A friend of mine says he's scared to go to the movies.
"They should put metal detectors in the lobby," he says.
I tell him I have been to preview screenings where people were wanded before entering the theater. Not because anyone was worried about them carrying a weapon, but because the studios are concerned about piracy. It's a hassle that definitely detracts from the moviegoing experience, because no one leaves their cell phones at home or in their car, so every phone had to be tagged and bagged, to be reclaimed after the show. Every second or third person required an explanation as to why they should hand over their phone, as they obviously weren't the sort of person who would try to profit off someone else's intellectual property.
A movie metal detector is not something I would endure often. The additional bother would deter me from going to the theater, at least to screenings likely to attract a large crowd. It's easier to sit home and fire up Netflix. I don't imagine theater managers are anxious to install magnetometers or to train their staff members to operate them. I don't think we'll see metal detectors in local theaters anytime soon.
My friend's anxiety notwithstanding, the possibility of movie theater violence doesn't seem to be keeping people away from theaters. John Russell Houser opened fire with a .40-caliber semiautomatic weapon during a screening of Trainwreck on July 23, and the weekend box-office receipts remained about the same as analysts expected. There's no real evidence that people are staying away from the movies because they're afraid of random terrorists.
Still, I don't want to dismiss my friend's anxiety. Four attacks in movie theaters since 2012, with 17 people killed and at least 80 injured, may be statistically insignificant, but that's no comfort to those left bereft. If you want to kill a lot of people in a short amount of time, movie theaters present an attractive soft target. They're places where large numbers of people gather in close proximity in the dark. Very few of them have more than a cursory security presence. If you pick your spot, for a second of two the report of your weapon might blend in with the soundtrack.
If you consider how vulnerable you are when you're engaged with a movie, you might find it difficult not to worry. Just because a fear is irrational doesn't mean it isn't real.
That's why some people really feel safer when they have a weapon close at hand. Sure, some of them have delusional fantasies about their own competence, but most of them genuinely believe they're better prepared to deal with an unexpected situation with a firearm on their person. That this is not the case for most of them doesn't really figure into their calculus. While it is actuarially demonstrable that they are increasing their chances of being killed or wounded by carrying a gun, each of them believes the opposite: They are the cool-handed and the level-headed. They are the ones who can deal with the bad guys. They are the sheepdogs, prepared to defend the rest of us sheep.
And for a tiny percentage of the people who believe this, it's probably true. No one should doubt that guns can save lives as well as take them.
In a better world, we'd all be brave. In a better world, we'd all stand up to bullies, and we wouldn't gossip or fudge on our expense reports. In a better world, we'd have a real debate about the efficacy of personal firearms in public places--we wouldn't call each other names on Facebook.
But that is not our world. We live in the lesser world, the one we have made, and the one we deserve. We are all of us vulnerable, at any time, any place. If someone wants to do you harm, they will have a chance to take their shot. With a ballpoint pen, if not a gun. We are ingenious creatures; we can improvise weapons if need be. We don't need guns.
Guns just make it easier. They give us the horrible superpower: the ability to kill at a remove, with a touch. Again and again, as fast as we can press the trigger, as fast as we can reload.
What is wrong with us is not that guns exist, but that we developed such a taste for them, that we think they look cool. That we use them to accessorize our lifestyle, that we imagine ourselves behind them as they nose through the levels of a first-person shooter game, looking for the ones that did them wrong. That they exist as a desperate option for so many of us, as frustrated and fallible as we can be. They should not be in reach in our worst moments.
There is no lesson today, no homily. My friend is afraid to go to the movies, and in the scheme of things that is no big deal. The movies will get along without him. And the world will roll on, frame by bloody frame, as the rights of a few to believe in things that just aren't true trump the interests of the pitiable flock.
------------v------------
Philip Martin is a columnist and critic for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at pmartin@arkansasonline.com and read his blog at blooddirtandangels.com.
Editorial on 09/01/2015