A Gun is a Tool

A Confederate Yankee

By Bill Mayers

(Town of Sullivan, NY – Jan. 2013) Not having a mind of its own, nor the means to independently carry out the act, a gun can’t kill people. What it does is enable people to kill people. And therein lies the problem: imperfect people manage these devices imperfectly.

We seek a cause, a reason for horrible acts like Sandy Hook. We blame a variety of factors, usually selecting one that appeals most. We cannot fathom the insane. All too often there’s no outward sign, though we tend to say there had to be signs, somebody had to have noticed, and that somebody has to have failed society by not getting this madman the proper treatment.

But here’s the thing: even trained, experienced psychiatrists can’t pick the seriously ill out of a crowd. The often can’t tell even after a conversation with an insane person because the insane usually act quite normally.

We all have our moments…

When was the last time you were so disgusted with someone you wanted to seriously go upside their head? Or exploded in a string of expletives when truly annoyed at a co-worker? Or wanted to paddle your misbehaving kid’s narrow behind?

Is that insanity? If so, it’s possible we’re all nuts.

So we look at other factors. Video game violence comes under scrutiny. Mental health professionals have known for decades that exposure to scenes of violence tends to desensitize young children to violence. And the more violent the stimulus, the more violent the children’s interactions with others becomes.

Does this mean the next episode of Warcraft is going to turn your kid into a serial killer? Probably not, but exposure to such gratuitous violence day after day after day isn’t really conducive to sweetness and gentle play. And it’s a mistake to think that at some point in their lives young people will suddenly grow up and leave all this behind at – what? 14? 17? When?

Even those of enlistment age have been seen to be far less empathetic toward the misfortunes of others when the inductee has spent his or her teenage leisure time on violence-oriented activities. So yes, violence depicted via electronic media and the movies does have an influence, but it’s not the only influence.

What about parenting? We tell ourselves that it’s the parents fault for not teaching kids the proper ways to behave toward others, but we entirely miss the point that the parents themselves may not know the best of social skills for a variety of reasons. They may not know how to raise children. So we wonder why the heck they haven’t seen a social worker, when there are so few social workers per capita one may get to see everyone on his or her appointment list only once every three years.

Conservatives in county and state legislators treat funding of social services like money that’s thrown away, insisting that few can do the job as well as many. And it just ain’t so. We cannot expect every family to be a functional family, the Father Knows Best dream-world image from popular television of years past.

Ain’t gonna happen.

About the time I got my DD-214 and began my civilian practice, it became the rule to make sure nobody got left behind cuz that wasn’t fair, and we didn’t want little Johnny’s future ruined: no winners or losers, everybody got a medal or a prize of some kind. Egalitarianism gone berserk!

And about this time, we began to notice more and more spectacular acts of violence, an uptick in the number of mass shootings among them.

That wasn’t the answer, so now the latest craze is to blame the media. We grouse that if they weren’t such tattletales, or if they didn’t show all the blood and the gore, and if they didn’t “glorify sex and violence” – but television ratings, which are collected regarding your viewing habits whether you’re aware of it or not – tell the true story.

We eagerly dine at this table of fresh hog manure.

The media gives us what we tell them we want to see, hear and read: it’s what pays their rent and buys their groceries. Look, your cable company knows what channel and what program(s) you watch cuz the television itself tells them via that cable. Please don’t tell me you’re gullible enough to think satellite TV isn’t doing it, too. We tell’em what we want every time we switch that thing on, and ‘that thing’ lately includes our iTabs, smart-phones, you name it.

So we cannot realistically expect to make major changes in any of those other factors by themselves. We need to seriously consider amending them all. Will we get all the amendments that we want or need? Of course not; we’ll be negotiating those factors for quite some time with people who have honest and respectable disagreements over what changes need to be made and which ones don’t.

And that brings us back to the very topic so many of us consider “a bridge too far.”

Gun control.

Did outlawing drunken-driving stop everybody from driving drunk? Since it didn’t, shouldn’t we drop all drunken-driving prohibitions? It’s illegal, but has being illegal stopped every attempt at scoring heroin, opium, weed and the latest make-ya-crazy mind-bending drug? Should we just drop all narcotics regulations because some people will still find a source for the dope they crave?

Should we just drop all prohibitions against any unpleasant behavior because they’re not perfect? Shouldn’t we drop all firearms regulations because they’re no more perfect than, say, prohibitions towards drunken driving, narcotics use, sex abuse … or should we work on crafting uniform and meaningful firearms controls?

I suggest we need all of the above, and make gun control a central part of it. Gun control does not mean total confiscation. I really don’t want to give up mine, any more than the rest of you. But I want that lovely young woman – my stepdaughter, a public school teacher – not to have to face what six teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary had to face; not now, not ever!

I want my two lovely granddaughters to be able to finish high school and find careers, husbands, lives that will continue long after the end of mine.

I bet you do, too.

No hunter needs a weapon that will accept more than five rounds; heck, if y’can’t hit your target in five shots or less, take up golf! No civilian needs to carry a concealed weapon on his or her person. There are areas of most cities where muggings, robberies and assaults tend to concentrate. Ya know what? Stay the blazes out of those places! What’re you looking for down there, anyway: Cheap women? Dope? Decent, law-abiding folks don’t belong down there, with or without a concealed firearm.

Protect yourself and your family from home invasion? Yeah, the NRA puts a couple stories in every issue of The American Rifleman about people who did just that. What they don’t tell you is that for every such success, there’re hundreds of instances where things did not work out so well for The Armed Citizen.

And we tend to wear blinders like those horses in Central Park during the lazy days of summer: we purposefully hide our eyes from that greasy, dirty, slimy, stinking reality.

Registration needs to be made mandatory, with harsh penalties for those who’re caught without the proper registration of their firearms. The loopholes for gun shows – loopholes large enough through which to fly a 747 – need to be tightened severely.

Force background checks; it should be a matter of hours for some tech wizard to come up with an app for a gun dealer’s smart phone to do a background check on the spot and record the results of the search. Perfect? No, some will still slip through, but a good many who should not have guns will be deterred.

Like someone I won’t name said, we can’t decline to do this because doing so isn’t easy. Let’s get our heads out of la-la land and get started!

William D. “Bill” Mayers RT, RN, of Sullivan is a retired senior U.S. Army Corpsman. A certified healthcare professional since 1964, he holds two professional licenses, including that of Registered Professional Nurse licensed in New York, Alaska, Virginia and Louisiana. He has four children, two stepchildren, two grandchildren and is an avid analyst of current events.