Everyone needs to take a deep breath

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I will pretty much always be receptive to being in the company of E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post. Smart guy, lots of common sense and he isn’t afraid to use it.

I have been getting a lot of criticism lately, from both sides of the gun issue. Some people on the left have denounced me as a “gun nut” to be “feared.” I have been called a bloodthirsty thug, mentally ill, and psychotically deranged. I have been informed that I am in need of a sturdy cage.

Because I own guns, and I hunt.

Lemme tell ya, being attacked by vegans is akin to being pecked by ducks. It isn’t sharp, it isn’t pointed, it’s funny at first, but soon gets annoying.

The gun-rights crowd has been just as judgmental in their denunciation of me – except they are more pointed in it. The paternalism is pretty thick on the sites that linked me that I bothered to check out. The gun crowd bristles at me because I have no use for the NRA, have never been a member and never will be. I also firmly believe that there are steps we can take to curtail gun violence in this country and part of what we need to do will involve common-sense gun control measures.

Let me give a little background. I have been around guns my entire life. I passed my first hunter safety course when I was 10. I took my first deer when I was 12., and with the exception of the year I had a baby in October, I have gotten my deer every year since. When I was 14 I built a .50 caliber black-powder replica of a Sharps buffalo rifle for a 4-H gun smithing class. I know how to reload ammo and cast lead. I know how to make black powder from scratch. I know guns. Inside and out. That is my responsibility as an owner of firearms.

Where I caught hell from the gun crowd was in disagreeing with those who say “Concealed carry! Then someone could have stopped him!”

At the mere thought of that, the first responder in me reaches a valium.

Everyone who has chastised me for that – I am sure you are every last one of you competent, rock-jawed, and staid. You would certainly be able to keep your composure and drop the dude and save the day. I get it. If I’m ever in a foxhole I’ll take you over anyone I know, because you have the right stuff. But c’mon – fess up – you know people who you wouldn’t trust. In fact, you know someone you probably secretly wish would go vegan and give away all their guns. Not everyone is Charles Bronson., and we all know it. In real life, bullets kill people, and once that trigger is squeezed, that bullet is no longer under your control.

I have a lot of cop friends and acquaintances. That is a side benefit of trauma team work. . I have been to the public safety training range many, many times. I always kill every “bad guy” target with one kill-shot. (I am not blowing smoke when I say I’m one hell of a shot. I am one hell of a shot.)

The thing is – I usually kill the guy with the camera or the cell phone, too. Most people do. I am curious about those who think I’m a silly little girl with a cop-worship complex. Have they even done the kind of live-fire course I’m talking about? (Most gun owners haven’t) If so, how many times? (68 times all the way through, which means that I got all the “bad guys “ and didn’t get “shot” I have been killed by a target I misread as no threat on nine more tries. Of the 68 times I have completed the course without getting “killed” myself, I have “killed” an innocent on 42 occasions.)

I do not offer this as if to say my experience should be considered representative. I just offer it for consideration. I am not saying my skills are any better than anyone elses,, (However I would put my knowledge and skill against pretty much anyones.)

Someone actually said in comments earlier in the week that even if an armed person firing back took out a couple of innocents, it could still have been a better outcome. I shook my head with incredulity at that one. Would someone who killed an innocent accidentally be subject to criminal prosecution? Civil penalty? Would you like to live with the knowledge that you took an innocent life? Have you considered the issue beyond the initial premise?

Common sense is lacking all around on this issue. Read E.J. Dionne’s column to restore some balance and sanity. He has the guts to ask the tough question that everyone has been thinking:

Why are our politicians still cowering before the gun lobby after Virginia Tech?

The Time for Reckoning is Nigh

We got our wake-up call today in Virginia. On both sides the noise machines cranked up - and promptly missed the point.

We need to have a national discussion, but it doesn’t necessarily need to be just about guns. That is naturally going to be a component, especially in the wake of this tragedy. But they are only a component.

We need to have a national discussion, and we need to deal with unpleasant realities. But we need to be talking about the underlying social dynamics that are fueling this pathology.

Let me make a deal with my brethren on the right – you stop talking about arming every Tom, Dick and Harry in the country so we can have contagious gunfire erupt on a regular basis because we have encouraged a vigilante culture, and I will try to keep my side from going nuts and trying to ban all guns.

You gotta get a muzzle on those calling for arming teachers and nurses and doctors and butchers and bakers and candlestick makers. Guns and adrenaline are a dangerous mix. A father shot and killed his daughter who was hiding in the closet. An international student with spotty English knocked on the wrong door looking for a Halloween party, and was shot and killed. Just last week an FBI agent was killed by friendly fire. In all of those instances the shooters were responsible gun owners, and their lives have been forever altered. A bullet can not be called back. As bad as today was, everyone I have talked to from the trauma bay and the KCPD has agreed with me - it could actually have been worse.

You give us background checks at gun shows and close some loopholes, and I will do my best to convince my compatriots that more and more restrictive gun laws aren’t the answer. They never have been. Only insane people keep trying the same thing over and over, and expect a different result. Unless you are insane, try applying some new thinking. Please.

Everyone needs to accept the fact that we are a gun-saturated society, especially my fellow lefties. They are everywhere. Are you going to bemoan that fact, or are you going to try to find some way to deal with it? I vote we do the latter. I’ll give you fifteen minutes to get your hand-wringing done and your sleeves rolled up.

On the other side, you need to admit that social policies and programs are important. Education and awareness are how you prevent things like this in a gun-saturated society. Gun violence is a symptom, but it is not the disease. I don’t have a diagnosis, but that just means we need to keep testing. Do you give up when you are sick and your doctor doesn’t know right away what is wrong? No, of course not. Apply that same thinking to society and let’s try to solve some of the problems we face.

And for God’s sake, don’t declare war on anything. That kind of thinking on the societal level is likely a part of the problem.

Screaming at each other isn’t going to accomplish anything. Guns are not going away. Getting our collective heads around that is as good a place to start as any.

HOLY SH**

A gunman opened fire on the campus of Virginia Tech and killed 22. Most of the casualties were in classrooms, but apparently the rampage started in a dorm.

Details are emerging, and this post will be updated as they become available.

UPDATE ONE: One person was killed in the dorm. The classroom attack took place about two hours later, and a single classroom appears to have been targeted. A high-capacity weapon was used.

UPDATE TWO: 1:12 p.m. NPR reports that the death toll is 29, and could go higher. This is the most deadly campus shooting in United States History. Before today, the most deadly campus rampage took place in 1966 at the University of Texas. Charles Whitman climbed to the 28th-floor observation deck of a clock tower and opened fire, killing 16 people before he was gunned down by police. The massacre at Columbine killed 12 students, a teacher and the two shooters themselves.

UPDATE THREE: 1:28 p.m. Thirty Dead. Will President Bush and the Republican Party finally reject the NRA and stop denouncing the assault weapons ban? I'm a gun-toting liberal my damned self. But I have no need for an M-16, and neither does anyone else. If I can't drop it with eight shots from a .270, it ain't indigenous to Missouri.

Update Four: 2:18 p.m. It turns out the shooter was armed with two nine millimeter handguns, but no other specifice. I struckthrough the M-16 remark in the previous update because the initial report that the gunman had an M-16 were a rumor. (If it turns out one of the 9 ml.'s was a TEC 9, it gets unstruck.)

I am interested in the capacity of the magazines and the type of ammunition used. I am also curious about how the weapons were acquired. Virginia has notoriously loose laws, which is why so many street weapons that kill police and crime victims originate there.

At least 31 dead, twenty more injured, eight quite seriously. Does it matter what the gun looked like? There is a social ill that needs to be addressed, and there is an unwillingness to do so in this country.

It is time to have a serious debate about firearms in this country. I am a gun owner and I see the need for this debate. Hell, I am willing to initiate it and stake out the middle ground.


UPDATE FIVE: - 4:50 p.m. 33 dead. Time for a serious discussion about firearms in this society. I don't want to take anyones guns away - and am certainly not giving mine up especially with this crew running things and trampling liberty - but if this does not highlight the need for the discussion, we are quite possibly doomed as a society.