Personal Protective Equipment Toolbox Talk - Environmental Health: Fill & Download for Free

I’m afraid that the argument is not reasonable at all.Allow me to explain my thinking here.The whole saying goes like this:“Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.”It’s hard to argue with this saying, on one level. People do kill people. It’s not like a gun jumps off of a table and begins firing its own trigger! Unless that gun has some form of sentience or intelligence (which, to be fair, we are moving towards), it’s not making any attacks on our lives by just sitting there, be the gun loaded or unloaded. In a sense, this is what the gun advocate answer would love to rest upon, that because a gun (currently) has no intention of killing us, it cannot be considered as “dangerous” in its own right. We’re dangerous, because we have what we call “intent” to harm others by using tools like guns.Human beings evolved to use tools as an extension of ourselves, in lieu of claws and fur and fangs. Even our language is, on some accounts, a tool:Think of the tools in a tool-box: there is a hammer, pliers, a saw, a screw-driver, a rule, a glue-pot, glue, nails and screws.—The functions of words are as diverse as the functions of these objects.Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations“Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.”But as your resident bisexual, bilingual, non-binary, Scottish-mother-English-father writer would be inclined to ask, “why not both?”This argument presents us with a false dichotomy.Either guns are dangerous, or people are dangerous.It assumes an either/or game that we have to play.Those who push this argument then use the assumption that the intention (or stupidity) in using the gun is what makes the gun a dangerous tool. But a gun is an inherently dangerous piece of equipment, by virtue of its creation. Again, made by humans! But while people use the gun to shoot other people, the gun itself is the chosen tool to carry out that shooting. Its design is with two main purposes in mind: destruction, or killing. An attack on physical integrity or on one’s life, with very little in-between (besides as unloaded display pieces, paperweights, or as external tools which might make guys with small penises feel more manly).By virtue of that alone, a gun is incredibly dangerous. It is coded into the very intent behind its creation. This is why, for example, in Minnesota, guns must be unloaded and cased for peaceful transport, so that they don’t cause any harm by recklessness or negligence. That’s also why, in Scotland (my home), we have this very clear guidance provided to us by the Police Scotland website:Never put a loaded weapon away in your cabinet. Always prove that a weapon is unloaded as soon as you handle it. Always prove that the weapon is unloaded before handing it to someone else. Never load your weapons indoors. Never allow unauthorised persons access to your weapons. Never allow unsupervised or unsuitable persons, especially children, access to your weapons. Never leave a weapon, even unloaded, unattended. Never stand a firearm or shotgun in such a position that it can fall or be knocked over.We are advised to keep guns unloaded, because quite frankly they are dangerous entities even without handling. This isn’t a case of “master your fear and you master yourself” fan-wank; even if you somehow become “one with the gun, one with nature” or whatever other sanctimonious horseshit I can think of, guns can fall over, they can trigger by accident. No machine is entirely free from fault; we like to think of machines as other to humans, and because humans break down, our machines should be totally fine; we rely on them, they’re tools, we need them to work! But they often don’t.And in the case of a gun, it’s a rather fatal issue if they fail.One of my best friends plays with Airsoft.The gun he has is fucking massive.This is the closest that my memory can serve:Trust me when I say that I am not afraid of guns. I see this monster every time I visit him. Plus, I’ve actually shot guns before (we have them here in Britain!); I’m unrefined, in need of training, but according to the people I’ve played clay pigeons with, it wouldn’t take much time to make a decent enough marksman out of me.Despite this post, I am not afraid of guns.Just like I’m not afraid of knives on a flat rate basis.But I recognise their dangerous sides.And so does my friend.As such, he keeps this bad boy unloaded at all times, while standing it on display on a tripod. He knows that, even if he messes up and knocks it over, the gun will be unloaded. It won’t shoot a shot at someone. The worst it’ll do is fall on your toe and leave you hollering in expletives and pain for a few minutes. Why is this an essential task, why are all of these precautions made so necessary, if the gun is itself not dangerous in its inert, unused state?The simple fact is that guns are dangerous, even if they are not currently being used to mow down targets. They’re dangerous in clay pigeons, they’re dangerous in hunting ranges, they’re dangerous standing upright while loaded. There’s no version of a gun that is not designed to cause some serious damage; that’s the whole point of the American argument for enshrining them into their public life and Constitution, that they should be used as a means of self defence in case an attacker (or the British) ever show up on American soil with murderous intent, or to deal with a tyrannical government.They’re dangerous with or without being in use.Let’s take some thought experiments!You are a gun owner, who has a three-year old son or daughter in your care. Save for your family, your gun collection is the pride of your life. You also love to have your guns on display, so that everyone can come in and see what a big macho man (or female equivalent) you are. Who cares about the safety issue, guns don’t kill people, people kill people! Until your kid finds one of your smaller pistols left loaded and with the safety off on the table in a moment of sheer forgetfulness, and in their natural curiosity they pull the trigger. The gun fires in their face.Now, you might want to argue with me on that point. “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people!” So, who killed the child? Was it the child, with no awareness of what they were doing? Unlikely; moral blame is assigned through intent. Is it the adult, who left the gun unattended? Likely; they were a stupid git who deserves to have child protection agents take any of their remaining children away.But let us remember the false dichotomy that gun advocates use.It’s not an either/or game.The adult didn’t pull the trigger, the child did. They used a tool that is designed for taking life and limb. But we’re not blaming the child. The adult deserves all of the moral blame here, and indeed they are the agent to whom we ascribe that moral blame. But moral blame means little in practical applications, only in the judgement of hindsight. The gun fired into the child’s face. And as a result, we can conclude that, while the adult is morally at fault, guns do kill people even without a conscious intent for the owner to kill anyone. To deny otherwise is semantic shuffling in order to evade any consequences attached.(I know that’s not a real gun, but it’s the best image I could find.)Let’s move away from guns to examine other dangerous items!You are a very stupid truck driver, who is transporting gallons upon gallons of explosive fluid (for the purposes of this thought experiment, we shall call this fluid “Explosive Fluid”). In a cruel twist of fate, you run out of petrol/gas/diesel, and you have to stop your truck on an incline. Or perhaps you don’t run out of anything, and you just stop the truck for another reason; do you need to help a pedestrian, did you run over a squirrel on your way? Regardless, you stop the truck, but you fail to put the handbrake on, and so the truck flies down the incline and into a crowded office, which promptly gets set ablaze.Again, we see the issue at play here.The truck driver is morally at fault, but the specific thing that harmed people in this case is the Explosive Fluid that kills everyone in the office. It is a dangerous material for transport, and even if we had a very diligent driver behind the wheel, they would still recognise the danger inherent. Indeed, this is what due prudence would call for; a recognition that what you’re handling is a dangerous substance, one that should be handled with care, with or without any external intervention. Improper intervention makes worse an already dangerous situation, be it from Explosive Fluid or your firearms stash.“But Explosive Fluid doesn’t kill people, people kill people!”Maybe it wouldn’t have killed people if you weren’t a very stupid truck driver, but it’s still a dangerous substance regardless. You look and sound foolish.One more?You are a professional chef, who is preparing a lovely meal for Mr and Mrs Eatwell. The happy couple have decided to bring along their pet dog, Scruffy, who just loves the smell of meat. And he’s just picked up the scent of some delightful pork sausages in your kitchen. In the classic Walt Disney scenario, naughty Scruffy breaks from his leash and bounds into the kitchen, happy as anything, but he skids on the nice clean floors into a table. Upon that table are perched several sharpened knives, just waiting for a hungry dog to bash into it. Gravity takes effect, and within three minutes of the unfortunate collision, Scruffy is no more.You know where I’m going with this, I’m sure.Nobody stabbed Scruffy, and yet Scruffy still died.Do you want to tell the grieving Mr and Mrs Eatwell that “knives don’t kill people, people kill people”? It’s true in the assignation of blame on a moral footing (who leaves knives so precariously placed?), but no intention was clear in killing the dog. There was negligence, but the staff wouldn’t have been expecting a dog. You as the chef will likely be fired, and rightly so, but you did not wish to kill Scruffy. The knife was lying there inert, and yet an innocent bashed its resting place.You don’t have to adhere to either/or to insist that, in the absence of intention or human intervention, your gun is not a dangerous entity.Guns are very, very dangerous, even when they’re sitting inert and unused. You might have been negligent or reckless in handling your gun, in the same way that you could be with knives and truckers, but while the moral fault rests with the human for using them, or for their lack of control over who gets access to their guns, that still doesn’t mean that the gun or substance in the scenario is not dangerous by default. Like with an idiot who spills a lump of radioactive waste that poisons bystanders, we can yell at the idiot for being a total klutz, but we back away from the waste.We force students in labs (and surgeons in hospitals) to wear protection and eye goggles, because the chemicals that they handle are often very dangerous and corrosive (“but Andrew, chemicals don’t kill people, people kill people!”).In a butchers, those who carve up the meats with enormous knives will take every precaution so that they don’t slice themselves, be that chainmail gloves or special chopping boards that don’t slip on the table surfaces. I should know; I spent my summer holidays as a student working in my local butchers.Four miserable years.We back away from an untrained idiot holding a gun not because of the person (“people kill people!”), but because that person is holding a gun.Both human and gun contribute to the deaths.Be it a gun fired on purpose or accidentally.Moral blame does not negate an underlying danger.Now, perhaps you have another rebuttal for my points here?“Andrew, I hear you, but we don’t limit knives and trucks! We can’t just go around limiting every dangerous substance just because it’s dangerous!”Or perhaps:“No way! It’s not relevant that guns kill people quicker, bombs do too!”In the immortal words of Grant O’Brien:I’m gonna handle these back to front, because the first one is an interesting point which actually merits some of my attention, while the second point deserves nothing of the sort, beyond my consternation and general annoyance.“Bombs kill people too!”I can’t take too much water onto an aeroplane because it might be a secret bomb:According to the TSA, limiting containers to what can fit inside a quart-size bag prevents what former TSA administrator Kip Hawley once called a “critical diameter” to blow anything up. The size of the container precludes enough of a potentially explosive liquid from being carried on board.That’s an American example, but it’s not far off the mark in Scotland too.From Edinburgh Airport:Your clear bag should be no bigger than 20 cm by 20 cm and hold a maximum of 1 litre's worth of liquids - you can pick one up at the security search area. Bear in mind that all gels, pastes, lotions, liquid-solid mixtures (including food) and pressurised containers also count as liquids!You want to drive?You’ll be needing a licence, and a special one for big vehicles.You want to hold knives?There’s an age limit to over-the-counter purchases.And hold that thought on guns having age limits in some states, because I promise that I’ll get back to you on that point.I just want to finish this off quickly.Even if other items like bombs kill people too (moral fault assigned to the user and all), the American culture is still permeated with guns. They’re everywhere. They are extremely dangerous, but some will do anything to find a workaround so that gun culture can continue. And hey, if you want guns, fine! If you want to argue that the likes of Sandy Hook are just false flags or one-offs or anything like that, then be my guest! But bombs are rare as shit in comparison to the gun culture in the States, wherein you could open carry to a shop and not be seen as the lunatic that most other Western countries would see you as.You’re comparing two totally different things here.Where this is normalised:We get news reports something like this:And this:If you want to justify this on the grounds of “X other thing kills people too!”, as if that fact could possibly justify anything on a moral plane, then I hate you. I absolutely, genuinely, one-hundred percent hate you.Screw unity, screw tolerance, screw love.I’ve had my fill of looking for unity with homophobes who either want me dead or denied my basic rights. I’ve had my fill of unity with QAnoners who want a fascist tangerine back in power. I’ve had it with people who make the most contrived excuses to keep their guns even in the face of all common sense (“I want my gun and I don’t care how many kids die for my obsession!”). My life motto is “Always try to be nice, but never fail to be kind”, but the man who said those words had no problem with punching racists and toppling evil regimes wherever he found them. And this is one such regime, one that endangers those most dear to us, our children and young people.School children have to prepare for mass shooting events so that you can keep your precious murder sticks. That’s not a childhood. Don’t talk to me about other substances causing the same amount of damage, because a) they’re largely already being handled without Constitutional drama, b) you reek of whataboutism, and c) you just want an excuse to keep your guns. If you’ve ever been impressed with my writing and followed me on Quora, only to hear now that I hate you on the basis of your values about the importance of guns over the lives of children, on your willingness to justify that evil in order to keep your guns, then I ask that you unfollow me here and now.Pretty please.A school shooter practice every year.Children should not have to live like that.Not to sate anyone’s borderline phallic desire for a gun.And we get commentators like this in the wake of the killings:They learned from being SHOT AT, you fucking turd!It’s a damn shame that Wintrich is a frothing alt-right hand-puppet, because in terms of looks, he’s annoyingly my type.Oh, what could have been…Now that we’ve gotten rid of the riff-raff (basket of deplorables), let’s turn to the other objection, which I actually do find rather an interesting point.“We don’t ban other dangerous items, we’re not a nanny state!”Right you are!To an extent, of course.I’ve already partially dealt with this point above, in that we have age restrictions and licences and sometimes outright bans on certain harmful substances. We have a lot of our priorities wrong on this front; we allow guns to proliferate among the populace, but the likes of cannabis are considered to be too dangerous to let loose on the populace in several states (despite the proliferation of alcohol and cigarettes as recreational poisonous substances), and even Kinder Eggs have been banned by the regulations enforced by the American Food and Drugs Administration:The pufferfish, too, is a banned delicacy across the US and the European Union, owing to the poisonous quality of the meal if it is not cooked exactly right. We ban the pufferfish because the poison kills people, and negligent chefs kill people with the pufferfish!So now that we’ve established that there is indeed an element of “nanny state” for other allegedly dangerous items (Kinder Eggs contain toys, not bombs!), we can get into the reasons why we don’t call for blanket bans on, say, knives.What does a knife do?Let’s remember Wittgenstein.In our toolbox, there is a knife. We can use this for lots of things. Knives are one of our main means for chopping food and for consuming it at meal times. We use our knives to spread butter. We use them in throwing contests and in circus-based entertainment. We have knives for screwing in screws where a screwdriver isn’t handy. We can use knives as thin objects to slide into tight spaces if necessary. They can slice through paper as scissors and slicers. They can open packages. They can whittle at wood to make a carving for the arts. We can even shave with them, allowing us to match the era’s beauty standards.That’s why we call for an age restriction, a criminalisation to carry knives outside of professional contexts in daily life, and nothing else to be done.It is illegal to:Sell a knife of any kind to anyone under 18 years old (16 to 18 year olds in Scotland can buy cutlery and kitchen knives).Carry a knife in public without good reason – unless it's a knife with a folding blade 3 inches long (7.62 cm) or less, eg a Swiss Army knife.What about trucks? Sure, they’re not everyone’s means of transport, but they’re one such on offer. They can transport substances needed for commerce. They can prop up economies and businesses by default. They have a much less varied palate than a knife has, but they are fairly important to make sure that we’re not losing out on valuable trade and business, which is a decent end to meet.Even explosives have lawful use in construction and mining livelihoods, though we do criminalise their use in the context of terror attacks! Their manufacture requires government certification in the UK, with exceptions to the rule:The Explosives Regulations 2014Authorisation to acquire or acquire and keep explosives4.—(1) An explosives certificate is a certificate certifying that the person to whom it is issued is a fit person—(a)to acquire explosives; or(b)to acquire and keep explosives,in accordance with the terms of the explosives certificate.(2) An explosives certificate must be in a form approved for the time being for the purposes of this regulation by the Executive.Health and safety gone mad, am I right?Hell, the air around us slowly kills, with 3–5 percent of the oxygen we breathe turning into free radicals that burn through our cell membranes; hence the need for a balanced diet to include antioxidants to protect against these free radicals!Remember that most knives can’t even be carried in Scotland without a good reason either, even though they have by far more practical utility in life!Now, what of our beloved guns?Clay pigeons.Hunting and shooting.Warfare.Penis enlargers.Causing injury to life and limb.Every single one of those uses (barring the penis thing) is meant for destruction. They are designed with one goal; to hurt or to break. Even Airsoft guns are meant to simulate a real war scenario, in which people can be injured without the right protective gear. The same goes for paintball. And while we might object and say “man’s gotta eat!”, you’re very right! But our economy offers us the chance to purchase meats from supermarkets from people with far more experience with a gun than you have, our foodstuffs allow for vegan options if you feel that vibe for an environmentally sustainable, plant-based diet!If you have experience with a gun, great! Apply for a permit! Demonstrate that you are a competent owner. State your reasons why you want a gun; to hunt (where “hunt” actually means that you'll be eating your kills, not “I want to go to Africa or the countryside to kill for pleasure because I didn't get enough attention as a child"), to protect your farm, to run a clay pigeon range! But don’t for a second think that your gun is an essential in an era wherein you can march up to a deli aisle and buy a ready-cooked meal within seconds. Stop pretending that you’re a hunter-gatherer if your only game is found in the reduced section of Walmart. Your gun in that scenario is worthless; just like explosives are illegal outside of their lawful context and are heavily restricted without professional purpose, you should not have guns in a household where the only thing you want to do is to show off while harbouring delusions that you’ll maybe someday get to shoot at an intruder. Guns should not be a personal item to own without cause and licence.Especially within the social context.A knife can get away with a mere restriction on its age of selling because of the everyday use it has for all people, a car cannot be driven on a public road without a licence or an instructor behind the wheel. They are not wholly eliminated from public life, though, because despite their dangers, knives and cars are essential to the lives of many. A gun, as a purely destructive tool with much more limited uses and a far bloodier history in recent times (remember our school shootings!), cannot rely on that provision alone (like explosives can’t); the most utility they have for many owners is in providing their egos with an unearned swelling. Some professions need them, some sports fans want them (and hey, that’s what licences and permits and the like are for!), but to call them “essentials” in the way that you would use the term for culinary and transportation needs is ridiculous.And no, I’m not coming after all of your other luxuries that you “want” but don’t “need” (you can sleep on the floor without a bed!), because almost every other of those other “wants” aren’t Goddamned assault weapons.The social context trumps a gun-nut’s fantasies of playing hero.There’s no comparison to be made between them.If you like guns for fun, either go to a professionally accredited shooting range or take up Airsoft. I hold guns to the same standard that I hold fireworks to; great in the past, but now that we have alternatives (Airsoft for guns, drones for fireworks), with the alternatives far less likely to injure or kill us (or cause PTSD damage in the case of exploding firework displays), you go down the moral route and take up the alternative option.As for a tyrannical government argument, you do realise that your guns are incomprehensibly outclassed compared to this, right?They’ll have how many of these tanks?And you’re standing there with this?That’s a doomed battle right there.That’s Goku against a blade of grass territory.You’ve only got so many hands to hold guns in.Besides, this is more what the Framers would have had in mind:Giving ridiculously powerful weapons to people who can use them to shoot up schools but not to take down the tyrannical government as intended showcases a failure on the Framers’ part to foresee the future, indicating that gun rights are (gasp) not fit for purpose.So, not only are your guns worthless against the might of a US army that pumps billions of dollars into its defence budget year on year (what was your salary again, my friend?), not only did a Capitol riot take place only a few weeks ago only to be put down and its members arrested en masse, we also have a much better system just waiting that would prevent school shootings on a major scale! Just get a permit with a reason to apply! You can’t compare a gun to a knife; we place purchasing and carrying restrictions on knives, and they’re nigh-essential for most people’s everyday living.A gun is not essential for everyday living in the slightest.Given their design intent, they have to be justified in personal usages.Just like one’s personal ownership of explosives.Just like a licence is needed to drive publicly.Even if cars kill more people, they’re not designed with the intention of being used as a murder weapon, and they have practical use in everyday life. You still need a licence for a car, you have to pass an aptitude test in both theory and practice, and you must take out drivers’ insurance in case you whallop another person’s car. But the basis for gun culture in America can be traced back to this here:A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.We just determined that whole freedom-fighter thing was a stupid plan.Need a reminder?And as for self defence being oh-so-crucial how will I ever LIVE WITHOUT MY GUNNY GUN GUN, most other countries manage just fine without these lethal firearms. I should know; I studied law at undergrad and postgrad (and currently PhD level) at the University of Glasgow, so I’m pretty aware of our rules (with the odd information top-up here and there). As a Scot, I might be required to do my part to put some distance between myself and an attacker (we have no “stand your ground” rule as a first response), but we are allowed to proportionately defend ourselves in a pinch:The law expects you to retreat – or, at least, put some sort of obstacle between you and your attacker – if you can. That might mean closing a door, driving or running away.This duty to retreat does not, however, require you to place yourself in danger by doing so. For example, if your only means of retreat involved running across a busy road, it may well be reasonable to stand your ground in those circumstances.And:Here are the three requirements for self-defence in Scots law[…]:1. “There must be imminent danger to the life or limb of the accused”2. “The retaliation that he uses in the face of this danger must be necessary for his own safety”3. “If the person assaulted has means of escape or retreat, he is bound to use them”In other words, threat + no escape + proportionate response = self-defenceNothing too spicy about that set-up.It’s America’s FREEDUMB gun culture that’s the outlier.You might then argue that you need your guns to defend against guns, but that’s where the issue lies; a society that introduced guns into its midst has to reckon with the fact that this is on them, mate! Fix the mess, don’t keep making it worse! Plus, the guns can be removed! They can be confiscated! They can be bought back! You might not like the idea, and you might be a bit miffed that you spent all that money on your gun (the slaveowners weren’t exactly thrilled either, but that’s for another day), but believe me when I say that I don’t give much of a toss about your feelings on the matter.Not when the social cost of this childish obsession is forty-five school shootings in forty-six weeks in 2019:They have taken place across the country. From Georgia to California. At elementary, middle and high schools. On college and university campuses.In 46 weeks this year, there have been 45 school shootings. That's nearly an average of one school shooting a week.Of those, 32 of them were at facilities serving Kindergarten through 12th grade.Some shootings were more serious than others, but then that turns on a majorly evil idea that ANY school shootings are good! Mother will allow America to have a little school shooting, toddle off and enjoy your school shooting!“Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.”What a ridiculous statement.You’re just shifting the conversation to your own pathetic interests, at the expense of other peoples’ lives and their physical integrity.What have we established here?Self-defence arguments can be circumvented both with the examples of other Western jurisdictions (America takes a lot of cues from Britain here!) and with the political will to enforce proper limitations.We don’t call for such stringent limitations to other such dangerous substances because they serve a major purpose in our lives that would otherwise become highly ineffectual, such as eating.Despite our best efforts to deny otherwise, the “nanny state” prohibits all from cannabis to Kinder Eggs in an attempt to protect the citizen, but for some reason it refuses to ban the murder sticks.Taking down a tyrannical government with your guns is a pipe dream that will never in a million years play out the way you want it to, even if a tyrannical government ever does take root in the country.Guns do kill people in several instances, and while the moral blame rests with the shooter or negligent party, we still have to acknowledge the underlying danger presented to us by the item at hand.“X other thing kills people”: yes, and in Britain we’ve never heard the end of the 2017 Ariana Grande Manchester bombing, because guess what? We banned the terror-based use of explosive substances too!And we haven’t constructed an entire national identity around the right to acquire and use explosive materials, for that matter!Appeals to the person behind the trigger and claiming some form of character defect with them specifically, or claims of “that’s just human nature”, are worthless in the case of accidents and ignores the harm.When the Christchurch mosque shootings took place in 2019, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern (a powerhouse of empathetic leadership, if her country’s COVID-19 response is anything to go by) flat-out banned assault rifles and military-style semi-automatics, and she also established a gun buyback scheme. It took two shootings (both at the same time, one incident) for her to ban guns.In Britain, after the Dunblane Massacre on the 13th March 1996, in which gunman Thomas Hamilton shot sixteen pupils and one teacher dead (injuring fifteen others before killing himself), we introduced new legislation under Prime Minister John Major. The murdered parties, save for the teacher, were all five-year-olds. I can’t be bothered to type out the legislative story, so have some Wikipedia:The Conservative government of Prime Minister John Major introduced the Firearms (Amendment) Act 1997, which banned all cartridge ammunition handguns with the exception of .22 calibre single-shot weapons in England, Scotland and Wales. Following the 1997 general election, the Labour government of Prime Minister Tony Blair introduced the Firearms (Amendment) (No. 2) Act 1997, banning the remaining .22 cartridge handguns as well.Our mass shooting sprees have come in tiny, isolated incidents since then, with far fewer major events than in the United States. And while our knife crime is an issue that needs to be seriously resolved, at least our politicians had the guts to ban them in public, rather than allowing open carry as an accident waiting to happen.Plus, you’ll do so much more harm with a gun than you will ever with a knife.You don’t tend to bring a gun to a knife fight, after all.This ain’t hard, my lovelies.Or rather, it’s as hard as you want to make it.Perhaps you’re still somehow unconvinced, though.Well then.If “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” is the argument that you still want to pursue, then people will kill people via lots of other means, too.Not just with knives and bombs, though.Inaction.Ignorance.Legislation.Selfishness.People enable themselves by sticking their head in the sand.People killing people by omission, a blindness to human rights (what about the murdered peoples’ right to a life? In “life, liberty, and justice”, life came first out of that little cocktail!), torture, abuses, dehumanisation, and violence.In our present case, that’s gun violence.And silence on the issue is violence.People are ignorant, stupid creatures who cause more harm than good through inaction. The hands that wield the tools are important, but the tools have the capacity to spread great evil in their own right. Like a national flag or a celebrated statue, guns inspire excessive jingoistic devotion to their image, perpetuating them as a symbol for “Americanness” thus rendering it unpatriotic to question their constant presence when another mass murder inevitably ends up taking place.You think a gun isn’t dangerous? Try the laws that allow them to spread! Try the written texts and political dogmas that allow for school shootings! And those that allow for theatre shootings and nightclub shootings and abortion clinic shootings and church shootings! Try the iconography that inspires them!Hell, try the people advocating for them!That’s people killing people!If people kill people, then this inaction is wholly on those people in power and those voters who support their ventures into legislatures and executives as a murderous enterprise.The Constitution that tells legislators and 2A activists that the deaths from gun violence are justified if Americans can keep their weapons is far more dangerous in their hands than they could possibly comprehend in their simple-minded idiocy. If legislators are meant to take decisions on behalf of their people who have the right to life, and they do nothing to stop a wholesale loss of life on bullshit ideological grounds, then that right to life has been tacitly denied through the lack of a political protective will.I wonder what the “due process of law” for not depriving people of their lives is, given that every process seems to repeatedly favour guns over life?I would argue that the right to life comes before the right to murder sticks.But the fact that it took the Constitution fourteen amendments to get that memo:No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.sickens me more than I can say.Harper Lee tells us in To Kill a Mockingbird that:Sometimes a Bible in the hand of one man is worse than a whiskey bottle in the hand of [another].The Bible, the Constitution, the whisky bottle, the gun.They’re all dangerous entities in the wrong hands.But that doesn’t stop them from posing any risk full stop.The wrong hands just make them so very much worse.

Most people in the world speak more than one language, suggesting the human brain evolved to work in multiple tongues. If so, asks Gaia Vince, are those of us who speak only one language missing out?IIn a cafe in south London, two construction workers are engaged in cheerful banter, tossing words back and forth. Their cutlery dances during more emphatic gesticulations and they occasionally break off into loud guffaws. They are discussing a woman, that much is clear, but the details are lost on me. It’s a shame, because their conversation looks fun and interesting, especially to a nosy person like me. But I don’t speak their language.Out of curiosity, I interrupt them to ask what they are speaking. With friendly smiles, they both switch easily to English, explaining that they are South Africans and had been speaking Xhosa. In Johannesburg, where they are from, most people speak at least five languages, says one of them, Theo Morris. For example, Theo’s mother’s language is Sotho, his father’s is Zulu, he learned Xhosa and Ndebele from his friends and neighbours, and English and Afrikaans at school. “I went to Germany before I came here, so I also speak German,” he adds.Was it easy to learn so many languages?“Yes, it’s normal,” he laughs.He’s right. Around the world, more than half of people – estimates vary from 60 to 75 per cent – speak at least two languages. Many countries have more than one official national language – South Africa has 11. People are increasingly expected to speak, read and write at least one of a handful of “super” languages, such as English, Chinese, Hindi, Spanish or Arabic, as well. So to be monolingual, as many native English speakers are, is to be in the minority, and perhaps to be missing out.Multilingualism has been shown to have many social, psychological and lifestyle advantages. Moreover, researchers are finding a swathe of health benefits from speaking more than one language, including faster stroke recovery and delayed onset of dementia.At the current rate, half our languages will be extinct by the end of the centuryCould it be that the human brain evolved to be multilingual – that those who speak only one language are not exploiting their full potential? And in a world that is losing languages faster than ever – at the current rate of one a fortnight, half our languages will be extinct by the end of the century – what will happen if the current rich diversity of languages disappears and most of us end up speaking only one?As adults, we try desperately to decipher a foreign tongue - but we may learn quicker if we stop looking for patterns that aren't there (Credit: Getty Images)I am sitting in a laboratory, headphones on, looking at pictures of snowflakes on a computer. As each pair of snowflakes appears, I hear a description of one of them through the headphones. All I have to do is decide which snowflake is being described. The only catch is that the descriptions are in a completely invented language called Syntaflake.It’s part of an experiment by Panos Athanasopoulos, an ebullient Greek with a passion for languages. Professor of psycholinguistics and bilingual cognition at Lancaster University, he’s at the forefront of a new wave of research into the bilingual mind. As you might expect, his lab is a Babel of different nationalities and languages – but no one here grew up speaking Syntaflake.The task is profoundly strange and incredibly difficult. Usually, when interacting in a foreign language, there are clues to help you decipher the meaning. The speaker might point to the snowflake as they speak, use their hands to demonstrate shapes or their fingers to count out numbers, for example. Here I have no such clues and, it being a made-up language, I can’t even rely on picking up similarities to languages I already know.After a time, though, I begin to feel a pattern might be emerging with the syntax and sounds. I decide to be mathematical about it and get out pen and paper to plot any rules that emerge, determined not to “fail” the test.The experience reminds me of a time I arrived in a rural town a few hours outside Beijing and was forced to make myself understood in a language I could neither speak nor read, among people for whom English was similarly alien. But even then, there had been clues… Now, without any accompanying human interaction, the rules governing the sounds I’m hearing remain elusive, and at the end of the session I have to admit defeat.I join Athanasopoulos for a chat while my performance is being analysed by his team.Glumly, I recount my difficulties at learning the language, despite my best efforts. But it appears that was where I went wrong: “The people who perform best on this task are the ones who don’t care at all about the task and just want to get it over as soon as possible. Students and teaching staff who try to work it out and find a pattern always do worst,” he says.“It’s impossible in the time given to decipher the rules of the language and make sense of what’s being said to you. But your brain is primed to work it out subconsciously. That’s why, if you don’t think about it, you’ll do okay in the test – children do the best.”Language is intimately connected to culture and politics (Credit: Getty Images)The first words ever uttered may have been as far back as 250,000 years ago, once our ancestors stood up on two legs and freed the ribcage from weight-bearing tasks, allowing fine nerve control of breathing and pitch to develop. And when humans had got one language, it wouldn’t have been long before we had many.Language evolution can be compared to biological evolution, but whereas genetic change is driven by environmental pressures, languages change and develop through social pressures. Over time, different groups of early humans would have found themselves speaking different languages. Then, in order to communicate with other groups – for trade, travel and so on – it would have been necessary for some members of a family or band to speak other tongues.We can get some sense of how prevalent multilingualism may have been from the few hunter-gatherer peoples who survive today. “If you look at modern hunter-gatherers, they are almost all multilingual,” says Thomas Bak, a cognitive neurologist who studies the science of languages at the University of Edinburgh. “The rule is that one mustn’t marry anyone in the same tribe or clan to have a child – it’s taboo. So every single child’s mum and dad speak a different language.”In Aboriginal Australia, where more than 130 indigenous languages are still spoken, multilingualism is part of the landscape. “You will be walking and talking with someone, and then you might cross a small river and suddenly your companion will switch to another language,” says Bak. “People speak the language of the earth.” This is true elsewhere, too. “Consider in Belgium: you take a train in Liège, the announcements are in French first. Then, pass through Loewen, where the announcements will be in Dutch first, and then in Brussels it reverts back to French first.”The connection with culture and geography is why Athanasopoulos invented a new language for the snowflake test. Part of his research lies in trying to tease out the language from the culture it is threaded within, he explains.Being so bound up with identity, language is also deeply political. The emergence of European nation states and the growth of imperialism during the 19th century meant it was regarded as disloyal to speak anything other than the one national language. This perhaps contributed to the widely held opinion – particularly in Britain and the US – that bringing up children to be bilingual was harmful to their health and to society more generally.There were warnings that bilingual children would be confused by two languages, have lower intelligence and behave in deviant waysThere were warnings that bilingual children would be confused by two languages, have lower intelligence, low self-esteem, behave in deviant ways, develop a split personality and even become schizophrenic. It is a view that persisted until very recently, discouraging many immigrant parents from using their own mother tongue to speak to their children, for instance. This is in spite of a 1962 experiment, ignored for decades, which showed that bilingual children did better than monolinguals in both verbal and non-verbal intelligence tests.However, research in the last decade by neurologists, psychologists and linguists, using the latest brain-imaging tools, is revealing a swathe of cognitive benefits for bilinguals. It’s all to do with how our ever-flexible minds learn to multitask.Split personalityAsk me in English what my favourite food is, and I will picture myself in London choosing from the options I enjoy there. But ask me in French, and I transport myself to Paris, where the options I’ll choose from are different. So the same deeply personal question gets a different answer depending on the language in which you’re asking me. This idea that you gain a new personality with every language you speak, that you act differently when speaking different languages, is a profound one.Athanasopoulos and his colleagues have been studying the capacity for language to change people’s perspectives. In one experiment, English and German speakers were shown videos of people moving, such as a woman walking towards her car or a man cycling to the supermarket. English speakers focus on the action and typically describe the scene as “a woman is walking” or “a man is cycling”. German speakers, on the other hand, have a more holistic worldview and will include the goal of the action: they might say (in German) “a woman walks towards her car” or “a man cycles towards the supermarket”.Part of this is due to the grammatical toolkit available, Athanasopoulos explains. Unlike German, English has the -ing ending to describe actions that are ongoing. This makes English speakers much less likely than German speakers to assign a goal to an action when describing an ambiguous scene. When he tested English–German bilinguals, however, whether they were action- or goal-focused depended on which country they were tested in. If the bilinguals were tested in Germany, they were goal-focused; in England, they were action-focused, no matter which language was used, showing how intertwined culture and language can be in determining a person’s worldview.In the 1960s, one of the pioneers of psycholinguistics, Susan Ervin-Tripp, tested Japanese–English bilingual women, asking them to finish sentences in each language. She found that the women ended the sentences very differently depending on which language was used. For example, “When my wishes conflict with my family…” was completed in Japanese as “it is a time of great unhappiness”; in English, as “I do what I want”. Another example was “Real friends should…”, which was completed as “help each other” in Japanese and “be frank” in English.Many bilinguals say they feel like a different person when they speak their other languageFrom this, Ervin-Tripp concluded that human thought takes place within language mindsets, and that bilinguals have different mindsets for each language – an extraordinary idea but one that has been borne out in subsequent studies, and many bilinguals say they feel like a different person when they speak their other language.These different mindsets are continually in conflict, however, as bilingual brains sort out which language to use.In a revealing experiment with his English-German bilingual group, Athanasopoulos got them to recite strings of numbers out loud in either German or English. This effectively “blocked” the other language altogether, and when they were shown the videos of movement, the bilinguals’ descriptions were more action- or goal-focused depending on which language had been blocked.So, if they recited numbers in German, their responses to the videos were more typically German and goal-focused. When the number recitation was switched to the other language midway, their video responses also switched.Searching for a word in one language - while suppressing the corresponding word in another - gently taxes the brain, helping to train our concentration (Credit: Getty Images)So what’s going on? Are there really two separate minds in a bilingual brain? That’s what the snowflake experiment was designed to find out. I’m a little nervous of what my fumbling performance will reveal about me, but Athanasopoulos assures me I’m similar to others who have been tested – and so far, we seem to be validating his theory.In order to assess the effect that trying to understand the Syntaflake language had on my brain, I took another test before and after the snowflake task. In these so-called flanker tasks, patterns of arrows appeared on the screen and I had to press the left or right button according to the direction of the arrow in the centre. Sometimes the surrounding pattern of arrows was confusing, so by the end of the first session my shoulders had been hunched somewhere near my ears and I was exhausted from concentrating. It’s not a task in which practice improves performance (most people actually do worse second time round), but when I did the same test again after completing the snowflake task, I was significantly better at it, just as Athanasopoulos has predicted.“Learning the new language improved your performance second time around,” he explains. Relieved as I am to fit into the normal range, it’s a curious result. How can that be?The flanker tasks were exercises in cognitive conflict resolution – if most of the arrows were pointing to the left, my immediate impulse was to push the left button, but this wasn’t the correct response if the central arrow was pointing right. I had to block out my impulse and heed the rule instead. Another example of cognitive conflict is a test in which the names of colours are written in different colours (“blue” written in red, for example). The aim is to say which colour each word is written in, but this is tricky, because we read the word much quicker than we process the colour of the letters. It requires considerable mental effort to ignore the impulse just to say the word we can’t help but read.The part of the brain that manages this supreme effort is known as the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), part of the “executive system”. Located on the frontal lobe, it is a toolbox of mental attention skills that enables us to concentrate on one task while blocking out competing information, and allows us to switch focus between different tasks without becoming confused. It is the executive system that tells us to go when we see a green light and stop for a red, and it is the same system that tells us to ignore the meaning of the word we read but concentrate on the colour of the letters.The snowflake test prepared my ACC for the second flanker task, just as speaking more than one language seems to train the executive system more generally. A steady stream of studies over the past decade has shown that bilinguals outperform monolinguals in a range of cognitive and social tasks from verbal and nonverbal teststo how well they can read other people. Greater empathy is thought to be because bilinguals are better at blocking out their own feelings and beliefs in order to concentrate on the other person’s.“Bilinguals perform these tasks much better than monolinguals – they are faster and more accurate,” says Athanasopoulos. And that suggests their executive systems are different from monolinguals’.Mental musclesIn fact, says cognitive neuropsychologist Jubin Abutalebi, at the University of San Raffaele in Milan, it is possible to distinguish bilingual people from monolinguals simply by looking at scans of their brains. “Bilingual people have significantly more grey matter than monolinguals in their anterior cingulate cortex, and that is because they are using it so much more often,” he says. The ACC is like a cognitive muscle, he adds: the more you use it, the stronger, bigger and more flexible it gets.Bilinguals, it turns out, exercise their executive control all the time because their two languages are constantly competing for attention. Brain-imaging studies show that when a bilingual person is speaking in one language, their ACC is continually suppressing the urge to use words and grammar from their other language. Not only that, but their mind is always making a judgement about when and how to use the target language. For example, bilinguals rarely get confused between languages, but they may introduce the odd word or sentence of the other language if the person they are talking to also knows it.“My mother tongue is Polish but my wife is Spanish so I also speak Spanish, and we live in Edinburgh so we also speak English,” says Thomas Bak. “When I am talking to my wife in English, I will sometimes use Spanish words, but I never accidentally use Polish. And when I am speaking to my wife’s mother in Spanish, I never accidentally introduce English words because she doesn’t understand them. It’s not something I have to think about, it’s automatic, but my executive system is working very hard to inhibit the other languages.”For bilinguals, with their exceptionally buff executive control, the flanker test is just a conscious version of what their brains do subconsciously all day long – it’s no wonder they are good at it.Speaking a second language can help forestall the symptoms of dementia (Credit: Getty Images)A superior ability to concentrate, solve problems and focus, better mental flexibility and multitasking skills are, of course, valuable in everyday life. But perhaps the most exciting benefit of bilingualism occurs in ageing, when executive function typically declines: bilingualism seems to protect against dementia.Psycholinguist Ellen Bialystok made the surprising discovery at York University in Toronto while she was comparing an ageing population of monolinguals and bilinguals.“The bilinguals showed symptoms of Alzheimer’s some four to five years after monolinguals with the same disease pathology,” she says.Being bilingual didn’t prevent people from getting dementia, but it delayed its effects, so in two people whose brains showed similar amounts of disease progression, the bilingual would show symptoms an average of five years after the monolingual. Bialystok thinks this is because bilingualism rewires the brain and improves the executive system, boosting people’s “cognitive reserve”. It means that as parts of the brain succumb to damage, bilinguals can compensate more because they have extra grey matter and alternative neural pathways.“Bilinguals use their frontal processors for tasks that monolinguals don’t and so these processors become reinforced and better in the frontal lobe. And this is used to compensate during degeneration of the middle parts of the brain,” Bialystok explains. However, it is no good simply to have learned a little French at school. The effect depends on how often you use your bilingual skill. “The more you use it, the better,” she says, “but there’s no breaking point, it’s a continuum.”Bilingualism can also offer protection after brain injury. In a recent study of 600 stroke survivors in India, Bak discovered that cognitive recovery was twice as likely for bilinguals as for monolinguals.Such results suggest bilingualism helps keep us mentally fit. It may even be an advantage that evolution has positively selected for in our brains – an idea supported by the ease with which we learn new languages and flip between them, and by the pervasiveness of bilingualism throughout world history. Just as we need to do physical exercise to maintain the health of bodies that evolved for a physically active hunter-gatherer lifestyle, perhaps we ought to start doing more cognitive exercises to maintain our mental health, especially if we only speak one language.In recent years, there has been a backlash against the studies showing benefits from bilingualism. Some researchers tried and failed to replicate some of the results; others questioned the benefits of improved executive function in everyday life. Bak wrote a rejoinder to the published criticisms, and says there is now overwhelming evidence from psychological experiments backed by imaging studies that bilingual and monolingual brains function differently. He says the detractors have made errors in their experimental methods.One estimate puts the value of knowing a second language at up to $128,000 over 40 yearsBialystok agrees, adding that it is impossible to examine whether bilingualism improves a child’s school exam results because there are so many confounding factors. But, she says, “given that at the very least it makes no difference – and no study has ever shown it harms performance – considering the very many social and cultural benefits to knowing another language, bilingualism should be encouraged”. As for the financial benefits, one estimate puts the value of knowing a second language at up to $128,000 over 40 years.Immersing children in a second language may help benefit their performance in all subjects (Credit: Getty Images)The result of my test in Athanasopoulos’s lab suggests that just 45 minutes of trying to understand another language can improve cognitive function. His study is not yet complete, but other research has shown that these benefits of learning a language can be achieved quickly. The problem is, they disappear again unless they are used – and I am unlikely to use the made-up snowflake language ever again! Learning a new language is not the only way to improve executive function – playing video games, learning a musical instrument, even certain card games can help – but because we use language all the time, it’s probably the best executive-function exerciser there is. So how can this knowledge be applied in practice?One option is to teach children in different languages. In many parts of the world, this is already being done: many Indian children, for example, will use a different language in school from their mother or village tongue. But in English-speaking nations, it is rare. Nevertheless, there is a growing movement towards so-called immersion schooling, in which children are taught in another language half the time. The state of Utah has been pioneering the idea, with many of its schools now offering immersion in Mandarin Chinese or Spanish.“We use a half-day model, so the target language is used to teach in the morning, and then English is used in the afternoon – then this is swapped on other days as some learn better in the morning and some in the afternoon,” explains Gregg Roberts, who works with the Utah Office of State Education and has championed immersion language teaching in the state. “We have found that the kids do as well and generally better than monolingual counterparts in all subjects. They are better at concentrating, focusing and have a lot more self-esteem. Anytime you understand another language, you understand your language and culture better. It is economically and socially beneficial. We need to get over our affliction with monolingualism.”The immersion approach is being trialled in the UK now, too. At Bohunt secondary school in Liphook, Hampshire, head teacher Neil Strowger has introduced Chinese-language immersion for a few lessons.Immersing yourself in a new language and culture may open your mind to new ways of thinking (Credit: Getty Images)I sit in on an art class with 12-year-olds being taught by two teachers: one speaking English, the other Chinese. The children are engaged but quiet, concentrating on the task of learning multiple ideas. When they speak it is often in Chinese – and there is something rather surreal about watching young people in the UK discussing British graffiti artist Banksy in Mandarin. The children say they chose to learn in Chinese because they thought it would be “fun” and “interesting” and “useful” – a far cry from the dreary French lessons I endured at school.The majority of the art class will take their Chinese GCSE exams several years early but Strowger tells me the programme has had many benefits in addition to their grades, including improving students’ engagement and enjoyment, increasing their awareness of other cultures so that they are equipped as global citizens, widening their horizons, and improving their job prospects.What about those of us who have left school? In order to maintain the benefits of bilingualism, you need to use your languages and that can be tricky, especially for older people who may not have many opportunities to practise. Perhaps we need language clubs, where people can meet to speak other languages. Bak has done a small pilot study with elderly people learning Gaelic in Scotland and seen significant benefits after just one week. Now he aims to carry out a much larger trial.It is never too late to learn another tongue, and it can be very rewarding. Alex Rawlings is a British professional polyglot who speaks 15 languages: “Each language gives you a whole new lifestyle, a whole new shade of meaning,” he says. “It’s addictive!”“People say it’s too hard as an adult. But I would say it’s much easier after the age of eight. It takes three years for a baby to learn a language, but just months for an adult.”As the recent research shows, that’s a worthwhile investment of time. Being bilingual could keep our minds working longer and better into old age, which could have a massive impact on how we school our children and treat older people. In the meantime, it makes sense to talk, hablar, parler, sprechen, beszel, berbicara in as many languages as you can.--