On Thu, 15 Mar 2001, Ronn Blankenship wrote:
> Then I guess I and the people I knew growing up are unusual, because I can
> say with absolute honesty that I never touched my father's gun without
> permission, and I was never invited by any of my friends to see theirs.
>
> The point is, when I was growing up, real guns just weren't that big a
> deal. They were there for specific purposes, like hunting or protection,
> and for emulating our favorite TV heroes, there were plenty of toy guns
> available, and we knew the difference. So what has changed about the way
> kids are brought up since those days, and how do we get back there?
(Glib, shallow response: force all kids to watch _Old Yeller_ at least
twice. Then they'll want to stay as far away from guns as they can.)
Of course it's possible that I was an uncommonly (take your pick) curious,
arrogant, willful, disobedient, or stupid child, and one shouldn't
generalize from my example. That's certainly possible. Or maybe your
father was just more strict than mine...
Anyway. I'm not prepared to concede that kids having accidents with guns
is something that never happened before the last 20 years or so, but it
would be interesting to me to speculate on changes in our society's
attitudes over the last 50 years, say.
re childrearing
Our culture no longer invests parents with the aura of grand authority
that they may once have had, so parental prohibitions don't stick as well,
especially if that prohibition can be reasoned around ("As long as the gun
isn't loaded, it's safe.") This trend probably goes hand in hand with an
increase in personal freedoms and decrease in the rigidity of culturally
mandated roles that marks the baby boomer & post-boomer generations.
I suspect that the rhetorical tone of our leaders has reached a long-time
nadir of self-serving mendacity (in both parties) at the same time that
they have become more visible than ever. I don't know how conscious kids
are of this, but it can't help but undermine the very concept of
authority.
re guns
Guns are no longer tools (except in some rural areas). People don't
need to hunt, and when they do it's for sport. Using guns for defense is
problematic at best. There's not much call for shooting coyotes, say, if
you live in the city or the suburbs. Guns aren't taken for granted
because their use today is largely symbolic, their meaning a product of
movies, TV shows, and political rhetoric. Owning a gun isn't like owning
a shovel anymore, so it presents a greater symbolic attraction to the
young mind.
Also, since guns are political and quasi-religious symbols, when somebody
does something dumb with a gun nowadays the incident attracts a lot more
attention than it probably would have done 50 years ago. I suspect that
50 years ago, if one kid shot another with his daddy's gun (let's assume
it's an accident) there wouldn't be much hue and cry over the threat that
guns represent in general--the blame would fall on the father and child
both for negligence and stupidity.
By comparison, if today a kid hurt his best friend with a garden
tool--cracked his skull or put an eye out, say--we probably wouldn't see a
national movement for the abolition of shovels, but we would probably
shake our heads and cluck about the poor example that kid's parents must
have set.
At first glance, these things might suggest that what we really need is a
return to old-fashioned discipline and enough common sense to dampen
public fears over firearms. But I'm not convinced we can go back
because with urbanization the niche for guns as common
tools has dwindled nearly into nothingness. The justifications for
keeping a gun around the house simply aren't as strong as they used to be,
and I (with my admittedly liberal bias) see evidence for this in the
hysterical self-aggrandizement of the NRA and associated groups--the
attempt to make the gun into a value unto itself to which society must
conform is, in my eyes, horribly wrongheaded and something that only
makes sense if one is trying to obscure the truth that guns, because of
the way our lives have changed, are now more dangerous than useful.
Another way of looking at it: when my dad was growing up in west Texas,
having some guns around made sense because rattlesnakes, wild animals and
so on were common and you never knew when something dangerous or possibly
rabid might come your way. Surrounded by rural country, it also made
sense to occasionally go out and hunt small game or birds, say. The gun
had purpose as a tool, and it's purpose as a potential weapon against
humans, though conceded, wouldn't have been the primary purpose for owning
a gun--there were lots of other less dreadful purposes to which a gun
could be put.
When I was growing up in the suburbs, however, none of these tool-like
reasons for having guns really existed. There were no rattlesnakes, rabid
skunks, or game birds to be found. The only point for having a gun was to
shoot people or strictly as a hobby. My dad was a hobbyist, and there's
no reason a hobbyist shouldn't lock his guns securely away (by the same
token, he was actively trying to foster my interest as a hobbyist, so to
me it felt natural to indulge my curiosity, even though I knew I
technically wasn't supposed to do so).
But it's the people-shooting bit I want to focus on. In that suburban
setting, the only example of gun use one really gets are those from the
media--cops and robber/murderers/rapist shows, and political rhetoric
about the 2nd Amendment. For these kinds of communication, the gun must
be far more than a tool; it becomes Excalibur in a way, the instrument for
defending freedom and fighting evil. By owning a gun one submits oneself
for membership in the ranks of the lone heroes who stand with their
weapons between the forces of order and chaos. In other words, the gun is
no longer a tool but is a touchstone of myth. The myth exists not because
it's a good way of solving problems of violence in a democratic society,
but because the myth sells guns. I'm sure that many, many kids have
father who buy the myth and who own guns for that reason alone, so in the
kids' eyes the gun isn't just an adult's tool, it's a mark of heroic
distinction.
Whereas fifty years ago a kid might want to use a gun because a gun is an
adult tool, and using one marks him as ready for adult responsibilities,
nowadays I think that most kids see a gun as a vehicle for becoming a
warrior and a hero. We tell kids that a gun is a tool for
destroying tyrants and oppressors, so a small number of kids, finding
themselves tyrannized and oppressed, decide to put the gun to it's
culturally approved use.
At this point I'll refer back to one of my earlier posts about how our
society treats kids as interchangable cogs in an educational machine that
emphasizes the regurgitation of data over the nurturing of basic humanity.
How to solve the problem? I'm not sure. I am sure we can't turn back the
clock, but I'm also sure that responsible parents still have the power to
make strong examples for their children. Charlton Heston tells me that I
need a gun to protect myself against the government (i.e. against
liberals) but he represents the very government-controlling power-elites
against which I feel the need to be defended, and a handgun isn't much
use against Congress.
We could use our tax money to make schools smaller, hire and pay
better-qualified teachers, and give parents the freedom to spend more time
with their children, but then Charlton would have to shoot me.
Marvin Long
Austin, Texas
Don't be frightened. Adrenaline will just make your blood taste funny.
