Always the Gun

This is America, home of apple pie. Then there’s the other thing. How much more convincing do we need that it’s time to do something about it?

From a practical point of view, it’s impossible to regulate intentions. People are going to be bullied, or jilted by their girlfriends, mistreated by an employer they’ve served faithfully for decades, you name it. There’s always going to be a motive or, if you like, a trigger, that will make someone pick up a gun and take out their rage on innocent people. In the case of the Connecticut shooting, there couldn’t be more innocent targets than elementary school children.

If you can’t regulate intentions, then you have to move on to what you can regulate: the means. Can anyone today seriously advance the argument that civilians need access to semi-automatic weapons with magazines, and if anyone does advance that argument, how many can seriously accept it? Today! How many blows of the 2-by-4 do we need before we get the message?

Being practical again: Sweeping bans on common behavior don’t work. If you’ve been watching “Boardwalk Empire,” you can see why Prohibition was a failure. So if you want to deal with guns, you have to do things in pieces, and you have to accept that it’s going to take time – but the important part is, you get started. It’s an evolutionary, not a revolutionary process.

We actually have had success at this in many fields. Smoking is one of the best examples. All over the country, we have laws restricting where people can smoke, and there are fewer and fewer places where it’s legal to do it. The fact that these regulations are in place is reflective of the fact that smoking just isn’t cool anymore. Considering that this habit was brought to the civilized world hundreds of years ago, we’ve come a long way in a relatively short time toward eliminating it, but it seems like forever.

I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of hearing about the psychological state of demented perpetrators, how sad a day it is, listening to more grieving families, and how we all have to keep folks in our thoughts and prayers. Thinking deeply and praying are very good, but what’s even better is realizing that we can take practical steps toward preventing these incidents, and now, we have the opportunity.

It will be a challenge. There’s something else just as American as apple pie and guns. It’s the short attention span. Will we care as much about enacting effective gun laws in 48 hours as we do today?