GUNS

Let's get serious. Do we have the courage to decide?

With everything going so well within our society, inflation, global warming, war in Ukraine, elections, abortion what is there to talk about?  Ok…How about GUNS!! Actually, not about guns, but how we debate the issue of guns and violence and get nowhere.

In the wake of the Buffalo and Uvalde shootings, we heard of a shooter (who must not be named) who killed three and wounded two last Sunday at the Greenwood Park Mall in Indiana.  He was stopped by the prompt actions of a “Good Samaritan, 22-year-old Elisjsha Dicken (who should be named).  Good job, we say; a “Good Samaritan!” and one would think that we would all agree. But in this age of immediate analysis and numerous people feeling free to express their opinions without the requirement of prior thought, a contrary view quickly emerged criticizing Dicken.

From a Fox News story: “Critics are lashing out after a man carrying a pistol stopped a mass shooting at an Indiana shopping mall, arguing the man should not be called a “Good Samaritan”, CBS 4 traffic anchor, Justin Kollar, and apparent, biblical scholar, decried using the term “Good Samaritan” on Twitter “because the Bible described the actions of a man from Samaria who stopped by the side of the road to help a man who was injured. He couldn’t believe he lived in a world where the term can equally apply to someone killing someone.”

Comedian, John Fugelsang, who also opined on Twitter joining in the theological debate, stated that “The Good Samaritan paid for an unknown immigrant’s health care out of his pocket”, evoking issues of government funding, immigration and health care.   Fugelsang went on to state, “The Good Samaritan did not shoot anyone. Jesus was not a fan of killing for any reason, including self-defense. But if these ammosexuals had ever read the Bible, they couldn’t support the GOP or NRA”, roping in religion, gender fluidity, partisan politics and the gun lobby all in one phrase.

Shannon Watts, the founder of the10 million member anti-gun group, Mom’s Demand Action, and not funny from what I have read of her statements took the opportunity to denigrate the heroic acts of the Good Samaritan tweeting that “when a 22 year old (good guy) illegally brings a loaded gun into a mall and kills a mass shooter after he (bad guy) already killed three people and wounded others is not a ringing endorsement of the implementation of the Second Amendment.”

Thus, the problem; the tone, quality of the debate and increasing noise on the ever increasing violence in our communities.  

The anti-gun people are focused on…well… guns, and they are agin’ ‘em.  They paint a picture of guns as sentient beings which are subject at any time to exploding into a hail of bullets killing all around them. They look at them and fear them.  They quiver. When they see others with them, they become emotionally distressed.  All their time, energy and passion is directed toward one goal, to eliminate or lower the number of guns, thinking that if there are fewer guns, it will have an appreciable effect on the amount of violence that is occurring.  What they really want is for guns to be outlawed but are deterred for the most part from articulating this position because they are aware that it will not be acceptable to an overwhelming majority of Americans.  So, while they give lip service to the interests of hunters, collectors and target shooters, they largely ignore pleas from those who wish for an opportunity for effective self-defense.  As a result, they focus on increasing registration requirements, restricting magazine capacities to limits that won’t fit in any guns, and suing gun manufacturers to drive them out of business in order to make gun ownership as hard as possible to accomplish indirectly what they could never accomplish directly.

The other side, which I will call the pro-gun side who are not necessarily “pro-gun”, respond to these anti-gun arguments with logic (i.e., we tried that before, these are restrictive policies have already failed in most violent urban areas etc.) pretending the anti-gun proposals are real ideas proposed to make a meaningful immediate impact.  From a personal perspective, with 360,000,000 guns currently in the possession of Americans, any attempt to limit the number of guns meaningfully is like trying to drain Lake Michigan with a bucket.  Pro-gun advocates also throw in the God-given right to hunt for food, the destruction of our Constitution, and that the 2nd Amendment “ain’t about duck huntin’” all of which like the anti-gun arguments may have merit but are not helpful with solving our immediate problem, how do we provide an adequate level of personal security or at least not get in the way of others who want to protect themselves and their families. With this very long exposition of the state of the debate, your humble columnist will now express some ideas that hopefully will get us somewhere that matters, … right now.

Americans are shooting up America on a regular basis. The ones that catch our eye are the mass shootings, places with a lot of people; schools, shopping malls, and concerts. Mass shootings, regular shootings and homicides are all up, a lot.  To be simplistic, which some people have accused me of (or is that simple), we have two short term personal security propositions from the two sides:  1). We can ban all gun sales and confiscate as many guns as possible, or 2) we can provide security against violence.  I don’t know about you, but option one, the goal of the anti-gun crowd, for reasons of the 2nd Amendment which we just can’t change right away because we feel like it and the fact a majority of Americans, currently, are not willing to give up their guns that they believe they need to protect themselves against other increasingly violent Americans (see above) makes option one a long term solution rather than a short term one. Let’s be real, gun confiscation at any level will not be available for a long time, if ever, due to practical problems even if the anti-gun crowd can convince us that we should give it a try.

If taking away all guns or dramatically limiting them is not going to work, what are we going to do to protect our citizens? We need to provide or allow for personal security.  Obviously, one answer is that we can provide armed security for everyone. Well actually, we can’t because we do not have the resources to provide personal protection for everyone and everything.  Only the rich and those who are in the government whose security is paid for by others can have personal security.

So that leaves the rest of us, as usual. The only remaining viable options, and I stress “viable”, are, we can either depend on the police for our individual security or provide security for ourselves, our families, and our neighbors when the police are not on the scene. The fact is the police cannot be everywhere all the time and as the Uvalde shooting exposed, being human beings, the police may not act as we would hope under life threatening situations.  The only thing that is left to look to ourselves to protect ourselves and our community against harm.  Imagine that…we would be responsible for taking care of ourselves.  One friend told me that she hated to think that it has come to this.  Well, I hate to think that too, but it has.

There are a number of societal actions that can be taken to make our communities safer right now, but I will mention three of the easy ones.

1.  Quit publicizing shooters names.  We know that many shooters want to be famous and go out in a blaze of glory (to them) so that they will be known as the greatest killer of all time giving meaning to their otherwise worthless lives.  However, if they knew that their horrid acts and subsequent suicides would result in …nothing., it would be a real deterrent to those so motivated and drive them to other less lethal pursuits.  We don’t publicize the names of juveniles or rape victims now.  We should be able to extend this to mass murders.

2.  Stop with the public “gun free” zones.  For us to believe that those deranged individuals who are willing to commit murder (which is currently also against the law as I recall) and then commit suicide would be deterred from entering a “gun free”” zone is well… deranged.  A “gun free” zone is simply an advertisement to “come and get us crazy person” because the chances of being stopped are slim to none as opposed to say… an NRA rally.  The Indiana shooter may have relied on such a policy because the Greenwood Park Mall had a “no gun on premises” policy. To the gratitude of those who were able to walk away that day, they can thank Dicken who chose to ignore the Mall policy, The Mall owners were kind enough (or at least smart enough) not to mention this breach of Greenwood Park Mall etiquette.

3.  Schools: We are justifiably horrified when school shootings occur because it affects defenseless children that most in society still believe we have a duty to protect.  Gun free zone schools and college campuses are a target rich environment for mentally ill or evil individuals to be famous (see above) if they can just get the body count high enough.  A shooter with grievances or a desire to be famous will encounter minimal resistance until the police arrive (usually too late, see Uvalde, Parkland, and Columbine.)  Active shooter training at many public facilities teach students and staff to “run, hide, fight”, however by creating gun free zones and prohibiting trained volunteers from carrying firearms, teachers are left with no way to fight other than suicidal charges at armed shooters or covering their students with their bodies in order to take bullets designed for their children. No one is suggesting that anti-gun teachers be required to protect themselves and their children, but how can one individual, employer or government tell another individual that they are banned from saving themselves and their students, the only alternative of which is to die?

There is a current but not vigorous enough debate whether volunteer trained staff who are willing to run toward gunfire and danger to save themselves and their students rather than run away should be allowed to conceal carry in schools while we waste our time debating how to close the “gun show loophole”, restricting type of weapons or determine the reasons for mental illness.

The three issues above are real and immediate; and we can implement policies to make our communities safer right now.  Should we encourage citizens to protect themselves, their families and community with firearms or not?   What are the consequences in lives lost due to disarming the public vs. the harm caused by barring individuals from protecting themselves and others?

While we dither with intellectually stimulating subjects like what did God mean in the story of the Good Samaritan and what did the words “well-regulated militia” mean in 1791, we don’t discuss and decide real issues because we are afraid; afraid of guns, afraid of being wrong, afraid of being blamed.  If we choose to quit blocking the self protection of our citizens and encourage them to protect themselves in this dangerous world, those who advocate for such a position will have to accept that sometimes there will be mistakes, accidents, and poor judgment that will cause the deaths of innocent human beings.  Those who oppose such policies will have to accept they are sentencing a number of citizens and children to death who otherwise would have been saved by ready access to effective self-defense like the hero of Greenwood Park Mall. There are no perfect solutions, but what is not acceptable is delaying decisions by not taking ownership for supporting or opposing proposed solutions to life and death issues, and the consequences that arise.

Decide.