American Guns

American Guns

Suppose you visited a foreign country in which the following practices prevailed. Poisonous chemicals are freely available. You can buy them at your local pharmacy or at specialty poison outlets. They are lethal—they can kill people and often do. People buy them in large quantities. There is a thriving culture of chemical ownership. Some of these poisons have legitimate uses, as in pest control, but many people buy them for other reasons—often for criminal reasons, or self-defense, or as a hobby. There is no gun culture in this society; guns were banned years ago, or heavily regulated. People just aren’t interested in guns (they have a nasty history). Of course, murders are committed using poisonous chemicals, and the chemicals have been weaponized in special poison dispensers—you can kill people by spraying them, sometimes from great distances. There are movies and TV shows that feature chemical violence. People take it for granted. Insane individuals often get their hands on these poisons and do insane things, or just plain evil people. Let’s suppose there has recently been an epidemic of chemical mass murder: poison gas released in playgrounds, church sprayings, school food poisonings, etc. Thousands have died terrible deaths. There is trauma and fear everywhere; people stay at home rather than risk being poisoned. What to do about it? Ban poison chemicals, or restrict their use, or criminalize them except under special circumstances, obviously. Of course, the poison chemicals industry will protest—they make a ton of money out of selling poisons to the general population. They have their lobbyists and loyal politicians. Some “intellectuals” defend their prevalence as an expression of freedom—“They want to take our poisons away!” They allege that chemicals don’t kill, people do; they point to instances of chemical self-defense (you poison the aggressor first). There was that old lady who sprayed a bunch of burglars in her house and brought them to justice the old-fashioned way (you should have seen them writhe!). Poisons are part of our tradition, passed on from father to son, with a distinguished history (remember the battle of Arsenic Hill?). So, this society persists with its lax poison laws, its untrammeled capitalism, its time-honored folkways. Of course, it is perfectly true that tightening up the poisonous chemical laws along with community-wide confiscation would eliminate the problem, but the people of this country don’t see it that way, so the mass killings continue—often involving children. They tearfully say their prayers and send their condolences, but they don’t want to give up their chemicals in their attractive bottles and special display cases. And surely it won’t happen to them.