So: guns. Quite the prevailing topic of conversation these days. Everyone seems to have an opinion on the subject, no one is shy about expressing it, and given the general ubiquity of opinions and how they are popularly tied to the similarly dense distribution of assholes, it stands to reason that I'd have one too. Well, sure I do — I'm just not entirely sure what it is, or whether an issue of this complexity can be reduced to a simple yea or nay.
One thing I like to do when deciding how I feel about something is to reduce it to its essence and strip it of whatever political, emotional, or symbolic weight it might be burdened with and unfairly influencing public opinion.
At the center of the debate is a tool designed specifically for humans to put holes into other humans. Other creatures too, but — let's face it — mostly people. Here's the thing about human bodies, though: they can't really sustain holes, save for those strategically and purposefully placed for hanging decorative hardware. Capacity for those is apparently limitless. But the human body is a closed and pressurized system, and the introduction of large holes into its workings causes an interruption of crucial processes and loss of tissue and fluids that often leads to the cessation of life. Ergo, and getting finally to the crux of the thing, a gun is a tool for killing people. Period.
All that design and engineering and craftsmanship goes to serve a single end: killing. A knife, by comparison, can also inflict the kind of traumatic derangement so inimical to life, but it is also one of the most insanely useful things ever devised by the mind of man. Take away a gun's ability to shoot, though, and you have, at best, an improvised bludgeon. Pretty much anything of sufficient weight and portability could be described as such, so let's not give too much credit for that.
Okay, so guns are for killing, and this is the part that seems absurd to me, that what we are arguing about is the right of citizens to freely employ and traffic in tools for putting holes in people. However, we will take it as read that this is the status quo, and that certain people under certain circumstances have the legal right to blow holes in other people. Again, seems a little crazy, but there you have it.
Now the question is who, and when?
The NRA argues for a comprehensively armed populace, including children, insane people, and the blind, with the full extent of the gunsmith's art, based solely on a constitutional afterthought implemented at a time when we not only had a mother country energetically engaged in thwarting our efforts at independence, but an entrenched native population equally intent on driving us out. I will concede that having a gun at that time was a pretty good idea, but it should be noted here that the NRA is not so much the staunch defender of constitutional freedoms it purports to be as simply the political action wing of the gun manufacturers, and only concerned with that august document insofar as it affects their client's ability to turn guns into money and people into corpses. Fair enough — everyone has got to make a living, but the result of all that lobbying and politicking is that they've convinced a significant portion of the population that they have not only the right but the responsibility to blow holes in other people. This is why they buy guns, and all that nonsense about defending your home and family against marauders, or the government, or government marauders, is just that — applesauce. Witness the deadly sophistication of the ordnance currently being deployed against our various "enemies” around the world. Should the government ever decide to turn its sights inward and come for your guns, or children, or whatever the hell it wants, your 9mm will be exactly as effective as a peashooter. And “responsible” owners of registered firearms are rarely victims of violent crime; urban people of color dwelling in certain low-income neighborhoods enjoy the bulk of it, and they are already heavily armed with illegal, unregistered weapons and are not afraid to use them.
Think about it. If you buy a juicer, you don't tuck it away in a closet in case you someday get your jaw wired shut and require a liquid diet. You seize on the slightest opportunity to make juice and shove anything you can fit into the hopper to justify the expense. Similarly, the new gun owner wants to shoot somebody and will start to interpret everyday irritations and encroachments as life-threatening and eventually blow a few holes of his own.
Thankfully, most people choose not to own guns. Even though there are currently more guns than people in this country, the average gun owner has 17 (!) of them. Most folks who choose not to arm themselves do so for the same reason they don't walk around in a rubber suit on the off chance of a direct lightning strike — the odds of them ever needing it are infinitesimal. It is at root a mathematical deduction. If I am 400 times more likely to be shot with my own gun by a family member than by an intruder, removing the gun from the equation results in a much safer environment than the one supposedly created by the presence of a gun.
I suppose in determining my own feelings about gun ownership I must return to the original, absurd premise of sentient beings forming a community and then devising the means to destroy select members of said community. Highly illogical, as Spock said, but my opinion is admittedly colored by a couple of things. One is being a kind and empathetic person who finds the idea of hurting or killing other living things distasteful. The other is that having occupied a certain social strata/demographic for most of my life, in my experience, when guns come out, bad things happen. I haven't been shot, but I've been shot at, and that level of terror I wouldn't wish on anyone. Soldiers in combat, of course, deal with it every day, and I'm surprised more of them don't crack.
Mostly people have stuck guns in my face to make me do things I don't want to do, occasioning an especially unpleasant blend of fear, panic, anger, and helplessness that again, no one deserves to experience.
So, bottom line, I will say that if you really feel you want to pay $80 a pound for venison, for that, at a minimum, is what that deer will cost you after factoring in all the equipment, licenses, and transportation, not to mention camo-ing everything in sight, you can have all the single-shot long guns you want. Regarding those weapons more specifically suited and targeted for killing other humans, i.e., concealable and rapidly firing guns, may I suggest that these folks with a grudge against humanity become reacquainted with the joys of a good old-fashioned stick fight.
As for you constitutional hawks, I agree that the rights promised by our founding fathers should be protected. That is why I suggest you stop fretting about Number II, which is in no immediate danger, and look to Numbers I, V, VIII, X, XIV, and XV, all of which are currently being ignored, attacked, or dismantled under the present administration, and no one seems to care near as much about these fundamental freedoms as they do about hole-blowing.
Priorities, man. Life. Liberty. Pursuit of happiness. Inalienable rights. Remember that? The shooting part is over: The British have been routed, only now they're back to take all of the good movie roles. We are free to develop into the best possible versions of ourselves, if only we didn't have to worry about getting shot all the time.
It is understandable to be angry and indignant about the police shooting unarmed citizens, but consider that they are operating under the assumption that literally anyone could be armed. If they could be reasonably certain that they themselves wouldn't be shot, maybe they'd be a little less trigger happy. A lot of lives might be saved, and if only young black men occupied a loftier place in the death hierarchy, someone might do something about it. If you’re wondering about the death hierarchy, that's the system that says: 40,000 traffic deaths a year? Fine, gotta keep things moving. 60,000 deaths from firearms per year? Plenty more where they came from. Cost of freedom. 2nd amendment. Muslim terrorist kills white American? UNACCEPTABLE! Attractive teenager overdoses? UNTHINKABLE! Homeless man freezes to death under bridge? UN-imaginably boring and unworthy of mention.
America is steeped thoroughly enough in gun culture that not only are any major policy changes highly unlikely, but ridding ourselves of any measurable proportion of existing guns would be logistically impossible. So for the foreseeable future we remain bang-bang America, but indulge me for a moment in a flight of fancy.
Once upon a time there was an artist, a man of vision and wisdom and a fierce advocate of peace and love, who suggested in song that we imagine a world without certain restrictive elements that impinged on our ability to live in freedom and understanding. He didn’t mention guns specifically, but he might shoulda, given that he ended up with a bullet in the head on a New York sidewalk. In the spirit of that hopeful imagining I would ask you to visualize a world without guns. Not one where your hardware gets taken away, but one where killing people was a low enough priority that we never felt the need to invent them.
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