Loving Our Guns

“We love our guns more than we love our children.’

How many times have you read or heard that sentiment in the aftermath of Nashville or any of the other child massacres unique to our exceptional nation?

But that statement is so untrue and so unfair!  We Americans don’t love our guns more than we love our children.  We love our guns more than we love other people’s children.

America’s affection for guns is not primarily rooted in the Second Amendment, although that becomes a convenient and comfortable distraction from the truth we should face:  We love our guns and many other things more than we love other people’s children.

I don’t write to argue for “common sense” gun control.  Those tepid proposals skirt the issue, despite the sincerity with which they may be offered.  The “common sense” approach to deadly weapons would be to banish them from civilized society, not to wallow in endless, unproductive debate about magazine capacity, muzzle velocity or bump stocks.  

But we are a rugged, freedom-loving, individualist society where one gets what he deserves and deserves what he gets.  Other people’s children are other people’s problem. 

We have a shameful rate of child poverty.  Our neonatal mortality rate is that of the Third World.  Our public schools are deteriorating in most urban population centers.  Our child welfare system is broken. We will not provide guaranteed parental leave.  Children are poisoned by lead in water and paint.  Is it a surprise that we can’t - sorry - won’t choose to protect children by addressing the epidemic of gun violence that kills children?  As constantly noted this week, gun violence is now the #1 cause of child death in the United States.  But those are other people’s children - until they aren’t.

There is something deeply broken in our country.  I read scores of social media posts after the Nashville murders.  Many of them involved guns.  Not banning or “controlling” them. Using them to rid our communities of wickedness, i.e. transgender humans.  Threats to use them on anyone who would dare to restrict our precious right to self-defense.  Members of Congress wear assault rifle pins on their lapels.  

Tennessee’s  Republican Governor, Bill Lee has worked hand in glove with the NRA to loosen gun laws.  Now he offers thoughts and prayers.  According to the New Republic:

“Just last month, Tennessee Republicans embarked on another push to allow all 18- and 19-year-old residents to carry handguns without permits. The House version of the bill changes the policy to include any firearm, not just handguns—and yes, this would include weapons the likes of AR-15 rifles and shotguns.” 

It is only a matter of time until guns are sold with “thoughts and prayers” decals, offering advanced condolences to the families of the eventual victims. 

I am deeply frustrated by the constant concessions made to the culture of guns and violence.  Even President Biden, speaking immediately after children were slaughtered, found it necessary to mention his two shotguns, as though one can’t be credible without expressing a few weapons bona fides.  I found that reference infuriating.  Every weapon, even good ol’ Joe’s shotguns, are designed and manufactured to do great harm to a sentient being.  I need no lecture on the difference between killing children with an assault weapon and shooting ducks with a 12 gauge. But the similarities are arguably as great as the differences - distant bookends on a long continuum of entitlement and domination.

I’ve written over and over again that the stubborn insistence on the “right to bear arms” is paired with the “right to use arms.”  No person buys a gun for decorative value. It sits in a pocket, drawer, glove box, holster or gun rack until its owner determines that its use is justified.  In every case of mass murder, the perpetrator believed passionately that their personal sense of injustice justified their use of deadly force.

A New York Times column this week by conservative Ross Douthat started this way: “"One of the notable dynamics of American life today is that conservatives report being personally happier than liberals . . .”

I also need no lecture on compassionate conservatism, but many conservatives are happier because they don’t carry the weight of empathy or the social responsibility to care for others’ children as you do for your own.  The insistence on the “right to bear arms” is arrogant dance partner to the anti-mask and anti-vaccination attitude.  “You can’t tell me what to do.”  

The broad consequences of these attitudes are utterly lost on the stubborn patriots who care deeply about the “rights” closest to them and don’t give a damn about the “wrongs” furthest from them:  the most vulnerable, whether the hungry children in the South Bronx or the dead children on the floor of the Covenant School. 

My dear friend, the late Reverend William Sloane Coffin, Jr., was for a time the President of SANE/Freeze, now Peace Action.  He often described the future of nuclear weapons as, “Eventually, no country will have them or every country will have them.”  

It is tragically analogous to guns in America.  We won’t get rid of them, so almost everyone will have them.  

Postscript:  As I let the draft of this post ferment, just two days after six humans were riddled with bullets, I went for a mountain bike ride on local pathways to ease my nagging discomfort.  From just beyond a nearby hill, the rat-a-tat-tat from the local gun range rang out defiantly, “My right! My right!”