By Amanda Marcotte
Wednesday, February 19, 2014 13:57 EST
Roy Edroso discovers a new level of self-delusion emerging from gun nuts, who are convincing themselves that they’re somehow how less “dependent” on government because of their phallic death totems. They’re all in a frenzy having to double down after a gun nut in Florida named Michael Dunn murdered a teenage boy named Jordan Davis for playing loud music, and then citing “stand your ground” in order to get away with it. (He was nonetheless convicted of three attempted murder charges, because even a bunch of racists on a Florida jury can’t justify unloading into a car that’s driving away as “self-defense”.) That means worshipping and idolizing guns in increasingly comical ways. So David French painted this picture of gun nuts as these people who somehow live apart from the mechanisms of police and other emergency services, as independent operators.
The protected class has a different view. The protected class is a dependent class — not economically dependent of course, but dependent on the state in perhaps a more fundamental way (for their very lives) – and like members of other dependent classes, they are terrified of flaws in the state’s protective apparatus. Walled off from gun culture, they read the occasional, aberrant story of (legal) gun-owner stupidity or recklessness and cower in fear of a nonexistent threat. (While of course blithely sending their kids off to far more dangerous activities, like swimming in neighbors’ pools or riding in neighbors’ cars).
Of course, the major flaw in this fantasy is that gun nuts are actually more, not less, likely to have to deal with the police. If your attitude is shoot first, it’s not like the cops won’t be called when you fire that gun. Ask Michael Dunn or George Zimmerman. The major difference is that if you act like the “protected” class that French has so much disdain for, odds are much lower that you’re going to shoot an innocent person in a bout of paranoid racist idiocy. So there’s that. But the notion that we can somehow get past the need for policing if everyone just arms themselves is painfully stupid. Someone has to sort out all those gunshot deaths and woundings and what caused what, and that someone is the police. Since they’re getting called anyway, it seems wise to call them before someone ends up dead, not after, so point to the “protected” class on that one.
And that’s just when we’re talking confrontations between strangers. (And let’s be blunt, neither Zimmerman nor Dunn would have taken it upon themselves to confront random young men minding their own business if it wasn’t because they were itching for a reason to use that gun.) Having a gun in your house increases the likelihood of accident, suicide, and domestic murder, all of which, yep, get the cops called on you. Just having a gun go off accidentally without hitting anyone often results in having a police report filed.
Basically, between two people that are identical in every way but one has a gun and one doesn’t, the one with the gun is more, not less likely to have interactions with the police. So, if your goal is not to be a member of the police-calling class, getting rid of the gun is the first step.
Amanda Marcotte
Amanda Marcotte is a freelance journalist born and bred in Texas, but now living in the writer reserve of Brooklyn. She focuses on feminism, national politics, and pop culture, with the order shifting depending on her mood and the state of the nation.
More Guns Means More, Not Fewer, Calls To The Police
