Guns make bullies of us all

We often use the tool at hand for whatever we’re trying to do. Got aspirin or alcohol? Drink it down ‘cause everything feels like a pain. Got a wrench? Everything looks like a pipe. Got a hammer and everything looks like a nail. Pete Seeger sang If I Had a Hammer he’d have used it to hammer out justice. It’s a wonderful song but it seems like the wrong tool.

Some of you may remember the late Congressman Steve Solarz. We went to high school together and I always remember a conversation we had about brotherhood – in student government I headed the brotherhood commission. Steve understood my passion and commented we can’t hammer brotherhood into people. Indeed, we can’t. Instead I had the privilege of inviting Jesse Owens to our school and introducing him to the assembly. Owens, an African-American, had won four medals at the 1936 Olympics in front of the Nazis in Berlin, Germany. We gave him our brotherhood award and then had the privilege of hearing him deliver an impressive and very powerful talk about brotherhood – a great alternative to using a hammer.

In the afternoon before I drafted this commentary, I read about a recent incident of abusive policing in Albany. In the evening, my email was filled with a discussion among law professors about an example in Louisville. Look at Washington and see international sabre-rattling. I looked over some draft commentary and read one about Israel’s reliance on force. And I realized there is a theme. Everybody has the same hammer with a barrel and a trigger. Much too often, from Albany to Louisville to Israel, the Philippines and many other places, the people with the guns don’t bother using their heads or their manners. They don’t have to. Them guns ‘ll make people shut up.

I don’t want to be simplistic about it. Policy changes often lead to overreaction. Focusing on domestic law enforcement, the public somehow has to support the police while also controlling it.

Nevertheless, mappingpoliceviolence.org/ tells us “There are proven solutions. Police Departments that have adopted these use of force policies kill significantly fewer people. But few departments have adopted them.”

Of course, if we could hang them up or put them away except when necessary, we could eliminate a lot of mistaken killing of innocent and unarmed people. There’s lots that police do that don’t call for guns.

Guns also don’t belong in cities. It’s one thing to use a gun for hunting but it’s another for people like George Zimmerman to think they are protecting the community by carrying a gun and killing an unarmed 17-year-old African-American who was heading away from, not toward, Zimmerman.

Guns do not belong in the hands of people who are convicted of domestic violence or any other kind of violence – only the manufacturers could truly like selling guns to people likely to use them on their families. Guns enable people to act out their worst instincts.

I support the Second Amendment right to carry a muzzle-loading-single-shot-18^th-century device deep in the woods. That’s the strict construction that conservative judges have been trying to teach us to use. Claims about the breadth of the Second Amendment come from people’s prejudices, not the Constitution. Guns should need an excuse and a warrant before they are pulled out in public because guns make bullies of us all.

— Addendum – four excellent podcasts and web sites:

Shots Fired Part 1: https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/shots-fired-part-1

Shots Fired Part 2: https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/shots-fired-part-2

https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/

http://useofforceproject.org/#project

— This commentary is scheduled for broadcast on WAMC Northeast Report, April 9, 2019.