President Obama’s Anti-Gun Tirade

When there is a dramatic event like a mass shooting, emotions run high – that’s permitted; in fact one can take comfort that Mr. Obama demonstrates such a high degree of compassion. Unfortunately, that is where my appreciation for his dialog on the issue of gun control ends.  As the head of state he has an obligation to express empathy for people affected AND reflect reality in his discourse, to be responsible in representing the facts. What we witnessed in is post Roseburg talk was a demonstration in politicking and a lack of understanding OR willful blindness, to what the second amendment is all about.

Mr. Obama mentions the routine response to mass shootings in the United States and yet makes no effort at going after the cultural underpinnings of the challenge. Switzerland has as many handguns per capita and people go there for safe holidays, so it is clear the there is a cultural driver here. It may be the celebrity culture colliding with gun access or some other phenomena. The press’s inclination to sensationalize these events, their willingness to deliver the 15 minutes of fame (infamy) to the “shooter” maybe effecting a contagion.  

Mr. Obama seemed to indicate an escalation in gun violence, there is, in fact a reduction – the trend has been downward since 1981.

Mr. Obama failed to contextualize the risk related to gun ownership, 11,078 or 3.6 gun homicides per 100,000 is a lower risk than taking 80mgs of aspirin daily, which kills 8 in 100,000. The very same year, over 100,000 Americans died of preventable medical accidents – This article in Forbs suggests an even higher number of deaths from preventable medical accidents http://www.forbes.com/sites/leahbinder/2013/09/23/stunning-news-on-preventable-deaths-in-hospitals/ some 440,000.  

Mr. Obama indicates that public opinion is supporting his call for gun control, Pew Research disagrees.

http://www.people-press.org/category/publications/

Mr. Obama it seems, is looking to England for direction on gun control, a 180 degree turn from the founders of the United States. Mr. Obama, of all people, has forgotten that the founders were eager to protect people from oppression. The primary consideration for including the second amendment in the constitution, is the ongoing assurance that people can mass, armed, to uphold their rights in the face of tyranny. Mr. Obama it seems, despite his heritage, has forgotten the lessons the founding fathers had learned so painfully from European history – by way of example, the English were able to quell Scottish independence for generations by disarming them. The founders of the United States knew, from experience, that tyranny happens when the populous has no means to enforce their will. The United States is one of the freest jurisdictions in the world, its very founding happened because people armed themselves to enforce their will. Mr. Obama extended consideration for firearm use in Hunting, Sport and self-protection – he failed to recognize the primary element for the 2^nd amendment's inclusion in the constitution. It is a unique cultural and structural element of the United States government, that it retains the right of the citizenry to oppose government miss direction – and what a success it has been.

Mr. Obama sites Australia as the bastion of reason for gun control; they eventually got to central storage of long guns. Mr. Obama sites England as an example, during IRA crime activity, England had nearly as high firearm related crime. Who wants to live in a country that is so risk adverse that a 3.5 chance in 100,000 is too great – no one will be skiing any more, let alone driving a car.

Availability Heuristic Salient is a useful concept by which to understand some of the public's fear and how politicians exploit that fear. In these instances, like a mass shooting, the ease of imagining an example or the vividness and emotional impact of that example, becomes more credible than actual statistical probability. Because an example is easily brought to mind or mentally "available", the single example is considered as representative of the whole, rather than as just a single example in a range of data. Salient events tend to distort the judgement of risk.

I would urge the United States to resist the temptation to embrace nouveau social engineering, over the time tested constitution and the mass of wisdom that was brought to it by the founders of the United States; or, if you’re going to think about changing, let reason guide you. 

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Party politics and the media – distortions and spinning mountains out of molehills

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In the words of Winston Churchill, democracy is the worst possible system except for all the rest, in another quote he suggested, if you ever want to shake your faith in democracy just spend five minutes talking to your average voter. The contrast to the voter of his day and the contemporary voter is that, the voter of his day had five minutes. It is very difficult for the average voter today to gain the knowledge required to be really informed, as people are running at an extremely fast pace; so even if the press were providing information unaffected by political distortion by which to form opinion, voters of today hardly have time to think. In this context there is instability in the voting public, resulting from people susceptible to a 30 second news clip asserting a scandal that would be contrasted to earlier times when opinion was formed slowly and changed slowly. In view of this battle for the “swing vote” or “vital middle” parties seek to differentiate by exaggerating differences that are really minute, spinning mountains out of molehills.

What emerges from this process is a polarised public by party but really possessing nearly identical beliefs or political outcomes. There then exists the absence of substantive difference in policy direction. This dynamic diminishes real choice, but what is worse is the distorted view of government policy that emerges out of the process.

The media feeds the political rhetoric by attaching undue saliency to occurrences in society at large and in response to political prompting. The events of September 11, 2001 where ghastly and warranted acute national attention, yet only 3000 people were killed. In that same year 100,000 people were killed by preventable medical accidents. The medical accidents received no attention at all. Both were horrible occurrences, yet only one, 9/1,1 received coverage. 

There are issues were political saliency becomes detached from mathematical reality and this distorts public perception and the political process. In Canada 171 people per year are killed in gun related incidents (one would be too many) yet we spent $2 billion on a gun registry and nothing on a medical records system, when in Canada 25,000 people die each year from preventable medical accidents. In the context of rational thought medical accidents should be our priority. It seems that journalists should give more consideration to saliency and the way it affects public opinion, as public concern is often misdirected with the most serious of consequences.

I've used gun control as an example above, there are many other examples to draw from.

A useful concept to consider this phenomena by is called the Availability Heuristic Salient. In these instances, the ease of imagining an example or the vividness and emotional impact of that example, becomes more credible than actual statistical probability. Because an example is easily brought to mind or mentally "available", the single example is considered as representative of the whole, rather than as just a single example in a range of data. Salient events tend to distort the judgement of risk.

 It is difficult to imagine a means by which this can be addressed, but the distortion in the public’s view of issues as a result is worrying. Even the application of ideology would give some stable means by which to anchor support. For the most part, political party’s position is so nebulous its hard to see what is being supported and so fungible that today’s policy is something else tomorrow, depending on which direction the windsock of public opinion is pointing. Young people see this, particularly the informed ones, and turn away from the system. One understands the nebulous stance holds political advantage at its core. In the effort to promote brand over substance in defining political parties, the overall brand of democracy is waning.  

“Politicians are like bad horsemen who are so preoccupied with keeping in the saddle that they can't be bothered about where they are going.” Joseph Schumpeter

Gun Control - No Thanks

As a Canadian interested in firearms, I am often dismayed at the anti-gun culture that has been cultivated in Canada. There has been an intentional effort, by primarily liberal federal governments, to actuate an anti-gun culture – under the rubric of public safety, but mostly as a cultural differentiation with the United States. The issue has been successfully, but inappropriately, attached to women’s issues and negative events associated with crime. One expects that any issue is subject to distortion in a competitive political situation, as competing factions fight it out attempting to sway the public and government; it seems this issue heightens this phenomenon. I find myself, a person who prides himself on being balanced and rational, getting very impassioned when I enter into discourse; I have concluded it really is “cultural” – culture, like morals, comes with your mother’s milk, you just believe. So I’ve forced myself through the process of exploring the “other side” on numerous occasions, to attempt to understand better the anti-gun movement – I come out of the process convinced that guns are okay, they come with some risk, but when the risk is contextualized to daily life it is minimal.

http://www.statcan.gc.ca/daily-quotidien/141201/dq141201a-eng.htm

“Research suggests that about 70,000 patients a year experience preventable, serious injury as a result of treatments. More shocking, a landmark study published a decade ago estimated that as many as 23,000 Canadian adults die annually because of preventable “adverse events” in acute-care hospitals alone.” National Post  http://news.nationalpost.com/health/inside-canadas-secret-world-of-medical-errors-there-is-a-lot-of-lying-theres-a-lot-of-cover-up

”About one in five (21%) firearm-related deaths in Canada is the result of a criminal offence, while the majority (79%) are the result of suicide, accident, or legal intervention (Statistics Canada 2012).”

http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/85-002-x/2014001/article/11925-eng.pdf

Part of the challenge of addressing this issue is that it has been so political in Canada. At one side of the issue are the Conservatives who have used the issue as a vote-getter from the more conservative rural voter, and on the other side, Liberals, using it as a vote-getter from the urban and largely female population. The attachment to women’s issues has most Canadian women wanting gun control or the removal of guns from private hands altogether.

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The cultural divorce between Canada as a nation and guns is a divergence from nearly our entire history. Canada since first contact has had firearms at the heart of its development; the fur trade was facilitated in large measure by firearms and their trade. I find the history of firearms as they have interfaced with our history in Canada a fascinating thing, as Canadians built Canada, firearms were a critical element of the process; since our inception, people have had and used firearms. There is no merit in ignoring this reality and it is a political red herring to whitewash an important aspect of our history or to lose it to an attempt to build a cultural firewall around Canada in a way that is adversarial to gun owners.

There have been several occasions where I’ve attempted to “enlighten” a person from the anti-gun lobby as to what my attachment to firearms is; to have them understand what resides in me that makes them important. For me, firearms have an interesting history, they are fascinating in function, form and action and they are a useful tool. They are cultural icons of self-reliance. They offer security in so much, that if things ever get tough I can always go get something to eat. I spend a lot of time in the wilderness and take comfort in having a firearm along for protection in bear country and the like. Some of my firearms were my father’s, there is a strong inter-generational appreciation – and once again, a cultural inclination to share a weapon between generations. You can in one way or another rationalize various aspects of my culture away with any number of “arguments”, but for me, I feel better knowing I have a firearm for these reasons - I "believe" in them. It is okay for others to rationalize away my reasons for having them, it is unacceptable that government legislates away my right to have one when there is very little risk in my or other law-abiding people having guns.

In the context of the United States a portion of the “gun culture” holds firearms are a means of domestic protection. I believe there is a constitutional argument in Canada as well for the retention of firearms as an instrument for personal safety. Section seven of the Charter offers as human rights, Life, Liberty and Security of person. In the same manner, the Canadian Supreme Court held that if the state is unable to see to the health of an individual as readily as the individual themselves, the individual themself has the right to deploy personal resources to purchase or seek treatment independently. It is clear that while the police services are exemplary in Canada, police are unable to respond as readily as an individual to a serious immediate threat; it is an imperative, then, that the state support self-protection.   

The right to bear arms is granted in the constitution of the United States to protect the authority of the people, the concern that drove the inclusion of the second amendment by the founders of the country was the history that showed, that a disarmed populous was without means to assert itself and generated the hundreds of years of oppression that preceded the founding of the United States. There is a cost to the second amendment in the United States, one needs to keep an eye on the benefit - take a look at history and tell me that people have never been exploited or suppressed - then tell me the rationale for the second amendment is invalid.  Scotland, a country that many of the founders of the United States were from or were educated by, was forced to servitude for generations. We have evolved to where we are in the modern world, with the enlightenment's values growing; in large measure due to the influence of the United States in the world, we need to be mindful of what the values of the enlightenment have brought us and by what means they have progressed.

The Canadian leadership’s desire to provide a national identity separate and apart from the United States is necessary, we want and must build a strong and independent Canada. In the process, however, we should retain from all places cultural artifacts that serve progress and that protect documents like the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Freedom has never been a “free” or “no risk” venture, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the advancement of enlightenment values it represents holds as equity 500 years of toil, hard fights and massive confrontations – we sit at the pinnacle of human existence today because people accepted risk for progress.

Many in the Canadian intellectual “bank”, our academics particularly, rail against firearms partly out of fear, (note I said fear and as opposed to public safety) and partly because they are influenced by the manufactured and recent culture that was introduced as a means of to differentiate Canada from the United States. There is strong resistance to the culture of “self-reliance” and independence by many in our “governing elite”, a cultural element that is strongly represented among firearm owners, this is partly residual from our history of governance and partly because it is antithetical to the culture of dependence that shores up the collectivist agenda. The rift over firearms in Canada is a cultural rift, it is my sincere hope we can reconcile it in a way that will let me do a little bird hunting in the fall and a little time in the bush with the comfort of having my rifle along.