GUN WORLD SURROUNDS YOU? What’s It Mean When You Don’t Notice

 

A gun world is all around us in America. Start a casual conversation and you might learn the mild mannered person you’re talking to owns thirty guns.

 

Since it’s so long ago, I like reflecting on my days as an Army medic. It comes in handy helping me pretend not be as grossed out by weird stuff as everyone else.

 

“Yep, it was lots worse back in my Army days,” except it’s not.

Gun deaths by the score? That’s not normal.

 

One gun death is better? It’s all one death for loved ones.

 

I met a woman who’s kid or grandson, was downtown when someone was shot near Portland State Tuesday night.

 

The grandson was visiting a group, one of the group went out for a sandwich and ended up shot dead.

 

Did he bump someone? Say something? Do anything that he needed to pay for with his life in Portland?

 

Maybe it’s time to take a stand. The circle of gun violence is getting tighter and tighter. When is tight enough?

 

One solution is more guns? You’ve heard that one a long time.

 

The other solution is make it harder to get a gun.

 

Like Japan:

To get a gun in Japan, first, you have to attend an all-day class and pass a written test, which are held only once per month. You also must take and pass a shooting range class. Then, head over to a hospital for a mental test and drug test (Japan is unusual in that potential gun owners must affirmatively prove their mental fitness), which you’ll file with the police. Finally, pass a rigorous background check for any criminal record or association with criminal or extremist groups, and you will be the proud new owner of your shotgun or air rifle. Just don’t forget to provide police with documentation on the specific location of the gun in your home, as well as the ammo, both of which must be locked and stored separately. And remember to have the police inspect the gun once per year and to re-take the class and exam every three years.

I hear the argument about Japanese gun ownership from a history that includes fanatical behavior in WWII. If Japan had won the War in the Pacific the same fanaticism would be attributed to Marines on island after island.

 

Instead we get knocked for nuclear weapons.

 

The same logic goes for German chemical companies.

 

IG Farben employed thousands of slave labourers at the Auschwitz death camp and its Zyklon-B was used to murder millions of Jews and other prisoners.

The company is one of the few surviving reminders of Germany’s Nazi past.

It was stripped of all of its chemical plants by the Allies after the Second World War, but continued to control a variety of other assets.

 

Guns are too complicated to discuss. It’s never a good time. Thoughts and prayers mean something, but are they enough? That’s it?

 

A young man bled out on a Portland sidewalk. Portland gun world. His friend was with him.

 

The friend’s grandmother gave me the news before I heard it. Call it the ripple effect, but it’s not a ripple. It’s a tsunami. Gun death numbers are phenomenally high.

 

If this is all about mental issues, is it the mental state of the shooter, or the mental state of law makers who will soon feel the wave of gun death over them the way they are affected when someone close to them has cancer?

 

Find the time, ladies and gentleman, to talk about the gun world we live in.