The “slippery slope” slides both ways: one protects our rights and the other bullies us with whining.
When an interest group declares that certain restrictions on their power is a “slippery slope” leading to dire consequences, we should hear desperation, rather than reasonable bargaining. The argument amounts to declaring that some remote cause will eventually lead to an undesirable effect, regardless of how remote the cause might be.
The first “slippery slope” argument may be the one where a squabbling brother and sister are sitting in the back seat, and sister calls out, “Bobby’s looking at me.” Dad, realizing that this often ends in hand-to-hand combat, barks, “Bobby, stop looking at your sister.” Bobby throws his hands up in the air, feeling unjustly accused, but the “slippery slope” has been cut off with a warning.
There are countless “slippery slopes” in school, including certain kinds of dress (the logo of an opposing football team) or a book used in a class that portrays an authority figure in a bad light. Usually the rationale for these restrictions on clothing and reading is the potential effects on school decorum. Indeed most anything new in a school can affect the decorum, so slippery slopes are everywhere.
The lesson of the “slippery slope” has been mastered by adults as well, including labor negotiators, politicians, and, most consummately, the National Rifle Association. Apparently the NRA is so consumed with slippery slopes that it does not want gun use or ownership revealed to doctors, so that data about such ownership can be compiled with health records. As everyone knows, gun ownership is always compromised when someone actually knows you own a gun.
The NRA has vigorously opposed background checks on gun owners on the same “slippery slope” principle. Somehow information about the criminal record or mental health of a gun owner is a violation of the Second Amendment, which protects the right to bear arms. In fact any restriction on gun ownership is by its very intent a violation of the Second Amendment. Not allowing teachers to bring their handguns to school violates their Second Amendment rights.
What the proponents of the “slippery slope” should understand is that the slope goes both ways. In one direction are the onerous restrictions on our Constitutional rights. In the other direction is our loss of credibility, because we have pushed the balance of power over the peak of the hill. Ask the labor negotiators who kept expanding employee benefits until they drove their companies out of business. Ask the southern politicians who insisted that Civil Right legislation infringed on the rights of States to regulate their schools and businesses. Ask the little brother or sister in the back seat after Dad says finally, ” I don’t want hear about anybody looking at anybody!”
Even if the Supreme Court has argued based on the principle of the “slippery slope,” it is probably the weakest argument in its arsenal. When legislation directly causes a conflict with Constitutional rights, then it deserves censure, but if the connection is as remote as restricting gun ownership to sane, law-abiding citizens and the generic “right to bear arms,” then the “slippery slope” principle is sliding amuck.
Breaking with past tradition, the NRA should choose its battles. If it continues to oppose innocent practices like background checks or gathering data on gun owners, the public will soon notice that we have slipped on this slope before. We don’t want to hear the plaintive “The government is looking at me” anymore. We have reached the point where the power of the gun lobby is pushing us down the other side of the slope. We’re not going there.