Gun Bullshit & Ever Receding Goalposts

One of the common patterns of my recent gun-control discussions, which were fired up by the recent assault weapon ban, but part of pretty much every gun control discussion I've ever had:

Me: Guns are dangerous, some guns are more dangerous than others and have no good place in civilian life.

Anti-ban person:  Bullshit. Show me some proof! Where are the facts?

Me:  Here are some facts.

AB:  Those facts are bullshit, show me more facts.

Me:  Here are more facts:

AB: Those facts are also bullshit, or random, or irrelevant to this situation, or there are not enough of them.

Me: Here are some targeted and relevant statistics then.

AB: Those statistics are bullshit!

Me: Here are even more statistics from a variety of sources.

AB: Statistics are bullshit!

Me: Sigh.

And on and on we go chasing after an ever receding goal post until we (sometimes) mire in some conspiracy theory territory for a bit and then finally reach one of two conclusions:

The ghost exit (a.ka. crickets)

The respectful bow-out. (a.k.a Well, we just have to agree to disagree!)

So far, the flame-out option hasn't happened much, which is good. What also hasn't happened? Gun peoples owning up to the fact that they are kicking the goalpost a lot harder than the ball.  Usually there is only one reason to do that: the goalpost was only ever bullshit anyway.

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Most anti-gun ban people are not lying. They don't know they are full of shit. They just are.

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The thing is, I do not believe most gun-advocates, those that oppose the current ban (or other control measures), are trying to bullshit me. Some yes, most no. My opinion is that most really don't know their arguments are bullshit because they are motivated to believe them, despite any facts. Thus the endless chase, endless because most of those facts must be devalued when they threaten something they hold dear. That's not a gun person thing, that's just human nature. We all do that shit. Thankfully, most of that shit doesn't involve such deadly weapons.

My hope is always to bring out the moment of dissonance in these discussions - basically the time-to-face-the-music moment. The vast majority of these conversations are with good people, people I respect. So it's about asking good people to face the reality of bad choices. And then hope they do the right thing.

One of the greatest reasons we fail to get there, I think, is the amount of time and energy we have to spend pushing past all the bullshit.

It takes a lot of energy and courage to breakdown our beliefs and put them to the test. It takes even more to dismantle them and change them when we find out were are mistaken.  By the time we get to the moment where that becomes possible we are all usually so fucking tired of talking about it that it's a lost cause before it even starts.

I'm still working on some shortcuts for this, but so far? No joy.

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Thoughts about the post? Feel free to drop me a line.