Gun Control

I'm not a big supporter of the NRA. Its knee-jerk reaction that anything the federal government does on gun related issues, particularly Obama's administration, is almost by definition a violation of the second amendment and is as predictable as it is silly. However, it is right about two things and the left does itself no favors by ignoring them.

First, assault rifles aren't really the problem. The number of shootings in which these weapons are involved pales in comparison to the number involving regular semi-automatic handguns and revolvers. Assault rifles are much harder to conceal than handguns making them suited mainly to deranged (probably suicidal) lunatics. Yes it looks like the weapons carried by the military and law enforcement, but it's not fully automatic so it's still just a rifle. What is looks like, and why that matters, I will return to later.

Magazine capacity is more of an issue; when the shooter has to stop to replace an empty magazine, there is an opening to tackle (or more likely shoot) him (or her, though very rarely 'her'). The longer the shooter can continue his rampage without changing magazines the more people he will likely injure or kill. But a Glock 17 holds 17 rounds, and is quickly changed out for a fresh magazine.  The left's mantra about banning assault rifles misses the point and undermines more serious proposals.

The the second issue, and the one nobody seems comfortable talking about is cultural. This morning, a woman was held up a knife point by an attacker who had managed to get into her car. She bravely tackled the assailant who fled. Then, according to ABC news and the local police 'Baker took matters into her own hands:  "I didn't mean to run him over - I was just trying to stop him so he didn't hurt anybody else" she told reporters.

There are two thing here that give me pause. First, she ran the assailant over with her car. This could not possibly be construed as an accident. Doing so involved pointing the vehicle towards him, and pressing the accelerator. Had he died (and there was no way she could have know that he wouldn't), this would, in other circumstances, have been a case of vehicular manslaughter or second degree murder.

But more troubling still, and this points of the wider cultural issue, was the (female) anchor's comment at the end of the piece: "She made a lot of Texans proud, this morning. I like how she said 'she messed with the wrong witch' ".

There were a variety of courses of action Dorothy Baker might have taken after her attacker fled, other than pursuing him and then running him over. But apparently vigilante justice, old testament eye for and eye vengeance, is the one that anchors, and presumably by implication audiences, want to see. That seems to me to be a more fundamental problem than whether or not private citizens are allowed to own  a rifle.

The commercial success of AR-15 style weapons owes something to good marketing; after all, owing a tool used by professionals is a tried and tested marketing message and works as well for guns as for power tools. But the other part of the wider issue is society's willingness to treat the marketing of guns as if they were no different than drills or diapers.

It seem to me that we don't have a gun problem; we have a gun-culture problem.