Merli Column: The year of the gun

It’s been an odd and deadly spring so far, and I’m not just talking about the weather. More than anything else, the sound of gunfire seems to have filled the air in places where it’s rarely ever heard —
across the globe in the modern city streets of Tehran, inside the U.S. Holocaust Museum a few miles up the road, at an abortion clinic in Kansas, and now at a PRTC bus terminal right here in Prince
William.

Tragic deaths in each instance, unrelated events, all with very different motives, to be sure. But once again what they each have in common is guns — and more to the point, gun accessibility. And while
it’s true that “guns don’t kill people, only people kill people,” it’s also true that it’s a heck of a lot easier to kill people when we allow virtually anyone relatively easy access to firearms. But this is not an
anti-gun campaign.

As this week’s PRTC killings here remind us all too starkly, we have so relatively few murders compared to most major cities that late-breaking news of Monday’s gunfire near Telegraph Road still holds a
lot of initial shock value. When the shock is no longer there, then we’re really in trouble.

Many of us in Prince William have lived in other countries, perhaps in a military or government civilian capacity — including in nations with very strict firearms laws such as most western European nations
or parts of Asia. Try toting a loaded gun on the safe streets of Singapore and it may be the last street you see for a while. And gun crimes in Germany, Great Britain and Switzerland are still so relatively
rare that gun murders still typically glean national media coverage.

Yet gun control laws and the amount of gun-related crimes do not seem to be nearly as related as logic might assume. Crime experts acknowledge, for example, that both Israel and Switzerland have gun
control laws at least as unrestricted as ours. It’s not uncommon for most citizens in these and other countries to readily apply for gun permits and receive them in due course. Yet crimes overseas involving
firearms, on a per capita basis (having little to do with population sizes) are far lower than here. It’s all attitude, I suppose. Ours.

And while liberal access to guns in Prince William and elsewhere in this country surely doesn’t serve as an additional hindrance to our huge problem of gun crimes, it is something in the American psyche
that makes us cleave to our weapons of choice through thick and thin. It is a part of our history and a right granted us under the Constitution. To many, especially outside the cities, guns are arguably as
American as apple pie and July 4th fireworks. And even most gun-control proponents will acknowledge that the vast majority of guns are used the way there were intended — for sport, target practice,
hunting, showing off, and yes, maybe even protection.

Gun crime here seems not to be dwindling into an almost-unheard act of final desperation, but more of a dramatic and conveniently expedient way to “solve” a problem quickly, and all too often,
permanently. And while it can be argued that making guns so readily available perhaps tempts fate a bit too easily among those who have somehow gone off the deep end of the sanity pool, the more
honest reason for the violence surrounding us perhaps lies much more in the quick-fix, economically depressed society of 2009 than in the mere physical availability, and sheer quantity, of guns.

As with most things, it can’t be nearly that simple.

John Merli has been a Prince William County resident since 1984 and Potomac News columnist since 1985. He has worked in the media for more than 30 years. E-mail him at j.merli@comcast.net.