The Gravel Pit

Memes

There’s a meme going around on Facebook.  

            “A Rock in bad hands killed Abel.

              A Rock in good hands killed Goliath.

              It’s not about the Rock.”

The National Rifle Association is holding their annual convention this weekend in Indianapolis.  Just an aside:  you have to go through a metal detector to get into the Convention hall to hear Trump or Pence; no personal guns allowed in there.

The NRA’s famous “gun rights” claim is:  “The best protection from a ‘bad guy’ with a gun, is a ‘good guy’ with a gun.” 

That definitely was true in Nashville and Louisville in the last couple weeks.  The “good guys” stopped the killing, responding immediately and courageously to mass shooters.  One rookie Louisville police officer is still in the hospital.  But it didn’t save the six already dead in Nashville, or the five in Louisville.  And that didn’t work out for the twenty-one kids and teachers in Uvalde, Texas.  The “good guys” stacked in the hallway for an hour, unwilling to take out the “bad guy”.  Meanwhile, kids bled out from their wounds.

How Many Rocks

To push the “Rock in hand” analogy a little bit farther, try this.

“A fight in a gravel pit uses rocks.

  A fight in a sand pit uses sand. 

  Sand is ‘safer’ than ‘rocks’.

 Don’t fight in a gravel pit.”  

And that’s where we are in the United States today.  We live in a “gravel pit” of guns, with 1.2 guns per person, all 334,625,932 of us.  For us non-math majors, that’s over 400 million guns in the United States.  We don’t live in “gravel pit”, we’re buried in gravel.  No wonder the weapon of choice in the United States, from gang-bangers to mass murderers to suicides, is guns.

It’s not that other countries don’t have mental illness, crime, gangs, suicides, or even wars.  It’s that they are in a “sand pit”, not a gravel pit.  There are fewer guns.  Canada, for example, has .34 guns per person.  Even in Yemen, wracked with civil war and battling with Saudi Arabia; .53 guns per person.   

And of course, we don’t just have guns, we sell guns designed for warfare.  The “assault style” rifle (yes, I know AR originally stood for Armalite) was designed for war.  The “trick” was a rifle that would be light and efficient.  But the real “value” of assault weapons in war:  the wounds created by these rifles were devastating, disabling the wounded and requiring massive and immediate care.  When someone got hit by the high velocity round from an assault rifle, they were “taken out” of the battle, and so were a couple of others to care for them. 

There are eleven stores where I can buy “my” rifle within twenty minutes of the house.  I not only live in the gravel pit, but I can easily access the “big rocks”.  So can everyone else.

Books not Rocks

The NRA claims that if “everyone” had a gun, our Nation would be much safer.  But we know that’s just not true.  Statistics aside; if we were all safer, then people wouldn’t be so scared.  But we know that many Americans are afraid:  afraid of strangers, afraid to go to the mall or the city, afraid to send their kids to school. 

 Here in our community, we just had a big “dust-up” about temporarily moving the public library into part of a school building.  The concern – that the library threatened the safety of the kids in that school.  And you know what?  After months of discussions, the library was temporarily moved — somewhere else.  Why is the library such a threat?  We live in a gravel pit, and we need to fortify our schools against any “stones”.  Even the public library, is now a threat.  Who thought books were so threatening?  

Out of the Pit

I know, “…the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed”.  I’ve already written about the Constitutional dilemma of taking a single phrase out of full context, but the reality is this.  We, the American people, can regulate guns.  We can regulate the size, the style, the numbers and styles of bullets.  And we can regulate the gun owners, including their “qualifications” to own and use guns. 

 Supreme Court Justice Jackson (and others) noted that the Constitution is not a suicide pact.  But for thousands, 12,237 in the United States in 2023 to date, our current interpretation of the Second Amendment is a literal suicide pact.  In fact, half of those deaths were actually suicides (Gun Violence Archive). If gravel is killing our children, then get them out of the gravel.  Gun violence is the leading cause of death for children in the United States (New England Journal).  

It’s time to start crawling out of the pit.

Essays on Guns

Guns and Sadness	10/3/17
A Teacher with a Gun	2/23/18
Don’t Change the Subject	3/25/18
Again	4/15/18
Staying Small	5/3/19
Saving Lives Is Not Politics	8/4/19
The Pain Becomes too Great	8/5/19
Who’s Your Daddy	8/21/19
A Good Guy With a Gun	9/1/19
Rights and Guns	5/17/20
Pittsburgh	6/17/20
Our Choice	12/1/21
Toxic Mix	5/16/22
Apple Pie	5/25/22
Prairie Dogs	6/9/22
The Will to Do It	7/6/22
Hanging Together	8/12/22
Swatted	9/23/22
They Aren’t Pro-Life	9/23/22
Motive, Means, Opportunity	1/25/23
Accepted Losses	2/14/23
German Rights	3/28/23
Fear Itself	3/30/23
The Gravel Pit	4/16/23