Gun

Bullets don’t have a conscience. They don’t care who or what their target is. Guns don’t care who pulls the trigger or what or who they are aimed at. Guns and bullets are objects. The only thing that distinguishes them from the hammer in your hand or the frying pan on your stove is that bullets and guns have a singular purpose. To kill.

I don’t care that law enforcement in Utah has now announced that they found a “high powered bolt action rifle” that was likely used in the killing of political activist Charlie Kirk. I don’t care what kind of gun the killer used, what its model was, what kind of bullet he used, what was the size of his ammunition magazine.

I don’t care what clothing he wore. I don’t care that he was male. I don’t care what age he is. I don’t care what he posted on social media. I don’t care what his motivation was. I care that the man he shot was a conservative political activist. I do care that he is dead, and he leaves a wife and two children to live on after him.

I don’t care that Donald Trump is in full stumbling stride trying to use Kirk’s assassination against Democrats. I don’t care that Democrats are lining up, as they should, to express their grief and anger that Kirk was killed. I do care that political violence is now a “thing” in the United States of America, because that fact marks another stage in this country’s fall from grace. I don’t care that the assassination of Charlie Kirk has already become and will continue to be a cheap and stupid political issue.

What I care about is that a gun was used to kill Kirk. A gun is unique among deadly weapons because it allows a killer to project his power from a distance, whether that distance is across a room or across a college plaza. A gun subtracts the personal from its deadly purpose, because by using a gun, a killer need not get close enough to touch the person he wants to kill. A gun allows its user to stand near his target and be seen, or to be far away and be anonymous.

It doesn’t matter either way. A gun does not care how it is used, or what distance it is fired from, or who pulls its trigger. A gun will go off and send a bullet into a human body to wound or kill because that is what a gun is designed and built for. That is why it doesn’t matter what kind of gun was used to kill Charlie Kirk. He is just as dead being killed by a bolt action rifle as he would be if he was killed by a pistol or an AR-15.

A great number of deaths caused by guns in this country are accidental or suicides. Guns don’t care if you are sloppy as you clean or reload them. Guns don’t care if the person they are aimed at is the person holding the gun. Guns will kill no matter the circumstance, because that is what guns do. Killing a human being may not be the reason a person buys a gun, but the gun doesn’t care what its owner’s purpose is. A gun holds within itself the mechanism and the power to kill. It is called a dangerous weapon because it has this power to kill. When it comes to a gun, purpose and power are one in the same because a gun’s function is to fire a bullet that can kill a human being.

I care every time someone is killed with a gun. I cared about Uvalde. I cared about Parkland. I cared about Sandy Hook. I care that yesterday a gun was used in a shooting at a school in Evergreen, Colorado that seriously wounded three children. I care about the victims. I care about their families. I care that a gun killed Charlie Kirk.

But what I care about most of all is that there are more privately owned guns in this country than there are U.S. citizens. Guns are not insane. They are what they are. But it is simply beyond comprehension that we as a people have laws that have allowed the insane proliferation of guns to happen, beginning with the Second Amendment and including the laws permitting guns to be carried openly or concealed without training or a license.

Guns kill people. There will be more Uvaldes and Sandy Hooks and Parklands and Columbines. We are at the mercy of killers who use guns, because we have allowed guns to rule us. In Utah yesterday, we learned once again that we have yielded our right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to guns that have more rights than we do.