Guns in the Crosshairs
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(This editorial, with color illustrations, was first published in the March/April 2013 issue of Sporting Classics magazine.) by Ron Spomer After tragic, horrific events like school shootings, one feels guilty writing about the pleasures of firearms. But firearms are not the issue. The Sandy Hook Elementary School murderer used a car to drive to the school. Without it, the madman couldn't have reached those poor children. That vehicle contributed to the carnage, but wasn't responsible for it. Neither were the guns. Politicians are not calling for vehicle controls, but they're sure screaming for more gun control. Such calls will be hard to resist. Many of us, even die-hard 2nd Amendment supporters, would be willing to surrender some of our “gun rights” (which are really inalienable natural rights to self-protection) if we thought this would prevent senseless mass murders. The reality is that the genie is out of this bottle and unlikely to be stuffed back in. Just as privately-owned, motorized, high-powered vehicles (which kill some 34,000 annually) are ubiquitous in our culture, so are firearms. Automatic, high-capacity firearms have been available for more than 100 years (and more easily procured prior to 1968 than today.) Some 300 million firearms are afloat in the U.S. So are about 300 gun control laws. About the only laws that have reduced gun crime are right-to-carry and mandatory sentencing. Violent crimes have declined dramatically in step with arming potential victims and locking up career criminals. But the Sandy Hook butcher wasn't a criminal. It was a monster. We've met these living nightmares before. Jeffery Dahmer. John Wayne Gacy. Not all of them are recent. Andrew Phillip Kehoe killed 38 school children, six adults and himself in Bath, MI, 1927, by placing bombs in the school and his car. The more exposure these psychologically broken people get, the more copycats they inspire through a phenomenon called the “contagion effect.” Media exposure of mass murders inspires more of the same. But no one is suggesting we muzzle the press. Not all mass murdering monsters are from the U.S., either. Gilles de Rais, in 15th century France, tortured and dismembered 80 to 200 boys. Ukranian Andrei Chikatilo murdered 52 women and children in the late 20th century. Pedro Alonso Lopez murdered more than 300 women and children in Peru, Ecuador and Columbia. We won't even touch on Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, Idi Amin... Mass murders are conducted with firearms, knives, gasoline, fertilizer and kerosene. Box cutters sufficed on 9-11. Fixating on the tools of mass murder obfuscates the real issue – protecting ourselves and kids from deranged monsters. Obviously some humans are defective. We can label this original sin, free will, the Devil or an evolutionary glitch in our psychological makeup, but Doctor Paul Quinnett, Clinical Assistant Professor at the University of Washington, suggests it is suicidal mental illness. Quinnett points out that almost all mass murderers die by suicide. I assume they express their frustration, rage and helplessness by murdering innocents just before taking their own lives. Preventing this “collateral damage” could be achieved by reducing suicides. A US Air Force study published in 2003 found that a mandatory suicide prevention/mental health promotion program reduced suicides by 33 percent, homicides by 18 percent and serious family violence by 54 percent. Quinnett recommends implementing the National Strategy for Suicide Prevention 2012 (released just last September) to significantly reduce the numbers of suicides and their attendant violence against innocents. In the meantime, we must learn to identify the mentally ill, suicidal among us or at least defend against their homicidal actions. Human killers are as much a natural danger as tornadoes, floods and fires. The president understands this. That's why he and his family are guarded 24/7 by heavily armed Secret Service police. So are some congressmen. It hardly seems right that they would deny us, the citizens who pay for their protection, our rights to similar protection. Given our penchant for safety, it strikes me odd that we don't demand this at our schools. We strap our kids into car seats and bike helmets, inoculate them against diseases, patrol their nurseries with audio monitors and smoke alarms, teach them to dial 911 and forbid them to play in meadows lest they encounter a snake. We try to outlaw tobacco, trans fats and sugary soft drinks. We pay billions for a military to guard our skies, waters and lands. When assaulted, we demand police with guns. But for seven hours a day, five days a week, nine months a year we turn our kids over to unarmed, helpless teachers in “gun free” buildings. This is willful denial of reality. This is shirking our responsibilities as parents. “Experts” whine that arming teachers or hiring school guards is too expensive, yet we hire school nurses and guidance counselors. I'm pretty sure Suzy can survive a day at school – perhaps even a week – without a counselor's guidance. Johnny might even survive a playground abrasion or bout of stomach flu without the assistance of a school nurse. But can any child survive attack from a murderous monster while teachers cower, call 911 and wait for police with guns to show up? If U.S. taxpayers can afford to pay police to protect politicians' kids, we can hire armed guards to protect ours. Many teachers recoil at the idea of arming themselves. I can understand this. We prefer the romantic notion of kindly, avuncular or motherly teachers hugging and mentoring beloved students in Utopian schools free from violence. Reality suggests we leave that to Beaver. This is not the 1950s. Drugs, gangs and kids gone wild have turned many schools into danger zones. Homicidal maniacs can turn even the best school into a tragedy. Realistically, we have but few options:
“Gun Control Option:” Prevent every potential mass murderer and psychotic (pretty much everyone) from obtaining implements of mass murder. (Gasoline, propane tanks, matches, fertilizer, firearms, swords, poison, knives, baseball bats, hammers...) In 2001 a former janitor in Osaka, Japan, used a kitchen knife in a primary school to kill eight children and wound thirteen more plus two teachers. FBI statistics show that more people in the U.S. each year are murdered with hammers and clubs (496 in 2011) than rifles (323 in 2011.) Twice as many are killed by hands and fists (728.) Knives accounted for 1,694 murder victims in 2011.
“Bar the Door Option:” If self-protection and the right of self-defense are anathema to our advanced, 21st century political myth, perhaps we could at least agree to harden school buildings and classrooms against unauthorized entry – steel doors, barred windows, perimeter fences, perhaps protective moats of spikes and concrete barriers to preclude car bombs. You can't board an airliner without being micro-examined with X-Ray vision, but you can waltz right into most schools. We build schools from fire resistant materials and plumb them with sprinklers. We engineer them to withstand earthquakes. We can't modify them to resist entry by insane killers?
“Stop the Killer Option:” Train and arm guards, principals, teachers. Again, if our first response to attacks is to call for armed police who will arrive too late, why not keep them on site? And if a police officer can appear before a school class to instruct kids on “street smarts” and personal safety, he must be capable of guarding and teaching at the same time. Why can't teachers teach and guard at the same time? This doesn't have to be mandatory or even universal. Each school can decide for itself. Each teacher can decide whether to prepare and defend or hide and hope. But each parent should have the right to select the school and teachers they feel will best protect as well as educate their kids. No citizen should be forced to send their child into an unsafe school.
A friend told me he didn't want his wife, a teacher, trained to be at the center of a gun-fight. Fair enough. But the alternative could be placing her at the center of a slaughter. Do we really want to insist that our children and their guardians remain helpless, sitting ducks? The “gun-free zone” didn't work at Columbine, Virginia Tech or Sandy Hook. Unarmed teachers who rushed to the sounds of gunfire to “protect” their students merely add to the casualty list. Huddling in corners makes the killers' heinous acts easier. Schools under assault don't dial 911 to request additional “gun-free zone” signs. Perhaps we could learn from Nature. Honey bees swarm and sting to defend the hive. Grizzlies claw and bite to defend their cubs. Even robins dive bomb cats that threaten their fledglings. Lions don't send their cubs to day schools overseen by de-fanged and de-clawed lionesses. “Our little kitten goes to school in a fang-free zone. No gang of hyenas dares violate that!” So-called dumb beasts seem to have this figured out. The smartest species on the planet thinks cowering is a better idea? The above ideas address protecting our children from madmen, but what about preventing them from becoming madmen themselves? This is a harder pill to swallow, but face it: every killer was once a child. What went wrong? Why does our culture seem to produce so many defective young people? Few rational people would seriously believe that the existence of a firearm – or millions of them – inspires anyone to evil. Too many of us grew up with rifles and shotguns behind the kitchen door, over the fireplace or in the den. Yet, somehow, we resisted the urge to grab them and shoot someone. But now hundreds, perhaps thousands of kids get involved in gun crimes, shooting everything from other kids to teachers and even parents. Gang members shoot gang members. Girls beat up other girls. Boys shoot adults for the shoes they wear or gang rape a drunk girl and post video on the Internet. In the words of most of us, “What the hell is going on?” I think we know. We touch upon it, shake our heads from time to time, but then go back to earning a paycheck while our kids come home from school, dive into their rooms and pay homage to a video screen. Whether we're making $500,000 a year or living on food stamps, we're failing in our parental duties. We've become too permissive, too disengaged or too afraid to act like adults and teach children limits. Instead of guiding our kids to become productive, responsible members of society, we make excuses for them. And ourselves. We no longer teach responsibility so much as encourage entitlement. And we let the entertainment industry do the parenting. Movies, TV, rock/rap music stars, sports thugs, the Internet and other kids are raising our kids. You don't need to know that the #1 movie a month after the Sandy Hook shooting was Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3D to grasp the essential reality here: we are desensitizing, brainwashing and training our kids via violent films and compute games. They train to kill and win by killing en masse. The more blood and gore the better. The higher the body count the better. I, for one, am sick of Hollywood hypocrites who glamorize violence, sadism, brutality and the misuse of firearms and then climb on their soapboxes to denounce guns. I don't believe in muzzling free speech, but perhaps it's time we held Hollywood responsible for profiting from films and video games that inspire, teach and celebrate wicked barbarity. Perhaps we should stop celebrating and rewarding selfish, self-destructive pop stars, “musicians” and sports stars who romanticize the “gangsta” lifestyle. As a culture we might also question the warehousing of children in unnatural pools of adolescents for eight hours a day. How can we expect them to mature when Mom and Dad drive off to a mysterious “adult world” and grandma and grandpa shuffle off to isolated retirement centers? It's difficult to observe and model adult behavior and interactions where there are no adults. Throughout human history children grew up in a healthy mix of age groups. Not anymore. Even zoos know enough to provide a holistic social structure in captive groups of primates. We know more about why young male elephants go rogue in the absence of older males than why adolescent humans do. And we seem to care more, too. Then there's our culture's emasculation of young males who no longer have legitimate outlets for testing and earning their manhood. Young women aren't the mass murderers. It's always males, the more aggressive sex by nature, but perhaps by nurture, too. Young men in the throes of testosterone poisoning used to measure up by lifting that bale, capturing that horse or helping Dad build that barn. They earned their way into the fraternity. Now a combination of child safety laws, union rules, fears of lawsuits and a weak job market shunt them into flipping burgers and drinking beer until after high school, if not college. There aren't enough positions on the football team to fill the void. Not every boy can exceed as a jock. They need legitimate outlets to test themselves, succeed and be appreciated for doing good, productive work. These are certainly not all our challenges. We can and absolutely should discuss the wisdom of allowing the dangerously mentally ill to roam our streets untreated. We should investigate moral relativism, situation ethics, the declining family and more. But demonizing firearms and pinning our hopes on controlling them is not the ultimate solution. # # #
