Proposing a Dumbass Amendment for Gun Laws
I learned to shoot a rifle roughly twenty-five years ago. I was an NRA member for a while, learning to target shoot and getting pretty good at it. At Boy Scout camp, I was actually involved in a marksmanship contest one summer. (I was disqualified because my technique was illegal. Sure, I put the bullet dead center through the bullseye, but because I steadied my rifle wrong, it didn’t count. Not that I’m still bitter or anything.)
That said, I would like to propose a slight rewording to the Second Amendment.
“[T]he right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed unless you demonstrate that you are a complete and utter dumbass when it comes to gun safety.”
Take, for example, a state senator who pulls a loaded handgun with no safety and points it at a reporter’s chest.[1. Disclaimer: as usual, you should probably avoid reading the comments.]
“Oh, it’s so cute,” Klein said, as she unzipped the loaded Ruger from its carrying case to show a reporter and photographer. She was sitting on a leather couch in a lounge, just outside the Senate chamber.
She showed off the laser sighting by pointing the red beam at the reporter’s chest. The gun has no safety, she said, but there was no need to worry.
“I just didn’t have my hand on the trigger,” she said.
Gun safety rule number one, straight from the NRA (hardly a bastion of liberal gun-haters), is “ALWAYS keep the gun pointed in a safe direction.”
I’m not afraid of guns. I’m afraid of people who think guns are toys. Who think they’re cute. Who don’t have the first f***ing clue how to treat a gun. Who think guns are status symbols to be worn like those flag lapel pins.
Lori Klein, you scare the hell out of me. Not because you carry a gun. But because, despite your “informal training,” you obviously haven’t learned to respect them. Per my new Dumbass Amendment, please turn in your little pink .380 until such time as you can demonstrate that you’re no longer a dumbass.
I recognize that comments on this one could get heated fast, so I’ll be moderating as needed. Discussion and debate are fine, but please keep it civil.
—
Anke
July 14, 2011 @ 10:42 am
Somehow I managed to pick up that safety rule without having had more contact with guns than occasionally at a shooting gallery at a fun fair…
I’ve got a weakness for what I consider cute guns. Last week I got a beautiful coffee table book with life-size photos of antique handguns, 1550-1913. Particularly interesting are the unusual ones… “swiss utility”, including two folding blades, corkscrew, and tweezers, or flintlock cutlery.
Sensawunda
July 14, 2011 @ 10:48 am
My grandfather was a gunsmith, so I not only grew up shooting guns, but making guns. He wouldn’t even let us kids point nerf guns at each other because of how much he wanted to drill gun safety into us. I can’t believe the actions of some people.
Jim C. Hines
July 14, 2011 @ 10:49 am
I was rather fond of the pistol Porthos used in the 1993 Three Musketeers movie, which came complete with its own folding blade. But that’s partly because I so loved the way Oliver Platt played the character.
Stephen A. Watkins
July 14, 2011 @ 11:08 am
You have basically stated my position on gun rights.
I personally am afraid of guns – as anybody with half a brain would be, because guns are powerful implements designed for killing people. I’m even more afraid of the people who carry guns – because most of them are so in love with their implements of death that they don’t give a damn about other people. It is exactly this kind of person that I fear is likely to become unhinged enough to actually use a gun for its designed purpose (i.e., once again, the killing of people).
I’m much less afraid of things like hunting rifles and whatnot… although more powerful, they are also more difficult to use, and are most likely only going to be owned and used, for the most part, by people who know what the crap they’re doing.
It has been my own belief and modest proposal that gun rights be predicated on (a) an ability to demonstrate proper training in safety and care of weapons and (b) the holding of a gun insurance policy in the event of a catastrophic gun-related accident (similar to a car insurance policy in the event of a catastrophic care-related accident). I don’t think that’s unreasonable. I don’t want people not to have guns. I want those who with to acquire them to own and use them responsibly.
bookishdragon
July 14, 2011 @ 11:22 am
You know how I learned gun safety and not to play with the guns for home defense in my house? (Guns I might add that I knew they were in my father’s night stand, no lock or key, because my dad believed you should know where the tools to defend yourself were if you needed them.)
My dad showed me and my little brother ammunition trials when I was around six or seven. After you see what a .9mm does to a watermelon (bad) or a hollow point (no more melon just bits)you can’t view a gun as anything other than a weapon, to be used only when absolutely necessary and never as a toy.
We leave it to movies and video games to show people what these weapons are capable of. Is it any surprise so many people don’t know what the real world consequences are?
Elaine Corvidae
July 14, 2011 @ 1:12 pm
THIS. I grew up in a very rural area, where every kid knew how to safely handle a gun by the time they were in second grade (if anyone here has seen Winter’s Bone, the scene where the heroine is teaching her younger siblings how to shoot squirrels to supplement dinner really hit home for me). Guns were a tool, no different than a combine or a chainsaw, any of which will cause serious harm to you or someone else if you don’t use them properly. The idea of treating them like a cute status symbol, and the carelessness that comes hand-and-hand with that attitude, is appalling.
Swan
July 14, 2011 @ 1:23 pm
I am a big proponent of gun rights, but I have to agree: there’s a lot of people that should not have guns because they have no clue what the hell they are doing with them. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve taken people who owned guns to the range, expected them to know basic firearm safety, and had them turn around to say something WHILE HOLDING THE GUN which is now, of course, pointed at me. Scares the living crap out of me.
The problem is, we’re no longer a society that uses guns normally as tools. (At least, the majority of city dwelling Americans, which is a huge percentage of society.) So we have to up the safety training, realistically, if we want safety, because it’s not there in the growing up process in the same way it used to be.
Wiley Robinson
July 14, 2011 @ 1:35 pm
I always wondered what sort of idiot buys those pink guns. Now I know.
Philip Weiss
July 14, 2011 @ 1:52 pm
I have proposed almost exactly the same rule. My tea party-ish uncle starts to sputter every time I do. He’s totally against dumbasses having guns. But he doesn’t want anyone to judge who is a dumbass except the dumbass, because otherwise it’s the government doing it, and he’d rather have dumbasses self checking than the government.
A lot of my conversations go like this:
Me: I’m for the right to carry guns unless you’re an idiot.
Uncle: but who decides that, the government?
Me: I decide. To get a gun you gotta line up and prove to me you aren’t an idiot.
Benda
July 14, 2011 @ 2:00 pm
I live in a country with a history of strong gun control laws. Simply stated, we don’t have the same culture of gun ownership that exists in the States. Despite that, we do absorb a good amount of gun safety protocol from the people who do own guns, and from the occasional television PSA. When I read about what Klein did there, I shrieked. Just reading that kicked me in the spot where my inner child keeps the things like ‘stranger danger’ and ‘stop, drop and roll’.
It boggles me that someone like me can know more about gun safety and etiquette than a woman who has grown up in a much more gun-aware culture.
Benda
July 14, 2011 @ 2:03 pm
That’s awfully self-defeating on the part of your uncle, isn’t it? I mean, they’ve actually done studies that indicate dumbasses think they’re a lot better qualified than they really are.
C.C. Finlay
July 14, 2011 @ 2:31 pm
“[T]he right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed unless you demonstrate that you are a complete and utter dumbass when it comes to gun safety.”
Jim: There’s substantial amounts of evidence that this *was* the original understanding of the Second Amendment. That evidence includes hundreds of state and local laws that required gun registration, firearms training, and safe storage of both weapons and powder. It includes the notes on the Second Amendment by important jurists like St. George Tucker. And it includes the reaction to Shay’s Rebellion by men like George Washington, who emphasized the important distinction between “well-regulated” men with guns and unregulated men. See a book titled A Well-Regulated Militia: The Founding Fathers and the Origins of Gun Control in America by Saul Cornell. Despite the best efforts of gun deregulation advocates, the evidence in the book (and in Cornell’s other writings) speaks for itself. America’s relationship with guns was changed dramatically by the availability, starting in the mid-1800s, of cheap and reliable handguns. The modern interpretation of the individual right of people — as opposed to The People — to keep and bear arms developed as a reaction to slavery, with radical abolitionists like John Brown and pro-slavery jurists in the South developing a similar interpretation for completely different reasons. Americans have a right to own weapons, but that was assumed to come with a responsibility to train, use, and store them safely, and it was the obligation of the states and municipalities to choose how best to enforce that responsibility.
I think I’ll put on my asbestos suit now and wait for the flames to begin…
John Hoover
July 14, 2011 @ 2:39 pm
I spent a lot of Saturday mornings on the police pistol range with the Junior NRA. That continued until I discovered girls, and had better things to do on Saturday mornings. Looking back, my only mild regret is that your mother got one more sharpshooter bar than I did – not that we competed, you understand. But every Saturday morning, we heard the same message. “Treat every gun with the respect due to a loaded gun.”
Jennifer T
July 14, 2011 @ 5:24 pm
+Wiley
And also people like me, who grew up hearing “You shoot pretty good for a girl” and choose not to play the tomboy at the range.
Women own guns, too. Some of use choose to own antique guns for their beauty, to keep guns with family history for their emotional attachment, and to deliberately choose grips to make a point in a male-dominated industry and hobby.
She’s an idiot because she broke a basic rule of weapons training. She’s an idiot for treating a serious safety issue as a joke. You could even argue that she’s an idiot for using a weapon without an integral safety as a carry piece. Similarly someone could even argue that my choice of grip color means I’ve got a chip on my shoulder about having to modify a rig so it fits properly on my shorter and bra-wearing self. But it doesn’t indicate anything about my intelligence, thank you.
Wiley Robinson
July 14, 2011 @ 6:04 pm
I think you’re taking that the wrong way. I have nothing against guns, women or women who shoot guns. I do think it’s insulting to women to think they need their guns to be “girly” though. All the guns I own are black, brown or blued. All the women I know have similar guns.
Lots of people hated the Pontiac Aztec because it’s ugly. Same thing with pink guns.
BTW, I think guns should have responsable owners as well.
Jennifer T
July 14, 2011 @ 6:29 pm
I’m not sure how I could have taken “idiots who buy pink guns” the right way?
To use your car analogy, while I may consider the Aztec unattractive, I would not disparage those people who chose to purchase for reasons related to its gas mileage or safety rating or who felt its blockiness was futuristic, rather than unfinished. Other people have needs and concerns and priorities that are not my own. You, and the women of your acquaintance do not choose to make a personal statement of gender identification at the gun range. I do.
I would not insult all women by claiming that we only want or need pink guns, and that is certainly not what I said. Most of the guns I own are antique. One is pink. And yet your opening statement throws me into the same category as someone who would break a fundamental safety rule because we both choose to display a traditionally feminine colorway. I object to that categorization, and choose to do so publicly for the same reason that I take a pink gripped gun to the range. I’m not going to bite my tongue and be a good girl and let you call me an idiot because I wear/carry pink.
Wiley Robinson
July 14, 2011 @ 6:46 pm
Owww! OK, you win – you are right. I have a headache now. When did everyone become so humorless? It was meant to be a joke Jennifer.
I’m sure you are a fine upstanding person and probably a pretty good shot.
To tell the truth, there’s really not alot to this subject. Gun owners and gun haters alike both seem to agree that what this person did with her gun was irresponsible, dangerous and pretty stupid.
We all seem to agree that at some level there are people in this nation who don’t deserve the right to own guns (pink or otherwise). The hard part for all of us is to determine what is a fair and just method to keep people like Jared Loughter from doing harm with them.
Jim C. Hines
July 14, 2011 @ 9:17 pm
Wiley,
I suspect my comment may make you feel picked on here, which isn’t my intention. But you hit a pet peeve of mine when you responded with, “When did everyone become so humorless?”
The fact that someone doesn’t appreciate a comment you meant to be funny does not make them humorless, and it’s an accusation I hear far too often in defense of some rather offensive jokes.
Jim C. Hines
July 14, 2011 @ 9:31 pm
I appreciate the historical context, Charlie. Having read your stuff, I know you’ve done a lot of research into early U.S. history.
“I think I’ll put on my asbestos suit now and wait for the flames to begin…”
I’m rather flabbergasted by the relative lack of flames on this one. Apparently it is possible to find examples of such extreme idiocy that folks on all sides of the political spectrum can agree that yes, this person is being a dumbass.
Hey, I’ve discovered the secret to uniting our nation!
Jim C. Hines
July 14, 2011 @ 9:32 pm
My mother was amused when she read this 🙂
She’s told me how the two of you got along before you went off to college. Nope, no competition there, I’m sure.
Mel
July 15, 2011 @ 7:37 am
She’s a complete and utter idiot, but that kind of blatant, unsafe behavior about deadly weapons is certainly not confined to women (far from it, actually, and I am not implying you said it was).
Here in OH Kasich has just made it legal to carry guns into bars and other places where a person can be served alcohol, just on the promise that those carrying weapons won’t drink. Because that works so well with drinking and driving.
I’m an ok shot (don’t have enough chance to practice, since many ranges require nra membership, and I refuse to throw money at their political machine), and always safe around weapons. What a mess people like this are making out of this issue.