Guns and Hippies

A few thoughts in the wake of last week's massacre.

Whether you call it “extreme gun ownership” or “gun fetishism,” the attitudes behind the mother who bought these weapons are common on the American right today.

Many people are struggling to put this new attitude into context, and explain it to foreigners, but my own writing gives you a frame.

These are hippies. And what happened last week, what is happening across the country as these incidents spiral, is very similar to what happened with the “leftist kids” in the wake of of 1968. Kid who'd been innocently tripping out on pot turned to harder stuff, they turned to cocaine and heroin. A lot of them died. 

In our time, guns are what drugs were then. They're a symbol, they're a totem, they represent freedom, defiance of “the man,” and big arsenals are what make true believers different, “better” in their own view, than their more passive neighbors.

We know what happened with drugs. I think the same thing is happening with guns. Overdoses and death. As a result our attitudes are going to gradually harden toward guns going forward, just as they hardened toward drugs, so that an abandonment of guns becomes the entry point for being part of civilized society. Maybe, they'll say 40 years ago, someone experimented with guns in their youth, but they'd better have renounced it thoroughly before becoming a responsible adult or, having been “outed,” they'll be destroyed by it.

The kinds of arsenals that are now all too common represent hard drugs. And they are a drug to those who own them, they're sold to them like drugs by the gun companies. Whenever something happens that scares the right – Obama's election, Obama's re-election – there's a rush to the gun shops. We've seen this. Why is it? Fear. Fear is a powerful motivator, which leads to getting more-and-more of the gun drug. The only people getting rich are the pushers. The NRA isn't a political organization – it's a trade group of drug makers. It's a cartel.

People with big arsenals, who “get off” on firing guns every weekend, need to be seen for what they are. They're addicts. They need to be treated as addicts. And those who've become addicted to guns can only recover by going cold turkey, by getting rid of all their guns, and giving themselves over to a higher power than guns.