Our Gun Problem

Guns are a problem. A serious, American problem. 

Since I was a little girl, guns have terrified me. The sound of a gunshot. An image of a gun. Even the threat of a gun on TV or in the movies makes my heart rate sky-rocket. I think it would be fair to say that the extent of this fear is uncommon; Most people would prefer not to have a run-in with a pistol, but to be so terrified by even the thought of one? I know it's strange. But as uncommon as this terror is, I in no way feel it is irrational. And one of the top five things I wish for my country is for it to be as scared of them as I am. 

This isn't my first post about guns. When Representative Gabrielle Giffords was nearly assassinated outside a Tucson grocery store, and some of her colleagues and constituents brutally murdered, I crafted a pretty impassioned testimony on my opinion of gun control. But in the past year, there have been even more incidents that indicate that our complacency when it comes to these violent weapons has gone way too far. Because we continue to see mentally unstable, racist and extremist individuals abuse their right to own a gun. And our government made the ill-advised decision to leverage the desirability of guns in the Mexican drug race to try and defeat it in the now famed Operation Fast and Furious. How meta of us.

Now before you put me in a certain ideological bucket without even reading where I'm going with this, know that I have asked myself these things:

• Is it fair to punish the vast majority of sane, self-defense-seeking or for-pleasure gun owners for the misbehavior of ignorant, malicious lunatics and otherwise normal people-turned-murderers?
• Would it even be possible to amend or caveat the Right to Bear Arms without opening a can of worms for the rest of our coveted Constitution?
• Are we sure that Operation Fast and Furious hasn't worked, at least in part, to help us track down drug lords and mass murderers despite the collateral damage?

And for each of these, I have thoughts. 

Now, I'm no self-defense-seeking or for-pleasure gun owner, but I do know that I don't mind the things I care about/enjoy being regulated so people don't take advantage of and ruin them for the rest of us. I also feel that the things I am most passionate about (travel, art, education) are not compromised by the barriers to entry put in place to ensure quality, security and honesty. I'm glad you have to be a certain age to see Rated R movies because that enables movies with more controversial (read: not child-proof) content to be made and shown. I'm thrilled my alma mater had a rigorous application process because that ensured, to a certain degree, that the people I was surrounded by on a daily basis wanted that education as much as I did. And you know what, TSA can make me take my socks off, throw out my brand new water bottle and scan me with X-ray vision as much as they want because that means I can fly around the world with the knowledge that due diligence was done to protect me. Movies, state-of-the-art education, travel. These are things people love and don't stop indulging in just because of a few hoops to jump through. So, self-defense-seeking and/or for-pleasure gun owners, why do you care if you have to sign a few extra forms, wait a few extra weeks and even submit some more invasive personal information to get your next gat? Making sure potential gun owners are assessed and proven able to handle the responsibility of gun ownership protects you and your craft just as much as it protects the rest of us.

Amending or caveating the Right to Bear Arms without opening a can of worms for the rest of our coveted Constitution: always a dicey issue. But my opinion on this goes far beyond the fact that our forefathers have probably already been rolling over in their graves at the sound of guns stronger and more concealable than muskets. I think we need to learn from history and recognize that being precious with the Constitution hasn't always been in our best interest. It's not like the document has never been amended and re-amended for things like basic human rights and alcohol consumption. Of course it shouldn't be taken lightly, but ruled out completely when a right is being abused to the extent that has been? We're inadvertently committing suicide. 

And Operation Fast and Furious I can't even talk about because it makes me so angry. I don't want to live in a nation that can't find a better way to assist their drug war-rattled neighbor than build a fence and hand them some registered guns. "We'll track them down eventually." After how many headless bodies are found hanging from the bridges of Nuevo Laredo? After how much blood is splattered on our nation's hands?

If you agree, disagree or are at least entertaining me, my work here is done. Because in just a few years we've seen Tucson, Fort Hood, Virginia Tech, the Sikh Temple in Wisconsin, the unraveling of Operation Fast and Furious and the Dark Knight shooting in Colorado, and as voting American citizens, we owe it to each other to engage in dialogue about this. 

In conclusion, if it were really up to me, I would leave the guns to my government, law enforcement and military because I believe certain regulations aren't suffocation or protection from ourselves. They're protection from each other – from those who don't love thy neighbor and have some bullets to prove it. But it's not up to just me and I know I might have a little too much faith (or too much fear) for my own good. So instead, I hope that we're all taking a step back this year and acknowledging that, if anything, guns are a serious problem. And no good is coming from pretending like there's no way to fix it.