Shoot Your Mouth; Keep Your Gun Holstered

(Please note: I didn't use any of the gunmen's names in this entry. I couldn't remember them and didn't want to look them up on Google. They lost the right to be named when they ended innocent lives.)

I have stayed silent on the recent rash of gun-related violence that's made the news. Then I realized, I'm not being honest about it. I am blogging because I want to get my point of view out there; if I'm not being honest about my point of view, then I'm failing. So here it is. I really hate guns. I have maybe once in my life held a gun. Maybe. They are heavier than what they seem on TV. From what I understand, it takes a lot of physical pressure to pull the trigger on most guns. In my mind, I imagine that in exerting the physical energy to squeeze the trigger, one spends an equal amount of time exerting mental energy deciding if pulling the trigger is necessary.

I am not anti-gun, nor am I an opponent of the second amendment. I do, however, feel that the NRA and other special interest groups misinterpret that amendment in the name of making money. Really, at the bottom of any hot-topic issue in Washington is money. So I'm not an idealist; I get that both sides of the aisle have an equal amount of special interest groups throwing money at politicians to get their legislation passed. It raised a stink in California when some councilmen tried to pass legislation mandating that foods be labeled as genetically modified. Obviously, the makers of sugary, starchy, pre-packaged food items don't want another bullseye on their food that might hurt profits. I get it. USA is a country run by money.

So I'm not naive. I am not sitting here thinking that we need to ban all guns, or that police officers should carry signs that say "stop, thief." I understand that there are people who live off the land. Ranchers need guns  to protect their herds. I eat meat; I get that by doing so, I'm endorsing the murder of animals. My uncle has hunted for years; since he was young. He has always had a number of rifles around his house and, more recently, a high-tech bow and arrow. I've eaten venison; I know the deer aren't lying down saying, "please, kill me, I want your family to eat me."

I was still coming of age when Columbine happened, though. I saw the devastating effects that guns can have on people's lives. Here were two young men, outcasts yes, but really, they were just kids. They plotted something on a scale the likes of which was just unheard of at the time. They had multiple guns, multiple types of guns, and a crazy amount of ammunition. That they purchased from KMart.

And here's where I depart ideologically with pro-gun advocates. I understand going into the woods and sitting with your buddies, drinking a beer and waiting for deer. I wouldn't do it myself, but I get that it happens and could be fun. There's duck-hunting. I get that, too, the idea of being patient and having the marksmanship to hit a moving target. Nobody who hunts, though, would venture into the woods with an automatic or semi-automatic weapon. I think it would be ridiculous to consider hunters pumping so much lead into a deer as to render it unrecognizable. I can't imagine that they'd bring multiple clips for said weapons; firing off just one clip of a weapon of that magnitude would scare off all of the wildlife in the vicinity.

So then, I can't understand why it's okay to sell automatic weapons at all. The mastermind of the Aurora, Colorado, shooting executed a plan he had worked on for months. He purchased his weapons, the ammunition and all of his other supplies legally. He passed a background check. He had everything shipped to his house. He broke no laws preparing for his massacre. I'll type that again. He broke no laws preparing for his massacre. He only started breaking the law as he re-entered the movie theater and started randomly mowing people down.

I don't understand the mindset. There have been a few people in my life I've hated. Stewing in that becomes all-consuming. I have been known to think of non-lethal ways to exact revenge on said people. In instances where I really hate someone, even the mention of their name or sound of their voice will cause my scalp to prickle. I will admit that I have wasted a lot of time on this emotion. It eats me alive while the other person continues to live their life as if nothing is wrong. The best description of this principle is that it's like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die. Final analysis demonstrates it's better to just let things go.

Even in my worst moments, when I'm raw with betrayal, when humiliation is draped around my shoulders, I cannot conceive of ending someone else's life. I don't own a gun because even if someone were breaking into my home, threatening my life, I wouldn't want to be responsible for ending theirs. I would hate to be mistaken. There is no way to undo a gunshot wound. I've heard on the news multiple times that the police have killed young men who they believed were armed but weren't. The police are trained for those instances, but I would suspect that years later, those mistakes haunt their dreams.

So I can't, in any realm of existence, understand why someone would plan for months to end the lives of random fellow human beings. We are "why" junkies in this country; we want to know why someone went so far off the reservation. I read an article on MSNBC that this man's parents received death threats from people. They are being held responsible for this young man's actions because everyone wants to believe that this evil came from somewhere. We all want to believe that the people we work next to everyday wear crazy on the outside, in the same way you'd wear a brooch or cufflinks.

I mean, really....we had one guy who tried to set off a bomb that he had hidden in his shoe. One guy. Now, everyone is supposed to take off their shoes. We want to believe that we've got terror and evil figured out, that there's some way to control it. I have never heard the TSA or anyone else report that they have found another shoe bomber.

I don't know why this young man cracked. Who knows if we ever will. Those of his type are usually chatty, or have a long-winded anti-humanity manifesto. Sometimes they have a video with a crazy, winding rant about why they did things. Watching those things, we can understand--"yeah, that guy, he looked crazy." This guy, on the other hand, has been deathly quiet. No one has been able to make heads or tails of his motive.

Crazy is tough to cure. There's no real screening process that's foolproof. It's tough to pass laws about crazy; heck, we can't even pass laws forcing schizophrenics to take their medicine. (I do agree that people shouldn't be forced to take medication, but then I'm kind of nuts about not being forced to choose about things.)

But we can pass tougher gun laws. What conceivable reason is there to manufacture and sell, to the average person, an automatic rifle? I understand that police officers (who have been well-trained and respect the power of the weapons) need a reserve of these weapons. I could argue that countries like England, where the police officers don't even carry guns, seem to have a handle on it. They have much less gun violence there than we do. But I'll concede that there are professionals, who, by the very nature of their job, need to be armed with such a weapon. They have been screened extensively for crazy. They are meticulous and methodical both in the use of and respect for their weapons.

There is no reason this guy should have had access to that kind of weapon. There just isn't. He wasn't trying to form a militia; he was one person. He wasn't trying to defend himself; he went into a sold-out theater and started randomly shooting people. He wasn't being attacked by a tyrannical government; in fact, the government allowed him to become armed.

I saw posts on Facebook that said that the whole thing could have ended if just one other person had a weapon. The logic is faulty; it's like saying, we as a world would survive nuclear war if all countries had nuclear weapons. I can't imagine that the average person, say myself, would have the presence of mind in a noisy, panic-filled theater, to locate the shooter (remember, the patrons said at first they thought the gunfire was a part of the movie itself) and gun him down without missing on the first shot and accidentally hitting someone else.

I will never own a gun. I don't care if someone took me to the shooting range every day and trained me to use it. I don't care if I was like Spiderman and had super-heightened senses. There is no way to prepare to use a weapon under duress. It lends itself to making errors in judgement. I don't want the burden of someone else's life on my shoulders. Eyewitness accounts are often the worst accounts of a situation. Our minds get so overwhelmed with what's happening that it's impossible to make intelligent decisions. Often, the people who have seen the gunman are the worst at describing what (s)he looks like.

I can't imagine that our forefathers, when framing the Constitution, dreamed that the second amendment would be used by gun manufacturers to defend their right to make and market semi- and fully-automatic weapons. Back then, it took a long time between shots. It's almost comical to think of this guy walking into the theater with a Revolutionary war-era musket and inflicting any kind of damage. The entire crowd would have tackled him before he ever got a second shot off. I think it's time to acknowledge that those who have the most to gain from making these weapons should exercise the most responsibility. Stop selling them to laypeople. Stop making them readily available. Set it up so that there are appointed people from within police departments and military branches (and only them) that have clearance to purchase these weapons.

I don't think that seems like a crazy idea. I know I'm a liberal and the other side of the aisle would say I'm wanting to strip American citizens of their basic rights. Don't you think the victims and their families of the Aurora shooting had rights, too? We're supposed to all have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We can't all have a right to life if there are those among us who have the right to end it with impunity.