Goddammit ABC…

About a month ago, ABC aired a special on guns in America.  Within 30 minutes of the start the proverbial media fear-mongering had entered full swing on 20/20’s broadcast that Friday night, showing (via hidden cameras) children, teenagers and twenty-somethings handling guns.  As you can imagine, they repeatedly showed the subjects looking down the barrels, pointing guns at other people and doing all of the things those of us exposed to guns by a responsible owner at some point were taught not to do.

I’m no expert on guns by any measure, but even with my limited experience I’m fully aware of which end of a gun is the business end and I’m smart enough to be aware of the risks involved in choosing where to point that end.  In this day and age, with the prevalence of guns in movies and television, I think it’s safe to assume that virtually everyone – children aside – also knows all of this.  Yet there is still a fairly common belief that guns are as dangerous as can be, firing deadly rounds at random any time they are even touched.

The thing that these people don’t seem to grasp is that a gun is a machine that lacks any ability to expel a round without external force.  The operative word here is force.  A loaded gun sitting on a shelf is no more inherently dangerous than a bullet sitting in the same place.

Sidenote: Yes, I understand that there are physics in play when exploding gasses are contained within a space and behind a projectile that make the loaded gun significantly more dangerous when it’s fired.  But the chance is small that the gun is aimed back into the room where the shelf upon which the gun rests is located, so I’d say the two are about even in terms of risk.

Regardless of the specifics, the point is that a gun will not fire unless someone squeezes the trigger (with the safety off, round properly loaded, breech closed, etc.) at a rate any higher than ammunition will fire sitting in a box.  Pointing a loaded gun at your face is no more dangerous than a pilot peering into an engine nacelle prior to takeoff.  Both could easily kill you, provided something else happenes first: pulling a trigger or starting an engine.

People have been killed by jet engines, guns, cars, ladders, swimming pools and elective surgical procedures.  Despite that, these things haven’t been banned because of the desire for a return in the face of the risks that they present.  The risk of any activity is accepted or rejected based upon the reason for engaging in the behavior and the strength of the want or need for the outcome, a concept I’ve come to understand is colloquially referred to as ‘living life.’  I once heard that humans are 800 times more likely to die if they get out of bed in the morning versus staying put under the covers.  Does that stop anyone from getting out of bed?  Very few, if any.

Regardless, quite a few jackasses in this country believe that legislation, not education, is the best way to mitigate this risk.  I, as you may have guessed, disagree.  But let’s entertain the fantasies of the unimaginably stupid for a moment.

Imagine that guns are banned tomorrow, how do you propose that the guns already in existence be collected for destruction?  Just have everyone bring their guns down to their local police station and drop them off?  Only the most law-abiding people in the country would even consider doing that and there are only four of them.  You can trust me, I know, I dated their daughters.

Since the honor system would be completely ineffective, how about having the police confiscate any gun that they happen to discover while performing their ordinary duties while our political leaders pass laws to lock up those found to be in possession?  That’s a bad idea too because 1) it would take so long to complete that those hell-bent on getting guns would surely find a way to do so, rendering the law useless, and 2) it would cause those unwilling to part with their weapons to go to great lengths to prevent their seizure.

So why should we not ban guns?  The most obvious answer is that banning doesn’t work.  The oft-repeated argument that “…if guns are outlawed, then only outlaws will have guns,” is true.  For proof, look no further than the idiotic ‘War on Drugs.’  Cops already confiscate drugs, as well as raid the cars, homes and businesses of those who are suspected of having some involvement with them and arrest millions of people in the process.

What’s the net result of all of this confiscating, raiding and arresting?  Millions of American tax dollars spent on salaries, equipment, training and planning for the police and millions more spent on prisons filled to the brim with non-violent offenders who pose no serious or immediate threat to society.  Those inmates will eventually be released back into the general population and, because of the black mark on their record due to the conviction, will have few options other than crime to support themselves.  The best evidence that banning doesn’t work is that with a few phone calls and a little cash, I could have virtually any drug known to man delivered to me like a pizza within a couple of hours.

Who could possibly be stupid enough to believe that banning guns would have any different result?  Apparently, the folks at ABC are and, assuming this special was effective, then perhaps a few more Americans.

PETA Confusion

Don’t bother asking how, but I ended up reading the Wikipedia entry about PETA, the animal rights group.  PETA stands for ‘People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals,’ which is certainly a noble concept.  I don’t think that animals should be treated cruelly, unnecessarily restrained or otherwise inhibited as they go about living their lives.  However, I’m confused by some of the group’s policies and positions as they are laid out in the aforementioned entry.  Their official website is similarly complex but it has less to do with their specific positions on certain issues and more to do with finding out exactly what they are, especially when the damn page won’t load properly for me.

Let’s start with the name, which acknowledges that a distinction between humans and all other animals exists in that people are the only creatures known to exist that are capable of intentionally treating other creatures in an ethical manner.  We have conquered virtually our entire planet and, by extension, every other species with which we co-exist.  While this allows us practically limitless power over our world, it is not without a large degree of responsibility.  The vast majority of us agree that human life is more valuable than that of any other persuasion, plant or animal.  This exists in stark contrast to what I perceive to be the organization’s overall message that animals are just as valuable, if not more so, than humans are.

The president and co-founder of PETA, Ingrid Newkirk, was quoted in September of 1989 by Vogue as having said “Even if animal research resulted in a cure for AIDS, we’d be against it.”  Allow me to reiterate my position that I am indeed against the commission of cruel acts against animals, but isn’t sacrifice in the interest of the greater good a noble act?  Perhaps she would argue that the difference lies in the absence of choice for the animal: the rat wasn’t given the opportunity to choose a life outside of a lab.  While this is true, it is so for the same reason that we travel in space shuttles to the moon while all other animals achieve locomotion only to the extent that their own biological faculties allow.  In other words, humans are intelligent, self-aware creatures while all other animals are, comparatively speaking, dumb.  If a human gets sick, we can usually make ourselves better.  If an animal or plant falls ill, it is almost always a death sentence unless we selfish humans intervene on their behalf.  Isn’t taking an animal to a veterinarian against its will the same deprivation of liberty of which this organization rallies against, despite this being – unbeknownst to the animal – in the animal’s best interest?  Perhaps the issue here is what species benefits from human intervention into the lives of animals, rather than the well-being of the animals themselves.  If PETA intends to argue on behalf of the animal, that the animal should ultimately choose its own path in the world, then that argument applies in all situations regardless of how obvious the ridiculous nature of any hypothetical situation may be.

While promoting a vegetarian or vegan diet as the best course for all to take, PETA seems to overlook one important fact: meat is delicious.  Who cares if it’s unhealthy?  This is a society that chain smokes, drives intoxicated, engages in recreational drug use, trades exercise for hours in front of the television and refuses to teach its children anything of real value regarding sex.  Personal health is of superficial importance to us, especially when the alternative is pleasurable, fun or tasty.

Perhaps most famously, PETA works to end the use of animal parts in clothing and fashion.  I had always assumed that this was because they are against the slaughter of animals, but I was intrigued to find out that PETA is far from being against killing.  During 2007, PETA euthanized nearly 2,000 animals, in Virginia alone.  If that is an average number per state, then it can be extrapolated that the nationwide number is around 100,000 animals, dead at the hands of an organization that claims to exist solely for their protection.  The organization admits that euthanizing is a necessary evil (especially pit bulls), and they claim to work toward reducing the number killed by spaying and neutering domesticated animals.

Continuing the theme of protecting animals from unscrupulous acts by humans, PETA has set circuses, zoos and the affiliated acts such as Jack Hanna and the late Steve Irwin in their sights.  While I somewhat agree with their position on this (filming is fine, touching is not), I’m interested to know what they think of the new show “The Exterminators” on A&E in which a camera crew follows around a team of exterminators in Louisiana.  The name of the show is a bit misleading, though, as the ‘exterminators’ have said multiple times on the show that they only kill animals as a last resort, instead preferring to trap the pests in a manner as humane as possible then release them as far away from humans as they can.  I’m sure they would support this as another ‘necessary evil,’ but doesn’t it also go against interfering with the animals’ free will?

I think that PETA’s sweet and peaceful bunny image on their website is meant to be ironic given their unwavering support of militant activism in achieving their goals.  The organization has supported:

• Those who throw paint on fur coats
• Those who throw pies at their opposition
• Giving animal carcasses and boxes filled with their entrails to those they oppose
• Damaging or defacing private property
• Funding the legal defense of those who have set fires, attempted murder and committed other illegal acts on behalf of animals
• The comparison between the treatment of animals in America to the treatment of Jews in Nazi Germany, slaves and Native Americans in early America, child laborers in third-world countries and other oppressed groups

These tactics combined with their anti-meat and anti-animal testing positions are the things that keep me from supporting PETA in any way.  Perhaps there exists some middle ground in which animals are processed in painless slaughterhouses that utilize methods that cause an instantaneous death following a clean, pain-free (although relatively short) life.  We could ban the use of fur in fashion, close all circuses and zoos except for situations in which containment is the only chance for the animal’s survival.  Unfortunately, though, I suppose that these advances wouldn’t be enough for PETA because animals would still be dying prematurely.

We do have an enormous responsibility to interact in an ethical manner with the world around us but the thing I think PETA seems to be forgetting is that above all else, we have a duty to ourselves to ensure that the well-being and continuation of humanity comes first.