I appreciate the letters from the Gun Responsibilities Subcommittee members in last week’s Viewpoints. These letters demonstrate another of the many things I learned from the Gun Rights and Responsibilities Committee meetings — that every one of us had false assumptions and misunderstandings about the other side.
The Gun Responsibilitists saw the Gun Rights side’s interest in using guns for self-defense as both bad and not necessary.
The Gun Rightists saw the Gun Responsibilities side as without any understanding of, training in or experience with the use of guns for self-defense.
The Gun Responsibilitists saw the Gun Rights side as not caring about gun violence when they pointed out that the Aurora/Newtown shootings involved only a tiny percentage of the total deaths and injuries related to firearms in the U.S.
The Gun Rightists saw the Gun Responsibilities side as naïve fools for ignoring the daily loss of life and injuries caused by gun violence on the West Side of Chicago — 10 blocks from where we sat.
The Gun Responsibilitists saw the Gun Rights side as worried about defending themselves against the government and unconcerned about minority rights.
The Gun Rightists saw the Gun Responsibilities side as unconcerned about the minority community being shot up by minority street gangs.
The Gun Responsibilitists saw the Gun Rights side as interested in locking up the mentally ill against their will.
The Gun Rightists saw the Gun Responsibilities side as unconcerned if the dangerously mentally ill continue to freely walk around and more interested in not calling them “crazies” than in protecting both society and these individuals themselves from their actions.
The blind Oak Parkers and the elephant
The trauma surgeon saw the results of gun violence and the tragedies the families of the victims had to endure.
The West-Side landlord who lives in the African-American community, works in the African-American community, has married into the African-American community and has actually pulled a gun in self-defense, regularly saw bad people walking around on the West Side of Chicago.
The social worker saw the importance of not stigmatizing the mentally ill.
The wife of a man born in Croatia under the USSR saw that citizens need access to guns.
The theologically-educated journalist saw guns as bad.
The anesthesiologist saw the need to defend oneself until the police arrive to deal with trouble.
The lawyer saw the need for more laws.
The retired NRA safety instructor saw gun violence caused by criminals and the dangerously mentally ill, not trained law-abiding citizens.
The pacifist saw 15- to 25-year-old males committing armed robbery as children potentially getting killed if civilians had guns.
The former Oak Park police officer saw gun restrictions on law-abiding citizens as a limit on his Second Amendment rights.
The retired social worker saw the dangerously mentally ill as a problem but did not want them involuntarily removed from society.
Ironically, it also demonstrates why the meetings ended with the lawyer, journalist, social worker, psychologist, trauma surgeon and pacifist holding forth on the technical matters of magazine capacity limits and background checks of legal gun owners.
Meanwhile, the gun owners were asked to hold forth on how to keep the street gangs from using guns during crimes and how to prevent the dangerously mentally ill from using guns against society.
Each side ended up holding forth on topics in which the other side had the expertise!
Now you can see why the mutual and unanimous agreement on the need to decrease gun violence ran off the road into the thicket of gun control.
It also clarifies the way to get the discussion back on track — decreasing gun violence in the U.S!
Per John Barrett’s request, next week I will propose my thoughts on how to keep guns “away from criminals, the dangerously mentally ill, children and the suicidal.”