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What's So 'American About Killing Each Other?

by Mark Worth

"Americans are finally fed up with violence that cuts down another citizen with gunfire every 20 minutes. Guns are instruments of madness."
-President Clinton, Nov. 30, upon signing the Brady Bill.

With violence-particularly firearm violence-speeding to the top of the American agenda, we are devoting much of this issue of The Free Press to an issue that many people thought should have been put to bed 30 years ago when President Kennedy was assassinated.

Or 25 years ago when Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated.
Or 13 years ago when John Lennon was killed.
Or 12 years ago when James Brady was wounded.
Or Two months ago when 11-year-old Dealando Gray of south Seattle was killed by a 14-year-old neighbor boy.
The issue, of course, is gun control, which actually is an abbreviated catch-phrase that means if people can't control themselves enough not to shoot each other, society should try to control their tools of destruction. And it's an issue that many Washington state lawmakers will have their sights set on when the next legislative session opens in January.
We've all seen these numbers:
We could go on and on with these numbers. We do, actually (see Fun Gun Facts).
But beyond the numbers-which can depersonalize an issue that is so highly personal- The gun control debate has heavy moral and societal considerations that, when explored, leave even the most ferocious National Rifle Association member grasping hopelessly for a comeback.

"I've changed the way my whole family lives. I have young teenagers, and until they can drive themselves, we'll drive them everywhere. We never walk anywhere now."
-a King County parent

We all know how big a part of this country's history guns represent. Many of us - half of the people, in fact, living in President Clinton's native Arkansas - use guns for hunting or for other forms of sport. These people love their guns. They love to shoot them. They love to clean them. They love to talk about them. They love to show their kids how to use them. They love to collect and display them.
But for others who own guns, there's no love in the formula. They feel they need a gun to protect themselves from intruders. Or to threaten or kill a rival gang member. Or to feel safe while walking down the street. Or to be a more effective drug dealer. Or to feel safe in school hallways. Or to seem cool. Or to be a bad-ass.
Most policy-makers say that it's these other gun owners for whom stricter gun controls are meant. At the same time, however, many a law-abiding gun owner - the poster child that the NRA props up as a victim of tighter gun laws - have been known to blow away a family member or friend or neighbor during an argument or misunderstanding that otherwise might have been settled by a fist fight. Instead, someone dies or is horribly wounded.
Exactly what is a person capable of doing with a gun? In most of the cases where someone shoots a relative or friend, it is an unplanned and impulsive act carried out with a gun initially bought for self-protection, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. And in most of these cases, the shooters didn't intend to pull the trigger when they picked up the gun.
In Washington state, a gun in the home is 43 times more likely to be used to kill its owner, a relative or a friend than someone trying to break in. You don't hear many NRA members arguing on TV or before a congressional committee, "If we can just kill one intruder... just one... it's worth killing 43 innocent people."
Need more to chew on? A survey of 2,000 felons revealed that nearly half of them would not be significantly deterred from robbing or attacking someone who is carrying a gun. And, studies have shown that it can be more dangerous to be armed if you're being attacked, for two reasons: (1) because the assailant might hurt you worse than if you didn't have a gun, and (2) many people hesitate, even freeze up, giving the attacker the opening to do serious damage.
What all this means is that in most cases, guns are used to kill innocent people. Or, in the case of adversaries seeking to resolve disputes, people who otherwise might have just gotten punched out are pushing up daisies.

"I think that everybody's afraid of each other. To me, it would be a good thing if we had more understanding."
-a Pierce County student

Psychologists report that having a gun makes a person feel more violent, and therefore more likely to be more violent than he or she otherwise might behave. But why would anyone want to own something that would make them feel more violent?
Several policy-makers we talked to during the past few weeks were uncomfortable when asked this question. Maybe, realizing that they needed political support in order for gun control measures to succeed. They didn't want to offend anyone.
Well, we'll answer the question for them. Ever since this country's inception, our government has solved political, economic and other problems through the use of violence. And over time, the government has appealed to citizens' patriotism as a way to engender support for these wars and, for that matter, our political and economic system, which rewards those who prevail amidst dog-eat-dog competition with their fellow citizens.
Throw in the American sense of independence and individualism-which has resulted in the disintegration of community- and you've got 240 million people looking out for themselves, doing anything they can to get ahead and, when they're faced with a problem that seemingly can't be handled any other way, they feel perfectly comfortable with hurting somebody. And as we all know too well, millions of people act out this urge.
Toss into the pot a lingering recession, expanding poverty, shifting social and moral values, festering racial tensions, violence in the media and video games, a growing number of latchkey kids, urban gangs, drugs... shit, it makes perfect sense that so many people have made violence part of their routine. These factors form what the American Psychological Association calls "a foundation of anger, discontent and violence."
In the '80s, it was hip to be square. In the '90s, it's cool to hate.
Just as an economic recession can be self-perpetuating, fear of violence can and does create more violence. Afraid for their lives, people are turning to handguns and other weapons for protection. Naturally, having a gun around can change one's complete outlook on his or her environment. People who buy guns because they fear something might happen to them start to think something will happen to them. The fear intensifies. The disconnection from community grows. Their paranoia feeds on the paranoia of others. Soon, we all become soldiers looking to duck for cover at the crack of a gun.
The proliferation of guns, therefore- we have 200 million in circulation in the country- creates an environment in which violence has been normalized, part of the way we live, part of our collective experience.

By themselves, laws do very little to deter someone from doing something bad. But they send a message. Stricter gun-control laws at the very least will establish a moral imperative for this country, just as moral judgments have been make about murder, theft, bribery, prostitution, even abusing donkeys. This is especially true for young people, who need to know that grown-ups have set a standard that guns are for killing, and that killing is no fun for anyone.

With the Brady Bill on the verge of becoming federal law, the corner has been turned. But hundreds of thousands of people will die before this country will even consider passing laws as strict as those in Vancouver B.C., where even "self defense" doesn't cut it as a legally accepted reason to buy a gun, and where you're five times less likely to be killed with a handgun than in Seattle.
Here's more ammunition to pump at the NRA: the gun-happy states of the South have a homicide rate nearly double that in the Northeast, where it's tougher to buy a gun. These and many other statistics led the U.S. General Accounting Office to conclude: "The ease with which firearms are obtained is a contributing factor in firearms crime."
They're also a contributing factor to people doing incredibly stupid things. Heck, I could prove that myself. By the time you read this, I would have had plenty of time to wait my five days to buy a handgun (or zero days to buy a rifle), and... who knows.
But is it really worth finding out what would happen if I owned a gun? Wouldn't I just be safer by making sure that my doors are locked at night, and that I watch myself out on the street, and that I don't tell that guy who cut me off on I-5 to fuck off? And isn't that smarter anyway? And a little less paranoid? And more akin to how a healthy member of society usually acts?
You bet your life, it is.

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Contents on this page were published in the December/Jan, 1994 edition of the Washington Free Press.
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