TRB FEBRUARY 18, 2013
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The current debate over gun control is one of several signs that liberalism is back, sort of. President Barack Obama gave a second inaugural speech forthrightly celebrating liberal principles (equality, environmental stewardship, collective action) and didn’t get impeached. More Americans now support gay marriage than oppose it. Universal health care survived a Supreme Court challenge and a presidential election. Grover Norquist’s anti-tax pledge has lost its juju.
The catch is that it’s still not entirely acceptable to be a liberal. It remains common, when making a liberal argument, to shroud it in non-liberal language. For example, in 2004, John Kerry described his opposition to the Bush tax cuts as a sign of his fiscal conservatism. “Oh, he’s liberal, he’s liberal,” Obama said four years later, mimicking his critics. “There’s nothing liberal about wanting to make sure that everybody has health care.” The lingering taboo is anthropological rather than ideological. Liberals are judged inauthentic because (at least according to stereotype) they live in cities, avoid church, and don’t own guns; they consequently feel the need to describe themselves using other terms.
This perceived illegitimacy has been a particular problem in the gun control debate, with its relentless use of first-person accounts of firearm use. And if one specific activity has ensured that the debate over guns occurs on the turf of those who use them, it is hunting. An unwritten rule says, if you’re going to argue for gun control, you must slap a halo on hunters. President Obama, asked recently by this magazine if he had ever fired a gun, affirmed that he had, adding, “I have a profound respect for the traditions of hunting that trace back in this country for generations.” Hunters are understood to be part of an authentic American majority in a way liberals who don’t shoot guns are not. But this ingrained assumption is no longer true. Busily genuflecting before hunters, liberals have somehow failed to realize that they are a new silent majority.
We think of rural-heartland dwellers as real Americans, but they currently represent less than 20 percent of the population; nearly all of us live in and around cities. We think of churchgoers as real Americans, but only 40 percent of Americans attend any kind of religious service at least once a week; most of us sleep in. We think of people who own guns as real Americans, but they represent only 21 percent of the population; the great majority of us don’t own guns. All these percentages reflect declines over the past few decades. The percent owning guns, for instance, is down by about one-third since 1985.
If liberals (defined in admittedly cartoonish fashion as non-churchgoing, non-gun-owning urbanites) represent an unacknowledged majority of Americans, hunters represent an unacknowledged minority—indeed, a minority of the minority of Americans who own guns. “Hunting” ranks behind “protection against crime” and “target shooting” as the stated reason for owning a gun. According to the most recent survey by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, less than 5 percent of the U.S. population reported doing any hunting in 2011. Even as liberals quake at the thought of disrespecting the animal-shooting masses, actual hunters fret that their numbers have dwindled during the past two decades by more than 11 percent.
Maybe liberals’ rank terror of the American hunter isn’t about numbers so much as it is about those “traditions of hunting” Obama mentioned. Generations of fathers have bonded with sons (and, occasionally, daughters) through the manly ritual of the hunt. And the Second Amendment, however cloudy its intent, conveniently allows gun owners towrap themselves in the traditions of both the eighteenth-century militia and American individualism.
Some liberals place the hunter on a higher moral plane because he bypasses (however fleetingly) the cruelty and wastefulness of factory-farmed meat. Writing in The Omnivore’s Dilemma about shooting a pig—his first kill—Michael Pollan observes that it “forced me to look at and smell and touch and even to taste the death, at my hands, of a creature my size that, on the inside at least, had all the same parts.” But if that’s the way you feel, wouldn’t it be simpler just to be a vegetarian?
A better argument for hunting is that state conservation efforts depend heavily on hunting-license fees and taxes on firearms and ammunition. Hunters also can help maintain a balanced ecosystem by culling overrepresented species—bison in Yellowstone, elk in the Rockies, deer nearly everywhere. On the other hand, hunters cull the odd human being. Since 2008, nearly 200 people were killed in accidents, according to the International Hunter Education Association. (The group’s executive director admits this is a low-ball estimate.)
Meanwhile, “trophy” hunting of game that won’t be eaten and doesn’t need culling surely ought to be banned outright. At the Texas Hunt Lodge on the Guadalupe River, a rich person can shell out $6,150 to shoot a water buffalo imported from Asia for that express purpose. In what sense is this, um, civilized?
The most generous thing you can say about the hallowed tradition of hunting is that its dwindling popularity means its relevance to American gun culture is dwindling, too. Gun ownership turns out to be one of those things (like income) that during the past three decades became extremely concentrated in a few hands. One-third to one-half of the world’s civilian-owned guns reside in the United States. There’s even a gun-ownership 1 percent! According to CNN, a group of Americans representing less than 1 percent of the world’s population owns two-thirds of all the guns in America and one-third of all the guns in the world.
That means a lot of serious stockpiling is going on. Assault rifles are openly marketed with this imperative in mind. “Forces of opposition, bow down,” says the Web page for the Bushmaster Adaptive Combat Rifle. I don’t think they’re talking about elk. Today’s gun owner—let me put this as bluntly as I can—is much likelier than the gun owner of the mid-’70s to be a major criminal or a raving lunatic.
I was getting ready to admit that I have never fired a gun when I remembered that, like the president, I had gone skeet shooting. But my experience is irrelevant. The politically correct notion that only those with proper credentials can weigh in on this debate was always absurd, but is especially so now that a large majority of us don’t own firearms and don’t hunt. By fetishizing a fading tradition, liberals have only made their arguments for increased gun control less likely to have much of an impact. A recognition of their—our—dominant position would be a better way to start the debate.
14 comments
There was a time when the most controversial government "mandate" wasn't to have health insurance but to possess a firearm. It's true, back when there was no regular militia, or law enforcement for that matter, and this was a dangerous place, and not only because of unfriendly native Americans but rebellious radicals. Able-bodied men were required to possess a firearm so when called to duty to protect the community or to track down the radicals they would have an arsenal to do it. The irony is that the government feared the citizenry, so much so that the founders made numerous compromises at the constitutional convention in Philadelphia to hasten the adoption of a constitution to strengthen the central government and deter the feared rebellion and to suppress the radicals. It was fear by the ruling elite of a challenge to their power. The history of America is full of irony, none greater than the exalted place of the firearm.
- rayward
February 18, 2013 at 7:43am
Good stuff from Mr Noah. Liberals do definitely suffer from a lack of confidence, even as we win more elections and see more [though not all assuredly] of our agenda enacted. I think all of us liberals, if we're honest, have tried to deny the extent of our liberalism in order to establish our bona fides as 'real Americans' at some point or another. I don't really do it much, if at all, anymore, but I did it in the past. Let's hope those days are behind all of us.
- DC Spence
February 18, 2013 at 8:52am
I am a liberal, I own a few guns, and I abhor the idea of hunting live animals. Many non-gun-owning liberals who write on the topic of gun control, Timothy Noah here being an exception, unhappily show their ignorance by supposing that the term "semi-automatic" is a synonym for "assault rifle." I have seen half a dozen articles and one Newsmax online poll that make this elementary mistake. It immediately raise the hackles of gun owners of all political persuasions, because calls to ban "semi-automatics" means the vast majority of both rifles and hand guns, while the authors of such calls seem to think they are referring only to assault rifles. The term semi-automatic means only that successive shells are fed, one after each trigger pull, from a magazine or clip. This is distinguished from a revolver with a circular cylinder holding only 5 or 6 rounds. Hence any pistol, no matter how small, that is operated with a clip magazine is a semi-automatic. This includes tiny .22s. Assault rifles differ in essence only by having much larger magazines. So calls to ban "semi-automatics" means banning not just many kinds of rifle besides AK-47s, but a majority of hand guns of all calibers. If that is not an author's intent they should get their terminology straight.
- lbevans@earthlink.net-old
February 18, 2013 at 11:28am
I am sorry but speaking personally I want to see just such a ban. I want the only legal type of gun to be owned are hunting rifles and revolvers, all clips or magazines being illegal for private ownership except under the tightest conditions, such as registered and stored at a licensed and secure gun club. 2nd amendment rights are still respected, you can still be safe in your home with a revolver. So speaking for myself it is not ignorance. And the way you impose this ban is to fine and jail any gun manufacturer who sells clips to private citizens who are not licensed and bonded agents of a gun club. Then you can own any gun you want, you just won't be able to buy clips for it.
- blackton
February 19, 2013 at 12:28pm
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There is no question the country is turning into city dwellers, and city dwellers have a limited use for guns. We merely need to look at Europe to see where this is headed. City living reduces self-sufficiency. It makes it easier for a government to provide more services that cannot be provided by suburban or rural dwellers due to geography. City living reduces compassion., because previously a person KNEW that if they didn't watch over a neighbor on the next farm over that nobody would, and thus neighbors felt a strong sense of community for one another. Walking in NYC today, or even Seattle, the examples of "not my problem" abound. ///Bit by bit the industrious American's are turning into a collective of folks who depend on government for everything. And given the slightly adversity, the bulk of the population is truly clueless about what to do next except wait for the government. Witness massive bad-weather events in the midwest versus the coasts. It is night and day how each group responds. One group mounts bulldozers and track-hoes, the other group stands there sobbing until somebody comes///It's likely best that city dwellers don't have guns. Guns are a tool for the self sufficient. No more different than a hammer or axe or chainsaw. And frankly, your average city person with even a hammer is high comedy.
- seattleeng
February 18, 2013 at 12:35pm
In Seattle's perfect world, apparently we would each have 0.2 acres of arable land on which we independently grow our fruit and vegetables and raise animals for meat and dairy. Self-sufficiency, after all, is EVERYTHING. God forbid that one be dependent on others; specialization is the devil's work. But wait, he also suggests that dependency on your neighbors is a good thing because it instills compassion. Oh well, just another of Seattle's incoherent posts, I guess.
- Fishpeddler
February 19, 2013 at 9:06am
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I'm loving this dawning fearless liberal epoch - you get 'em Tim. There is no reason to cower before tired gun cliches anymore. Thank you!
- WandreyCer
February 18, 2013 at 2:08pm
Seattle - you've written some stupid ass boilerplate in your day, but that was a classic: a screamer of epic idiocy and glib, my country tis of thee hackneyed nonsense.
- WandreyCer
February 18, 2013 at 2:11pm
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Seattleng cites several of the same old stereotypes about rural vs. city dwellers without any supporting information: city dwellers are not compassionate, too dumb to use tools safely, just helpless in the face of disaster. The instant response of my chainsaw and hammer wielding neighbors in the aftermath of hurricanes & ice storms, the rehabbed city appartment housing designed for developmentally disabled adults to live independently with supportive neighbors, the friends who started charter schools to focus on the needs of low income minority students, the numerous food truck entreprenuers who take their local businesses to the next level by remodeling old buildings using local artisans and crowd sourced capitalism, the people who check on elderly neighbors and bring food for the mourning... I could go on & on with examples of the compassionate, collaborative and ingenious neighbors in the city where I live. Maybe you can tell, those hoary old stereotypes about city people don't resonate with me. And yeah, there are too many guns around here, drive by and less random shootings have robbed us of some fine people, and the element of surprise means that even folks armed for self defense are somtimes just as vulnerable as the rest of us.
- s.trabka@frontier.com-old
February 18, 2013 at 5:17pm
I'm not sure where Mr Noah is going with his argument. Is the premise that "non-gun toting, rabbit hunting liberals" should now stand up and stop pretending to be the minority and that the new majority should flex their collective muscles and eliminate guns because only a small minority of the American population "hunts" versus target-shoots or stock-piles for the coming minority-zombie apocalypse? Noah seems to imply that because hunting is such a small factor of the gun-owning providence that any reference to hunting is null and void and thus advocates the persecution or exclusion of the minority at the expense of the majority. But what about those gun-toting hunters that happen to be liberal? What group do I belong to? I don't go 'plinking' and I don't stock-pile weapons or need an AR style rifle to compensate for physical inadequacies. There are plenty of legal and responsible gun-owners in America that advocate for appropriate gun restrictions and closing of loop-holes. Do I think the military style semi-autos out there are really appropriate for civilian use? Not really. I don't think anyone needs clips that hold more than 6 or 7 rounds. No...really this piece by Noah has less to do with gun rights or restrictions and his personal discomfort and dislike of "hunting" and he doesn't like the fact that some liberals actually "hunt" because...you know...they might like it.
- singlspeed
February 18, 2013 at 6:36pm
I don't think so Single - Tim is his sounding the death nell of the bullying use of an empty *stereotype* of the hunter. It's made liberals dance and hide for generations now. There is no reason to hide anymore, his point is that the stereotype is over. No one is just a "liberal hunter" anymore than they are a "latino union member" or some such category. There's no "place for you" in any of this because it's a false construct. You're much more than that.
- WandreyCer
February 19, 2013 at 10:51am
I don't think anyone needs clips at all. Revolvers and single loaded rifles are enough. You can drive a car, you can't drive a tank even though driving a tank would make you feel ever so much safer.
- blackton
February 19, 2013 at 12:32pm
Wandry...I'm doubting Tim's ringing of the bells a little bit because his tone comes off as if he has less issues with the gun-hoarders of the world vs. his "rank liberal terror" of the hunter (liberal, pan-sexual, redneck or otherwise). I'm certainly not hiding as a liberal hunter and I'm wondering what the stereotype of a hunter is. That they hunt or carry guns? Or that they're all gun-nuts? Do I agree with him that the NRA's couching their anti-gun law arguments behind the 'hunter' cloak as disingenuous? Yes. Do I buy their slippery slope arguments? No. But I do think there is a place for hunting in our culture as a whole, just as there is a place for fishing too.
- singlspeed
February 19, 2013 at 2:55pm
Blackton, most hunting rifles (even those that have been in production for over 100 years) are multi-round rifles. This includes the Remington 700 single-bolt - which holds 5 rounds + 1 in the chamber, the Marlin 336 lever rifle holds 5 rounds in the tube + 1 in the chamber, just to name a few. Under your proposals that would outlaw every hunting rifle with the exception of single shots and black-powder rifles. Same thing with shotguns for bird-hunting and skeet shooting. Those hold 5 rounds as well. Really the issue comes down to whether or not guns are autoloaders and can hold more than 5 rounds before reloading is what can make a gun a practical tool for hunting, sport shooting and defense and turning it into a semi-auto assault weapon that's only purpose is for putting as many rounds into the targets as possible.
- singlspeed
February 19, 2013 at 3:08pm
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