DEAR OLD GOLDEN RULE DAYS
DEAR OLD GOLDEN RULE DAYS: “Welcome, freshmen, to Orientation Week at Smith & Wesson High School. Look at the student on your left. Now look at the student your right. Statistics say that one out of every three Smith & Wesson students will be murdered before the end of the school year. Don’t be that guy!”
“Orientation Week will teach you survival skills – both offensive and defensive – that will increase your odds of getting through your freshman year. You’ll learn how to handle hostage situations; when to shoot first and ask questions later; how to use an active shooter’s suicidal tendencies against him; and on Friday, we’ll finish the week by practicing small unit combat tactics. Remember – we’re stronger together. Now, hands over the heart as we recite the Second Amendment.”
When I was a teenager, the bad boys were the ones who chewed gum, or didn’t tuck their shirttails in. Do either, or both, often enough, and you’d get kicked out of school, and into a life of…. Well, I don’t know what. Insubordination rarely progressed that far at my high school. The leather jacket set would occasionally get into testosterone-fueled fights – fist fights – and get suspended for a week. But they’d always be back. That was life on the mean streets of Wichita, Kansas, back in the early 60s.
Sometime when I was in high school, I read Robert A. Heinlein’s science fiction novel, BEYOND THIS HORIZON, in which he said, “An armed society is a polite society.” It didn’t make that much of an impression on me back then, because Heinlein’s novels were full of similarly bombastic quotes. But it became an article of faith for Gundamentalists, notwithstanding the fact that the past twenty years of American history have proved it to be bullshit. Not only that, but 2A fanatics are among the rudest people I’ve encountered.
The NRA hasn’t repudiated Heinlein, but they’re no longer claiming that there’s a correlation between firepower and politesse. No, their current slogan assumes that Thomas Hobbes had it right. Life in contemporary America is nasty, brutish, and short, and “the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is with a good guy with a gun.”
Hobbes, of course, wrote “Life in a state of nature,” rather than “life in contemporary America.” But in terms of guns, contemporary America lives for all practical purposes in a Hobbesian state of nature, with “no law, no common power to restrain human nature.” That’s what today’s NRA wants – a LORD OF THE FLIES society where your only chance for survival is to outgun your enemies.
How did an organization founded to promote marksmanship and responsible use of firearms by hunters and outdoorsmen turn into a domestic terrorist organization? Basically, there was a coup in 1977, and the gun nuts won. They’ve had 40 years to learn how to manipulate their members’ anxiety over social change. Give the devil his due – they’re good at it.
According to a Pew Research study last year (link below), about 30% of Americans are gun owners. I thought the number would be higher. Only 19% of gun owners belong to the NRA. I thought that number would be higher. So basically, 6% of Americans are NRA members. That’s a non-trivial number, but it doesn’t represent an insurmountable obstacle.
All this by way of saying bravo to Emma Gonzalez and the other protestors from Stoneman Douglas High in Parkland FL. They’re calling bullshit on the NRA and its elected lapdogs. I don’t know whether they’ll “win,” but they’re moving the needle.
Republicans were taken aback when a bunch of kids dared to call them out. Some dumb politicians and commentators (looking at you, Ted Nugent and Dana Loesch) even lashed out, attacking teen survivors. That’s going to backfire in a big way. The rest of them are scrambling to find the right script, complete with proposals for serious-sounding but deliberately ineffective legislation, that will cover their asses at least temporarily.
My guess is that Emma Gonzalez and her friends won’t be fooled. And when the next school massacres happen (I’m sorry to say that I believe there will be more), students at those schools will have the Stoneman Douglas example to use as a model for their own protests.
I think the genie is out of the bottle. The NRA can bully politicians, but they can’t bully a bunch of high school kids. Dudes, your sons and your daughters are beyond your command. There’s a battle outside, and it’s ragin’. Emma Gonzalez may never have heard that song, but she’s living out its truth. Long may she run.