By: Jim Taylor

A Nation That Worships Guns Reaps a Grim Reward

The mass shootings at Virginia Tech University shocked a continent. A man armed with two handguns shot two people in what seemed at first like a domestic dispute, then shot 30 more in a classroom a kilometre away across the campus, and finally shot himself.

        I didn’t know any of these people.

        But I knew I was in shock when I consumed an entire chocolate bunny, left over from Easter the week before, in a single morning. Wandering aimlessly around the house, listening to radio reports that endlessly dissected the crime into mentally manageable bits. I chomped another chunk every time I passed the counter where the bunny rested.

        By mid-morning, there was no bunny any more.

        Shock began to transform into anger when a representative of the National Rifle Association argued that if Virginia Tech students had been armed, one of them might have shot the gunman and prevented several deaths.

Of course.

        In the hail of hasty bullets, anyone shot in the crossfire would at least have had the consolation of knowing they were victims of “friendly fire.”

        A bullet does the same damage whether it comes out of a friendly or a hostile gun barrel.


The right to bear arms

U.S. President George Bush addressed a grieving nation to offer sympathy to families who lost sons and daughters. But he couldn’t resist adding words of support for the right to bear arms.

        Members of Congress offered prayers of sympathy. But none—at least, none that I heard—suggested gun controls, let alone banishing guns.

        The “right to bear arms” has become an American article of faith, perhaps even surpassing belief in a God who helps favoured baseball teams win games and zaps cartoon characters with lightning bolts.

        Why else would Americans buy the argument that if everyone carried a gun, they would be safe from gun-toting loonies?

        Why does nobody make the alternate argument—that if no one carried guns, no one would have to worry about protecting themselves from gun-toting loonies?

        Gun possession is absurdly easy in Virginia. Any adult resident can buy a gun without a permit. There’s no restriction on assault weapons, such as AK-47s or Uzis, with rapid-fire ammunition magazines.

        The lack of a permit merely limits state residents to buying just one handgun a month.

        Any child over 12 can buy rifles and shotguns.

        And according to the Brady Campaign for gun control, 32 of the 50 U.S. states have even more lax regulations than Virginia.

        Perhaps the motto on American coins should be changed, to “In Gun We Trust.”



The real terrorists

The Brady Campaign has been vilified across the U.S. Canada, which has much stricter laws on gun ownership, has been called soft on crime, a haven for terrorists.

        Not so. The real terrorists are Americans themselves.

        As the New York Times editorialized, “the gravest dangers Americans face come from killers at home armed with guns that are frighteningly easy to obtain.”

        Far more Americans are killed every year by fellow citizens than have been killed in Iraq by insurgents. Far more Americans die every year from American bullets than died in the destruction of the World Trade Center.

        The United States has an ongoing “war on drugs” that costs at least US$2.4 billion a year. Why can it not launch a war on guns?

        Drug dependencies certainly result in social havoc and untold crime. But drugs themselves cause few deaths. Occasional overdoses, from cocaine and heroin. Occasional overdoses from prescription drugs. Marijuana overdoses, highly unlikely. Marijuana use may result in impaired driving—but far fewer traffic deaths than alcohol impairment.

        Drug deaths come when addicts use guns to commit their crimes, when drug dealers defend their territories, when crime syndicates funded by drug money wage war on competitors…



Killing from a safe distance

  Science fiction writer Orson Scott Card identified a basic truth in his “Homecoming” series.

        Card postulated a distant planet, colonized after wars had devastated Earth. To prevent the new planet from same fate, the colonizers placed a satellite in orbit—symbolically called “The Oversoul”—which prevented humans from thinking about weapons that could kill at a distance.

        The humans of that planet could develop sophisticated technologies, such as wheelchairs that floated above gravity. But as soon as they started imagining arrows, guns, cannons, or guided missiles, they unaccountably felt bored or sleepy, and drifted off to more interesting occupations.

        The Oversoul did not eliminate cruelty or violence. It merely ensured that one had to confront one’s enemy directly. And thus to risk being close enough to suffer the consequences of one’s actions.

        Our practice, by contrast, enables us to bomb villages from ten kilometres in the air. To launch missiles from halfway around the world. To detonate roadside bombs by cell phone.

        And to fire bullets into cowering victims while standing safely out of reach.

        The solution to the kind of violence that occurred Monday at Virginia Tech, Card implies, is to reduce the possibility of killing from a distance. Not to rely on retaliation, also at a distance.

        If the killer attempted to commit the same series of murders with a knife, an axe, a scythe, he would surely have been overpowered before he could harm more than one or two victims.

Getting it wrong, again

 Americans, I fear, will miss his point again.

        Gun pushers will exploit fear to market even more weapons.

America will resemble a state under martial law, with heavily armoured guards at every critical point. With sky marshals patrolling planes. With vigilantes roaming streets…

        Their idolatry of “the right to bear arms” will encourage more Americans to carry their own weapons, to shoot first and ask questions later, to counter violence with more violence.

        How does it happen that the most overtly Christian nation in the wealthy world can so easily ignore Christ’s specific warning: “Those who live by the sword will die by the sword”?

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Copyright © 2007 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups permitted; all other rights reserved.
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