I’ve been thinking of writing some version of this post since the days immediately after the Newtown shootings. It overlaps with but is distinct from the division between people who are pro-gun or anti-gun or pro-gun control or anti-gun control. Before you even get to these political positions, you start with a more basic difference of identity and experience: gun people and non-gun people.
So let me introduce myself. I’m a non-gun person. And I think I’m speaking for a lot of people.
It’s customary and very understandable that people often introduce themselves in the gun debate by saying, ‘Let me be clear: I’m a gun owner.’
Well, I want to be part of this debate too. I’m not a gun owner and, as I think as is the case for the more than half the people in the country who also aren’t gun owners, that means that for me guns are alien. And I have my own set of rights not to have gun culture run roughshod over me.
I don’t have any problem with people using guns to hunt. And I don’t have any problem with people having guns in their home for protection or because it’s a fun hobby. At least, I recognize that gun ownership is deeply embedded in American culture. That means not only do I not believe there’s any possibility of changing it but that I don’t need or want to change it. This is part of our culture. These folks are Americans as much as I am and as long as we can all live together safely I don’t need to or want to dictate how they live.
I’ve never owned a gun. I’ve never shot a gun. (I’m not including the bb guns I shot a few times as a kid.) Once about ten years ago, my friend John Judis and I were talking and decided it would probably be educational for us as reporters and just fun to go to a firing range and do some shooting. For whatever reason it never happened.
I also have a random and kind of scary experience from childhood. I’m probably or 4 or maybe 5 years old. We’re visiting someone’s house in St. Louis where we lived at the time. I’m off in some part of the house away from the parents playing with the little girl my age in the family. And I see a gun. Looks like a rifle or shotgun (I was too young to know which.) I pick it up, aim at the little girl and jokingly go ‘pow!’. And when I say ‘go pow!’ I mean I said ‘pow!’
But that’s when things got weird. Basically all the blood ran out of this little girl’s face at once, which was totally weird to me. And she said in something like shock, that’s a real gun.
Now, this is just an artefact of my memory. I can’t remember precisely what she said — particularly whether the gun was loaded or whether she thought it was. But her reaction made it very clear that it could have been.
The point, though, is that it was totally outside of my experience that a gun I might find in someone’s house might be a real — possibly loaded — firearm as opposed to a toy. The fact that I didn’t pull the trigger when I said ‘pow!’ was just dumb luck.
Again, I’m not a gun person. My parents weren’t.
Needless to say, this experience made an impression on me. And it sticks out as one of relatively few early childhood memories going on 40 years later. How would my life have been different had I pulled the trigger? I pointed the gun basically point blank at the little girl’s face. (Now, why the hell did I do that? No idea. Little boys are idiots. But it sounds a lot less dramatic if you think it’s a toy.) I’d have been a murderer at age 4 or 5. Be stigmatized and traumatized for the rest of my life. Probably spend at least some time in the juvenile justice system, if only to adjudicate the fact that it was an accident. Of course, the girl’s life would have been snuffed out before first grade.
Now, that’s a pretty heavy story. And you’re probably thinking, wow, no wonder Josh isn’t a gun guy. He was totally traumatized by a near-miss horrific incident as a child.
I don’t think that’s it though. It’s something I only think about once in a blue moon and obviously nothing actually happened, though I can’t deny that it’s part of my life experience.
More than this, I come from a culture where guns are not so much feared as alien, as I said. I don’t own one. I don’t think many people I know have one. It would scare me to have one in my home for a lot of reasons. Not least of which because I have two wonderful beyond belief little boys and accidents happen and I know that firearms in the home are most likely to kill their owners or their families. People have accidents. They get depressed. They get angry.
In the current rhetorical climate people seem not to want to say: I think guns are kind of scary and don’t want to be around them. Yes, plenty of people have them and use them safely. And I have no problem with that. But remember, handguns especially are designed to kill people. You may want to use it to threaten or deter. You may use it to kill people who should be killed (i.e., in self-defense). But handguns are designed to kill people. They’re not designed to hunt. You may use it to shoot at the range. But they’re designed to kill people quickly and efficiently.
That frightens me. I don’t want to have those in my home. I don’t particularly want to be around people who are carrying. Cops, I don’t mind. They’re trained, under an organized system and supposed to use them for a specific purpose. But do I want to have people carrying firearms out and about where I live my life — at the store, the restaurant, at my kid’s playground? No, the whole idea is alien and frankly scary. Because remember, guns are extremely efficient tools for killing people and people get weird and do stupid things.
by Josh Marshall, TPM | Read more:
So let me introduce myself. I’m a non-gun person. And I think I’m speaking for a lot of people.It’s customary and very understandable that people often introduce themselves in the gun debate by saying, ‘Let me be clear: I’m a gun owner.’
Well, I want to be part of this debate too. I’m not a gun owner and, as I think as is the case for the more than half the people in the country who also aren’t gun owners, that means that for me guns are alien. And I have my own set of rights not to have gun culture run roughshod over me.
I don’t have any problem with people using guns to hunt. And I don’t have any problem with people having guns in their home for protection or because it’s a fun hobby. At least, I recognize that gun ownership is deeply embedded in American culture. That means not only do I not believe there’s any possibility of changing it but that I don’t need or want to change it. This is part of our culture. These folks are Americans as much as I am and as long as we can all live together safely I don’t need to or want to dictate how they live.
I’ve never owned a gun. I’ve never shot a gun. (I’m not including the bb guns I shot a few times as a kid.) Once about ten years ago, my friend John Judis and I were talking and decided it would probably be educational for us as reporters and just fun to go to a firing range and do some shooting. For whatever reason it never happened.
I also have a random and kind of scary experience from childhood. I’m probably or 4 or maybe 5 years old. We’re visiting someone’s house in St. Louis where we lived at the time. I’m off in some part of the house away from the parents playing with the little girl my age in the family. And I see a gun. Looks like a rifle or shotgun (I was too young to know which.) I pick it up, aim at the little girl and jokingly go ‘pow!’. And when I say ‘go pow!’ I mean I said ‘pow!’
But that’s when things got weird. Basically all the blood ran out of this little girl’s face at once, which was totally weird to me. And she said in something like shock, that’s a real gun.
Now, this is just an artefact of my memory. I can’t remember precisely what she said — particularly whether the gun was loaded or whether she thought it was. But her reaction made it very clear that it could have been.
The point, though, is that it was totally outside of my experience that a gun I might find in someone’s house might be a real — possibly loaded — firearm as opposed to a toy. The fact that I didn’t pull the trigger when I said ‘pow!’ was just dumb luck.
Again, I’m not a gun person. My parents weren’t.
Needless to say, this experience made an impression on me. And it sticks out as one of relatively few early childhood memories going on 40 years later. How would my life have been different had I pulled the trigger? I pointed the gun basically point blank at the little girl’s face. (Now, why the hell did I do that? No idea. Little boys are idiots. But it sounds a lot less dramatic if you think it’s a toy.) I’d have been a murderer at age 4 or 5. Be stigmatized and traumatized for the rest of my life. Probably spend at least some time in the juvenile justice system, if only to adjudicate the fact that it was an accident. Of course, the girl’s life would have been snuffed out before first grade.
Now, that’s a pretty heavy story. And you’re probably thinking, wow, no wonder Josh isn’t a gun guy. He was totally traumatized by a near-miss horrific incident as a child.
I don’t think that’s it though. It’s something I only think about once in a blue moon and obviously nothing actually happened, though I can’t deny that it’s part of my life experience.
More than this, I come from a culture where guns are not so much feared as alien, as I said. I don’t own one. I don’t think many people I know have one. It would scare me to have one in my home for a lot of reasons. Not least of which because I have two wonderful beyond belief little boys and accidents happen and I know that firearms in the home are most likely to kill their owners or their families. People have accidents. They get depressed. They get angry.
In the current rhetorical climate people seem not to want to say: I think guns are kind of scary and don’t want to be around them. Yes, plenty of people have them and use them safely. And I have no problem with that. But remember, handguns especially are designed to kill people. You may want to use it to threaten or deter. You may use it to kill people who should be killed (i.e., in self-defense). But handguns are designed to kill people. They’re not designed to hunt. You may use it to shoot at the range. But they’re designed to kill people quickly and efficiently.
That frightens me. I don’t want to have those in my home. I don’t particularly want to be around people who are carrying. Cops, I don’t mind. They’re trained, under an organized system and supposed to use them for a specific purpose. But do I want to have people carrying firearms out and about where I live my life — at the store, the restaurant, at my kid’s playground? No, the whole idea is alien and frankly scary. Because remember, guns are extremely efficient tools for killing people and people get weird and do stupid things.
by Josh Marshall, TPM | Read more:
Photo: Jeb Harris
