Wounds

As a gunshot victim, I feel justified in committing to the screen the magic words that might actually get this blog some attention:

NATIONAL RIFLE ASSOCIATION

I'm not taking a position on the NRA, mind you -- I don't want to get shot at again or anything! -- I'm just simply saying: National Rifle Association.

Let me hasten to add that I'm a "gunshot victim" in a rather loose sense. Sometime Sunday night or Monday morning a bullet penetrated a decorative window shutter and the north wall of my home, and came to rest on the carpet of the guest room about four feet from the window. The bullet's apparent lack of velocity suggested to the responding officer that the gun was fired several hundred feet, and as much as half a mile, away. This in turn suggested that we were not targeted.

This came as a great relief to my wife, who thought the incident may have had something to do with the Obama-Biden sign that remains in our window more than half a year after the election -- a clear violation of our homeowners association's rules. In a way, though, I feel worse about bullets falling as unpredictably as meteorites than I would if we had been targeted. If we had been targeted, I could put my energy into learning who our tormenter was and dealing with him. (We live within walking distance of many gun shops.) This is the same logic that leads my Israeli friend Gigi to assert that her children are safer in Israel than they would be in the States.

There's nothing at all one can do about random violence, on the other hand. My children, who were sleeping feet away from where the bullet entered, may never feel safe again in their own home, and they'd be right.

Why is it, though, that there's nothing at all one can do to correct a social problem when the evidence is all around us that social problems are susceptible to intervention?

National Rifle Association. That's all I'm saying.