We know EXACTLY how to greatly reduce gun violence in the US, because we have done something similar before: We have fought a serious public health problem that's in many ways similar -- massive cigarette addiction -- and won.
It's not illegal to own and use cigarettes, and we should be grateful for that: the civil rights of each of us are enriched and protected by knowing that everyone has the right to own and use a cigarette. But we've become completely aware as a culture that the problem isn't cigarette ownership or even occasional usage, it's addiction.
True, many are still addicted to cigarettes, but that's not the point. True, they are free to cause themselves harm with their addiction; but they are not free to cause harm to non-users. Cigarettes cannot be advertised with the purpose or effect of enticing more addiction, and they cannot be used where they could have negative effect on non-addicts. We understand that cigarette addiction is an illness, and we make tremendous resources available to prevent and fight that addiction. As a society we are vigilant (for example, in schools, in media, in parenting, even in video games) to make the truth known that addiction is not normal, not healthy, not beneficial in any way, and in fact, it's pretty much the path for losers. (Note that movies are rated as inappropriate for children if they simply show scenes of "historical smoking".)
Attitudes and behavior about smoking changed radically in just a few decades, during this battle, but only through a hard and costly effort. Tobacco companies wielded tremendous financial power to support cigarette addiction, for their own profit and at the expense of public health; so the fight against smoking began in earnest only once facts overruled money. The same is true for gun addiction: gun pushers encourage addiction with huge amounts of money, mostly used to buy and corrupt elected representatives.
But we know money is not invincible; and we have already begun the movement toward a country free from the tragedy of gun addiction. So now we can imagine "no guns" signs everywhere; huge "guns are made to kill" billboards; education programs to explain to children how gun addiction starts and how to resist and recover from it. We can see that laws allowing gun addicts to express their addiction invisibly (concealed carry) will disappear, because this is one addiction that puts innocent people at risk just by being nearby. In comparison, my right to be safe from someone's secondhand smoke, whether or not I can smell it, pales in comparison to my right to be safe from the effects of gun addiction.
Gun ownership in itself is irrelevant; it is gun addiction that is the problem. It is personal and cultural addiction that makes people buy guns for no good reason, and be obsessed about using them. (If I were never going to smoke a cigarette, would I have a stash on hand just in case? Would I carry them around, trade them, show them off, threaten to light one up if I got scared?) Their addiction doesn't make gun owners bad or wrong; addiction is always a disease, harming the addict as well as innocent bystanders and society as a whole. And it is not gun owners themselves that society should be fighting, but rather the culture that accepts and encourages gun addiction, and the pushers that are largely to blame. (However, that does not hold a gun owner blameless for his continued ownership once he knows his addiction. Do we accept it as reasonable if an alcoholic keeps a quart of vodka in the cupboard even if he has trouble staying dry?)
Arguing for the necessity of guns as personal protection is a monstrous fallacy: simply compare our nation to pretty much any other nation on earth to see how safe guns actually make us. Quite the opposite, it is obvious and has been proven that the false bravado felt by gun toters often makes them act foolishly and recklessly, putting themselves and everyone around them at risk. (And then there are those really sick and desperate jokes they tell: more guns in schools make children safer, for instance…)
Likewise, arguing about preserving constitutional rights doesn't ring true. Can we not think of other civil rights that are more in need of preserving than gun ownership? Do gun pushers spend as much money fighting for the right not to have our conversations recorded and our phones confiscated without cause, or the right not to be photographed nearly constantly while moving about in public? (Don't forget the added threats of automated facial recognition and email keyword searches.) In short, do gun pushers care about any constitutional right that doesn't make them money? And more to the point, a right to own a gun is not the same as a right to foster and encourage dangerous addiction, to the great harm of us all. It's not the constitutional right to own a gun that's killing people; it's the national sickness that makes using a gun seem, in an absurd way, like a normal part of day to day life. "Constitutional rights don't perpetuate deadly sickness; gun pushers and corrupt corporations, lobbies and government officials perpetuate deadly sickness."
Gun control is a red herring: blaming gun violence on "guns in the hands of the wrong people" is laughable. We are ALL the "wrong people" at times: have you ever thrown or broken something in anger? Have you ever hit someone? Have you ever experienced the insane urge to use whatever is at hand to do the most damage you can? Being human means being out of control at times, whether from rage or depression or grief. I would rather regret hitting someone with my fists than shooting them in the head; I would rather heal from a broken nose than a gunshot wound. In anger, everything within reach becomes a weapon: I don't want, within reach, something so terribly good at killing.
Since no one can be counted on to ALWAYS be sane enough to safely have a gun in their pocket, background checks don't work. If we try to use background checks to prevent gun violence, we have to make them ever more exclusionary; and then, while still being ineffective, they have the effect of de-legitimizing or criminalizing ever more classes of people who have done nothing wrong.
Fighting to end gun violence with gun control will never work for another reason: it's "playing on the other guy's turf". Arguing about who does NOT have a right to own or carry a gun is fighting directly against a widely accepted constitutional right to guns, and that's gun pushers' territory. Gun addicts get to dictate the terms of that argument, and they have the money to make it a costly one, as well as futile.
As a society, we don't go to much effort to make any one person stop using cigarettes. We understand that to the whole society, prevention is in the long run more successful than treatment; and so we use cultural behavior, attitudes and expectations to help young people avoid the trap of harmful addictions. The same can be applied to gun addiction. It doesn't really matter much to the health of the country if any one person owns a gun, or even if they are addicted to guns. Yes, we must restrict how addicts express their addiction; and of course it is a good idea to make treatment and recovery resources readily available. But the real recovery from our current public health catastrophe lies with preventing addiction in the first place.
We are not each and every one of us 50% in favor of guns and 50% opposed. Rather, almost everyone agrees that the current situation is untenable, and only a very vocal and very powerful minority is deeply committed to perpetuating and spreading the current epidemic of addiction. We, the non-addicted, need not be silent about this. What the addicts do is their own nasty business, and they have a right to it, and we're not going to change them. But what the rest of us do is our business, and gun addicts have nothing to say to us about our business.
It's our business how we raise our children and what toys we buy them. It's our choices, what movies we spend our money on. Our priorities, what games we play, what we read. Our voices, what we write to our editors, what we blog, the comments we post, how we speak in social media. Do we put up with gun pushers using our money to help us kill each other? Do we elect officials who take that money? Do we demand to watch more and more gun violence on screens? Or can we make the connection to realize that idolizing guns, gun addicts and gun pushers is itself addicting? Do we eagerly abet those who make money as we shoot each other? Or can we boldly face the addicts -- and face our own addictions -- to start on our recovery program, as individuals and as a nation?
We don't have to argue about this. Would you argue with a smoker? Nope. You would say, "Go ahead and smoke your non-addictive cigarette -- over there, where it can't kill me. Nice to know you're not addicted to that thing. Whatever."
What if some gun owners really truly are not addicted? Don't they have special rights? Well, do only non-cigarette-addicts have the right to smoke in restaurants? workplaces? shopping centers? busses? airplanes? (Oh, wait: no one has ANY personal rights on an airplane; never mind.)
Of course, the analogy eventually breaks down. While the actual addictive and harmful behavior is using cigarettes, gun addiction is not so simple: it's more than just shooting. It starts with the delusion of power and control you feel when you touch a gun. But in the end, gun addiction, like any other addiction, must include all the beliefs, attitudes and behaviors about guns that cause emotional dependence, short term exhilaration, but long term and large scale harm rather than health, happiness and wholeness.
We must ask: Do guns in America cause health, happiness and wholeness?
And let's be clear, it's not the addicts we're asking.
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