[Prologue: I wrote this piece amid the shock and horror of the shooting this past Friday at Arapahoe High School and the first anniversary of the much more lethal event in Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut. It seemed appropriate for the subject matter because it seems to me that our society must turn its full attention away from deterring acts of terror born of religious intolerance at home or abroad and toward the growing problem and many times more destructive issue of home-grown terrorism and we must do it RIGHT NOW.
As I have mentioned here on more than one occasion in the past, I grew up with guns and hunting. I was good at it. It was an outlet for the anger I felt inside for whatever motivation lie behind it. My victims were birds, mammals, insects, reptiles, amphibians and the occasional street lamp. Their sacrifice sated for a few minutes or hours my need to feel that I was nobody to mess with, that I could make an impact, that my anger was something to be respected.
Sometime during my middle school years, I outgrew that emotional deficiency. Some boys don't. In their teens-to-early-twenties, their hurt and pain overpowers their sense of decency. It is no longer sufficient for them to punish surrogates for their oppression. Their oppressors become their parents, peers, even strangers. Their victims can no more comprehend what's going inside their heads than the lowly sparrows I brought down by the dozens.
One day, a neighbor saw me shoot out a street light. The police came and took away my pellet gun. My dad had to drive me downtown and sign a release to get my gun back. It was embarrassing. I never attempted something so stupid again. Perhaps the police had the right idea--take the gun out of my hands until a person of responsibility helped me get it back. I can't help but wonder if society would have been better served if someone had taken my weapon away before my angry rampage got as far as it did.
I write this out of a feeling that--as many times more complex is the problem of mass shootings today--we must seriously consider how we can diminish the odds of something like the Columbine or Aurora massacres from happening again. I will now make such a case.]
When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. When the only tool you have is a gun, every problem looks like a threat. A gun quickly turns a coward into a drunken cowboy who shoots first and asks questions later. In fact, if you have a gun, you don't even have to wait for the answers because you're guaranteed the last word.
I'm sick and tired of hearing the press talk about the "senselessness" of these school shootings. Are they really unable to put two and two together? People do senseless things a million times a second in this country but nobody dies. They knock things over, they kick things, they slam doors, they curse, they stomp around, they pull their hair out, they spit, they foam at the mouth. Sometimes, they may even get what they want...and nobody dies.
But you put a loaded gun in their hand and reason and dialogue and common sensibility goes out the barrel. In the New Town, CT, shooting, Adam Lanza cut down 20 children and six adults, including himself, in about 5 minutes. By the time police arrived, it was all over but the sobbing.
This is not an issue about Second Amendment rights, as the NRA would have us believe. (More on the Second Amendment in a bit.) No, it is about sales of guns and the profitability of the gun manufacturing industry of which the NRA is a vital part. Look at the front page of Friday's Post and tell me that the horror and pain on that teenage girl's face is the price we have to pay so that every paranoid gun-hugging freak out there in our once-admired nation can own as much fire-power as his delusional mind can conjure up. I don't believe it, not for an instant. No, this is a battle between a society that values life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and the most destructive, greedy, and self-serving industry that calls itself a champion of liberty.
Quoting Tom Diaz's brilliant new book, The Last Gun, "An American's chances of being killed in an automobile accident are about one in 7,000 or 8,000 per year; of being a victim of homicide, about one in 22,000 per year; and of being killed by a terrorist, about one in 3.5 million per year." Yet, over the decade between
September 2001 and September 2011, American taxpayers have spent over $1.3 trillion on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and homeland security, while backtracking on the issue of freedom from domestic terrorist threats birthed by Second Amendment demagogues.
The "Oligarchy of Five" sitting on the current U.S. Supreme Court has interpreted the Second Amendment as if the first half doesn't exist. This is odd for a bunch of "strict constructionists". True, the language is quaint and the syntax poorly constructed. "Four-score-and seven years ago" is also quaint but we still quote that part of the Gettysburg Address.
Still, the Second Amendment follows the First and even the right of free speech has been found to be limited. A citizen is not allowed to shout "fire" in a crowded theater. (The way things are today, one might be on more constitutional grounds yelling, "open fire".) Neither can you slander, libel, incite violence, obstruct justice, or disrupt the peace. Nevertheless, the NRA argues--successfully, if recent trends are any indication--that citizens should be allowed to "keep and bear [any and all] arms", including weapons designed for the military.
Why the need for so much firepower? Well, in a vast number of instances among NRA members, it's for protection from the very government that wrote the Constitution. So, in essence, the Supreme Court--one of the three co-equal branches of government--has ruled that the Police Power of that same government does not have the right to bar modern-day, would-be Enemies of Democracy from owning the most lethal hand-held weapons on the face of the earth. Is that not the very epitome of insanity?
It seems that the real enemy is not as likely to be found wearing a long robe so much as a bullet-proof vest or a backpack. The man who kills me is more likely to look like my son than a foreigner. Just because it's hard to pick out the real enemy, does not mean that we have to throw up our hands and say, "Well, that was really a tragic occurrence. Let us pray for the families of those dead and those lucky enough to still be alive. May it never happen again." No, we need to change the way we look at the gun problem and we need to do it RIGHT NOW.
16 December 2013
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