Guns, Revisited

     It feels far too familiar to be in the wake of a massive shooting, and then to hear people attempting to explain it. Motivations are sought, a particular individual's insanity is discussed, so that how isolated this incident may be, or how uniquely American this event was, can be attested. Thus, people can ignore the fact that a man was able to legally acquire guns with which he illegally employed them in the purpose for which they were made. A day from the Utøya massacre's first anniversary, and I've lost count of how many shootings like this have happened in the past year, in The U.S., but also in Toronto, Belgium, in supposedly more peaceful countries everywhere.

     This happened because a violent person had easy access to guns. Don't tell me he would have just found illegal guns if legal ones weren't so easy to buy. That's a justification, and besides, legal ones ARE too damn easy to acquire. Colorado has disturbingly lax gun laws: 
      http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2012/07/20/denver-shooting-movie-premiere.html.

     But ANY access to guns is wrong. No justifications. It is becoming routine after a killing like this to hear law-abiding, non-violent (?), "leisure," gun owners defending their liberties, touting some variation of an antiquated American amendment. It's not the madness of one person that sees a dozen people murdered. It is the pervading belief that this man could have done what he did no matter what, and just because he could buy an arsenal around the corner, and drums of ammunition online, we shouldn't be concerning ourselves with tougher gun laws or restricting use and ownership, they say.
     In 2012, I say again that there is no reason to own a gun. They're not tools, they're not toys, and those who defend the right to possess them in the wake of this "singular" tragedy are trivializing the lives of the victims in that theatre. Guns should be banned, legislate it. The costs to government are meaningless when measured against the lives taken. 

The Gun Registry: Such a Big Deal?

                Say what I will about the Harper Government, it’s fulfilling election promises. The Wheat Board is getting axed, arts and culture funding will dry to a dribble, the CBC could be on the outs, a brutal crime bill has been slapped down—why, the only thing Stephen and his acolytes won’t address is abortion, and a lot of folks voted for he and some of his formerReformers on that and that alone. He’s doing every nasty thing he said he would. Can’t fault the guy for honesty, at least. I just wonder if his ultra-right supporters will be happy with the next 4.5 years seeing as he’s blown his political wad in the first sitting. Of course, one of Harper’s biggest annoyances has been the Long Gun Registry, and now that he’s got his majority, it’s finally on the way out.

                http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2011/10/25/pol-gun-registry.html

                Only a matter of time, I guess. What’s more, now that old Stevie can ram whatever he wants through the house, well sir, he’s not stopping at eliminating the Registry—despite the pleas of law enforcement officers—he’s going to delete all existing data on those registered already—despite same. The more vocal gun owners are saying he should relax restrictions on hand guns, submachine guns, bazookas, thermal detonators (depending on the hue of the neck).

                My question: Was it really such a big deal, registering guns?

                Let me say that I see the criticism of the Long Gun Registry. Yes, it’s been expensive registering what were mostly law-abiding citizens. Yes, that cash could have been better spent on enforcement chasing down the baddies who don’t register their guns anyway. But why the great outcry against it? Harper’s wasted more money beating protestors and buying shiny jets than was wasted on the Gun Registry.               

                What was the hubbub? Was it all just a Charleton Heston “cold dead hands” sort of thing? “The government ain’t got no rights in our bedrooms or near our gun racks.” Was that all? I’ve never heard a better argument than that.

                My Dad has a few guns. He registered them. I helped. It was in 1996 or so. Didn’t seem like a big deal, and we were ventilating our weight in gophers later that day. Responsible gun owner followed the law, life went on. Far as I know, no satellite was trained on our house after that.

                My feeling has always been that you can own a tiger, you can cage a tiger, and you can keep diligent surveillance on the tiger. But it’s still a tiger. If every failsafe you have in place somehow falls, it’s a loose tiger, and a loose tiger is a scary thing—always.

                You could be safe, your guns could be safe (ish), your guns could only be used for sport (I struggle with that concept), and they could safely be locked away. They’re still guns, though. They still have only one purpose. I think where I’ve always differed from law-abiding gun owners who decried the Registry is that I’ve thought, even if these aren’t the guns killing people, there’s nothing wrong with limiting guns. They’re for killing. Fewer of them, and more control of them always felt like the right thing to do to me.

                In the US, gun crime is common. I’ve discussed this before. http://vikingpaul.blogspot.com/2011_02_01_archive.html

                More guns means the potential—potential—for more violence. Nobody would be comfortable with a dozen caged tigers on their block. I’d rather they were gone. Limiting the potential of violence is a no-brainer.

                You need to register your car. It’s dangerous even if you’re the most responsible driver in the world, and a car has more than one purpose. A gun does not.

                Regardless, I think the LGR was an expensive failure. I do think the basic intent (this is not praise for the Chretien Government) was sound. However, we should limit crime through prevention and education, not through brutalizing petty criminals and allowing the populace to arm itself with all the ease of a Texas wedding. I’ve never understood the rabid opposition to it, though, despite the cost, when law enforcement officials—the people who are the experts on firearms usage—say it has helped them.

                Has it really only been about making someone sign a piece of paper saying they own a shotgun?

Guns

"Shoot a few, knock 'em down, cost you half a buck now,
Guns, guns, guns"--The Guess Who

So, here’s the scene:

It’s late spring/early summer, my parents’ farm. It’s one of those long stretches of fixing machinery and waiting for things to ripen.

I’ve come to a visit to southwest Saskatchewan from wherever I’m living this particular year. This scene has been replayed continuously since the mid-90s.

I discuss books and politics with my mother over breakfast, then get caught up on the latest family news and gossip. I step outside to enjoy the steadily heating morning air and the peace of this place.

Then, my dad and I pile into a half-ton or his Rhino ATV, clinging to our .22 calibre rifles. Boxes of ammo rattle on the seat between us as we tear out into the prairie in search of gophers marauding the frail wheat plants. We spend hours chatting, listening to the wind or the piercing whistles of our soon-to-be victims. The stillness is only broken by these and the reports of our “plinkin,’” and perhaps by the squeals of the dying.

This massacre also brings me a peace. I’m a farm boy enjoying a farm boy’s pastime, and it’s more of a hobby than a job—for we’ll never make a dent on the gopher population this way.

I love it. Mark me as a hypocrite.

I grew up playing Cops and Robbers with my brothers and friends, my action figure of choice was G. I. Joe. Though it horrifies me to see it in my own son, I know that for every little boy, a hockey stick or a twig or a pointed finger and thumb are all eventually turned into a gun by boys who may have never even seen one.

Today, I hate guns.

When Democrat Gabrielle Giffords and eighteen other people were gunned down in Tucson last month in an “It Can Only Happen There” spree, any Canadian haughtiness was shut right up when Canmore police shot and killed a man a few days later. He’d been making threats and brandishing a mock handgun, and officers claimed they had little choice. It’s not good that it happened, but it drove home for me that it can happen anywhere—all that where needs is guns.

In the wake of the Tucson shooting, CBC’s Anna Maria Tremonti interviewed a Charles Heller of the Arizona Citizens Defence League, a pro-gun group who believe that gunman Jared Lee Loughner would have been stopped sooner (than the fifteen seconds it took) if more of those present were armed, and had the training to use their weapons. If they were in, “a constant state of code yellow.” This is because having a gun makes you a different type of person, though Heller and I would disagree on what kind.

More guns and more itchy fingers would prevent gun violence? Come the hell on.

When prodded on Arizona’s lax (read: insane) gun laws, which allowed Loughner—a former student who had been brought to the attention of authorities before for his Travis Bickle potential—to purchase a weapon with a 30+ magazine, and which allow teenagers to buy assault rifles at gun shows, Heller remarked that anybody can buy a muscle car too, and a car is much more dangerous than a gun.

Seriously?

Even a shiny, $50,000 penis-extension is, at root, a form of transportation. Yes, the wrong driver can make it dangerous, but a gun is a killing instrument right from the start. It serves no other purpose than to kill.

I’m no hunter—those of you more appalled by guns than I am might question my seasonal vermin-blasting habits, and rightly so—so I don’t get any sporting angle to gun ownership. Many of my friends and family hunt for fun. I don’t like those guns, but I also know that none of these men—and they’re all men—carry a gun with them at all times, or would even turn it on another human being. At least I sure hope not.

I do know that there are some nutty rednecks on both sides of the 49^th who are insistent on keeping their mounds of weaponry free from official hands and eyes because, y’know, if the Nuclear Holocaust ain’t coming, then the Zombie Apocalypse sure as hell is. I recall being an appalled at about seventeen when my MP stood up in parliament and told Chretien’s Liberals that he would openly disobey their gun registry laws. Imagine a Marijuana Party or Neo-Nazi getting elected and saying the same thing.

There’s just something so passionate about gun owners, in their insistence on being free from government imposition, in their defence of accumulating an arsenal, in their hazy purposes for needing it. Freedom, they say, or the U.S. Second Amendment, or perhaps that idiotic “gotta protect yer house” philosophy. Oh sure, home invasion can happen, and then if the odds start stretching and you’re home when it happens, you’ve then got to have the cajones to put a bullet in another human being. Buddy, it’s 2011 and you aren’t in a war—you may, but I don’t have it in me to put a bullet in another human being. Threaten? Frighten? Intimidate? Call those whose job it is to deal with this? Yes, yes, yes and yes. Shoot? Nope. Not even if they damage my daddy’s crops.

Prime Minister Harper’s attempts to undo the gun registry—for reasons he has never made clear, and despite the opposition of law enforcement—has its fans and foes, but I’ll tell you this: if you told me that tomorrow all guns were banned in North America, Dad and I would simply start playing more games of cribbage before checking crops on a sunny morning.

There is no sensible reason for private citizens to own guns, and I’ve never heard a logical attestation to the contrary.