Let's stop perpetuating gun culture
Americans have normalized gun ownership and an armed citizenry.
Let's change attitudes.
Yesterday I heard an advocate of "common sense gun regulation" on MSNBC. She said it was common sense to change the age from from 18 to 21 for buying a military-style rifle. She had a firm, indignant tone. An 18-year-old cannot buy a beer, she said, but he can buy an AR-15. And it is perfectly legal right up until the moment he points it at people and starts killing them. That's wrong, she said. Change it to 21.
She attempted to qualify herself as a reasonable person of moderate intent before she urged this change in law. "Look," she said in a soothing, reassuring tone, "I'm not anti-gun. I'm a gun owner myself, and I love my guns, but it's only common sense to. . . ."
This pundit gave away the game.In her effort to sound reasonable and harmless she validated and confirmed current gun culture. She normalized private citizens owning, carrying, and using guns. The reason Americans have so many gun deaths in comparison with peer countries is that we are awash in guns. Guns are here so they get used. We have street violence and mass shooting events far out of proportion to the UK, France, Germany, or Japan.
Some small percentage of people are crazy, hot-headed, addicted, stupid, or for some other reason dangerously unreasonable. Every career salesperson knows it. Every owner of a restaurant or bar. Every school principal. Every politician. Put that together with ubiquitous guns, and there will be gun violence and mass shootings.The range of the "common sense" debate--age 18 or 21 for purchasing military weapons, big magazine or bigger ones--miss the reality of the real problem--the pro-gun culture.
If we are going to reduce gun violence including mass shootings, the better opening disclaimer for the pundit would have been, “I personally want no part of guns, and I think that people carrying guns is as dangerous as people having concealed carry of pet rattlesnakes, so it is only common sense to. . . .”
Change can happen. Over a 50-year period what Americans thought to be acceptable changed for smoking tobacco. People used to smoke in airplanes, indoors in offices, nearly anywhere. No longer. Over a 50-year period attitudes toward women in the professions changed. So did attitudes toward inter-racial marriage and homosexuality. Toward spitting.
In 1973 dog owners in the wealthy Beacon Hill neighborhood in Boston used to let their dogs crap on the sidewalk. They would leave it there. The sidewalks were public space. Advocates of Boston livability urged people to pick up after their dog. The idea was unthinkable at first. Pick up dog crap? Yuck! Now cleaning up after one's dog is both law and thoroughly expected. People carry plastic bags.
Far away from Boston's Beacon Hill, here in Medford, Oregon's parks areas, I observe dog walkers. Even young men (ok, most, not all) who are communicating a tough-guy don't-tread-on-me attitude with bold tattoos and an unleashed pit bull, carry a plastic baggie. What was unthinkable 50 years ago is accepted as normal now, even here. Guns could eventually be put away along with spittoons. It starts with the leaders normalizing the new behavior, and not apologizing for it.
Wrong: "Like all of us, I find it disgusting to clean up after my dog, but for reasons of public health. . . ."
Instead: "I have a dog and of course I clean up after it. . . ."
Changing gun culture will take decades. The new ideas will take hold unevenly. It may not happen at all. It is a long march.