Take Back the Night, Bring Back the State

I had intended my first post of 2013 to focus on the positive, the possible, but the horrors that December 2012 wreaked on innocents in two different parts of the world have stirred up a reflective mood in me and in everyone, it seems. Between Newtown and New Delhi, violent incidents provoked a rare outburst of collective outrage and concern among most thinking people. Did 26 blameless people , the vast majority children, have to die in Newtown, Connecticut to establish that military-style assault rifles should not be in civilian hands? Did  a young girl out to see a movie in Delhi have to be brutalized and left to a lingering death to shake up a sleeping government to its own lack of governance?

Let me leave to others the philosophy of gun rights or the psychology behind sexual violence. I have strong opinions about those but will tackle them later. Let me confine myself to just discussing pragmatics for today. First, guns. Just to be clear: I'm not talking about hunting rifles. You want to shoot your dinner? More power to you. Hey, I might even buy you a new rifle next holidays if you're a friend of mine. Just remember to give me some of that venison, OK? But assault rifles? They don't belong in your civilian hands, cold, dead as they may be. These kind of weapons only belong with the military and with law enforcement.

CAPS ALERT: Lots of caps coming!

Some background info here: I grew up with guns in the house. As the offspring of an army officer, this was inevitable. I saw guns being taken apart, cleaned, loaded, unloaded inside the house and sometimes at the firing ranges where families were invited on limited occasions to witness firing demonstrations. I've sat inside tanks, heck I've even driven a tank! And here's why I am a total snob about guns in the hands of civilians - no civilian will ever receive the amount of training one needs to handle military grade guns safely. See those two key words - "Training" and "safely"? Let me repeat them - TRAINING and SAFETY. The obsession with safety in military training when it comes to guns cannot, repeat cannot, be overstated. After a weapon was discharged, not only did it have to be reported but the empty casings had to also be picked up and brought back! Not only was my father obsessive about locking guns and ammunition separately, not only did he check and re-check the safe storage of weapons EVERY SINGLE DAY, it was his JOB to be that way!

No civilian will ever reach these levels of obsession with safety and responsibility because for the average civilian guns are not a JOB, they are a HOBBY! And assault weapons especially are not part of a civilian's professional responsibility. God willing, they will never have to be. So stick to hunting, civilians. If you want to shoot with assault weapons, then join the army or law enforcement. Oh wait, those organizations require psychological tests for aspiring entrants. See, what I said above about training and safety? I saw very few cowboys in the army when it came to weapons, in fact most of the murderous louts were those goons in the hinterlands with their sawed-off shotguns, firing in the air during weddings, and feeling macho talking about "kattas" and "gupti" . They felt macho because they hadn't had the training to be grown-up and responsible about guns. And now to the last point of this post which is...

....the State has to step in here. For too long in this country, the state has been receding from areas concerning the safety of its citizens. The diminishing role of the state in public safety has been concealed because as of today, the armed apparatus of the state retains, just barely, an advantage of firepower vis-a-vis the average citizen, as the Branch Dravidians in Waco, Texas, discovered to their cost in 1993. But the United States is now awash in small arms and this is a threat to public order and public safety. Did you known that 90 per cent of civilian casualties are caused by small arms? I fully support a gun law that will RESTRICT the rights of civilians to own or store assault-grade weapons in the home. And I look forward to the debate that is coming on this issue.

Next post on the horrible, horrible sexual assault and murder of the young woman in Delhi and on the role of the state in India. Oh, and Happy New Year!