Gun Control & Intimate Violence

When I was in high school in the early 1960s, a student shot and killed his best friends while hunting.  His friend, as I remember it, made a disparaging remark about his girl friend, and the hard words between them ended with a senseless death. A recent news posting entitled, "Do lax gun laws escalate domestic violence?" suggests that one of the greatest dangers widespread, all but uncontrolled gun ownership poses has nothing to do with crime or mental illness (See also the NY Times editorial, "Dangerous Gun Myths").  It has to do, rather, with intimate relationships within families and among friends.  Citing various reports and studies, the posting notes, for example, that "domestic assaults were as much as 12 times more likely to end in death if a gun was involved." One investigation into cases where a family membered murdered members of the family and then committed suicide found that in 92% of these cases a gun was involved.  In all, far, far more Americans die in incidents of domestic violence where guns are involved than on foreign battlefields.  The posting also makes the point that many more individuals die in cases of domestic gun violence who were nothing more than by-standers who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

It is clear that we have lost the capacity as a nation to look on all of this dispassionately and make rational decisions about smart ways to limit access to firearms sufficiently to reduce all of this death while still allowing hunters and other sports folks the opportunity of gun ownership.  We have, for a time at least, fallen into the grip of fear and ideology, which have morphed into a deep-seated anger.  It is ironic.  The very very emotions of fear and anger that makes guns so dangerous are also the things that are preventing us from taking sensible steps to protect ourselves from the violence.

(Not) Learning from the Past

The idea that we should learn from the mistakes of the past so that we don't repeat them in the present and future is a "nice idea."  Sometimes it even works.  Sometimes.  More often than not, however, we prefer to see in the past "lessons" that confirm our particular set of prejudices.  Ideologues happily accuse historians of making up facts when the historian's version of the past does not comport with their own.  Or, they will dismiss the historian's rendering of the past as "just your opinion."

A popular variation on these ways to dismiss any actual lessons the past might teach is to make up quotations by historical figures that "prove" one's pet dogma. Take, for example, a posting at CNN entitled, "Jefferson: The face of the modern gun debate: How the third president is our Rorschach test on guns."  The posting quotes Saul Cornell, a professor at Fordham University, as stating, ""There are definitely ways you can make Jefferson be a spokesman for Occupy Wall Street or the NRA, but to do so is to take him out of his own time and put him into a debate that is quite alien in his time."  Interestingly enough, the examples of false or misinterpreted quotations attributed to Jefferson cited in the posting all tend to support the gun lobby folks rather than their opponents.  In any event, the invention of fake quotations is just one way we avoid learning what the past might actually teach us while allowing us to invent a past convenient to our own ideological agendas.

The problem with learning from the past, in sum, is that it more often than not doesn't teach us the lessons we want to learn.

Gun Control: A Hopeful Development

Former Rep. Gabby Giffords testifying before Congress

In an online news posting entitled, "Senators Discuss Changing Background Checks Bill," reporter Alan Fram observes, "A study by the government's Bureau of Justice Statistics found that gun-related homicides dropped from a peak of 18,253 in 1993 to 11,101 in 2011, down by over one-third. A report by the private Pew Research Center said gun homicides per 100,000 people fell from 7 in 1993 to 3.6 in 2010, a drop of nearly half. Both reports found nonfatal gun crimes dropped by roughly 70 percent over that period."  This in spite of the laxity of our national gun laws, the NRA's promotion of a gun culture, and all of the talk about 2nd Amendment rights.

These figures are still too high.  We still need to develop a wise policy concerning firearms, one that gets beyond fear mongering and finger pointing.  Otherwise, there will be another Sandy Hook, another Aurora, and another Columbine.  Still, we the public seem to be already taking action ourselves to accomplish what Congress can't seem to do—reduce gun violence.  For whatever reason, when it comes to guns we are behaving better.  That's good.  That's hopeful for the future.  Sooner or later the current gun debate will quiet down again, and even if we can't get the national legislation we need to improve the situation we face today it seems likely that all of the publicity and debate that has taken place since Sandy Hook will itself have a further positive impact.  That is a prayer as well as a reasonable hope for the future.  Amen.

A Sad, Sad Headline

Darlene Sitler (1959-2012)

This morning, the Huffington Post opens the day with a sad headline, "THE PRICE OF 'FREEDOM'," along with the photos of 100 individuals who have died from gun violence in America since the Sandy Hook murders. The article to which that headline links is entitled, "U.S. Gun Deaths Since Sandy Hook Top 1,280."  The article itself chronicles just a handful of those shooting deaths.

The list of  dead does not include Darlene Sitler, choir director of First United Presbyterian Church, Coudersport, PA, who was murdered while playing the organ during worship on Sunday, December 2, 2012, twelve days before Sandy Hook. See reports of her death, at the hand of her ex-husband, (here),  (here), and (here).  Darlene was a local music teacher and by all accounts loved and respected.  She was 53 at the time of her death.

The gun control laws now being discussed probably would not have her life as her killer used a handgun and the shooting was without any prior warning that he would do such a thing.  But, that does not mean that we as a society should not continue to try to reduce and reduce again the havoc we are wrecking on each other with guns.  As is being noted in the current debate over gun control, it is true that guns do not kill.  It is also true that violent, angry, demented, or just plain heartless people use guns to kill—by the tens of thousands every year in America.

It already seems clear that in the current political environment only a limited amount can be done to curb gun violence legislatively.  That is sad.  One fears that it is going to take another Sandy Hook and one after that and perhaps one after that to move legislation along. How much heartache we are going to endure before even a minimum of common sense moves us to begin the task of bringing gun violence under control?  The Second Amendment was intended to preserve our right to form militias not provide the opportunity to gun each other down in the streets.  Its modern expansion to include exactly that by its more radical "defenders" defies all spiritual as well as humane common sense.  Sadly so.

Again We Ask, "So What is the Problem?"

source: skepticink.com

In the United States today there are over 250 million cars.  We register them.  We tax them.  We require a license to drive one.  We put tags on them so that law-enforcement can readily identify them.  They are numbered so that each vehicle can always be accounted for.  We set safety standards for the use of our cars including such things as seat belts, turn signals, and special seats for children.  We have created large bureaucracies to manage all of this.  And no one questions the value, necessity, or right of government to regulate the manufacture and use of motor vehicles in the United States.  Nor does all of this reduce the availability of cars.  The reason we regulate the manufacture and use of motor vehicles is because they are dangerous and, uncontrolled, could become a public nuisance..  In 2011, roughly 32,000 people died in auto accidents.

In the United States today there are well-over 200 million firearms in private hands.  There is a huge lobby devoted to obstructing any regulation of these firearms, and it has been impressively successful to that end.  We are warned that any regulation of firearms puts us on the "slippery slope," which will bring to an end private gun ownership in America.  In 2007, over 30,000 people in the U.S. died at the hands of guns, including a significant number of suicides.

Guns are as dangerous as cars, but, when it comes to cars, there is no "slippery slope."  There is no paranoia over regulation.  Why is the regulation of cars to the benefit of society as a whole acceptable but the regulation of firearms, which are just as dangerous, not?  What's the problem?

It Feels Different

Maybe this time is different. It feels different.  It felt different in worship this past Sunday morning.  The intensity of the congregation was palpable during the time that we focused on Sandy Hook Elementary.  Comments after worship showed that we had all been thinking about Sandy Hook and share, if dimly and at a distance, in the grief being felt there.  The media coverage, at least on CNN and MSNBC, feels different, too.  The reporters clearly have been swept up in the pain of the moment.  With the President taking the lead, political leaders have vowed to go to the mats for gun control legislation, and while most of them are Democrats there have been some Republican voices as well.  The NRA has gone silent, as it does at these times, but a New York Times posting (here) reminds us that silence is its common tactic.  It waits and then frustrates any gun legislation later.  This time, however, the NRA silence seems to be...well, a deeper silence.  And, there is the larger subject of our "national culture of violence," which is again being taken up.  There's a realization that mental health needs to be looked at again.

In all of this, the thing that makes Sandy Hook different is the tone.  This one hurt because of the ages of the children and the bravery of the teachers.  It is bad enough when something like this happens to 16 year-olds in a high school, but six year-olds and kids who were only seven?  This hurts even more.  I suspect that Sandy Hook also hurts still more because of the locale—a quiet, safe suburb, one of the last places we associate with violence like this.  Yes, the ongoing humanitarian crises in places like Syria take far, far more innocent lives, and, yes, children and innocent by-standers die virtually every day in our nation at the hands of shooters.  Sandy Hook, somehow, brings all of that into a new focus esp. because of the ages of the twenty children and also because of where it happened.

For a time, if even for a few days, a week, or a little longer, we are a gentler nation.  It is striking how petty the politics in Washington suddenly seems, how strident.  And, for the moment, the tug of wills over the so-called "fiscal cliff" has become, at least, a little more civil, less shrill in tone.  The question is, of course, will it last?  The answer is probably a mixed one.  Will the NRA suddenly "come to Jesus"?  Probably not.  Will the political rhetoric heat up again?  Sure.  Will the government find to reduce these mass killings?  Not likely.  Will things go back to "the way they were"?  That is harder to say.  Superficially, one wonders if anything much will change.  But, more deeply, Sandy Hook may well be one more moment on the way to a less violent society.

All of the crime data indicates that we are becoming a less violent nation and that, at least in terms of state-sponsored violence, a less violent world.  After Sandy Hook, it could well be that we will become a nation still less tolerant of violence, if only a little less.  It could be that we will see gun violence still a little more for what it is, a national public health issue and not a constitutional one.  I have long believed that violence begets violence, but perhaps in this case it doesn't.  Perhaps in this case violence begets non-violence, which is a step in the direction of peace.  Only time will tell, but one senses that these beautiful kids and their brave teachers have not died in vain.

But, what a sad price for peace.