Following the recent incident in Ferguson, Missouri, where an unarmed black teenager was shot and killed by a white police officer, issues about race and gun control have once again taken center stage in the minds – and hearts – of large sections of the American public. Although the gun control topic is not the main one being discussed, its contribution to the situation was pointed out by an article in The Economist, a magazine produced in a country where gun control translates to “we don’t have any.”
First of all, the article offers some simple statistics about how the US compares with some other countries in relation to the number of people killed annually by police. The US, with a population of 315 million, saw 405 police shooting deaths in 2013; Germany, with 82 million, had 8; the UK, with 60 million, had zero; and Japan, with 127 million, had the same – zero.
But what was more thought-provoking was the following observation:
This is not because they are trigger-happy but because they are nervous. The citizens they encounter have perhaps 300 million guns between them, so a cop never knows whether the hand in a suspect’s pocket is gripping a Glock. This will not change soon. Even mild gun-controls laws tend to fail. And many Americans will look at the havoc in Ferguson and conclude that it’s time to buy a gun, just in case.
That first sentence actually makes sense. Whatever your beliefs may be in relation to gun control, it’s not impossible to be empathetic towards the notion that when you’re in a job where many of the people you come into contact with are (a) not likely to feel friendly towards you, and (b) could legitimately be carrying a gun, you might feel a little nervous. Note that this isn’t to say shooting an unarmed person is OK but that if you work in law enforcement there’s a good chance that you have learned to be more wary than most when it comes to issues of trust; and by “trust” I mean “could that person be carrying a gun?”
Yet it’s that final sentence that is something of a litmus test for determining people’s perspectives. Basically, what is says is that the answer to having lots of guns in the hands of people is to have more guns in the hands of more people. So you have to ask yourself; do I think having easier access to guns makes my life safer or more dangerous? For members of the National Rifle Association [2], the answer is “safer;” for supporters of gun control, the answer is “more dangerous.”
Gun culture and gaming
The gun-owning culture in the US is, quite frankly, very hard for folks who live in non-gun-owning cultures to understand. For example, when 20 children and 6 adults were shot at Sandy Hook Elementary School in December, 2012, there was, as you might expect and hope, international outrage and grief, with many countries citing the ease with which people in the US can get guns as being a contributory factor. Yet bizarrely – to the rest of the world – one of the corollaries to the shooting was an increase in gun sales! And the other was the promotion of the idea that teachers should be allowed to carry guns in schools.
Both these things make some sense within the framework of US gun culture. The simple equation is more-guns = more-security. The oft-quoted trope of “if we outlaw guns only outlaws will own guns” is a variation on that theme. As is the idea that “the answer to bad people having guns is to make sure more good people have them.” The latter sounds appealing for a few seconds but defining who “good people” are is much more difficult: ask some of the people of Ferguson if the police are “good people” and their response may be pretty vocal.
So does “good people” include Speech and Language Therapists? Special Educators? Educational Psychologists? Not all of us work in idyllic Norman Rockwell Mayberry’s next door to Mr. Rogers, where trips to the Malt shop are followed by an afternoon of baseball followed by an evening’s barbecue with friends from the neighborhood. Some of us may have “interesting” tales to tell of visits to and from clients that turn out to be less than the perfect therapeutic experience. And perhaps carrying a gun to work is not necessarily as bad an idea as some might think.
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For those who demand that a blogger have a “point of view,” this Dude [3] is in favor of gun controls. It’s perfectly possible to support the Second Amendment (and more important to support the First) while simultaneously wanting some modest controls over how guns are handled within society as a whole. There’s no likelihood that America can become a “gunless society” and the suggestion that we should somehow lose the Second Amendment is just plain silly. However, to simply do nothing because someone thinks gun control won’t work is tantamount to saying things are OK. And isn’t stupidity defined as “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting things to change?” If I buy a car, I have to go to the DMV to register it; if I want more than one car, there’s nothing to say I can’t; the government is not trying to take my car away from me; and if I want to hang out with other car enthusiasts, I’m free to do so. If we’re OK with this modest controls for cars, why not guns?
Notes
[1] Here in sunny Cleveland, Ohio, Mayor Frank Jackson is trying to introduce a bill that would include some of the following rules: you can’t take a gun onto a school campus; if you are a convicted offender, you have to register ownership of a gun; you can’t buy more than one gun every three months (i.e. you can only add four guns per year to you collection); if your gun is lost or stolen, you have report it to the police. Put it another way, here’s what you currently CAN do; take a gun to campus (Ohio lets you carry a gun as long as it’s concealed); buy as many guns as you want; lose a gun and not care who finds it; let your kids use guns. But so ingrained is the gun culture mentality that there is actually lots of opposition to these control. To folks outside the US, what might seem like fairly reasonable controls (and no-one here is suggesting that folks can’t own guns or that “someone” is going to “take your guns away”) are, in fact, perceived by a section of the US community as a deeply intrusive attack on a fundamental human right – the right to bear arms. And it’s this perspective that makes any talk of gun control so contentious and explosive within the US yet it’s so hard for folks outside the US to really understand how emotional it is.
[2] For our readers outside the US, the National Rifle Association (or NRA) is a non-profit organization that promotes itself as “proud defenders of history’s patriots and diligent protectors of the Second Amendment.” The Second Amendment says that “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.” The NRA interpret this as meaning that the word “people” implies “individual,” and therefore the individual has a right to bear arms – and in states with Concealed (or not-so-concealed) Carry laws, this is figuratively the case, where folks walk around with holstered guns just waiting for someone to “make my day, punk.”
[3] “This Dude” is Russell, who, to help put things in perspective, was born and raised in the north of England and didn’t move to the US until I was 35. It’s taken almost 20 years for me to appreciate the Gun Culture perspective. I’ve handled and shot a number of different guns (including Dirty Harry’s “most powerful handgun in the world, and it will blow your head clean off”); live in a hunting/fishing/shooting community; have a son-in-law who’s an ex-soldier who only gave up his gun collection when his first child was born; and have a daughter who once received a pink Smith & Wesson handgun as a Christmas present. I mention all this to illustrate why it is that I can be a supporter of the right to bear arms yet still support the idea of gun controls.
Dude 2, Chip, would probably shoot me for this stance 🙂
The Speech Dudes 