By Greg “RU Twisted” Drobny
For obvious reasons, the talk of “common sense” laws regarding guns is back in the news. And if there’s one thing you can be sure of in political discourse, it’s that whenever the term “common sense” is brought out, there will be a decided lack of critical thought involved.
I have written about the silliness of most gun control efforts several times in the past both here and at The Rhino Den, so it may seem as though I’m repeating myself. However, this time I’m going to try and include more pictures of the A-Team and references to Samuel L. Jackson, so it’s worth sticking around for that.
So back to the point, I’ve seen a lot of call for “common sense reform” in the area of guns and gun laws since the truly awful shooting in South Carolina. Hillary Clinton and President Obama have both made mentions of this ubiquitous term as if it is just a given—that throwing out “common sense” is a slam dunk because it’s as agreed upon as 2+2=4.
News flash: It’s not even close.
Let’s do something crazy, as Thomas Sowell would say, and stop and actually think through this for a moment. Can we do that? Can we approach something without going bat-shit crazy on some partisan rant one way or another? I bet we can. 
The easiest way to do this is to examine the words—because those should matter—of people making these statements. Hillary, in all her vivacious wisdom, offered the following:
“It makes no sense that we couldn’t come together to keep guns out of the hands of domestic abusers, or people suffering from mental illnesses, even people on the terrorist watch list. That doesn’t make sense…”
Holy guacamole, she’s right! I’ve seen the errors of my ways!! I shall now get on board the Hillary Train to CommonSenseVille!!!*
Ahem.
Okay, back in reality land, none of her comment makes any sense on a large scale. Beginning with the first qualifier, how do I say this….oh boy this is awkward…we already have laws designed to keep guns from “domestic abusers.” Guess what? They don’t work and never have. Ever hear of the Lautenberg Amendment? No? Maybe use Google next time, Hillary. Even if you only have one phone, I’m pretty sure it will still do a basic internet search.
Next we have the classic “mental illness.” Right, because that’s not a vague term. I mean everyone agrees on what that is….wait, you’re telling me that around half of all Americans qualify for being labeled with a psychiatric disorder at some point in their lives? Hmmm, so…maybe that’s not as much of a cut-and-dry issue as we thought.
Well, surely we can all get behind denying weapons to those on the terrorist watch lis….Wait, no one knows how people get put on the list? Sonofa bitch. This is becoming decidedly more complicated than I thought.
Okay, full confession—I knew it was ridiculously complicated. That’s my point. Stating “common sense” and acting as if it is some universally agreed upon term is not only hopelessly shallow but it ignores a far bigger problem in our society.
I’ve written before about how the overwhelming majority of people are provably irrational. This is being demonstrated repeatedly in modern psychology, yet is almost never universally applied. Instead, like most scientifically-based findings, the parts that fit a certain agenda are used while the rest is conveniently ignored (which, ironically enough, is exactly what these findings predict).
The term “common sense” is an example of this very thing. When a political or media figure throws it out there in relation to gun control, those who already wanted certain types of control quickly cheer them on and decry anyone who disagrees with this “common sense” as being barbaric, unethical, or both.
The reality is that what is common sense to one lighting rod of political thought is often much different than it is to another. However, it isn’t always because one party is wrong and the other right—rather, it’s because people are trying to use buzz words as policy from every angle and, as a result, critical thought is utterly ignored.
When we see a tragedy of any kind, our gut reaction is often to “take action” and “do something.” Unfortunately, when it comes to terms like “common sense,” these quick-thinking, knee-jerk reactions are, in fact, the exact opposite to critical thought.
Our fast-brains do not process things in an optimized, systematic fashion that take into account things like empirical facts and statistics. Those things get left in the dust in favor of “we must act now!”
At any rate, when Jules Winfield said, “the path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyrannies of evil men,” he was on to something. Tyranny can easily be created by thinking selfishly—which is to say uncritically and believing that action, rather than analytical thought, should win the day in the political arena, as well as how you view them in between A-Team reruns.
This is fulfilling the promise of more A-Team. Which is a win for everyone.
*Disclaimer: That’s not a real place, so put your credit card and phone down. Yes, even if you are on the phone with Amtrak (which is a horribly inefficient business model, by the way).