Gun Fallacies

About 15 years ago, a friend (David) made the dumbest possible decision to use a gun to defend himself from a pair of stupid young men late one evening after a gig in a small Idaho town. He didn’t manage to kill anyone or even seriously injure them, but he did shoot two unarmed men and, in a panic, ran away and tried to hide the evidence. In every simulated and real scenario I have ever seen, ordinary people demonstrate no good reason to possess a gun during an emergency. People kill their kids, kids kill other kids, cops shoot unarmed victims or innocent bystanders, and people shoot themselves accidentally or on purpose. But the whole "good guy with a gun comes to save the world" bullshit is just that; bullshit. I just finished reading A Massacre in Memphis, The Race Riot thatShook the Nation One Year After the Civil War.  A couple of the scenes in that story reminded me of David’s experience with a gun.

The first incident in A Massacre in Memphis that is a classic example of dumb shits with guns demonstrating how criminally easy it is for a pack of idiots with guns to do everything except what they planned with their little toy pistols. The scene is--after a day of white and black idiots waving sticks, throwing rocks, and shooting guns in the general direction of their oppressors or the people they've decided are the reason nobody wants to hire drunken, lazy Irishmen--a group of black men decided to chase a group of white cops out of their neighborhood. Most of the black citizens in this encounter were recently discharged “Buffalo Soldiers” who were well-trained and experienced soldiers, supposedly competent with weapons and with being under fire. Like most modern cops, the white (mostly Irish) cops were more skilled at close-up brutality than being in a gun fight and they not only couldn’t hit a barn door at ten feet, although the only one who did hit something shot himself. Not an unusual story today. 

“To this point no weapon more dangerous than a stick or rock has been displayed. But now a pistol shot rings out. One of the more distant black men, intending no doubt to scare the police men and speed them along on their retreat, has pulled out a revolver and fired into the air. A few others follow his example. The policemen, thinking they are being shot at, halt on the bride and turn. Three of them reach for their revolvers. Two of them draw, level their weapons at the crowd and open fire. The black me who are shooting into the air immediate lower their guns and fire at the policemen. Within moments, twenty or more black men are firing.

“One of the officers, thirty-two-year-old John Stevens, falls. A shout goes up from the crowd, 'He is shot.' He has in fact been shot, but not by any of the blacks. In his panicky attempts to draw his weapon and return fire, he has pulled the trigger prematurely, putting a bullet into his own leg. It is a bad wound: the bullet goes deep and shatters his right thighbone. All who see him go down assume he has been hit by gunfire from the blacks.

“The fusillade is quickly over. The firing has all been hasty and inaccurate. Dozens of rounds have been discharged, but no black person and no policeman but Stevens has been hit.”

In this episode of "Gun Dummies," the two cops who opened fire and started the shootout at the bridge ran away, leaving their wounded officer and the one sane cop who hadn’t panicked to face the black soldiers on their own. That cop and several of the black protesters helped get Stevens to a doctor and, then, to a hospital. The two panicky cops ran back to the police station, exaggerated what had happened and prettied up the fable of their own participation, and helped start a Memphis riot and race war. More of that kind of gun-owner behavior continues throughout the story, but another favorite moment of mine was when black non-participants in the fight were trying to flee the city and escape the white mob.

“Many of the blacks being shot at are fleeing down Rayburn or across the eastern branch of the bayou. Pendergrast sees one who appears to be lagging behind the rest: the man is running down Rayburn just twenty feet ahead of the (white) mob. Pendergrast can see only his back. He takes aim at him with one pistol and fires. The man pitches forward and sprawls facedown on the street. Pendergrast goes up to him and turns him over on his back. To the grocer’s astonishment he sees that his victim is white. ‘God damn it,’ he exclaims. ‘I am sorry I shot this man. I thought he was a God damn yellow nigger.’

“The man is fireman Henry Dunn, who in his eagerness to wreak vengeance on blacks raced ahead of the rest of the mob. He is alive but unconscious, and obviously cannot live long. Pendergrast’s bullet has entered the back of his head, plowed through his brain, penetrated the skull on the other side, and lodged under the skin of his forehead.

Pendergrast now seeks atonement for his error by claiming a black victim. Leaving Dunn, he goes down to the bayou and spots a short young man in an army uniform who is trying to get away. The man is Lewis Robinson, a former corporal in the 3^rd. He is too far off to get a good shot at but is within shouting distance. Pendergrast calls to him, telling him to come back, that he will not be harmed. Robinson takes Pendergrast at his word. He halts, then begins making his way back toward the grocer. When he is close enough, Pendergrast raises a pistol and fires into his face. The bullet hits Robinson in the jaw. A policeman nearby also fires, hitting Robinson in the side.”

American history is littered with the wreckage of lives, families, and communities destroyed by the fable of the "gun that won the West." The west was "won' and became a semi-livable place when communities decided they'd had enough of the mindless fallacy of "good guys with guns." When law officers began to disarm the usual idiots who are inclined to carry weapons everywhere they go and when communities and states decided to disarm the usual suspects, the country finally began to achieve some sort of stability and security. Like most lessons in history, we seem to have forgotten that lesson and the NRA/Russian propaganda is doing everything it can to prevent a rational discussion about the problems a "well armed" society creates for itself. In fact, we have repeatedly disproved Bob Heinlein's drunken claim that "a well armed society is a polite society." It was dumb when he said it and it's even dumber to keep thinking it.