Reject Guns

Want to get death threats?? It’s easy. Write something negative about guns or gun ownership.

Several years ago I urged individuals to pledge not to own guns and received several angry emails including a threatening note from a gun fan calling himself—surprise, surprise—Wotanbornprince.

But my attitude toward guns hasn’t changed and this week’s massacre at Virginia Tech only confirms what many Americans already understand.

Guns are an abomination.

So said Richard Nixon in a rare flash of clearheaded brilliance. The debate about whether guns kill or people kill is an irrelevant dodge. Guns are, quite fundamentally, instruments of death. They fascinate the powerless. They attract the weak. They seduce the frightened.

Guns are a necessary evil, but necessary only insofar as they are critical to the conduct of the military and law enforcement.

It’s no coincidence that the more insecure, fearful and paranoid, the more likely a person is to own a gun. We often see images of children and teens wielding guns, playing soldier or gangster—because they often feel afraid and powerless in the face of a complex and intimidating adult world.

But it’s safe to say that a secure, emotionally mature person lacking the need to kill animals has no reason to own a tool designed solely to produce death. Indeed, such a person would understand that the presence of a gun in their household increases the risk of death by gun accident. The number of people who successfully defend themselves with a gun from a gun-wielding attacker is insignificant compared to the thirty-thousand or so gun-related deaths each year in America.

Forgetting that the Constitution only addresses gun ownership within the context of a well regulated state militia (which is why supremacist hate groups call themselves militias—to ensure they can safely own guns), the laws of any given state still have no bearing on the notion that guns are an abomination. After all, laws fail to restrict plenty of things that are wrong. It’s not against the law to hate, but that doesn’t make hating right.

Since virtually none of our citizens need to hunt to stay alive, why do people still hunt? In the vast majority of cases, people hunt to satisfy an urge to feel powerful, to feel a certain rush and vitality lacking in their lives. How sad. And how unsportsmanlike. It’s virtually impossible to respect hunting with a gun. Any child can pull a trigger and kill something. And while it may take skill to track an animal and aim well, killing it with a gun is antithetical to sport—it’s no contest, just a one-sided slaughter.

So the question begs itself: How many gun hunters are emotional children trying to feel big and macho by killing things? More broadly, how many gun owners are compensating for a lack of something?

Which brings me back to death threats. When you take toys away from children, they often go into a rage and throw a tantrum. And likewise, gun people are often so insecure that any threat to their unfettered access to guns fills them with rage and fear. They lack the maturity, intelligence or character to navigate the perils of life without deadly weapons nearby.

In the hate mail I received, gun nuts consistently portrayed themselves as strong and tough versus the weak, “limp-wristed” liberals opposing their guns. How ironic that gun fanatics who strive to project a macho façade are actually fueled by fear and inadequacy. By using slurs like “limp-wristed” and worse, they tell the world a lot about themselves.

And by owning a gun, they tell the world they feel scared, insecure and impotent. By owning a gun, they demonstrate immaturity, bad judgment and/or malignant priorities.

Regardless of what our laws allow, in modern-day America there is simply no good reason to own a gun. Though gun ownership will likely remain legal, until more citizens take a personal stand and reject gun ownership, until more of us reject the childish glorification of gun culture, we will continue to live in a nation plagued by gun violence.

- JT Compton