This damn essay was stuffed in back of the fridge at the end of the year. I couldn’t get a handle on what else to say. It’s now April 20, and many mass shootings ago, but nothing is different.
Thanksgiving Thoughts
It’s Thanksgiving morning. I had been working on this post for several days, referring to the working copy as “The Ninety Percent.” My writing needs a stern editing hand to make it fit for public consumption. I started in three days ago.
That was two mass shootings ago.
Again, every week, a shooting with multiple victims plays out in all the corners of America. There are prayers. There is a earnest cry to stop this madness. And it inevitably simmers down and slides off the news lead after a day or two, and the horror is re-enacted with barely enough variation between the events to distinguish one from another.
The only time any particular shooting is memorialized, is when there is a long enough pause before the next shooting that the details of the last shooting have time to sink in.
Since the Fourth of July this year, Chesapeake, Virginia; Colorado Springs, Colorado; St. Louis, Missouri; Raleigh, North Carolina; Oakland, California; Phoenix, Arizona; Bend, Oregon; Greenwood, Indiana and Highland Park, Illinois have been featured for a brief flash as the sites of mass murder. Most of these we’ve already forgotten about. Sixty-three innocent citizens lost their lives in motels, schools, nightclubs, stores, shopping centers, food courts and parades. They were in the wrong place at the wrong time. We are protected not by laws or society but by statistics. The chance that you will be murdered in a mass shooting is really low, so take comfort from that.
Will it ever stop?
It can.
Who Has Guns in America?
There is a vast number of American gun owners with very little in common except their private possession and free use of guns. The nutcases and nihilists who wish to end many lives, come from this group. The hunters come from this group. The target shooters come from this group. There is no hope of stopping the madness without turning to this group.
Three in 10 adults say they personally own a gun, while four in 10 say they live in a household where someone owns a gun, according to a 2017 survey from Pew Research Center. (Ref. CNN)
On the whole, gun owners are more likely to be White and male. They’re also more likely to live in rural areas and identify as Republican.
Remember, about 44% of adults who identify as Republican or lean Republican say they own a gun, while just 20% of those who identify as Democrat or lean Democrat say they do, according to Pew.
Look carefully at the last statistic. Most Republicans do not own guns. Many Democrats do. Gun ownership is strongly correlated with residence rural areas.
Reports estimate that of the 265 million privately owned firearms in the US, about half are owned by 3% of the US adult population. And while about half of gun owners own one or two guns, 8% of gun owners own 10 or more – a figure that amounts to about 40% of the total US gun stock, according to the report.
Local Control and the Second Amendment
The tradition of local control of guns was long held as reasonable in the United States. Very recently, the activist Supreme Court has taken on that position, using a civil rights tradition to find for national protection of gun ownership.
The two cases of District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) and McDonald v. City of Chicago (2010) that the Second Amendment is incorporated by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and thereby applies to state and local laws as well as federal laws. (ref. Wikipedia) More recently, in 2022, the Supreme Court ruled in the case New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen "that the Second and Fourteenth Amendments protect an individual’s right to carry a handgun for self-defense outside the home."
The change is in the understanding of the Second Amendment from a principle of rights into an absolute commandment more powerful than the First and Fourth Amendments.
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
What Amendment?
An observation which does not likely bear on the legitimacy of the Amendment, is that the Amendment was stated differently when presented for ratification in different states.
The following were different versions voted on for the ratification of the Bill of Rights:
A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.
A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.
Although such passage of different amendments without reconciliation would cast a deep cloud on proposed amendments today, such variation was not sufficient to invalidate the Second Amendment’s passage at the time. They do, however, suggest that the alternate wording was seen to be identical in meaning when issued for ratification.
Safety with Firearms
For working discussion, remember that there are 90% of gun owners who do not, and never can, pose a threat to their fellow humans. I am not proposing statistical certainty - perhaps it is 99%, perhaps 99.9% who are unable to significantly threaten others.
To make huge inroads into the American culture which uneasily sustains the re-emergence of mass murder, here and there but every week, we need to ignore the 90%, or 99% - whatever the number is - and disarm the dangerous 1%.
But more than that. We need to turn the minds of the 99% to be aware of those within their midst.
Back to the Future - April 2023
And still nothing changes. I’ll offer a profound explanation of why this is, but the understanding might not do a damn thing to help the problem. And I offer a proposal that’s likely a non-starter in the current American mind.
Stop Glorifying Guns
That’s a buzzword phrase in the postmodern narrative of the anti-gun universe. I’ll get to what some of these details are - I don’t mean to pump out buzzwords.
Jeff Cooper, the author of the Art of the Rifle, a much more intelligent book than you-know-who had written, describes four simple and common sense rules for the handling of small firearms. His rules represent a bright line between responsible gun owners and slobs. They’re not enough to assure one that a firearms handler is safe, but they damn sure show you if someone’s an idiot, and should be shunned from beyond the distance a bullet can travel. Rather than expound on the rules, which are all over the ‘net, I’ll mention his rules as a shibboleth for assessing the handling of firearms and the fool behind the sights.
As an aside, to better understand the mature and rational role of firearms in America is In Gravest Extreme: The Role of the Firearm in Personal Protection, by Massad Ayoob. He’s a rare bird in the firearms rags and publications. He’s a big advocate of running away, giving up your money if armed and shaken down for cash. He’s a grownup in a world populated by too many fat ignorant child-persons. These two books on the shelf make you an informed person in the world of firearms, whether you hate them or love them.
The entertainment media presents a shocking and terrifyingly wrong world to American audiences. One never-broken rule is that if a firearm is shown on screen, it will be fired before the show is over, usually at a person.
Most American police never unholster a firearm during the course of their career. Even fewer discharge the firearm. You wouldn’t know that from the shows, whether in news or entertainment. Audience members of all types want a show, and a show gets better with a bang.
In real-life firearms discharge, except in mass shootings with a perpetrator, most users of firearms aren’t very good at it. I think the police strike a human target 30% of the time; bad guys with the pistols held sideways and no target practice, hit maybe 10% or so. At thirty feet, the accuracy drops to single-digits and below. The most effective thing to do is run. At 50 feet in the real world, you might as well be behind a concrete wall. Don’t fight, run away.
But you’d never find these things out in the entertainment industry.
One effective idea that has little chance of success would be to institute a “Hayes Code for Firearms” in the movie industry. Censorship, yes - but censorship of false and misleading portrayals of firearm handling and use in the entertainment world. I’d propose #Mas Ayoob or a similar firearms expert or panel to simply enforce Cooper’s Rules and not allow the portrayal of careless methods of firearm handling on the screen. Call them a Firearms Safety Board, with the authority to censor the portrayal of dangerous firearms handling.
What, no Reservoir Dogs? Leave Reservoir Dogs alone, you censors! It’s a horribly violent movie - just what American audiences demand! There movie portrays some very bad people, including ones who don’t handle a straight razor with good intent towards others. It’s all about scary violence. But that’s not the point of the censors.
The Firearms Safety Board should ban dangerous and nonsensical portrayal of firearms that might lead to worsening of firearms handling in the general public. Shooting guns out of peoples’ hands doesn’t happen, has never happened, and should be banned from the screen. The hero running across a fusillade of machine gun fire. That stuff.
There are self-evident, fair and mature rules to make firearms handling and portrayal safe. The problem is the slobs. The horrific killing of Halyna Hutchins by Alec Baldwin on the set of Rust is blamed on Baldwin, and his violation of Cooper’s rules. But the set was run by slobs from the get-go, IMHO. If you are going to PORTRAY firearms on stage or screen, the set should have a comprehensive series of safety rules for the filming of scenes with firearms. A few of the obvious:
No real firearms period, except in scenes which require the discharge of blanks. These should be secured in safes when not on set being used.
No real ammunition on the set. EVER, EVER, EVER.
A “Hayes Auditor” for the Firearms Safety Board should be on set, representing the firearms safety board, to advise in real time what’s unacceptable portrayal. Genchi Genbutsu, in Japanese, simply means to watch where it’s happening, not from a desk.
And the Second Amendies will scream bloody murder to preserve Alec Baldwin’s right to kill Halyna Hutchins by means of a series of tragic screwups. You know it. It takes no brains to screech when someone speaks ill of firearms.
But you know who will hate it? The people who want to see blood and guts and pretend that what’s on screen mirrors reality. You know the type. Most of us.
I’ve got to get back to the Big Picture, the useless insight part, later. But at least I’d like to offer my ten cents about firearms and the eternal unmoving mess.
Man shoots girl, six, and her parents after ball rolls into his backyard.