Gunning

I am trying to wrap my understanding around the idea that Americans want guns because they are afraid. This is surely the only explanation for the firearms advocates in the United States continuing their opposition to any kind of control on guns after what we have experienced over the past week in gun violence and unnecessary, tragic deaths.

I live in a rural area south of Ottawa, the capital of Canada. Ottawa is a small city as capital cities go and surrounded by parks and open, recreational area. A few years ago one of the local papers carried a story about an American tourist who was afraid to walk in one of these parks because he did not have his gun (Americans cannot bring them over the border into Canada) and did not feel safe. I recall shaking my head at the time, as this seemed to be such a bizarre attitude. The only time I or anyone I know worries about guns is during the November hunting season when there may be some drunken or idiotic lout who could mistake me for a deer.

When we lived in the city, the chance of being shot by some madman or getting mixed up in a gang war were so diminishingly small that you might as well worry about being hit by lightning. Both possible but unlikely. Why? Because the only guns around belonged legally to police and hunters and illegally to the criminal elements we have always with us. Before there were guns, the same type of lawless yobs carried coshes and knives and suchlike, I am quite sure. Canadians are not hung up about the right to bear arms. And because it is not a big deal, we don’t have a lot of gun crime.

Yes, we have gangs and they shoot each other and innocent bystanders once and a while. Yes, some of the urban police use weapons inappropriately and we have had a few panic shootings by law enforcement officers. Yes, we have had law enforcement officers shot by nuts. Twice, in recent memory. Both times the shooters had legally acquired weapons,I think . But not assault weapons. Our radical attacker on Parliament Hill had a weapon that he used to shoot and kill a soldier from behind, but it was not a high powered rifle. He couldn’t get one.

 Most Canadians except the police do not think about guns at all, outside of being a little careful on hikes in the first two weeks of November.

I cannot imagine what it must be like to be constantly in fear of being shot. I cannot imagine how police can do their job rationally and reasonably when anyone, anytime, could be armed and dangerous. That too many policemen believe that black Americans are more dangerous than white ones is sad and sickening and terrible. Yes, it is hell for the poor cops to be constantly expecting some black criminal to pull a gun. But for the 99 out of 100 law-abiding and reasonable black Americans who have to live in fear of every police interaction, life must be hell too.

Because anyone can carry a gun or have one stashed to hand, everyone has to be afraid of guns. What a horrible, endless circle. What a mess.

A Morning of Mourning

It’s a lovely damp cool morning, a mix of sun and cloud and the promise of yet more rain to revive our parched land and wilted trees. It is high summer, a nest of red breasted grosbeaks has hatched and is decorating our feeders, the ED and family are off on an adventure vacation and all should be well.

Only it isn’t. I keep seeing in my mind the solemn, lovely face of little Taliyah Marsman and remembering that they have found her body and wondering how much horror and terror attended her pitiful death. Yes, there are piles of dead and suffering, wounded children in Nice today and what happened to them is terrible. But their deaths and those of their parents and relatives are less real to me than what I am quite sure happened to poor little Taliyah before she died. Any of us can imagine why she was taken to a deserted field, alone and at the mercy of a human animal.

I am glad my granddaughter is old enough and strong enough and smart enough to be able to defend herself. Although girls and women are often, however clever and strong they are, victims anyway. They are vulnerable to the twisted and sickening desires of the madmen and equally vulnerable to the attitudes of society toward them. As are black males in our society vulnerable to the kind of attitude that makes nervous and badly chosen or trained policemen shoot them for little or no reason. As are ordinary people going about their innocent lives, perhaps watching fireworks, perhaps dancing in a night club with their friends, vulnerable to the mass killers created by outmoded ideas.

It is a horrible world out there. Innocent men shot because of the terror and rage of the police.  Police shot because of the terror and rage of the persecuted. Holiday makers crushed in the midst of their peaceful enjoyment. The madness of indiscriminate political murder weighs on us all. And I do mean political, even if it is disguised as religious fervor. We are all, in some way, at the mercy of the fanatic and deranged, even if we are personally safe for the moment, because of how the horrors they enact affect how we feel and act toward others.

It is peaceful here. My most pressing irritations are deer flies. And I suppose that Taliyah’s poor little face will fade from the forefront of my mind in time, stored away with other horrible facts we have all had to assimilate and live with. Only children cry out ‘It’s not fair’. Those of us who are supposed to be adult know that fairness is nowhere in this mess of hatred festering in our world. What is so horrible is that it goes on and on and all the good intentions in the world will not solve it. Nor all our tears wash out a word of it.