Guns, Gun Control and Fear in America

Why Americans need to fear a future full of guns, instead of one without them

And to be clear, there are thousands of men and women who have 6,000 rounds sitting on their shelves at home who will never walk into a theater and commit mass murder.

It’s the combination of that quantity of ammunition and the ease of access to said ammunition that gave a mentally ill James Holmes the ability to murder so many.

If you buy bulk from a gun show or one of  the plethora of websites that encourage super-sizing ammo orders, an individual bullet, costs less than a quarter.

Each and every one of them designed to take a life, or practice doing so.

In some states you can pick up  gallon of milk and some shotgun shells at the same grocery store. There are enough bullets that already exist in the U.S. to kill every man, woman and child in this great country of ours, and still have literally tons to spare.

The truth is gun violence is good for business.

The gun selling business. In Colorado, between Thursday night’s shooting and Sunday, background checks for people wanting to buy firearms was up 43 percent from the previous week.

After the 2011 Tuscon shooting, sales in Arizona skyrocketed 60 percent while the nation saw a 5 precent increase during the same period.

But the record for gun purchases was broken in 2009 after President Obama was elected.

Many conspiracy theories suggest that in a second term, with nothing to lose, President Obama will finally implement his master plan of nefarious gun control, so look for gun sales to continue to soar in the coming months.

Fear is the organizing principle around guns. 

Gun owners will tell you, that on some level they fear for their safety and so amass arms. They wish to transfer their fear onto their adversaries through the ownership of said gun.

But gun fear isn't binary. It flows much deeper.

Congressmen and Senators are afraid of the gun lobby, so they don’t push back with legislation. You wont hear much from either President Obama or Mitt Romney this election season about the renewing assault weapons ban.

And surprisingly, gun companies themselves, who’s business has been in a steady decline over the past thirty years, fear for their future.

But a future full of guns, not void of them, is really what America should fear.

Where do we think we’re headed should we keep up our internal arms proliferation to fight our cold war within?

Fear isn’t what made the United States of America great.  Courage did. And Courage is what we have to marshal if we’re to find our footing.

In the Aurora shooting alone we lost a tiny child, students, men, women and active duty military.
Some of them showed extraordinary courage in the face of gunfire while trying to save others.

Their courage made more powerful because of, not in spite of, being unarmed.

We have to muster our own national courage to deal with these big issues in mature ways, because more guns will only beget more guns and fear more fear.

And in the the words of FDR “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

   
This is the Cross Section.