Once we get through this layer of bullshit we'll proceed to a second layer, the debate about whether more guns versus fewer guns present in that Aurora movie theater when the shooting occurred would have made the people there more or less safe.
For the record, I'm of the opinion that the ability to purchase hundreds and thousands of rounds of ammunition on the internet, semi-automatic assault weapons at gun shows, and virtually anything that enables you to fire off 60 rounds in a minute makes all of us less safe, regardless of how many holstered heroes happen to be haunting our public entertainment venues.
Others, however, will argue that if only guns were easier to get and more acceptable to carry with us at all times, tragedies like the Aurora shooting could be curtailed or avoided altogether. Says Larry Pratt, executive director of Gun Owners of America:
'It is very sad that there was a no-guns policy in that theatre and that nobody had thought to take a gun with them anyway.'You will see plenty of these kinds of arguments, which will begin with an example of an incident in which someone besides the attacker was packing heat, and that person managed to take down the attacker. From this point you will hear arguments that, as such an incident demonstrates, the increased presence of guns only makes us safer, and more of us need to be carrying concealed weapons in public for our own, as well as public, safety. After all, violent criminals tend to stay away from those kinds of movie theaters where they know that everyone inside is strapped; they only prey upon the kinds of movie theaters where they figure it's likely that everyone decided not to bring along a lethal weapon.
'At a church in the same city four months ago something somewhat similar occurred but with a very different outcome. A dirtbag ran his car into another car in a church parking lot and stormed out of his car, killed a woman, and people were leaving the church at that time. So as soon as he did that somebody that had a concealed firearm drew down and killed the attacker, and his slaughter was put to rest immediately. So a clear take-away message from what happened is "don't go into gun-free zones unless you are willing to break the law".'
'The idea that you tell people they've got to go into a public place without a firearm is setting them up for this kind of disaster. Most of our mass murders have occurred precisely where the criminal knew that he would find unarmed victims, and by and large he has been right.'
Such arguments are contestable head-to-head. Presumably, for example, the fact that the US is up there with the likes of Columbia, Jamaica, Mexico, and Nicaragua in per capita gun deaths (and we fight our drug wars in these other countries; not our own) says something about the fact that even if guns make us 'safer' in some sense, they definitely make the consequences of altercation more lethal for us than any comparably developed country in the world.
But once you strip away all the bullshit, all the technocratic arguments by economists and lobbyists for and against greater measures of gun control, and all the sappy stories about modern John Wayne figures gunning down an assailant at the local Church, the real argument of people like Larry Pratt becomes clear.
For Mr. Pratt, the NRA, and the broader gun lobby, the reason some lunatic armed to the teeth with multiple handguns, semi-automatic assault rifles, explosives, and enough rounds of ammunition to hold down a fort for an afternoon was able to take over a movie theater filled with innocent people and commit mass murder comes down to you, average citizen: it's your fault. And if only you were a better educated and more reasonable person, and if only your government would allow you even greater access to deadly weapons, you could have prevented this senseless tragedy. If only you would have had the foresight and the freedom to bring your personal-issue Glock 19 along with you and your children to eat popcorn and watch Batman, you could have mowed down this crazy with a flurry of high-minded civic action right to the chest, and saved your fellow moviegoers from this monster.
This is really what the pro-gun argument comes down to. We don't have enough guns because decent, well-meaning people like you are being stopped by your tyrannical government from pursuing the right of lethal self-protection that you were born to embrace. If only we could get rid of Obama and the liberals and gun restrictions, you would all be free storm your local gun shows and Wal Marts and suit up for combat.
The thing is, I'm personally not very interested in the nuclear detente theory of personal responsibility. I'd like to think that, based on what I'm told by gun lobbyists, it would actually be a greater affront to my individual freedom if I had to think about going to the movies or Church or the grocery store or anywhere outside of my home (which, presumably, should resemble a barracks) as though I lived in Fallujah. Well, I'm sorry Mr. Pratt, but fortunately I don't live in Fallujah, and I'm not interested in conceiving of everywhere I go as a potential war zone, for which I should be packing heat and prepared to use lethal force to protect myself and my loved ones. The fact is, we all deserve better than that, and we can do better than that. The average American, I'd wager, avoids bringing a gun to the movies because the average American doesn't want to live that way, and isn't interested in "protecting" themselves with lethal weapons. We choose not to bring guns to the movies because we don't want to bring guns to the movies, not because the government is stopping us, or because we feel an unwarranted social stigma about carrying.
When you argue that a greater gun presence would make us safer, you're arguing smoke and mirrors. It may even be true that, hypothetically, the good guys would have a better chance against murderous gunmen if the good guys thought of themselves as a militia, and 6 in 10 of them were armed, trained, and prepared to return fire. But in reality this isn't the way we live, nor the way we aspire to live. There will always be crazy people who will do what they can to harm others, and there will always be altercations. Our job as a society is to reduce the lethality of these unfortunate circumstances. Our job as a society is to make it harder for a disaffected individual to purchase 3000 rounds of ammunition on the internet, not to make sure that more of the rest of us are purchasing 3000 rounds of ammunition on the internet as a counterforce.
So go on and say what you will about your twisted utopia in which the imminent threat of death for any person at any time, at home, at the movies, at the store, or at a political speech in the public square guarantees that we're all sufficiently wary and suspicious of one another's lethal intentions that we all keep our concealed weapons in their holsters. But for the rest of us in the real world, freedom means something more that that; and we'll work toward more sensible and desirable solutions to the problem of gun violence.
