I keep watching the news about the obscenity that occurred Friday in Connecticut. I've already heard rumblings of the old, "guns don't kill people, people kill people" mantra, and a number of the individuals being interviewed have mentioned the enormous power of the gun lobby.
Before I go any further, let's get something straight: I am in favor of gun ownership. I grew up in a family with guns.
There was only a limited number of guns, and they were always stored properly. I was always carefully schooled not only in their proper handling, but in giving them the proper level of respect. While I lived with my folks, I always read the monthly issue of American Rifleman magazine.
Now let's take a look around. The Connecticut shooter killed his mother with one of her own guns and then went on a rampage with three of them. The latest reports are that she had five guns in the house, including several semi-automatic pistols and a military-grade rifle. One family member said something about her buying guns because "she was alone in a big house" and "she was comfortable with guns."
Waitaminit.
The slain woman -- and I do not intend to demonize her, I am simply using the example -- was worried about living alone (with at least one late teen/early adult son) in a big house... in a well-to-do neighborhood in a well-patrolled area in a close-knit town with very low crime statistics. The excuse of a poor little frail female alone in the dark in a big house rings hollow here. Then there's the nature of the weapons. I can understand owning a semi-automatic pistol; there are a lot of advantages for the person holding the gun in case it needs to be used, and they're often easier to use than non-auto firearms. But why five weapons? And why was it necessary for one of them -- the weapon that ultimately slaughtered all those kids & staff in the nearby elementary school -- to be a military-grade, semi-automatic carbine?
What are we planning to defend ourselves from?
Just days ago, I watched one of those "prepper" shows, where the entire purpose of the program was to see if people had built up a proper arsenal for self-defense and knew how to use it properly. There was a family of three who all ran up excellent scores in a military-style test, and there was a guy with a ranch out in the middle of nowhere who needed to make some adjustments before he could score well at long range but soon proved to be an excellent shot.
Waitaminit.
Papa in the family of three is retired military, and he has obviously taught his wife and daughter a great deal about weapons; their familiarity with both proper use and handling of their weapons was clear to see. While I didn't get a feeling they were "weird" or out of the ordinary in any way (daughter showed up for the test with iPod earbuds hanging around her neck!) I was a little put off -- as was the host -- by the sheer size of the family armory. I also had to remind myself that all the training, all the respect they had for the weapons and what those weapons could do, was based in making sure they were ready for a post-apocalyptic America where they would have to defend themselves against ravening hordes of I-don't-know-what. Is it really necessary for a family of three to have an entire armory to defend themselves against ravening post-apocalyptic hordes? (Hint: probably not.)
Then there was the ranch guy. He also had a very large collection of weapons, all supposedly to help him defend his land against -- you guessed it -- ravening post-apocalyptic hordes. His arsenal (and again the host was "impressed" by the sheer volume of weaponry on display) included, among other things a MAC-10 that can spray over 100 .45 caliber slugs in a minute and a .50 caliber monster that's closer to cannon than rifle (the military uses these to disable vehicles by shooting slugs through their engine blocks at long range).
Ravenous post-apocalyptic hordes be damned; I cannot find any excuse for a private citizen to need that kind of firepower, much less multiples of the weapons. The guy was literally, by his own admission, preparing to defend his land and supposedly his neighbors' against armies of invaders. It's not bloody likely that any such armies will be marching toward him through the Texas brush in his lifetime -- but God save the poor sot who gets lost on a hike or makes a wrong turn on an ATV.
After the first round of news about the Connecticut school shootings I flashed back to that show and others like it, and I realized that part of the problem is that we as a society have come to glorify this kind of quasi-military excess. We celebrate the fringe individuals who believe the world is ending according to Mayan prophecy, or that they will be overrun by hungry hordes of the undeserving unprepared after some kind of military / financial / political / natural apocalypse. We encourage them to be even more prepared for their personal nightmares -- more prepared in ways that make it much easier for them to do serious damage to the everyday John and Jane Doe on the street. God save the Does if they look the slightest bit post-apocalyptic!
(Remember the case a few years ago where a Japanese exchange student was shot dead on someone's front lawn because he went to the wrong house on his way to a Halloween party?)
Am I advocating gun control? Damn right I'm advocating gun control! Not the elimination of private gun ownership -- but the application of basic common sense.
Individuals seeking a method of self-defense in their own home do not need more weapons than they can carry, do not need a weapon that can hose down an area with multiple rounds each second, do not need military-grade carbines when even a simple .22 pistol or .38 revolver will kill several intruders quite dead just as easily.
Individuals who want to hunt animals in their natural habitat do not need a semi-automatic weapon that converts the prey to ground meat on the spot, do not need separate weapons for every 100 yards' difference in range, do not need a weapon that can kill at ranges over a mile, do not need a dozen or more rifles for a single hunting trip.
Individuals who have armed themselves because they "need" to defend themselves when (it's never "if," it's always "when") society collapses do not need more weapons -- they need counseling. There is nothing to stop these individuals from suddenly deciding "things have gone far enough" and that poor schlub a few feet away on a street corner or in a doctor's office or in a school or shopping mall is the cause. There is even less to stop these individuals from deciding "the end is near enough" and removing you, or me, or that little kid over there from the list of people likely to want them to share their stored provisions.
Individuals seeking to defend themselves in their homes, individuals participating in target shooting sports events, and individuals who are hunting in the wild do not need armor-piercing rounds, hollow-point rounds, incindiary rounds, or explosive rounds. Individuals do not need military-grade body armor to plink at tin cans, hunt deer, or check that noise downstairs in the kitchen.
Individuals who live in the middle of nowhere (never mind urban areas) do not need military-grade weapons capable of putting a slug through the engine block of a car a mile away. They do not need military-grade weapons capable of nearly vaporizing a meat-based target at 100 yards' distance.
The U.S. Constitution guarantees the right of weapons ownership. It was written at a time when most households had a limited number of weapons that were used primarily to put food on the table or defend homesteads on the fringes of "civilized" territory. Individuals were well-versed in the use and handling of these weapons, and usually could only put out two, maybe three, shots in a minute. The Constitution's authors are extremely unlikely to have thought that it would be used to guarantee a single person's ownership of firepower equal to an entire brigade of 1800s infantry. Yes, I've hear the saying, "if guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns" so I will repeat that I am advocating gun control, not gun elimination. I don't have the space here for all the references, so I'll leave it up to my readers -- but the majority of the mass shootings we have cringed over in recent times have been accomplished not with "outlaw" guns but with weapons legally purchased and registered.
It is time that we as a society cut down on the sheer volume of arms and armaments in general circulation. Can you hurt a lot of people with a knife, a lead pipe, a baseball bat? Sure you can -- but simply looking at crimes of violence anywhere in the world (I mean the raw numbers, nothing "adjusted" for this, that, or the other purpose or point of view) will immediately show you that such attacks account for fewer victims even though such weapons are easy to procure. It's slower, it's harder to accomplish, it's easier to stop, and only guns really allow attacks at distances more than a couple of free greater than the length of an attacker's arms.
It is time that we as a society stopped glorifying violence. There's no need to show 12-year-olds adult videos, but where is the sense in piling legal penalties for that act atop each other while a WWE match complete with trash talking, physical violence, and orchestrated disrespect is considered "good family entertainment." We need to stop marketing toy weapons under the guise of teaching "interpersonal skills." We need to stop making diplomacy a laughable example of stupidity while making massive military-style responses to the merest of slights an acceptable form of crisis management.
It is time that we stopped telling women they are supposed to be weak little dependent things, and telling men they aren't men if they're not virile super-beings capable of killing or impregnating on sight, depending on the whim of the moment. We need to stop looking at mental health services as just another good place to cut costs while tens of millions of dollars are spent on the making of a single movie about a fictional gun-toting hero righteously blowing away dozens of bad guys.
It is time we stopped demonizing each other, objectifying each other, seeking to magnify the differences that exist between each other, turning each other into targets instead of finding ways to agree that we disagree and leave it at that.
It's time people like me can return to merely being annoyed, instead of horrified.
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