This diary began as a reply to a comment by DKos member ban nock, in the discussion of DKos member political junquie’s diary If you are a member of the NRA…, and includes elements of my diary from yesterday Is it enough yet? If anyone supports the GOP today, they lack a moral conscience.
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I hear you wanting to take away something that I and millions of people own.
Yes, I do want to take them away.
I want to take away all firearms that aren’t single shot rifles, because all others (handguns, semi or fully automatic firearms) have only one primary function— to murder other people.
The claims of other uses for these firearms — for sport, for collecting, for hunting— can no longer be used to justify their continued public circulation. These claims never should have been considered sufficient moral justification, when the known result of allowing anyone to purchase them is tens of thousands of people dying every year, just so a handful of firearm zealots can gratify their impulses through the uniquely American fetish with guns,
In reality hunting today is typically not a source of provision but actually drains family resources. Deer hunters, for example, spend on average twenty dollars per pound of venison acquired, once all the costs of equipment,licenses, transportation, unsuccessful hunts, and so forth, are calculated.3'
This hunting is doubly sexual-as a source of erotic enjoyment as well as an expression of masculine gender identity. In her ecofeminist critique of hunters' discourse, Marti Kheel cites a number of sportsmen and hunting advocates who understand hunting as an expression of aggressive male sexual energy.3 The following sampling of North American hunters'literature indicates the validity of a sexual interpretation of hunting. The pattern is that of a buildup and release of tension organized around the pursuit, phallic penetration, and erotic touching of a creature whom the hunter finds seductively appealing.
especially among emotionally fragile white heterosexual males:
In both school shootings and acts of domestic terrorism the perpetrators use guns and/or commit violence to resolve crises in masculinity and to constitute themselves as “tough guys,” real men.
Whatever pleasure you take from holding a firearm does not justify every other person living in fear for their life on a daily basis.
If that feels like an inconvenience, an imposition, or an intrusion on something you deem important, I find it an intrusion on something I deem important that I have to worry whether one of my adult children might not come back alive if they decide they want to go to a concert. I shouldn’t have to worry about that, and they shouldn’t have to think twice about just living their lives as they choose, just so you or anyone else can fire off 30 rounds without reloading.
And the idea that there is such a thing as ‘gun culture’, or that the ‘traditions’ of rural areas have equal importance to the lives lost, or justify the costs borne by the rest of us:
… an American myth emerged. The wild, wild West was won through the barrel of a Colt .45 or a Winchester repeating rifle. This tale, told often and colorfully enough without regard to supporting facts, assumed a patina of truth because it affirmed the young and expanding nation’s image of itself. All this gun-blazing storytelling was mostly fanciful imaginings, manufactured in pulp literature and codified on celluloid reels.
To emphasize how reality was something far less dramatic, Hix quoted Bob Boze Bell, executive editor of True West magazine, who cast doubt over the shoot ‘em up version of the taming of the West:
“There are a thousand movies made about them, so you’d think that there were gunfights every day,” Bell says. “And when you read the diaries or you talk to the old-timers, they’ll say things like, ‘Why, I never saw anybody pull a gun in anger, and I lived on the range for 40 years.’ Did most people settle their differences in court? Yeah, probably. Did they use their fists more than their guns? Yes. Were there a lot of deaths from shooting in saloons? Oh yeah. It was a wild time. It’s safe to say that the West had its moments. And what we celebrate in legend are those dramatic moments. They weren’t all the time, and they were not like Hollywood portrays, but if you portrayed it real, nobody would go see the movie.”
There’s a right to hold millions captive with terror, never knowing when they, their children, their partner, may not come home— their bodies ripped to pieces— so you can entertain yourself, or hold on to the delusion you are safer with a gun in your possession?:
DID YOU KNOW? Keeping a gun in the home raises the risk of homicide.
- States with the highest levels of gun ownership have 114 percent higher firearm homicide rates and 60 percent higher homicide rates than states with the lowest gun ownership (Miller, Hemenway, and Azrael, 2007, pp. 659, 660).
- The risk of homicide is three times higher in homes with firearms (Kellermann, 1993, p. 1084).
- Higher gun ownership puts both men and women at a higher risk for homicide, particularly gun homicide (Harvard School of Public Health, Harvard Injury Control Research Center, 2009).
DID YOU KNOW? Keeping a gun in the home raises the risk of suicide
- Keeping a firearm in the home increases the risk of suicide by a factor of 3 to 5 and increases the risk of suicide with a firearm by a factor of 17 (Kellermann, p. 467, p. Wiebe, p. 771).
- The association between firearm ownership and increased risk of suicide cannot be explained by a higher risk of psychiatric disorders in homes with guns (Miller, p. 183).
DID YOU KNOW? A gun in the home is more likely to be used in a homicide, suicide, or unintentional shooting than to be used in self-defense.
Show me where this right you conjure exists in the Constitution.
It doesn’t.
You only imagine it because you want to rationalize a hideous hobby, and justify what amounts to pure self-importance— other lives matter less than yours, and matter less than what piques your interest.