In case you missed the news, the Supreme Court overturned Washington DC’s ban on handguns. This naturally has been a topic of conversation all over, including the exciting (some of the time – see oakbook link) character-laden city I call home.
Over the weekend I discovered that the views, global warming ain’t happening, and that handguns should be owned by anyone who wants one can exist in the same person. So a global warming denier can also be a gun acquirer! I made me an old fashioned Venn diagram which is a most excellent visual aid to understanding this beautifully crazy world.
I wonder what proportion of those who deny global warming also happen to believe that owning handguns is great? Anyone have any guesstimates for the G & G? Please comment if you do!
All I want to know is this:
If
People believe that is it perfectly logical that one should own a gun to defend against an improbable event
Then
Why isn’t it logical for everyone to take action to prevent global warming, an event/process for which the probability is close to 1?
Of course IMHO global warming is already occurring – witness the extreme weather events all over the world, not to mention the glaciers and the poles. That said, if we make an effort, things can get better.
Now at the end, I should make my own position about guns clear. I don’t much care for guns and I don’t want one in my home because well designed studies have made it clear that there are way too many accidents in homes with guns. And the incidence of guns being used in self defense in almost the entire western world is negligible – anything under 5% is negligible for me. But policy implications of studied are apparently more difficult, at least based on the studies mentioned in all the leading newspapers.
For policy implications I’d like to see behavioral experiments with guns as well as better statistical analysis. But my gut feel is that better policing is answer to making citizens feel safe. Just like two wrongs don’t make a right, two guns in a room does not mean that the right one will stay safe.
