That’s freedom? Seriously?
by Tom Sullivan
Peter Daou, like the rest of us, is processing the latest mass shooting in this country. Growing up amidst a war in Lebanon, he brings to the subject a perspective few raised here can: a childhood collecting shrapnel and stray bullets in the street, and a sharp appreciation that none of them had claimed or maimed a family member. Yet also a hunter and a marksman:
My military service quickly taught me that there was an inextricable link between the weapon I carried on my shoulder and the suffering to which I bore daily witness. I was trained to use guns against others before I was old enough to be considered a man.
In Lebanese culture, “manhood” was an issue teenage boys were taught to think about. What did it mean to be a man, to be respected as a man? A gun was an instant pathway to respect – or as I more accurately understand now, fear masquerading as respect.
America’s obsessive relationship with firearms is familiar to me; I know the intoxicating sense of power that a gun bestows, particularly to a young man. But in the aftermath of the terrible violence I witnessed and with the passage of time, I know that guns are dangerous and illusory shortcuts to strength and maturity and no guarantee of personal safety.
Daou considers guns “the ultimate drug” for treating feelings of powerlessness. “Those of us who advocate for stronger gun control measures,” he writes, “must understand that we are dealing not just with an obsession, but an addiction. And addictions are notoriously hard to break.”
Addiction perhaps, but for some are guns not more like a security blanket? Maybe both. Any social upheaval that threatens the status quo sends a certain kind of gun owner running down to the gun store to buy another for the arsenal. Economic uncertainty or a Democrat being elected president — especially one with a foreign-sounding name — and they’re stockpiling more guns and ammo, certain for the eleventieth time that the government’s jack-booted thugs soon will come break down their doors to confiscate their illusion of strength. I mean, really this time. Daou is right. It is an obsession bordering on addiction.
Certain kinds of gun owners dress up their fear with patriotic-sounding bluster about the tree of liberty and the blood of tyrants. And freedom, of course. I’m not sure how foreigners would describe the American obsession with hoarding weapons to defend against our neighbors and our government, but freedom is probably not the word that springs to mind.
We have a cat we rescued in Port Fourchon, Louisiana about five weeks before Hurricane Katrina hit. A kitten no bigger than your hand, she was lost or abandoned, starving, half dead, and about that far from being a seagull snack. Maybe a little dain bramaged for the neonatal wear and tear. She ain’t right. She’s really skittish, and whenever startled (and she startles easily) she runs to the corner of a particular storage crate and rubs her cheek obsessively against it until she finally settles down.
Maybe she’d feel more secure if we got her a Hello Kitty .380. Or two. Or three.