Vic Socotra

20 April 2007

Gun Control

Strange week. I don't know how yours was, but as far as I'm concerned, they can ship this one off to the archives and put a yellow sticker on the box with a big “S,” for strange, or “W,” for weird. Pity we can't use “Q” anymore, because that is what it was.

It started with the horror in Blacksburg and then morphed into the madman's psychosis, into which NBC news invited us. It ends with the anniversary of the Columbine murders,

The whole gun thing got me going, and roiled me up again this morning with the accounts of some of the survivors. The stories are compelling, in profoundly creepy way. There is the killer, empowered by the semi-automatic pistols at the end of each hand, and the victims, who lie passively at his feet. The killer dispenses his ultimate power seemingly at random.

One this morning talked of looking at his shoes as he moved among the carnage. Another said he whispered “Play dead!” to those around him, not knowing that some of his classmates had no option.

I know I am no hero. That was evident on the fourth day of survival training, in the simulated interrogation phase before being locked in a box at the special facility at Warner Springs. I also know that with enough adrenaline I am perfectly competition to run through walls. It is all on how the situation is presented, and how much time there is to think.

I thought for an instant that the answer to the mad gunman problem was not to impose a total ban on guns. We are not starting with a blank slate, after all, and given the millions of them in circulation in America, it would only result in disarming the lawful and empowering the evil. That is the way it worked in the District. I had a fantasy, briefly, of those bright and hopeful young women who died instead rolling from their desks, yanking their own weapons in self-defense, and blasting the madman into his private hell on the spot.

There has been a movement in many parts of the country to enact “shall carry” statutes, which permit licensed citizens with spotless records and certified training to carry handguns on their persons. The Gun Control advocates recoil in horror at the idea, but it has not resulted in a surge of random shootings. It is a phenomenon that needs a close look. The argument goes like this: Predators are deterred when they do not know whether their prospective prey carry deadly stingers.

I am not enamored of the gun as a metaphor, or an extension of the anatomy. Guns are tools, like others that can maim and kill if the operator does not know what they are doing. I have some in the house, long and short. They are not on display, though accessible. When the kids were little, they were tightly controlled. Then, there were trigger locks and the ammunition was secured separately then. It is about common sense. You wouldn't leave your circular saw plugged in the family room, would you?

Over a cool beer last night at the Capital City Brewery a pal told me about two women from his agency, analysts, who were deployed downrange to support ongoing operations. Driving along in their rental sedan, they realized they were being set-up by some local thugs for robbery or worse. The women had a modicum of training- a defensive driving course and some time at the shooting range- though they were no warriors.

“I'll drive. You shoot,” was the extent of the conversation. The woman at the wheel maneuvered frantically and the other produced the assault rifle they had been issued. Blowing out the back window, she sprayed the chase car and then the checkpoint as they skidded around it. They were not taken hostage, and in my mind, they did what any citizen ought to have the right, if not the responsibility to do.

That was not here, of course. But adding to the oddness of the week an old pal happened to be passing through town after a year in Baghdad. I asked him how he felt being without his 9mm Beretta, which had been on his hip as part of his daily attire, in uniform or civilian clothes.

“Feels kind weird,” he said, patting the place on his waist where the holster would have been. “I feel like I have forgotten something.” The kids in the Green Zone carried the M4, the folding-stock version of the M16 rifle that collapses like an umbrella. It is a bit of an adjustment for him, returning to civilian life. It is about exchanging the active security blanket of being personally armed for the passive social contract that transfers responsibility to the police.

It seems to me that the contract has been breached by the predators. In addition to the usual cut-throats, rapists and madmen, we now have small groups of fanatics who have committed themselves to a long campaign of incredible violence. The police cannot be everywhere, all the time. Nor do I think that is the way we want our society to be structured.

Perhaps I am wrong on that count, but if I am, this is no longer the America I used to understand.

I am not arguing for all of us to be armed at all times, hyper vigilant, lacking training and perhaps inclined to shoot before understanding. I got a note from another pal earlier in the week. He lives down in New Orleans, which is a place that has its own challenges. He said something that seems to strike a more reasonable chord than the idea that we begin to arm our student bodies.

He talked about Liviu Librescu, the engineering professor who sacrificed his own life to block the door to the killer, and give his students a few moments to escape. He said it this way:

“Too bad this brave teacher didn't have a hand gun of his own on him at the time. He sounds like someone I'd trust to carry a concealed weapon. If he had been armed, the results may have been a lot different. There can't always be a cop when you need one. I think airline pilots and teachers and certain health workers ought to be carefully selected, trained and compensated for carrying concealed arms and undertaking their use, if necessary.”

I considered that for a moment and decided that of the available options, that might be the one that is the least intrusive to our daily life, and avoids the extremes of a completely militarized society or complete and unilateral disarmament.

There is a case going to the Supreme Court about the right of law-abiding citizens to possess guns in the District of Columbia. It had been completely banned, and the predators did not seem to care. The Court has not talked about the Second Amendment in a couple decades, and it seems like a timely topic right now.

The right was considered so important by the Founders that was enumerated immediately after the right of free speech in the hierarchy. Some say that times have changed. Others say it is more important than ever. The Amendment is a little fractured in syntax, which has caused the problem down through the years. It contains two linked but disparate thoughts: "A well regulated militia being necessary to the maintenance of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

The way I read it, the right is absolute and inalienable, though associated with a common public need. My pal down south thinks it is time to concentrate on the well-regulated militia part. "Some of us who don't have "security" written in our job description ought to be trained and packing heat, just in case," he says.

I agree with him.

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