Brief interlude

What I’m about to write about doesn’t really relate to Denmark, but it has me so shaken up that I really need to share with the public. After all, misery shared is misery divided, so let’s get rolling.

On my host father’s recommendation, I watched a Danish documentary about gun ownership and use in America. Specifically, it dealt with gun ownership in families, and looked at several families who have taught their kids how to use guns at a very early age. Now, I don’t have any fundamental problem with people owning guns. There is the Second Amendment, and if people feel that owning a gun is necessary for their safety and peace of mind, I’m pretty much okay with that.  And if they own guns, I would much rather know that they were educating themselves and their family members in the safe and proper use of guns. That’s why I was really happy when I heard one of the fathers in the documentary tell his son to respect the gun he was firing, that the gun was dangerous and not something to be played with.

What I WASN’T happy about was that this child, who was no older than six or seven, had just been firing  A GODDAMN ASSAULT RIFLE. My Danish isn’t great, but I believed that the voice-over narration said that the child was using an assault rifle similar to that used in the Vietnam War. Furthermore, he was too little to hold the gun on his own! His father was standing beside him helping him hold it. And yes, that’s a good, safe way to approach it, but I’m saying that the child did not have sufficient arm strength TO HOLD THE GUN BY HIMSELF. This is COMPLETELY unnecessary, and frankly it’s pretty dangerous. You have a child who cannot HOLD the gun, and I don’t think that “giving him a feel for it” before he can do multiplication is a good way to encourage proper respect for the weapon. And I was not comforted by the camera zooming in on the child’s face as he fired the assault rifle. He was gleefully laughing, and his eyes were closed.The father then admonished the child, saying that he needed to respect the gun. Call me crazy, but maybe the father should wait until the child has a respect for the weapon BEFORE HE’S PULLING THE DAMN TRIGGER?! That seems akin to bringing a high school kid into the operating room, handing him a scalpel, and only AFTER he’s started making the incision do we say “Hey now, that’s a human life. Careful there.”

My fears were only further confirmed by the seven year-old girl who said that she liked shooting guns more than school, because “you don’t have to think.” She qualified her statement, saying that “well, sometimes you need to think about where you’re aiming”, and I quote this without mockery. I’m glad to know that she has a sense of responsibility about this. But still, she sees guns as something more…removed from conscious action. And that terrifies me. And the fact that she likes guns better than school. I guess this makes sense–the family in which she was raised was describing their trips to the shooting range as an “after-school activity” like baseball or soccer, and it doesn’t surprise me that a young child would enjoy an after-school activity more than

Earlier, I said that I’m “pretty much” okay with guns. This “pretty much” basically covers pistols and rifles. I have a very hard time listening to arguments that assault rifles and machine guns are necessary for “self-defense”. If you’re an enthusiast, fine. You can go to a shooting range and have a grand old time with your high-powered weaponry. But I watched a father of five say that he keeps a LOADED AK-47 next to his bed in order to “dissuade” anyone who broke into his house from engaging in any sort of a fight. In the most literal sense of the word, that’s overkill. Assault rifles are most pragmatically used to kill large groups of people very quickly. If your neighborhood is known for experiencing break-ins executed by groups of highly-armed, well-trained assailants that engage in urban-warfare tactics, then fine. I stand corrected. But in my defense, though I’m no criminologist, I’m fairly sure this type of crime is isolated in the US.

If this sort of documentary is shown often on Danish television, I finally understand why one of the first questions my host father asked me about my life at home is how many guns I owned.

On a happier note, I watched this documentary while eating delicious home-made cake.  And I promise, I’ll be writing my end-of-my-time-in-Denmark-for-now closing thoughts soon. I was just WAY too pissed off by this to let it go.