Gun nation is constitutional

Human Quest, Jan/Feb 2002 by Nelson, Zed

Six years ago a man entered a British junior school and shot 16 children and their teacher to death. The "Dunblane massacre" triggered a fierce backlash against guns and calls for all privately-owned firearms to be banned outright in the United Kingdom.

Arguments for and against guns raged in Britain, fueled by a small minority of pro-gun advocates who suggested it was unfair to them to outlaw their firearms. But what about the right of a majority to live in a gun-free society? Frustrated by the notion that Britain might not seize the opportunity to swiftly contain a potential Pandora's Box, I turned my focus on the United States - a country that has historically embraced and celebrated gun ownership, where nearly 40% of all households reportedly keep a gun.

Since 1960, over half a million people have been shot to death in the streets and homes of the United States. By no coincidence, an estimated 240 million guns are in circulation nationwide. The solution seemed clear: get rid of the guns. Armed with this notion, I arrived at the National Rifle Association's (NRA) 125th annual convention in Dallas on April 9, 1996, and unwittingly stepped into a hornet's nest. "Guns don't kill people - people kill people" was the mantra I heard repeatedly from gun supporters who always added, "A gun is an inanimate object."

In the first year of my investigation into American gun culture, over 34,000 people were shot to death with inanimate objects. A sizable number of vocal Americans appear so passionately in favor of guns that they are unwilling to admit any link between the easy availability of firearms and the huge annual death toll. I have struggled to understand both sides of the debate. Gun owners cannot be easily classified; they come from all walks of life. Many owners purchase guns as protection from a strongly perceived threat, as well as believing it is their right. A group of armed Memphis housewives told me, "If you ban guns, the bad guys will still have them," and a father holding a gun in one hand and his baby girl in the other, voiced a widely held belief when he said, "It's my constitutional right to own a gun, to protect myself and my family."

While this rationale does not, on the surface, seem unreasonable, evidence suggests that the bad guys tend to steal their guns from the good guys (or just buy them second-hand), and that protecting one's family becomes increasingly difficult when teen-agers can legally purchase semi-- automatic assault weapons through classified ads and at local gun-shows, and children often get their hands on their fathers' guns.

What is striking about the gun debate is how polarized the two opposing sides are; there is no middle ground, no compromise.

In recent years a series of fatal school shooting rampages, committed by students armed with a variety of firearms, has shaken the nation. In the wake of the worst school shooting spree In American history - the Columbine High School massacre - a local Colorado congressman bizarrely announced, "Now is not the time to debate gun control," while a Denver newspaper columnist wrote, "There is something profoundly distasteful about debating gun policy... in the context of such a tragedy."

As I stood next to the fresh graves of 14 Columbine High School students, it was hard not to feel bewildered by such comments. Rev. Lucia Guzman,a Denver church leader and rare voice of wisdom, was one of the very few local public figures to actually speak out in favor of gun debate, saying, "If not here... where? And if not now... when?"

After years of documenting a nation's obsession with firearms, the Colorado atrocity struck me as a potential catalyst to end America's enduring love affair with the gun. Surely the time had come when the weight of public opinion would say, "Enough...."

But the full scale of America's Catch-22 could be seen in Denver on May 1, 1999 when, just days after the Columbine School shootings, the NRA's annual meeting took place in the very same city. Tbis, combined with suggestions from local and national commentators that tragedies like Columbine could be prevented if teachers were armed, goes to show how complicated the gun debate actually is.

In the days after the school shooting rampage that left 14 students and a teacher dead and 22 more hospitalized, I encountered little change In attitudes towards guns. Local gunshops opened for business as usual, and every possible scapegoat, from the Internet to the Devil himself, was being blamed for this most recent addition to the grim catalogue of gun-related deaths in America.

On June 17, in the aftermath of Columbine, the House of Representatives passed a "juvenile crime bill," steadfast in its refusal to limit the ease with which juveniles can lay their hands on firearms. House Republicans, it was clear, were determined to avoid making any connection between the fact that there are an estimated 240 million guns in the United States - a number that is increasing by some five to seven million a year - and the increase of violence in American culture. Instead, the problem was that we had forgotten the importance of "family values." Guns weren't the problem; the problem was "the abandonment of God" in the public sphere, or the entertainment industry.