The Personal Politics of Gun Control

When a mass shooting occurs in the United States, the perpetrator almost always turns out to be a disaffected young white male — someone whom the neighbors describe as odd and a loner — after the fact. It is usually someone whose co-workers or ex-co-workers knew to steer clear of. And when they hear of the shooting, of course, they’re saddened and shocked, but somehow not surprised by the name reported on the news.

Whether the shooter is crazy is almost beside the point. Most people with mental illness are nonviolent. We know that. Yet paranoid schizophrenia typically manifests in the late teens to the early twenties among males (in women the onset is later). For now, let’s define as crazy someone who plots to terrorize and kill a bunch of innocent people.

Here’s the thing: a crazy person with access to guns and ammunition is hard to stop. Crazy people can’t be locked up or forced into treatment unless they’ve committed violence on another person or themselves. And for that to happen, someone has to be willing to report them to the police when they make threats, to be named on the police report which the crazy person has every right to see. When you are talking about a potentially violent person, that gives you pause. And sometimes it’s just a gut feeling you have, which isn’t actionable.

I’m with the majority of Americans who think that we need common sense gun control laws. By that, I mean an outright ban on automatic and semi-automatic weapons (and a ban on selling the ammunition in large capacity magazines for the aforesaid weapons). There’s also the straw man question: when someone knowingly buys a gun for someone else. If that gun is later used in the commission of a crime, shouldn’t that straw man be prosecuted and convicted as an accessory? Shouldn’t the gun store owner be prosecuted if he or she turned a blind eye? We also need to close the gun show loophole. We need background checks on all gun buys. It’s all too easy for crazy people, felons, and domestic abusers and stalkers to legally purchase guns.

And although I don’t like hunting — I’m a vegetarian for goodness’ sake — many people I’m friends with enjoy hunting, so they can keep their rifles. And if you want to pack a pistol for personal protection, I’m not going to argue with that, even though I could cite statistics from countries that have outlawed guns completely versus what happens in the United States. All right, I will cite them:

In the United States, there are 88.8 firearms per 100 people. In Japan, there are 0.6 firearms (that’s not even a whole gun) per 100 people. There are 3.21 gun homicides per 100 people in the U.S. In Japan? It’s 0.01 gun deaths per 100 people.

Draw your conclusions. We lose roughly 30,000 people to gun violence in the United States each year. Eight children and teens die from gunshots each day.

As I said, like the majority of Americans, I’m in favor of sensible gun control laws, a compromise that is not a ban on all guns. So like Joan Rivers used to say, can we talk?

All too frequently, a mass shooting dominates the news for a week or two, but nothing changes, and it needs to, and at a federal level. Otherwise, the shootings are going to keep on happening. We’re approaching the third anniversary of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings in Newtown, Connecticut. Some piecemeal legislation has been enacted in a few states, but far more needs to be accomplished.

Why are the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention not allowed to investigate gun violence as a health issue? Why isn’t there funding for research? The CDC can look at falls from ladders, but not injuries and deaths from gun violence. Oh, right, in 1996, Congress barred federal research into the cause and effects of gun violence.

In Florida, physicians are forbidden by law from asking about guns in the home, when it is clearly a health issue, particularly for children. Why? I want an answer to these questions.

Of course, I know why. The National Rifle Association or NRA is a powerful lobby that has brainwashed its followers into thinking that imposing limits on gun sales is the same as jettisoning the second amendment which governs American’s right to bear arms. Our founding fathers wanted the nascent country’s citizens to be able to defend themselves. Understandably, they had just endured a bloody war separating them from Great Britain. But let’s not forget that at the time the Bill of Rights was written, the available firearms were flintlock pistols and single-shot muskets. How technology has advanced in nearly two hundred and forty years — allowing for more deadly accuracy, quicker loading, and high-capacity magazines — all leading to gun slaughter on a much grander scale.

Yes, the NRA is powerful, but I’m not going to shut up. I’m not going to think that nothing can be done, and, therefore, do nothing. And while my thoughts and prayers are with the victims’ families and friends every single time gun slaughter happens, thoughts and prayers are not enough. Something’s got to give.

I think the problem is we’re not loud enough, those of us who care and want change.

Is it because we’re scared?

If you dare to mention your position on social media, you’re likely to get piled on by the gun nuts (as opposed to the really frightening people, the nuts with guns). When I mentioned the National Vigil to #EndGunViolence (there may be one in your community the second week in December), one of my husband’s cousins told me I would be wearing a burqa within two years if any kind of gun control legislation was enacted.

Seriously, a burqa.

I get that gun control is a hot-button issue. And I am scared, but not of the Taliban invading downtown and a forced conversion from my form of Christianity (Presbyterian, thank you very much) to a perverted form of Islam.

So instead of a burqa, I’m putting on my Wonder Woman underpants to tell you why.

There is a crazy person in my family: a loner without any friends who owns a gun. He’s someone my mother warned me about, someone she thought (with good reason) would harm me. He subjected her to years of verbal and physical abuse. He almost killed her, and not just once. This crazy relative tends to fixate on one person.

Since my mother’s death, that person he has been fixated on is me.

Unless you’ve ever been the target of irrational rage, perhaps you won’t understand, but I want you to try.

Picture a man raising a child’s beloved dog over his head and dashing it onto the patio bricks, breaking its leg. Picture your mother in the kitchen — those stylized 1970s vegetables on the wallpaper burning into your retinas — gripping the phone receiver, screaming, “I swear to God, if you come one step closer, I’m calling the police!” Picture her in a chokehold being strangled.

Picture your four-year-old little brother with corresponding finger bruises around his neck.

Picture —

No, I can’t say it. I hope I’ve said enough that you get the picture.

So maybe now you’ll understand why when the doorbell rings I don’t answer it unless I’m expecting a visitor.

Sorry, FedEx if you needed my signature. I hope you’ll give me a call first next time.

Sorry, Angela the nice Jehovah’s Witness Lady pushing pamphlets on forgiveness and intelligent design. I’m not ready to forgive, and you know, that whole evolution theory is kind of working for me.

When that doorbell rings, if I’m not expecting anyone, I move away from windows. I retreat into the closest bathroom. I wait there a few minutes before coming out, and when I do I make damn sure there isn’t a car parked in my driveway.

Every time a mass shooting occurs, I also think about the family of the perpetrator. How they probably felt helpless observing someone they loved go off the rails. How they may have been frightened of their crazy relative. How they did what they could to warn the police.

The family of the University of California at Santa Barbara shooter did everything right. Worried that their son would commit suicide, they reported him to the authorities. At the time, they couldn’t conceive that their son would commit mass murder. I wish them peace even though I’m sure that peace will be a long time coming and hard fought.

Let’s make it as hard as we can for crazy people to get their hands on the kinds of guns that can kill the most people in the shortest amount of time.

There has got to be a better way. Let’s find it.