I'm not a gun person, although I have a friend who has a friend whose cousin owns two military surplus rifles identical to the one the
hunter used to kill six other hunters a few weeks ago in Wisconsin in an argument over a deer stand.
These guns were designed and manufactured for one specific purpose: to kill people a city block away efficiently enough to stymie the advance of their fellows. As hunting weapons (even as "self defense" weapons) they are ridiculous: heavy, long and unwieldy, equipped with bayonets and "NATO grenade launchers" (think "alloy rims").
Even as military "assault weapons," they are sorely outdated. Modern "assault weapons" are shorter, lighter, more easily handled and faster-firing. This link to an Al Jazeera article (warning: critical of Israeli policy) shows an Israeli Defense Force soldier clearly, if disturbingly, demonstrating superior modern "assault weapon" versatility (scroll down to the third photo).
The sort of legal "assault weapons" my friend's friend's cousin owns are somewhat expensive. "Market forces" effectively control production, distribution and ownership at reasonable levels, according to gun people.
But "market forces" are driven by hurricanes of influence, not the least of which is our gun-controllish attitude. My friend's friend's cousin could afford his weapons because the Yugoslavian Army unloaded 200,000 SKS 7.62-mm semi-automatic rifles for sale here in the U.S. about a year and a half ago, undoubtedly part of their deal to end the war in the Balkans. A year ago, they were widely available for $139 from dozens of gun dealers; three months ago they were advertised in the $170 range.
Cost-wise, a contemporary (legal, semi-auto) "assault weapon" runs in the $450-$600 range. The sort of (fully automatic) gun the Israeli Defense Force soldier is using in the Al Jazeera photo linked above costs in the neighborhood of $1,200 - $1,600, and, in the U.S., legal ownership requires a license with lots of hoops.
In short, my friend's friend's cousin's guns, and likely that of the Wisconsin hunter, are widely available today thanks to forces way outside their influence (or yours, or mine, and maybe all of ours).
A few years ago, as part of a research project, I spent six months seriously studying a couple thousand issues of U.S. sporting magazines (Field & Stream, Forest & Stream, American Sportsman, etc.) published from the 1870's to the 1950's. Before Playboy, before Maxim, these magazines comprised the bulk of (mostly white) men's popular leisure reading.
They articulated a system of wisdom that many of our grandfathers, liberal and conservative, strove to emulate. They consistently promoted responsible gun ownership/use, to an extent far beyond their debt to commercial supporters (gun manufacturers, sporting goods retailers, gun owners, local and national law enforcement agencies and readers).
They promoted guns as a transcendental rite, as a process that changes each participant predictably and positively.
Such participation was reserved, disproportionately but not exclusively, for white males. But extrapolating the "rite" to women and people of color was natural, plausible, and occasionally implied in those magazines (though featured infrequently, and then, always, as anomalies; those magazines will open your eyes about racism/sexism in your great-granddad's generation).
The propaganda that espoused this transforming rite was almost religious. Purportedly, the rite changed a person the way marriage, parenthood, indebtedness, or education changed a person. If I can sum up 70-odd years of industry magazine philosophy in a single proposition, it was: that responsible gun ownership is a duty of able-bodied citizens which improves the moral character of the individual and strengthens the common defense.
My father, a research scientist who would be in his late 70's now, was a once-every-other-year hunter. My youth, in a rural area in the 1960's, was a long and happy cycle of BB-guns, hunting bows and 410-ga. shotguns (the least destructive available).
I and four subsequent brothers were lectured frequently and thoroughly before we were allowed to "own guns" (at age 13). What my father told us echoed those sporting magazines, though he as never a reader: that responsible gun ownership signifies an automatic and irrevocable contract between every gun owner and all the various representations of our "society," with separate sets of responsibilities to friends and family, neighbors, strangers, wildlife, property, law enforcement and government.
In 1962, I was an 11-year old altar boy, John F. Kennedy was president, and "the national mood" around our house was triumphant-exuberant (I was registered Democrat before I was baptized and may have even voted, that's how it was back then).
I was talking with my father. The topic, nuclear arms proliferation, quickly turned to gun control (more particularly, whether I could have my first "real gun" for my upcoming birthday, and the answer was no).
What he told me that day might have been rationalization for his career choices, but it articulated the sentiments of all those sporting magazines I read later.
Gun ownership and citizenship are inextricably interwoven. Implicit in the "social contract" of gun ownership is the de facto responsibility to uphold our way of life, including our Constitution, our democracy if you will, and the social customs that define our "society." For many, that concept implies military service. For my father, it went way beyond that.
At 11, I was an idealistic and impressionable "duck and cover" veteran, and I believed Kennedy's election had permanently altered history. I could see a short, straight line from where we were to a worldwide democratic utopia, like maybe by the time I was 14.
My father deflated those notions. Kennedy couldn't make America safe, he said, much less the whole world. Plenty of people wanted to oust Kennedy and take over, and not all of them were Russians (my dad, incidentally, was afraid Kennedy might provoke just that).
Owning a gun, he told me, was like a sacred oath shared with millions of American people. That oath meant that I might one day be forced to kill people or be killed in order to protect our family and preserve our way of life. That might happen as a soldier in a war overseas, he said, but it might happen here at home, right out on our street, and it might happen to me. Figuring all that out would have to wait until I was older, he said. I was too young to "take the oath."
That conversation scared the hell out of me. I remember crying about it that night.
My father designed battlefield communications technology for a defense contractor. He truly believed his work helped make the world safer. By the mid-1970's, Vietnam weighed heavily on him and probably contributed, albeit slightly, to his fatal heart attack.
At least a dozen diaries over the past few days have expressed sentiments along the lines of, "what's America coming to?"
I doubt I am alone imagining that, if the ultimate purpose of the bad guys is to supplant democracy with a more "orderly" social form, they could not be doing a much better job. Comparisons with late-1930's Germany make that imagining all the more chilling.
The polarization of our political spheres is pretty even and pretty severe, about half of us headed our way and the other half toward Armageddon. Some proportion of both sides would likely consent to a more authoritarian lifestyle were we to endure another Sept. 11, and that is a very dangerous condition for a democratic society to find itself in.
As I fuss and worry about it I keep returning to the philosophy of my father, and those old magazines.
My friend's friend's cousin has taken "the oath."
He doesn't shoot. He doesn't even want to. (He did take one funny photo in dark glasses, a beret and a raincoat that's a morbidly hilarious Patty Hearst spoof). Nevertheless, he owns two military assault weapons and several hundred rounds of ammunition in hopes that their "mojo" will help protect us all and, failing that, that his guns will protect him and his family as best he is able.
He -- my friend's friend's cousin -- thinks all of us should adopt his philosophy. He would feel safer at night if every American who voted against Bush and his thugs owned a military assault weapon and stored it safely, securely, and privately, along with some ammunition.
In a functioning democracy, it is the responsibility of the people to determine the national course. Many of us today are asking "whither America?" By the time "the people" (meaning, a majority of our fellow Americans) reach that same dilemma, it's doubtful any effective means of social opposition will be available to us.
Are the (certain and horrendous, IMO) bad effects of arming ourselves any worse than the potential effects of our current gun controlish efforts?
I have plenty of reasons to support gun control, and I've never been opposed to it. Well, except for my friend's friend's cousin, of course. And I'm not as sure as I used to be about myself.
It would be foolish (and frightening) to suggest that we begin arming ourselves. That, of course, would necessitate changes in our gun controlish consensus and lead to tragic accidents and occasional atrocities. Clearly, a society without any guns would be an evolved society, and clearly, that would be our almost universal first choice here at dKos, hypothetically and all that.
On the other hand, should we ever come to the abso-posi-lutely point where we must arm ourselves, I doubt whether Fox, Clear Channel, Drudge, ABC, etc., will announce it, and I doubt whether dKos would be able to.
Forget ideology, forget even morality. Logically, classic liberal American democracy (of the people, for the people, by the people) stands as the best and maybe only means to secure dignity for the largest mass of participants with even minimal infrastructure (education, opportunity, etc.).
Logically, classic liberal American democracy depends on a sustained and forceful commitment from an extreme majority of its participants, way more than 50 percent plus one.
Logically, the force of that commitment inoculates us against conspiracies to supplant our way of life. But expression of that commitment may someday require that "well regulated Militia" our Constitution claims is "necessary to the security of a free State."
Logically, then, don't all of us have an obligation to at least consider "taking the oath"?