Submitted by Aaron Arkin.
For the last several months, when I take my usual route to the grocery store, I pass a makeshift memorial for someone who was murdered with a firearm; and I’m seeing these sad markers more frequently. Thinking about this, it occurred to me that over time our civic life has been markedly degraded while the number of those possessing firearms has been increasing;* and I worry where we will end up if we keep going down this path.
There is a recent phrase in our lexicon: “The New Normal.” It’s a reference to situations where there has been a change, often not for the better, affecting some aspect of our society. It is trotted out so frequently that often the dire implications of the expression are no longer appreciated. The term reminds me of a story I read about Easter Island. Colonized by Polynesians hundreds of years ago, originally the island was completely forested. Cutting down trees for making fires and building shelters, each succeeding generation was presented with a different understanding of the forest’s size or what it was supposed to look like. For each subsequent generation, the reduced forest they grew up with was “The New Normal”.
So, when the last generation to see trees on the island cut down those few remaining, they weren’t cutting down a forest, they were cutting down some isolated trees in a savanna: there was no forest on Easter Island in their “New Normal.” Cutting down a few tall plants would not have seemed like a big deal because there was no one there to tell them what their island once looked like: lush and green, tall trees everywhere. Of course once they had no more trees, firewood and shelter were harder to come by: their standard of living plummeted, their population declined, their very survival threatened.
This should be a cautionary tale for us here in the 21st century. Every year more firearms are present in America. Every day we get news about the untimely loss of life: death by firearm. Many more are injured. Some places it’s one or two a night: others, it’s 10 or 20 a weekend. Frequently there are even mass shootings with more casualties. Perhaps, a generation from now there will be twice these numbers on a regular basis. More generations after that, who knows, maybe three times as many. And each generation, looking back at their most remote memories, may bemoan that things seem to be getting worse. They may well then say, “OK, this is “The New Normal’” and accept a horrific situation as “just the way things are now”: worse, but only a little different than before.
There’s a popular notion, a so-called urban myth, that if you put a frog in a pot of water and slowly raise the temperature, the little critter, experiencing only small temperature changes at a time, will stay in the pot until it’s cooked. Turns out, that is not true. Frogs know they need to leave the pot. Humans, not so much.
Welcome to “The New Normal.”
* According to the Small Arms Survey of 2017, there are 393,000,000 privately held guns in the US, distributed among 92,000,000 gun owners. This amounts to about 120 guns for every 100 residents.
Aaron Arkin,
Yours is a well written and thought provoking letter providing readers with things to think about. I am assuming that based on the slant of your article, you are on the take away everyone’s guns including law abiding citizens.
If my assumption is incorrect, than to quote Gilda Radner on the TV show Laugh-In, “Never mind.”
If my assumption is correct, then I have this to say.
Had the Polynesians taken steps to add more trees (reforestation) instead of reducing the number of trees, the old normal could have become the new normal and they could have survived.
Unless one wants to die defenseless at the hands of an evil gun packing criminal, we, like the Polynesians, might well be better off with a new normal that includes more qualified individuals arming themselves based on the proven concept that “an armed society is a polite society.”
If you and I lived right next door to each other we could display two signs in our front yards. Yours could read, “We are unarmed because we think guns are the problem.” My sign could read, “We are armed because we know people, not guns, are the problem.”
Of the two houses, which do you think an armed home invader / burglar would select?
Bullies generally target victims judged to be unable to fight back. Take away everyone’s guns and the new normal will be felons against victims with felons winning every time.
Joseph Boyle –
My opinion on whether or not citizens should own guns is not really relevant. I wrote this essay to provoke thought and give some additional perspective on the ‘guns in society’ issue. I will say this though: extensive research has shown that human beings are really bad at dealing with uncertainty, and at accurately evaluating risk. And if memory serves correctly, studies show one is much more likely to be killed or injured by a gun if they possess one than if they don’t. These are facts, the personal experiences or the mindset of any one individual notwithstanding.
Aaron Arkin,
Your memory does serve you accurately. Unfortunately it serves you up a often repeated lie propagated by gun haters.
According to the NRA magazine titled American Rifeman, and I quote, “Studies indicate that firearms are used more than 2 million times a year for personal protection, and that the presence of a firearm, without a shot being fired, prevents crime in many instances.
Joseph Boyle
I started thinking again about my response to the gun advocates from my last Suburban Times article. I’m sorry now that I didn’t give myself more time to consider a response; because I think now a different approach would have been better. To start with, instead of framing a response around gun proliferation, I should have framed it more generally about the pitfalls of not recognizing change over time.
I was reminded about something I thought was attributed to Aristotle: If you would know anything, know its history. When I looked it up, the actual quote was: “If you would understand anything, observe its beginning and its development.” So, pretty close to the same thing. Anyway, my larger point should have been that if we are to truly understand what we take as a given at present, we must understand how we got there: in order to see what we have now may not necessarily be immutable, desirable, but on more careful reflection, is actually in need of change.
Even in our fast-paced world where change is happening faster than at any time past, human memory is short and many tend to accept “The New Normal” as the “natural (and right)” outcome from a series of past events: but events many tend not to scrutinize.
To take one example: one respondent quoted an NRA publication to justify gun proliferation. But if he had bothered to delve into the history of the NRA he would have found that their official position 50 years ago was against gun proliferation and open carry. And why? Because they were afraid of putting guns into the hands of Blacks. Going back even earlier, the NRA was for even greater restrictions.
Today’s “New Normal” for the NRA (almost everyone should have a gun to defend themselves) is 180 degrees from its former position. There are all kinds of historical and contextual reasons for this back and forth on gun restrictions; but perhaps were we more aware of this history, so many of us wouldn’t be in thrall with the NRA’s current gun-protection philosophy. The fact alone that the US has by far the highest rate of gun deaths of any advanced nation, surely should suggest that there is something intrinsically wrong with the rationale for widespread arming of its citizenry.
This commentary reminds me of two expressions.
1. Things will get worse until they can’t.
2. Society’s failure to support the prosecution of all crimes (pretty and serious) will result in many small crimes becoming capital offenses (meaning many petty events will result in a dead offender)
The markings along the road are not from gun shot victims, but car victims. I have never heard of road side markings for gun violence and have no idea where you came up with it, but I think you are a victim of the socialist/communist gun grab politicians and media.
“Cain spoke to Abel his brother. And when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him.” (Genesis 4:8) ”
The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil…” (Luke 6:45)
“And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them.” (Luke 6:31)
I realize everyone will cite his or her own versions of “statistics” (and we all know what they say about statistics) but I thought I’d throw these these into the mix:
“FBI Stats Show More Guns Equal Less Crime
August 13, 2019
Written by the editors of Richardcyoung.com
Originally posted October 20, 2015.
Despite rabid calls for gun control…FBI stats show what author John Lott explained in his 1998 book, More Guns, Less Crime. In the chart below you’ll find the number of background checks performed by the FBI for gun sales, and the number of violent crimes committed in the U.S. from 1999 to 2014. As you can see, as numbers of implied gun purchases have exploded, the number of violent crimes has cratered, directly counter to the idea that guns cause crime.”
You can view the chart here: https://www.richardcyoung.com/essential-news/fbi-stats-show-more-guns-equal-less-crime/
The graph clearly shows a dramatic increase in U.S. Gun ownership while at the same time a dramatic decrease in violent crime.
Violent crime, including crimes involving firearms, has increased more recently, however. Could it be that calls for defunding the police might have something to do with the increase in crime? Could it be criminals will ignore, and always have ignored, gun laws?
Common sense gives the answer to that.