I
changed my mind. Once my butt was firmly planted on a barstool, I
ordered a Barbancourt neat instead of whiskey. I noticed that I was
unaccountably angry, well, maybe not unaccountably. Account.
Interesting word choice. The young woman who had held up the sign in
the beginning of class was there too. We commiserated over our drinks
for a while until she headed home, then I started dissecting my
anger. I was trying to find the core and found that the core wasn't
nice and tight like a pared down apple, it was more like a seed in
the applesauce.
I felt
a bit like an old timey scryer. Staring into the glass, the surface
became an amber colored screen for a mental slideshow. Pictures of
young men, black, white and latino, in orange jumpsuits. Sometimes
their eyes showed trauma or surprise or fear, sometimes anger,
sometimes nothing at all. Pictures of bright young faces in their
eighth grade school photos, shiny and smiling, ready for a framed
place on Grandma's mantel. Pictures of young men in white tshirts,
their bodies in improbable positions, framed by yellow crime tape
with a pool of something shiny and dark on the ground. Pictures of
bereaved relatives on the news or at the funeral. Pictures of the
Instructor, the other members of the class. The round, slightly ruddy
face of the Police Chief, grainy video footage of a robbery from a
convenience store, more of the same from a bar. Pictures of tables
full of guns: pistols, revolvers, sub-machine guns, just like in the
free encyclopedia but with somber police officers standing proudly
behind the stacks. Gordon Liddy behind a table full of gold coins and
bullion saying that this yellow metal will save me when times get
tough as they inevitably will, never actually saying but clearly
intimating that “they”, however you personally define “them”,
will be coming for YOU and you better be ready. You'll surely need a
gun or six to protect the gold ya know. Glenn Beck in a chalkboard
frenzy screaming Van Jones, Van Jones, Van Jones-he's a liberal
socialist with a socialist agenda bent on taking away your civil
rights, and mark (socialist) my words, people, am I the only one that
sees it? This guy is out (socialist) to change your way of life, not
the America I know, and it's not cuz he's black (socialist) that I'm
saying this, I'm just sayin' that he's a socialist and he wants to
shit on the Constitution (cue tears) and stomp on the flag and you
better get some guns to protect yourself before the socialist black
guy tries to take your guns away—by the way do you need a Survival
Kit for your bunker? Oh goodie. Now my slide show had a soundtrack.
Sketchy white guys in tall foam rubber and mesh trucker hats outside
a trailer next to a pickup truck complete with loaded up gun rack, a
Confederate flag bumpersticker and a macho pose, speaking a readily
identifiable proud-to-be-an-ignoramus dialect: Telling us about the
Second Amendment, which may be the only one that they readily
recognize, while stating with firm resolve that they are something
that sounds like “Mur-i-kins.” Ten guys in camo on ATV's
patrolling the border with scoped rifles and sidearms and handcuffs
and not a badge among them ready to “catch” some goddamned
pregnant wetback carrying an anchor baby intent on taking their jobs.
I guess these testosterone and fear spiked guys all work as maids at
the local Holiday Inn. A tastefully dressed and coiffed woman,
wearing a crucifix pendant in 18K gold in the mega-church parking lot
shows off the secret zip up compartment in her purse in which she
carries her “made specially for women” Lady-whatever gun. A
gorgeous tall thin babe in scanty clothes and a holster blasting away
in hi def glory without ever ruining her makeup or moving beyond her
mark by the wind machine so her hair streams in sexy fronds across
her sweaty, determined but beautiful face as men 13-80 replay the
scene in slo mo. Elderly men with angry faces, prone to saying “get
off my lawn” and “turn that racket down” have guns in every
room and one right there on the TV tray next to dinner. Men who grew
up in a very different world, where people knew their place, and they
by god aren't gonna stand by and watch it all go to. . . . .go to
them, go to hell, go go go go. . . .I'm tellin' ya, it's going. The
suburban soccer coach sobbing on the news saying, “I told Tommy
never, ever to touch that gun. I kept it way up high in the closet.
Who would have thought a six year old could get up there? My family
and I feel terrible about this and we hope that Johnnie's family can
find it in their heart to forgive us. It was an accident. A terrible
accident.” The newscaster saying, “Six year old Tommy Smith is
being questioned today in the death of his friend, five year old
Johnny Martin. . .” Angry young men in Matrix trenchcoats with more
guns and ammo than Rambo, purchased on Dad's credit card over the
internet or by phone, shooting up the affluent high school or the
University as helicopters fly overhead and the burghers are stunned
speechless. News photographers reduced to tears at the sight of a
young girl's head cradled in her father's arms, dead.
Hey,
barkeep, mind getting me a beer in a really tall glass? And a
semi-automatic pistol with a side of hollow points. Something's off
with this rum.
So many
scenes. So many motivations. So many accidents. So many deliberate
acts. So many entertainments. So many. . . bullets, erupting,
projecting, flying out of so many barrels of so many guns. BOOM. I'm
so sorry. BOOM. I'm not sorry. BOOM. I didn't mean it. BOOM. “Honey,
I love you so much. I regret that I couldn't take better care of you.
Tell the children that I tried.” BOOM.
Okay,
lemme stop ya right here. I am not saying that anyone but the person
who pulled that trigger, except in the case of a kid getting hold of
Daddy's Glock, is responsible. So don't start. I am saying that there
is something that underlies the pulling of that trigger. And you know
as well as I do, if you played back your own slideshow, that mine was
just the tip of the proverbial iceburg.
What I
realized was that I was angry about the wholesale marketing of fear
and the gun being sold as the cure for that particular malady. It's
also the cure for low self-esteem, free floating anxiety, the feeling
of lack (aka greed), and anger stemming from someone disrespecting
you. These diseases are contagious and the cure is lethal. I was
angry that anyone would consider a possession, any possession, as
inherently more valuable than a life, whether they were the
individuals in possession of it or the individuals trying to
appropriate it. I was angry that it was so easy to get hold of a gun,
for anyone: kid on tiptoes on a kitchen chair in the closet,
upstanding citizen at a sporting goods store, violent criminal
choosing one from the unfolded blanket in the trunk of the local
underground gun guy. Hell, I learned recently from an 11 year old
that a gun can be rented for a specific time period at a specific
price to be determined by the renter and that it had to be returned
“without a body on it.” WTF? Why on earth should any 11 year old
know this or even know that term? He might have seen it on TV. I
really hope that's the case.
I was
really furious at the folks like the Instructor, the gun
manufacturers, the gun lobby, the scared-I'll-look-soft-on-crime
legislators, the gun sellers-legal or illegal-who all make a ton of
money feeding and growing that fear and churning out more guns,
putting them into more hands in the doing. And not a one of them seem
to feel any responsibility for the free fire zones we see in this
country. Following the old adage, “find a hole and fill it,” they
took it literally and are filling the hole by creating a different
kind of hole. (The new and improved hole, thanks to our R&D
wizards, is the BULLET hole. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, just take a
look at our beautiful Rachel, isn't she beautiful, she's holding up
our brand new Tektonik 1078, it's a beauty too. You can't have
Rachel, chuckle chuckle, but for the low price of . . . )
Sorry.
Lucre.
Spendolas. Bucks. Greenbacks. Cheddar. Dollars. Ducats.
Fear,
guns and money are a bonanza. The manufacturers make them, lobby
against restrictions, are (unlike car manufacturers who have been
sued when their product killed too many folks) protected from
liability, export them to regimes who then use them against us in
battles all over the world. Lots and lots of money there. For them
it's a win-win. The retailers mark them up and fill their cash
registers. Ammunition manufacturers follow suit. Ammo retailers do
the same. The NRA grows their war chest becoming more and more
powerful with unprecedented amounts of cash. The guy down the block
selling illegal guns makes a bunch, probably selling guns stolen from
citizens, so one gun can be sold over and over from the time it comes
out of the factory to the retailer to the citizen to the street gun
seller to the out of the trunk purchaser.
From
there, the money pot widens. Private security forces for gated
communities paid high prices to keep the gun carrying bad guys away
from the gun carrying good guys. Security systems with passcodes and
lights and cameras, all money makers. Police, lawyers, judges,
ambulances, news reporters, prisons, oh yeah, prisons and sheriffs
and correction officers, whole towns whose economies are based on
that lockup (Plantation System 2.0 or how to make money on the backs
of people of color like we did in the old days); parole officers,
drug testing labs, electronic bracelet developers, after market gun
accessory companies making cases, high powered scopes, gun safes, gun
locks; gun show producers collecting admission fees and booth fees,
and the gun sellers who pay them; bulletproof glass makers,
installers; doctors, nurses, hospitals, gurney makers, body bag
makers. And let's not forget the morticians, the gravediggers and the
florists.
I'm
guessing someone will make an impassioned argument that they are the
premiere job creators.
I am
not being flip. Nor am I representing that all of these businesses or
individuals are pro-gun, pro-violence or that they revel in the blood
rivers in our streets. I am saying that that list, and I'm certain
that I left a few groups out, are indeed part of the money honey pot
one gun can create, nevermind millions of guns. That, my friends,
seems crazy to me.
Years
of talk radio, divisive fear mongering TV show hosts, slanted news
coverage have all fueled the fear machine. Reliable gun stats are
hard to come by. I've buried myself for days in pro-gun and anti-gun
statistics. Sometimes the numbers are really close, just framed
according to each side's particular bias. I'm going to settle on the
number I saw most often: 14+ million guns sold in the U.S. in 2009.
(Industry projections say that we have surpassed that number since
the election of Obama, and that the numbers are trending higher in
2012.) The Instructor advised not buying a cheap gun, and told the
class better to buy a more expensive gun that could be depended on.
He used numbers like 300-500 dollars as sort of the low end.
Certainly guns can be had even cheaper than that or much more
expensive than that, but let's use the high number of the low end:
$500, and multiply it by 14 million. Excluding accessories or
ammunition, gun manufacturers made a minimum of $7 billion dollars in
the United States alone in 2009. Plenty of ducats, eh?
Now,
how about those nice folks I took the class with? They were nice
people. I'd say if I'd asked each one, which I didn't, why they were
considering gun ownership (if they didn't already own one—see
previous post) or a conceal carry permit, they would all have said
self protection or protection of property. Their property. Isn't that
what produced a George Zimmerman? He appears to have been a basically
decent guy, based on what people who know him are saying, but for
whatever reason, that night he saw a young black man in his
neighborhood, felt the need to protect that neighborhood, and called
the cops. Even after the dispatcher told him not to follow the young
man, Mr. Zimmerman did, no doubt in an effort to be a help to his
neighbors and the police. At least that's the story. Had he done all
that and not had a gun, he probably would not have approached
Trayvon, or perhaps the whole thing would have ended with a couple of
fists thrown. (Zimmerman claims Trayvon hit him. If I had a guy
following me like that, who then approached me, I might hit him too.)
But Zimmerman had a gun. On his person. My guess is his defense will
be that he thought he'd just hold Trayvon (at gunpoint) for the cops.
That gun made him a big man. Whether he was a racist in his daily
interactions with people may or may not be an issue. What is an issue
is that he absolutely profiled Trayvon (young, black, in a hoodie),
had a gun on his person and pulled the trigger. On his person. A gun.
I can
tell you that there were at least two people in the class I took that
I'd really prefer not have guns on their persons. One was terrified
and I think might hurt someone in a panic and the other had the “big
man” syndrome going pretty strongly.
I don't
think I'm entirely stupid (except in the fields of economic theory,
surgical procedures, internal combustion engines, oh wait, this could
be a pretty long list come to think of it). I don't sit here thinking
for one minute that a gun free world is possible. In fact, I'd have
to give a whole lot of thought to my philosophical stance regarding
its desirability. I do admit to lusting after the low crime stats and
gun limiting laws of other countries, and I really am baffled by the
American love affair with guns even in the face of monstrous costs to
life and the giant bogeyman--taxpayer dollars. I don't understand
why, upon seeing kids killed or locked up for killing, we aren't
screaming at the top of our lungs for solutions and regulations that
might change that. Even the hardest hearted out there have to know
that if they don't care about urban center violence (let 'em all kill
each other), they probably do care if their brother blows his head
off in a low moment because a gun was there instead of a baseball
bat. (Some would be criminals have been rebuked with Louisville
Sluggers, but I've never heard of suicide by baseball bat. However
the stats I've been steeped in appear to show that possibly as many
as 50% of the gun fatalities every year are suicides.)
The
moaning over the crime rate. The lock 'em up mentality. The “I'll
get a gun and they can't get me” thinking. All of this is strictly
reactionary. The logical conclusion would be, upon seeing the carnage
in this country that is directly tied to guns, to restrict and
regulate them. For chrissake, DO something, cuz clearly what we are
doing isn't working. Say that out loud in a bar or a town hall
meeting and see how many catcalls you get. Immediate shouting will
occur replete with the tired “guns don't kill people. . .” You
can fill in the rest. Or “they can have my guns when they pry them
from. . .” Or “you want to gut the Cons'tooshun, second amendment
sez. . .” Or my personal favorite, “if they take our guns only
the criminals will have guns.” Remarkably in countries with strict
handgun laws that isn't what has happened. Nor has their government
come to take them all away and put them in socialist re-programming
camps. We have friends who live in Australia who are flabbergasted by
our complete refusal to regulate handguns. When they ask us why, I
really can't answer them with anything that approaches a rational
statement. As for the criminals with arsenals:
Ya
know, folks, a shitload of those criminals' guns came from YOUR
house, YOUR car, YOUR closet, YOUR dresser drawer. Many were driven
into your state after having been bought in a state with less
stringent gun laws than your own, bought legally, transported
illegally. Pay some fine upstanding citizen (on paper) to go to the
local sporting goods store or the one in the more lenient state, have
them get the background check, and they can walk out with several
guns.
I
called a local sporting goods store this morning. I told them I was
considering purchasing a firearm and had some questions. I asked if
there was a fee in addition to the purchase price of the gun for the
background check. No. I asked how long it would take. The answer was
that for most people it takes a minute or two, some others might take
up to three days. (She said it as though she'd been coached to tell
someone who sounded overly eager, ya know, like someone who might
want a gun this afternoon to kill her wayward husband with after
smelling the Chanel she doesn't own, when he comes in the door
tonight, that it could take up to three days.) Either way, by
Saturday I could have had one on each ankle, two in shoulder
holsters, one in the back of my pants (just like in the movies,
man!), another in my bag and one in my pocket. All with one free
background check and enough cash to flash around. As long as I'm on
my own property, in my house, my office (if I have a key, which is
the key in that particular location, no pun intended) or my car, all
that firepower would be legal. Again, yeah, I think that's nuts.
The
American love affair with guns and money, along with the mass
marketing of fear of the “other”, will be a roadblock to any
slowdown in the blood letting. If we really want to change this
situation, we're going to have to knuckle down and change some
thinking, change our cultural view, and pass some laws that a lot of
people won't like.
Some
people and municipalities are already trying.
Next
up: Dead, for a ducat, Dead! Part 3-Gun Laws and Culture
(It may
be a week or so before Part 3 is done. I will be out of town next
week so will be taking a break.)
No comments:
Post a Comment