DPU Hosts Debate on Gun Control

On April 10, former Libertarian Vice Presidential Candidate Spike Cohen and Parkland Shooting Survivor David Hogg faced off in a fierce debate over gun control. Although I had high hopes for the productivity of such a debate between two very learned individuals, the debate proved to be, at best, one of congenial nature, and, at worst, ultimately unproductive.

Contrary to my initial prediction, the two debaters did not differ in their interpretations of the Second Amendment. All too often, during debates about the origins of the right to bear arms, there is a tendency to get bogged down in debates about semantics of what a “well-regulated militia” was initially intended to mean. However, when questioned, both Cohen and Hogg agreed that British common law—in which the Second Amendment is rooted—prescribes that a well-regulated militia includes every able-bodied member of the population, and was not meant to indicate only the armament of formal militia groups. 

In coming to this agreement, far less time than usual was spent on esoteric disputes over the meaning of the Second Amendment, and more on the data-driven arguments over the modern-day ramifications of widespread gun access in the United States. However, as is often in debates about firearms – the two activists brought different statistics leading to different conclusions, and several questions ended in questions about the validity of certain data points compared to others.

The two activists took strikingly different approaches to the debate. Whereas Spike Cohen arrived with a stack of graphs and statistics, while Hogg arrived with none. Initially, I thought that this would not prove to be an obstacle to a productive debate, for both debaters were profoundly well-read about the topic at hand. However, the disparity in at-hand information between both sides really did present problems in the ability for truly fair dialogue to take place. 

In typical libertarian fashion, Spike Cohen thunderously denounced any and all gun reforms, claiming that all were unconstitutional, and more harmful to society. To Cohen’s credit, he had a graph or data point to back up just about every single argument he made. Among Cohen’s arguments were that European countries and sections of the US with the least stringent gun laws tend to have the lowest levels of gun violence, that red flag laws were applied with far too little evidence, and that the expired federal ban on assault weapons did not demonstrably show declines in violence across the United States.

Hogg described many of Cohen’s statistics as untrustworthy due to an alleged vested interest on part of the gun lobby to downplay the effects of widespread firearm use. Hogg explained that his ideal plan for gun safety would be to take the policies of the state of Massachusetts and expand them to the federal level. Specifically, Hogg federalizes the licensing system that Massachusetts uses to control the spread of guns. In Hogg’s view, such a system would greatly reduce the number of guns on the streets of the American cities since individuals deemed likely threats to the public safety would be denied the ability to purchase guns under such a system. 

Cohen decried the Massachusetts system—alleging that it did not demonstrably reduce rates of firearm homicide. Cohen responded by pointing to states which possess very few firearm regulations and yet have lower rates of gun violence than Massachusetts. The two then debated whether or not the graph was covering the rates of homicide per-capita, and if the more sparsely populated nature of states cited by Cohen had any bearing on the lower rates of gun violence.  This part of the debate was, from this reader’s perspective, the most important, because it was the closest that the two came to coming to a conclusion without getting bogged down into the validity (or lack thereof) of a particular statistic.

Aside from the few particular instances in which Hogg and Cohen clashed over the validity of a certain statistic, the two arguments presented at the debates (unfortunately) boiled down to empiricism vs. anecdotalism. I am confident that both David Hogg and Spike Cohen could make compelling cases both for and against widespread firearm access, but because the two debaters were unequivocally unequal in their degrees of preparation and information-at-hand, such a debate did not take place. The debate followed a simple formula: Cohen presents a set of data points, Hogg questions the validity of the data, and then followed up with a general platitude about the necessity to make more strenuous efforts to keep people safe.

David Hogg appears to have approached this debate with far more congeniality than in previous instances. During several moments, in the debate, Hogg repeatedly affirmed that he was *not* seeking a total disarmament of the American population, and cited his respect for the Second Amendment. 

Moreover, Hogg repeatedly stated that he was not there to completely refute Cohen’s argument, but rather to come to a consensus on adequate gun safety. In doing so, Hogg appears to have – at least in rhetoric – greatly softened his perspective on guns in such a way that is more collaborative and conducive to meaningful change. This is not an uncommon case; there are many such instances in which people who are victims of gun violence take a hard-line approach to the problem in the following years, only to eventually come to the realization that substantive change can only come through compromise.

I think that this debate was ultimately productive for students at Dartmouth to see, if not for offering substantive new insights, because the cordial sentiment of both debaters offered a positive model for students on campus to follow in the future. However, the efficacy of such debates all too often fails to be productive when the arguments fail to directly refute one another, there is disparity in levels of preparation, and there is no mechanism to fact-check arguments at the moment. Once again, this is not a problem exclusive to these two debaters, but rather to roadblocks in debates over gun policy as a whole.