Guns (Kindle Single)

that seriously wounded Congressman Gabby Giffords,
Loughner was able to fire so fast that the killing was over before many of the
horrified onlookers realized what was happening and opened their mouths to
scream.
    James Holmes, who killed twelve and wounded fifty-eight in
an Aurora, Colorado, movie theater, was carrying an M-16 rifle (thirty-round
capacity) and a .40 caliber Glock, with a clip that can hold up to seventeen
rounds.
    In addition to the Glock 10 Adam Lanza used to kill himself,
he carried a Bushmaster AR-15, a light, easily handled, pistol-gripped
semiautomatic rifle that can fire thirty rounds in under a minute. In his war
against the first grade, Lanza fired multiple thirty-round clips.
    As for the Glock: it was pried from his cold dead hands.

VI. No Solutions; Reasonable Measures
    I have nothing against gun owners, sport shooters, or
hunters (as long as it’s varmints they’re after, or, in the case of bigger
game, they eat what they kill), but the weapons noted above are not used to
shoot skeet or kill deer. If you used a Bushmaster on a deer in anything but
single-shot mode, you’d turn the poor thing into hair-covered meatloaf.
Semi-automatics have only two purposes. One is so owners can take them to the
shooting range once in awhile, yell yeehaw, and get all horny at the rapid fire
and the burning vapor spurting from the end of the barrel. Their other use —
their only other use — is to kill people.
    In the wake of the Sandy Hook shootings, gun advocates have
to ask themselves if their zeal to protect even the outer limits of gun
ownership have anything to do with preserving the Second Amendment as a whole,
or if it’s just a stubborn desire to hold onto what they have, and to hell with
the collateral damage. If that’s the case, let me suggest that fuck you,
Jack, I’m okay is not a tenable position, morally speaking.
    I read a jaw-dropping online defense of these weapons from a
California woman recently. Guns, she said, are just tools. Like spoons, she
said. Would you outlaw spoons simply because some people use them to eat too
much?
    Lady, let’s see you try to kill twenty schoolkids with a
fucking spoon .
    Guns are not tools — not unless you reverse a pistol and use
the butt to hammer in a nail. Guns are weapons. Autos and semi-autos are
weapons of mass destruction. When lunatics want to make war on the unarmed and
unprepared, these are the weapons they use. In most cases, they are bought
legally. These killing-machines are for sale on the Internet as I speak. The
real question is hackneyed, but I suppose it has to be asked: How many have to
die before we will give up these dangerous toys? Do the murders have to be in
the mall where you shop? In your own neighborhood? In your own family? One
hopes for a little more public spirit and citizenship than that, even in this
politically double-fucked country. A gun is not a bit like a spoon. A gun is
like a gun.
    In January 2013, President Obama announced — to the
predictable howls of outrage from America’s right wing — twenty-three executive
orders and three major initiatives to help curb the spread of guns and stiffen
penalties for illegal use and possession. (The NRA’s response was a vile ad
suggesting that Obama’s daughters were receiving special treatment, as though a
terrorist attack on the Chief Executive’s family were not even a possibility …
don’t these guys watch shows like Homeland ?) What it all boils down to
is a trio of reasonable measures to curb gun violence. I list them in ascending
order, from the one most likely to happen to the one least likely.
    • Comprehensive and universal background
checks . This probably will happen, and not a moment too soon. For one
thing, it would entail a waiting period, and that alone might stop a number of
would-be mass killers. Remember that two school shooters, Dustin Pierce and
Michael Carneal, expressed incredulity at what they had done only moments
later. James Holmes, the movie theater shooter, was apprehended as he stood
beside his car, in a daze. Violent emotions (especially in teenagers like
Pierce, Carneal, and Loukaitis) are like spring tornadoes in the Midwest: their
departure is as sudden as their violent arrival. Given a chance to think, even
for 48 hours, would be enough to stop at least some of these guys. Not all —
Harris and Klebold planned for months, and only an act of God would have
stopped them — but some; the ones who look at what they’ve done