If in this moment of outrage over Newtown we are really serious about more stringent gun control there’s an o bvious way of making the task easier. We can give up our need to reinvent the wheel.
We could model new gun legislation on other developed countries, all of them statistically much safer than ours. What an idea: You want a safer, less gun -saturated country? Do what other countries have done to achieve that level of civilization.
It helps that the NRA’s response to Newtown was so completely, predictably, unrepentant. Not a word about banning assault weapons or limiting the size of magazines. The NRA couldn’t be sorrier about the Newtown massacre, but the current gun laws, such as they are, are just fine.
That is, a system of gun control that allows the Newtown massacre (plus all the others) is the best of all gun control worlds.
There are clearly two fundamentally different ways to go about creating a safer society, NRA- Think and the way the rest of the civilized world thinks. According to statistics only one works.
We have long been under the sway of he NRA’s way of looking at things– its version of the Second Amendment, its assertions about the American character. Such memorable slogans as “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” and the soundbite trotted out in the Newtown statement: “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”
What the NRA says about us is that we Americans are not like the citizens of other developed countries. It’s in our nature to demand to own and when necessary use weapons. To stand our ground. To be the good guy with the gun ready to confront evil. European countries are maybe just a little too civilized. It’s because we are just a bit more freedom-loving and macho than other nations that we haven’t, as they did, given up our right to own and wield guns.
You may (you may not) disagree with the NRA’s characterization of us but the fact is we live and vote in a country that supports the NRA and allows its statistically killer thinking to control the debate and dictate policy on guns.
There was a lot of outrage over Columbine 12 years go and demand for new laws. All lip service, as it turned out. It resulted in no new laws and in fact ushered in a period in which despite periodic mass shootings most people polled showed less interest in gun control laws. We have reason to wonder if the current determination will come to anything more.
It’s pretty clear what has to happen if we are to become a safer society. NRA-Think has to go the way of racism and sexism. To become a less gun-saturated culture may require that serious a change. Those of a certain age remember when racism and sexism used to be not only legal and tolerable but downright attractive, at least to many. Now even if you hanker to tell a racist or sexist joke (which is much less likely) it’s a lot harder to find an appreciative audience.
The NRA’s response to Newtown of installing more gun-wielding heroes in schools (and malls, and outdoor civic space, theaters, etc) has a certain logic that a lot of us seem to find appealing at this point in American history. But it’s a real question whether we will get the gun control laws other countries have keeping them safe until such logic begins looking in its way as unattractive (crazy, cowardly, repulsive) as racism or sexism. We may have a ways to go
As for hunters and other gun sportsmen crying out now not to be condemned along with the wrong sort of gun-users, one hopes a lot of them are showing their disgust with the umbrella organization that now speaks for them all. Someone who hunts with a rifle should be ashamed to belong to an organization that supports the sale and dissemination of assault weapons. Has anyone founded an anti-NRA organization of legit gun-users: Gun Owners for Gun Control or Gun Owners Against Assault Weapons?
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