The stupidity is running fast and thick regarding Jovan Belcher. I don’t know if it started with Jason Whitlock, but it certainly didn’t stop there. After Whitlock’s silliness, Bob Costas doubled down on the stupid by giving the article and Whitlock’s words a national stage with his silly little soliloquy during the Dallas-Philadelphia game on Sunday night.
Today, we have another examples of stupid. An oped at CNN blames a “culture of manliness.” Stop laughing. This guy is serious.
As for the Costas-Whitlock axis of stupid, I’d just point out this picture of Belcher with Miss Perkins. See the size difference? The gun was merely the instrument. Belcher could have killed her in any of a number of ways. And since we’re dealing with absurd scenarios, perhaps if Miss Perkins had been a gun owner herself, she would be alive today.
This case comes back to something simple and, for most of us, unfathomable: Jovan Belcher, for some reason known only to him, decided he was going to kill his girlfriend and them himself. That a gun was used is incidental. If he hadn’t had a gun, he might have used a knife and rope, or his bare hands and slit his wrists, or any one of other equally awful ways to perform his horrific act.
While I’m at it, I came across this post via memeorandum today and, while it kind of blows up the Whitlock argument, it’s not as simple as all that. The writer’s gun ownership might push her “Ex” to purchase his own gun. To be clear, I’m not saying she’ll deserve it if it comes to that (please NO), but the notion that acts of violence are simple “a + b = no harm to me” equations are wrong. There’s always someone bigger, someone with more guns, someone with more resources, someone willing to go to horrible places the rest of us wouldn’t dream of.
Zooming out a bit though, there seems to be a cottage industry in this sort of post hoc analysis. Remember the aftermath of Gabrielle Giffords? or James Holmes and his shooting spree at the Batman Rises premiere? or the Fort Hood tragedy? or the Wisconsin Sikh Temple shooting? All horrible tragedies, all of them producing the same quality journalistic claptrap we’ve got now.
How long until these people learn (ie- pundits and journalists) that it’s impossible to account for the whims of every individual? The simple, admittedly frustrating, fact is we won’t ever really know why any of these people performed their acts. In every case, we can look and find whatever personal bogeyman we might like that makes us feel better about our world views- i.e. what “makes me right.”
Unfortunately, there’s one thing we can be sure of, that there will be a next time. And that it can’t be prevented. The other thing we can be sure of are the displays of media stupidity to follow.
4 replies on “Why Does Tragedy Bring Out the Stupid?”
Unfortunately, the media – as a collective body – have appointed themselves as omnipotent observers, commentators, and all-knowing in all matters that pertain to all subjects, all of humanity, and all life on earth – regardless of the species. They know all the answers and have the only valid opinions … masters of the universe: watch out!
Okay – I think you need an argument in so far as we are talking about guns. 🙂
You need to make a distinction between any single event and the statistics needed to form a rational policy e.g law. This is true for all governance issues, not just gun control.
What do we know about the US and guns? The US has the highest homicide rate among all developed market economies by a frightening margin. I use DM countries because they are the natural counter experiments rather than places like Somalia. The US has the most permissive hand gun laws among all developed market economies by a wide margin. Most homicides in the US are committed with hand guns by a wide margin.
What do we know about guns? They are efficient. A single person can kill many with little effort. Not so with hands, knives, hatchets, whatever. Guns also make killing dissociative – meaning it is clinical. The act of killing has emotional and psychological barriers (not true with sociopaths but most murders are not committed by sociopaths) when it involves physical contact and closeness. There is little to no chance that the process of killing will stop when using a gun.
Does the counter argument rest solely on the concept that if someone has a gun, you are safer owning one myself? That is a pretty thin thread. The statistics are pretty clear that you are more likely to get killed by your own family’s gun by accident than you are to successfully protect yourself in the event of a robbery or home invasion. And an argument between two people who are intimate? Seriously? Unlikely they are going to have a mutual scramble for pistols. With enough effort you can probably find or construct examples of self protection, but those events are by far in the most remote portion of the tail of the distribution for US gun violence.
reductio ad absurdum: “If everyone owned a gun, no one would get shot.”
Society is unequivocally safer governing from what we know about the vast bulk of the distribution: hand gun ownership causes massive tragic death with no meaningful benefit to society – full stop.
What is left? Some sort of inalienable right to own a hand gun? Really?
Oh man, you’re actually forcing me to think. Not cool.
First, I’ll concede that the world would undoubtedly be a safer place if guns did not exist. The US would undoubtedly be a safer place if guns did not exist.
Unfortunately for your argument, that’s not the world we live in.
Also: lies, damned lies, and statistics.
One problem with your statistical argument is that it doesn’t paint a full picture of gun ownership here in the US. It obfuscates the fact that there are over 100 million civilian owned guns throughout the US, and yet, according to the data here, the number of gun related deaths is a fraction of a percent. Also, what the these statistics indicate is that the presence of a gun in a crime is more likely to result in a death; yet, the rates of the crimes committed are not increased as a result of gun ownership, see here.
I don’t mean to belittle those deaths, but the inconvenient fact (for pro-gun controllers) is the vast majority of gun owners are extraordinarily responsible with their firearms. I know several gun owners here in town and I’ve always been impressed with the seriousness they treat their weapons.
Further, I think this argument needs to keep in mind the culture of the US. The simple fact is that guns have been present in the civilian population since before the US declared it’s independence. When the new government was formed, rather than force all citizens to turn in their guns, the government enshrined their right to keep them in the law of the land.
You mock the notion with your final statement “What’s left? Some sort of inalienable right to own a hand gun?” That question is provocative, but the wrong one. Since we’re talking about gun policy in the US, the question is “Who has the right to prevent me from getting a gun?”
If your answer is “government,” you’d be mistaken. The answer is the rest of the public through government and the laws we choose to enact and enforce. You need to remember that here, the government gains its power from the people, not by some divine right or simple presumption on the part of my “betters.”
So right off the bat, you are going to have civilian gun ownership here, full stop. It’s baked into the cake because of the strong cultural strain in the US whereby government interference into the intimate lives of it’s citizens is regularly punished (this is why conservatives and the GOP deservedly gets hammered on social issues, it just hits too close to home for a majority of people).
Alright, so let’s wrap up. We know that guns exist. Further, we know that here, in the US, civilians will own them and will do so responsibly. We also know that they will not take kindly to some imagined “better” telling them they cannot own their gun. As such, is it really reasonable for the gun policy here in the States to be “thou shalt not own a gun”?
You need to be careful with your rationale. If it’s “any unnecessary death is unacceptable” then how many other things will you ban in the name of safety? Cars kill people; planes kill people; swimming pools kill people; sports kill people; natural gas (home heating) kills people; medicine kills people- the list is endless. Will you ban all of that in the name of safety? If not, then why concentrate on guns?
Finally, I’ll note that I’d have no problem with you owning a gun. In fact, I’m certain you’d be an exemplary owner. Would you deny me the same opportunity?
Awesome! 🙂 Will have to get back to this … interesting points.