This is not a rhetorical question, though, according to my husband, it may be one that I come to regret asking in a public forum like this.
When I told him I was going to write an article about what happened in a gun shop the other day, he winced, "I hope you're ready for the fallout."
I guess I am, because I want to tell you the story and ask you what you think. I have come away from the whole experience with less "knowing" than I thought I had when I went in.
Allow me to start by saying I am a gun owner. I have several weapons and I respect all of them. I treat them with the care they demand and I am properly licensed. I have, thank God, always used them solely for target practice. I do not eat meat and do not hunt (though I admit that if there were ever an emergency and I needed to hunt in order to feed my family, I would reluctantly do so).
Mostly, I have them for home defense. I also, however, have a concealed carry permit. In my mind, carrying a gun in public has always had a dual consequence. It has not only implied that I can take care of myself, it has also meant that I have to be able and ready to to defend someone else if that is appropriate and necessary. I do not suffer from the delusion that I am a cop, nor am I secretly looking for opportunities to be a hero. I pray it never ever comes to that, but it is part of the deal (and responsibility) as far as I've been concerned.
The Case of The Sweltering Pup
In any event, this is what happened. It is an ordinary day. We are walking into a gun store to make a purchase. As we approach the building, we notice a dog languishing in a car with the windows only cracked open. It is in the mid-90's and the sun is searing. I point it out to my husband and he cringes, already knowing that I'm going to do something.
I have to sidetrack for a moment to acknowledge that he and I come from different worlds. In his, where everyone carried a gun, a person didn't get involved in another person's private affairs, even if those affairs were morally offensive. "Live and let live" was the Rocky Mountain tao by which he was raised.
My conscience was directed by different forces. What was perhaps the strongest code in my family was Edmund Burke's maxim: "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." We not only believed in intervention, we actually intervened. We picked up clothes that other people dropped in department stores, stood between abusive parents and their babies, or wrote to congressmen and marched on Washington or the U.N.
When you saw something wrong, particularly something life-threatening, Justice was spelled with a capital J and doing nothing was not an option.
In any case, he was right about what was soon to happen. I walked into a store full of men with guns and told the clerk about the dog. "If you guys don't take care of it, I'm calling the cops." They said they would deal with him.
With a few questions, they found the man who needed to bring his dog to the firing range so he could leave him in a closed car in the parking lot in summer. They told him it was "unacceptable" and then they let him go back into the range to continue firing. The dog was still in the car. I waited a little while, then I went outside and called the police.
They came within about five minutes. And the guy, squealing and bleating in shamed protest, finally took his dog home, where hopefully he will live to see another day.
A Psychological Reality Check
I expressed my utter confusion about this to my husband when we got home. I couldn't understand how a store full of men with guns couldn't promptly and properly deal with a coward and a dog bully.
He said I misunderstood or misinterpreted gun ownership and that a good number of gun owners do not have guns out of any sense of duty and don't necessarily develop a sense of duty out of having guns. They have no bearing on one another. Many gun owners are profoundly honorable and benevolent people. But not because they have guns. Rather because they were raised well.
Most, he said, have guns for either sport or self-defense. It is a private matter. And it has no bearing on a sense of responsibility for anyone else.
I was surprised and still confused. But, but, but ... I kept asking him: Didn't the having of a gun at least bring some semblance of duty to bear on a person? All he could do was say, "They're just not the same thing, is all."
So, I called a friend of mine, a detective and CSI whose opinion and intelligence I have come to trust. I told him the story and he laughed and asked me, "So, you're living where?"
I told him.
"And the culture there says what about privacy and animals?"
I shut my mouth and let him continue. I had already begun to see the light.
"To stand up, they'd first of all have to agree it's wrong. What's the mentality of the place you're in? To them, you're probably crazy. Plus, you think that because you know mostly people who do get involved -- like cops or fire fighters or medics -- that everyone with a gun is thinking the same way. They don't necessarily want to be involved at all and don't want anyone else to be involved with them. They're not all that interested in being helpful. They're interested in maintaining a perimeter between them and the rest of the world."
It came to this: guns don't make the man. Quite the reverse.
So, sadly, it seems that the world is still as apathetic as it was when Kitty Genovese was killed in a parking lot in Queens, NY with a dozen people watching, none of whom called 911. I may have to accept this, but I don't have to like it. Just like I will never become the person who walks past the panting dog or crying child in the car and clucks their disapproval without putting any punch in their protest. Some things are worth the risk and the alienation, as far as I'm concerned. And to tell you the truth, I'd do it again.
A while back I was visiting friends in a suburb of NYC. We are walking down the street minding our own business. A woman screeches up to the sidewalk, yanks her kids out of the car, screams at them and leaves them sitting and crying on a park bench. She takes off in the car. My friends and I look at each other in stunned silence for approximately .05 second and immediately corral the children. I call 911.
They put me on hold! I should've known right there that something was up. But, caught up in the moment, I stand there like a numskull and wait. The mother drives back up and whines about how no one understands how hard her life has been and how they were driving her crazy and it was just a little lesson...etc... I told her to back away and wait to give her story to the police.
As things went from terse to truly tense, out of the bushes pop up a sound man, a couple of 20 year old girls with release forms, and John Quinones from "What Would You Do?"
I guess we answered the question our way. And no one was carrying a gun.
Follow Judith Acosta on Twitter: www.twitter.com/VerbalFirstAid
Josh Horwitz: The Real Slippery Slope of Gun Laws
Your story points out what has happened to society, since the influx of immigrants, who brought with them a strong sense of righting wrongs. There was no such thing as seeing an injustice and simply walking away. Your friend is correct: perpetrator(s) have to believe that what they're doing is wrong to correct it. I am a substitute teacher and I see this lack of recognizing right and wrong in the children that I teach. It is obvious that many children are not being raised with a moral code. I'm not referring to religion; but a code that rings an internal alarm that something is wrong. Like you, I will continue to get involved, if only to make a report to the authorities.
Also, define a "sporting goods store". Bicycling, rock climbing, skiing, etc are all sports, therefore REI is a sporting goods store, and they don't sell firearms. If you limit "sporting goods" stores to stores which sell firearms, then half by $ is feasible. If you include stores which sell any items used in sports, then no, there is no way that it will be half by $ or half by unit count.
This has been a humbling learning experience for me. A friend of mine who is a gun hobbyist just called and chewed me out for being so naive. I guess I deserved it.
To comment more seriously: There are two parts to this piece. One is the part in which I make gross and unreasonable assumptions about a group of people based on my own experience. The other is the part in which I discuss the willingness to become involved. They are intertwined but not the same thing.
I wish I could dismiss their behavior as "redneck." It wasn't. It was just unmotivated and unmoved. These were city people, some of whom were well educated. See what I mean by assumption?
My only critique is this:
"So, sadly, it seems that the world is still as apathetic as it was when Kitty Genovese was killed in a parking lot in Queens, NY with a dozen people watching, none of whom called 911."
They could not call 911 because Kitty was murdered in 1964. 911 did not begin implementation until 1968. But I know what you really meant to say... which was to call the police, and no one did.
Lawson Meadows
Thanks for the comment and the attention to detail. I keep learning.
Y'know what's funny? I remember that like it was yesterday. Must be why I thought of 911.
Stop reminding me how old I am, LOL
Because I hallucinate that I am a free man, dogs suffer in hot cars—at my pleasure--while I identify with the 'harmless fun' of target shooting, 'knowing' full well that the target is my wife, boss, or parent.
Your husband was right not to expect rational replies from all when writing about a thing, guns, onto which so much abstract irrationality is projected. You intuitively (unconsciously) knew that the risk would have been reduced calling the cops on a car parked in front of the grocery store :) You did the right thing, and made conscious an unexamined (unconscious) assumption from your childhood.
I subscribe to the Zen view that morality/ethics is a false solution to the nature of life. 'Grasping' is the attempt by the ego to separate life from death, good from 'wrong'.
Irrationality is the belief that life can be divided into categories, and especially the self-validated concept that guns and your de*th make me right. In irrationality, individuality disappears into psychosis, the place without categories, without barriers, without a 'me'.
I can 'win' by your de*th--that makes me right, and irrational. I can also win by becoming the Cheshire Cat, the irrational, nothing but a smile, leaving you as the apparent winner in full possession of the field, thusly :)
See my remarks to Drcarab yesterday re the paranoid style in politics--20% of the voting public are fearful and see vast conspiracies which will overwhelm them, and against which they must fight back in a losing battle, which includes buying a gun. Americans, especially, have a type of guilty paranoia from our 'rich' lifestyle which we defend with an unfounded sense of superiority or entitlement as daddy's 'chosen one'. A gun is necessary to irrationally defend any concrete challenges to what I know to be a collective illusion of power. (continued)
I would say that a duty to help others has nothing to do with whether or not you are carrying a firearm. If you saw a thug beating up a weaker or helpless person you would call the police or intervene if appropriate, even if you were unarmed. It has nothing to do with guns. In fact, I hope carrying a firearm would cause a person to be LESS likely to intervene personally because the level of escalation that could result is more serious. But you seem to think, or thought, the opposite: "I couldn't understand how a store full of men with guns couldn't promptly and properly deal with a coward and a dog bully". Again, carrying a gun should not make people more eager to "deal" with others, it should hopefully cause them to exercise more self-restraint.
I think we tend to assume people will/do guns them to solve problems (for better or for worse). The situation you describe really had nothing to do with you or them having guns. It was group of people who weren't willing to do the right thing and stand out. I would have done the same thing you did, and I love that you quoted Edmund Burke.
I recently bought a home. We have a bit of a gang problem here and honestly I think the best thing you can do for crime is to just go out and be in your neighborhood. Make it a place where good things happen and crime is not acceptable. Gun ownership has definitely played into this sort of "neighborly creed" that I've developed. Not even because I have encountered any situations where I wanted to use a gun, just because gun ownership has affected me in this "responsible" way.
Thank you! It's been a bit embarrassing, but worth it. I made HUGE assumptions. And you're right, the story had far less to do with gun ownership per se than it did with the willingness to be involved.
Best,
Jude
http://tinyurl.com/4k346he
And to those who indicated that preparedness is an important reason to own one, I say, unequivocally "yes." Fear can sometimes be a starting point, but it's never a good ending point. I admit that my reason was initially fear. It has since changed and I've grown up a bit. But the essence of the article is that it is not only wrong to assume something (using pop psychobabble or otherwise) about someone (or a group), it can lead you into a dangerous spot.