Moments of Lucidity

About 10 years ago, a boy I babysat a few times secured his father’s gun, received bullets from a friend at school, loaded the gun and took his own life.

With a bit of determination and a couple of pounds of pressure his life ended. At age 13.

It would be simple to look at that situation and assign blame to any number of people, but it doesn’t really matter who is to blame, the boy is still dead. Anyone who wants to assign blame to another person or the hunk of wood, plastic and metal that took his life is missing the point.

Last month, the captain of a shipping vessel was taken hostage by a group of Somali pirates and held captive on a lifeboat for several days. He was freed when U.S. Navy snipers shot and killed three of his captors.

Within hours the news channels were atwitter with praise and feature stories extolling the expertise of the Navy marksmen. The three Somalis killed that day barely registered on the radar.

Three people lost their lives. Whatever their crimes, and even that depends on who one talks to, they were human beings. But the story of who they were remains untold. The stories printed and run on TV revolved almost single-mindedly around the glorification of the men who took their lives.

The media takes a beating for shining the spotlight on gun violence when schools are involved. Less of a fuss is made when the same violent acts accomplish a goal generally perceived as noble. Yet reporters were tripping over themselves to find a new angle on snipers and their weapons.

When “innocents” are caught in the crosshairs of gun violence, the uproar is intense and immediate.

Some clamor for gun control, but the cat’s already out of that sack. Others fight for unfettered access to military-grade firearms. Neither seems like a solution to the problem, but extreme arguments on both sides make it difficult to see if there is any middle ground to be had.

Rather than banning private ownership of firearms or opening an armory on every corner, it would be more beneficial to take a serious look at assumptions underlying possession and use of firearms, especially in this country.

By and large, we treat guns as tools – tools for hunting, tools for protection, tools for waging war - but they possess the inherent power to take a life. Advocates of gun ownership treat safety classes as a cure-all, but the lesson that needs to be ingrained goes beyond trigger locks and separating guns from ammunition.

Guns give the wielder the power to take a life, up close, at a distance and from every range in between. Until there is a demonstrated understanding of that fact, any and all permits should be withheld.

Guns do take lives in moments of accident, frustration, anger, depression, and even celebration. They have their uses, but until we’re all willing to engage the topic like adults, we will always be children playing with fire.