Why not ban guns?
Jun. 13th, 2016 10:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatToday at work, I'm plugging in the earphones, attempting to block out a co-worker's political conversation with her boss. She's defending the Democratic stance on guns, a common refrain --"we aren't suggesting that we should take your guns away, just that we should eliminate semi-automatic weapons and conduct background checks. If you are on a no-fly list shouldn't you be prohibited from buying a gun?"
At my desk, I think, but why can't we abolish guns? I mutter this aloud. I want to get rid of them. All guns. I want to melt them into a ball and sculpt a memorial to all the people who have been killed with a gun in the past twenty years. It would be a big memorial. It would encompass the whole of the North America and possibly the globe.
Why can't we get rid of guns? Why do people feel the need to own them? I don't understand. It makes no logical sense to me.
It's a question I've asked so many times.
In 1988, as a junior at Colorado College, I asked this question of a Fort Collins Army Sergeant, who had just taken one of my housemates on a date at a shooting range. He responded by asking, as most people do or so I've discovered, "Have you been raised with guns?" I said, "No. Never saw or handled one." I'd never really seen an actual gun outside of my mother's old cap gun. Or the squirt guns you play with. We didn't even own a bee-bee gun. My father abhorred them. He'd dealt with them in the army and that was enough apparently. While my mother's relatives, including my grandfather, owned guns for protection. "Well, no wonder," he'd replied. "You were raised to hate guns. As kids, in Western Kansas, we used to drive around in the back of our truck and shoot at squirrels and cows, to see if we could hit them." I remember thinking, okay, why were you shooting at cows from the back of a truck? What did those poor cows ever do to you? Also isn't that a bit dangerous? What if you accidently hit another car? "Oh it was perfectly safe, " he told me, "no one else was around and this was on the back roads."
Four to five years later, in 1992, I'm in my second or third year of Law School, we're doing a murder trial for a litigation competition. We're playing the defense, and my partner supplies a gun for evidence. It's in a bag. It looks harmless. Black. Metal. Cold. I pick it up and think, so, this is a gun.
The summer before, while working at the public defender's office, I'm watching a man on trial for shooting a trespasser dead. In Kansas, it's actually permissible to shoot someone for trespassing. So the case hinged on whether the person was "trespassing" and therefore it was permissible to kill him to protect yourself. The individual he killed was admittedly skeevy and at the time, I was rooting for him to get off. He'd been through two trials already, both hung jurys. This one found him innocent, not of murder, he'd killed the other man, just that it was somehow "justified".
A year later, I'm sitting in a federal penitentiary looking at a man who killed more than forty people as a hitman for an east coast drug cartel. He doesn't care that he killed these people, just that he shouldn't have been found guilty. He killed them with a semi-automatic assault rifle. He'd done it for drugs and money.
Meanwhile, in our law classes, and in the hallways and lounge areas, we have long debates over the true meaning of the Second Amendment. One of the debaters is a gun dealer, who I had long conversations with, another is a constitutional law professor. The second amendment is an amendment that I've grown to hate over the years, and I think only worked in the context in which it was written - over a hundred years ago, when cougars, bears, wolves, and other predators roamed the land. You had to hunt to feed your family in some areas of the country back then. And you had to defend your land against all sorts of interlopers, including the natives who weren't all too happy about the European settlers invading their land. So, it made sense back then. But not now, when we have grocery stores and the internet delivering things at the press of a button. Not when we have police and security devices and prisons. And as the constitutional law professor pointed out - the Amendment doesn't exactly state that people have the right to individually bear arms, so much as they have a right to form a militia that bears arms for security. In other words, it means the people have the right to form a police force that bears arms (not necessarily guns) to protect themselves. And...it probably should be pointed out that back then, they carried muskets, which took a while to load. Or dueling pistols, which also took a while to load. Not semi-automatic handguns, silencers, machine guns, etc. They also had duels. Alexander Hamilton was killed in a duel. We don't permit duels now.
Two years later, in 1998, I watch the news in horror, when children are mowed down in a school shooting in Columbine. The nation freezes for a moment. Television shows are yanked. A documentary is filmed. And I think, isolated occurrence? Right? But no. It happens again. Then again. In colleges, grade schools, universities, high schools, middle schools across the country. Too many to remember by name. The last one was at UCLA. And I still vividly remember the one in an elementary school in New England, where a teacher gave her life for her students. The gunman was mentally ill and used his parent's gun.
Last year, it was in a church, where an evening prayer group was brutally gunned down. A prayer group. Their children and the survivors came together to forgive the gunman. A white supremacist. And requested the country mourn in love and forgiveness, not hate. They also asked for gun restrictions.
Several years ago, in a DC suburb, a sniper - two snipers actually, gunned down random commuters on their way home from work. Then, a couple years back, in a Colorado movie theater during the premier of Batman - The Dark Knight Rises. People were brutally gunned down in their seats during the movie. The gunman wasn't a terrorist, he just had a psychotic episode.
And that's not all, the news is riddled with reports of small children getting hold of their parents' handguns and killing themselves or their friends by accident. A few years back, a young black man with a hoodie walking home at night was shot to death by a neighborhood watch volunteer. This was followed by other young black men being shot to death by police because the police believed they were armed. Or so they said. To be fair, numerous policemen were also killed in various shootings, for a while it seemed to be one a week. Just last week a woman was shot in her apartment by her boyfriend - just an hour or so walk from where I live.
Twenty years ago on the Long Island Railroad,passengers were brutally gunned down by a crazed gunman. One of the survivors, who lost her family in that shooting, ran for office on a gun control lobby. In the 1980s, Brady fought for the Brady Bill to curb gun violence, after he was shot in the head by a crazed gunman while at Presidential Press Conference. President Ronald Regan had also been shot. In 2011, a Tuscon Congresswoman fought to end gun violence, after she was shot in the head at a political rally by someone who was mentally ill. Citizens in Arizona recently worried over a sniper taking potshots at their cars on sections of the interstate. This past weekend, gunshots were fired at a Kayne West concert in the East Village.
In the 1960s, President John F. Kennedy was shot in the head in a motorcade. His murder was shortly followed by the murders of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., Bobby Kennedy, and John Lennon. All of these people were shot to death. Someone used a semi-automatic to kill them.
Back in the 1800s, President Abraham Lincoln was shot to death, while watching a performance at the theater. And Alexander Hamiliton one of the founding father's of our country was shot to death in a duel.
So, again, I ask the question, why not ban guns? All guns? And recycle them to sculpt a memorial to honor our dead? Wouldn't that be an awesome memorial to the lives lost? An end to gun violence?
At my desk, I think, but why can't we abolish guns? I mutter this aloud. I want to get rid of them. All guns. I want to melt them into a ball and sculpt a memorial to all the people who have been killed with a gun in the past twenty years. It would be a big memorial. It would encompass the whole of the North America and possibly the globe.
Why can't we get rid of guns? Why do people feel the need to own them? I don't understand. It makes no logical sense to me.
It's a question I've asked so many times.
In 1988, as a junior at Colorado College, I asked this question of a Fort Collins Army Sergeant, who had just taken one of my housemates on a date at a shooting range. He responded by asking, as most people do or so I've discovered, "Have you been raised with guns?" I said, "No. Never saw or handled one." I'd never really seen an actual gun outside of my mother's old cap gun. Or the squirt guns you play with. We didn't even own a bee-bee gun. My father abhorred them. He'd dealt with them in the army and that was enough apparently. While my mother's relatives, including my grandfather, owned guns for protection. "Well, no wonder," he'd replied. "You were raised to hate guns. As kids, in Western Kansas, we used to drive around in the back of our truck and shoot at squirrels and cows, to see if we could hit them." I remember thinking, okay, why were you shooting at cows from the back of a truck? What did those poor cows ever do to you? Also isn't that a bit dangerous? What if you accidently hit another car? "Oh it was perfectly safe, " he told me, "no one else was around and this was on the back roads."
Four to five years later, in 1992, I'm in my second or third year of Law School, we're doing a murder trial for a litigation competition. We're playing the defense, and my partner supplies a gun for evidence. It's in a bag. It looks harmless. Black. Metal. Cold. I pick it up and think, so, this is a gun.
The summer before, while working at the public defender's office, I'm watching a man on trial for shooting a trespasser dead. In Kansas, it's actually permissible to shoot someone for trespassing. So the case hinged on whether the person was "trespassing" and therefore it was permissible to kill him to protect yourself. The individual he killed was admittedly skeevy and at the time, I was rooting for him to get off. He'd been through two trials already, both hung jurys. This one found him innocent, not of murder, he'd killed the other man, just that it was somehow "justified".
A year later, I'm sitting in a federal penitentiary looking at a man who killed more than forty people as a hitman for an east coast drug cartel. He doesn't care that he killed these people, just that he shouldn't have been found guilty. He killed them with a semi-automatic assault rifle. He'd done it for drugs and money.
Meanwhile, in our law classes, and in the hallways and lounge areas, we have long debates over the true meaning of the Second Amendment. One of the debaters is a gun dealer, who I had long conversations with, another is a constitutional law professor. The second amendment is an amendment that I've grown to hate over the years, and I think only worked in the context in which it was written - over a hundred years ago, when cougars, bears, wolves, and other predators roamed the land. You had to hunt to feed your family in some areas of the country back then. And you had to defend your land against all sorts of interlopers, including the natives who weren't all too happy about the European settlers invading their land. So, it made sense back then. But not now, when we have grocery stores and the internet delivering things at the press of a button. Not when we have police and security devices and prisons. And as the constitutional law professor pointed out - the Amendment doesn't exactly state that people have the right to individually bear arms, so much as they have a right to form a militia that bears arms for security. In other words, it means the people have the right to form a police force that bears arms (not necessarily guns) to protect themselves. And...it probably should be pointed out that back then, they carried muskets, which took a while to load. Or dueling pistols, which also took a while to load. Not semi-automatic handguns, silencers, machine guns, etc. They also had duels. Alexander Hamilton was killed in a duel. We don't permit duels now.
Two years later, in 1998, I watch the news in horror, when children are mowed down in a school shooting in Columbine. The nation freezes for a moment. Television shows are yanked. A documentary is filmed. And I think, isolated occurrence? Right? But no. It happens again. Then again. In colleges, grade schools, universities, high schools, middle schools across the country. Too many to remember by name. The last one was at UCLA. And I still vividly remember the one in an elementary school in New England, where a teacher gave her life for her students. The gunman was mentally ill and used his parent's gun.
Last year, it was in a church, where an evening prayer group was brutally gunned down. A prayer group. Their children and the survivors came together to forgive the gunman. A white supremacist. And requested the country mourn in love and forgiveness, not hate. They also asked for gun restrictions.
Several years ago, in a DC suburb, a sniper - two snipers actually, gunned down random commuters on their way home from work. Then, a couple years back, in a Colorado movie theater during the premier of Batman - The Dark Knight Rises. People were brutally gunned down in their seats during the movie. The gunman wasn't a terrorist, he just had a psychotic episode.
And that's not all, the news is riddled with reports of small children getting hold of their parents' handguns and killing themselves or their friends by accident. A few years back, a young black man with a hoodie walking home at night was shot to death by a neighborhood watch volunteer. This was followed by other young black men being shot to death by police because the police believed they were armed. Or so they said. To be fair, numerous policemen were also killed in various shootings, for a while it seemed to be one a week. Just last week a woman was shot in her apartment by her boyfriend - just an hour or so walk from where I live.
Twenty years ago on the Long Island Railroad,passengers were brutally gunned down by a crazed gunman. One of the survivors, who lost her family in that shooting, ran for office on a gun control lobby. In the 1980s, Brady fought for the Brady Bill to curb gun violence, after he was shot in the head by a crazed gunman while at Presidential Press Conference. President Ronald Regan had also been shot. In 2011, a Tuscon Congresswoman fought to end gun violence, after she was shot in the head at a political rally by someone who was mentally ill. Citizens in Arizona recently worried over a sniper taking potshots at their cars on sections of the interstate. This past weekend, gunshots were fired at a Kayne West concert in the East Village.
In the 1960s, President John F. Kennedy was shot in the head in a motorcade. His murder was shortly followed by the murders of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., Bobby Kennedy, and John Lennon. All of these people were shot to death. Someone used a semi-automatic to kill them.
Back in the 1800s, President Abraham Lincoln was shot to death, while watching a performance at the theater. And Alexander Hamiliton one of the founding father's of our country was shot to death in a duel.
So, again, I ask the question, why not ban guns? All guns? And recycle them to sculpt a memorial to honor our dead? Wouldn't that be an awesome memorial to the lives lost? An end to gun violence?
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no subject
Date: 2016-06-14 04:27 am (UTC)And it took practice to learn how to load them efficiently. They also took practice to aim because unlike modern weapons they didn't fire as soon as you pulled the trigger, but a moment later, after the powder in the pan ignited the powder in the barrel. Getting practice with all that is the reason for the amendment. If follows since those conditions haven't existed in fire arms (and thus haven't affected the well-ordering of militias) since before the turn of the 20th century, the amendment itself is clearly outdated. It should not be used as an excuse for anyone to own whatever weapons they want in the 21st century.
But try convincing the paranoid folks in the NRA of that.
no subject
Date: 2016-06-14 10:24 am (UTC)But we know what concerted efforts by gun manufacturers will get you. I don't think we're stuffing the genie back into the bottle. Now a gun isn't just a gun - it's a fetish.
no subject
Date: 2016-06-14 12:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-06-14 10:27 pm (UTC)The US has unfortunately, romanticized guns through movies, television shows, and books. They are cool. And protect you. So, I think, guns have become a sort of psychological security blanket. And as a result the elephant in the room that no one wants to acknowledge or deal with.
no subject
Date: 2016-06-15 02:44 am (UTC)I'm not sure what one does when people don't listen to reason or even their own best interests (a gun in the home is most likely to be used for suicide or to kill a family member than anything else). Some sort of reverse conditioning needs to happen to US society.
no subject
Date: 2016-06-14 05:53 am (UTC)Lately, we've been having armed soldiers on the streets in regards to the terror alerts, and every time I see one of those weapons, it horrifies me how used we are getting to them, how used our children are getting to seeing armed men (and women) on the streets to protect us. And those are specially trained men and women whom we should be able to trust.
How can we be expected to do the same for just any civillian?
no subject
Date: 2016-06-14 10:20 pm (UTC)The US culture romanticizes guns in much the same way we used to romanticize cigarettes. Doesn't mean we can't change that, we've begun to do it with cigarettes.
no subject
Date: 2016-06-14 03:07 pm (UTC)You cannot ban guns when so many people want to have, or rather, are afraid not to have one.
Guns can be banned once the opinions are swayed.
Why these horrid shootings do not change the opinions radically? I don't know. Maybe there is a stream of information in media that keeps the fear alive. Before this fear-feeding stream is cut off, it will be hard to change opinions. Anxious, fearful people cannot think rationally.
no subject
Date: 2016-06-14 10:16 pm (UTC)But, it is admittedly difficult to ban guns when so many people see them as the equivalent of a security blanket. It's more than just a fetish really, it's a psychological security blanket. And our entertainment media does do it's level best to promote that perspective.
So, we're basically stuck with curtailing their use for the time being. Which means instituting thorough and detailed background checks for all gun users, regardless of who they are. And include strict rules for who can own one.
If we can't ban them, we can restrict their use. It can be done. Otherwise, we'll have more shootings like Orlando.
no subject
Date: 2016-06-15 06:09 am (UTC)Putting some hurdles into owning to make people stop and think at every step could gradually change their attitude.
So a background check for all gun users and all their household members above 12 years old. Plus a risk assessment of the area (living in a tiny remote village is different to living in a city). Plus mandatory training for safe handling (like a driving test to get a licence). Plus psychiatric assessment for everyone at the address on application and every three years. It's not just the registered owners who pose a risk of misuse - their teenage children with mental health issues are just as dangerous.
Questions like - Now you own a gun do you think police force in your neighbourhood can be reduced? - if asked regularly will force people to stop and think.