Happiness is a Warm Gun for What?

Adding one's comments to the already substantial set on this past week's event at Virginia Tech probably wont help much, but I will do it anyway.

Like many others i just wanted the basic facts at first, how did it happen, why did he do it, how many died?

As in so many of the tragedies before it there are no easy answers.

Young and old. Futures yet to be realized and lives full of memories. All taken so senselessly by someone with something missing. Was it an accident of a missing heart, someone himself a victim of bad chemistry, a head full of ghosts.

And now we are left with grieving families, children from their families an old man from his wife and children.

And then there are the guns. So easily obtained, so easily loaded, so easily discharged.

I grew up around firearms with hunters and NRA instructors. From my early teens I used many types of guns. Shotguns, rifles, and even a few handguns. Mostly we spent time at the rifle range learning gun safety and marksmanship from our Boy Scout master who also happened to be a lifetime NRA instructor. Usually a soft-spoken, easy going man, but on the rifle range he was strict and harsh. A boy caught carelessly pointing his gun anywhere but downrange received a verbal thrashing and was done for the day. Safety was drilled into us with no compromises. We enjoyed shooting whether it was paper targets or clay pigeons. My friend Billy who grew up around guns as well was a great shot and I wasn't too bad myself. Supposedly his father had a Luger he'd found while in the Army during WWII, although we never saw it.

And it wasn't just target practice, we hunted as well. Duck hunting and deer mostly, sometimes bear. Each season some kids took a fews days off with their fathers. Trophy hunting wasn't their way, we cleaned, butchered, and ate what was caught. And oddly through this we also learned respect for our environment, you only took what you needed and appreciated the bounty provided.

That's the way it was, guns weren't a source of romance for us, a fetish with a hidden agenda, ever so carelessly aimed at our friends, families, and neighbors. They were tools, useful and yes enjoyable, but potentially dangerous and always respected. The consequences of a mistake were not to be imagined.

So when I say that our guns laws much change, I would have you understand my experience.

Yes, I am a liberal and yes I know the role firearms have in American culture. But what this right has transformed into is peculiar in it's ferocity. What is it that makes this particular tool (and weapon) so loved and feared? The second Amendment to the Constitution gives it protection, but the original purpose seems perverted like so many good intentions.

Men defend the right, but ignore it's full intention (What ever happened to that "well regulated militia" part?) finding something else. Does it some from fear? Is it the "other among us they would use them against? How many are aware that it is one of the top ten causes of death in the US? We would eradicate a disease with such power if it were within our grasp, but not this. It's inviolate. Enshrined. Too many use it to prove their manhood, "hunting" animals flushed for their hunger to prove masculinity. Not spending the day in a cold wet blind or freezing in a tree stand. Is it so hard to wonder why they need to prove something in such a pathetic manner? And then there are handguns, no good for hunting game. Only useful for shooting others.

What is it they defend? The right to kill?