It was 12 years ago last week when two students at Columbine High School used a variety of weapons, including homemade propane bombs, a shotgun, a semi-automatic rifle and a 9mm handgun in a massacre that left 12 of their classmates and one teacher dead before both shooters committed suicide.
In the days before the attack, the two students prepared several bombs and modified their weapons. These two students were in violation of several federal laws, including the National Firearms Act and the Gun Control Act of 1968, even days before the shooting began.
The incident shook our nation, and once again the national debate over gun control consumed media outlets all over the world.
In response, the U.S. Secret Service, in conjunction with the National Education Association, undertook a study of school violence and published their report three years later, in 2002
The Secret Service Report concluded that schools were taking false hope in physical security, when they should be paying more attention to the pre-attack behaviors of students.
There’s a reason all of this sounds familiar.
Nearly eight years to the day of the Columbine tragedy, a distraught student at Virginia Tech shot and killed 32 fellow students and injured scores of others on April 16, 2007. He also committed suicide.
There was more political fallout. Other nations criticized a U.S. culture that is seemingly enthralled with guns and violence. More gun control laws were introduced and passed. It should also be noted that the university had a campus firearms ban before that massacre happened.
Sadly, I could go on and on with more examples of gun violence and the ways in which those horrific events are exploited by politicians and pundits from both sides of the gun control debate.
But what’s the point?
The point, my friends, is not about the guns. It’s about people and human behavior.
I am treading into this topic as a response to a friend’s Facebook post in which she was commenting on an editorial from the Lewiston Sun Journal regarding a bill before the Maine Legislature that would allow lawmakers to carry handguns.
“In the wake not only of Tucson, but also the shooting at NY City Hall (’03 – one Councilman shot another dead) and various examples of ‘going postal,’ this seems . . . wise?”
I have immense respect for the woman who wrote the above posting on her Facebook wall. She is extraordinarily smart and equally passionate. If I’m going to debate her, I need to bring my A game, and even then the odds are stacked against me.
But it was just two words from her pithy post that jarred me: “going postal,” just another catchy euphemism that grants us permission to brush off and dismiss a much darker topic: The cost of mental illness and our society’s unwillingness to acknowledge the ramifications of a grossly insufficient treatment system.
The genesis of the term “going postal” can be traced back to the early 1980s, when a spree of shootings by U.S. Postal workers became a macabre trend.
The term is now comic relief, as best evidenced by frequent double entendres on the Seinfield show, in which “Newman, the postal worker” was often teased for his bizarre behavior and frequent angry outbursts.
We laugh.
Some say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over while expecting different results. Keep laughing, if you can.
I am a big believer in the Second Amendment. I tell my friends that the Second Amendment ensures the continuation of the much more beloved First Amendment.
But I must admit that I am sometimes conflicted. After all, our society understands and accepts limitations on freedom of speech and expression. It is a violation of federal law to say, “I am going to kill the president.” It is also against the law to scream “Fire” in a crowded theater.
Former Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously quipped “ I know it when I see it,” as he struggled to define what is and what is not pornography.
Reasonable people can agree to be reasonable, right?
Sure, but what about the unreasonable people? That is a different subject altogether.
The bottom line is this: Guns represent power.
You never see news footage of refugees slinging rifles over their shoulders as they are forced to leave their homeland because of a tyrannical government, do you?
Alan Keyes, a conservative African American and a perennial presidential candidate, once quipped, “This nation would have never had a slavery problem if the people of Africa were armed.”
Any half-rate student of history can rattle off a litany of government abuses, which all began with the collection of the public’s firearms.
Guns are part of our American culture and psyche. One of my core beliefs is that power should be equally distributed and held by the people.
Thoreau seemingly agreed with my stance, when he wrote, the government that governs least governs best. Of course, he wrote Civil Disobedience in 1849, so it’s hard to know where he would come down on the post Columbine gun control debate.
I own three guns (a .22 rifle, a 12-gauge shotgun and a 20-gauge shotgun). Ironically, I don’t allow firearms in my home. My guns are stored in a gun-safe at my father-in-law’s home, some 15 miles away. They are used for hunting.
There are two reasons for not having firearms in my home.
1.) I have teenage sons who are often alone at home while Laura and I are working; and
2.) I have a responsibility to acknowledge and manage my own mental illness.
I feel safer without firearms in my home, but I am also troubled by any further encroachments on my Second Amendment rights. It doesn’t mean I think everyone should own an Uzi. Then again, reasonable people can agree to be reasonable.
But what are we going to do about the unreasonable people?
Laugh, or introduce legislation requiring background checks on the sale of propane tanks?
LESSONS IN MEDIOCRITY 
There are many points concerning mental health and even gun policy where Randy and I agree. Unfortunately, my choice of two words has seemingly put us at odds. My Facebook post concerned recent efforts at the state level that would further reduce extant gun control measures meant to protect the public and public servants; it was not at all meant as a gibe towards the mentally ill. [Full disclosure: I’m on the board of Maine Citizens Against Handgun Violence, hence my interest in what Augusta’s got brewing.]
To understand why I used the shorthand “going postal,” it’s worth detailing what is happening at the State House in terms of gun policy, particularly with regard to the Sun Journal editorial (http://www.sunjournal.com/our-view/story/1020062) that I posted.
The SJ editorial commented on measures currently before the legislature, including [emphasis my own]:
LD 932, an Act to Allow Concealed Weapons in the State House, which “would require that all guns be concealed in the Legislature and that permit holders register with Capitol security before entering.” – Hence my reference to the 2003 shooting at City Hall in NYC.
LD 578, which will allow “municipalities to decide whether they could allow guns in meetings and municipal offices. Here, the Criminal Justice Committee took a different approach. The public must be allowed to carry guns into town meetings and offices, whether they are open or concealed.”
LD 35 would force employers to allow guns in parked cars on their property, when “currently, employers and businesses are allowed to decide if they will allow guns in buildings and on their properties.” – This, if you haven’t guessed, is what led to my use of “going postal.”
Other bills that remain in committee include:
LD 1347, regarding guns in State Parks, bars, and labor strikes.
LD 35, concerning guns in the workplace, which has been tabled as proponents determine how to pass it without upsetting the business community.
LD 1176, concerning the elimination of the “good moral character” requirement for carrying a concealed weapon (CCW) permits. Perhaps a bit silly, yes, but this would end reciprocity with 6 states.
Randy’s blog for the most part focuses on mental illness, and I agree with much of what he writes. However, he mentioned something that can be exploited by those with mental illness or who are felons, among others, at the very close of his post – that of background checks. In pondering what to do about the “unreasonable people,” Randy asks whether we should “Laugh, or introduce legislation requiring background checks on the sale of propane tanks?”
Where guns are concerned, background checks are meant as a means by which to keep felons, fugitives, domestic violence offenders, and the dangerously mentally ill from purchasing a firearm. This background check is not universal, with a widely abused loophole providing for private gun sales (as advertised in Uncle Henry’s) and sales at gun shows. Guns used at Columbine were secured via the loophole; proper implementation of the background check process would have stymied Seung-Hui Cho, the mentally ill Virginia Tech shooter. It seems to me that universal background checks should be an issue supported by those who own weapons and those who do not, as we’d all benefit: if you have the legal right to own a gun (as a non-felon, etc.), you will not be kept from doing so, while those who do not have such rights will remain unarmed. The only folks whose rights would be impacted by closing the loophole are those who sell firearms without any care as to the purchaser, whether that person has the right to bear arms or not – and I’m a-ok with that impact. (You can’t sell or serve alcohol to someone underage . . .)
I agree with Randy that the toll – emotional, physical, financial; personal, familial, societal – of mental illness is a gigantic problem, with far-reaching implications. My use of “going postal,” however, was in reference to the proposed legislation that would not simply increase the likelihood that employees might have guns in the workplace or in a car parked nearby, but permit them to do so. Moreover, I feel it important to note that mental illness cannot be assumed to underpin all instances of going postal, or road rage, or any similar contemporary phenomena where a situation degenerates into anger or violence. Just as Randy says that too often we “brush off and dismiss a much darker topic” through euphemisms such as going postal, it is wrong to assume that gun violence is the purview of the mentally ill alone. There are reasons why felons, fugitives, and domestic violence offenders are also restricted from owning guns, and examples of gun violence that involve individuals who do not fall within any of these categories.
Meanwhile, it’s worth bearing in mind that the Violence Policy Center recently released news (http://www.vpc.org/press/1104norc.htm) concerning a study conducted by the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago, which indicated that nearly 70% of U.S. households are gun-free. 70%. Who knows what the percentage is of people buying propane tanks in US. Or whether a fair metric exists by which to determine consistently, across all categories, what is ‘reasonable’ or who are the “unreasonable people.”
What Randy and I do know is that certain ‘unreasonable’ actions exist under US law: one cannot cry “Fire!” in a crowded theater (this is key – even the First Amendment is not absolute), one cannot threatening to kill the President, and – as Justice Scalia himself has opined† – one does not have a complete and unfettered right to bear arms. Even within the Second Amendment, limits exist; I appreciate both. I do not wish to eradicate gun ownership from America, but I do support common sense regulation of that right.
Like Randy, I don’t think we all should have an Uzi. Unlike Randy, I’m one of the almost 70% of Americans who don’t own a weapon. Furthermore, I want background checks to be part of all firearm purchases, and feel it is indeed reasonable to keep those who do own a weapon from bringing it into the State House, a bar, a State Park, a labor strike, or the workplace.
† “Although we do not undertake an exhaustive historical analysis today of the full scope of the Second Amendment, nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.” District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008), majority opinion.
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