So, I saw Gangster Squad last night with a bunch of my friends. Heretofore I have attempted to disengage with the gun-control issue that's been so hot since July, mostly because I have not wanted to spend my mental energy on political issues (this is part of my total disengagement with the political process), but after the movie and the anguish I was surprised to find myself experiencing after the Sandy Hook tragedy, I found myself looking at gun laws in a slightly new light.
Growing up, guns were a part of my household - my father owned a couple, I suppose, but they were under lock and key 100% of the time and I still have no idea where they were stored in any of the 3 houses we lived in over the years. Like, if you held a gun to my head and asked me where the guns were, I would have zero clues what kinds of guns we had, much less where to even start looking. I just knew that my father had guns for protection and maybe to go hunting once in a while, and that he had them locked up safely. He was a member of the NRA. One of my uncles goes on hunting safaris in Africa. Guns were an unseen, mostly comforting part of my life. This, I think, is the correct way to have guns in one's household - including families that go hunting. (We were more of a fishing family, although my father did allegedly go hunting occasionally.)
But beyond that, the question of what KIND of guns one should be able to own was a question that I never really gave thought to, because I am a strong believer in the innate goodness of the human race (despite all evidence to the contrary) and believed that eligible gun owners should be able to exercise their legal freedoms to the best of their abilities. Also, "If guns are outlawed, then only outlaws will have guns" - this is something that I still believe.
Watching the film, though, it occurred to me that there is literally no reason for anyone to own a machine gun or any other "automatic" firearm (defined by Wikipedia as "a firearm that will continue to fire so long as the trigger is pressed and there is ammunition in the magazine"). Why would anyone need one? Why are these guns what we have adapted from military-only usage, instead of way more useful stuff like Silent Velcro and hover cars? The military has developed so much technology to which civilians have zero access - or even knowledge of, in some cases - yet somehow we have walked away with weapons of mass destruction.
I would normally NEVER say something as lefty and commie as this, but after watching the movie, I now believe that all automatic firearms should be turned in, confiscated, otherwise removed from private ownership. Of course there will be evil people who will not give up their guns, but at some point their guns will wear down and there will be no shop owners willing to repair them, at some point they will be arrested and their guns removed from their possession, at some point maybe 100 years from now we will be at a point where we are back to the state that the Founding Fathers (I know, I know, groan) imagined where guns are used for protection and crazy inventions that make a firearm even more dangerous than it already is will no longer be part of the public consciousness.
I realize I am presuming on the goodness of people and willingness to comply with Big Government and this is an unrealistic thing to ask of suspicious rednecks. However, I am not entirely sure WHAT, if not the massacre of 9-year-olds (which, yes, I know has nothing to do with automatic firearms and has everything to do with an unstable young man's unfettered access to "regular" guns), it is going to take to make people realize that what we are doing now is not working.
(On a related note, this article from the New York Times was a great read on how a parent can talk to other parents about the presence of guns in their and their children's lives. "When my boys swim at a friend’s pool, I always ask if adults will be supervising, and I remind my sons about the rules of the pool. Why should firearms be any different?")
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