Gilbert Garcia: The gun fetish that is killing America

We always hear gun-rights absolutists define their position in the most practical terms. We’re told that people need unfettered access to firearms in order to protect themselves and defend their homes from criminal attack. By that reckoning, guns serve much the same purpose as home security systems. But no one ever wears a T-shirt daring people to “come and take” their home security system. No one ever boasts that their home security system can only be removed by prying it from their “cold, dead hands.” Politicians never put out TV ads in which they’re seen activating a home security system. The reason is obvious: Home security systems are simply practical tools. But Americans don’t value guns merely for the practical benefits of personal security or even game hunting.

Millions of people in this country have a fetish for guns. For those Americans, guns are an expression of power, a provider of identity and an endless source of pleasure. No matter how many mass shootings we have in this country — and we’ve had more than 230 this year, including the May 24 elementary-school massacre in Uvalde which killed 19 children and two teachers — zealous gun enthusiasts won’t bend. They’ll cite unrestricted access to guns as a God-given right, though I continue to search in vain for the biblical passage granting 18-year-olds the authority to purchase an AR-15. They’ll call it a constitutional mandate, although even the landmark 2008 District of Columbia v. Heller verdict — seen as a major triumph for the gun lobby — acknowledged that government entities are allowed to impose some regulations on gun access and use. More than anything, guns are a deeply embedded piece of our culture for reasons that have little to do with the intentions of Founding Fathers who lived in an era of muskets and thought in terms of private militias that might need to rise up against an oppressive national government — just as the American colonists had risen up against British rule.