I've never been a
hunter, never owned a gun, never shot anything in the wild, never saw the
pleasure of killing. In this day and age with a torrent of controversy
about gun control on all levels of society, with gun sales going through the
roof and with the majority of Americans opposing any major restrictions on gun
sales and use, I found it interesting the other day to read that on a farm in
Scotland a herd (flock?) of sheep had enclosed in their numbers a lost or
orphaned or abandoned fawn. As the farmer drove his animals along the
road the sheep kept the fawn securely protected in the center of
the herd.
I've never been
robbed at gunpoint, never had my house robbed at gunpoint, never had my wife or
daughter molested by a gun-toting hood. I don't know if my attitude toward
guns might have changed if any of that had actually happened. What I do
know is that "he that taketh up the sword dies by the
sword." The more guns that are bought, the more guns are bought to
protect against the guns that were bought. The more violent games kids buy and
play the more violent kids do violent things. Ernest Hemingway who hunted
in Africa and shot every animal that was found for him to shoot once famously
said, "I never met a gun I didn't like." Shooting ranges are
increasingly being used by women and girls. Yes, there are solutions to the
world of guns and gun violence although I'm not the one to offer profound
sociological analyses of this or anything related to it. I do think whatever
laws or restrictions are to be put in place in gun control have to be
underwritten by moms and dads and families and churches and schools and Scouts
all coming together to take on the gun lobby and to enact local laws and teach
children well about violence and how to deal with it from the time they're two
years old.
A society that takes
up the sword as a substitute for more rational and needed measures of
controlling violence becomes an armed mob. If we measure it by gun sales
we are close to living in that society now. It took American society untold
generations to free itself from the violence of slavery and the suppression of
women's right to vote, perhaps the time is coming when the lion will
lie down with the lamb, when "They shall not hurt or destroy in all my
holy mountain, for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the
waters that cover the sea."
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