On Feb. 14, Oscar Pistorius, the exalted South African Olympic track athlete who gained fame for running with blade-like artificial limbs, shot his supermodel girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp dead. The reason for the horrific violence came as a surprise; early reports said Pistorius believed that Steenkamp was an intruder and opened fire instinctually, though police have since called that version of events into question.
What does this have to do with the current state of affairs in the United States? More than one might think. There is a culture brewing in America around the issue of gun control that seems to be infected with a strong strain of mistrust and general fear toward the public.
Recent events have revealed that there is a population of gun owners whose support for the Second Amendment seems based on the notion that arming themselves as heavily as possible is the only way to protect themselves from an unseen criminal mass.
This idea was illustrated vividly recently in Wayne LaPierre’s speech on the National Rifle Association’s proposal to put armed guards in every school. Such a concept represents a frustratingly delusional point of view — it is not hard to imagine that an escalation of such a thought would lead to a populace surrounded by weapons in every corner of their lives. Recent legislation, such as that passed in Arkansas allowing concealed weapons to be carried into houses of worship, is worrisome.
The Second Amendment has a place in American society and our system of law, but the idea that it is in the best interest of the general public that more guns in more places equates to more safety requires a fundamental leap of logic that is disconnected from reality.
The provision that the “right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed” should not be misinterpreted as providing for uninhibited access to weapons. A gun has a one function, and whether it is used to kill an innocent person or to harmless punch holes in a paper target at a firing range, it is performing the same action that it was designed to be used for with drastically different consequences.
Currently in Tennessee it is perfectly legal to walk into a bar, drink alcohol and all the while be carrying a firearm. One rationale that has been given for why this is a good idea is that if a mass shooting was to take place in that bar, the armed clientele would be able to stop the killer. Yet this places a huge expectation upon the average person; that they, if armed, will always be able to act prudently in their usage of their weapon. This is an unreasonable expectation.
In August of 2012, the New York police department injured nine innocent bystanders while they fired at a gunman outside the Empire State Building. These were people who were trained to use their guns in the “right” way, to protect the general public, but violence was still wrought by them.
The idea of giving everyone in America with a weapon the responsibility to stop an attack is horrifying.