Killing Tools

I grew up with guns. My dad has always loved them, and we shot them regularly growing up. We went to the range and shot his AR-15 and 9 mm pistol along with several other guns when Jen and I visited a few years ago. Guns are fun to shoot. Those types of guns are particularly fun to shoot. Neither of those statements, regardless of how true they are and how many people feel that way, justify the damage a single one of those guns can do in mere seconds.

My father wrote this:

“ There should be a ban on the sale, possession, and use of center fire, clip-fed semi-automatic and fully automatic firearms in the United States. I have owned two such weapons for many years and would immediately be affected by such an action. I consider myself a responsible gun owner, but there is no use that I have for continuing to keep them that comes close in importance to the need to remove them from our society. These weapons allow evil intent to become horrifying disaster in mere seconds. They multiply victims, amplify grief and endanger responders far, far more than other weapons. Many justify their possession as a safeguard of liberty, but I for one do not want ever to be protected from my elected government by a horde of people whose only qualifications are a trigger finger and an urge to kill. It is time to take this reasonable and life saving step.”

I would add to his statement that the notion that people are going to use small arms to somehow stand up to the US government, if that was ever really justified, is ridiculous. I’ve had this discussion at length elsewhere and don’t want to fully expound upon it, but if you sincerely believe you can do anything other than hang out for years in the woods taking pot shots and most likely dying, you haven’t thought through it. It is a machismo pipe dream. Here are some words to help clarify that: Air Power, Drones, Armored Transports, Tanks, Satellites, Missiles, Mortars. You simply wouldn’t be able to compete through physical force. Sure, you could possibly survive, but it would be miserable, most of your friends would die, and you wouldn’t ‘win’.

The way to keep the government working for the people is through civic action, communication and manipulation of the economic system. The global economy is the real master of everything these days, and unless the populous as a whole learns to use and control it, the governments of the world will do the bidding of the small group that currently does.

Yes, there are other issues at work here in the US. We need to work on our culture. The same people who are typically championing gun rights also embrace a culture of rugged independence. It is a common historical thread in US culture, and I think it is a big part of the issue with the mass shootings. Humans aren’t built for rugged independence. It makes us depressed, lonely and unhappy. People are now regularly bringing up ‘mental illness’ as a core issue in the mass shooting discussions. I think that is somewhat valid, but I think the illness in question isn’t the typically diagnosed kind, and I think that misconception can be dangerous. I think it is a general sense of separation, loneliness and otherness that our culture instills in those who are not being properly supported by it. We are social, communal and cooperative animals. We are built for community, support and acknowledgement of our peers, and socializing. Those are the hallmarks of a successful human society, and we need to be embracing all of those things.

Ultimately, however, it will take a long time to improve our culture, and guns are a magnifier of the damage that can be done by a single individual. The guns themselves are only tools. So is a guillotine. You could use a guillotine to chop watermelons, but ultimately it is much better at killing people. That is its nature from a tool design perspective. Axes can do the same job, but can also chop wood. We build axes but not guillotines because one is clearly built and designed for a gruesome task. Center fire, clip fed, semi-automatic or automatic weapons are no different. They are designed to kill a lot of people quickly, and have no place in the daily life of a civil society.

I’m not sure there is a route to realistically banning these weapons. I imagine we would have so many incidents of people fighting to keep them that it would be untenable. I still believe it is what we should do, but that doesn’t mean we can.