Many people are hoping we will come to our sense on guns.
It will not happen. The people obsessed by having access to semi-automatic weapons that murder 20 children in a few minutes, believe that is the only thing keeping the black helicopters from the Socialists coming to take them to camps. No wonder their favorite movie is Red Dawn, where the only thing preventing us from being conquered by Russians is brave gun-bearing American teenagers.
Meanwhile, not-so-brave gun-bearing American teenagers (or post-teens) have been on a murder spree in the last few months. Loners, unhappy, unconnected, they have suited themselves up like soldiers and acted out with murderous violence. And no surprise, as we Americans worship violence. We have no problem with absolutely vicious violence on TV, but show a kiss or someone making love and we faint, clutching our pearls. Our values are completely backwards.
I don't actually want to take most people's guns away. I've had hunters in the family, who kept their weapons responsibly and would have been insulted at the thought they would need semi-automatic weapons to kill the deer they hunted for dinner. (Semi-automatic means that you can keep pressing the trigger and it will continue firing, as opposed to weapons like a bolt-action rifle where you have to manually intervene to eject the used shells and insert a new one into the chamber. )
I just think guns should be licensed and regulated at least as much as a car, and you shouldn't be able to buy them over the internet or at gun shows without a background check and proper training, and NO ONE should have semi-automatic or fully automatic weapons who is not in the military or police force. Because those weapons exist for one reason: to kill people.
And I don't think guns are a problem as much as a paranoid mind-set that worships violence as part of every day culture, and men who feel stronger if they have a pistol stuffed into their waistband, like the man who killed that boy in Florida. Big Tough Guy playing vigilante.
Of course, the NRA will demand that it keeps its guns as a constitutional right, the same way old ugly men defended their right to walk around San Francisco stark naked, until the city finally had enough.
So the NRA and its supporters really are no different than those literal SF wankers. The city of San Francisco had enough of that. Would that the rest of us would too.
Meanwhile, my brain cannot really wrap itself around the horror of Newtown CT and my eyes are filled with tears.
7 comments:
This was a good (if depressingly fatalistic) post, IT, until you brought up the SF nudists. C'mon, this isn't an analogous situation AT ALL. You might not like to see nekkid "old ugly men" (I don't) . . . but seeing them isn't going to kill you, either. Focus!
CarlD
The most important fact that I question is, "In a safe community, where everyone knows everyone" that an elementary school teacher with a twenty year old son that has known mental problems has a licence for THREE guns, one of which is a semi-automatic rifle.
What is a female kindergarten teacher doing with this type of weaponry?
Since the defeat of Protestant Western societies by their own doing; autonomy has been devalued. Although not so much here in America.
JCF, the sentiment is the same: putting a fierce defense one's own rights ahead of anyone else. It goes from ridiculous (SF Wankers) to tragic (CT shooting), and all of it affects children, from the modest to the serious How do we balance rights with responsibilities? ow do we protect children and freedom? If my essay makes you sit up, in agreement or not, it has done its job
the sentiment is the same: putting a fierce defense one's own rights ahead of anyone else
ONLY if you put the right to LIFE (of which the CT victims were deprived) with "the right to not be visually offended".
Now, I'm not saying there's an ABSOLUTE right to freedom of expression (even if causes offense). Burning crosses is a step too far---maybe naked "junk" is too.
But I certainly grant qualitatively greater right to give offense, than the right to deprive life. Seriously, IT, the comparison is ridiculous, bordering on obscene. It diverts attention away from the legitimately ESSENTIAL discussion we need to have about guns (and the nexus of guns & mental illness), to have wrinkly old pee-pees pop-up (as it were). The stakes are TOO HIGH, for this kind of sideshow.
Put me in the pessimists camp. I don't think there will be any movement on gun control in the wake of this massacre, and there won't be in the wake of the next massacre.
I'd be happy with a revival of the 1994 assault weapons ban, but I don't think that's going to happen.
We're growing numb to this madness and are beginning to accept it as somehow "normal."
JCF, I write my essays as I see fit. I encourage you to set up a blog and write the ones you want to see!
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