The dumbest thing you’ll read all year

And since it’s December 31, that’s saying something.

Is it possible to be too educated? Most people would say “no”. As an engineer, I would normally say “no”. There’s always something new to learn, especially outside your field. How could that be a bad thing? But after reading this OP-ED piece in the desperately anti-gun New York Times, you may find yourself joining me in the belief that perhaps one can have too much education. The author, Gary Gutting, is a philosophy professor at Notre Dame; a position that requires quite a bit of education. However, it appears that Prof. Gutting has gone ’round the bend from highly educated to appallingly ignorant.

So long story short: We need more gun control in the US because racism.

Yup… It’s that stupid. (Technically, it’s called the fallacy of the undistributed middle)

So never mind that the first gun control laws in America were intended to disarm, among other non-Whites, Black freedmen. So never mind that modern gun control’s legal framework has its origins in the Jim Crow laws of the post-war South. Never mind that California’s odd open carry laws were based on a fear of Black men with guns. Resistance to new gun control laws, as per the good Prof, is grounded in racism.

No, it doesn’t make any sense to me either. If it makes sense to you, seek help.

Some people might be tempted to “Fisk” a piece like this, but it’s just not worth the effort. A thorough “Fisking” requires that the piece in question make some points, which when taken in isolation, possibly make sense. This piece lacks even that. However, there is one area where it does raise an interesting question: Why are crime rates so drastically different between the Black and Non-Black communities? Gutting’s impossibly stupid answer is “cuz racism”. But there is a difference in the crimes rates. Why?

It simply can’t be race. A Black teen living in Calabasas is no more likely to end up in prison than his Jewish best friend. He’s no more likely to end up in the wrong end of a gun than any of his White classmates. If this were a question of race, then he’d be a dead man walking. But, he’s not. So why is the outlook so different for his cousin who lives in Compton? If it’s not race, then it must be culture.

Urban communities suffer more from violence, including gun-related violence, because their culture tolerates it. Gutting laments the lack of gun-related violence in affluent neighborhoods because he sees this as an impediment to passing new gun control laws.

But imagine if there regularly were shootings in previously “safe” white areas.   Now there are frequent killings on the Magnificent Mile, the Gold Coast and in Lincoln Park. Both the perpetrators and the victims are white, and, despite greatly increased police protection, the violence continues. Given the strong support for gun control among residents of these areas, the cause would quickly become very personal.

Yup… He really said that. He really wished for more crime in non-Black neighborhoods so that gun control would be more popular.

Gutting’s solution is not to change the inner-city culture; it’s to punish non-Black Americans. Rather than do something to end the suffering in Black neighborhoods, his solution is to spread it to non-Black neighborhoods.

How does one get this stupid?

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