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The best journalist in American history once said that the most important thing that people lack is courage. Not money, justice, sex or happiness. Courage.
Recently in my newspaper's coverage area, a man born before the invention of television picked up his gun, drove down a rattletrap country road, and shot a tenant farmer who was working for him. A land dispute was thought to be the motivation for the murder.
The farmer died in a nearby hospital. The shooter drove back to his home, and barricaded himself inside. Nearly six hours later, he was gunned down by law enforcement officers, but not before wounding three sheriff's deputies and taking potshots at an oncoming SWAT assault tank.
I showed up at the scene a few hours after the shooting stopped and the crime scene mop-up work began. I noticed a group of adults standing on the other side of the road, watching the SWAT officers, local police, and the Special Operations Group guard the shooter's driveway. I learned that they were relatives of the man who had just been shot by police. I pressed for more information, but they declined to elaborate. If there hadn't been men in uniform nearby carrying firearms, the man I spoke to first would probably have popped me in my smart-ass journalist's mouth.
Since the shootings at Virginia Tech (which I also had to cover, since two local Mississippi kids narrowly avoided the scene of the tragedy), writers and politicians have taken sides of the "gun" question like girls and boys hugging the walls at a 7th-grade school dance. The results in both events have been just as predictable.
As difficult as it is for some to admit, guns are part of this country's DNA. While certain genetics traits may be "bred" out of a nation's history like Gregor Mendel working with pea pods, guns partially made America what it is today, good and bad, Lexington and Concord and Wounded Knee and Kent State. There is rich unintended irony that the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution are enshrined in bullet-proof glass.
Whatever one thinks of guns, they are very difficult to mechanically socialize away because they deal with, and deal out, life and death. This is the same reason that abortion captures the political imagination and passion of so many people who otherwise seem very peaceful and polite company at dinner.
Who can tell that someone who owns a gun will have the courage to use it when the situation does call for self-defense? A gun, in such a case, is a tool. While everyone catches fire when a tool is misused, what is there to say when it is not used at all when it should be? If I chamber a shell in my Remington 870 shotgun, the sound may terrify the man who wants to rob my house. But after that, will I be too shaken to shoot? Nobody knows. In Saving Private Ryan, when Private Upham crumpled into a sobbing heap on the stairs instead of charging Nazi soldiers with his rifle blazing, did anyone claim that the moment was fanciful?
A gun is no guarantor of safety and no signifier of courage, just as money is no guarantor of happiness and signifier of hard work. Banning guns in America will not stop those who are tortured by inner demons from making murder. Putting guns in the hands of everyone who calls for security will not make the country braver. The supply of guns is inexhaustible, but the supply of a man's courage is a mystery, for no one ultimately knows the source, and it is only discovered when it is tested.
I wonder what that downcast family on the side of the road was thinking, as they watched law enforcement personnel clean up the scene where their relative had just been gunned down. I doubt very much they were thinking about a ban on handguns, or Ted Nugent's sawed-off rants about "gun-free" zones.
Maybe they were somberly searching their minds to try to discover what drove a member of their family to kill his neighbor. Perhaps they thought that their loved one's courage ultimately failed him. Instead of reaching out to his neighbor and speaking his mind, a man out of his right mind reached for his Second Amendment right.
Recently in my newspaper's coverage area, a man born before the invention of television picked up his gun, drove down a rattletrap country road, and shot a tenant farmer who was working for him. A land dispute was thought to be the motivation for the murder.
The farmer died in a nearby hospital. The shooter drove back to his home, and barricaded himself inside. Nearly six hours later, he was gunned down by law enforcement officers, but not before wounding three sheriff's deputies and taking potshots at an oncoming SWAT assault tank.
I showed up at the scene a few hours after the shooting stopped and the crime scene mop-up work began. I noticed a group of adults standing on the other side of the road, watching the SWAT officers, local police, and the Special Operations Group guard the shooter's driveway. I learned that they were relatives of the man who had just been shot by police. I pressed for more information, but they declined to elaborate. If there hadn't been men in uniform nearby carrying firearms, the man I spoke to first would probably have popped me in my smart-ass journalist's mouth.
Since the shootings at Virginia Tech (which I also had to cover, since two local Mississippi kids narrowly avoided the scene of the tragedy), writers and politicians have taken sides of the "gun" question like girls and boys hugging the walls at a 7th-grade school dance. The results in both events have been just as predictable.
As difficult as it is for some to admit, guns are part of this country's DNA. While certain genetics traits may be "bred" out of a nation's history like Gregor Mendel working with pea pods, guns partially made America what it is today, good and bad, Lexington and Concord and Wounded Knee and Kent State. There is rich unintended irony that the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution are enshrined in bullet-proof glass.
Whatever one thinks of guns, they are very difficult to mechanically socialize away because they deal with, and deal out, life and death. This is the same reason that abortion captures the political imagination and passion of so many people who otherwise seem very peaceful and polite company at dinner.
Who can tell that someone who owns a gun will have the courage to use it when the situation does call for self-defense? A gun, in such a case, is a tool. While everyone catches fire when a tool is misused, what is there to say when it is not used at all when it should be? If I chamber a shell in my Remington 870 shotgun, the sound may terrify the man who wants to rob my house. But after that, will I be too shaken to shoot? Nobody knows. In Saving Private Ryan, when Private Upham crumpled into a sobbing heap on the stairs instead of charging Nazi soldiers with his rifle blazing, did anyone claim that the moment was fanciful?
A gun is no guarantor of safety and no signifier of courage, just as money is no guarantor of happiness and signifier of hard work. Banning guns in America will not stop those who are tortured by inner demons from making murder. Putting guns in the hands of everyone who calls for security will not make the country braver. The supply of guns is inexhaustible, but the supply of a man's courage is a mystery, for no one ultimately knows the source, and it is only discovered when it is tested.
I wonder what that downcast family on the side of the road was thinking, as they watched law enforcement personnel clean up the scene where their relative had just been gunned down. I doubt very much they were thinking about a ban on handguns, or Ted Nugent's sawed-off rants about "gun-free" zones.
Maybe they were somberly searching their minds to try to discover what drove a member of their family to kill his neighbor. Perhaps they thought that their loved one's courage ultimately failed him. Instead of reaching out to his neighbor and speaking his mind, a man out of his right mind reached for his Second Amendment right.
Comments
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I'm (just now) in my 7th decade of living
and 5 of'em (off and on) have been in the Land of Enchantment. That simply means I know that these are pretty nice folks, normally, but riled about their pet frog; well, 'tis likely these folks'll behave like your tragic subject. The issue for me lies in the Amendment. Little Jimmy (when he took those attachments from Virginia and tacked'em onto the Costitution) never intended for folks to go to a school and kill kids, wantonly use their "reserve weapons" to AK-47 a neighborhood, nor to shoot his tenant. Today, the reservists aren't told to report for duty with their own weapons.
So, I guess I'm trying to start a little thought-revolution out here concerning the sanctity of "I-gotta-right" or "you'll get it from my cold, dead fingers." It appears that Yorozu-sen writes like I'd like to write. Southerner: systemic, empathetic, and a large "helpin'" of heart stirred by a pen mightier 'n the sword". That's a good thing. Guy Out Here!