It’s a subject that makes even my friends nervous. I’ve learned not to talk about it in polite company, never sure someone won’t react badly — and fairly sure most people whose circles I run in will lose respect for me, maybe even think I’m a bit nuts.
I want a gun. Actually, two guns: a moderately sized handgun and a small-gauge shotgun with a big magazine and a relatively short barrell.
And I don’t want the guns so I can take up hunting or sport shooting. I want them so I can point them at people and even shoot people — should it become necessary.
These confessions usually provoke an incredulous “You’re not serious?” from my coastal, educated, liberal friends. Then shakes of the head, eye rolling, or a slight edging away.
Unlike many of these friends, I’ve actually shot a gun, as have most Westerners, I’d imagine. I grew up with guns in the house, going shooting with my dad, not hunting but knowing plenty of hunters.
I grew up thinking of guns as pretty much like power tools — they could hurt or kill you if misused, but they were basically tools that could get things done. Actually, I was more comfortable using a gun than power tools, because the safety procedures with guns were well specified and strict.
I get the impression that for most non-Westerners, or for most born-and-bred big-city folk, guns mean something different. They’re not what your dad takes to the mountains with his buddies, or even what your nutty great-uncle keeps locked in his nightstand against “prowlers.” Instead, they’re crime. They’re gangs. They’re the 11 o’clock news and the inner city run amok and the urban jungle come to life — with all the racial and class innuendo that carries.
I want a gun, though, pretty much because I’ve started seeing guns like a big-city resident and not like the pseudo-country Western boy I was. Guns aren’t just dangerous toys for shooting targets or animals. They are a weapon that can give you power over other people when you most need it.
One event persuaded me of this viewpoint: Hurricane Katrina. What was so shocking about that disaster, and so unlike 9/11, was how enough people turned so nasty so fast that the bonds of common sociality dissolved into violence. This wasn’t the majority response. But there were enough people who thought they could get ahead by means of (or simply get away with) violence that they created a horrific situation for everyone else.
Thomas Hobbes said that in a natural, pre-legal state, human life was a “war of all aginast all.” Life was “nasty, brutish, and short.” There wasn’t even a stable rule by the strong, because
as to the strength of body, the weakest has strength enough to kill the strongest, either by secret machination, or by confederacy with others, that are in the same danger with himselfe.
The Superdome looked to me like the closest we usually come in America to what Hobbes was talking about. And Hobbes could have added guns to his list of things that allow the weak to kill the strong — that allow anyone to kill anyone else, really.
And then I though about what might happen in my own city. Terrorism worse than 9/11? A hurricane or other natural disaster? A prolonged blackout? Economic troubles leading to general strikes or riots?
Watching the societal breakdown of New Orleans, I suddenly could vividly imagine a breakdown in my own neighborhood and city. And I could imagine needing something to give me an advantage in a war of all against all, something to help keep me and my loved ones alive.
I don’t know how likely such an extreme situation is. But I think it’s likely enough to be worth a little insurance policy. I’d keep my guns locked away except for an occasional trip to a shooting range to keep my skills up. I would not expect to use them against “prowlers,” and I’d make sure children could never get at them. But I’d feel much better if I had them around.
I can’t say, though, that the whole thing doesn’t make me nervous. Am I just being paranoid? Does the thrill I get when looking at a Walther PPK in a pawnshop (an automatic pistol, less reliable but infinitely sexier than a revolver) say something about darker motives and more frightening desires that I hide even from myself?
Maybe. But I still want a couple of guns. A moderately sized handgun for concealment and easy brandishing, and a small-gauge shotgun with a large magazine and a relatively short barrel for short-range stopping power. I intend to shoot people with them — should it become necessary.
Wow! Provocative post.
I teeter on this subject myself. In fact, I squeamishly brought up the idea of gun ownership to my other half a few years ago, and was met with absolute disbelief, as if I had broken my vows to liberalism. Funny thing is, I don’t think the knee-jerk liberal reaction against gun ownership has to do with the possibility of inflicting violence; I think it has to do with the kind of people we perceive as gun owners, and we are freaked to think of one of our own as one of them.
Yes the world (and people) can be scary. I say get the guns.
PS: there was a great Family Ties episode in which Ma and Pa Keaton decide on gettin’ a gat, only to almost shoot A.P.K. Great TV indeed!
got a gun, fact I got two…
I understand the whole fear of social breakdown scenario. It was the L.A. Riots/Uprising/Civil Unrest that did it for me. Throw in some of those darker motives and desires you were talking about and a screening or two of Straw Dogs and I became a proud gun owner.
And yeah, part of the frisson was to be the bookish albeit angry liberal at school but Chow Yun fuckin’ Fat (don’t think I didn’t buy the gun from The Killer) at the range.
I agree with your assessment of guns as a tool but my fear is that their utility is somewhat limited given the catastrophic conditions they are meant to deal with. I mean, if everything really goes to shit and your front porch suddenly looks like a Romero movie then killing one or two of the bad people will only briefly stave off that noted Hobbesian end.
Then there are practical considerations like the fact that I haven’t practiced with or cleaned my gun (insert joke here) in so long that I am unsure as to its working order or that I am such a rightfully scared parent that I have it so carefully locked away that getting it out would require much more work than a literally life or death emergency would call for.
The moral considerations don’t get easier either. It is comforting (if that could ever be the right word given the circumstance) to know that you have an instrument of death dealing power to protect your loved ones but it also calls into question what it would take to actually put a large bloody hole into another human body. I never want to do that-yeah, I hope that I could if the situation called for it-but again, how completely fucked would things have to be for the situation to call for it and how realistic is it that my one shot could effectively end the problem once and for all?
The line that really got me was “short-range stopping power.” I mean, if that is our intent, and clearly it is when we are talking about purchasing guns to use to shoot people should they threaten our lives, then why stop at a handgun and a shotgun? You know what Ordell Robbie says about an AK-47, right? “When you absolutely, positively got to kill every motherfucker in the room, accept no substitutes.”
Thanks for the post, I haven’t given this much thought to the bogeymen in my closet in a long time.
I’ve never seriously contemplated owning a gun. I have fired guns, primarily .22 rifles, shooting at cans out in the country where I was raised.
Considering what happened in N.O. after Katrina and what happened in L.A. after Rodney King, I completely understand the reasoning behind the desire to own a gun. And I appreciate the serious consideration of the moral and philosophical ramifications of gun ownership. Plus, living as I do in L.A., I realize that I’m one 7.0 quake away from total chaos.
All the same, I don’t want to own a gun, for two reasons.
(1) There are times when I’m so angry that I might just use it for no good reason. Last year, for instance, over the course of a few months, someone in my neighborhood took to heaving rocks and other objects at random against the side of my building, breaking a window in my apartment and one in my upstairs neighbors’. A couple of times during these assaults, I took to the streets to try and find out who it was and ended up shouting at the top of my lungs at whoever it was. If I had a gun in the house, I just may have taken it along ‘for good measure’ and gotten myself into a whole lot of trouble. I need to keep that kind of temptation at bay.
(2) I’m a well-known worrier about the kinds of accidental harm that can come about just by living in the world. I’m famous among some friends for having said, “There are just so many ways to get in an accident!” Keeping a gun in the home seems to me a good way to increase your percentages of getting shot. Guns are much more likely to harm their owners or their owners’ loved ones than they are to be used in self-defense.
Here’s a little something I turned over in the most cursory of web searches.
“A gun in the home is 4 times more likely to be involved in an unintentional shooting, 7 times more likely to be used to commit a criminal assault or homicide, and 11 times more likely to be used to attempt or commit suicide than to be used in self-defense.” -A Kellerman, et al. Journal of Trauma, August 1998; Kellerman AL, Lee RK, Mercy JA, et al. “The Epidemiological Basis for the Prevention of Firearm Injuries.” Annu.Rev Public Health. 1991; 12:17-40.)
[found on http://www.ichv.org/Statistics.htm
Also, I know you’re not talking about using your guns to defend yourself from the typical breaking and entering robbery, but almost all break-ins happen when the occupants are not around anyway. Suppose you get robbed. Losing your computer and stereo is bad, but losing your guns to someone who is a criminal will probably help propagate more crime and even possibly deaths that could have been prevented.
The Hobbesian war of all against all can be an attractive idea, one that can explain a great deal about human behavior. At the same time, I think it can also feed the sort of paranoia that sometimes leads to unnecessary violence.
It’s unfortunate yet entirely warranted that we have such a lack of confidence in our local, state and federal governments to adequately protect us and respond to disasters like Katrina - such a lack of confidence in fact, that we (or some of us) feel the need to get an edge by getting armed. This mentality is how freaky fringe militias get started, in my opinion. There are few justifiable reasons to have a gun, and for every one there are so many good reasons not to have one. I’m not trying to pop-off on some liberal anti-gun rant. I could care less about that. I’m just saying a gun won’t help you.
I’ve had a gun pointed at my on a couple of occasions, and I’ve been in situations like Tim, where if I had a gun, I’d be in jail now, probably regretting what I did. The problem with possessing a deadly weapon is that it’s always in the back of your mind that you have it. It’s an ace-in-the-hole type thing. Maybe you got the gun for a good reason, but in the heat of the moment, that bar of “when I’d pull this gun out” might just slip down a few notches, say when someone takes your parking space or something. And i you pull it out, you better be ready to pull the trigger.
I have an anecdote about a doctor — an ER doctor in Seattle, who sees gun shot wounds all the time, knows the risks and statistics etc. She came down to visit me and a couple of my friends a few years ago. Like most of the other cars on our block, hers was burgalurized when she was in our apartment building. Guess what got stolen? Her fully loaded automatic, with an extra clip.
When I heard that her gun was stolen, I was pissed, worried, and struck by her behavior. She spend the better part of the night trying to explain her reasoning, but at the end of the day it didn’t matter. Some crack head was now roaming my neighborhood strapped. Great.
Living in San Francisco, disaster is always on the horizon. The next earthquake could easily dwarf what happened in New Orleans. But I’m not building up my arsenal just yet. I have food, water, and an escape plan. I’d advise a similar approach for dealing with potential mayhem in your neighborhood.
As much as I enjoyed reading this incredibly interesting and engaging post, the intellectual in me wants to respond by saying:
Guns are so stoooooooooopid.
I can’t imagine wanting one.
I’ll take a hand grenade, though, if anyone’s got a spare.
Interesting that none of the regularly posting females have weighed in on this one
Makes me think of the basic psychological theory that you’re either an “internalizer” or an “externalizer”– meaning, from our typcial and universal experiences of suffering and/or anger, you’re either more likely to think about or carry out an act of sabotage/hurt to yourself or to direct it at someone else (the statistics in Tim’s comment show that we’re more likely the former). I mean, let’s get over the idea that guns really function as “protection.” I’m reminded of the fourteen (!) guns my stepdad owns (and I myself shot a .22 at 10 years old, out in the wash, at soda cans) and how he told me he’d shoot any boy I brought home who was other-than-white -and- the fourteen year-old student I had who hid a gun under his pillow for a gang member so that he himself wouldn’t get “popped.”
Fear. Anger.
A little search about the psychogy says “Such systems guide persons’ actions in respect to their environments. Social and personal worlds constantly mutually constrain each other in ways that lead to transformations in both. Internalization and reciprocal externalization occur as the person takes in and transforms social messages…This account of internalization/externalization extends sociogenetic approaches to explain how the human mind functions as both a social and a personal organized system. [from http://tap.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/13/6/723.
I, myself, am an internalizer, but want to put a vote in for humanity over hubris.
[...] Recently, a post on this blog resonated with me. The necessity of owning a gun (a shotgun, in particular) seems not irrational anymore–rather, seems important. When I was growing up the Prophet of the church I belonged to sent out a proclamation that every family should have “a year supply.” It was apparently a response to Cold War anxieties. And dutifully, my parents purchased and stored away hundreds of pounds of canned foods, grains, sugar, dried milk, and water. We would regularly make use of the stores and then restock them to keep the supplies fresh. [...]