One of the (many) great things about teaching is that whenever I found a student who was not listening, or who misunderstood a previous statement, I could always call him or her on it. I could give the offending student a bonus F, insist that he paraphrase the previous speaker, ask for objective details to back up all the subjective labels. With me in control, most of the conversations we had in my classroom actually went somewhere and accomplished something. Well, most of them did.
But outside of the classroom I don't do so well. Adults don't take kindly to being asked to paraphrase the previous speaker. And giving them a bonus F almost always results in bad feelings. If these adults would just slow down and listen, behave a little more like 18 year old seniors in high school, maybe we wouldn't have all this disfunction in Washington. I think the powers that be should hire Kathie and me to go into Congress and run them through a few forced choice discussions.
Joe Scarborough would certainly profit from such a class. This morning he was having a ridiculous argument with Donny, one of the liberal balances to Joe's rampant conservatism. They were discussing gun stuff. On MORNING JOE there are only two topics of conversation: hand-wringing over whichever fiscal disaster is the next one looming on the horizon, and the movement of the NRA to the fringe over the latest gun rights debate.
Donny's point--one that I strongly agree with--was that if we're going to do anything about this national problem we need to focus on one issue rather than get distracted with all the other tangential ones. In other words, even though we need to address the proliferation of violent video games, let us not let that distract us from the big issue, namely GUNS. Donny said that we had a chance to take the "mass" out of mass murder by going for assault weapons, but it was impossible to isolate children from the all-pervasiveness of our culture by regulating video games. Joe freaked out and said that was the old liberal argument that was causing all the trouble. Liberals want the first amendment to be absolute, but they want to limit the second amendment.
So Joe was saying that calling for regulation of assault weapons and high-capacity magazines was analogous to calling for the regulation of video games. His point was that defending the creation of video games and presumably violent movies and television shows under the first amendment was no different than defending assault weapons under the second.
If Joe were in my class I would feel compelled to launch into a lesson about analogies. The two situations are completely different. I can establish a direct cause-effect relationship between a Bushmaster semi-automatic rifle and the death of 20 first graders. Take away the Bushmaster and the kids are still alive, or at least more of them are. But for the life of me I don't see a similarly direct cause-effect relationship between playing a violent video game in your basement or bedroom and the immediate death of anyone.
It is a hard call, I realize. The idea of some sad little boy or girl playing violent, desensitizing games all day is incredibly depressing--if I were King of the world I would mandate that all children be compelled to play work-up softball games with the neighborhood children in the vacant lot out back until it got too dark to see the ball--but the video game itself is not deadly, unless you can manage to club someone to death with it. The difference is so obvious it seems silly to even talk about it.
Of course the problems leading to mass murder go way beyond gun control and curtailing violent video games. We have a lot more irresponsible parents, or well-intentioned parents over their heads, than we have maniacal gun dealers trying to encourage murder and mayhem, but doing something about assault weapons and high capacity magazines, even though it might inconvenience some perfectly legitimate fun with munitions, seems like as good a place to start as any.
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6 comments:
You're kind of a didactic prick.
I'm not convinced you know the meaning of the word "didactic", but I'm quite sure you are familiar with the word "prick."
Maybe "pedantic" is the word the courageous mr/ms "anonymous" is grasping for. Probably not. As you point out, at least "prick" is appropriate for his/her vocabular depth. Thanks for the post, Jim. Interesting to hear about Morning Joe, since I avoid stuff like that to save my stomach from knots. (Except for Tom Hartman on progressive talk, 760 AM--give him a listen sometime!)
Hi Peter. Hope all goes swimmingly at good old GMHS. MORNING JOE, along with a daily look at (dare I say it?) THE DRUDGE REPORT, comprise my attempts to be fair and balanced. Everything else I look at or read is done simply to reaffirm everything I already believe. Actually, MORNING JOE is an oasis of reasonable debate in the partisan wasteland we all inhabit. I will give Tom Hartman a try.
I agree with you, Mr. Starkey. I have the following thoughts about the assault weapons ban:
1. There is historical precedence. I find it amusing that today's generation thinks that nobody has ever gone through anything before and we're experiencing everything for the first time. The ban on Tommy Guns in the 1930s was to respond to mass executions being carried out by the mob. It was ruled constitutional because the court determined that the average U.S. citizen didn't own a Tommy Gun and, therefore, when a militia might need to be called up - those people wouldn't be reasonably expected to be carrying a Tommy Gun anyway. I'd say 80 years later, the same is true. My Dad was an avid hunter, my father-in-law owns a fully stocked gun safe, my Uncle inherited my grandfather's guns (who was a former police officer) and none of those contains an assault weapon. It's not the gun of choice for hunters as shooting something 30 times tends to ruin the meat. :)
2. In my work as a CPA, we learn that the best financial controls (those procedures or processes that prevent or detect errors or fraud) are preventative controls. And it's for fairly obvious reasons - you'd rather catch someone before they embezzle millions rather than figure it out after the money is gone. So - it shouldn't be surprising that preventing the ability to kill so many people in a such a short amount of time is preferable as a preventative measure. Arming teachers to be able to shoot someone after they hear gun shots is detective, and thus, less preferrable (of course, there are many other factors there as well). In fact, here at the University, we learned lessons from the Virginia Tech shootings and we have solid core doors that automatically close and lock when the alarm is triggered. That's a great preventative control. It's near impossible to shoot someone you can't get to. I'd like to see more of those types of security measures in buildings, but that's another topic all together.
3. I find it a weak argument that we can't solve one issue just because other issues (that don't contradict the solution) exist. That's like me determining that there is so much laundry for me to do that I just won't use the washing machine at all. I think the general population could benefit from a symbollic logic class to map out their arguments. :)
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