As Mama said in the great Steve Earle song, "The pistol is the devil's right hand." Of course, I'm not sure what that makes the fully automatic assault rifle with armor piercing bullets. A number of recent stories have once again brought gun violence to the fore, but we remain as always a nation divided when it comes to solving the problem. The two sides of the debate flew in their usual formation with gun control advocates relating guns to gun related crime, and gun rights supporters arguing that tough gun laws will only increase criminals' advantage by taking guns from honest citizens but not from criminals. The divide between these two camps will doubtlessly persist as far into the future as we can project, but I think the entire issue begs the larger question of why here? Why doesn't blood flow in the streets of other wealthy, democratic countries the way it does in ours?
The NRA argument that guns don't kill people; people kill people is partly true and partly misleading. Yes, if you're determined to kill Hamlet's father and ascend the Danish throne, you may very well opt for ear poison rather than a gun to commit your murder most foul. Luckily, there is no NEPA to lobby politicians, so we're spared endless claims of, "When ear poison is outlawed only outlaws will have ear poison." Knives, blunt objects and other implements are certainly used by both premeditated and spontaneous murderers, but the prevalence of guns and our proclivity to use them in anger account for a great many homicides that wouldn't occur without our lust for firepower. Even if we accept the NRA argument, this still doesn't address the issue of why our murder rate dwarfs that of all similarly situated countries. Are Americans such savage, bloodthirsty barbarians that our rampages can't be deterred by the legitimate rule of law? I find it difficult to accept the premise that we are a country incapable of civilization and we need more vigilantes to stop the irredeemably lawless horde that is our society.
The biggest problem is our cultural mindset. We celebrate violent solutions to our problems and we tend to see ourselves as ten feet tall and bulletproof. We labor under the delusion of grandeur that we can shoot our way out of any jam like the star of a B western movie. When some of the recent shooting rampages were discussed, I heard numerous people suggest that if only the victims or some bystanders were carrying guns, the problem would have been averted because the good people would have shot and killed the bad people. That's our culture in a nutshell, clearly defined good guys and bad guys and the answer to violence is always more violence. Here's the problem, a lot of killings are committed by those we presumed to be good guys because we were unaware of their impending refusal to live one more day as a discarded worker or scorned lover without exacting their bloody vengeance. I also have to question the wisdom of arming everyone so that if, God forbid, someone does start shooting, we'll solve the problem by hastily assembling a circular firing squad of untrained, adrenaline-riddled reactionaries. Hey, what could possibly go wrong?
