Fear
and distrust keep many Americans attached to the very weapons that kill
thousands of us each year.
By John Morlino
Yes, it’s happened again. A man with a legally acquired arsenal walked onto a college campus. Moments later, 10 people were dead, and nearly as many wounded.
Sick
to your stomach? Of course you are. Surprised? Didn’t think so.
Like
Aurora, Newtown, and a lengthy list of similar tragedies, the October 1 mass
shooting at Umpqua Community College in Oregon aimed the spotlight on the
debate over guns in America. But there shouldn’t be a debate at all.
Arguing
that guns are a sacred part of our culture just doesn’t cut it anymore. They’re
instruments of death. Nothing else you can own can kill more easily or
efficiently.
Guns in private homes extinguish the lives of loved ones
far more often than they prevent the advance of an intruder. Children shoot
other children. Adults shoot their spouses and their children.
Accidental death or suicide is just a trigger pull away.
This,
apparently, is the price we’ve agreed to pay to uphold a convoluted
interpretation of the Second Amendment.
Sure, there’ll be calls for background checks to keep these weapons away from people stricken with severe mental illness, served with a restraining order, or convicted of violent crimes. But gun owners appear to have nothing to worry about.
After
all, who’s going to suggest disarming ourselves completely?
From
the Brady Campaign to Everytown for Gun Safety and Americans for Responsible
Solutions, no prominent organization purportedly working to end gun violence —
actually, they prefer the word “reduce” — has been willing to explicitly
endorse giving up our firearms.
Instead, some of them —
along with nearly any elected official you can think of — seem to go out of
their way to express support for the Second Amendment.
“Sensible” gun control, they say, is their objective.
Making
it harder for the most troubled among us to acquire a gun would, of course, be
a good thing. As would comprehensive mental health care for all, and a ban on
assault weapons.
Yet
well-intentioned as this strategy may be, it’s cursed with a deadly flaw:
There’s no guarantee that anyone deemed a “responsible gun owner” today will
still be one tomorrow.
The
human mind is ever-changing. And there’s no end to the number of things that
can send people into a nosedive — disintegrating relationships, devastating
unemployment, unlucky biology, profound trauma. Passing a background check on a
given day does nothing to ensure that a person buying a gun will remain
emotionally stable for the rest of his or her life.
So
how do we dig ourselves out of this mess?
The
answer, I believe, lies in confronting the two-headed monster that’s left us in
a state of perpetual paralysis.
Fear
and distrust lurk beneath our collective psyche.
For
example, people who wholeheartedly distrust our leaders delude themselves
into thinking that, if properly armed, they’ll prevail in an apocalyptic shootout
with the government.
Some
gun buyers fear the neighborhood “bad guy” and comfort themselves by
fantasizing about winning a duel in their living room. Others fear the
aftermath of a prolonged natural (or man-made) disaster where fighting over —
rather than sharing — food, water, and shelter becomes the norm.
To
varying degrees, the odds would be stacked against us in any of those
situations — just as they would be in a mass shooting. It’s only on the front
end that we can improve our chances. The sooner we develop a genuinely
compassionate and trusting society, the less likely any of us will find
ourselves in such dire circumstances.
John
Morlino is a former social worker and founder of The ETHIC (The Essence of True
Humanity Is Compassion). He’s been writing about gun violence for more than a
decade. Distributed by OtherWords.org.