I’m a Regular Army officer and have served in frontline positions in Iraq (this only to mean that I’ve got a very small slice of experience with the practical application of what military grade weapons were designed to do).
I’m a southerner who grew up shooting .22s in the field behind the house from the time I could hold the rifle. I own several “classic” firearms like the M-1 Garand and a Martini-Henry, though not an AR-platform, which I shoot enough at work, to be honest (something half-submerged in my mind makes me think that in my house I don’t need a weapon designed exclusively for combat, either for sport or home defense—my German Shepherd is a much better platform for both).
All that to say that for the first time ever, I find myself more strongly on the side of gun control than of unrestricted gun circulation...
My niche perspective is this: in the Army, firearms are much more heavily regulated than in civil society. How can so many enthusiastic gun owners say that they hold the military as a model, and yet not accept the strict regulations that go with the military’s use of firearms?
Probably with the same logic that they use when they buy military tactical kit and shoot GoPro videos on their homemade urban range, but would never carry a hundred pounds on their back for 20 miles or sit freezing in a foxhole for days on end. This is another facet of rights without responsibility, or privilege without duty, in our present “liquid society.”
In the Army, firearms are stored under lock, key, and sometimes guard, and god help you if one goes missing—the post shuts down and a frenzied search bordering on a religious quest begins. After basic training, soldiers are required to go through a few hours of refresher training with practical drills before they are even allowed on a range for individual shooting qualification. These are ranges that are heavily monitored, with a monumental emphasis on safety.
What might be shocking to people who have not been around the military is that if a soldier cannot qualify with his weapon, he is not allowed to carry or shoot it on live-fire exercises or downrange. ... Can many of the gun-rights advocates be heard seriously advocating for hours and hours of training and qualification by competent authorities before a civilian is allowed to own the same weapon soldiers carry? Perhaps, but I am not aware of it….
After those individual qualification ranges, soldiers spend hours upon hours day after day drilling to conduct more complex operations like a squad live-fire. And perhaps the most complex of all—clearing a room or building in a live fire scenario… It is very difficult for trained military units to deal with lone shooters on a battlefield, yet something in the American psyche—let’s call it the Lone Ranger archetype—is being convinced that one armed teacher can make a stand and take down an evil menace, then receive his hero’s laurels. Perhaps we ought to consider regulating John Wayne movies as well.
***
What is to be done? Clearly, with several hundred million firearms in circulation, mass confiscation is not practical, politically toxic, and as a sporting man myself, I would say culturally undesirable. But simple steps such as limiting high-capacity magazines, stringent background checks (lets’s not pretend they hold water now), and a licensing process are all good starts. After a certain list of tangible steps is exhausted though, the question becomes a nebulous one of cultural norms. Is there going to be a shift toward seeing firearm ownership as innately bound up in social responsibility? One can hope.
As a very small child I was taught, with fear and wonder approaching holy revelation, that safety with firearms was paramount, and I intend to teach that to my children when they are old enough. But until more Americans interact with structures like the military where safety and social responsibility are innate to firearms, I don’t see how that sentiment can grow organically so that people will accept it, as opposed to seeing it as imposed from above.
Will most Americans grow up and out of the fairy tale that their right to bear arms is without nuance or burden of responsibility? Will they realize they are probably not Lone Rangers waiting for their moment to save the day in their home or school? That the intent of the second amendment is to ensure that any armed, but unorganized and untrained citizenry, is able to overthrow a tyrannical government (a ludicrous proposition, in any case)? I am not sure, but our history and our geography—unlike that, say, of the Swiss, who have long seen firearms as a means to defend their country collectively from invasion—do not bode well for it….
To put a final twist on Oscar Wilde, even in the niche of American gun culture we are living with both extreme barbarism and extreme decadence, with only a precarious sliver of civilization in between.
Must be because of those Dick's joke headlines I made up.
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