People and Guns

Posted on | April 16, 2009 |

I used to be a competitive rifle shooter for my University in England. I have several Oxford ‘Blues’ as a result, and was the captain of several teams. And that’s why I feel I can say something about guns now.

A newsletter I received today stated that since Obama came to power gun shops have been unable to stock enough ammunition to meet the demand. It seems that gun owners are so afraid the Obama administration will take away their right to own weapons that they’ve bought up as much ammo as they can carry.

Now that makes no sense. If the government were about to ban cars, for example, would you go out and blow the housekeeping money on spare tires to hoard?

Which brings us to the point. Gun ownership is for many people not about logic. As we saw with Phil Spector, quite a lot of people own guns who shouldn’t, and some of them have fantasies about them that are not healthy. The bottom line seems to be that guns become the focus for a huge number of neuroses for many people, and added to that is the strange feeling that seems to come across some people that I can only describe as the ‘if you’ve got a gun you’ve got to use it’ urge. I speak from experience of many years around guns and gun owners, some of whom are my friends. We’ve talked about this unhealthy tendency in gun owners, even when they’re law-abiding, decent, and sane.

And perhaps this is where the gun ownership debate runs into trouble. We’re not talking about these objects that go bang. We’re not talking about what the Constitution says. We’re using both of these facts to try and talk about something more visceral, even when the discussion gets masked as ‘freedom’ and ‘liberty’ and ‘history’. That’s where things get bogged down, of course, because on the other side people talk about ’safety’ and ‘law’ in similarly clouded ways.

We need a better discussion. Perhaps our love of guns is a type of addiction, like alcohol or tobacco. I’ve lost friends to both substances, and yet I don’t want to ban them - which makes no sense, either. What I’d like to do is prevent the people who become dangerous around any of these things - guns, alcohol, or tobacco - from wreaking havoc and killing themselves or others.

And I’ve no idea how to do that….

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