Guns: William Kostric and Chris Matthews
William Kostric protested Obama's Health Care town hall in Portsmouth, New Hampshire today. William Kostric wore a gun to the protest. This, of course, resulted in people flipping their shit. The problem with the shit flippers, I think, is found in the following exchange between Kostric and Matthews:
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William Kostric: "I'm advocating an informed society, an armed society, a polite society...that's all there is to it."
Chris Matthews: "You speak in a different way than most people. I think, what the trouble is, you alarm many people that believe when you bring a gun violence might be afoot. Because they associate a gun with violence and they associate a gun with force. But you say you're not interested in using force to get your way politically."
William Kostric: "A firearm is a defensive tool."
Chris Matthews: "So bringing a show of force to a political debate was not meant as a violent act?"
William Kostric: "Not at all."
Now, as I've said before, the Second Ammendment is pretty damned unintelligible. In District of Columbia v. Heller we received some clarification. Regardless, at the present moment, it is legal to openly carry a gun in New Hampshire. So, great.
There exist dipshits who think guns are the means of settling an argument, who embrace a "right makes right" mentality. The difficulty is that not everyone who carries a gun is a dipshit. Assuming that William Kostric is genuine he is not one of the crazies. Presumably he is not going to open fire at a crowded mall given that, to quote Kostric, "a firearm is a defensive tool."
The difficulty I have with this situation is Matthews' "they associate a gun with violence and they associate a gun with force" comment. I can understand how one might arrive at or support that association. The question is whether or not the association is reasonable, whether there is some causal link between guns and violence. My guess is not that guns cause violence, that there is some innate quality to the thing which somehow sparks violent tendancies. Rather, individuals who are themselves violent can utilize guns as they could utilize a knife, an explosive, a pencil, a car, etc. to perform violent acts. Interestingly, no one freaked out at the number of people who drove to the protest, despite the existence of car bombs. But when one guy brings a gun everyone freaks out. This, I think, is a problem.
In the media coverage I saw of this event the verbage of "he had a gun" carried with it an undertone of violence, of the threat of assassination, of evil. It was not taken to be a fact, akin to "he wore shoes", but rather the "gun" was somehow indicative of violence, harm, danger. This despite the fact that no one was shot or harmed at the protest in spite of the gun.
There are some who characterize alcohol or marijuana as themselves evil, a root cause of society's ills. This characterization results not from an understanding of the things in themselves but rather is based upon an illusion crafted out of cherry picked examples. Sure, there are alcoholics who beat their wives or drug addicts whose addiction started with pot. But there are also individuals who can drink a beer after work and then do their taxes, who can smoke a joint and then watch a movie with their kids.
If we can dismantle illusions and talk about the things in themselves, if we can undermine bullshit-stupid conceptualizations of objects and rather discuss the objects themselves, why not do this with guns? Why are these objects not all on equal footing? The left might endorse alcohol and marijuana but loathe guns. The right might endorse gun rights but loathe alcohol and marijuana. If one assesses the whole situation, the big picture, I think one will see that both sides are being moronic.
What if each side stopped being moronic and assessed the things in themselves? What if each side abandoned socially constructed illusions and rather engaged with reality? What if we stopped being stupid?
William Kostric can carry a gun to a political protest and not shoot anyone. Perhaps this indicates something regarding guns and people being shot.
