Taking Responsibility

I woke up on Friday excited to head out with a friend to a favorite spot to shoot some Huns. Like every other morning, I made coffee and watched some of my sports talk on T.V. I sucked down a couple cups of coffee and packed up my things including my dog and my shotgun and jumped in the truck. I'm not going to lie, sports talk radio is kind of an obsession of mine so I quickly tuned the radio to the SVP and Russilo show. It was the first I heard of the Newtown shooting.

Scott Van Pelt's opening dialog to the show was filled with grief, anger, and confusion. He expressed how ridiculous it seemed to talk about the troubles of the Lakers when all he cared about was the children and families that were suffering so much amidst one of the saddest events since 911. I listened intently on what he was saying because I had no idea of what was going on but I could feel the seriousness in his tone. I was drawn in to try to understand what not even he knew much of, as the details at 11am that morning were coming in large part through social media with little trust for accuracy, which made how heinous the violence was he described and who the victims were even more difficult to believe.

One thing SVP said in the first few minutes of the show was that he didn't want to hear any arguments that day about protecting ones' rights under the 2nd Amendment as he expressed what he felt was even more important as his protection under the First Amendment that gave him the right to use his voice to say how ridiculous it is that we keep allowing these things to happen. He said that he understood how complicated this problem is and that there are no easy answers and that there is no way any of us could possibly understand what brings a person to killing innocent people in such a mass killing but one thing he did know is that the killer wouldn't have killed all those children if he didn't have the guns to do it. (I think what SVP was trying to say is that he was going to come out and express his disgust in a culture that allows and promotes such violence by having such loose policies and enforcement on gun control, much like Bob Costas did, and he didn't want to get any flack for it because he, like many of us, are tired of reading about and experiencing the violence in a country that's not willing to do anything about it. I think what he was also saying is that all you people out there that are going to argue that having the protection under the 2nd Amendment to have assault weapons is more important than the lives of those 20 children and the 6 adults that were trying to protect them can fuck off. I agree.)

I changed the channel on my radio so I could get more facts. Again, the information was coming in from a number of different sources at a rate that nobody could verify so even by the end of the day, the details were sketchy at best. Regardless, it was an incredibly troubling event that has happened way too many times in this country, which will inevitably bring out a lot of emotion from both sides of the gun control isle. Because the facts were sketchy and I'm also emotionally charged by what as happened, (because even though I don't have my own children I love a number of people that do and I've seen how scared and sad and angry this has made them,) I decided to mill over my thoughts before expressing them. As facts have become more clear I've also been able to become more confident in my feelings.

I think it's fair to say that the 20 year-old that did the shooting obviously had some mental deficiencies. There is absolutely no way any of us will ever understand what was going through this person's head when he decided to carry out such despicable acts. At some point it may help to figure it out so others suffering from such illness can get help so that other lives aren't wasted including their own. But what really is troubling to me is that knowing her son had these issues, a mother would keep such weapons in her house. (The weapons were two semi-auto handguns, a riot control style 12 gauge shotgun with a HUGE clip, and a .243 semi-auto assault rifle that, given the number shots that were fired in the amount of time, must have been turned into a fully automatic weapon, which can be converted quite easily after market. Every child and every adult that was shot had multiple gunshot wounds. This person pointed and squeezed and each time, several rounds were fired into each child he shot at.) And the reason for her having the weapons that was shared by her ex-sister-in-law, was that she wanted to be able to protect herself when the economy crashed. Really...

I went to a gun show last week because I wanted to pick up a 20 gauge shotgun for Jill. She wasn't comfortable shooting my 12 gauge so I thought a 20 would be the perfect size to start. We looked through thousands of guns at that show and finally found a Remington 870 pump. It was perfect and the gentleman selling the gun was willing to deal a little so I bought it. I hadn't bought a gun in a while so I really didn't know the drill. The seller wrote up a sticker as a bill of sale and stuck it to the gun so that I could get out of the building with it and then took down my driver's license information. I gave him the cash and asked, "Is that it?'

"Yep." he said and five minutes later I was walking out in the parking lot with a new gun that had no record of me owning yet. Across the room I could have also picked up literally thousands of shells for that gun before I left. All I would have had to do is prove I was 18 years old.

Of all the guns that were at that gun show, I was struck by how many assault weapons and hand guns were there. Given how easy it was for me to purchase the shotgun, I could only imagine it would have been the same had I wanted to  purchase one, or any number, of the assault rifles. And, there would have been no immediate record and there were no background checks that I saw being done.

The last time I wrote about this was on the Costas rant and I said I wasn't going to disclose my position on gun control but now I am. As a hunter, I personally would rather give up some of my so-called "freedoms" if that would save the life of another kindergartner, prevent another mother from being shot and killed before her deranged husband kills himself, or keep another ego driven teenager from showing off to his friends and accidentally killing himself or one of them. I believe it's too easy to buy a gun and I believe some guns just don't belong in the hands of civilians. I also believe there are not nearly enough mandatory safety measures being taken to keep them out of the hands of kids or from being stolen from people that will use them for harm. And believe me, I'm not perfect and I know that this means I might have to change some things on my home-front as well and there would probably have to be some sacrifices but it would be worth it.

Let me just say too, that I understand where the theory of protection and that having a gun in the house makes us safer because we can protect ourselves and if a would-be thief knows I have a gun or that I'm a hunter he will stay away but the reality is, is that the numbers don't support it. In fact, according to many studies, a victim who has access to a gun almost never is the one doing the shooting during crimes where a gun is used. If you take into consideration the amount of domestic violence we have in our culture, suicides, the number of accidental shootings among minors and the number of mass-type shootings; the argument that having guns making us safer just doesn't make sense. It just doesn't. Just the thought that it does is counter-intuitive and those that believe they are safer I believe, are actually putting themselves more at risk because they don't have a healthy respect for how dangerous guns really are to those around them.

Again, I enjoy hunting and shooting but I also believe that with that freedom comes huge a responsibility and we as a collective group of sportsmen and women, are coming up way too short. Let's be honest; most of us that own guns don't have assault weapons. Most of us don't even have clips for our guns that hold more than five cartridges. Most of us, (all of us,) have no need to have those weapons and shouldn't.  The only reason the 'bad' guys have them is because the so-called 'good' guys made them available in the first place. If you want to level the playing field, we should hold the manufactures and the dealers responsible for getting those guns back.

I really think what gets lost here is the responsibility we all share as gun-owners. I think every gun-owner should take what's happened in the last few weeks as a wake-up call and instead of jumping on a side right away, we should champion the effort to make gun-ownership safer. There's a reason I will never belong to the NRA. It's because of their lack of recognition of the problem we have with guns and violence in our culture and the fact that there's no interest in taking any responsibility for their part in it. As an avid hunter and someone that wants to protect my right to hunt, I think we should be more proactive in securing safe and responsible gun-ownership and promote the principles that would prevent the tragedies that have recently touched so many of our families, friends and neighbors. We have to participate in our communities and actually do things that make them safe instead of making irrational arguments such as, "Well, if they would have had guns in that school this would have never happened." (Yes, I have heard that and those people are ignorant.) We could call it, "Sportsmen Against Gun Violence" or something; I don't know. But we should come together to bring real answers to the table to show that we do care about keeping our communities safe instead of only preserving our rights to own and carry weapons, (as appose to turning a blind eye to the fact that our exercising of our own rights is taking others' rights away. It's because of that, that we are promoting our own stigmatization as gun owners).

I realize guns aren't the only variable in this complex problem we have where people feeling isolated by their peers look to violence as a means for either resolution or revenge. I get that parents have a huge responsibility to teach their kids right from wrong but the reality is, is that it doesn't happen in many cases. For instance, the shooter in this last tragedy was living with his mother who turned to guns as an answer for addressing her fears that what she had would be taken away. She took her son, who again had limited capacity for understanding consequences of his actions, to a gun range and supported the idea that violence is the way to go. How many of our neighbors are doing the same thing? Look at how many ways we inadvertently promote those same values.

I worked with an autistic boy for a few years. For the first couple years, he was almost always playing an incredibly violent video game when I picked him up. (Halo..) He probably played that game with his brothers 3 or 4 hours a day because that was the easiest way to keep him busy and "out of trouble." He would often express frustrations he had with his classmates and teachers about how unfair they were and how he and his friends were being mis-treated. We had countless discussions about how he was going to "punish" classmates for their wrong doings and his only example for resolution was what he saw in this video game and what he witnessed watching the WWF. His view on how he was being treated and how he should react to it was incredibly disproportionate to what was reality. This scared me and I spent a literally hours talking with his mom and his case management team to at least somehow get the games out of the house.

My point is, is that we can't legislate how a person raises their kids short of having them removed from homes where there is obvious neglect or abuse. (Forced birth control seems like a pretty good option if you want to know the truth but we all know that would be a huge violation of a person's rights.) Watching TV or playing video games does not equate to abuse but it does perpetuate an attitude where violence is the method for resolution and disproportionate revenge. I know that this particular family does not own guns. I would fear what might happen if they did but it also makes sense to assume that other kids with similar issues or dispositions do live in homes where guns are accessible; like the 20 year-old in Newtown.

Personally,  there are things I plan to do right away to keep those around me safer. I will be locking my guns up. I also believe that I can teach young people to be responsible and show them the immense power they wield by using a gun through hunting that hopefully translates to a healthy fear for weapons and a respect for how they should be treated. I will also take every opportunity I have to teach and model peaceful resolution to the young people I come in contact with. I will never allow anyone I'm responsible for to play video games like Halo or anything else that promotes such violence. I'm not a pansy and I don't cower from confrontation but I will not be a part of this type of violence anymore.

Keep 'em where they live...I look forward to getting back to writing about my adventures soon.