Stoopid Stuff

The Second Amendment is Not a Suicide Pact

We aren't stupid. We aren't blind. Regardless of ideology, we can sit down together and talk through the issues, can we not? Even if we cannot arrive at a real solution to intractable questions, we can at least ponder the questions as thinking adults, right?

Sadly, the stupidity has taken hold in a genuinely frightening way, preventing even our elected legislators and appointed adjudicators from speaking honestly about so many issues. In the Sotomayor confirmation hearings today, we saw this, from a woman who grew up in a hardscrabble Bronx neighborhood that lost many of it's sons and daughters to pointless violence:

"I understand how important the right to bear arms is to many, many Americans," Sotomayor told Leahy, adding that one of her godchildren is a member of the National Rifle Association and she has friends who hunt.

Show of hands. How many people think that's actually her honest thoughts around guns in America? How many think THATS the thing she'd choose to say when asked about the Second Amendment? We have reached a tipping point, where not a single government figure is allowed to tell the truth about important issues anymore. Can someone tell me how all this hiding from the facts and refusing to even have a conversation about the real-world issues and their non-imaginary impacts on neighborhoods and families all over the country is a sustainable path?

Look, here's the hard truth about gun ownership in America. First, it's in the Constitution. As much as firearms opponents want to try to create some kind of fuzziness around that, and they do make a valiant effort, "...the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed" is a hard phrase to obfuscate. Is it valid, or valuable now, today, in twenty-first century America? Of course not. It is a deeply embedded evil built into the very fabric of our national heritage, and the bloodshed just goes on and on. To get to something approximating common-sense gun ownership laws, you will HAVE to change the Constitution. But here's the thing. It's not just in the Constitution, it's in the Bill of Rights. And if you open the door to tampering with that, there is NO reason to believe it will all just stop there. A free press, as poor a job as they have done recently, is a pesky thing that most authoritarian governments do not allow. Speech can be re-defined. Assembly more tightly controlled. As much as we have seen the American Constitution trampled upon over the last decade, to allow people to begin to tamper with the core principles is to open a Pandora's Box of authoritarian and plutocratic activism, something we've seen far too much of already.

But to leave things as they are is a horrorshow of blood and loss, wasting our best along with our society's detritus, breaking families and hearts even as no higher purpose is served, and nothing of value is accomplished beyond the profits of the weapons industry. We cannot allow the status quo to be the future. We cannot continue to watch our children and brothers take the lives of their neighbors so casually, and then rot away in a prison cell for a moment's sick anger.

It's easy to reach the conclusion that there is no way out of this conundrum. And, for all that, I have no solution to offer. A solution, if there is one, would not look like an assault weapons ban or a law against high capacity magazines. It would be something that greatly reduced the number and availability of handguns, particularly in places like the inner city where the murder rates are unacceptably high. There would be regional, emergency legislation that, while unlikely to have an immediate impact, would begin to make guns more scarce, more expensive, and more difficult to for children to get and use casually. But it doesn't really matter. Because we have created a system where the only people that matter, the only people who have within their grasp the power to make a difference, to try to save some lives over time, the people who ASKED for the responsibility to deal with our society's hard problems are afraid to even have the conversation. Are AFRAID to even start a dialog with the phrase "what are we going to do about gun violence in our communities". The brave men and women who are asking this question, who are demanding answers, are written off as leftists, pacifists, unamerican hippies who are not "serious". And the people who are considered serious are AFRAID to say to the very constituency that elected them "I need you to help me develop a solution". They are more protective of their reputation in Washington then they are of the children back home.

Let's be honest. They will never have to try to decide whether to risk taking a gun to school, or risk leaving it home. They will never learn to not just flinch at the pop-pop-pop-pop of a drive by but to find good cover, and take care of their friends under fire. They live in nice, safe neighborhoods and will never have to try to understand the loss of a daughter caught by a stray round, or a son who just didn't have the strength and support to say no to the gang.

When you're scared, a gun is a very easy thing to reach for. I've done it. But when you're scared to talk ABOUT guns in America, it is enough to offer platitudes to the people who perpetuate the violence without ever suffering from it. The Alabama Senator, the Michigan Congressman, the Florida Governor will never lose a child to gun violence. They will never have to lie awake in the depths of the night, sobbing, wondering why god has taken their daughter, or what could have led their son to a life sentence. Like so much in our world, the difference between where we are and where we need to go is courage, and sadly, once again, courage is sorely lacking...

posted by mikey @ 4:48 PM