Individuals cherish the right to possess guns for many reasons. As exemplified in my early years in a small Wyoming community, recreational use was paramount – hunting and target shooting. Guns were owned as a matter of course, people enjoyed them and the community at large did not feel threatened by them.
Use by criminals, injuries and death from tragic accidents and suicides, although shocking and tragic, were dealt with tangentially as social problems resulting from careless or abusive use of weapons rather than as bases for passage of extreme gun control laws. Circumstances differed in large urban areas, where recreational use was uncommon, but my sense is that people there looked to the police for protection from gun-wielding criminals rather than to personal weapons possession.
Now the front-line reasons citizens at large want to own and carry guns are more variable and complex: Thwart government oppression (as cited in the op-ed “Without gun rights, there is no America,” Salt Lake Tribune, June 10). Protect against gun-wielding gang members and other criminals and life-threatening aggressors. Pure enjoyment of the heft and feel of the finely crafted hand guns and rifles. The thrill of the kick and resulting impacts of firing them. And, finally, more deep-seated ego enhancing factors such as feelings of power and self worth.
The upshot of all this is that there has always been a gun culture in the U.S. But it is has changed from one of acceptance of a tangential role of gun ownership to one of gun proliferation for the reasons discussed above and the promotional efforts of the NRA and other gun proponents.
Bolstered by Second Amendment-based decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court rejecting efforts to curtail criminal activity in urban areas, the NRA in particular has pushed successfully on almost every front to limit gun ownership restrictions, to expand concealed weapons authorizations and to broaden permissible weapons descriptions. Much of this expansion of the gun culture has occurred because of paranoia (Obama is going to take away our guns) and related slippery-slope arguments.
In pursuing the ostensible goal of protecting gun rights, proponents have used the Second Amendment as a battle standard to expand gun ownership rather than as a backstop to prevent government overreach. My feeling is that a massive program to deprive U.S. citizens of the right to own guns is never going to happen. Gun ownership is too prevalent and personal feelings favoring gun ownership are too deeply embedded.
But there can be swings as to peripheral issues, such as the types of weapons that are made accessible, categories of individuals whose access can be restricted and flexibility in determining areas where weapons are forbidden.
What is needed is a shift toward the more traditional gun culture of the U.S., where guns were used primarily for recreation, recognizing that there are valid reasons for expanding use for personal protection. The goals of gun rights advocates such as the NRA can still be pursued without the current always more and never-retreat policies. They, as well as the elected officials fearful of their political sway, should back off a little in response to the concerns of the ever-expanding groups, such as high-school students and others, whose sense of security been shattered by mass shootings involving rapid-fire military style weapons.
Increased security in vulnerable areas certainly can be justified, but the stock “more guns for more people” solution has begun to ring hollow.
Clayton Parr
Clayton Parr lives in Draper. His step-father was a gunsmith and he spent a great deal of time while growing up shooting with a .22 rifle at rabbits on the plains of southwestern Wyoming without ever hitting one.