{"id":3022,"date":"2015-01-09T21:00:10","date_gmt":"2015-01-10T01:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/?p=3022"},"modified":"2015-01-09T21:00:10","modified_gmt":"2015-01-10T01:00:10","slug":"think-like-a-freakabout-gun-control","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/think-like-a-freakabout-gun-control\/","title":{"rendered":"THINK LIKE A FREAK\u2026ABOUT \u201cGUN CONTROL\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve become a fan of the \u201cFreakonomics\u201d books<\/a> and podcasts<\/a>. I like the way Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner apply critical thinking, logic, and \u201cwhere the rubber meets the road\u201d reality. So, it\u2019s no surprise that I really enjoyed their newest book, \u201cThink Like A Freak.\u201d (Harper-Collins, 2014.)\"think-like-a-freak\"<\/a><\/p>\n

These guys think in the big picture, using real world anecdotes to illustrate their points.\u00a0 Readers can\u2019t help but apply their thinking to our own issues. We gun owners wonder why, when even many high profile \u201cgun control\u201d advocates admitted the ten-year experiment of Bill Clinton\u2019s national Assault Weapons Ban didn\u2019t change a damn thing, the Bloombergs of today, more than 20 years later, still go after such things so ferociously. One answer may be found in \u201cThink Like A Freak\u201d at page 192 (hardcover edition): \u201cQuitting is hard in part because it is equated with failure, and nobody likes to fail, or at least be seen failing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Levitt and Dubner urge us to look beyond the superficial, and get to root causes of bad things. They write, \u201cIn 1960, crime began a sudden climb. By 1980, the homicide rate had doubled, reaching a historic peak. For several years crime stayed perilously high but in the early 1990s, it began to fall and kept falling. So what happened?\u201d\u00a0 They explain in part, \u201cGun murders are down? Well<\/em>, you figure, that must be from all those tough new gun laws \u2013 <\/em>until you examine the data and find that most people who commit crimes with guns are almost entirely unaffected by current gun laws.\u201d (Pages 67-68.)<\/p>\n

We all know people who are smart and usually logical, but have an absolute blind spot when it comes to the gun issue, and insist on guzzling the Kool-Aid of anti-gun propaganda. What could account for that? For one thing, self-image.\u00a0 We all want to think well of ourselves. In discussing the psychology of charity, Levitt and Dubner point out that people contribute to charities because \u201c1. People are truly altruistic, driven by a desire to help others\u201d or <\/em>\u201c2. Giving to charity makes them feel better about themselves; economists call this \u2018warm-glow altruism.\u2019\u201d\u00a0 In a similar vein, taking what looks like a life-saving position on an issue can give the same \u201cwarm-glow\u201d effect. Combine that with Levitt\/Dubner\u2019s earlier explanation of why people resist the truth when they\u2019re proven wrong, et voila: <\/em>we have a piece of the psychological puzzle that explains why many normally logical people can\u2019t see the absence of fact and logic in the \u201cgun control\u201d movement.<\/p>\n

If you haven\u2019t looked into the \u201cFreakonomics\u201d series, check it out.\u00a0 These guys make people think.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve become a fan of the \u201cFreakonomics\u201d books and podcasts. I like the way Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner apply critical thinking, logic, and \u201cwhere the rubber meets the road\u201d reality. So, it\u2019s no surprise that I really enjoyed their newest book, \u201cThink Like A Freak.\u201d (Harper-Collins, 2014.) These guys think in the big picture, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":6428,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-3022","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-reviews"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3022","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3022"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3022\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}