More on Guns in America

Gun-related violence in America is amazingly high compared to other "civilized" nations of the world. Why is that?

It is tempting to say that we need more restrictions on gun possession, but I am really not sure that is a practical answer, unless we want to go all the way and literally disarm Americans and scrap the 2nd Amendment. While I know some people who would like to do that, I don't think that's going to happen. 

In the movie "Bowling for Columbine," Michael Moore noted that Canadians own as many guns as Americans but have far fewer gun-related cases of violence. What's going on? we ask. The answer, I think, is Moore's analysis of violence in all aspects of American life. We are, in fact, a violently competitive society. There are multitudes of ways in which people can act with violence toward one another and simply shooting them with guns is only one of the ways. We can start by humiliating others wherever possible. Our youngsters quickly learn how to bully vulnerable kids, and many adults have never learned to rise above that kind of behavior. Our love of violence is so obviously out there that you can't go to the movies without seeing previews of the latest violent films to be shown. And these are films that offer no redeeming values other than just streaming us through endless violence from beginning to end.

I am afraid that the real reason behind gun-related violence in America is just Americans themselves. They are a violent people and, when a gun is handy in a violent moment, they just shoot their ways through it. This is not going to be solved through background checks or gun-safety instruction or gun-licensing. The only solution is a transformation of the American psyche, and that's probably less likely than getting rid of the 2nd Amendment. There are obviously mental health issues of importance, but American violence way outstrips cases of mental health illnesses. 

Yet, do we have the option, today, of just doing nothing? I think not. Understanding Americans as violent people, we need to try even harder to keep instruments of extreme violence less available. We could start, it seems to me, by requiring gun owners to license their guns and maintain them under the supervision of local law enforcement. An aspect of this in my mind would be that gun owners are required to keep guns under lock-and-key (or with reliable trigger locks) so that unauthorized people cannot access them and the owners themselves have to think a few times before using them in violent ways. If a person wants to have an assault-style weapon under his/her 2nd Amendment right, he/she ought to be assigned to the local National Guard unit for training and the weapon should be housed in the Armory for appropriate Guard use. That seems to be what the 2nd Amendment is all about. The 2nd Amendment is NOT about arming Americans to assault or defend themselves against their own government. It states that a "well regulated militia" is its purpose, and militia's were vital to the newly-declared independent states in fending off the British Army. "Well regulated" means trained and working in the service of the state.