Deep breath.....I will do my utmost to stop short of writing a book, since I've already written thousands of words on this subject in recent days. Oddly enough, I might just be the designated person to fill in a few of the shades of gray between the blacks and whites of this emotive and divisive issue.
I say this because while I am an American, and still feel like an American on many issues, and still consider myself to be an American despite having lived most of my life in Europe, I am at the same time also 'European' in my outlook on many of the things I believe strongly in. In essence, I sort of straddle the Atlantic.
The black and white - I heard a 'law enforcement professional' on CNN characterize the two extremes of this issue as follows - on the one hand the NRA - no controls, no impediments, if it moves, shoot it - and on the other extreme, what he called 'extreme liberals', whose position is 'ban guns', period. I'm sure that people associated with either of these points of view could take issue with these over-simplified definitions, but they'll do for the purpose of establishing the 'black-white' parameters of the discussion.
The gray - Europeans tend to believe that the US pro-gun lobby and people who love their guns are all right wing, and that US 'left-wingers' ('liberals') share the general European antipathy to guns. This may well be true in broad lines, but the shades of gray include conservatives who are not into guns, and liberals who are. This is also not an entirely partisan issue, as many elected Democrats are entirely pro-gun, and would block any attempts at meaningful reform. I am, however, not aware of any anti-gun Republican politicians in Washington, or elsewhere.
Europeans (as a generalization) of all political persuasions believe that US gun apologists are crazy, nuts, illogical, and irresponsible for attempting to justify and defend the current state of affairs in the US. Yes, this attitude then leads US gun apologists to think that Europeans see their own point of view as being smug, and morally superior. They are right. We in Europe (and here I include myself and all other Americans I know who live in Europe,) don’t have one instant of doubt about what the sensible and morally correct attitude of any modern society should be about guns. We know that we are right on this. We know that you (Americans in the US who are prepared to stand up and justify the current state of affairs by whatever specious arguments) are as dead wrong as can be, you are an historical anomaly, imprisoned by your rigid lip service to that damn Second Amendment.
However, we sometimes lose sight of the significant differences between the US and other civilized western societies, differences that need to be taken into account when discussing possible ways forward. (For the purpose of simplicity only, I use the term ‘we’ for the anti-gun view, and ‘you’ for the pro-gun side.)
Violence, especially gun violence, has become part of the DNA of our US culture to the point of obsession. We are nearly constantly entertained by it, profit from it, bask in it, even glorify it. Just look at the (by European standards) mind-boggling hypocrisy of US tv. You can't swear. You can't show any nudity, even if celebrated as God's natural beauty. But ,you can show all the violence you want in the name of news, or entertainment. Murders, beatings, decapitations, and no one blinks an eye. Hardly surprising then that the pro-gun lobby is obsessed by maintaining its power and grip over Americans who refuse to see the writing on the wall, and who in turn obsess over having and keeping as many weapons as their hearts desire.
This fundamentally macho attitude to violence, and to guns in particular, is unique to the US, and has everything to do with the country's history. Yes, I also blame the mindset of all those generations who have been brainwashed to unthinkingly, and with a knee jerk reaction, refer to the holy Second Amendment as guaranteeing their “right” and “freedom” to own any number or manner of weapons that they can get hold of, whenever the very concept of 'gun control' is mentioned. I am fully aware that calling for a sensible, modern revision of the Second Amendment is tantamount to treason for most conservatives and members of the gun lobby. But really, there is no longer any alternative. This is not 1780. The weapons you were guaranteed access to were single shot muskets. The reasons for the guarantee were the frontier, Indians, the need to hunt for food, and a fear of the British. None of the original reasons or justifications apply today. Any nation’s constitution or bill of rights should be a living document, not an ancient piece of paper viewed as holy or sacrosanct for all eternity! The Bill of Rights is not etched in stone! Times change. Society changes. Methods of killing change. Adapt, change, revise, modernize, or continue to sink further into the abyss and be buried by history as the nation that self-destructed out of sheer, obstinate stupidity.
Other justifications used by the pro-gun lobby are as specious as the constant reference to an ancient document. ‘Guns don’t kill, blah, blah…’ Of course, someone needs to pull the trigger, but making access to guns so easy only encourages criminals and those with mental health issues to do outrageous things with those weapons once they have easily gotten hold of them. You can't pull that trigger if getting hold of that trigger is made very difficult, or impossible. (Man in China attacked school kids with a knife, 20 injured, none dead because he had no weapon with bullets!) Guns kill - more quickly and efficiently than any other method readily available. Did you know that there are more registered gun dealers than grocery stores in the US???? Do you find that acceptable?
‘There’s no point regulating guns because criminals will always keep theirs or have access to them, only decent people will be the dupes of gun control’. – Why then do we have traffic, or any other kind of laws if we simply proceed from the assumption that criminals will break the law anyway, so why bother having it at all?
I also disagree with constitutionalists about the First Amendment. All European nations enshrine freedom of speech, just as the US does. But all European nations also draw a line – certain hateful utterances or actions, like denying the holocaust, are illegal! These restrictions in no way affect the average citizen’s ability to express his opinions, they simply ensure that racial or religious insults of a gross kind are not permitted. Why have I raised the First Amendment? Westboro. These scum would not be permitted to do and say what they do anywhere in Europe. I draw a line in the sand for ‘people’ like them. I would never defend their ‘right’ to do what they do. I make this point to demonstrate that there should not be inherent objections by conservatives and gun defenders to the very idea that part of the Bill of Rights might be revised in line with the 21st century. Rigid constitutionalists under current conditions are like ostriches, with heads buried in the sand.
Ask yourselves – how could you have ever let things slip so badly? How can anyone who is not insane justify the existence of 300m THREE HUNDRED MILLION weapons in private ownership? And these are just registered weapons! How have all our traveling lives changed as the result of one failed shoe bomber? Why has absolutely nothing changed since Columbine, 31 mass shootings ago?
Is there any possible way forward? It’s probably too late, because I fear that there will never be a majority of politicians with enough backbone to seriously tackle this issue. Since even the POTUS, who so far has done absolutely nothing about gun control, has publicly said that, ‘something needs to be done,’ I will set myself up to be shot down by offering some suggestions off the top of my head. Sadly, we have to accept that it’s unrealistic to expect that many weapons would be turned in if a general ban was decreed, so most of those 300m weapons will just have to stay out there forever.
Differentiate by law between hunting/farming weapons and hand guns.
Implement and enforce a strict ban on automatic and semi-automatic weapons capable of firing hundreds of rounds in seconds. Collect as many of these that are in circulation as possible. No upstanding citizen ‘needs’ a weapon like this.
Implement a ban on hand guns in high density urban areas.
Educate the ignorant to understand that ‘gun control’ does not mean that the government is coming to take all your guns away, resulting in you being left at the mercy of marauding armed criminals. I have seen this ignorant paranoia expressed countless times in recent days. (There is a tragic irony in the fact that the killer’s mother justified her gun obsession for this reason.)
Revise the Second Amendment to bring it into line with today’s realities. Ownership of weapons capable of mass destruction and death should neither be any kind of ‘right’, nor any kind of ‘freedom’. (Those who choose to maintain this position need to realize that they are in a very small minority indeed amongst ‘civilized’ people of all western nations. If you don’t change, you will be seen by future generations as an anachronistic laughing stock.)
Implement, and rigidly enforce much stricter qualifications for gun ownership. (This also speaks to the mental health issue.) Make gun owners prove their fitness to own weapons regularly after they have purchased them.
Implement a ‘sin tax’ on bullets. Make bullets ridiculously expensive, say $50 each, or even more (an excellent extra source of revenue!)
Finally, perhaps as a glimmer of hope, I offer the following poll results from a large US sports forum that I frequent, where I am one of very few non-US based posters, and where the following results surprised me, since almost all posters there are ‘real Americans’ and not ‘foreign’ liberals like me. An overwhelming majority agrees that something needs to be done, while the numbers advocating either a complete ban (unrealistic, sadly) or a strict adherence to the status quo (madness) are more or less equal.
.
Yes, we need more strict gun laws 60
Yes, we need to ban guns entirely 20
Yes, we need deeper screenings of purchasers 50
Yes, we need to abide further by the Constitution 8
No, we need to eliminate gun control practices 4
No, the current policy is what the Constitution intends 8
No, the current policy as-is is fine 11
Other - explain 2
(Apologies for the length, and no personal offense to anyone intended!)
RIP Iron Man
Rock On and keep the Faith
