Anyone remember attending a business meeting in say, 1977? What do you remember? Well, it was mostly men and, eight out of ten were smoking. And God help the prig in the room who suggested that those eight smokers put the smokes out. Smoking was as much a part of the culture as martinis at lunch and gas-guzzling cars. Smoking was permitted everywhere: in stores, banks, phone booths even in hospitals. All of our heroes smoked. James Bond liked Turkish cigs. Johnny Carson smoked on the Tonight Show. The point is that smoking was as ingrained in the American way of life as television and cell phones are today. So how did that change? It changed slowly and culturally.
So now let's talk about guns.
First we should clear away some of the silly rhetoric associated with this issue:
1) "Laws won't stop mass killings like Sandy Hook" True but irrelevant. Gun laws like mandatory background checks and assault weapons bans will have no effect on criminal behavior or the irrational acts of the mentally disturbed. Those laws might, however, make it just a little bit harder for crazies to kill people. So where's the harm?
2) "The Second Amendment is clear and absolute regarding gun ownership." Hogwash. There are exceptions and modifications to all of the Constitutional Amendments. You have free speech but you can't yell "fire" in a crowded theater. You have press freedom but child pornography is illegal. Ask George W. Bush how he feels about the rules on search and seizure having signed and implemented the Patriot Act. We interpret the Bill of Rights for good or ill all the time and those interpretations inform our understanding of Constitutional amendments.
3) "Law abiding citizens own the majority of guns and they shouldn't have their rights interfered with in any way." Nonsense. We interfere with "law-abiding citizens" all the time. (BTW, please ask the NRA to stop referring to gun owning "law-abiding citizens" like they were oppressed saints. Owning a gun lawfully does not confer some sort of knighthood.) You need a driver's license and insurance to operate a motor vehicle. In many states you must wear a helmet to drive a motorcycle. Seatbelts are mandatory. Hunting and fishing licenses are needed in many areas to hunt and fish. The idea that a gun is sacrosanct and should therefore be restriction-free is misguided and perverse.
4) "Gun laws will not stop criminals from obtaining and using guns" True but who cares? Criminals will always be able to get guns in the same way that drug users will find ways to get drugs. We should not be concerned about the victims of crime so much as we should be concerned about the victims of accidents and suicides. Forget Sandy Hook. Forget Aurora, Colorado. How many children are killed each year in accidental shootings and how many would it take before the NRA stopped posturing? How many suicides would be prevented if the tortured souls, bent on self destruction had tried to kill themselves with a less guaranteed method? Now weigh these tragedies against the supposed inconvenience of gun-owning citizens.
5) "Guns in your house will make you safer" Really? For every one time a gun is used in home defence there are: 7 assaults or murders, 11 suicide attempts and 4 accidents involving guns in or around the home.
Guns kill because guns are handy; not to muggers or burglars but to despondent fathers who kill their families. They're available to troubled teenagers who are tired of being bullied; to jilted lovers with "no reason to live". How many thousands of lives would have been spared if there wasn't a gun available to settle a dispute, express a rage or permanently stop an unbearable anguish? Guns kill children because, when found in the home, they present the same fascination as matches. And comparing guns to knifes or hammers as potential deadly weapons is ludicrous. Guns are a single purpose tool. They exist only to kill.
N.B. While I was writing this, a six year old in New Jersey died after being shot by a four-year-old on Tuesday. Are you listening Mr. LaPierre?
Whatever perverse genome exists in American DNA (no other culture or nationality seems to have it) must be identified and modified. We must begin to treat gun ownership as out of the main stream. The question "why would you own a gun?" must carry the same social disapproval as asking "why would you still smoke?" or "Why are you so quick to slap your child?" We don't want to take away your "right" to own a gun, only your desire. A person wearing a pistol into a bar in Fort Worth should be subject to ridicule (but perhaps with a bit of circumspection). A proponent of personal armories in their basements should be viewed with the same derision as someone hoarding Twinkies. Virtually all of the civilized world views America's obsession with guns as aberrant behavior. Why don't we?
You know in your heart that, confronted with a mugger or a burglar you are not going to shoot your way out. You're just not. A few hours of training will not qualify you to do anything more than put up your hands and allow the thief to steal and sell another gun...yours. A woman in Ft. Worth shot and killed an intruder who, as it turns out, was at the wrong house. Perfectly legal except one man, 29 years old, is dead and one woman will have to live with the shooting on her conscience. Had she been unarmed she would have suffered no more than a serious scare and the intruder might have spent a few hours in a cell. This probably wouldn't have happened in Italy or Poland or Japan. If we don't abandon the gunfighter, macho, frontiersman notion that gun ownership equals home security, we will continue to kills thousands every year almost all, unnecessarily. Guns don't kill people, stupid, myopic, misguided gun-rights nuts kill people...and they kill a lot of them.
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