Grappling with Guns

Michael Moore’s new movie, SiCKO has been just released. I like Michael Moore. Bowling for Columbine really made me think hard about guns. As my reader’s know, I walked away from shooting at the age of 16 after a friend was coerced by a parent into committing a gun crime.

As I watched Bowling, I felt that in terms of logic, Charlton Heston won the day. In the scene where Moore interviews Heston, Moore confronts Heston with the fact that the NRA held a rally in Moore’s hometown just after an elementary school girl had been shot by a fellow student who had brought his dad’s gun to school. The emotion Michael Moore felt and expressed at the tragedy of a child being shot by another child didn’t seem to have a lot to do with whether or not guns should be regulated, but more about how parents teach their children how to be safe, or how parents take safety precautions with their dangerous tools.

The entire film was filled with the same logical flaws. Moore indicates that Canada is loaded with guns, but has less gun violence, then wonders what the difference is, surmising that we in the US should illegalize guns. The missing link – culture – is obvious to most of us. Illegalizing things won’t help if violent cultures cannot be changed.

So, like I said, I like Michael. It's thanks to him and his film in part that I feel safe in owning, maintaining and carrying loaded firearms. I've got the missing link - a peaceful culture.

I’m worried that after watching SiCKO that I’m going to see more of Moore’s bad logic. I’m in support of a strong social net and government mediation of medical costs, and I’ll be damned if a good/bad movie by Mr. Moore is going to muck that up!

Change is in the air! Siminov has brought a guest writer going by the handle QuestionEverything into the fold. QE is acting to ferrit out current news stories on guns, gun rights, and democracy. As he writes, "You could say I’m going to be his spotter on the battlefield of ideas, helping him line up thousand-yard rhetorical shots against the gun-grabbing hordes."

Check out his first post at http://www.guntards.net/breaking-news-at-this-hour

When being interviewed about an undercover operation to get exeutives out of occupied Kuait just prior to the first Gulf War, an operative describes choosing not to carry.

“If you somehow get stopped uh by a security person as an example and you’ve got a weapon, immediately there is the implication that there is something wrong.
The one time in Beruit (referring to an earlier operation) that we had weapons with us, they were silent weapons, ironically… uh, we pulled them. And uh fortunately it was an instance where we didn’t have to use them, but it just highlighted once again that if you have a weapon what you might do in a normal situation if it gets dicey and you don’t have a weapon you think of a way to get out and if you do have a weapon you’ll pull your weapon and uh right away you’ve raised your profile.”*

Here's to creativity over lowest common denominators.

*From Silent Warriors: 2 Escape from Saddam on the Discovery Channel
http://shopping.discovery.com/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?storeId=10000&catalogId=10000&langId=-1&productId=30403&partnumber=672808

Spade addressed Gutman: "I hope you're not letting yourself be influenced by the guns these pocket-edition desperadoes are waving."

Spade said: "I've practiced taking them away from both of them, so there'll be no trouble there."

Dashiell Hammett, The Maltese Falcon

When I joined the Ames Police Explorers in eighth grade I had several reasons. First, after my parent’s divorced my mother wanted me to have strong male role models. This meant the Boy Scouts, where the play of Cub Scouts turned to discipline and discipline turned to manhood.

I hated the repetition and mental bluntness of the Boy Scouts. Reciting, marching, standing in neat rows and saluting, sitting through boring meetings in the stagnant air of the Kiwanis’s club and working for merit badges alone with no father to guide, only increased my awareness of the separation Mother wanted the activities to fix..

The Explorers was different. Here was an opportunity, I thought, to really help people. I could learn to be a stabilizing force in an unstable world. I could walk the line between the good guys and the bad guys, and not only that, but I could do it with a gun at my side, itself a symbol of security and enforcement to those whose flaws didn’t contain the taint of criminality.

It was an easy solution in my mind, and it gave me an out with my mother. I could quit the Boy Scouts.

For the past week I've been off doing "other" non-blog related things - hitting the gym at 4 in the morning (not exactly sure how that happened, but it did) and getting ready for the start of my MBA program.

(So, that means, get up when my wife gets me up, [maybe that's how the 4am trip to the gym started] toss my M&P in the hip pouch [not really toss, but place safely and carefully] go to the gym for an hour or two, come home, shower, read for school, leave the gun with my wife, go to work, come home, spend time with my dear spouse, read, go to bed, repeat).

On gun bloggers websites it sure seems that guns and personal defense are this big massive thing that is always there looming in the foreground, but in most ways it really isn't. Personal defense is part of the mundane everyday.

I was thinking the other day about one of the things I do each day before I carry. I check in with my mental and physical state. Am I tired? Am I frustrated? Do I have a crick in my neck that will keep me from blocking an attack with a blunt object? Does my knee hurt in a way that will keep me from dodging out of traffic should a car cut around a corner too sharply? Safety is a lot more than just about having a tool like a gun or can of mace. It's about being peaceful, self aware, and willing to defend yourself.

When I bought my compact M&P in .40 caliber I didn't know Smith & Wesson was offering free clips with the purchase of a new M&P or Sigma. I got home on June 2nd from picking up the pistol from The Place to Shoot, the indoor range where I'm a member, and logged in to the S&W website to see if there were any downloads or additional information about my new gun. On the front page I saw the offer. I was elated. Not only had they designed a top contender in contemporary pistol design, but their pricing and rewards beat any deal in town.

When the clips arrived I appreciated that both clips had the pinky grip base plate included. In the photo the last clip with a flat base plate was the backup clip that came when the gun shipped. For concealed carry I can wear the gun with the flat base plate, and use the other three as backups.

Thanks Smith and Wesson!

Unfortunately, the offer just ended. Maybe they'll create an even better fall offer, just to make me jealous...

What kinds of arguments are we making as gun owners? Classical rhetoric classifies arguments into three categories of persuasion, ethos (appeals based on the character of the communicator), logos (appeals based on logic and reasoning), and pathos (appeals founded on emotion). Of course, we participate in all three, but we can look at and be careful about the kinds of arguments we participate in.

If I say, “My favorite class to teach is Power, Ethics, and Design, and I am a safe and proud gun owner,” I am relying on ethos. I am saying, “Look I’m educated, I think things through, and so you can rely on me to have thought through gun ownership before choosing to buy a firearm.” The folks at Of Arms and the Law, lawyers who examine precedent, constitutional rights, and case law to argue in support of gun rights rely partially on ethos – they are highly educated lawyers, so their opinion should matter.

There are other ethos-driven arguments in the gun community. There’s the “I’m a common guy an’ I like common things. I talk straight, shoot straight, I love natural things, and ain’t nobody gonna pin me down.” It is an ethos that emphasizes simplicity, directness – the breath of fresh air in the face of politics.

Unfortunately, a lot of politicians have played this hand, to the point that most people don’t trust what’s under the surface of this authenticity-based ethos. The point is we have to look at how we build our ethos and who is using our ethos. If we want to express something with integrity we need to understand both what it means to act with integrity and what it means to convey a message with integrity.

We all also participate in logos, appealing to audiences through logic at one time or another. Academics, the news, and lawyers like this approach to supporting an argument. Dave Kopel, the research director for the Independence Institute, is probably the strongest author in the gun-rights movement, but a lot of gun bloggers have been taking more of this approach in the past couple of years. I’m glad to see our logos driven arguments becoming stronger.

Pathos, the use of emotion to support a position, is one we don’t use often. In Bowling for Columbine, Michael Moore’s movie about the failed-bombing-turned-shooting at Columbine high school, there is a scene where he meets with Charlton Heston to discuss the shooting of one six-year-old child by another, shortly before Heston holds an NRA rally in Flint, Michigan near where the event occurred. Moore was making an argument driven by pathos, while Heston tried to respond with ethos arguing he owns guns based on rights and tradition.

What kinds of arguments could we make based on pathos? I think some of the stories on my website do a bit of that. I think some of the double gun bird and game magazines make such pathos driven arguments. I’m wondering if there are more arguments based in emotion in support of gun rights that might cross-over to touch the non-gun enthusiast.

For definitions of logos, ethos and pathos visit http://www.rpi.edu/dept/llc/webclass/web/project1/group4/