Chris sent me an article about a Houston pro-gun nonprofit, the Armed Citizens Project, that provides free shotguns to single women, and residents of high-crime neighborhoods. It’s a smart move, strategically.
One thing that’s always disturbed me about the NRA and other gun advocates is that they talk a good talk about self-protection, but their message always seems to be about protecting you from the government, not from the thug down the block.
And while protecting yourself from the government is crazy-talk, in addition to borderline sedition, the notion that “our neighborhoods aren’t safe” likely resonates with far more people.
And it’s something that gun opponents don’t address, or acknowledge, directly enough. America has a violence problem. In part because of the omnipresence of guns, to be sure. But it’s a bit of a cultural catch-22 as well.
Guns help feed, and enable, the culture of violence, but the desire for guns is also a direct result of the violence that our country tends to be more prone to. Street violence, in particular. And the causes of street violence are many, but guns are only a part of it – they’re part cause, but also part symptom.
And while it’s easy to poke fun at gun nuts who claim they need their weapons to protect themselves against the Department of Homeland Security, it’s harder to poke holes in the notion that people in high crime areas need guns for protecting their homes.
Mom with gun via Shutterstock
The irony, of course, is that they need guns to protect their homes against the guns that are already on the street.
So, while one option is to arm more people, the other is to try to figure out how to disarm the street so people don’t need guns at home. We’ve written before about one option: Raise the price of bullets. Of course, there are other options as well, such as dealing with the root causes of crime on the street. Part of that is poverty, and discrimination. But part of it has also become cultural – the cool factor of owning a gun, committing crimes, and hurting people.
A cab driver was shot and killed a block away from my condo last week, here in DC. It was 3 in the morning, he’d picked up a few guys in a relatively bad neighborhood, brought them here, and they tried to rob him. When the cabbie refused to hand over the money, they shot him dead. Fortunately there were some cops nearby. The guys saw the cops and immediately started shooting at them. The cops fired back. One of the guys ran into a backyard and busted down the door of an English basement – the renter of which jumped out a window to get away.
It’s difficult to tell the renter, or the people who own the home and lived right upstairs, that owning a gun is a bad idea. I’m not sure I wouldn’t buy a gun if some thug, who is willing to open fire on police officers, kicked down my door. And that’s the conundrum that gun control advocates – and I consider myself one – face.
The NRA’s best argument in a violent country is to promote guns as a means to protect yourself against street violence. That argument crosses all political lines. Fortunately (well, perhaps “fortunate” isn’t the right word) for gun control advocates, the gun nuts are far more concerned with the government than they are with the real threat, day to day life in America.