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Guns, Birkenstocks, and Beer
I’ll admit this much up front: I’m not a gun person. I’ve tried to like guns. Some of my favorite people are gun nuts, so I’ve been treated to long disquisitions on the virtues of different kinds and calibers and sat through long debates on the merits of the Glock this and the Winchester that.
I attend firearms training with new recruits to our agency and fire a few rounds with a 9mm SIG Sauer and a patrol assault rifle (AR-15). As long as I’ve got my tongue poking out of the corner of my mouth, I can put a hurtin’ on a paper bowling pin at three yards (CQB). I really enjoyed watching the recruits learning, and love watching the instructors who are so expert at something that (having tried it) I know is difficult.
I liked stripping and cleaning the guns afterward, like the smell of gun oil, but the shooting itself? I’m sorry: it’s loud and dangerous — and so far — at least, just not my thing.
You know what is my thing? Knitting. My yarn homies and I talk about knitting needles and gauges and debate cashmere vs. alpaca happily for hours while we stitch away… and I’ve tried to get some of my law enforcement officer buddies interested (“It’s meditative! It reduces blood pressure!”) but so far no takers. So fine: I knit, they shoot, everybody’s happy. What’s the problem?
Here was the problem as Officer Pepsi saw it: The Liberals wanted to take away his guns.
I met Officer Pepsi (not his real name) in a bar in Boston, and we got into a conversation about guns in America.
“Liberals like you just don’t like guns. You don’t understand guns, and you sneer at gun nuts like me.”
Here was the problem as I saw it: holes in people. I see more of them than I want to. I see actual holes in the heads and bodies of teens and tweens and mothers and fathers and children, and I envision holes in Officer Pepsi and my other, beloved brothers and sisters in law enforcement.
“I have no problem whatsoever with you having a gun,” I told him. “I want you to have a gun. But it is too easy for a crazy person to get a gun and kill innocent people with it. It is too easy for a crazy person to get a gun, point a gun and make a hole in you.”
“Well, okay,” said Officer Pepsi. “But if you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have them…”
I’ve never seen a hole in a person that was put there by an outlaw. Let me repeat: I’ve seen a lot of gunshot wounds in 14 years, even though I live in a relatively peaceful state. I have never seen one that was inflicted by a criminal, if by “criminal” we mean someone who has committed and been convicted of a prior crime.
If your definition doesn’t include conviction, well then sure: the guy who murdered his whole family one morning with a shotgun became, in that moment, a criminal but by then it was a little late to refuse to sell him the gun.
In virtually all the cases I see — the suicides, homicides, infanticides — the weapon involved was purchased legally. Occasionally, it turns out that the shooter borrowed the gun from someone else, maybe without that person’s explicit permission, so there might technically be a “theft” involved, though not one that would have been reported as such had no murder been committed.
Adam Lanza “borrowed” a gun from his mother, for instance, but this is an act that we can only define as “theft” because he used it to kill her, before proceeding to the Sandy Hook Elementary School and opening fire on little kids.
“Adam Lanza was nuts,” Officer Pepsi points out.
Definitely. And on those occasions in which someone has pointed a gun at one of my guys and threatened to kill him, it hasn’t been a “criminal,” but someone with severe mental health issues.
“There are laws to prevent mentally ill people from buying guns,” Officer Pepsi points out.
No. There are laws to prevent people who have been adjudicated as mentally ill from buying guns. I have lots of mentally-ill friends and relatives including a few who have been hospitalized for psychosis, but they all retain the legal right to purchase a firearm because they — like the vast majority of patients — consent to treatment.
Let’s say that, tomorrow morning I awaken with some condition — paranoid schizophrenia, a glioblastoma — that causes the voices in my head to advocate mass murder. I’ve got no criminal record, no court-ordered hospitalizations. I could go to my local gun store and buy a gun and ammo and be blasting away from the church tower by lunchtime (although unless my targets looked like bowling pins and were no more than nine feet away, I would not be able to actually hit them).
Let’s say my local gun dealer was particularly conscientious and discerning. “Jeez. Kate is acting strange. I’d better not sell her a firearm.”
What would I do then? “Buy an illegal gun?” suggested Officer Pepsi.
Please.
Okay, actual criminals — gang-bangers and mafiosi — will continue to have access to guns no matter what the laws say, because their criminal activities put them in touch with the black market where guns, drugs, stolen goods, and other contraband are traded. But I wouldn’t have the faintest idea how to find an illegal gun. I’m not a criminal, just a crazy person.
As are the majority — by far — of the shooters I see.
“I don’t want guns to be outlawed,” Officer Pepsi insists. “I want to be able to keep and bear arms, and I have the right to do so under the 2nd Amendment.”
“Well,” I said. “How about we go with Originalism on this? Every American Citizen can freely keep and bear arms… provided the arms are those that would have been available to the Founding Fathers. If Thomas Jefferson could keep and bear it, you can too. Muzzle loaders, a saber, an iron cannon in your front yard…”
“You’re a liberal and you want to take away my guns,” Officer Pepsi said. “Would you like another beer?”
“Sure.” I said. “But let me get this round.”
I’m not allowed to have a .50 caliber mounted on the top of my Subaru for personal protection while I’m driving around the neighborhood. I’m not allowed to salt my front lawn with Bouncing Bettys. Why does the Second Amendment not guarantee me the right to keep and bear my own personal nuke? I asked Officer Pepsi when I got back to our table with the drinks.
“Well, because that’s not reasonable…”
“Ahah! So the debate isn’t about absolutes: arms/no arms? It’s about reasonable limitations. It’s deciding what’s the 2nd Amendment equivalent of shouting fire in a crowded movie theater?”
“Rights always have to get balanced against the burden that the exercise of those rights impose on others.”
“And to me, twenty dead kids at Newtown, and forty-seven police officers shot and killed in 2014 is too great a burden.”
“But I want to keep my guns,” said Officer Pepsi. “And I have a right to keep them.”
“Yes! And I want you to keep your guns, too! You know why? You’re trained.”
And trained.
And trained.
As a police officer for the City of Boston, Officer Pepsi is a very different case from the guy who wanders into a gun store on some macho whim. Does that guy know what he’s doing? Has he been trained by qualified instructors, has he done Simunition training, shoot-don’t-shoot, does he have non-lethal tools he can use before escalating to deadly force? No? Then he’s just a yahoo wannabe, and a menace.
“He still has the right to buy a gun,” said Officer Pepsi.
Fine. But no fantasies, here: Officer Pepsi is not safer and his job is not made easier by Citizen Yahoo’s guns. My children are not safer because Yahoo is pseudo-patrolling the neighborhood and Yahoo’s own children are not safer with his gun in their home. In fact, statistically speaking, his children are a lot less safe with the gun in their home… but I’m not just talking statistics.
I’ve seen the holes. So has Officer Pepsi.
“Here’s the solution as I see it,” I said. “Gun owners should be trained, licensed and insured.”
Guns could be grouped into classes — Class A, Class B, Class C — and a gun owner would be thoroughly trained in the safe handling and use of any class of firearm he or she wishes to purchase. When purchasing a firearm, the customer will show the dealer his or her license and proof of insurance. As with auto insurance, the insurance policy can be comprehensive, covering damage, destruction and theft, but liability insurance would be mandatory. This would serve to provide compensation to victims and survivors in the event that injuries or deaths are inflicted upon the innocent through the use of the firearm by the owner or by others.
“Who will do the training, licensing and insuring?” Officer Pepsi inquired skeptically.
I shrugged. “The state?”
Officer Pepsi recoiled. “No!”
“No?”
“Absolutely not! The government can’t … oh wait a sec. I’ve got it. The NRA.”
“The National Rifle Association?”
He explained: the NRA already has the expertise, the training programs and the proven capability for creating a data base. More importantly, the organization already commands the trust of gun owners. “Let the NRA do the training and licensing.”
“Fine,” I said promptly. “Agreed. But don’t forget the insurance piece.”
“But what’s the point of the insurance piece?” Officer Pepsi asked. “Other than to compensate victims?”
“Because once you get the actuaries in on the act, they’ll take care of the big safety issues.” I said. “Insurers won’t want to be on the hook for those unfortunate bullet holes.”
Take Adam Lanza’s mother. Let’s say she wants to buy an Bushmaster XM-15 because she’s a gun nut. Her son is a plain old nut, but they’ve been doing some mother-son bonding over lethal weapons. So she goes to her insurance agent to enquire about a policy.
“Have you had the NRA training for this weapon?” the agent will inquire. “Do you have a gun safe? Who has access to that safe? Do you have any young people living in your home? A twenty year old son… really? I see… And he has mental health issues, and you’ve taught him how to shoot ? Okayyyy…” (Sound of typing) “I should have an estimate for you in just…. a…. sec…”
Had she been faced with an insurance premium that makes the GNP of Denmark look like chump change, Adam Lanza’s mother might have re-think her parenting style, or at least spend the money she was going to use for the Bushmaster on a really good safe for the guns she already has.
And Adam — thwarted by the combination his mother refuses to give him — will wander down to the local WalMart to purchase an alternative, only to find that they won’t sell him a Bushmaster without a Class C license and proof of insurance…
“I’ve got it,” Officer Pepsi interrupted. “The NRA could create a stand-alone, for-profit insurance company and sell gun-owners the necessary insurance. “
“And cops like you can ask a gun owner to show a license and proof of insurance when its necessary. Or get a subpoena for specific records from the NRA, the way you subpoena records from Verizon when you need them…”
“But the state doesn’t issue the license, and the state doesn’t keep the records.”
“Agreed?”
“Agreed.”
But might Adam Lanza — foiled in the attempt to legally acquire a gun — seek entrance into whatever passes for the criminal underworld of Newtown, Connecticut? Or drive to Hartford and make inquiries among the more obvious corner drug dealers as to whether they knew of someone willing to sell a skinny, crazy white boy a gun?
Sure. Could happen. But it would be more difficult. It doesn’t seem a bad idea for there to be a few more obstacles — or any obstacles at all, for that matter — between the Adam Lanzas of this world, and defenseless kindergarteners. Or between the suicidal teen, the four year old playing cowboy or the rummaging burglar… and that loaded gun in Dad’s bedside table…
Of course, at the same time this plan would put a few tiresome obstacles in the way of the ordinary, law-abiding gun-lovers like Officer Pepsi.
But if gun owners in America could retain the right to keep and bear arms, yet be trained, licensed and insured… and if all three of these requirements would be met through a trusted, non-governmental entity with proven expertise in the field… like the NRA… well, it took us an hour and four glasses of beer, but in the end Officer Pepsi and I agreed that we could live with that.
“So,” I said. “Would you like me to teach you to knit?”
Published in General
What are the gun laws in your states?
Personally, I live in Florida – and I KNOW that more people die with water in their lungs, especially kids. I could make a similar case for removing all swimming pools from backyards, not to mention canals.
Gun *ARE* ment to do harm; and the harm is for self defense – especially against the state. So, if the state can have it, I should not be restricted from it either.
The second amendment is a “right” not a “grant”; so yes, all restrictions are bogus.
The argument that the Second Amendment’s anti-tyranny purpose is obsolete because of nuclear weapons is a red herring. The only thing nuclear weapons are good for in that type of war is extermination, and short of building up a private BMDS, there’s no winning that war.
On the other hand, in the much more likely scenario that the government is merely interested in oppression, then preserving liberty doesn’t require a decisive military victory by the citizens over the state. It only requires a level of armed resistance that the state is unable or unwilling to deal with. When you have 300 million guns in the hands of 80 million gun owners, a tyrant’s military of a few million regular soldiers will not be able to occupy and control the entire country, no matter what weapons they have. And consider the likelihood that there would be breakaway factions of the military, especially the National Guard, and you’d have a much better match of conventional firepower.
Purely practical question: What do we do about the problem of multiple gun-toting strangers in, say, a Wal-Mart, all drawing down on a bad guy. How are they able to identify each other as good guys? Or the arriving officer running into a whole bunch of armed people and not knowing which one is the bad guy?
The bad guy will be the one kneeling on the floor with 3 others pinning or covering him. Easy. What kind of idiot would hold up a Wal Mart anyway? Now Target, on the other hand… with that kind of name…
When the cops arrive and yell “Drop your weapon!” the bad guy is the one still holding his.
“Holes in people” is meant to invoke a visceral/gut reaction (no pun intended) in the negative. It is a play on emotions and though can be effective is not based in logic thus flawed. She uses no data, imaginary conversations, and feelings which are not a basis for rational decision making.
When exposed to data that contradicts her assumptions/position, she then dismisses it with “feelings”. Typical.
I don’t really see the connection of this aspect of crime in Ghettos with an argument to take away or limit our rights to own guns.
First of all, would you prefer that gang members in inner-city neighborhoods kill people without any threat of retaliation from the victims? You do realize gang members always have and always will obtain illegal firearms don’t you? Secondly, a lack of arrests and convictions (perceived or actual) involving these crimes is a completely separate issue.
Again, the results speak for themselves. Armed citizens are a deterrent to crime according to recent studies. They are also a deterrent to abusive and tyrannical Governments like the one my parents fled in Cuba. That is a story for another day.
I read this, and thought: Yes. Hence the prevalence of guns in the ghetto. As mentioned in my brief review of GHETTOCIDE, above, young black men have been disproportionately victims of murder for a very long time, and one primary reason is that crimes against black victims have not, historically, been taken seriously, investigated or punished.
The function of the police isn’t just to arrive to Save the Day (much as they love it when they can) . The police investigate and punish crime. They remove violent individuals —repeat offenders—from the immediate proximity of the vulnerable, at least temporarily and (ideally) permanently.
If you are a young black man, the problem you face isn’t just growing up in a low income, high crime area with ineffective or indifferent policing… it’s that your parents and grandparents grew up in the same sort of neighborhood, and self-defense isn’t just a rational reaction to specific threats, but a cultural meme.The less sure a subculture is of the wider societies willingness and ability to defend or avenge its members, the more it will emphasize the taking, or threatening of, revenge.
Self-protection always includes a measure of signaling and advertising—the guy who posts a sign on his door that says “this property protected by Smith and Wesson” probably has a gun but the sign is less a warning than a bit of advertising. Say “don’t mess with me” convincingly enough, and maybe people won’t.
As I think of this, what seems like mindless, self-destructively aggressive behavior on the part of young black men begins to make more sense. In a world in which the best (only) defense is a good offense, young men are likely to be offensive.
Right – the concealed carry training I’ve done all recommends you re-holster/drop the weapon after the threat is over for this exact reason. You don’t want to show yourself to be a threat and get mistaken for another bad guy. There’s also an oft-cited example of a responder killing a man stabbing a woman, only to find out he was defending himself when she attacked him with a gun. It’s definitely something you have to take into account with training/mindset.
Policy-wise I think something like that should be put into the risk/benefit calculus, but for me at least it doesn’t move the needle much.
From Kate’s comment #43
I just feel very strongly about innocent people getting shot, and about my loved ones (cops) getting shot. Or having to shoot people. Or having to risk the career-ending, life-shattering mistake of shooting an unarmed person because so many people have guns that you have to assume a gun is what they’re reaching for, and not a wallet, or a cell phone. And I am inclined, by my experience not by ideology, to think that we do have a problem when it comes to guns in America. We are paying a higher price than, perhaps, we really want to acknowledge, for our right to keep and bear arms.
Emphasis mine. She admits to this being based on emotion.
Emphasis mine. No it wasn’t – he was apprehended beside his car, behind the movie theater without incident.
Had he wanted to commit suicide, he could have done so even if it were “suicide by cop.”
Or, instead of the Aurora shooting relying on 90 second police response take a look at what happened in a Colorado Springs Church in 2007 when a female member of the church engaged and killed a man wearing body armor and helmet shortly after he came through the doors shooting – he ended up killing 4 people. There were two other security guards there that couldn’t bring themselves to engage him.
More is better when it comes to people willing to defend themselves.
Addressing the problem with crime in black communities, the issue is fairly complex and self reinforcing. Police may not react as aggressively to judge by surface reactions, but often the unofficial line you hear is that even if they tried the community itself does not trust the police enough to aid the inquiry (witnesses don’t come forward, evidence is withheld, etc).
It’s rather a nasty circle:
community doesn’t trust the police enough to aid investigations
investigations are less thorough because of lack of assistance
so community’s trust diminishes
Wash, rinse, repeat.
Exactly. I think you’d be interested in GHETTOCIDE. It’s all so much more complicated than we want it to be. (And that’s before adding welfare dependency into the mix!)
Kate – you are careful not to list the state you come from. That makes it harder to visualize your argument, as it doesn’t give anyone a frame of reference.
I come from Illinois, particularly a suburb of Chicago. I have numerous friends who are (now) retired CPD. I have heard all the stories of gunfights, showdowns, etc.
I work in an Emergency Room. I have seen the rapes, shootings, etc. that come in there. Thankfully I don’t work at Cook County Hospital (now Stroger – yet another political bad act); they are the primary collector off GSW’s, and they have WAY too many GSW’s by bad actors. You wish to see “holes” by miscreants, come spend a bit of time at Cook County. You will lose you bias quickly.
Exactly. Between the low trust issue that Skipsul identifies and the propensity of the black community to deride their scholars as “acting white” I would argue that the cause isn’t “institutional racism” that Kate quotes (#59), but rather the gratuitous racism within the African-American communities. I say African-American, because the lack of social progress seems to remain in those communities yet not in immigrant Black communities (or Asian, for that matter.)
Maine
Please note something important. Government does not DO things. It merely BARS things. So licenses are simply a means to limit the access to something. In Illinois, in typical liberal style, we have licenses for … hairdressers! All it does is keep people from opening shop and selling a service. Somehow the people need to be protected from something the market would, and does, do so much better. IF you are a lousy hairdresser, you will not be in business very long. Don’t need a license to find that out. So all licensing is merely the state limiting people from doing something.
You are making the classical liberal mistake of thinking that government can solve the ills of a people. Culture will solve the ills. Faith will solve the ills. But government won’t. Government passes laws. Laws are limiters, not expanders. No law says, “You can do whatever you want.”
Toward that end, there are some laws that people can agree are things that SHOULD be “limited” – that is, punished if done. So, you commit murder, you get punished. This isn’t something as a feather in the cap of the DA; it is maintaining orderly processes of the people. THEY get to decide who is or isn’t guilty. They even get to decide whether the law that the government passed is reasonable of not.
So I don’t kill people I am upset with because my culture, my faith, and my community have raised me to believe that is not a reasonable response. Were that not to be true, then there are really no laws that would bind me – only punish me if I’m caught. But if I’m smart, or ruthless, it is far less likely I would be caught – see the various Eastern mobs actions about the nation.
So let’s turn your situation on its head. ?How about we institute firearms training to school children. Once it was true that kids learned to shoot when quite small (I was 7 – had my first gun at 13). We once had a healthy and vigorous marksmanship program in schools. And there weren’t any Columbines. Carry it on through high school. Have competitions for best shooter, like any other sport.
MY guess is that you would change the attitude of people about guns fairly quickly. We already have a tsunami of people buying weapons for self-defense. That isn’t because the papers have been pushing the ides; it’s because people have noted that in the end, they are responsible for their own protection.
You brought up the (bogus liberal straw man) argument about a nuke. No one has the money to own a nuke, so ?why are we even talking about that. BUT rogue nations now have nukes. ?Does anyone think NK is rational, reasonable, righteous, respectful of their people. Yet they not only have a nuke but sell it to other rogue nations. The arguments that we can stop that with the UN are, at best, laughable. Such pipe dreams only come in liberal pipes. NK isn’t more of a bad actor because they fear the possible consequences.
And STILL they test us – to see if we will tolerate some bad action. So far we have, to our detriment. No one seems to want to actually DO anything about them. ?Why – because they HAVE nukes! It’s easy to beat up Ukraine – they gave up their nukes. ?Think Russia would be so prompt to attack them had they still held nukes.
And finally, to your question of where are all these “private citizens” who have thwarted a crime, I am one of them.
I have “used” a firearm and a knife once each to prevent a crime – robbery (of me). I didn’t discharge the firearm, and since it was in Boston, I was not about to talk to the cops about what happened. They are death on guns. One more result of “laws”.
And yet…
A college classmate of mine describes growing up in the Jamaican part of NYC. They had an issue with the onset of gangs. They got together with the cops, got a plan, and POOF! The gangs were gone. And no one in the neighborhood would tolerate such bad behavior.
His comment on visiting Harlem at age 12 was what a poor ruin that was. And he’s black.
Ultimately, Kate, you’re talking about collective punishment, which is antithetical to a free society. You’re talking about burdening people who had no connection to the holes in question other than their having purchased a similar tool to the ones who made them. If someone bashes a person’s head in with a crowbar should all crowbar owners then be forced to register their crowbars and purchase prohibitively expensive insurance? What if the victim is curbstomped? Should all those who wear boots be burdened?
The issue, for me, and I am by no means a second amendment absolutist, is that this sort of thinking seems to be applied only to guns and never to any other potentially offensive weapon. There is no discussion about knife control, or club control, or even sword control. It’s only guns that provoke this sort of demand for restriction.
Pelayo—not arguing, but amplifying. Your post was provoking me to think! Always good.
When the statistics on gun deaths include what happens in inner-city neighborhoods, I think you would agree that two distinct phonomena (your legal guns vs. the illegal guns, your self-defense vs. bloody gang wars) are conflated. That’s why the book I recommended seemed relevant. The author makes passionate data-backed points about violence in the inner city without ascribing the problem to guns or recommending gun control as a solution.
I have two chronic frustrations when it comes to talking about guns (or other volatile subjects). One is that people, no matter what their position, presume bad faith, roll their eyes and get dismissive or huffy really quickly. So everyone comes away feeling both irritated and self-righteous.
The other frustration is that conversations tend to slide around from one idea, theory or factoid to another.
The anti-gun person will go from “40, 000 children die every year from gunshot wounds” to “hunting is cruel” to “the 2nd Amendment isn’t about individual firearm owners…” to “guns are phallic symbols to compensate for male feelings of inadequacy…” (got that one the other night—nice, eh?)
But pro-gun people will do it too—slide from “I have the right to defend my home and family from bad guys” to “80 million gun owners will prevent the government from oppressing us…” to “you can kill people with knives too…” and “more people die in car accidents.” So I appreciate the non-slippery quality of your posts, and if I’ve been slippery, or seem emotionally manipulative, I apologize.
My OP wasn’t intended as a firm-and-forever declaration, but as a way to provoke you to do exactly what you are doing—point out the defects in my argument and the deficits in my understanding. The great drawback of communicating this way is that you can’t see me nodding, or hear me making interested noises as I read what you have to say.
Thank you, Devereaux! (And I’m glad you won).
You mean, requiring or at least encouraging training for gun owners? Was your concealed carry training required by anybody, or just recommended?
http://gunssavelives.net/incident-map/
What is a GSW?
Which bias will I lose? (I have so many…!) You and I probably see a lot of the same things, although my experience is slightly weirder (and probably more bias-ing) because while I hear about other stuff, I see death. And I’m serious about the bias that brings in: my children call me Reverend Worst Case Scenario, and it’s true.
Yes—Boston did a similar thing, back in the ’90s, and it was miraculous. I remember doing a series of ride-alongs with BPD (as part of my chaplain training) in Roxbury and Jamaica Plains. Lots of action (stabbings! yes—now that I recall, I have seen holes in people made by knives!) and interest, but I came away thinking yeesh! I would not want to wander around this place without a police officer! A few years later, I was sent to a weekend seminar on Clergy and Police in Boston. The seminar was held in the same neighborhood that I’d ridden around in…and it was so completely transformed, I literally didn’t recognize where I was. It was very inspiring.