I have a message to many of my liberal
friends, and it concerns safety.
I think that we all agree the the most
important aspect of safety is education. Time and time again we have
seen that repressing knowledge of a subject in an effort to curb it
doesn't work. In fact, it is likely to worsen any existing problems
associated with that subject. Take sex and sexuality for instance.
We have all seen the damage done by disinformation and repression
haven't we? The religious right fought to keep people ignorant for
years. We often attribute homophobia, abuse, unwanted pregnancy and
untold other sexual dysfunction on lack of knowledge and
understanding. Education can curb those problems pretty well. If we
gain a better understanding, we can improve the situation.
Alcohol and drugs too. A
misunderstanding of mechanisms of addiction coupled with repression
and lack of education have brought about significant and serious
problems in our society. The more we understand about these
subjects, the better we are able to educate against some of the
pitfalls of misuse of alcohol and drugs. I have noticed a wonderful
trend lately toward education and understanding and think that has
and will continue to have a positive impact on crime and many of the
social problems associated with the stigmatization of drug use.
Education and understanding are keys to integrating potentially
dangerous human drives and desires into a peaceful and cooperative
society.
Not to mention that we should be pretty
much free to do what we want with ourselves. It should be assumed
that we are intelligent enough to navigate our way through these
potentially difficult and troublesome problems with a little
education.
Why can't we do this with guns?
There are those, in some of the more
liberal circles, who think we should have massive restrictions on
guns and gun ownership. They don't even like to talk, or I suspect
think, about gun ownership. Some are probably even a little phobic
about guns. Why is that?
I think it is, like most irrationally
strong fears, derived from ignorance.
Why isn't there a push for a mandatory
gun safety class in schools? If we educate children about guns and
speak honestly to children about the uses and dangers of guns, why
can't we improve our gun violence problem in this country? If every
child in every school had to learn about guns and their safe, basic
operation, couldn't we eliminate some of the accidental shootings?
If we use our gun safety class as an opportunity to talk about
seriuos injuries and death, could we help them start to understand
the implications of gun violence on themselves and their families?
Maybe we could even reduce some of the fetishistic nature of guns by
removing some of the mystique. And if a teacher does see someone who
responds in a peculiar way about guns, wouldn't that be nice to know?
I can't really see a downside to this
idea. If we continue to just shout for restrictions, we will drive a
further division between ourselves and some people who may be more
like us than we think. And continued to anhance the forbidden allure
of guns to many of those same people who are least capable of
handling the responsibility of gun ownership. Most responsible gun
owners could be very liberal in some respects. We need to support
gun rights as long as it is accompanied by gun education. Lets use
knowledge and understanding to help solve the problem instead of
letting repression and fear exacerbate it.
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