License to Kill?
A friend of mine was trying to explain his fascination with guns, and related an incident where he handed over some powerful weapon to a lady companion who had never used one. She promptly blew up a hillside, and found this thrilling beyond imagination. She was a god, with incredible potential to destroy all around her.I suppose I understand. Life gets away from all of us from time to time, and we seek desperately for reassurance that we are, in some measure, in control of our destiny. A series of personal disasters – a hurricane tearing apart your house, along with erasing your job; a child diagnosed with cancer – and you find yourself swept away by a rip tide you cannot navigate through. If blasting away at a mound of dirt restores your belief in your ability to manage your life and face the dawn, well, great.
This would not be my answer. I recoil from guns the way others recoil from snakes and spiders. I don’t pretend that this makes me more virtuous than those who enjoy guns and target practice. It’s just a visceral reaction built on instinct. It is also, however, my frame when considering issues of gun control, the 2nd Amendment, and the NRA.
I acknowledge that a free society means that all kinds of behaviors and possessions are legal even if I don’t personally like them. I find violent, misogynistic video games abhorrent, and saying they are merely entertainment ignores the mindset of those who vicariously participate in murder, rape and mayhem. However, these video games are a form of speech, and thus are protected from my likes and dislikes, no matter how well grounded my objections might be. I’m not wild about cigarettes, because I see only the threats to health, having never experienced the relief of stress they seem to bring. Still, cigarettes are legal, and many state budgets could not be sustained without tobacco taxes and settlement agreements.
So it is with guns. We have individual rights and liberties, and thus if someone chooses a form of recreation involving hunting or target practice or blowing up hills (I’m assuming this hill was on property belonging to the shooter or the gun lender), they are perfectly entitled to do so. I prefer to gain my sense of power and mastery by creative, rather than destructive acts, but each to his own. My gun-loving friend is also enormously creative, so must enjoy the balance between the two forms of power.
But just as we have rights, we have responsibilities. The 2nd amendment does not give government a free pass in ensuring that guns are manufactured, sold, and handled in a way that protects society. The courts have specifically indicated that the 2nd amendment does not apply to the states, and state and local governments are free to impose any gun laws they see fit. Alcohol and cigarettes are legal forms of recreation, but society has an interest in ensuring that the use of these legal objects does not harm others. How much more, then, the societal interest in making sure that weapons that can destroy the landscape and all the lives therein is tightly regulated?
Just yesterday, a psychopath used a gun to terrorize a school, sexually assault teen-age girls, and murder one. I don’t think that’s the price we have to pay in order to maintain individual freedom. Apparently the NRA considers that this monster’s right to easy access to weaponry exceeded the rights of a 16-year-old girl to live, and her family to have a daughter. And where the NRA leads, the legislators sheepishly follow.
Guns have one purpose only – to destroy anything and anyone that gets in the way of a bullet. If we must have guns in order to be free, then at least let us have real gun control laws that allow us to live to enjoy our liberty.
posted by Lenore Wilson @ 5:03 PM
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