Gun Idolatry Is Destroying the Case for Guns: David French
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
...Yes we own guns. And yes, I support gun rights, not just for hunting or shooting sports, but for the purpose of self-defense. I’ve written in support of gun rights for years. I grew up in a culture that approached firearms responsibly, safely and with a sober mind. They were a tool — a dangerous tool, to be sure — but nothing more. In a fallen and dangerous world, a responsible, trained gun owner could help keep his or her family safe.
But the gun rights movement is changing. In many quarters of America, respect for firearms has turned into a form of reverence. As I wrote in 2022, there is now widespread gun idolatry. “Guns” have joined “God” and “Trump” in the hierarchy of right-wing values. At the edges, gun owners have gone from defending the rights of people to own semiautomatic rifles like AR-15s to openly brandishing them in protests, even to the point of, for example, staging an armed occupation of parts of the Michigan Capitol during anti-lockdown protests.
But we’re now facing something worse than gun idolatry. Too many armed citizens are jittery at best, spoiling for a fight at worst. In recent days we’ve seen a rash of terrible shootings by nervous, fearful or angry citizens. A young kid rings the bell on the wrong door and is shot. A young woman drives into the wrong driveway and is shot. A cheerleader accidentally tries to get in the wrong car and is pursued and shot, along with her friend. A basketball rolls into a man’s yard, and a neighboring 6-year-old girl and her father are shot.
All of these episodes occurred over the course of just six days.
Yet even worse than such shootings, which occurred because of fear or sudden rage is the phenomenon that begins with a person who seems to want to fight, who deliberately places himself in harm’s way, uses deadly force and then is celebrated for his bloody recklessness. Take Kyle Rittenhouse. At age 17, Rittenhouse took an AR-15-style weapon to a riot in Kenosha, Wis., to, he said, “protect” a Kenosha business.
When you travel, armed, to a riot, you’re courting violent conflict, and he found it. He used his semiautomatic weapon to kill two people who attacked him at the protest, and a jury acquitted him on grounds of self-defense. But the jury’s narrow inquiry into the moment of the shooting doesn’t excuse the young man’s eagerness to deliberately place himself in a situation where he might have cause to use lethal violence.
And what has been the right’s response? Rittenhouse has gone from defendant to folk hero, a minor celebrity in populist America.
Or take Daniel Perry, the Army sergeant who was just convicted of murdering an armed Black Lives Matter protester named Garrett Foster. Shortly after the conviction, Tucker Carlson effectively demanded a pardon. Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas responded the next day, tweeting that “Texas has one of the strongest ‘Stand Your Ground’ laws of self-defense that cannot be nullified by a jury or a progressive District Attorney.”
Yet Abbott ignored — or did not care — about the facts exposed at trial. Perry had run a red light and driven straight into the protest, nearly striking Foster’s wife with his car. Witnesses said Foster never pointed his gun at Perry. Even Perry initially told the police he opened fire before Foster pointed his gun at him, saying, “I didn’t want to give him a chance to aim at me.”
But the story gets worse. In social media messages before the shooting, it was plain that Perry was spoiling for an opportunity to shoot someone. His messages included, “I might have to kill a few people on my way to work they are rioting outside my apartment complex” and “I might go to Dallas to shoot looters.”
That is not a man you want anywhere near a gun. Kyle Rittenhouse is not a man you want anywhere near a gun.
Our nation’s gun debate is understandably dominated by discussions of gun rights. But it needs to feature more accountability for gun culture. Every single feasible and constitutional gun control proposal — including the red flag laws that I’ve long advocated (which allow law enforcement to remove weapons from people who broadcast deadly intent or profound instability) — will still leave hundreds of millions of American guns in tens of millions of American hands.
...Gun rights carry with them grave responsibilities. They do not liberate you to intimidate. They must not empower your hate. They are certainly not objects of love or reverence. Every hair-trigger use, every angry or fearful or foolish decision, likely spills innocent blood.
Moreover, every one of these acts increases public revulsion of gun ownership generally. The cry for legal and moral reform will sweep the land. America will change and gun rights will diminish. And the gun owners and advocates who fail to grasp the moral weight of their responsibility will be to blame.
You should start to educate those revolted on the two processes to amend the Constitution.
"including the red flag laws that I’ve long advocated (which allow law enforcement to remove weapons from people who broadcast deadly intent or profound instability) — will still leave hundreds of millions of American guns in tens of millions of American hands."
The problem is, is that the usual mass shooter has not previously shown deadly intent, and has legally purchased the guns they use. As far as getting all those millons of guns out of private hands...forget about it.
The acts and inactions of both the Obama and Biden administrations have caused the largest increase in gun sales in our history.
The left's legacy of coddling criminals and not enforcing existing laws and regulations has caused an explosive surge in crime...mostly in larger cities and towns.
Those who whine and endlessly complain about guns don't have a clue as to what to do.
Bullshit! Violent crime has actually been going down in most major cities.
What year are you using as your baseline?
This is a lazy, irresponsible reaction, though. And I don’t mean to attack you for it, alone. Much of society and government has been throwing it’s impotent hands up in this way, for a long time.
We have other situations where we don’t take this feckless, hands-off approach. Imagine saying this about a dog, for example: “Sorry my dog bit you, but he has never previously shown deadly intent. He has his shots, and I bought him legally. He likes me so I never dreamed he would bite anyone.”
Would that matter to the person he bites? Of course not. People would be looking at the breed of dog you chose. Was your dog trained? Did you socialize him? Was he on a leash?
You see what I mean? As a responsible dog owner, you are proactive about your potentially dangerous animal. You don’t wait to see if he will bite someone. You take steps in advance to prevent it.
Same with our children. We teach them in advance what is right so they know to avoid doing what is wrong.
Does this mean dogs never bite and children always behave? No, but we still recognize value in making the attempt. We don’t give up and declare “there’s nothing we can do!”
A responsible gun owner is trained in the safe operation and storage of his weapon. He doesn’t leave it where unauthorized people can get to it. He doesn’t reach for it in anger. He doesn’t go into a crowd of people with it out so he can intimidate others. He shoots only in defense of self or others under imminent threat. He doesn’t fire at random because of something that only might be happening. He is sure of his target and the certain need for deadly force. He owns a gun, but prays he never is forced to use it on a person.
Does anyone go through all of this with potential gun owners? Not really. Individual parents, mentors, etc. might, but not society as a whole. Any random 18 year old can walk into their local sporting goods store, with zero training and buy as many guns as he can afford. Too many people who own guns end up fantasizing about using them, and often they find a way to make it happen.
I don't really have issue with gun ownership but the sheer number of guns some own is nothing more than a fetish.
Exactly, like my father and his coin fetish.
Exactly, like my uncle and his collection of deadly pathogens. (that would be a more apples to apples comparison)
He has an unusual hobby.
What happened to the rest of the skeletons?
Can't ban some and exclude others. Equity won't apply unless the goal is separation (and segregation).
Yeah, basically all of that is what I say about guns all the time. But resistance to the discussion from the far right is no longer rational. No gun regulation could possibly be reasonable or sensible, in their minds. Every suggestion is impossible, ineffective, or unenforceable based on a standard we would never apply to any other situation, therefore we should do nothing. There is no room for new ideas until existing gun regulations are enforced 100% perfectly in all situations for some unspecified amount of time, as judged by whothefuckknows.
And of course anyone who suggests even the most gentle restriction or regulation on the right to keep and bear arms is met with the unfounded accusation that we want to take away everyone’s guns (I don’t), we don’t understand firearms (I do), we don’t own guns ourselves (I own 9), or we just hate freedom or some such shit. It’s like trying to convince bratty children to go to bed or eat their vegetables.
On another seed, I offered up a list of policies/regulations that - as a gun owner myself - I thought were pretty sensible. I got lots of pushback, and almost all of it was either an attack on me personally or one of the other reactions described above. No one wanted to actually consider whether any of the proposals might be a good idea. It’s all political tribalism at this point. Us vs. Them. No willingness to sit down and consider what might be the right thing to do.
You all may as well give it up - it's just too damn late to do anything effective about it. America is doomed to continue if not increase gun violence. The debate about it is a total waste of time and words. The opposition to any meaningful control is massive, organized (the NRA) and unstoppable. My suggestion for a long time was, because it is so necessary to have a gun for the purpose of self-defence, is for EVERYONE to have a gun and never having to part with it in any situation or location because there simply is NOWHERE that is safe. Six-year-olds walk around with guns and shoot people. So I wish you Americans good health, good fortune, and survival from gunshot.