The recent massacre of children and adults at Sandy Hook
Elementary School in Newtown, CT has led to renewed speculation and discussion
of modern gun culture, as well it should. This was an unspeakable crime, and unfortunately
not an isolated one. That there is a growing body of such bloody incidents in
the annals of crime is a curse on the so-called “free world”.
It has been said, by people on both sides of the gun ownership
issue, that the root cause has absolutely nothing to do with gun ownership and
everything to do with media and/or mental illness trends. Others, of course,
say gun ownership with a “might as right” attitude is the root cause of these
tragedies.
I will go out on a limb and assert that these approaches,
nay, these excuses, are inherently and completely incorrect. My proof resides
in the whole history of the human race, as encapsulated within the ancient
literary formula:
HERO [WITH WEAPON] SLAYS DRAGON
This literary formula extends from the Ancient Hittite,
Vedic, Persian, Greco-Roman, Baltic, Celtic and far Northern European
traditions. Scriptures of all traditions are filled with stories that follow
the same formula. Histories, myths, charms, prayers and victory songs contain
this same formula, over and over again.
Aside from the interesting philological implications, this
formula indicates a more basic sociological truth: humans have always used
violence to overcome adversaries and other adversities.
Violence in society is nothing new, but perhaps the purposes
and reasons for using violence have changed.
Our ancient literary evidence indicates that the hero’s
purpose was to return or create order from chaos.
HERO SLAYS DRAGON =
CHAOS INTO ORDER
In essence, maintaining order is what the modern police
person is supposed to accomplish. A sense of social responsibility lies at the
heart of our best readings of this formula; the hero is the person who has the
courage to attack a monster (whether that be a dragon, a tyrant, an anti-hero,
or some other) that threatens the equilibrium of the community. Not everyone is
cut out to be a police person, not everyone is capable of being a hero, in that
ancient understanding of what heroism requires.
What we are seeing, in these modern massacres, is the
aberration of the formula:
ANTI-HERO KILLS
INNOCENTS
This version of the formula is also present in ancient
literature, generally within the context of a larger literary expansion that
shows the following:
ANTI-HERO/MONSTER
KILLS INNOCENTS; HERO KILLS ANTI-HERO/MONSTER
or
SPOILER WREAKS HAVOC;
HERO RESTORES ORDER
If you think about it carefully, you will realize a great
deal of modern literature, not to mention film media and games, contain this very
formula, more or less.
The point I make is that human beings are violent, no less
so now than in past epochs. We like to think that we moderns are more sophisticated,
more rational, more urbane, more prone to desire tranquility and peace, more
likely to follow rules with a sense of social responsibility and obligation.
This assumption is incorrect, even to the point of tragic delusion.
The National Rifle Association (NRA), in proposing that
institutions such as schools invest in armed guards on patrol, clearly suggests
that its membership populates the hero category. “Arm all the good guys,” is
the new refrain. Parents and educators look on this proposal, as well they
should, with revulsion. Do you want your child attending a prison in order to obtain an education? What sort of social value
does it impart, that our schools might become
army garrisons?
The second amendment to the U.S. Constitution, as ratified
by the states and authenticated by Thomas Jefferson, reads as follows:
A well
regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of
the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
When considering this statement, two essential bits of information
are almost always forgotten, in the deafening volleys of rhetoric that abound
within the public discussion of this issue of guns and gun ownership. First,
the population of the United States, at the time this amendment was ratified,
was sparse and widely spread over enormous territories; in such times, the need
and ability to raise a militia against foreign enemies was only a sensible
precaution in an era of colonization and empire-building. Guns, in addition to providing
a modicum of frontier protection, were important tools in bringing food to the
table. Second, the American
Constitutional amendment bears direct relationship to a clause from the 1689
English Bill of Rights, one that disallowed the monarch from disarming Protestant subjects—thus restoring a
right that had previously been available equally to all free male subjects and making
amends for what a Catholic monarch
had done due to a perceived threat of uprising. The framers of the U.S. Constitution
were clearly trying to make it impossible for a federal overseer to have power
to disarm the populace.
While grocery stores and farms are more congenial modern ways of
bringing food to the table, guns are still used in the subsistence lifestyles
of rural and indigenous peoples. Semi-automatic and automatic weapons, whose
design and engineering are for war and for the indiscriminant killing of people,
not wild game, are inappropriate for use as tools for the modern hunter.
The United States has an Army, a Navy, a National Guard, a
Coast Guard, States police and highway patrols, County Sheriffs, and local law
enforcement, as well as an astonishing array of privatized bonded security
agents. With all of that firepower, why would the public need to raise a
militia? Conversely, the United States does
not have a centralized database for arms and ammunition sales, nor does
it have a single federal code for the registration of weapons. The Bureau of
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) does not have any authority to do what is
necessary to aid all areas of law enforcement in the necessary regulation
of firearms.
The following formula is illogical and is a social anathema, but is
being bandied about by gun advocates:
MORE WEAPONS =
GREATER SECURITY
The NRA continues to issue its disingenuous rationalization:
GUNS DON’T KILL
PEOPLE; PEOPLE KILL PEOPLE
If this is true, and certainly a great deal of our world
literary traditions bear it out, then what is needed is regulation and enforcement of responsible ownership of firearms.
Killing is an irrational
response, and has always been.
The NRA wants to sell the following formula to the public:
GUN OWNER IS HERO
When so much of our newspaper is taken up with this reality—
ANTI-HERO [WITH AUTOMATIC WEAPONS] KILLS
INNOCENTS
—I wonder that anyone can imagine the NRA vision to be
correct.
Meanwhile, I think we need to work on a different equation, completely, one that has nothing to do with weapons, their ownership and
regulation:
HERO SLAYS DRAGON =
HUMAN SUBDUES VIOLENT IMPULSES
If
humans want a peaceful world, this is
the formula we need to work out. If few are cut out to be police, and not everyone
is capable of being a hero, then we need to start working on the root causes of
violence as a natural, if irrational, human impulse, for the sake of our children, and our children’s children.
We
need to write, and come to revere, an entirely different kind of story,
all together.
___________
To explore the literary traditions to which I have referred,
and the poetic formulae I have shamelessly borrowed, see this fascinating book:
Watkins, Calvert, How To Kill A Dragon; Aspects of Indo-European
Poetics. Oxford University Press, USA, 2001
