The Myth of the Morally Neutral Tool

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One of the favorite myths of gun culture is the myth of the Morally Neutral Tool.  As the legend goes, “A gun is just a tool, it’s what you choose to do with it that matters”.But as the police in Ferguson, MO recently demonstrated, the notion that our tools do not exert enormous pressure on us to *use* them is false.The truth is, our technology deeply affects us and presents us with both opportunities and temptations.  Give a teenager a 2014 hot sports car and the car will whisper, beg, wheedle and demand that he drive fast and take chances. They will also put pressure on thieves to steal more of them, which is why insurance companies, who do not feel the need to pretend that all technology is “neutral” charge more to insure them.Give a police force military tanks and weaponry and assault gear and they will become acclimated to the idea that their job is warfare on a subject population, not “protect and serve”. That is exactly what we saw in Ferguson and with other cops whose shiny new jackboots, tanks and massive weaponry has encouraged them to behave like a jackbooted occupying army and not like protectors of the peace.Conversely, give a crowd of paranoids an arsenal, fill their heads with propaganda about Black Helicopters and FEMA concentrations camps and our patriotic duty to make war on the New World Order and the technology of mass slaughter will make his hands itch with the strong temptation to view themselves as called by God to fight off the imaginary Nazi Regime that is just about to take their land and arrest their family. That is exactly what we saw at Cliven Bundy’s ranch in Nevada. Put the two together and you have a formula for disaster. Only the grace of God has averted even worse

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