“You have to keep an open mind,”
...one of the two older women seated across from me explained, as I waited on a physical therapy appointment. The aphorism brought to a conclusion an anecdote in which, after a lifetime of attending Baptist services, she found herself attending a Lutheran Church with a new partner, and thought it oddly familiar. On surveying her extended family, she discovered a long personal history with the denomination of which she had been unaware.
So perhaps invoking an open mind was more intended to express “you never know!” Nevertheless, her compatriot nodded in agreement, “Yes. You have to.” I kept scanning the news on my phone, thinking idly about how my grandmother’s Lutheran faith had inspired her interest — and to some degree my father’s interest — in social justice.
“They’re bringing up that gun control nonsense again.”
“Oh, really?”
I stop reading my phone.
“I can’t believe it. Only with the guns. You never see a gun run up and shoot someone., it’s the shooter”
“You’re right.”
“It’s all mental illness.”
“It wouldn’t change anything. Criminals are always going to get guns.”
“Then how come we are the only wealthy western nation to have anything approaching this level of gun violence?”
They look up at me, now ignoring my phone and compelled to finally interject in this rather public conversation.
“Every one of these shooters had something wrong in the head.”
“You can kill someone with knives, with cars, with poison...”
“The frequency of mental illness is the same — the people are the same in each of those other countries. Why are we the only...”
“Because they maintained their convictions.”
“That’s simply not true. Australia radically changed its gun laws after a mass shooting incident and saw a corresponding reduction in violence...”
“You will Never convince me.”
Called in to my appointment, I made a passing appeal to responsible gun ownership and to our ability to achieve a reduction in violence common in the developed world, but I never pointed out the deep irony of that last comment in light of their earlier conversation.
Ultimately, rational gun laws are not going to come about through mass persuasion or by shaming of those who feel insulated from the cost. We will win by finally saying this issue (among many others) is a reason to go to the polls. To elect only both those who have reason and those who may at least be persuaded, to the exclusion of those who have sold out our country to a mixture of anti-government sentiment and NRA corruption.
And damn... sometimes I feel out of place in central, red Michigan.