It's true. Shotguns, handguns, rifles, BB guns, squirt guns, you name it. Try it yourself: Just head out to a shooting range and have the gun boys yank you some clay pigeons and blast those things out of the sky and oh my God it's just a ridiculous barefaced thrill, a sense of godlike power, a rush of adrenaline to go along with a hot buzz of precision and concentration and the smell of gunpowder and much manly macho grunting.
I am not at all joking. I've done it. I've even enjoyed it, quite a bit. Sport shooting is an intense rush, a unique sort of pleasure, scary and powerful and deadly and fascinating and, in its deep, pure violence, rather beautiful. What's more, guns can be gorgeous pieces of precision engineering, sexy and brutal and often superbly made and so dumbly phallic and obviously homoerotic it makes the men of the NRA tingle every night, secretly.
But let this be known: Guns are also, quite clearly, something that could exit the human experience entirely and we would, very simply, only be the better for it. Much, much better. Oh yes we would.
Look, it's easy enough to point out all the obvious gun-control arguments the brutal Virginia Tech massacre slaps across the face of the pro-gun culture. Guns are far too easy to obtain. Gun fetishism is far too prevalent and glamorized and legitimized in the States. Guns are often easier to get hold of than a driver's license and we don't even perform instant background checks, and in places like Texas it's now easier than ever not only to own a gun, but the state's newly expanded gun laws mean it's A-OK to shoot and kill someone for pretty much looking at you sideways, and if you do, not only is it unlikely you will go to jail for it, many Texans will actually applaud.
But the truth is, these issues aren't really the point. And as many politicians -- even Democrats -- are already pointing out, new gun-control legislation in the wake of VT isn't exactly a priority, mostly due to the vicious power of the tiny-but-vocal gun lobby and especially given the faux-cowboy gun-lovin' warmonger who currently holds the White House veto stamp in his insolent little fist right now.
But even the obvious fact that no new gun-control laws are likely to emerge hasn't stopped the pro-gunners from tossing up what is easily my favorite pro-gun argument of all time, one that's popped back up on blogs and forums and in right-wing columns all over the Net in response to VT, like some sort of cute, thuggish mantra of happy cancerous violence.
It goes like this: If only more people had guns, no one would get shot. If only everyone was armed and everyone was packing heat and everyone knew everyone else could kill them at a moment's notice, why, no one would dare shoot each other for fear of getting killed themselves before they even had a chance to enjoy their own murderous rage.
In other words, the solution to the too-many-guns-too-easily problem? Even more guns.
More to the point: If the professors and students at Virginia Tech just so happened to carry their own swell Glock 9mm in their backpacks or in their purses just like insane sullen loner Cho Seung-Hui, maybe he would've been less likely to go on that rampage because, gosh golly, he'd surely know he'd be quickly shot dead by 100 trigger-ready students as soon as he fired the first shot. And what satisfaction is there in a brutal gun rampage if you don't get to kill more than a handful of kids? It's such perfectly insane logic, they should print it on the NRA brochure. Hell, maybe they do.
I love this line of thinking. It's like bashing your own skull with a brick and calling it intellectual stimulation.
Hell, it worked great for the Cold War, didn't it? Every major nation enjoys a grudging, caveman-esque respect for each other's massive nuke stockpile and whoever can annihilate the world the most times over gets the most power and we all live happily ever after in a brutal, anxious, fear-based society, some juvenile vision of a macho Wild West that never really existed. Beautiful.
It doesn't matter how overtly reckless and idiotic the "let's arm everyone" argument is. What matters is millions actually believe it. What matters is how many people, especially many who make the laws of the land (or coerce and lobby those who do) still believe this is some sort of core, defining ethos of the United States and even the world. It is, you have to admit, one hell of a way to run a planet.
But it is not the only way.
Here is the flip-side argument. It is at once simple and obvious and makes a calm sort of moral sense, and is therefore is sneered at by every gun lover and bitter Second Amendment misinterpreter and NRA lobbyist in the land.
It goes like this: If all guns were banned outright tomorrow, or even if we took the strict British/Swedish approach and only allowed them for hunting and in highly controlled shooting clubs, well, guns would slowly but surely disappear from the popular culture. As a fetish, as a gang weapon, as some sort of bogus macho self-defense argument, as an obvious and too-easy means to shocking schoolyard massacre, guns and the fear-based culture they create would, slowly but surely, fizzle and die.
It would not be instantaneous. It would not be easy. But slowly, as manufacturing largely ceased and gun shows shut down and fewer and fewer new firearms entered the channel and the black market slowly dried up from lack of decent supply, and as the upcoming generation simply wouldn't know a world where guns were prevalent and easy and stupid as paint, well, guns and the numb ultraviolence they inspire would disappear within a single generation, maybe two.
I know, it would ruin the all-American fun of shooting. I realize a beloved American hobby would have to be replaced by, well, roughly 10 thousand other options. I know it would infuriate countless collectors and responsible gun owners who merely appreciate the craftsmanship, the gun-maker's art, the simple joy of shooting deadly weapons into controlled targets and who have zero urge to kill anything, ever. I know.
But, well, so what? Giving up such a rather hollow, morally indefensible, outdated pleasure seems a tiny price to pay for the end result of a dramatically less violent America, a less suspicious, reactionary worldview, a nation not shot through with an undercurrent of fear and blood-drenched headlines and childish notions of angry, armed retaliation.
Hell, we've done it before, with all sorts of other harsh social practices and beliefs that, we finally realized, served the soul of our species not at all and actually caused much deep harm. Slavery. Hangings. The slaughter of Indians. Monarchical rule. Chamber pots. Flamethrowers. Smoking on airplanes. Lack of women's suffrage. Eugenics.
Really, has the time not come for guns to exit the wary American dream? Can we not even imagine it?
