Guns and firearms are on my mind. Given the seemingly relentless news about African-Americans being shot by Caucasian police officers, given the seemingly relentless news about terrorist attacks and the equally relentless news about "crazy" people storming into businesses, schools or other places simply to vent their rage by shooting people, given the "accidents" that happen with guns (this morning I read that a father accidentally shot and killed his 14 year old son because he mistook him for an intruder)…given that this kind of firearms-related violence just doesn't happen in any other country in the Western world, I can't help wonder: What is going on in America, what's going on with America and its citizens (I am now one of them too) to be blind to the writing on the wall: our relationship with guns is psychologically problematic.
I am a conscientious objector. At the military court hearing where I had to make my case I said I would never pick up a gun, let alone shoot at anyone. Many doubts were raised, questions asked. Manipulative questions, designed to drive my thinking to the kind of extremes that "might make" me shoot anyway. I have not been in any of those situations, and I have never held or shot a gun. In spite of a childhood rich in fantasy-play involving cowboys, indians and, of course, guns, my interest in the real thing is zero. The thing I had that came closest to a weapon was a very small pocket-knife with the picture of an Indian on it. And it was with that thing in hand that, at night, when my parents weren't home, I would quietly walk from room to room, check behind every door, ready to stab whoever might be there hiding. Yes, that knife gave me a sense of power that, without it, I would not have had. But what if I had encountered an intruder, what if I had had a gun in my hand, what if that intruder had been my grandmother…or mother or father?
As a man and as a father I know rage. I know the blindness and concomitant sense of righteousness that can result from it. I wish nothing more for myself and my sons than that we will always be as far away as possible from a weapon when such feelings come up.
Every time I have had a weapon in my hand--be that a tiny pocket knife, my play bow and arrow, a toy gun--I felt a surge of power, often bordering on grandiosity. Isn't that the meaning of the beginning of 2001 A Space Odyssee? The power of the club in the hand of the humanoid!
The majority of people in this country seems to believe that guns are not a problem at all. They believe we have a constitutional right to bear arms, period. However, even the minority who believes that not everybody should have that right seems to be lost in a kind of bias, a kind of misunderstanding of what firearms really are. This latter group believes that we need stricter laws governing the sales and purchases of guns. They say we need even better background checks. They would like to have even more in-depth psychological assessments of a person who wants to buy a gun. All this to make sure that
a future gun-owner will not turn
into a terrorist,
or into a jealous husband or father,
or into a disgruntled employee,
or into a fighter for some religion or ideology he/she has become convinced needs to be spread to all
or into a resentful student
or into a lonely hateful person,
etc.
You see, all of us have the potential to become those things. We all could turn into those people. I will stay away from going through a list of examples and ask you to go through the options I listed. Ask yourself "Under what circumstances might I be likely to shoot another person?"
The problem is that as human beings we're more likely to give in to the impulse to kill another person than any other animal in the world. And the more power we have the more likely it becomes that we kill another.
This is the essential problem with all measures to control fire-arms: it misses the essential fact about guns. It is not about the possibility of crazy people having easy access to guns. Rather it is about guns having easy access to us, especially to our minds. Guns distort our minds into thinking we have a chance at "getting back at" whoever we feel we need to get back at. And perhaps guns actually do give us that chance. Except I believe this to be a chance we need to avoid, at all cost. For it is this very idea--that we deserve a kind of revenge, that we should be able to get back at someone who's hurt us-- that makes us so very susceptible to the powers of guns.
Guns are toxic. They manipulate our already only minimally instinctually regulated minds into fantasies of power and survival. We would be better off, safer, if we limited access to guns to three groups of people: law-enforcement, military, professional hunters.
This is not to say the latter groups are safe compared to the rest of us. No, the only difference this would make is that guns would be in the hands of a finite minority.This simple step would reduce gun violence to a minimum. 30,000 persons in the US were victims of deadly gun-violence last year. Police shootings amounted to about 1,000 of those 30,000. No doubt, that's still too much and much needs to be done to educate the police in the responsible use of their fire-power. If you're interested in reading up on police shootings in the US compared to other western countries go to this link:
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/09/the-counted-police-killings-us-vs-other-countries
Military use of weapons is a different issue altogether. There certainly is much to discuss there as well. Professional hunters exist in other Western countries. Probably the greatest risk there is that of poaching, not so much that of killing other humans.
Valuing human life means becoming aware of the toxic potential that resides in guns and fire-arms. Their power is seductive and misleading. It means that we humbly approach our own susceptibility to the deceptiveness of their power--and stay away from them.
No comments:
Post a Comment