Smoking Guns and Social Ceasefires

“We do not know why this happened. We do not know how this happened. But again, to confirm, 13 are dead in rural southwest Oregon.” – CBS News

Now the local anchor is speculating that this might be the greatest number of people killed in one event in the state of Oregon. True or not, that’s still 13 bodies, and while that’s a drop in the bucket globally speaking, it’s worth having a conversation about.

A real conversation. You know, the kind where people listen to each other before they respond. The kind where we at least pretend to be interested in the other side’s perspective before we explode like a hydrogen bomb of self-righteousness and vitriol. Without even looking at Twitter – intentionally, I might add – I know for a fact that there are folks on both sides of the gun control debate screaming through their keyboards that the other side are idiots, monsters, and evil bastards.

But with a few exceptions, that’s bullshit. Evil is an idea, not a reality. Granted, it’s an idea that influences reality, and there are those who apparently let that idea so deeply infiltrate their worldview that it becomes a part of who they are. Was this shooter evil? Chances are, he was crazy as a shithouse rat, lonely to the point of being suicidal, and totally devoid of empathy. He was scum. And he had a gun. Or guns. Or a goddamn arsenal.

That will be at the crux of the public’s outrage. Guns will be blamed. People will be blamed. They’re both right. Would this have happened if we had tougher gun laws as a country? Could it have been avoided if the campus security guard was armed? Ask away.

Just stop shouting at each other. Just stop shooting at each other.

Now a student being interviewed at Umpqua Community College is saying that, from a young age, we’re taught what to do in an active shooter situation. That’s pretty fucked.

Like every red-blooded male with whom I grew up, I played with toy guns as a kid. We played at war, and we set up our G.I. JOE guys in elaborate tableaus of impending fake violence. I went on to listen to gangster rap and watch John Woo movies, and even fantasized about busting a cap in a sucker’s ass on multiple occasions. There were guns in my house growing up, though they were dusty and locked in a cabinet in the basement. Never did I consider taking them out and using them.

Granted, I was raised in a loving home, and had plenty of friends. Can’t say I was ever bullied, though I got in my fair share of fights. I’ve had moments in my life where I felt utterly alone and hated the world, but even in my darkest nadirs of misanthropy, I only wished for a global pandemic, alien invasion, or zombie-pocalypse – you know, like in the movies.

For whatever reason, I never found myself at a true breaking point. I never considered actually taking the steps to end somebody else’s life. I never connected the guns in the basement with the world outside. They were abstractions, completely unrelated to the hate in my gut. I may be a lot of unpleasant things, but I’m not a murderer.

In 1995, when I graduated high school, I didn’t know of any mass shootings in schools, except those that had been perpetrated at Kent State by the government and Charles Whitman’s clock-tower massacre at the University of Texas at Austin. Kip Kinkel’s rampage at Thurston was three years away, and the Columbine shootings were four.

That’s no longer the case. Seems like there’s a new shooting every few months now, if not a few new shootings every month. There’s some serious disconnection going on in America. Is it because we view the world through the lens of social networks and video games, where individuals are no more than pixels and strings of exclamation marks? Is it because there are more of us than ever before battling for fewer resources? Just asking questions. Willing to listen to your responses.

I don’t personally own a gun, and I have no plans to do so. I do have a lot of friends who own guns, ranging from handguns to shotguns, and not one of them has ever killed someone. They are responsible gun owners, and I think they should be able to own guns. I’ve never been one to believe that the rights of smart, well-adjusted people should be limited by the weakness of stupid, crazy, racist, or violent people. Once we go down that road, we’re all living in a grade-school cafeteria where everyone has to stay in at lunch because one kid was horsing around. I don’t want to live in a world where the lowest common denominator sets the bar under which we all must stoop to crawl.

Having said that, there are a lot more important issues in this world than whether or not you get to keep your guns. People are struggling to feed their families and save their homes. Around the world, warlords and despots are using rape as a weapon to control entire populations. There’s an island of plastic and sludge floating in the Pacific that’s at least the size of Texas. A bunch of people were just killed in Roseburg. Your guns are some unimportant shit in the big scheme of things. If you live in the wilderness, and actually use your rifle to hunt, and the meat you harvest is your primary form of sustenance, then your gun might actually be considered vital. If you’re so moronic and deluded that you think you have a chance of defending yourself against the U.S. government with your paltry pantry of puny popguns, then the availability of psychological services is a bigger issue for you than the second amendment.

Those two paragraphs likely angered some of you. I won’t apologize, but my intention isn’t to inflame. I don’t believe in drastic gun control, but I do believe in consistently applied background checks. I don’t believe that good people should have their rights infringed upon because of bad people, but I also believe that there are more important rights than to bear arms. I also believe that exploring options isn’t the same thing as a conspiracy to take away your firearms. Either I’m just covering my ass, or I’m like a lot of other people out there in that I’m not an extremist.

We need to stop choosing sides and arming ourselves: With the titles of Republican or Democrat, Liberal or Conservative; with words meant to incite rather than exchange ideas and move toward consensus; with distrust of anyone who thinks differently than us and the desire to control them and force them to live their lives, or end their lives, in the ways we think righteous.

This is a hot take. I don’t know all the facts. What I do know is that I’d rather write something that attempts to get a conversation going than funnel my anger and frustration into a diatribe against anyone. It’s that kind of reactive, lashing-out mentality that undermines the potentially great country in which we live. Feel free to tell me I fucked up, my perspective is bullshit, or that I’m a gun-defending/gun-attacking asshole. My hope is that you, too, will avoid that impulse. The next time somebody flings that dookie in your direction, smile, imagine whatever medieval revenge scenario makes you giggle, and then DON’T DO SHIT ABOUT IT. Instead, ask them to explain, try to listen, and politely offer your perspective. If all else fails, go home, pet your dogs or cats, and try to remember that it’s mostly good to be alive.