Guns and other weapons

Like the rest of the country, my heart weeps for the victims of the shootings in Tuscon, Arizona.  And like every other responsible critical thinker, I'm trying hard not to let my own perspective cloud the facts of the matter.  There has been endless debate this week about the tone of rhetoric and its effect on violence, the state of politics today and its effect on violence, and, of course, Arizona's relatively libertarian gun ownership laws and their effect on violence.

I don't own a gun.  I don't want a gun.  I recognize that the Supreme Court recently ruled that the 2nd Amendment guarantees individual gun owners' rights.  I haven't read the case file (briefing?  What do you call those things?), so I don't know how they define a "well regulated militia" in a world where every yahoo with a hand can get a Glock.  But I know they must have done so, because they're the smartest constitutional lawyers in the world (that could get passed by the Senate) and I'm a guy who uses trimming tools to prepare for the coming zombie apocalypse.

That actually brings me to my broader point.  I recognize the right of my fellow citizens to carry 2-pound lumps of metal that can kill me from 200 feet away.  But that doesn't make me a gun-rights advocate.  The way you can tell a gun-rights advocate is that they think it's a good idea to carry guns everywhere.  Representative Trent Franks said that he wished there had been one more gun in Tuscon last Saturday, the idea presumably being that if anyone else in the store where the shit went down had had a gun, the assailant would have been a.) too scared to do what he did, or b.) shot before he could do more harm.  By now, of course, it's fairly well documented that someone else in that store was carrying their piece, and did bring it to bear in the conflict.  He almost shot the wrong guy. 

And the bumper-sticker NRA slogan is, "Guns don't kill people, people kill people."  And many comedians have already had their go at this.  Eddie Izzard said, "But I think the guns help."  Chris Rock thinks bullets should cost $5000 each.  On discussion threads all over the internet, real gun-right activists are saying things like, "Guns are not the only weapons used to commit violent crimes." While this is true, guns certainly amplify peoples' abilities to wreak havoc.

What if, instead of a Glock 19 with a 31-round clip, the shooter had had a knife?  Or even a machete?  I have a 2-inch wide, 6 1/2-foot-long piece of Japanese red oak designed for hitting people.  What if he'd walked into that Safeway with one of those?  I don't think the body count would be one 9-year-old girl, four septuagenarians, and a federal judge, plus 12 wounded and one still alive more or less by miracle.

There's no real moral here, except that guns probably aren't as great an idea as real gun rights advocates seem to think.