Battleground America: One Nation Under the Gun, Jill Lepore -- Comments

Battleground America:  One Nation Under the Gun

By Jill Lepore   The New Yorker,  April 23, 2012.  pp. 38-47.

  

I wish to call attention to an excellent article on American gun laws by Jill Lepore in the April 23, 2012, issue of The New Yorker.  http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/04/23/120423fa_fact_lepore

It is a survey of the history of gun laws, the NRA, the Second Amendment, and the culture of gun ownership in the United States.  Well researched and well written and illustrated with many examples of important incidents and legal cases that shaped both public opinion and the direction of legislation on gun ownership in America, it is the best concise discussion of this topic I have seen.  I highly recommend it.  If you think things are crazy, she explains how they got this way. 

What she didn't talk about, and which I would like to see, is a story about the manufacturers of guns.  Where are they made? How are they made?  Who profits from them?  A gun is a precision instrument.  It is not that easy to make.  You can grow marijuana or synthesize methamphetamine in your home.  But you can't very easily make a handgun on your kitchen table.  We have about three hundred million guns in the United States, one for every man, woman, and child in the country.  Those guns have to be coming from somewhere.  Someone is making a lot of money manufacturing them.  There are probably relatively few factories turning them out.  It would take many years to cleanse this society of guns, even if we started wholesale confiscation today -- which could never be done.  But the faucet of guns that continually burgeons this supply could be shut off literally overnight.  Factories could be shuttered.  Workers could be retrained.  Swords could be beaten into plowshares.  Once replenishment of the supply of guns is cut, then guns (and ammunition, which fortunately is specific to each gun) would immediately begin to become rarer and more expensive.  The gun problem in America is not insurmountable or hopeless.  It is certainly a formidable undertaking, but one must realize that the landscape of private gun ownership in the United States could change dramatically in a very short time.  Understanding the problem in both its historical and cultural dimensions is an important starting point and Jill Lepore's article provides a clear, comprehensive foundation.  My suggestion is that the discussion shift from the right of individuals to own guns, to curtailing the manufacture and marketing of a deadly product that has no other purpose but to cause death, harm, and mayhem.