Nothing is Ever Simple

I guess I need to process a few more thoughts on Newtown and guns.

What do you do with a country where gun sales spike immediately after the election of a democratic president?  And then again upon his re-election?  After little to no commentary on his part, in either campaign, regarding guns?  His sole accomplishment in his first term being a slight increase in the amount of places gun-owners can conceal carry guns?  They've been told over and over by Trusted Sources that Obama, and the U.N. and whoever else is coming for their guns, lack of evidence stronger than hearsay not withstanding.  What do you do with a subset of your population furiously stocking guns like it's the end of the world?  And then occasionally going nutso and going on a shooting spree when the drumbeat of fear grows too big to handle?  What do you do with that?

I'm not sure.  I absolutely reject the NRA's assertion that we must simply throw more guns at the problem.  It's the classic problem where, if you only have a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail.  The gun is a tool.  It's good at killing animals and humans.  That's all it does.  It's too simple to declare the gun is the only solution to our discontent, because it assumes we have no other tools in our toolbox.  Also, we really have become a nation of such gullible marks that we can't see the obvious scam in gun salesmen, and the lobby representing them, selling guns to both sides of a conflict?  They sell them to the disturbed and then turning to the rest of us and saying, "Hey, you really need a gun to protect yourself from those crazies."  Their goal is not your safety.  Their goal is to make a ridiculous amount of money playing on your fears to sell you tools most of us don't need.  You should listen to them with all the credibility you give a car salesman telling you this Porche is just what you need to improve your sex life.

Having said that, I'm not remotely convinced it's ethical, moral or remotely pragmatic to try and get rid of the 40 million guns in this country.  For one, availability of guns is clearly not the only issue involved in our gun violence.  Places like Idaho have fairly lenient gun cultures and open-carry laws, and don't have a lot of violent shootings.  But there's a wide range of options in between "giving everyone a firearm and hoping no one's feeling like picking a gunfight today" and "taking away all guns forever and throwing them into the sun."  What frustrates me about this, and most other debates today is we are told by extremists over and over that there is no room to maneuver in between the polar opposites of every issue.  That every action we take will inevitably ride the slippery slope to the furthest extreme.  And it isn't true.  It's obviously not true.  We should stop listening to the people who try to make us afraid enough to forget ourselves and believe it's true.

Yes, the 2nd amendment exists.  But constitutional literalism has roughly the same problem as biblical literalism, in that if you insist on reading a document devoid of context and without interest in the principle behind the rule you're reading, you run the severe risk of missing the whole damn point.  In a time of inaccurate, slow-loading firearms the constitution allowed for a well-regulated local militia and the right to keep firearms in your home.  At the time, this was a pretty good way to ensure the federal government would face an armed and angry populace should it ever become as tyrannical as good old King George.  The last and only time a portion of our populace tried this, we killed each other in staggering numbers.  In my opinion, our option to effectively rise up as a populace ended roughly around the time the federal government developed tanks, airplanes, laser-guided drones, biological and chemical weapons, atomic bombs, space-based spy satellites, counter-insurgency tactics, armored SWAT and the ability to eavesdrop on your cell phones and emails.  So embrace the existential suck of that notion, because like your inevitable death you can't get around it.  And not to embrace worship of the founding fathers, but I'm guessing they were counting on us being capable of reconsidering the 2nd amendment in a prudent and intelligent manner, in light of a world with vastly more apocalyptic weaponry and tactical realities.  And if you're interested in retaining the principle of the 2nd amendment, then a regulated and well-armed militia will also need to include weapons more advanced than a semi-automatic rifles.  Because your collection of pop guns is not going to take down the federal government.  If you have any further questions on that score, please ask any members of the Branch Davidian cult that might have survived Waco.

Regarding the right to defend yourself and your family via firearms, I think the arguments are stronger.  I think people probably have the right to some kind of gun to defend their homes, although I don't think those need to be anywhere near military quality.  I don't have a problem with people shooting at gun ranges.  I don't have a problem with people hunting.     I do have a problem with paranoid and unstable people stockpiling weapons like the world is about to end, or like they have absolutely NO confidence in our police or military to protect us.  As far as I'm aware, that was, in fact, the point of creating a standing army and a citizen police force, yes?  And if shootings are so rare that they don't need to be legislated for, then they certainly don't necessitate every citizen acquiring a defensive arsenal.  I'm not sure what the best method is to re-persuade the citizenry to trust in law an order again, but it seems there are, again, a wide range of options to try well before we get to "fuck it, civilization failed.  Buy a gun and jump at shadows for the rest of your life."  Maybe, before sending the entire population running for body armor, hollow-point bullets and A-team seminars on how to build your own tank, we could try, I don't know, something rational like modifying existing police practice and organization to better meet civilian needs.

But to some, it IS a jungle out there.  There are bad men with guns, and, so the saying goes, only a gun can stop a gun.  Right?  Well, except for Jared Loughner, who was tackled by unarmed citizens while he was reloading.  And about 20 other stories I found from googling "tackled gunman."  Not to mention the British Police force, who overwhelmingly prefer to remain unarmed even though one of their officers is occasionally shot.  If only a gun can stop a gun, why would an entire country's police force refuse to carry them, even when confronted with the possibility of armed criminals?  Why does the military prefer to keep soldiers unarmed when they're not on active duty and assign military police to keeping the peace?  Shouldn't having them tote their guns around off-duty fix it?  Is it possible there are more and potentially better solutions than the ones we limit ourselves to?  I'm not saying we don't want our police to carry guns over here, and I acknowledge the U.S. faces different problems in it's criminals.  But I do want to point out, there are other options in policing gun violence than simply arming everyone involved.  In Chicago, the CeaseFire group uses ex-gang members or families of gang members to talk to gangs, and defuse potentially violent situations.  Notably, they do this without arming rival gangs, intimidating them with weaponry or making them more afraid.  Again, we need to reject people who try to narrow our options to solutions convenient for their bottom line or that soothe their fears with false security.

One thing I didn't see in Newtown was a bunch of civilians running around with guns drawn looking for the shooter.  Why would we want that in any case?  Would it have made the police's job any easier to arrive on the scene and have to figure out which of twenty people with guns drawn is the bad guy?  Isn't there a reason we give cops a badge and a uniform?  Isn't it to distinguish "the people we have paid to train in the use of guns, negotiation and crisis management to protect us" from "some crazy asshole with a gun?"  If you want to be a hero in this society, doesn't it take a bit more than just owning a gun and bragging about how you'd use it to shoot a bad guy if you saw one?   Don't we aspire to have the men in our society embody values more nuanced than that of Ralphie from "A Christmas Story?"  Shouldn't it be understood that being a hero in this society embodies something more than just holding a gun self-importantly?  Isn't Ralphie eventually supposed to learn that more important than a willingness to kill if necessary, is preserving the peace, even if that requires considerably more bravery and risk than firing a gun?  Don't we value the risk of peace more than the certainty of violence?  Aren't we aspiring to a society somewhat more stable than "might makes right?"  Did NO ONE fucking read To Kill a Mockingbird and notice the example of Atticus Finch?

I honestly don't think we want a society where every argument ends in a spoken or unspoken, "watch what you say, I've got a gun."  And I think gang violence and police shooting teach us that knowing the other person has a gun is not the deciding factor in whether they get shot at.  And that having a gun is not the same thing as being safe.  In fact, there is evidence to the contrary.  Nor is there any evidence that the problem is TV and video games.  But since I don't think being surrounded by lethally armed citizens is an environment in which people feel free to speak their minds, and since it seems demonstrably foolish to try and pretend the violence that's been in our fiction for thousands of years is suddenly the cause people killing each other, I don't think we need to abridge freedoms granted in the first amendment simply because some paranoid people interpret the 2nd amendment as a right to carry any kind of gun for any reason, a position Justice Scalia happens to agree with.

But I do think we have a problem.  One that is steadily getting better over time, but still worse in areas where there are more guns than not.  I don't think the level of violence requires panic or fear or a complete abandonment of the idea of a civil society, policed by men we train for that job.  Nor do I think it requires we try to remove every kind of gun from civilian society.  But I think we can do more than the nothing we currently accomplish on gun violence.  I think we can stop listening to the people who are telling us it's the end of the world, that our death is just around the corner, that we can't talk to people who scare or offend us, that security is as simple as holding a gun, or making a prohibition law and that we have no more than two extreme options at any given time.  I think we can ask more of our leaders than a lust for retaining power.  I think we can ask for more of our heroes than just a willingness to kill.  I think we can read and rewrite and re-interpret our constitution in ways that reflect modern realities better, while remaining true to the principles behind them.  I think we can try, assess and effectively manage the solutions to our problems regardless of who is in charge.  And I'm pretty sure we can come to a more interesting and effective solution than "more guns."  I don't know about you, but I'm willing to bet the second amendment shouldn't be read as a suicide pact.