Some of you have noticed that it has been a long time since my last post. It isn’t so much that I had nothing to say as it is that I was overwhelmed by how much needed saying. A lot has been going on, and even areas where not much has been happening (the U.S. Congress), the inaction is fraught with meaning.
Where a lot has been going on—forest fires in the U.S., flooding in the U.S., wars and rumors of wars in the Middle East, and changes related to global climate change—it is hard for me to know what to say beyond complaining about conditions. Two articles in today’s Internet news have motivated me to return to blogging. Both cases involve police shooting the wrong people. I grew up with guns and owned both rifles and shotguns. I never owned a pistol, and my one experience shooting one assured me that, while the broad sides of barns would be safe, anything in the surrounding country side would be in danger.
My father’s brother was a gun collector. He had a room full of weapons, including both original and replica muzzleloaders (rifles and dueling pistols), an 1880s six-shooter (44 caliber, if I recall correctly), big-bore weapons, a serious crossbow, and a variety of hunting rifles. While I never went with him on a “big game” hunting trip, every hunting rifle I actually saw him use was a single-shot bolt action. Every time he fired, he had to put another round in the chamber. He and my father are both dead now, so I can’t ask either of them their opinion about military-style assault weapons, high capacity magazines, and “open carry” side-arms in the hands of the poorly trained. In Ohio, it is now legal for blind people to carry weapons in public. See http://huff.to/1aWAWkJ for details.
Unfortunately, blind or sighted, most of those licensed to carry weapons in public are too poorly trained to be able to use their weapons judiciously. Poorly trained? Yes, I’m virtually certain that the vast majority of those carrying weapons in public (or keeping them close at hand in public places) are poorly trained. How do I know? I have friends who are police officers or have retired from actively serving. I know how much training they received in “urban warfare” situations, and while not all police departments provide the same degree of training, even well-trained police officers shoot the wrong person with relative frequency. In the movies, the good guy with a gun shoots the bad guy holding the knife to the throat of a hostage. In “real life,” it doesn’t always happen that way. The police—even with all their training—often shoot the wrong person. Today’s news (15 September 2013) has two stories about this:
- Two of New York’s finest (among the best trained in the country) fired at a guy who was threatening them with his hand, which he was holding as though it were a gun and pretending to “shoot” at them. They missed him and hit two bystanders instead. Neither of the women received a “serious” wound, and the guy who started everything was arrested without being shot. See http://cbsn.ws/16uBA5z for the full story.
- In North Carolina, a guy wrecked his car and went over an embankment. He was able to get out the vehicle and run to a nearby house to ask for help. The homeowner was afraid (the guy was African-American) and called 911 saying that someone was trying to break in. When the police arrived, the crash victim started running toward them. They fired a taser that didn’t work, so they shot him several times as he was asking for help. Unlike the lucky women in the previous story, the guy needing help was killed. See http://cbsn.ws/16uBA5z for details.
Most people who carry and/or keep guns in their homes say they do so for self-defense. Unfortunately, their record on self-defense isn’t that great. They more often kill a friend or relative (or one of their children uses the weapon to kill a sibling or a playmate) than they thwart a bad guy. See http://bit.ly/10fHPVo for the full story.
One of my early memories of TV news was of an attempted interview with a woman who was fearful that someone was breaking into her home. When she thought the person was coming in, she fired a 12-gauge shotgun through the door. Unfortunately, the person coming in was her son, who was having trouble making the lock work. He was killed. As you can imagine, she was hysterical, but the intrepid reporter kept shoving the camera (they were big and awkward in those days) at her, asking how she felt now that she knew she had killed her son. The police were there but did nothing (that I could see) to keep the reporter and camera away from her. That was a long time ago. How many friends and relatives have been killed in the intervening years? For a statistical summary, see http://bit.ly/AVMBS.
I can understand why people like guns. Guns symbolize power in a way nothing else does. I am reminded of Mickey Mouse as the Sorcerer’s Apprentice in the Disney Film “Fantasia” doesn’t understand and can’t control the power wielded successfully by the Sorcerer, the average person is ill equipped to control the power compacted into a weapon.
