Kevin Baker has repeatedly pointed to examples in John Taylor Gatto's book The Underground History of American Education, which you can read in its entirety here. Unix-Jedi brought up some passages from it to me recently in conversation, and like a moth to the flame, I've been compelled to go through this book.
Like I have the time to do this. Or the blood pressure to spare. Sigh. It's a frightening book, and so far worth the sickening pit in my stomach.
However, that's all about the educational system, and because this is a gun blog I need to get back on topic, I'd like to discuss a small part of the book, The Art of Driving. I believe Kevin has already gone over this, but I cannot help but read this and apply my own opinions
What if I proposed that we hand three sticks of dynamite and a detonator to anyone who asked for them. All an applicant would need is money to pay for the explosives. You’d have to be an idiot to agree with my plan—at least based on the assumptions you picked up in school about human nature and human competence. And yet gasoline, a spectacularly mischievous explosive, dangerously unstable and with the intriguing characteristic as an assault weapon that it can flow under locked doors and saturate bulletproof clothing, is available to anyone with a container. Five gallons of gasoline have the destructive power of a stick of dynamite. The average tank holds fifteen gallons, yet no background check is necessary for dispenser or dispensee. As long as gasoline is freely available, gun control is beside the point.
What if I proposed that we hand three sticks of dynamite and a detonator to anyone who asked for them. All an applicant would need is money to pay for the explosives. You’d have to be an idiot to agree with my plan—at least based on the assumptions you picked up in school about human nature and human competence.
And yet gasoline, a spectacularly mischievous explosive, dangerously unstable and with the intriguing characteristic as an assault weapon that it can flow under locked doors and saturate bulletproof clothing, is available to anyone with a container. Five gallons of gasoline have the destructive power of a stick of dynamite. The average tank holds fifteen gallons, yet no background check is necessary for dispenser or dispensee. As long as gasoline is freely available, gun control is beside the point.
Mr. Gatto is not in the business of writing about gun control. As far as I can tell, this is a throwaway line for him. He may be armed to the teeth, he may not even own a Nerf gun, I do not know. What is inescapable though, is his logic in this.
Push on. Why do we allow access to a portable substance capable of incinerating houses, torching crowded theaters, or even turning skyscrapers into infernos? We haven’t even considered the battering ram aspect of cars—why are novice operators allowed to command a ton of metal capable of hurtling through school crossings at up to two miles a minute? Why do we give the power of life and death this way to everyone?
Why do we indeed? It is simple – we observe what is real vs. what we might imagine to be and then base our policies on the reality.
It should strike you at once that our unstated official assumptions about human nature are dead wrong. Nearly all people are competent and responsible; universal motoring proves that. The efficiency of motor vehicles as terrorist instruments would have written a tragic record long ago if people were inclined to terrorism. But almost all auto mishaps are accidents, and while there are seemingly a lot of those, the actual fraction of mishaps, when held up against the stupendous number of possibilities for mishap, is quite small.
Back in 1908, one could imagine the press release by The Brady Campaign to Prevent Automobile Violence (née Horseless Carriage Control, Inc.)
Our cities are no longer safe. Politicians, spurred on by Mr. Ford and the powerful automotive lobby, have placed dangerous weapons in the hands of dangerous people. These 'cars' contain nearly two sticks worth of deadly dynamite (or as the car lobby calls it - 'gasoline') and have nearly the same power as twenty horses. By not requiring extensive training, background checks, and limiting high capacity vehicles to government and police forces, the Car Lobby has endangered the very fabric of our society. The common man cannot be trusted to operate an object which allows them to achieve speeds up to forty five miles per hour; plenty enough velocity to easily kill a small child should they find themselves in the misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Bank robbers will now have a rapid 'getaway' system at their disposal. We will see the emergence of 'Road Rage' and there will be blood in the freshly paved streets.
Our cities are no longer safe. Politicians, spurred on by Mr. Ford and the powerful automotive lobby, have placed dangerous weapons in the hands of dangerous people. These 'cars' contain nearly two sticks worth of deadly dynamite (or as the car lobby calls it - 'gasoline') and have nearly the same power as twenty horses.
By not requiring extensive training, background checks, and limiting high capacity vehicles to government and police forces, the Car Lobby has endangered the very fabric of our society. The common man cannot be trusted to operate an object which allows them to achieve speeds up to forty five miles per hour; plenty enough velocity to easily kill a small child should they find themselves in the misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Bank robbers will now have a rapid 'getaway' system at their disposal. We will see the emergence of 'Road Rage' and there will be blood in the freshly paved streets.
Now, in 1908 they may have had a sympathetic ear in the public. Here was something new, possibly dangerous and yes it would make logical sense that anyone armed with nothing more than $850 and the desire to drive could simply walk to the factory and drive home. It would utilize a liquid that could burn down entire houses and have enough kinetic energy to kill pedestrians with ease. Of course it sounded scary.
Fast forward a decade, and there are thousands of these things on the roads and yet, there are no mass killings with the fuel, and while there have been accidents, the number of deaths that were purported never materialized. People would roundly shun the Brady Campaign to Prevent Automobile Violence becuase they can see the truth with their own eyes. The benefits of the automobile greatly outpaced the negatives and people learned to accept that sometimes bad things happen but that's not the fault of the car.
Why then, do nominally intelligent people even give the time of day to the cretins in the gun control movement? Driving is a skill that... well, I'll let Mr. Gatto say it better
Now consider the intellectual component of driving. It isn’t all just hand-eye-foot coordination. First-time drivers make dozens, no, hundreds, of continuous hypotheses, plans, computations, and fine-tuned judgments every day they drive. … I could go on: think of licensing, maintenance, storage, adapting machine and driver to seasons and daily conditions. Carefully analyzed, driving is as impressive a miracle as walking, talking, or reading, but this only shows the inherent weakness of analysis since we know almost everyone learns to drive well in a few hours. [ed - emphasis mine]
Now consider the intellectual component of driving. It isn’t all just hand-eye-foot coordination. First-time drivers make dozens, no, hundreds, of continuous hypotheses, plans, computations, and fine-tuned judgments every day they drive.
…
I could go on: think of licensing, maintenance, storage, adapting machine and driver to seasons and daily conditions. Carefully analyzed, driving is as impressive a miracle as walking, talking, or reading, but this only shows the inherent weakness of analysis since we know almost everyone learns to drive well in a few hours. [ed - emphasis mine]
Hours. We let members of our society with only 15 years of living under their belts to operate machinery of this magnitude and we do so without paralyzing, social fear and we do so when they've had barely any training whatsoever. We do this because over a 100 years of reality have proven that, while there are accidents, DUIs and bank robbers using cars as getaway assistance, overall car ownership is a safe and beneficial item.
Firearms are more prevalent in our society than cars and have an even better track record when it comes to safety. Yet people still listen to the anti-gunners as if they have anything truly intelligent to say.