Missing the Gun Forest for the Gun Trees

Think our gun "problems" are intractable? Think again.

Ready? Aim…Let’s set it all on fire. (Photo by Gabriella Marks)

Andrew was obsessed with Humphrey Bogart. Every conversation, if it wasn’t about John Garfield, and those were just really conversational ramps to Bogart, ended up being about Bogart. In those days though Asperger’s Syndrome might have had a name, we didn’t know that’s that what it was.

What it was, was that Andrew spent all of his waking time thinking or talking about Bogart. Every line from every Bogart movie. Every fun fact connected to the man’s life. And the entire family tree of Bogartalia was Andrew’s deal.

There was no love more abiding, and none quite so complete. And that word “love” is not used casually here. It’s not a stretch, at all, to say that Andrew loved Bogart. Because, in all earnestness, I’m quite sure, he’s never loved anything as much. For whatever reason.

I say this by way of prelude to explain how Second Amendment folks feel about their guns.

Standing in a prepper’s garage in a location he wouldn’t share with me prior to me getting there — he directed me there by calls from pay phones and yellow tape fluttering off of nondescript fence posts on a relatively deserted highway — we surveyed his massive arsenal. Massive, my word, not his.

Floor to ceiling vaults and more munitions than I’ve ever seen in any one place at any one time. It was like we were in church, a comparison that was apt given his ardent Christianity. Jim Wesley, Rawles had me gather up a desired selection of things he wanted me to shoot, along with things that I wanted to shoot.

Similarly if there’s no energy behind restricting the criminal use of firearms in the marketplace might we also just change the marketplace?

Though he later directed me to not post any images from that day for fear that Google image searches would reveal his location, he did OK a few photos of me firing off of his back porch. All of this against a background of life in America that sees kids, babies really, shot in school, in malls, in playgrounds, on city streets, all over the place. At this point in 2023, as of this writing, there have been 133 mass shootings.

133.

If at this point in 2023 you had told me that you had gotten laid 133 times, I’d be impressed. If you told me that you had 133 pairs of shoes? The same. And, if you keep in mind that ONE does not equal MASS, you also know that 133 mass shootings means that well more than ONE person was shot, and killed, during these engagements.

Then: the bullshit thoughts and prayers two step, and a congressional shrug in the face of the query, “well what can we do?”

Gun aficionados heatedly, and sometimes correctly, end up defensively stating that this has nothing to do with them. In this they might be correct. Where they are incorrect is in assessing the opposition. The opposition that largely misunderstands the totemic, quasi-religious, and truly and deeply felt affection that many have for their firearms.

Eric B. (he of Eric B and Rakim) once was quoted as saying that he had never told a woman that he loved her but that he had said this to his Rolls Royce. Further studies have shown that the portions of straight men’s brains where love and lust exist are fired in similar ways when they look at both pictures of attractive women and objects that they covet.

Make all of the jokes you want about penile overcompensation the reality is and remains, these feelings are real, ardent and not to be replaced by much else. Loading the armaments back in Rawles’ garage I found we were whispering as we did so against a silence that was almost reverential.

And still nine-year-olds are being buried today.

And still there’s “nothing” we can do about keeping them from meeting untimely death at the hands of the damaged who want to exercise their Second Amendment rights as a way to say some version of “I told you so.”

But there IS something that can be done.

If you’re of a certain age you might remember a time when a comedic meme had involved the hijacking of commercial airlines to Cuba. Some wild-eyed hijacker would jump up on some variety show and scream “TAKE ME TO CUBA!” Cue laugh track and Goldie Hawn intoning “Sock it to me baby!!!”

That same skit today? Nothing but crickets. Because even after 9/11 the hijacking of jets for political ends is just not part of our current calculus.

Back to School Nite: The 2023 Version

Ruggedized cockpit doors, armed air marshals, x-ray machines, gun powder detectors, industry verticals all along the line have created processes and procedures that while many who have to fly would claim have lowered our quality of life, have also lowered our concerns about being Shanghai’d to Cuba.

Similarly if there’s no energy behind restricting the criminal use of firearms in the marketplace might we also just change the marketplace? While there might be some resistance to making schools as hard to get into as Fort Knox, it’s nothing when compared to burying nine-year-olds.

In Israel guards with machine guns hang out in supermarkets. An excess of caution or just the right amount? Well, there’s a merciless realism that controls life there, so no one is under any illusion that things are just going to “work out.” They’re taking precautions to try to tilt things in favor of them doing so.

To wit: as much of a pain in the ass as it might be to go national with the kind of misery that we need to endure to fly these days it’s still minor when it comes to burying minors. Or any one else really with no interest in being shot while shopping for eggs.

So, if we can’t keep the guns off of the street, and believe me, this will never be possible, can we just raise the white flag and work on keeping us safe from those who would do us harm? Safe rooms, hardened doors, perimeter checks, personality profiles and more might work well in guaranteeing that life inside remains safe inside. Like The Walking Dead, there’ll be no one in here but us chickens. And non-zombies.

Or, even more creepily, at the Salesforce building in San Francisco a debate has started over public spaces. Rather than sponsor parks and open spaces outside of their building, Marc Benioff, the CEO, has had them construct gardens inside the building. While technically open to the “public” there are levels that you have to pass through to get there, which serves to effectively root out unhoused folks.

On the one hand being able to enjoy a sandwich during lunch without sidestepping human excrement seems to be a positive, on the other hand, well these are not the parks we grew up with. Which seems to be the key.

Life as we knew it has ceased to be a life that we know or recognize. So, maybe, let’s jail ourselves, locking the doors, windows and walls against the dangerous, while leaving the rest of the asylum to the lunatics and hope that we can stop burying our kids.

Sound crazy? More or less crazy than believing “thoughts and prayers” are a useful antidote to just about anything?

And versus…what? The continued dead dance of death and our later expressed mock concern?

Yeah. Exactly.