America is addicted to guns – which only give an illusion of strength and security

[umbertino]

I grew up with guns all around me in Lebanon. So I understand America’s relationship with firearms, and just how dangerous it can be

 

 

Sunday 4 October 2015 11.30 BST

By Peter Daou

 

 

 

You are not the same person carrying a firearm as you are without one. A device that can extinguish a life with the flick of a finger places inordinate power in the hands of an individual. That power – whether exercised or simply imagined – can be addictive.

 

Growing up in the midst of a war in Lebanon and undergoing military training in high school put guns at the center of my childhood. As the grandson of an experienced marksman, the son of a hunter and a hunter myself, I loved my guns. I loved shooting. I loved the feeling of slinging a double barrel shotgun over my shoulder before dawn and wandering off into the cold mountains.

 

I am also someone who, as a 10-year-old, collected shrapnel and spent bullets from the streets and alleys around my home near Hamra Street in West Beirut – daily reminders of death and violence, but also of survival. As my collection grew, so did my appreciation for the value of each new morning with an intact family, which was a privilege that many of my friends and neighbors lost.

 

My military service quickly taught me that there was an inextricable link between the weapon I carried on my shoulder and the suffering to which I bore daily witness. I was trained to use guns against others before I was old enough to be considered a man.

 

In Lebanese culture, “manhood” was an issue teenage boys were taught to think about. What did it mean to be a man, to be respected as a man? A gun was an instant pathway to respect – or as I more accurately understand now, fear masquerading as respect.

 

America’s obsessive relationship with firearms is familiar to me; I know the intoxicating sense of power that a gun bestows, particularly to a young man. But in the aftermath of the terrible violence I witnessed and with the passage of time, I know that guns are dangerous and illusory shortcuts to strength and maturity and no guarantee of personal safety.

 

After another horrific mass shooting – this time at Oregon’s Umpqua Community College – our intractable gun control debate has begun once again, with those who are categorically opposed to rational controls on gun ownership already insisting that a mass shooting is no reason to contemplate new laws. What is it about America and firearms? What makes us different from every other developed country that we tolerate such disproportionate levels of gun violence?

 

I see the debate about guns through the lens of that teenager surrounded by weapons and by bloodshed and terror created with guns. I can also see it as a hunter and amateur marksman – as someone who spent years perfecting the Zen-like art of hitting the head of a pin with a tiny projectile.

 

Guns are a high. For someone just entering adulthood and grappling with the attendant challenges, emotions and sense of powerlessness, easy access to firearms is easy access to the ultimate drug: the feeling of omnipotence.

 

In America, that access means that the consequences of contentious interactions between people can more readily turn deadly. According to a report by the Center for American Progress, “The easy access youths have to guns across the country creates the opportunity for otherwise nonfatal confrontations between young people to become fatal.”

 

Allowing unfettered access to deadly weapons leads to the carnage we’re seeing in our schools, our churches, our movie theaters, our shopping malls, and our streets. The frustration expressed by President Obama in his statement about the Oregon shooting is shared by millions of people, like me, who cannot fathom how we permit these travesties to continue.

 

Those of us who advocate for stronger gun control measures must understand that we are dealing not just with an obsession, but an addiction. And addictions are notoriously hard to break. Meanwhile, the death toll keeps rising.

 

 

Guns on display in Roseburg, Oregon.

Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

 

 

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/oct/04/america-addicted-to-guns-illusion-strength-security

 

[dog53]

Its a addiction that will save your life instead of taking it.

Belive me me when I say the strength is not a illusion.

Just another dipshat foreigner that no`s nothing about

american life and history.  If the death toll keeps rising

its only because this govt in charge fails so miserably at their job. 

[bohica]

I will take my God and my guns any day of the week over being just another statistic.  I believe it is real lack of reality to think that the world will just sit down and talk over tea.  There are people out there who the only hope you have is to get the first kill shot off before them.  People who do not believe this are living in a psychotic fantasy land of make believe.

Edited October 4, 2015 by bohica

[Bandit795]

Guns are a protection against government tiranny.

[Xtaxguy]

This is sent to us from a guy who's from the country that elected Il Duce and allied with Hitler, and went on to widely vote for the Communist Party, and is now on the brink of become a "failed State."  How can the people with the best food and the best music in the world be so ignorant and dilusional? 

[skeetdog]

Thanks umbertino...At least you showed your ignorance of why some people don't need to posses a weapon. Your connect in your assumption that there are type of civilizations that can't handle the awesome power involved in the ownership of firearms. As a child, you should of been taught that a weapon is never used against or pointed at another individual. It's the deranged individuals that uses a weapon to settle any type of conflict. The mental state of an individual is the essence of the power of good and evil in the use of a firearm. Once a weapon is pulled openly by a deranged individual to harm an incent person...I personally want to have a weapon. You keep reading the propaganda about how terrible the weapon is and spewing it all you want...But for us that have matured to the point of being responsible with the use of a firearm can only appreciate the fact that firearms are restricted to folks with your mental capacity...    

[RV ME]

"Those of us who advocate for stronger gun control measures must understand that we are dealing not just with an obsession, but an addiction. And addictions are notoriously hard to break."

 

No, you are dealing with a GOD GIVEN RIGHT!  Which is something even harder to break than an obsession or an addiction.  Good luck with that.

[chess]

..........."I JUST WANNA BE A COWBOY"

 

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[dog53]

..........."I JUST WANNA BE A COWBOY"

 

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yippy ki aye  baby!!

[dip stick]

never leave home without one