People kill people

I go back and forth on the whole gun issue. I grew up in the country, where it would take the Sheriff an hour to get to my house and where random wildlife would frequently wander up on the porch to steal cat food. We owned guns, locked in a cabinet in my dad's office. He went hunting once or twice a year. Other than that, the only time the family guns saw the light of day was when the dogs went crazy barking late at night, and Mom would simply flip on the porch light and do a quick walk-by with a .22. (I think I felt safer with the dogs.)

Not long after I got my first apartment, my city had a mini-crime wave that kept me up many a night. The guy I was dating at the time got me a gun, mainly so I could feel safer and, if the worst should happen, I could use it to scare off - not hunt down and kill - an intruder. I think it's still in a shoebox in the utility room.

At the same time, I understand that not everybody feels safe where they live or work. Knowing that you've got a 9 mil. in the glove compartment makes you not worry as much about getting mugged driving home in Atlanta, or Chicago, or wherever. The idealist in me doesn't want to live in a world where I need to have the constant presence of a weapon to feel safe. My practical side worries that packing heat will give me a false sense of security.

I find myself thinking about this yet again, given today's shooting at an immigration center in upstate New York, where more than a dozen people were killed. Last weekend here in North Carolina, eight people shot and killed at a nursing home. Six more in Santa Clara, Calif., added to the 11 in Alabama and the four police officers in Oakland. Sure, the disturbed people who committed those crimes most likely would've found a way to kill without access to guns. But would they have been able to kill so many? The pro-gun lobby is fond of saying, "Guns don't kill people; people kill people." Sure, but people with guns kill a hell of a lot more people.

On one side, there's the argument that an ordinary citizen with a gun could've stopped many of those shootings (as happened at Appalachian Law School, where other students tackled and disarmed the gunman). In Kennesaw, Ga., the town mandated gun ownership for every citizen decades ago, and crime has since plummeted. My problem with this goes back to the false sense of security. The reason we call the cops during a crime isn't just because they have the weapons - it's because they've been trained how to function in an emergency. They're not immobilized, thinking of family and wondering if this is really happening to them. The guy who buys a gun at Wal-Mart doesn't necessariliy buy the skills to use it.

But the fantasy that banning guns would eliminate gun crime doesn't work either. In fact, a 2003 CDC study found inconclusive evidence that gun control laws reduced crime, largely because the laws (regulating the guns themselves, ammunition, etc.) were so patchy. And of course, there's the very real argument that, if guns were illegal, criminals would still get them because, well, they're criminals.

Clearly there are complex social and policy concerns here that I just don't know enough about. I know that guns will always be with us, and also that they're not a magic protective wand for any victim.

(By the way, that same ex that bought me the gun also got me a cheap knock-off katana sword, which I keep by my bed. Sometimes when I hear a funny noise at night, I reach over and hold its handle, and I instantly feel safer knowing that any intruder to my house is most likely not banking on running into a damn Samurai. Plus there's the added bonus of not blowing my head off accidentally.)