Guns (Kindle Single) Read Online Free PDF

Prison, and that
should probably be enough. For him, at least. Maybe still not quite enough for
the grieving relatives of the dead and the maimed.
    For Australia, though, it was enough. The government
either banned or restricted automatic weapons (as well as pump shotguns of the
sort Eric Harris used at Columbine). As for those autos already out there, the
government authorized a huge buyback that eventually netted 600,000 weapons. It
amounted to about twenty percent of the country’s private firepower. Since the
Bryant killings and the resulting tough gun laws, homicides by firearm have
declined almost 60 percent in Australia. The guns-for-everyone advocates hate
that statistic, and dispute it, but as Bill Clinton likes to say, it’s not
opinion. It’s arithmetic, honey.
    In the end, this sort of ban can only be accomplished in one
way, and that’s if gun advocates get behind it. I can hear people laughing and
saying pigs will whistle and horses will fly before that happens, but hey, I’m
an optimist. If enough American gun-owners urge Congress to do the right thing,
and insist the NRA climb aboard, the results might surprise you. Gun owners
aren’t dragons, and they don’t have to practice Gerald Ford two-mindedness,
simultaneously mourning the victims and denying the role speed-shooters play in
these tragedies, forever.
    I didn’t pull Rage from publication because the law
demanded it; I was protected under the First Amendment, and the law couldn’t demand it. I pulled it because in my judgment it might be hurting people, and
that made it the responsible thing to do. Assault weapons will remain readily
available to crazy people until the powerful pro-gun forces in this country
decide to do a similar turnaround. They must accept responsibility, recognizing
that responsibility is not the same as culpability . They need to say,
“We support these measures not because the law demands we support them, but
because it’s the sensible thing.”
    Until that happens, shooting sprees will continue. We will
see the BREAKING NEWS chyrons, the blurry cellphone videos of running people,
the tearful relatives, the rolling hearses. We will also see, time and time and
time again, how easy it is for the crazies among us to get their hands on
portable and efficient weapons of mass destruction.
    Because, boys and girls, that’s how it shakes out.

Epilogue
    Shortly after I finished this piece, a New Mexico teenager
gunned down his parents and three younger siblings. He intended to take the
AR-15 he found in his parents’ closet to a nearby Walmart and shoot people
until “eventually killed while exchanging gunfire with law enforcement.” (His
statement.) A friend talked him out of that part.
    About eighty people die of gunshot wounds in America every
day.