Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris (Columbine HIgh School). Jason Holmes (Aurora movie theater). Jared Loughner (Tucson, Arizona). Seung-Hui Cho (Virginia Tech). And, now, Adam Lanza and a horrendous massacre in Newtown, Connecticut. All of these terrible incidents highlight a shameful situation in this country: the inadequate nature of our mental health treatment for the seriously mentally ill, a tiny few of whom are capable of snapping and harming themselves and others, and the absurdly easy access to guns. Even more frightening is that this country doesn’t attempt to identify the people who should never touch a gun, much less an assault weapon, nor do we have effective mechanisms to keep them away from deadly weapons.

I remember quite well the uproar after 32 innocent people lost their lives at Virginia Tech. Virginia politicians agreed that we needed far better mental health treatment, more resources to identify those in need of treatment. The minute budget troubles came along, first to be cut were services to people. Gone was that commitment to change the state’s grossly inadequate mental health care.

There was a movement years ago to close large mental hospitals and move treatment for mental illness into community settings. The funding for those community services never was adequate, and in the Great Recession funding became even worse, as states and localities, including Virginia, cut budgets for social services to the bone.

Caught in the middle of this national shame are the estimated one in 17 people in America who suffer from a serious mental illness and the families that have to deal with them without the resources they need. As Liza Long explains in an article titled I Am Adam Lanza’s Mother, “With state-run treatment centers and hospitals shuttered, prison is now the last resort for the mentally ill…It’s time for a meaningful, nation-wide conversation about mental health. That’s the only way our nation can ever truly heal.”

Liza Long helped me understand how parents with seriously disturbed children struggle with the dilemma of having a child arrested for a crime as the last resort for controlling dangerous behavior. But, nobody can believe that jail or prison is the best environment to help the mentally ill, even though experts estimate that as many as 25% of persons locked away in jails and prisons are in need of mental health treatment.

There are several steps that politicians on both sides of the aisle should be able to agree to, if they can overcome for once their fear of the NRA and their own partisanship.

1. Close the gun show and Internet gun sales loopholes in background checks immediately.

2. Have the Federal government provide money to put mental health records for identified mentally ill people in the background check data base.

3. Require mental health professionals to notify police of those they see who appear to be an imminent danger to themselves or to others.

4. Give parents the power to commit their mentally ill child for treatment without having to swear out criminal charges as the only way to control a situation getting out of hand.

If politicians can muster some real intestinal fortitude, they also should pass the assault weapons ban that Sen. Dianne Feinstein will introduce in the next Congress with a bipartisan vote and make it the first bill to reach the president’s desk. That one, I don’t expect to see happen, however, unless public pressure becomes too great for them to ignore.  

Whenever National Rifle Association spokesman Wayne LaPierre goes on television to claim that the NRA gets its money from its membership in small donations, he’s lying through his teeth. The real money behind the organization is from industries that make and sell guns and ammunition, as well as right-wing wealthy donors. The NRA receives tens of millions of dollars from domestic and foreign gun manufacturers and other corporations related to the firearms industry through its “corporate outreach program.”

Those who gave money to the NRA include 22 gun makers, 12 of which manufacture assault rifles, and high-capacity ammunition magazine manufacturers or sellers. Beretta alone donated one million dollars to the NRA to lobby to overturn gun control laws in the wake of the 2008 Supreme Court decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, which eliminated laws against handguns.  

The Violence Policy Center Executive Director Josh Sugarmann states, “Today’s NRA is a virtual subsidiary of the gun industry. While the NRA portrays itself as protecting the ‘freedom’ of individual gun owners, it’s actually working to protect the freedom of the gun industry to manufacture and sell virtually any weapon or accessory.”

The NRA is nothing more than a front for corporate money spent to enlarge markets and  profits, no different than the bogus Smokers Rights Groups that were created secretly by major tobacco companies Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds.  

From 2004 to 2010, the NRA’s revenue from corporate fundraising grew twice as fast as its income from members’ dues. So, let’s be clear. The NRA does not  exist to represent gun owners and hunters. Its purpose is to be a front for corporate lobbying, to help elect legislators who will resist any and all gun regulation, and to strike fear in its members about gun control. The political activities of the NRA serve right-wing political interests, as well. Otherwise, why would the Koch brothers have donated big bucks to the NRA in 2012?

Let’s begin that discussion about guns: the current application of our Second Amendment protects the proliferation of weapons. At the time it was written, it was damn difficult to kill with them, though Aaron Burr managed not long thereafter. That amendment was never meant to aid and abet carnage.

I don’t remember not owning a firearm. My first was given as a Christmas present when I was young; a Savage over and under .22/.410. My father instilled the greatest respect for firearms in me. He locked them away and I did not have access unless there was a purpose. Later I learned that upon his return to college from the Pacific theater and engagements on Tarawa and Saipan, he’d kept a handgun at his bedside. One night late, a spring roller blind in the bedroom snapped open and by the time he awoke he had locked, loaded, and drawn down on my mother who’d jerked up next to him in bed. He’d nearly killed her. Weapons in their home remained secured after that.

As a college student, I carried a weapon wherever I travelled. I did not have one with me the morning in Richmond when three fellows with sawed off shotguns came into the convenience store near Carytown where I worked. Thinking back, I don’t think it would have helped the situation much, even if I’d open carried. After all, they were only exercising their own open carry rights.

You’ll find no one more rationally and sentimentally supportive of the second amendment than I. But all this silliness, false bravado, and acting out about what gun rights mean misses the problem it has created: we have guaranteed access and availability of firearms to every individual regardless of their capacity, intent, or history. And our own Governor McDonnell is on record as supporting “the more the merrier” approach to provision. This outcome and attitude is sinfully irresponsible and far from the intent of the framers.  

This society is not the society extant at the turn of the 19th century. The weapons and ammunition available today weren’t even science fiction when the Constitution was written. There was no rifling and people had to stand a few paces from their target if they hoped to do more than scare their adversary with a pistol. The reload gave time to reconsider. Early Americans knew, cared for, and used their weapons purposefully, most often to stock the table. They weren’t toys or extensions of their “selves.” And they usually didn’t own an armory’s worth. If they did, they kept them in an armory.

Imagine my surprise when I checked into Quantico for Officers Candidates School and my weapon was confiscated (along with an unopened fifth of Johnny Walker). You see, the military understands a weapon’s purpose and does not allow the casual brandishing or unsecured possession of personal arms aboard forts and bases. Years later, when I was assigned to temporary duty there and an officer candidate in another platoon, screened and selected for a commission, threatened another with a bayonet in a deserted squad bay, I understood the wisdom of that policy as two others on staff and I responded. Wise, even though the only one “armed” at the moment happened to be the perpetrator.

When my father and I went to hunting camps, restrictions were stringently enforced. Upon the return from the hunt, we always cleaned and maintained our weapons then placed them in a secured space usually locked by the cook who left for the night with the key. No one was allowed to uncork a bottle of booze while any weapon was unsecure. It is absolutely true that guns and alcohol do not mix. These were rules that were respected. The camp policed itself.

So when I have to think about whether it is open carry or concealed carry that is allowed at a bar in Virginia, I still get confused. And if I am confused, what the heck with the thousands of Virginians who get concealed carry permits without ever handling a weapon. When I attend political gatherings where there are people with holsters strapped around their generous bellies, I am alarmed. I wonder if one of these fat f^%$ has a heart attack and I try to give CPR, I might get drawn on.

During my assignment to recruit training there was an incident where a recruit, while being closely supervised at the pistol range (as in one coach per two recruits), managed to shoot himself in the head during familiarization firing. Even under controlled conditions, guns are dangerous. Guns have become symbols rather than practical tools of self-defense. They have proliferated for reasons beyond individual rights. There is a certain status they convey for any of a number of reasons; most not good. These have nothing to do with defending against a tyrannical government. Many gun owners have no inkling that that is the defense that allows us to play with them without any coaches (or many rules) at all.

“Not even kindergarteners learning their A, B, Cs are safe. We heard after Columbine that it was too soon to talk about gun laws. We heard it after Virginia Tech. After Tucson and Aurora and Oak Creek. And now we are hearing it again.” – New York City Mayor Bloomberg

The fact is, guns do kill people, no matter how snappy that worn out mantra is. I do not believe for a moment that it would have been my father who killed my mother if he had pulled the trigger that night in Columbia, Missouri. No more than the law believes that John Hinckley was “responsible” for shooting Ronald Reagan, Thomas Delahanty, Timothy McCarthy, and James Brady. That’s right, there were four of them shot that day, not the two always remembered. Two of them armed at close range, against one assailant.

When I was living in Damascus a Syrian woman told me she would never come to America. It is too dangerous. What she saw on TV led her to believe that getting mugged at an ATM was a common occurrence and that nights were unsafe here. Of late I have wondered if her mind had changed relative to her own country. But yesterday it wasn’t at an ATM or at night. And it was no less tragic than what must be her own story today.

The contemporary interpretation and application of the Second Amendment is absurd. What we have managed to do is to guarantee that all criminals have guns in quantities only armies would require. Yet somehow the discussion always seems to get stymied at “assault” weapons as a place where we find some common ground. You will hear such wisdom as that if the teachers had been armed yesterday, the tragedy could have been prevented. No. Professionals, a DC policeman and a Secret Service Agent could not keep a President (or themselves) safe. And in neither of these cases was an assault weapon used. (Update: the Connecticut shooter was reportedly armed with a semi-automatic rifle but that does not remain consistent.)

Our camp needs to refine its mores. While social norms remain deficient, we require stricter, enforceable laws. And now and even afterwards, we need a cook to hold the keys.