Watchin' the tele tonight I was confronted with yet another story about gun-related violence in Sydney's western suburbs, along with the requisite Greens' demand for a guns prohibition of course. And it occurred to me that as we strive to combat The Greens’ efforts to paint every man/woman Jack/Jill of us as irresponsible homicidal hooligans, so that we might retain our meagre rights as law abiding firearms owners and hunters, we’re apt to wear ourselves out in the process of over-intellectualising the Antis' motivation.
It is easy to demand the prohibition of something one has no stake in, while for most it’s impossible to so much as vaguely entertain the notion of withdrawing the right to own something that we find useful, regardless of how effective its prohibition might promise to be in protecting the most vulnerable members of the community i.e our children.
I will explain what I mean in a moment, but first, let's set the scene....
The Greens and the Antis claim that gun violence is rife and that the solution is prohibition of guns in private ownership.
They acknowledge that it may be necessary to permit limited gun ownership by people who can demonstrate a “genuine need”, but they maintain such cases are very rare.
They acknowledge that prohibiting the ownership of guns will not have an immediate impact on the criminal misuse of firearms because, as we all know, criminals don’t surrender their guns during amnesties and buyback schemes, but they claim that over time prohibition will have an impact on the underworld’s access to firearms.
The Greens and Antis will grudgingly acknowledge that it is unfortunate that responsible firearms owners should be inconvenienced by this vital prohibition, but their inconvenience is a very small price to pay for an end to gun related violence and accidents in the community.
That’s a fairly simplistic roundup of the Anti’s stance I’ll grant you, but I think it pretty-well sums it. And all of it is easy to say because those saying it don’t own guns, and because they don’t own guns they have absolutely nothing to lose by demanding their prohibition. It really is that simple!
Everything else they go on about is just smoke and mirrors aimed at generating the appearance of a higher moral purpose and a genuine need to ban firearms. It is vital that we understand this if we’re to avoid intellectualising their motivation, and so avoid wasting our time and energy trying to address sundry ignoble furphies.
The same may be said of hunting, which they oppose on all manner of grounds, all of which translate as “we don’t do it, so nor should you!”
Their claims of concern for the excessive cruelty of hunting, declining animal populations and the threat to public safety, are simply furphies aimed at convincing a largely unconcerned public that they shouldn’t like hunting either.
And let me assure you, the vast majority of the general public would remain unconcerned about hunting - on public lands or anywhere else - were it not for The Greens’ and Anti’s considered, strategic and highly emotional investment-sharing of the issue and the fact that the public, on the whole, also has no direct stake in hunting.
They have nothing to lose by hunting's abolition, or at least they’ve been convinced they have nothing to lose, and so half the Antis' battle is won.
Now let’s look at another example; one that hasn’t been suggested broadly as a comparison as far as I know, but nonetheless runs the same lines of ‘logic’ that the Greens and Anti’s use to justify firearms prohibition. There is one vital difference, however, and that lies the fact that they have a direct stake in the subject of the proposed prohibition, as has pretty-much everyone else...
I happen to think that child pornography is every bit as wicked and detestable as drive-by shootings and armed robbery. Some may not agree, but I think many would too. Some might say that kiddie porn doesn’t kill people like guns do, but how many suicides owe their motivation to the despair wrought by child exploitation?
So if banning guns is the solution (albeit imperfect) to gun violence, surely banning digital cameras is the solution (albeit imperfect) to child pornography?
Let's face it, few of us actually need a digital camera; we just like to own them for one reason or another, and we could always licence folks who have a 'genuine need' to own them.
Perhaps the kiddie-porn-brokers wouldn’t surrender their digital cameras during the amnesty, but given time those already in the community would wear out, and with no replacements available and with no digital cameras remaining in private ownership to be stolen and/or cannibalised for parts, digital cameras would eventually become quite rare.
It’s a pity that law abiding digital camera owners might be inconvenienced by the prohibition, but hey, what price the safety and dignity of our children in whom rests the future of our entire species?
Anyway, people could always return to good ol’ fashioned fil-um, which is much-much harder to digitize for the net and sundry electronic gadgets with the potential to host kiddie-porn, while still allowing responsible folks to take those wholesome family snaps that have seen us right since Joseph-Nicephore Niepce invented the first negative image back in 1826.
Of course no-one would support such a ridiculous move, least of all The Greens and the Antis, but not because the argument for prohibition lacks any intellectual integrity. It has every big as much as The Greens' and Antis' line on gun prohibition. No, the reason they’d not support it is simply that it would have a negative impact on their lives...it would inconvenience them...because they like digital cameras.
Ergo, any suggestion that banning digital cameras will have a serious impact on child exploitation, suddenly becomes ridiculous, perhaps even offensive, not least because implicit in the move to ban them is the suggestion that no-one who currently owns one can be trusted to manage it responsibly.
I believe it is analogies such as this that we must turn to when refuting the 'logic' and ‘fairness’ of the Antis' line on gun prohibition.
We have for too long relied on impotent examples such as, “Well, we may as well ban cars given the annual road toll”, which don't carry weight simply because people are so dependent on cars that they consider them absolutely essential, and so are willing to accept a certain level of carnage as the price of that dependency.
Digital cameras, on the other hand, are anything but essential. In the hands of the majority they are at best a convenience or an amusement that we lived safely and happily without just a decade ago. In the hands of predators, however, they facilitate abuse and exploitation on a growing international scale.
Digital phone cameras travel covertly into every lavatory, shower-block, poolside changing-room, Sunday school, kindergarten and a thousand other places where our children are at their most vulnerable. Surely then, there can be no sound argument for their continued existence in the community....except that we want them and find the suggestion that we might not be trustworthy enough to possess then highly offensive...and so we are willing to accept a certain amount of child carnage so we can continue to indulge our egocentric obsession with posting ‘selfies’ on facebook.
Anyway, I'll get outaya way now....
