There are one or two blog posts from years ago that fit in with what I want to do. This was written after a spurt of gun violence, as will be evident. Since thinking about such things when passions (about this anyway) may be less engaged might be helpful, I'll post it here. I mean, guns is a safe place to start, right?
I should start by stating that I am armed.
I do not have a stockpile of weapons, and I do not think I would be safer if I walked around strapped, but here in my home, I do have a pistol and ammunition.
We Americans have a thing about guns. Actually we have two things about guns - we love them and we loathe them. Generally, we pick a side, but I imagine that there are those who do both. There are a few of us who do neither, and I am one of those. I love to shoot, but I do not love guns. Firing weapons is exhilarating - owning them is a pain. I’ve fired a number of different guns - military weaponry (M-16, M-60 ), hunting rifles (30.06, some Winchester that was rated to bring down a Kodiak bear with one shot that a friend bought to bring on a trip to Alaska; after about three shots your shoulder hurt so much that it was difficult to get off an accurate shot - not fun), shotguns of many varieties and sizes, and pistols from .22s to .44 magnums. A lot of people have more experience, but my point is that I know a bit about guns, have played with them some and, frankly, they are fun. Probably not for everybody, but for many. There is something about firing off a round that touches something in me so ancient that it is pre-linguistic. The closest thing to it that I have felt is the sensation I get when I am fishing, and a trout hits the lure or bait, and there is that tug on the pole, followed by the quavering of the line. I suppose the two share a common hunting or dominance theme, so perhaps it is related to that. Have at it Dr. Freud. In any case, shooting is fun.
And it is dangerous. Bullets kill people. People use guns to kill people. I knew a few people who have been killed with guns. One was killed by his wife, with a gun that I had shot years before. I used it to plink at rocks, she used it to kill a man. I don’t know how that happened - I knew and liked them both, but something bad happened, and she seems to believe that she had to shoot him. She may be right - I really don’t know. I liked them both, and I see no reason to disbelieve what she says. She may be alive today because she had access to the gun - certainly he is dead today because she did It is not my place or within my abilities to decide if what happened was criminal or was necessary. But I do know that people with guns can kill.
In the past month or so there have been two high profile multiple shootings - one in a movie theatre in Colorado, and the other at a Sikh temple. Today there was another shooting in New York, near the Empire State Building. The initial reports indicated that it was another seemingly senseless act by a crazed person. It turned out to be a former employee shooting a former boss. The other casualties were the shooter himself, and the ten or so people injured by ricocheting bullets as two police officers, almost certainly justifiably, fired fourteen shots at the man. The point is that we have become accustomed to the random violence dispensed by a person with a large quantity of ammunition and the means to use it.
Guns are fun, and guns kill people. The same can be said for many drugs or dangerous recreational activities. The situations are not perfectly analogous. Most recreational deaths happen to people who have assumed the risks involved in their activity - they choose to free-climb, skydive, base jump, or whatever. Drugs mostly kill the persons who actively use them, but frequently they also kill others - passengers in the “other” car, etc.. On the other hand, most people who own or use guns will never be injured themselves, nor will they ever injure another with their weapons. Drugs we regulate or ban, recreational activities we admire. Guns we love and loath. Sort of like the British Monarchy.
The Royal Family and the Second Amendment are beautiful expressions of the power and the living heritage that is the nation. They were started in their nations’ youth, and continue today, manifesting the continuity of the people - their connection with the heroes of their glorious past. They are unique, defining traits of their countries, and the loss of them would be the end of the nations as they know, love, and cherish them.
For others, however, they are anachronistic relics of a long-gone past - a past where the rule of law and of the people had not yet been established. Few British subjects believe that a glorious monarch, chosen by God, provides benevolent protection for the nation, just as few American citizens believe that their assault rifles will help them defeat the combined US military forces, should they decide that the government is tyrannical. They are symbols of a step that we needed, but which we also needed to outgrow. Symbols that are expensive, either in lives or money, and certainly in the loss of a more mature people, a people who, when they were children, thought spoke and reasoned as children, but who having attained adulthood had put aside their childish ways.
We live where we live, and we tell ourselves our stories. Stories are about change. Except, perhaps, some of Beckett's. To avoid living in Beckett's world we need to change. What is likely needed is to either find a way to reduce the costs of keeping our talismans or to find another symbol that tells us that we are, in fact, the worthy descendants of our worthy fore-bearers. It is, however, as difficult to imagine Prince William and the Duchess living in a two-bedroom flat as it is an America where patriots proudly display paintball guns on their trucks’ rifle racks. I’ll give you my gun when you give me a really cool pellet pistol? Implausible. More likely, I think, is that we will both muddle on as we are, bearing the cost of symbols that we apparently still need. Until we don’t. In a land far, far away. Pax.
