Guns are boring

Guns are evil. You can excuse bolt-action rifles and shotguns, but a pistol, assault rifle or machine gun cannot fulfil its design goals without somebody getting seriously injured, or seriously dead. They can be terrifying. But they can also be that close corollary - thrilling.

There's the dull urgent thudding of the mounted M60 chewing through targets at Cu Chi tunnels and the lighter staccato of the M249 SAW in Vegas. The precise teutonic clicking of the MP-5 and the roaring rattle of the grand fathered fully automatic M16A1. And the kick of a large caliber pistol, yearning to be free, only begrudgingly staying pointed at its target. Guns can be AWESOME.

That other single-purpose implement, the sword - a knife swollen to preclude any use beyond cleaving and stabbing people - can be beautiful. The Japanese katana remains singularly so. The British 1897 Pattern swords, the marriage of industrial metallurgy to two centuries of bloody imperial experience, are, like Spitfires, the beautiful epitomes of a superseded technology. 

But steel pressure pipes, constraining the reaction byproducts of a low explosive, to force a few grams of toxic metal to high subsonic or low supersonic speeds. The burning waste heat that must be convected away before the barrel cooks itself. The residue covering everything with its acrid smell. The lubricant filming over the moving parts and anything that touches them. The noise, the thunder clap in your ear causing the shouting semi-deafness of professional soldiers everywhere.

Not beautiful. Dirty, noisy, and smelly. Seriously, what possessed Mozambique to put the AK-47 on their flag? They don't even kill efficiently. A motivated assailant can be rendered a walking corpse by a pistol without being halted, not until their neurological tissue is destroyed or cardiovascular system depressurised (ie head shot or heart shot).

But any supporter of the Second Amendment will admit it. Any honest opponent of the Second Amendment will also admit it. Guns can be thrilling. It is the strange sensation of power. I am by no means proficient with an assault rifle, but with one I could hurt a lot of unarmed people, very quickly. That is a terrifying idea, and not an abstract one - approximately annually an American does precisely that.

As an Alien living in America, the terror was persistent and distracting. Anybody could be carrying. He could. She could. What's that suspicious bulge under that dog's coat?

It wasn't rational. I know that. And expressing these fears to American colleagues simply revealed the breadth of the culture gap. Most reacted with bemusement. One, with a companionable hand on my shoulder assured me 'Don't worry - if somebody brings a gun to work, they WILL use it.' (Not helping, dude!) Another had never owned a gun and further couldn't understand why anybody would - 'Any more than I'd own a Sherman tank - what would I do with it??'. Better, but what of those who did understand?

Clearly somebody did - the ones those billboards in Newark imploring people not to murder each other were aimed at, the ones DC's impressively high gun crime statistics were documenting (in spite of its then, and subsequently ruled unconstitutional ban on firearms), and the ones who had given my colleague his 9mm scars.

Well, 'Know thy enemy'. So in 2008, I completed an intensive pistol course. After a temporary hiccough rote 'yes' ticking my way through the safety disclaimer and proudly declaring I suffered from a mental illness, we were given a brief but thoroughly professional classroom tutorial encompassing the usual firearm axioms - 'Don't point at anything you aren't willing to kill', 'Finger away from the trigger until you're ready to kill', but also more practically, given all those sliding and clanging moving parts, 'When flesh meets metal, metal always wins'. Then we blasted our way through their entire range. Aliens in America, even those of us from Earth, can't legally own firearms - and the course was after all an elaborate sales pitch - but a compromise was reached and a Glock 17 made available for rent.

I arranged further tuition from a seriously impressive instructor. Cagey about his background, but had worked in diplomatic protection and, I suspect, something rather more 'special' prior to that. He did a quick demonstration and in an unbelievably fluid motion drew and put several rounds into a tight grouping on the target 50 feet away. It wasn't the Wild West draw of a Raylan Givens, but a normal two handed grip done with the supreme economy of motion of a lifetime's experience. (He'd also actually worked in Australia, a country he wasn't particularly fond of, though given he'd never ventured beyond Alice springs and Pine Gap, he was perhaps being a little harsh.)

I subsequently attended the Firing Range fairly frequently - really as often as my budget allowed. I became steadily more proficient. But that wasn't the objective. Guns still terrified me.

Returning to Australia, reminds you just how unique the USA is. After Martin Bryant slaughtered 35 at Port Arthur in 1996, the conservative Prime Minister, John Howard drove through legislation rendering guns mostly illegal. There is still a firing range in Perth, but the guns there are chained so comprehensively they can't be turned around or even really picked up. I bought 50 rounds on the Glock 17 but it was about as realistic as a fair ground shooting gallery. Out of curiosity, I also asked whether they had anything, you know, heavier, like an MP-5. 'That's illegal.' 'Oh. Um perhaps an AR-15?' 'That's HIGHLY illegal.', her hand moving instinctively towards what was presumably a panic button under her counter. Hm - looks like shooting in Australia was a wash then...

I've often wondered about America's unique love affair with firearms, one I'd come to understand viscerally, if not intellectually. I don't hold any store in notions of 'defending liberty', not least because I for one have little idea what liberty actually is, still less how to defend it. For the Founding Fathers (and their nominal casus belli for the American Revolution) it was freedom from the Tyranny of unchecked government, either in laws invading every aspect of daily life, or in a tax-engorged (or even more terrifyingly, debt-engorged) government crowding out free enterprise. Ie an almost precise description of the current Federal and State Governments.

Even were there an armed revolt, a militia armed with small arms could do little in the face of a modern army equipped with air assets, armour and heavy weapons - just ask the Fallujahans in 2004. This is precisely why (rather conveniently) heavy weapons are not deemed protected by the Second Amendment while small arms (and only semi-automatic ones at that, are). The latter remain legal precisely because they are so ineffectual.

What firearms do give you are the right to be judge, jury, and executioner. Sometimes this can be done within the bounds of the law, though even then, as George Zimmerman discovered, your life will likely still be effectively over. At other times it is a right you can only exercise once, and probably bought at the cost of your own life. But it is a right completely denied to citizens of other developed countries, and I think it encourages a sense of civic responsibility absent elsewhere. Even by recusing yourself by not owning a firing arm, you are still after a fashion exercising it. It has been said that America is a nation of grown ups, while the social welfare systems of Europe and Australia have infantilised their citizens. I think this is only one half of the puzzle, and I think firearms make up the other.

The next time I could shoot again was in Houston in 2011. Shooting has always left me exhausted. Each trigger pull was with rigidly locked arms and a face held in a rictus of concentration, anticipating and dreading the next kick and roar. But this time, I apparently reached a critical threshold of competence and familiarity, and something clicked. The tension drained out of me, and the pistol (a 9mm Beretta from memory), though outwardly identical had *changed*. It was no longer something almost alive, but a lump of steel and plastic. A noisy tool for punching holes in paper, and, if I were so inclined, people. It was no longer thrilling. It was no longer terrifying.

I tried upping the dose. If pistols arguably have their place for home defence, assault rifles certainly do not (unless you have the x-ray vision to see what's on the other side of that wall your round is about to punch through). But in Texas they are legal, so I arranged private tuition with a semi-automatic AR-15. No gun is beautiful, but the AR-15 comes close to elegance. No longer really state-of-the-art but with the glacial pace of firearm development, certainly serviceable, and since being effectively open-sourced, available in myriad customisations and innovations. There was the nice sensation of control you get with any long-arm and the feeling you are carrying a military grade weapon of the type that can win wars (rather like picking up a replica Roman Gladius). It was certainly interesting and certainly entertaining, and I would like to develop more competence with it. But no, not thrilling.

In March 2014, in Cambodia I upped it to its logical limit, practically ODing, and doing my bit for post-civil war disarmament by buying up surplus munitions. First, the hand grenade, an underarm lob into a nearby water filled crater, a dive to the ground, and a satisfying water spout jetting into the air. And then just as I was walking away, a secondary spout as a previously misfired grenade already in the pond also detonated, sending me back to the ground accompanied by more than one expletive. An M79 40mm grenade launcher - somewhat disappointing, a blast like a shotgun, a near invisible projectile going I know-not-where (hopefully just not 'here'), then a distant explosion and a small plume rising from the shrubs. Then the piece-de-resistance, $450 of pyrotechnic awesomeness - an RPG-2 B4 recoilless rifle. Older than me, and harmless against modern heavy armour, but still capable of hurling a 80mm package of shaped high explosives 150 yards into the opposing hillside, where it detonated with a puff of smoke, and half a second later, a concussive boom. 

But by now, it was all just indulgence. My paranoia, even at its most delusional, had never actually extended to fear of attack by rocket launcher.

Finally, July 2015 saw me in a Firing Range near the bus station in Vilnius. Vastly different to American ranges, this was just a long room with some tables up one end, a far end shrouded in unlit darkness and an instructor to enforce safety. I rented a ubiquitous Glock 17, bought 50 rounds and punched holes in a target. I played a bit, first with one-handed grips and then trying basic draws. 

But it was boring. It was finally, GLORIOUSLY boring. I continue to respect guns, they are dangerous tools, and they incur a societal cost in blood too high in my opinion for the benefits they bring. But they are now no more concerning than the intent of the person holding them.

Mission Accomplished.

Postscript - 

I confess I returned a few days later to the range in Vilnius for some time with an AK-47. I was terrible with it, even less accurate than with the Glock (I blame the shitty iron sight), but it's hard not to admire the sheer agricultural ruggedness of it. Entirely more interesting was the elderly gentleman in the white suit firing an elegant little pistol (I didn't recognise the type), and his companion, an impassive man in his thirties firing his own pistol with frightening accuracy. And the four stunningly gorgeous young women waiting in the dingy foyer, absurdly out of place, under the watchful eyes of another minder sitting discreetly in the corner where he could keep an eye on both them and the door.

Yes. No more concerning than the intent of the person holding them.