Gun Control Issue Makes for a Double-Barreled Debate

I never want to be accused of being a limousine liberal like those white folks who railed during the ‘70s about the inequity of urban school segregation, only to move to the suburbs as soon as their kids became subject to busing. Sure, they favored desegregating the schools . . . as long as someone else was doing the desegregating.

So, when it comes to gun control, what is the position that any good card-carrying liberal can live with? Will gun control become the busing of the ‘90s?

Be advised: The operative phrase in this column will be “on the other hand . . . “

A Garden Grove man recently began a letter to me by saying, “I realize that you sensitive, sweater-wearing people cringe at the thought of some of us enjoying our Second Amendment right to own and use firearms . . . “

He couldn’t have been more correct. There are some people who make me cringe at the thought of them wielding a fork at lunch, much less a loaded gun around their home or on the streets.

On the other hand . . .

I understand why a responsible citizen worried about self-protection might want a gun. Sure, they could get a Doberman or a thousand-dollar security system, but they’d rather have a gun. They might even accept the statistic that guns in homes are more likely to be used in domestic fights or accidental deaths than in self-protection. But, to them, that’s just an argument that affects other people. It doesn’t carry much weight with someone unwilling to forfeit a chance of warding off an intruder, even if the odds are 1,000 to 1 against ever needing to.

And that’s just families. What about the huge singles population? You’re not going to convince all of them that a gun poses a danger around the house, where there are no children or spouses. To them, a gun is merely insurance--perhaps never needed but still worth having.

It happened in Cypress just a couple weeks ago. The odds be damned, a couple suddenly found themselves face-to-face with a robbery suspect in their home. A fight ensued, which ended when a neighbor with a shotgun killed the suspect. It would have sounded pretty hollow to condemn the neighbor for possibly saving the couple’s lives.

On the other hand . . .

The story also disclosed that just before the neighbor with the shotgun arrived, the suspect had wrested the homeowner’s handgun from her, after she was afraid to fire it. That reinforces what the gun-control lobby says happens all too often: namely, that private citizens end up being shot with their own weapons because they’re not skilled with them or prepared to use them, and the criminal takes it away from them.

On the other hand . . .

Would I feel safer knowing that everyone out there had guns? Do I want the number of guns to grow to the point that the pro-gun crowd could see if they’re right when they argue that “an armed society is a polite society?”

Not on your life. People walking down the street with hair-trigger temperaments and hair-trigger .22s do not make me feel safer.

On the other hand . . .

Convince me that a ban on guns is even remotely feasible. It’s easy to keep people from smoking in public places; it’s not easy to confiscate people’s guns from their homes.

The gun-control crowd makes a mistake if it thinks its opponents are National Rifle Assn. stereotypes. Most gun owners are average citizens, perhaps privately wishing they didn’t need a gun but still quietly keeping the pistol in the closet.

On the other hand . . .

If I could snap my fingers and make all guns disappear, I’d do it in a minute. I think the public’s knowledge that guns are out there in such abundance is both consciously and subconsciously affecting our national mental health. Society is too vulnerable to both intentional and accidental gun deaths, and most people are repelled by that.

I remember the busing debate.

Ultimately, liberals didn’t win the busing argument, because they didn’t win, as the saying goes, the hearts and minds of people. In the abstract, many people favored integrated schools; when it came down to the nuts-and-bolts reality, they balked. A big part of the busing legacy was that middle-class and affluent whites left city schools in droves for suburbs.

The gun-control debate could go the same way. Gun sales in California increased 18.9% in 1993--to a record 665,229 firearms--the state attorney general’s office said last week. In Orange County, handgun sales increased 102% in the past seven years, much higher than the statewide average.

That’s where the public is on this issue.

Yes, it would be nice if guns didn’t exist. It would be nice to gather up all the guns. But my sense is that the general public, while agreeing with the sentiment, is a long way from boarding the bandwagon.

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by writing to him at The Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, Calif. 92626, or calling (714) 966-7821.