Read most of the newspaper this morning, including the op ed page. Much of this week's front section's news centers around the horrific shooting at the Emanuel African Methodist Church in Charleston. This lone act of violence now dominates our national and local news cycles and serves to polarize (further polarize?) out nation's leaders and pundits. Hopefully reasonable people can approach regrettable events, such as this one, with hope and understanding that our nation is not defined by the acts of lunatics who so lack a basic moral compass that they kill without conscience. This isn't a statement. It's the opposite. It's a vacuum. A very painful vacuum lacking ideas or ideals. This lunatic has nothing to give, nothing to say, nothing to share. He is nothing. But his actions, which cause pain and grief, trigger opinions. Opinions and actions which now try to retroactively un-cause it from happening. What went wrong? What should be done? Whose to blame? Thus the news cycle's maw opens for its weekly feeding.
This is not the first lone wolf, nihilistic mass killing in recent years. Sandy Hook's elementary school shooting, while sui generis, is compared and contrasted to the Charleston shooting. Each is its own horror and those of us on the sidelines have no way of understanding the pain family members and friends are going through. I am a bit embarrassed to be writing at all since I really don't have the right to comment at all unless or until I suffer something like this myself. That said, I seek only to rebut the nonsense that seems to permeate comment after these events. All generalizations are false and each of these perpetrators tends to have a unique disconnect which allows them to open the door to destruction, both personal and general. Some are obviously mentally bent, some morally bankrupt and others motivated by political and religious misinterpretations. It seems last week's shooter was nothing more than a moron with a gun. It is true he seems to have been motivated by a hatred for black people and considered himself a white supremacist but realistically he drooled in his photos. Mass murder is not now nor will it ever be laudable for anybody for any reason. Those who execute it are terminally confused and well, stupid. Perhaps I am embarrassed to be from the South (when related to this idiot) and deny this moron's motivations because they are so anathema to any enlightened human's value system. I can't see anybody actually taking anything this guy believed seriously but there it is. The horrible loss of life focuses us on the perpetration of evil. We must react.
So I concede the point. There will have to be a reaction. The most vocal reactions come from the right and from the left. These are most newsworthy. Let's step off with the left foot first. Is this is a hate crime? Is this an act of terror? The President responds by wanting more law(s). He bemoans his lack of power to restrict gun ownership. The kind of very restrictive laws they have in Chicago that work so well to prevent gun violence, right? How's that working? Laws are only as good as the will of the people to follow them. The prohibition of murder by law isn't stopping murder, is it? The prohibition of illegal drugs by law isn't stopping it, is it? But beyond the fact that the country is chock a block with literally millions of guns already and the only effective way of controlling them is to give the government rights to control citizens beyond common sense, is the history of our country. We are a country founded by revolutionaries who took up arms against an unjust government, which was run by a despot who didn't care about the rights of citizens. Our citizens, to this day, still don't absolutely trust government to not act in just the best interest's of government. Read a little about Huey Long some time if you think this country is far removed from despotism. Individuals want protection. Sometimes from intruders. Sometimes from a government run amok. Is it likely in our enlightened society? No. But anything isn't until it is. Or it is until it isn't. Paranoia is a side effect of basic distrust of what government is capable of. It fuels nuts and there are quite a few of them. Should crazy paranoid people wield weapons? Probably not. Would we be better off if such people didn't have easy access to plentiful dangerous weapons? Yes. So that's the President's point right? Give me the power the restrict gun ownership. But the reality is such laws are unlikely in this country and when they are passed in communities, they work about as well as passing laws against using drugs. People find a way if they aren't law abiding citizens and they feel the need. Their need will be met. Besides, the fool could have taken lessons with a Japanese Katana and done the deed more quietly and with even more gruesome results.
I read the op-ed page about the right's response being something about we should arm everybody and those in church could have defended themselves and the guy wasn't a racist, he was attacking our religious freedoms, or something. Bizarro stuff. If anything, worse than the left's approach, which is at least seeking some semblance of a solution. The real "beauty" of guns is they preponderantly kill their owners and the owner's families, friends and acquaintances. The chance that a gun will actually be used to defend somebody from an attack is incredibly small. Guns kill their owners and owner's family members by suicide, accident, and rage. Every week in the United States a gun is discharged by a child to kill another child in play, a loading accident kills a family member, a father kills himself (including my own), a drunken husband kills his wife or vice versa because they are upset. Neighbors kill neighbors. People have fist fights in bars and somebody goes gets a gun to escalate the violence and kills somebody. Hunting accidents kill by mistake. Road rage fueled gun owners kill strangers who drive aggressively. Guns provide instant power to kill and let's face it, they whack more thumbs than nails. To own a gun is to be instantly less safe from violence.
But...
Illegal drugs are bad. Most uses of people-shooter guns (pistols, assault rifles, etc.) other than practice and shooting for thrills and kicks, turns out bad for the owner and their family. But they ain't going away any time soon.
The bottom line is, in America, with our culture and our history, we want to keep our guns and we don't trust government enough to give them up. Bigger government with more control is not today's solution for this problem. Period.
But...
The fool who murdered those people in church WAS a racist. He was an idiot racist. However his small mind was polluted by the internet or other racists can be studied and maybe we'll learn something, but I doubt it. I'd like a simple solution to people who lack understanding or who have a broken brain, but I'm afraid we will mourn this act and soon others after it. We are a country of 319 million pretty decent people who go about their daily business without recourse to senseless killing. While horrific, this act was an aberration of the norm, not indicative of it.
But I do have an opinion (and two elbows):
I inhabit the middle. In the middle we tolerate responsible gun ownership and we prosecute illegal uses of weapons, not ownership of weapons. We blame the idiot user, not the gun. And again, owning a gun likely will end in tragedy for the owner and his family. But people still buy guns.
In the middle we understand the motivation behind progressives who want to restrict gun ownership and in time, with reason, some of that is likely to occur. Gradually and with compromise. We believe that there are actually racists in the world and their actions are offensive and when they occur we will speak out and when necessary get up and march for individual rights and freedoms guaranteed by the constitution. For all citizens.
What happened last week was the lone act of an idiot. There is little or nothing that can be done in a free society to track, restrict or prevent idiocy.
But where there is cause, there can be effect.
I am from the South. I studied in a school in the 1950s in rural North Louisiana with a text book that subscribed to the idea that the Klan and the Knights of the White Camellia were heroes during reconstruction. Today I believe southern pride is taken as knee-jerk racism. I can't help if it is or it isn't, that's how its perceived. That the rebel battle flag is about as benign as painting on black face and putting on a minstrel show.
I am in the middle and I think to honor the dead in an historic African American church, the dead who were murdered by a racist idiot, the rebel battle flag needs to be retired from the statehouse in Columbia, South Carolina. To honor those individual lives lost. To honor those black South Carolineans who suffered prior to the war between the states and those who have suffered since, up to and including this act of stupidity. To show this idiot that no, blacks aren't taking over our country, they are joining it as equal citizens and while we respect our forefathers and their contribution to the south, that INCLUDES our black brothers and sisters who suffered before, during after the war and continue to this day to suffer from those who perceive them as different or inferior. It would only be symbolic but it would be a very minor achievement and honor for those fallen dead at the hands of a racist idiot.
That's from the middle, where the heart and the head reside.
This is not the first lone wolf, nihilistic mass killing in recent years. Sandy Hook's elementary school shooting, while sui generis, is compared and contrasted to the Charleston shooting. Each is its own horror and those of us on the sidelines have no way of understanding the pain family members and friends are going through. I am a bit embarrassed to be writing at all since I really don't have the right to comment at all unless or until I suffer something like this myself. That said, I seek only to rebut the nonsense that seems to permeate comment after these events. All generalizations are false and each of these perpetrators tends to have a unique disconnect which allows them to open the door to destruction, both personal and general. Some are obviously mentally bent, some morally bankrupt and others motivated by political and religious misinterpretations. It seems last week's shooter was nothing more than a moron with a gun. It is true he seems to have been motivated by a hatred for black people and considered himself a white supremacist but realistically he drooled in his photos. Mass murder is not now nor will it ever be laudable for anybody for any reason. Those who execute it are terminally confused and well, stupid. Perhaps I am embarrassed to be from the South (when related to this idiot) and deny this moron's motivations because they are so anathema to any enlightened human's value system. I can't see anybody actually taking anything this guy believed seriously but there it is. The horrible loss of life focuses us on the perpetration of evil. We must react.
So I concede the point. There will have to be a reaction. The most vocal reactions come from the right and from the left. These are most newsworthy. Let's step off with the left foot first. Is this is a hate crime? Is this an act of terror? The President responds by wanting more law(s). He bemoans his lack of power to restrict gun ownership. The kind of very restrictive laws they have in Chicago that work so well to prevent gun violence, right? How's that working? Laws are only as good as the will of the people to follow them. The prohibition of murder by law isn't stopping murder, is it? The prohibition of illegal drugs by law isn't stopping it, is it? But beyond the fact that the country is chock a block with literally millions of guns already and the only effective way of controlling them is to give the government rights to control citizens beyond common sense, is the history of our country. We are a country founded by revolutionaries who took up arms against an unjust government, which was run by a despot who didn't care about the rights of citizens. Our citizens, to this day, still don't absolutely trust government to not act in just the best interest's of government. Read a little about Huey Long some time if you think this country is far removed from despotism. Individuals want protection. Sometimes from intruders. Sometimes from a government run amok. Is it likely in our enlightened society? No. But anything isn't until it is. Or it is until it isn't. Paranoia is a side effect of basic distrust of what government is capable of. It fuels nuts and there are quite a few of them. Should crazy paranoid people wield weapons? Probably not. Would we be better off if such people didn't have easy access to plentiful dangerous weapons? Yes. So that's the President's point right? Give me the power the restrict gun ownership. But the reality is such laws are unlikely in this country and when they are passed in communities, they work about as well as passing laws against using drugs. People find a way if they aren't law abiding citizens and they feel the need. Their need will be met. Besides, the fool could have taken lessons with a Japanese Katana and done the deed more quietly and with even more gruesome results.
I read the op-ed page about the right's response being something about we should arm everybody and those in church could have defended themselves and the guy wasn't a racist, he was attacking our religious freedoms, or something. Bizarro stuff. If anything, worse than the left's approach, which is at least seeking some semblance of a solution. The real "beauty" of guns is they preponderantly kill their owners and the owner's families, friends and acquaintances. The chance that a gun will actually be used to defend somebody from an attack is incredibly small. Guns kill their owners and owner's family members by suicide, accident, and rage. Every week in the United States a gun is discharged by a child to kill another child in play, a loading accident kills a family member, a father kills himself (including my own), a drunken husband kills his wife or vice versa because they are upset. Neighbors kill neighbors. People have fist fights in bars and somebody goes gets a gun to escalate the violence and kills somebody. Hunting accidents kill by mistake. Road rage fueled gun owners kill strangers who drive aggressively. Guns provide instant power to kill and let's face it, they whack more thumbs than nails. To own a gun is to be instantly less safe from violence.
But...
Illegal drugs are bad. Most uses of people-shooter guns (pistols, assault rifles, etc.) other than practice and shooting for thrills and kicks, turns out bad for the owner and their family. But they ain't going away any time soon.
The bottom line is, in America, with our culture and our history, we want to keep our guns and we don't trust government enough to give them up. Bigger government with more control is not today's solution for this problem. Period.
But...
The fool who murdered those people in church WAS a racist. He was an idiot racist. However his small mind was polluted by the internet or other racists can be studied and maybe we'll learn something, but I doubt it. I'd like a simple solution to people who lack understanding or who have a broken brain, but I'm afraid we will mourn this act and soon others after it. We are a country of 319 million pretty decent people who go about their daily business without recourse to senseless killing. While horrific, this act was an aberration of the norm, not indicative of it.
But I do have an opinion (and two elbows):
I inhabit the middle. In the middle we tolerate responsible gun ownership and we prosecute illegal uses of weapons, not ownership of weapons. We blame the idiot user, not the gun. And again, owning a gun likely will end in tragedy for the owner and his family. But people still buy guns.
In the middle we understand the motivation behind progressives who want to restrict gun ownership and in time, with reason, some of that is likely to occur. Gradually and with compromise. We believe that there are actually racists in the world and their actions are offensive and when they occur we will speak out and when necessary get up and march for individual rights and freedoms guaranteed by the constitution. For all citizens.
What happened last week was the lone act of an idiot. There is little or nothing that can be done in a free society to track, restrict or prevent idiocy.
But where there is cause, there can be effect.
I am from the South. I studied in a school in the 1950s in rural North Louisiana with a text book that subscribed to the idea that the Klan and the Knights of the White Camellia were heroes during reconstruction. Today I believe southern pride is taken as knee-jerk racism. I can't help if it is or it isn't, that's how its perceived. That the rebel battle flag is about as benign as painting on black face and putting on a minstrel show.
I am in the middle and I think to honor the dead in an historic African American church, the dead who were murdered by a racist idiot, the rebel battle flag needs to be retired from the statehouse in Columbia, South Carolina. To honor those individual lives lost. To honor those black South Carolineans who suffered prior to the war between the states and those who have suffered since, up to and including this act of stupidity. To show this idiot that no, blacks aren't taking over our country, they are joining it as equal citizens and while we respect our forefathers and their contribution to the south, that INCLUDES our black brothers and sisters who suffered before, during after the war and continue to this day to suffer from those who perceive them as different or inferior. It would only be symbolic but it would be a very minor achievement and honor for those fallen dead at the hands of a racist idiot.
That's from the middle, where the heart and the head reside.
