The wages of fear

Once again I'm wondering exactly when we Americans turned into a nation of sniveling cowards. Way too many people seem to be wandering around scared silly of their own shadows.

I keep seeing announcements for concealed carry permit classes being offered locally. Ads come up on the local sales and discussion page on a regular basis. There is also a vehicle running around that has ads on it. I must confess that every time I see the pickup with the wraps advertising such classes I have to fight the temptation to either (a) congratulate the guy on his ability to make a living off other people's stupidity; or (b) express surprise there are enough dudes running around with micro-dicks to support his entrepreneurial endeavors.

The local appeal for concealed carry kind of baffles me. This is a rural area where lots of people hunt. It's just kind of a given that most households are going to have what to urbanites qualifies as an arsenal: a deer rifle or two, a couple of different gauge shotguns, a varmint gun or two (you don't use a deer rifle to blow away the raccoons digging in the trash), maybe a handgun or two for plinking at beer cans. You know, this is not an area where evil-doers could casually pull off home invasions without worrying about having some pissed off old lady blowing them away. Gun ownership in general locally is no mystery.

Concealed carry, on the other hand. . . does anyone living in Baraga County actually need to carry a concealed weapon to go grocery shopping at Larry's? Or even go up to Houghton to hit the Evil Empire for cheap toilet paper and maybe indulge in lunch at the Suomi Restaurant? It's bizarre. The NRA and Faux News have done a really nice job of sowing fear.

The hard truth, the one most people aren't willing to believe, is that guns do not make you safer. When you see the totals for deaths from gunshots in this country, what's often missing from that statistic is the fact about two-thirds of the total are from accidents -- "Gun discharges in man's pocket" "Toddler shoots Mom" -- or suicides. Any time guns are easy to find, the suicide rate climbs. Also missing from the statistics is the fact that of the people who are homicide victims, something like 80 percent (4 out of 5) of the victims knew the person who shot them. You know, "Man shoots wife and kids;" "Disgruntled co-worker shoots boss."

Other uncomfortable facts include the reality that the more concealed carry permits a state issues, the higher the murder rate climbs. The easier you make it for anyone and everyone to exercise their right to carry a weapon, the more likely it is that people who shouldn't be allowed to use crayons unsupervised are going to end up with a gun in their hands. Ditto gun ownership in general. The states with the loosest gun laws and the highest percentage of gun ownership also have the highest death rates from guns, with one exception. Wyoming has more guns per capita than any other state but its gun death rate is fairly low. Then again, considering that Wyoming has more pronghorn than people, that's not surprising.

I've written about this before. Not sure what inspired me this morning other than a couple discussion threads in the RV-ing group I belong to on Facebook. Lots of people obsessing about protecting their stuff, including worrying about someone possibly stealing their nasty little dropkick dogs. I guess it's nice for the psychotic little ankle biters that their owners think someone would actually want to steal them, but if you think you need a Glock to protect your rat on a string, maybe you should think about getting a real dog that can protect itself. Shelters are full of pit bull mixes that no one is going to snatch because they're so cute. (No insult to pit bulls intended, but they do tend to scare people.)

My overall reaction to the discussion about people being willing to fire off multiple rounds in a campground or RV park to protect their stuff was, "Holy wah! What a great argument for boondocking!" No way would I want to be in an RV park when some moron several motorhomes or trailers away decided to shoot at someone because he or she saw someone carrying off a lawn chair. Just how many aluminum or fiberglas walls would a 9 mm bullet pass through before stopping in a person?

The stupid, it burns.

Thinking about guns

but am too depressed to string together anything coherent.

Fear mongering pays off

A year or two ago I mentioned the two cent solution as the low budget version of euthanasia for ailing pets. Turns out it's no longer quite that cheap. Fear mongering apparently pays off. The price of ammunition has been climbing. The fantasists who believe Obama or the ATF is coming to take their guns away have made such a run on the gun stores and online sales sites that the cheap stuff is selling out. 22LR shells now cost ten times what they used to, maybe more. The S.O. is so ancient he can remember when you could get a brick of 500  .22 shells for $5 -- they were basically a penny apiece. Now, depending on where you shop, they're more like $20 for 100 shells (20 cents each), and that's considered a sales price.

Maybe we'll all get lucky and the paranoiac gun nuts will drive the prices high enough that the truly crazy people won't be able to afford to load their weaponry.

So how's that bunker fantasy working out?

As that standoff in Alabama was unfolding, I found myself wondering just how long that particular delusional nutcase was going to manage to avoid getting shot by the cops. Answer: five days, and only because he had a kindergarten student in the bunker with him.

You know, I can understand and empathize a bit with the survivalists who hoard weapons, ammo, and canned goods because they fear a breakdown of society. The idea of having a safe place to hunker down quietly and wait for the looters to all shoot each other makes a certain kind of sense. I personally doubt we're likely to experience a Mad Max/zombie apocalypse dystopia anytime in my lifetime, but preparing for one isn't totally nuts. If nothing else, if there's a major infrastructure failure, e.g., no electricity for several weeks, you're not going to be totally flummoxed.

On the other hand . . . the rationale I've been hearing over and over from various gun nuts is that individuals have to be prepared to stand up to a tyrannical government. Well, good luck with that one. From what I've seen, the people who shout the loudest about the need to stand up to tyranny are the ones who'd have zero luck doing it, especially when their idea of tyranny too often consists of being asked to pay property taxes or abide by local zoning laws. They'll invoke the American Revolution and compare themselves to the Founding Fathers while totally ignoring the fact the American Revolution was the result of a lot of people cooperating with each other. The typical bunker-building gun nut doesn't seem to be able to get along with anyone, probably because the same paranoia that inspires bunker building renders the gun nut incapable of doing effective networking. If you don't trust anyone, usually all it takes is for your little group of "patriots" to exceed the passenger capacity of a Kia Rio and the group starts splintering.

In any case, given the long history of various individuals and groups that have engaged in stand-offs of various types with the government, whether it was local law enforcement, state police, the FBI, or ATF, can anyone recall any incident where the end result was anything other than the bunker-building gun nut being hauled away in a body bag or handcuffs?

Is the paradigm shifting?

Is the paradigm shifting? It's been over a month since the massacre at the Newtown elementary school, and the media is still paying attention to guns and gun control. Given that the main stream media usually have the attention span of a gnat when it comes to any one issue, it's a bit odd to see them still talking about "old news."

Even more intriguing, they seem to be playing up the number of incidents highlighting gun owners being idiots. I've noticed an unusually high number of stories describing stupid human tricks that come close to qualifying as Darwin Award nominees except no one has died. You know, gun owners shooting themselves in the hand or other body parts, gun owners reporting weapons missing and then finding the lost Glock hiding in the sofa cushions in their living room, and so on. One article mentioned an idiot who lost a loaded handgun in a movie theater. He apparently had it so poorly secured that it fell out of the holster when he shifted position in his seat. You've got to be pretty damn incompetent to manage to lose a 9 mm Beretta and not notice it's gone until the following day.

Some of these incidents have involved not just any ordinary gun owner, but gun dealers. Gun dealers are supposed to be experts, the guys who really know their stuff around weaponry. So what does it say when gun dealers start accidentally shooting themselves? It's all truly stupid stuff, all of which lends itself to a subtle undermining of the gun owners' preferred self-image, i.e., a competent, responsible modern day version of Marshall Will Kane preparing for his or her personal version of High Noon. You can talk all you want about "responsible gun owners" but when the news media keeps pointing out fools who do stuff you wouldn't think was physically possible -- how the heck can anyone shoot themselves in the hand? Who on earth holds any weapon with one hand covering the end of the barrel?! That's when the collective image of gun owners starts to slide from Marshall Matt Dillon to somewhere in the general vicinity of Festus Hagin's mule.

So what does all this imply? I'm hoping it means the political power of the gun lobby is eroding. When the public starts to mock gun owners instead of kowtowing to them, one can hope it means a paradigm is shifting.

h/t Blue Gal