Gun Massacre Nation

I express my deep condolences to the families and friends that lost their loved ones at the horrific shooting on February 14, 2018 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., where the 19-year-old teenager Nikolas Cruz shot 17 people with a semiautomatic rifle.

This tragic event affected many people, and raises a lot of questions, about Cruz as an individual (how does a person arrive at the point of committing such an act of destruction?), but also about wider societal issues: How can a young boy have the opportunity to pack an AR15 assault rifle, load several magazines filled with full metal jacket bullets and enter without obstacle a 2,972 student school? On the latter question, I feel the need to take position as a parent, as a citizen of the United States, as a gun owner, former NRA (National Rifle Association) member and practicing marksman. 

Growing up with guns

Similar to any other child in rural America, I grew up around guns, with the difference that I lived in Venezuela and not in Kentucky. During my childhood it was absolutely normal that when arriving at our farm on the weekends, we would fire some shots into a safe direction to make sure potential robbers knew we were there and armed. When laborers came onto our property asking for work, carrying their basic tools, which were long and sharp machetes, more than once I saw my mother place the Colt 38 special revolver on the table just to show that she was not defenseless. 

I found my first gun at 11 in an old monastery's general store and my father bought it for me thinking it was an airgun. Later I realized that from my bullet collection, the 22 caliber rimfire fitted perfectly into the barrel. When I told my father, he immediately took the pistol from my hands and we went out to the garden to test-fire it. We both were shocked when becoming aware of the danger that I had been in. From that moment on, I could only use the pistol under my father's supervision and he taught me how to handle it with extreme precaution. My uncle on the other hand, did just trigger my fascination for guns and at the same time my sense of self preservation. When I was about 14 he once asked me to get the Colt Python 357 Magnum from under the seat of his Lincoln Continental saying: “take out the bullets and bring them to me”. After, he let me have the revolver to handle it all by myself. So as you can see, I am not a “anti-gun liberal pacifist” and I understand them as an effective defense tool for certain situations.

In my house I exercise strict gun control

I have three boys (14, 25 and 28), and I keep my weapons locked up in a safe of which only I know the combination. Every now and then I take my sons and nephews to the shooting range to have some fun and at the same time teach them how to shoot and handle guns safely. Even if you have your firearms locked up, other households might not. Kids could get them into their hands anywhere. Therefore it is important they learn to handle and respect them as they learn to handle a knife, a kitchen stove or a car, that can be deadly too. 

Of course my bigger sons could legally purchase their own weapons, but as long as they live in my house I would not allow them to keep them. You might think that applying this double standard is not right, but I would like to explain my reasoning to you: I do not see that they have the level of maturity and control to possess a gun yet. And probably they recognize it too and have therefore never even asked me if they could.

It is our collective and individual responsibility

Maybe the issue with Nikolas was precisely the missing father figure, or the sudden loss of the last remaining parent, his mother, or being a foster child or everything combined. When events with this level of impact happen, mostly it is not the fault of a single person, but a failure of the whole society. A society that did not detect on time what was building up inside this human being, a society that allows military firepower in hands of disturbed individuals, a society that is mainly focused on business, culturally attached to their instruments of war and sufficiently corrupt to put the economic interests before the wellbeing of its citizens.  

This massacre problem cannot be left to the politicians to be solved alone; each citizen has to become active and it has to be tackled from deep within our society.  We will need a lot of conversations, common sense and emotional intelligence to be able to agree on a new base. Because when we are not able to protect our young ones, all parties, all groups, all of us parents, all teachers, all neighbors, all law enforcement, all mayors, all pediatricians, all governors, all senators, all presidents (past & present) have dramatically failed. Events like this put our society to a tough test and we basically have two choices: We can enter into the usual actionism, trying to cure the symptoms, or we could (and in my view should) dig deeper and start by diagnosing the route cause to then initiate a transformation developing ourselves to a new level.

There is urgent need for change

The consequence of not having tackled the issue so far: 14 kids and 3 staff members were killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High in Parkland. This happened only 26 miles away from where we live and has therefore touched us significantly. The killer is a young man that had been expelled from that same high school last year. My son will start high school this year and I find myself asking:“Is this really the society I want my boy to continue growing up in?” Well, the answer is that it is in my hands, in our hands and only in our hands to change it. I am a world citizen and I could live wherever I wanted, but 14 years ago I chose the US and it would be really great if I could be part of a transformation here.

Rigid positions lead us nowhere

When everything is categorized in black and white or in this case "for" or "against" guns, there is no constructive discussion possible. As the author and research professor Brene Bruce very well puts in her article https://brenebrown.com/blog/, we have to stop this "bull shit" of knocking down the arguments by disqualifying the other positions and ignoring the valid demands (like the example of the picture). Instead, we have to work together all sides to define and implement the requirements and conditions that a civilian should comply with to be allowed to posses or carry a gun? Not the other way round: everybody can have guns and there are some exceptions, like in the case of convicted felons. But criminals will get them illegally anyway. 

In my opinion, it is absolutely outdated to continue granting this freedom and right to everybody through the 2nd constitutional amendment. It is not logical that you can buy a semiautomatic high caliber rifle at the age of 18 and for entering a bar and purchasing alcohol you have to wait until 21. Even car insurance companies categorize men under 25 as higher risk categories and they know what they are talking about, because they analyze this with accident statistics.

Violence should be shown as crude as it is

Instead of declaring thoughts and prayers again and again after every massacre, maybe we should as a society, consider what it will take to change the mindset.  In example, the media could start showing the real graphic pictures of the wounded bodies and corpses so people understand the effect of destruction that these war artifacts infer. 

We have no problem in doing so in movies and TV series, where guns and violence are glorified.  When it comes to real happenings, we prefer to look away and hold up the “in America everything is great” flag. Nobody likes to see his weak or dark side and it requires even more greatness to be self critical.

There is not only one cause, it is a combination

Our type of gun freedom is really unique in the world, and combined with the high degree of mental health issues and drug usage in this country, it adds another ingredient to an already deadly cocktail.

I remember several crazy characters when I was a student at the German school in Caracas. Some of my schoolmates were angry and mentally unbalanced enough to maybe have done something bad. Of course we did not have the violence abstracting video games and internet access to all kind of distorted and sick content from all around the world.  But most important, we did not have access to the means of power to massively harm anybody. Therefore the maximum expression of craziness was a chair flying through a window, a fist fight or a teacher or fellow student being yelled at. I have to say, that things were not so anonymous and individualistic as they are today. We knew the crazy guys out there and were always alert and trying to anticipate what idiotic thing they could be doing next. In some cases we would even talk or scare them out of it.

The illusion of defending ourselves against a tyranny or "whatever"

I fully understand the argument, that being able to form an armed force, theoretically gives us civilians the possibility of protecting ourselves against potential tyrannies. 

Nothing would I enjoy more, than watching the Venezuelans blow Maduro and his gang of criminals out of the country. But this thought is total utopia, because even if all civilians had guns, in the extreme scenario of a civil war, the government would be able to use warplanes, tanks, bombs, chemical and biological weapons and exercise control over the infrastructure. There is very little chance that the people can defend themselves against a military supported dictatorship (just look at Syria).

The craziest thing of all is how our society has even created a fictitious threat of a post-apocalyptic zombie invasion to sell more weapons. You can buy zombie targets to practice shooting on them and even specific weapons are sold for chopping zombies apart. We have to put a stop to this collective delirium or we will end up living that world as our reality.

Nowadays, the tyrannical governments have other more subtle methods of keeping us under control. They use a spider web with a façade of a democracy and its composed of manipulated elections, taxes, debt, laws & regulations fabricated by congress for the lobbying interest groups, consumerism, “health care” and media. To fight this excessive government control, the best weapon is education and not guns and schools definitely must stay gun-free zones.

Too many weapons in unqualified hands

It is simply to easy to get firearms in America. I have bought a gun on a show and high caliber bullets at Walmart without any background check nor restriction other than showing my ID. In fact, anybody can posses unlimited number of bullets, guns and assault weapons and potentially go crazy with them. This gives individuals too much power and therefore limits our own freedom, safety and peace of mind. This overpopulation of guns also leads to an escalation of fire power on the law enforcement side, a group that is also not exempt of mental issues or abuse. The only ones benefiting from massive arming is the $ 50 billion firearm and ammunition industry (0.27% of the national GDP). It is incredible that this minority group with selfish economic interests keeps the whole nation hostage. 

All the talking and calling for more intelligence and empowerment to detain mentally unstable, increasing police force, arming teachers inside the schools does only make it worse and distracts from the main cause of the problem, which is that roughly 310 million weapons are still out there and increasing in numbers every day. As long as we allow this level of fire power in hands of the unqualified public, these shootings will continue. You can only hope that next time it will not hit you or your loved ones. 

Gun rights should become gun privilege

As a gun owner in Florida, I have to be conscious that the Constitution / State is giving me a "license to kill" in an event where I could "prevent imminent death or great bodily harm" for myself or another person (Stand Your Ground law). This is a huge responsibility that cannot be taken lightly. This empowerment has to be made conditional to certain restrictions and control mechanisms. 

That is why I would accept a strict retroactive gun control legislation that would allow only men of 25 and women of 21 years and older to possess firearms. All gun owners should be required to obtain a  concealed weapons permit. Further, they would need to be member of a training facility / gun club, practise regularly and undergo bi-yearly psychological tests (as hopefully does law enforcement too). The city police would have the right to control availability and storage of the guns at any moment without announcement. Military weapons should be banned completely. This is not rocket science and there are many examples from other countries on how to do this. I would still be able to go to the range for fun and be better prepared to protect my home, myself and my family.

The greatest act of American heroism will be the partial sacrifice of our current gun liberties for the full safety of our children. If we don’t do it, they will.

Pedro Cabrera Scheider

South Florida