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There were recently two high-profile shootings where innocent people were killed and injured. Young Ralph Yarl of Kansas City knocked on the door of elderly Andrew Lester. Lester shot him twice through glass. Poor Yarl ran to three other houses before someone helped.
Kaylin Gillis was part of a small convoy in rural New York that drove up the wrong driveway. The homeowner, Kevin Monahan, blasted them with deer slugs killing the girl. She should be graduating.
Some would call these incidences murders. Some would call them accidents. What made these men so scared? Ironically people often buy guns because they are scared. Shouldn't possession of a gun inspire calm and confidence?
My students read some research by a sociologist Jennifer Carlson. She makes the claim that people who obtain permits to carry concealed guns are good citizens.
Carrying a gun gives all consequences additional weight. It makes you aware. You tend to scan the room and sit with your back to the wall. When people are shouting at each other in the street, you avoid the silly tangle.
My students also read some English history by Joyce Lee Malcolm. Malcolm said that as the English people lost access to firearms they became more violent. For reasons you can guess, today a Brit is more likely to be awakened at night by a thug over her bed than an American. Too much gun control makes for a disengaged, passive citizenry. American thugs are scared. British thugs will march over your threshold.
Ralph Yarl and Kalin Gillis, however, were no thugs. In fact, they were shot by people who were scared. This led to a good philosophical discussion in my class.
Don't believe the welcome mats. Americans put up barriers to one another. "No trespassing, violators will be shot and survivors will be shot again." Americans are not supposed to be this way.
Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and the other old superheroes who wrote the Constitution did indeed include the right to bear arms, but they also favored the fullest involvement in society, economy and politics. They would have shaken your hand and carried on a conversation in full sentences and paragraphs.
They would not have lived like Lester and Monahan. Lester and Monahan were isolated and likely steeped in the electronic hallucinations of Fox news and social media. The "woke mob mighta gotten 'em." Remember that badly-wounded Ralph Yarl stumbled to three houses to find help. Alienation is a massive problem.
We Americans might be embarrassment by this because it violates who we think we are. Real community here is rare. Drive through any "development" and you see predominantly vinyl siding and SUVs and hardly any people. Is it any wonder why naked primitives in the jungle are happy and we are the ones on antidepressants? All sociological needles point to mental illness.
Like an arachnophobe handing spiders, Americans need more exposure to people, especially if we tote such serious tools of death. My wife and I train our children on firearms, but we also socialize them. Late the other night, an African fellow with a thick accent rang our doorbell looking for an address in the alley, my 15-year old daughter answered the door and directed him. No lunacy.
Philadelphia suffers from unlicensed motorbikers ripping up and down the streets. News reports of them scare the dickens out of suburbanites. My son attends school there and you can overhear the large two-cycle engines during our evening zoom meetings. He talked to one biker, as we had taught him to, and learned that doing wheelies down Broad Street is liberating in an otherwise dismal ghetto. It sounds like something I would have said as a young man.
We are an armed society. That is very serious business. I wish I could believe the automatic connection between bearing arms and being a good citizen.
Greg Walker is a sociologist at the new Commonwealth University. He lives in Lock Haven.