They were indicted and prosecuted. And then things went terribly wrong for the government. The prosecution thought it was running a trial, a legal proceeding governed by rules. The defendants decided that they would instead mount a new kind of media spectacle intended to show total contempt for the rules, and to propagandize the viewing public into sharing their contempt.
The prosecution was doing law; the defense countered with politics. When I first suspected that I was losing my hair, I felt like maybe I was also losing my grip on reality. This was the summer of , and although the previous three months had been difficult for virtually everyone, I had managed to escape relatively unscathed. My loved ones were safe. I still had a job. Now my hair was falling out for no appreciable reason. The second time it happened, a little more than a year later, I was sure—not because of what was in the shower drain, but because of what was obviously no longer on my head.
One day, after washing and drying my hair, I looked at my hairline in the mirror and it was thin enough that I could make out the curvature of my scalp beneath it. When I looked at it, the panic became sharp. Tony Judt said that there is darkness in this world, and that darkness often triumphed—and liberated me to do the same.
I always find it hard to list the books that have influenced me the most. Moreover, people who set as their job the task of judging what others do, and why, are not always reliable when turning the lens upon themselves. Still, on that changing list there are a few mainstays. Having, at that time, read very little of Tony, I was left with the impression of an intellectual monk who eschewed the dictates of party or crowd. It was my mistake. It was my loss. John Henry Ramirez is going to die.
The state of Texas is going to kill him. The question that came before the Supreme Court this week is whether Dana Moore, his longtime pastor, will be able to lay hands on him as he dies. Given the grand, even alarmed pronouncements about religious liberty made by the right-wing justices recently, you might think this would be an easy decision. Our fears about what other people think of us are overblown and rarely worth fretting over. Click here to listen to his new podcast series on all things happiness, How to Build a Happy Life.
Social media has opened up our heads so that just about any trespasser can wander in. If you tweet whatever crosses your mind about a celebrity, it could quite possibly reach the phone in her hand as she sits on her couch in her house. We are wired to care about what others think of us. Her message was succinct, accurate, and easy to understand. A small Kurdish boy is sitting on the ground in a damp Polish forest, a few miles from the eastern border with Belarus.
The air is heavy with cold and fog. The boy is crying. Around the boy, sitting in a circle, are his parents, uncles, and cousins, all from the same village near Dohuk, in Iraqi Kurdistan.
There are 16 of them, among them seven children, including a four-month-old infant and an elderly woman who can scarcely walk.
Through a translator, Anwar says that the family has been in this forest, moving back and forth between Poland and Belarus, for two weeks. They have eaten nothing for the previous two days. When you go to the airport, you see two kinds of security rules. Some apply equally to everyone; no one can carry weapons through the TSA checkpoint.
But other protocols divide passengers into categories according to how much of a threat the government thinks they pose. If you submit to heightened scrutiny in advance, TSA PreCheck lets you go through security without taking off your shoes; a no-fly list keeps certain people off the plane entirely.
Not everyone poses an equal threat. The same principle applies to limiting the spread of the coronavirus. The number of COVID cases keeps growing, even though remarkably safe, effective vaccines are widely available, at least to adults. Recently, NRATV personalities have deployed this technique to argue against common-sense legislation introduced in the th Congress to implement a universal background check system for firearm sales.
The bill would close existing loopholes in the background check process, which currently only requires licensed gun dealers to run a background check on buyers before selling them a firearm. By requiring private sales of firearms—including online sales and sales made at gun shows—to require a background check on all buyers to ensure that they are legally allowed to obtain a firearm before completing the sale, the legislation would prevent prohibited people from exploiting gaps in the existing system to obtain a firearm.
However, instead of engaging in policy discussion, the NRA chose to pivot the debate using lies and tangents. That government overreach to block us from exercising our constitutional right is a clear and present danger. It is a threat to our republic disguised as gun safety, two words which are a tip off to mean unconstitutional.
Nothing in the bill would criminalize law-abiding citizens, and the bill contains explicit language barring the creation of a gun registry. Much like demagogues and autocrats demonize their opposition, the NRA attacks advocates of gun violence prevention in order to justify its political agenda. In this vein, the group and its surrogates have repeatedly painted the opposition as traitors who seek to strip the law-abiding gun owner and American patriot of their fundamental freedoms.
This tactic serves as an umbrella to vilify the media, government officials, and civil society members who advocate for legislation that would reduce gun violence. The focus on painting traditional media as a self-aggrandizing disinformation machine is a common theme across NRA media platforms. You guys love it. Crying white mothers are ratings gold to many in the legacy media.
Members of Congress advancing gun violence prevention legislation face regular attacks from the NRA. The NRA attempts to vilify the speaker by making her appear elitist and out of touch with the struggles of average Americans—willing to abuse her power in order to fulfill her personal agendas, including those that would allegedly limit the rights of gun owners. Feinstein as someone who is morally opposed to the Second Amendment and American freedoms. The visibility of Sen. In response to a speech delivered by Sen.
Senate and the Democratically controlled House of Representatives want to disarm me. That could cost me and my family our lives. Civil society is actively engaged in the quest to end gun violence and prevent more families from being torn apart by preventable tragedies. Strongman leaders use fearmongering rhetoric as part of an overall agenda to gain power and retain control over a country.
The National Rifle Association uses these tactics to control the debate around gun violence and ensure the gun industry continues to be profitable, regardless of the human toll. Public opinion research indicates that the majority of people in the United States—across partisan lines—support policies to reduce gun violence, such as universal background checks for all firearm sales and assault weapons bans, yet polling data also indicate that a majority of Americans believe gun ownership increases personal safety.
By perpetuating a culture of fear and divisiveness, the gun rights group is crippling legislators and lawmakers who want to address a public health crisis that kills more than 35, people a year in the United States.
While the strategy of the National Rifle Association has been remarkably effective thus far, the United States has recently experienced a shift around gun culture. In , following the murder of 14 students and three staff members at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, by a shooter armed with an assault rifle, several corporations severed ties with the gun rights organization.
The NRA has established a narrative that frames the organization as the protector of freedom while combating the passage of legislation that would make communities safer from gun violence. Yet the group is not driven by a desire to protect fundamental freedoms. Much like a nondemocratic leader, its goal is centered around a desire to secure and sustain political power. She previously served in the Obama administration in the U. Prior to her political appointment, she served as the inaugural Hillary R.
The author wishes to thank Chelsea Parsons for her indispensable counsel. She thanks Steve Bonitatibus for his vital advice and guidance in writing this report.
Arkadi Gerney , Chelsea Parsons. In this article. InProgress Stay updated on our work on the most pressing issues of our time. Glossary of key terms Illiberal nation or regime: A nation or regime whose leaders are democratically elected but who then implement policies that repress the political rights and civil liberties of their nation, standing in opposition to liberal democratic principles. How the NRA mutated from supporting gun safety to advocating gun rights.
Consequences of the playbook Collectively, these tactics are regularly implemented in illiberal nations whose leadership is focused on stifling debate, with the extreme methods resulting in crackdowns on political rights and civil liberties in order to suppress a nation into submission. How the NRA spreads and engrains its message. Exploiting xenophobia on issues of border security The issue of security along the U.
Vilification of opposition Much like demagogues and autocrats demonize their opposition, the NRA attacks advocates of gun violence prevention in order to justify its political agenda. The following year, he was elected president of the organization. Quote appears at Ronald J. It should stay in Hungary. Quote starts at and ends at Guns Down America, gunsdownamerica, February 11, , a. Lott, Jr. David E. Opponents of more gun control argue that there are already some 20, gun laws in the United States, and that, as more laws pass, more gun violence occurs.
Proponents argue that these are largely state and local laws with limited impact, and that without them incident rates would be even higher. Another area of dispute involves the use of guns in self-defense. Gun control opponents cite studies that say guns are used up to 2.
Different data sets, different methodologies, extrapolations from limited samples. Both sides use comparative data from other countries to bolster their arguments. Gun control advocates draw comparisons with countries that have stricter gun laws and much lower levels of gun violence.
Opponents cite countries like Switzerland, with high levels of gun ownership and much lower gun-homicide rates, as evidence of the protective benefit of guns. Clearly, gun-related crime has more than a single cause, and measurements and trends are subject to manipulation by both sides. For example, while decreasing adult homicide rates in urban areas with tough gun laws are cited as proof of the effectiveness of control, increasing youth homicide rates in the same areas are cited as proof of its futility.
With such wildly divergent sets of statistical ammunition, one wonders if it even makes sense to prepare for this debate by arming oneself with facts and figures. At a minimum, it seems useful to try to quantify the problem, if not its exact nature.
Most estimates place the number of guns in the United States at somewhere over million. Approximately million guns became available to the general public between and , according to statistics compiled by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, but some of these are presumably no longer in existence or at least not in working order. Handguns and rifles each account for slightly over a third of the total, with shotguns slightly under a third. An estimated 4 million new guns are added to these totals annually, and in recent years, over half of the new guns were handguns.
Somewhere over a million crimes are committed each year involving a firearm, with recent estimates in the range of 1. The number of deaths due to guns each year is approximately 38,, divided about evenly between homicides and suicides, with a small fraction attributed to accidents.
The "Debate" Reducing the issue of gun control to "pros" and "cons" is probably the least desirable outcome of studying gun control, but it may be a very useful beginning. The pure pleasure of argument will attract some students. Other students may appreciate being asked for their opinions, rather than having to come up with a "right" answer at the outset of the discussion. The debate used to be waged-both in classrooms and elsewhere-largely on constitutional grounds in terms of the right of individuals to keep and bear arms versus the role of government in providing for the common good.
The U. Supreme Court has had relatively little to say about the Second Amendment, the main constitutional buttress of arguments that regulation is illegal. The amendment reads: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. When the Supreme Court has ruled, it has been more likely to allow regulation than to prohibit it, at least at the state level.
Even Daniel Polsby, a lawyer and one of the most eloquent and persuasive opponents of gun control, suggests that seeking constitutional protection under the Second Amendment is a flawed approach.
He argues that a guaranteed right to bear arms under any circumstances, including those that might endanger public safety, would provide grounds for repeal of the amendment rather than a case for respecting it. Instead, Polsby argues that the best reason for opposing gun control is that "gun control laws don't work.
The terms, but not the tenor, of the debate have changed. Some of the most persuasive of the gun control opponents employ economic arguments, using rational choice theory to demonstrate the inability of regulation to stop the flow of guns into neighborhoods where crime is the dominant employer in local labor markets. Gun control advocates argue from a public health standpoint, noting that while guns may not cause violence, they do cause violence to be far more lethal. This "lethality," in suicide and accidents as well as homicide, is the imperative from a public health perspective for regulating guns like other deadly substances.
I recently listened to a debate, staged by a public policy school, that featured two respected figures hurling statistics at each other. They treated each other with disdain. I was appalled that this was the way in which we modeled "public affairs" for adults, let alone for young people. Despite my own bias in favor of regulation, I found myself wondering if such regulation could be effective in a society so full of discord and so lacking in civil discourse. Opponents of regulation argue that laws are not the primary arbiter of behavior.
On the other hand, there is surely a social cost when "bad" laws are disregarded, divert resources, or produce a false sense of security. Others would argue that the role of law is not primarily to change behavior, but to reflect the behavioral norms that a society professes. Even when these norms conflict, the process by which they are negotiated suggests a value in accepting the outcomes. An Alternative Process Consider the following primary learning objectives established for a curriculum that addresses public policy approaches to reducing gang violence: 1 to increase student knowledge of the problem, substituting facts and specific information for stereotypes and generalities 2 to listen to a range of opinions, gaining practice both in persuading others to change and in being open to change 3 to understand that laws need not only to have worthy ends, but must provide effective means 4 to demonstrate the role of ordinary citizens in shaping good laws.
These objectives apply equally well to the study of gun control or to any other public policy issue. It is not necessary that issues be violence-related in order to teach the fundamental concepts of social justice, public responsibility, tolerance, and equity.
But issues related to violence underscore form with function. A classroom debate on gun control as part of a violence-reduction curriculum offers an appealing option, but also presents a situation to be avoided. The appeal of a point-counterpoint method of engaging students in learning models the real-life process of public policy making. But the rancorous, uncivil, and often unproductive nature of the debate-as it has been conducted in the real-life models of state legislatures, the national media, and the halls of Congress-is at odds with producing either good citizens or effective policy.
The challenge is to combine the attraction and inherent interest of the issue with a genuine desire to seek information, solutions, and above all, effective public policy. In attempting to reduce gun violence, the policy debate has focused on regulatory vs.
As students consider policy alternatives, it can be helpful to examine the truth of these beliefs and to investigate the context that gives rise to these notions about the so-called American gun culture.
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