Boys and their Toys: What is at Stake in Discussions about Guns

I was the proverbial boy who, if not given a plastic gun to play with, would pick any random stick and start shooting at Germans, Huns, Vikings, stone-age barbarians or any other villains my fertile imagination could concoct. As I was bookish, this passion for shooting things up in the imaginary sphere soon turned into reading military history on more and more immersive levels down to things like logistics and the design and procurement of crucial weapons systems. Whatever the malign fascination of humanity’s basest activity (and I can write about that some time- it is not down to simple repressed blood lust for instance) I concluded two things from all this reading. The first was that the more I learned, in detail, about how people acted and how people died in wars the less inclined I was to participate in one. Further, as I am more than a bit of a Kantian, I concluded that I could not rationally wish anyone else to participate in one either. This means rejecting the classical conception of war as a venue in which a man (or an occasional Amazon!) demonstrates his prowess, desire for excellence and fame, and public spiritedness.

In ancient cultures weapons and the other tools of war were numinous objects invested with mystique and power. It is a great moment in human evolution when the Greek poet Archilochus throws away his shield escaping from battle on the pragmatic grounds that he can simply buy another. It is my contention that this same mystique is the primary issue in our current debates on gun control. The gun, like the sword, is a potent symbol of masculinity, authority and power. This is why debates on policy, on rational paths to reducing gun violence or encouraging a safe and responsible approach to firearms as tools (which some people in fact need) are beside the point. Sensible people may disagree on the best policies towards fire arms but this debate is not about good sense but about symbols. Guns have been fetishized as symbols of freedom and hyper-masculinity. Worse, and far more to the point, they have been COMMODIFIED as such. The portfolios of countless investors and the bonuses of many CEO’s depend NOT on the use but on the fetishization of the gun. This is why gun control is impossible in the US and contested in Canada. An entire industry, an immensely profitable one, is built on the denial of the proposition that the gun is a mere tool. A car or a chainsaw may be subject to rules but the gun cannot because it is a cultic object not a means of obtaining food or scaring off bears. The people who profit from guns are not stupid. They know they are not selling a tool. They know they are selling a prestige item that has a hypnotic glow like no other. They know they are selling a form of crack. This is why they are shrewd to oppose ANY efforts to control guns EVEN or rather ESPECIALLLY ones that are mild and largely symbolic. They know they are selling social prestige and anything that affects the social prestige or social approval of firearms the least little bit impacts their bottom line. This is why any gun control measures at all no matter how restricted or weak have some inherent social utility. This is glaringly evident from the hysteria with which such measures are met. The people in the know, the gun manufactures, know what is good for their profits and what is not down to what a bad news cycle costs them. We need to face the fact that they have a monetary interest in murder and mayham and treat them as the malign and rational actors they are. It is time to legislate not guns so much as gun manufacturers out of existence to the extent that they make their money not from hunting rifles but boutique items of no social utility.