On guns.

Oh, dear, god, yes, thank you, bless you, you are the miracle, I owe you my life all the time, I will do what you want when you want now and forever always, I will willingly give you my body, my time, my money, my home, I am your slave, I will offer you my family, my entire life is yours, it is in your hand, and every second you don't pull the trigger is another precious moment I owe you, thank you, thank you, thank you for sparing my life, please, I will do anything for you, anything at all.

This is what the gun offers to the person who holds the gun. Anyone and everyone in their sight owes this litany to the gun holder, all the time, whether it is listened to or asked for or not, and there are those who say they are immune to it, and that may very well be true at the point in time any of the rest of us think to ask, and we can laugh and have a beer and laugh at those who think the gun holder is a threat to those they love and care about. No, not them. Not the type. And we laugh. Perhaps uneasily, but we laugh; not a lot of choice there: they have a gun.

But the litany of the gun is incessant; the gun's very existence, it's only real purpose, is to force the litany from the person looking up from their knees into the barrel. The whole kill and injure things it can do take a back seat to what it is most often used for: to threaten. It isn't about safety or protection or having a tool. It is a device primarily designed to hand the wielder the ability and the power to be a threat. To be the threat. When the gun fires, it ceases to be a threat, it becomes something that kills or maims; it wreaks loss onto someone who couldn't offer enough. Even if they're shooting at the gun holder. But that's a different situation from what is happening more and more in America these days. No, guns are being fired upon people who are unarmed, who are no real threat to the person with the gun. Something unspeakable has happened to get them to kill for reasons we think we can not possibly understand.

I think, in at least some of the cases, we can. Because all of us have bad things happen to us, and mercifully, for the most part, they aren't bad enough to drive us to kill. That doesn't mean we are immune from that kind of bad; we've just been lucky. And when things start to fall apart for the gun holder's life, whether it be a job problem, or a relationship problem, an argument with someone, something we never find out about, the song gets louder. It never stops. It can't. When enough things fall away, when things get to be so bad that the people end up killing lose their reasons for going on, for living, for caring, the song bellows. The acts of people who are surprise murderers are a surprise to them, too. Murderers who survive murder-suicides tell this often. They couldn't see it coming and when it got there, they couldn't stop it. Law enforcement, the people who have to deal with the aftermath of what guns can do altogether too often all assure us: every last one of us are entirely capable of killing, under the right (or rather, incredibly wrong) circumstances.

This temptation, this call to power, is very strong. My faith in the idea that people will always be able to resist this siren call has left this year. Too many people are dying by a gun; it is such an easy way to kill.

It is too easy. Killing should be hard. Without a gun, for the majority of people, it is. Oh, sure, we can argue that anything can be a weapon and that won't stop someone who is really determined, and no, the unavailability of ease won't stop someone who is hellbent for leather to kill. But if it is more trouble than it is worth, if it takes too long, the opportunity for the madness that we in our modern society don't seem to be able to spot ahead of time begins to increasingly pass as time slips by. Guns account for more murder weapons used than all other weapons combined in America. No justification logic about the number of guns that aren't used for murder countermands this. They make it too easy. Period. There are too many owned by people who shouldn't have them, who have no real reason to own one beyond their pride, their desire for power over others.

The Bushmen, the most primitive society on earth, who use a fairly deadly poison on their hunting arrows, go very far out of their way to take the weapons out of the hands of anyone who is having any kind of altercation for any reason over anything. Remarkably, it is the women who take the weapons from the men. The poison is slow acting, and almost always fatal, and is excruciating to suffer through. The Bushmen community is small, close-knit, and everyone is considered important, and even though fights and disputes happen, no one is worth risking losing and there is no question or argument about the removal from the scene the almost-always-fatal weapons. The Bushmen are actually happier than most of the rest of us, despite what we would call astonishing poverty. They have to hunt to eat and dig in the ground to drink. But still, they laugh a lot; they like each other, and manage to get along better than most of do in our more "advanced" cultures.

This is not happening in America. We're too busy, too rushed, have too many of our own problems to be concerned with anyone else. There are so many of us, too many for us to expend our energies toward, and eventually, people come to be considered expendable, not worth our time, we can do without people who don't agree with us, they are exhausting, don't bother us, that's too hard, and if it that means some have to go so far to stay out of our way as to have have to die, that's okay, we can find a way to distract ourselves from that idea and we do. We're all going to die anyway. No reason to really care about people we don't care about.

We've lost something in there.

In America, the stance of gun ownership has become more like a cult, a religion, and the phrase "I'll give you my gun when you pry it from my cold, dead hands" is a mantra that is a misquote of Charlton Heston when he was the head of the NRA, a group that doesn't even qualify as a non-profit organization, a group that primarily concerns itself with extending weapons sales for weapons manufacturers. Their most recent response to a national atrocity came down to "more guns"; even they acknowledged that. It was a sales pitch.

That line about hands is filled with arrogance and pride and has become core to current extreme gun advocates. The understanding of that phrase is actually a reversal from what it actually says: people who shout it seem to understand it more along the lines of anyone who attempts to take the gun will be killed for trying it. Which means that the gun owner is unwilling to relinquish the power the gun offers them under any circumstances. They aren't willing to die for their gun, they're willing to kill for it. If power corrupts, this is the absolute corruption of absolute power. It is a life and death matter, not one of safety or security or rights or preserving any notion from a couple centuries ago about the idea that the government could not afford a standing army and they were going to count on the citizenry to preserve the nation. The power the gun offers has become more important to the gun holder than anyone he or she loves; god save those fools for attempting to take this kind of power from the gun holder. Good thing ignorant fools are expendable and replaceable, no matter who they are: crazy-ass liberals, strangers, friends, family, if necessary.

Gun owners have reiterated to me, over and over, every time they chant the line, that they are willing to kill to keep the power. Then they try to laugh and say let's have a beer, come on, don't be an asshole, there's no way I'll ever kill anyone, ha ha, I'm not a threat, I'm not in the demographic of killers, you should be thankful people like me are keeping you and your rights protected, god you are so stupid for not seeing it my way because I am not giving up my gun, not for anything, and don't bring it up again, it's god damn unpatriotic. Especially not for you, no matter what, no matter what kind of threat you feel from it, asshole. Go away.

So, if the guns are so important, so safe, so sane, I would wonder why it is that gun owners don't open carry into their jobs, on review days, when they know they are going to get a bad review. How many bosses would feel safe reprimanding an employee who has a gun on their hip? The very presence of the gun would demand the litany from the boss. Seems just wearing a gun would get one promoted with good raises all the time, and won't we all get along better? Does carrying the gun into church make the other worshippers safer? How about to restaurants? Movie theaters? If the gun is nothing more than a tool, and a symbol of freedom and democracy and the American way/dream/whatever, then everyone who doesn't have a gun should feel perfectly safe with the responsible gun owner, the private citizen, who is only showing off their power to all because they have it under perfect complete benevolent control all the time, right?

When I see a private citizen open carrying, I not feel any sense of safe. The person with the gun is, regardless of their real disposition, making it clear that they are going to get their way no matter what, and they always appear to be incredibly pissed off, even if they are smiling and laughing. The gun is an angry thing. The concealed weapon carriers are no better or different, they are just harder to spot. They still always appear to be deeply suspicious of all the unarmed people around them, and not seeing the weapon does not make me feel any safer.

Gun owners can, at times, be extraordinarily arrogant and hypocritical: this power cannot tempt me, I am above it. Only bad people are the problem. Only people who are foolishly terrified that I would ever under any circumstances ever misuse the power ever, I mean, my god, you are all such fools who even think about wanting to take this glorious secret power away from me, you, all of you are the problem. I couldn't possibly be the problem. I am so strong, so above you all, you need never worry about me. I'm not the type. Now change the subject.

Every murderer has, at some time or another, with, I believe, very, very few exceptions, has uttered this assurance to themselves, to assure themselves and those around them that they are, don't worry, immune to the litany of the gun. And they can't see when they are mirroring the litany: you owe me everything because I have spared your miserable life again, today even, and whatever you do, don't piss me off. I have a gun. Too late.

Weapons do not make peace. Trust makes peace. And trust isn't earned, it's given. Guns are an attempt to take trust, by force, no matter what. And all they offer is the opportunity for the target to give absolutely everything to the wielder and that will eventually not be enough, and the peace the gun holder feels, the joy of getting everything from someone is false, a lie. As soon as the gun gets put down, everything that was gained with it will fall away. Then what? Pick it back up, idiot.

The primitives have it right. There is a time and a place to have a weapon, and there is a time to have it taken away. The problems with the killings has not been with the gun, nor have they been that an individual had a problem they couldn't get through. The problem is that when the crisis arose, they were alone with a banshee that screamed a solution that would re-empower them, save them, and by god they would not give it up because that was all they had left.

Guns are dangerous. Those who own them are not safer with them, they are putting themselves at risk with them, the risk that they would at some point not be able to resist what they offer. And while that sounds extreme, far reaching, and an outrageous exaggeration, no, you don't get it, you don't understand, asshole, god, you are so stupid, it's not that simple, there have been altogether too many instances of those who could not do so to write this idea off as ridiculous. The solutions of throw those hopeless people away cannot work; sooner or later, our strength fails us all. Because that is the core to all the spectacular uses we've been suffering through. It is a failure of philosophy, of resolve, of our ability to resist a temptation we have thrown ourselves in front of.

Murderers and criminals do not take lives because they are happy. Only the incredibly psychopathic and sociopathically insane do that. Looking for the signs of those sick people in those around us will not often enough thwart what has been happening. The madness that has been overwhelming us is not in there. We're looking for the wrong problems.

The problem is that we are alone at the wrong times. Alone with monsters. Monsters that make outrageous promises, that won't shut up.

Have your guns. Use them for good. There is no question, shooting a weapon is fun. But when the time comes you have to have them taken away from you, give them to the person who loves you. If you don't have such a person, if you do not have such people, you should not have a weapon that demands you demand the litany from everyone you know. You're not safe. If you proudly proclaim Mr. Heston's propogandized slogan, you are already under the spell. If you can't hand your gun to someone who loves you, someone who's afraid of what you might, at an impossible moment, do with it, then you are at risk of killing them. And if you can't see that, they are as good as dead already.

There's some laughter that has to happen, laughter without any kind of threat anywhere near it. There isn't any kind of one-button solution. We need to be involved enough with each other to see something might happen, and we need to trust each other enough to give up our defenses, our offensive systems. Because that is the choice: we either have to love and care for and trust each other enough to lower our barriers and believe we will be alright, or we have to kill each other. There is no other choice; guns afford us no other option, and they have such an easy one they want to tell us about.

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