In Guns We Trust

Episode #5 considers the 22 years since the Columbine tragedy and what America has (not) done to make our citizens safer.  

TRANSCRIPT FROM PODCAST:

Hey yall – thanks for tuning in. I had several things on the agenda today, but the news bumped them all off the page. So today we are going to talk about the gun situation in our country the numbing down (and the dumbing down) that surrounds this particular issue. Its heavy stuff, but I’m also going to offer up a couple of pushbacks, and I promise to end on a positive note so you don’t feel like flinging your phone into the sea. Alright, let’s get started….

AUDIO CLIP – Pumped Up Kicks by Foster the People

Robert’s got a quick hand, He’ll look around the room, he won’t tell you his plan

He’s got a rolled cigarette, Hanging out his mouth, he’s a cowboy kid – Yeah, he found a six-shooter gun, in his dad’s closet with a box of fun things – And I don’t even know what But he’s coming for you, yeah, he’s coming for you, wait.All the other kids with the pumped up kicks – You’d better run, better run, outrun my gun

All the other kids with the pumped up kicks – You’d better run, better run, faster than my bullet….

I didn’t know for years that this song was actually about the Columbine shooting – give it a listen when you get a chance. Also, one more recommendation for you on this topic. is a book called 19 minutes by Jodi Picoult. It was recommended to me by a teacher friend of mine, it’s a hard read, but well worth the time.

Since Columbine…

So, I’ve said before that I’m going to try and use this podcast to “own” some of my past nonsense, call myself out on some of the absurdities that I have passed along over the years as fact. I grew up in what you can call gun country, but I didn’t really grow up around guns – in fact I rarely even touched a gun. But I did like to spout a lot of pithy comments about guns like “An armed society is a polite society,” or “a good guy with a gun is the best way to stop a bad guy with a gun,” Stuff like that. But the thing is, the good guys weren’t stopping the bad guys with the guns, and 22 years after Columbine, we’ve had something around 200 mass shootings. So it’s safe to say that while our society is well armed, but anything but polite. Our politicians have given us a lot of speeches, and they’ve done a lot of hand wringing. They’ve given us their thoughts and prayers, but what they haven’t given us is ANY concrete movement toward making us safer. Back when I moved to DC, the NRA was mostly for sportsmen and people who wanted to be able to defend themselves and protect their homes. But over the past 30 years, the gun lobby has gotten stronger and stronger and the gun laws have gotten weaker and weaker. Unfortunately, we have the bloodshed to prove it.

 You will recognize many of these mass shootings – some of the most horrific among them, Virginia Tech, Las Vegas, Pulse nightclub, Parkland Florida, and of course, the one that changed all of us forever… Sandy Hook. I think the fact that we didn’t do anything after Sandy Hook… I think it somehow scarred us as a nation. Perhaps most of us, or at least many of us feel like maybe it’s a lost cause – that nothing’s ever going to change. The only things it seems we believe with certainty are that the shootings will continue and Congress will continue to ignore it.

Imagine with me for a moment that you’re one of those people in the Boulder shooting last week… you just endured a year long pandemic – maybe you just got your job back, maybe you even lost a parent. Then at the grocery store, while you are minding your own business in the produce aisle, you get gunned down by a madman. I’m not really sure why we refuse to address this issue – It’s almost like we want to step back from it and pretend like there was nothing we can do. As if it’s the weather, or somehow beyond our control, or worse, has nothing to do with us. This crisis is far larger than the guns themselves. This is a crisis of humanity. We’ve got a culture that somehow now prizes individual rights over the well being of our citizens. Maybe the founders had it wrong…

Maybe then we would better understand that as citizens, it’s our responsibility to take collective care of one another and remove dangerous elements from society.

There are so many statistics I could throw at you all – I’ll put some on my website, but I don’t really think you need to be convinced because everyone knows this is a problem. The interesting number to me, though, was that 94% of Americans are in favor of universal background checks – I’m shocked the number is that high. This also tells me that law abiding gun people – gun rights people, even – believe that background checks are essential. In this country, a person in struggle can get a gun in about 15 minutes, but it might take a month or two to get a get a therapist appointment – its a perfect storm. America sees this as a huge problem, and so does Congress, but the situation is sticky.

The Long Arm of the NRA

So those members of Congress who are in rural districts, they are held to a pretty high standard and have to pass purity tests, of sorts, with the NRA. They’re given a grade A through F, based upon the votes that they cast. Anyone who doesn’t get a good grade with the NRA will be decimated at the polls in some of these rural places. It affects republicans more because republicans are more often elected in rural America… so it’s just sort of how it works. Privately, everyone’s concerned, but (true to form) precious few are willing to put their career on the line to do the right thing. One of the more interesting things to me is that there’s such a nexus between christians and gun owners and gun rights people. When i worked for the Christian Coalition, our voter guides and theirs were almost identical – the same people that were pro-life and anti-gay were pro gun… it was all in the same vein. I’ve got to figure it’s probably because, I mean, we all know that Jesus packed heat, right?

AUDIO CLIP: “If a man strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him and shoot him that is the law.”

So here’s the deal… the gun people are in that same ultra conservative wing of the party that believes that the government and the Democrats are somehow in cahoots to end their way of life. But the dirty little secret here is that the government doesn’t want to take your guns. Its just one more thing we used to say on the right to convince you to write checks and to vote Republican. It was never true – it was never really going to happen. Look I’m pro-gun – We have a couple of shotguns and I grew up in a place where there were more guns and cows than people. But do we really think it’s a good idea to make all guns accessible to all people? I don’t mean to say anything, but the next time you’re out in public take a look around…the mouth breather in the next check out line… should he have a gun? That dude probably shouldn’t even have a squirt gun…

CLIP: “hey baby… you’re pretty hot..”

Anyway we’ve all gotten into this binary argument cycle where everything is right or wrong, left or right, up or down, yes or no …Christians are really bad about it – we are some of the worst. The gun lobby has successfully convinced Americans that we have only two choices: 1. Let every person have however many guns, whatever kind of guns they want, for any reason, with no background checks whatsoever, or 2. The big liberal government’s gonna burst in your house in the middle of the night while youre sleeping and confiscate every gun you have. Just as with most every other issue, the reasonable common sense answer lies someplace in the middle. And no, we’re not going to solve every problem with background checks – you’re always going to have somebody on television saying “Well, this person already had a permit or that person passed a background check” But we are going to need to start somewhere.

Because there is not a simple, clear answer that will solve every problem, we have allowed the perfect to become the enemy of the good – and in 30 years we haven’t done a single thing to make our public safer. Those precious babies at Sandy Hook were murdered by a 19 year old kid. In this country, the government doesn’t think a 19 year old kid is old enough to buy a can of Coors Light … but he’s old enough to buy a semi-automatic weapon and if he’s got a couple extra bucks he can buy a bump stock and turn it into an automatic weapon, like that guy did in Las Vegas. But no no no …. we’re not going to require permitting or licensing that’s an infringement! But we will make you get a permit or a license to drive a boat or Jet Ski, and of course cars and trucks. You’ll need a permit to build a shed, to go fishing and to cut hair…but you don’t need one to buy a gun (or to buy several guns) powerful enough to mow down hundreds of people in a matter of minutes. Furthermore, nobody’s going to look into your background, nobody’s going to look in your mental health records, nobody’s going to make sure you’re not a criminal.

Milk, Eggs, Giant Bomb

The whole idea that its a slap in the face of the second amendment to put any restrictions on gun owners is ridiculous. I mean, they call these things assault weapons for a reason and it’s not because you’re going to assault a deer or a water buffalo. These are tactical weapons intended to use for mass destruction – to kill lots of people. So it’s maximum destruction, minimum effort. Just like the fact that we can’t go run down the street to Costco and pick up a missile or maybe a giant bomb … I mean, that would be fun to blow up, wouldn’t it? But the closest we can really get to that are black market South Carolina fireworks… but you know what? Those are illegal.

Ironically, it’s a perfect time for Congress to act because the NRA is mired in scandal and bankruptcy. Ultimately what we’ll get from Congress is what we always get – Thoughts and Prayers and a bunch of other cliches that smack of indifference. If we end up with any action at all, it will most likely be by President Biden’s executive order . OK – Lets put a pin in this and do a could of quick refreshers… Executive Order is when a president makes a law that’s not voted in by Congress – it’s a great way to get something done quickly but it’s not permanent and it’s easily overturned by the next president. its also while semi automatic weapons and automatic weapons are both under the category of assault rifles (or assault weapons) semi-automatic only fires one bullet per trigger pull. When you pull the trigger on an automatic rifle, the bullets fire in quick succession if you hold the trigger down (like a machine gun) Semi-automatic weapons are legal, automatic weapons are illegal – however, for a low low price, you can buy an adapter that turns a semi automatic into an automatic weapon – and its legal. Isn’t that just dandy? The boys at the NRA were able to get all these laws passed (and/or blocked) but it’s pretty hard to argue – even for the best lobbyist – that any of these guns are needed for sport. You don’t use these guns to shoot pheasants… you use them to shoot people.

There is irrefutable evidence that fewer guns equals fewer deaths by gun. Whether you consider statistics from other countries or you compare statistics among states in our own nation, the fewer the guns, the fewer gun deaths. This isn’t difficult math, people.. I’m an language person and this isn’t even hard math for me!

One last statistic that’s really important to bring up, especially given the mental health crisis due to the pandemic. Of all of the gun deaths in America, 61% of them are self inflicted. Any therapist will tell you that suicide is an unfortunate intersection of opportunity and despair. When someone feels the urge to take their own life, as long as there’s not an opportunity to do so, that feeling sometimes passes and then they survive. The problem with guns is if you have a gun, you’ve always got that opportunity. Secondly, if someone attempts suicide with a gun, they are successful 85% of the time.

Pushbacks

So yeah that’s some heavy stuff, but the truth is we’re NOT helpless. Lets talk Pushbacks.

1. Reach out to your members of Congress – your House members and Senators – let them know that you’re with that 94% that demands a background check. Tell them that its the very very least they can do.

2. If you’ve got one of those Members of congress who thinks it’s cute to pose with assault rifles because it makes them look cooler or maybe more macho (if you have one, you know who they are) reach out and tell them you don’t appreciate it. Tell them that our culture already glamorizes violence and terroris…maybe elected officials shouldn’t be setting that example for our kids.

3. If Joe Biden actually does something by executive order, support it. Support it with your friends, support it with your family. Even though i do not really love the idea of executive order, there have been 22 years since Columbine…. and 7 mass shootings in the last 7 days. Somebody’s got to do something.
Like my granddad used to say, “A little bit of something’s better than a whole lot of nothing.”

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