It's Not a Tragedy
Sunday, December 16, 2012 at 08:54AM What can we say about the children massacre? “OK, Jay, do something,” says Melinda, a college English instructor in Colorado. “You’re the argument man….Every religious right idiot is posting cliched sayings on TEE SHIRTS for goodness sakes that this terrible tragedy occurred because we have taken prayer (and therefore God) out of public schools. I know there’s a fallacy there.”
There is, Melinda. More than one, actually. (Post hoc ergo propter hoc and Straw Man lead my list). But remember, pointing out fallacies generally fails to persuade.
Besides, this is more of a framing issue than a mere argument. You want to redefine the terms and focus the issue to achieve your goal.
What goal? I have one: Make it harder to pour bullets into small children. That’s something a majority of Americans should agree on, right? In practical terms, that means restoring the laws that expired under the Bush presidency—laws that banned assault weapons and large-capacity bullet clips.
So let’s talk about how to frame the issue, getting Congress to restore the ban on assault weapons and large clips.
- Don’t call it a tragedy. “Tragedy” implies an act of the gods, something terribly sad but inevitable. Instead, call it a massacre. A massacre is the most violent kind of crimes, and it implies that more than one person was involved. (We’ll get to that in a bit.)
- Keep the focus on the children. This was a massacre of children. Gundamentalists will try to focus on the shooter. That allows them to make a reasonable-sounding case for school prayer: As our morals deteriorate, more sick people will do horrible things. Frame the issue around making it harder to massacre children. You can’t pray away legally acquired assault weapons and large-capacity ammo clips.
- Demonize the NRA. I like Robert Shrum’s label, the National Rampage Association. There’s more than one culprit in this massacre. While the NRA didn’t specifically set out to massacre children, they did work with brutal efficiency to allow the massacre to happen.
- Make the wafflers sound weak. Obama wiped a tear away while reading careful language avoiding direct talk of gun control. Demand that the President, and leaders in general, stand up to the NRA. It’s the ultimate classroom bully—a bully that allowed every small terrified child in a first grade to be killed with legally acquired assault weapons.
- When the Second Amendment gets mentioned, bring the focus back to the children. The Second Amendment calls for a “well regulated militia” to protect the “security of a free state.” Ask what the security of a free state has to do with massacring children. Laws that make it easy to massacre children arguably violate the Second Amendment. Eleven bullets into a small child: Security?
- Be the moderate in the debate. Ultimately, the more moderate-sounding argument wins. As long as the issue stays focused on the children and not on the shooter, on the children instead of “freedom,” then the issue comes down to this: Are you for or against the massacre of children?
It’s all about the children. As long as the issue focuses on them, their deaths—their criminal massacre—won’t be entirely meaningless.
Reader Comments (28)
I DO think that my analogy with the car manufacturers holds up and explain why: You said that because they dont lobby against stricter liscensing they are taking responsibility. WTF do they have to take responsibility for? All they do is provide transportation to millions of consumers. Supply and Demand was the first lesson i learned in Economics.Guns are used for other things than ending human life. You are hunter correct? So: We cant blame gun manufacturers or the NRA for the way people decide to use guns. Baseball bats are essential to the game of baseball. Somewhere sometime somebody has murdered another person with a baseball bat so should we place a ban on them? Also When a man calles a woman "hot" he is not describing her as the dictionary definition like temperature but we understand what he means. If this is called a tragedy...IT IS regardless how TECHNICAL you want to be We all understand when somebody says tragedy we dont always have to correct the dictionary definition
I'm seeing a lot of defensive language among gun advocates arguing against banning all guns. Personally, I'm for making it a little harder to pour bullets into small children.
By the way: I used to hunt but then stopped when I had children. It seemed irresponsible to have guns around kids. As for "home protection," I didn't want to foster the culture of fear that too many kids grow up in. Don't get me wrong, I love guns and support hunting. But assault weapons don't belong in a peaceful culture--or anywhere near kids.
And, for the record, as far as I'm aware, MURDER is banned 100% in the entire United States. Doesn't mean it doesn't happen. Banning a particular type of weapon isn't going to magically eradicate them from existence, or keep them from being used to commit crimes.
No law eliminates crime, but I think we can agree that it should be a little harder to pour multiple rounds into the bodies of small children.
Or can we agree? The NRA clearly doesn't, which puts the organization at the extreme of American politics. A plurality of gun owners support a sales ban on assault weapons, according to the most recent Gallup poll. A sizable majority of Americans also support the ban. Not to eliminate mass shootings, but to make them a little harder. To make us live in a little less fear. And to prevent turning our schools into armed encampments.
Fig.
I would think that "left in the trunk of the car" did not qualify a weapon as being "used" in a shooting. According to police, the Bushmaster .223 was found in the trunk of a parked car at the school and ONLY pistols were taken into the school (4 hand guns were found inside the school). There is video footage of the rifle being removed from the trunk. The only news organizations "reporting" the rifle being used have somehow failed to update their stories since December 16th.
http://video.today.msnbc.msn.com/today/50208495#50208495
To the point: the only assault weapon in the story stayed in the trunk of a car. But I'll come back to that in a minute.
The NRA suggested arming adults within the school, something Bill Clinton also suggested, implemented and funded...yet no one called him "extreme". A man in China knifed 20 school children the same day as the Sandy Hook incident, yet no one is suggesting we also ban knives. The Oklahoma City bombing killed more people than the D.C. sniper, yet no one is calling for a ban on fertilizer or box trucks.
I'm curious to know if a current Gallup poll would show the same results as you claimed herein what gun owners are in favor of. I know that since Sandy Hook, gun sales AND NRA memberships have skyrocketed. Howeve, I don't believe either are attributable to fear of more shootings. More likely, they are due to fear of losing our rights to own a gun (a short history of bans in other countries shows that "certain guns" can very quickly become "all guns"). Furthermore, plenty of already-banned weapons show up in criminals' hands on a daily basis. All a ban does is take them out of the hands of those who use them for protection, and leave them open to assaults from the criminals who seem to be able to get their hands on all sorts of banned items. When it comes to criminal activity, there is a time to fight fire with fire, and this is no exception.
Honestly, if people want to live in less fear, they'll turn off the media and realize that the only reason things like this are "newsworthy" (I use that term in the absolute loosest sense of the word) is BECAUSE they are incredibly rare. Horrible? Yes. Tragic? Yes. Avoidable? Very likely, though the "how" is probably not found in a specific-weapon ban; if Adam Lanza woke up on Dec. 14th determined to kill 26 people and himself, he could just as easily mowed down kids walking home from school or put a bomb on a school bus. Using this incident to call for a ban on a certain kind of weapon makes no more sense than using this incident to call for a ban on homeschooling (Adam Lanza was homeschooled, therefore, all homeschoolers must be homicidal child-murderers).
So now back to the Sandy Hook Bushmaster .223... If the weapon was sitting in the trunk during the entire attack, then why the call for a ban? Is this where we jump up and decide to ban all hand guns too? Or lock up all the homeschoolers? To be frank, Fig, you were the last one I'd have thought would jump on the hasty conclusion bandwagon. I'm actually quite disappointed.
But there never was any restrictions on assault weapons in the Clinton ban. One just couldn't have a surpressor, or a certain kind of stock or a 30 round clip. The AK-47 was not banned, nor was the AR-15 nor the Bushmaster 223.
Does anyone seriously think that there would have been less killed if Lanza used the two semi-automatic hand guns that he brought with him instead of the assault rifle?
http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/16md27/make_it_harder_to_pour_bullets_into_small/
Good ongoing discussion there as well.