The only thing Americans have to fear is … more guns than people in the United States. And most people with a gun in the home are not trained to shoot it. There are twice as many gun accidents than gun deaths—combined, however, they are in the tens of thousands every single year, and this excludes suicides. Gun proliferation in our country, our communities and neighborhoods, is more of an immediate threat to our security and sanity than immigrants from the Middle East or Central and South America.
Our own home-grown American crazies who have taken to high-powered assault weapons, the kind used by combat soldiers, are our most pressing concern—screaming for a solution. The political argument used to center on mental illness or gun control, as if we have to impose on the freedom of the chemically imbalanced or the proud American sportsman. By now we’d best deal with our own personal national epidemic of gun violence.
And our fearless leaders did just that, by eradicating a late-ordered Obama mandate that would have kept people with mental illness from buying guns. So the insane along with the rest of us can enjoy our American right to bear arms? What’s there to be afraid of if’n we’re all packin’?
But it doesn’t work that way. Time and again, we are caught off guard by a maniac or maniacs shooting up high schools, elementary schools, churches, mosques, playgrounds, cinemas, restaurants, funeral processions, Wal-Marts, shopping malls, apartments, residential streets, Christmas parties, birthday parties, courthouses, police stations, protests, police officers, nightclubs. Most of these mass shootings had nothing to do with Muslim terrorists and everything to do with easy access to assault rifles and unchecked mental illness.
1980
Remember the issues behind gun control—way back when Americans really thought reason and sanity would win over fear and power and money? First John Lennon was shot multiple times, then a few months into 1981 President Reagan and James Brady, then Pope John Paul II. Only one of these men died, another left with permanent brain damage, and two survived—Reagan and the Pope recollecting with a chuckle their brush with death. Their assailants were carrying only a handgun, and the movement against guns was underway. No one was safe since anyone could buy a gun even illegally. Many guns linked to crimes were stolen, usually during home burglaries and then passed down by sale or pawn. No questions asked.
Oh and then in the 1990s the uproar for the seemingly rational government background check for anyone wanting to purchase a gun. Those years of heated debate have faded into black and white memories. A decade later, shooting deaths not only continued (by the tens of thousands every year) but mass killing sprees were accomplished by high-powered rifles to ensure multiple deaths in a frenzied lust for bloody murder. The movie Bowling for Columbine about the Colorado high school massacre and the student assailants didn’t change Washington or the nation. Instead, Americans were more vocally adamant for carrying guns at all times anywhere, any place … just in case. They seemed to be chasing the very real opportunity to play hero, Clint Eastwood with a .44 Magnum—just like in the movies! Make my day, punk. It didn’t matter that every police and law enforcement association was against ‘any and every body carrying a gun.’ They had a point, being the ones who legally wear a gun and are without a doubt trained and licensed to shoot one. They know all about criminals, drunkenness and doped-up delusion, human passion, depression, and how quick guns kill. Yet society just didn’t feel safe letting cops fight their battles, real or imagined.
Holy terror, Batman
We got caught off guard by 9/11 and subsequent attacks like the Boston marathon and San Bernardino. During the presidential campaign, I had tweeted: If Trump wins, it will be because of San Bernardino; if Hillary loses, it will be because she always includes a Muslim-dressed woman among a multi-ethnic crowd of supporters for speeches. That was a turn off to Americans after two long, hard, vicious wars trying to combat Muslim terrorists. Call it prejudice, but it’s how Americans feel pain.
The terrorists who attacked our homeland wanted to bring what people in the Middle East deal with every day and have for decades. Terrorists are usually not highly educated and come from dire poverty unimaginable to anyone growing up in the U.S. An unschooled mind within a poor family and community is a dangerous thing. There is no hope … except for religion. Many Christian families can relate. The Great Depression drew throngs of folks to church, hoping things would turn around … and we would find God’s favor once more. Terrible times often bring people to their knees in prayer to God.
In these admittedly dangerous times in which we live … there still is no comparison between the numbers of Americans killed by terrorists in our country and abroad to the number of Americans killed and maimed by guns and assault rifles at the hands of our own. Many Americans will not part with guns because they have the Constitution on their side. In the beginning Americans were given the right to bear arms to form a militia—probably because in those more dangerous times there was the likelihood a ruler might attempt to overthrow our newly born democracy. It’s happened throughout history and still does in nations all around us.
But since 1776, guns have become awfully powerful … and fast! Our forefathers never could have conceived of such a thing in the days of muskets and reloading powder. A modern gun’s sudden death and damage today is faster than a speeding bullet—irreparable, perhaps doing more damage to our collective psyche than to the doomed human life.
We are the ones with the sickness, the mental defect, the dangerous and deadly personality quirk when it comes to our ideas about personal safety and guns. Our nation’s history was built by our own people who had to quickly size up an enemy: from Redcoats to ‘red skins’ then black and brown and yellow. By now it’s in our genes, our perpetual need for an enemy. So we shoot first and ask questions later.