During class, someone pointed out that the constitution was written in the 1700s during a different time and a different America. I couldn’t get a chance to say that I don’t like this statement. It’s dangerous to say the Bill of Rights was meant for a different time, a time two hundred years ago—it would mean freedom of speech and religion don’t really mean the same now, which is what you’re saying about the right to bear arms: that it intended for a distant past. I don’t think the right to bear arms or freedom of speech are any different now. On the other hand, it was important in the Bill of Rights that citizens militias were armed. In a way you’re right to point out that things were different in the past—namely that we now don’t need citizen militias since we have this police force. Following this, Nakajima argues that gun rights should pertain to police and not civilians.
Later, Nakajima made a very paradoxical argument: that you never know when someone will go insane or will want to kill someone, but it’s okay for police to have weapons. This is contradictory. I think policemen can go crazy too, look at the case of Amadou Diallo. The police shot 41 rounds, and the guy was unarmed!
Moreover, if someone was bent on hurting someone, he or she could use an axe, chainsaw, light a fire, use a car, rape etc. (and I could list hundreds of grotesque household ways). If you wanted to ban guns because they’re dangerous, then you’d have to ban knives and cars too, arm everyone with rape shields and ban alcohol (think of Alfredo Ramos, an illegal immigrant who allegedly killed two teen girls while driving drunk in Virginia Beach, VA). There are so many cases of domestic violence, too. Violent drunks, murderers and rapists are horribly resilient, and I know of many horrifying cases following Columbine of resilient school shooters who get around metal detectors: they shoot everyone waiting in line. Seconds ago, I googled a website that explains how to make homemade pipe bombs. If Seung-Hui Cho didn’t have access to guns, he wouldn’t have been deterred. Not for a second! I feel certain that he would have found an equally destructive way to carry out that evil massacre. Guns don’t kill people, people kill people. Before you hate me because I sound like the NRA, because I have heard the hateful, vicious things some of you say behind my back, I just want to say that I am appalled that Nakajima would think a ban on guns would help. If anything, it would give rise to a black market of weapons, like in Iraq, and an easily corrupt police force (or rather an even more corruptible one).
I will tell you that I honestly believe gun control won’t solve murderous intent (Andrea Yates used a bathtub). At the same time, I can’t tell you where I stand on the gun control debate. In economic terms, guns are “substitutes”—biological or chemical weapons could be substituted, such as diethylene glycol. Chainsaws and knives could be substituted for guns. Iran just put its nuclear facilities underground. Who wasn’t surprised when Pakistan made the bomb… I have spent serious time thinking about both sides of the table, and sometimes I am so profoundly frustrated that I would rather have a world like Minority Report (that Tom Cruise movie based on that other short story). How else to stop a serial rapist, murderer, drunk driver, etc. and make a peaceful world. Better more surveillance than another 911.
Of course there are problems with the system. Of course the way it’s implemented has serious problems. It all needs reform, but I wouldn’t be so quick to completely do away with it.
Another reason I have a problem with banning guns is that it is so analogous to the abortion debate. Please tell me if you think I’m mistakenly conflating issues. In my view, most people who hate abortion also hate guns, yet they affirm women’s right to choose. But how can the people who believe in a woman’s right to choose also believe that they can simultaneously deny others the right to bear arms? Of course I absolutely hate guns, and I hate abortion even more, but I don’t think it’s fair for me to tell women that they can’t have an abortion, or to tell others that they can’t own a gun. Saying otherwise is a blaring contradiction to me, and I invite your point of view (although I know that won’t happen since only 5 people post here). With abortion, someone is guaranteed to die. So if you want to ban guns, then I think we need to ban abortion also (with exceptions, as with exceptions for guns).
In any case, I was deeply moved by seeing Nakajima san face to face. As for peace in the Middle East, we had a long conversation.
She is from a generation that survived WWII, and lived through the legacy of the nuclear bomb, the cold war, women’s rights, etc etc etc. She’s 72 years old, looking back at the last 50 years of her life.
And I am 22 years old, looking anxiously at the next 50 years where world peace, oil, gay rights and affirmative action are hotly debated.
More profoundly, Nakajima at a young age was deeply impacted by the sounds of the March 10th air raid. And we, by that I mean our generation, have been deeply impacted by the images of 9/11 and this age of terrorism. (Or at least I hope more of you care about 9/11 and terrorism and you know who is KSM and where Osama bin-Laden is hiding.) Can you believe that at this very moment, we are living through events that will shape the social, economic, and political situation of the Middle East and the globe for the next 50 years? The next 100 years? Think about how Japan and China have changed in the last 50 years. I’m thinking of current events in a dyslexic, fortune-telling kind of way because I’m imaging myself as Nakajima in the next 50 years.
Who knows where each of us will be in the year 2057, standing at various lecterns, or in rallies or court rooms or our children’s bedsides. There are so many pressing issues in our world—terrorism, new generation warfare, poverty, nuclear weapons, radiation, narcotics, human trafficking, gay rights, equality, gun control, media bias, collective memory, etc. Every Tuesday and Thursday, we never have enough time to discuss and debate these issues. I wanted to say more about free trade but there’s no time and I’m getting tired from typing, but just think about China’s transition to a market economy and whether or not you would like to pay $200 for a pair of leather shoes made in Queens, or $5,000 for a computer made in Silicon Valley. Sorry for the long post. Don’t hate me because I am well versed on conservative arguments. There is so much ahead of us in the next 50 years, but we all have the same goal for peace and prosperity.
Where to start? I can’t possibly offer the same kind of detail as you’ve brought to the table, so anything I say will probably look myopic and one sided, but try and read into it.
What you say about the constitution and the bill of rights, I think it’s fair to say that they represent the sorts of values that have built our society and keep it on the (rocky, at times) straight and narrow. Simply to say that it was the product of a different time and situation isn’t to say that it’s worthless or represents a set of values that are no longer relevant. Nevertheless, although I wasn’t in the discussion so I don’t know how the comment was framed originally, it also seems valid to question the social contingency of those “truths we hold self evident.”
For one thing, it’s worth getting one thing down: it was NEVER “important for the framers that citizen militias were armed.” The Bill of Rights was put forward as a condition of federation to protect the rights of member states. It was never part of the original constitution. So any ideas we have of a bunch of enlightened philosophers in a room mapping a course for human society need to be thrown out the window. The Bill of Rights was, essentially, a political document and a compromise, manufactured in dialogue between groups of interests. Not that the political nature of its writing invalidate it, in fact I’m inclined to think that it makes a lot of it stronger and more convincing. So, no, it’s not irrelevant, but it’s not timeless either.
One clear temporal difference involving guns is how they have become increasingly more efficient at killing more people. If self-defense is the argument for a right to bear arms, it seems pretty clear to me that a rifle or full length shotgun will be quite sufficient for protecting your home, without the need for concealable small arms or AK-47’s. The fact is that weapons made to kill human beings efficiently are available and easy to use, and suddenly owning a gun is like owning a can of mace, except more expensive. But when you blind someone with mace for a week, you aren’t killing another human being. Premeditated murder can be accomplished in any case, that’s the nature of society as it stands, but the unprecedented ease with which the modern American can kill is completely unacceptable.
That brings me to the nature of violence with guns. I think however we think of violence or tools of violence — as substitutable or not — it’s pretty easy to draw a line between kitchen knives and bombs. The fact is that there’s a qualitative difference between the two as tools for violence. Ease of use, abstractedness from subjectivity, equality of access, and especially alternative use separate them. Yes, anything can be used for violence, and the banning of guns may not put a damper upon acts of violence (in Korea and Japan, where guns are highly illegal, knives are used quite often). But with a gun, leisurely violence becomes possible. And in the wrong hands, yes this is a huge problem. Obviously, monopoly of violence by the state is not acceptable if the state is not beholden to its citizens or the rule of law, but the answer to cases such as that of Amadou Diallo is not to put a gun in his right pocket, which wouldn’t have changed anything in the case. Rather, the answer is to hold the NYPD accountable to the rule of law and the citizenship of New York. The fact that police officers feel like it’s okay to shoot a man forty-one times (racism aside), I think, is indicative of the extent to which gun violence has been normalized in our society.
About abortion, I take it you’re arguing that any “right” in which a person dies is about as monstrous as any other. Why am I even arguing this point? The thing is, you seem to have more of a problem with hypocrisy than with the issues themselves. Even if we look at abortion as loss of life, combining the two issues still doesn’t make any sense. If you hate abortion, as loss of life, then why does that mean you have to be against gun control (you didn’t say that, I know) as a matter of principle? Because you see other people at hypocritical therefore you must be to even it out?
How can we argue about paying $5000 for a computer made in Silicon Valley when no consumer computer has been manufactured in Silicon Valley for years? I’m not exactly sure where you’re going with this… China’s entry to the market will not change a great deal, collectively we’ll find some other corner of the world to exploit. Suggesting that China capitalizing is going to rob the world of low cost labor is suggesting that Chinese are inherently exploitable, or better at mass labor. This sort of socially evolutionist logic I can’t stand.
To be honest, I don’t know a great deal about gun control issues, but it irritates me when people parade issues without considering the embedded nature of all government and policy. Gun control is lax at this point in history for a million reasons, none of which have anything to do with the constitution. Block-voting by the NRA and associated groups has a lot more to do with maintaining the status quo than historical legacy. If we’re going to have a debate about gun control issues, I think it’s important to divorce the issues from the rhetoric of policy.
I am concerned that you might take this as hateful or vicious, as well… I don’t intend any of it that way. But you’ve got some controversial views, I just hope you can recognize this as emotional disagreement on issues and not personal hate.
Comment by naesung — May 6, 2007 @ 8:31 pm |
Thank you for your reply, Andrew.
Just to be clear, I am not a Republican. I grew up in Texas and know how conservatives think about domestic policy.
Furthermore, I don’t “parade” issues! I’m required to post my thoughts and I feel increasingly embarrassed! I’m trying my very best to be coherent and honest. I’m beginning to lose all inclination of saying anything that is not far-left or in conformity with the liberal mainstream media.
As for the Bill of Rights, I guess I was trying to summarize this language: “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.” I don’t really know what it means to have a well regulated militia. I mistakenly mentioned the framers of the constitution. Thank you for pointing that out, I won’t make that mistake again. But while this was not from the pen of the framers, my simple point was that arming a kind of security force was the intent of the second amendment, or rather this militia was specifically stated, and that we might not need to arm civilians when we’ve got this police force now.
Well maybe the Bill of Rights should be timeless. Why isn’t it. I don’t know what it would mean if freedom of speech wasn’t a right in the year 2050 or 2200.
We both agree that the “unprecedented ease with which the modern American can kill is completely unacceptable.” Right, like bathtubs.
You also say “But with a gun, leisurely violence becomes possible.” I agree, I also think with alcohol and a car, violence becomes leisurely. If I understand you, you’re arguing that there should be a ban on guns or that there is a problem with gun violence, or that we need to reform gun ownership?
As for the rest of your comment, I don’t think the characterization you make of me is very fair or accurate. I’m trying to get at the issues at hand, not something you think that I see as hypocrisy, which I don’t, I merely think the woman’s right to choose and the right to bear arms are both inalienable, despite how much I despise both abortion and guns, but of course I don’t want outright insane people to get guns either, just like I don’t want Iran to get a nuclear weapon. As I mentioned in class, think about what happened with Hurricane Katrina. What’s supposed to happen in the event of a complete breakdown. This is a real threat. In my hometown, Houston, people live far apart and the police don’t patrol a lot. If Houston had been hit by the second hurricane in 2005, my mother would not have a way to protect herself from a burglar. If we got rid of guns in America, then someone could just use a chainsaw to hurt my mother, and frankly my mom doesn’t have the arm strength to defend herself with another chainsaw.
I think it would be beside the point to make a list of all the times a gun has saved someone’s life, from a home intruder. Of course the list of accidental deaths from children tampering with guns is also a very long list, horribly long. I’m just trying to bring in the other side in our discussions of domestic and foreign policy. I tell you what I hear on Fox News because it’s a lot like what all lawyers do: they look at counterarguments. (As a side note, please don’t roll your eyes when someone says he or she listens to Fox News. It’s not fair and everyone does it to me.)
As for Amadou Diallo and the NYPD, my basic point was that it’s not fair for Nakajima to say that regular people will go crazy at any point so no one should have guns, but it’s okay for police to have guns. My point was that police go crazy all the time. Just think about taser guns, too.
Are taser guns really any better? Have police used them fairly? I don’t know what to think when so many people have wrongfully died from the deadly force of taser guns.
Bottom line is, there’s a difference between hating abortion and the right to choose, and there’s a difference between hating gun violence and the right to bear arms. Yes I have a heart, and I don’t want anyone to die. As for rights, I won’t tell you what I believe.
As for the free market question, you’ve completely misinterpreted me! I didn’t say at all that “Chinese are inherently exploitable”—-in fact I am Chinese! Actually I am a little insulted that you read my comment as containing what you call “a socially evolutionist logic”!
I’m sorry I didn’t say more in my last post about free trade. I told you I don’t have enough time and I’m tired of typing. This blog isn’t an organized or coherent forum for me to debate.
My point was that without free trade, that is if we become more protectionist, prices would be different. Probably higher than most people would be comfortable with. And then developing nations wouldn’t be able to sell things to us and they’d lose their jobs or go into prostitution like in Bangladesh.
Poverty is a bitch, everyone knows poverty is a nightmare, but I don’t think any other system but the global free market will help. I gave China’s post-socialist reforms as an example. I’m not saying that the free market is a quick fix either or that it is without flaws, but it’s the best option. I don’t believe in socialism because I’ve seen it fail throughout history. There are good sides to competition and there are bad sides. The good outweigh. There are so many examples, like the speed of technological innovation or production efficiency or medial drug innovations.
It’s not fair for you to say “we’ll find some other corner of the world to exploit.” That’s not respectful to factory workers around the world. Of course I’m bothered, however, that they are paid little and work in awful conditions. Of course I have a heart.
But I think the reason so many countries are in poverty, especially in Africa, is that their economies have failed them and they don’t have the right institutions. Like Zimbabwe. Part of me hopes Robert Mugabe dies tomorrow, of natural causes, since he’s certainly old enough.
And poverty exists because there’s illiteracy.
I don’t think it’s fair for you to say we’re “exploiting” them. I think globalization gives them jobs and helps them out of poverty. I think the WTO is a powerful mechanism to leverage institutions to improve.
I won’t say any more about free trade and markets because people end up just hating me when I say anything and then devise plans to “take me down” in class, according to my sources, but I wasn’t at all referring to you Andrew!!
As for gun control and policy, I don’t understand what you’re saying. In your response, second to last paragraph, the first sentence and the last sentence somewhat contradict each other. I don’t know what you mean by the “embedded nature of all government and policy” or why it irritates you when people don’t consider that embedded nature, and then you say it’s “important to divorce the issues from the rhetoric of policy.” So you want me to consider issues while also considering government and policy, and then you want me to divorce them? I don’t understand where you’re going with this. You don’t need to respond because it’s beside the point, and I think I got my main points on the table. I don’t think they’re controversial.
There was a powerful moment in my conversation on Iraq with Nakajima when she said to me “it has to end.” She was talking about the troops. It was simple and honest, and I nearly fell to the ground, because at the end of the day, we all want the same thing. Peace, no need for a military, no violence. I might want it more than others, I might even know more about the obstacles to get there, but we all want the same thing.
Comment by memorygongs — May 6, 2007 @ 9:53 pm |
Don’t feel embarassed, Patrick! I appreciate that you to post your thoughts a lot! And thanks a lot for Andrew for your comment, too. I actually think having some disagreements and discussions among classmates (although you are not exactly “classmates” as you are in different classes – still these two classes have lots of common activities!) – which could be really challenging and difficult thing in classroom setting nowadays. Having disagreements and constructive discussion, I think, is an integral part of activism.
Comment by tomomi — May 6, 2007 @ 10:09 pm |
I do appreciate this posts by Patrick and Andrew, as it really makes me think about my own position and thoughts. I hope we can continue honest and constructive discussion (but try not to take anything personally!) in class as well.
I think it’s important to think of poverty in historical context as well. Didn’t many countries under poverty suffer from colonial rules? It’s not just because of illiteracy, lack of constitution, etc. And what kind of “jobs” does globalization give, and also deprives of when the “labor” wasn’t considered cheap enough in that country/area any more?
Comment by tomomi — May 7, 2007 @ 12:05 am |
Patrick, sorry about the muddy nature of my post overall. Obviously there were some parts that could have been better stated, and some other places where I misunderstood your meaning completely. Let me see if I can clarify a little.
First, about the free market. I actually took your meaning to be the exact opposite of what you were saying. Obviously, I know that you weren’t trying to generalize China through racist logic, but I did believe that you were accidentally applying such logic with the best of intentions. I was mistaken, thinking you were arguing for further market protections, worried about China’s entry into the market because it poses a threat to American production jobs. Now that I reread your post, that’s obviously not the point you were trying to make and I apologize for misinterpreting it.
On the other hand, I think the language of exploitation is perfectly applicable. Whether or not exploitation provides living wages for workers in those countries, the truth of the matter is that “trickle down” economics is always accompanied by an increasingly polarized inequality of wealth distribution. And as long as this is the case, I can’t see global capitalism as global philanthropy… maybe exploitation with certain system-wide positive effects. On the other hand, I have great respect for economists; they know exactly how capitalism works and have generally made a decision given damages that they feel accomplishes other worthwhile goals — just don’t ask me to share those goals.
I’m not trying to be unfair to workers by saying we’re exploiting them. I’m not suggesting we’re pulling the wool over their eyes, but that we’re engaging them with, maybe offering good wage earning opportunities, at their maximum expense, and our maximum benefit — it’s the laws of the market.
I think market principles can help, but the application of economics does not need to mean the opening of all markets. An example from the recent Korean FTA talks: Korean rice farmers want the government to protect their market. You might consider this from the free market perspective and say, “rice will be cheaper if they are forced to compete with foreign rice growers,” but the situation is more complicated than that. Korea is a small country, and familial networks are pretty big. There’s probably a rice farmer in half of the extended families in the country, and plenty of towns where rice growing is the only meaningful product. To destroy that rice economy, therefore, while it may lower the price of rice in Korea, may not be in the interest of the local economy or the majority of Koreans. Protections in markets have measurable effects, and I don’t think that those are always necessarily bad. You’re talking about US protectionism, however, and I think in general you’re right on the money… we don’t have any place being protectionist about our economy as the economically most powerful country in the world.
I realize you don’t really want to go into the market issue, so I don’t want anyone to interpret this response as negatively representative of Patrick’s views. I’m just thinking through the issue for myself.
About which: sorry again for my use of the word “parade.” I was making a general statement, and didn’t mean to characterize you like that. I think it’s great that you are honest and vocal about your views on this blog. I admit I wince, sometimes, at the points you make, but I don’t think there’s any call to be embarrassed. I know you’re not Republican, although I would probably call you conservative or slightly nationalistic, if pressured… But that’s fine because it’s certainly not knee-jerk party line — I think you really add to the debate (would there be a debate without your posts?). However, I think it’s also unfair to generalize the discussion in our classes, on the blogs or boards as “far-left or in conformity with the liberal mainstream media.” We are certainly a pretty liberal group of people, but I think you should give people the same intellectual respect everyone deserves. We’re all thinking through the same stuff, and learning as we go. On the other hand, devising plans to take others down is indefensible…… unless they’re being really stupid, and I’lll be the judge of that (just kidding). I think it’s most important that we be flexible with our thoughts, rather than absolutist.
The thing about the Bill of Rights that I’m trying to say, is that the right to bear arms has been attached to the right of free speech and practice of religion, not necessarily by you, and that the gun lobby has worked very hard to keep them inseparable. Therefore, the right to free speech, which I freely recognize as a right that it is important to protect in all free societies on the globe (to some extent), is represented in the Bill of Rights. But the “right to bear arms,” which I largely disagree constitutes a real human right (any more than the right to “own anything I want inclusive of weapons, drugs and other people” should be a right), is also represented in that document. Instead of pointing at the “rights” the document represents, people look at those representations and declare them sacrosanct. And the logic usually goes in this order: the right to speech is inalienable, the right to speech is in the Bill of Rights, the right to bear arms is also in the Bill of Rights, therefore the right to bear arms must also be inalienable. Again, I’m not saying that’s your choice of legitimizing logic, but it’s been used often enough that I’d like to hear more about your view on why the right to bear arms should be inalienable.
Enough with bathtubs. Do you really want to argue that bathtubs should be regulated to whatever extent guns are? Nor does anyone else. Do you want to say that bathtubs purchasers should be subject to a background check? Then, do you want gun buyers not to be subject to one?
Since you ask, in a nutshell I believe (for reasons I won’t be able to fully explain here) that even with a right to bear arms, there should be a ban on all small arms and assault rifles from the get-go; that there is a huge problem with gun violence above and beyond other kinds of violence in American society; and I would very much like to see all gun ownership restricted to military and public safety personnel. So, all three really. I think when saying “leisurely violence” isn’t a particularly good way of putting it, on my part. “Unprecedented ease with which the modern American can kill is completely unacceptable” is basically what I mean by “leisurely violence.” The point about alcohol is well taken; my uncle was killed by a drunk driver, so I know how socially destructive that can be. But the point is that as a society, we try to regulate that kind of activity as well. Do I expect gun deaths to drop to zero in the US if we ban guns? Probably not, but regulation will be effective is reducing them.
If my characterization was inaccurate, please put it down to my misinterpretation of your post. It really didn’t come across to me that you believe the right to bear arms is inalienable, and as I said before, I’d love to hear more about your logic behind that. The right to abortion I can get behind, because I happen to agree with you, but I haven’t gone through the mental steps to lead me to believe in the inalienable nature of the right to bear arms yet, so it’s sort of new to me in a way. As for Katrina, I think that’s a prime example of why people shouldn’t have guns, although that seems to be a point that we’ll disagree on. Personally, I don’t worry too much about complete social collapse, since I’d be pretty much fucked if that happened in any case (I’m no Mad Max), but it’s also a good example of why small arms make no sense in the self-defense logic. Is having a pistol going to help someone defending their house in the boonies any more than a rifle would (actually, a rifle would be more powerful and accurate)? Pistols are only useful to be portable, concealed and to fire quickly. And if you can’t fire a rifle straight, then the chances are you can’t fire a pistol when push comes to shove either.
I’m behind Nakajima about allowing the police to monopolize gun violence. I don’t apologize for it, nor do I consider it to be hypocritical. Society is a complicated place, and if we’re really arguing about what people without government have the “inalienable right” to do, yeah, we can all get guns and set up little compounds. But the nature of our social relationship in a government is that we set up privileges and rights that may be unequal in some respects in the interest of stability. The key is to empower people in different ways, through law, judicial oversight, citizen oversight, etc. And I think all those systems can work without the need for a threat of violence from citizen militias.
I’m sorry you won’t share what you think about rights, because I think that’s at the center of this argument — what is really an inalienable right and why? But I do want to say a word about being the devil’s advocate, something I have a LOT of experience doing. In my opinion it’s all well and good, as long as you’re keeping another part of yourself off to the side that is growing and learning all the time from your experience. I decided to stop playing the devil’s advocate because there was a point I realized that the only way I was growing as a person was that I knew more ways to come back at someone’s arguments. That might not be you, or anyone else who decides to push the limit of people’s thinking, but it was my experience, so I tend to be pretty disparaging of the practice.
You make a good point about my last paragraph… I actually started writing it and wasn’t sure where to go. My first draft was something even more contradictory, and then I thought I caught it. You saw right through me, haha. What I mean is, policy is a socially contingent thing, and what it looks like (rhetoric) isn’t always what it means/is (issues), because it is mutually dependent on a multitude of different factors which are not well-represented through that rhetoric.
I don’t think anyone wants war, for which reason I don’t think this argument is anything to get worked up over… but the issue is hardly ever the desired result, is it? Method is so much more controversial.
Comment by naesung — May 7, 2007 @ 3:07 am |
Thank you for your responses, Tomomi and Andrew. Very thoughtful!
You made me rethink my original positions. I was so pessimistic that no one would respond but I am delighted more classmates are posting now.
Yes, method is much more controversial…
Too bad we couldn’t spend more time with Nakajima!!!
Comment by memorygongs — May 7, 2007 @ 10:22 pm |