Posted on 04/09/2005 3:31:33 PM PDT by Dan from Michigan
Commentary:
The gun culture and its consequences
By JOSH HORWITZ
Guest Commentary
A HIGH SCHOOL student in Red Lake, Minn., kills his grandfather and eight other people before turning the gun on himself; a man shoots his ex-wife and a bystander outside a courthouse in Tyler, Texas; a disappointed litigant in a malpractice case kills a federal judge's husband and mother in Chicago; a rape defendant in Atlanta overpowers a police officer, seizes her gun, and shoots three people to death; and a man walks into a church service at a hotel near Milwaukee and shoots 12 people, killing eight.
Instead of reevaluating its dogmatic devotion to guns as the answer to every question, the gun lobby has its story and is sticking to it: If only the victims in these cases had been armed (or in the Tyler and Atlanta cases, more heavily armed), then violence could have been avoided or stopped by a gun-wielding citizen.
The message that more guns will solve our problems has been promoted relentlessly by the NRA and other elements of a fringe culture that believes not only in the right to bear arms as the most important bulwark against violent crime and government oppression, but that every citizen should prepare for armed confrontation.
Writing in the Union Leader online last week, Dave Workman, senior editor of Gun Week, approvingly quoted John Snyder, public affairs director of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, who said: “When push comes to shove, an ultimate protection against terrorist activity could well be an armed citizenry.”
Gun Owners of America, the nation's second-largest gun rights group, is distributing public service announcements “[t]o generate public awareness of the dangers of not having a gun ready for protection.” As Erich Pratt, a GOA spokesman, has said, “Passing a law that says everyone in a town must own a gun would be a good thing. It would be like putting a sign on every door saying, ‘This home is protected by Smith & Wesson.’”
Vin Suprynowicz, a well-known gun enthusiast and prolific writer, says, “Americans have a strongly implied obligation under the Second Amendment to stand ready to defend our freedoms . . . by owning, maintaining and keeping in good practice with a firearm of ‘militia usefulness’ — that being, in this day and age, an M-16 or (preferably, in my opinion) a .308-caliber, M-14 combat rifle.”
Even among purportedly mainstream gun rights organizations like the NRA, the response to the firearm homicides of recent weeks is essentially that we can just shoot our way out of trouble, and the NRA is backing a variety of state-level legislation designed to roll back restrictions on guns in bars, churches, schools, and just about anywhere else.
With somewhere around 200 million guns in private hands in the United States, our society hardly suffers from a shortage of firearms, and it is not clear why adding millions more would make us safer. In fact, other cultures that have reached this level of individual armament have done so at their own peril.
Think of Somalia or Russia, where even locals are reluctant to travel alone and bodyguards and razor wire are considered necessities for middle and upper class households. In these societies, democracy has taken a back seat to maintaining order.
The United States isn't near this point yet, but turning over responsibility for establishing order to armed citizens has not been the answer in those foreign countries and it will not be the answer here. The privatization of crime control — whether through hired security forces or individuals who mete out justice as they see fit - is the hallmark of a society that has been turned against itself, with devastating consequences for political liberty.
The latest spate of shootings has produced proposals to increase security for judges, offer easier access to concealed carry permits, and pass a new assault weapons ban. These ideas should be debated, but not as a substitute for hard thinking about whether a society where citizens feel they need to be armed to the teeth to go to school, work, or church is really good for our quality of life, our safety, and our freedom.
Josh Horwitz is executive director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence
The author of this essay is a fool. He askws in the last line about our freedom. What the left never gets is that without the ultimate freedom, the freedom to defend your own life, you can't really have freedom.
That's my two cents.
Arioch7 out.
Nicely Fisked here:
http://heartlesslibertarian.blogspot.com/2005_04_03_heartlesslibertarian_archive.html#111296946924871648
The number of examples of situations that would have had a better outcome IF there was a firearm handy is in the millions. Maybe billions.
This guys says absolutely nothing in support of his own position or anything else for that matter. The closest he comes to a point is the above which is flatulent circumlocution.
Yeah, I was trying to find some actual argument there and really couldn't find any beyond 'guns are bad 'cos I say so'.
I don't know where Josh Horwitz hails from, but, in my neck of the woods far more people are killed and injured by cars than by guns.
Of his cases, one was a criminal stealing a gun from an armed guard (not sure he is saying all of our police should be unarmed as well), and in one case the child WASN'T killed, but a bystander was after he shot the suspect, which distracted him enough that the police were able to get him before anybody else died.
In other words, in the case where the shooting was in a place where we are still allowed to have guns, the number of people killed was a lot less.
The question isn't whether too many people are killed because we allow guns, it is how many more people would be killed if only criminals had guns.
To those who argue that if we outlawed guns that would cost more, realise that to a criminal "cost" is translated to "rob a few more people at gunpoint", something that is a lot easier when you know your victims will be unarmed.
Countries where it seems a gun ban works also have other laws restricting the rights of citizens in ways we would never contemplate.
The price of freedom isn't gun violence, it is that we don't stop people for suspicion, so bad things can happen.
Gee, I never realized Somalia and Russia had such permissive gun laws. (Rolls eyes).
I think HUD should mandate that all wealthy communities in this country must host a site for low income housing and half way houses for drug users/homeless. When the rich families have family members accousted by menacing people on the streets, carjacked, homes broken into and deal with crazy people, I think their attitude towards guns would change, expecially when the police arrives after the fact to collect information because they can do nothing to stop it because courts ruled that menacing people have rights and you cannot do anything to them unless they attack you. The problem is many gun ban advocates live in wealthy communities insulated from crime, because it is the middle class who forms the buffer zone for them.
Lets get rid of the guns and return to the good old days when the bad guys walked into the tavern and hacked everyone to death with axes. or people got mug by bad guys after they had their throats cut by daggers. And snipers fired from the bushes with long bows.
People have been killing people for the last 15,000 years or so, long before they invented a damn gun.
These ideas should be debated, but not as a substitute for hard thinking about whether a society where citizens feel they need to be armed to the teeth to go to school, work, or church is really good for our quality of life, our safety, and our freedom.
The question isn't whether too many people are killed because we allow guns, it is how many more people would be killed if only criminals had guns.
As Josh advocates the trampling of my Second Amendment rights I'll bet he's horrified that his liberties and rights are under attack by the Patriot Act. He's probably "outraged" and "chilled" by the fact that some FBI guy might be able to take a peek at his library card.
Fringe culture? What is so fringy about the 53% of the voters who put Bush into office for a second term?
Decent folks must be the stopgaps of violent crime and violent criminals
..If you want peace you must train for war..
There's the way it ought to be and there's the way it is..
Sometimes ya just gotta face the cold hard facts..and prepare yourself and your family for reality..
You cant live in some socialist pipe dream..or teach your kids to...not if you care about them anyway...
imo
I had NRA hunter safety in gym class in high school. No one in my school killed another in my school. Maybe the schools are causing hate or doing something wrong. I did not fire a gun in anger, not even in Viet Nam!!! The armed civilians are what saved this country form the British more than once. Where did they say this guy came from?
The gun-grabbers are one of the few people that I will not compromise with under any circumstances.
I sometimes think it would be easier talking to a brick wall, LOL!
Arioch7 out.
"With somewhere around 200 million guns in private hands in the United States, our society hardly suffers from a shortage of firearms, and it is not clear why adding millions more would make us safer"
Most of these guns are locked up in a safe. Now if folks were able to use them to defend themselves with the applicable laws, then he might have a point. But until then his statement is simple fantasy.
Maybe young Josh never learned that our country won it's freedom by use of the gun? Maybe young Josh also never learned that it's been use of the gun that's kept our freedom so long?
Odd too that young Josh doesn't mention the 1997 school shooting at Pearl High School in Mississippi where the Principal, using his gun, stopped the shooting? Seems none of the left stream media mentions that one very much.
http://www.davekopel.com/2A/OthWr/principal&gun.htm
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