The idea of a gun

For a couple of years now, A has talked about us getting a gun.  And somehow the liberal hippie inside of me has stripped myself of that idealistic "let's take all the guns away and everything will be okay" plan just by being around him and his family.  After all, they did shoot at a gopher on the farm while drinking beers this weekend.

I've been reading Freakonomics again lately, and I ran across this bit on page 131:

"A gun scrambles the outcome of any dispute.  Let's say that a tough guy and a not-so-tough guy exchange words in a bar, which leads to a fight.  It's pretty obvious to the not-so-tough guy that he'll be beaten, so why bother fighting?  The pecking order remains intact.  But if the not-so-touch guy happens to have a gun, he stands a good chance of winning.  In this scenario, the introduction of a gun may well lead to more violence.

Now instead of the tough guy and the not-so-tough guy, picture a high-school girl out for a nighttime stroll when she is suddenly set upon by a mugger.  What if only the mugger is armed?  What if only the girl is armed?  What if both are armed?  A gun opponent might argue that the gun has to be kept out of the mugger's hands in the first place.  A gun advocate might argue that the high-school girl needs to have have a gun to disrupt what has become the natural order: it's the bad guys that have the guns.  (If the girl scares off the mugger, then the introduction of a gun in this case may lead to less violence.)  Any mugger with even a little initiative is bound to be armed, for in a country like the United States, with a thriving black market in guns, anyone can get hold of one.

There are enough guns in the United States that if you gave one to every adult, you would run out of adults before you ran out of guns," (Levitt and Dubner, 2005).

Obviously I'm smart enough that I've thought about that kind of process before, weighed it out in my head in such a way, but I thought it was an elegant depiction of why many people feel strongly and many feel confused.  Like abortion, it's a heated topic because of all of the elements that play a part in the discussion.

On to this idea of disrupting the natural order - I believe that tools are one of the ways that mankind has completely differentiated themselves from animals because they can control their natural environment that way.  Guns do disrupt the natural order.  Guns play a part in power shifts and makes a different skill set beyond strength, stamina and body movements an ally in a physical altercation.  However, most would agree that the power shift has such an effect because of the lethal nature of guns.  Rather than temporarily overpowering your opponent as you can with wrestling moves or knock out punches, a gun can kill them quickly.

Gives me something to think about more.