What a Great New Group!
Organization to Work for Truly Responsible Gun Laws
by dischord
(distribution permitted and encouraged)

Many people who dislike ?the gun lobby? (whatever that is) have failed to see through a bit of specious reasoning that dominates the gun control debate. ?Specious? means more than simply false; it means seemingly true at first glance but false upon real examination. A false dilemma is a question that implies an absolute but untrue either-or relationship. For example: ?Is it snowing, or is it summer?? Obviously, there are many instances when a lack of snow does not mean summer.

The false dilemma with gun control is that you either support gun control or you don?t care about saving lives. More recently, this false dilemma has been given a patina of faux logic with: ?You either support this common-sense gun control measure that doesn?t violate your rights or you don?t care about saving lives.?

We gun rights advocates have played that part a bit, I admit. Or more accurately, sometimes we fail to realize how our arguments sound to the other side. We responded to their proposals for ?saving lives? with demands that our rights not be violated. By doing so, we often make it appear that we have a callous disregard for life. Instead, we should start by questioning whether various proposals actually would save lives regardless of our rights.

We have to make the broad public ? the fence sitters ? understand that our opposition to various proposals has to do with more than rights. It has to do with saving lives and maximizing that with wise use of money, time and labor. We need to cut through that false dilemma. We need to make people understand that it is possible to oppose gun control and still work to save lives ? in fact, that it is possible to oppose gun control BECAUSE we care about saving lives.

That means we have to go beyond the current ?guns save lives? arguments fostered by the work of Gary Kleck and John Lott. While their conclusions are true, if we stop at them, we risk setting up – or seeming to set up ? our own false dilemma: that you either own a gun or are in mortal danger. Further, by seeming to attempt to justify our guns, we appear give into the position that I hate so much ? that we can have our guns only if we prove we need them.

We have to go further and explain why gun control itself is dangerous. We have to explain how most gun control measures will do negligible good, especially in the U.S. ? and even if they do not cause scenarios where armed criminals harry unarmed innocents (like in D.C.) ? they DO harm by sucking resources from programs that actually save lives.

Unfortunately, such effort, in my opinion, has been sporadic. But now a group of doctors banned together earlier this month to make a concerted effort to educate the public along those lines. Their group is called Doctors for Sensible Gun Laws, and you can visit their website at http://www.keepandbeararms.com/DSGL/

They?ve done a good job of incorporating concern over RKBA and over the danger that ill-thought, feel-good measures pose. They provide a good library of articles about ?junk science? used to support gun control, and about the danger of a politicized medical community that cares more about enacting gun control than about figuring out what really saves lives. I?m assuming they?ll be issuing reports challenging and debunking various dangerous ?grabber junk science.”

I wish them godspeed. Lives are at stake, and it?s time we took back the ?saving lives? high ground from those who would push their political agendas at the expense of actually saving lives.