Can you think of a promotional slogan that exceeds this one in persuasive power, especially for people who are already inclined to accept its implications: “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people”?
The slogan’s effectiveness resides in its second clause. Of course people kill people. But that obvious fact beguiles us to accept the sketchy logic of the first clause and misleads us in two ways:
First, we discount the killing power of modern weapons, which have a deadly potency that the Founding Fathers could not have imagined when they wrote the Second Amendment.
Thus when defenders of unlimited access to firearms say “Guns don’t kill people,” they fold semi-automatic AR-15s in with all the other tools that can be used for murder, such as knives, axes, baseball bats, hammers, crossbows or, as one right-wing commentator put it, even a butter knife.
But let’s face it: If you’re really serious about killing, there’s nothing like a gun.
Second, the slogan invites us to disregard the agency of the gun itself. Sure, people kill people. But often without the gun the killing would never happen.
If you doubt this, consider the case of Adil Dghoughi. Born in Morocco, he immigrated to the U.S. with his family in 2012, looking for a better life. He graduated from a university in Rhode Island with a master’s degree in business administration and finance. He moved to Austin in 2020, hoping to find a job as a financial analyst.
On Oct. 11 he attended a football watch party with his new girlfriend. Later, in the wee hours of the morning, he was driving to her house, in the tiny town of Martindale, 35 miles south of Austin.
His family believes that a few miles from his destination Adil got lost and pulled into a driveway to check directions on his phone. The driveway belonged to Terry Turner, who happened to glance out a window and, noticing Adil’s car, retrieved a handgun from his nightstand and ran out to confront the driver.
By this time Adil was accelerating in reverse, but Turner ran to the driver’s side, hit the window twice with his gun, then fired a bullet that passed through Adil’s upraised hand and into his head. Adil was unarmed. Turner called 911: “I just killed a guy.”
Last week a grand jury indicted Turner for first-degree murder. He faces a penalty of as much as life in prison.
Whatever you might think about the necessity of keeping a firearm at your bedside for personal protection, you can’t get past this fact: Had there been no gun involved in this regrettable episode, Adil Dghoughi would be alive, and Terry Turner, at age 65, would not be facing spending the rest of his life in prison.
Not convinced? What about Curtis Reeves?
In 2014, Reeves, a retired Tampa police officer, went to the movies. He had the misfortune of sitting behind Chad Oulson. Oulson, 43, insisted on using his cellphone during the previews. Reeves objected. Angry words were exchanged. Popcorn was thrown. Reeves drew his concealed weapon and killed Oulson, an act that he immediately realized was “stupid.”
Last week, Reeves, 79, went on trial for second-degree murder, facing a sentence of life in prison. I wonder how much he regrets having taken a pistol to the movies. Without it, he or Oulson might have ended up with a busted lip, but Oulson would probably still be alive and Reeves would be enjoying his retirement.
Firearms are not innocent bystanders. Often they create the confrontation. Is there any doubt that Ahmaud Arbery would still be alive and that Travis and Gregory McMichael wouldn’t be spending the rest of their lives in prison if the McMichaels hadn’t had a shotgun at the ready?
But in some respects, Terry Turner and Curtis Reeves — and even the McMichaels — are also “victims.” Their weapons created a false sense of their own power and righteousness and lured them into aggressive acts that they could not control.
Yes, guns do kill people. And sometimes they make people kill people, too.
