Weapons Guide for the Perplexed

_______________________________

Due to the spectacular shooting sprees over the last decade or so, much attention is being paid to deaths caused by firearms, but little attention is given to the much larger number of deaths which occur annually in vehicular homicides (In Sharp Reversal, Highway Deaths Rise):

Road deaths in the USA rose 5.3% last year to 34,080, the first year-over-year increase in traffic fatalities since 2005, according to preliminary estimates today from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

The fatality rate — which is number of deaths per 100 million vehicle miles traveled — is projected to rise to 1.16 from 1.10. ... Crash fatalities were up for every quarter of 2012 compared with 2011, the NHTSA says.

The deaths caused by the 2,000 pound bullets known as "automobiles" are every bit as gruesome as those caused by guns, but we accept them as the cost of the privilege of living and driving in a free society. The majority of these deaths are caused by people misusing the "weapon" -- high on alcohol or drugs -- but still, we do not think of curtailing the right to drive beyond state licensing tests and drunk driving suspensions. 

The good liberals who wish to characterize gun owners as "nuts" call this comparison invalid, but both activities involve the possibility of non-consensual death at the hands of an out of control tool user. In both cases, the victims are often unaware of the act which will become an imminent threat to their life or well-being.  In both cases, astute licensure of the user and control over the form of the weapon could reduce deaths, yet we seem disinterested altering our driving habits. If reduction of the loss of life due to violence is the goal, why not focus on any weapon of mass destruction?

Some constructive suggestions to help reduce the number of traffic fatalities:

--Limit the horsepower of vehicles. In Europe cars do just fine at even higher speed limits than in the States at considerably lower average horsepowers (70-100 bhp compared to the U.S. which tends to 180-250.)

--Require all drivers to undergo Defensive Driving courses before they can get a drivers license.

--Disallow certain groups of mentally ill people from driving. Perhaps the same groups who would be disallowed firearms would also be disallowed driving licenses.

--Ban cell phones and texting while driving (duh?)

--Lower speed limits, which saves gas and lives

The aggression of a time-pressed society plays itself out in the phenomena of road rage, or worse, the mesmerized tailgating which is a part of daily-driving. People drive offensively to hopefully gain a few minutes in arrival time, risking their lives as well as mine. Both guns and cars are tools which can mete out death, whether intentional or due to inattention.

Why are traffic deaths accepted as the price of life in a free society while gun deaths are demonized? The damage wrought upon the individual is commensurate in either activity, and often just as indiscriminate.

Swallow This

Here we go again with
Mickey Mouse and Rin-Tin-Tin 
--Old Army Cadence Call 

I'm crazy for trying and crazy for crying
And I'm crazy for loving you 
--Crazy, Patsy Cline 

No escape from the mass mind rape
Play it again jack and then rewind the tape
And then play it again and again and again
Until your mind is locked in 
--Bullet in the Head, 
Rage Against the Machine
  ___________________

Is gun control a real life issue or just another hot-button topic used by both parties to keep We the People in a constant state of emotional upheaval?  The issue serves to polarize and harden the plaque in our partisan arteries, without demandingd any rigorous proof which might substantiate the taking of one side over the other.

Meanwhile, our national "debate" hinges on the straw man argument: You are for gun control, or you are for unfettered Wild West violence.  Good, compassionate limp-wristed liberals vs. insane, gun-toting bloodthirsty tea baggers.  Only, the reality is not so facile. Who speaks for common sense today?

Let us use the figure of 30,000 annual gun homicides in the United States (this figure includes justifiable use of firearms).  30K is a lot of dead people, but so what?  Dead folks are helpful to society in many different ways; in fact, they are essential lest we deplete our raw resources. Requiescat In Pace.

Why do we get crazy about gun deaths but barely raise a whisper about the approximately 100,000 annual U.S. deaths due to  wrongly prescribed pharmaceutical drugs and drug reactions and interactions?  There is one death (accidental or intentional) every 24 minutes in the U.S. due to drugs found in our own medicine cabinets; 61 deaths per day, on average, or 22,265 deaths per year.  How do you legislate drug safety?

Good liberals decry the gun lobby and take easy pot shots at those who embrace their guns, but a far bigger and more nefarious lobby is that of Big Pharma, whose products will kill every one of us far more efficiently and in larger numbers than will guns any day of the week.  Insidiously, too.

If gun deaths are unacceptable, then so too are prescription drug deaths, or tobacco-related deaths, or alcohol-related deaths.  We tried to legislate the latter with the Eighteenth Amendment and the Volstead Act but found out that our citizens have a remarkable facility for circumventing the law.  Banning things rarely works in a free society, though legislation may. The caveat is that a free society must sign on to the strictures. We abide by a Bill of Rights which accords us the right to weapons ownership.

The issue comes down to power and control of our lives. Are we a liberal or a conservative society?  Is the Federal government  allowed or legally able to force background checks and then to use these as investigative and intelligence tools?  Why and how can the government use private legal purchase of firearms to establish a national database for firearms purchasers?  Further, is such a warrantless intrusion into our rights of privacy and ownership consistent with what we are as Americans?

Why do we have a Fourth Amendment?  We should get clear on this when discussing Second Amendment infringements.

Guns look scary and go "BOOM!", and when used destructively, the results can be spectacular.  Because it is a simple, discrete item, it is easy to focus on.  We are susceptible to being riled up by the press and our leaders like marionette puppets chittering on about the latest train wreck dujour, whether personal or political (or best -- a combination of both).  Yet we ignore the many other forms of death which stalk us every day of our lives, some of which may be as easily legislated as gun ownership and may be more productive in terms of protection.

It seems that we have an unspoken covenant that condones certain methods of self-destruction, while opposing gun violence. But why is the death wrought at the end of a gun any different from that caused by any number of other mundane modalities?

What are willing to swallow? At the current mortality rate from prescription drugs, we have more dead bodies stacked up every 11 days than we do victims of all spree shootings since 1980.  Where is our sense of perspective?  All of this death without one extended magazine or assault rifle.

Guns are viewed as symbols of freedom by many Americans.  In fact, we would not have our nation had the citizens not owned firearms; it was not via mediation that the Brits decided to leave us to our own devices.

We are also a nation of death, and one form is as serviceable as the next.

A Windegg

And here is an example of stupid thinking, the Regress Problem in action:

FOCUS | Arming Black People Would Have Prevented Slavery?

Aviva Shen, ThinkProgress 
Shen writes: "Larry Ward, chairman of Gun Appreciation Day, 
argued that if African slaves had been armed,
 they would have been able to prevent slavery from ever happening."

Shen quotes Chairman Ward on CNN:

"[I]f African Americans had been given the right to keep and bear arms from day one of the country’s founding, perhaps slavery might not have been a chapter in our history."

How does one even begin to address this absurdity?  Would the slaves, which of course they were, have kept their flintlocks in their Plantation shanties? No -- slaves do not get to own guns.  Maybe Mr. Ward can work from that premise and construct something. 

But MAYBE, if you did not deal in slaving -- if you did not OWN slaves -- they would not have had to fight not to be slaves. But once in America, they could not retroactively have prevented themselves from the facticity of their slave-ness.   

Now, maybe if they had guns in Africa (prior to enslavement), those might have trumped spears and any other wiles their captors imposed, and they might have avoided ever becoming slaves.  And if pigs had wings ...

It just hurts my head, these weak attempts at imposing potential historical revisionism based upon stupidity.  The National Rifle Association needs to ally itself with some vocal intelligent people; gun owners are not all, or probably even mostly, ignorant buffoons as the liberal press would wish to portray them. Ward's statement is so embarrassingly ignorant and transparently exploitative, it simply reinforces the stereotype and keeps the divide in place.

It seems the "best" refutation the conservatives can front is of the sort done by Alex Jones versus Piers Morgan (CNN; Piers, Mr. Rescind-the-2nd-Amendment -- Alex, Mr Let's-Run-Piers-Out-of-the -US-on-a-Rail.)  It is terrible, sloppy, and such grotesque show, but the people eat it up.  As a staunch Civil Rights advocate, I am embarrassed for my Republic when I see such things, on both sides.  Where is the rigor?  The respect, for any thing or any one?

Per the hapless Mr. Ward, it is Blaxploitation redux.

Scattershot

This is the argument of a totalitarian. 
You can't know what we're doing to protect you, 
even if we're doing it to you, 
because then we can't protect you 
and you will be killed by bad people 
and it will be your own fault 
--Should Auld Civil Liberties Be Forgot, 
Charles Pierce 

What a wonder is a gun
What a versatile invention!
First of all, when you've a gun-
Everybody pays attention 
--Gun Song, Assassins soundtrack

 They who can give up essential liberty
to obtain a little temporary safety,
deserve neither liberty nor safety 
--Benjamin Franklin
 ________________

Along with death and taxes, gambling remains Big Business in the United States.

As the mega-million dollar state lotteries roll on despite the player's incredibly slim odds of winning, this metaphor seems right for a society that accepts odds of thousand-to-one of winning. The  
Lotto Mentality was the impetus behind entering the Phony War on Terror (PWOT ©) and drives much of our legislation, including our gun laws.  We buy Lotto tickets, fight wars and legislate with only the slightest chance of winning.

Betting on a legal solution to our domestic violence issue is as losing a proposition as is buying a Florida Lottery ticket.  It is a response to the cry to "do something", but it is as well thought out as an grade school teacher denying the entire class recess because someone threw a spitball. (This is not to dismiss a spree killing as being akin to such a classroom transgression, but to compare the punishment of all for the crime of one.)

We fight in Iraq and Afghanistan and call it a war while in reality it is nothing but controlled bully behavior, asserting our military dominance under the pretense of caring about their welfare.  In reality, we occupy their country because they are the enemy.

The same bullying is conducted in the United States towards its own citizens, when Ranger feels like the enemy because he believes he has the right to own weapons, including those that would be carried by a law enforcement officer.  If a government does not trust its citizenry, then it is an adversary, and is not by, of and for the people; the people are not the enemy.

Gun ownership will not protect our democracy; then again, neither will anything else, to include myriad technologies.  It is the hallmark of a cosseted democratic society to believe that we can be protected.

Did Jose Padilla think that he would be thrown in a brig, devoid of all rights of citizenship? Did "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh expect to bear the barbaric treatment thrown his way? Did Bradley Manning expect two years in prison before even being tried for an offense?  What were the odds?

Will guns make us free?  Probably not, but they are an indicator of the health of our freedoms and our status as free citizens versus subjects of our elected government.  It is ironic that so many argue for the continued abridgement of our civil rights, as though a bloated entity will be a better controller of our behavior than each of us may be himself.

Killing is wrong, whatever the source.  Handguns and assault rifles are but a piddling threat compared to what can be done in the name of the government.  Ranger for one does not fear the governed.  The abrogation of gun rights once accorded to the governed rarely bodes well for those so deprived.  Consider how the Holocaust might have played out had the slaughtered had access to small arms -- think about the doomed Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

Back to the Lotto: You can play and not win, or you can not play and not win; either way, you're a loser.  If my government does not trust me, I have lost the most important measure of citizenship.

Winning $530 million off a $1 ticket will not compensate for that loss.

Gunning for It

They're talking about things of which
they don't have the slightest understanding, anyway.
It's only because of their stupidity
that they're able to be so sure of themselves 

--The Trial, Kafka 

We didn't love freedom enough 
--The Gulag Archipelago, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

_________________

The Phony War on Terror (PWOT ©) has spawned myths that have been sewn into our gun culture.

We were told that being alert would alleviate our fear and neutralize the threat, a threat left largely undefined.  The first reaction to the 9-11-01 attacks was to place National Guard riflemen in the airports of America to create a simulacrum safety net against the "bad guys".

From this image issued a cornucopia of terrorist TV and movie depictions of terrorists bearing old fashioned AK's and semi-auto pistols being ferreted out from behind every bush by brave Jack Bauers.  The problem with this media-driven bravado was that it did not address the actual threat.

The closest we came to suffering this sort of threat was the inside the wire shooting by Major Nidal Hasan at Ft. Hood, an event which was entirely predictable and avoidable (as were the World Trade Center attacks themselves if anyone had connected the dots.)  Terrorism was not the problem, but rather a failure of leadership.

The collective insanity of our national reaction to a containable terror threat has led to a warped perception that our safety is enhanced by firearms, a hyperbolic idea beaten into our consciousness at all levels.

The United States has not seen a significant firearms-related terrorist event and we will not because such an attack would lack the drama demanded by the terrorists.  Terror must be significant and, well, terrifying.  It is unlikely that terrorists will ever engage in shootouts in the Homeland.

We confuse the low-intensity conflict in far-flung reaches of the earth like Libya, Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Gaza, Israel, Philippines, Mexico, Columbia, et. al. with U.S. concerns at home, leading us to the false conclusion that this will happen in America.  Being so misled allows the proliferation of government security excesses and the militarization of our civilian security and law enforcement agencies.  While this does not make us safer, it does make us less free.

Imagine what our unemployment rates would look like if the people employed by the current U.S. security apparatus, including the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) -- as though we were Britain during the Blitz -- were not padding about in para-pornographic airport pursuits.  How many people are employed in nebulous security functions that provide no protection from any actual threat.  Security and Prisons are the only growth industries in America.

The entire system is like a metastasized cancer -- it is systemic, but we do not see it because we are in the tumor.

We fail to see the fiscal cliff that is based upon security, defense and intelligence activities that have little or any rational basis for their existence.

Zombie Apocalypse

I'm shocked! 
--Casablanca (1942) 

War is the spectacular and bloody projection
of our everyday life
--J. Krishnamurti 

When the fight was over, nothing was solved,
but nothing mattered. We all felt saved. 
--Fight Club (1999) 

Tell me with the rapture and the
reverent in the right - right.
You vitriolic, patriotic, slam, fight, bright
light, feeling pretty psyched. 
--It's the End of the World as We Know It,
 R.E.M.

______________________

The Global War on Terror and the predictable knee-jerk reaction to the recent grotesque elementary school shooting share similarities. Both events will have elicited emotional responses that resulted in national policy based upon a feeling of vulnerability and demand for a response.

The terrorist attacks of 9-11-01 birthed the Phony War on Terror (PWOT ©), a self-proclaimed generational war the hoped-for success of which is based on no solid academic study.  The 9-11 Commission's report was an emotional cover-up for the failure.  The shouts to "Remember Newtown!" will lead the march to gun control laws, which will always be ineffective.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have thrown billions of dollars at an external threat, not an existential one as we were led to believe.  The real threat was containable and achievable without the declaration of war. So too addressing the tragedy of mass murder in America will require more than curtailing gun ownership rights.

"We Need to Protect Our Children!" is analogous to, "We must fight them there to keep us from fighting them here," or, "We must not let a mushroom cloud form over our cities." Effective policy cannot be based upon fear and irrational thought; emotionalism is not leadership.

We should trust our system of government and allow the Congress to do what they are constitutionally required to do, rejecting a unilateral Executive Order which would be created from the chaos of emotional reaction.

The problem is not high-capacity magazines or incorrectly defined assault rifles -- the problem is that our culture is death-oriented rather than life-affirming.  We have weak-minded members of society playing games disgorging blood splattering heroics, so valuable that developers stay at the top of the stock market weeks after new releases and parents line up in holiday queues to gift their young ones with this antithesis to the spirit of yuletide cheer.  We love to ask what guns should we use during the zombie apocalypse, funnin' with the idea of having power enough to shoot the undead. It would seem, by all the current renting of garments, that the Apocalypse is upon us.

Even our down time -- our relaxation mode -- is spent watching or engaging in ersatz gun violence in our commerce with various forms of media. Scientists now know that on some level, the brain assimilates ersatz actions (even gossip) as actual, lived events. We swing from angst over not being able to procure these simulacrums of violence to angst over the thought of being unable to protect our children and ourselves from the actuality of the thing.

In a monumental height of hypocrisy, those same actors in the violent films, or the makers of the violent games, then campaign for gun control.  They make millions portraying gun violence then wash themselves off with their morally superior attitudes, which amounts to some more acting. An example would be Angelina Jolie who portrays gun-toting action heroine Lara Croft, and then murdered journalist Daniel Pearl's wife -- she plays both victim and perpetrator. There is no coherence here in a mind which seeks to make understanding; it is schizophrenic, at best.

All the while we wallow in violent representations our proxies -- called soldiers and contractors -- are waging actual violence around the planet while we celebrate their handiwork, the bloody and broken bodies plastered on the front of our erstwhile dignified national news magazines.We celebrate the non-judicial murders executed at the behest of our President, while crying crocodile tears when the same President abhors violence, performing as a penitent at the site of the recent school murders.

This is hypocrisy in the highest. The United States has been shooting civilian children and innocent adults since September 2001. We are no strangers to extrajudicial, indiscriminate death.

We are comfortable, or at least impassive, about the deaths committed overseas in our name, yet we get incensed when this violence settles on our doorstep. Are the lives of Connecticut kids more valuable than those of kids in Afghanistan of Iraq, or any country that carries assault rifles given to them by U.S. foreign military aid programs?  When our Defense policy is based upon the concept of overwhelming and non-proportional violence, how can we say that gun violence is a discrete and perplexing phenomenon?

We love cage fighting, and boxing and every blood-lusty thing we can sink our teeth into, yet have the temerity to act shocked when our more vulnerable members of society act out their revenge fantasies.  Maybe we should be listening and talking to each other as opposed to getting lost down the rabbit hole of self-indulgent video pursuits.  We can claim to have thousands of Facebook and Twitter friends who consume our ersatz self, but who knows our soul?  Who can feel anothers fear and react accordingly?

We are victims of our gluttony, gullibility and fear, and guns merely facilitate the problem.

Gun Shows

--All photos taken at the April 2012
North Florida Gun Show
___________________

Ranger will share this tour d'espirit of the most recent Tallahassee Florida gun show, walking the beat so you don't have to.

Imagine being a delegate at the Republican convention, then turning several clicks to the right. Then turn the dial 'til it is at its right-most setting, and you have the basic spread attending these shows. The American Civil Liberties Union does not have a membership table at the gun show (though they would probably defend the rights of these citizens, too.)

As a gun show denizen for 50 years, Ranger notices a hard turn from collectors of curios and relics towards Chinese arms bazaar dealers of Kill Your Neighbor high capacity rifles and pistols. The trend began around 1989-90, when Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) allowed the Federal Firearms License (FFL) dealers to use their licenses off premises, transforming these erstwhile collectors events into another commercial venture.

Prior to 1990, gunshows were places for collectors and enthusiasts. However, that quaint appreciation for the gun-as-craft has largely passed by these type of general shows; it is only to be seen at the occasional special collector's convention. If the government wanted to address the issue they could simply outlaw off premises use of FFL dealers.

One wonders why this is not done since it is simple and legal. It would remove the aura of the Kill Your Neighbor fervor which presently dominates the scene, returning gun collecting to a position of acceptability.

Do the Right wing nuts ever stop to think about the people around them when they wallow in their apocalyptic visions? If society descended into anarchy, all the folks at the show would be armed and dangerous . . . does anyone consider that?

Classes for the Concealed Carry Weapons (CCW) permit were big business at the show. While they criticize government encroachment, they make big bucks off of the CCW laws. The classes run $145, exclusive of the actual state cost to apply for the permit. The class is two hours, and is given twice per day of show. At 40 heads per class over two days, that over $23,000 take per show.

Dialog over the issue of guns is as convoluted, emotional and often nonsensical as an episode of Survivor.

Zombie Zoo

--Fr. Brownell's spring catalog

You can make a big impression or
Go through life unseen
You might wind up restricted and over seventeen
It's so hard to be careful, so easy to be led
Somewhere beyond the pavement
You'll find the living dead
--Zombie Zoo, Tom Petty

License to kill gophers by the government
of the United Nations.
Man, free to kill gophers at will.
To kill, you must know your enemy,
and in this case my enemy is a varmint.
And a varmint will never quit - ever.
They're like the Viet Cong - Varmint Cong.
So you have to fall back on superior intelligence
and superior firepower.
And that's all she wrote.
--Caddyshack (1980)

8. Keep moving, keep low, keep quiet, keep alert!
9. No place is safe, only safer.
10. The zombie may be gone, but the threat lives on
--The Zombie Survival Guide,
Max Brooks
__________________

Note the latest haute couture in the gun world: vanity magazine release buttons sporting death's heads, "infidel" and the biohazard symbol, showing the world what a bad MoFo you are. Then you have the commercial ammunition for zombies or varmints, depending upon one's needs at any given moment (perhaps the two are interchangeable, at times); terrorism is located somewhere in between these two.

And then, the targets. Seen this Wednesday at a gun shop in Jacksonville, Florida, witness the generic "Terrorist" target, looking suspiciously like Osama bin Laden, on sale for $79.00. In addition, large pallets of various ammunition were featured in the center of the store.

This seems to put the lie to the National Rifle Association's fear of the Obama administration's yanking of bullets for your guns. Not to worry, they -- the guns -- can still go "boom".

Cowboys and Aliens

--Bigger is Badder

What the hell?
--Cowboys and Aliens (2011)

And anger of the Lord will blaze against you,
and he will close the heavens and there will not be rain,
and the earth will not give you its fullness
--fr. Shema, Jewish Prayer

Sometimes I feel like a motherless child
Long way from my home
Sometimes I wish I could fly
Like a bird up in the sky
--Motherless Child, Van Morrison
______________________

This is a moment in a day in the life this week of Ranger, out on the range in the hinterlands of Northwest Florida, Solar System. It is hard to tell if he is the Cowboy or the Alien. He is inclined towards "alien" as he was the only one not "strapped" in this little episode.

The scene: A local mechanic's shop, right wing radio blaring its inanity, National Rifle Association mag on the table. The men talked of guns, one vociferously bad-mouthing a gun control advocate called "Shuma". This caused Ranger some consternation as 2nd Amendment issues are near and dear to him, and he had not heard of this Shuma. The wildly vilified Black Bart turned out to be Rep. Charles Schumer (D-NY).

At the point of recognition, Ranger said, "Let's be real here [first wrong assumption] -- the first assault weapons ban occurred by Executive Order from the pen of George H.W. Walker." Came the invective: "I don't talk to liberals!", he said disgustedly, after he pulled his shirt aside to display the 9 mm pistol stashed in his belt line.

Now Ranger has always been against gun control, and this exchange should have made his little Red, White and Blue heart flutter, except . . . it did not. It's 2011 and we will not even talk to one another, and some of us are so threatened here in The Homeland ™ that they spend their days with pistols in their belts. Where do we meet?

This is not the sign of a healthy society.

Last week we sighted a police officer in a black outfit and a shirt imprinted, "Drug Task Force". He was carrying a high-cap Glock in a gunfighter, low-slung holster with enough gear to fight Tet '68. What's that all about?

Have we gone insane? Ranger likes guns and oppose gun control, but does not carry because it is not wise. When you carry, you are less likely to leave a confrontation -- the weapon heightens the chance of a dangerous or lethal interaction.

Was the gunslinger flashing his hide-out gun threatening me? Could I kill him before he pulls his weapon? Was it a thumbing of the nose? A show of solidarity with the shop's owner (who also sports a gun in his belt), or something else?

Ranger's advice: Don't let someone within striking distance even if you've got a handgun rubbing your dick, 'cause that could be the last thing it ever touches.

The Crown of Creation

Tonight we trade
our vanity for insanity
--Charlie Sheen

We cannot have peace among men
whose hearts delight in killing any living creature.
By every act that glorifies or even tolerates
such moronic delight in killing
we set back the progress of humanity
-- Rachel Carson

We have guided missiles
and misguided men
--Martin Luther King, Jr.

Could kill a man with a gun like this.
Kill anybody, black or white.
And if he were holding his gun in his hand,
nobody could run over him;
they would have to respect him
--Almos' a Man, Richard Wright
_____________________

Ranger recently acquired a WW II-captured P08 Luger with accessories from the grandson of a recently-deceased veteran. The pistol had no value to the man and he did not feel the need to keep the items.

Shooting the pistol yesterday I recognized it as a precision piece of advanced firearms engineering, mechanically complex and ergonomic, before CNC capabilities -- tight and efficient. (As an aside, the gun was designed before we had a clear definition of how a semi-automatic pistol should look or function. The toggle bolt was copied from the 1873 U.S. Winchester lever-action rifle and adopted to a recoil blowback system; pure mechanical genius.)

But, so what? Technological marvels of the 20th century abound. There was the P51 Mustang fighter escort, ground attacking aircraft. The Enola Gay sits in a place of honor in the Smithsonian. What they, like the Luger, Mauser, the MG 34 and 42 machine guns, share is their unity of purpose: to efficiently kill our fellow humans.

My Luger is a beautiful piece of nastiness highly-coveted in the collector world. As with all of the aforementioned items, they were the crown of creation of God's chosen species, and they all rain death. When these weapons were introduced the U.S. was not an electrified society and indoor plumbing -- much less cars -- was not a given. To keep it on a Ranger level, venereal disease was incurable and appendicitis along with other routine infections were killers. Children died young from common childhood ailments.

High school education was a luxury for the average person, but the manufacturers of death-dealing devices were decades ahead of commensurate civilian advances. The U.S., Germany, Belgium and the Czech areas armed the world, and everyone had a repeating long-range rifle available to them at a reasonable price.

Even as we were peddling Jesus to the natives we were arming them, too, before they even had proper clothing or reliable food. Christianity always flourished next to the firearms distribution centers of colonial precincts. The pictures in Ludwig Olsen's The Mauser Rifle show that the sign of arrival in most parts of the world, no matter how primitive, is the possession of a fine hand gun or other weapon (This is why Osama bin Laden is always photographed with his AK 74 ready to hand.)

Who could deny a God that arms his believers with such magical fire sticks? Such an item is a miracle akin to converting water to wine. We pretend to export culture, but really we export guns and violence, in the name of our God or creed.

Ranger is not against the use of weapons to justly defend one's person or country, but we must consider the brutality wrought by our fine technology. The march of civilization has often advanced at the end of a rifle, and this is worthy of consideration. Much as we revile Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD), gunpowder-based weapons have killed far more people than has what we now call WMD's. Firearms are WMD's as wielded by the individual.

Richard Wright's "Almos'A Man" considered the idea succinctly, the naive protagonist "Dave" standing for all of mankind. After he gleefully feels the power of the shot, he realizes his mistake in shooting Jenny the mule, an innocent beast so vital to the farm, and helplessly packs the bullet wound with mud. He is overcome by guilt and shame, but there is no unshooting the poor beast.

For all of our fancy engineering, we are but children playing with morbid, murderous toys.

--Lisa & Jim