I hate guns. I don’t care what the U.S. Constitution says. At this point with mass shootings every day in our country, I don’t see a reason for citizens getting to have and to hold guns like they’re married to them. Self protection is maybe less than a one percent chance; most police work their whole careers without ever firing a shot. There’s no need for us to hunt for food anymore. And the sport of hunting is legally marked by certain seasons and is not legal every day everywhere. No, the only reason for guns, in this country, is to kill people and lots of them quickly. We’re the only nation on earth whereby our total freedom includes guns and bullets to kill people.
I know that only a third of Americans own all the guns. But now most right-wing public protests feature guns visibly worn by the protestors. It’s a menacing show of force. It’s to tell unarmed counter protestors to shut up or they’ll shoot. It is intended to be a threat and should be illegal. Threatening a person’s life is illegal. So why does the law allow people with guns to shop with us at Walmart or walk around armed in any public place? It can’t be to play hero in the event someone starts shooting. The hero scenario never happens. We only know about hundreds of innocent people being shot to death or disability while minding their own business at parades, holiday shopping centers, churches, and mostly school.
And now that we know only four percent of mass shooters are mentally disturbed—meaning all the other shooters are just regular guys—why do Americans need so many guns? In the U.S., there are enough for every child, teen and adult to have three apiece. Yes, we have three times more guns than people.
The common military-style rifles used in daily shooting massacres were once banned in this country. But our elected officials in Washington, D.C., let that ban expire around 2003, when we were scared senseless by Islamic terrorism and whole hog supportive of two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Live by the gun, die by the gun
I don’t believe in guns. It was a decision made in the 1970s, being influenced by pacifist TV shows like Lou Grant and All in the Family. I was convinced that a gun in the home leads to accidental shootings especially among kids. And that fact remains true and indeed increased dramatically during the stay-home orders associated with the pandemic.
When John Lennon was shot to death in December 1980, Americans wondered why someone so famous would choose to live in New York City. Everybody thought New York to be the most dangerous place in the U.S. Ha, what a laugh today with American shooting massacres occurring in hundreds of cities and small towns across the land.
My thinking about America’s repulsive ‘gun love’ is more about the human brain, the last of the major organs scientists are beginning to study and hopefully understand someday. See, the brain thinks everything it sees is real. That may not make sense, but just think about it. We agree that our minds are influenced by what we see, right? So if we see dozens of murders on TV or in movies and video games, does our brain think it’s all real, that it all really happened? My theory is we made ourselves a culture of hyper anxiety—our first reaction to a situation we don’t like is ‘Shoot!’ Think I’m wrong?
In the year 2022, what do we all have in common now that we collectively know of hundreds of shooting massacres while seeing even more through the mass media of TV, internet, movies and video games? What do the victims, the assailants and all of us casual observers have in common? We’re all American for the most part, share the same culture that loves guns and believes they have solved all our perceived problems, and our eyes watch a lot of entertainment involving guns and shooting bullets.
We’ve always romanticized the Wild West and admired 20th century mobsters like Bonnie & Clyde and characters like Scar Face. From childhood to old age, we’ve ‘seen’ time and again how the one with the gun calls the shots, so to speak. The one with the gun is in charge, and the ones without loaded dangerous firearm are helpless. And ACTION.
Going back to the 20th century with full speed to today, it’s our mass culture of visual entertainment that filled our brains with the power of the gun especially when in the hands of a good person or a bad guy. For generations now, we’re replaying what we’ve been conditioned to accept. We are trapped in a loop. Someone gets angry about something, easily gets a gun made universally accessible, then shoots everybody to death until stopped dead himself.
Don’t believe me?
How to get out of this American nightmare? That I don’t know. I’ve made my decision to not believe in guns and have nothing to do with them. With each passing day and year, however, I know I may come into contact with a shooter—some young guy conditioned by our shared culture that guns are part of life and death—and never seeing any other way.