Page 41 - Time Magazine-November 05, 2018

THE GOOD
NUMBERS GUYS WITH

The complexity GUNS...
eborah Wallace and Cindy Chester live about of the gun issue
30 miles from each other in Maryland. They means the
D ride the same freeways, read the same bill- evidence for the
boards, dress for the same weather. To some extent policies under
they have even encountered the same trauma. But for debate isn’t rarely stop
all that, it’s not easy to locate their common ground. always clear-cut. thwart active bad guys
Wallace teaches in a part of Baltimore where gun Here’s the data shooters with guns
violence is so common that in the space of 15months, behind the
seven of the students at her high school were shot arguments Of 200 Estimates on how
that support
dead. Atop a massage table during a sea cruise she different views. shootings that often guns are
killed or
used defensively
had booked hoping to escape reality, “I just cried,” wounded 1,274 range from fewer
Wallace says. “The masseuse thought she hurt me.” victims from than 100,000
The 63-year-old views guns as a plague that needs 2000 to 2015, to more than
to be eradicated. the majority a million times
In suburban New Carrollton, Chester lives in re- were resolved a year.
when the
gret that she did not have a gun at hand, and know shooter ceased There
how to use it, the day 10 years ago that her ex- fire, committed were
boyfriend shot her. She lost her right leg and her un- suicide or fled, 235,700
born child. “It could have changed my whole story,” according to U.S. violent
says Chester, 31 and a “firm believer” in the Second government crime
Amendment. She wants other women to be empow- statistics. Here’s incidents
from
a breakdown of
ered to take the action she could not. interventions: 2007 to
Even though they may disagree on guns, their 2011 in
opinions are grounded in lived experience and ex- 30% which
pressed with a sincerity and respect often missing Law- victims
used a
in the national debate. That was the most consistent enforcement firearm to
takeaway from TIME’s project on guns, an under- gunfire threaten
taking that involved three cities and 245 people over 13% or attack
five months. The artist JR assembled the mural on Unarmed the
this week’s cover from separate photographs of every citizens’ offender.
participant, each with a distinct view on firearms. actions
They were situated in a tableau that evokes not only 4% In 32% of
the spirit of debate associated with the Founding Fa- Armed those cases,
the offender
thersbutsomethingelseaswell—theunitythatflows citizens’ was also armed
from a sense of shared enterprise. We saw the same gunfire
SOURCE: DOJ, BUREAU
thing in St. Louis; in Washington, D.C.; and in Dal- OF JUSTICE STATISTICS
las: We’re all in this together. SOURCE: FBI
Owning a gun remains one of the oldest and in
many places most cherished traditions in America,
but it’s no longer as commonplace as it was 230 years spends many weekends hunting with her parents,
ago. The right to “keep and bear arms” with a “well- something she has done since her grandfather gave
regulated militia” was regarded as so central to the her her first gun (it was pink) for Christmas when
notion of liberty that it came second in the Bill of she was 5. “I really want to pass this down to my kids
Rights only to the freedom to think and speak. whenever I get older,” she says after being photo-
But when the topic is the Second Amendment, graphed by JR while holding a gun in early Septem-
the exercise of the First Amendment lately amounts ber in Dallas. She hopes to show people across the
to talking past one another. The gun debate stands country that her gun is not something to fear.
frozen in stalemate, advocates unable to agree even A firearm can be a beautiful thing, depending on
on the meaning of words. When one side appeals the eye of the beholder. Wander the tables of a gun
for “commonsense gun controls,” the other hears show and the combination of burnished walnut,
only “control.” When some say “law-abiding gun tooled steel and exquisite balance might be fondly
owners,” others only hear “gun.” How did we get labeled artisanal by a city dweller. The craftsmanship
here? Over time. displays tradition and care, including the solemn
sort a parent brings to the instruction (often via an
AmericA wAs A rurAl nAtion for most of its his- NRA safety course) of a youth in the responsible
tory. And in many places, firearms remain tools—for handling of a lethal weapon, a marker in the passage
sport, for securing food, for a bond to connect genera- to adulthood.
tions. In Lewisville, Texas, 10-year-old Cooper Buck But fewer and fewer Americans learn about
28 Time November 5, 2018