Guns Versus Cameras

The choice
between buying a gun
and buying a camera
feels like the choice between
documenting history
and becoming it.

This choice makes me feel like
hope is past tense, that maybe
focusing (the act of bringing an image to clarity)
might be less important than
focusing (the act of breathing to center your aim).

Using a camera is an act of acceptance,
opening an aperture
to allow light to form an image on a digital sensor,
a third eye capturing a moment
for playback, the act of gathering
a story that needs
to be told.

Firing a gun is an act of rejection,
pin striking primer to ignite gunpowder
and throw a slug spinning, screaming
down the rifle like a football spiral,
gravity temporarily denied,
an act of saying,
no
you do not take my life today,
instead I take
yours.

The camera is more expensive
contains lenses precision cut
from glass cylinders.

Captures twenty four
or thirty or sixty frames
per second,
still images strung together
to form the image
of a child running,
a poet reading,
always something in progress.

If you slow it down, you can
watch each image float by.
The best footage creates
a world you never want to leave.

The background
is called bokeh, the lovely
smear that light makes
when it strikes the sensor,
the pleasing blur of memory,
of light, golden,
in the summer afternoon.
The gun is cheaper,
fires sixty or a hundred
or six hundred bullets
a minute.
I can’t keep count.

Contains as many rounds
as the law will allow
each one a human life
taken or saved or taken;
I can’t keep the count.

Ends sentences but not paragraphs,
lives but not stories,
so many
bullet holes, each one,
the shape of a period.
But what
ever really
ends?

When firing your gun,
you must always be aware
of what is behind your target;
bullets have a tendency to
pass through flesh, bone,
and intention.

If you slow it down,
you will become a better marksman,
more competent, more capable
and you may be able to protect
the things that matter most to you,
help you to preserve a world
worth keeping.

Both require
open eyes
and commitment.

Both are called

shooting.

Political theatre for progressives

So apparently, the House Democrats are having a sit in about gun control.

Sometimes I feel like gun control is political theatre for liberals / leftists / progressives in the same way that bathroom bills, abortion, and sharia law issues are political theatre for conservatives / right wingers / culture fascists.

Gun control does not challenge entrenched moneyed interests. Gun control does not impact American imperialism abroad. Gun control does not stop political and economic elite impunity.

So we see the Democrats making some noise on it.

But I didn’t see any of these Democrats sitting on the House floor when we refused to prosecute the TBTF banks. I didn’t see them sitting on the House floor when we invaded Iraq. And I didn’t see them sitting on the House floor when Guantanamo Bay become a torture center. No, I am not impressed. This is not progression. This is theatre.

Guns

Every time a mass shooting happens, I am infuriated that we let another asshole get his hands on a gun and I instinctively want more gun control. Then I remember what a godawful job the state does of protecting racial, sexual, and gender minorities. Indeed, they’re often the ones handing out the violence, in giant heaping portions. And then I become that much more conflicted. With Trump perhaps about to become president, with Americans visiting Japanese internment camps excited about the prospect of Muslim internment, how can we possibly willingly disarm ourselves? This cannot be the only line of defense, but will the state be interested in any other argument?

The counter argument (one that I’ve posed myself repeatedly) is that our massive proliferation of guns has done NOTHING to protect our civil rights from eroding since 9/11.

But then the counter argument to that is that minorities have purposefully disarmed themselves and put ourselves at the mercy of the state – the guns, and the thought of armed struggle, is generally the province of racist, sexist, awful assholes.

And then the counter argument to that is that minorities (any type) can’t survive a shooting war with privileged people and the state.

But then the counter argument to that is that Iraqis and Afghanis just pantsed us in the Middle East.

Then the counter argument to that is that they only pantsed us because our military made an active decision to not butcher every man woman and child – they made an attempt to win hearts and minds.

And then the counter argument to that is that, well wouldn’t the military show the same restraint here if it came down to that?

And then I look and history and the answer is “nah, not really.”

And then we ask ourselves “Shouldn’t we try to be better?”

And then we ask ourselves “At what cost? Can we even survive being ‘better’ when so much is at stake??”

How much is pacifism a privilege of the cis and white?

How much is armed struggle a fantasy of the cis and white?

How much is relying on the state for protection a privilege of the cis and white?

And can we, as a society, continue to pay the awful cost of being armed to the teeth when in fact, our liberty erodes daily?

But with how badly our state handles the rights and freedoms of oppressed people (Brock Turner, anyone?) can we ask those populations to wait for the state to come to their senses?

But will provoking the state by arming yourself lead to a positive outcome?

Counterargument: no provocation was required for the violence currently taking place.

Summation? None.

Two thoughts on gun control

Thought 1

Do you want to know how to get rid of the Second Amendment? Start up the Black Panthers again. Create a Muslim Panthers. A Chinese Panthers. A Latino Panthers. Arm all the racial minorities. Arm the women. Arm the Planned Parenthood employees. Arm queer people. Arm trans* prostitutes, particularly trans* youth sex workers engaging in survival sex work. Make it legal to shoot rapists with impunity. Teach radical self-defense in American high schools, but only to people who belong to oppressed groups, because those are the groups that have been historically exposed to government tyranny and the viciousness of their fellow citizens. Start up AIM again, and give real sovereignty to the tribal leaders, so anyone who steps on their land without permission can be gunned down without trial. Anyone who tries to sell their mineral, water, and oil rights who isn’t a tribe member can be shot as a violation of their sovereignty.

You will see the Second Amendment evaporate faster than you can says “bipartisanship.”

Thought 2

The mighty US military just got pantsed by a bunch of guys with technicals, AK-47s, and roadside bombs. In a grinding, awful ten year war in Iraq. An American guerrilla army *definitely* has the potential to cause all manner of intense grief to the actual standing US army. Unless you are willing to do something like ride through a neighborhood and kill every man, woman, and child absolutely indiscriminately, conventional military force means less and less these days. We weren’t willing to do that in Iraq / Afghanistan, and the troops who did pull shit like this were put on trial (and rightfully so). I’d imagine that American troops would be even less inclined to commit war crimes this if they were rolling through, say, St. Louis, Brooklyn, or Tulsa.

That being said, we’ve seen concrete erosion of our freedom since 2001, all in the name of protecting it from terrifying brown people. All the guns in the world didn’t stop that.

In terms of protecting freedom with force, these supposed “real Americans” are cowardly and pathetic. They lack the intellect to realize that we’re frogs in a slowly boiling pot of water and the willpower to do anything about it. They see violations of our Constitutional freedoms as necessary protections against terrorism.

Guns don’t protect freedom. People protect freedom.

And our people have utterly, profoundly failed.