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

[Mary Laura Jones]

Thank you gordon    your witness is very helpful and wise and thought
provoking   thank you  mary laura
On Dec 18, 2012 3:52 AM, "Gordon Harper" <gharper1 at mindspring.com> wrote:

>  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
>
> _______________________________________________
> OE mailing list
> OE at lists.wedgeblade.net
> http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/oe-wedgeblade.net
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Dialogue mailing list
> Dialogue at lists.wedgeblade.net
> http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/dialogue-wedgeblade.net
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.wedgeblade.net/pipermail/dialogue-wedgeblade.net/attachments/20121218/aee0c9de/attachment.html>