A Bad Thing
What is a bad thing? Writers like me love to run with such ideas. “Ziggy and the bad Thing” might be a future short story here. Cartoon images of glowering blobs with fangs and angry, bloodshot eyes come to mind but that is only fiction. English speakers know that the term “thing” almost always refers to an inanimate object that has no life. A “glowering blob” therefore would be an animate object, not an inanimate one. Why is this important?
Every now and then democracies have an interesting discussion about a “bad thing.” Democracy dies without the interchange of ideas. Therefore, discussion is a necessity. The problem is running with the “bad thing” concept in that conversation. Let me clarify.
On January 17, 1920, prohibition of nearly all alcoholic beverages with some exceptions, became law of the land in the United States. At the time of the ratification of the eighteenth amendment to the United States Constitution, the majority of us believed that there was a “bad thing” in our physical universe and it was Devil Rum. Problems with declaring a “bad thing” started appearing almost immediately.
Interesting chicken or egg thoughts can be had here because the consumption of alcohol in the United States did noticeably flatten during and after prohibition. I will spare the reader a ranting of scholarly works on the matter. My point, in human governance the issues before us are always much more complex than activists on one side or the other of a debate often make it out to be. It doesn’t matter what the issue is.
The United States of the prohibition era’s noticeable alcoholism problems and that addiction’s obvious social, economic, and health costs were one of the major selling points of the eighteenth amendment. The problems still exit today since we focused on the “bad thing” and not the alcohol misuse itself, a “flattening of the consumption curve” mentioned earlier, aside. Alcoholic beverages were still generally available even if they were illegal because we gave American organized crime approximately thirteen years of the biggest market that they could have ever dreamed of.
There is a side issue that needs clarification here. Clearly, possibly harmful products and services however defined, need enforcement of related laws. This truth runs the gamut from a waste pipe leading out of a factory all the way to a guy in a big raincoat selling stuff in a park. That of course, includes a loaded truck trying to enter the United States. We really need to know about those products and services and make sure that such items are only used as prescribed.
In the process of governmental oversight I argue that attempting to address a related issue by naming a “bad thing” is simply laziness. It is much easier to say for example, we have so and so many “gun deaths” even though not one of us ever saw a gun get up under its own volition and shoot someone. It is much harder to attempt to address the actual reason for a crime spike in our city for example. We don’t complain of baseball bat deaths or picked up rock deaths because clearly that is idiocy. We know that a horribly twisted person used that bat or rock to cause ultimate harm but somehow we can make the logical jump to a “gun” death. Clearly, bats, rocks and guns are inanimate objects. The argument that guns don’t follow this logic because they are solely “tools of death” flies in the face of every law enforcement, soldier of a democracy, self-protection and even farming and wildlife management needs of all human history. The use of the gun clearly depends on who is holding it and therefore is a much more complex issue than blaming the gun itself. We go back to my earlier statement that activists always simplify. On the second amendment issue alone, several much complicating questions prove usual oversimplification. If we abrogate the second amendment and remove private gun ownership:
The disarming of law abiding citizens who then hand in their registered firearms is going to bring crime down? Really? These are the only people who will follow the law while habitual lawbreakers by definition, will not and therefore will keep their guns.
Then we have the entire spectrum of people who usually follow the law but have moral, religious and social reasons to insist on protecting themselves and others. These now have a crisis of asking if this is an immoral law and therefore must break it. (Prohibition had the same problem.)
Historically our federal government runs porous borders. Therefore we certainly will not be able to stop a car trunk loaded full of guns. As prohibition has taught us, organized crime will joyfully provide their expertise on smuggling and illegal manufacturing services.
Related issues such as our car fenders now becoming the primary method of deer overpopulation control here in Wisconsin for example, will be rampant once the “evil tools of death” are gone. There are case studies on the matter.
As prohibition clearly outlined, economic harm will occur. A wide spectrum of businesses who are focused on the legal, correct use of firearms, employ and pay taxes.
We must demand an end to the habit of naming an inanimate object as evil and force the proponent of that tactic to confess their true intentions. On the second amendment issue, do some activists have an irrational fear of guns? Are they simply making a good living off an issue and are resorting to a good old, simple, emotional appeal to gather as many dollars as possible? Are they actually seeking to further another cause but hiding behind the emotion of crime related stories? Let’s solve the actual problem instead.
