Sugar, shoot!

A nine-year-old girl in Arizona is (inexplicably) being taught to fire an Uzi. The instructor shows her how to hold the gun, then tells her how to position her feet. Clearly, the girl has no experience with guns -- not even in play. He tells her to fire one shot. She does. Then, he says, "full auto" and flips a switch on the gun. She pulls the trigger. In a blur too quick for the video camera to capture, the gun kicks to the left, spewing a torrent of bullets. Here the video ends. But the rest of the story is known: the instructor is shot in the head and dies.

Gun enthusiasts will point to the video and claim that this is an isolated incident. But this kind of thing seems to happen every day. 3-year-olds shoot their Dads (it's always Dads, isn't it?) or themselves. Little kids shoot their friends. Grown men shoot themselves in the leg or groin. Over and over and over.

There is a very vocal faction in this country that sees all of this mayhem is acceptable collateral damage in the campaign to regularize the owing and public display of firearms. I am sure that my Facebook post on the subject will get shot down (an aptly-chosen metaphor) by self-styled "patriots" who see themselves as guarantors of Americans' precious right to arm themselves the teeth.

Our Founders were rightly concerned about royal attempts to disarm them, making them unable to stand against the depredations and stupidities of empire. But today's patriots have no communal sense -- only an individualist's sense of expressing his own stunted masculinity with gun play.

The sickness in our society stems from our switch from communalism -- villagers banding together against evil outsiders -- to individualism -- the desire to show off one's macho and terrorize one's fellow villagers. We won't make significant inroads against gun violence until we address the pathology of the personal -- the unrealistic need to protect one's own, and only one's own.

As a species, we have not progressed to our current state via the efforts of individuals. No pharaoh built a pyramid. No pope built a cathedral. No mogul built a railroad. No president won a war. All of our great accomplishments from the concerted efforts of hundreds, thousands or millions of people, all working in unison toward a communal goal. The gun nut's fantasy is that a firearm will make them king of their own universe. Something that hasn't happened in recorded history, and will never happen in then future.

Rather than becoming a legend in in their own minds, guns make them the widowed, the childless, the slain and the accidental killer.