So I posted my last blog on Facebook with the comment, “I am trying to understand guns.” One of my friends zapped me back: “Understand how? The appeal? how they work? You’re an Okie girl…doncha have hunting in your family history?”
Fair questions, all. I have been thinking about this. What is it, exactly, that I hope to resolve for myself about guns?
First of all, I actually don’t understand how they work. I may have grown up in Oklahoma, but no one ever actually taught me anything about guns. I was a girl, for one thing, and I used up all my feminist powers of persuasion to get a motorcycle, not a gun (“Dad, you would get me a motorcycle if I were a boy!”). I just was never interested in guns.
So that’s why I started this journey by learning how to shoot. Even so, I still feel completely clueless when it comes to guns. Apparently, there are many different kinds of them, and some are more deadly than others.
Some of my questions, then, are simply about how guns work and why they are different. But even as I figure out some of the basics, I am quite clear that most of my questions are less about how than they are about why.
Why do Americans have such a love affair with these weapons of destruction? How did they go from being necessary for survival to being necessary to stave off fear? When did the world change from hunting guns in the woods & prairies to assault rifles on the streets? Why did that happen?
Do we really need guns? Why were they invented? And what does the Second Amendment really intend? Surely our current state of affairs is not a “well regulated militia”? Why are some people so fiercely antagonistic about their right to own a gun? Why is it so hard to track and/or ban certain kinds of guns or ammunition?
One of the questions that bothers me the most is this: why are most gun crimes committed by men? Why do white boys gravitate toward spectacular public shoot outs and why do black and brown boys shoot each other in our streets? What does gender tell us about guns? How does race factor in here?
Where is the line? There must be a line between between being a responsible gun owner and a criminal gun user – but where is that line? Why do some people cross it? If we believe that guns don’t kill people, but rather that people kill people, why is it so hard to regulate access to guns for the people most likely to kill people?
Why is it that gun & ammunition sales are way up at the same time that more people than ever support new gun regulations? This is very interesting to me. Are we letting the NRA / gun manufacturers win? By this, I mean: Are we all starting to feel like we have to own guns for our own protection?
If it were up to me, we would have NO guns in the world. And even though I feel that way, I am learning how to shoot a gun (just in case it’s knowledge I might someday need). I might even buy one at some point.
It’s this internal conflict that interests me the most, as it seems to be playing out across America. We have all long known that there’s too much gun violence in our country, but it took the mass execution of very young children to shake us up and get us to pay attention.
So I’m paying attention. I am trying to understand guns. Not just the physical weapon itself, but their role in our world and our feelings, as a society, about them.
These are the questions I have about guns. To start, anyway.
divatoni 