tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6567396730298487402.post2475451896717301594..comments2024-02-28T20:43:43.739-08:00Comments on An Unexpected Error: Armed and DangerousRichard Badalamentehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06008785529404172402noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6567396730298487402.post-19084016369727865232012-12-15T10:33:12.923-08:002012-12-15T10:33:12.923-08:00Here's how Donald Braman - associate professo...Here's how Donald Braman - associate professor at George Washington University Law School - and Dan Kahan - professor at Yale Law School - put it in 2006:<br />For one segment of American society, guns symbolize honor, human mastery over nature, and individual self-sufficiency. By opposing gun control, individuals affirm the value of these meanings and the vision of the good society that they construct. For another segment of American society, however, guns connote something else: the perpetuation of illicit social hierarchies, the elevation of force over reason, and the expression of collective indifference to the well-being of strangers. These individuals instinctively support gun control as a means of repudiating these significations and of promoting an alternative vision of the good society that features equality, social solidarity, and civilized nonagression.<br /><br />These competing cultural visions, we will argue, are what drive the gun control debate. They are what dispose individuals to accept certain empirically grounded public-safety arguments and to reject others. Indeed, the meanings that guns and gun control express are sufficient to justify most individuals’ positions on gun control independently of their beliefs about guns and safety. It follows that the only meaningful gun control debate is one that explicitly addresses whether and how the underlying cultural visions at stake should be embodied in American law.Richard Badalamentehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06008785529404172402noreply@blogger.com