I was raised in a house where toy guns were not allowed. Frequently, my parents would bend for clear plastic, brightly colored squirt guns – but anything that resembled or invoked a real gun was seriously frowned upon. Of course, this didn’t prevent me from playing “guns.”
Construx - 100% cooler than Legos
Like any enterprising, red-blooded American boy, I simply used the parent-approved sets of Legos and Construx to build my own guns. Also, sticks. I don’t view my parents’ approach to this topic as a failure, though. I think the important thing was not preventing me from shooting fake guns, but the clear, consistent message that guns are not a plaything, and that violence is not okay.
As a result, I’ve developed a kind of split, parallel attitude towards guns. On one hand, I have very, very little interest in real guns – certainly no interest in having one anywhere near my house, and not quite enough interest to ever go shoot one.
I’ve never bought the argument that “law-abiding citizens owning guns makes our communities safer.” I grew up in neighborhoods with plenty of gun owners, of both the law-abiding and non-law-abiding variety (funny how we act like that’s an impermeable division) and I never once heard about one of these law-abiders using his/her gun to protect him/herself. What I did hear about is the gangbanger who was shot in the alley behind my house, the five-year old girl who got caught in crossfire while playing in her grandmother’s living room, and the cop’s son from down the street who blew half his face off playing with his dad’s gun.
On the other hand, I take great pleasure in spending a couple dollars shooting zombies in the arcade after a movie. Basically my attitude boils down to: Toy guns can be fun, real guns are not toys.
Like many people, the recent shootings in Tucson have got me thinking a lot about guns and our relationship to them. I’m not a Constitutional scholar, but it seems to me that there’s no way in hell our founding fathers would ever ever (ever) have thought it was a good idea for people to be running around with war machines that can shoot 31 bullets in a matter of seconds. To me, Seth Myers nailed it on a recent edition of Weekend Update:
Vodpod videos no longer available.Recently, the New Yorker published an interesting article by Jill Lepore titled The Commandments – The Constitution and its worshippers which illuminates the history of our public relationship to the Constitution, and the ways in which it has been manipulated and interpreted. Highlights include anecdotes about Ben Franklin, insight into the fairly new phenomena of “Originalist” interpretation and 2nd Amendment activism (see N.R.A.), and stats about how little Americans actually know about it.
“Pop quiz, from a test administered by the Hearst Corporation in 1987.
True or False: The following phrases are found in the U.S. Constitution:
“From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”
“The consent of the governed.”
“Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
“All men are created equal.”
“Of the people, by the people, for the people.”This is what’s known as a trick question. None of these phrases are in the Constitution. Eight in ten Americans believed, like Boehner, that “all men are created equal” was in the Constitution. Even more thought that “of the people, by the people, for the people” was in the Constitution. (Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg, 1863.) Nearly five in ten thought “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need” was written in Philadelphia in 1787. (Karl Marx, 1875.)”
Obviously, this is a complex issue. For me though, I have to agree with Mayor Daley, who pointed out after the shooting in Tucson that all of the talk about rhetoric and who inspired who to do what overlooked the real issue – that these kinds of guns are available for people to buy and use. Say what you want about Sarah Palin’s disgusting rhetoric (I heard a spokesperson on NPR actually try to deny that the gunsight graphic used on a political map to point to Giffords’ district was not necessarily meant to depict a gun. Really? How do you “lock and load” a telescope?), the simple, inarguable reality is that it is impossible to fire a gun that does not exist. And, of course, just slightly less impossible to fire a musket from 1787 that takes forever to load.
Josh Du Jour 