Gun rights at any cost

This is an attempt to do some thinking. To do some out loud thinking. To get a sense of where I am about this. One way I am is troubled. Troubled by things I seen said on TV in the past couple days by Ben Carson and Donald Trump in the wake of the shootings in Oregon.

I'm writing this to kind of work my way through my own thoughts. I'm a bit uneasy about anyone else seeing it as I'm committed to being honest with myself and wondering who will be offended by anyplace I arrive as I ponder my way through this. But there aren't many who follow my blog and the ones that seem to are people I trust and respect.

I'm surprised no one in my community of friends, including my Facebook "friends", has said anything about Ben Carson's statements yesterday and today about how he'd handle a shooter if he were around (charge them), and how 2nd amendment gun ownership supersedes protecting people in importance. I thought I'd hear a barrage of opinions. Nope. Just silence. I'm astonished by these gun-ownership-rights-at-all-costs-arguments I've been watching on TV. And finally I'm annoyed that my past internal conversation has been to say to myself to let someone else figure it out.

As a starting point I am someone who has owned guns, since I began hunting as a teenager, who belongs to a gun local club, and likes to shoot there, and who is an NRA member - AND who agrees by-the-way with the majority of NRA members that gun ownership, safety, and usage should be more regulated to the benefit of all, despite the constant shrill pronouncements and fear mongering published by the NRA.

As for Ben Carson's proposition, I assert his imagined reaction toward a killing shooter in a classroom setting is a self delusional hypothetical. Unlike a cop or a soldier who is trained and has learned to how to react to that sort of danger, Carson has got no idea how he'd react. It's a delusional hypothetical and speaks to the utter stupidity of those who claim this as a way to justify gun rights at any cost.

Unfortunately I seem to be part of a hopeless community of citizens who do not see any way to punch past the juggernaut of gun business interests, NRA's lopsided single-minded narrative, and idealistic constitutionalists who argue the infallible righteousness of that document to justify taking no action to bring the use of guns under a more rational system of control in order to at least, even if imperfectly, quell some of the actions of these mentally ill killers, and criminals whose neighborhood collateral damage killings reign unabated.

I'm resigned that the direction this so-called debate is taking will require still more, and dramatically more outrageous, acts of killing, which Carson, and Trump so blithely admit they expect will continue, accelerate, and grow in their honorifics. And that it will inure to perhaps my grandchildren's generation - when the scale and consequence of this killing have finally become so horrific as to become unacceptable to enough people, to finally step up and find an equitable way to deal with this in the U.S.

It occurs to me that one of the costs of our so-called freedoms and the financial disparities we have allowed to segregate our melting pot have provided for institutionalizing group think - molding the narrative inside of which we all live in this country to the self-serving aggrandizement of the opinions, interests and wants of the few, the most powerful, and those who can afford to create and mold this country's governing narrative.

We are currently living in a group think of righteousness. We are battered by voices from all sides of who is the most "right" - has the most righteous claim to their brand of righteousness. The claims are based on historical justifications, religious justifications, and justifications of traditions that have long out lived their usefulness or rational applicability. And of course any righteous position carries with it the automatic "wrongness" of any who disagree.

I am not a member of the NRA because I want to be, or because I agree with their positions. I am a member because it's the only way I can hold membership in any local gun club and so have access to their shooting ranges. I have enjoyed building rifles. I have enjoyed making my own shooting ammunition, trying different load component combinations to improve accuracy and the performance of guns under different target challenges.

My favorite gun is a civil war era black powder Navy Colt "six shooter". And every time I go through the 30 minute process it takes to safely load and fire that gun, I marvel to myself how any civil war soldier ever effectively used that gun to hit anything, especially when they were being fired upon. Forget about any idiotic notions that anyone could fast draw and fire that kind of gun from a holster at waste height and hit anyone standing 30 feet away. Not going to happen.

I quit hunting over 40 years ago after being twice shot at by other hunters in the Pocono woods in PA. Once the fear, and anger of those near-miss moments passed, I found myself wondering what possessed those hunters to such heights of stupidity. As I wondered about and confronted that adrenalized moment that I and all shooters experience - that moment of unintelligible fear/excitement/power, I had an epiphany. It occurred to me that shooting and killing (killing anything) were two different states, and that I could enjoy one without needing the other.

I was hunting with my dad and had spotted a nice buck among a herd of dear. I was sighted in on him and expected to drop him in his tracks as was my practice. As I watched him through my scope, I had this sudden overwhelming sense that I had no need to kill this creature. So I fired under the deer to chase him and the herd up the mountain, walked out of the woods, and never went hunting again.

I continued to shoot, to enjoy the science of ballistics, the craft of guns and ballistics and the fun and skill of shooting hands guns - but no more hunting. I've no desire to kill. Through this all I am clear that the emotional charge of shooting - of controlling the power of this instrument - addresses some deep need to assuage the final helplessness we all spend life avoiding, working around, overcoming, conquering, or in some cases drugging away.

I'm also clear that although I have permits to carry a gun and were I have one with me in one of these shooting situations, and with all the shooting, training and facility I have with using a gun, I have no idea - NOT REALLY - how I would behave in the face of some murderous person trying to kill me or others around me. Could I shoot and hit him? I expect so. Would I have the control and practiced reaction to do so if he were shooting at me? I really have no idea. Would I have dreamed or pre-imagined myself charging in to save the situation, such that it would be a dependable response? I'd like to think so. But thinking so and actually doing so in that split second are very different things. The truth is I DON'T AND WON'T REALLY KNOW UNTIL IT HAPPENS.

The difference between me and Ben Carson is that I know I don't know. He's deluded himself into thinking he does. I don't want a president who deludes himself and is comfortable in his righteousness.