Why can’t, won’t we fashion legislation geared toward the prevention of more acts of gun violence or, at the least, compel strictest compliance with gun laws already on the books?
In my continuing puzzlement, I hazard some answers or rather, in the fairness of honesty, some guesses.
It would be easy for me, therefore, I think, unfair and dishonest, to attribute or blame “it” (our American unwillingness to do anything more vigorously legislative concerning gun control) entirely on the National Rifle Association and the greater gun lobby.
Yes, with millions of dollars and millions of gun-rights advocates, the NRA can and does influence elections and, therefore, legislation or no legislation.
Yet that’s only a part of it. For our inability to do anything is a complex matter rooted, I believe, in our national psyche. And this rootedness in the soil of the American soul has to do with the power of the symbol of the gun.
I’m not opposed to individual, private, socially-responsible gun ownership. However, I neither have owned nor desire to own a gun. Therefore, in my effort to understand, I dream my way into a mindset other than my own…
If I was or wanted to be a gun owner, then I wonder might that be an expression of my desire and need to take individual hold in hand (literally! physically!) of…
My 2nd Amendment rights and freedoms; especially in reaction and resistance to what I perceive…fear as the external intrusion and erosion of those rights and freedoms by the government?
Perhaps, and even deeper…
My sense of security in an era of unparalleled (read: uncertain, power-shifting, and status quo-threatening) social and cultural change?
Perhaps, and still deeper…
My self-confidence in the glaring light and encroaching shadow of my increasing awareness that I control little to nothing of the circumstance and chance of this world I inhabit and thus, the life I live (where even my free choices are in response to uncontrollable circumstance and chance)?
Perhaps, and…
If any (or all) of my guesses and more than I possibly can guess – all powerful, abiding, perhaps unconscious and, thus, unspoken reasons, verily, forces – are true, then I don’t wonder (or, at least, I wonder less) why we can’t, won’t fashion legislation geared toward the prevention of more acts of gun violence or, at the least, compel strictest compliance with gun laws already on the books.
© 2022 PRA
#gunlaws #gunlobby #gunviolence #guncontrol #gunlegislation #NationalRifleAssociation #SecondAmendmentrights #societalchange #symbolofthegun
occasional observations of mind and heart, soul and spirit 
Thank you Paul!!! All I need to say here is one word! AMEN!!
Love
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Thank you, my beloved sister. Just putting some thoughts (and feelings) out there in the universe praying that some sense can be made of the madness!
Love
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And what about replacement theory and the need for a gun to ward off any potential physical assault on white supremacy. I have seen that idea expressed somewhere recently, not my own idea. Fear motivates more than love.
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My dearest Pat, I struggle to comprehend what I consider to be a conundrum. Fear and love. Each is a powerful emotion. Concerning the corresponding behaviors that attend to each, most often can be and are taught and learned. I can be taught to fear. I can be taught to love. Why is it, then, that fear is more easily transmitted and inculcated than love?
Again, I struggle to understand this. Methinks, largely, that as we humans, fundamentally, are self-interested creatures, the attitude and action of withdrawal and defense registers more easily and resonates more deeply immediately than the attitude and action of openness (vulnerability, which can be perceived as defenselessness). Still, I think, there must be more to this — what I consider to be a — moral dilemma. For, though self-interested we human creatures are, none of us can survive in isolation. We, inherently, also are communal beings. Thus, the fear-love dimension of our existence constantly is at play.
I must think more about this.
Love,
Paul
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