The Power of Guns and Christmas

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Remember the fun, energetic folderol last week when Representative Thomas Massie (R-KY) and family posed in front of the Christmas tree flexing their guns? Wasn’t that fun? Watching online leftists lose their collective marbles because the Congressman pulled a clickbait stunt on Twitter. Then for an encore, Representative Lauren Boebert (R-CO), probably disappointed she didn’t plan the extravaganza first, recreated the image with her four minor sons.

Initial criticism targeted the Representatives for posing with guns just days after the Oxford, Michigan, school shooting. More interesting for me than the rifles, though, is the other two props these photos share: children and Christmas trees. Both Representatives are professing Christians; Massie is Methodist, and Boebert describes herself as born-again. Why would they conflate military-grade firearms with the birth of the Prince of Peace?

I’m certainly not the first Christian to complain that Christmas has come unmoored from its liturgical roots. Long before Republicans embraced the “War on Christmas,” the expression “Keep Christ in Christmas” meant resisting the holiday’s creeping commercialization. It’s too late for that, though. Like Halloween before it, Christmas has become a secular marketing phenomenon, unrelated to a religion to which America overall has a fairly lukewarm relationship.

Once associated with childlike wonder as kids discover exactly how “naughty or nice” Santa deems their year, Christmas has become a holiday of adult self-indulgence. From relatively innocent traditions like spiked eggnog and ugly sweater parties, to competitive light displays and Elf on a Shelf, Christmas has become a commercial spectacular. Again like Halloween, Christmas is no longer for children; it’s become a massive, culture-wide bender, verging on suicidal.

This transition of childhood holidays into adult extravaganzas hasn’t happened coincidentally. It’s part of a pattern where citizens of the industrialized world see the season of childlike dependence extended well into adulthood. My parents’ generation could get married, buy a house, and start a family on a job secured with a high school diploma. Today, people with multiple college credentials are deferring home ownership and parenthood into their forties because they’re broke.

Children love displays of supposed adulthood. Feeling their social, economic, and sexual maturity thwarted by the constraints of industrial modernism, they find ways to display the grown-up identity they’ve been denied. Remembering my high school years, I recall minor girls finding inventive ways to display their breasts and butts, while boys displayed images of military-adjacent machismo. Carrying gun aficionado magazines to school sure seemed grown-up to us teenagers.

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Representative Boebert in particular matters here. A high-school dropout, Boebert never underwent commencement, one of the few adulthood rites remaining in American society. She later redeemed herself through entrepreneurship and a knack for PR, certainly. But in many ways, Boebert has become a public face of an American generation denied any passage to adulthood. Even her allies frequently comment on her youthful good looks, innately infantilizing her.

Consider the difference between the two photographs. Representative Massie’s family is well-groomed and posed, and look comfortable holding their firearms. (I’m unclear whether the small girl on the couch is Massie’s youngest child, or a grandchild.) By contrast, Representative Boebert’s kids look disorganized and are pointing their rifles randomly. Their facial expressions run the gamut from numb to hysterically terrified, less a family photo than a hostage situation.

Yet it’s Massie whose caption specifically invokes Santa. (The NRA posted a similar Santa-themed tweet days earlier, to similar umbrage.) This entreaty to childhood innocence, while desperately trying to look grown-up with military-grade weapons, reflects the conundrum almost every American born after 1970 has felt: we’re expected to act adult and responsible long before our society and economy trust us with more than the most rudimentary adult responsibility.

These demented family photographs make perfect sense in context. And that context is that of parents, even grandparents, trapped in a permanent cycle of adolescent dependence. We’re expected to demonstrate unquestioning loyalty to our economy, our government, our church, our nation—the wide-eyed loyalty of a child for a mother. A loyalty which anyone who’s ever worked for an hourly wage knows we’ll never see reciprocated in this lifetime.

I admit having an adverse relationship with guns. When American lawmakers display their weapons as literally children’s Christmas toys, my immediate reaction is hostility. But when I distance myself from that history, and consider the situation from the Representatives’ perspective, I realize: they’re a lot like me. They feel powerless and estranged in a culture they don’t understand. They handle it differently, but fundamentally, they’re not that different from me.

Guns and Power in America Today

The now-infamous photo of concert-goers fleeing the shooter
at the country music festival in Las Vegas, 2017

My father, a 21-year Coast Guard veteran and lifelong Republican, said something recently which really surprised me. Shortly after the Sutherland Springs Baptist Church shooting, we were talking about the ongoing debate whether to loosen or tighten American gun laws. “I have experience with guns,” he said. “I’ve handled them, trained with them, shot off live weapons. And I enjoyed it, too. Shooting a gun makes me feel powerful.

“And let me tell you, I don't trust myself with that kind of power.”

When Dad says he knows weapons, I believe him. Before the Coast Guard, he did seven years in the Army Reserve, meaning he’s attended boot camp twice. He served as arresting officer on the first-ever joint Navy/Coast Guard high seas drug bust. He has served in maritime law enforcement, and he has been the American representative when vessels built in international shipyards were registered and flagged American. He’s now a ranking Coast Guard auxiliary member on one of America's largest inland bodies of water.

So when Dad describes the feelings of power he receives from handling and firing a weapon, I know he speaks from the heart. And when he says these feelings could corrupt a trained, experienced shooter like himself, I take his concerns very seriously.

Following the shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School, in Broward County, Florida, the familiar script has reasserted itself. Guns are to blame! No, it’s mental health care! The Constitution is too sacred to change! We should arm teachers/mall cops/civilians! But what about the children? Though the unusually outspoken response from teenagers perhaps breaks the mold, everything else feels tediously repetitive, building towards an inevitable end: nothing will change, feelings will recede, and another shooting will happen.

But what if we're having the wrong fight? I suggest this debate isn't about guns, civil rights, or the Constitution. We face a fight about power, and how people handle it.

We’ve witnessed the misuse of firearms for self-aggrandizing purposes in recent years. The shooter at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston thought he could ignite a race war. The Von Maur shooter in Omaha specifically sought to be famous. (I’ve resolved to avoid contributing to these shooters’ grab for notoriety by not using their names.) And their opposite numbers, most visibly NRA board member Wayne LaPierre, have advocated citizens seizing power by arming themselves to perpetrate vigilante justice.

One way or another, these people all want to feel powerful.

The Baptist church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, 2017

Many civilians don’t realize—I didn’t until recently—that military professionals face some of America’s most stringent gun controls. They aren’t allowed to carry weapons, not even personal weapons purchased and registered legally, when traveling under orders. You’ll sometimes hear critics noting that the Fort Hood shooter opened fire surrounded by hundreds of people trained with weapons. These people don’t realize that soldiers on base aren’t allowed to carry weapons.

That’s because packing heat makes people reckless. Flushed with the vigor that comes from pulling the trigger, soldiers, especially young, inexperienced soldiers, could jeopardize themselves. Conflicts tend to escalate quickly when combatants are carrying weapons; shouting matches that would’ve burned themselves out turn into armed standoffs. When feelings run high, armed people feeling powerful become dangerous.

Plato, in his Republic, notes that people who desire power most, generally deserve it least. This includes guns. We know, because we’ve been around the block, that we can know a person’s heart by how they handle power. If, like my father, they respond with increased sense of humility, responsibility, and restraint, they probably have whatever it takes to handle power. If they respond by believing themselves to have superhuman reflexes, unerring aim, and a bulletproof aura, we probably shouldn’t trust them with something as powerful as a gun.

Outside Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School,
site of the most recent school shooting, 2018

Anyone could cite statistics. Though many people muster anecdotes or out-of-context internet memes of individuals packing guns preventing a holdup or something, that isn’t the standard. In the aggregate, you’re more likely to shoot your own cock off. Yet people advocating more widespread carrying and use of guns aren’t interested in facts. Packing iron makes people feel powerful, even when they’re not. And that makes them risky.

We could, and probably should, investigate why people feel so powerless these days. Has the economy narrowed the number of available jobs? Has anonymity left citizens feeling like cogs in the machine? Are people dislocated because rapid social changes have undermined their lifelong assumptiong? But whatever the reason, we should recognize they’re trying to reclaim power in their lives. And power is a mighty drug.

The Sleek Black Glock and the American Dream

For a weapon that has become iconic, it’s easy to forget that the Glock semiautomatic pistol didn’t exist thirty years ago. Gaston Glock, an engineer and machinist who made bayonets in his garage, started experimenting with firearms to snag an Austrian military contract that the army hadn’t actually offered yet. In Glock: The Rise of America's Gun, Paul Barrett describes how an experiment became a phenomenon, despite almost unprecedented opposition.

While established gun manufacturers like Steyr and Sig Sauer continued modifying existing pistols—many of which hadn’t changed significantly in decades—Gaston Glock experimented in his hobby lab. He tried avenues the big boys would never touch. His pistol had a larger magazine, fewer moving parts, and with its injection-molded plastic frame, weighed less than half as much as standard models. It could survive falling from a helicopter and still fire reliably.

In Europe, gunsmiths primarily manufacture for military and law enforcement. Even in countries with relaxed gun laws, private firearms ownership remains fairly rare. Gaston Glock, a suburban working guy who ran his factory part-time and spoke only German, had no other aspirations. That is, until a writer for Soldier of Fortune magazine almost accidentally introduced Glock’s pistol to the American gun market.

Karl Walter, an Austrian-born American gun retailer, proved a perfect conduit to get the Glock into American hands. He spoke German, which dovetailed nicely with Gaston Glock’s provincialism. He had business savvy and an awareness of America’s cliquish gun culture. And he had a plan that allowed his boss to turn a huge profit even if he sold very few of his lightweight, inexpensive weapons. Luckily for Walter, the Glock exceeded anyone’s humble expectations.

But American scaremongers, who have elaborate mechanisms in place to terrify the people, leaped on the Glock with unparalleled fury. Some said its plastic frame immunized it to regular screening, making it an airline hijacker’s dream. (The FAA and ATF roll their eyes at this claim.) Others said its large magazine and easy reloading system are custom-tailored for maximum casualty. (This claim has more basis, but still doesn’t withstand scrutiny.)

Moreover, Glock pistols suffered ridiculous media caricatures. While heroes continued packing Smith & Wesson revolvers, villains carried Glocks. The Glock’s Hollywood debut, in Die Hard 2, included a line of expository dialogue in which Bruce Willis got every claim of fact flat wrong. The Glock’s streamlined profile and matte black finish made it look natural in the bad guy’s hands.

Not surprisingly, to anyone who knows American gun culture, the bigger the scares got, the more people wanted this weapon. Every alarmist screed resulted in another mass run on America’s gun stores. And Bill Clinton’s ill-considered 1994 assault weapons ban, partially written to restrict the Glock, resulted in panic buying on an epic scale. Glock quickly surpassed Colt or Smith & Wesson as the emblem of firearms in America.

The more popular and diverse his pistols grew, the more autocratic Gaston Glock became. The unassuming suburban machinist suddenly bought a spacious mountain villa, travelled in private jets, and grew increasingly disdainful of his American market base. Men (and some women) who built his trans-Atlantic business, like Karl Walter and Phil Jannuzzo, got bulldozed by Gaston Glock’s monolithic presence. Even his own children felt like cogs in his machine.

Paul M. Barrett combines public record, remarkable connections with industry insiders, and a business journalist’s investigative skill to build a remarkable study of a gun. His intricate history and sociology make the Glock pistol come alive. And where many who have tried to participate in the American gun debate have been terrible pedantic bores, Barrett is an engaging storyteller who makes the Glock into a character in an involving drama.

Barrett maintains journalistic clarity, advocating neither gun control or gun rights. He simply acknowledges guns and gun culture as part of American life, to be treated like any other. And he examines both sides with dry wit. He finds if funny that gun control advocates’ quixotic campaigns have sold more guns than all the ads on earth. And he reduces gun rights advocates increasing Orwellian alarmism to a unique form of gallows humor.

Americans love our guns; no one should feign surprise at that. For good or ill, our national arsenal—roughly one weapon per adult—is part of American character. Rather than whine about guns’ ubiquity, or about Constitutional freedoms, Barrett coolly examines this part of our psyche. More importantly, he examines how a sleek Austrian import became a symbol of quintessentially American freedoms.