Category: Politics, Rants a.k.a. Commentary || By

According to pop culture, honorable men have used guns to settle disputes and right wrongs for many years.

Former Vice President Aaron Burr famously gunned down former Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton in a duel.

In the "Old West," legend has it that cowboys shot rustlers and scoundrels like mad dogs in the streets.

And just a few years ago, Bernie Goetz became a folk hero for shooting several toughs in a New York subway.

Yet there was nothing honorable about the two shootings this week in the Mon-Yough area. (I almost wrote "the two shootings so far this week," but I'll try not to be that pessimistic.)

. . .

In fact, it's not honorable that our culture refuses to ask any hard questions about gun ownership ... even questions as simple as, "How many guns are too many?"

The United States has 90 guns for every 100 citizens, making us the most heavily armed nation in the world. In second place is Yemen, where terrorists and warlords prowl the streets.

That's pretty embarrassing company to keep.

I'm not a gun-control freak. I think every adult member of my family (even the women) owns at least one gun --- a pistol, a rifle, a shotgun.

But no reasonable person should think that the current situation is healthy. There is something seriously wrong in our country when someone can reportedly get into an argument at Nigro's in North Versailles, and think it's a perfectly reasonable reaction to go out to his car, grab his pistol, return to the restaurant and start blasting away, putting five people into the hospital.

. . .

And now, last night, a man on Evans Avenue in the city shot his neighbor multiple times because their dogs were fighting. Witnesses are telling police and reporters that the man charged in connection with the shooting, Thomas Davis Jr., fired at least eight shots into Leroy Hughes, 29, as he tried to pull the dogs apart.

He's accused of executing his neighbor on a city street because their dogs were fighting.

. . .

We can parse the language of the Second Amendment all we want: Does it forbid government from placing any restrictions on gun ownership? Or does it just enable each state to create a "well-regulated militia"?

Having philosophical discussions about the Bill of Rights doesn't change the fact that if the shooter at Nigro's didn't have a gun on Sunday morning, the worst thing that would have happened was a fistfight.

And if the shooter on Evans Avenue didn't have a gun, he probably wouldn't be facing homicide charges, and Hughes would probably just have a shiner and a bloody nose.

. . .

There are people, especially in McKeesport's suburbs, who think they're immune to gun violence because they're white, or upper-middle class.

Ah, but it was a white college professor, Edward Constant, who shot two police officers in Mount Lebanon a few years ago during a domestic dispute.

It was a white law-school graduate, Richard Baumhammers, who went on a shooting rampage in the South Hills.

And it was the well-to-do son of two small business owners, Seung-Hui Cho, who shot 57 people on the rural campus of Virginia Tech (which is 72 percent white).

. . .

Gun violence is not a "black issue" or an "urban problem." It's an American problem.

By Pittsburgh standards, Nigro's is a painfully typical suburban restaurant. Until Sunday morning, it was best known for its weekly oldies car cruises. The loudest arguments concerned whether Ford's 302 small-block was as good as a Chevy 350.

Instead of facing this American problem, the United States has allowed itself to be held hostage by a small, but very vocal and well-funded, gun lobby. Barack Obama was attacked for pointing out something that should be obvious --- guns and religion have been used as wedge issues in American politics for far too long.

The gun lobby argues that Americans need guns for "protection."

Protection from what? Other people with guns, presumably. There's a nicely self-fulfilling prophesy --- protect yourself from the problem of too many guns by buying more guns.

. . .

Yes, you can buy a gun for protection. Or you can buy one to keep handy for when you're pissed off at your neighbor and want to pump eight shots into him in the middle of Evans Avenue.

Did you know that the NRA opposes programs where citizens voluntarily surrender old handguns in exchange for gift certificates or other inducements?

That's not defending the Second Amendment. That's having a gun fetish that borders on paranoia.

. . .

No, there's nothing honorable about the gun lobby, there's nothing honorable about American politicians who quake in fear at the initials "NRA," and there's nothing honorable in our own refusal as citizens to honestly question the role of guns in American society.

We need to decide whether we're going to be a nation of civilized people, or a nation of vigilantes and animals who only respect the survival of the fittest.

It's well past time for us to open the discussion, even if it's too late for the people at Nigro's on Sunday morning, or the people on Evans Avenue last night.

And it's the honorable thing to do.

(Updated on June 9, 2008. See comments.)