Responsible gun owners...

I am not a gun enthusiast. I don’t hunt, never got into target shooting, and don’t feel so threatened that I think carrying a gun around will in some way improve my life. Maybe it is my mechanic’s background. A gun is a tool for killing things. A hand gun is a tool tailored for killing people. Guns are not a tool I need.

Gun enthusiasts like to insist that they are not into killing people. Something I happen to believe when it comes to most hunters. They kill, they know what it means to kill, and for the most part they spend a lot of effort getting good at killing after careful preparation, planning, and deliberate selection of their prey. Indiscriminate killing seems deeply offensive to the true hunter. Though I am not a hunter and the few hunters I do know are offended by my liberal politics; I have a certain affinity for them. They are often deeply committed to conservation. They love being out in nature, have a profound respect for the biosphere of which we are all a part, and (though it seems counter intuitive) often exhibit an open reverence for life. The sailor in me finds a lot in common with the hunter. I guess it would be safe to say the vast majority of hunters are gun owners. But I wonder if they are more “hunting enthusiasts” who use guns as tools than they are “gun enthusiasts.”

Gun enthusiasts seem a different sort of animal. Somehow I get the impression that they are all, deep down inside, pleased with the idea of having the ability to kill at their fingertips. They are the ones shooting at human shaped targets. They are the ones most often talking of putting political opponents “in their sights”, “killing off a campaign" or "eliminating a rival". The language of endless, deadly violence is the language of the gun enthusiast. And, to put it bluntly, they seem paranoid to the point of mental illness. Armed enemies lie in wait around every bend, stop lights are all places subject to constant car-jacking, and some bad guy is surely casing their home in preparation for an armed confrontation complete with assault rifles. (Breaking and entering is now “home invasion”.) Places of worship and education must be particularly dangerous since the gun world seems intent on making sure the secretly armed are allowed in churches and classrooms. This level of paranoia is simply not part of a healthy person's world view.

Just as an aside I hate the “concealed carry” laws. If a person is carrying a gun I would much rather they display it openly for all to see. That way the rest of us can know from which direction the danger is likely to come. Besides, there is something vaguely disturbing about a person who wants to tote around a tool to kill me with, but at the same time seems ashamed to be seen with such a thing. Concealed carry laws, in and of themselves, suggest there is something not right with those looking for a permit. To me the first and most obvious clue that a person should not be allowed to have a gun, is that they want to keep their having one on them a secret.

That being said, a lot of people I regard as friends are gun enthusiasts and have carry permits. While sitting around one day a report of the latest gun rampage popped up on the TV news. Instantly one of them said, “Things like that make all responsible gun owners look bad.” The other gun enthusiasts agreed, and that got me to thinking…

The person making the statement is someone I really like. All he need do to get anything from me he needs is to ask. He has been a good friend now for several years. And yet...

He has no real fixed address, living alone in an RV parked in the lot of an industrial / recreation sight in the middle of IL.

A long term relationship for him is counted in months, sometimes weeks. At least one girlfriend parted the scene with a call to the local police station in the hopes of having him caught riding home drunk and collection a D.W.I. It almost worked. He got stopped. But it is a small town and he knows the police. They sent him home so long as someone else came to collect his Harley.

Not a member of the club, but he often rides with an outlaw biker group with a long history of violence.

By any definition he is a heavy drinker, often deep in his cups by noon every weekend and pretty much toast by late evening on any day.

Would it be that he go off some day and end up in the news cycle, those of us who know him would be utterly crushed and deeply puzzled. Our friend wouldn’t hurt a fly. The rest of the world would wonder how we could be so blind; loner, outlaw biker, divorced several times with a string of girlfriends, heavily armed and an alcoholic. No one would be surprised but those who claim to know him; a familiar subplot in nearly every tale of gun violence.

Another of the group of gun enthusiasts sitting around that day is openly racist. He expects the riots to start any day now and figures picking targets will be easy – they are the “burnt” ones. To him the only mystery in the Trayvon Martin shooting was what an armed Mexican was doing in a white neighborhood? (My Dad, before he was lost to dementia, held pretty much the same view, as do two of my brothers and a brother in law.) To an armed racist most of the world is already the enemy. Locked, cocked and ready to rock... that's how unarmed kids get gunned down in the street.

Lest one accuse me of picking on the right wing, another of the responsible gun owners in the crowd is far left of me. He sees a right-wing conspiracy for everything from the Wall Street bail-out to the WCC attacks to UAVs flying over the neighborhood. Should civil war actually come to these shores he will be a surprise to the right wingers; as heavily armed as they and just as good a shot.

These are a pretty good sample of the responsible gun owners who I know. I love ‘em, but I’m not sure any of them should be packing. And the fact is I don’t feel entirely safe around them all the time. A few months ago an acquaintance on the fringe of our social circle got seriously drunk and launched a physical assault on me (left wing politically correct speech for saying he threw a series of punches). It was over something my wife had said days earlier about him letting his rather large German Shepard rampage though the common kitchen area; and yes, it was completely stupid and I was totally embarrassed by the whole thing. (I am 57 fucking years old, not some high school punk.) I just held him still until a friend could collect him up and take him home, but it was an uneasy night. You guessed it; he is also a “responsible gun owner.” (Let me say it again; he got drunk and tried to start a fight over a dog.)

It is an ill society that holds as a “right” the ability to hide a tool on one’s person whose sole purpose is to kill, while neglecting the right of a likely victim to enjoy life without the constant threat of violence. Yet that is what guns are about, the constant threat of deadly violence. I know gun enthusiasts, I love a few of them like brothers, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t something wrong with them. The problem is they don’t realize just how wrong they are to consider themselves as "responsible gun owners." The thought that maybe a responsible human being would not be a gun owner will never occure to them. That is until someone they know is killed by one of their fire arms.

And then it is too late.

A lack of shame

I am a bit ashamed to admit it, but I have a friend who is seriously racist. He isn't a Nazi or a Skinhead or anything, just a middle aged white guy with an ugly take on people who are not as pale as he is. Truth to tell he pisses me off sometimes and then I find a reason to be somewhere he isn't; but the fact of the matter he is still a friend. When he needs something I will step in to help, and he does the same for me.

Perhaps what bothers me the most is that he doesn't see his racism as something that should cause him the least bit of shame. In fact, is some twisted way that completely eludes me, he seems a bit proud of it - throwing this backward and hateful attitude in the face of the politically correct and liberal minded like he is standing some kind of ethical ground.

There seems to be a lot of that going around lately. People are proud of being ignorant and uneducated; as if not being able to read above a third grade level is a badge of honor. Educated people reject evolution and climate change with the claim that they are superior to people who accept facts and try to act in a way consistent with those facts. People who spew hate act as if those who call them on it are the real evil.

I would be utterly ashamed at being counted among any such, how can they look in a mirror? How do they sleep at night? Clearly they don't see themselves as shameful people, they are proud of what they are.

Which, perhaps more than anything else, convinces me that this is a dying society. Even the most blatant lies are simply glossed over; leaders no longer even bother to deny that they are, in fact, lying. It is part of the game and besides, "the people" don't want to hear the truth anyway. Indeed, rather than shame at being caught, they take pride in the aggressiveness of their attacks on their political enemies.

Politics in America is nothing now but hate and spin, lies and open threats of violence. The gun crowd is big on this, though they are quick to insist that don't mean "real" violence every time bullets fly and people are cut down. Which is just more lies. Of course they mean exactly that. How can they not? They are violent people - so long as they are the perpetrators of violence and not on the receiving end.

Which makes them cowards as well; something else that should make them hang their heads in shame.