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I Swear That I Don't Have a Gun
Deep down, I lack a strong conviction about the rights of citizens to own and carry guns. There are problems either way, and I for one like guns. I don’t own one now but I suppose I’d be disappointed if I lost the right to ever own one, and I don’t think I should be able to take that right away from every other person. I mean, guns rock- it can be a lot of fun to knock something over from a long way away just by pointing at it and if I ever needed to defend my home I’d hope that I had the gun and the people I was defending against didn’t (I currently have a golf club I found in the dumpster. My wife doesn’t know that I consider the club the Last Line of Defense in the event of Home Invasion, but that’s what it’s there for.)
Deep down, I lack a strong conviction about the rights of citizens to own and carry guns. There are problems either way, and I for one like guns. I don’t own one now but I suppose I’d be disappointed if I lost the right to ever own one, and I don’t think I should be able to take that right away from every other person. I mean, guns rock- it can be a lot of fun to knock something over from a long way away just by pointing at it and if I ever needed to defend my home I’d hope that I had the gun and the people I was defending against didn’t (I currently have a golf club I found in the dumpster. My wife doesn’t know that I consider the club the Last Line of Defense in the event of Home Invasion, but that’s what it’s there for.)
I do, however, have strong feelings about the gun control debate- especially in the wake of something like VT. A great deal of what is being said about guns is just wrong, and it bothered me enough to get an extra column out of me this week.
First Argument: The idea that more guns will mean fewer killings. This one is just insane. The idea is your psycho killer walks into a mall or school and is shot down by an armed citizen. This is right up there with your Star Wars missile defense system in the likelihood of ever working. I mean think about it—what are the odds of being confronted by an armed psycho killer, really? And should it happen, does anyone actually believe that a teacher or barista is going to stride down the hall and take the guy out? Or are they going to panic, fire wildly, and get shot themselves? I know, I’m giving all the competence to the crazy dude in this instance but the real issue is the inestimably small chances that the armed guys and the psycho killer are going to get together. What’s more likely is that more guns in public will mean more accidents and more shootouts over contested parking spaces.
I mean, rampant gun ownership hasn’t done much to make the hip-hop industry safer, has it?
There’s a story being used to support this argument about an off-duty cop who took down a crazed killer in a shopping mall –thank god the cop violated the mall’s concealed weapons rule! –but the real argument here is for more cops. The gun didn’t stop the guy—the combination of trained police officer and gun did.
Another factor in this argument is most people don’t want to carry guns. It’s easy to get a gun in Virginia --we know that now -- but none of the other students had them. I know there was a campus ban on guns, but there’s also a campus ban on weed and I bet a thorough search would have turned up reefer to guns in a ten-to-one ratio, and weed is flat-out federal illegal. So let’s do the math: students would rather break a federal law to relax and make Willy Wonka more interesting than violate a campus policy against carrying a firearm they could acquire legally.
So the folks who want guns, have them already. Most folks don’t want them. Making guns easier to acquire is only going to make it easier for folks who can’t handle the responsibility that goes with instant death you can stick in your belt and hide under a light windbreaker to have them. I also think the folks who want guns so as to be prepared for the day when the Crazed Loner starts shooting up the coffee shop are going to jump through the hoops no matter what they are –I mean, their lives are at stake! So there’s no harm in making the folks who want guns to jump through a million hoops if those hoops keep even one homicidal nutjob from getting a gun.
Second Argument: We need guns for the threat of revolution to keep the government in check. If you believe this, you are high. No revolution was ever fought with legal guns. All revolutions—even the American one- were begun by concentrated, intense and prolonged efforts to buy illegal guns from nations sympathetic to the cause. If any of us ever end up fighting against the US Army, it will be with AK 47’s bought from China. The occasional private-owned shotgun or 9 mm will mean nothing.
Guns owned by regular people are not useful for revolution - only assassination. And that’s one asshole nullifying the democratic process with a bullet.
Third Argument: Guns don’t kill people, people kill people. Yes, but people with guns are so much better at it. Imagine this news report: ‘Massacre at Wal-Mart today when a crazed loner killed 63 people with a ballpeen hammer.’ Even assuming the nutjob started on the very old folks in the pharmacy line, he’d get maybe three of them before someone tackled his ass and even then, unless he had the swing just right, some of those old birds might come out of it okay. But give that fucker even a .22 and he’ll scare everyone in that store so bad that he’ll own the joint until the S.W.A.T. team comes. The nutjob knows it—that’s why he got a gun in the first place.
Oh, and let’s not forget the escape clause that guns give crazed loners. That guy with hammer—he’s going to trial.
‘But he could still get a gun illegally.’ That’s true, but shouldn’t we make our crazed loners work harder for their moments of infamy? I live in Massachusetts and I know that for me, buying an illegal gun would be like the money laundering scene in ‘Office Space’ – I’d have no clue where to begin, and were I so unbalanced as to try and take out a Wal-Mart, I doubt that I would even have the patience to plumb the depths of the criminal underworld. I mean, wouldn’t the guys who had the illegal guns just take my money and tell me to fuck off? Why wouldn’t they—they have the illegal guns! All I have is a hammer! Aren’t illegal gun dealers one of our best defenses against illegal gun ownership?
I’m not saying that no one should ever own a gun. I am saying that bullshit is bullshit, even if it is the name of a cause you believe to be just. The idea that more armed citizens will lead to safer schools is bullshit because most people don’t want to be armed and many of the ones who do want to be armed shouldn’t be. The argument that the feds are worried about an armed uprising is also bullshit because what they are really worried about is China selling us 9,000,000 AK’s or some dicktard wasting Cheney with a .38 because democracy works to slowly for him. And third, you’re right, guns didn’t make that guy kill all those folks, they just gave him the ability to be very successful at it.
The Deconstructionist with Gordon Weir appears every Wednesday