Guns, Part 4: Conclusion

From an organization called the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence we get these statistics:

In 2010, guns took the lives of 31,076 Americans in homicides, suicides and unintentional shootings.  This is the equivalent of more than 85 deaths each day and more than three deaths each hour. 73,505 Americans were treated in hospital emergency departments for non-fatal gunshot wounds.2Firearms were the third-leading cause of injury-related deaths nationwide, following poisoning and motor vehicle accidents.3Between 1955 and 1975, the Vietnam War killed over 58,000 American soldiers – less than the number of civilians killed with guns in the U.S. in an average two-year period.4In the first seven years of the U.S.-Iraq War, over 4,400 American soldiers were killed. Almost as many civilians are killed with guns in the U.S., however, every seven weeks.5

These numbers are (one would hope) eye-opening.  And distressing.  They can’t be explained away by bumper-sticker sloganeering, as in “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” (Unless there are dramatically more of the types of people who kill people in the U.S. than there are in, say, Canada, the UK, France, or Germany.)  The problem of firearm injuries and deaths is clearly related to the immense number of guns out there and their relatively easy accessibility.  That’s not the only reason for the ridiculously high injury/death rate – sure, people do kill people – but it seems certain that the rate would be reduced, perhaps dramatically, if it weren’t so easy for people who kill (and injure) people, accidentally or on purpose, to get guns.

A big part of the problem is what has come to be known as the “gun culture” – a disturbingly large subset of the population that has a weird fascination with these implements – a fascination that borders on love or even worship, and one that appears to be borne of equal parts paranoia and fantasy:  We are always in mortal danger and we will be the hero of any scenario that develops when that danger manifests itself.

And so, according to reliable statistics, there are 88 guns for every 100 people in the U.S. The result of the ubiquitousness of these instruments whose primary reason for existence is destruction: Huge numbers of injuries and deaths that have nothing to do with protecting oneself or one’s loved ones from predators.

Let us be the first to acknowledge, however, that this is a complicated, multi-faceted problem for which there are no obvious (and/or easy) solutions.  The banning of guns in private hands, something that’s advocated by a sizeable number of presumably well-intentioned people, is a non-starter. – politically impossible, constitutionally questionable, and probably unnecessary.  Better to narrow the focus to steps that can actually be taken and that can be expected to significantly ameliorate if not fully solve the problem.

• Find a way to keep guns out of the hands of the mentally ill.  This is not a solution for all the different ways people get killed or hurt by gunshot – suicide, accident, street crime, gang activity, etc. – but it would put a dent in one of the most appalling: the slaughter of innocent people, en masse or otherwise, by people with unhinged thought processes and revenge fantasies.

• Close the loopholes in the gun laws we do have, by which buyers and sellers can avoid background-check requirements by way of private and gun show transactions.

• Make guns safer – devise and employ technology that makes it impossible to discharge a firearm accidentally.

• Abatement of gun crime by swift and severe punishment.  This may include creation of a special docket in the courts dedicated to weapons offenses -- specified judges handling bail, trial, sentencing, and supervision of offenders. Proposed legislation to create such a docket has called for such measures as minimum cash bonds of up to $50,000, and swift and meaningful consequences for people who violate probation for weapons offenses. 

Responsible members of the National Rifle Association should disavow the leadership of this organization and publicly repudiate its role as lobby and mouthpiece for gun and ammunition manufacturers. 

People who own hand guns for protection should carefully think through the need they perceive for that protection and ask themselves if theft of their gun and/or its use in an accidental death or injury is more likely than the use they imagine for it; viz., thwarting an assault.  Private gun ownership is an important contributor to the tens of thousands of annual gun deaths and injuries.  Fans of concealed carry have their own particular danger-and-fantasy demons to deal with.  Fans of open-carry cannot be reasoned with.  Fans of the need to have and use guns to defend themselves (and the country) from their own government and/or from any number of other shadowy conspiracies can’t be reasoned with either, and need to be carefully monitored.  It appears they are mostly talk, paranoia, and swagger, but they  have the potential to be every bit as dangerous to the homeland as foreign terrorists.

As for the constitutional right to bear arms, I will leave it to legal scholars to parse out and argue over the wording of the 2^nd amendment and the meaning(s) that wording was intended to convey, and suggest only this:  The motives of gun-enthusiasts who wrap themselves in the flag and position themselves as courageous defenders of the constitution are suspect.  Those folks would be more persuasive on this point if they were as passionate (and knowledgeable) about other parts of the constitution as they are about the gun part.

Guns, Part 3: Government Conspiracies

In Part 2 of this multi-part discussion of guns, the focus was on the fantasy component of hand gun ownership and concealed carry:  People envision using their guns -- and rationalize the keeping of guns -- to defend themselves and their loved ones in circumstances that almost never occur in real life. The cost of the widespread nurturing of this fantasy is injuries and deaths by gunshot – many thousands a year -- that are largely unintended.  So widespread gun ownership – an “armed citizenry” – instead of deterring criminals as its proponents argue will be the result, has the real-world effect of increasing exponentially the number of opportunities for tragic gun-related accidents.

Another corner of gun fantasyland altogether – one that makes a significant contribution to the culture of gun worship and the proliferation of guns in America -- is typified by the reaction from a tiny but vocal minority to something called Operation Jade Helm.  Jade Helm was a thing that came and went this past summer without most Americans being aware of its existence let alone bringing about the gun-confiscation and martial law apocalypse that wing-nuts in Texas and elsewhere had said was its hidden purpose.  In fact, Jade Helm was the name of a seven-state Army command and control mission – an otherwise obscure military training exercise – that right wing conspiracy theorists said was part of a plan to impose martial law and “population control.” Others said it was a plan on the part of the federal government to “invade Texas.” There was some stockpiling of guns and ammunition, at least one quasi-militia was formed to keep track of Jade Helm troop movements, and, incredibly (and shamelessly) the governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, ordered the state’s national guard to keep an eye on things – to make sure that the U.S. Army wasn’t, you know, invading Texas. Also promising to look into the matter, thereby giving some patina of credibility to the whole ridiculous theory, were members in good standing of the very government supposedly employing Jade Helm to ruin our lives, including U.S. Rep. Louis Gohmert (R-Texas) and Senators Ted Cruz and Rand Paul. A particularly interesting and remarkably delusional (even in this world, where delusion is the stock in trade) component of the theory was that closed Wal Mart stores were to be used as FEMA detention centers, or as places for the military to stockpile supplies for Chinese troops who would be arriving to disarm Americans. 

For this corner of fantasyland, the one whose inhabitants believe the government plans to take away their guns, impose martial law, and take down the democracy, and that they are going to heroically fend it off with their six guns, I would offer this from turn-of-the-century commentator and contrarian H.L. Mencken:  “Communism, like all religions, consists mainly of prophesy.”  Replace “communism” with “gun-government conspiracy” and you pretty much have it.  The government never actually does this thing.  It is always going to do it.  Thus the great takeover is repeatedly and forever pushed into next week, next year, or some dystopian future.  Nor do they worry too much about the logistics of such a massive nationwide undertaking.  Would the U.S. Army participate in this?  The FBI?  Local police?  Or is there a secret (but necessarily gigantic) gun-confiscation force (possibly being housed and trained in the basements of closed-down Walmarts) that is poised to start knocking down doors, confiscating guns, and imprisoning citizens – quite an undertaking in that it would require billions of dollars, many years, and tens of thousands of people willing to participate in such a thing and  able to keep quiet about it until launch day. Gun conspiracy and perpetual danger religions, like all religions, consist mainly of prophesy.  Thus the true believers never have to be held accountable for the up-in-smoke fate of their nonsensical predictions.

For a complete rundown of the most current right-wing conspiracy theories, all of which are related in one way or another to the perceived need for gun ownership, see “Margins to the Mainstream,” an article in the Southern Poverty Law Center’s publication “Intelligence Report.”  It covers in detail Jade Helm and other conspiracy magnets such as Common Core, Agenda 21, the North American Union, Shariah Law, FEMA, money manipulators, secret Muslim training camps, and the homosexual agenda.

https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2015/margins-mainstream

Another astonishing idea, equally loony but far more reprehensible, is one in which armchair tough guys blame the victims of mad dogs with guns for their own injuries and deaths.   They should have defended themselves – rushed the shooter and taken him down.  Each should have been willing to sacrifice his or her own life for the sake of the rest, as they, the courageous purveyors of this theory, assure us they would have done. All people have to do is be willing to take one for the team and throw themselves at the muzzle of a blazing assault rifle.  By gad, that’ll put a stop to this mass shooting nonsense; there’s no reason to keep guns out of the hands of crazed shooters by limiting their availability.  Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson is leading this particular confederacy of dunces.

Another idea we’ve seen lately from the gun-obsessed is one that could be dismissed as simply cockamamie were it not so objectionable: that German Jews could have and would have prevented the holocaust had they not been prevented by the government from owning guns.  Or, to put it another way, had there been no gun restrictions, the Jewish people of Germany and occupied Europe, a significant percentage of whom were women, children, and the elderly, all would have had pistols and rifles and would have used those pistols and rifles to do what various countries’ armies couldn’t do and what it took the U.S. and the Allies many years to do – thwart the vast war (and “final solution”) machinery of the Third Reich.  The sheer reprehensibility of this appallingly stupid idea stems not just from its blame-the-victim overtones and its blind disregard for the facts, but also from its attempted use of the wanton murders of six million people and the devastation of the survivors and their progeny to advance a political agenda and pet cause. 

Of note: People who have advanced this theory have cited the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943 as evidence of what can happen when would-be victims get their hands on guns.  What did happen: About two-dozen Nazis were killed.  All who participated in the uprising – some 750 people – were killed by the Nazis and some 50,000 people were sent to concentration camps.  As incredibly brave and courageous as those who rose up were, their procurement and possession  of guns did not do what latter-day gun enthusiasts apparently believe it did, and makes no case for private gun ownership as a defense against predatory government forces. The uprising was, in relatively short order and mercilessly, crushed.  Guns or no guns, it never had a chance.

There’s a more detailed discussion of the “if-Europe’s-Jews-had-guns” theory in this Huffington Post article…

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/07/did-gun-control-prevent-jews-from-stopping-the-holocaust_n_2635989.html

Earth to gummint conspiracy theorists:  The United States government is not planning to confiscate people’s guns.  There is no plan afoot to declare martial law or to dismantle our democracy or to become part of a world government or to poison our children’s minds with socialist propaganda in the public schools.  There are no secret Muslim training camps or FEMA-sponsored concentration camps, and Muslims are not trying to overthrow the government and impose Shariah law.  There is no need for you to prepare to take pot shots from your kitchen window at forces trying to make these things happen.  Beat your guns into plowshares and find employment that makes you happier.