This is the American way. Since Sept. 11, 2001, when the country’s attention understandably turned to terrorism, nearly 120,000 Americans have been killed in nonterror homicides, most of them committed with guns. Think about it — 120,000 dead. That’s nearly 25 times the number of Americans killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Have you processed that? I have. I live in Virginia, where our General Assembly could not even pass a bill to close the gunshow loophole which means you do not have to pass a background check at a gun show in order to purchase a gun. Even a compromise which would have closed the loophole except for those who had carry permit or were buying an antique gun could not pass.
And in the column from which I have quote, Bob Herbert's, entitled (as is this diary) The American Way he reminds of 3 cops killed in Pittsburgh, 5 people - four murdered and a suicide - in Graham WA, and 3 days later 3 more murders with the suicide of the shooter in Alabama. All this the month after 4 police were killed in Oakland.
Herbert begins with the grandmother of the Pittsburgh shooter, at the house of the shooting. He writes
"My grandson did a terrible thing," said Ms. Scott. "There is no mercy for what he did."
Mercy or not, there is no end to the trauma and heartbreak caused by these horrifying, blood-drenched eruptions of gun violence, which are as common to the American scene as changes in the weather.
I read that and remembered words spoken H. Rap Brown in 1967:
Violence is as American as cherry pie.
Herbert reminds us of the gun violence of Virginia Tech, whose anniversary is in two days. In case we had forgotten, he also reminds us that the National Rifle Association would like even more guns, advocating for handguns on college campuses in Texas (as they tried to argue that had the students at Tech been armed Cho could have been stopped). I know Virginia State Police who are horrified at the idea, of the possibility of people being caught in a crossfire as inexperienced people fired while pumped by adrenaline. Herbert writes of the advocates
They’d like guns to be as ubiquitous as laptops or cellphones. One Texas lawmaker referred to unarmed people on campuses as "sitting ducks."
I am not opposed to private ownership of firearms, although unlike the majority of SCOTUS I do not read that in the 2nd Amendment, but rather the 9th. While I have no desire to hunt (perhaps a byproduct of my Jewish background with its Torah mandates for merciful slaughter of animals), I understand the appeal it holds for many. I am not seeking to take away all guns. I have fired weapons in the Marine Corps. I am a good, not a great shot, missing "Expert" by two points while firing an AR-15 on semi-automatic mode. I have no desire to own a firearm. I have seen people who were shot, and a woman who once worked for me was murdered, along with their two daughters, by her estranged husband, for which he was eventually executed.
I have twice had guns pointed at me, once by a policeman who under the rather unique circumstances probably had every right to pull his revolver. He was well-trained, which is why I was not shot. He was a New Jersey State Trooper.
The Pittsburgh shooter wore body armor and had multiple firearms, including an assault rifle. Does that mean people need to constantly wear body armor? Here's the news folks - the police officer in our school wears a vest at all times - it will stop the projectiles of most handguns as well as blunt the impact of a knife thrust.
And think about this - we have increasingly seen the use of heavily armored police forces, SWAT teams, attempting to come with overwhelming force to prevent resistance. In theory a good idea. Yet when, in light of the recent events with the Maersk Alabama, people suggest having crews armed and/or adding armed guards, experts warn it would lead to an escalation of force by the pirates, and do we really want a firefight with cargo exposed that is often volatile, subject to violent reaction if impacted by high-speed projectiles?
We worry about cargo and ships as well as the crews. Perhaps we should. But then, should we not also demonstrate similar concern for those who would be exposed to the crossfire, often from people who really do not know what they are doing with guns? I just missed being an Expert. But when I was shooting, it was not while someone was shooting at me, with my adrenaline pumping. How inaccurate might my fire have been then, and what or who else might thereby have been hurt?
It is not just those killed who suffer. Even in the military, those who have taken lives suffer, unless they are already spiritually and emotionally dead. Paul Rieckhoff once said in an interview that telling his guys to kill was hard because he knew what it did to them. And those were trained soldiers, in war.
And always there are the families of those who have died. Herbert writes of the grief of a city, of its police force, of their families.
"They all had families," said Detective Antonio Ciummo, a father of four. "It’s hard to describe the kind of pain their families are going through. And the rest of our families. They’re upset. They’re sad. They’re scared. They know it could happen to anyone."
We have as a nation agonized over the deaths in Iraq especially, and about how to honor those who died, whether it was unfair to their families to let the returning caskets be seen. We have seen demonstrations by the noxious Fred Phelps at their funerals.
We remember the incredible losses of public safety officers, police and fire, in the Twin Towers, the many funerals, the solemn silence when another body was removed from the rubble.
When police - or fire - die in the line of duty, we often have massive public support at funerals and memorials. We know about that in this house. Michael Garbarino was one of the two Fairfax County killed by a man who had hijacked a vehicle, driven to the Sully police station, and opened fire on Michael (who was sitting in his patrol car). He went to church with my wife. The funeral was too massive for the Church, which was also in Maryland, so the largest church in Fairfax County was used, and filled to overflowing. So it often is with policemen killed in the line of duty.
So it was with Frank, a cop I knew in Moorestown NJ, who had never in more than 20 years removed his gun from its holster except on a firing range. Until the day he walked into a bank robbery and got immediately fatally shot. He emptied his revolver at the escaping bandits as he was dying.
Cops and soldiers often die. Would that none did. Here I will not speak of the military. Might less cops die if our gun culture were somewhat different? Michael Moore pointed out that Canada has a gun ownership rate like ours, but does not have the gun death rate that we do. I don't know that there are simplistic answers, either for those like the NRA who want no control of firearms and those who would seek to follow Britain after a school shooting and eliminate most private firearms ownership.
Yet this I do know, all too painfully, from my almost 63 years as an American. Our current gun culture is killing us. Not just those who die by gunfire, nor their families who mourn. All of us, our entire society, because our response is too often one of fear - "it could could happen to anyone" as the Pittsburgh police officer said. And from that fear comes escalation. And from that escalation - similar to the escalation of military forces - more people die.
And the cycle continues.
Some of those who read this will strongly object. They would if they could troll rate the diary. Perhaps they will so act towards my tip jar. That is certainly a less damaging response than what I fear. I listen to the rhetoric of some on the right, their fears about Obama and the Democrats, the rhetoric of violence over the air waves and unfortunately from some political leaders. They seem to be channeling the worst of the left from the 60s and 70s - like those words from H. Rap Brown. In a nation which has seen far too many political assassinations - Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, John Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, Evers, King . . - and attempted assassinations - both Roosevelts, Ford, Reagan . . . and which has far too many guns in the hands both of those untrained and those unstable, must our fear also include the possibility of further assassinations, of internecine violence, of people so panicked by fear that they immediately fire on someone who might possibly pose a threat, a civilian version of Cheneys one percent doctrine?
I do not have the answers. I acknowledge that. And because I must do other things, I cannot pursue this further than this, and to leave you as Herbert leaves us, with his final paragraph.
Murderous gunfire claims many more victims than those who are actually felled by the bullets. But all the expressions of horror at the violence and pity for the dead and those who loved them ring hollow in a society that is neither mature nor civilized enough to do anything about it.
Peace?