When will we reach the tipping point on guns?

The following is a good post by Cenk Uygur, of the Young Turks:

How many shootings do there have to be in the news before we wonder about the wisdom of allowing just about anyone to get a gun in America? Our gun culture is completely out of control.

In just the last two days we have had 13 people killed in Binghamton, NY with a 9 mm and a .45-caliber, three police officers shot and killed in Pittsburgh with an assault rifle and two other guns, and a five children killed with a shotgun in Washington at the hands of their own father. How many will it take before we say enough is enough?

How about the eight people killed in a nursing home in North Carolina a couple of days before these shootings? How about the ten killed in Alabama a couple of weeks earlier? Is there any point when gun rights advocates would admit that we have too much gun violence in America? What will it take for them to acknowledge the most obvious thing in the world?

Of course, their answer is that we don’t have enough guns in the country. If we just allowed concealed weapons at schools, nursing homes, work, bars, airports and just about anywhere else you can imagine, then we would have less gun violence. Yes, maybe in bizzaro world, but in this world the more guns we have had in this country the more people have been shot … with guns.

The Washington case is a good example. Would that father really have been able to kill his four young daughters and his young son without a shotgun? Maybe, it’s happened before. But it would have been a hell of a lot harder and hell of a lot less likely. And what would have been the NRA alternative fix here - arm the kids?

I know it’s a political impossibility, but we need to reign in the permissive gun culture in America. I’ve gone to a shooting range several times. I get the allure of it. It’s fun and empowering. Until someone gets their head blown off. It’s madness that almost anyone can stroll into a Wal-Mart and walk out with a deadly weapon. Guns should be the hardest things to get in America, not the easiest.

So, will a sizeable group of politicians have the courage to step up and demand tighter regulations of firearms in this country after all of these shootings? Have we reached the tipping point? And if not, what will it take? How many more mass murders do we have to go through before we realize how crazy this is?

Cenk, it’s going to take a lot more apparently.

I have any number of friends here in Nevada who deeply believe that if everybody was ‘packing’ then the problem would be solved. This is, of course, merely justifying their own need or desire to have lots of weapons and addresses none of the realities of the easy availability of firearms in America.

I also think it’s self-delusional.

They also use the hoary old fall back position of guns being a part of the western American cultural zeitgeist, which comes about when you watch too many cowboy movies, and can’t tell the difference between John Wayne the actor and real life.

I don’t think any of these people have ever had to face the harsh realities of gun violence. I have.

My father was one of those who was always ‘packing’, as an ardent NRA member and true believer John Birch Society member. We had a small arsenal in the house when I was growing up. For years, I figured that if he pulled a gun on people enough times, he’d kill somebody. He did.

Rather than solve anything, it destroyed a lot.

These gun rights advocates should meet James Brady. I did. I can’t imagine not supporting the Brady Bill, and any bans on owning high powered assault weapons - that are in fact fueling the violence just over the border in Mexico - which will in time spill right over into our communities.

This is where the role of government and leadership is so important. We need government to tell the people who are not capable of stepping back and rationally seeing the facts for themselves, what they can and cannot do.

I do see a bit of change though. One of my gun owning, hunter friends did admit today that nobody needs to own an assault weapon. That was a big step for him, and he is disgusted with all this violence.

Again, it takes leadership - which American hasn’t had for quite some time.

maven

Update on Monday, April 6, 2009 at 22:19 by mavenandmeddler

I thought this quote from Bill Watterson to be particularly apt:

“Careful. We don’t want to learn from this.”