I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. During the horrific killing of five officers and wounding of seven others in Dallas in July, police responding to the multiple shots didn't know who to apprehend. That's because there were nearly 30 people openly carrying rifles at the demonstration. In this open carry state, there were doubtless even more people with handguns. Many of these armed protesters were also wearing camouflage outfits, bullet-proof vests and gas masks.
Dallas Police Chief David Brown said he wants people to be able to express their Second Amendment rights, "but it is increasingly challenging when people have AR-15s slung over [their shoulders] and shootings occur in a crowd … and we don't know if they are the shooter or not."
The only ray of sunshine in all of this is that it put the lie to the NRA's bogus claim that "the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun." In this case, all of the open carry "good guys" scurried for cover with the rest of the crowd while the outgunned police ran toward the shots. In retrospect, this was a blessing because who knows how many other people might have died in the indiscriminate cross-fire of semi-automatic weapons in the hands of panicky civilians?
This is yet the latest argument against the open carry and right to carry movements that have turned our nation into a demented version of Dodge City. Besides Texas, 22 other states have legalized the right to carry firearms, and in some this applies to bars, colleges and even churches. What could go wrong?
The ready availability of guns may be useful for self-defense, but the vast majority of gun deaths involve not criminals but Average Joes who have momentarily become emotionally unhinged. With the right to carry and open carry, how many people will now needlessly die as a result of road rage, bar fights, arguments at sporting events, and domestic violence? An altercation over texting in a darkened Florida movie theater ended with a fatal shooting in 2014.
And how will the ubiquitous presence of guns affect the suicide rate and the accidental shootings of and by children? Perhaps the answer lies in the fact that there were 291,557 combat deaths in World War II. In comparison, from 2005 through 2015, 301,797 Americans were killed by gun violence. I don't believe this is what we like to think of as our American exceptionalism.
It wasn't always like this. Though we don't consider 1934 to be a more enlightened age, Karl Frederick, then president of the NRA, testified to Congress, "I do not believe in the promiscuous toting of guns. I think it should be sharply restricted and only under licenses." In 1967, California Governor Ronald Reagan asserted that there was "no reason why on the street today a citizen should be carrying loaded weapons."
According to an article by Evan Osnos in a June issue of The New Yorker, the current gun mania can be traced to 1977 and the NRA's annual meeting. There, "conservative activists … wrested control from leaders who had been focused on rifle-training and recreation rather than on politics, and created the modern gun-rights movement" that stresses personal defense. This was a boon to gun manufacturers, whose business had been hurting because of foreign competition and the decline of hunting.
As gun sales increased, gun manufacturers said "thanks" by contributing millions to a newly politicized NRA. In turn, NRA lobbyists discovered that state and national politicians could be rented, if not bought outright, to advocate for more liberal gun laws. All one needed to do was make a contribution to their political campaigns. Don't forget that in 1995, then-GOP conference chair John Boehner infamously handed out checks from the tobacco lobby on the floor of Congress just prior to a vote on tobacco subsidies. Amazingly, many are not upset by this because they are easily distracted by phony scandals like Benghazi.
Don't look for things to change soon. The Republican presidential platform has no mention of gun violence. Instead it contains a plank calling pornography "a public health crisis" that is destroying lives. You would think that gun violence and the rise in mass shootings pose a bigger threat to the public's health than porn, but then you aren't getting those persuasive little checks to help your next re-election campaign.
Frank Batavick writes from Westminster. His column appears Fridays. Email him at fjbatavick@gmail.com.
