Guns and Ammo, Guns and Roses, Guns and More Guns

George Bernard Shaw wrote a little thing called "Arms and the Man." I read it in high school. I was just dumb enough to be surprised that the arms he was talking about were not the appendages attached to the upper part of one's torso, but arms, as in guns used for killing other human beings. Mr. Shaw wrote about war. I too am concerned about man's penchant for killing other men, using guns, knives, crossbows, or even blunt objects. War is awful. Yet it is ordinary life in urban America that I am concerned about.

Men are violent and stupid, for the most part. Men need to be protected from other men. Thank you Thomas Hobbes ("Life in a state of nature is nasty, brutish, and short...") Got news Mr. Hobbes. In the unnatural state of urban life in the 21st century life is equally nasty, brutish, and short for a great many Americans. (Not even talking about 3rd world countries here. Talking about America, "Home of the brave. Land of the free.") The reason is partially social and economic. America needs to address these social and economic ills that create disaffected youth who run the streets with guns. So let's recap. The reason is partially guns, easy access to guns, dumbass kids with guns, and hmmmmm, more guns.

I work in an urban high school in a neighborhood where very few of the persons who read this blog would choose to live. In almost every school year, one or more of the students from my school is shot by another teenager. Gang violence? Certainly. However, gangs alone do not create the mayhem that takes lives numbered in the hundreds per year. Remember West Side Story? The gangs of New York of 50-60 years ago. They were gangs. They did not take lives numbered in the hundreds per year. They carried knives and blunt objects and assaulted one another with the same. They did not shoot each other from a distance with automatic and semi-automatic weapons.

Yet the National Rifle Association lobbies ad infinitum and promotes easy access to weapons from .22 pistols to Uzis to AK-47s. They constantly bombard us with propaganda that tells us that the government is trying to disarm us and ordinary sports hunters would not be able to pursue their hobby and outdoorsy love. Get real! Nobody! Nobody is seriously advocating that we take away the guns from sport hunters. Gail Collins, in a recent New York Times Op-Ed piece noted that Chuck Schumer has appeared in pictures holding up a bunch of dead pheasants from a hunt. Hey, and he actually hit the pheasants, unlike Dick Cheney shooting a fellow hunter. Question! Who would you trust with a hunting rifle, a Republican who wants everyone on the planet to have unrestricted access to guns or a liberal Democrat who wants reasonable restrictions on gun ownership? Hmmmm. I think you get the point.

The thing is that there are gun rights extremists out there who advocate guns for everybody, everywhere, every time, and without any restrictions. Let me note right here and now that I have spent the last 30 years of my life in large urban environments and I have never owned a gun and I have never at any time needed a gun. Yet there are legislators in Georgia who advocate for gun owners carrying their weapons on them into airports. There are legislators in conservative states across this nation who are advocating that gun owners be allowed to carry guns into restaurants and bars. Gail Collins noted in her recent Op-Ed piece, "Even in the Old West, saloons made patrons check their guns at the door." Read any newspaper articles recently about people being shot in an argument? Was alcohol involved? Well duh! And not all of the shooters were NFL or NBA players or their body guards, for the record.

Bob Herbert, another New York Times columnist, pointed out that 150 Chicago Public School students were shot in the last school year. Not all of them died, but many of them did. Mr. Herbert noted that when he was at a meeting of about a dozen men and boys who were violence outreach workers, he asked how many had been shot? Of the dozen, five raised their hands. When he asked how many knew someone who had been shot and killed, all raised their hands. This is what makes the Op-Ed pages of the New York Times.

I asked those same questions the first year I went to work in a school on the Southside of Chicago. I received similar answers. I recall not being able to convince students to stay after school for a Drama Club because it gets dark in the winter and it's not safe to walk home after dark in those neighborhoods. I recall that when the sounds of fireworks went off in the neighborhood many of my students ducked under their desks out of reflex.

This is not Baghdad or Kabul. This is America. There are guns that are for hunting game. There are guns that are for killing other human beings. There is no rational reason on Earth that this country should make it so easy for a teenager in a gang to gain access to weapons of the latter category. 99% of the paranoid people in America who think they need a weapon to protect themselves never need that weapon. The drug gangs in Northern Mexico are armed to the teeth with easy access weapons purchased in the United States of America. Enough is enough. Get the guns off the streets. Save our children so they have time to grow up. Limit gun access. Some of them will still be violent individuals, but not nearly as many will die.

When it all comes down to it, think I'd rather listen to "Guns and Roses" than read Guns and Ammo, and when it comes to the final accounting I'll take my chances against a 6'6" thug with a knife or blunt object rather than a 5' 2" wuss with a Glock.