Lethal Passage_ The Story of a Gun - Erik Larson [7]
I can appreciate the lethal appeal of weapons and the fine craftsmanship evident in such premium handguns as the Colt Python and, yes, the Smith & Wesson Model 29 used by Dirty Harry. When I go to gun shows, as I do now in my capacity as a federally licensed firearms dealer, I am drawn, as are most of the rest of the browsers around me, to pick up the guns spread so invitingly across the exhibitors’ tables, especially the notorious weapons, the fully automatic AK-47s and MAC-11s, the Sten guns and pistol-grip Mossbergs. As a creature of the James Bond era, I am particularly fascinated by the silencers, which can be acquired by anyone with a clean record willing to pay the $200 federal transfer tax covering such devices. At gun shows, the urge to touch is strong and has caused many dealers to spread a soft black mesh over the guns on their tables. I confess to at least thinking the words “Make my day” or “Hasta la vista, baby” on my rounds, although I do not own any guns and, as a parent of two resourceful children age five and three, have no plans to buy any. I am content to let hunters hunt and can certainly appreciate the fun of getting out into the wilderness on a crisp autumn day in the company of one’s friends, although I confess the charm of “blooding,” or dumping a pail of deer viscera over the head of a novice hunter on the occasion of his very first kill, still eludes me.
Where I run afoul of the tenets of the National Rifle Association is in my belief that people should be allowed to acquire guns only after going through a licensing process at least as rigorous as getting a driver’s license. As things stand now, a blind man can buy a gun. I hasten to add here that I mean no offense to the sightless. It just seems to me that anyone who buys a firearm ought first to be asked to prove he or she can see well enough to distinguish between a burglar and the paperboy. When I first mentioned this notion in print, I took it to be an unassailable position. I soon heard from two irate souls who accused me of stereotyping the blind. One of my critics wrote: “I know several blind persons (men and women) who have guns—for all the reasons anyone else might own them. These people represent the same cross section of sensitivity to the issue … and they demonstrate behavior as responsible as that of anyone else.” The author accused me of believing “that blindness should be prima facie disqualification for owning a gun.” Such a belief, he wrote, was “totally unsupportable on any basis other than unreasonable discrimination.”
Nonetheless, I stand my ground.
Where I further risk abrading the prickly sensibilities of the gun camp is in my belief that a federal firearms dealer’s license of the kind I now possess should be the hardest, most expensive professional license to acquire in America, instead of one of the easiest and cheapest. I cross the friend-foe line too in my belief that America is currently in the midst of a gun crisis that can no longer be considered just a manifestation of that good old frontier spirit but instead has become a costly global embarrassment.
That a handgun crisis does exist should be well beyond dispute by now, given the bleak slag heap of statistics on gunshot death and injury now casting its shadow over our society. These statistics could kindle outrage in a stone but have failed, somehow, to shake any tears from America’s gun industry and the gun culture that supports it.
Over the last two years firearms killed almost 70,000 Americans, more than the total of U.S. soldiers killed in the entire Vietnam War. Every year handguns alone account for 22,000 deaths. In Los Angeles County, 8,050 people were killed or wounded in 1991, according