Barack Obama is once again pushing science fiction as official policy. As usual this has caused a great deal of ignorant individuals to voice their unqualified opinions on the matter. Surprisingly, in a sea of shitty media discussion, one publication managed to hit the nail on the head as far as the entire smart gun discussion is concerned:
Guns are a technology, and, like most members of the general public, gun control advocates are thoroughly confused about how guns operate outside of Hollywood — as in, “the Internet is a series of tubes“-level confused. It’s hard for me to overstate just how bad it is out there, even among much of the gun-owning public.
[…]This, then, is what the NRA is terrified of: that lawmakers who don’t even know how to begin to evaluate the impact of the smallest, most random-seeming feature of a given firearm on that firearm’s effectiveness and functionality for different types of users with different training backgrounds under different circumstances will get into the business of gun design.
And they’re right to be afraid, because it has happened before.
You can substitute gun owners for the National Rifle Association (NRA) since the opposition isn’t limited to just that organization. But the point stands, most lawmakers are entirely ignorant about the technology behind firearms. That brings us to today’s lesson: democracy sucks.
Somewhere along the line the idea that everybody is entitled to their opinion morphed into the idea that everybody’s opinion is equally valid. That idea is nonsense. A theoretically physicist should no more regard my opinion of his work than I should regard the opinion of somebody who has never studied basic mathematics on an algorithm I’ve written. When somebody lacks the basic fundamental knowledge of a field their opinion on that field is not equally as valid as an expert’s.
But such facts are irrelevant to democracy since it is a system where a majority of a voting body makes the rules. Here in the United States that voting body is Congress. Congress is composed of members elected by the majority of their constituents. In the end the only qualification somebody has to have to rule on something in the United States is charisma. This becomes a major problem as soon as members of Congress decided to write a law because they — along with their peers — are entirely ignorant on the subject the law pertains to.
Issues revolving around firearms are being decided by people who are entirely ignorant about firearms. When the issue of smart guns arises the problem is compounded by the same people’s ignorance on computer technology. In the end you have people who know nothing about the technology being discussed voting on how that technology is to be used.
Imagine if we applied democracy to an engineering feat such as building a bridge. Instead of having architects, structural engineers, material engineers, and construction workers designing and building a structurally sound bridge we’d have a bunch of ignorant lawyers voting on how they thought the bridge should be designed and built. The only outcome of that would be failure. If we don’t apply democracy to building a bridge why do we think it’s an acceptable means of mandating laws involving technology?
Yes, democracy sucks. But in that regard, it is not unique. Any government made up of men and women who want to run other people’s lives sucks. In other words, all governments suck. The only thing uniquely bad about democracy is that it can be sold to a gullible public as “fair” in a way that autocracies can’t.