The events that took place in Arizona on Saturday offer yet another datum for the experimental evidence that supports the thesis of my title.  That is an abstract statement of scientific fact.  On the human level, American’s infatuation with guns leads to personal tragedies that affect survivors, friends and relatives of victims and survivors, and the local communities where shootings take place.  On one hand, we relish violence in our TV shows, movies, and video games—it makes villains more evil, allows us to empathize with the victims, and glorifies the hero who meets violence with violence, and wins—all the better if all the violence is directly related to Sigsauers, Glocks, Berettas and Uzis.  On the other, this fictional tradition makes us thick-skinned about violence, especially gun violence, in real life.

Arizona was a bloody battleground in the 1800’s.  Tombstone and the O.K. Corral provide the real stuff idealized in our Westerns.  There was a time in the 20^th century where radio and movie cowboys rode the Arizona trails and kids’ heroes were Gene Autry, the Lone Ranger, the Cisco Kid, and Roy Rogers.  Like G.I. Joe and other military figures, most parents considered such heroes as harmless and simple extrapolations that reflected the pioneer spirit that won the West.  Never mind the redskins that bit the dust in the movie lots, the fist-fights in the saloon ending in gunplay, the painted whores exploited by wild cowboys and drunk miners, or the macho posturing in the streets of Laredo where the good guy outdraws the bad guy.

There was a period when the movie Western, in fact, lost favor.  Gun violence like that of the Die Hard series in the movies and Hillstreet Blues on TV took over and seemed more gritty and entertaining.  Then came movies like The Unforgiven, No Country for Old Men, and the recent remakes of  The 3:10 to Yuma and True Grit, where gun violence again warped the spirit of romance and adventure of the Old West.  In real life, our Northeastern conception of rednecks running around the Texas plains in Ford 250’s, their rifles loaded and ready in the gun racks on the back, perhaps helps us to look the other way at the number of gun deaths in New York City each year.

We are a nation of gun lovers and the Southwest is indeed the place where guns are most loved.  Complicating the immigration problem Arizona conservatives love to exploit is the fact that the U.S. supplies most of the firepower to Mexican drug cartels.  But guns are readily accessible everywhere, penis extensions for men with macho personalities and substitute penises for many women.  Yes, I know, there are valid arguments for self-protection, especially when budget cuts result in layoffs of police and sheriff’s deputies.  I’ll also applaud the women that blows away an attacking rapist.  (It is reported that Congresswoman Giffords even owns a Glock 9mm, yet it would have done no good on Saturday even if she had carried it.)  However, if you have ever been to a gun show and watched a guy or gal lovingly fondle an expensive but very lethal firearm, you’ll realize where I’m coming from.  The NRA is full of people like this.  Our nation’s underworld also is.

Guns have become an extension of our anger.  Guns enable an angry person to lash out lethally.  The person may be a complete wacko, like the man who stalked Jodie Foster and shot President Reagan.  Or, he may just be paranoid about and furious with his government, like the shooter in Arizona.  However, the gun is the enabler.  We, as a society, need to go beyond the question of what motivated the shooter to ask whether more gun control is needed.  Data to consider are that America has the most lax gun control laws of any industrialized nation.

Yes, permits are needed in most states to own a gun, but many states slacken the rules and regulations when firearms are purchased in a gun show.  Some states also allow the gun owner to carry his gun openly, probably arguing that a concealed weapon is more dangerous.  And there are certainly not enough checks to see if the buyer of the firearm is deranged (the Virginia Tech shooter had a history of mental illness) or has a criminal record (the Arizona shooter had several run-ins with the law and was banned from Pima College due to his mental aberrations).

Not to help matters and in spite of Mr. Cheney, wild marksman of the Western plains, Justice Scalia and other members of the conservative majority of the Supreme Court love guns enough that they warp the intention of the Founding Fathers.  I’ll agree with gunslinger Scalia and the rest of his NRA sell-outs that it’s all just a matter of interpretation.  However, their interpretation, as it has been in many cases, is just wrong (I won’t dwell on the obvious affront to American democracy that took place during the 2000 presidential elections, which, in effect, was another constitutional issue and was a first huge step towards fascism).

The second amendment reads, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”  “People” is a collective noun and “person” is an individual; a “militia” is a group of persons that the people are permitted to have for protection, and the persons in that regulated militia can keep and bear arms.  I don’t need a degree in constitutional law to declare that nowhere does it say in that simple phrase that possessing a gun is an individual right.  Otherwise, the Founding Fathers would have said “the right of persons to keep and bear Arms…” and not even mentioned militias!

Conservatives scream about progressive and liberal judges that legislate from the bench, the ones Ms. Palin would target just as she did the Arizona representative, but the two recent Supreme Court decisions involving gun possession, District of Columbia v Heller (2008) and McDonald v Chicago (2010), are the most egregious examples I have ever come across where activist judges warp the meaning of the Constitution.  Conservatives applauded these decisions.  A sane society would impeach the judges who voted in the majority.  An even saner society would imprison them for being responsible for all the deaths by shooting that their interpretation has caused.

To be fair to Ms. Palin, she wasn’t necessarily talking about targeting with guns, even though the icons had crosshairs and her rhetoric used gun metaphors.  On the other hand, Mr. Keith Olbermann, who is responsible for some of the over-the-top rhetoric along with his MSNBC cohorts, apologized, thinking some of his words were the tipping point for the Arizona shooter—apparently he has a conscience, whereas Ms. Palin and her Fox News cohorts do not.  Yes, I’m contributing my small part in being over-the-top here, but I have continuously pointed out in these posts the need for rational discourse in contrast to emotional ranting.  Both sides have polarized American society with their wild diatribes.  Strident rhetoric is all some nuts need.  People living on the edge of sanity don’t need much of a push.  And we certainly don’t want to push them and then hand them a gun, which is what the Supreme Court effectively does with its two decisions.

Those who are vociferous NRA members and other gun lovers must live with the fact that they are responsible for much of gun violence in the U.S., either directly or indirectly.  Their barbaric point of view is more appropriate to the 12^th century or Grand Theft Auto, not the 21^st.  Their love of guns is shared by every pimp, pervert, carjacker, gang member, rapist, bank robber, mafioso, or drug kingpin out there in our society.  It takes very little common sense to know you don’t want to be associated with this crowd, but my knee-jerk reaction respect to a rabid gun lover is to do exactly this.

And my choice words for the justices of the Supreme Court?  “What were you thinking?”

This entry was posted on Monday, January 10th, 2011 at 6:58 am and is filed under Terrorism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.