Guns in ‘Merica

One of the questions I get, infrequently is, “Do people [in your life] know you write about them?’ My answer is, “Yes, and I usually do so in such a pseudonymous fashion that you’d have to know some intimate details not publicly available to identify people, so no one’s usually bothered.” The more-accurate answer is, “Yes, but, quite honestly, if I dislike you, you’re not going to wind up in anything I write, because I don’t have enough space in my skull for people I don’t particularly care for.” The even-more-accurate answer is, “If you’re really worried about me writing about you, ask if your current behavior would make you a character in Tiger King or not.” We can go on and on about the virtues and demerits of good behavior, but, at its root; it’s boring and does not make for good writing. Rare is the sit-com where the couple comes home, gets along, bickers briefly about who should clean the kitchen, and one party just sucks it up and grudgingly-but-uncomplainingly washes the pans, and everyone goes to bed content. It’s not exactly prime-time television. If you’re worried that your behavior is abnormally-interesting enough for me to write about, feel free to ask either me or a therapist.

Today, in the interest of demonstrating a fundamental point that has been made over and over (namely, how obscenely easy it is to get a gun in America — seriously, the opening scene of Bowling for Columbine involves literally getting a gun from a bank), there will be some airing of family laundry, and discussing people I rarely ever think about. Yes, it’s a little salacious, and, yes, I could write an entire novel about this whole incident (what I relate here is but a taste of a Twilight Zone miniseries of family squabbling in the wake of parental death), but that would take time, and we need some traction. So, today, how my family unwittingly released a military weapon onto the streets! It might, as I type, be involved in the commission of a crime. I’d feel more guilty about that, except I was 15-ish when the initial events occurred, and no grown-ups in the room, at any point, felt compelled to say, “Look, this situation has gotten weird and we need to sit down with a therapist and a lawyer and square this away.” BTW, as I discovered, that should always be the first step in the grieving process, because everyone involved is likely to do something that makes Joe Exotic look sober and sane before the story ends; but I digress.

So, 20-odd years ago, my grandparents died. It was sad — they were members of the Silent Generation, and loaded with 20th century history and lore, but they were also in their 70s, and humans only get so many years on this planet. In the ensuing legal melee, one family member with a law degree bottled up the estate and limited both access and transparency in the process. And that’s why, if you have kids with a law degree, they get special section of their own in estate planning. Anyway, in the turmoil of it all, another individual made off with one of Grandpa’s guns. An M1911, I believe — a USMC service pistol. I don’t know whether there was any particular monetary or sentimental value attached to it; I sincerely doubt that, since the lawyer in the family was scrupulously assigning a dollar value to every single item in the house, and making everyone who wanted something either pay her or take it out of the inheritance (again, if you don’t want me to write about you, ask your therapist if they call colleagues for advice about you). Which is why no one wound up with any of my grandparents’ cooler stuff.

Anyway, before Family Lawyer showed up to put the kibosh on looting the estate of all our fond childhood memories, the faster individuals in the family “took inventory” of all the stuff that was readily-accessible that the lawyer didn’t know about. One of which was a .45 pistol in a lock-box in the walk-in closet of my grandparents’ closet. There were plenty of sentimental knick-knacks we’d all happily go ten rounds for; the gun was absolutely not one of them.

Which is why it was news to me, recently-ish (okay, so last year), that someone grabbed the gun whilst the grabbing was good. Again, this incident was 20 years ago, so I have absolutely no idea where the gun is, now, and I have a hard time imagining the USMC issuing sidearms for hunting elk — there’s a pretty specific, direct purpose to the guns they use, and a gun like that is currently unaccounted for. The question conservatives like to ask in every situation is, “Would harsher gun laws have prevented this?” In this particular instance, I can, with absolute certainty, state, “Yes. Yes, they would have.” If Gun Grabber had been required to register and insure the gun, that would have flagged the attention of Family Lawyer, and it would’ve made a messy, ugly situation even worse. It also might have ended in a duel, given the personalities involved; so this a double-crime from my POV — the first being a .45 semi-automatic being unlawfully removed from the premises, the second being robbing us of the weirdest made-for-TV movie of all time (and the royalties thereof).

And, even though I’m not dense enough to believe anything that happens in my gene pool is indicative of the general population; I do have to wonder how many other stories there are like mine, in which there’s a weapon in a room one minute, and then, thanks to a complete lack of government oversight and one individuals’ desire to own a gun, the gun vanishes into the ether. No insurance, no tracking, zero accountability, and the possibility of unwittingly making dozens of people unwitting accessories to a crime. And how entirely preventable the whole thing would have been if there’d been laws in place, at the time, making it completely illegal to own an unlicensed, unregistered firearm (again, tellingly, there was an almost-new Ford pick-up in the driveway that remained there; it was undoubtedly worth far more than the gun). And how many violent crimes start with someone just seizing the opportunity to commit a victimless crime that involves a lethal weapon?

Because here’s the weird, uniquely-American part that makes the whole thing sinister: at the time I heard about this; I didn’t really think much of it, because everyone in the family is mostly-law-abiding and Gun Grabber, while being a bit of a self-absorbed jerk, is far from violent or dangerous. But he’s not the problem in this equation; ready access to guns and the lack of requirements to buy one is. Even though I don’t doubt for a second that Gun Grabber would never use the weapon in question to hurt anyone, I also don’t doubt for a second that if someone offered him $100 for the gun, he’d go for it. I don’t think anyone would turn down that offer — cash for a piece of metal with virtually no sentimental or real financial value? We’d think of it like as selling an unwanted couch — it’s a score for something we’re disinterested in, anyway. The critical difference is, couches rarely kill people when mishandled and are even less-frequently used in the commission of a violent crime. It’s that degradation from a weapon used in war to the same mental category as furniture that contributes to America’s raging gun violence issue. Again, simply requiring all guns, everywhere, to be registered and insured, exactly like a car, would’ve prevented one person from seeing a gun and thinking, “Cool gun, I’d like to take it” to, “That’s more trouble than its worth.” And when discussing gun violence, that’s the overlooked factor — not, “How do we prevent every single shooting,” but, “How many shootings could be prevented simply by playing on peoples’ laziness and aversion to paperwork?” I think we’d be surprised.