Guns and their uses are a perennial controversy in the United States. Gun rights advocates do have some serious arguments on their side, among them the moral right of self-defense, and the overall record of reliability and restraint established by legal gun owners.

These issues come to the fore during any prominent incident involving the use of guns in self-defense. And on these occasions, gun rights advocates invariably rush to bolster their case for the responsible and judicious use of guns by acting like belligerent assholes.* Apparently, the feeling in the gun community is that maturity, responsibility, judgment, and caution are fine for the few prominent teachers and activists who represent gun issues in public, but they aren’t expected to be taken seriously by the immature, insecure, easily provoked, childishly-excited-by-violence, spoiling-for-a-thrill, self-righteously judgmental, and more than rarely more than a little racist yahoos who make up the rank and file. Or at least that’s what I have to think, because that’s the way the community chooses to behave, almost any time any incident involving guns is in the news.

What prompts this observation is an incident from June of last year, in Louisville, KY, which I have seen mentioned twice in just the past week on gun-related Web sites.

An elderly man was working on a rental property he owns in what I gather is the rough section of town. He had collected rents that day and had a large amount of cash on him. Two 19-year-old, masked, black men from the neighborhood, possibly tipped off about his cash holdings, shoved their way through the door; one was carrying a TEC-9 - a cheap, shoddy, high-capacity, high-rate-of-fire weapon beloved of street criminals, formerly banned by the defunct Assault Weapons Ban to the great dismay of responsible legal gun owners who can’t think of any reason everybody shouldn’t have one of these . . . but I digress - and shoved it into the owner’s face, demanding his wallet and shouting “You’re gonna die!”. The man faked a heart attack, doubled over, pulled his own concealed weapon, and shot the gun holder once, then his unarmed companion once, then the gun holder again, then the unarmed man again, and then loosed off 7 more rounds at the first guy after he dropped the gun and ran out the door. Both robbers died, one on the spot and the other at the hospital. Police ruled the shooting a case of self-defense and no charges were filed.

So far, so good. Based on the news reports, I have no objection to this act of seemingly justifiable self-defense. (I don’t even criticize his shooting the unarmed robber, or the disarmed robber as he fled. At the time, he couldn’t be sure the second man was unarmed or wouldn’t otherwise attack him, and he stated that he thought the first man was still armed after fleeing and would try to shoot back through the doorway, so he kept shooting in reasonable fear of a continuing threat to his life - which I can believe.) The shooter called the police, cooperated with the investigation, and was exonerated. Even more than that, based on a TV interview he did shortly thereafter, it is obvious that the shooter in this incident is a decent, restrained, gentle man. He speaks with a great sense of responsibility, unapologetically but with sorrow. He asserts his justification for his actions, but regrets the outcome and sympathizes with the dead and their families. To all appearances, he did rightly, and behaved bravely, with great presence of mind, and yet with dignity and humility afterwards.

If this guy represented what it means to carry a concealed weapon and take responsibility for its use, probably everyone would think that was a reasonable policy, and that he reflected well on both the gun-rights advocacy community and the community of law-respecting citizens in general. And in both the cases I have seen this incident mentioned, it has been touted as just that by the advocates and activists who seek to promote gun use to the public. But just as soon as one or a few voices speak up about appropriate gun use and the responsibilities of gun owners to public safety, a dozen ugly creeps chime in with their braying, tough-guy posturing and triumphal gloating over what any decent person would regard as a tragedy, whether or not justified.

One of the blogs I mentioned linked to just a two-minute news report on this story, shot before the police investigation was even completed. Based on virtually no information whatsoever, here are some representative comments from that post:

We should try to stay on top of stories like this to make sure the cops return the gun they claimed for testing.

And the brass. I figure the bullets were discarded, though.

Amen, and good riddance. . . . Your life became forfeit the instant you threatened to take an innocent person’s.. . . [A] cause for remorse is the lamentable damage incurred on Mr. Jackson’s property. The report sounds like their weren’t any bullet holes from stray shots, but blood stains are a royal pain to get out.

All in all, another couple of violent thugs bought the farm thanks to a law-abiding citizen who was ready, willing, and able to protect what was dear to him. I say that’s a good outcome to this event.

Why did he put the EMPTY gun on the mantle? In my opinion, he needed to reload it and keep it on his person.
I’m from the Louisville area, and I can tell you that if your skin is a shade lighter than the asphalt, you are not welcome west of 9th street. . . .
Good riddance to bad rubbish. I’m glad the old guy took these two pieces of shit out.I am so tired of hearing about innocent people being threatened, robbed and killed by punks that think the world owes them something. . . .

As for the two crooks, thank God we don’t have to support them for the rest of their miserable lives while they bounce in and out of prison every 10 years or so. . . .

. . . glad these rodents never will do anything like it ever again. . .
. . . One of the pieces of filth hit him in the head when he thought he was clutching his chest with a heart attack. There was no compassion in either of these thugs.. . . As a friend of mine in this area (an NRA Certified Firearms Instructor) advises, “Never say you’re glad the SOB is dead” because the thugs’ family might sue based on your expressed prejudice. I’d say he said the right thing. Since, however, I didn’t shoot them I can express my opinion that I’m glad they’re dead because otherwise they would have killed someone else eventually.

And here is my response, re-posted here because I somehow suspect it won’t make it out of moderation over there:

I find a lot of these comments distasteful and ugly. On the basis of the few facts reported, you can certainly be sympathetic to the shooter in this case, and you can certainly approve of the use of arms in self-defense as a general right. But, even assuming the guilt of the dead parties here, it goes far beyond self-defense to gloat over their being killed.

Two teenagers were shot to death - likely with justification - by a desperate and frightened elderly man who himself could have been killed. Your reaction? You want the brass back. You’re sorry . . . for the damage to the hall rug.

Very funny. You certainly give the gun community a good name. The important thing, of course, is not to understand or accept the reasons for violent action in the last extreme, but to have something funny to say over a black kid’s dead body. I guess they really “made his day”, didn’t they? I guess those punks don’t “feel lucky” now, do they? Anybody who tries that again is going to “Die Harder, With a Vengeance”. Keep it up . . . it’s hilarious, and so civilized.

So is your eagerness to stereotype two young, dead people on the basis of one bad act. They’re not just criminals, not even just violent criminals . . . for some reason that’s not enough for you. On the basis of a two-minute TV news story, broadcast before the investigation was even over, you’ve decided that these two “forfeited their lives”, are undeserving of remorse or pity, are “bad rubbish”, “pieces of shit”, “rodents”, and “filth”, that their deaths are a “good outcome” and a “good riddance”.

You also know with a certainty that they would otherwise have killed someone else, and that they would have repeatedly gone to prison. You can also read minds: you know that these “punks” were motivated by the fact that the man’s skin was “a shade lighter than asphalt”, that they “think the world owes them something”, and that they both completely lacked all compassion (including the unarmed one who, apparently, never said or did anything except tag along). Apparently you have absolute knowledge that no criminal ever reforms, that no 19-year-old punks ever straighten out, that every armed robber is a killer in waiting (or . . . is it just the ones whose skins are closer in color to asphalt?).

But, even armed with all this amazing insight, you’re worried that a shooter could be charged with “prejudice” - I can’t imagine why.

It’s a commonplace among advocates of armed self-defense that those who adopt that stance take on a great responsibility, and can be relied on to exercise it with wisdom. Luckily, most do. The shooter in this case acted decisively, yet shows great compassion and humility after the fact. But he is cheered on by the likes of the commenters on this thread - childish, bloodthirsty, remorseless (by your own gloating description), laughing at a deadly tragedy, freely stereotyping total strangers in the most vicious and prejudiced ways, celebrating a fatal shooting.

Some of you at least are concealed carriers. What you tell the world is that these are the attitudes you carry along with your guns - these are the beliefs and expectations that will guide you if you face a decision whether to shoot. If every gun owner were of the mindset of the man in this incident, I suspect many people would feel secure and reassured. But - judging by the comments in this thread (and the many others just like it on any gun blog) - the large majority would seem to be nasty, coldhearted, eager to prove their righteousness or just feel the thrill of shooting another person to death, and more than subtly bigoted in their choice of targets.

Am I wrong? Perhaps. But your behavior demonstrates, if anything, the opposite. The only way to feel at all reassured about the gun community is to hope and assume that most of its members don’t really mean what they say - that their childish posturing is just that; that they aren’t reckless enough or at least don’t have the nerve to be as quick on the draw as they pretend; that the apparent vast imbalance between mature and serious advocates of responsible gun ownership and belligerent paranoids with a chip on their shoulder is somehow just a (repeated, consistent, and pervasive) coincidence. And maybe that’s all true, but there’s no reason to think so, given the way gun advocates choose to present themselves and their own moral decisionmaking in almost any public forum.

Well done, all. You’re a credit to your kind.

The amount of intemperate, even deranged, rhetoric that seeps out of the gun community at the merest hint, or less than hint, of a controversy is truly staggering. (And I haven’t even touched on the responses you get to the issue of gun control, even within the gun community itself.) I think we’re entitled to ask how responsible, how reliable, how restrained, how cautious these people’s judgment and behavior will be, if ever tested, when their language and declared intentions and beliefs are so volatile and immature. Even given an example of a commendable gravitas and humility in the awesome act of taking another person’s life - an example on the part of a man they claim to respect and support - they can do nothing but compete with one another to offer the most gleefully obnoxious and flippant dismissal of the deceased’s humanity, grounded on almost complete ignorance of the facts. These are the people who claim the right to make that same awesome decision someday, faced by some other person whose humanity they feel entitled to mock and dismiss.

The blog that linked this story is actually a generally interesting, even-tempered, and thoughtful one. The guy who runs it seems like a decent chap, and engages in only a minimum of the otherwise traditional paranoid ranting you find on gun blogs. But right on the same page as this post about the Kentucky incident, the immediately previous post describes the writer being scared away from his local firing range by “reprobates” (his word) shooting randomly into the forest with other shooters downrange, and linked to news stories on the dangers of firing guns into the air to celebrate holidays. Further down is a post pleading with gun store clerks not to openly insult his students for refering to a revolver as a “pistol” (and noting that the term is historically accurate anyway). Another self-defense post profiles a woman in California who beat off an attacker by stabbing him with scissors; for some reason he describes her as a “most unlikely” warrior, and, naturally, the comments thread was filled with insulting remarks about “liberals”, people from Berkeley, and how the the woman who successfully defended herself was not observant or “tactical” enough, and should have shot the man instead. On the sidebar is a link to the NRA Blacklist. (Yes - unsurprisingly, they have an official blacklist. Somewhat surprisingly, they call it by that name. Among its targets: NOW, B’nai Brith, the YWCA, the Anti-Defamation League, the American Academy of Pediatrics and at least two dozen other health-related organizations, Maya Angelou, Tony Bennett, Art Garfunkel, Coretta Scott King, Dweezil Zappa, Jimmy Carter, Ed Koch, Ben & Jerry’s . . . and a host of other individual and organizational threats to America. It’s like they went out of their way to find either the most harmless, or the most beloved, people in the country and declare war on them all. Because tolerance and a sense of reasoned proportionality are watchwords of the NRA.) In other words, even the most reasonable discussion of guns is pervaded with obnoxious assholes, to the point that the gun advocates themselves have to plead with their fellows not to be insulting to potential customers and allies, and to remember basic safety rules like . . . not firing guns randomly into the air. Open stereotyping, condescending prejudice, and official enemies lists are just par for the course.

More and more it seems to me that the worst thing wrong with the pro-gun position is its advocates. There are actually decent arguments to be made in favor of some reasonable form of gun rights - it’s just that the people making them all seem to be about a heartbeat away from making a bad impression at any given moment. They can’t keep from savaging each other over trivial points of disagreement. When any practical instance of gun use rises to prominence, they fall over themselves, slavering with gleeful bloodlust, macho posturing, and racist and/or anti-government antagonism. The most prominent gun-rights organization (which most anti-gun people would be shocked to learn is regarded as traitorously weak by the real gun nuts) maintains an official “blacklist” that includes Dweezil Zappa and an ice cream company. The entire gun community would be a massive self-parody except that they really mean it all. And it’s not me saying this - these are their words, their behavior. Every time I think there is some sense to pro-gun politics, I am brought up short by pro-gun people.

* I am fully aware, and it has been proven on this blog several times in the past, that this accusation will immediately engender dozens of viciously angry rebuttals from gun owners acting like belligerent assholes. Allow me to admit in advance that I stand corrected by the undeniable force of your counter-examples.

UPDATE: Xavier, the blogger I linked to, did post my comments, quoted above, on his blog. I credit him with being open enough to do so. The follow-up remarks, of course, were just what you’d expect.