[Dialogue] [Oe List ...] more on guns

[Gordon Harper]

Since I'm part of this problem and hopelessly complicit in sustaining 
it, I'll start with a little confession.  Like many of us, I grew up in 
a gun culture, in my case as a Wisconsin farm boy.  I loved the various 
rifles and handguns I accumulated over those early years, and I 
continued to sharpen my target shooting through college and graduate 
school and even as a young professor (never really had the heart for 
hunting).  I was (full disclosure) a member of the NRA starting in high 
school, so that I could get my cases of 22 ammo for a pittance.  (I 
dropped my membership while in college, when the organization started to 
morph into the right wing entity that we see today.)

When our family joined the symbolic order and moved to the West Side, I 
got rid of everything except for a special treasure, my Ruger Single Six 
(replica Colt six-gun) with its beautiful rosewood grips and fancy 
Mexican fast draw holster. Lane Erskine and I used to enjoy sharing our 
fascination with our handguns' workmanship.  Unlike Lane, who was given 
to packing heat as he moved about in 5th City, I kept mine unloaded and 
in a locked case in our room.

After a few months, however, I became concerned that even with those 
safeguards, in our community, with the kids having easy access to 
everyone's rooms, it was too much of a risk.  With great sadness, I took 
my beloved revolver and holster to a gun shop in Wisconsin and sold 
them, thus ending my gun ownership phase.  When it came time, a few 
years later, to decide which of my siblings would inherit our father's 
firearms, I chose not to participate in the distribution.

I start with this to make the point that what we're dealing with in this 
gun culture lies very deep in many of us.  I've had--and still have--a 
love affair with the classic American Western film.  This is a tradition 
that exalts the single shootist, who is able to do good and make things 
right for others precisely because he has at least one sidearm and when 
necessary uses it well.

I see myself mirrored in the fascination of young people today for all 
the first person shooter games, battlefield adventures and standing 
one's ground against those hordes of attacking vampires.  It's a 
manifestation of our special culture as Americans, with our frontier 
tradition and mythology.  Which in turn is an aspect of what we 
sometimes refer to as the concept of American exceptionalism.

To deal seriously with gun violence, it seems to me, is to take on the 
challenge of shifting these profoundly rooted national and personal 
images and stories of who we are.  They are so much a part of us that we 
hardly ever feel the need to talk about them--they're simply assumed, 
taken for granted as part of the common ground we share as Americans.

We all grieve when events like those of this past week occur, and we 
feel personal shock and pain when one of them hits close to home.  At 
the same time, at some deep level we also find our way to accepting 
these occurrences as the tragic but necessary side effects of our 
special nature as a frontier people and the unique role of our nation in 
the world.

It's like the collateral war damage to innocent people that we've 
accustomed ourselves to living with.  We lament it, and we truly want to 
keep it to the bare minimum, but we also feel that our historical role 
requires our paying this cost (a bit of White Man's Burden, 
/redivivus/).  Theologically, there's a strong connection here with the 
myth of redemptive violence, which provides a religious rationale for 
many among us to accept the way things are and for at least part of the 
deep resistance we encounter to changing the gun laws.

I suspect that we will now begin to see some modest changes in access to 
semi-automatic weapons, some improvements in preventing, spotting and 
caring for mental illness, maybe even more support for our educational 
systems. I'm hoping it's also a point in time where we will see, in 
various formats and venues, the start of the conversation about our 
national identity and values that we very much need to have.

What I find myself looking for are ways to engage our neighbors and 
ourselves in surfacing and exploring together these largely unquestioned 
images and stories that so powerfully shape our behavior.  What is 
really special or exceptional about America--the good, the bad and the 
ugly--relative to what is special and exceptional about any other nation 
and people?   How are we to understand that exceptionalism, and what do 
we do with it in today's world?

Some of us might like to get rid of the whole idea of exceptionalism, 
but I think in this country, it's there, and we have to engage it.  
Doing so, it seems to me, is key to that long range and indirect 
strategy we've been talking about in this conversation.  It's essential 
if we're to have a real shot at changing the images from which we 
continue to act and from which we and others continue to suffer.

Engaging these conversations, I'm afraid, means welcoming and listening 
deeply to those with whom we strongly disagree--sharing and discussing 
together what we think the times call us to preserve in our heritage, 
what to leave behind and what to recreate.  If it's to work, it will 
have to be uncomfortably inclusive, in a big tent, as the Occupy folk 
like to say.

We could begin to start such conversations in our workplaces, our 
churches, our book groups, our community meetings, at the pub or coffee 
shop, over dinner with friends, on line, using all these wonderful 
social media tools.  It's something each of us could tackle, if we chose 
to, without much of an organizational structure.  Maybe down the road at 
some point, . . . .

Is this a tactic--and a conversation--we want to be part of?

Gordon


On 12/17/2012 1:45 PM, jlepps at pc.jaring.my wrote:
> Colleagues
>
> I'd like to add one more note to this lively dialogue (which I hope 
> continues, and perhaps even begins to focus).
>
> It's obviously the case that a change of heart is required in this 
> situation. The question becomes how to make that happen, and I'm 
> reminded of Martin Luther Kings's response to us WASPS who were 
> opposing desegregation because "we need to have hearts change to 
> support integration." To paraphrase him, "Laws can't make you love me, 
> but they may prevent you from killing me." Strict gun control may be 
> that kind of law. And, IMHO, whatever will prevent this sort of mass 
> murder is worth doing. Also I've noticed that hearts are remarkably 
> adaptable to their external situation.
>
> In terms of luring the tiger, the question now that she's out of her 
> lair (sorry Cynthia), what do we do: well perhaps something initial 
> like forbidding the sale of assault weapons and mass magazines. That 
> might be able to get some support from tigers. After all, we endure 
> considerable inconvenience to insure safety on airplanes,, so perhaps 
> the inconvenience of forbidding access to these instruments of mass 
> destruction might be a possible first step.
>
> I don't believe we'll be able to change tigers into lambs, but maybe 
> we can help de-fang them!
>
> John
>
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