silence him.
Imagine that.
More guns, some say. That will solve the problem. A good guy with a gun can stop a bad one, they say. More smart gun owners will outweigh the ones who aren’t so great. Arm security guards. Arm teachers. Arm anyone who will remember to put the safety on. That will keep us safe.
We know this isn’t true. And more importantly, it’s incomprehensibly inhumane to expect others to meet violence with more violence when something so simple and sensible could prevent it all.
Just don’t give people an easy means of murder.
Harry gets dressed down in the final book for being easy to spot due to his signature move, the Disarming Charm. It’s not the first time Harry’s is given flak for it either; there are members of Dumbledore’s Army who are initially disbelieving about its usefulness. Remus Lupin eventually tries to tell Harry that it’s too dangerous to keep using the spell as his default because it makes him easy to spot. Effectively, calling to disarm makes him more of a target. Harry refuses to alter his preference: “I won’t blast people out of my way just because they’re there. That’s Voldemort’s job.”
***
Harry’s disarmament of Draco accidentally makes him master of the Elder Wand. When he fights Voldemort for the final time, he tells the Dark Lord that this has come to pass. But Voldemort believes he’s invulnerable and he shouts “Avada Kedavra!” and Harry shouts “Expelliarmus!”
Voldemort’s Killing Curse rebounds on him and he dies.
And everyone else lives.
And everyone here could, too.
Emmet Asher-Perrin says #NeverAgain. You can read more of her work here and elsewhere.
Thank you.
I come to this site to read about science fiction and fantasy. Not to be compared to the evil bad guys in Harry Potter. Nice way to alienate a significant portion of your readers.
Also, if you think the answer is so “simple and sensible”, I’m afraid you’re uninformed and / or naive. If it was so simple and sensible, why didn’t the Democrats implement it when they had control of the presidency and both houses of Congress?
When you learn more about the subject and stop making caricatures out of your political opponents, you might see that it’s far from a simple problem.
Not sure why this is on Tor. Good luck with the comment section, moderators.
Bravo.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I agree with almost all of this, except the part where you compare adults to Remus Lupin. Yes, we as adults have failed to deal with mass shootings effectively. The kids should never have had to take the burden on themselves, but we can do more than offer support, tools, ideas, etc. We can find ways to take the burden off the shoulders of traumatized teens. We still have power and voices of our own. We cannot and should not rely on these children to “lead the way” or “drive the movement” or “change the world.”
“Wow, look at how amazing these teens are. They’re so effective.” too easily and too often turns into “We dropped the ball, but they’re doing a great job. And they clearly care so much. We’ll let them handle it.” I see batted around Facebook and Twitter and it is, to me, nothing but more of the same: abdication of responsibility. The Parkland kids are taking care of it. What more can I do? I failed in the past, oh well, better let these kids suffering from PTSD and grief take the brunt of the fight and the abuse.
We as adults need to learn lessons from dystopia stories as well. The adults in Harry Potter, Hunger Games, etc fail in their duty before the war begins, but during the war as well. They fail to step up and lead, to allow children to recover from shock and trauma, to take the terrible burden off their shoulders, to do the hard work of redemption and reform. We can be better than dystopian adults and to claim that is the only status we have is to do what the children are fighting against: accept the status quo.
Good article generally, and I agree largely with the premise and general idea.
However, it is somewhat ironic that it is just as easy to view this the opposite way and the metaphor breaks down extremely fast when realized that the basic premise of the entire Potter universe is that every “lucky” one, every kid that can fight back, indeed every kid (and everyone else in the magical community) has the magical equivalent of a gun, is trained to use it, and is free to use it in any way they may so choose (with penalties and laws of course to govern).
Thus, concluding that “it’s incomprehensibly inhumane to expect others to meet violence with more violence when something so simple and sensible could prevent it all. Just don’t give people an easy means of murder” falls flat because the Harry Potter story is built on the premise that everyone is on the same level because everyone is armed. All the kids have the means of fighting back.* Everyone is walking around with an easy means of murder/torture/etc. The only means that Harry has to win is to use his weapon more wisely, not to take his weapon away. Anything else is a drastic misreading of the story, reduces the dramatic tension/danger of every wand fight, and really just becomes a rhetorical move that actually supports the narrative that the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.
Again, not advocating for guns for everyone as the means of solving the RL conundrum. But pointing out the rhetorical flaws and problems with trying to use the Harry Potter universe in this manner. It has its massive flaws.
*of course this brings up the issue dealt with in the books of wizards withholding wands from certain other creatures, etc.
Irony:
Wands are weapons. Wands were taken away from non-humans, which enabled the Death Eaters and their like to dominate them with relative ease (and even the overall Wizarding World continued that practice). The students of Hogwarts had wands and were able to defend themselves, while if those wands had been taken away then Voldemort would have won without effort.
Guns are weapons. Guns were taken away from the Russians, from the Chinese, from the North Koreans, from the Jews, and those groups were not able to defend themselves from the tyrants who kept their guns, tyrants who said that only the state should be armed. The Greeks had guns and were able to defend themselves, while if their guns had been taken away then first the Nazis and then the Communists would have own without effort.
Absolutely agree with decision to publish this. While not all readers will agree with OP, a situation in which fantasy fiction is currently influencing real political life is relevant for the themes of this site. Good luck to mods keeping things civil in the discussion that will result–but the discussion is important to this site’s goals.
Macsimus: Granted, not so simple. But regulation is sensible. And as for “making caricatures out of your political opponents,” I look at the current Republican congress and can only think of that scene in Revenge of the Sith: “You have done that yourself.”
I applaud what you’re trying to do. I applaud what the kids who are suffering through this are trying to do. Difficult conversations must be had and well-considered action must be taken. But there is a real danger in over-simplifying this, on both sides. No one should be “explaining away” the problem or blaming the victims or making excuses for inaction. But simply taking guns away altogether (as many are advocating) is dangerous as well. This isn’t an issue where we can all just shift to the extremes and see who wins. Fiction is easy; you can decide who wins and why. Who the good guys and bad guys are. Real life is seldom so tidy and unintended consequences are the rule, not the exception.
@8
Please stop peddling the throughout debunked argument that the Nazis were crazy about gun control. They inherited a system of gun registration, did nothing to expand it, and in 1938, loosened restrictions substantially. Furthermore, if you’re going to suggest that gun control is a road to genocide, you have to reconcile that with basically every first world country on Earth, where nothing of the sort has happened.
Regarding the article itself, I agree with others that Harry Potter isn’t the best text to cite here (and in general, that it’s cited way too often for political, argumentative purposes, because it doesn’t hold up to that kind of rigor) but the general sentiment is sincere, and well expressed.
Just a quick note, since this is a complex and highly sensitive topic: we ask that you please keep the tone of the conversation civil and directly related to the points made in the original article. As always, we ask that you keep your comments and criticisms constructive–rude, dismissive, aggressive, and/or overly personal comments do not add to this conversation in any helpful or fruitful way. You can find our full Moderation Policy here. Thank you.
“More guns, some say. That will solve the problem. A good guy with a gun can stop a bad one, they say. More smart gun owners will outweigh the ones who aren’t so great. Arm security guards. Arm teachers. Arm anyone who will remember to put the safety on. That will keep us safe.
We know this isn’t true. And more importantly, it’s incomprehensibly inhumane to expect others to meet violence with more violence when something so simple and sensible could prevent it all.”
Ahem.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/20/us/maryland-school-shooting-resource-officer-response-trnd/index.html
Great article! I’m rereading the Potter books in reverse order, and am in the midst of Order of the Phoenix (they’re gathering for the first defense meeting).
I’m an older GenXer, still cookin’ when JFK was assassinated but old enough to remember Peyton Place. My folks are Depression Era Babies.
We have GOT to do something!!!!! No access = everybody lives.
What about a nationwide economic boycott of places that cater to gun toters? And I mean every place. I generally support locally owned businesses, but there’s this one restaurant I won’t go to because they cater to gun toters and it’s been at least three years since I’ve been there. Money is the only thing that Fascists care about, so they might listen then.
I make my folks come in w/ me when we go on errands because it’s too dangerous for them to stay in the car.
I’ve contacted my state and national representatives, tho’ they don’t care about gun control (it’s the state I live in).
I’m wearing a Not One More bracelet, and two homemade bracelets of different colored, iridescent crescent moon beads and smaller round beads. One has seventeen orange beads, a small round bead, then twenty-six beads. Another bracelet has beads organized according to number (the church shootings in TN and TX, the singer killed not long before the Pulse shooting, the five people in NM killed that same week) or number of letters in words (five beads for Pulse), and one or two beads, each separated by a small round bead, for the different individuals killed in the last few years; this bracelet is wrapped around my wrist twice.
The young people are on my list of admired people (along with Lincoln, Barton, Carver, Edison, Salk, King, LBJ, and Hannah Arendt).
The Potter books, the Bible, Arendt’s The Origin of Totalitarianism, and The Long Winter are on my Handbooks of Resistance list.
I’m a Christian and I don’t know why religious people aren’t screaming the place down for decent gun control laws. But don’t let their bad example sour anyone on religion!!!
Let’s keep on supporting the young people, and each other!!!! And I reckon another email to my reps are in order, tho’ they don’t listen . . . In the Gospel of Luke there is this parable about the unjust judge who was worn down, finally, so . . . .
Wands are not inherently weapons. The difference between a wand and a gun is that wands have uses other than killing. A knife can be used for cooking, an axe for splitting firewood. But an AR-15? That can’t even be used for hunting because it destroys what it comes in contact with, leaving fragments of bullets in the flesh.
Let’s look at Emily’s post more literally. Harry doesn’t neutralize his opponents by killing them. Harry doesn’t say “we should use the killing curse as the first line of defense.” Of course it’s not a perfect metaphor. Most things aren’t. The killing curse is the gun here, not the wand itself.
Remus Lupin saying that Harry should have done more than disarm Stan Shunpike is analogous to the government arming teachers. Dementors “protecting” Hogwarts is analogous to arming teachers. Harry believes we can do better. And isn’t that what all Potter fans want? To do Harry proud?
Ps: Emily, I’ve always seen you as more Tonks than Lupin.
@16 Not so. It depends on the cartridge used not the type of rifle. AR-15’s are commonly used for hunting as any simple Google search will reveal.
Please see comment #13 re: constructive comments. Reductive and dismissive insistence that this article and discussion does not belong on the site is a non-starter.
This is important, powerful writing.
#18 — Any simple Google search will also reveal many other rifles—not semi-auto, not miltary style, not used in mass shootings—used for hunting game as well. If a hunter needs to look like Rambo to hunt deer, that hunter needs to question the culture of the hunt. Was John Wayne and his trusty old rifle not good enough?
When someone invents a technology that can reliably disarm a man with a gun (without killing him) that I can easily carry in my pocket at all times, then this argument will make sense. Or if you can find a way to 100% (not 99.999%) disarm all the criminals but still allow farmers and herders to protect their livestock from wild predators, and allow soldiers to protect our country from other countries that don’t agree with disarming, we can have this discussion. Until then, it’s just a fantasy.
@@@@@ Ipso Interesting article in Time magazine written shortly after the Orlando nightclub shooting. Time is not exactly an NRA apologist. Not everyone who uses an AR-15 or similar rifle to hunt does so because they think it looks badass. For some it actually is the best tool for the job.
http://time.com/4390506/gun-control-ar-15-semiautomatic-rifles/
As someone who was present during a shooting, I think the issue is far more complex than just gun control/reform.
The shootings are a symptom of larger problems, and maybe one of the treatments is to prevent dangerous psychopaths from having easy access to guns (fun fact, our current prohibitions don’t event begin to prevent most people with dangerous mental illnesses from getting guns; and yes, it is in part a mental health issue). But beyond that, we have other social problems: kids are bullied in schools; people are fired from greedy companies with little or no recourse, and even less safety net; we’ve criminalized drugs that are less addictive than alcohol, driving people to high-risk lifestyles that usually end behind bars or before the barrel of a gun. All these factors and more contribute to the desperation mass shooters, which push them to murder people.
While it’s a cliche, it’s still true, murder is already illegal. In the case that affected me (while it wasn’t technically a mass shooting) the gunman, William Phillips, not only killed someone (illegal in Texas, usually), but also brought a gun onto restricted Federal property (breaking Federal law, and the rules of his employer, might I add). While suicide was no longer illegal in Texas, had he survived his suicide attempt, and didn’t actually try to kill anyone else, he would have been taken against his will to a psychiatric ward (again, while he wouldn’t have broken a crime in this case, he would have been detained against his will until he was evaluated by a mental health professional). What layer in this particular legal/policy sandwich was supposed to stop him? (In this case, he brought a gun to work because he was about to be fired, because JSC operates most of its functions through subcontractors who are always, always, always laying people off in order to be profitable.)
Assuming the 2A issues are easy to navigate (which they aren’t), making guns less readily available won’t make mass shootings a thing of the past. If city/state lines don’t stop the flow of guns, how could we expect country lines (just ask Mexico and Colombia), or heaven forbid, 3d gun printing DRM? Or if it does make mass shootings a thing of the past, and that’s all we do, it will just introduce other forms of mass murder, like vehicular killings and explosions (two things that have happened in the past few years here in America without anybody demanding car and pressure cooker reform). The sad truth is: people will still find a way to kill other people if they’re sufficiently desperate.
The biggest issue is that we have a corrupt government (both parties), that let the will of the large businesses and organizations determine what they want (which is why we got FOSTA, which erodes civil rights and CDA 230 protections of website operators but does nothing to actually help victims of sex trafficking, and was passed by 97% of the Senate). In a recent town hall given by Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren (both of whom voted for FOSTA, but I digress), Michael Moore and Darrick Hamilton, Moore said “The largest political party in America is the non-voter party.” If those people would get out and vote for the candidates that actually wanted what was best for America and had the gumption and honor to go out and do it, then, hey, maybe there’d be fewer shootings, because there’d be fewer desperate people.
Now, I’m not a gun-toting republican. I’m not even a republican, or right wing or any other mappable point on the tribalistic political spectrum. So, don’t discount what I’m trying to say by trying to put me in a basket (of deplorables). What I’m saying is: it’s more complex than just gun reform. We need country reform; or at least, political reform (’cause the country’s not so bad). So, let’s aim for a packaged deal, and not just (to tastelessly abuse a cliche) put a bandaid on the bullet wound.
Now, let’s get back to the dragons. Please.
@2
It is actually simple and sensible: If you have guns, destroy them. Otherwise, the comparison to Voldemort is spot-on.
@8/Porphyrogenitus: You do know that Germany occupied Greece in 1941?
Well put. Thank you.
@24 Excellent comments. As someone who was mugged and terrorized by three crack heads with a sawed-off shotgun, I couldn’t agree with you more.
Disarming the law abiding is not a solution. Look at how the Parkland shooter was allowed to slip past numerous agencies and organizations – so maybe more laws aren’t a solution either. Let’s try better and tighter enforcement of the laws we already have and PAYING ATTENTION to red flags and see what happens.
And yes, it is the culture.
@29 princessroxana
The United Kingdom, Australia, Japan, and Germany all have strict gun laws. They also have a far smaller number of gun deaths.
It’s entertaining to hear people insist that fewer guns couldn’t possibly be a solution that works when practically every other First World country has both fewer guns and fewer gun deaths per capita than America. This isn’t some new, groundbreaking theory that needs to be tested; other nations manage to reduce gun deaths through strict regulation, and we can do the same.
There are violent, angry, and mentally ill people in every country. But most countries regulate gun ownership. As a result, fewer of their citizens die from gun violence. If we stop making excuses and learn from their success, America will stop being “exceptional” in the number of citizens killed by guns.
@29 Agreed. My neighbor is a police officer and his secondary outrage, after the death of the children, was directed at the armed law enforcement officer on the scene who did not enter the school and attempt to stop the shooter. He told me that all the cops feel the same way. They regard that man as a disgrace to his badge.
@30, We might want to consider we are a larger, more diverse country than any of the above. Diversity makes for conflict. Fact. Add in two long weakly guarded borders which make a gun ban impossible to maintain. We might also want to consider that mass shootings are quite a modern phenomena. Again, it’s the culture.
@32 princessroxana
The UK, Australia, Japan, and Germany all suffered from mass shootings. They responded by tightening regulations and making it more difficult for their citizens to get guns. As a result, the number of gun deaths in each country dropped substantially.
Everyone arguing against increased regulation insists that there’s no such thing as a “perfect” system. That’s true, but it’s also irrelevant. If gun dealers have to smuggle guns in across the border, sell them on the black market, and face substantial criminal charges if they’re caught, they will raise the price of guns. When prices go up, fewer people can afford to purchase the product.
The four countries listed above have fewer gun deaths than America per capita, so our size isn’t important. I don’t see what “diversity” has to do with it, either; Canada is more diverse than America (http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/07/18/the-most-and-least-culturally-diverse-countries-in-the-world/), and they have fewer gun deaths per capita. The idea that America is somehow more diverse than every other country is false, and it has nothing to do with gun deaths.
Imagine a country where everyone was allowed to buy a car without passing a driver’s test and where there were no seatbelt laws or safety regulations. That country would naturally have a far higher percentage of its people killed in car accidents. But whenever anyone suggested “car regulation”, car owners would declare that seatbelts violated their constitutional rights, that car regulation was the first step on the road to tyranny, and that driver’s tests never helped save lives. We would consider that absurd, even as we do the exact same thing with guns.
There are problems we genuinely don’t have good answers to. With guns, the answer is very simple; other countries have solved this. Once we stop making excuses for why we can’t fix things, we can start fixing things using the methods that have worked for much of the First World.
I’m new to this site and am extremely impressed with, and proud of, the insightful discourse.
Like Chesterton, I know dragons exist. The essential issue may be that they are always shape-shifters.
Thanks for this!
…how many deaths will it take till he knows that too many people have died…
@34. Most of the guns used in criminal activity already obtained illegally. Criminals do not typically fill out forms at their local gun shops. Mass shootings get 99% of the publicity but comprise 1% or less of the total gun deaths per year. Far more children are killed every year as bystanders during drive-by shootings and other unintended consequences of criminal activity than are shot in mass shooter incidents. But the former are primarily children of color who live in inner cities while the latter are primarily suburban whites. Coincidence?
Also Canada has a population of 37 million. The USA is roughly 330 million. Big difference.
To all: it’s refreshing to be able to have this discussion without angry rhetoric and name calling. A credit to this community.
Unless the Constitution is amended you cannot ban individuals from owning guns. See 2nd Amendment, US Constitution; District of Columbia v. Heller. Even if you could there are already somewhere between 270 to 310 million guns already privately owned in the US. You are too late to ban guns. Some things that could be done constitutionally include limiting magazine sizes and…taxes! You can tax newspapers (1st Amendment) so why not guns and (more importantly) gunpowder.
What is most disturbing about these mass school shootings is not how (with a gun) but WHY? Why does this generation have some many people who want to kill their peers? You may be excited to see the motivated Parkland students marching but don’t forget one of their own killed them. Why doesn’t anyone seem to care why this is happening? We might ban guns and end up with truck bombs or poison gas attacks, and sometime in the near future homemade viruses.
@38
Many, many people care about the why; but many, many countries have angry young men who don’t commit mass shootings, because they can’t.
I agree #37. Why is the murder of 17 kids in school in Florida more important than the hundreds (thousands?) of inner city kids killed every year? Oh I know, ’cause they were rich white kids whose parents have the money to fly them all over the country to protest and appear on the news while the inner city kid who skips school to protest might miss her only meal of the day while her mom works two jobs to try to house and feed her kids.
@34
Just to echo this … NZ has fairly strict gun control laws. And yet we still have professional hunters who use AR-15s (or derivatives) for culling of introduced feral livestock like deer and goats, mostly from helicopters. I personally know several people who collect classic weapons. Strict licensing and periodic monitoring of gun owners is no restriction on people’s ability to do what they enjoy, but it does keep large calibre semi-automatics out of common ownership.
What we don’t have is handguns. They’ve always been tightly restricted, and even professional target shooters have periodic problems training and travelling with their weapons. Which means if you want to go on a rampage, you need to use a shotgun or rifle, and that limits the impact on victims, because magazine sizes are small.
Yes, criminals have access to guns. But because they are inconvenient to obtain and relatively expensive they don’t actually use them much, around 1-2% of crimes in general. By far the vast majority of firearm related deaths are suicides, with only ~15% being crime related.
@26: Yes, and it was not an easy occupation. It helped the Allies out quite a bit that the Nazis had to rescue their Italian allies and devote troops and equipment to the occupation that they otherwise could have used on other fronts.
@12: The fact-checking report you linked admits that, in the case of the Jews, the Nazis not only kept the previous restrictions on gun ownership but also increased them. If a good Aryan German was allowed to keep his firearms would that help the Jewish neighbor whose home got raided and whose weapons were confiscated? History says it would not.
And as far as any road to genocide, was the Weimar Republic genocidal? I don’t think so. But the laws it had were abused by the Nazis when they came to power. Was the Russian Empire genocidal? It might be argued that they were, at least to an extent, but when the Soviets seized power they slaughtered millions of their own people using the situation created under the Czars. In general, laws that require official registration of firearms make a population vulnerable to targeted confiscation once the government changes. After the last round of elections in the US and Europe, I’d expect everyone to recognized just how quickly such changes can occur.
Imagine if you will that the United States were to disarm its civilian population. At some point a crisis occurs, perhaps economic, perhaps military, but a strong leader sweeps into power and blames the country’s troubles on homosexuals and other non-binary, non-hetero people. He employs the military (or militarized police) to round up such people into separate communities. Eventually they start disappearing, and by the time an outside power intervenes (since no internal opposition with a realistic chance of stopping things can exist) millions are dead. Opportunism is how people like Lenin or Hitler come to power, and they abuse the legacy situation of the displaced government.
Imagine if you will that a government colonizes a distant land. Over time, the expenses of managing those colonies grow significant, so that government begins to impose taxes upon the colonies. However, that government refuses to give those colonies representation or even to heed the petitions that they offer in an attempt to get redress for their grievances. Instead, that government sends agents, including armed soldiers, to confiscate the weapons of the colonists. If the colonists roll over and let it happen, then you get a military occupation that lasts who knows how long and has any number of negative effects on the colonists. If they instead choose to fight, to take up the arms that the government seeks to strip from them, then you get Lexington and Concord, the American War for Independence, and eventually the United States of America, which despite its share of crimes has brought more prosperity to the world than any other power in the history of human existence.
Bringing this back to Harry Potter, isn’t one of the complaints of the centaurs and other non-human groups specifically pointed out to be wand control? Human wizards monopolized access to wands and as a result gained utter dominance over the magical world. In much the same way most European powers (and IIRC the European- descendant Unites States) criminalized the act of trading firearms to Amerind populations, post-Reconstruction southern State governments implemented laws to prevent black Americans from arming themselves, and in general groups that sought to oppress or eliminate a population would almost always first seek to disarm or to prevent the arming of that population. Frankly I’m more than a little surprised that Umbrage didn’t implement any wand control policies, for instance requiring that all students (other than her favorites) surrender their wands and only sign them out for specific classes. Had she done so, either Hogwarts would have revolted against her immediately or Voldemort would have won the war (and now I’m imagining a great scene with McGonagall leading a group of students to the wand lock-up and blasting the door open, arming the students and starting the great Hogwarts Revolution).
@38: You can tax newspapers but only in the same manner that you tax other businesses. Imposing special taxes on newspapers is unconstitutional as it is an obvious infringement on the First Amendment. See Minneapolis Star and Tribune Co. v. Minnesota Commissioner of Revenue, 460 U.S. 575 (1983.)
The Supreme Court would presumably disallow the imposition of special taxes on weapons or ammo for the same reason it won’t allow special taxes on newspapers. If the government can’t constitutionally ban something outright then they also aren’t going to be allowed to use their tax power to effectively ban it.
@37 mp1952
Definition of per capita
1 : equally to each individual
2 : per unit of population : by or for each person
Canada has fewer shootings per capita, which means they have fewer shootings relative to their smaller population. If America was the size of Canada, we would still have far, far more gun deaths than they do.
Germany, Japan, Australia, and the UK are not crime-free utopias. Their criminals just don’t have easy access to guns. I don’t think gun regulation will instantly make it impossible for criminals to acquire guns, but I think we can make it more expensive and more dangerous.
I support gun regulations to reduce the frequency of drive-by shootings just as much as I support gun regulations to reduce the frequency of mass shootings.
@38 C Oppenheimer
Making bombs and poison gas is difficult; buying a gun is very, very easy.
@40 C Oppenheimer
I think we can oppose the murder of inner city children and the murder of suburban children. Sensible gun regulations will help to prevent both kinds of murders.
Your outrage on behalf of poor children in the inner city would be more believable if you supported gun regulations that would help to keep them alive. Those regulations have been proven to work in Germany, Japan, Australia, and the UK, but America refuses to adopt them because we think guns are more important than the lives of children.
>When Harry is in the cemetery at Little Hangleton with Death Eaters surrounding him, Voldemort shouts “Avada Kedavra!” and he shouts “Expelliarmus!”
>Harry lives.
So, let me get this straight: you’re saying a good guy with a wand can save us from a bad guy with a wand. Right?
Voldemort uses his wand to kill people and Harry Potter uses his wand to save others from people like Voldemort who kill others with his wand. Without the wand, Harry Potter–and all of the others you said who lived–would be dead. Dead, because Voldemort surely isn’t giving up his wand if wands are banned.
Great point. You should join the NRA.
@42/Porphyrogenitus: “Yes, and it was not an easy occupation.”
The same is true for France, and Norway, and probably every occupied country.
#43 See 26 USC Sec. 5801 et seq.
#44 The USA cannot adopt the provisions adopted by Germany, Japan, Australia, and the UK because they would be unconstitutional. I don’t think limiting magazine sizes would be though. Now what are you going to do about the hundreds of millions of guns already owned by US citizens?
#23 — The best tool for the job…that also happens to look like a military weapon. Isn’t that interesting? Because, as a gun owner myself, I’ve never needed an AR-15 to defend my home and livestock. I don’t need to go auto or semi-auto on a coyote or a wild pig. A single shot rifle or a single barrel shotgun is all I’ve ever needed. It’s all my father ever needed. It’s all my grandfather ever needed.
And the hunters who live around me don’t need AR-15s either. Black powder rifles and compound bows and arrows seem good enough for them. Their homes have the decorations to prove it.
So yes, this is about looking like a “badass.” That’s all it’s ever been. It’s iconography. Like Harry Potter and his magic wand, King Arthur and Excalibur, Luke Skywalker and his lightsaber, the Terminator and his machineguns, on and on and on—rooted in the ancient notion of owning a thing will give you its power. Except this isn’t fantasy. No, this is about a culture where the height of patriotism is expressed by buying something, and buying more and more things to go into it, accessorizing with endless fallacies, bumper sticker apathy, and the terrible irony that this mission creep of excessive militarism will somehow make the country safe.
@dptullos The guns used in drive by shootings, gang violence, drug trafficing, etc. are already guns obtained illegally. Banning AR-15’s is not going to reduce these crimes. Most bangers use Glocks and they don’t buy them from the gun store. Banning all sales of guns in the US starting tomorrow still leaves approximately 300 million legally owned guns in the hands of private owners. They don’t wear out quickly. And gun sales are not about to be banned tomorrow.
Lastly stating we think gun ownership is more important than the lives of children is a perfect example of the type of rhetoric that so far has been avoided. I own a gun. That doesn’t make me a supporter of murdering children.
@@@@@ Ipso My ony gun is a pump shotgun. I have no desire to own an AR-15. I simply feel banning a specific gun based on its appearance is passing a law just for the sake of saying we passed a law. Banning bump stocks and magazines over ten rounds at least makes sense.
If you hunt feral hogs with a single shot shotgun, let me be the first to say you have very large brass stones.
@42 Porphyrogenitus
America suffers far more gun deaths than any other First World country. If you have actual proposals to reduce gun deaths, share them. Otherwise, you’re just saying that we should shrug and go on with our lives without making any effort to prevent people from being murdered.
Germany, Japan, Australia, and the UK are all liberal democracies. They all have gun control. Clearly, not having a heavily armed population doesn’t automatically turn a country into a totalitarian hellhole. Yemen and Iraq have large numbers of guns per capita, and they aren’t nice places to live. There is no magic connection between gun ownership and freedom.
You make very strong arguments for why selective gun regulation is bad, and I agree. It’s wrong to bar one ethnic or religious group from a right that the rest of society enjoys. However, I don’t see why it would be bad to have egalitarian gun regulation. The biggest advocates for gun control in America aren’t generally gun owners, and it’s not like they’re maintaining a secret stock of assault rifles while disarming the rest of the country.
Thirty-three thousand Americans die every year because of firearms. I think that number should go down, and I have ideas about how to do it. What are your solutions?
My favorite part about the anti- gun regulation argument is that if it isn’t 100% effective, it shouldn’t be done at all. If this really was your argument, then stop locking your doors, or using passwords on your wireless router. All security measures do is stop a *level* of criminal activity. You lock your front door, but no dead bolt. Okay, that keeps the opportunists out, but what about a crook with a lock pick. Okay, add a dead bolt, make things harder. Keeps out the dabblers or opportunists that have tools. Add a chain, this keeps out those who don’t have specialized tools.
Add electronic protections, this keeps out those with more expensive specialized tools. Add lasers, guard dogs (dogs with bees in their mouths!), trained riflemen, and you keep out those who do not have counter measures. But there will still be *someone* who can get into your house if they want to badly enough.
With each level of gun *control* (not ban, control), you eliminate a level of possibility. Sure, there will still be someone who can get a gun if they want to badly enough, but what about the guys who got turned away because they couldn’t jump through one more hoop? Do those potential lives saved mean nothing? I like to think that if the regulations save one life, it’s worth it.
@47:Just because there is a statute on the books does not mean the statute in question is constitutional. And it is very difficult to see how 26 USC 5801 could be upheld as constitutional in the wake of Minneapolis Star and Heller.
@52 sarrow
> I like to think that if the regulations save one life, it’s worth it.
Passing a national regulation to raise the age to get a driving license in the United States to 18 would save thousands of lives. There are SO MANY kids killed with drivers under the age of 18, not to mention the people they hit with their cars.
So we should do that, right? We’re saving at least one life (more than that–thousands!), so the ramifications of raising the age don’t matter. Right?
@54 MR_22
People need cars to drive. They need knives to cut. Cars and knives can kill people, but cars and knives are not designed to kill people, and it’s very difficult to get to work or cook if you banned cars or knives. We would save lives if we raised the driving age, but we would also make it more difficult for children to work jobs after school, and there are families where that income is important.
I’m not automatically opposed to raising the driving age, but we’d need to discuss the consequences of teenagers not being able to drive in areas with no public transportation. There would be legitimate costs, not just benefits, to raising the driving age, and we’d need to think about creating alternative methods of transportation for teenagers who weren’t able to drive anymore.
The only purpose of a gun is to kill. No one will be unable to get to work because they don’t have a gun. No one needs a gun to cook a meal. Australia, the UK, Germany, and Japan have all made it more difficult for their citizens to acquire guns, and the sky has not fallen. People need cars and knives in their daily lives. We do not need guns, unless you want to argue that it is impossible for you to travel or cook without a firearm at your side.
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@dptullos So what do you propose as reasonable gun control that should be enacted? I live in Connecticut where we already have laws on the books that are far more restrictive than states like Florida, but not as restrictive as California. Are you suggesting a national law based on current state laws like Connecticut, California or New York? Or something else?
Moderator: this comment was originally flagged as inappropriate. Please let me know what I wrote that violated the regulations so I don’t do it again!
@57 – The comment wasn’t flagged — that’s just what it looks like when a comment is in the queue awaiting approval by a moderator (which, as mentioned above, may not be immediate after regular business hours.)
This article is a nice thought… but it doesn’t seem realistic. You’re basing an argument for extreme gun regulation on a tailored interpretation of a fantasy book. Not only is it really easy to come up with very good examples from the book that counter what your argument states, but even if that was not the case, you’re still basing your argument on a fantasy book. An author literally wrote a story EXACTLY how she wanted to. Harry was able to never kill anybody and beat the bad guy because J. K. Rowling wrote it that way. It made a great story. It was nice. That, however, does not make for a very compelling example of how things actually work. We can certainly look to fantasy for inspiration but don’t forget that it’s fantasy. I admire Dhalinar Kholin (stormlight archive) as an example of good leadership, but I must not forget that his success/failures are completely orchestrated.
@54 MR_22
My purpose in above was simply to point out a flaw I see in one of the common anti- gun control arguments. Just because something isn’t effective 100% doesn’t mean it’s worthless. If that were the case, we wouldn’t use any cancer treatments, hell any medicines at all, and all meteorologists would be fired forever.
As a kid who didn’t get her license until she was 18, I fundamentally don’t have an issue with this idea of upping the age limit. I also know, that in rural areas, where kids help on farms and ranches, a special drivers license can be obtained as early as 14 for tractors. So I’m not sure what “ramifications” might be that are so harmful that the idea of upping the age limit is seen as sooooo horrible.
Anyway, the problem with your argument is you are now comparing guns to cars, and it’s not a 1 to 1 argument. Comparing guns to anything isn’t a 1 to 1 argument, and that’s because guns have a single purpose. To kill things. Hand guns and fully automatic weapons were actually invented to kill people. Following your argument to an absurd end, pillows can be used to smother people in their sleep, shall we ban or regulate them? I should hope people see that comparing guns to anything…a hammer, a car, a bomb, a tank, a spoon, a cigarette, a hamburger, the moon…just doesn’t work, because of what a gun is designed, uniquely to do. Because guns are unique, so too should be our regulation of them in comparison to other things.
In fact, I think that the comparison of wands to guns isn’t right, because wands allow a wizard or witch to use magic. Which makes them a tool with multiple applications. No, what the original article was doing was comparing the Killing Curse with guns, and that if we disarm the folks using the Killing Curse, well, then, no one dies. Can’t shoot someone if you ain’t got a gun. Right?
@55 dptullos
> I’m not automatically opposed to raising the driving age, but we’d need to discuss the consequences of teenagers not being able to drive in areas with no public transportation.
Exactly. You have to weigh the benefits against the costs–for everybody. That’s exactly my point.
>The only purpose of a gun is to kill.
There is where you are 100% WRONG. If that’s the only purpose of my guns, they are all defective. Guns are used every single day in this country for sporting events, competitions, self defense, hunting, collecting, hobby building, and just plinking for fun, or target practice. You probably don’t accept these valid uses of guns because you don’t use them. I’m quite sure that people who live in New York City who use public transportation wouldn’t mind at all if the age to drive was increased to 18. It doesn’t affect them so they don’t mind the regulation. That’s the problem with most new gun laws being proposed: they don’t affect those proposing the regulations and those who want them don’t understand the issues anyway.
Anybody who claims guns are used only for killing clearly does not understand the issues. And no laws should be proposed or passed by people who do not understand the issues. By your own admission with the above statement, you are obviously in that group.
According to a study commissioned by President Obama and conducted by the CDC in 2015, guns are used somewhere between 10 times to 100 times more often to prevent crimes than they are used for murder. So, guns are used in self defense situations more often that they are used for murder. That clearly shows that killing is not their only purpose, or even their most-significant purpose.
As with any new regulations, the costs must always be weighed against the benefits. And just because the costs do not affect you, that does not mean it doesn’t validly affect others. The costs to everybody must be considered. For example, I’m waaaay over 18 (more than I’d like to admit), so my input on raising the driving age to 18 may not be useful, because it doesn’t affect me. I really don’t care, just like you don’t seem to care if addition gun regulations are imposed. Well, to be fair, it does affect me, because I have kids–so I might even favor raising the driving age to prevent my kids from being in danger.
That is the problem with gun control. It’s not as simple as you think it is, I’m afraid.
@57 mp1952
I’m not an expert, but here are some ideas to start with.
1. Every gun has a registered owner. That owner may not sell, gift, or transfer that gun to another person without going through a legal process that includes a background check for the gun’s new owner. Transferring a gun without going through the process is a crime. If a gun is stolen, the theft must be reported; failing to report a theft will lead to the right to bear arms being revoked and possible criminal charges. Owning an unregistered gun is a felony, and you forfeit your right to own a gun.
2. Only registered gun owners who have completed a background check may buy bullets. Bullets may not be sold, gifted, or transferred except through a legal process that includes a background check for their new owner. The transfer of bullets without a background check is a crime, and their theft must be reported; failure to comply with the law means that the offender’s gun rights will be revoked and they may face criminal charges. Possessing ammunition that was not legally transferred is a felony, and you lose your right to own a gun.
3. Keep records of all gun and ammunition purchases, and place legal limits on the number of guns or amount of ammunition that can be purchased at one time.
I really needed to read this article today. Thanks for writing it.
Here’s my thoughts on the gun control issue. I’m 35 and a military veteran. I was never deployed and never had to shoot at another person, but I’ve shot plenty of guns throughout my life. I own and have in my house several guns to include hand guns, rifles, and shot guns. I was trained how to shoot an AR-15 in the military and even though I have never been a great shot I have always enjoyed shooting guns for target practice. I’m not going to go through other folks comments and specifically talk about what I agree and disagree with but I’ll go through some examples of interactions I’ve had with co-workers that will show where I fall into the gun control debate.
I often hear the argument that if only there had been a good guy with a gun they would have easily stopped whatever shooter of the week’s rampage that has happened most recently. Just like the armed school resource officer in Parkland right? Just a few weeks ago, I got into a pretty heated argument about my co-workers desire to “stop the bad guy”. I honestly asked them, do you want to kill another human being? Well, I would if I had to they replied. It seemed to me like they desired to be a hero and I just didn’t understand their viewpoint. Like I said before I’ve never shot at another person, in war or otherwise, and I have absolutely zero desire to do so. I do not want to carry a gun, concealed or out in the open, on my person. We don’t live in the Wild West, at least I don’t want to live in the Wild West.
But how are you supposed to protect yourself when lots of other people have guns and they are so easy to get? I feel like my tax dollars go to great use for my local fire and police departments and I gladly pay them, but I want to have faith in their ability to protect me and to respond in a timely manner to protect my family and my property. With so many weapons readily available it’s hard to keep that faith. I still have enough faith to not feel the necessity to carry a weapon on me but I still have the desire to keep weapons in my home to help protect myself and my family, god forbid, should the need arise. Also I like to be prepared just in case there is a zombie apocalypse.
One of the main questions I find myself arguing with co-workers about is the access to guns. I don’t understand how a reasonable person can think that requiring a license and gun safety classes along with thorough background checks are somehow an infringement on their constitutional rights. How can someone under 21 who has had multiple calls to the authorities, and not just a few, dozens, buy an AR-15, which is primarily used to kill other humans in war. I just don’t get it. I don’t understand how there weren’t red flags on this person at the local, county, state, and federal levels. I don’t understand how my co-workers can constantly shout this isn’t a gun issue it’s a mental health and video games issue. Why can’t it be all of the above? Why can’t it be acknowledged that guns are part of the problem and maybe control of said guns could even part of the solution to this extremely complex issue? But if I try to discuss these things with my conservative co-workers I get shouted down and called a liberal snowflake who wants the government to take everyone’s guns away.
I don’t know what the answer is but I do know this. I, as a responsible gun owner who respects, owns, and believes in other’s rights to own guns, want to be part of the solution. It’s hard to keep an even head when discussing these things, especially with folks on opposite sides of the issue than you are. But I will keep discussing and I will not be deterred by those that are shouting their views the loudest and trying to keep my voice from being heard.
@mr_22
Actually the CDC doesn’t study gun violence – it was restricted from doing so in the 90s under threat of losing all funding. Obama in theory lifted those restrictions, but the CDC has not chosen yet to publicly undertake any such highly politicised research, and given Republicans took control of both houses and now the Presidency I am unsurprised as to why.
That particular oft cited study doesn’t actually conclude anything of the sort if you read it fully. The actual terms of the study asked the Institute of Medicine and National Research Council to investigate and identify potential research goals for the CDC to investigate if it decides to do so.
What it does state is that there is a clear case for more research across the board, but particularly in five categories – the characteristics of firearm violence, risk and protective factors, interventions and strategies, gun safety technology and the influence of video games and other media. Most of the examples it uses are demonstrations of how little genuine research has been done into those issues, and they specifically cite that sentence you quote above as being an example of numbers with poor evidence behind them with figures ranging from 108,000 to 3,000,000 times per year. That’s a ludicrous spread to draw any sort of scientific conclusion.
Unfortunately one aspect of US culture that is highly prevalent is “not invented here” in which research conducted overseas is considered low value and inapplicable due to unspecified reasons. That applies whether the subject is guns, cars, public transport, public health, you name it, I can find an example. And it also applies between states, where a solution to a problem in one state is deemed totally inappropriate in another because “we don’t do things like that here”.
Until the political situation in the US from county level to federal starts changing, I strongly suspect any solutions will be few and far between.
@dptullos 62 A good number of these already exist in my state. A permit is required to own a handgun and obtaining one requires an NICS background and mental health records check with fingerprint submission . In addition the prospective handgun owner has to take a mandatory gun safety course at his own expense (average cost $250). Since 10/1/2013, purchase of a long gun requires a certified long gun eligibility certificate also with background check. Both pistol permit and long gun eligibility certificate have a two week waiting period. Also since 10/1/2013, purchase of ammunition in CT requires either a valid pistol permit or long gun certificate. The two biggest differences between your suggestions and what already is in effect, at least in CT, is that we don’t require individual guns registered, just the owner, and violations of these laws are a misdemeanor with fine for a first offense and a felony for second offense.
Interestingly, gun homicides in CT have decreased to sixth lowest in the country per 100,000 population but gun suicides have remained roughly the same.
@64 Mayhem
> Actually the CDC doesn’t study gun violence – it was restricted from doing so in the 90s under threat of losing all funding.
Well, you’re “sort of” correct, but not really. The Dickey Amendment prohibits the CDC from using funds “in whole or in part, to advocate or promote gun control.” The limitation is only for research done with the goal of passing or promoting gun control, because Republicans didn’t want tax dollars going to fund a gun-control agenda.
> That particular oft cited study doesn’t actually conclude anything of the sort if you read it fully.
Actually, it does. And I’ll prove it to you.
It’s hard to say how many crimes are prevented from the defensive usage of guns, but, as you say, the CDC estimated these occurrences to around 108,000 to 3,000,000 times per year. They aren’t quite sure, because no such data is recorded, nor are all incidents of self defense with a firearm even reported. So that’s the best number we can come up with.
There are roughly 35,000 deaths in the U.S. per year due to guns. Of those, about 11,000 or so are homicides. Note that I said murders, so I’m taking out suicides and accidental shooting deaths. So, 108,000 / 11,000 = 9.8. So that’s my lower number, but I rounded it to 10. 3,000,000 / 11,000 = 272. So we have 10x to 272x, but since the numbers are really just guesses, I dropped that number to 100x to make sure my numbers were reasonable.
So there you go. The math is valid and easy to compute. According the CDC, guns are used 10x to at least 100x in self defense uses more than the number of murders from guns. I didn’t say they saved that many lives, just that guns are used to prevent crime 10 times to 100 times more than they’re used for murder. It’s unknown exactly what crimes were prevented.
@66 Mr_22
Wait, you’re saying that their study on “Gun Ownership as a Risk Factor for Homicide in the Home” – literally the same subject we’re talking about when it comes to guns as defensive weapons – should be prevented because it promotes a gun control agenda?
Their conclusion was
The use of illicit drugs and a history of physical fights in the home are important risk factors for homicide in the home. Rather than confer protection, guns kept in the home are associated with an increase in the risk of homicide by a family member or intimate acquaintance
That’s pretty obvious, especially when you include the fact that around 66% of gun fatalities each year are suicides … and excluded from the study above.
And immediately after :
The Dickey Amendment added an amendment to the bill that funds the CDC that said “none of the funds made available for injury prevention and control” could be used to study or promote gun control. That same year, Congress stripped the CDC of $2.6 million — exactly the amount the agency had spent studying gun violence the previous year.
The message was clear: Study gun violence and risk your career and your agency’s funding. CDC researchers who used to study gun violence told me they stayed well clear of guns for fear of jeopardizing their livelihoods
Which means any sort of negative portrayal of guns can be classed as studying or promoting gun control. Even if you start studying one thing, if your conclusions conflict with the views of your paymaster, you’re likely to lose your job.
But no restrictions, of course not.
On your part 2. Since you don’t seem to want to read the study though I’ll quote the relevant bit in full.
The initial reference Kleck (2001a) for the higher number takes purely a criminological stance, not a public health one. It is solely based on a telephone survey of ~5000 American adults in 1993, and some 30 followup questions to anyone who said they had used a gun defensively, then scaled up to the wider population, and originally published in The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology. However the figures are cited here from a rather over the top book, which has a profoundly biased slant on things.
The second reference (Cook 1997) for the lower number directly confronts the Kleck figures, and finds a great deal of inconsistencies in the numbers – while the original survey methodology itself is fine, for example the reported injuries inflicted are greater than the total number of gunshot injuries in that same year. Also in a follow up survey 38:12 report being threatened by someone with a gun compared with using a gun defending themselves. It is expected many of those doing the threatening would claim Self Defence if questioned about the circumstances after the fact, which would exacerbate the false positive reporting.
The third reference (Kellerman et al) is from several articles in The New England Journal of Medicine, which also contradict Kleck’s conclusions, and which repeatedly stress the poor nature of the evidence in this area while also stressing the over 2:1 nature of suicides to homicides, and the ratio of domestic homicides by family members or close intimates compared with random attacks.
For the general benefit of the discussion I would recommend reading Five Thirty Eight’s articles related to the issue.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/tag/gun-deaths/
The Gun Deaths in America infographic in particular was helpful for me in thinking it through.
And wands are hardly guns, they’re much more dangerous based on what they can do to the mind as well as the body. The forbidden curses are just the tip of the iceberg (Harry used two out of three of them if I recall right.) I feel like the analogy doesn’t hold, much the same as some other posters here, but for different reasons.
I’m a Veteran and still serving. I grew up in rural areas where students had guns on gun racks in their truck’s rear windows parked at the Highschool.
I went to several grade schools since my family moved a lot, one of them targeted by a student who was turned in the morning he was going to execute his plan. He had a manifesto, pipe bombs, pistols, and long rifles, and a list of all the students he felt personally wronged by. One of his friends turned him in at five in the morning, two hours before school started. Many students on the list were in the first morning class on my schedule.
Our culture and nation is saturated with guns. I live in the Chicagoland area. When I go to certain parts of the city to meet with people I can hear gunfire and see kids huddled on street corners waiting for things to calm down. Most of it isn’t reported. Our city is the largest open air drug market in the world, gun violence is everywhere, and gun laws are absolute in their prohibition.
America also over romanticizes the gun, with interesting analogies to Japanese sword media culture.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=os3lWIuGsXE
And we overromanticize violence, to include serial killers. We are morbidly fascinated by it all and our prime time television, news reporting, and movie industry show it. We are also built on an ideology of independence, revolution, individual liberty, and small government. And our culture is changing in large cities, creating polemic politics and competing values primarily expressed in the antagonisms of the executive branch and incredibly abused executive orders. Radiolab’s More Perfect had a great podcast on the American mindset and court rulings related to the Second Amendment. As well as the odd cultural twists and turns of gun rights and racial tensions.
http://www.radiolab.org/story/radiolab-presents-more-perfect-gun-show/
Guidelines on reporting suicides have been developed based on good data:
http://afsp.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/recommendations
.pdf
yet news networks continue to violate them. Similar efforts for gun violence would likely fall short. A disengenuous interpretation for this is the impact on news ratings. And I tend to think that’s true.
I’m a gun owner. But I don’t ascribe to conceal carry, aside from the added benefits of transporting a firearm to and from a range or out to the countryside to plink around. I also think school officers should carry MP-5’s and gun safety courses should make a comeback in the school systems along with archery, home ec, and shop class.
I would be upset if efforts were made to repeal the second amendment, but I’m not opposed to amending it towards age requirements to purchase firearms and eliminating the private sale of firearms, no online sale of firearms, and the ability to own pistols and semiautomatic weapons should be restricted to certain population groups (the three military components, retired military, first responders, retired police, farmers, ranchers, security firm employees etc). Of course that raises other issues, like shotguns being one of the more common sporting guns and simultaneously one of the most lethal when used against people. It’s not a simple thing when it gets down to the nitty gritty of legislation.
I also work in mental health and worry about perceptions surrounding the mentally ill, particularly in relation to some of the gun violence that has occurred in the last seven years or so. “The Anatomy of Violence: The Biological Roots of Crime” was an informative read on the issue to help understand how developmental neurology combined with upbringing can really create a terrible combination, or at times with the right upbringing make a person more willing to run towards danger rather than away from it. There aren’t easy answers when it comes to hospitalizations and gun ownership. Some states do it better than others. I help others recover from all types of violence. I’ve delivered death notifications. My family has received our own as well.
And here we are, trying to solve the worlds problems on tor.com.
I like Harry Potter, JK is a talented author and built a fun world to read and enjoy. Her new creative effort falls short, especially as it relates to native peoples. This article falls short, an appeal to emotion, making something simple out of something complex.
Thank you Emily. For all the detractors out there, the second amendment grants the right to bear arms. It does not guarantee the right to carry semi- or fully-automatic weapons, incendiaries, bombs, tanks, or armor-piercing anything. You need a .22 to shoot a deer for dinner? Groovy. You need an AR-15 for anything? No, you really don’t.
This is wonderful. Thank you. And as #3 said: I pity the moderators.
The article left out the time Harry shouted Sectum Sempra and nearly killed Malfoy.
@71.
To be fair, Harry used the Sectum Sempra spell without knowing what it did. At best, he had a note written in the margin of a textbook that said: “For Enemies”.
If you want to compare this to something, compare it to putting a gun in the hand of a child who is not aware of the consequences of pulling the trigger.
Harry was “horrified by what he had done” to Malfoy, and he never used that spell again.
I believe you’re missing your own metaphor. Harry disarms the bad guys trying to kill him using his own weapon. And he only disarms people after they do something bad.
The only person who can stop a bad wizard with a wand is a good wizard with a wand.(or a very brave/reckless/desperate, very lucky one without one) And in real life, the only way all these shooters have been stopped was by good people with guns, or very brave/recless/desperate, very lucky people without them.
Additionally, the only people in the series trying to disarm others preemptively are the Deatheaters, once they’re in charge of the government.(and what do you know, they disarm the marginalized first.) Just like every totalitarian movement in the history if this planet has moved to disarm its citezenry before making their big move. That is the whole purpose of the 2nd amendment. To ensure a totalitarian government can’t run rampant over the rights of citizens.
Yes, action needs to be taken, but calling something only tenuously related, statistically speaking, to success a “common sense change” does not, in fact make it more likely to be profitable. It also doesn’t do anything to protect the powerless from the powerful, whatever their position may be. We must search for answers elsewhere.
Great discussion! Though I have to admit my personal bias was more in favor of the postings that actually talked about science fiction and fantasy.
Which brings me to classic SF stories that have addressed some of the issues discussed here. In Robert Heinlein‘s 1942 novel, Beyond This Horizon (inspiration for the 1997 movie, Gattaca), the common saying is “an armed society is a polite society“, and the code duello is considered evolution in action.
In A.E. van Vogt’s stories about the Empire of Isher (1941-1951), the Weapon Shops are the only factor that prevents the world government of Earth, established to end warfare, from degenerating into tyranny. The motto of the Weapon Shops is “The right to buy weapons is the right to be free.“
Gotta tell ya, that motto still resonates. As he was writing those stories, van Vogt probably learned that the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising began with ten handguns – all illegal, of course.
Like several other people, I was a little bemused by the choice of Harry Potter to make the case for gun control. Obviously, in Hogwarts, not only are the teachers armed to the teeth, but so are the students.
Writers don’t always understand the implications of what they write. I’m reasonably sure J.K. Rowling did not intend to make a case for widespread ownership of handguns!
Some years ago, I was at a Windycon room party, sitting on the bed with David Weber and various and sundry fans. Weber told us that, on three occasions, carrying a handgun had saved his life.
Did he ever have to fire it? I’m not certain. Sometimes all you have to do to defend yourself with a gun is show you have it. And sometimes you only have to fire in the air. In any case, I’m pretty sure Weber didn’t have to shoot anybody.
In the early 1960s, so-called “Freedom Riders” worked to register black voters in the South. As you might imagine, the Ku Klux Klan took exception to this activity, and some of these young men were murdered. But some carried guns, and fired back when attacked – and then everybody, Klansmen and Riders, ran away in opposite directions. (Gun-control advocates would, no doubt, have advised them to rely on local sheriffs for protection!)
“The only purpose of a gun is to kill“? Hardly! Its purpose is to deter a prospective attacker by confronting him with a plausible threat of bodily harm if he proceeds. This is probably why nearly all mass shootings occur in “gun-free zones“.
It was Switzerland’s “gun culture“ that deterred Hitler from invading the country during World War II. It would have been too costly to invade a country where every able-bodied male is required to have a machine gun or military assault rifle at home.
Switzerland was also the inspiration for the US Second Amendment, though in the end the Founding Fathers stopped short of making gun ownership compulsory.
I will preface this by stating each of you who believe that an ar15 is a weapon of war and not protected by the second should have read the ENTIRE 2nd amendment. And educated themselves on the history of the armalite model 15. Because surprise it was a civilian rifle long before Colt copied it in a full auto version. And the 2nd specifically spelt out a right to have weapons of the same power as the government. As for those saying outlaw them so they will be harder and more expensive to obtain how’s that working out for prohibition and the war on drugs. Because drugs are illegal
@75.
Several points on Switzerland, because people always get this wrong.
Firstly, machine guns and assault rifles are flat out prohibited, except for the personal weapons of serving military personnel. Those do not have ammunition, the ammunition is stored in government armouries or located at shooting ranges for immediate use.
Secondly, all weapons must be registered, and when a weapon is sold both parties must hold a record of the sale contract in great detail for at least 10 years and a copy goes to the canton registration offices. The same applies to the purchase of ammunition, alongside a requirement to prove that the purchaser is legally entitled to such. All owners are regularly audited, including military personnel.
Thirdly gun ownership in Switzerland is around 24 guns per 100 residents, which is actually lower than that of Austria or Germany, and less than a quarter of the US figures.
Finally Switzerland has a very low rate of gun crime in any way, and a low rate of crime in general, which is primarily cultural – everyone keeps an eye on everyone else, so intervention happens early. Heck neighbours will even go through the rubbish if someone didn’t recycle properly to work out who made the mistake and get them to fix it.
Switzerland was conquered by the French under Napoleon but subsequently the the country has not been invaded for three main reasons: Firstly it is of little economic value. Secondly, like Sweden, it proved useful as an ostensibly neutral location for meetings between the great powers. Thirdly, Switzerland generally is willing to cooperate with neighbouring powers, for example freely allowing the Germans to use their railways through to Italy. A war would have severed those links and probably cost more than it gained. Hitler did have plans to invade alongsideItaly under Operation Tannenbaum following the fall of France, but chose to turn East instead.
Thanks for this piece. I have my complaints about Harry Potter, but I appreciate the importance it puts on compassion–and the way it portrays violence as senseless and cruel.
And hey, I would be totally down for implementing the Swiss gun culture in the US: You want a gun? Fine–but you can’t keep bullets. If you need to use your gun for sport, you have to check those bullets out, and you are accountable for every single one of them. Sign me up!
Literally every single kid in Hogwarts is packing the wizarding equivalent of a firearm, all the time. Even 1st years. If anything the gun control regulations in the Harry Potter world are vastly less strict than in ours. Try again.
@76
Where do you get the notion that the 2nd amendment guarantees the right to firepower equal to what the government has? This is obviously an extreme example, but if that were the case, then a citizen could legally acquire or build a nuclear weapon… which, no, you’re not allowed to do that. We are already, in many ways, limited with regards to the arsenal any single person can have; and frankly, it’s pure fantasy to entertain the idea that my rifle and I are going to stave of state-sponsored violence, if such were ever directed at me.
I did think this article was well done, and I am very glad that the decision to post it was made. The purpose of Tor is to think, not just blindly accept what the media throws. I have an issue with the article, where throughout it, every time Expelliarmus is used, it’s being used by someone with a wand. If in this country we could successfully keep guns out of the hands of every single person with bad intentions, then no one would need guns. Unfortunately, in order for Harry and his friends to protect each other, they needed to use the very thing that was being used against them.
It’s like what Umbridge tried to do, where she tried to take away the good people’s ability to protect themselves. It doesn’t work. Harry created Dumbledore’s Army so they could learn to protect themselves. Not to instigate an attack, but so they wouldn’t lie over dead every time a deatheater said ‘boo’.
To the OP, thank you for this article, and the way it was presented. And thank you for Marching for our lives.
67. Mayhem
> Wait, you’re saying that their study on “Gun Ownership as a Risk Factor for Homicide in the Home” – literally the same subject we’re talking about when it comes to guns as defensive weapons – should be prevented because it promotes a gun control agenda?
Hold on, that’s not what I said. Don’t put words into my mouth. I gave no opinion on whether the CDC should study guns or not. I mentioned what the Dickey Amendment was and why Republicans proposed it. I’m not a legislator. I had nothing to do with preventing the CDC from studying gun issues. I do have an opinion on that, but I didn’t share it.
I’m not even saying the premise of this 2015 study was to promote gun control. It was actually one of the only government documents that I’ve read that didn’t exhibit considerable bias or a tendency to support a specific agenda. Much of it was not favorable for gun ownership. I used the study merely to indicate that guns are used legitimately for preventing crimes more often that guns are used to murder.
66. MR_22 I would also add that people constantly reference the 35,000 gun deaths when talking about this issue. When you take out suicides, which gun control would not affect (see Japan’s staggeringly high suicide rate), our gun death rate drops dramatically.
69. glasself Actually, your standard AR15 round is a .223, its just got more power behind it than your standard .22 caliber round. I would also add that the .223 round is fired by other guns that are not labeled “assault weapons”.
I agree that we need better screening for mental health issues in regards to gun purchases. This, coupled with law enforcement following up on issues (like the Parkland shooter), would solve a large part of this issue. I wouldn’t be against the “firearm restraining order” that Senator Rubio proposed, as long as there is due process, other wise you’d be violating the law.
In regards to limiting magazine size, this would solve very little. With minimal practice, you can swap out a magazine in about a second and a half.
60. sarrow
> In fact, I think that the comparison of wands to guns isn’t right, because wands allow a wizard or witch to use magic. Which makes them a tool with multiple applications. No, what the original article was doing was comparing the Killing Curse with guns, and that if we disarm the folks using the Killing Curse, well, then, no one dies. Can’t shoot someone if you ain’t got a gun. Right?
I understand what you’re saying, but my comparison was valid and your point is not correct because of one fact: guns also have multiple applications and are not created solely for killing people. If not for that fact, I would agree with out. But the fact remains that Harry Potter used his weapon to render his opponent, who also held a weapon, unable to harm others with his weapon. That is the same reason firearms are useful for self defense.
And as I mentioned in post #61, firearms do have other uses than killing. In fact, their primary use is not killing, since there are 3,000,000 guns in the United States currently and there are only about 11,000 murders per year. Most of those guns are being used, but not to kill people.
Here’s my list from post #61 on how law-abiding Americans are using their guns: “Guns are used every single day in this country for sporting events, competitions, self defense, hunting, collecting, hobby building, and just plinking for fun, or target practice.”
My question is, why don’t we ban alcohol? Far more people are killed by alcohol each year than guns even before you account for 2/3 of gun deaths being suicides. So you know to reference with the below chart, 3.85 people per 100,000 are killed by guns, and again 2/3 of that 3.85 are self-inflicted.
BRAVA!!!!
News Flash:
Harry has his own wand.
I thought this photograph was amusing, given our current discussion here. I find this poster ironic and illogical, but I also find additional gun control illogical, so take my opinion for what you will. Even so, it’s still funny.
Technically, if we are comparing Harry Potter to gun control, then it shouldn’t be a comparison of guns to spells but guns to wands. Without the wand, Voldemort can’t cast Avada Kedavra and Harry can’t cast Expelliarmus. That’s why Expelliarmus works because it removes the weapon from the bad guy. But if the good guy didn’t have a weapon in the first place, then he (or she) couldn’t have removed the bad guys weapon. It’s not the weapon that kills people, it’s people that kill people. It’s not whether you have a weapon or not that makes you a bad guy or a good guy, it’s how you use that weapon. To take the analogy one step farther, you could say that Harry is using different ammo for his weapon than Voldemort is. So if Harry Potter is an example of what we should do, then rather than disarming the good guys, equip them with shotguns that fire bean bags instead of bullets. Disarm the bad guy without anybody being killed. It may not be an ideal solution but that way there is a good chance of the bad guy surviving so we can figure out why he or she is doing what they are doing.
When you push for gun control in spite of the Second Amendment you are attempting to take a constitutional right away from some people. Be careful what you wish for, because rights might be taken away from you in the future if the clamor is loud enough. Millions of law abiding citizens have not been shooting innocent victims, but criminals and mentally ill people have. Criminals and the insane will always find a way to circumvent the law. There is the problem!!!
@92
Regulation is included in the 2nd amendment. Literally, it’s in the text. A well-regulated militia. Therefore, regulation can occur–and already does–without infringing on constitutional rights.
Furthermore, it’s dangerous and damaging to suggest that mentally ill people are the problem here. Mentally ill people are, according to every study ever done on the subject, more likely to be victims of violent crime than the general population, and less likely to perpetrate it.
Interesting to see such a civil and fact-based discussion. Still, it seems to me most gun control opponents are ducking the issue of almost all other first world countries having much more restrictive gun laws and much less gun deaths.
Sweden has about 1/2 as many private firearms as the US per capita, less difference than might be expected perhaps. However the great majority of those are hunting rifles, which are not so well suited to commit a crime. The key regulations are:
* Gun permit requires a hunting license or target shooting club membership. Either way, it means you must have passed a gun handling course. Type of firearm must be appropriate to the activity.
* Firearms must be stored in a certain type of secure locker, disassembled in 2 parts.
* Guns can only be carried in public places if you have a legitimate reason to transport them, unloaded and in a case I belive.
Sweden has about 1/4 as many homicides in general as the US per capita, which is about average for Western Europe. I don´t remember gun homicides specifically, but obviously the difference is greater.
Switzerland is the exception with liberal gun laws and still a low number of firearms killings. Still, comparing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_in_Switzerland with what I know of US laws it still seems there are some differences. Other than some rifles, permit and registration is needed, sales between individuals have to be reported and approved, and carry laws, open or concealed, are much more restrictive than the US, or at least many US states.
Whitespine, the US and some other countries have experimented with alcohol ban or strict restrictions and the results were not really good, however logical the reasoning behind it. By contrast, gun control laws function in many countries. Still, in Sweden alcohol can only be bought in government stores, and in Norway it´s the same except for beer.
All that said, using a fiction story as an argument is a bit problematic.
I had to prep myself before reading this, and I don’t know if I’ll have it in me to go through the comments. I’m a similar age as you – I was 16 (I think) when Columbine happened and I’m just so…tired.
I am so sick of the ‘we need more good guys with guns!!’ argument. Because – even if we get there (such as the guy in Maryland that perhaps was able to stop the shooter there – we don’t necessarily know his motives, if he had been planning to shoot others, but he may have) – the point is SOMEBODY STILL HAD TO SHOOT A STUDENT (and of course he managed to kill one person before that). Do we really expect teachers to shoot and kill children? Certainly, it’s commendable for when things slip through the cracks, as they inevitably will, but it’s not what we should be relying on.
Likewise, I find gun control to also only be one of the last steps. I say this as somebody who supports more regulations, checking and tracking and making the right of gun ownership something that also comes with responsibility and is a privelege that can be lost (similar to how ‘liberty’ and even ‘life’ can be deemed by the law appropriate to take away in some circumstances – not that I’m particularly pro-death penalty, mind you, but there’s a precedent for the rights also coming with conditions).
But even with gun control – there are still people that want to hurt, that glorify violence and aggression, and that view their wounds as some grand injustice they are entitled to lash out at others for. This isn’t just a ‘white boy’ problem (although in the category of school shootings that demographic certainly dominates the statistics) but just in general – as you mentioned and as was evident at the march, violence is a problem. And we have to work to fix that too (although I actually think in some ways, gun control – or our lack of it – is a part of the contributing culture and shows what we value). But honestly – there will always be people who choose evil, and that’s why we should still have the regulations. I don’t know if we really do just have more violent/mentally ill people or not, or if it’s just that now they also have more access to deadly weapons.
Anyway – I love the literary examples you chose. I really wish there was more emphasis on technology and techniques to disarm in our own world. Ideally even police wouldn’t need a gun if they had a way of stopping the threat. I come from a worldview/faith where life is a good to be preserved above all so it makes me really upset to hear how eager people are to just throw more deadly weapons into the fray, or to justify lethal force.
Since Tor.com has decided that entering the political opinion business is a good idea, will articles whigh suppor opposing views be published?
@83
In that case I apologise, because that is how your post came across.
However the study doesn’t indicate that at all. Between 400,000-600,000 crimes are reported as being committed in the USA every year involving a firearm. Assume 108,000 successful uses of a defensive weapon occurred. That means that between 14% and 20% of crimes involving firearms can be prevented with a defensive weapon. You have to add the numbers together, because a successful use of a defensive weapon in that study means no crime was committed.
In perfect honesty, my problems aren’t with the vast majority of hunting or sporting weapons, even large calibre weapons. Rather they are with the much more limited number of military style weapons and the proliferation of handguns. The former are primarily used to show off, and are regular features in the mass shootings, they have very limited roles in professional culling and no role in sports. The latter are primarily used to commit crimes and to make people feel better via security theatre, and sporting pistols are wildly different to normal pistols. Handguns have no real hunting use compared with long guns. Add to that 73% of all murders in 2016 were committed with firearms, and 70% of those were handguns. Handguns are far too easy to conceal, and the fact that more Americans die to toddlers firing guns than die to terrorists yet you’ve locked down all the airports and invented an entirely new enforcement arm of the government tells you all you need to know about attitudes to public safety.
@84
The difference between suicides in Japan and the USA, is that first of all, Suicide is tolerated by the Japanese culture – in many circumstances it is considered as an honourable way out, which has a big influence on the young demographic who is most vulnerable. More than a quarter are directly financially related, and death generally erases debts which might otherwise be transferred to family.
Secondly suicide by gun is around 90% likely to kill you, whereas suicide by other means generally has a 80% chance of failure – a high percentage of people when they first try to commit suicide don’t really want to die, they just don’t know what else to do. Guns generally don’t give the victim that second chance.
@93. I suggest you read the LA Times article I linked to above (granted, It’s a paywall, but you get x number of free views). Here’s a link, so you don’t have to dig for it. The existing peer-reviewed literature on the matter seems to directly contradict your statement that “according to every study ever done on the subject” the mentally ill are more likely to be victims. If you have an article you’d like to share, though, I’d be interested in seeing it.
While it’s not strictly a mental health issue, mental heath is definitely a contributing factor.
@93 18342772
> Regulation is included in the 2nd amendment. Literally, it’s in the text. A well-regulated militia. Therefore, regulation can occur–and already does–without infringing on constitutional rights.
Actually, you’re reading that wording wrong. But don’t worry, it’s a common thing to do, because the writers of the Bill of Rights didn’t make the Second Amendment very clear, unfortunately.
While you may disagree with this evaluation–and I understand that–the Second Amendment is as follows, which includes 3 parts:
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.
Part 1: A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State,
Note the comma at the end, denoting the end of this part.
Part 2: the right of the people to keep and bear Arms,
Again, note the comma.
Part 3: shall not be infringed.
If you diagram the sentences by breaking them apart–like I was taught way back in junior high, long ago–you’ll see that there are two subjects and one predicate. Part 1 and Part 2 are subjects and Part 3 is the predicate. You can break the subjects out and write this as two sentences, as such:
Sentence 1: A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, shall not be infringed.
Sentence 2: The right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.
Note that the word that “regulated” modifies: “militia”. It’s not talking about the right to bear arms being regulated, but that the militia should be regulated. What does that mean? Well, the colonists had been dealing with being forced to house British soldiers in their homes. They didn’t like that. They wanted to make sure that the militias–or the colonists’ version of British troops–be regulated such that they were under strict control. They didn’t want to be forced to house militia members in their homes. They wanted to make sure the militias did not get out of hand, or that they should be regulated, like the British troops had not been.
While the Heller vs DC case did allow for regulations, that was not initially included in the original Second Amendment.
Another difference seem to be that in Switzerland you also need to register to buy ammunition (even for the permit-free rifles), which I belive is completely free in the US?
In Harry Potter, the students form a militia they call Dumbledore’s Army and go out to fight the tyranny of those in the regulating bureaucracy. In the end, the open-carrying students successfully fight off the power of corrupted government.
I think that using HP to promote disarmament is a misstep at least as significant as the time Ms Perrin called Dune–a book where women have *literal* superpowers–misogynistic.
Harry Potter is literally the BEST ARGUMENT **FOR** the 2A.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a wand, is a good guy with a wand.
Who is the shaved head lady on the picture? I don’t care. You rock lady!
Except we aren’t in a fantasy story and bad/evil/insane people do exist.
A couple studies on violence and mental illness, here and here, since people asked. Regardless, no one is suggesting mental health care is irrelevant, just that plenty of other countries have similar rates of mental illness, and much fewer incidents of gun violence. There are multiple variables, of course, but I would suggest the largest is gun laws.
@101
I don’t think I’m reading it wrong–or if I am, it’s not because I misunderstand clauses or punctuation. I understand that “regulate” as it was most commonly used then meant, essentially, regular, or functional, in the way that a working clock is regular; and I understand that it refers to the militia, in this case. I’m also aware of the issues the founding fathers had with harboring soldiers, and with standing, professional armies in general. But I don’t think we can say it’s possible to address how regular and functional a militia is without addressing how the people making it up are armed. And functionally, it’s obvious that we do consider some weapons legal, and others not, and that we aren’t calling on a mass citizen army to fight off an invading force.
Of course, as you said, the presiding legal opinion detaches individual right from service in a militia.
I don’t think you can honestly bring up late-18th century American militias without acknowledging that one of their primary and immediate purposes was to act as an auxiliary and first-contact force for committing genocide against Indians. There were of course some matters of republican principle involved in the Revolution, but just as pressing was that Americans wanted to invade the Northwest territories, and were angry that the British had a goal of coming to friendly terms with the Indians. The end of the American Revolutionary War really only saw an end to England’s involvement in the fight; American continue to wage war on Indian country for the next century, and militias were an important aspect of that.
Hunting runaway slaves would have been a secondary but not unimportant concern of course–slavers in the U.S. certainly couldn’t have missed that the abolition movement was gaining ground back in London.
What the writer here fail to do is compare Harry Potter solution to what she is suggesting in the real world. When Harry need protection at school he didn’t go out unarm and protest wand free zone, no he went out and recruit more people that has wands and magic to defend the school. The write suggest that in the real world we should not recruit more arm people to protect our children because it’s inhuman to have them harm anther life. I wonder what would have happen if they disarm all the wizard and the only the bad guys have wands??
All it takes to defeat a bad guy with a wand… you fill in the blank.
Bravo! Change came about in the 60s regarding Vietnam, civil rights, women’s and gay rights because of young voices speaking up even though at the time we were just considered too naive to truly understand the issues.
Guns are not defensive weapons, and gun mythology exists only to sell guns. Guns are tools of death and violence, and the OP could stand for “On Point,” because it’s exactly right. Rowling gave the current generation a roadmap for revolution, including the dark areas of gaslighting, propaganda, abuse of power — even by one’s allies like Rufus Scrimgeour — and most of all persistence.
Read the Harry Potter books, but instead of the easy Harry-and-friends-are-heroes view, read it as “Harry and friends are outlaw rebels against the government” view. They invade (“terrorize”) the Ministry of Magic and the risk of their lives. They evade capture living rough for months. They invade a school resulting in a standoff with the government. Children fight and die.
These are not easy books. They are not books about lighthearted topics. They are books about lawbreaking and loss and violence. They are books that acknowledge the inevitable setbacks and losses. They are primers for revolution, and this whole generation has been raised on them.
The Powers that Be should be worried. These young people are natives to social media, television, and conflict. They will endure and persist. There’s a reason the series ends with the prologue from Aeschyus, “…answer the call, send help. Bless the children, give them Triumph now.”
Good luck and Expelliarmus!
@julejoe #113 Those of us who came of age in the late 60’s and early 70’s helped end a war and topple a President that we hated. We changed the world…or did we? Vietnam, Watergate, and Nixon’s ouster led directly to the paper tiger US of the late 70’s, which in turn caused the pendulum to swing back to Reaganism. That’s the thing with pendulums. They always swing back.
@drcox #15 I would love to donate $$ to one of your bracelets… is that possible?
@100 The article you link to only shows that ~ 60% of mass shooters had probable mental health issues. It gives no information on mental health rates among shooters with fewer than four victims or the rates of diagnosed mental health issues among victims of violent crime. To my knowledge (as a mental health professional), people with mental health issues are far more likely to be victims of violence than to perpetrate violence. I assume that is what @93 was talking about.
@103 Superpowers don’t preclude misogyny, but that’s a conversation for another thread.
Wonderful writing, but there is no “expeliarmus” (or however that’s spelled) in real life.
@118 That is the point the gun control lobby is making. Means the only effective measure to reduce deaths from guns is to reduce guns.
@117. While true, it’s a distraction from the topic at hand. We’re not seeking here to discuss proposed solutions to violence and violent crime, but rather, violent crimes involving firearms, especially mass shootings. I would hazard to argue that your statement should instead be “at least 59% of of mass shooters in the US in the past 117 years are definitely attributable to people with known or largely probable mental disorders.”
I would imagine that for a large amount of the remaining 41% we lack sufficient information on the person to make the determination either way, and as such, the authors of the article were erring on the side of caution/respect.
I’m curious, as you are a mental health professional, under which conditions would a mass shooter not have some sort of mental illness to engage in a mass shooting? Serious question. Likewise, what’s your take on the fact that at least since Columbine, they’ve all been male?
Your whole argument goes out the window when you consider the fact that eleven-year-old children are given the exact same tools that are used to murder.
114. a1batross
> Guns are not defensive weapons, and gun mythology exists only to sell guns.
Uh… wanna bet?
https://www.statista.com/statistics/251894/number-of-justifiable-homicides-in-the-us/
The above are only statistics when self-defense with a firearm results in death. There are many more self-defense uses where the perpetrator was not killed and thus not included in the above statistics. The U.S. CDC estimates this number to be 108,000 to 3,000,000, as discussed in other response.
Do you know how absurd it sounds to hear somebody say that guns are not used for self defense? There have even been high-profile cases of self-defense in the news over the past few years, proving this wrong. I don’t want to mention these cases by name, because that would spawn a useless continuation of a debate that has been discussed to death, but you probably know the cases I’m talking about.
Here are some less-known. specific examples of guns used as defense weapons:
http://wlrn.org/post/lawmaker-tells-story-using-gun-prevent-rape
http://www.kvue.com/article/news/local/pulled-my-gun-and-told-him-to-get-off-her-man-who-stopped-alleged-rape-in-austin-speaks/269-490107463 and https://www.conservativereview.com/articles/another-good-guy-with-a-gun-saves-woman-from-alleged-rape/
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2017/11/08/texas-church-shooting-not-first-time-good-guy-with-gun-takes-down-mass-shooter.html
And those were just a few that I found in 5 minutes. There are plenty of other examples. That guns are not useful for self-defense is a false talking point from gun control advocates who rely upon lies and it’s easy to disprove the statement, as I have just done here.
Please don’t spread false claims about guns. That helps nobody, including gun-control advocates. However, I think we’re getting off topic a bit now, since we’re talking about gun control and Harry Potter here.
For better or worse, America was founded upon gun violence: Colonists shooting Native Americans. Colonists shooting colonists. Colonizers, including Spanish, French and especially British, soldiers shooting colonists. And, come the Revolution, colonists shooting back at the British army and their Hessian mercenaries. We moved westward, using gun violence to clear the way. Guns and gun violence are “baked in” to the fabric of American society.
We, also, are the sons and daughters of rebels, criminals, opportunists and other social misfits. Our ancestors emigrated from Europe either because they did not want to fit into Europe’s static society, fleeing religious or political persecution, fleeing war or “natural disaster” (like the Irish potato “famine”), or because they were one step ahead of the law. We tend to obey only those laws that we find convenient and ignore others.
For example, I grew up in New York State where fireworks was illegal and the Sullivan Law made it extremely difficult to legally own a handgun. In the 1960s, when I wanted to purchase fireworks for the 4th of July on New Years Eve, I would talk to a certain classmate and tell him what I was looking for and how much I would pay. A few days later, another classmate would tell me to meet “the man” at a particular place at a particular time. Once there, I would identify myself to the lookout. Once he was satisfied, I would follow his directions and find a man with an older full-size car with a big trunk. Inside the trunk, he had bottles of liquor without the NY stamp, boxes of new guns – mostly handguns but also automatic rifles, used US Army M16’s, buckets of used handguns with different prices, – the cheap ones did not even have trigger guards, boxes of ammunition, open boxes of fireworks, and a bunch of bags, each with a name or nickname on them. He also had untaxed cigarettes and other tobacco products in the back seat. I would pay for my bag of fireworks and, if I had some extra money, perhaps add a pack of Cherry Bombs or a couple of rockets. I would walk back to my car the way I came.
Each time, I met with a different guy with a different car in a different place. If I wanted a gun, all I needed was money. Organized crime will always provide anything you want that is illegal for you to buy.
The “mass shooters,” at least here in America, seem to plan their attacks well in advance. With advance planning, these shooters can get any type, brand or style of weapon they want – gun laws will neither stop them nor change their weapon choice.
You keep saying people are disarmed with expelliarmus and so-and-so lived. How many in the Harry Potter series did not live? How much of the Wizarding World go about all day carrying a wand, a concealed weapon? Children are taught how to use it from entry at Howard’s – age 11. Voldemort and his followers indiscriminately kill until people stand up and use their wands to disarm AND KILL. The government cannot help them – the Ministry cannot help them. They have to rely on their weapons, their wands, and ultimately defeat the bad people with their own effort.
Be careful with your metaphors and analogies. Sometimes they work against you.
Civil rights are easy to give up and hard to obtain. The United States is founded on the unique principal that the People own the government. The government is merely a convenient servant for each Individual. That is why the 2nd Amendment is there. The Individual is acknowledged as the center. That the Individual Citizen must have the right to bear arms is an acknowledgement that the Individual is the power.
For those who want to give up that power and be subservient to government, let them answer where does their idea that government is superior to individuals come from? Is government made of something other than people? When Individuals do bad things with their rights, there are courts to hold them accountable. When governments are given power over citizens, citizens soon find they have no safety at all.
It has been said: Those who would give up Liberty for security will have neither.
To those of you complaining this commentary doesn’t belong on TOR, one of the reasons I have always appreciated SF and one reason I always site when I tell people why SF is worth reading is the ability to do social commentary and explore social themes. There are so many great stories and series that take a social issue and put it in a SF world that allows freedom to examine and highlight that issue.
And to those gun advocates who fall back on the tired meme of how guns prevent tyranny and protect ‘us’ from evil governments, I’m afraid you’ve watched Red Dawn too many times. I’m sure you’ve also watched Zero Dark Thirty, American Sniper or even Captain Philips. If the US government or military came to get your guns, you wouldn’t hear or see them and your and your rag-tag band of ‘patriots’ are no match for actual military, regardless of the number of guns you have or weekends you play paintball. What keeps the US government from oppressing the ‘people’ IS the people and the fact that we actually are a (mostly) civilized country that values the rule of law and has a government, laws, and culture that protects the weak and minority view points instead of allowing their oppression. For every pseudo example of a country that ‘protected’ themselves because they had guns, I’m sure there are 10x examples of countries with low per capita gun ownership that don’t have the insane number of mass shootings, suicides, and domestic violence the US has that can be directly attributed to guns, and have not been overrun by fascists, communists, or nazis and where their kids don’t go to school wondering if today they might get shot.
The use of “never again” is historically associated with the Holocaust. I find the appropriation very disturbing.
The editorial, full of inaccuracies, did not persuade me at all.
It doesn’t matter whether I go hunting at all or I never go hunting or if I am a vegetarian peace-loving hippie animal rights activists.
I am never going to comply with the agenda of the gun control movement gun control minus gun equals control
It all depends. If the shooter is a white male, the shooting is attributed to mental illness. If the shooter is from the middle east, they’re a terrorist. If they’re black, they’re a hardened criminal.
I’m crying. I can’t stop. So much of this resonated with me.
“Though I was the same age as Harry when the books were first published, my generation is not Harry’s anymore. In fact, I am the same age as Snape, as Lupin, as Sirius Black would have been when Harry started school.“
“I am not a member of Dumbledore’s Army. My generation, we’re the Order of the Phoenix, at best. Faces on a picture waving up at them. Some of us are gone and some of us remain. The most I can hope for is Remus Lupin status: Here are a few spells to combat evil. Here are the fights we tried and failed to win. Here is my unflagging support. Here is some chocolate; eat it, it helps, it really helps. Forgive me for not doing more, for not ending this before you had to lose your friends and hide in a dark room and listen to adults tell you how to feel instead of telling you how they will stop this from ever happening again.”
Thank you
As for the overall discussion I’m reading over here, I’ve been always baffled by a society that has more stringent control for issuing driving licenses than for selling a machine gun.
@124: For worse. For worse. Unspeakable violence might be our legacy, but it’s up to us to decide what to do with that. I cannot think of a worse reaction to the blood of our national history than to just shrug and say that is who we are, and who we must be. We have the power to decide whether the imminent threat of gunbattle is really something we want in schools and everyday life. Guns are not our destiny, and are not immutable physical laws of nature; they are just things made by humans.
When thinking about this article, I remembered there’s something about children in the quote from Aeschylus’ The Libation Bearers that’s used as the first epigraph to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and thought how that is appropriate and now that I’ve opened my copy and reread the epigraph, I’m thinking how very appropriate, how very wonderful, for the last line of the quote is “Bless the children, give them triumph now.”
Now I’m thinking about the first epigraph to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
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Writers work intuitively, and sometimes find they have sent messages that they consciously deplore. This is why JK Rowling depicts the boys getting in trouble, and dragging the girls along with them. This is true – in real life, boys get in trouble vastly more often than girls do – but at this particular time it is not politically correct to tell the truth, and Rowling has spent a lot of time apologizing for it.
Similarly, Rowling created a story line in which it was desperately important that weapons (wands) be very widely distributed. As a result, her books will tend to be read as promoting the private ownership of firearms, whether she likes it or not.
Given the likely age of most people following this thread, I should perhaps clarify that, when I talked about the Freedom Riders (registering Southern blacks to vote in the early 1960s) asking local sheriffs to protect them from the Ku Klux Klan, instead of carrying firearms, I was joking. At that time, most of those sheriffs would have been in cahoots (love that word) with the Klan and, on top of that, knew if more blacks voted those sheriffs would soon be out of a job. The Klan was intertwined with the Democratic Party at the time; thus the astonishing career of Robert Byrd, who went from Klan organizer to Congress (1953–1959) to Senate (1959-2010). When he fainted during the inauguration of Barack Obama in 2009, I got a reprehensible chuckle out of it!
Some people on the thread may also be too young to know what the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was; that they will have to look up for themselves. Word of warning, though: you may cry tears of blood.
However, it reminds us that even light armaments can bedevil a much better-armed force. It’s worth noting that Navy SEALs and special forces guys are avid Second Amendment supporters.
@78/Mayhem: “[In Switzerland] machine guns and assault rifles are flat out prohibited, except for the personal weapons of serving military personnel. Those do not have ammunition, the ammunition is stored in government armouries”. Just to clarify, in the Swiss context, “serving military personnel“ means essentially all men between the ages of 20 and 30 (34 for officers). Second, military ammunition (for machine guns, etc.) was stored at home until 2007, when there was a change of policy, possibly due to pressure from the EU. It’s only when a militiaman retires — at 30 or 34 — that the full automatic setting on his service weapon is disabled, if he chooses to keep it.
The bottom line: some countries/cultures/subcultures are heavily armed yet nonviolent; others severely restrict gun ownership yet have high levels of violence. For example, Britain had a low murder rate before gun control. It’s all in the culture.
Regardless of the lessons regarding gun control which may or my not exist in Harry Potter — I think they don’t — the real lesson is that adults can’t always be trusted to be responsible. Nearly every person in authority completely abandons their responsibility to deal with Voldemort and the Death Eaters.
Thank you for a well-written piece.
But I suspect that if magic wands were a thing IRL, “gun control” would become “wand control”. And only the Ministery of Magic would be allowed to use them.
Emily, everything you post speaks truth. Everything you post is insightful. Nearly everything you post makes me cry. You’re amazing, and I hope no one ever silences YOU.
Brava!!!
So Harry and friends would be better off if the primary tools of violence that were used in that universe were removed?
If you are calling for the removal of firearms from our society, the analogy would be more accurate if you were calling for the removal of all wands from Hogwarts. Disarmed people are safer, right?
You analogy fails to me. Everyone in the Potter universe that carries a wand, is effectively carrying a lethal ranged weapon.
“It is about communities going unaided and ignored while friends and children and loved ones are taken from them.” Exactly. Ignored by the FBI, the local police, and school administrators, while a psychopath made it very clear to anyone who would listen, what he was going to, and finally did, do.
Some people are replying that the wizarding students having their own wands is like real life students and teachers being armed with guns to defend themselves. That’s not correct. Wands in the Potterverse do everything from levitation to laundry. The Killing Curse is just one spell, and the one only the villains use and the kids refuse to.
Guns are Killing Curses. They don’t have any use or function besides murder. Guns have no equivalent to a disarming or Patronus spell. The closest thing is a inflicting gunshot wound the person manages to survive, but there’s no guaranteed way to do that. No person in their right mind wants to know the Killing Curse in the first place, and they try to keep it out of the hands of anyone who would use it. The solution is not “a good guy with a Killing Curse” pre-emptively murdering anyone who seems liable to use it.
You are a talented writer and I enjoy reading your material. This might be the best thing you’ve ever written.
@142/taras: “Just to clarify, in the Swiss context, “serving military personnel“ means essentially all men between the ages of 20 and 30 (34 for officers).”
All men who haven’t been classified as unfit or decided to do community service instead. I think the current number is about 60%.
“Second, military ammunition (for machine guns, etc.) was stored at home until 2007, when there was a change of policy, possibly due to pressure from the EU.”
It was stored at home in a box they were not allowed to open. The policy was changed after studies had found that army guns were used a lot in murders and especially suicides. People also argued that the end of the Cold War had changed the political situation, making an invasion unlikely. I’ve never heard the “pressure from the EU” theory before, and I doubt that Switzerland would let the EU pressure them. Quite a few people in Switzerland are wary of guns. In 2011, a referendum “For the protection against gun violence” was rejected by 56,3% – that’s a rather small majority.
“The bottom line: some countries/cultures/subcultures are heavily armed yet nonviolent; others severely restrict gun ownership yet have high levels of violence.”
As a foreigner, I really shouldn’t intrude into your discussion except to provide information about Europe, so I apologise for my next question… but I’m curious. Do you have an example for the second kind of country? The one that severely restricts gun ownership, yet has high levels of violence? Because your final argument (“It’s all in the culture”) sounds to me as if gun control would yield the most impressive results in a violent culture.
I typically don’t post my opinions on hot button topics, but I think that
if this site feels it’s appropriate to post an article like this, then I’m justified in posting a reply.
I think several other posters have covered the fact that Harry doesn’t just ‘shout’ Expelliarmus. He uses his wand. The comparison above has already been made that the wands are a stand in for guns in this case. Voldermort is the equivalent of a terrorist threatening you with violence. Harry is responding with his weapon to protect those he loves. As a matter of fact, as you mentioned, he goes in the room of requirement and helps train those other students to use their weapons to protect themselves and those that they love. I think that’s an excellent idea. To practice these things so that you can use them responsibly, to work past knee jerk reactions that can do as much harm to your friends as to the enemy trying to harm them. So that’s a good point you made.
Here is another simple thought I’d like to state. I own several guns. I enjoy having them. I don’t hunt regularly, but I think that anyone who puts meat in their mouth should have to kill and eat an animal, be it deer, fish, etc… at least once. Too many people are divorced from where their resources come from. I think they should know, viscerally, where that hamburger they pick up in the store comes from. I think they should respect the animals life that is nourishing them.
I also like to target shoot. Not only is it fun, it’s a test of skill. It’s also practical training so that I can, like Harry, effectively use my weapon to protect myself and my family without doing something in the heat of the moment to hurt them. I’ve helped several ladies at my work that worry about intruders chose a gun that fits their needs. For instance, I recommend to a lot of them to get a .410 or 20 gauge pump shotgun. There are two things that will make someone poop their pants. That’s a red dot lighting up their chest and the sound of a shotgun racking. If that sound can make an intruder run out without a fight, then that’s the ideal outcome. If not, then it doesn’t take a lot of practice to aim. I highly encouraged these ladies to take a training class and volunteered my time to train them, as well as asking that they practice at least every other month to stay familiar with the weapon.
Having said that, I also own an AR-15. I’d like to take an opportunity to state that AR-15’s are not assault rifles. they’re not automatics. You can’t buy any automatic without a special license. I reiterate, it’s already illegal. Problem solved. They were once market as assault style rifles, but an assault rifle has a different name and has a selector switch. If you set it to auto, then when you pull the trigger, it fires repeatedly till the magazine is empty. There are two things to note, even if someone does have an automatic rifle or pistol. One is that whatever happens, it’s over with quickly. I think a lot of gun control advocates knowledge of guns is based on Hollywood movies. I also think it’s hypocritical that many Hollywood celebrities make money off of movies where they rain down destruction with weapons of all shapes and sizes, but advocate gun control and restrictions. That’s for another post, though. In Hollywood movies people grab a fully automatic rifle and fire it at the opposing side, then they fire it again, and again…and again. Most magazines that you’ll get hold 30 rounds. You can fire all of those in about 10 seconds. Then you’re out. With a fully automatic rifle, you’ll also get something called walking. When a gun fires it creates recoil, which causes the barrel to lift. Most shooters practice to manage this as best as possible and to come back to their resting spot as quickly as possible for the next accurate shot. When you hold down a trigger on an automatic, you can’t control this very well and the more shots you fire the higher the barrel goes. You’ll quickly end up shooting much higher than you intended. So to my knowledge no assault rifle or automatic weapon has been used in any of these shooting. I’d appreciate it if anyone talking about it made a point to use correct language. An AR-15 is the exact same as a regular semi-automatic rifle. It’s just got a pretty paint job to make it look cool. Yes, they look cool.
To the poster that said you can’t even hunt with an AR, you’re wrong. Plenty of people hunt with them. You can take edible animals and people do, but they’re very popular as varmint rifles. They’ll often use them to harvest hogs that are destroying property as well as coyotes when they become nuisances and are killing pets and livestock. You can certainly vote to trap and relocate these animals, but all you’re really doing is making them someone else’s problem.
I had one liberal that worked with me ask me why I needed a gun or wanted more than one. My answer to him is that I have them because I enjoy the craftsmanship that goes into them, I enjoy shooting as a sport, and I enjoy being able to protect my family. I then stated that while he sees guns as something no one should have, much less seeing why I’d want them, he would have congratulated me if I’d gotten a nice sports car. It would have cost an arm and a leg, there would be no where I could utilize that speed without endangering others, and I’d be willing to bet that deaths related to speeding are more prevalent that deaths related to guns. Yet it’s a celebration when a 16 year old child with less training than I’d allow anyone I taught to handle a gun, gets their license and goes out on the road, much less the texting that goes on now with teens and adults. You just don’t get this criticism with other things people enjoy that can be dangerous.
Having made my feelings clear on guns. I’d like to state that I would never go out and shoot a group of people. I wouldn’t resort to using my weapon first. If I could run, I would. There isn’t anyone whom I allow in my personal life that I wouldn’t trust to handle a firearm around me. The point is that you are trying to solve an unsolvable issue by creating stricter gun control laws, when the guns aren’t the issue. Guns don’t pick themselves up and go on a spree. People do. You could illegalize guns today and that still wouldn’t solve the problem. There are too many out there. The vast majority of guns criminals obtain aren’t obtained legally anyway. They’re stolen. Lets say that you did wave a magic wand and used the ‘banish all guns on earth’ spell. People have been killing each other for centuries without guns. I had a bomb threat called into my high school. I suspect it was a student trying to get out of exams and would have turned them in, but it is still an issue. ISIS is using bombs in many of their attacks.
I’m also boycotting many of these companies that have stated that they’ll only sell long rifles if you’re 21, even though it’s legal to buy at 18. They’ve effectively stated that the day you turn 21, you inherited common sense, reasoning skills, and empathy for other human beings. I’m sorry to say that’s ignorant. All they’ve done is punish law abiding 18 year olds that are responsible enough to have a gun. There is no way to make any laws at all that will protect everyone. It’s not possible. I don’t care if 50% of the world population went into law enforcement and every person was assigned their own highly trained body guard to watch them 24/7. They still can’t protect you. All laws can do is protect as many people as they can. They can’t stop a coworker from punching you in the nose when you make fun of them one to many times and you catch them at the wrong time. The only thing stopping them from doing it are restrictions placed on them by instilled morals, social values, and the threat of punishment by laws. However, as any child comes to realize, their parents only have the power over them that they allow. Once the child becomes independent then the only power the parent has over the child is what they allow them to have. If they’re willing to take a spanking or have their car taken away, or even kicked out of the house or physically assaulted there still isn’t anything the parent can do if they decide to do what they want and accept the consequences.
So I agree something needs to be done. I’m not smart enough to know what the solution is and I don’t think most people are. That’ll work itself out in the long run. What I do know is that saying take away and restrict guns an there won’t be violence is extremely ignorant. I’d ask that anyone opposed to guns answer two questions. One is, if you were given a gun would you harm someone with it who wasn’t a threat to you. The second question is if you had the choice to lose someone close to you, such as your parent, child, sibling, or significant other, would you choose to let them die or would you defend them with a gun. I’d appreciate it if you answered these questions in the spirit they were asked and not say, “I wouldn’t let that happen.” If we had that ability, then this wouldn’t be an issue. I don’t need to know your answer, but you do.
154. Dalton24 Thank you. That was wonderfully said.
@Dalton24 Well done sir.
Not sure why my comment didn’t make it, so I’ll prune it down-
in Real Life, in 1988, a home invasion was in progress at my mother’s home.
She would be at a severe disadvantage against any violent criminal, except she was (and is) armed.
Harry Potter does not justify disarming my mother.
I appreciate your analogy. Voldemort’s first act of terror was at his school, directed at his peers. However, I don’t think the armed vs unarmed debate was ever central to this character. His first tool of terror was the basilisk not the avada cadavera curse.
Guns, no guns, metal detectors, armed guards, armed teachers… those are ALL Umbridge/Ministry of Magic level solutions. The true solution that crosses over from the writing to real life is to find Tom Riddle before he becomes Lord Voldemort.
The thing that saved it all in the end was Harry’s mother’s concern for someone like Snape (assumed villain, mini-Voldemort, turned hero.)
Check out the sandy hook promise, the whole program.
Excellent article. And while the points are valid, and the similarities between the books and real life are clear, I can only echo the general consensus: nothing about gun control is easy. Perhaps it would be a little easier if our government refused to take campaign money from the NRA, but that’s not going to happen. They’re too greedy. Sad but true..