Christine Emba writing for the Washington Post:
At the Nation’s Gun Show in Chantilly, spirits seemed
high. People wandered from booth to booth, and the scent of popcorn filled the
air. It could have been mistaken for a state fair or weekend flea market were
it not for the rows of weapons and accessories — gun parts, AR build kits and
body armor — laid out on every surface. It was easy to overlook the one common
emotion underlying the event: fear.
Here were weekend shoppers intently inspecting tools
of death: moms testing the heft of handguns and fathers stocking up on ammo.
When I asked attendees and sellers what gun ownership meant to them, most
replied with the same word: “protection.”previous week had brought three highly
publicized shootings. Ralph Yarl, a Black teenager in Kansas City, Mo., was
allegedly shot by an 84-year-old White man after he rang the wrong doorbell to
pick up his younger siblings; a 65-year-old man in Upstate New York
allegedly shot and killed a 20-year-old woman who accidentally
pulled into his driveway; and two cheerleaders in Texas were shot after trying to
get into the wrong car after a practice.
For all the talk of protection, gun violence is now
the leading cause of death for children and teens in the
United States. Yet over and over, people told me they needed their guns to keep
themselves safe.
Safe from what? Most couldn’t answer; they simply
had a feeling that the world had become a more dangerous place. How would they
use their guns in a crisis? Their confidence in their own abilities seemed
inflated.
This manifested in the constant invocation of the
word “tactical” — a gun-industry buzzword used to suggest that buyers of
weapons, body armor and shooting courses will be able to engage with enemies
like trained soldiers. In other words, a fantasy.
Republican leaders, including Virginia Gov. Glenn
Youngkin, have resisted calls for increased gun regulation after shooting
deaths, arguing that the root problem is mental illness. But the paranoia that
fuels gun-buying has come to seem like a mental health issue in its own right.
“It’s crazy out there,” a woman named Dinah told me,
an unloaded rifle slung over one shoulder. “People don’t care anymore, and
criminals go for the low-hanging fruit. I don’t ever want to be in a situation
where I can’t protect myself.”
A record-high 56 percent of Americans believe that crime has
increased in their area, even if reality is more complicated. Republicans in particular have
grown sharply more concerned. Many Americans no longer assume that a stranger
might be well-meaning, innocent or harmless; rather, the world is seen as an increasingly dangerous place. Incessant media coverage
of violent events has encouraged this thinking, the gun-show attendees told me.
And poorly understood “stand your ground” and “castle doctrine” laws perpetuate
and protect a vigilante mind-set.
Perhaps the most troubling aspect of gun ownership
for “protection” is the sharp-edged individualism it implies: an
every-man-for-himself mind-set. Institutions can’t be trusted, police will be unresponsive, and the government might one
day turn on you. Your only obligations are to yourself and your family.
Individual fear becomes a greater priority than
collective safety. Increasing the number of guns in the system will almost
certainly spell death for others, but at least your gun will
keep you safe.
“You can’t
predict who is going to shoot someone,” one ammunition salesman told me. “It’s
just the nature of the evil world we live in. So I’ve got to be prepared.”
Today there are about 393 million privately owned
firearms in the United States, according to an estimate by the Switzerland-based Small Arms Survey — in other words,
120 guns for every 100 Americans. That’s the highest rate of any country in the
world, and more than double that of the next country on the list.
The gun owners I spoke to were open to some
violence-prevention measures. They suggested mandatory training courses,
raising age limits for gun-buying or cracking down on dealers who sell to
people not legally allowed to buy guns.
But no one was willing to give up their own weapons.
They would rather “open the floodgates,” as one shooting instructor put it.
If everyone has a gun, the theory goes, everyone will be more
careful. If the side effect is a private arms race in a country already flooded
with guns, so be it.
Over and over again, I heard the NRA-approved
phrase: “An armed society is a polite society.” But guns might be leading us to
give up on the concept of society altogether.
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