The Trouble With “Convenient Belief”

• Lucinda Garthwaite, ILI Director

  In the wake of another school shooting, which should never, have become predictable, the calls predictably came:  Ban the guns or control them. Send thoughts and prayers. Blame a particular group or challenge and focus all energy there.

  This time, I realized, all of it felt toothless. After I closed my eyes and shook my head; after I said out loud to the empty room, in one breath, oh no; after that, I stared out the window and thought to myself, we have got to do this differently.

  What I meant, what I mean, is that when responses to horrible trends and events begin to sound like shouts returning across an empty canyon, echoing themselves but changing little, then it’s time to stop shouting and listen.

  The poet, thinker and activist Audre Lorde once wrote, in a poem I cherish,

  Do not pretend to convenient beliefs
  even when they are righteous
  you will never be able to defend your city
  while shouting.

  and in the same poem,

  Even when they are dangerous examine the heart of those machines you hate
  before you discard them . . .

  I cherish that poem, “For Each of You” among other reasons because it has always reminded me to be both humble and fierce in my efforts for change, to avoid resting in convenient belief - that is, obvious to me, given my own singular and inevitably limited experience.

  I wondered this week if banning guns has become a too convenient belief, and if I needed to examine the hearts of -- or, in this case, the hearts of those who love -- the machines I hate.

  As if in answer, the Washington Post published a survey of over 400 owners of AR-15 rifles, that includes videos of several of them speaking to why they own those particular guns. O the same day, the Post also published a thorough review of the history of automatic rifles in the US, and an exploration of its rise in both numbers and cultural prominence.

  The role of profit especially, while unsurprising, is laid out here in profound detail. Also, racism and racist backlash, fear, images of war, rigid masculinity and other deeply held identities, gaming culture – these and more, both purposefully manipulated and evolved, have brought the automatic weapon to its current status. One former gun industry executive, now a gun control advocate, says it’s become like a “religious relic.”

  One particular thing that struck me about the survey is that most of the people surveyed, and most of those who spoke on video, did not seem to be cynics. The beliefs or desires that ground their choices to own such a gun are sincere – some bewildering, some terrifying, to me, but nonetheless, sincere.

  There is no evidence in history or scholarship that deriding sincere belief has any positive effect on social change. In fact, there’s ample evidence to the contrary.  Yet another predictable response to shootings is exactly that, derision. It rises, always, to absolute sneering distain.

  It’s an equal opportunity distain, for sure, but I’m interested in strategies that will drive down violence and increase thriving, so it’s distain for gun owners and their beliefs to which I’m referring here. Because it doesn’t work.

  So, there’s that, and there’s the fact that in the decades since mass school shootings began in the US, sticking to a single-minded strategy of insisting on banning automatic rifles, has not yet worked, either. Arguably, it has (I’m deadly serious here. I mean no pun.) backfired.

  Because after each shooting, and whenever a gun control advocate comes to power, sales of automatic weapons increase sharply. In fact, I learned this week that President Obama was “mockingly crowned 2009’s “gun salesman of the year” by a pro-gun news service.

  A Smith & Wesson executive explained this simply, saying, “people buy because they are afraid of future legislation.”   So, when calls to ban guns get louder, some people double down and finally buy one, or buy more, because they’re afraid they soon won’t be able to.

  There is plenty of evidence, in the US and elsewhere, that points to fewer guns as an essential and reliably effective strategy for decreasing violence.  So, banning them seems like an inarguable necessity.  But what if that’s not possible, at least not yet? How long will people continue to beat only that drum, and the drum of derision, while the killing continues?

  Audre Lorde was nothing if not fierce in her insistence on change that would lead to more liberation. And be wary of convenient beliefs, she said, even when they are righteous. Examine the hearts of the feared and hated.

  I don’t believe Lorde ever meant to stop shouting altogether. It’s just that it’s not enough.

   _____________

  Why Do American’s Own AR-15s? By Emily Guskin, Aadit Tambe and Jon Gerberg. The Washington Post.   March 27, 2023.

  The Gun That Divides a Nation. By Todd C. Frankel. Shawn Boburg, Josh Dawsey, Ashley Parker and Alex Horton. March 27, 2023.

  What the Owner of an AR-15 Sees in Every Single Place He Goes. By Mathew Walther.  The New York Times. April 4, 2023.