I was 11 years old the first time I held a gun. My mother, raising my sister and me alone, kept a handgun in the house for protection. One day she took the gun down out of her closet, showed me how to switch the safety lever off, how to hold the gun, and how to aim it. She talked to me about circumstances where it would be appropriate for me to use it. I was taught to never touch the gun unless there was a life-threatening reason to do so. I never did.
That summer, mom’s boyfriend taught me to shoot a 22 rifle. We went out in the woods and tacked targets to trees, and practiced shooting from various distances with my mom. Everyone was surprised, especially me, when I had the highest accuracy of the three of us. For some reason, I have very good aim. I have gone target shooting a few other times since then. I really enjoy it. Having worked in a Renaissance Faire gaming area, I can shoot a bow, a knife, and an axe with some accuracy. I have never aimed at an animal, or considered it. I’m not a hunter.
I have friends and family members who are avid gun users and collectors. They have a passion for guns. I don’t share this passion, but I do understand it. I have lots of collections. Let’s take paint brushes: each one has a specific use, can perform in a different way. One might be better to draw whiskers on a tiger, one might be better to paint the sweeping strokes of a sky. I have trusty paint brushes I use for many purposes, and some that only get used once in a while. I appreciate that gun enthusiasts might feel the same way. Each gun might have a story, or a specific function.
In college, I had a teacher who had a very different perspective on guns than I had been used to. When she had been a child, her seven-year-old brother had been at a friend’s house. The two boys were snooping through the parents’ bedroom, and came across a handgun in a drawer. My teacher’s brother had died instantly when his friend shot him in the face accidentally. Each semester she made a point of telling each new group of students her brother’s story, to humanize the reality of the need for gun safety for them. I paid attention.
I have never owned a gun, but I have sometimes wondered how I would protect my family if an intruder entered our home. The idea of having a gun and successfully disabling someone seems far-fetched to me. I think the calm, steady head and hand that an accurate shot requires could elude me in that situation. But I do have an 18-inch hardwood club under my bed, and I can easily imagine using it if anyone came between me and my children. My family members and my dog are the only things in my house I would protect with deadly force. Yet there are other people, many of them, who seem excited by the idea of confronting a criminal and legally disabling them in the protection of property. I think of the overzealous neighborhood watch member, George Zimmerman. Armed with a deadly weapon, and patrolling the streets on the lookout for suspicious activity, he seems to have glamorized his role in local law enforcement. His gun gave him a sense of security and power to pursue what he thought was a suspicious individual. Regardless of what you think happened in the ensuing confrontation, it is unlikely that anyone would have died that day if George Zimmerman hadn’t been carrying a gun.
When Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 people at Virginia Tech, I started to wonder how we can keep guns out of the hands of unstable people. People who have that passion for guns bristle at the idea that the guns are the problem, that people like Cho, or the Columbine killers, or now, James Holmes, represent the average gun owner. They surely don’t. Perhaps it is the combination of the way we glamorize, almost idolize guns and violence, and our inability to keep them out of the hands of unstable people that leads us into this horrific situation, again and again.
According to Science Daily, “many scientific studies have established the connection between exposure to media violence and aggression and violence in children. For example, playing video games can lead to changes in attitudes and behavior as well as desensitization to actual violence.” As a society, we have to consider why we are creating such violent entertainment to begin with. What purpose does it serve? What effect is it having on our young people, whose brains do not fully develop their capacity for understanding cause and effect until their mid-twenties?
Every time there is an incident like the shooting at the Aurora movie theater, anti-gun people demand tougher laws for gun control, and those who care strongly about the right to bear arms counter-attack. Yet most people can probably agree, the right to bear arms is a fundamental American freedom, and few people are saying that all guns be outlawed. There must be some middle ground, where reasonable people can agree on strategies to keep guns out of the hands of these men who use them to massacre innocent people. If guns are meant for protection, why aren’t we protecting our citizens against their illegal and devastating use? And what are we doing to reduce the amount of violent and desensitizing imagery our young people are exposed to?
If we hunger for violent entertainment, what is the cause, and what is the effect?
