It was an odd day, to be sure. It certainly highlighted the centrality of guns in the minds of many US citizens. Even the name of the event — Gun Appreciation Day — struck a strange chord. These are the folks who tell us guns are tools — and you can’t blame the tool, they say, for how a person uses it. But we’ve never had a Drill Press Appreciation Day, or a Chainsaws Across America rally. The name itself is evidence that guns are different. They’re not just tools. Not even close.

My cousin and I attended the local Gun Appreciation Day event, which was held on the grounds of the State Capitol building. We arrived about half an hour early and joined the crowd that had already gathered. It wasn’t quite what we’d expected — mostly white, middle-class families with young kids. Even more surprising, the gender distribution was about equally divided — nearly as many women as men. Everybody was dressed neatly in a style I think of as ‘conservative casual.’

It was the Pro-Life rally demonstrating on the anniversary of the passage of Roe v. Wade. The Pro-gun rally was a wee bit farther away, on a different terrace.

There was no crowd at the pro-gun rally — not at first. There were a few men sort of scattered about the area, standing alone or in pairs. I wandered around until I found one of the event organizers, who pointed out the designated assembly spot. I then played border collie for a bit, herding some of the early arrivals to the rally point.

A sizable crowd did eventually gather. I estimated the crowd to be maybe three hundred people. The organizers have claimed an attendance of over six hundred. Maybe more showed up after I left.

These were the people I’d been expecting to find at Gun Appreciation Day. Almost exclusively male, almost exclusively white (though to be fair, this is Iowa — so ‘almost exclusively white’ is sort of redundant). Lots of camouflage jackets, lots of ball caps with NRA logos or the icons of sports teams. Lots of beards. Lots of stoic faces. Lots of flags. Several American flags, a scattering of Naval jacks, and lots of Gadsden flags (the yellow Don’t Tread on Me flag designed during the American Revolution by Christopher Gadsden).

For the most part, people were awfully quiet waiting for the rally to begin. These were the sort of men who are reluctant to start a conversation with another guy — a guy they don’t know. Once you got them talking, though, they were uniformly cheerful and friendly. In a way, these guys weren’t very different from, say, collectors of Beanie Babies or Star Trek memorabilia. If you engaged them in a conversation about guns, they were positively chatty. At the merest mention of black powder muzzle loaders or the relative merits of a 16 inch upper barrel receiver for an AR-15, these guys would happily natter away for hours.

You expect peculiarities at any gathering of people with esoteric interests. On one level, these guys were no more eccentric than a gathering of the Society for Creative Anachronism or the Baker Street Irregulars. On another level, of course, these folks are radically different. And that difference, in my opinion, lies in a strange mixture of paranoia and romanticism.

From the comments I heard from the people in the crowd, and from the speeches given by the organizers, it seems clear many of these folks are driven in large measure by the romantic mythos of the ‘frontiersman.’ The mythos is rather contradictory — it involves a lone man, but one with a family that requires protection from savages. It’s all about self-sufficiency, but self-sufficiency within a network of similar ‘lone men with families’ who all bond together in times of need.

In this mythos, the frontiersman acts as both a stepping-stone and a bulwark between the wilderness and civilization. The uncivilized frontier is dark and full of danger, but the frontiersman manfully shoulders the burden of protecting civilization while being partially shunned by it. Whether it’s Natty Bumppo in The Last of the Mohicans or Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings or the Jack Nicholson character in A Few Good Men, the frontiersman stands at the border of a dangerous world and defends those who can’t or won’t defend themselves — women, children, and men who aren’t suited or capable of doing a man’s job.

There’s also the romance of defiance at work here. The concept of standing up against tyranny is very attractive, of course. But the rallying cry of “You can have my gun when you pry it from my cold dead hands” is only meaningful if somebody is actually trying to take your gun. If not, then it’s just sad and pathetic blustering.

There was a great deal of bluster in the speeches yesterday. There they stood, those gallant speakers, on the grounds of the State Capitol, having been issued a permit by the government to hold a rally in which they could give speeches describing their courageous stance against governmental tyranny. They were, in effect, exercising their Constitutional rights by freely and publicly stating they were being denied their Constitutional rights.

Although I’m convinced a deep strain of heroic romanticism influenced a lot of the folks at Gun Appreciation Day, there was also a more disturbing facet — paranoia. There was a pervasive sense of fear among many of these people. They seem to truly believe they are under attack — that somebody is actively seeking to do them harm, that somebody is out to get them in some way. There was a stone-solid conviction among the people at the rally that they absolutely needed multiple firearms with high capacity magazines to protect themselves from…well, from lots of things. Despite all their protestations of courage, the heart of their argument is grounded in fear.

They’re afraid somebody will attack them in their homes. Not just somebody, but several somebodies. One woman at the rally said limiting ammunition magazines to ten rounds would would make it difficult to defend her family against multiple intruders. They’re also afraid somebody will attack them on the street, so they need to be armed all the time.

They’re afraid in their homes, they’re afraid on the streets, and they’re afraid of their own government. Those fears seem primarily grounded in wild suppositions about what the government might do and incorrect information about what the government has actually done.

They carried signs proclaiming Those who make peaceful revolution impossible make armed revolution inevitable. They carried signs with fictional quotations by Thomas Jefferson: The strongest reason for people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government. Paranoia combined with romantic defiance against a threat that doesn’t exist — it’s an unhealthy but intoxicating mix.

But perhaps the strangest thing about the day is this: I was certain that many of the people at the rally were carrying concealed weapons. The organizers think as many as half of the people there were armed. That’s probably an exaggeration, but even if only a quarter of them were carrying, that’s a LOT of guns.

And yet I didn’t feel particularly safe. To be fair, I didn’t feel particularly at risk either. I’m pretty sure, though, that if a shot was fired at that rally, an awful lot of innocent people would have been wounded — and possibly killed — in the chaos of the returning fire.

It was an odd but instructive day. I rather doubt I learned what the organizers of Gun Appreciation Day would have wanted me to learn, but I left the rally feeling all the more convinced of the need for sensible gun control legislation.

Tomorrow President Obama is supposed to announce his new gun policy proposals. Yesterday, Steve Stockman (why yes, he IS a Republican from Texas) objected to those new proposals — whatever they are.

Yes, you read that correctly. Texas Republican Steve Stockman is objecting to the proposals President Obama hasn’t yet made. I guess he doesn’t want to wait until the last minute to start his objecting. Texas Republican Steve Stockman is so incensed by the proposals the president hasn’t yet made that he’s threatening to defund the White House and to file articles of impeachment.

In his press release, Stockman says “The President’s actions are an existential threat to this nation.” He warns that he “will seek to thwart this action by any means necessary.”

Texas Republican Steve Stockman (No, wait…that’s Jean Paul Sartre…sorry)

By any means necessary. That’s an interesting phrase, isn’t it. Sartre said it first, though I’m not sure if Sartre and Stockman would agree on gun control.

“I was not the one to invent lies: they were created in a society divided by class and each of us inherited lies when we were born. It is not by refusing to lie that we will abolish lies: it is by eradicating class by any means necessary.” — Jean Paul Sartre

Texas Republican Steve Stockman — probably not really into eradicating class. Just a guess on my part.

The phrase was repeated by Malcolm X, who oddly enough probably would agree with Stockman on gun control, though I doubt Stockman would be comfortable living next door to Malcolm X.

Texas Republican Steve Stockman (No, wait…that’s Malcolm X…sorry)

“We declare our right on this earth to be a man, to be a human being, to be respected as a human being, to be given the rights of a human being in this society, on this earth, in this day, which we intend to bring into existence by any means necessary.” — Malcolm X

Texas Republican Steve Stockman — probably not really interested in Malcolm X’s rights as a human being. Just a guess.

Malcolm wanted black folks to be armed. Probably to protect themselves from people like Texas Republican Steve Stockman. It was in response to the Black Panther Party acquiring military-style weapons and brandishing them in public that some of the most stringent gun control measures in modern U.S. history were passed. Don Mulford, a conservative Republican state assemblyman in California, proposed legislation prohibiting the carrying of a loaded weapon in any California city. Republican Governor Ronald Reagan happily signed the law. Imagine a law like that being proposed today (or tomorrow, by President Obama).

Texas Republican Steve Stockman probably thinks Don Mulford and Ronald Reagan were socialists from Kenya. And maybe gay. Just a guess on my part.

Texas Republican Steve Stockman

Texas Republican Steve Stockman wants to be very clear about the seriousness of the danger posed by President Obama’s yet-to-be-announced proposals:

“The President’s actions are not just an attack on the Constitution and a violation of his sworn oath of office – they are a direct attack on Americans that place all of us in danger.” — Texas Republican Steve Stockman

Sartre, Malcolm X, Texas Republican Steve Stockman. By any means necessary. Great minds think alike.

Phenomenally stupid minds also think alike. Did I mention that Steve Stockman is a Republican from Texas?

Two years ago today Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was meeting her constituents in a grocery store parking lot in a suburb of Tucson, Arizona. A young man named Jared Loughner arrived at the event with a concealed Glock 19 9mm pistol, which he’d legally purchased a few months earlier.

Loughner used that weapon to shoot Giffords through the head at point blank range. He then began firing randomly at others at the event. When he paused to reload, he was tackled and subdued by bystanders. Loughner had fired 31 rounds (although he had a 30 round magazine, he’d arrived at the event with a round already in the chamber). He had a second fully loaded 30 round magazine in his pocket, along with two 15 round magazines. That’s a total of 91 rounds.

The shooting only lasted about 15 seconds, during which Loughner managed to shoot 18 people, killing six of them. Had he been limited to the standard 15 round magazine sold with the weapon, the carnage would have been reduced.

Today, on the Facebook page of the National Rifle Association, you can find this graphic:

The numbers may be accurate, but not surprisingly, they’re deliberately misleading. The NRA is right — rifles and shotguns are NOT the weapons of choice for murder. Handguns are. The majority of murders are fairly spontaneous events, often fueled by alcohol or drugs. Folks get drunk, get in an argument, a fight starts, a gun is pulled, and there you are. It’s fairly rare for somebody to have a shotgun or rifle on them in most murder scenarios; usually in the time it takes for a person to leave the area and go fetch a rifle or shotgun, either the intended shooter calms down enough to re-think the situation or the intended victim hauls ass and leaves.

So no, there aren’t a lot of murders by rifle or shotgun. However, when it comes to mass shooting, rifles are one of the weapons of choice. The irresponsible NRA fails to mention that in their graphic. There were also some other numbers missing from the NRA’s graphic, so I’ve added them.

Blunt Instrument Murders: 496 (1.36 deaths per day)
Hands/Feet Murders: 726 (1.98 deaths per day)
Knife Murders: 1,694 (4.64 deaths per day)
Firearm Murders: 8,583 (23.51 deaths per day)
All Firearm Deaths: 31,347 (85.88 deaths per day)

Firearms make it easier to kill, it’s that simple. Easier to kill yourself, easier to kill other people — accidentally or intentionally. Large capacity magazines make it easier to kill more people; it’s also that simple. Those are facts the NRA doesn’t want you to know.

I’m not an advocate for disarming the U.S. As I’ve said before, I rather like guns. But it’s possible to like guns and still want to see the annual body count reduced.

Today, on the second anniversary of the shooting she somehow managed to survive, Gabby Giffords and her husband, Mark Kelly, have launched Americans for Responsible Solutions — an organization dedicated to sensible firearm policy. In their opinion piece, Giffords and Kelly write:

We have experienced too much death and hurt to remain idle. Our response to the Newtown massacre must consist of more than regret, sorrow and condolence.

They’re right. Regret doesn’t change anything. Sorrow and condolence don’t change anything. People can change things. And it’s way past time we did.