Beauty is Imperfection

Eight people are gone in Georgia, six of them Asian women. We should talk about the rise in Asian-American hate crimes. We should talk about how women have been forced to define their freedom to speak, to move, to even live according to the violent and uncontrolled sexual impulses of men. The horror of this mass murder is worse because of its complication: there’s a lot to unpack, and I don’t want to see any of the many problems here obscured by one of the others.

So we shouldn’t let it all overshadow the gun talk we still need to be having. It always feels pointless to try to explain the link between murder weapons and toxic masculinity to people. But a gun gives a psychologically wounded man a feeling of agency. “I’d just like to try to see somebody break into my house.” How many people have you known who’ve said that? Guess what: It’s wrong. Why? It’s not the statement of a prudent person who wants to defend himself. It’s the statement of somebody practicing homicidal ideation. It’s someone saying that “I have the power to shoot someone in the back from across the street, and instead of stepping back and thinking about the awful responsibility of that fact, I am dreaming of how I might bring that vision about.” This kind of person is not thinking of rules of engagement. This person is not thinking of how the duty to retreat might make a situation better. This person has tied his esteem and existential pride to facing down a risky outcome in which he hopes to win but seldom does in reality.

We shouldn’t be surprised when people suddenly do bring their sordid vision of personal power about. I grew up in a house with many guns. I was taught how to fire them and how to safely use them by someone who thought he was responsible. He was. Until he wasn’t. When he was angry or afraid, he pulled out his guns and in at least two situations created unnecessary danger for those around him. I knew as a kid (without having the words for it yet) that it was ridiculous to call a gun a defense weapon. How in actual situations it was highly unlikely I was going to be even have time to point it at someone with intent to kill if necessary. It’s very seldom going to happen in the fast-moving arenas where violence happens, always with speed far beyond the fantasies of our reflexes. Being able to kill somebody by shooting them in the back from 100 yards is the essential talent of a firearm, and it does not make you a defender to own one. There is nothing inherently defensive about being able to heave a projectile through space faster than anybody can react.

Does having a gun make a lot of people feel safe? Sure. Does it really make them safe? Not according to physics or statistics. (We can save the two flawed or fraudulent studies arguing for the regularity of successful gun defenses. Those studies are ridiculous on their face and have been debunked repeatedly.) If you think of a gun as a defense weapon–even though it has no shield and no way to disperse incoming projectiles–it’s not because you’ve ever really thought about the physics of the idea but because the social conditioning rampant among toxic American fathers has led you to suspend your common sense.

So our gun laws in many states are designed with the pitiably incomplete idea that a violent people will use violence to dampen their own violent tendencies. It’s actually what I like to call a “Vote for the Worst” scheme: Our laws don’t reward or protect responsible gun owners (as advocates insist they do). Instead, weak gun laws ironically protect the least responsible, the ones with the most likelihood of acting out of passion or anger. We give speed to cretins. We pray for reflexes among victims. And we end up giving killers like the shooter in Georgia a fair shot at rearranging the world according to his fantasy of perfection. It requires our blood to work.

The coronavirus sent everybody home, sent everybody into a panic, sent everybody out to buy guns. More guns will equal more violence. There is nothing preventative about a murder weapon. That’s the world that’s been inflicted on us, those with families whom we love, the world all of us must have venture out in–leaving one spiritual coma and entering another.