365 True Things: 186/Guns

There was another shooting today, at a college in Roseburg, Oregon, which I heard about on Facebook just now. Thirteen dead, at least twenty wounded. Which got me ranting—on FB. But then I decided to pull it off there. I don't like going political on FB.

But I'll go political here, and maybe keep revising to try to figure out how I really feel/think about all this. Because it's complicated. As is everything.

So here's my start:

The U.S. and guns.

I wish the Founding Fathers could come back and edit that particular amendment, knowing what we know today.

For starters: 142 school shootings since Sandy Hook (December 14, 2012), not quite three years ago.

And no, I am not at all against gun ownership. I have been the very happy consumer of many a nice moose stew, moose roast, moose sandwich.

Though that's in Norway—where, in fact, a goodly proportion of the population are hunters with guns. But in Norway, one has to have an officially documented use to own a gun.

Certainly, hunting is a use. Target practice, also. Being a security guard.

Yes, Anders Breivik got hold of a gun, and massacred eighty young people; but he went to great lengths to procure that weapon. (Read about it on Wikipedia. His efforts are impressive.) Hunting, though, was his entree in the end.

Here, however? You can just . . . buy a gun. Because you want to.

Oh, no, sorry: Because the Constitution guarantees the right.

As I said, I'd really love it if the Founding Fathers could come back and take a red pen to that particular, utterly ambiguous amendment: "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

And let's just add: anachronistic. It reminds me of kashrut: the biblical laws of keeping kosher. Treif, meaning nonkosher, literally means "torn," as in: one shouldn't eat an animal that has been torn apart by another animal. Okay. But what are the chances of that anymore? And the laws against seafood? Those made sense as a general prohibition when people knew only that shellfish kills. But these days we know why, and when, and we can avoid the bad clams. Ditto keeping meat and spoilable milk separate. We've progressed since whenever God dictated his mitzvot to Moses.

And we've progressed—you'd think—since 1776. Back then, the population was 2.5 million. Granted, the land area was less, but still: that's not a high density. And they had the recent war against their oppressors to think of. Today, we're at almost 320 million, mostly in urban centers, mostly on the coasts. That's huge pressure. Plus, we haven't had a war on our land in over 150 years.

The times are very different.

We have a healthy military, supported by taxpayer dollars. Which I fully believe is well regulated.

There's no hint of insurrection, unless you count the Tea Party. (And I try not to.)

We do have a problem in this country with mental illness, but that's a subject for another person. I'm not going there. Sure, the guy who went on a killing rampage in Sandy Hook, in Aurora CO, in Roseburg today, must have been off his rocker. But: he did it with a gun.

That whole saying that "guns don't kill people, people do" is bullshit. Let anyone try to kill a bunch of people with a knife. He won't get as far as thirteen dead, twenty wounded.

Me: I don't consider the possible eventuality of the potential need for self-defense a "use." (That particular "need" is based on fear. Which is a whole other issue.)

So yeah, in my mind: the only reasons to have a gun—which should be fully justifiable—are the above: hunting, sport shooting, guard duties. Self-protection, maybe, but you'd have to justify the need. Not just random "bad guys could come bursting in my front door anytime now." Please.

But who cares what I think, or any of the many thousands of people clamoring for some sort of halt to this madness. The NRA . . . it doesn't abide: It lobbies. It pays big bucks. It buys.

And it earns—bigtime.

Which could get me into a whole new rant about American politics, but oh, I really don't want to go there. I'd rather drink my wine, cook my cauliflower kuku (a Persian egg dish from the Splendid Table online), and listen to Béla Fleck playing with African musicians on SONOS.

SONOS was what I intended to write about this evening. I guess I got sidetracked. Maybe tomorrow.

I'll leave guns alone for the rest of my blogging run. I am not against them. And the gun owners I know are, yes, some of my best friends. But there has to be some way of tackling all this random hatred and violence, which, no, is not caused by guns. But the deaths are.