Choose Your Weapons

The BBC’s call-in radio program, “World Have Your Say,” featured a fascinating pro-and-con about gun control. The pro-gun guests were especially interesting. An American gun shop owner allowed as how he never leaves home without carrying THREE guns on his person. One of the three, he observed, is particularly good for going to the movies with. As you might expect, he believes that if members of the audience in that Aurora, Colorado movie theater had been armed, lives would clearly have been saved, because someone would have quickly dropped the shooter. He was silhouetted against the screen and would have made an easy target. Plus, the gun shop owner added, if the Colorado shooter knew ahead of time that the audience was packing, he would certainly have been deterred from doing his thing.

Unfortunately, that scenario seems a little counter-intuitive to me. What it sounds like is bullets flying in multiple directions fired by a lot of semi-trained individuals. As for an armed populace discouraging a crazy person from launching an attack in the first place, well, uh…he’s CRAZY, right, so would that have stopped him?

Another guest on the BBC show was a woman who decided to train her daughter at an early age how to use guns. The woman said she bought the child two rifles and a shotgun – pink guns, befitting a girl – for her eighth birthday. The daughter was not issued any ammunition until she was adequately trained in the use of the weapons (the family has its own shooting range). The earlier guest on the show, the male gun owner, said children who are trained early on in the use of weapons have much more respect for them than kids whose shooting experience is limited to video games.

Not to change the subject here, but why do I have this sneaking suspicion that some of these kinds of parents are a lot slower on the draw when it comes to sex education? All children are issued “weapons” which often become “loaded” before anybody teaches them responsible usage. True, these weapons don’t generally kill anyone, but improper use can certainly have life-changing consequences.

OK, maybe that’s unfair, but I couldn’t resist.

A Misdirected Gift

I’ve been listening to the live stream of KOA in Denver over the past few days, following the shooting Friday in the suburban Aurora movie theater. The station scrapped its regular programming, including commercials, that day to devote all its energies to covering the news related to the shooting. As the emergency situation subsided, the station shifted to taking on-air calls from listeners to give them a chance to process their reaction to this tragedy. Naturally, there was vitriol directed at the suspected shooter.

One comment, though, was interesting. The male caller said he was praying for the suspect – in its traditional meaning, not a popular point of view at the moment. But the caller then got more specific. He was praying that the suspect suffer. He wanted the suspect to be fed as little as possible, just enough to be kept alive, so that he could suffer.

Those who really want this man to suffer might think about praying for his recovery from mental derangement. He may have no sense at all right now of the horror of what has been done. If and when he returns to his right mind, he can’t help but suffer more intense pain than any physical torture might produce.

One of the tragedies here is the nisuse of a gift. The alleged perpetrator has been described as brilliant. Consider, for example, the level of sophistication of the explosive booby-trap set up in his apartment, and to what good that intelligence might have been applied. If he ever has an opportunity to do good in the future, it will be on a very limited scale, behind prison walls.

Religious leaders often tell us to hate the sin and love the sinner. Since part of our discussion here relates to the movies, I’m reminded of the “The Exorcist,” where the priests, confronted by the taunting, demon-possessed Linda Blair character, are tempted at several points to physically hurt her, a temptation which they have to resist in order to complete the casting out of the devil from the girl. For the average person in Aurora, of course, there will be no loving of this sinner in the near future.

One thing we have to consider in this country is what method those possessed with demons, if you like, are likely to select to iinflict spectacular injury on others for maximum effect. We’re Americans, so it often involves the use of guns – which also means ammunition. When a private citizen suddenly orders 6,000 rounds of ammo, as has been reported in this case, not to mention thousands of dollars worth of tactical combat or law enforcement gear, it might constitute a red flag of some kind. Ya think?

The Reset Button

On Thursday, I was watching the evening news on cable TV. When the first political attack ad came on, I remember how angry I was getting and how I had to switch channels for a minute just to calm down. These ads are supposed to “work,” but at least on Thursday night, they weren’t working on me.

And then there was Friday, and the news from Aurora.

In response, both major presidential campaigns suspended attack ads in Colorado, and, when not canceling campaign appearances altogether, drastically changed their speeches and settings. Why? The shooting in Aurora was as a laser beam exposing the trivial nature of the campaign issues. Do we really care that much about Romney’s tax returns or the promises made by a campaigning or even newly-elected Obama years ago? There are simply more important things to be thinking and talking about.

It occurred to me that instead of suspending the attack ads for one day in one state, the campaigns – and the organizations given new license to spend advertising money by the Supreme Court – have a terrific excuse now to honor the ban for a week, or a month, or – dare I suggest it – make it permanent.

Naturally, the Aurora shooting will revive the issue of gun control – to my mind, a good thing. But instead of the usual grandstanding, can both sides of this debate work on finding a reasonable middle between arming and disarming average citizens?

And could a productive debate over this issue expand into a productive debate about the other big issues that should concern us right now? Does "my way or the highway" seem a little inappropriate at the moment?

Aurora was a hard reboot for our national consciousness. It’s an opportunity to seek a state of balance. We just don’t have to go back to business as usual.

Guns Are Our Thing

It’s a little amusing to me how quick we are in the United States to bash other cultures for odd or even barbaric behavior -- adulterous women being stoned to death by fundamental Muslims, Chinese eating dogs (or Hindus NOT eating cows), etc., when we have ubiquitous guns. It’s been our little thing for a couple of centuries now, and while it may seem perfectly normal to us, it’s not in many other civilized countries.

As expected, the shooting at the Colorado movie theater is igniting a new debate about gun control. Personally, I still think there are things we can do in this area without depriving citizens of their right to own guns. We probably can’t take away those that are already out there, but we could stiffen the qualifications for purchasing a gun, especially a concealed weapon, with really thorough personal and psychological background checks, including social media postings, etc. If that costs more money, make the buyer pay the freight.

By now, it has been well established that we’re in much more danger from armed wack jobs in this country than we are from international terrorists. BTW, there is NO justification for any private citizen owning a functioning automatic weapon.

Any new control measures at best will only slow things down – they aren’t going to make us instantly safe. That will require a cultural change – and such changes are possible, if we have patience. It has taken hundreds of years, but smoking tobacco, while still tolerated, isn’t cool anymore. In spite of anti-slavery laws, it took more than a century to afford black people their full legal rights, and that change is, in practical terms, still in progress. In the case of other countries, can we expect the Muslim world to instantly give up compelling women to wear burkas? So how long is it going to take for guns to be uncool here?

OK, how about some good news: Initial reports out of Colorado say that police are getting good marks for their response to the Aurora shooting incident. Public safety communications systems there have drastically improved over the years, allowing different agencies to talk to each other when a wide-area response is needed. What spurred these changes? Columbine.

We often learn things the hard way, but eventually, we do learn.