Guns, Guns, Guns. . .

Well this is interesting. E.J. Dionne is suggesting that the gun nuts in congress quit pussying around with security guards and metal detectors and just go ahead and defend themselves with concealed weapons like real Americans.

Of course, he's being facetious. E.J. Dionne is no gun nut, and he would sooner turn health care over to the pharmaceutical companies than carry a fire arm. But the article has some bite to it, as he calls out what he considers to be hypocritical politicians to, as he challenges, rather disrespectfully, "put up or shut up."

This line of reasoning is effective, but I believe it obscures one of the more nuanced features of the gun law discussion, and at the same time it betrays Dionne's own unconscious biases.

I have long been for strict gun control. That is, until I moved to the country. The thought of a New York City populace armed to the hilt with handguns or worse would threaten to close the city in a bloodbath every time somebody "blocked the box" or held the subway doors open too long. There is too much stress - caused by too much proximity - in a dense urban environment to give people such easy and sanitary access to murder. This is why, for better or or worse, we have codes of conduct and restraint in cities that we loosely define by the term "civilization." And we like it that way.

Now there is a great argument in America - and it is one I subscribe to - that says that "civilization" is something best avoided, that there is a naturalness and an instinctive truth that is lost with too many societal constraints. This tradition goes back to the first generation of settlers in Virginia who suffered a 98% mortality rate for their first two years in the New World. Those who were able to survive such grueling living conditions were not the ones who did the best at the New York Times crossword puzzle. They were the ones who were the most savage, the most hearty, and the most instinctive- that is, the least civilized. And their descendants would form much of the culture that we now describe as Southern and (even more so) Western.

The mythem of the self-reliant man-beast wended its way through Daniel Boone, Andrew Jackson, Huckleberry Finn, Eustace Conway, and, in a strange media distortion, George W. Bush, aka Shrub. For these characters, real or imagined, the encroachment of civilizations with its strictures and controls was too much for the wild spirit. Freedom didn't just mean freedom of religion, freedom of assembly - it meant Freedom, non-negotiable and absolute.

For this culture, guns were - and are - a certain guarantor of that freedom. What is also required for that kind of freedom is a lot of open space.

Dionne's prejudices come from his experience as a Boston native and Washington, DC resident. These are dense metropoli - lacking in wide open spaces where men can roam free as in the wild. Civilization, even, dare I say, European-style civilization is a requirement of order when you have that many people in such a confined space. A Boston, a New York, or a DC in which every whack-o was walking around with a Beretta in their fanny pack would be an instant no-go. People would (rightfully) be afraid to walk the streets - in the day or the night - businesses would close, commerce would stop, and the economical juggernaut which is the big cities would quickly screech to a halt as the best and the brightest retreated to their compounds in the exurbs.

So in the end, perhaps, like so many things, gun control advocates are pushing an economic issue. Urban life would simply cease to be if everyone in town had recourse to such easy death and maiming. I know I, myself, would be responsible for at least 5 cabbie deaths a day + a handful of Midwestern transplants and two or three tourists holding up the line at Balthazar's. Where would we find time to prosecute everyone? Likely an agreed upon quota would have to emerge on how many German tourists you could kill in a week without getting dragged into court. The whole city would be dead in no time.

Anyway, you get my point.

But much of the pro-gun lobby lives far away form these urban centers - and gladfully so. For those folks living on a 1,000 acre ranch in states with cattle outnumbering people by 10:1, a gun is a reasonable way to protect yourself in an area where 911 is a long distance call. Wide open spaces allow for a kind of civility about firearm use due to the lack of relative stress compared to urban environments. Each time two strangers face each other, both knowing each other is armed, a kind of temporary, localized civilization forms which keeps each other's worst instincts in check. When the two men part ways, this mini-civilization dissolves and they can return to the naturalness of wilderness life. For many rural Americans, that's the American way.

Now rural folks do occasionally congregate at the local cafe in town, each with their firearms by their side. But these are voluntary social gatherings to help break up the solitude, and the numbers of those assembled range in the high single digits rather than the high 6 figures. The civility that gun possession engenders in public places can work fairly well on that smaller scale, especially considering that the people who are meeting in the local towns are generally people who are all, excuse me, the same "type" of person, whatever that means in a particular locale. The lack of ethnic and cultural diversity in small towns makes for one less strain of tension that can lead to trigger happy massacring. While it may seem backwards from the high mindedness of the northeast, for much of the country, mono-culturalism is still very much the norm. And for each of the half dozen hicks sitting around the table at the local bar-b-q joint to be carrying a firearm is largely as innocuous as a half a dozen Columbia students sitting around the juice bar with a copy of Das Kapital.

Which brings us back to Congress.

The nation's Capitol is surely one densely populated area. People from all walks of life, from all the various states of mental derangement inhabit it. Lobbyists, Congressmen, staffers, tourists, and sandwich vendors all swarm in and out of the great public buildings which litter the Washington Mall. Such a menagerie cries out for civilization. And they get it - in the form of gun control laws, security officers, and metal detectors. Yes, this sort of division of labor and forfeiture of self-reliance principles is anathema to the rural sensibility. It is a degradation of the human being to a kind of cubicle-troll. Of this there can be no disagreement.

But don't expect the southern congressmen to take Dionne up on his challenge. They are in Rome when they are in the Capitol, and they know better than to open the doors to all and sundry with the hopes of being able to pick off the stray assassin while voting down a cloture motion. Plus a lot of these geezers would be pretty slow on the draw. And who would want to pay for all those special elections?

But these same congressmen, though visiting Rome, will eventually return to their districts, where those they represent may go days or weeks without seeing another two-legged critter. Those rural Americans and their ancestors chose that way of life on account of its greater sense of freedom and individual self-sustenance. And their representatives understand that.

Dionne's stealth attack is certainly a charming read, and while he protests that he doesn't offer it lightly, his thinking on the subject is as thin as the paper it's printed on. I'm sure his chorus doesn't mind being preached to, but in terms of furthering the national debate, Dionne has simply hit his head one more time against a very thick wall.