The Cost of the Right To Bear Arms

Of course the news of the Virginia Tech massacre reached here. I read the newspaper accounts of the shootings on the bus yesterday. I looked at the first pictures of the victims and I found myself very emotional. I was glad I had my sunglasses on, the tears came to my eyes quickly. These were faces that looked just like some of the children that Kiki goes to school with. They look just like Raul, our nephew who just left here on Sunday. No older. Quite a few of the dead are children, regardless of the age of consent, the age to buy alcohol, the age to vote, the age to register for the draft. Children. In a place where there should be little expectation of violence.

In the aftermath, there are discussions of how did this happen, why did this happen, who can we blame? What could the University have done to prevent the second round of shootings? Overseas, the discussion is really based on a single subject. Guns. Not gun control. That debate will be inevitable. However, I don't think gun control is the issue. Early reports indicate this man bought his weapons legally and easily enough. I don't know what the exact requirements were in his home state and whether he was required to pass a background check. But what would a background check have turned up that would have prevented him from having a gun? He writes disturbing stories? So do half the published authors in the United States. He was a loner. Should there be a requirement to own a gun that you have a certain number of friends or acquaintances? No, the real debate is whether ordinary citizens should be allowed to own guns at all. That is the discussion going on overseas right now.

The US image abroad is tarnished. Oh, it is true that these kinds of events happen everywhere. Germany, Russia, France all had their share of school shootings in the past decade. But truthfully, when you hear about this kind of incident - isn't your first thought "I wonder where in the US this happened?" The perception here is that it is easy to buy guns in the United States. One of the papers interviewed some people on the street here and I was surprised to find that quite a few of them thought that getting a gun in the US is as easy as going to your grocery store. You can pick one up in the gun aisle, two aisles down from the milk. Truly. The newspaper articles fall just short of blaming the US but really why should they? The United States has a gun culture. Let's face it, let's own it. It is true. You see it on the news everyday. It is part of our entertainment. Watch a prime time drama on television, it will usually involve a gun crime, a murder so grisly we all talk about it the next day. We like it - we must because those are the shows that are the most highly rated, the ones that bring in the big bucks to advertisers, the shows we keep getting to watch.

There is no answer if we continue to believe it is our God-given right to own a gun and we are too afraid as a nation to stand up to an organization as insignificant as the NRA. How can it be that a gun-lobbying organization is so powerful? There is no "need" for an ordinary individual to own a gun. None. As a nation, we don't hunt for our food anymore. I don't buy the "I need a gun to protect myself from the random criminals at my doorstep" argument. Most of the guns used by criminals in the commission of a crime are stolen from the law-abiding citizens who bought them legally. There isn't a plethora of "I foiled the criminal at my doorstep with my .22" stories but you hear a lot about kids injured or killed by guns found in the household. Some of the guns used in the Columbine killing were registered and locked in a gun safe. I haven't heard it yet, but I am sure some gun-loving yahoo will get on TV or the radio in the US saying, "Well, if some of those students at VT were allowed to carry guns - it would be a different story." Such an idiotic statement, I am not going to waste any more space refuting it.

The simple truth is this will continue to happen. Over and over and over again. Until we have the guts to do something about it, like abolishing private gun ownership. Other civilized countries have done it. Everyone knows that Britain bans most gun ownership. They are so serious about it that most of their police officers don't carry guns. Last year in Britain there were 46 gun related homicides in a population of 56 million people. In New York city, population 8 million, there were 590. Doesn't that statistic say something to you? Only 13 more people were murdered by guns in all of England and Wales last year than were killed 2 days ago in Virginia. The number of people killed in this one incident in Virginia represents 72% of the gun related deaths in all of Great Britain and Wales last year.

Oh for a while, we will be all up in arms about this. But in the US we have the attention span of a 2 year old. For a few months we will tsk-tsk, something should be done, blah, blah, blah. I plan on writing my representatives and urge others to do the same. To ban gun ownership wouldn't be popular, but so was abolishing slavery (another constitutional right). The gun lobby would scream but I imagine so did the alcohol lobby when we changed the legal drinking age to 21. Or the tobacco lobby when we banned advertisements for cigarettes in certain publications. All of these action items take courage and I am not sure we have it in us as a Nation to fight these battles any more. And until we do, more kids like these VT students will die and I guess that is the price we are willing to pay for our constitutional right to bear arms.