Breaking the Links

"Mass shootings" have made their way back into the American news cycle, with the shootings in the Atlanta area, then in Colorado and now a shooting in Orange, California. And again it's triggered a debate about "gun control" and "assault weapons." These debates are predictably partisan by this point, because of the various constituencies that the parties represent. Affluent city-dwellers and suburbanites who tend to feel themselves threatened by random acts of violence perpetrated by people with guns tend to vote Democratic, and people who live in rural areas and enjoy shooting sports, fear the breakdown of society or fear the tyranny of (Democratic) government tend to vote Republican. This polarization in the voter demographics tends to drive a similar polarization at the legislative level. (And yes, I did leave out the various non-white groups that have interests here. Mainly because I don't feel that their concerns are at all driving the broader conversation. Republicans may use gang violence in Black and Hispanic communities as something scary to motivate their voters, but neither party is showing publicly any investment in dealing with that particular problem in a way that would drive lasting change.)

The two blocks have divergent interests, brought about by their divergent visions of what a safe (or safer, anyway) world looks like. In broad strokes, the Democratic idea of a safe world is one in which people who wish to be violent lack certain tools with which to commit violence, while the Republican idea of a safe world is one in which people can meet force with greater force, and thus suppress the viability of violence as a tool. As one might have guessed, these are more or less mutually exclusive with one another (as are so many other things in American political discourse), mainly because they understand the problem very differently. And each side understands their particular viewpoint as being backed up, not by some facts, but by the facts. Which, despite the fact that it's often seen as cherry-picking, is reasonable; the entire set of relevant information is quite vast, and most people obtain their information from people who have already chosen a side, and media outlets that understand the desires of their audiences (even if they don't always intentionally cater to them). Information, like water, seeks its level, and in so doing, tends to find those who are most receptive to it.

Where things become muddied is when there is an understanding that rather than a set of facts, allowing or rationalizing a certain set of policies, the facts demand certain policy prescriptions, such that accepting that some given set of facts is accurate is considered an endorsement, if not a mandate, for the policy positions one favors. So, for example, an activist might hold that if one accepts that shootings with guns that were covered by Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act are often mass shootings, then one must also accept that the Act should be reinstated. And this (just like it does for anthropogenic climate change) adds a level of motivation to the differing understandings of the facts, since facts that mandate unwelcome policy changes must be contested.

This stems in part, I would guess, from the idea that there are right and wrong ways to respond to particular facts. So tobacco companies sought to sew doubt about the links between tobacco smoking and cancer, because "I'm willing to accept some risk of a bad outcome in order to partake of this activity" was not seen as a legitimate viewpoint, whereas "in the absence of convincing evidence, this activity may be viewed as risk-free" was. So the question, at least for me, becomes: If it had been more acceptable to smoke, despite the risk of cancer, would there have been a perceived need to cast doubt on the level (or even existence) of risk? Likewise, in the current back-and-forth on firearms and public safety, would a decoupling of facts and policy allow for people to more readily accept different sources of facts?

Not that I think this likely. The last time I had a discussion with someone concerning climate change, they were adamant that someone who acknowledged the changes to the Earth's climate was ethically obligated to accept whatever changes to the economy and people's lifestyles were required to reverse the changes. And while I understand the position, I believe that it makes the discussion over what's actually happening higher-stakes than is useful. And this, I think, lends itself to the idea that people's perceptions of the facts are tainted where they have an interest in certain policy outcomes.

The outcome of all of this is that the status quo becomes the norm, because neither side can marshal broad support for facts that can be evaluated to support change. Each side focuses on the facts that they presume support their case to the exclusion of others, and considers those facts that the other raises to be suspect; either taken out of context, or completely fabricated. Can decoupling facts from policies prevent this? I have no idea. But I suspect that it can't make things worse.