A 'Merican without a gun?
Oct. 10th, 2018 04:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
garoteI do not own a gun, and will never own one. (I have handled and fired them though.) Occasionally someone asks me why. I'm writing this so I can refer them to it.
If I were in the military and had to do dangerous things around dangerous people, no doubt I would possess and use one. Do I do dangerous things around dangerous people at home? No. But I know something about myself: If I had a gun at home, I might be inclined to use it anyway. Then I'd have to live with the guilt after - for example - ending the life of some stupid junkie kid trying to break into my house at night to steal possessions that I could re-purchase in a couple of months at most.
I think a handgun is, in its present form, a silly thing for a private citizen to own. I find American culture's belief in guns as a kind of household tool to be weirdly contradictory. Some places, yeah, you need a rifle to shoot game and defend your livestock. But in the suburbs? Land of lawn darts and barbecues? In the city, packed in with thousands of strangers? How does that math work? I'm okay with tightening the regulatory noose around ownership of any firearm that isn't purpose-built to hunt game, and I think innovation in gun safety is long overdue. For example, we unlock our phones with a fingerprint; why not our guns? A solid-state finger scanner can easily be made to handle the shock of firing, and the shock itself can generate the power to recharge the sensor. At the very least a home invader or your own child wouldn't be able to fire it.
But gun control laws are actually a sideshow. People have to decide, one at a time, that keeping a gun isn't their best move. It has to be their decision. It has to be a cultural shift. Rallying for laws is missing the point.
Every time a mass shooting in a park or a school commandeers a zillion eyeballs worldwide, I see the same self-satisfied arguments pushed out on top of the same firearm statistics, and after the fifth or tenth time of being told that 'Merica is a seething hellscape of whizzing bullets and hare-brained yankees in stars-and-bars t-shirts and if only we just rewrote some laws more like (insert Northern European country here) the bullets would stop whizzing ... well, it gets tiresome.
I live in a neighborhood where gangs have turf wars. Armed robberies and drive-by shootings happen here. Someone was shot to death on a street corner across from my house last spring. The previous year there was a drive-by in front of the church on the opposite corner. I've learned the difference between fireworks and gunshots without trying, just by exposure. Oakland is not a very safe place to live, and gun violence plays a part in that.
But relative to the amount of attention it claims in the mind, it's not actually a large part. In 2016, Oakland had 85 homicides with ~60 involving guns. Divide that into the population, and my 0.0002% yearly chance of being murdered via firearm is, in absolute terms, not something I worry about, and if I ditched Oakland for London and reduced that chance to 0.000012%, I would not consider it an important win.
In the same year in Oakland, there were 30 traffic fatalities plus another 200 people maimed in traffic accidents. I ride my bike to work and back every day, making my exposure in that betting pool way, waaay higher than the one for gun violence. Every single day as I step onto the pedals, the thought passes through my mind: Is this the day I get plowed under some random car? I have close calls every year, even with 30+ years of experience cycling around cars. There are "ghost bicycles", painted white, chained to posts on corners all around the city, marking where cyclists have been killed recently. Becoming a ghost bicycle -- that's what I worry about. Not whizzing bullets from gang-bangers and yee-haw yankees.
But oh look, here's another wave of headlines, another horde of talk show speechifying, another crowd of angry protestors shouting, "we could get these gun laws passed, if it wasn't for those heartless, unfathomably stupid, backwards rednecks in thrall to the NRA!"
This big emergency about a conspiracy that has people freaking the hell out, and baffled at the apparent apathy of the other side ... Well, other people have done the math, subconsciously or no, and they are worried about other things. For me, it's death by car. (That and the endless annoyance of having my own car and property vandalized multiple times every year, which is another thing that happens in Oakland.) You know what's really got you in a panic?
Your internet connection.
Seriously. I just described what it's like in my city, and what I'm actually afraid of: Cars. So what's your excuse?
I don't own a gun, but I'm not in a hurry to ban them either. I fully understand that for other people - people who feel less physically secure, or have more dangerous jobs - a gun might seem like the right choice. The "solution" to that isn't to make it impossible for them to legally get the gun. Mandatory but affordable training, and alternate options for self defense, are better ideas. And ultimately the solution is to find out what's making them feel insecure, and reduce that instead.
Like, duh. But that's a complicated and reasonable task, and it doesn't declare an obvious scapegoat. HOW BORING!! Let's just sit on our hands instead, and mutter about rednecks, and feel afraid, until the next mass shooting, and then leap up out of our seats and scream like we did last time. It might work! We'll get that law on the books and then gun crime will evaporate like morning mist. Yeah; no.
Here's one thing I do know, and have chosen to live by: The fewer guns there are in circulation, the less my chances of getting killed or maimed by one. That's the bottom line reason why I have not added one to my home. Cars make my life dangerous enough as it is ... But there's no way in hell I'm going to give up cycling. You'll have to pry my bicycle from between my cold, dead legs!
Come on my fellow Americans: Let's beat those handguns into bike parts! I guarantee it's a better hobby (even though it probably eats up just as much money, and more time, and gets you greasier and smellier than a trip to the range.) You can put a cup holder on your handlebars; can a gun do that? I rest my case.
Oh, and if you live in the city, consider this: Riding a bike to get around keeps you way safer than walking with a gun. Yes! JOIN US.
If I were in the military and had to do dangerous things around dangerous people, no doubt I would possess and use one. Do I do dangerous things around dangerous people at home? No. But I know something about myself: If I had a gun at home, I might be inclined to use it anyway. Then I'd have to live with the guilt after - for example - ending the life of some stupid junkie kid trying to break into my house at night to steal possessions that I could re-purchase in a couple of months at most.
I think a handgun is, in its present form, a silly thing for a private citizen to own. I find American culture's belief in guns as a kind of household tool to be weirdly contradictory. Some places, yeah, you need a rifle to shoot game and defend your livestock. But in the suburbs? Land of lawn darts and barbecues? In the city, packed in with thousands of strangers? How does that math work? I'm okay with tightening the regulatory noose around ownership of any firearm that isn't purpose-built to hunt game, and I think innovation in gun safety is long overdue. For example, we unlock our phones with a fingerprint; why not our guns? A solid-state finger scanner can easily be made to handle the shock of firing, and the shock itself can generate the power to recharge the sensor. At the very least a home invader or your own child wouldn't be able to fire it.
But gun control laws are actually a sideshow. People have to decide, one at a time, that keeping a gun isn't their best move. It has to be their decision. It has to be a cultural shift. Rallying for laws is missing the point.
Every time a mass shooting in a park or a school commandeers a zillion eyeballs worldwide, I see the same self-satisfied arguments pushed out on top of the same firearm statistics, and after the fifth or tenth time of being told that 'Merica is a seething hellscape of whizzing bullets and hare-brained yankees in stars-and-bars t-shirts and if only we just rewrote some laws more like (insert Northern European country here) the bullets would stop whizzing ... well, it gets tiresome.
I live in a neighborhood where gangs have turf wars. Armed robberies and drive-by shootings happen here. Someone was shot to death on a street corner across from my house last spring. The previous year there was a drive-by in front of the church on the opposite corner. I've learned the difference between fireworks and gunshots without trying, just by exposure. Oakland is not a very safe place to live, and gun violence plays a part in that.
But relative to the amount of attention it claims in the mind, it's not actually a large part. In 2016, Oakland had 85 homicides with ~60 involving guns. Divide that into the population, and my 0.0002% yearly chance of being murdered via firearm is, in absolute terms, not something I worry about, and if I ditched Oakland for London and reduced that chance to 0.000012%, I would not consider it an important win.
In the same year in Oakland, there were 30 traffic fatalities plus another 200 people maimed in traffic accidents. I ride my bike to work and back every day, making my exposure in that betting pool way, waaay higher than the one for gun violence. Every single day as I step onto the pedals, the thought passes through my mind: Is this the day I get plowed under some random car? I have close calls every year, even with 30+ years of experience cycling around cars. There are "ghost bicycles", painted white, chained to posts on corners all around the city, marking where cyclists have been killed recently. Becoming a ghost bicycle -- that's what I worry about. Not whizzing bullets from gang-bangers and yee-haw yankees.
But oh look, here's another wave of headlines, another horde of talk show speechifying, another crowd of angry protestors shouting, "we could get these gun laws passed, if it wasn't for those heartless, unfathomably stupid, backwards rednecks in thrall to the NRA!"
This big emergency about a conspiracy that has people freaking the hell out, and baffled at the apparent apathy of the other side ... Well, other people have done the math, subconsciously or no, and they are worried about other things. For me, it's death by car. (That and the endless annoyance of having my own car and property vandalized multiple times every year, which is another thing that happens in Oakland.) You know what's really got you in a panic?
Your internet connection.
Seriously. I just described what it's like in my city, and what I'm actually afraid of: Cars. So what's your excuse?
I don't own a gun, but I'm not in a hurry to ban them either. I fully understand that for other people - people who feel less physically secure, or have more dangerous jobs - a gun might seem like the right choice. The "solution" to that isn't to make it impossible for them to legally get the gun. Mandatory but affordable training, and alternate options for self defense, are better ideas. And ultimately the solution is to find out what's making them feel insecure, and reduce that instead.
Like, duh. But that's a complicated and reasonable task, and it doesn't declare an obvious scapegoat. HOW BORING!! Let's just sit on our hands instead, and mutter about rednecks, and feel afraid, until the next mass shooting, and then leap up out of our seats and scream like we did last time. It might work! We'll get that law on the books and then gun crime will evaporate like morning mist. Yeah; no.
Here's one thing I do know, and have chosen to live by: The fewer guns there are in circulation, the less my chances of getting killed or maimed by one. That's the bottom line reason why I have not added one to my home. Cars make my life dangerous enough as it is ... But there's no way in hell I'm going to give up cycling. You'll have to pry my bicycle from between my cold, dead legs!
Come on my fellow Americans: Let's beat those handguns into bike parts! I guarantee it's a better hobby (even though it probably eats up just as much money, and more time, and gets you greasier and smellier than a trip to the range.) You can put a cup holder on your handlebars; can a gun do that? I rest my case.
Oh, and if you live in the city, consider this: Riding a bike to get around keeps you way safer than walking with a gun. Yes! JOIN US.
