Validation is the New Fact?

           When I find myself with a quick moment or two of down time I go through my Facebook news feed looking for funny memes, videos and interesting news stories (as I’m sure many of you do as well), in doing that I’ll sometimes come across one of my friends posting a meme advocating for something they believe in and if something they posted involves any sort of argument using logic and or factual claims I simply like to do some research to find out if they post holds any merit. I’m sad to say I find a high number of them end up being either wrong or not telling the whole truth to angle to a curtain type of thinking. Funny enough most recently the inaccurate posts I’m finding happen to be about the gun debate. I know that is a heated topic and I hope you can understand I’m not taking a stance on either side, I’m simply using what I’ve found as an example, so let’s see some problem memes. 

           This meme was posted by a friend whom is not shy about his beliefs and is very much a pro-gun / anti-gun law supporter. On the surface, I can see what this post is trying to achieve. The main idea is to show the problem with gun violence will not be solved by gun control because that isn’t the root of the problem and to prove that look at Iceland, they have a lot of guns and very low violence, so therefore gun control isn’t the answer to end gun violence. When I saw this meme I initially saw a few problems with its message. The first was they never mention anything about the types of weapons. Yeah, they say 90,000 guns against 300,000 people okay, but the gun type is important especially when one of the core issues with gun control is the banning of certain types of guns. The second and most important thing I noticed was this would only hold up if Iceland didn’t have strict gun laws. Okay yeah, if Iceland had the same or even less strict gun laws than we do here in American then it seems to me like a sound argument, but I was honest with myself in that I didn’t know what the gun laws in Iceland where, so I decided to take the time to look them up. What I found was interesting. Here is a direct quote from the first sight I found from the Iceland review: 

“According to a colleague of mine who is an enthusiastic hunter and is well informed on the Icelandic gun laws, all automatic and semi-automatic rifles and most handguns are banned for public use in Iceland. People who hold a gun license can buy semi-automatic shotguns, bolt-action rifles, single-shot rifles and double-barrel rifles to hunt with but all rifles over 8 millimeters in caliber are banned in Iceland, although with a special permit to hunt large animals abroad, such as elephants or African cape buffalos. It is also possible to obtain a special collector’s license for handguns and sports associations practicing marksmanship can apply for a license to use small indoor 22 caliber handguns as used in the Olympics. To obtain a gun license people must attend a course and pass a test at the police station. They also have to pass a medical examination where they are specifically asked about their mental health. The gun license is issued by the respective District Commissioner. There is no limitation on the number of guns each person can own, although legislation is pending, but everyone who owns more than three guns has to have a legal gun cabinet. My colleague said the vast majority of hunters own fewer than ten guns; two or three is the average. Icelandic police officers do not carry any guns, only the Special Forces, which are known as the Viking Squad in Iceland. The Coast Guard is also armed, carrying handguns and automatic rifles.”

           As it turns out Iceland has more strict gun laws then we have here, which ironically actually advocates for the exact opposite message than what my friend was posting it for! Iceland has stricter gun laws banning different styles of guns as well as making people take written, medical and physical exams to get a license to own a gun which is exactly what pro-gun people are fighting against. It got several likes and comments on it from other pro-gunners showing their support for the post and I found that to be just hysterical.

            It only took me a matter of minutes to do some research to find issues with the message of that meme. I was curious as to why a vast amount of people wouldn’t do the same as I did. Everyone else had the same access to this information and a very quick way to getting it and why wouldn’t anyone not try to see if what is being said online is accurate? I understood early on that with a platform like Facebook or twitter that anyone can post anything, so it is more important than ever before to gain more knowledge and understanding with anything being said online. Words have always been known to be a powerful tool to motivate and manipulate even before the internet existed. The internet gave us a way to connect and communication in a very easy way with the masses, so it should be taken with extreme caution. I listen to The Daily which is the podcast of the New York Times and one reporter said it best when she said that Facebook is like having thousands of reporters that instead of finding facts and researching, they just all talk to each other to write their stories, but now lets move on and I want to go through another meme I found.

           Again, regardless of what your stance is on gun control my problem had nothing to do with what was being argued, but with how it was being argued. When I saw this on my news feed I was flabbergasted by this logic. Criminals will still use guns regardless of gun laws therefore we shouldn’t have gun laws. I can understand the point that is being made and a lot of people that use this argument use Chicago as big example as in they have strict gun laws, but still have heavy gun violence, so to a point I can understand the idea behind the post, but once you take that logic and apply to other laws then you should see the issues I have with it, for example: It is a law to not murder someone, but people still commit murder, so we shouldn’t  have laws against murdering people. See the issue with this logic? This argument can be inserted with any law, so saying that laws shouldn’t be in place because criminals won’t follow them just doesn’t track because if you follow that logic then you would have to believe that we shouldn’t have any laws in place at all and if we have no laws then we’ll have no criminals because breaking a law is what defines them as criminals. It’s narrowing the argument to make a point seem sensible. Gun control is much more than just criminals. Hell, the gun control movement didn’t even really pick up steam until all these mass shootings started happening and they weren’t criminals, majority of them where troubled youth. What’s funny to me is the Waffle House Shooter wasn’t a criminal before he walked through those doors, the moment he broke the law he became a criminal. The other part of this meme is the statement being made. This meme claims that law enforcement took his guns and somehow, he was able to get them back, so I decided to investigate this and see what really happened. That is a very broad statement and I wanted more details. After a simple google search I found a news articles where it goes into detail about how he got his guns back. It turns out how he “still managed to get his hands on them again…” was simply because his father gave them back to him, so yes, his guns were confiscated, but they were then directly given to his father and his father was asked to not return them to his son, but that is exactly what he ended up doing. There was also some trouble with the fact they are from Illinois, but the shooting happened in Tennessee and the two states have very different gun laws. Here is one of the articles I found if you would like to read it yourself (Click Here). He wasn’t a criminal mastermind that somehow managed to get past the law and get his guns its just not the case and a main problem happen to be because Tennessee gun laws are less strict then Illinois.  

            This post also received a lot of praise from like minded people and that really got me thinking as to why this may be happening? Smart phones gave us the ability to fact check in a matter of minutes, both of my examples were simply from looking more into the things I was reading on social media and trying to be more crucial before I jumped right in and I wanted to take the time to better understand what was being said. What I came to conclude was whatever belief or idealism one might have; social media gives you a way to easily link up with groups of people that share you’re believe and ideas and these echo chambers justify and validate how you feel or believe. When one feels supported for their ideas they feel content and accepted, nothing can shake that sense of security, so when one starts to just believe things as truth because that is how one would like to think it should be and if that one person has a lot of people who have their back on what they think then once can be happy with that truth with no rhyme or reason. It’s accommodationism at its finest. It’s causing people to no longer have conversations to try and understand the other side of the coin. In debate class I was taught that in order for you to win you’ll have to dive in and understand the other side of the argument. I’m baffled when I try to do this. I do find myself to be more of a liberal, but I’m always open for a discussion, but I’m not always met with the same curtesy. Let me give you an example. I was hanging out with a buddy of mine I haven’t seen in a while and we were at his brother’s house having beers and a good time. Of course, we got on the topic of politics and my friend’s brother says something along the lines that Obama was a war hawk and he was the most war aggressive president in our history. Regardless of if I agreed with that statement or not that is a heavy fact to just throw out there, so I simply asked for reasons as to why he believe this. I wanted his justifications, but instead I was called a moron for not believing what he said to be true. I will admit it was very difficult for me to keep a level head when I’m being called a moron for simply asking him to explain why he believed what he said.

            I encourage anyone no matter what you believe, no matter what side of any topic you may be on, to not call people morons for trying to simply understand. To not call people morons for not agreeing with how you think. We all should work on understanding and really taking the time to look into the truth of what we are believing and stop blinding following ideas because you have a support system that also believes them. I encourage you to take the time to look up what you read and what you find before you decide to post it. I encourage you to take the time to look into why someone might believe the opposite of you to help you either be more solidified in why you believe something or maybe be able to open up to another point of view. Let us not continue to be angry or divided and to simply gain better understanding and being okay with agreeing to disagree or am I the only one?