Michael, I just came across this example of an article that, rather than preaching to the choir, actually tries to communicate with people who are not predisposed to get the message. It is respectful of the reader's predisposition as it explains an alien perspective. Thought you might like to see what that looks like.
azstarnet.com
A liberal contemplates power, beauty of guns
By Robert Lee Mahon
Let me introduce myself. I'm 53, white, male, middle-class and an English teacher complete with doctorate.
I'm married (twice) and come complete with kids, stepkids and an attitude so liberal I almost carry the cards: I vote left, think Gore Vidal and the ACLU are fine American institutions and get junk mail from Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Federation.
If I were a couple of years younger and a lot more affluent, I'd be a yuppie. And I'm a member of the NRA.
I joined more for the magazine and the conversations my NRA bumper sticker would start than for the organization. But I confess to being a lifelong shooter and gun collector. At one point, I even had a federal license that permitted me to deal in firearms.
In other words, I'm one of "them." That bunch of .44 magnum-toting, pickup-trucking, Busch-drinking, baseball cap-wearing, commie-hating, right-winging, "Guns Don't Kill People, People Kill People" bumper-sticking, assault rifle-wielding good old boys.
Admittedly, guns ? and stereotypes ? make for strange partners. Still, while you wouldn't believe it from listening to the official line, some of us can occasionally think logically about the right to bear arms.
Not all of us consider all of you to be city-slicking, commie-loving bleeding hearts intent on disarming real Americans. In fact, far from mistrusting your good intentions, we'll admit they're based on some sound premises.
For instance, guns are dangerous. Very dangerous. They kill much more efficiently than any other form of weapon, which both explains and justifies many of those statistics you toss at us about murder rates and accidental deaths.
Bumper stickers aside, a firearm makes killing a lot easier. A maniac and a knife just aren't going to get their quota of kindergarten tots nearly as quickly as a partnership that features an AK-47. And accidents? In spite of being safety-conscious (and most of us are; the NRA's not exaggerating here), every gun owner has his "almost" horror story to tell.
A third admission: A gun is all but useless for defense ? whether of home, virtue or self. Either it's not around when you need it or it's not ready to use.
And most of us are not up to playing Dirty Harry in the presence of a prowler. Unlike Harry, first I've got to find the damn thing, and then find the ammo for it, and then mate the two ? and all this in the dark?
I might as well go back to bed, pull the covers over my head and hope the guy's only interested in TVs and video recorders.
Most enthusiasts, you see, are neither competitive shooters, professional gunners of any sort nor even hardcore hunters. Instead, like me, they're part-time plinkers, casual collectors and occasional nimrods, no more capable of self-defense against armed intruders than of piloting the space shuttle.
We do not keep our assault rifles loaded in expectation of making the National Rifleman's "Armed Citizen" column, and the closest most of us ever want to get to violence is a Clint Eastwood movie.
So what's a nice guy like me doing in a place like this? In other words, why do I love guns? Let me count the ways: My firearms are more than just weapons; they are things of beauty.
And before you snicker, consider. In an age of all things shoddy, the handgun, the rifle and shotgun remain benchmarks of craftsmanship, reliability and that marriage of form and function that hallmarks superior design.
The guns hanging on my wall will outlast me, as some of them have already outlasted previous owners; further, they have done (and will do) so while doing supremely well what they were made to do.
If a Louis XIV chair is a work of art, then why not a Winchester Model 70 or a Colt .45? Pick one up sometime. Hold it. Feel its balance. Imagine. In other words, guns are also the ultimate toys. They go bang ? big-time bang.
And since that bang is potentially deadly, guns also succor all sorts of fantasies that go all the way back to the first hominid who picked up a stick and realized he could club something or somebody with it. (Remember the ape in "2001: A Space Odyssey"? Remember how you felt watching him feel the power?)
As the anthropologist and author Loren Eiseley once put it: "The hand that hefted the ax . . . fondles the machine gun as lovingly. It is a habit . . . (whose) roots go very deep."
Human males, like it or not, are drawn to weapons, and the firearm is simply the ultimate weapon. Modern man, as has been pointed out hundreds of times, has no rational need of weapons. And so, logically, you argue that access to guns should be limited to those officials, like the police, who do.
But nothing could be further from the truth. Having no need of weapons for actual defense or legitimate aggression does not mean having no need of weapons. That need, in fact, may be even greater when its only legitimate expression comes from blowing away beer cans on a Saturday afternoon.
And since we're talking need: Beyond all that food, clothing and shelter stuff, beyond even sex, how about that need where both beauty and fantasy meet? How about power?
It is the sine qua non of firearms; and of course, it underpins much of human life, private and public, especially the social contract.
A weapon, like an AR-15, in the hands of a private citizen, alters that social contract in favor of the individual. (One of the truly revolutionary things about the Revolution was its resultant establishment of a government forced to share real power with its constituents.)
My AR-15 is a concrete reminder that my government's power does, indeed, spring from me. In retaining it, I retain some of the power.
In a century in which power has accumulated like lead in the organs of the state, in its experts and its agencies, in which an individual is scarcely deemed fit to raise or school his own children without the "assistance" of all of the above, a weapon in his hands may remind both him and his masters that he has, indeed, only delegated, not abrogated, those powers that make masters.
Two brief anecdotes to illustrate: I once watched a female Chicagoan, born and raised to hate and fear firearms, after hitting her sixth can in six shots look appraisingly at the revolver in her hand and state flatly: "You know, this puts a whole new perspective on equal rights. You boys have been hiding something from us."
She might have been echoing the scene from the TV series "Holocaust," in which the elderly Jew looks down at his submachine gun after killing his first SS trooper and says, wonderingly, "They can die, too." In Chairman Mao's blunt synopsis, "Power flows from the barrel of a gun."
Nothing sums all this up better than the current assault-rifle melee. An assault rifle is one of the supreme expressions of the gunmaker's art, a perfect meld of function, fantasy and power.
I look at it, admire it, dust and heft it from time to time. Hey, I even fire it occasionally ? once or twice a year.
And while it gratifies me, of course, it scares the hell out of you. And it should. Because it is, potentially, dangerous. But that's the price of power; of, in many ways, beauty; and even, for that matter, of fantasies.
My final confession: That's the price I'm willing to pay. Or, to be candid, that I'm willing for everyone to pay.
One bumper sticker I recently read expresses the nut of the problem perfectly: "They can have my gun when they pry it from my cold, dead hands." Inelegant and hyperbolic. But the sentiments of lovers are often thus.
San Francisco Examiner contributor Robert Lee Mahon teaches English at East Central College in Union, Mo. |
