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
4 Comments:
You know, strangely, I had never considered the possability of firearms as a way to pick up on girls. But, I do know of several girls that have shot guns as a date and seem to be all into it. Besides the obvious "I am all powerful" bit, there is also a bit of empowerment going on. After all, most women are told that girls can't handle guns and all of that. So, by giving them a gun, and letting them shoot a target, you are in some way showing them respect by saying that you do not look at them as inferior in that way. I prefer other approaches to showing the women I date respect. But to each their own.
Anyway, in terms of gun control, I am not really sure what you mean by the term. It is such a loaded term. For example, the NRA would have you believe that gun control is but a step on the slippery slope of banning all guns.
On the other end of the spectrum, there are the people who want to prevent people from having things like automatic weapons, and thermonuclear missles, but aren't trying to interfere with racoon hunters (ok, racoons are kinda cute. Maybe I should have said some other animal.)
Most people would fall somewhere in the middle of the two extremes. So, I think it is appropriate whenever you are advocating gun control, to advocate a more specific and rational approach to the regulation of weapons. There is also all sorts of technology that could help mitigate the problem. For example, firearms could be equiped with electronic devices that would disable them if you tried to bring them into a certain areas. Like, a Circle-K, for ecample, could install a gun disabling device in thier door.
Or maybe devices could just automatically detect them using technology similar to what stores use to prevent shiplifting. Only, they should use RFID tags so that they are accurae and do not produce false alarms. Anual inspections could be required, and possesion of a gun where these devices had been disabled could carry a long prison sentence. This would not stop a determined psychopath. But, on the other hand, it would be enough of a deterent to generally help deter crimes of passion. And it really wouldn't interfere with reasonable and lawful use of a gun.
Anyway, most people are om favor of some sort of regulation of firearms, but they aren't necessarily in favor of "gun control" without some explanation.
~Randy
Sheesh, Randy - it's a blog, not a report from a legislative committee or a political campaign. Basically, I'm asserting that whereas a free society should allow individuals to carry weapons for hunting, target practice, or whatever safe use there can be with such a destructive item; a resaonable society pays attention to who has them and where they are kept. European countries in general don't have much problem with this, and they have vastly lower homicide rates. There aren't many toddlers accidentally killing other babies either.
The technological approach is interesting, but I don't know how well it would work in a society as awash in weaponry as ours.
As for specifics, a general rule of thumb would be to ban the manufacture, distribution and ownership of automatic weaponry unless commissioned by the military or law enforcement (I'm even ambivalent about that last - law enforcement's need for these should be very rare). This would deprive my friend of his ability to allow a girl to blow up a hillside, but we all have to make sacrifices. It would also deny psychopaths (who are not necessarily easy to spot before they indulge in mass murder) the ability to kill scores of people before he has to take a breath.
Our current local and state laws usually require some sort of waiting period prior to buying a handgun or rifle, but, courtesy Dick Cheney, are required to shred information as to who owns what guns within 24 hours after purchase. This is insane. Should a gun be used in a crime, it is clearly helpful to know who owned it in the first place. Since it was probably stolen prior to use in a crime, knowing where the gun originated is still a useful starting point in finding the criminal.
Finally, there should be strict laws as to where guns can be kept and carried. We should not all have the ability to wander the streets at will armed to the teeth. Those who want guns for law-abiding reasons should be happy to keep them locked at home, and brought out only for legitimate purposes (killing that raccoon, I suppose would be one). Persons found carrying guns into public places other than firing ranges should be subject to stiff penalities, unless they have a license to carry which should be very difficult to obtain.
There - my compromise between letting people run wild with deadly weapons, and eliminating basic freedom.
The point you make about how, in this country (theoretically anyway) strong dislike does not constitute grounds for outlawing a thing or behavior, is well taken. Is it just me, or are the people who don't want to give women their reproductive rights or homosexuals their marriage rights on the grounds that the application of those rights would "harm society" often times the same people who insist on their right to keep an arsenal? I'm not sure which is scarier - a citizenry armed to the teeth with unrestricted and unlicensed hardware, or the notion of a citizenry that can blindly and blithely apply such black-and-white double standards to the principles of personal liberty and personal responsibility.
That was very well put. By and large, I have no idea who reads my blog, but they are certainly a very literate bunch.
It is mind-boggling to think of the right-wing Christian defense of torture (how can this possibly be a Christian act?); the people who want teachers to be free to baptize children in their classrooms (it happened here) but don't want others to have the right to protest an unjust war; and of course, the people who want their right to bear arms, but deny others their right to decide whether or not to bear a child.
Thanks for writing.
Post a Comment
<< Home