The following is the opinion and analysis of the writer:
A gun is a tool. It is a manufactured implement with an intended use. Tools are useless until someone employs them. Guns do not, in fact, kill people. People kill people. People kill innocents and they kill themselves — with guns — every single day in this country. It’s the American tool of choice.
I have a brand new chainsaw. I live in a rural area, and it comes in handy. I can take down dead trees, trim branches, make firewood, etc. My new saw is great, it works exactly as intended. But I feel no compulsion to join the National Chainsaw Association or Chainsaw Owners of America, which is good since those organizations don’t exist. And why would they? Why would anyone worship a tool, even if it works very well? Perhaps if it was also widely embraced as a symbol of national pride. But that’s just silly. It’s. A. Tool.
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If we want to project national toughness, why not select the nail as our object of worship? No one ever says this or that guy is “tough as guns.” Sure, it’s crazy to honor the nail this way but if we’re in the market for a tough-as-nails national symbol, there it is! “You can have my nails when you pry them from my cold, dead hands.”
Oddly enough, guns are afforded protections in this country that are not afforded to any other tool. A 2013 state law in Arizona, for instance, makes it illegal for a town to destroy guns that have been confiscated after a crime or voluntarily turned in to authorities. A 2005 federal law shields gun manufacturers from civil liability. How can that be? We allow children to be massacred by cowards who kill from a distance, but hands off those guns! Those tools have rights!! Those rights do not come from the Constitution. The Constitution endows citizens with rights, not inanimate objects. Only politicians do that.
Assault rifles and handguns are tools designed to wound and kill people. They may do so in the hands of trained soldiers defending our country and allies. They may do so in the hands of trained law enforcement trying to protect us. And they may do so in the hands of ordinary citizens in instances of self-protection, though that is exceptionally rare.
When that tool is in the hands of someone who rages, or someone who fears and hates those who are different, or someone who holds it in his hands and feels magically transformed from the average guy he truly is into Dirty Harry or Rambo, it will still do what it is designed to do. The gun does not discern those differences. It cannot detect mental instability. It’s. A. Tool. We must make those distinctions ourselves. We don’t allow toddlers to play with knives, even if they seem to have their act together. Wrong tool for the wrong user. Assault rifles and handguns in the general public? Wrong tools for the wrong users. There’s no cause to get emotional about this if we just remember that a gun is a tool. That’s all it is. It is nothing more.
These lethal tools are granted special status by politicians up to their necks in greed and cowardice. Until we outvote the extremists who support them, the gun will have rights and reverence afforded to no other tool, the daily carnage of gun homicides and gun suicides will continue, and we’ll continue to be left with only thoughts and prayers.
Our national symbol is the bald eagle. Strong, noble, courageous. Do we need a tool as well? If so, I submit the honorable crescent wrench. Useful, adaptable and wholly incapable of slaughtering dozens of children while they sit in their classrooms learning about their nation’s exceptionalism.
Mike Cohen is retired and lives in Oro Valley.