Off Topic: Gun Control

Allow me to rant:

I don’t imagine for a moment that America will wean itself from its adolescent addiction to gun enabled mayhem. Let’s face it: America is a violent society, it likes to export its violence, and it enjoys the mayhem with a gusto usually reserved for more constructive pursuits. Anyone unfamiliar with the inner workings of the American spirit needs to confront this aspect of the American way of life. Somewhere along the way Americans have convinced themselves that the only solution to crime is to use violent counter measures, apparently oblivious to the fact that this engenders a sort of arms race in which criminals arm themselves more in order to deal with retribution in advance. It is no coincidence that the US ranks high, if not highest, for all the social ills associated with guns. Gun enabled murder is so commonplace that it no longer makes headlines. Unless, of course, it is murder en masse or is murder in some secluded affluent neighborhood where it is least expected.

Gun ownership and the violence that it engenders is the part of America I have never ben reconciled to even after over three decades of living here. It is so evidently uncivilized it needs no comment, yet is I and those like me, who are regarded as the oddity.

The infamous Second Amendment confers, supposedly, the right to bear arms. That right has been severely abridged through the years. Sensibly so. Few, I imagine, think it constitutionally protected for a private citizen to amass an arsenal of nuclear weapons. Or to carry them around to the local mall. Or to drive an armored vehicle on the highway. Or to fly a military style jet about the place. Or to own a private warship. These things are all ‘arms’ that no one defends a private right to own. So the Second Amendment has been radically limited along the way. Yet getting further limitation, especially for machine guns, is well nigh impossible.

Right wingers will immediately scream about government oppression and imagine themselves as some latter day hero fending off the intrusion of big brother – or, if you go to the movies, some evil foreign army – with their local band of well armed frontiersmen. Except that we have no frontiers any more, and big brother and those foreign evil armies are armed to the teeth with weapons far more sophisticated and lethal than anything our wannabe hero could ever muster.

Here’s my take:

Guns are designed to kill. That’s their task. Modern guns do it very well.

Naturally guns are simply tools. Gun owners are the actual killers.

So anyone owning a gun is a potential killer. This is undeniable. The very act of owning a gun is a simultaneous act of announcing an intention and willingness to kill. This has to be true, else the act of owning a gun would be utterly pointless. No one can claim to own a gun other than to, potentially, use it. And the use for guns is to kill.

So all gun owners have announced themselves as possible killers.

The rest of us ought to know who these people are so we can avoid them. If we think it reasonable to know where potential child molesters live, we ought, likewise, to think it reasonable to know where all potential killers live. At the very least we all ought to want potential killers to know how to use the weapons they have bought to kill with. We impose restrictions on drivers for exactly the same reason.

Expanding on this: since the original intent of the Second Amendment was to ensure the existence of a well armed militia, ready and capable of resisting the intrusions of nasty foreign authorities, we ought to invoke that sentiment and make sure that our contemporary gun owners are both ready and capable. They, being patriotic and merely asserting their constitutional rights, ought to be quite happy serving the nation on a regular basis and undergoing regular testing to ensure their readiness. After all, we do not need a haphazard or underperforming militia.

So we need either to make public a list of potential killers so the rest of us can steer clear, or we need to invoke the patriotic spirit and convene our militia regularly, perhaps even deploying them periodically so that they can fulfill their civic duties appropriately.

In my dreams.

The biggest roadblock to any progress towards civilization is, as usual, the US Senate. Just yesterday a minority of that less than august body blocked a very minor reform to current gun ownership law. In yet another display of its total disregard for any semblance of democracy, the Senate voted down a weak increase in the requirement for background checks to be run on those wanting to arm themselves with guns. At present there is a less of a check on someone buying a gun than there is an someone renting an apartment, changing jobs, or pretty much crossing the street. Also as usual it was a minority of the Senate able to prevent progress.

Never has there been a more stark reminder of how distant pure democracy is in America. In recent public opinion polls upwards of 80% of voters said they support stronger checks on gun ownership. The Senate, however, is able to ignore the people. It likes periodically to spit in the face of the general public in order to assert its special, and quaintly absurd, role as a bulwark against the mob. In this vein, the usual coalition of small state Democrats and right wing Republicans managed to defy the public’s will once more and obey the National Rifle Association’s diktat.

The moral here is that anyone wanting to understand America must accept that, despite all the wonderful things that America represents, and despite all the power for good that it sometimes musters, it is an adolescent, violent, and not very democratic society still grappling with its self-image and a heritage that dates back to a different era that it has only partially adapted to modern reality.

It is a gawky kid with enormous potential. Not one of those old and cynical types that lurk in Europe.

Both have lessons to learn. Just different lessons.

And one of America’s is how to square being free with being less violent.

Good luck with that.