A White Nationalist terrorist wearing body armor kills twenty people and injures twenty-six more, and the Governor of Texas, in his first response to the horror, makes an impassioned plea for yet more legislation to address ... mental health issues.
Is there any way that Silicon Valley wizards could devise an attachment to automatic weapons so that they only can kill gun rights activists?
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A Commentary on the Passing Scene by Robert Paul Wolff rwolff@afroam.umass.edu
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About Me
- Robert Paul Wolff
- As I observed in one of my books, in politics I am an anarchist, in religion I am an atheist, and in economics I am a Marxist. I am also, rather more importantly, a husband, a father, a grandfather, and a violist.
41 comments:
I realize I might lose the few leftist friends I may still have on this blog by posing the following question, but I'm being completely sincere and serious:
I'm a gun owner. I have never once considered using my gun as an act of violence towards another human being or animal. If I were to consider that, as something other than impending self-defense, I don't think it's irrational to assert that I would be mentally unhealthy. That is, to even consider slaughtering other human beings is a sign of waning mental health. To actually slaughter them is the act of someone who is mentally unhealthy. Why is this claim wrong? [Note this point is divorced from how best to regulate firearms, if at all].
The whole framework reminds me of the poverty of the abortion debate. You're either pro life or pro choice, as if someone can't be both pro choice and pro life, or even anti-life and anti-choice (e.g., certain forms of anti-natalism). Similarly, can't one decide that they think gun deaths in America are BOTH products of an overzealous gun culture, with too much easy access to guns COUPLED WITH mental health problems? I would argue that the overzealous gun culture is already a sign of a mental health problem...
What makes me so angry is how it's a blatant misdirection. They don't care about mental illness. You KNOW they don't. When they talk about trans people, you know they're using "mental illness" the same exact way, as a way to dismiss the issue completely. What do they think they're even saying? Should we have universal Healthcare so everyone can have access to therapy? Should we do something about capitalism and its toxic conception of merit and human value? They don't want to do shit.
Chris,
Why do you own a gun?
As for mental health, I've never been sure what that term means. I read a lot of the anti-psychiatry literature in the 60's and it has stuck with me.
Chris,
Below is a link of a Sanders being interviewed on CNN just a short while ago in the aftermath of the shootings. He speaks to this precise question--of gun policy and mental health--and I'd be curious where if at all you'd disagree with what he says (go to 2:27 for the question and then his response).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9zP15t53DI
That the republican politicians (not voters) are full of shit and insincere is of course true. But that's independent of whether or not gun violence is ACTUALLY connected to mental health concerns. I don't why it wouldn't be?
Oh god, Wallerstein, I don't know if I want to publicly answer that question. Let's just say its for defense, in the event I need it. I'll e-mail you specifics later.
I've read my Foucault, there are serious reasons to be 'anti-psychiatry' (like Wolff, I'm still a Freudian), but if you're desiring to shoot up a wal-mart, or a home depot, or whatever, I don't think it's egregious to say you're not of sound mind. I realize defining sound mind and unhealthy mind are difficult tasks, perhaps impossible, but although I can't give you a consummate definition of health, I knowing being indefinitely moribund is not healthy, and wanting to slaughter people you don't even know, is also, not healthy.
Talha,
I just watched it, and stopped at 3:57 when things became tweet related. I hope that's alright. Okay, I'm going to lose all support, and even consideration, from everyone on this blog:
I side with the far right on gun ownership. Basically, full stop. Sanders is right that of course there is a connection between mass shootings and mental health. There has to be, to deny this is to imply that shooting up places is mentally healthy. That's obscene. And prima facie he's right that mass gun ownership, coupled with insecure health, seems risky. But that's hardly a reason to regulate, deny sales, or take guns away. We have an obscenity epidemic but I don't want the state raiding my pantry. We have an idiocy and ADHD epidemic, but I don't want the state taking my copies of Seinfeld or whatever (that's the least high brow DVD set I own haha!).
Here's what bugs me about the gun debate. Is gun violence bad? Yes. Is gun violence targeted at innocents bad? Of course. Whose the largest perpetrator of targeted violence that kills innocents? The United STATES of America, not John or Jane Doe. So I'll be happy to start regulating guns, firearms, and firearm related deaths if and when we start with the state first. Anything else strikes me as a false move, e.g., when republicans say they will lower the debt and deficit by cutting school lunches.
I agree with Libertarians and the Right that despotic and tyrannical regimes often first desire to disarm their populace. Is Bernie a future tyrant? No, but the idea that we could have an American tyrant, who had the full force of the American Empire behind him, and would love a disarmed populace, is not outrageous to me. So I'm not prepared to start disarming the populace, especially when I agree with the right that the larger problem regarding mass shootings is not the existing of guns (just as the obesity problem is not a product of the existence of food), but the existence of some serious mental health issues.
(I know the next reply is that the US empire is now so armed, that gun ownership is useless as a defense mechanism so let's get rid of them anyway. But this reply both 1) entirely AFFIRMS my point above, about whether or not we are serious about ending firearm violence: then we must begin with the state, and 2) even David brought a slingshot to fight Goliath)
Goodbye friends! ;)
I'm not sure that the concept of mental health is useful in general.
Is the guy who would never walk into a Walmart and shoot people, but has no problem firing a drone into a wedding party in Afghanistan mentally healthy?
The guy who kills people in Walmart for racist reasons is a racist, is cruel, is a product of a racist society.
The guy who fires drones into a wedding parties in Afghanistan is rule-following, conventional, has an authoritarian personality, etc.
Why bring sickness and health into it except so that the doctors can treat them and the drug companies can push new legal drugs?
Is the guy who believes he is Napoleon mentally ill and the guy who believes that Mary was a virgin mentally healthy? I could go on.
No such luck with me, Chris. Though on this issue we are very far apart, I'm more curious than repelled by what you say. Is your view motivated more by: (a) deep anti-statism (against a monopolist of violence), (b) individual freedom (against social regulation), or (c) individual responsibility (against "blaming the gun, rather than the shooter")? Don't feel obliged to answer; I'm happy to drop it, just curious.
(For the record I have a pretty standard lefty position on the issue, of wanting massive gun regulation. And I very much hope that the conjunction of this recent spate of private terror + leading Dems feeling it's a good anti-Trump issue to campaign on will result in some legislative movement.)
"Is the guy who would never walk into a Walmart and shoot people, but has no problem firing a drone into a wedding party in Afghanistan mentally healthy?"
No, he's not. This is a difference in degree, or manifestation, not a difference in kind.
"Why bring sickness and health into it except so that the doctors can treat them and the drug companies can push new legal drugs?"
Okay, let's bracket out the drug companies and doctors, I suspect you and I are in total consensus on those institutions. So, let's deal with just the first part of your question:
"Why bring sickness and health into it":
Because just saying "gun violence is caused by the existence of lots of guns" is false. Just as saying "obesity is caused by the existence of lots of food" or "rape is caused by the existence of [oh I dunno] lots of members of the opposite sex" is unsatisfactory. Granted, you can't rape people of the opposite sex without them existing, you can't get obese without food around, and you can't shoot people without a gun, it doesn't follow that the existence of these things is a sufficient explanation. So we need something else. Mental health seems like a plausible something else. Unless you have another suggestion?
Yes, I have a lot of other suggestions. We have a rich vocabulary for describing human behavior and it was used by everyone before the mental health racket took over. Read Dostoyevsky about Raskolnikov or Shakespeare about Macbeth or Camus about Meursault or Nietzsche about slave and master morality.
There is no way to predict with any reasonable degree of certainty whether a given individual will kill or not. What can be done is control the weapons available. Gun deaths declined when the assault weapons ban was in place (1994-2004). Reinstatement of that would be a good place to start. No one needs an assault rifle-for hunting or home protection or "sport." Someone who thinks owning an assault weapon will allow him to resist a despotic regime is likely to be exactly the kind person who shouldn't have a weapon of any kind.
Talha,
It's honestly a combination of (a)-(c), and I can't pin down which dominates. If anything I insist you DO PRESS ME, because I've never sat down and fully worked out my views on the matter, they are only semi developed.
I'm a Marxist, but like Marx, also an anti-statist in the long run. Unlike 19th century Anarchists, I'm happy to use the state to achieve class victories, and also anti-statist victories (e.g., making what Snowden did legal, or reforming the NSA in the wake of Snowden's leaks), while recognizing this is pragmatism (and not nihilistic pragmatism like DP). Now it is true that presently the American empire just is, de facto, a massively destructive institution of violence. Anyone that disputes that can be disbarred from further discussion. Okay, so what's the largest generator of firearm violence? Individuals in America, or the state? Obviously the latter. So if we are SERIOUS about targeting gun violence, why aren't we starting with the state? [Just as Chomsky always points out, if we are serious about maintaining the integrity of our elections, the solution isn't FIRST to deal with Putin, the solution is first to get money out of politics].
(b) and (c) are very tricky, in that, I think the answer is both YES and NO. And we need some post-liberal socialist synthesis that transcends this rigid paradigm. It's true that on the one hand I don't think the mistakes someone else makes should be used to reform others, i.e., you're responsible for your actions, not mine. That covers (b) and (c), but also, it's quite clear to me that attraction to firearms, how they're sold, how they're made, etc etc are not 'individual issues, but clearly larger social ones. That is, the avenues we choose to exercise our freedom and responsibility in are not avenues of our own making: "Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past." That Marxian sentiment is also correct. So we are at a political impasse here.
My outstanding questions remain though:
1. Is the existence of guns the cause of gun violence? If you say no, then we need to discuss what the cause is, instead of just taking guns away and disarming people.
2. Do states rely on disarming to further their tyrannical power? The answer is yes, right? If so, then at a minimum we should be weary of gun regulation, and at a maximum we should insist on the state disarming first.
"Read Dostoyevsky about Raskolnikov or Shakespeare about Macbeth or Camus about Meursault or Nietzsche about slave and master morality. "
I've read all the above many times. So feel free to keep spelling out your view. Fine, let's drop mental health. Either way the mere existence of guns is not a sufficient explanation for gun violence. So what is? Call it what you will.
Sociologist Randall Collins explains the gun controversy in America and on this blog
http://sociological-eye.blogspot.com/2018/03/
"There is no way to predict with any reasonable degree of certainty whether a given individual will kill or not. What can be done is control the weapons available."
Right, but this chain of reasoning is a serious slippery slope. Again, my left friends, I'm not insisting I'm right, I hope you all prove me wrong in fact, but I don't like this argument. We can plug in anything for "kill" and start getting tyrannical.
"There is no way to predict with any reasonable degree of certainty whether a given individual will overeat or not. What can be done is control the food available."
"There is no way to predict with any reasonable degree of certainty whether a given individual will be racist or not. What can be done is control racial interaction."
etc etc
"Gun deaths declined when the assault weapons ban was in place (1994-2004)."
On the other hand we blew up a Somalian chemical factory, and murdered a million people in Iraq.
"No one needs an assault rifle-for hunting or home protection or "sport.""
There's lots we consume that we don't "need". Again, we are approaching tyranny in deciding for people what leisure needs they can and can't have.
"Someone who thinks owning an assault weapon will allow him to resist a despotic regime is likely to be exactly the kind person who shouldn't have a weapon of any kind."
Uhm what? Why? Do we resist despotism with prayer? hugs? I'm lost on this claim.
You have to sit down with people, ask them questions and see what motivates them instead of calling them "sick".
A very close woman friend went to one therapist after another for her "depression". She mainly saw therapists in the public health service, which is free, and they talked to her for a few minutes and then prescribed some medication for her illness. It didn't help much.
Finally, she came into some money and she very carefully selected a therapist whom she believed could understand her existential situation, someone who would try to see "where she is coming from", what motivates her, what has influenced her and to try to get her to "resignify" (that's the term the therapist uses) her worldview. She's been going to that therapist weekly for years and she is now a more rational, more secure, stronger,
more autonomous human being. I suggest that that can be done with any human being with
"problems" as long as someone has the patience and empathy to try to understand their existential situation as "a situation" not as an illness.
[p.s. Talha the reason I'm weary of (b) and (c) is that if I'm honest with myself...I know deep down, if given power, I really would ban reality television, Hollywood films, romance and spy novels, pop songs, all songs under 3 minutes, trucks, and all the other hedonistic and impoverishing crap that lines 99% of our commercial shelves. So I shouldn't be given power. Or, regulating human behavior is a great idea. Impasse.]
You've said nothing I disagree with Wallerstein. So the problem with gun violence is people in certain "situations". Good. So what's the solution? Banning guns, or dealing with the situations? The latter, no? Call it whatever you will, but I think we are in agreement here.
The long term solution is sit down with people and to see why they are so filled with hatred, to try to empathize with their hatred and hostility and to try to get them to care a bit about their fellow human beings, to care enough so that they don't kill them.
That is a long term goal and while we're working on that, I suggest that stricter gun control might be helpful.
We agree on the long term goal. Are there any short term goals that might aid in the long term goal, that don't entail depriving others though?
We live in such violent, aggressive societies (look at how people drive, look at how they shop, look at sports, look at how subordinate employees are treated in the workplace). I guess if the daily atmosphere was less violent and aggressive, people would feel less hatred and hostility.
P.S. Talha and D.P., I accept your claim here Talha:
"(For the record I have a pretty standard lefty position on the issue, of wanting massive gun regulation. And I very much hope that the conjunction of this recent spate of private terror + leading Dems feeling it's a good anti-Trump issue to campaign on will result in some legislative movement.) "
I accept it, in that, I'm willing to lose my principle gun argument to get Bernie in office. So, hypothetically, if we had clear polling data that said "If Bernie goes full universal ban on all weapons, he will beat Trump", I would implore him as campaign advisor to make that move. I'm not so committed to ensuring firearm liberty that it takes priority over basically everything else we all discuss: M4A, free college, greener technology, ending capitalism, worker democracy, increased minimum wage, etc etc., are all a priority over gun ownership for me, and I would sacrifice gun ownership to achieve any of these goals. However, like the abortion debate, and the M4A debate DP has been raising, I find the discussion itself lackluster and impoverishing, and so I'm pressing back for those reasons alone, not because I'm so in love with my firearm that I'll fight to the death to keep it. I wouldn't.
Again we agree Wallerstein. Which is why I think regulating gun access and ownership is treating a micro symptom, not the disease/problem. There's something else going on besides the existence of guns, just as there's something also going on on the highway besides access to cars, or in the local bar during football season, besides access to televisions with sports on.
However, although the United States armed branch is not driving cars into people's mortal bodies (well not all the time at least), or throwing footballs into their skulls, it's definitely shooting people without caution.
Chris--How does it follow that if we kill people in an immoral war overseas it's OK to murder each other at home?
Also. I'm unfamiliar with the term "nihilist pragmatist." How does it differ from the non-nihilist variety?
It doesn't follow from that. I would never argue that. What I argued was that one of these two scenarios has remarkably more gun violence than the other, so if we are serious about ending gun violence, one of these two cases should take priority. But it doesn't. So the arguers against gun violence strike me as missing the point.
I've beaten the nihilistic pragmatic horse to death DP, if you're still not sure what I'm saying either Talha must take up the reigns for me, or I give up. Sorry.
Tidying up matters first:
My own view, David, is of course that the position you stand for is centrism, which I believe it is ideologically pernicious to dress up as "pragmatism"--for reasons I've elaborated at length already, yes? But that's my take.
Chris's take--and hopefully he'll correct me if I'm mistaken--is that he takes your pragmatism to focus solely on "taking power" without adherence to any principled commitments (as either goals for, or constraints on, the pursuit of power), and that such a view is "nihilist."
Turning now to (a) through (c), Chris, well... this could blow up into a multi-volume treatise on social and political theory, so in the interests of avoiding that, lemme offer three brief replies:
Re (a)'s statism, I have to say that, first, that despite some early anarchist leanings, I do not actually fully share--or, at least--understand any more the shared anarchist-Marxian long-term aim of "abolish the state." At least if by the state we mean organs of organized societal decision-making/power. Of course that's ostensibly not what "state" means in either liberal or Marxian theory: for the former, it is organs of organized societal decision-making/power the claim a monopoly on the legitimate use of coercion, while for the latter, it the separation of such organs--in terms of their institutionalization and personnel--from the rest of society. (Speaking quickly and roughly.) But whether we should envision or aspire for the long-term erosion of either of these I am also less than clear or strongly committed on--for reasons that will become clear below (having to do with my rejection of the individualist ontology of liberalism that anarchism shares only to radicalize). Btw, none of this means that I don't retain the full-blooded anarchist demand that all laws and other state actions demand legitimation and have no legitimacy unto themselves simply by virtue of being laws, etc. (to that degree I share the "philosophical anarchism" elaborated and defended by Prof. Wolff).
Now, more to the specific point here, you also say re: (a) the following:
"Do states rely on disarming to further their tyrannical power? The answer is yes, right? If so, then at a minimum we should be weary of gun regulation, and at a maximum we should insist on the state disarming first."
I have to admit less than crystalline clarity on this. Is state power ultimately backed by armed force? Sure, yes. But for modern liberal states, at least, you have to go a long way before that "ultimately" is typically exerted--at least against domestic political challenge (as opposed to foreign challenge or domestic legal infractions). And I don't have a clear sense of what it means to say that such modern liberal states "rely on disarming" to "further their tyrannical power." Certainly the citizens of, say, Canada and France are more "disarmed" than those of the US--do the former states have a tighter grip on power over their citizenry as a result? I really don't think so. Perhaps you mean something different, but, again, I am unclear what that might be.
I'm a bit surprised that the role of the NRA in our culture and our politics has not even been mentioned yet.
As for (b) and (c)--i.e., social regulation of individual freedom and strong emphasis on individual responsibility--well, this is an even bigger topic and for which I'll have to be even briefer, at least as an initial salvo.
Put simply, I think that at the deepest level the fundamental insight differentiating Marxian analysis from all others is the recognition that persons are always already social: born into, shaped by and oriented toward social relations (of production, kinship, meaning, etc.) all the way down. The freedom of persons, as individuals or groups or collectives, is (a) neither simply "there" at the outset--some "natural" right or other pre-political blah blah--but rather an achievement realized through reflection and deliberation on one's social circumstances and then either affirmation or change of the same; and (b) nor some "thing" achieved once and for all, but an ongoing process via ongoing emersion in such social relations, to which there is no "outside."
Liberalism, at the deepest philosophical level, is about the fundamental denial of this, a juvenile cry to be "free from" others. Anarchism shares this liberal ontology, only to radicalize it. Both orientations only make sense within a modern (read: capitalist) society, where market-structured social relations have the effect of rendering "society" invisible. The task of socialism, on this view, is to render visible and subject to social agency this behind-our-back and out-of-control form of "second nature."
To bring this back to the concrete points you raise, Chris, for me there simply is no escaping the fact there is always already a "social architecture" framing and shaping individual agency--including, to use your provocative example which I happily bite-the-bullet on and embrace, an individual's dietary choices. For me the choice is *never* between "to regulate or not" but rather "how/who to regulate how/who." To not regulate means to leave something to the impersonal agency of generalized markets.
Talha,
Your take on my take of DP's take of politics is correct :)
Basically, the following is correct:
"Chris...takes your pragmatism to focus solely on "taking power" without adherence to any principled commitments (as either goals for, or constraints on, the pursuit of power), and that such a view is "nihilist.""
--------------
Thank you for your considerate replies Talha.
Regarding (a): First, like a good Marxist, I don't think there is a uniform and timeless definition of the state. Your definition of the state "organs of organized societal decision-making/power" misses that the present form of the state is either disorganized (since a whole class of society, and possibly even whole races are excluded), or is more than this definition. Since the present state, especially the American one, is an Empire with a serious monopoly on violence, which it has made clear it is ready to use on a whim, it's a state that extends beyond your concept. So I'm presently anti-statist.
If you referred to a Shaman and her clique as a state, since it's an organized social deciding factor, or some Rudolph Rocker style syndicate as a state, since it's also a social deciding organ, then it's clear the definition is too flabby. So I'm an anti-statist about the present state, but I'm not against organs of social decision making.
Now regardless of whether or not any of us are anti-statists, that's independent of my arguments about state violence and gun control, which haven't been addressed.
EVERYTHING you say about (b) and (c)I fully accept. Yes the social pre exists the individual, and shapes her through and through. The problem though is that 'Freedom' amd 'Liberty' are not to be categorically jettisoned because of this basic Marxian truism. Liberty and Freedom did score some necessary victories against obvious forms of illegitimate authority, and also secured some much needed protections for citizens against tyrannical states. So the question is how do we preserve what's best in Liberty and Freedom, without, as you rightly put it, collapsing into some false Liberal Ontology, or just securing market freedom under the guise of human freedom. I realize arguing things like 'don't regulate me just because X is acting up' and 'as long as I'm not hurting anyone, leave me alone', can lend themselves to BOTH a positive direction for society, and a purely capitalist market one. That's the impasse and the line I'm poorly straddling in my gun commentary. In that regard I accept your positive notion of Freedom and Liberty, of "how/who to regulate how/who".
Chris,
What is the difference between freedom and liberty? I thought that they were synonyms, and in fact, in Spanish and French there is only one word for both, libertad and liberté.
Perhaps not much of a difference, and in some political texts they are synonymous and in others not so. For instance, it could be argued that a society founded on positive liberty is the most just, but that's a check on certain freedoms.
Bojack Horseman on guns in America
https://www.theviolenceproject.org/mass-shooters
And Beau's take on the study: https://youtu.be/Ht5ldqQdioM
Basically the national institute of justice funded a massive profiling project for mass shooters. As Beau explains it, there's a few really common elements. The shooters tend to have early childhood trauma. They're usually responding to another, recent traumatic experience which they can't cope with. Violence spreads epidemically, when one mass shooter gains notoriety and inspires others. More often than not, the weapons used aren't owned by the shooter.
I dunno if this information changes my perspective on the "mental illness" conversation. But it seems there are some strong predictors for mass violence.
@s wallerstein
There are different kinds of mental illnesses. Depression is one thing; psychoses in which, e.g., a person hears voices that he takes to be real etc., are another.
Drug therapy may work for some people and conditions and not others; ditto for the kind of 'existential' therapy you endorse. But I suggest that your notion that there is no such thing as mental illness is incorrect. And I doubt that reading R.D. Laing or Thomas Szasz would persuade me otherwise.
LFC,
I see nothing wrong with giving people medication if they want it. What I question is labeling people as "mentally ill": that just makes people who generally already feel "different" or "queer" (in the older sense of the word) even worse about themselves.
Don't worry: there's no required reading for this course.
An economist would approach the matter by asking what effect outlawing gun possession would have on the number of mass shootings. Likewise for assault weapons.
Well this Democratic House member just verified my argument!
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EBJBdhrWsAADuSP.jpg:large
"You want to shoot an assault weapon? Go to Afghanistan or Iraq. Enlist!"
Haven't read every single word in the thread, but just for the record (and in case there was any doubt), I disagree with Chris and favor stricter gun laws in the U.S.
In policy terms, I find it strange to suggest that U.S. foreign policy must be fundamentally overhauled etc. before one can/should do anything about gun laws domestically.
But more to the point, I don't think Chris's remarks on guns reflect an accurate portrayal of the state of the debate in the U.S. Almost no one is proposing to ban gun ownership entirely so that law-abiding citizens would be unable to own guns for sport and/or b.c of a (perceived need for) self-defense. (For instance, the Wash. D.C. regulation struck down in the Heller case did not go that far, if memory serves, though not taking the time now to look it up.) Rather, the issue in the U.S. right now is that we have a system filled with so many loopholes etc. that an unstable and/or deranged person can acquire a lethal weapon with minimal difficulty. Moreover, no one needs an AK-47-style assault rifle for sport or self-defense, which is why banning those particular weapons made, and makes, complete sense.
The situation w/r/t gun regulation in the U.S. today is, in my view, quite insane. No other society I'm aware of, certainly not in the so-called developed world, has mass shootings and individual gun homicides at the rate the U.S. does. Arguments from cultural exceptionalism cannot excuse this situation. It's a disgrace (fully as much as some of the official actions of the U.S. state overseas are).
I don't believe that in any other country, developed or not, mass killings at random are frequent.
Several Latin American countries have much higher homicide rates than the U.S., for example, Venezuela, Mexico, Honduras, Brasil (I believe so), etc., but they are almost always homicides due to gang violence, domestic violence or other violent crimes such as armed robbery. It is U.S. cultural exceptionalism, since I have no doubt that in countries like Mexico the use and ownership of firearms is very widespread.
s.w.
Thanks, I take the correction on homicide rates, but I think the basic pt of the comment stands.
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