The Bullet and the Tweet

 

            The research is in. The NRA has declared that the proliferation of guns has nothing to do with mass violence. It’s tweeting that is the culprit. Here is how the argument goes.

             The tweet is like an assault rifle.  Instead of a 90 bullet clip, a tweet has up to 140 characters per clip blasted out at the whole world all at once. People have become so at ease with blasting their ill-formed thoughts out at the universe, it has become easier to do the same with bullets. Guns are not the problem: tweets are. All it takes is someone who has trouble distinguishing reality from fantasy, and the transition from tweet to bullet is as easy as changing clips in the middle of an assault.   

            I know, you are thinking of the old adage, “sticks and stones can break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” Well, guess what: there are a lot more kinds of words out there than there are kinds of ammunition. And now that we can shoot from the hip a quick burst of tweet, the idea of shooting bullets at a complete group of strangers becomes easier.

            Once upon a time words were used to write letters and essays, and those efforts took a lot of time. You had to think before you wrote. Often you had to wait days or even weeks before you got a response. You also had to wait for the postman to pick up your written material or you had to deliver it to a mailbox or post office. Now, all you have to do is register with Twitter, something gun owners don’t have to do in all cases, and off you go: Ready, Fire, Aim.

            The tweet is the opposite of, say, a soliloquy. Just imagine if Hamlet had “tweeted” his famous speech. This is all he could have delivered:

HAMLET: To be, or not to be--that is the question:

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles

And…

            On the other hand, had Polonius been able to “tweet” his advice to his son Laertes as Laertes was about to leave for France, perhaps Hamlet would have received it and avoided tragedy. Polonius, the good counselor that he was, said: “To thine own self be true,” advice certainly suitable for a tweet and just what Hamlet needed to hear.  Clearly, tweets can be useful at times.

            There are a lot more words and word assassins out there than there are assault rifles. So before you try to curtail the use of firearms, why not reduce the tweet to, say, 10 characters. That way most tweets will fall harmlessly to the ground and a lot of lives will be saved from death by embarrassment.

            But, you argue, the limitation on word use has been eroding our use of language and limiting our capacity to hunt down ideas that may feed us in the future. The larger our thoughts are, the smaller the audience we reach. It is the inverse of the assault rifle. Maybe if we invited people to say more than 140 characters worth of philosophy, it would serve as a release valve and thereby prevent some folks from turning to the machine gun as a means of expression. Therefore, will someone please create a site called “Soliloquy” where First Amendment rights can be fully exercised so that Second Amendment rights return to, well, their second place position?

            Just a thought.