A gun is not just a gun

During the past several weeks we have witnessed two accidental shootings that have resulted in the sad death of Claire Thompson, an Eastlake High School graduate, and the severe wounding of an 8-year-old girl at her school in Bremerton. The death of a child, a sibling, a relative, a friend is heartbreaking. I lost an 18-year-old brother to cancer. That was hard. The sudden, accidental gun death of a loved one, how painful can it be?

A quick Internet search revealed three accidental shootings in the Seattle area late last year. A father accidentally shot his son. A 17-year-old accidentally shot himself. A 23-year-old accidentally shot his friend.   

Here are a few statistics to think about and compare. Latest, confirmed statistics for firearm related deaths come from 2009. 31,347 firearm related deaths in a single year. (National Center for Injury Prevention and Control). This includes suicides, homicides, accidental deaths. In 10 years of war in Iraq U.S. fatalities were 4,486. Since 2001, U.S. fatalities in Afghanistan have reached 1,909. The bloody battle of Iwo Jima during the Second World War saw 6,800 U.S. fatalities.  At the Civil War battle of Gettysburg, combined Union and Confederate fatalities were 7,863.  

Americans love their guns and show no inclination ofgiving them up. The yearly fatalities and the heartache to families are, it seems, acceptable collateral damage  for the right to have a hand gun.   

As a psychologist I suggest that we might understand what underlies our love of the gun if we see the gun as much more than a gun. A gun is a symbol. The gun symbolizes freedom, self-determination, personal significance, control over life.  The gun symbolizes who we want to be not who we are. The more reality clashes with the symbolic meaning, the more powerful is the symbol. Don't underestimate the high that can come from a symbol or a symbolic act. Symbols are very powerful psycho-social drugs.

We want to be free, respected, self sufficient, connected, secure. In reality, if we have work, we work like slaves. We feel no one really understands us or cares who we are. We are depressed and anxious when alone. Society values us as consumers not as persons. We are completely dependent on complex technological system we don’t understand. (After three days without electricity society begins to collapse.) We have less economic security. Our desires are molded by the media, our politicians ignore us, and the rich run the country. The gun as a symbol tells us life is other than it is.   

Will Claire's death mean fewer people will buy and keep a gun at home? What do you think?