Lethal Passage_ The Story of a Gun - Erik Larson [109]
Prophecy is a dangerous pursuit, but some trends seem certain to continue gaining momentum for a good while to come. We will see, for example, a proliferation of more advanced and lethal variations on legal weaponry, such as guns with built-in laser sights and ever-more-powerful handguns, including more models built to fire .50-caliber bullets, the largest caliber allowed for unrestricted sale.
We will witness, and soon, firearms massacres conducted in realms we now naively consider off-limits to even our most craven killers. Schools are now accepted killing grounds—what Nicholas Elliot did is old hat. Post-office massacres do not surprise us either. The link between postal workers and random gun violence is now well-established in contemporary mythology, causing us all to contemplate that trip to the post office just a little more carefully than we did in the past. Law firms have been done. So have playgrounds and public pools.
What remains? Well, churches certainly. Funerals. Grocery stores. Museums. Baseball games. Hospitals—well, perhaps not hospitals. Most major urban hospitals have already felt the unaccustomed sting of violence in their sterile corridors and have already stepped up security.
We can in the next few years expect to see metal detectors turning up at the entrance doors of an ever-wider array of institutions, such as malls, emergency rooms, elementary schools, and fast-food shops located in perilous neighborhoods. This last may be of limited value, however. Another neighbor of mine was held up at the drive-through window of a Wendy’s restaurant located a few blocks from our homes. She had been hungry when she drove up to the window. When a robber pointed a gun at her head as she waited in line, her appetite disappeared.
The question is, when will we as a culture get the point?
In discussing this book with my editor and her marketing associates, we all came to the same conclusion. This book would never lack for a promotional tie to a national news event because a new massacre was bound to occur within the viable lifetime of the book, and this massacre would be more horrifying than the last.
When will we as a culture stop seeing gun ownership as a God-granted right, so precious as to be nurtured and preserved at the cost of thirty thousand corpses a year; when will we at last demand that all those armed patriots out there first demonstrate a little responsibility and recognize that while they are in the woods waiting for that eight-point buck to wander within range, a newly released felon in Nebraska is buying a gun to blow his ex-girlfriend away, a kid in East Baltimore is tucking a .45 into his belt to defend his lunch money, a toddler in Chicago is aiming the family gun at his baby brother, and a drunken husband in Beverly Hills is climbing the stairs to teach his wife a lesson she will not soon forget?
We can solve the problem of firearms violence. The National Rifle Association and its homicidal allies in Washington would have us believe otherwise, but we can solve this. We have solved other equally intractable, even comparably lethal, problems. We have awakened to the dangers of smoking to the point where smokers are now an embattled minority. We have virtually eliminated polio, smallpox, and the German measles. We have controlled highway litter and sharply reduced the presence of lead in our lives—atmospheric lead, that is. Anyone who has been to a recycling depot lately and seen young and old dutifully sorting colored glass from clear cannot help but marvel at how much we as a culture have changed our wasteful ways.
The nation’s success in reducing the death rate from traffic accidents provides the best model of what could be done with guns. Through a combination of lower speed limits, increased enforcement of drunk-driving