Guns as Symbols

Ever since I started writing about guns, I have been quoting Adam Gopnik, a writer for The New Yorker and an astute writer about gun issues.  In his most recent article at the New Yorker site, he compares the symbolism of cars and guns.  Both, he says, are symbols of freedom and autonomy.  I recommend the article, and below (spoiler alert) I’m going to include a piece of his conclusion:

For the deeper truth is that cars are not, or not only, symbols of autonomy. They are, in every sense, vehicles of it. Guns, however, have an almost entirely symbolic function. No lives are saved, and no intruders are repelled; the dense and hysterical mythology of gun love has been refuted again and again….The few useful social functions that guns do have—in hunting or in killing varmints, as a rural man such as my father has to do—can be preserved even with tight regulations, as in Canada. Cars have to be, and are, controlled: we license their users and insist (or should) that they regularly prove their skills; we look out for and punish drunken or reckless users. If we only achieved, in the next few years, a regulation of guns equal to that of cars, we would be moving toward the real purpose of autonomy, which is to secure the freedom from fear as much as the freedom to act. Symbols matter. Lives matter more.