Somehow the weirdness of the American gun obsession was crystallized for us last week when 200 gun control supporters rallied at the Legislative Office Building in Concord to urge Gov. Chris Sununu to sign into law three bills that would have, respectively, established a three-day waiting period for firearm purchases; created a state background check system; and mandated gun-free school zones.
As the Concord Monitorreported, the protesters were soon joined by a small contingent of armed counterprotesters who clustered in the back of the room, to the visible discomfort of those endorsing the gun safety measures. State police eventually arrived to provide security. Post-rally, there were verbal clashes between the two sides, but at least no gunfire.
The armed cadre insisted that their presence was not meant to intimidate (a claim about which we are skeptical), but rather to make a statement. What statement? “I would like it to be so normal to carry guns that the question isn’t even asked,” said Caleb Dyer, a Libertarian former state representative who is armed wherever he goes. “I wish that people were not afraid that I was carrying a firearm. It’s like any other tool that I have in my car.”
The question arises why Dyer, if all he wanted to do was make a statement, didn’t just leave that particular tool in his car with the rest of them, given that there is no link we know of between possession of a firearm and ability to speak.
Or if he needed a tool at hand, he could have left his firearm locked in the car and brought in a screwdriver. God knows, there may have been a handful of loose screws in that room.
But beyond that, all gun owners (a group that includes a couple of members of this editorial board) must recognize that a gun is not just another tool in the tool box. It is a potentially lethal weapon that must be treated with extreme caution every moment that it is not stored safely away. There’s no place for casual carry, and normalizing the presence of guns in public venues does just that.
As for those three bills, Sununu vetoed them on Friday afternoon, saying New Hampshire has a “tradition of responsible firearm stewardship.” This is at least consistent with what he has said in the past, that he sees no need to change the state’s gun laws.
Why the epidemic of gun violence in America has failed to crack his opposition to sensible firearm restrictions is anybody’s guess. His initial response to the killing of 31 people in separate mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton last weekend was the customary “horrified-by-senseless-acts” statement and ordering flags flown at half-staff to honor the victims. We’re bound to say that if he wanted to honor the victims, he had the appropriate tool available — a pen, with which he could have signed those bills into law.
On the subject of mass shootings, the extent to which they have become an everyday fact of American life was conveyed in a New York Times story describing the latest in must-have back-to-school gear: the bulletproof backpack. They are being made and marketed by a handful of companies and sell for between $100 and $200.
One student wearing such a backpack on campus this fall will be University of Connecticut sophomore J.T. Lewis, whose younger brother, Jesse, was slain in the 2012 school shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary. When the backpack was given to him by his mother, he told the Times, they didn’t have to exchange a word. They both knew.
The spectacle of terrified parents grasping at straws to protect their children from gun violence at school is testimony to the failure of the political system to perform one of its most basic functions: keeping people safe. Or as Igor Volsky, director of the gun control advocacy group Guns Down America, put it: “The market is trying to solve … a problem that our politicians have refused to solve.”