As happens every time there’s a mass shooting – a tragedy of increasing frequency, it seems – gun dealers nationwide reported a spike in sales in the days following the terrible slaughter this month in Connecticut.
People wait in line to enter a gun show in Marietta, Ga. on Saturday, Dec. 22, 2012. As gun control talks heat up in Washington, more than 1,000 people lined up Saturday morning outside the exhibit hall at Jim Miller Park in Cobb County for the Eastman Gun Show. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)
The experts tell us there are already about 250 million guns in the United States. I wonder how many more we’ll need to feel safe.
I don’t feel any safer, really, despite the 12-gauge I keep safely accessible at home. But I do feel just a bit ashamed as a gun owner who, each time another shooting makes headlines, shrugs helplessly, given the inefficacy of gun laws, the intransigence of the gun lobby and everyone’s inability to make sense of the contradictory statistics of gun control.
But all that crap about the victims of gun violence being the necessary collateral damage of our Second Amendment rights just doesn’t seem like enough this time. Twenty-six dead, 20 of them little children, in the middle of the holiday season in the middle of an elementary school in the middle of the supposedly most civilized nation on earth. The victims of our historic love affair with guns and violence.
“Must every tragic mass shooting bring out the shrill ignorance of ‘gun control’ advocates?” conservative columnist Thomas Sowell asked the other day. Yes, dammit, until we get some better answers. We deserve better in these United States than more mass shootings – American exceptionalism at its worst.
Truth be told, there’s plenty of shrill ignorance on both sides of the gun debate. One TV commentator on the left the other day was going on about how all these shootings appear to involve 9 mm handguns. Maybe we need to outlaw weapons of that caliber, she suggested, as though the diameter of the bullet were the culprit.
On the other hand, you’ve got the yahoos on the other side insisting that the way to make us safe is to make sure everyone is packing in classrooms and crowded movie theaters. Guns don’t kill people. No, people with guns kill people, too many people.
We have to get past the ideological mantras and have a rational discussion on this national shame, a dialogue in which everything is on the table. I don’t think putting Glocks in the hands of language-arts teachers is the answer, but maybe armed guards in the hall are a short-term solution. Bans on assault rifles or 30-round “banana” magazines may not keep us safe, but maybe they are a step in the right direction – a statement that as a nation we don’t think the answer to violence is more violence.
What would Jesus do? I don’t know, but I doubt he’d say more semi-automatic weapons.
We need to talk about identifying and treating the mentally ill, ask ourselves if violent video games and other shoot-’em-up entertainments play a role. What about the media feeding frenzies that accompany each new outrage? Do they encourage the next twisted notoriety seeker? And how do we mitigate such influences in a free society?
I’ve heard it said the Second Amendment mandates that Americans have access to high-powered, military-grade weaponry, that the Founding Fathers wanted to make sure citizens had the firepower available to stop tyranny in its tracks.
Nonsense, unless we want to say individuals have a right to tanks, bazookas and attack choppers. The Founding Fathers believed a professional army was the chief threat to liberty and that the answer was to rely instead on a “well-regulated militia” trained by the federal government and led by state-appointed officers.
But George Washington himself was quick to turn out the troops to put down insurrections by armed rabbles who styled themselves don’t-tread-on-me patriots. As Alexander Hamilton said, urging Washington to quickly crush the Whiskey Rebellion, “There can … be no such thing as ‘constitutional resistance’ to laws constitutionally enacted.” And it is up to the Supreme Court, not gun owners, to decide the constitutional limits of the law.
The court has only recently, for the first time, ruled that there is indeed a personal right to gun ownership, a right most historians say has to do with self defense, or hunting, both of which were nearly added to the Second Amendment but ultimately left to the states. The court itself has yet to draw the contours of that gun right, but was quick to note in its 2008 decision that nothing in the ruling should cast doubt on prohibitions against gun possession by felons or the mentally ill, laws against carrying firearms in sensitive places or the regulation of gun sales.
So why don’t we start with extending background checks to the 40 percent of gun sales the law currently doesn’t cover? A majority in this country favor such a law, and surely the majority in a democracy has the right to enact such laws to protect public safety, so long as they don’t infringe on the rights of others.
So keep your Glock if you think you need protection when you run down to Rutters for a quart of milk. I’ll keep that shotgun I hope never to have to fire in anger.
But quit making this an all-or-nothing debate. Yes, cars kill more kids than guns do in America, but we have admittedly less-than-perfect laws that try to make motor vehicles safer. We can try to make guns safer, too.
Surely, as the president said in the wake of Sandy Hook, we can do better. I hope and pray that is so. But to not even try because of politics, or simply because the answers are so unclear, is a response too horribly cold-blooded to consider after this latest round of carnage.
Marc Charisse is the editor of The Evening Sun. Email: mcharisse@eveningsun.com. Twitter: @esmcharisse.
Marc Charisse is the editor of The Evening Sun. Dr. Charisse has a Ph.D. in First Amendment law and history, and has taught communication law and constitutional law at the University of Washington in Seattle and Jacksonville University in Jacksonville, Fla. Charisse can be reached at mcharisse@eveningsun.com.
My friend Stan Hough is organizing a vigil in D.C. Sunday, Dec. 30 at 8 p.m. In support of commonsense first steps: bans on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines and closing background-check loopholes. If you can’t make it, please consider lighting a candle at that time and standing for 10 minutes. No, it won’t fix the problem in the short run, but I think it sends an important message that the answer to violence isn’t more violence, the answer to gun massacres doesn’t have to be more guns.
The holidays are past and the innocents are at rest,so, with that in mind I want to tread softly back into this exchange of ideas.
My wife & I have kept those children and thier families in our prayers and respect Mr. Hough’s intent to do something.
Again, as I asked you in my first reply, please define “assault weapons” & please tell us what your destination is if this is a “common sense first step”?
I also respectfully ask you to explain what you percieve to be a “loophole” in the background check system that is currently in place. To the uninformed these catch phrases garner support, but to those familiar with the laws and weapons they ring very hollow. Again, I ask if you believe that a madman with numerous 8-15 round magazines is less capable of atrocities such as these, as opposed to a madman with a 30 round magazine? Our problems lie much deeper than gun ownership and we are not willing to even have that discussion in our society.
Kevin Benner emailed the following response, which he graciously allowed to be posted here, along with my answer. While we obviously disagree, the tone of Kevin’s message gives me hope we might find common ground, or at least civil compromise:
I read your piece regarding safety in a free society. You and I have never
met, so I want to be careful not to make assumptions. I am an owner and user of numerous firearms and have many friends who are proud to claim that they too are gun owners, based on the fact that they purchased a simple 12 gauge shotgun and placed it in the closet in their bedroom. It sits there collecting dust and serves no purpose other than to back up their status as “gun owners”. Once they declare this status they can then join the “gun
debate” on the side of more laws and feel like they have credibility.
You ask how many more guns we need to own in order to feel safe. I would answer by saying I have never purchased a firearm for the purpose of making me feel safe. I buy them to shoot them and enjoy them, as I expect most folks do. My guns do not make feel any safer than a golfers clubs make him feel safe.
You refer to the poor children in Conn. And the innocent people in Aurora, as victims of our “love affair with guns and violence”. They are not. They are victims of mad men and the culture that breeds these creatures. When people, like me, offer as a possible response to this horror the idea that maybe our children would be safer if a trained armed person or persons were present in the schools, you ridicule the idea by presenting it as “language arts teachers packing”. Is it even remotely possible that some of those language arts teachers might just want to be trained and armed in
an effort to keep the students safer?
You call for a ban on “Assault weapons” & “Banana Clips” as “a step in the right direction”. As a second amendment supporter, I need to ask you if that “is step in the right direction”, what is the destination? Along those lines, could you please also give us a working, legal definition of assault weapons?
Also, please explain to me why you believe 4 or 5 lesser capacity clips would reduce the carnage when a madman strikes? You alluded that the second amendment came within a hair of limiting the ownership of firearms for the purpose of hunting. Jefferson was the author of that amendment, and I know you have previously stated that you are something of a Jefferson fan. If one reads his writings on the subject it becomes very clear that his intent was for the citizenry to be armed as a defense against tyrannical government.
Perhaps we can talk about this sometime at one of the many turkey shoots in our area, or maybe we will stand next to each other on a trap squad. Perhaps we will spend a Saturday morning in a group shooting sporting clays, or see each other as we set up decoys for waterfowl hunting at Codorus. We might
even run into each other at one of the parking lots for the various public game lands around here. If these are activities that you have never enjoyed, I invite you to pick up that shotgun and come on out. I believe you will meet some real gun owners who live and work in our community, and have strong feelings about what direction our nation needs to take in order to be safer. In the end, safety in a free society is a touchy matter.
Kevin L. Benner
Thank you for the thoughtful response, and for not stereotyping me as dusty shotgun in the closet sort of guy. So far, you set the better example of civil discourse than I did in that column, though I’m not sorry I my anger come through in that piece.
As a matter of fact, I grew up around lots of guns and still appreciate the power and craftsmanship of fine firearms.
My father was a hunter and avid collector, and was I shooting as young as I can remember, at least as young as 7 or 8, though most of the guns were sold in harder times.
I got an AR 15 for my 18th birthday and a year later in the Army I shot expert and the highest score in my basic training, earning a stripe, on an M-16. I recall our drill sergeant telling us this wasn’t a squirrel hunting gun or even a deer hunting gun. It was a people hunting gun. Period. I tend to agree about the weapon.
I don’t hunt myself but would love to shoot skeet with you and continue this conversation.
I agree, for instance that in the short run putting armed guards in schools is a good way to keep kids safe. But teachers have enough on their plates, and that’s not their job anyway. I’d say the national guard, the militia the 2nd Amendment talks about, is better equipped to provide that kind of protection.
The Founding fathers disagreed on many things, including the meaning of the amendments, but I think it’s fair to say most thought the militia was preferable not only to a standing army, but a professional police force as a protection to liberty. So I don’t see constitutional concerns by such measures.
I wonder if I might post your letter on my blog, along with tis response? I’d like to get real dialogue going on some of these things. I get gun ownership, but I also get how some people are repulsed by guns. And they need to be heard as well. I want to believe in the power of nonviolence, too, to stir our souls.
Please let me know about posting this. Obviously if you don’t want to take this public, I respect that, but I’m a public guy so I thought I’d ask.
Anyway, have a great Christmas. I’ve got to run right now and attend to holiday stuff, but I wanted to respond to your letter. I’ll post more when I have a few moments on the other substantive issues you raise.
Your right margin listing on Blogroll includes your written commentary entitled, Can We Feel Safe in a Free Society? presumes underlying civilized structures of thought and function as existing in everyday life activities.
2nd Ammendment rights to bear arms in defense of safety when intrusion occurs on private property or with threat to personhood and legal life business activities. Gun rights is not about freedom, its about rights to safety in legal activities. You see, guns would still exist even with 9000 laws, as drugs still exist with whole Defense policies against drugs guns and drugs would exist in the hands of uncivilized people.
The very same sinister hand of corruption in background checks that informs local enforcement duds wearing tasers and rubber Glocks, like the invisible hand of dirty cash flow into small businesses influence such safety.
Gun control presumes enforcement, forensics and human intent to civilized safe lives
Gun control proposals and “Can We Feel Safe in a Free Society?” WRONGLY presume underlying structures of civilized thought and intent from system/ institutional functions in everyday life activities. We, as law- abiding American citizens, have never been privileged to assume such safety. Guns in criminal hands for criminal intent will never be stopped by one more law. And it is said that there are 9000 laws all together that currently exist adddressing illegal possession, sale and manufacture.
Violation of privacy on civilian, proprietary technology like this internet device attracts pimps and whores of all colors, shapes and character. Swift elimination helps send the message to intruders. There is consequence to action.
The hand in the puddding is dirty. Like the sinister hand found in corrupt real estate deals by parasitic cheats and gangsters. “Can We Feel Safe in a Free Society” needs a wake up message, Editor-in-Chief. My letter to you is being reviewed by formal anti-terror officials who believe academic idiocy in Constitutional writing about rights to defend privacy, property and personhood is the fuel for hatred against American imperialism abroad.