Target 223 Savage 10FP 25 shots (credit: Arthurrh, via Wikimedia Commons)

What Are The Odds? 

Once again, a lone gunman – white, no known ties to any extremist groups – has bought an arsenal of guns and ammo and shot a bunch of people in the U.S. One of the posts on social media caught how people in other parts of the world, and even in much of the U.S., feel. The post showed a “news release form” that could be used to make up regular headlines for the news media. The fictitious form looked something like this:

“Breaking News: in _____________, U.S.A. _______ people have been killed, with an estimated ______ wounded and in hospital at the time of this news release. The alleged shooter died at the scene after being shot by police/taking his own life. (Circle one.) He has been identified as __________________, a man whom neighbors say seemed friendly enough. He so far appears to have been operating alone. The victims were at a …. (some public place where people gather to work or have fun). Of the ____ confirmed dead, ___ have so far been identified. Their names are  __________________________ …”

Et cetera.

Yes, America. Unfortunately, this is how you look to the world. 58 dead in the Las Vegas attack that occurred Sunday night. About double that number have been killed by guns in the U.S. in the four days between that shooting and the time at which I write these lines.

Let me try my best to get to the heart of the matter. America, you used to pride yourself on being rational. Crackpot ideas were for Europeans who still had kings and czars or Orientals with their emperors and emirs or Africans or Latin Americans with various dictators. America was down-to-earth. Sensible. Americans made a point of learning facts and coming to rational decisions based on those facts.

13,286 gun deaths in 2015, excluding suicides.   On this one, you have long since ceased to make any sense.

So here one more time is my case for serious gun control laws.

And for those who resist my case before they have even heard it, it might help for me to say that I grew up in a house that always held between 4 and 10 guns. My dad was a hunter. He also bought and sold guns because he knew a good deal when he saw one and he was willing to buy and hold. He taught me to shoot when I was about 7. I have shot game of many kinds. I know guns.

The thing that many people don’t get is that no matter how sensible you think you are, anyone will have had moments of rage in their life. You can bet on it. Everyone "loses it" sometimes.

So here’s the big point: if you do “lose it” for even a short while, the odds that you will do something irrational and cause major, irreversible, perhaps fatal, harm to one or more other persons are much, much higher if you have guns handy than if your only weapons are a knife, a club, or even a vehicle. Guns were invented, and have always since been manufactured and sold, because they are efficient, lone-attacker killing devices. That's why assassins use them. 

In plainer language, when guns are all around, more and more people will use them on more and more other people. And it’s not because the U.S. or any other gun-toting nation is full of crazy people. It is just a matter of statistics. The odds. A percentage of Americans are troubled with mental illnesses, but no more than anywhere else. It’s the availability of guns that makes these horrific outcomes follow as naturally as night follows day. Guns being so easy to get means that horror is statistically inevitable on a regular basis.  

What are the odds, when so many guns are so easy and relatively cheap to obtain, that they are going to be used to kill other people?

And that is the heart of the matter. What Americans should be asking each other, once they calm down again, is “What are the odds?” That is the rational question the gun rights folk should be answering.

And those odds, of course, are plain as the lumpy nose on my face.

So how do gun rights advocates answer this completely cool and calm rational argument?

   

                                                               Declaration of Independence 

                                                   (credit: John Trumbull, via Wikimedia Commons)

Basically, their responses boil down to asserting that they have Second Amendment rights. The constitution says in clear langage that they have a right to “bear arms” if they want to do so. 

How then should those who wish to see much stronger gun control laws enacted answer this “bottom line” that the gun rights advocates see as sacrosanct and inviolable? Take it on. 

  

So once more, in a sincere attempt to be rational, calm, and open in our reasoning, let’s answer the Second Amendment argument rationally.

No, the Second Amendment is not the final word on the matter. The founding fathers of the U.S. were not gods. They were mortal men. They did their best, but they made mistakes in parts of the documents that they wrote for the new republic they were trying to set up.

They were men. Human. They had shortcomings. They sometimes could not foresee what the future might bring. They did not make provision for all possible eventualities because no one can. They made mistakes or left gaps. The Second Amendment is one.

No one in that painting of the founding fathers of America could possibly have foreseen the kinds of weapons that exist today. Paddock, the Vegas shooter, used more firepower in nine minutes than a company of men would have been able to get off in that time span in 1776.

Today, American gun control laws look to the rest of the world like madness, the opposite of what for so long Americans prided themselves on, namely common sense. When you make laws for millions of people, you have to look at the statistics. The odds.

The Second Amendment never really had the effect that Jefferson was hoping it would even in his time. He wanted citizen militias that would protect the citizens against the power of the federal government. The plan did not work. West Point was created because the local militias that Jefferson thought would be the American people’s protection against tyranny performed so badly so many times. British regulars in 1812 to 1815 whipped them over and over.

Note also that America’s biggest heroes of the Old West cleaned up towns that were run by gangs simply by making every person check his/her guns upon entering the town limits. Wyatt Earp saw what needed to be done and did it. Check your guns. No exceptions.

There are other gun rights advocates’ arguments, but they don’t hold up. Good guys protecting themselves and their families against bad guys? If those bad guys get “the drop” on you – which is pathetically easy to do – your plan is gone in a heartbeat. Then, too often, so is your heartbeat.

I could go on, but enough already. America, you always prided yourself on your common sense. Finally, after so much rage, pain, grief, and fear, show some. Not while everyone is emotionally overwrought, but later, when everyone is calmer.

No automatic weapons and no devices to make semi-automatic weapons automatic and no 20+ shot clips. The only exceptions should be for law enforcement personnel. For the rest, hunting arms only. Difficult to conceal. Long barreled. Maximum 6 shot magazines. And every device the gun makers cook up to get around these laws, legislators should block that week.                                                                  

You know the drill, America. I pray that this time, you will show, in the long run, grief, rage, and fear, yes, but then quietly and more determinedly, just some common sense.  

   

                                       Children's Day 2012, Chiang Mai Airforce Base, Thailand

                                                   (credit: By Takeaway, via Wikimedia Commons)

   

                    Taking Aim (credit: Airman 1st class, C. C. McCloud) (www.af.mil/News/Photos)