“Talking to gun owners”–Daily Metta

November 12:

“We are fearless and free, so long as we have the weapon of Satyagraha in our hands.”

–Gandhi (Satyagraha in South Africa)

The funny thing about guns is that in nine cases out of 10, the person behind the trigger is scared to death. A gun does not represent bravery as much as it does fear, insecurity and powerlessness. Ironically, people think that guns and violence makes them powerful, secure, afraid of no one. But any time we rely on something outside ourselves for our basic needs like security and a sense of agency, we loosen our grip on those very qualities. It’s a real problem, especially in the United States where one in three households own firearms, many out of paranoia.

How do we convince people otherwise? Framing is a part of it.

Gandhi called nonviolence, Satyagraha, a kind of a weapon; it is “the weapon of the brave,” to be precise. Remember, Gandhi is always strategic and he was not against stealth. Here, I’m convinced he was using rhetoric to draw in people who would not be willing to put their violent weapons down to face a conflict. You want a weapon? Nonviolence is the best one. It’s an intelligent framing, I think. Martin Luther King called nonviolence “the sword that heals.” Once people have experienced how nonviolence feels internally when they use it, that they feel more secure, braver, more powerful in a healthy way, then you can help them to go deeper. So instead of a call to “Put down all your weapons,” to a people armed to the teeth, we might consider the power behind asking them to pick up a more powerful one: nonviolence. Maybe we could change the US second amendment along these lines? You have the right to nonviolence. And think about it, nonviolence is so ingrained in a person that even if you have “cold, dead hands,” no one can take it away from you…

Experiment in Nonviolence:
Think of a person for whom the framing of nonviolence as a weapon might appeal.