Dangerous American Gun Myths and Fantasies

By TERRY STULCE

America is awash in gun myths, many of them created out of thin air. The “Guns don’t kill people” defense is a staple of NRA rhetoric when people are murdered with guns. The truth is this; People with guns kill other people and themselves everyday. Furthermore, maniacs armed with semi-automatic weapons kill large numbers of people on a regular basis.

The most often repeated NRA myth is that “It takes a good guy with a gun to stop a bad guy with a gun.” The truth is that “good guys” with guns are often at the scene of gun slaughters and have become bystanders or victims themselves. There were several “good guys” with semi-automatic weapons at the Orlando nightclub shooting but they failed to stop the slaughter. I know for a fact that one of the men killed at the Kansas City mass murder near the abortion clinic had a concealed carry permit and was carrying his gun at the time he was murdered.

There were several ”good guys” attempting to stop the mass murder in Las Vegas, but 59 people were murdered before the shooter stopped himself with his own bullet. In the Parkland murders, police with guns failed to stop the murderer from killing 17 and wounding 20 children and then successfully fleeing the scene. In Sutherland Springs Texas, a “good guy with a gun” wounded a “bad guy with a gun” but not before he had killed 26 people and wounded scores of others. In these mass murders, a more truthful statement of this reality is that “a bad guy with a gun can kill a lot of good people.”

“The good guy with a gun stopping a bad guy with a gun” myth is based on the premise that a “good guy” is anyone who can buy a gun legally. Getting possession of a gun legally automatically transforms anyone into a “good guy who is just exercising his constitutional rights.” Mass murderers at Las Vegas, Parkland, Orlando and Sutherland Springs bought their guns legally. Were these mass murders just exercising their constitutional rights?

These myths are buttressed by childhood fantasies that were created by watching too many cowboy and war movies. Americans cut their teeth on gratuitous violence. American children role play being the “good guy” with a gun and killing a “bad guy”. They have witnessed this scenario being staged in the movies and on television a thousand times by the time they are in the third grade. Matt Dillon had killed 2000 “bad guys” before they graduated from elementary school. What is the message of this violence? “Good Guys” with a gun always win in a gun fight with a “bad guy” with a gun.

It is then a short jump to the myth that “good guys” must carry a gun to insure their own safety and to keep their loved ones safe. The combination of these fantasies and myths lead directly to the most dangerous myth of all: If you have a permit and own a gun, you qualify as a gunfighter. Give a teacher a gun and 20 hours of training and he/she becomes a gunfighter. This idea is beyond ridiculous. This is a formula for staggering body counts.

The truth is that even most veterans have no experience in gunfights. Even in combat zones, 90% of soldiers are in the rear areas. They may experience rocket or mortar attacks but engagements with the enemy at close range with assault weapons would be extremely rare to nonexistent. The experienced gunfighter is in the Infantry. Even Infantry training doesn’t insure success as a gunfighter and even being a good gunfighter doesn’t mean you will survive very long in a gunfight.

Nevertheless, Americans continue to carry their childhood fantasies into adulthood, to buy AR-15s, shoot cans with it, and imagine that they are heroic gunman. Even a coward like Donald Trump with five draft deferments and a bone spur handicap, claims he would act effectively in the face of a mass murderer with an AR-15. Of course, he can’t produce any evidence to support this outrageous claim. Trump imagines that he would act “fearlessly”. That is his first mistake.

Acknowledging your own fear and using that fear to mobilize your actions are the first steps in surviving a firefight. You quickly learn that adrenaline is like running on high test gas. Those who repress or deny their fear are likely to make a trip to the morgue in a body bag. Those that immobilize themselves become non-factors. The old primitive fight or flight system is still at work for humans engaged in firefights. Your fear is a friend.

For Trump to call our first responders “cowards” when they hesitate in the face of an AR-15 is deeply deplorable. The expectation that police should be able to “take down” a mass murderer armed with a semiautomatic rifle and high capacity magazines with a pitiful little side arm is absurd. Allowing our police to be continuously “outgunned” is the height of social irresponsibility.

I happen to know a few things about gunfights and assault weapons. I carried an M-16 for the better part of two years in Vietnam as a Combat Platoon Leader in the 101st Airborne Division (1967-68) and a Senior Advisor with the 69th Border Ranger Battalion (1970-71). My M-16 was never out of arm’s reach. I ate with it next to me and held it next to my body when I slept. When I came back from those two tours, it was difficult for me to adapt to not having it in my hand. Through the years I have had nightmares about not being able to find it.

The M16 has one purpose and that is to kill numerous people as quickly as possible. The selector switch had 3 positions; safe, semiautomatic, and fully automatic. In Vietnam, we called the fully automatic position “rock and roll.” In that position, the weapon’s muzzle tended to pull upward and off target. In a firefight, we instructed our infantrymen not to use automatic because it was not as accurate as semi-automatic and was a waste of ammunition.

The only important difference between the M16 and the AR-15 is that the AR-15 can’t fire fully automatic without certain modifications like “bump stocks.” But in a firefight, semiautomatic is the preferred setting for the infantry. In other words, the AR-15 is a weapon of war just like the M-16. Allowing civilians to arm themselves with AR-15s is inviting disaster, and it puts our police at disadvantage in a gunfight with criminals armed with AR-15s. It would be much easier to ban the sale of AR-15s than to persuade Americans to give up their infantile fantasies of being heroic gunfighters.

Terry Stulce was a decorated Combat Platoon Leader in the 101st Airborne Division during the war in Vietnam, earned a master’s degree in social work after his military service and was licensed as a psychotherapist. He now lives in Ooltewah, Tenn.

From The Progressive Populist, April 1, 2018

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