Guns are not the problem...

Guns are not the problem.

Gun culture is the problem.

When a group like the NRA repeats its notoriously famous dictum, "guns don't kill people, people kill people" they are, of course, speaking an unavoidable truth.  It is not the hammer that builds the house.  It is not the flute that plays the melody.  It is not the shovel that digs the hole.

The hand that holds the tool is the hand that puts the tool to work.

A tool that never gets used is not a tool at all. It is, instead a fetish, a symbol of the work the tool was meant to do.

This is why iconography is so powerful.  A beautiful classic car in perfect condition symbolizes the open road, an idyllic earlier time, and unspoiled potential.

So what does the gun symbolize?

A gun can symbolize all manner of things, depending on who you ask.  The Colt revolver brings to mind the Wild West -- as the saying goes God made men, and Colt made men equal. For many around the world, the AK-47 symbolizes armed struggle against tyranny, but for those of us in North America and Europe, it symbolizes the enemy - almost any enemy, in fact, from Central America, Africa, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, or Eastern Europe. 

But at its core a gun is simply a symbol of death.

But the problem is not the gun.

Guns don't kill people.  People kill people.

Angry people.

Unhappy people.

Desperate people.

Clumsy people.

Obedient people.

Rebellious people.

Religious people.

Anti-religious people.

People who think guns are good solutions to problems.

The gun is not the problem.

Gun culture is the problem. 

When the Khmer Rouge killed a million people, many of them were not killed with guns.  They were clubbed to death.  But that does not exonerate guns - they were clubbed to death to save bullets.

Even those who invoke self-preservation and protection as justification for their subscription to gun culture are in fact doing so in order to protect themselves from other members of gun culture.

The gun is not the problem.

Gun culture is the problem. 

What does a gun symbolize?  Independence?  Freedom? Perhaps. 

But independence and freedom from what?

From other people with guns.

As another old saying goes, to a man with a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.

Gun culture is death culture.  This is not to say that guns themselves have no place in our society.  Hunting is not about the gun, but about the hunt.  Target shooting is not about the gun, but about the self and its relationship to the target.

But gun culture is death culture.

“The gun does not only kill,” some say.  “The gun can also protect.”

This is true.  But as any carpenter or mechanic will tell you, a tool designed to do two things will not do both of them well.

My point in all this is simple.  Gun culture, that shared American fetishization of guns as emblematic of strength, coolness, sexiness, or manliness - this is in fact a fetishization of death.  Culture is created by the people who live that culture in their daily lives. Every day we make decisions about the world we build. 

A brand-new Beretta 9mm costs as much a First Responder class in emergency first aid.

Every day we decide with every move we make whether we want to live in a culture of life or culture of death.

Yes, strength is important.  Struggle is unavoidable.  Pain is a fact of life.  Death is inevitable.  But in the end, as the old story goes, within each of us there are two wolves struggling -- one is good and one is evil.   

The one you feed is the one who wins that struggle.

Choose a culture of life.