Gun Control and American Over-reaction

(Warning: stereotypes used in this dissertation!)

Last night I had a discussion with a friend, Jim, about gun control. He was an American, now happy to have been granted immigrant status to remain in Canada. He's from New Hampshire (state motto: Live Free or Die) and owns several guns, stored at the home of his parents in the US.

He had been an Obama supporter, but last night made Obama out to be the worst person imaginable. Why? Because, Jim said, Obama was sneaking in legislation under the tax laws to take away people's guns. Jim was furious, and proceeded to bring up the right-to-bear-arms and denial-of-freedom-guaranteed-by-the-Founding-Fathers arguments.

I did some research and it turned out that he was incensed over an internet hoax. (http://www.snopes.com/politics/guns/taxreturns.asp). There was a bill about licensing of firearms (HR 45: Blair Holt...) before Congress--nothing to do with Obama--that Jim thought would permit the government to enter private houses to check the firearms, but the bill said no such thing. A similar bill had been brought before, and never voted on. Likely, that will be the same result here.

What I found surprising (shocking would be a better word, except that I'm no longer shocked because I've seen it so often) is how the barest hint of gun control provokes such a visceral reaction in (many) Americans that it trumps all other considerations. Jim argued that the reaction is against restriction on freedom itself. Okay, I'll buy that. But the scale of the reaction is way out of proportion to the "danger".

First, the reaction is against the mere suggestion of something that could possibly be used by an extremely totalitarian state to remove all weapons from its citizens. In fact the first site I hit when I searched for Obama and gun control displayed his picture beside Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot. Such comparison is ludicrous because the president doesn't have the power over the legislative and judicial arms that those guys had.

Second, there are many limitations on freedom in society that we (Canadians and Americans, both) tolerate. We accept having to contribute some income to the state (taxation), licensing our cars, being required to educate our children, and so on.

Jim made a distinction between privilege and right. Owning guns wasn't a privilege; it was a right. He was on pretty solid ground there, except that the distinction has, historically and in practicality, been that "right" is what a someone demands and "privilege" is what someone else demands but doesn't matter much to me. We saw how society changed on the Smokers' Rights issue, where smoking changed from a right to a limited privilege.

It seems to me, and to most Canadians (I claim), that the American defense of their "right" in the 2nd Amendment is far more vehement than their defense of any hint of infringement on any other right. The reaction looks, to Canadians, way out of proportion. And since we Canadians don't include the right to bear arms as a fundamental freedom, the fact that so many otherwise thoughtful, intelligent Americans demand the right to carry machine guns and rocket launchers down public streets looks preposterous and downright pathological.

Am I exaggerating? Sure, but there is a continuous line between pea-shooters and nuclear weapons. Air pistols, semiautomatics, and the other types of weapons fill the gap. Individual Americans place the line between acceptable and unacceptable somewhere, and there is vast disagreement as to where.

To Americans, I say that I accept that the right to bear arms is incorporated into the very fabric of the creation of your country, both to rid yourself of an oppressive regime and to defend yourself against external threats. So I can pardon the vehemence somewhat. But what's ironic (and scary) is that your vehemence is its own counterargument. Jim said it himself, "If Obama's going to restrict my right to carry a gun, I'll shoot him myself." The very fact that he made that declaration shows that he shouldn't have the right to own a gun. My own Florida relative, visiting my cottage during an earlier presidential campaign years ago, was watching Jesse Jackson on the TV news. She blurted, "That man should be shot." I stared at her in disbelief. Compare her statement to "we should vote against that guy" or "someone should write an editorial against what he's saying". Her automatic reaction perfectly illustrated the difference between Canadians and Americans.

I agree that I'm talking stereotypes. Many Americans favor gun control, and many Canadians are against the drive to register long guns in Canada.

But am I very far off the mark?