Guns (Kindle Single)

example;
the wrangle over immigration is another; the argument over gun control is a
third. Political discourse as it once existed in America has given way to
useless screaming. On second thought, forget the finger pullers. We’re like
drunks in a barroom. No one’s listening because everyone is too busy thinking
about what they’re going to say next, and absolutely prove that the
current speaker is so full of shit he squeaks.
    That makes my task in writing this essay dispiriting. Given
my liberal creds, those of a blue persuasion are already forming a choir, ready
to say amen and right on, brother , as I preach the Gospel of Gun
Control. And those of a red persuasion have already moved on (possibly to the
comforting scripture of the Rev. Rush Limbaugh), or come to this essay with
their shoulders hunched and their fists clenched, itching to begin long-winded
blogs that will explain how naïve I am, how wrong my facts are, and how I should
stick to writing books.
    Drunks in a barroom.
    Jesus wept.
    Only I’m not a drunk, and although I’m a blue-state American
now, I was raised a red one, and I’ve spent my life with at least half of one
foot still in that camp. It gives me a certain perspective. It also allows me
to own my handguns — I have three — with a clear conscience.
    Even if I were politically and philosophically open to
repealing the Second Amendment (I’m not), I don’t believe that repeal, or even
modification, would solve the problem of gun violence in America, particularly
violence of the sort that’s at the root of that problem. Although I need to add
that I also believe strict gun control would save thousands of lives. Later,
we’ll talk about Australia, where that has happened.
    Pass it for now, though. Let’s talk about reality. The death
toll at the Sandy Hook school was 26, and I mourn every one of them, but the
number of homicides in Chicago last year exceeded 500. That’s 200 more than the
number of American troops killed in Afghanistan during the same period. And
let’s remember that our troops volunteered to go in harm’s way. Their bodies
come home to parades and flag-draped coffins. The dead of Chicago — 107 of them
children, some just waiting to get on the school bus — don’t get the hero
treatment, but they are just as dead. Gun control would do little to change
that situation, because the guns are already out there and the great majority
of them are being bought, sold, and carried illegally.
    The best we can do for handgun violence is to impose strict
mandatory prison sentences on those who use them or carry them concealed
without a license to do so (plus background checks, which I’ll get to). Los
Angeles and New York (other cities, too) have tried the carrot as well as the
stick, in the form of gun buyback programs. Good luck to them. In LA, over
8,000 guns — and two rocket launchers — have been turned in for cash since
2009. Sound good? Maybe, until you add this: in 2012 alone, Californians bought three-quarters of a million rifles and handguns. Honey, that’s a lot of
firepower.
    Liberals and gun control advocates (they are not exactly the
same, no matter what paranoids like Mr. Wayne LaPierre may try to tell you)
understand that a great many horses have already left the barn, and that’s one
reason why the gun control issue flares, then dies until the next high-profile
shooting. The libs think of the millions of guns already out there, and their
shoulders just slump. Even those most passionate on the subject give off a
faint what’s-the-use vibe.
    You might think things would be different in Newtown,
Connecticut, where the Sandy Hook shootings took place, but it’s not; it’s
still drunks in a barroom. After all, Colt Firearms is just up the road, in
Hartford, and honey, that’s a lot of jobs. The starry blue dome marking the old
Colt factory is a city landmark for good reason.

IV. Culture of Violence
    I also don’t believe the NRA’s assertion — articulated by
Mr. LaPierre each time there’s another mass murder by gun in a school or a
shopping mall — that America’s so-called “culture of violence” plays a
significant role in kid-on-kid school shootings. That this idea has gained even
a shred of acceptance simply proves what George Orwell knew when he wrote 1984 :
if you say a thing often enough, it will be accepted as truth. Let me be frank:
The idea that America exists in a culture of violence is bullshit. What America
exists in is a