2-16-89 . . . A few weeks ago, a young man with an AK-47 assault rifle opened fire on a schoolyard in Stockton, California, killing five children and wounding dozens of others. He ended the massacre by shooting himself in the head with a handgun. This incident has reopened the debate about gun control. One argument in favor of gun control has me puzzled. Some individuals claim that guns such as the AK-47 “have only one purpose: to kill people”. Since this “purpose”, they say, is illegitimate, the gun should be banned or regulated. But what does it mean to say that a gun has a purpose, let alone a single purpose? My purpose in buying an AK-47 may be to display it in my home, to use it in hunting, or to use it in target practice. This is true even though many people (perhaps most people) have other purposes for it. It’s as if proponents of gun control want to classify guns by purpose. “These guns have legitimate purposes, so they can stay; these guns have illegitimate purposes, so they must go.” It’s a way to categorize and deal with firearms.
But this misses the point. People, not guns, have purposes. The person who designs the gun has a purpose; the person who manufactures the gun has a purpose; and presumably every person who buys a gun has a purpose. Some of those purposes are illegitimate, and, if acted upon, should result in legal punishment. We need a case-by-case determination. Guns themselves just sit there, purposeless, harmless, benign. They can be put to good or evil ends, depending on the persons who use them. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not claiming that all guns are equally dangerous, in the sense that they have the same firepower or devastation potential. In fact, the AK-47 assault rifle is special in that it has a large magazine. It can be used to kill a large number of people in a short period of time. This would be a good reason to ban it; having an illegitimate purpose, so far as I can see, is not. I wish the gun-control debate would stay on track.
Two sports notes: (1) In college basketball, Arizona defeated Southern Cal to improve its season record to 19-3. (2) Orel Hershiser, who led the Los Angeles Dodgers to the World Series title last year, has signed a three-year contract for $7.9 million, which makes him the highest-paid player in baseball history. During the third year of the contract (1991), he’ll earn $3.1 million. And you know what? I can’t say that he’s overpaid. Hershiser almost singlehandedly took the Dodgers to the promised land last year, and I’m sure he packs people into Dodger Stadium. Had the Dodgers let him go, all hell would have broken loose in southern California. I wonder how Hershiser will do this year, knowing that he is financially secure for the immediate future.
