Regulations, Trust, Guns

Good regulations promote trust and facilitate our ability to conduct ourselves without being encumbered to think about the risks we face to our very survival every day.  For example, imagine what driving would be like without regulation, without traffic signals or licensing, without speed limits or turn signals.  Imagine cars with sharp protruding dashboards and handles and without seat belts or airbags.  Imagine no car seats for children or laws against drunk driving.

Laws and regulations help to fulfill our constitutional mandate as a people to have a government that, in addition to other mandates is to promote the general welfare.  And our welfare is immeasurably improved by the promotion of trust in one another.  Without regulation our trust would be diminished.  In the case of automobiles, we would inch along every street suspecting that every driver was untrained, unlicensed and under the influence.  We would need to stop at each intersection to be certain that cross traffic was going to give us the right of way, at each bridge to be sure it was strong enough or, if going under it, high enough, and we would require more caution when taking unknown roads with unknown hazards.

The notion that we cannot rely on regulations and laws and societal norms, that we must be constantly prepared to defend ourselves against an imminent threat to our ourselves and our loved ones is, I believe, what drives those who propound having guns at the ready, and who believe that concealed carry and open carry laws will reduce gun violence.  But contrary to the claim that more guns will instill a sense of security, I believe these proposed solutions create a profound mistrust of others and encumbers each of us to assume an unrelenting sense of threat for our survival at every moment.

Laws that promote carrying personal weapons as a daily feature of our lives diminish the capacity of people to trust their surroundings and the people they encounter.  As a society we have professionals, police and private security guards, to establish our security so we don’t have to prepare and monitor for threats to our immediate survival most of the time.  

None of this is to deny the real and present dangers to our lives.  Crime, aging bridges and buildings, automobiles and irresponsible drivers, toxic chemicals, unstable people with access to weapons, terrorists, these dangers, if not addressed, regulated or otherwise mitigated can reduce our lives to that of overriding suspicion and fear.  

In the USA in the year 2016, something on the order of 40,000 people died in vehicular accidents and upwards of 4.5 million were injured, many devastatingly so (see end note).  It is a risk we take to get to and from our work, our friends, our doctors, entertainment and to accomplish the multiple tasks of daily living that we do for ourselves, our family and others.  So regulations have their limitations.  They can only go so far in providing for our safety and general welfare.  Regulations put in place to improve the safety features of automobiles have had some positive impact, to be sure, but we could go further. We could reduce speed limits, for example, especially on interstate highways, which most probably would dramatically reduce accidents, save lives and result in fewer injuries.  But slowing down our expressways will also slow down our commerce.  Fewer medicines will be available in time to save lives, local markets will gain an advantage over national markets, constraining competition, allowing for more scarcity and higher prices. So regulations have their limitations and must be considered in the larger context of what we want as a society. 

Laws and regulations go hand in hand with individual responsibility.  Regulations that allow us to trust one another more don’t obviate the need for caution.  Children must still learn to look both ways before crossing a street.  People in unfamiliar territory should be wary of strangers.  It’s probably a good idea to lock your car and house at night.

To trust is to establish a firm belief in the reliability or truth of someone or something.  Trust is not blind faith, to be maintained in the absence of evidence, but something which is acquired and maintained, or lost, through periodic evaluation of the evidence.

For the most part we trust our societal systems, that police protect us, that doctors cure us, that the waterworks won’t poison us.  Yes, there are exceptions to these expectations and when the exceptions mount in frequency or severity our trust is lost and we seek redress, we seek change, we seek justice.

But the presence of weapons in our daily lives is not a solution that will instill trust or reduce gun violence.  Guns, rifles, semi-automatics must be regulated.  Who can own and use them, where they can be carried or housed, and when they are appropriate are all within the framework of the second amendment and the supreme court rulings that have been made to date. 

Death is certain and life is always on the edge of chaos.  But modern civilization advances through progressive improvements in the quality of human existence. Trust is an essential aspect for living in peace, and the more we can find ways to trust one another, the more likely it will be that peace and tranquility can prevail.  More guns are not the answer.

End Note:  Automobile statistics from Kirsten Korosec, February 15, 2017 638 PM Fortune Autos section. Timeinc.net.

A cold winter day

Looking out on a cold winter day.  The trees bereft of leaves, the ground frozen and seemingly barren.  Winter encourages a comparison with the other seasons and encourages a view of transformation and change that is part and parcel of our existence. We can not have a stable, steady life without change, any more than there can be day without night.

Part of our maturation and growth unfolds from the genetic blueprint encoded in our DNA, a blueprint that is reconstructed anew, changed and transformed from each set of parents to each child. The uniqueness of each physical being, the composition of proteins, the size and shape of each bone and muscle, the neural network of each brain and nervous system is based on a long evolutionary chain of challenge and test.  Of traits that remain and of traits that are removed from the blueprint.

So too is it that our choices lead us toward some possible futures and away from others.  Every choice leading down one path, leaving behind another.  Sometimes our choices are based on decisions that are too exclusionary, too dogmatic, decisions that unnecessarily take us too close to the things we choose to align with, and move us too far away from the things we have purposely or unmindfully excluded from our lives.  Like the forces of tectonic plates which shift and slide among one another, there is a natural tendency for our choices to re-align, for our beliefs to adjust to the past excesses of earlier intentions, those “I’ll nevers”  or “I’ll only’s” that made sense in the heat of a particular passion but which, over time, can be seen in a clearer light.

Transformation allows for a resetting of intentions and, conversely, a resetting of intentions allows for transformation and growth.  Recalibration brings you closer to those things which you’ve pushed away, and allows you to adjust your course to move away from those things that no longer serve you.

12/31/2017

East of the Vietnam War Memorial

I am east of the Vietnam War memorial wall now.  I had walked from F street and 12^th to the Washington monument, then up past the reflecting pool to the Lincoln memorial.  To the south is the Jefferson rotunda and, to the north, the White House.  Behind me is the Capital building. 

Washington, for all its power and corruption is still a spiritual place, steeped in an ideology of justice and freedom. 

People with lofty ideals are never-the-less the product of their times. They are tied to the outright prejudices and lingering doubts of their ancestors.  To allow for something less than the ideal is sometimes seen as hypocrisy.  But ideals are not meant to reflect what is, but what can be.  To voice what you wish to be true, even when your own behavior subverts achieving it, is a step forward to manifesting a better future.

Lincoln presided over a country in civil war.  A war about economics, about what is and is not permissible to buy and sell;  about whether certain people can serve as just another means of production.  It was a war that was meant to define who the we of “we the people” were.  A defining that continues today to establish those differences that can be tolerated among a peolpe who call themselves a nation.

But there comes a time when an idea, like slavery, can no longer coexist with the evolving thought of the times; when a practice deviates from a multitude of other closely held values such that the tectonic plates of a culture shift, and those who persist in their outmoded beliefs are toppled from power.

At any point in time, the prevailing culture of America is always rife with fault lines that demarcate transitions from old to new, from that which was accepted or tolerated to that which is increasingly perceived as undesirable as well as those things that were once undesirable but are now perceived as benign or in some way beneficial.

At the core of our understanding are the notions our founders called out in the preamble to the U.S. constitution:

• To form a more perfect union
• To establish justice
• To insure domestic tranquility
• To secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity

If these are the ideals we share, if this is the nation we seek to be, then whatever political acrimony of the day must be relegated to a squabble, a spat, a disagreement about how we achieve these loftier goals. 

 (November 7, 2001)

Aside...

Aside:  I’m changing the nature and format of the writings that I’ve published here, but not the overall topic.  Bridging the Divide remains as a fundamental objective.  Divide of what?  Well, that’s what I’m exploring.  What is it that divides us?  Not only from one another but from ourselves?  What keeps us from being our best selves? What keeps our society from being the best society? What keeps us from being the best partner, the best parent, the best of whatever we aspire to?  Not a competitive best, but the best in terms of what heredity and circumstance offer us.  Grace to some, blind dumb luck to others. 

Bridging, what does this mean?  To cross, to integrate, to increase connection to.  So together, Bridging the Divide means to cross over, integrate and increase connection to what keeps us from being our best selves, what keeps our society from being the best society.  And there is no getting around the fact that we are, each of us is, the fundamental unit from which society is made.

In the past I treated this blog, and the writings which preceded it within a formal framework of publication.  My own rules to be sure, and not of sufficient rigor that they were able to produce a product having perfect grammar or spelling or logic or relevance or interest.    Still, it was on the other side of the current continuum of tweets and Facebook posts, on the side of “resistance to make public” until I had edited and revised to a point of resignation – “this is the best I can do.”

I’m going to compromise and allow for more imperfection, more half-baked, ill-conceived ideas to escape the safety of my private world.   Because the times have changed.  Because it appears that we have lost our collective ability to integrate logic and subjective experience into a vision of a collective future.  A future in which the widest breadth of human experience and potential is allowed to evolve into the greatest good.