This blog will not be about religion- Christian or Muslim Fundamentalism, and how often extremist beliefs cause war and death. It will not be about politics, though it could be easily, and will somehow be misconstrued as such anyway. It will simply be about guns. And in an effort to clarify- not my desire to remove guns from all citizens, as my utopia would dictate I do, but the assault rifle and why protests against gun control are counterintuitive.
In 2012, a young gunman walked into an elementary school, where small children were reading Harry Potter in a library, and singing America the Beautiful in music, and struggling through multiplication in math. Like Columbine, the young gunman was a white kid, pretty well off, and a little "misunderstood". In a short amount of time, he opened fire with a Bushmaster AR 15 Assault weapon and killed 20 kids and 6 grown ups. In the same amount of time it would take most of us to wash a sinkful of dishes, or put on our makeup, or drive to the grocery store. In 11 minutes, he managed to forever change an entire school, an entire town.
Since the massacre at Sandy Hook, there have been 998 mass shootings in the United States. In 2015 alone, almost 13,000 people were killed with guns (including at least 2 children each week from accidents alone). This does not include the 20,000 who use a gun to commit suicide each year. Looking at a map of the United States, there are no places that are immune- no community too posh, no area too educated, no terrain too smooth.
This weekend, another gunman, young and by most accounts, handsome and usually amicable, walked into a club where he left 50 families without their loved ones, and 53 more beginning their own nightmares of surgeries, post operative care, post traumatic stress, and grief. He too used an AR 15, which coincidentally was the same gun used in Aurora and San Bernadino, two other notoriously grisly mass murder scenes. With his weapon, he was able to fire 20 bullets into a crowd of dancing strangers in nine seconds. In the time it takes us to sneeze and recover, he was able to eliminate the equivalent of an entire sports team.
I would like to go back to the shooters of these mass homicides. I won't mention them by name, because they aren't the ones on which we should focus. But each of them, like each of us was born a small, defenseless child. In fact, when a child is born, it is a lump of less than a dozen pounds of pure potential. But conversely, in each of us is the potential to become unhinged, to become obsessed, depressed, oppressed. I have read one of the many forwards on social media this week, a passage that made me cringe in its simplicity. It read:
I stand behind you in line at the store with a smile on my face...and a gun under my shirt and you are none the wiser, yet you are safer for having me next to you. I won't shoot you. My gun won't pull it's own trigger. It is securely holstered with the trigger covered. It can't just go off. However, rest assured that if a lunatic walks into the grocery store and pulls out a rifle, I will draw my pistol and protect myself and my family and therefore protect you and your family. I may get shot before I can pull the trigger...but, I won't die in a helpless blubbering heap on the floor begging for my life. No, if I die it will be in a pile of spent shell casings. I won't be that victim. I choose not to be. As for you, I don't ask you to carry a gun. If you are not comfortable, then please don't. But I would like to keep my right to choose to not be a helpless victim. There is evil in the world and if evil has a gun, I want one too...
Copy and paste if you believe this too....
My main objections with this paragraph (aside from the spelling errors), are the assumptions that because you are not planning on shooting me, everything is AOK. In fact, most people who purchase guns, do so without the imminent plan of killing someone. Many buy them for sport, for hunting, for protection. But as I pointed out above, we are all capable of changing, and changing quickly. Quite often we will hear news stories about a father who has suddenly shot his entire family during a birthday party, or a veteran with PTSD who has used their gun on themselves and their children. We hear neighbors insist that they all "seemed so normal", "wouldn't hurt a fly". And like the person who wrote the italicized paragraph, was standing next to us, fully armed, without us knowing-we were unknowing of what they were capable, and also unknowing of the weapon that was mere inches from us. I believe I should have the right to make a decision about my whereabouts, with full knowledge of the weaponry available to my fellow patrons. If I choose to go to a bar, I should have the ability to choose to go where strangers will not be armed. The fact that this passage has eerily whispered to me that I am none the wiser while you have a smile on your face, tells me how very out of control this situation has become.
We could go through the statistics of the US versus the 23 other high income nations, and how we lead on gun deaths compared to all of them combined. We could discuss how other countries, in respose to their own gun massacres, immediately began to remove guns, and how successful they have been. But I won't, because these are all easily found online, and one could argue that like this entire blog, I would be preaching to the choir.
After September 11th, the American people were told there were weapons of mass destruction lurking in a land far far away, over seas, past mountains. Many of these people took up the war cry, fearing for their safety, convinced that the WMDs, as they were so affectionally called, would kill their families and friends. Later, we came to feel foolish and mock the existence of these weapons. But with just one person telling us they were real, we had millions ready to declare war upon those who might be holding them.
So my question, though long winded, is this: Is a weapon that can take out more than a hundred people in five minutes, one that can cause devastation to families, businesses, and whole schools or towns, not a weapon of mass destruction? How could we, as Americans, be so willing to declare war and then kill hundreds of thousands of people based on weapons that don't exist, but then be so unwilling to fight against the ones that do?
We have all heard the gun enthusiasts who tell us we will have to pull their weapons from their cold dead hands, which according to statistics, is more likely to happen than for them to have to use them on an intruder or a stranger. But in all actuality, if the gun enthusiasts would lower their roars to room temperature discussion, we would be able to tell them that we are not, in fact, proposing we remove their second amendment rights altogether. We are just asking for some accountability. We are asking that assault rifles not be sold to our citizens, that background checks be done, that there is due diligence in preventing criminals and those with classified psychiatric disorders from becoming armed, and that we stop selling guns at gun shows, where all rules seem to be more lenient. This is a federal problem, and should be treated as such.
And as to my last point- the second amendment, that oft quoted, and oft misunderstood part of our constitution. Our forefathers, who drafted this amendment in 1791, said "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of free state, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." It came to be as a way for citizens (male citizens, of course) to form militias, as we did not have our own army at the time. Need we be reminded that during the 18th century, the guns available to our people were muskets, which at very best could be fired three times per minute? Assault rifles were mere futuristic fiction, and were unable to be written in as amendments to the amendment.
So this passage written into our constitution, which was written centuries ago, in a time when blacks and women were still considered inferior, when people shat in chamber pots in their bedrooms, when meth was handed out for spring allergies, when a man was legally allowed to rape and beat his wife, may need to be re-examined, as so many things have been. As our world evolves, so should we.
If one of the children from Sandy Hook, or one of the dancing nightclub patrons, or just one of the victims of the 998 mass shootings from the last four years could come to you and tell you that by relinquishing just a little control over your weapons, you could have possibly saved their lives, would you tell them no?
In 2012, a young gunman walked into an elementary school, where small children were reading Harry Potter in a library, and singing America the Beautiful in music, and struggling through multiplication in math. Like Columbine, the young gunman was a white kid, pretty well off, and a little "misunderstood". In a short amount of time, he opened fire with a Bushmaster AR 15 Assault weapon and killed 20 kids and 6 grown ups. In the same amount of time it would take most of us to wash a sinkful of dishes, or put on our makeup, or drive to the grocery store. In 11 minutes, he managed to forever change an entire school, an entire town.
Since the massacre at Sandy Hook, there have been 998 mass shootings in the United States. In 2015 alone, almost 13,000 people were killed with guns (including at least 2 children each week from accidents alone). This does not include the 20,000 who use a gun to commit suicide each year. Looking at a map of the United States, there are no places that are immune- no community too posh, no area too educated, no terrain too smooth.
This weekend, another gunman, young and by most accounts, handsome and usually amicable, walked into a club where he left 50 families without their loved ones, and 53 more beginning their own nightmares of surgeries, post operative care, post traumatic stress, and grief. He too used an AR 15, which coincidentally was the same gun used in Aurora and San Bernadino, two other notoriously grisly mass murder scenes. With his weapon, he was able to fire 20 bullets into a crowd of dancing strangers in nine seconds. In the time it takes us to sneeze and recover, he was able to eliminate the equivalent of an entire sports team.
I would like to go back to the shooters of these mass homicides. I won't mention them by name, because they aren't the ones on which we should focus. But each of them, like each of us was born a small, defenseless child. In fact, when a child is born, it is a lump of less than a dozen pounds of pure potential. But conversely, in each of us is the potential to become unhinged, to become obsessed, depressed, oppressed. I have read one of the many forwards on social media this week, a passage that made me cringe in its simplicity. It read:
I stand behind you in line at the store with a smile on my face...and a gun under my shirt and you are none the wiser, yet you are safer for having me next to you. I won't shoot you. My gun won't pull it's own trigger. It is securely holstered with the trigger covered. It can't just go off. However, rest assured that if a lunatic walks into the grocery store and pulls out a rifle, I will draw my pistol and protect myself and my family and therefore protect you and your family. I may get shot before I can pull the trigger...but, I won't die in a helpless blubbering heap on the floor begging for my life. No, if I die it will be in a pile of spent shell casings. I won't be that victim. I choose not to be. As for you, I don't ask you to carry a gun. If you are not comfortable, then please don't. But I would like to keep my right to choose to not be a helpless victim. There is evil in the world and if evil has a gun, I want one too...
Copy and paste if you believe this too....
My main objections with this paragraph (aside from the spelling errors), are the assumptions that because you are not planning on shooting me, everything is AOK. In fact, most people who purchase guns, do so without the imminent plan of killing someone. Many buy them for sport, for hunting, for protection. But as I pointed out above, we are all capable of changing, and changing quickly. Quite often we will hear news stories about a father who has suddenly shot his entire family during a birthday party, or a veteran with PTSD who has used their gun on themselves and their children. We hear neighbors insist that they all "seemed so normal", "wouldn't hurt a fly". And like the person who wrote the italicized paragraph, was standing next to us, fully armed, without us knowing-we were unknowing of what they were capable, and also unknowing of the weapon that was mere inches from us. I believe I should have the right to make a decision about my whereabouts, with full knowledge of the weaponry available to my fellow patrons. If I choose to go to a bar, I should have the ability to choose to go where strangers will not be armed. The fact that this passage has eerily whispered to me that I am none the wiser while you have a smile on your face, tells me how very out of control this situation has become.
We could go through the statistics of the US versus the 23 other high income nations, and how we lead on gun deaths compared to all of them combined. We could discuss how other countries, in respose to their own gun massacres, immediately began to remove guns, and how successful they have been. But I won't, because these are all easily found online, and one could argue that like this entire blog, I would be preaching to the choir.
After September 11th, the American people were told there were weapons of mass destruction lurking in a land far far away, over seas, past mountains. Many of these people took up the war cry, fearing for their safety, convinced that the WMDs, as they were so affectionally called, would kill their families and friends. Later, we came to feel foolish and mock the existence of these weapons. But with just one person telling us they were real, we had millions ready to declare war upon those who might be holding them.
So my question, though long winded, is this: Is a weapon that can take out more than a hundred people in five minutes, one that can cause devastation to families, businesses, and whole schools or towns, not a weapon of mass destruction? How could we, as Americans, be so willing to declare war and then kill hundreds of thousands of people based on weapons that don't exist, but then be so unwilling to fight against the ones that do?
We have all heard the gun enthusiasts who tell us we will have to pull their weapons from their cold dead hands, which according to statistics, is more likely to happen than for them to have to use them on an intruder or a stranger. But in all actuality, if the gun enthusiasts would lower their roars to room temperature discussion, we would be able to tell them that we are not, in fact, proposing we remove their second amendment rights altogether. We are just asking for some accountability. We are asking that assault rifles not be sold to our citizens, that background checks be done, that there is due diligence in preventing criminals and those with classified psychiatric disorders from becoming armed, and that we stop selling guns at gun shows, where all rules seem to be more lenient. This is a federal problem, and should be treated as such.
And as to my last point- the second amendment, that oft quoted, and oft misunderstood part of our constitution. Our forefathers, who drafted this amendment in 1791, said "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of free state, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." It came to be as a way for citizens (male citizens, of course) to form militias, as we did not have our own army at the time. Need we be reminded that during the 18th century, the guns available to our people were muskets, which at very best could be fired three times per minute? Assault rifles were mere futuristic fiction, and were unable to be written in as amendments to the amendment.
So this passage written into our constitution, which was written centuries ago, in a time when blacks and women were still considered inferior, when people shat in chamber pots in their bedrooms, when meth was handed out for spring allergies, when a man was legally allowed to rape and beat his wife, may need to be re-examined, as so many things have been. As our world evolves, so should we.
If one of the children from Sandy Hook, or one of the dancing nightclub patrons, or just one of the victims of the 998 mass shootings from the last four years could come to you and tell you that by relinquishing just a little control over your weapons, you could have possibly saved their lives, would you tell them no?
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