Okay, Alex, Thanksgiving is over and it is time to gently resume the debate about handguns. Alex and I are proceeding with this, incidentally, everyone, because we both believe a civilized debate can be had about an issue that seems to be inflammatory, and because we both consider ourselves reasonable people who respect each other's intellects and find the huge difference between us on this issue to be provocative of further exploration, rather than the more typical polarization replete with hot words and general intemperance. Anyone is welcome to join in, but there are some gentle souls who hang out at Feelings who don't really enjoy FIGHTING, so I hope we can keep this discussion very soft and soothing.
I really had to wrack my mind to remember if I had ever been the victim of a handgun in any way, and came up only with the memory of a crazy old aunt who kept one in her purse and pulled it out one day and waved it in a mildly threatening manner at me and my husband when we indicated we didn't really want to spend the rest of our lives living with her in Texas. We had come on a visit because my husband, who is Irish, had very romantic notions about the Old West. I don't remember being terrified, or feeling in immediate danger, but we did cut the visit short and escape to a hotel for a few days while we waited for our scheduled train to come and drag us through the huge American desert VERY slowly for several days and nights on our way back to California.
I have never had any other connection with threatened violence from a gun, and I also owned a very beautiful Beretta when I owned a small business and thought there should be one behind the cash register. I did not really enjoy owning it, and I guess the way I would describe my feelings is that it was HEAVY in the same sense that being stoned on marijuana is. I would look at it and rub it and it felt very powerful, very lethal, and when I was aware of it I was confronting life and the possibility of instantaneous death much more frequently than I enjoy doing.
While I would possibly consider having a weapon if I lived in a very rural, isolated setting, the police response time in this neighborhood is well under two minutes, for two police cars, and I feel very safe here. I basically don't like the feel of being around guns, though, and with all the ups and downs, arguments and occasional periods of despair inherent in life, I think it is slightly more likely that someone in my family would be the victim of domestic violence than that it would ever be used to protect us, and I say this without having ever having experienced any domestic abuse at all. I think guns are powerful and compelling and basically bad news, for me, and add an actual constant, negative vibration to my environment that I simply do not want there. The possibilities inherent in permanent solutions to temporary problems are a place I do not even want to go, and who is to say when the passion of the moment reflected in doors slammed in anger or holes kicked into cheap plasterboard could turn into tragedy?
That does not mean that I think every gun in America in private hands should necessarily be confiscated, and anyone who puts me in the category of attempting to deny anyone else's freedoms does not know me well at all, or is simply being rhetorical.
I'm going to requote the url you cited, Alex, and quote a little of it, and perhaps we can start there. I think this discussion has so many elements, and I have so little concentrated time, and these posts have some maximum word limits, that perhaps we should break up the discussion into separate parts.
2ndlawlib.org
"A reasonable analysis of the handgun problem should begin by recognizing that there are three distinct groups of
people that are affected by government regulation of this area. First, there are people who desire to use firearms in
the commission of crimes. Since firearms are useful for this purpose, these people are unlikely to be discouraged by
the relatively mild sanctions that are imposed for the mere illegal possession of guns. The only way to deter those
people from using guns for criminal purposes is by punishing them for the underlying crime and perhaps imposing
additional penalties for using firearms in the commission of a crime. These firearm penalties would pose no Second
Amendment problems. At the other extreme are responsible citizens who wish to possess guns for legitimate
purposes and who carefully guard against accidents or other misuse. The government has no defensible interest in
prohibiting this group of people from possessing arms. The third group comprises people who are without settled
criminal designs, but who are prone to carelessness or fits of temper that result in unplanned injuries to innocent
persons."
This, while it sounds very reasonable, is where I start to disagree. Since most guns involved in crimes are stolen from law-abiding owners, and we have five times the percentage of our population in jail as other civilized societies already, at huge cost to this society, it does not seem reasonable to me that further incarceration is really workable.
I have no real problem with people like you having guns, as long as they are not stolen from you, because you weigh the responsibilities of gun ownership carefully, and have discussed how you will keep yours away from your soon-to-be-delivered child. I do think the third group is much more of a threat to society, but how do we divide people like you from that group? What would the criteria be?
And I would also say, that aside from the seeming reasonableness of many of the pro-gun arguments, the simple fact is that whether guns kill people, or people kill people, this is an extremely violent society, and way too many people are dying, out of all proportion to other civilized, DEMOCRATIC nations. Here, once more, is the url I cited to Skipper last week:
examiner.com
Looking at these statistics, I wonder how anyone can really justify the statistics as positive in any way, and I wish someone would try, so that I can understand better.
I guess in summation, you could say that at this point in my life I look at the gun issue as a concerned citizen, and even more so as a parent. It is sad but true that this society seems to be coming apart at the seams, and one of the ways that is acted out is when disturbed children bring guns to school and inflict carnage impulsively. Of course, these guns are LEGAL weapons almost always, stolen from neighbors or parents. It's not the fifties anymore, the mothers have mostly gone back to work, and children are being reared in absentia, and as a group seem to be much more lost than before. There is so much repetitive, numbing violence on tv and in movies that many of these children have no real respect for the sanctity of life, or even that death is real, or final. The child in Kentucky seemed stunned after the shootings--"I can't believe I just did that." Since I don't really believe in the domino theory--that tightening access to handguns will result in American becoming a dictatorship any time soon--and being a woman, thinking circularly rather than in a linear fashion, I tend to wrap all the issues up together and think of the good of society as a whole.
Later I would like to talk about the influence of the N.R.A., but that is a whole other part of the subject. Maybe we could just take one little bit of this issue at a time? |
