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from the Helsingan Samomat
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http://www.helsinki-hs.net/news.asp?id=20030429IE23
Living with a gun enthusiast from the American heartlandBy Timo E. Peltonen
A tall, stout man about 20 years of age appears in the doorway of the study of the student dorm. He is wearing a cowboy hat, a long coat of oilcloth familiar from a cigarette advertisement, and a pair of cowboy boots. The outfit is not unusual in winter Montana - not even at the University of Montana.
In his arms the man carried a 30-inch television. He did not seem very self-confident when he walked in, but he tried to put on an air of nonchalance. I cannot recall if he introduced himself right away, but it is hard to forget that Mark Wicks eventually proved to be a genuine American gun nut.
What is a man like that made of? And why should we be interested in a person like Mark Wicks?
Mark is an American who takes a great interest in guns - the tools of violence. The attitudes that individual Americans have toward violence are what forms the collective US attitude toward violence. This relationship has a downright astoundingly broad impact on the world in general.
First of all, the foreign policy of the world's only superpower springs forth from that relationship with violence, and that policy reverberates in every corner of the earth.
History has shown that Americans are ready to support the violent efforts of those whose actions they have considered justified from the point of view of the "free world".
They have armed Nicaragua's Contra guerrillas in the fight against the Sandinistas, the Afghan Taleban against the Soviets, and the tyranny of Saddam Hussein against Iran's Islamist regime.
The war in Iraq has shown again that of all industrialised countries, the United States is the most trigger-happy. Unfortunately in today's world one cannot say that this is exclusively a bad thing.
The bombings in Kosovo apparently spared many innocent people from suffering. It would also have been an injustice if Saddam Hussein had been allowed to hold on to Kuwait without interference, no matter what one feels about the oil issue.
The concept of the "free world" has not always been as hollow as it might seem from the outset. It can be assumed that all supporters of democracy are ready to admit that it is fortunate the Cold War was won by the United States and not by the Soviet Union.
However, tenaciously resorting to violence has not brought Americans security as individuals, or as a nation.
The relationship that Americans have with violence surrounds us as well, because US-made entertainment, movies, television programmes, books, and music spread like a tidal wave throughout the world. They influence the attitudes of vast audiences, even though few would actually imitate the behaviour.
In drama we Europeans are ready to approve of violence that is seen as justified, which is no wonder, because evil was punished in a bloody manner already in the plays of ancient Greece. However, revenge on a global scale is not an officially maintained practice as it is in the United States, where the system of justice dishes out death sentences like fictitious heroes do.
The Americanisation of entertainment could lead to a vision of America as entertainment. The real violence that exists in the United States might look to Finns like something fictitious, unreal, or a mere joke - gunplay by barking-mad paranoids.
I have never been involved in acquiring a firearm, but I can say from experience that it does not take many individuals to provoke the kind of disquiet that makes people want to get one. Just one is enough.
Mark was not one of my favourite people. He left his television permanently in our study room of about a dozen square metres, which disturbed the work of the other four of us.
Mark's studies were linked with agriculture. The Wicks family, which I understood to have comprised only Mark and his mother, owned a small farm. They were not among the "haves" of American society.
The division of American society into the "haves" and the "have-nots" apparently starts already in high school. In the school year 1986 - 1987 I attended the Catholic High School for Boys in Little Rock, Arkansas. At least in this private boys' school the teachers did not hesitate to divide the students into good and bad people. The inequality was also clearly seen in the football team, whose members formed a kind of internal elite in the school. There were only a few black students in our school, whereas blacks comprised about half of the students in the nearby public school.
Finnish upper secondary schools certainly do have pecking orders of their own, and some teachers might favour the better pupils, but the system is not built as a field of honour for anyone. There is competition in Finland, including competition for popularity, but not on the official level as there is in the United States - in the form of elections for the homecoming or prom kings and queens for instance.
In the United States the competition for a place in the sun is important, and the system favours struggle. In Finland there is support for equality.
As higher education is free in Finland, being the best or the strongest is not so important. A reasonably high level of social security gives people a favourable image of the state.
Mark was a member of an organisation known as the Montana Militia, whose members are united mainly by a desire to defend themselves with guns, and by a mistrust of the US Federal Government. He would often repeat a joke - too often, in fact - "Don't be surprised if the black helicopters [i.e. Government agents] come to get me some day. Don't be surprised if the FBI knocks on the door."
The anti-government declarations of the Montana Militia are said to have been an important motivator for Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols when they used fertilizer to make a bomb in Oklahoma City in April 1995. A total of 168 people, including small children, were killed in the bombing of the Federal Building. McVeigh and Nichols had taken part in meetings of the Michigan Militia.
A news photograph of a firefighter carrying a small child is one that has been ingrained in people's memory. The blood covering the child is unnaturally bright. Apparently the red had to be enhanced because of all the dust.
American TV journalists have a saying: "If it bleeds, it leads".
As Michael Moore says in his documentary film Bowling for Columbine, which examines American violence, the news has become increasingly violent in recent times. There are fewer homicides recorded, but news coverage of killings has increased many times over.
It seems obvious that news broadcasting that focuses on viewer ratings is not very wise, because selling the news leads to a distortion of reality. Headlines of massacres on the front pages of Finnish tabloids also disproportionately erode the sense of security here in Finland as well.
However, nothing eats away at a person's sense of security as much as having an armed person living in the same household.
One day Mark showed us his pistol, calling it his "baby". The weapon was not the only one that Mark had. In fact, he earned money by buying and selling guns during weekends at gun shows organised in different parts of the state.
For me it was completely incomprehensible that a man of 20 could hold a part-time job as a weapons' dealer, without any special training: none at all.
In the background are the traditions of American gun ownership, and the right to bear arms, which was enshrined in the US Constitution in 1791.
Lobbyists for the gun industry, including the National Rifle Association led by ageing film star Charlton Heston, have a strong influence on decision-makers. As a result, restrictions on gun sales are minimal.
For instance, the 1999 shootings at Columbine High School, in which 13 people were killed, did not even come close to leading to the kinds of tougher restrictions on pistol ownership that were imposed in Britain after a mentally disturbed man shot 16 young children and a teacher at a school in Dunblane, Scotland in 1996.
Mark was also concerned about people with guns. One of the awkward moments of living in a student dorm came when he told us about another dormitory where he lived in a previous year. He said that a large revolver was found under the pillow of a "suspicious guy". Mark said that since then has made sure that he always has his own pistol close to hand. According to university rules, guns must be kept in the owner's cars.
Mark did not understand - or he did not care - that by bringing a pistol to our dormitory he caused insecurity among the rest of us. As it was impossible to say what kinds of thought processes were going on under that cowboy hat, there was no point in explaining to Mark that in our eyes, he was exactly that kind of suspicious gun-under-the-pillow man.
Sometimes when I went to bed myself, and was not tired enough to fall asleep right away, all of these thoughts would easily pop into my head. Mark and his pistol were just six metres away, and there were were only two unlocked doors between us. It doesn't take many people to awaken fear. One is enough.
The other week people were giving me funny looks as I carried a large cardboard box into a supermarket with stubble on my chin and sweat on my brow. I was returning some dishes that proved to be unsuitable for me, but I could not avoid the thought that people were wondering if I was carrying a bomb.
Naturally, the fear awakened by the terrible but isolated Myyrmanni incident, whether it involved feeling suspicion or falling under suspicion, is irrational and disproportionate. Nevertheless it shows - in a manner that even we can understand - the sort of logic that might persuade an American to buy a gun.
As so many crimes involving firearms are committed in the United States (341,831 in 2000), and as so many people are shot to death (one person out of 25,000 - 5.5 times more than in Finland) the fear is actually justified, and getting a gun for self-defence is understandable. Once you have made that jump it is understandable that guns and ammunition are fairly easy to get. Since anyone might have a gun, it is justified, in a way, to carry one around.
But although I would have liked to see Mark leave the whole city of Bozeman, I did not have any evidence that he was an evil person. Mark was neither xenophobic nor racist, and I never saw him behave in a violent manner.
What I remember of Mark is a vague sadness, which may have been connected with a feeling of being an outsider. It is hard to come from rural Montana and join a conversation with European exchange students. For this reason Mark usually talked about his own affairs.
Similar monologues - albeit more intense and sermon-like - are conducted by members of the Michigan Militia in camouflage uniforms in the film Bowling for Columbine. "It's your duty to defend you and yours. If you don't do it, you're in deriliction of duty as an American. Period."
It is ironic that on the psychological level these backwoods types do not differ much from al-Qaeda supporters. Neither group live economically secure lives. Both of them get their support from doctrines offered by people who are close to them. They share the same Great Satan - the Government of the United States. Both are ready to take out their suspicions and frustrations on the same target - American civilians.
It would be hard to imagine Mark committing terrorist acts, because I also saw him laugh. When we ate a meal at a restaurant to mark the end of the academic year, and someone was taking a picture at the end of the table where Mark was sitting, one of the American dorm mates replaced the traditional "Say cheese!" exhortation with "Say fertilizer bomb!"
Mark laughed, and we all laughed. Undoubtedly there was some relief in the idea that we might never have to live under the same roof with a gun owner.
I never got to know Mark very well, largely because I tended to avoid direct contact with him - perhaps even unconsciously. However, as a general formula, I offer this sweeping generalisation:
If you combine a competitive society, lack of security, suspicion toward officialdom, the free availability of guns, state-sanctioned violence, and hero models fed to us by the media, and add to that the influence of people who are near the person, you get a Mark Wicks.
I hope that Mark is doing well.
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 27.4.2003
TIMO PELTONEN / Helsingin Sanomat
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