Editor’s note: Walt Amses is a writer and former educator who lives in Calais.
[W]hatever side you’re on in the Vermont discussion about gun control, you must admit, as polarizing as the topic, the debate here has been fairly respectful, as far apart as both sides remain. The premise — whether or not to require background checks on private firearm sales — has been the topic of a vigorous debate over which respective tent the theoretical camel’s nose will be under: the fears are that either everyone will be armed and consequently dangerous or unarmed and consequently defenseless.
On a national scale however, things are dramatically different as the National Rifle Association’s twisted paranoia gets played out in one more transparently manipulative, morally bankrupt initiative. Their latest is a craven appeal to women, conflating campus rape with open carry laws as a logical solution to college sexual assault. As if to emphasize the national gun lobby’s misunderstanding of both rape and firearms, Nevada state legislator Michele Fiore suggested that “these young, hot little girls” needed to be armed to fend off assailants and that such assaults “would go down, once sexual predators got a bullet in the head.”
Ah yes, the old “bullet in the head” elective added to the curriculum catalog, cozily inserted between alcohol consumption and drug experimentation, could probably do away with either Ultimate Frisbee or tailgating as a cornerstone of higher education. Never mind for a minute that study after study indicates gun ownership provides limited protection while actually increasing the likelihood said owner will be murdered by a partner, it’s difficult to think of a worse idea than unfettered access to firearms coupled with overactive hormones and under active judgement.
Adults who remember what college was like should try this: Imagine your four years (or however long it took) with everyone on campus armed. All the football players over in the human growth hormone dorm; the guys in the floor-length black leather coats who played board games all day; and of course the brothers at I Phelta Thi on fraternity row, not just the coeds on whom they prey. The possibilities for unbridled mayhem are endless. Revenge of the theater arts majors.
Those in the protection racket — like the NRA’s Wayne LaPierre — see our world peopled with “terrorists … home invaders .. drug cartels … carjackers … rapers … haters … campus killers … airport killers … shopping-mall killers” a post-apocalyptic Sunday brunch of horrors, all of which are frightening; most of which are absurdly unlikely, yet hyped hysterically to sell ever more firearms. If guns are the answer to every question, we only need ask: “What can we do about it?” Here you can fill in the blank: Lock and load, and bingo! One more problem solved.
Ah yes, the old “bullet in the head” elective added to the curriculum catalog, cozily inserted between alcohol consumption and drug experimentation, could probably do away with either Ultimate Frisbee or tailgating as a cornerstone of higher education.
The problem of course is that LaPierre and his ilk are describing a different country than the one where violent crime — according to FBI statistics — has been on a steady and dramatic decline for the last 20 years. Although you wouldn’t know it from listening to the NRA paranoia machine, murder, rape, armed robbery and aggravated assault are all exponentially less frequent than they were 20 years ago.
And those home invasions that instill fear in the hearts of anyone wanting to protect their family? According to data compiled by Slate, the per capita risk of death during a home invasion is 0.0000002, which essentially means you need more protection from the NRA than any NRA hallucination sneaking over the back fence.
It’s almost unfair to quote Louie Gohmert — who belongs on the Cartoon Network rather than in Congress — but the Texas Republican embodies exactly the kind of lunacy gun control advocates fear when he suggests (regarding high capacity magazines): “Why would you draw the line at ten? What’s wrong with nine? Or eleven? … It’s kind of like marriage when you say it’s not a man and a woman anymore … why not have three men and one woman … or four woman and one man … or why not someone who has love for an animal.”
Absurdity aside, GOP proponents of campus firearms essentially suggest that college women are attacked because they aren’t packing, ignoring the fact that open carry isn’t gender exclusive, meaning rapists terrorizing campus will be just as likely to be armed. Considering women in the United States are murdered with guns 11 times more frequently than women in other higher income countries, adding more guns to the mix seems counterintuitive.
That the Vermont Second Amendment discussion maintains relative civility in light of the national delirium, bodes well for the state’s live-and-let-live reputation; the “Vermont Way” prevails, a small island of relative sanity in an otherwise derisive political climate. Hopefully no one will float the notion that armed students would make UVM a safer place.
