I own a gun. I plan on owning more guns. I am a registered Republican. I think though at this point I am more of a Libertarian. I am certainly Conservative on fiscal issues but I am Democrat on some social issues. And there are some views that I hold that border on Socialist. So I think my political confusion should have me somewhere close to the middle politically.
There has been another mass shooting in America and it was at a school. It's time to stop this. It's beyond time to stop this. I don't know what will stop it. I can't see the future. I can't know what will or will not work but I do know that we have an abundance of examples of how doing nothing will work.
It won't.
It hasn't.
Yes, we have a disconnect. The fact that people even form the idea that shooting another person or a group of people is acceptable blows my mind. I don't know. There is no respect for life, for the other or for the self. In all honesty in a lot of cases the shooter doesn't even respect their own life. And that is a problem that will not be solved quickly.
In April of 1999 I was a junior in high school. Columbine wasn't the first school shooting but it was the first to really really capture the media's attention. This is 2018. And things have gotten worse. We didn't have lock down drills. I felt safe at high school. My biggest concern was being taunted or teased by other students. And bringing a gun to school wasn't seen as a serious threat. Now it is a reality. I don't remember what year of high school it was but there was a student who in an argument had said she was going to bring a gun to school and shoot another classmate. That classmate was in my homeroom. In fact I was in line with the door to the classroom and the student who was being threatened. We told a teacher what we had heard and she told us not to worry. That we should feel sorry that this student had so much pain in her life that this was her reaction. The next day she skipped school. The day after she was back and there was no further mention of shooting anyone. That was a very tense homeroom period where I kept looking to the door and nothing happened. I wish the students of Parkland, FL had been so lucky. They weren't and now Parkland joins a list of other schools that have seen children killed in their halls when it could have been stopped. It could have been avoided.
We really can't wait any longer. Something, anything, will be better than nothing.
Let's try.
First let's enforce the laws already on the books. Because that is objection one. Why add new laws when we don't enforce the existing ones? So let's just do that, enforce them. I value the potential lives saved enough to follow them.
As someone who owns a gun and wants to own more I have no issue with a background check. I think every sale of a gun should involve a background check, whether at a gun show or in a store. I have no issue with signing a release form that would allow that background check to include a medical history. I have no issue with having to take a certification and safety class, not just for conceal and carry but just to own and buy. I have no issue with there being other requirements like storage requirements so that no visitors or other occupants of my home can access those guns. I have no issue with having to pass a proficiency test. I have no issue with having to do that every few years like renewing a license. Maybe it will be annoying, another thing to do. Maybe there will even be a licensing fee to cover administrative costs of background checks and such, an inconvenience. I value the potential lives saved more than that fee will cost.
I don't know if banning AR-15s will help. But it is a weapon of choice and that is for a reason. Maybe the reason is how easy you can get one. I haven't tried to get one but I understand it is easy. So yeah let's make that harder. Maybe raise the minimum age to buy/own one. Does it need to hold that many bullets? I'm going to be honest here. I went shooting. And I thought it was fun. I find target shooting very enjoyable. And firing a semi automatic weapon was awesome. Very powerful. But I also recognized how easy it was to shoot a multitude of bullets in a very short amount of time. Very easy to lose track. When we were children we went to Rye Playland in NY. There was a shooting game with a semi automatic air rifle. That was actually where I first fired something that was semi automatic, again a glorified bb gun or air rifle. You had to shoot the entire center of the target out to win. The allure of the semi automatic gun was to just hold the trigger and in a matter of seconds all the bbs would be gone and the center of the target would still be there. Quantity over quality. My Dad came very close to winning one time. He did not shoot continuously but in as short a burst as he could manage. And the few people who I saw win did the same thing. It might be fun but that continuous fire is not for accuracy. It is not for hunting it isn't even for home protection. And frankly with the amount of damage it has caused in years and years of mass shootings it isn't worth the fun. I gladly would give it up if it means that tomorrow or the next day or the day after that I don't turn on the TV to see children running from a school with their hands up while someone else has taken an AR-15 and used it against innocent lives. I value the potential lives saved more than my hobby.
I can hear in my mind the objection to this. If we make gun ownership harder it will just make it harder for those who legally own guns. The criminals who want to commit crimes won't care about adding another crime to their list. I know this one. I've used it in the past. But the same can be said about every law. Why bother making laws? The people who will break them will just break them anyway. But if there are stricter background checks. If AR-15s are not so readily available some people will be stopped. They will be stopped because the gun is not available or because they actually get stopped because of a background check that maybe would not have previously been done. Isn't stopping one person worth the chance?
And another objection I know well, it's a mental health or human issue. Why blame the tool and not the person? I've used this in the past too. I'm not blaming the tool. The tool is doing what it does but the people who are getting the tool are not mature enough or not ready for that power. A toddler gets a permanent marker and writes on the walls and you move the markers out of their reach right? When my sister and I were little we got our hands on scissors and cut each other's bangs. Well you better believe my Mom moved the scissors out of our reach. We weren't mature. Well background checks, and limiting rounds or making AR-15s harder to get is the same principle.
Our society is broken right now. We can't and don't see all the warning signs. We can't know what is in the minds of others. And this isn't just about mass shootings. This is also about accidental shootings because children find a gun that was hidden in a house. This is also about suicides because someone is hurting worse than anyone knew and they took someone else's gun and used it on themselves. Let's take this chance and do something.
I have a Constitutional right to bear arms. But my Constitutional right is not in a vacuum. My fellow citizens also have Constitutional rights. In fact they have the inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
I was thinking about that earlier. It brought to mind a quote from Albert Camus. "I Rebel therefore we Exist." Now what Camus was talking about was metaphysical rebellion against what he saw as an absurdity of existence. But let me explain how I see this applying. The Rebel commits the act of Rebellion in recognition that he has boundaries that should not be crossed. If the Rebel has boundaries then so to do others and therefore we all exist and have boundaries. It is that positive understanding of Rebellion that is coming to my mind and the fact that the act of Rebellion affirms a society. I have boundaries and if I as a human have boundaries so do others as humans. In this way Rebellion recognizes shared values, needs, and overall humanity. My dignity and rights are worth fighting for and so are others. Camus explains:
"No doubt the Rebel demands a certain freedom for himself; but in no circumstance does he demand, if he is consistent, the right to destroy the person and freedom of someone else. He degrades no one. The freedom which he demands he claims for everybody; that which he rejects he forbids all others to exercise." - The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt
There is a communal aspect to Rebellion and that is what I am focusing on. By recognizing my value as a human life I recognize value in all human life. By recognizing that I have hopes, loves, desires, and rights I also recognize others have their own hopes, loves, desires, and rights. And this is where I repeat the sentiment from above. I want my rights. I want my rights recognized. But by recognizing I have a right I also recognize others have rights.
In American society we need to find a balance. I have a right to own a gun. My family, friends, neighbors, fellow Americans, and my potential children also have rights. My right to own a gun exists in the same world as their right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Actually those rights probably should take precedence as inalienable rights, as stated in the Declaration of Independence, whereas the right to bear arms is a Constitutional right. Without getting into a 'hierarchy of rights' debates I still must recognize that they have rights like I do. So my right should not infringe on their right. Gun ownership and gun control as it exists today, as it has existed since 1998, is preventing them from realizing their rights.
And people want this. The vast majority of people want this cycle of violence to stop. A lot of gun owners want this to stop. But they don't want to be vilified in the process. The vast majority of gun owners are responsible law abiding citizens who do exactly what they are required to do. They don't want this. They don't want to see mass shootings and children killed. And to say they do is disgusting. The postings I have seen about how NRA members must like seeing dead children is the same to me as those who stood in protest of Vietnam Veterans and called them all baby killers. Obviously one difference being the soldiers in Vietnam were drafted while individuals choose to join the NRA but to vilify them in a way that is so disgusting and untrue does not help. This vilification brings to mind a quote from Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice. "The villainy you teach me I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction." Shylock is talking about acts against him but I think this goes further as well. If you tell someone enough times they 'are something' or they 'do something' eventually it will become self fulfilling. If you vilify someone over and over they will become what you are saying they are because eventually they will give up fighting the stereotype. The stereotype does not fit the majority. It barely fits the minority but that extreme minority gets the attention. And by painting the majority in the picture of the worst of the minority you end dialogue. And you shut out debate. This vilification also feeds into us verse them which is part of the Issues of Humanity we need to work on. But that is part of the long fix.
So what are these Issues of Humanity, the long fix, we find in society.
The first human issue is framing every single issue as a battle of us verse them. I recognize the other side. I recognize they as humans, like me. And as Americans, like me, they have rights. And their rights are being impaired. I don't want my rights impaired and because I don't want it to happen to me I also don't want it to happen to them. It isn't us verse them. It is us. And we need to do something.
There is another human issue and that is boredom. People are bored with life and they are looking to see that they have an effect. Well the easiest way to see an effect is to cause harm. It is immediate. Building someone up and instilling value takes time but knock someone down and you can see the result immediately.
A third human issue is a disregard for life. The shooter 's and the victims' lives are meaningless. It is a real lack of self worth that is masked in grandiose thinking that causes this disregard. But this is a cultural problem. It is a problem that is complicated and will take a long time to change because it took a long time to get here.
I wrote when I started this that don't know all the answers this is just my vision of a start.
Gun control may be just a 'bandaid fix.' But we need the band aid because the long fix is long and we don't have that time. Humanity is going to bleed to death before we can get it to the surgeon if we don't do something.
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