{non-fiction}
Five years ago, I wrote an essay about guns. It was through the lens of fear - a fear I argued was both justifiable and appropriate. We should be afraid of guns, and we should be more afraid to live in a community that won't do anything about them.
I reread it in the aftermath of the Las Vegas massacre, and I was struck by something far more personal, and far more trivial: I didn't like it. I didn't like myself for writing it. I felt ashamed. I felt humiliated. Or rather I would have, if anybody had read it.
But nobody did - not many people read anything I write. I'm not employed by any publication. I'm not employed at all.
What I was feeling - what many of us were feeling - was powerless. And this makes the long story of guns seem awfully familiar.
Warrior culture is a lodestone of all human society. It is a way of metabolising the fear of violence. Some of us have to be strong. They have to do violence. It is the only path to survival. We had rivals who did not absorb this lesson as well as we. The knowledge of this permeates all human memory.
There is a problem: violence does not come naturally to us. It comes so unnaturally that it is nearly impossible for us to commit. The progress of what we call civilization has been marked by a material quest to counter this fact, largely through something that does come naturally to us: problem solving.
On the reading list for all United States Marines is On Killing, a study of this problem. It begins by noting something that is common knowledge to military minds: by and large, people simply will not kill people. It is not something that is possible for us to do.
Our solution to this has been the driving force of our history: the development of technology that would allow us to do something we cannot do. Because the fundamental truth is that people don’t - can't, won't - kill people. Weapons kill people.
The end of someone else’s life is abstract, but it is an abstract we grasp intuitively. In the land of the pure abstract - in dreams - no one could kill anyone. What we can do is manipulate tools that cause that death to happen. And the more we focus on those tools, the more likely it becomes for us to do something altogether concrete.
Warrior culture is a lodestone of all human society. It is a way of metabolising the fear of violence. Some of us have to be strong. They have to do violence. It is the only path to survival. We had rivals who did not absorb this lesson as well as we. The knowledge of this permeates all human memory.
There is a problem: violence does not come naturally to us. It comes so unnaturally that it is nearly impossible for us to commit. The progress of what we call civilization has been marked by a material quest to counter this fact, largely through something that does come naturally to us: problem solving.
On the reading list for all United States Marines is On Killing, a study of this problem. It begins by noting something that is common knowledge to military minds: by and large, people simply will not kill people. It is not something that is possible for us to do.
Our solution to this has been the driving force of our history: the development of technology that would allow us to do something we cannot do. Because the fundamental truth is that people don’t - can't, won't - kill people. Weapons kill people.
The end of someone else’s life is abstract, but it is an abstract we grasp intuitively. In the land of the pure abstract - in dreams - no one could kill anyone. What we can do is manipulate tools that cause that death to happen. And the more we focus on those tools, the more likely it becomes for us to do something altogether concrete.
I used to have a drug problem. But it wasn't a drug problem. It was an everything problem.
I was introduced to my adult life at the dawn of the Great Recession. I couldn't find a job. I could barely find a friend. I certainly couldn't find a publisher for the several novels I’d written as my youth ripened on the vine. And eventually, when I discovered I was manic depressive, I couldn't get out of bed - except to entertain what in clinical terms might be called delusions of grandeur, and which I still maintain were really awesome ideas.
Either way, it involved smoking a lot of weed.
I used to have a drug problem. But it wasn't a drug problem. It was an everything problem.
I was introduced to my adult life at the dawn of the Great Recession. I couldn't find a job. I could barely find a friend. I certainly couldn't find a publisher for the several novels I’d written as my youth ripened on the vine. And eventually, when I discovered I was manic depressive, I couldn't get out of bed - except to entertain what in clinical terms might be called delusions of grandeur, and which I still maintain were really awesome ideas.
Either way, it involved smoking a lot of weed.
Primates can use rocks, and so can we. We always could. We can use rocks to crush each other's skulls, and that's how warfare happened for a very long time.
But of course the basic unit of warfare that we have contained for the length and breadth of organized human society is the blade. We can use sharp things to stab each other.
'All who take up the sword will die by the sword,’ Jesus told a follower who tried to protect him from arrest through violence. He also said, 'I am come not to bring peace, but the sword.’
The sword, unsurprisingly, is a ubiquitous symbol in human society. Jesus’ use of the term is pivotal, though: he uses it both as a symbol of power and powerlessness.
Towering over all in the consideration of weapons is the feeling of control. The ancient epics gave power to men who could use weapons well. It’s an idea so enticing that it bleeds even into our current moment of drone strikes and nuclear umbrellas. At some level, we feel that mastery of weapons makes us invulnerable. And we are very vulnerable indeed, and we know it.
But throughout the age of the sword, the notion persisted. Chivalric romance insists on the skill of the warrior and its ultimate liberation. No one can kill a great swordsman but a greater swordsman. It takes Achilles to kill Hector.
'The greatest swordsman in the world was killed by Meryn Fucking Trant?’ the Hound scoffs at Arya in Game of Thrones. Even the fuck-it-all medieval atheist can't abide chaos when it comes to the sword.
Towering over all in the consideration of weapons is the feeling of control. The ancient epics gave power to men who could use weapons well. It’s an idea so enticing that it bleeds even into our current moment of drone strikes and nuclear umbrellas. At some level, we feel that mastery of weapons makes us invulnerable. And we are very vulnerable indeed, and we know it.
But throughout the age of the sword, the notion persisted. Chivalric romance insists on the skill of the warrior and its ultimate liberation. No one can kill a great swordsman but a greater swordsman. It takes Achilles to kill Hector.
'The greatest swordsman in the world was killed by Meryn Fucking Trant?’ the Hound scoffs at Arya in Game of Thrones. Even the fuck-it-all medieval atheist can't abide chaos when it comes to the sword.
He has a point. Because it takes a mind to use a weapon - a trained mind. Combat scholarship demonstrates that only a tiny minority of soldiers can actually bring themselves to use their weapons. More precisely, it takes a certain kind of person with a certain kind of experience to use a certain kind of weapon. The less of that, the more of the other.
Hannibal’s army’s success has been linked to the innovation of long spears - tactically useful, of course, but psychologically so as well. It’s easier to kill someone at the end of a spear. Easier still to kill them at the end of a gun barrel.
But not that easy.
He has a point. Because it takes a mind to use a weapon - a trained mind. Combat scholarship demonstrates that only a tiny minority of soldiers can actually bring themselves to use their weapons. More precisely, it takes a certain kind of person with a certain kind of experience to use a certain kind of weapon. The less of that, the more of the other.
Hannibal’s army’s success has been linked to the innovation of long spears - tactically useful, of course, but psychologically so as well. It’s easier to kill someone at the end of a spear. Easier still to kill them at the end of a gun barrel.
But not that easy.
The day a woman won more votes than any white male candidate in history for the U.S. presidency, I cried watching a live stream of Susan B. Anthony’s grave.
Some surreal months later, I reflected on the first great victory of the American woman voter: prohibition.
It was considered at the time to be the ultimate women’s issue. Men liked to drink. Men didn't want to stop drinking. But the wives they would routinely abuse while drunk thought differently about it. To them, it was the worst of all possible vices: one whose pleasures they didn't share and whose pains they had to endure without respite. Men would drink, beat them, spend the paychecks meant to care for the children they were rearing on booze - and all with the law behind them. Taking the bottle away was their way of striking back; of curing an intractable social ill.
Prohibition, of course, is alive and well for every recreational drug except alcohol. I know because according to American law, my habit of smoking marijuana was punishable by years of imprisonment. I know also because hundreds of thousands of people are incarcerated for it, and millions more are locked away for their involvement with other prohibited drugs. In principle, this same criminal justice system could have derailed the lives of the past three presidents who administered it.
But the capitalized Prohibition is a laughingstock of our political history, routinely invoked as the dumbest law in American history. After men simply refused to stop drinking, and crime rose, and enforcement became impossible, and even women decided this might be fun to try - the law was repealed.
The problems the suffragettes had zeroed in on lingered - men still drank and beat their wives, alcohol still sickened and endangered lives at every turn - but the law was repealed. Why?
The day a woman won more votes than any white male candidate in history for the U.S. presidency, I cried watching a live stream of Susan B. Anthony’s grave.
Some surreal months later, I reflected on the first great victory of the American woman voter: prohibition.
It was considered at the time to be the ultimate women’s issue. Men liked to drink. Men didn't want to stop drinking. But the wives they would routinely abuse while drunk thought differently about it. To them, it was the worst of all possible vices: one whose pleasures they didn't share and whose pains they had to endure without respite. Men would drink, beat them, spend the paychecks meant to care for the children they were rearing on booze - and all with the law behind them. Taking the bottle away was their way of striking back; of curing an intractable social ill.
Prohibition, of course, is alive and well for every recreational drug except alcohol. I know because according to American law, my habit of smoking marijuana was punishable by years of imprisonment. I know also because hundreds of thousands of people are incarcerated for it, and millions more are locked away for their involvement with other prohibited drugs. In principle, this same criminal justice system could have derailed the lives of the past three presidents who administered it.
But the capitalized Prohibition is a laughingstock of our political history, routinely invoked as the dumbest law in American history. After men simply refused to stop drinking, and crime rose, and enforcement became impossible, and even women decided this might be fun to try - the law was repealed.
The problems the suffragettes had zeroed in on lingered - men still drank and beat their wives, alcohol still sickened and endangered lives at every turn - but the law was repealed. Why?
About one in ten Civil War soldiers would actually fire their weapons, even when threatened. Usually there would be a group of soldiers clustered around the one actually pulling the trigger, loading and reloading a gun that was already loaded.
Weapons got better, and so did training. Soldiers in the Second World War were heavily drilled to fire on targets. In battle situations, however, only about a quarter of the men would fire their guns - and then often deliberately wide of their targets.
The postwar military industrial complex - with its mad technological gusto - pretty much solved the problem once and for all. They did so by giving their soldiers automatic weapons and training them to fire reflexively, as soon as a target presented itself - like a video game.
About one in ten Civil War soldiers would actually fire their weapons, even when threatened. Usually there would be a group of soldiers clustered around the one actually pulling the trigger, loading and reloading a gun that was already loaded.
Weapons got better, and so did training. Soldiers in the Second World War were heavily drilled to fire on targets. In battle situations, however, only about a quarter of the men would fire their guns - and then often deliberately wide of their targets.
The postwar military industrial complex - with its mad technological gusto - pretty much solved the problem once and for all. They did so by giving their soldiers automatic weapons and training them to fire reflexively, as soon as a target presented itself - like a video game.
Today, Americans are perpetually at war, and the armed forces are the country’s largest employer. But military leadership is often suspicious - even downright critical - of civilian gun ownership, which is famously the highest in the world. 'Home should not be a war zone,’ wrote General Stanley McChrystal in the wake of the Pulse night club massacre.
Guns are hard to use. Using them properly, and in the right context, is a profession. In fact, using them in any other context serves, at best, no purpose at all. Yet Americans insist that they have them, notwithstanding the cost - which is suffering and death, on an epidemic scale.
Each time this happens - each time the supplications are made, the dead mourned, the bitterness vented - many of us express sickened bewilderment that this doesn't ever serve to change our policies or our minds. In the wake of a mass shooting, gun sales inevitably go up, not down. People want their guns more than ever.
I feel powerless when this happens. But I'm not the only one.
Today, Americans are perpetually at war, and the armed forces are the country’s largest employer. But military leadership is often suspicious - even downright critical - of civilian gun ownership, which is famously the highest in the world. 'Home should not be a war zone,’ wrote General Stanley McChrystal in the wake of the Pulse night club massacre.
Guns are hard to use. Using them properly, and in the right context, is a profession. In fact, using them in any other context serves, at best, no purpose at all. Yet Americans insist that they have them, notwithstanding the cost - which is suffering and death, on an epidemic scale.
Each time this happens - each time the supplications are made, the dead mourned, the bitterness vented - many of us express sickened bewilderment that this doesn't ever serve to change our policies or our minds. In the wake of a mass shooting, gun sales inevitably go up, not down. People want their guns more than ever.
I feel powerless when this happens. But I'm not the only one.
In the run-up to the 2016 election, there was palpable fear. I read an article about it. Psychologists across the country were taking note of a severe uptick in anxiety due to the political climate. Being me and no one else, I assumed this had everything to do with the evil charlatan who would soon be handed the nuclear codes.
But the fact was: Republicans were actually more afraid of Hilary Clinton’s election than Democrats were of Trump’s. And the biggest reason for this was the prospect of gun control.
In the run-up to the 2016 election, there was palpable fear. I read an article about it. Psychologists across the country were taking note of a severe uptick in anxiety due to the political climate. Being me and no one else, I assumed this had everything to do with the evil charlatan who would soon be handed the nuclear codes.
But the fact was: Republicans were actually more afraid of Hilary Clinton’s election than Democrats were of Trump’s. And the biggest reason for this was the prospect of gun control.
The victory of the gun lobby is a fait accompli of American life - politicians ride out the storm of outrage in the aftermath of mass shootings and go back to keeping the 300 million guns on the streets.
There is greed in this, opportunism, cruelty, dereliction of duty; but this is a state of being for lawmakers in a society divided against itself. It could just as well be argued that turning a blind eye to the sale of alcohol is an act of callous profiteering. It is. Politicians are used to this. We ask it of them.
The victory of the gun lobby is a fait accompli of American life - politicians ride out the storm of outrage in the aftermath of mass shootings and go back to keeping the 300 million guns on the streets.
There is greed in this, opportunism, cruelty, dereliction of duty; but this is a state of being for lawmakers in a society divided against itself. It could just as well be argued that turning a blind eye to the sale of alcohol is an act of callous profiteering. It is. Politicians are used to this. We ask it of them.
When Steve Bannon, the right-wing populist, left the White House, he gave an interview to a friendly publication in which he said that he was glad to have his hands back on his weapons. When he did, I thought of those conservatives who elected Trump and feared his opponent, and the reason they did. But I also thought of an equivalency.
Imagine a radical-cum-populist movement from the other side, in which a far-out media figure from the left is given a top post in the White House. Bill Maher seems about right.
Say Bill Maher gave an interview after leaving office in which he said 'I’m just glad to be able to get high again.’ Would my instinctual reaction to this - my wolf-grinning familiarity - be that far off from a gun owner who voted in Bannon’s brood?
When Steve Bannon, the right-wing populist, left the White House, he gave an interview to a friendly publication in which he said that he was glad to have his hands back on his weapons. When he did, I thought of those conservatives who elected Trump and feared his opponent, and the reason they did. But I also thought of an equivalency.
Imagine a radical-cum-populist movement from the other side, in which a far-out media figure from the left is given a top post in the White House. Bill Maher seems about right.
Say Bill Maher gave an interview after leaving office in which he said 'I’m just glad to be able to get high again.’ Would my instinctual reaction to this - my wolf-grinning familiarity - be that far off from a gun owner who voted in Bannon’s brood?
Despite the fact that there is a gun for most every American, most Americans don't own guns. This is because gun owners tend to own lots of guns. Even to a man raised on action movies, having more than two guns doesn't seem like a matter of practicality. I’ve seen Equilibrium. Two uzis should do it.
To me, this emphasizes something fundamental about gun culture. Notwithstanding the firebrand rhetoric about good guys and bad guys, resisting a tyrannical government, and so on, the fact is that the allure of guns isn’t about what they do. It's about how they make you feel.
Having a gun makes you feel powerful. It makes you feel like you're in control. It gives you the sense that you have options, that there are possibilities. That you can survive, and thrive, no matter what. This may be illusory; you may be aware that it's illusory. But the sense of it is overwhelming. It feels real.
I know that feeling.
Despite the fact that there is a gun for most every American, most Americans don't own guns. This is because gun owners tend to own lots of guns. Even to a man raised on action movies, having more than two guns doesn't seem like a matter of practicality. I’ve seen Equilibrium. Two uzis should do it.
To me, this emphasizes something fundamental about gun culture. Notwithstanding the firebrand rhetoric about good guys and bad guys, resisting a tyrannical government, and so on, the fact is that the allure of guns isn’t about what they do. It's about how they make you feel.
Having a gun makes you feel powerful. It makes you feel like you're in control. It gives you the sense that you have options, that there are possibilities. That you can survive, and thrive, no matter what. This may be illusory; you may be aware that it's illusory. But the sense of it is overwhelming. It feels real.
I know that feeling.
Guns are analogous to drugs in many ways. They make people feel better in fraught situations. Guns make you feel as though you have control when you don't have much; drugs make you feel good when there's plenty of reason to feel bad.
In both cases, there's a cost - and not just or even principally to those who choose them. Prohibition was a women's movement designed to check the violence of men. Wives were being hurt by their drunk husbands. Their lives were being destroyed for a choice someone else was making. Guns are an even clearer demonstration of this fact.
Yet the people, as a body, have legislated - and they have done so at tremendous cost to themselves. If it were a conventional movement, it would be the great cause of the age. Americans have elected to use drugs and guns at the expense of their lives, liberty, and health. They have put their bodies on the line to protect these things that they love. They go to jail to protest drug criminalization; they vote against their other interests to keep guns legal.
They value these things so highly that they're willing to live with the consequences: early death, both through violence and addiction; a severe deficit in public health that strains all social resources; and the dramatic warping of political life to suit the agendas of those who would exploit these unshakeable beliefs.
That these decisions are made as a matter of living rather than as a matter of principle only makes them more powerful: this goes bone deep into how people choose to exist. Despite the regular slaughter of innocents and the institution of a prison state, Americans have made it clear that this is how they will live, no matter what.
Guns are analogous to drugs in many ways. They make people feel better in fraught situations. Guns make you feel as though you have control when you don't have much; drugs make you feel good when there's plenty of reason to feel bad.
In both cases, there's a cost - and not just or even principally to those who choose them. Prohibition was a women's movement designed to check the violence of men. Wives were being hurt by their drunk husbands. Their lives were being destroyed for a choice someone else was making. Guns are an even clearer demonstration of this fact.
Yet the people, as a body, have legislated - and they have done so at tremendous cost to themselves. If it were a conventional movement, it would be the great cause of the age. Americans have elected to use drugs and guns at the expense of their lives, liberty, and health. They have put their bodies on the line to protect these things that they love. They go to jail to protest drug criminalization; they vote against their other interests to keep guns legal.
They value these things so highly that they're willing to live with the consequences: early death, both through violence and addiction; a severe deficit in public health that strains all social resources; and the dramatic warping of political life to suit the agendas of those who would exploit these unshakeable beliefs.
That these decisions are made as a matter of living rather than as a matter of principle only makes them more powerful: this goes bone deep into how people choose to exist. Despite the regular slaughter of innocents and the institution of a prison state, Americans have made it clear that this is how they will live, no matter what.
Why?
The answer begins with the logic of drug use - a logic towards which we are wilfully blind. In fact, our blindness itself reveals what we would see.
There is an old experiment done with rats that lay people are fond of repeating: a rat given the opportunity to receive the chemical equivalent of an orgasm every time it pressed a button would continue to do so until it died.
This is somehow comforting to us: that pleasure is an abyss, that we are powerless in the face of it. It’s the fundamental logic of the anti-drug crowd. Pleasure is so tantalizing, so powerful, so irresistible, that our only path to civilization is through the elimination of temptation. If drugs were available, we would simply be lost to them.
Philosophically, this is troubling - Foucault would have something to say to them about giving more power to pleasure by denying it. But let’s put that aside, and go back to the rat.
In this experiment, the rat is a fixed presence - any rat and all rats. Yet this rat was not all rats. This experiment was performed a generation ago on rats whose treatment was not a matter of concern. They were caged in open spaces, in brightly lit conditions - both of which rats hate - and given nothing to do but await the scientist’s whims, some of which involved killing them. These were not happy rats. In fact, they were probably among the most miserable rats on the planet during their short lives.
Another experiment was done much later, one that would do well to enjoy the same level of cocktail party banter. This one repeated the basic premise, but with one crucial difference: it was done at Rat Park.
Why?
The answer begins with the logic of drug use - a logic towards which we are wilfully blind. In fact, our blindness itself reveals what we would see.
There is an old experiment done with rats that lay people are fond of repeating: a rat given the opportunity to receive the chemical equivalent of an orgasm every time it pressed a button would continue to do so until it died.
This is somehow comforting to us: that pleasure is an abyss, that we are powerless in the face of it. It’s the fundamental logic of the anti-drug crowd. Pleasure is so tantalizing, so powerful, so irresistible, that our only path to civilization is through the elimination of temptation. If drugs were available, we would simply be lost to them.
Philosophically, this is troubling - Foucault would have something to say to them about giving more power to pleasure by denying it. But let’s put that aside, and go back to the rat.
In this experiment, the rat is a fixed presence - any rat and all rats. Yet this rat was not all rats. This experiment was performed a generation ago on rats whose treatment was not a matter of concern. They were caged in open spaces, in brightly lit conditions - both of which rats hate - and given nothing to do but await the scientist’s whims, some of which involved killing them. These were not happy rats. In fact, they were probably among the most miserable rats on the planet during their short lives.
Another experiment was done much later, one that would do well to enjoy the same level of cocktail party banter. This one repeated the basic premise, but with one crucial difference: it was done at Rat Park.
Rat Park was designed to be what rats wanted it to be. There were soft places to rest, dark-lit nooks to explore. Plenty of good food and fresh water were always available. The rats were never threatened or mistreated through outlandish experimentation. They were given a park to live in - as well as an orgasm machine.
None of them died.
Rat Park was designed to be what rats wanted it to be. There were soft places to rest, dark-lit nooks to explore. Plenty of good food and fresh water were always available. The rats were never threatened or mistreated through outlandish experimentation. They were given a park to live in - as well as an orgasm machine.
None of them died.
Life is hard all over. Why do Americans feel so powerless?
Because Americans are told they have power, and they don't. They tell themselves the same thing. It’s the land of the free, the land of opportunity. The greatest country on Earth. The best democracy. The most powerful citizens. The richest, the strongest. The indispensable nation. The greatest country on Earth. The greatest country on Earth. The greatest country on Earth.
Americans have no real say in their governing. There’s roughly one federal representative for every million. Twenty million Californians have one Senator. Your vote doesn't matter if you happen to be in your state’s political minority. Your vote is cast for a person, not a policy - not any policy. You don't even choose the person. A dozen well-funded people appear before a small subset of voters and are whittled down to two. Half of the people don't vote, which at the least demonstrates a deep lack of faith that the process is necessary or truly representative of their interests.
Yet they're not just powerless, the way many humans are. They're deluded by power, from within and without. Americans are vexed by the illusion that they are free. It is their birthright, their burden, their sacred position before a world that is, as they are constantly reminded, much worse off than they. They must be free.
And since it is plainly not so, there must be something wrong with me. I should be employed, and I am not. I should be successful, and I am not. I should be able to fix this, and I can not. I should be powerful, and I am not. I should be free, and I am not.
The only thing worse than not living in a park is thinking you are.
I gave up drugs four years ago, when my daughter was born. As I cared for her, as I grew up, I wrote another novel. If it's not the most grandiose of my books - and hell, it may be - it is the most honest.
In another four years, my daughter will be the age of the twenty children shot to death when I wrote my last essay on guns. By then, if current trends hold, the better part of half a million people will have been killed by guns in the United States. The toll that marijuana will take in traffic deaths and other indirect public health measures will pale in comparison to the one already being taken by alcohol - still the leading drug-related weight on human life. Millions more will disappear into the cavernous complex of drug use and policy, from mass incarceration to overdose.
As long as we live the way we live, our vices will remain, and we will cling to them. A cage won't do. We need to build a park.
10/3/2017
