March for Our Lives (3)

"No gun violence" and "No gun"

 

One of the rallying cries of March for Our Lives is: “no gun violence”. But during the translation, it is somehow changed to “no gun”. This is such a giant leap that warrants a closer examination.

 

Do we really want “no gun”?

 

The founding fathers obviously didn’t think so. They were fully aware of possible gun violence if people were allowed to own guns. Despite that, they gave us the second amendment explicitly and unambiguously.

 

Even today, if we are having a referendum, I believe the 2nd amendment will still stand.

 

So we don’t really want “no gun”.

 

Do we want “no gun violence“?

 

Of cause! However it’s a goal we can get closer and closer but can never reach. For every step towards this goal, it will cost more and more. As a law of nature, for every dollar we spend to reduce gun violence, we have one less dollar to spend somewhere else (e.g. other areas to protect our kids’lives). So we have to decide on the rational allocation of our limited resources.

 

Of cause, March for our lives with hundreds of thousands of people is not the right place to talk about logic, costs and tradeoffs. “We need actions and we need actions NOW.” So our society is forced into actions even without examining whether the actions will be useful. And when the next mass shooting happens, the emotions runs higher and hastier actions are taken. And so on and so forth. We are going down in a self enforcing spiral.