Guns: The Disconnects

Guns: The Disconnects

P. Schultz

December 21, 2012

When I was young, we had guns in our house. But we had them for hunting game, rabbits, pheasants, and sometimes even deer. We did not have them or think of them as “protection.” They were for sport, not “self-defense.”

            This connection is now broken and guns are seen as necessary, necessary for “protection,” necessary to maintain “civilization,” as we understand it. [Is this what the second amendment was about? Hardly. The Federalists, those who supported the cause of the proposed constitution were proponents of a potentially pervasive national government, a government that would and could not only preserve but advance “civilization.”] Guns are what stand between us and danger, even death, between us and anarchy or the end of our “civilization.” It’s as if we are poised on a precipice and guns will keep us from falling into the abyss. Guns are not for “sport” any more. Oh no, guns are now for the serious business of maintaining our “civilization.” It can now be said, even publicly, that without guns the good will fail, must fail, and the bad will triumph. And so, post Newtown, we now need armed guards in every school, the NRA chief says, while many, very many, nod their approval.

            And it is the self-proclaimed “conservatives” who nod in agreement most often, a version of “conservatism” that can only be described as weird, as strange, insofar as “conservatives” are suppose to be opposed to a pervasively powerful government. But this is the same kind of “conservatism” that wholeheartedly supports the Pentagon, the NSA, the CIA, the FBI, and other appendages of an ever greater and ever more powerful national government. “Small government” for these “conservatives?” Hardly. An armed guard in every school house? How anti-government is that? Not very.

            And let us pursue the “slippery slope” that the NRA sees in every piece of legislation attempting to regulate guns. If in the schools, then we definitely need armed guards in every movie theatre and banks, as well as armed guards at every place a congressperson is to speak, to say nothing of any place where violence might erupt, especially where people are protesting government policies. Ah, I see, barely but clearly, Kent State and Jackson State, where those protesting government policies were gunned down by the duly constituted authorities.

            So, definitely, guns are not for “sport” any longer and “conservatives” no longer oppose the insertion of the government, armed and authorized to kill, into every nook and cranny of our lives. These are some disconnects. Can’t anyone see how fucked up this is? But then perhaps, as some alleged “conservatives” like to say: “Freedom isn’t free.” Indeed it is not these days. In fact, it is difficult to tell whether the price of freedom isn’t freedom itself.