Gun Control?

What can I say? It's a rainy Saturday, and while I do, actually, have better things to do than sitting at home with the TV on, that is how I've chosen to spend my time. Chosen to spend it relatively dry.



 

And what a great day of viewing it's been, too. My attention has been mostly caught up with visiting neighbours, sad dogs who don't get so much running since I no longer smoke and even less on rainy days like today, and playing a fascinating (to me) pseudo-historical computer game that challenges short-, middle- and long-term memory, something which I think all people grapple with and which I in particular need to keep working on. At least, that's my excuse to be addicted to the computer-game, and I'm sticking to it.

 

Saturdays, we get treated to a lot of current affairs and documentaries on ABC-1. I enjoy them. I also enjoy having them on as background-noise.

 

Today has been interesting. I very much enjoyed something on technology to help the paralysed communicate with others which was out-and-out fascinating, but what outraged me and drove me here was a documentary on gun control in the USA. Again, this with the disclaimer that I only heard it as background noise over other activities and thoughts, with an occasional glance over my shoulder at the screen.

 

A lengthy portion of it was grabs from an interview with an American gun club executive, as well as hardly less lengthy grabs from gun salesmen, legislators, parents of shooting victims, hunters and the like.

 

The American gun club executive talked and talked. He was a real worry. He said that since he had children in his house, he couldn't feel safe unless he had a loaded gun within an arm's reach at all times. Why, I felt like asking. I remembered sharing a house in the early 1980s with a very rare kind of Australian, one who actually had a gun. He kept it loaded, too, and upright in his wardrobe. Highly illegal - they are supposed to be stored unloaded, and in a locked safe. And we found out why - his gun fell over, accidentally firing as it did so, and a bullet penetrated the wall between our bedrooms, lodging in the ceiling of my bedroom. He was not at home at the time: he came home to a virago who yelled at him a lot and made him do the right thing - which consisted of getting the firearm out of the house until such time as he bought a safe.

 

The American talked about a possible burglary (which hadn't happened to him yet) where two people might break into his house when he was home with burglary on their minds and nine mill handguns in their pockets. He said he sure-as-hell didn't want to tangle with them if all he had to "defend himself" with was a nine mill handgun, so he had this. I glanced over my shoulder: it was a long, long thing, menacing, heavy, looking like something you might find in a war-zone. The interviewer probed: his house had never been burgled. And yes, the gun wasn't a luxury, it was an absolute essential. For self-defence. To be in his home, close to hand and loaded at all times - after all, what use is an unloaded gun? The burglars who hadn't burgled him yet wouldn't be gentlemanly enough to give him time to look for a gun that wasn't within reach, much less to load it, so it had to be convenient at all times and loaded at all times.

 

I kept wondering about the kids in his home, what they were learning from him. Were they learning that the whole world was dangerous, were they learning fear and suspicion and a lack of trust? The whole world isn't dangerous: fear and suspicion should only be responses to specific situations, not a lifestyle thing.Were they learning that their daddy approved of killing anyone he didn't know? Were they learning that visiting other people's homes might cause them to be shot? Were they learning that violence is okay? Were they learning that peace is about firepower, that is, about armed ceasefire, not peace? At best, from an upbringing like that, they would learn that what Daddy fears and says, never happens. At worst, they will never question it, and will grow up fearful, suspicious, and believing it is okay to kill strangers if they make you feel a little nervous. Is that how we want our children to live, in fear? And do we want them, after a childhood of fear, to believe in killing anyone who makes them afraid as adults?

 

He had four handguns in his car. I kept thinking about road-rage incidents. I had one of my own just recently where the rage was mine, in fact if completely surpassed rage and went to blind, red-eyed, end-of-line extreme fury. I won't bore you with that the guy did to deserve that kind of fury, except that it was horrible and he should never been on the road. If I were a gun-carrying-kind of girl there is NO DOUBT I would have pulled it on his car at the very least, and shot out all four tyres (you can change one but four is a problem). And if the tyres didn't scream enough and bleed enough to satisfy me, I would probably have started shooting off his fingers, one by one, just to hear the screams and see the blood. He's just lucky I didn't have a length of wood with a few rusty nails sticking out of it in the car. And me, a pacifist who hates guns. What about someone like the guy in the documentary, who kept talking about the damage that the pacifists were doing to his country - what would he have done if we had swapped places for that moment? The other driver was an idiot and a dangerous idiot, but his dangerous driving didn't kill me, and my dangerous rage didn't kill him. The shooter's dangerous rage and dangerous shooting would have killed him in an instant.

 

I have a friend who is a nomad from a nomadic family. I have known the whole lot of them since the late 1970s. In that time, their wanderings firstly as a family then as individuals, have centred roughly around Sydney, Brisbane and Auckland. When I met my friend all those years ago, she and I were both only teenagers, and she was just back from a couple of years in Auckland. She was constantly spooked by our Australian policemen. I asked her why, once. Because they had handguns in holsters hanging from their belts, she said. She was terrified of being shot or witnessing a shooting - it just seemed so strange to her that law enforcement had only violence as its tool against "the baddies". She calmed down, eventually.

 

I am in my fifties, now, and I have never seen a copper take their gun out, even in situations where I witnessed someone being arrested - we just don't have a culture of shooting. It would never have occurred to a cop to draw their weapon as a routine thing. In New Zealand the culture was even more anti-shooting - the cops didn't even carry guns because gun-crime was so rare. Sure, there were armed units that could be called on if needed, but they were badly underworked. And in New Zealand far fewer people own guns proportionate to the population-numbers. In America, I believe there are two and a half guns for every American.

 

There is a place for guns in Australia. In 2007 I drove twice through the area between Cobar and Wilcannia in NSW a week or so apart. The terrain there is fairly flat - the horizon as about twelve kilometres away, therefore, in all directions. The road is a thin grey ribbon through a rumpled sheet of red earth, punctuated by saltbush and the occasional stunted gum. There was a feral goat plague: a goat every one and a half square metres as far as the eye could see, picking at the last of the leaves on the stripped saltbush and standing up trying to get the lower leaves on the gums. And for every female goat, because it was breeding season, one or two tiny kids were also in her metre-and-a-half, barely born, far too small to be weaned yet. This was over a distance of hundreds of square kilometres, between and on both sides of those two towns.

 

Goats have completely ravaged the bushland and wiped out whole ecosystems, driving Australian native animals to extinction through starvation, and plants to the very edge of extinction. That was the first and only time I have ever wished I owned guns and knew how to use them: if I'd had one, I would have been stopping, and picking off all the breeding bucks and childless females. And if I had hit a mother by mistake, I would have "wasted" another bullet or two making sure her offspring were dead, not letting starvation and exposure do it for me. It's the only compassionate thing to do. After all, they don't understand that their population is a menace to the environment, as humans do.  And humans, knowing that humans are a menace, still perpetuate the species and bemoan deaths, and beg for pain relief! The only decent thing you can do for the environment it to reduce species that are out of control like the goats in that area - but do it quickly and kindly, making sure as few as possible suffer an instant longer than they have to.

 

Some weeks or months before I saw that documentary, a science programme that I usually enjoy ran an item on gun-related behaviour. In particular, they tested male hormonal levels before, during and after playing with "toy" guns (games consols) and "real" guns. When handling toy guns, there was some upswing of testosterone, similar to that when viewing visual pornography, but when handling real guns, their testosterone levels were completely off the scale. The conclusion most educated laymen would draw from that is that most males see guns as a huge turn-on, more than pornography. During today's documentary, the gun-club executive said something like (and I paraphrase): Every time there has been a gun-based massacre in America, sales have spiked. He seemed to see that as a Good Thing. Bearing in mind the testosterone-rush revealed in the science show, I saw it as a bad thing.

 

What is wrong with the psyche of a nation, where the deaths of beloved family members of a great many families produces a surge of rapaciousness, and people go out to buy guns? Some would, no doubt, be individuals who would be concerned that the same thing might happen to their loved ones tomorrow, and might have some misguided belief in "protection", that two deaths is somehow better than one. But the rest? They get turned on by the idea of mowing down others in a hail of bullets? How sick is that?

 

An executive of an American gun-selling company had something just as grim to say,  and said it in an unctuous voice rich with greasy self-satisfaction (and again I paraphrase): During the recession, our sales boomed. What a shame the rest of America's economy can't run itself as well as the gun industry can.

 

Did he not think? During the recession, tens of millions of Americans were as-miserable-as. And the totalitarian nature of their society made them feel so powerless that they ate dry bread for a month so they could afford to buy themselves a gun, to make themselves feel just a little less powerless. Sir, having your business boom during a recession is not so great, if it has ties to power, powerlessness and testosterone. (Brothels boom in recessions and times of war, too - people go hungry, but use sex to allay fear).

 

I was talking to someone here in the house an hour or two ago after seeing the documentary, someone who has lived on that gloriously gun-supplied continent (which I haven't). We talked about how, when Australia had the Port Arthur Massacre last century - our last - almost our whole civilian population cried out against guns, and handed in their privately and legally or illegally owned guns. We haven't had an event like that since. In America, faced with a massacre, people go out and buy more guns. And keep having more massacres - I seem to hear of yet another one almost every other month. Which country is healthier?

Death of the Soul

Depression stalks our world.

The last twenty-four hours or so have been the annual mental, emotional and astral onslaught that is Anzac Day, a day of mourning and celebration, on which we remember a particularly bloody conflict where a whole generation of Australian boys was wiped out on a beach in Turkey. I believe a similar number of Turkish families lost their sons and brothers, also.

I have, some years, gone out to parades and sung along with National Anthems and hymns, or just eaten ice cream and watched the crowds. Today, I decided to spend the whole day in my own home, supposedly insulated from it, to see if the day would feel any better. I didn't leave the house, didn't go for a solitary walk, didn't even step into my backyard in utter privacy. Instead I spent the day in my living-room, listening to occasional rain on the roof and feeling the coldness of Autumn finally close in, when Winter should be about to start. It was the first day I couldn't wear just a tee-shirt and be comfortable.

Rain goes a long way towards alleviating anxiety and depression. It cleanses the air you breathe, washing particles of pollution out of it if you are in a populated area and dust out of it if you are in an unpopulated area. Rain promises that your plants, things of beauty and food, will stay alive a little longer. Rain promises that at least in the short term, you will have something to drink. And, of course, the ever-changing clouds are always fascinating.

But on Anzac Day, none of that helps. Far away and long ago, people were dying. Far away and right now, people still are - we haven't learnt a thing. People who are traumatised by murder and torture in their own countries flee on the first vehicle they can, often not even being told what country they are being trafficked to until they disembark, but the delightful Tony Abbott says it is all about how attractive the government's policies make Australia look. Political changes here are never going to change the desire of people in distant lands wanting to flee in any direction they can from certain death and mutilation. And then these deeply traumatised, damaged people who have fled everything they know, the countries they love, the people they love, the only language they know just to survive, find themselves behind padlocks and razor-wire because they have somehow done the wrong thing in trying to stay alive.

Depression stalks our world.

I did a reading recently for someone I know, and all I was told by the subject was that it was "about relationships". I turned over one card after another, and a vast, complicated and very personal story unfolded in front of me. A wounded human being, carrying deep, secret pain within them from long ago, searching desperately for the person who could help them heal. It was very hard to find a way to tell them that finding a lover, even "the right one", will not help them heal - they need to heal before they will be capable of being free and comfortable in a nurturing relationship. I know they wanted me to say that on such-and-such a day they'd meet a tall dark handsome stranger who would adore them and make everything better in their life. I coudn't honestly tell them any such thing, I cannot promise what isn't there now and may not ever be there if they don't overhaul their life. I have a lot to overhaul, myself.

Depression stalks our world.

And yet, until triggered by something like a day drenched in warfare, I feel like a happy person. I wouldn't normally say I'm depressed. I wander around looking forward to whatever is coming next, grateful for the ability to be upright and breathing, and pretty-well with a permanent smile and a ready laugh. I have discussed luck and happiness on this blog before, but sometimes the best of us don't feel so lucky. Sometimes a dark stain spreading across the world can seep through to anyone.

I do a bit of work on the inner realms from time to time, and I've definitely been neglecting it in recent weeks. I went down into a particular "cave" after doing the reading to be selfish and do a little housework on my own mood, and I found a network of dark energy rushing through me that had multiple sources, both inside and outside of me. I didn't deal with all of it, but identifying it and dealing with some of it is a start.

On four occasions I have sat with coma patients, and only one of them was someone known to me. On all occasions I dropped into a working trance, with the aim of finding the essence of the person. In three of those four cases I failed to find them, and in the fourth case, they wanted to leave anyway. One of the other three came back, but permanently danaged, "unsouled".

A "shellshocked" person, a person with post traumatic stress disorder who can no longer function, will be partly or wholly unsouled. Their family and lovers will report not that they are damaged, or psychologically wounded, but that they are "a different person". People just instinctively know when someone is merely psychologically harmed and capable of healing, and when it is vastly more serious than that. A magical person will see it on the inside, and it is a frightening thing to see.

I remember reading something in the last few months - I'm sorry, I didn't record references - about a colony of chimpanzees where the senior males were somehow removed from the group, perhaps by predators or poachers, and the junior lads didn't have the seniority to push their women around. It is said that in chimpanzee society a pecking order enforced by violence of senior males to secondary males to females to children, each level punishing the one below it slightly more than they themselves are punished, is natural in chimp society. It is also "natural" in highly stressed human societies, and you could make a case that most of our societies are stressed because we were evolved over millions of years to live on soft earth in groups of twenty to fifty, not on hard concrete in groups of millions.

But the interesting thing in this colony was that once the senior males were taken out, the senior females took over leadership. And instead of bullying underlings unmercifully, they bullied only those young, upcoming males whose testosterone was starting to kick in, and let them know in no uncertain terms that no child-abuse, spouse abuse or unreasonable fighting would be tolerated in the group. And as those lads grew into adults, the dynamic of the group was softer, more peaceful, and the young capered around without an eye to suddenly running away, and the cortisol (stress hormone) levels in the group were uniformly better than in regular groups whose blood had been sampled. The groups was peaceful when the elder males with their crusty traditional ways were taken out.

In the early 1980s, a friend of mine who was a political anthropologist suggested publicly a good way to take a huge step towards world peace. As a parent, he had noticed the beneficial effects of warm milk and cookies (what he actually called by their proper names, biscuits) on very young children, their teenage siblings, and even on occasion on his own moods. His suggestion to take the first step to world peace was this:

To take all the world leaders and their generals, strip them out of their uniforms (including suits) and put them in fluffy, fleecy, colourful tracksuits without the insignia of rank, lock them up in a warm, comfy room with soft floors and lots of cushions, and feed them cookies and warm milk until they got friendly and talked their differences out, feeding each other cookies as peace offerings.

You know, it would probably help. Gandhi said, wisely, "You cannot prepare your people for war, then expect to have peace." That is true on an international level, and on a personal level. As long as we - or my client - feel defensive and needy, we will never really master our circumstances and get what we truly need. And while we have standing armies with serious weaponry at the ready, we will never settle conflicts with nothing worse than a handful of twigs and a few harsh words.

Depression stalks our world, and it is way passed the time we need to get a grip and start to heal ourselves on an inner level.