If you are one of those people who secretly enjoys each new high-profile shooting, believing it’s going to bring the U.S. closer to banning firearms, don’t get your hopes up.
America will always have guns. It cannot control guns any more successfully than it has controlled drugs or illegal immigrants.
It has been estimated that in the U.S. alone there are roughly 300 million guns. Who is going to willingly turn over their firearms?
Not Jerad Miller of Las Vegas who, as a convicted felon, was not allowed to legally possess a firearm but had one anyway. Not 15-year-old Jared Padgett of Gresham, Ore., who was not old enough to possess a gun but obtained one anyway when he broke into his father’s safe.
Miller and his wife, Amanda, ambushed two Las Vegas police officers eating lunch, and then Amanda killed an armed Walmart customer who tried to stop her husband. This aroused a whiff of schadenfreude among the commenters at the New York Times:
“I thought a good guy with a gun was supposed to be able to stop a bad guy with a gun. Isn’t that right Mr. LaPierre?” said a reader from Houston Texas, taunting the NRA’s Wayne LaPierre.
“These murderers have proven what a total folly the NRA’s claim that guns are useful for self defense really is. The two police officers who died were armed and trained,” said Steve Bolger of New York City. “If you think you need a gun for self defense, 99 times out of 100, you should not be allowed to buy it.”
Our war on guns is misguided.
Will denouncing the NRA and demonizing all gun owners as a bunch of paranoid, racist right-wingers help? No.
Will stockpiling weapons and abusing open carry laws by strapping on firearms and parading in public help? No.
Like so many political issues in America, if you limit your analysis of gun violence to only one side of the left-right political divide you’ll miss some of the crossover.
The Millers in Las Vegas, for example, were instantly portrayed as right-wing, white supremacists and neo-Nazis involved in the anti-government Sovereign movement. Some media reports sounded almost giddy when it was discovered that the couple had visited the ranch of Cliven Bundy. News reports immediately reran details of his latest controversy where he made reference to Negroes.
“Unfortunately, many press reports and pundits seem to be relying on outdated assumptions about the Sovereign movement that don’t take into account that the shooters were young,” J.J. MacNab wrote in Forbes.
Far from being Nazi sympathizers, the Millers viewed the police as Nazis.
“This cop needs to be shot and then displayed for all others to see. Time to let these Nazi thugs who really runs the show here in this country,” Jerad Miller posted on his Facebook page a month before the June 8 killings.
Younger members of the Sovereign movement often call themselves Anonymous and wear the mask of the central character in the movie “V for Vendetta,” MacNab said.
Compare Amanda Miller’s photo of her fellow mask wearers with photos of the Occupy Wall Street protesters.
It’s the same mask that Occupy protesters from Portland to New York to London wore.
The Millers might have felt right at home in Portland’s Red and Black Café, an anarchist vegan eatery that doesn’t serve cops.
A couple of days after the Las Vegas shootings, Jared Padgett got on the school bus to Reynolds High School in Troutdale, Ore., carrying a guitar case. Inside was an AR-15 and nine loaded magazines capable of holding several hundred rounds of ammunition. He also had a handgun (which he did not use) and a knife.
Like many schools in America, Reynolds High had gone through extensive lockdown drills. Did it help Padgett plan his own attack? If so, in the seconds after he killed 14-year-old Emilio Hoffman, Padgett may have discovered that his fantasies of a school shootout didn’t match the reality. Did he see Emilio’s blood and get scared?
Did he fully appreciate that if he killed himself he wouldn’t be around to watch his tragedy unfold on TV?
When it was discovered that Padgett’s father had firearms, critics immediately seized on this, as if the guns made the boy do it.
What’s peculiar about that reasoning is that as a Baby Boomer growing up in Oregon I remember guns being readily available to teenage boys, especially those whose dads hunted. Granted, there were no AR-15s, but there were plenty of hunting rifles. Why didn’t we have school shootings then? Kids had many of the same problems as now – minus the drugs – maybe even worse because there were fewer social services. If you were depressed or your dad beat you, you likely had to deal with it on your own. You didn’t go to school and shoot someone.
What has changed is the transformation of violence into something excusable and entertaining. It wouldn’t be surprising if some senior students at Reynolds High School, who got out of class a week before the shooting, were disappointed they missed out on the excitement.
For the past several decades, our popular culture – especially movies and music – has glorified and rationalized the violence of black and Hispanic street gangs, who helped popularize Glocks and AR-15s. As long as they only killed each other, it was tolerable.
In 1988, a young graphics artist out for a Saturday night in L.A.’s affluent Westwood Village was accidentally killed during a gun battle between rival gangs. Karen Toshima’s death attracted national attention and a vow by L.A. officials to finally do something about gangs.
Her death faded from the news, and the killings continued, singled out only when a victim didn’t fit the usual profile. As long as the victims were gang members or at least members of the lower socio-economic class, it was business as usual.
The deaths in the Las Vegas shootings and at Reynolds High School (as well as the recent killings in Isla Vista) are not unlike Toshima’s. They attracted attention, not only because of the number of victims, but because of who the victims are.
While the homicide rate in many states has been going down in recent years, what has changed – and cannot be measured in statistics – is the backgrounds of the victims. It could be that violence seems worse because it’s closer to middle-class homes.
If so, will calls for “common-sense” gun control resonate? Depends on who makes these calls and what is meant by common sense.
Sarah Brady has little credibility outside her circle of gun control advocates. If her husband, James Brady, press secretary to Ronald Reagan, had never been shot by John Hinckley, today she would probably be lending her support to Jeb Bush. Her interest in gun control began when her comfortable, upper-class life was disrupted by gunshots.
Any common sense approach to more gun laws has to acknowledge that law-abiding civilians have and want the right to self-defense. But does that have to include allowing civilians to possess military-grade weapons like the AR-15?
Law-abiding, gun-owning males need to raise this issue. Not gun-hating females with fearful voices, or smug New Yorkers who live in secure apartment houses with doormen and use the murder of police officers as evidence that guns are useless.
The majority of Americans are not going to willingly disarm themselves of all guns. But they might be persuaded that a single boy or man, armed with an AR-15 and a grudge or egomaniacal fantasies, cannot be allowed to quickly kill scores of people.
We can’t legislate against grudges and fantasies. We can at least exercise some caution in who gets weapons that can fire a bullet every half-second if the shooter keeps pulling the trigger. If the shooter has multiple 15-round magazines, and if those magazines are taped together, feeding an uninterrupted flow of ammo … well, imagine the possibilities. Who needs that kind of weapon for self-defense? Maybe a gang-banger or an anti-government anarchist or a religious fanatic preparing for Armageddon.
AR-15s are a ridiculous choice for home self-defense (and an unsportsman-like choice for hunting).
Handguns, however, are a common sense choice. They are designed for self-defense, specifically to kill or stop someone, which is legal and justifiable under certain circumstances, even praiseworthy on occasion. Handguns are designed to be fired at close range, and their bullets travel slower and not as far as an AR-15.
The downside for some guys, however, is that handguns aren’t as ferocious-looking as they used to be. Hollywood (not exactly known for its conservative politics) has amped up the cool factor for AR-15s. They are often used for their killer effect in many movies and TV shows.
Common-sense, law-abiding gun-owning males should help rewrite these fantasies and steer the debate in new directions.
Real men don’t need AR-15s, but they ought to be able to protect their families.
– Pamela Fitzsimmons
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No bulls eye here. Reasonable enough idea but you gotta remember what happened in Colorado … two elected officials who voted for gun control got tossed out of office. I think gun control is one of those thigns politicians like to argue about and get their names out in the news. When it comes to actually doing something they do nothing or they go after the wrong target, like New York City. Only the rich and the crooks get to have guns.