Posted on 04/09/2005 3:36:16 PM PDT by Dan from Michigan
The price of freedom': More bodies
The harsh reality is that too many Americans love their guns more than they love their children
JOSH SUGARMANN
In just 10 days last month, two mass murder-suicides -- one ending in a Minnesota high school, the other taking place during a religious service in a Wisconsin hotel -- left a combined toll of 18 dead and more than 10 injured.
As Americans go through the familiar ritual of asking how this could happen, the National Rifle Association has a stark answer articulated by former head Harlon Carter more than 20 years ago. America's gun death toll, he explained, was simply "the price of freedom."
To Carter, no matter what atrocities stem from America's unfettered gun culture, they were a small price to pay for the unparalleled "freedom" of Americans to own virtually any gun of their own choosing: from pocket-size derringers to military-bred 50-caliber sniper rifles that can destroy aircraft and penetrate a half inch of armor plating from a mile away.
Carter's words have shaped the world view of today's NRA. They also lead to a more important question. At what point will Americans agree that the price exacted by guns -- the gun lobby's "price of freedom" -- is simply too high?
An all-too-familiar pattern has already emerged after the Red Lake High School shooting in Minnesota -- the worst school shooting in the United States since Columbine. Attention has focused on virtually everything except the actual tools -- reportedly two handguns and a shotgun -- that made the massacre possible.
Did the school have metal detectors? Was the security guard armed? Did the unique struggles faced by the residents of Indian reservations play a role? What about the shooter's postings on a white supremacist Web site, and did other students help plan the attack? What have we learned since Columbine?
Each of these questions is legitimate. Yet while other Western, industrialized nations face their own civic, social and economic problems, they understand the direct link between gun availability and gun violence and severely restrict access to specific classes of firearms. The result is that other countries simply don't experience mass shootings as commonly seen in the United States. The United States is unique in the ease with which it allows its citizens to act on their rage through the barrel of a gun.
Even when Americans' attention is focused on gun policy, a timid mindset takes hold. Advocates and policy-makers look for minor, "common sense" policy proposals into which they can shoehorn the discrete circumstances of a particular attack.
They are unwilling to acknowledge the basic fact that America's gun violence problem is a direct result of the ease with which Americans can obtain virtually any gun of their choice for almost any intent. Why talk about banning handguns when you can focus on trigger locks?
Mass shootings today are treated almost like tornadoes or earthquakes -- unstoppable forces of nature that we must endure. The harsh reality is that too many Americans love their guns more than they love their children. Each new shooting -- regardless of the number of people killed or the formerly "safe" environment violated by the sound of gunfire -- seems less to shock us than to inure us to the next horrible incident.
In April, when parents across America think twice about sending their children to school on April 20, the sixth anniversary of the Columbine massacre, remember Harlon Carter's words: We are just paying "the price of freedom."
That would be redundent. Josh Sugarmann is rather imfamous among most 2a activists.
I thought the Minnesota mass murderer took the guns from his grandfather , who was a law officer? Couldn't this also be referred to as "the price of law enforcement"?
Actually, I'd say it's the price of liberalism. Kids raised without parents, dumbing down education so that every student can feel good about being average, violence in the city slums that we cannot fight but "must try to understand the reasons for the person's feelings and action", banning even a word about religion in public places under the "separation of church and state", MTV and it's 'gangsta rap' drivel. I could go on. It's not surprising that a kid could become so detached he does not know right from wrong. The kid is to blame, and ultimately society's decay is to blame. The gun(s) are not responsible, the person is.
The blessing of freedom: Less bodies
Some areas of the country have relatively little gun violence and some have a lot. If the explanation for gun violence is ease of getting a gun, you'd expect to be able to show that it's easy where violence is high and difficult where violence is low. I have my doubts that what explains low violence areas is that there's just nowhere around to buy a gun.
An old lie, twice warmed over.
Why don't they publish a list of all the people who were killed because they didn't have a weapon to defend themselves with. John Wayne Gacy murdered all his victims without using guns if I'm not mistaken. Many more murderers, serial killers (Ted Bundy, etc) and otherwise, didn't resort to firearms to murder their victims. How many murders could have been prevented if some of the victims had been armed. We'll never know.
No doubt Josh is himself the source of the distorted quote.
Amazing.
too many Americans love their guns more than they love their children.
I don't have any children so I just have to love my guns
more, and it shows.
I don't love my guns more than my children. However my guns are more reliable and useful :^)
Roughly 30,000 gun deaths in the US per year, but who's counting...
I love my children so much that I want them to always own firearms -- and to practice frequently.
And to stock up on ammo!
Thank you for the link to the truth on Carter!
And nobody loves mass shootings more than Josh Sugarmann.
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