I had this neighbor a few years ago. He made it really clear where he stands about guns. And about what he thinks about everything I value.
Years ago, we moved to a small town in Michigan. A bit under 6,000 people and up against the big water. Water to the east, other communities to the north and south, and the only thing you’d find to the west is farmland and open road.
We found a house on a farm still in use. So much of the land all around us was being sold for big houses on big land for the big lives moving in.
Our house had been there far longer, 1960s I think. And unlike all these big pseudo-mansions, nakedly baking in the middle of nutrient-rich soil, ours was surrounded by big, old trees whose shade was glorious.
Land
We’d drive this narrow, two-lane farm road straight into town every day. People would remark that we lived so far out, but it only took us five minutes to go from door to door to the church. We couldn’t cross our hometowns that quickly.
It was small; a placid community of people who lived there a long time. Many of whom couldn’t get out. And a small growth of people, like us, moving in.
Like the older couple who bought the farmland next to us cleared it, and built. They decided not to stay. But their house sold quickly. To a family our age. Two small children. They’d always wanted land.
One way
There really was only one way into town. Out there, you’d have to go miles and miles out of your way to find an alternate route. Besides, this road went straight into town, straight past my daughter’s school, the grocery store, the church. If you kept going you’d find yourself in the big water.
We loved this house and made the drive to it easily. Except for our neighbor, a few lots down.
Every day, twice we’d pass their house. Every day we’d pass their mailbox, like a trophy, an idol longing for our worship. Angry at us because we wouldn’t worship it.
This mailbox was tall, probably 5’ and just as long. Not a post in the ground with a standard black attached. No wooden guard to protect it from the snow plows or baseball bats or reflective discs to help it be seen at night.
But there was no missing it.
This massive idol wasn’t a mailbox, but a mutant strain of one. It was unmistakable: a massive handgun.
And when I saw it, the first thought I had (after “Dear Lord!”) was a rush of sympathy for the mail carrier.
Every day she’d have to stare down the barrel of a gun aimed at her.
Idol Thoughts
Passing this idol twice a day, I can tell you what I didn’t think.
I didn’t think
- Here lives a responsible gun owner.
- They have a hobby they appreciate.
- This person is using their 1st Amendment right to support the 2nd Amendment.
- I know who to go to if something happens.
- This person loves me.
OK, that’s not entirely true. I would think these things, but not that way. I’d think of how that’s what he’d think I think. That I’m interested in his protection. Or his freedom apart from mine.
He thinks his guns protect me.
And yet he isn’t who I’d go to in an emergency. Not because he’s telling me he’s a gun owner, but because his announcement actually makes me feel far less safe.
I’m not naive. I recognize what he’s trying to communicate.
But I wonder if he recognizes what he actually communicates instead.
Other Ideas
Driving past, the idol became a totem. It became an opportunity to examine my life and values.
Each pass was an opportunity. I’d think of ways I could express my moral values in mailbox form. The twice-daily trips became meditative and instructive. I used it for an act of discernment.
What do I love so much that I’d shape a mailbox to look like it?
I’m not sure how I’d build a mailbox to look like a peace sign.
Making it about the people who hate people who like guns.
Often I think back on that episode of the West Wing when Sam debates guns with Ainsley Hayes. A scene soon after the president was shot, a best friend was shot by a couple of kids who, if this were now, would be part of the Alt-Right. Homegrown terrorists like Timothy McVeigh. A real person who came from a town a handful of miles from this neighbor’s house.
This fictional pundit argued that the problem isn’t guns, it’s the people. A line we keep hearing almost two decades later.
But it isn’t just about the people who do the shooting, but the people who hate people because they like guns.
Hayes’ suggestion seems so reasonable, so just. It’s humane.
It’s also passive aggressive and dismissive. It suggests that people who like guns can blame me for buying more guns. That I’m the reason. They’ve made an idol and worship it because of me.
But this isn’t what we’re talking about. I have literally no belief that this former neighbor likes me. Or respects me. At all. So rather than talking about the danger of weapons in our public square, we make a left/right argument about the people. We make it personal.
And yet, that sympathy only seems to go one way. How I feel about the person with the gun. And not what he thinks about me.
Our debates are too simplistic
But I honestly can’t think of how else to feel about this gun mailbox.
If we indulge the idea that this is only about free expression, that he is sharing with the world something he loves and I can share something I love, it won’t be enough. As if there’s nothing else to it.
But for the sake of argument, let’s pretend it’s that simple anyway.
So we pretend I put up a peace sign mailbox as a response to his gun mailbox. Tit for tat. My ideal for his ideal.
But if we’re being honest, this doesn’t sound right. It doesn’t sound the same at all. This isn’t all there is to it.
My peace sign doesn’t balance his gun.
It isn’t all open, unfettered free speech at stake.
I often hear my conservative friends talk about being morally distressed by equal marriage or people flaunting their sexuality at a gay pride parade or fear for their children’s safety if transgendered people use a public restroom.
When these things are known, when we talk about them openly, I’m offended.
But we don’t talk about my being offended. It’s like offense over sex is all the excuse some need. But my offense is an insult.
And I hear it. I find it interesting. But I hear it and understand it. I understand what it feels like to be offended.
Twice a day. Every day.
But being offended isn’t everything.
Let’s debate
The debate can’t be parsed and divided, though many want to. We can’t separate the free speech from the product of the speech. Precisely because the nature of the speech threatens social order.
It isn’t just a question of speech as if all speech is neutral. Even the question of threat to social order has positive and negative dimensions.
While many believe certain matters of sexuality similarly threaten social order, expanding notions of love have a more positive effect on community and culture. Expanding opportunities and justifications of violence have a more negative effect on community and culture.
So in other words, if I were to replace my mailbox with something else, the debate would still not properly function. A peace sign isn’t that political, offensive, or really all that norm breaking.
So let’s try something else.
If I were to replace my mailbox with a dildo, it would have a political effect (dealing with left vs. right), an offensive effect (most people don’t want to see sex toys in public), and an act of norm-breaking (it isn’t a regular mailbox), but it still wouldn’t be a fair comparison.
We can’t get anything that checks off all of the same boxes as this stupid gun mailbox!
I don’t love sex toys. I’m not arguing for a right to them. And if I did, it would have, at worst, a neutral social effect. But guns, handguns bring negative emotions and associations: fear, violence, disunity.
I don’t want fear, violence, disunity. I want peace. Big ol’ peace signs. That’s what I want on my mailbox.
That’s the difference.
And it’s a big difference.
I’m not really sure how this man could be directly offended by a peace sign. And what could I put up that would actually match this offense?
There’s nothing I idolize or love so much which would strike the same fear and disgust in this man. Nothing I’d want to use to break social norms and sow disharmony by putting on a mailbox. There’s nothing I worship enough to hurt others that is also made to hurt others.
How could I love something so much that I’d repulse half the people who go by? Not just repulse by the thing but also repulse by its message? A message from Mars: kill or be killed.
This is the center of the gun debate, ultimately for me. What are we willing to do with one another?
A Right to Love
99% of the time I think about guns, I include the right I and my family have to not be hurt by someone else’s gun. This is just as important as the person’s right to have a gun.
This is the old definition of liberty granting the freedom to swing a fist which won’t hit my nose. A freedom long understood as needing to regulate how fist-swinging ensures it doesn’t break noses.
I think of the intellectual arguments, the moral arguments, and the statistics which all prove that people don’t defend themselves nearly as much as they think they do and actually harm themselves and others far more than they think they do.
I think about all of the emotion people put behind these tools and weapons of war.
But there is literally nothing that I could put up by the road which expresses my devotion to a thing which would endanger all the people around me.
Literally nothing.
And that’s why it bothers me.
This isn’t a hypothetical because people are dying today. And nothing I love is killing them.
We Need Emotion
It isn’t a semantic argument about constitutional rights because we’re all bringing emotion into it. We’re all bringing our feelings and upbringings into it. We can’t isolate the one argument from the others or pretend it can be balanced without moral decisions to ensure mutual safety.
Because this guy knows.
He knows it hurts me. He knows that many of the people driving past his house want to beat our swords into plowshares. People are longing to make peace paramount.
He knows and he does it anyway.
He breaks the social codes of our community for something which causes hurt. Not for the expansion of love or for the right of individual dignity. But an expression of war, an instrument of death.
He’s made his open carry argument hold his greeting cards and bills and target his enemies.
Like an icon of worship to the god of death. A stick in the eye of all the world’s religions, our civic priorities, and the ideal our society has, until recently, determined to be universal: a hatred of war, a hatred of violence, and a hatred of murder.
We all claim to want peace. But I really don’t think he wants that.
By replacing his standard mailbox with a gun, pointed at me every time I drive by, he offers proof he doesn’t want to debate me.
He doesn’t want to care about me or my rights of self-expression. He doesn’t want to encourage me to bring more love, peace, and unity into this world.
This gun proves he doesn’t want to care about my feelings or prevent me from feeling that sense of disgust.
He doesn’t want to abide by social norms or protect the community because he doesn’t just violate the norms, but their purpose: peace and unity.
He doesn’t want peace. That’s not what he wants. He wants me pissed, frustrated, and fearful.
He wants all of that every time I pass his house. Every time.
Until he’s won and I pass this gun, pointed out toward the road, literally at his neighbor. And I don’t even notice it.