Response to a Gun Nutter

[markpkessinger]

I posted this as a comment to an article on RawStory.com, in response to a gun enthusiast who insisted that 'part of the problem' is that there 'really are "people trying to quash our second
amendment rights," and that the real solution to our problems was a greater awareness of gun safety procedures. Here is the full text of the comment to which I was responding (my response follows below the original commwnt):

Srilania

Some good points there. I've tried telling people till I am purple in the face, part of the problem here is not the guns. It's the idiots who've never handled one, never SEEN one, till they plop down a grand for their cool looking rambo machine, or buy a gun that no self respecting hunter would look twice at.

Part of what is going on IS there are people trying to quash our second amendment rights. Just read after ANY gun related news hits that "OMG WE SHOULD BAN GUNS NOW!" gets plastered all over. Responsible gun owners are trapped between the mentally ill anti gunners, so phobic over a machine they have panic attacks when they see one, and gun waving idiots who mistake their gun for a penis.

Proper education, made mandatory for all schools, yearly, can teach our kids to handle a firearm safely. Yes, this includes the best option, to stand there, don't touch it, and send someone to get an adult to handle it. Many of the gun penis crowd would slow their rolls, and decrease MANY accidental shootings with just some simple, common sense safety lessons.

And the worst part is, these are simple rules ANYONE with half a brain can follow.

Simple Safety rules.
1. The gun is to ALWAYS be treated as loaded. Just consider it loaded.
2. If you have unloaded all ammo from your firearm, opened the action, and checked to make sure there is nothing the gun can use to shoot, see #1
3. NEVER point a firearm at anyone or anything you do not wish to shoot. This includes checking what's BEHIND your target. One popular show, the Walking Dead, shows just why this is important (Season 2, Carl getting shot by accident because a deer hunter failed to check for possible targets behind the target of interest.
4. NEVER put ANYTHING in or near the trigger EXCEPT your own finger. And don't even put your finger near that trigger till you are ready to fire. Not even a trigger lock. Realize most trigger locks can be defeated with a hacksaw or screwdriver. Several gun locks can even be jarred loose, and allows the person to fire the gun without removing the lock. Use a gun safe, or if you cannot afford one of these, then use what is called an ACTION lock. This is a cut resistant lock that feeds down through the action, and physically prevents someone from loading or operating the firearm.
5. DO NOT LEAVE FIREARMS WHERE CHILDREN, CRIMINALS, AND MENTALLY ILL PEOPLE CAN GET THEIR HANDS ON THEM!

5 simple rules, and some simple lessons that can be easily learned, and you'll see a major reduction in this nonsense where some toddler finds Momma's boyfriend's gun under the couch and shoot themselves dead, or an adult just tossing a handgun into the console of the car and accidentally killing their son because the "unloaded" gun just happened to have one round still in it.

And here was my response:

markpkessinger Srilania

Part of what is going on IS there are people trying to quash our second amendment rights. Just read after ANY gun related news hits that "OMG WE SHOULD BAN GUNS NOW!" gets plastered all over.

This might surprise you, but believe it or not, comments made in response to an article on a web site really aren't the same thing as a serious legal effort to 'quash our second amendment rights.' Nowhere in this country has there been any legislation, or even proposed legislation, seeking to take away your guns or anyone else's. It may well be the case that there are many people out there who think we should ban guns. They are entitled to their opinion (there is no law saying anyone has to agree with any or all of the Constitution -- only that they abide by it). Banning guns outright would require a Constitutional Amendment, not merely passing a statute -- and that is a very, very tall order, and most people know this country is far from being willing to pass such an amendment, no matter how fervently it may be supported by some..

But here's the thing: if such a Constitutional Amendment overturning the Second Amendment were proposed—that is to say, if such an amendment received the approval of a two-thirds majority in both the House and Senate—and then were sent on to the states for approval, and if such an amendment were then to be approved by three-fourths of the states (either by vote of the state legislatures are by vote of state ratifying conventions), then it would be perfectly within the right of the people to do so.

But what the NRA—and many gun enthusiasts—do is to conflate any and all regulation of gun sales and ownership with 'taking away our guns.' It is a belief without any rational basis whatsoever. If one agrees that guns should be kept out of the hands of criminals and the mentally ill, then why in God's name would that person (or that organization) then go on to oppose things like background checks? On the other hand, if an organization that purports to be about defending the Second Amendment is really about protecting the financial interests of, oh, say, gun manufacturers (despite what it has led many of its rank-and-file members to believe), well then it makes perfect sense.

I grew up in a household with many guns -- it was central Pennsylvania, where almost everybody hunted (my family included, and even I myself for a few years as a teenager). Yes, gun safety can be, and most certainly should be, drilled into any and all who come in contact with firearms. (My Dad drilled gun safety into his kids many years prior to any of us actually handling a firearm; he forbade us from pointing even an obvious toy gun (save for maybe a squirt gun) at another person And all of the safety rules you mention were likewise drilled into us over and over again. Yes, that is certainly how it should be. The problem is, it all too often is not how it is. And there is no real way to remedy that problem. Sure, you can make gun safety courses more available, or you can create safety awareness campaigns, but you cannot, under our Constitution, compel people to participate in such things. And inevitably, some will choose not to.

As to your point about not storing guns "WHERE CHILDREN, CRIMINALS, AND MENTALLY ILL PEOPLE CAN GET THEIR HANDS ON THEM," well, if only it were so simple. First, while it may seem to be a simple matter to secure guns from children, how exactly do you do that for the 'mentally ill,' given that mentally ill persons usually have perfectly normal, or sometimes even advanced, intellectual capabilities, and in many cases are not specifically identified as being 'mentally ill' unless and until they attempt some act of violence? It's not like you can go out and buy a 'mentally ill-proof lock' or something. And besides, the overwhelming majority of mentally ill people pose no threat of violence at all to anyone, so how do you identify those who should be denied access to something everybody else is granted access to? And what about those with a history of criminal or domestic violence? Those folks aren't necessarily mentally ill. Here again, background checks would make perfect sense. (And yes, I believe anybody who has a history of domestic violence incidents should be denied the right to own a gun.)

The bottom line is that although safety education can certainly help, effective regulation of gun sales and ownership is also required. Requiring universal background checks on all gun sales, public and private, is a common sense step to take in order to make it more difficult for those who should not own guns to acquire them. But the NRA opposes them. Gun safety awareness can have a dramatic impact upon the number of accidental shootings, but does little to affect the shootings and deaths resulting from intent. Banning sales of certain types of guns and gun accessories, such as high-capacity magazines and rapid-fire weapons (all such measures which are opposed by the NRA), can at least reduce how much damage a malcontent with a gun can inflict within a given amount of time, and as such would be an obvious common-sense step to take. But the NRA opposes them.

Pointing to gun safety rules as a remedy for gun violence is egregiously and woefully inadequate to the problem we face as a society. It represents a selfish, willful refusal to grapple with reality. But if gun enthusiasts continue to successfully block all reasonable efforts the wider society tries to make in order to protect itself from this scourge (which efforts are supported by a large majority of voters), then they may very well live to see the day when there really is an effort to overturn the Second Amendment and to 'take away their guns,' because the wider society will have no other alternative, what with every attempt at reasonable regulation having been blocked.

The gun lobby may, as a result of its selfish intransigence, find itself the unwitting midwife of the very opposition movement it now fears, but which currently exists mostly in the fevered imaginations of gun enthusiasts. Keep it up, NRA -- just keep it up.

[Hoyt]

1. I agree. Maybe the images of the Bundy Ranch Militia and Rodger's killings will help.

I think a lot of today's gun crowd feels like Rodger expressed in his manifesto -- "After I picked up the handgun, I brought it back to my room and felt a new sense of power. I was now armed. Who’s the alpha male now . . . . . ."

[Justice]

8. excellent point.

[dickthegrouch]

2. Excellent response, Mark

Do we have your permission to use it (with/without attribution) elsewhere?

[markpkessinger]

3. Thanks!

And yes, feel free to quote/reproduce any or all of it, with attribution. Thanks for asking!

[MohRokTah]

4. Every gun owner has been a "responsibile gun owner".

At least, all the way up to the point where they aren't.

[markpkessinger]

5. I don't think that's quite fair . . .

. . . the implication seems to be that sooner or later, every 'responsible gun owner' will become an 'irresponsible gun owner.' It's kind of like saying, "Every law-abiding, non-murderer is a law-abiding, non-murderer right up to the point at which he or she kills someone." I grew up in a household where responsible gun ownership and handling was drilled into us at a very early age (as I alluded in my comment on RawStory). Here's what that looked like in our house:

• Guns were stored in a steel cabinet, secured with a heavy combination lock, the combination for which only my father knew (and the cabinet looked like any steel utility cabinet -- it was not obviously a gun storage cabinet);
  
  
• ammunition was stored in a totally separate location (in an antique steel safe that looked very much like this:
  
  

  

  
  
  My father's store was attached to our house, and the safe was in my father's office. It was the same safe he used to keep his business receipts between trips to the bank. Only he and my mother knew the combination.
  
  
• Long before any of my siblings or I were ever allowed anywhere near an actual firearm, we began learning about proper handling of guns. He really didn't much like for either my brother or I to have even obvious toy guns, but being the '60s and we being boys, it would have been pretty hard to avoid them entirely. But even in the few times we did have even the most obvious toy guns, we were absolutely prohibited from pointing them at people or animals, or pretending to shoot one another), and we got a very stern reprimand if we were caught doing so. (He made an exception for squirt guns.) As a kid, I thought he was a bit over the top with this, but as an adult I see exactly what he was trying to do: that is, he was trying to instill in us certain absolutes when it came to handling guns, so that when the day came when we actually did handle real guns, those absolutes would already be a force of habit. (We never really appreciate our parents' wisdom as kids, do we?)
  
  
• Loaded guns were never, under any circumstances, permitted to be brought indoors or into a motor vehicle. If we were hunting or target shooting, we would make a point to load, as a group, when we arrived at the location of our hunt or at a shooting range, and then also make a point to unload as a group prior to departing. By insisting that these activities be done as a group, the likelihood of someone forgetting to unload a weapon was greatly reduced, if not entirely eliminated.
  
  
• When carrying a loaded gun during a hunt, one carried it pointing downwards, so that should it be accidentally discharged, the bullet would go into the ground about 18 inches to two feet in front of the carrier's feet. But I would add that, in our party at least, we never had any such accidental discharges. We did not, under any circumstances, lift the barrel of the gun except to prepare to shoot. And again, if anybody did slip up on that, they were quickly and sternly reminded.

Look, gun safety is quite important -- critically important even -- it's just clearly not enough. I don't own any guns, and I only hunted for a few years as a teen. I have no desire to do so now, and I have no desire to own any guns or even shoot any guns. But I did grow up in a part of Pennsylvania where hunting, for many rural families, a significant source of their meat intake for the year (indeed, it still is for many struggling families in that area). In my hometown of Beech Creek (pop. 750, give or take), one would have been hard-pressed to find a house that didn't have at least a small-gauge shotgun (for small game such as grouse or pheasant), and a larger gauge shotgun for turkey, as well as a rifle of sufficient caliber to effectively bring down a dear or a bear. Whatever your feelings might be about hunting (and believe me, my own feelings are very mixed), these folks were, and are, responsible gun owners. Gun violence was exceedingly rare, simply because guns were not thought of as a solution to problems involving other people (except in the case of law enforcement or the military), and were viewed more as a specialized tool. It think it is critically important to understand people like this, and to try to reach them with reasonable arguments about gun control. (And, at least where I grew up, most people had no problem with reasonable efforts at gun control.) Not everyone who owns or uses a gun is a raving right-wing lunatic. Just as the gun lobby risks hurting its own cause by failing to consider the reasonable arguments of gun control advocates as being nothing but an attempt to 'take away our guns,' so do gun control advocates risk damage to their own credibility by carelessly portraying all gun owners as redneck idiots who will sooner or later surely shoot themselves or someone else. Careless stereotypes do great harm to a very important public discussion, regardless of which side of that discussion one happens to be on.

[MohRokTah]

6. It's absolutely fair.

Every last irresponsible gun owner was a responsible gun owner up until the point where they weren't.

[markpkessinger]

7. So what's the point, and how does it help the national conversation?

I can say, with equal accuracy, that every criminal murderer was a law-abiding non-murderer right up to the point where he or she wasn't.

Okay, so it's true so far as it goes. But what meaning does such a statement have in this conversation, except to try to imply -- quite unfairly -- that every responsible gun owner is destined to become an irresponsible gun owner. I mean, be honest: isn't that exactly what you're trying to do with this statement -- i.e., to suggest (or rather, imply) that the distinction between the two is somehow a false one? Statements like that serve only to antagonize a lot of folks who otherwise would be quite willing to support enhanced gun control measures. Why on earth would you want to do that?

[seveneyes]

10. Every person thinks they know what's best

At least, all the way up to the point where they don't.

[Martin Eden]

9. Voice of Reason

Excellent rebuttal!

[Doctor_J]

11. gr8 response as always, mark

Rec