The Line in the Sand - A Reflection on US Gun Culture

 The Writing's on the Wall, and It's Written in Blood

Sex. Religion. Politics. When we were young we were taught the three "no-nos" of polite conversation. With the 2016 election on the horizon it's getting harder and harder to have a coffee house conversation without any of the three wiggling its way out into the air. At the risk of suffering a house divided, I have kept politics mostly to myself for some time, but in the wake of the Orlando shooting I have come to the sobering realization that President Obama is right: "To actively do nothing is a choice as well". For this reason, I have decided to lay my cards on the table with respect to gun laws and the gross negligence of the United States Government in regulating the sale and trade of weapons that make any human being instantly lethal.

Amid the swarm of sympathetic Facebook posts and enraged newscasts, the story that caught my eye was this New York Times article that outlines the inefficiency of federal regulations in determining the eligibility of potential gun owners. At least eight of the shooters from the past sixteen mass shootings passed the background check required to purchase a firearm despite such apparent red flags as mental health problems, FBI investigations, and suspected involvement with terrorist cells. All the same, these people were able to walk into pawn shops and gun stores and pick up a firearm of their choosing like they were ordering a pizza.

The most common argument against regulations has been, to my ears, "strict regulations only detracts from the God-fearing collectors and hunters". Besides the fact you don't need 100 rounds of steel core ammunition to claim a deer, the day of honest collectors is in its twilight years, if not in it's death throes. When I was young, you could walk into my uncle's arsenal and lay your hand on anything from an antebellum shotgun to a modern day assault rifle (full-auto, complete with n00b tube). But there was a quiet dignity in the collection - he could tell you why he had each one, its ballistic properties, and what it was like to shoot it. Target shooting or "plinking" was a past-time in my family, and it wasn't uncommon to go sink a few rounds in the river out of plain boredom. But from an early age we were taught a rifle was a responsibility, a tool for harvesting game or eliminating threats to livestock. We would never dream of walking into an Applebee's fully strapped "because I can".

And therein lies the problem. The difference between the gun culture I was raised in and the one I see today is that "gun people" no longer collect, they stockpile. In the past several years, the culture has shifted from an appreciation of engineering and capacity into a full-blown obsession with firearms simply because they are what they are. Moreover, the Conservative mentality has adopted the firearm as its flagship symbol for American freedom, and any attempt to limit firearm trade is a direct violation of that freedom. But the lifestyle of fear that accompanies their apparent necessity for a full gun case appears to me to be more limiting and detrimental to a free mind than any law that could be passed that limits what goes into that case.

Over a decade I've watched the culture steep itself in an aggressive rhetoric of fear that permeates into peoples' own homes. Too often I've been confronted with the tired doomsday prophecy "If 'they' come I'll be ready because I've got X guns and X cases of ammunition at my disposal". This idea is as foreign to me as the people these modern collectors fear. Not only do they cultivate a mental state of anxiety over some farfetched Alamo situation befalling their houses, but the crusaders carry that state of mind into the world at large. What's worse is the fear of domestic disarmament that they are willing to face in a blaze of powder and lead. My question is this: Even if there was a task force sent to your house to claim your guns, what makes you think you'd survive? And don't you think the right to carry a death machine is a silly thing to die for?

 

I have been very fortunate to have interviewed a young man who does not carry a pistol on his person, but is every bit as gun-ho as the open carry fanatics trying to make our streets and schools a war zone. "Let's say a man jumps out from behind a corner" he posits, "and grabs your daughter. You're a skinny guy - what do you do?" Again we have the same "big stick" situation every advocate for the heretical gun laws has been assaulted with time and again. We get so caught up in the "others of the day" - the family, the daughter, the wife - that we lose sight of the real issue. Honestly, in that situation, it kind of sucks to be me, but I don't live in constant fear of a mugger or shooter because I know that isolated situations like that happen all over the world, all the time, and if I live in that state the "terrorists" have already won. Furthermore, the argument that disarmament only puts honest citizens at a disadvantage is completely bogus considering the decline in homicide and suicide rates among European countries that have done just that, and even disarmed their police force.

Ten years ago I would have been happy to see a father at my local sporting goods store showing his daughter the pieces of the rifle, how to hold it, etc, because I knew it meant that we were breeding another generation that knew all the ins and outs of gun ownership, and what it means to be equipped with a weapon. Today it sickens me to see a hot pink youth rifle knowing that some young girl is sure to be armed this Christmas, and immersed into a culture that's quite frankly every bit a militant powderkeg as ISIS or mass shooters. And to the old man grumbling about the restrictions on firearms: What are you worried about? If your record's clean (and apparently even if it's not) you'll have your rifle in two weeks. Chill out.

Now, I won't get into the "good guy with a gun" fallacy floating around because at this point I think anything else I say will fall on deaf ears. I may have lost some friends and colleagues with this post, but if it means there's another voice in the crowd that won't stand for the deaths of innocents then so be it.


Food for Thought: And if you don't think we live in a culture of violence and badassery, check out this trailer for the first first person feature length action film or first person GTA game and think about the difference first and third person impressions make on our society. It's one thing to control a SIM that does all the dirty work as it puts some distance between player/viewer and the violence, but to become that SIM?. . .