OT: me + guns + campuses

Shots were fired Sunday morning on my campus. Not a “shooting,” because no one got shot. An undergraduate who lives on campus parked his car in a parking garage and shot into a dormitory. Thank heavens, his aim wasn’t true and no one was hurt. There’s a big gouge in the wall of the dorm where the bullets struck it. The young man was identified, arrested, charged, and as of this afternoon, was being held on bail. He’s been suspended for the remainder of the semester. No explanation has yet been offered as to what possessed him to fire into a dorm. I don’t imagine we’ll get any explanation. The university hasn’t bothered to notify any staff member directly. We all read about it in the news.

This is the third time this has happened since I’ve worked here. One time, the perpetrator chose an apartment less than 100 yards away from mine in which to commit a particular phase of his crimes. I missed it only because I was in Wisconsin for mom’s funeral.

The last campus I worked on had an active shooter who kept the campus locked down for an entire morning before shooting himself in front of a group of students he was threatening. There’s tradition on that campus; three years before I was born, someone killed fourteen people there, sighting his prey from the campus bell tower. Great perspective: the rule when you shoot is that you need to keep in mind at all times where the bullet will go if it misses its target, and from there he could see the entire potential trajectory of his projectiles. Coincidentally the day Texas implemented its “campus carry” law (students who have concealed carry permits will now be able to bring their guns to the university and into classrooms with them) on the fiftieth anniversary of that event.

It’s entirely predictable, what will happen there. As this state seems to inherit version of the politics of that one, it will gradually happen here, too. Masses of people with poor impulse control, some of whom are learning how to use alcohol for the first time, cope with their emotions on their own for the first time, immersed in studies, staying up all night, in situations where they are likely to be emotionally stressed for personal or academic or financial reasons. Ask the average American college student how stressed s/he feels at any given moment. I’m guessing it’s at least an 8 on a 10 point scale, except maybe for twenty-four hours on the day after the term ends.

Yeah, put weapons in the hands of these people. That’ll go well. When it’s all over, the pro-gun people will offer their prayers. Cry their crocodile tears. Insist that we can’t talk about this now out of respect for the victims. Prevent us from ever talking about it.

I’m so tired of everything about this. As regular readers know, I grew up with guns in the house. My nieces got hunting rifles for Christmas two years ago.

About two years ago, though, I grew tired of insisting to my liberal friends that not all guns were evil. Because there was just too much evidence that most gun usage that we see every day is destructive. A responsible gun owner is a great thing, but a growing body of evidence suggests that fewer and fewer gun owners are responsible.

The guns closest to me aren’t supplying my table. They’re all aimed at me or my students.

Last night, I snapped, in yet another conversation with people from home about how all guns are good and must be allowed and how the evidence that we can see right before our very eyes about the increasing prevalence of gun violence is somehow not real, or if it is real, gun violence is the inevitable price of the infallible and immutable Second Amendment.

Just as the anti-gun people can’t accept that not every gun owner is a murderer, the hunters can’t accept that some guns are harmful and shouldn’t be available.

Meanwhile, the gun lobby insists that we get more guns. And people who believe what it has to say rush off after every incident of violence and buy a few more.

If you have the gumption to say that no matter the law, you don’t want guns around you when you’re at work, you’ll have them shoved down your throat — more threats. People who openly express their refusal to have guns in their classrooms get death threats. When I taught argumentation, I used to mention that arguments from force were not very credible. Convince me of the value of guns by holding one to my forehead. I get it. You win. I quit.

I’m just so tired. I signed up to be a researcher, and an educator, and then an academic adviser. I didn’t sign up to be a Marine or a policewoman or a spy. Bless G-d, I don’t live in a war zone. All I wanted to do was study some stuff and teach some people.

When I lived in Berlin in 2006, every now and then I’d find a building that still had bullet holes in it from the Battle of Berlin in 1945. Most of them were gone, but there were still a few, here and there in Mitte.

I wonder idly how long it will take to clear American college campuses of the bullet marks the gun lobby and its legislators are about to impose on them. It will be long after my death. Long, long.

~ by Servetus on October 13, 2015.