Thoughts on our American Gun Culture

As with so many others, I've been thinking about the Newtown shootings quite a bit. Usually I ignore these tragedies...after all, we have so many shootings in America. But having so many elementary schoolers shot, for an unknown motive, when I have a seven year old son that I've not seen in person for a few weeks due to my job in the city while he's back home in the middle of DeerHuntin', PA...that disturbed me.

I am in a tough spot. Many of my coworkers were horrified by what happened. There was some comfort in that, some measure of not feeling quite so alone here in the big city while my family is over a hundred miles away.

But there are some coworkers who are, to put it mildly, gun enthusiasts. There's a chilling effect to know that you really shouldn't express much of an opinion on the matter lest you bubble some animosity to the surface; to be fair, they may be feeling under attack now, since there is some rather vocal anti-gun sentiment against those who feel a need to collect a small arsenal in their basements.

It's best to just not say much at all. And I for the most part kept my comments in check. I'd say a few snark things here and there using Twitter and that was about the extent of it. But there always has to be someone who decides to damage my calm.

Apparently Rep. Louie Gohmert, a Republican representative from Texas (color me surprised) said that "Having been a judge and reviewed photographs of these horrific scenes and knowing that children have these defensive wounds, gun shots through their arms and hands as they try to protect themselves, and, hearing the heroic stories of the principal, lunging, trying to protect, Chris, I wish to God she had had an M-4 in her office, locked up so when she heard gunfire, she pulls it out and she didn’t have to lunge heroically with nothing in her hands and takes him out and takes his head off before he can kill those precious kids."

 Seriously?

Apparently they are serious. This is the same type of bullshit we heard when James Holmes shot up a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado. "If only the audience full of law abiding citizens were armed! They could have taken the shooter out before he killed those people!"

These same advocates ignored the followup where it was found that if someone did happen to have the wits about them enough to draw a weapon, AND realize who the person was causing the panic among the chaos, the odds are they would have ended up shooting people fleeing the theater instead of actually shooting the killer. Oh, and he was wearing bullet resistant protection...better make the first shots count.

 That truly made me twitch. Literally, I had a twitch from the muscles on the side of my face. Did these people ever actually work in a public school? Have they had experience dealing with people who don't fantasize about killing everyone around them the way they themselves apparently do?

Are they aware they aren't actually in one of these action movies?

Was this guy aware that the teachers he wanted to arm are the same teachers that his party platform are accusing of being overpaid, overcompensated, and largely incompetent? Now he wants to arm them?

This was when I tried to better understand why people feel a need for such weaponry. I'm not a stranger to guns. I enjoyed target shooting. I grew up in a town that had days off school for hunting. Guns, church, and beer are pretty much the top three things that keep my home town's economy fueled before the gas fracking companies moved in, and all that did was add "fleecing those damn gas workers" to the list of income for businessmen and slumlords.  I was in a town that made guns a hobby nearly as important as NASCAR.

But I still couldn't understand the fervent need for people to own large guns.

So what reasons are being put forth to support the pro-gun groups?


"I have a right to defend myself." I can understand that, being in a scary city. You never know when someone scary, like basically anyone who isn't you, might steal your wallet or threaten to rape you in an alley or look at you in a strange manner. It's comforting to feel the weight of that pistol holstered to your side.

The thing I wondered was that if robberies and assaults generally took place within reach of a baseball bat's distance from you, why are you using a weapon that is ideally able to whap a target a few blocks away? That means that if you were to miss your target, or the bullet goes through the target, you risk hitting an innocent bystander.

Why are you using a gun for self defense when you could use a taser or mace, or perhaps invest in  martial arts training?

I suppose there are some that would say that the criminal could have a gun. In that case, you're already at a disadvantage, if he's already got a weapon drawn and aimed at you.

"Drunk drivers kill people! Should we ban cars?" That was a great reply because it was blatantly stupid. No auto dealer sells you a car with the expectation that you're going to run someone over. If I pull out a pocket knife, people generally don't assume I'm going to start slashing them with it. Pull out a gun, and you're going to get a panic from people around you.

Why?

Because guns are used for one thing. Putting holes in things. Targets. Animals. People.

These massacres aren't accidents. These guns are doing precisely what they're made to do; kill things. You're not misusing the gun. It's not like someone took a break from using their Glock as a cooking implement and decided in a moment of angry passion to turn someone's brain into a decorative wall pattern.

This is a "false equivalency" fallacy.

 "I use a gun because I need protection from the government." Or some other relation to the second amendment, back when guns took three minutes to reload and were laughably inaccurate over a distance of more than fifty feet.

Here's my question. You have your guns, or your basement arsenal, and you are going to protect yourself from the government when they come knockin'. Has there ever been a successful outcome of this game for the people with the home arsenal? Waco? Ruby Ridge?

It seems to me that the government, with tanks, fighters, well trained militia, body armor, drones, bombs capable of blowing up bunkers hundreds of feet underground...

...probably isn't all that afraid of what you have. I remember a case in California where a guy in body armor did substantial damage (notice he's not around anymore?) before he could be stopped and another case where a guy welded steel plates to a bulldozer to create his own tank before going on a rampage (notice he's not around anymore?) so I concede that you can do a lot of damage before someone takes you out.

But someone will still take you out.

"I use a gun to protect my family." I question this because this insinuates you feel your family is in danger, yet all most of these people do is have a few guns in the house. That's not always the case, though. Do you also bar the windows? Have a panic room? Is the door frame steel, to prevent someone from kicking it in? Do you have security cameras? Fencing around the perimeter?

Or just the guns?

Having the weapon also supposes that accidents cannot happen. True enthusiasts relish telling you how careful they are; gun locks, gun lockers, teaching kids to use guns "responsibly." Yet every year there are stories of kids shot because they were playing with daddy's gun. Or the gun slipped and went off "accidentally." Or a kid was shot because he was sneaking in late at night and Daddy thought it was an intruder.

So many people who honestly wanted to protect their families end up killing them instead.

And when the stories do come out, it's always someone else's fault. Always. My Dad was shot in the leg by a ricochet from a rock; should have been more careful with his backstop! The person that killed all those kids in Newtown? He was mentally ill! It's irresponsible to let him have access to those weapons, of course bad things happen!

 Which brings up the latest spin on the elementary school massacre. "Mental illness is the REAL problem. We need to address that!"

This hearkens back to the core message of the Republican party. Responsibility for one's own actions. See, guns don't kill people. People kill people. Crazy people getting guns, they kill people. We normal, sane, law-abiding citizens pose no threat, because we're sane, responsible people! We need to focus on treating the mentally ill!

This is also the same party that opposes healthcare coverage that isn't for-profit, putting healthcare out of reach for most of the Americans that need it. Ironic, isn't it? Maybe it's cognitive dissonance.

I'll point out that there's no definitive test to show when or if someone will snap. Most guns used in crimes are obtained legally, after all. I'm not exactly sure how they plan on "treating the mentally ill" or rounding them up before they get guns if there's no way to know if someone is truly mentally stable before they go on a shooting spree.

And what about the law-abiding perfectly sane people with weapons that have a kid who is unstable? Does the idea that "just because someone went nuts and killed a bunch of people doesn't mean I should have to give up my gun" extend to the people who have kids or family members who are potentially unstable? Are they going to start screening all members of a home before allowing you to have a gun?

What's the solution? Banning guns? "If you ban guns, people will just find other ways to kill each other!" Will there still be murders? Most likely. But hearing this argument gives me a couple of questions; first, in countries with stricter laws limiting access to guns, why do we not hear of the stream of bombings, poisonings, and other supervillain-esque schemes to murder masses of people? Come to think of it, our murder rate is something like three or four times higher than France.

Take a look at the list of homicides by country from Wikipedia. It doesn't take a genius to see, even at a glance, that we're doing something really wrong compared to similarly developed countries.

That's really strange to me to hear gun advocates vehemently denying that something is wrong with the way we approach gun regulation in our country. Looking at the numbers, how can you not think there's a better way?

Second, the goal isn't necessarily to eliminate homicide, but rather to reduce homicides. Raise the bar, so to speak, on how easy it is to kill each other. When most gun crimes are committed using legally obtained weapons, shouldn't we examine just how easy it is to obtain guns? Maybe if it were a little more difficult to pick up a gun and squeeze the trigger on impulse, maybe there would be fewer deaths.

"The real answer is to have everyone carry concealed weapons!" This one is another one that makes me wonder how far into the non-reality bubble these people are. Everyone? Armed? Are they aware that the majority of people out there probably aren't as anxious to shoot other people as they are? I really wonder if these advocates are just chomping at the bit for an excuse to blow someone else away, and rely on the laws allowing easy access to weapons as a form of validation that this is normal.

The logic goes along the lines of, "If everyone is armed, then gunmen won't shoot anyone, because they know that they'll be killed right away." Because of course lunatics think about surviving their rampage and are normally rational people, and it also ignores the fact that even experienced shooters miss. That was driven home by a recent shooting in NYC wherein the police...trained police...shot 3 and injured a total of 9 civilians in an attempt to hit a lone gunman near the Empire State Building. When trained policemen end up wounding more people than the shooters, I question the wisdom of just arming civilians who are a little too anxious to carry death in a hand-sized package.

It sounds to me as if they live in some kind of action movie fantasy, where everyone is suddenly turned into a SEAL team member by virtue of just having a Glock strapped to his or her side.

But this approach is the opposite of they "They want to ban all guns!" mentality, where the retort is that people will find creative ways to kill each other anyway.

The implication is that if you level the playing field, criminals will be criminals anyway, and will continue to find ways to kill people. Evidently these people who live in an action movie set to continually loop in their heads never paid attention to Batman.

There's a scene in the movie Batman Begins where Commissioner Gordon expresses some concern regarding the impact of masked vigilantes running around the city (quote culled from IMDB):

Batman:Well Sergeant
Jim Gordon:Its Lieutenant now, you really started something, bent cops running scared, hope on the streets
Batman:But?
Jim Gordon:We still haven't picked up Crane or half the inmates he released from the asylum
Batman:We will, we can bring Gotham back
Jim Gordon:What about escalation?
Batman:Escalation?
Jim Gordon:We start carrying semi automatics, they buy automatics, we start wearing Kevlar, they buy armor piercing rounds, and *you're* wearing a mask and jumping off rooftops. take this guy: armed robbery, double homicide. Got a taste for the theatrical, like you. Leaves a calling card. 

See, if everyone, or a significant portion of the public, were carrying guns, wouldn't that mean the same scenario as pro-gun advocates spelled out with banning guns, that nutjobs would just start using more "creative" ways to kill people? If they're not willing to just kill people with guns and ending their own lives out of fear of being shot by the gun-loving public, you'll just end up with bombings and poisonings and other supervillain-y type behavior, using their own brand of logic.

The real question is, why do you need these weapons? Isn't there a reasonable compromise that can be made?

I'm a fan of target shooting. Others in my family are big on hunting. And living in rural PA, there are times we see things like bear roaming in the back yard. Plus I really do hate deer...anything to keep their population down and minimize my car insurance is a bonus as far as I'm concerned.

But has PETA been going around arming deer so that hunters require AR-15's to take out deer? (Which might actually be awesome as a reality series, by the way...)

Can't we limit access to guns in a sensible fashion? You're not going to hold off a mob if civilization collapses. The government that can kill with remote-control drones is by no measure afraid of you and your collection of rifles. And you're not John McClane or James Bond.

It's time to become more practical. There are far more deaths through accidents, suicides and homicides than are prevented by citizens brandishing guns, and perhaps it's time to scale back the tools of lethality to a more manageable level. Looking at the numbers and statistics compared to other countries, it's sheer delusion to not think there's a better way.

"But this is America. Not some Socialist/Communist country. AMERICA!" You're right. Other first-world countries have fewer of their citizens killing each other with guns. It would be nice if citizens of the Greatest Country on the Planet had lower odds of being shot than those living in France.

EDIT - Found some interesting graphs created by Mark Reid (@mdreid) on Twitter. Go ahead and have a look...an illustration of my previous assertion that even glancing at this information tells me that something is seriously wrong with the way the US handles guns.