Advice columnists probably need to heed a little advice: Stay in your lane.
It’s one thing to answer the question about what someone should do in a given situation. It’s another way to engage in pop psychology in an effort to try to score a political point while offering that advice, if for no other reason than you end up looking like a freaking idiot when you do.
No, this isn’t just some random aside from the league leader in ADHD-fueled tangents. Oh no, baby, this is based on a real advice column in the Washington Post.
A concerned parent asked what to do about her in-laws. See, they have a lot of guns, and now that the kids are mobile, they want the in-laws to buy a gun safe and secure the firearms.
It’s not an unreasonable concern, all things considered, since kids are difficult to contain. It’s not a deal-breaker in my mind, either, but I’m not them.
For what it’s worth, the in-laws were willing to put most of the guns in a closet where they’d be out of sight, but they weren’t willing to budge on actually locking them up. I can see why, though, because we gun owners have been demonized as everything wrong with the country, and just owning guns has been treated like some kind of disease. The idea that every parent gets a say in how we live our lives is troubling, and I can see the desire to push back.
Of course, the columnist agrees that the mother’s refusal to return is the only sensible course of action, but then we get into this:
I suspect you’re up against a tough combo with Pop: a warped masculinity “protector” trope — that if he locks his weapons in a safe, he can’t as easily be the Good Guy With a Gun in the event a threat appears — plus wounded pride at feeling called out as an irresponsible gun owner. Unfortunately, trying to break down that dual-engineered wall with arguments is probably only building it higher.(Side note, are your in-laws packing heat when they come for visits? That’s definitely a reasonable question to ask, along with how they’re securing the firearms if they are. Further action might be warranted, depending on their answer.)
So now it’s “a warped masculinity ‘protector’ trope” to want to protect your loved ones? There are hundreds of thousands of defensive gun uses every year, so it seems to me that there’s a role for that protector trope. Plus, who’s to say grandma doesn’t want to be able to protect herself and the family, too? My wife has a protective streak in her, and she’s a pretty damn good shot. Guess who picks which guns stay home with her when I head out of town?
Now, I can see both sides of the original debate, and the problem with advice columns is and always will be that you only get one side of the story. While the columnist said that even if the closet door is locked, the writer shouldn’t go if she still feels unsafe. However, if you’re just worried about a toddler gaining access to a gun by accident, wouldn’t a locked closet handle that? We simply don’t know enough to make a true value judgement about anyone involved in this.
But apparently, advice columnists understand gun culture and crime statistics to such an insane degree that they’re perfectly qualified to demonize some grandfather who might just want to protect his loved ones.
Or who may have a large collection of muzzle-loaded guns that simply cannot fire, even if mishandled.
It doesn’t matter. What matters is that advice columnists should learn to stay in their lane and stick to terrible suggestions that don’t ultimately do anything but make the readers roll their eyes.
If they’re going to step out of it, then they should learn to talk to someone who actually understands what the hell they’re saying, which also means not reaching out to Everytown, Brady, Giffords, or anyone of that stripe, either.
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