Gun Control and Privacy ... briefly

I'm back. I wasn't really away, though, just wasn't posting new entries. There have been a few comments, which is exciting to me. It's always much more interesting when there's a dialog in comparison to when there's only a monologue. I've added a "widget" over on the left hand side that will track the 5 most recent comments if you want to go back and read what's being said. I actually added that back in the beginning of May (wow, already 2 weeks into May) when I changed out of the maroon and orange.

With a couple of those comments in mind, I plan to use the rest of this entry to ramble a bit about something that seems to be counter-intuitive. Before I get going on this, I want to preface that while I'm going to be talking about liberal and conservative generalities, I consider both sides to be a bit baffling. I am not at all saying that the liberals are right and the conservatives wrong ... and while I do find both persuasions are equally odd-ball, I probably will in the end try to justify my own beliefs. Confused yet? Hopefully I'll make more sense once I get down to it.

Almost all of the comments so far have revolved around gun control. I really didn't intend for gun control to become the hot topic here, at least not yet, not with my entries to date. I personally have never owned a gun but I have lived in a house with a gun. The only guns I shot are on my Wii but I admit that I would enjoy going to a shooting range and learn how to properly use a gun. I don't have a problem with people owning guns but I do think there should be certain restrictions on types of guns and ammunition and I also think that people owning guns have a huge responsibility to keep their firearms safe.

Following strict political persuasions, I think it is fair to say that conservatives are pro-gun ownership while liberals are pro-gun control. Some people may see that as complete opposites but I believe that there can be compromise and that it doesn't have to be one way or another.

Now that we have an incredibly brief view of the sides of the gun control debate, I'd like to compare it to the privacy debate, especially when you think about things like the Patriot Act. I would argue that, perhaps only indirectly, gun ownership is tied to privacy so wouldn't it make sense that gun rights activists would be against violations of privacy such as the Patriot Act? And wouldn't gun control activists be for something like the Patriot Act if it is in the best interest of public safety? Bizarrely, the answer to those questions is no. Conservatives who tend to be against gun control are also for the Patriot Act. Liberals who tend to be for gun control are very much opposed to the Patriot Act. What is going on here?

There are, of course, other issues where liberals and conservatives seem to be a contradiction to themselves but I really don't want to get into that yet. In fact, I'm not really sure how much I'll get into this discrepancy in regards to the issues of gun control and of privacy. The only thing I can do is try to explain my own wobbly reasoning.

Gun control isn't imposed on specific individuals based on evidence from an intelligence agency and granted by private courts with records that no one has access to. Gun control is imposed on people in the act of buying a gun. Some guns and ammunition are deemed to be too dangerous and unnecessary for private ownership across the board. Everything else in the gun control is a gun owner's journey to prove he/she is responsible to own a gun, to carry a concealed gun, etc.

Things like the Patriot Act, though, are invasive based on flimsy evidence. Most people for the Patriot Act and other forms of invasion of privacy will say things like "well, if you're not doing anything wrong, who cares if someone in monitoring you?" and "I know I'm not a criminal so it doesn't bother me for someone to listen in on my conversations." I think that's a pretty easy thing for most Americans, particularly white Americans, to say. It is usually first generation Americans or people of Arabic or Islamic descent who's rights are being trampled and who have to prove themselves because certain key words were taken out of context in their emails.

I'm not sure I explained myself well enough here but I'm going to stop for now. As always, I'd be interested in hearing what others think and discussing it in the comments.