We Are Greater Than The Gun Lobby

How’d it feel to drop off your kids at school this morning? 

 I just dropped mine at middle school half an hour ago. And I’ll tell you what it felt like to me. It felt like a new form of terrorism. 

 Terrorism’s aim is the unsettling of daily norms, the infusion of fear, anxiety, and a sense of powerlessness into the general population. That’s what I felt as I crept along the dropoff line in the Subaru. 

 I’ll wager I’m not the only parent who had to tamp down the urge to instruct his 8th grader on the finer points of mass shooter survival. Where is your jacket? Put that lunch in your backpack. Remember, if Boo Radley shows up with military-grade weapons, be sure to hide in the kiln closet and survive! 

 It’s becoming normalized, this insidious new safety calculus. Eight days ago my daughter and I attended the wedding of my cousin at Seattle City Hall. Gay marriage became legal in Washington State that day, and the mayor had thrown open the community’s most public space to host 140 weddings. The day was glorious. But the night before, I found myself taking serious stock of the risk. Gay marriage is still a passionate issue, one of those end-of-civilization buttons for some of those on the extreme right. It wasn’t unthinkable--in fact, it was quite thinkable--for some right-wing nut to show up with an assault rifle and start shooting up the place. 

 That sort of thinking leads, of course, to Terrorists-have-won Boulevard, and of course we attended the wedding. Love and joy all around. 

 Why are we accepting this? Why are we adapting to it? This is interior terrorism: We absorb the fear, assuming we’re powerless to stop it. We adapt to the fear, quivering in the face of a few (emphasis few) gun enthusiasts who demand their right to collect  military weaponry while externalizing the blowback onto us and our children. We do it to ourselves. 

 If a group with a foreign-sounding name had perpetrated the Aurora theater massacre, the Clackamas Town Center shootings, and the Newtown horror, we’d have take action yesterday. Instead we get Stephen Roberts on Morning Edition knitting his sticks about the power of the gun lobby. The gun lobby. What civilized country has a gun lobby? 

 We are greater than the gun lobby. We are the pissed-off parents lobby. We have the power to gather and sit in the offices of Congressmen and demand to know why they are voting for Bushmasters--I’m pissed off that I even know the name of that gun--over the safety of our children. 

 Act now. In the wake of 9/11, Congress passed the Patriot Act in thirty days. Not thirty months. Not thirty weeks. Thirty days. 

 What can we do? Here are a few ideas off the top of my head. 

1. Ban assault weapons now and forever. Period. 
2. “Gun shows” end today. We don’t allow people to swap Demerol at “prescription pharmaceutical” shows. 
3. Background checks, 30-day waiting period, and three co-signers for a gun permit. 
4. Gun permits. Required for all guns. Pass a test to get one. You drive a car, you need a license. 
5. Require shooting ranges to check gun licenses. It’s not that hard. Grocery store clerks check ID’s on liquor sales ten times an hour. 

 That’s a list from ten minutes of thought. I’m sure Congress and the Obama Administration can do a little better. 

 We need to make sure they do. 

 

Comments

[Suz]

Excellently put! I agree 100%

[Auden Schendler]

Good piece. We also need to ban large capacity magazines. That is a key point, nobody should need a high capacity clip, which is only designed for combat, and when rampages are stopped by civilians, historically it has been during the reload. My wife had a terrible time dropping out kids off today and I spent much of the day thinking about how to tell my five year old son to run if someone comes into a room with a gun.(One six year old in CT DID run and survived...) This is a little boy who told me his teeth chattered and his body shook "so he could not to speak" when they taught him about "lockdowns" and did drills in Kindergarden. I have not said anything to him yet, I can't figure out how to.

[Rockfarmer.wordpress.com]

Thank you for this, I couldn't agree more. I'm ready, it's past time.

[TK]

I don't agree. Your comments are misguided and you are sadly politicizing a tragic event to advance your own agenda. Connecticut has the strictest gun laws in the Nation and they did not prevent this violence from happening. Limiting law abiding citizens from legally obtaining and owning firearms will only lead to more violence and the criminals will be the only ones with the the guns. We need more responsible sheepdogs that can be prepared to stop and deter these senseless "terrorists." Wake up....

[Mark Messinger]

An almost common component in the mass shootings is mental illness, too. The widely distributed piece from a parent of a mentally ill child - a parent told by authorities they cannot treat him, but could incarcerate him, if only he would commit a crime - is telling. There needs to be a mental health component to our response to what's happened in Connecticut.

I don't believe a the controls suggested in this article, alone, will reduce this kind of gun violence. That said, I agree with every one of Bruce's ideas. There's no reason law-abiding citizens need ready access to assault weapons.

[Martin]

Hi TK - I write from the UK where we along with the rest of the modern world watch incredulously at these events and listen even more incredulously at views like yours - criminals can always get guns, in every country - that is not the point; criminals don't tend to go into schools and massacre children! Nutters on the other hand would find it incredibly difficult to get such violent weapons in other countries - they certainly would not be able to buy them over the counter or "borrow" from their mother's cabinet!! Less guns / less shootings - right to bear arms was for cowboys; normally America leads the world, but on this one issue it lags a long way behind :(

[Doyle McClure]

An excellent assessment on the consequences of a nation awash in guns--the political connection is well illustrted by the following:

http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/18/in-gun-ownership-statistics-partisan-divide-is-sharp/

[Howard Platte]

Just for the record, I am a huge gun enthusiast and gun owner rights advocate and I agree with almost everyone of the ideas suggested– except for some of the ignorant terminology used by a writer who knows nothing about guns or current laws already on the books in many states.
But here are some counter points to give careful thought to:
First - The gun used in Newton was NOT a real assault weapon, it was a civilian version lookalike of a real assault weapon.
Second- I would like to point out that a proficient shooter with a regular pistol or shotgun could have shot almost as many people in the same amount of time. Should we ban those too if that happens next week and 20 people are killed if the shooter used a pistol or a hunting rifle?
Third – If a group of armed thugs broke into your home in the middle of the night threatening your family’s lives using baseball bats, knives and a shovel from your backyard….would you rather defend yourself with equal force? Or a big giant handgun? You think about that………There is a reason SWAT teams use overwhelming force to attack. You don’t want a fair fight, you want such overwhelmingly good odds in your favor that they decide to retreat and not get into a fight. Or do you think we should ban shovels too? Or maybe you think you should only give them a ‘fair’ fight? Right?? I mean it just wouldn’t be fair if a homeowner shot a guy dead who only had a big kitchen knife in his hand, now would it? I am pretty sure that any person who had their family murdered by thugs would do anything to have a chance to do it all over again only this time, with a great big gun in their hand. But that’s just me. Unthinkable? Yes every time I read in the news that someone breaks into a home and rapes and kills the family inside, yes I think that is unthinkable too.
Fourth – There are other good reasons for the public to own guns. For example, in case there ever is a reason to form a militia because our government has gone out of control. Don’t laugh, without exception, every great society in history has collapsed under its own weight and corruption. What makes you think we are immune? So although there is a time to re-examine certain gun ownership laws, let’s be real careful here……. People need to be very skeptical when our lawmakers start protecting us from each other. They are supposed to protect us from our enemies and criminals. Not stop our ability to protect ourselves or raise arms against them!
Think real hard when you give up your rights to anything. Getting them back is almost impossible.
People who think government can solve all of our problems conveniently choose to ignore all the failures and corruption of government and blissfully think that a new set of laws will just fix everything! They are also naiive to think that if any type weapon is outlawed all of a sudden every criminal out there will immediately march into the police station and surrender his newly illegal weapons. How "Nutter" is that type thinking? I am sorry, I don’t have that kind of faith for the screw-ups and outright liars that run our government.

[emily white]

a friend had a great idea

figure out which companies in the US have money flowing into the gun and ammunition industries. I bet LL Bean is out there. Or Storables. Pressure these companies just as we did with divestment from South Africa. By "we" I mean big-time lefties.

Bruce, you are the crackerjack reporter, can we do this>

Emily