Guns, Spoons, Keyboards, and other Tools

Perhaps you've seen this image.  This appears to be the original, even though it is available in much better colors elsewhere, it is the earliest copy and the only one attributed that I could find:

Acker, Charlie.  "Spoons made me fat."  The Libertarian Enterprise, # 672.  May 27, 2012

The implicit argument of this picture boils down to this: Arguing that guns are responsible for crimes or, more specifically, murders is the same as arguing that spoons are responsible for fat.  Many Republicans or self-proclaimed Libertarians I know posted the picture on Facebook not long after.

Today, I saw another argument of a similar vein on Facebook (I included my reply):

It's an amusing argument, but of course, any time spent thinking about it proves both of these analogies are horribly inadequate.  Spoons and keyboards are only tools, but guns can be so much more than that.  Both keyboard and spoon analogies depend on people not questioning them, but rather simply having a knee-jerk reaction of affirmation, because they agree with those people's thoughts on gun control already.  I don't need to talk about that here - confirmation bias is already a well-known phenomenon.

But, I do think it'd be helpful to do two things: First, explain where those comparisons break down; Second, create new and more accurate comparisons that would be helpful to share in their stead.

First, we already know that guns have a storied place in our society as tools that can solve problems beyond simply protecting life.  I talked about this recently in my post, "Hitting Where You Aim."  To briefly recap: because we see guns as the tools of "good guys" used to stop "bad guys," and because we're all good guy in our own stories, we always see guns as tools we can use to stop whoever we perceive as bad, whether or not those persons really are.

If we were to try to extend the spoon analogy to that, we would have to see spoons employed in our culture as tools to save people from hunger by making them fat.  In fact, we would elevate the position of obesity to one of our highest aspirations in society, rather than shaming people for being obese or overweight.  We would show advertisements and movies and TV shows where someone's life was saved because they had access to a spoon and the ammunition (food) necessary to use it.  And the result?  Every time you felt the slightest hunger pain, you would immediately reach for your spoon to try to satisfy it.

We have something close to that, though.

Replace "spoon" with "sugary snacks" in that scenario and suddenly a lot of things click into place.  We do advertise the crap out of sugary snacks, and thanks to governmental intervention and a lot of engineering know-how, we've removed barriers to access for such snacks.  They're some of the cheapest things you can get.  In advertisements, people often reach for snacks to satisfy their slightest hunger pangs.  In fact, Snickers advertisements used to carry the phrase, "Hungry, why wait?"  The premise being that Snickers is always readily available.  And, when you have that sudden urge to eat and you have something readily available, that's what you tend to choose.

This more closely fits the model of guns.  You see advertising constantly telling you that you can use it to solve your problems, and when you own one, it's readily available should the mood strike to solve such problems.

Thus, here's a better version of that original picture:

Yup, I can believe that's true.