Monday, December 17, 2012

Shun the Gun

Guns are legal, and their ownership protected by the U.S. Constitution, but after the Connecticut school shootings last week, President Obama is right: something has to change. So, if guns are legal and protected, what can one person do?

Here's a suggestion: Shun the gun.

I don't actually oppose gun ownership. As a hiker and outdoors lover, I'm grateful for the wild country set aside as hunting game lands. I know people who honestly love hunting, and whose love of it is truly what I would call "sporting." But even so, it seems to me that gun culture in the country has gotten completely out of control. That's something that can change, and that we should change. And we can do it without passing any new laws.

From a culture that tolerates guns, our country, particularly here in the American South, has changed to one that actively celebrates and glorifies them. Your local Wal-mart probably has a prominent gun section. Outdoors superstores like Bass Sport Shop, Gander Mountain, and Cabelas are all about guns, and no one finds it unusual as they drive by on the nearby superhighway. First-person shooter games dominate the market. Small towns, like mine, have multiple gun shops, with brightly blinking signs advertising their wares. No one thinks twice.

More to the point, few people think twice about neighbors with extensive collections of firearms—people who proudly boast of their guns, who sport aggressive bumper-sticker slogans on their cars ("This home protected by Smith & Wesson"; "My President is Charlton Heston": you've seen them). The mother of the Connecticut shooting suspect was, apparently, among these—a woman who boasted of her guns, and took her children out shooting with her, if one is to believe the press reports.
Years ago, such a "gun nut" would have been looked at askance by "respectable" members of the community.

Maybe it's time more of us started looking askance.

Public gun culture celebrates public threats of armed defiance, glories in aggressive militaristic bluster, romanticizes uncritically elements of popular culture, such as Clint Eastwood movies, that a careful examination shows are usually much more equivocal or ironic about violence than their fans imagine. Popular movies, television shows, and books often imagine dystopias in which guns are the only answer to a society gone mad. The implication is that ours is just such a society, and that the only thing a sane person can do is own a gun for self-protection.

It's crazy, and it has to stop.

Your dentist ought to be ashamed of himself for having gun magazines on his waiting-room table. Your church-going neighbor with gun slogans on the car ought to find him- or herself suddenly alone at church during the coffee hour. The drunk at the party bragging about how he'll go out in a blaze of glory before the President takes his guns away ought to suddenly find he has no audience. The child demanding the first-person shooter game for Christmas ought to find coal in his stocking.

It's time to shun the gun. It's time to make gun ownership private again—something chosen out of necessity or sporting requirements, not a public statement of political defiance. It's time for being law-abiding and "respectable" to be respectable again. Good people shouldn't go around boasting about their arsenals and expect not to be shunned. People who are proud to be "gun nuts" shouldn't be accepted in polite company.

Statistics show that guns in the home increase the likelihood of accident or suicide, but if you feel that you must have a gun to defend your family, that's your right. Still, it's not something you should feel comfortable boasting about. If guns were something to feel self-conscious about, owning them might be less attractive. Such a change in attitudes is something that we can encourage without passing new laws or changing our Constitution.

It would be a good start.

1 comment:

Maddy said...

I think that instead of totally outlawing guns, we just do more background checks on the people who buy them. Gun laws were a huge topic in my 7th grade US History class this last year, but I believe in the second amendment: the right to bear arms. Now, whether that means that we can keep the arms of bears that we find in the woods, or that we have the right to own a firearm, well, that's anybody's choice ;). I recently read your book again: On the Beaten Path, and it was awesome. You signed it for my mom a while ago (I mean, like, probably 10 years ago). Anyway... I was looking you up on the internet and I found your blog (not to be a stalker or anything ;) ). I plan on walking the A.T. one day by the name of gator girl.
But I think that running more background checks on gun buyers should help stop situations like the Sandy Hook Shooting. Just my 2 cents worth ;).