Saturday, December 04, 2021
The Good Guy With a Gun
We have faced some terrible mythologies lately: That life-saving vaccines kill people, that the elections were stolen, that we should find something to like about the Houston Astros. But the worst of them all is the myth that "the best way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun."
First of all, it doesn't really work out. Draw two columns. For the next few weeks, list all the stories you read about shootings, suicides by gun, and the like in one column. In the other column, list all of the stories about private citizens using their guns to stop a crime. Then consider: how is this theory working out in a nation where there are more guns than people?
Second, and more importantly, the myth of "a good guy with a gun" does something terrible: it turns someone into a "good guy" just because they have a gun.
Like Kyle Rittenhouse, say.
And now we have the whole terrible Crumbley family of Oxford, Michigan. Ethen Crumbley was the 15-year-old school shooter who killed four people and hurt eight this week. His parents gave him the gun as a present, apparently. I'm sure they did that because their kid could be the "good guy with a gun."
I know men who have this fantasy of being just that kind of good guy-- that they will shoot someone who threatens them. It's disturbing. And dangerous.
And only getting worse.
