people aren't good at things

I want to make it clear that I'm not at all exempting myself from this point, so: I am generally amazed when I finish a day without hurting myself. I am clumsy, frequently lost in thought, and easily distractable. I am generally speaking bad at all sports or games that involve coordination or agility. And like a lot of people, things just go wrong for me. I was at a mixer on my very first day at my master's program, years back. I was pretty nervous and just wanted to get through the day without embarrassment. While standing on the deck of the faculty member hosting the party, I shifted my weight and my leg broke through, and I fell in down past my knee. I'm thin, I wasn't jumping or pressing hard. It just happened. I think a lot of people know what it's like to attract mini-disasters.

I say this to make it clear that I'm not being an elitist when I say: the "arm everybody" argument for stopping gun crimes is a bad idea, because people aren't good at things. Most people I observe are just serviceable at most skills. Those that require coordination are even worse. It's not a function of intelligence, and I don't intend it as some sort of terrible condemnation of people. I'm just saying, if you've ever watched somebody work the self-scan machine or try and parallel park, I don't know how you can feel confident proposing that regular people carry guns just in case of a spree killing. Cops and the military have to undergo countless hours of training before they are given weapons, and people can and do flunk out of both professions for a lack of skill.

I really shudder to think of what would happen in the chaos of a mass shooting, if many bystanders pull out their own weapons and start firing. It's hard enough for cops to avoid shooting the wrong person or hitting a bystander. I don't see any good that comes from adding more bullets flying around in these situations.

This argument is all over at the moment. Here's Jeffrey Goldberg's version, just as a point of reference:

People should have the ability to defend themselves. Mass shootings take many lives in part because no one is firing back at the shooters. The shooters in recent massacres have had many minutes to complete their evil work, while their victims cower under desks or in closets. One response to the tragic reality that we are a gun-saturated country is to understand that law-abiding, well-trained, non-criminal, wholly sane citizens who are screened by the government have a role to play in their own self-defense, and in the defense of others (read my print article to see how one armed school administrator stopped a mass shooting in Pearl Mississippi). I don't know anything more than anyone else about the shooting in Connecticut at the moment, but it seems fairly obvious that there was no one at or near the school who could have tried to fight back.

I'm not being glib when I say this: I wonder if Jeff Goldberg has seen most people operate a motor vehicle or even a cart in the supermarket. I know that most people believe themselves to be competent, and they are, at certain skills or talents. But most people are never going to be good at most things, and shooting a gun is a complex skill that requires a lot of practice, and one where failure to perform adequately has tragic results. Solutions that presume broad competencies shared by large groups of people just aren't solutions.