Presenting a chapter a week, more or less
Categories: The Neocon Aberration--the book
My intention here is to share selected chapters of my 2007 book, The Neocon Aberration. New material will be posted periodically.
I should note that the text offered here is taken from a Word document and doesn't resemble, typographically, presentation in the book.
Also, since I continued to read, proof, and read again for several months in the process of publication, there is a possibility some typo survives in this manuscript that was caught later in the production process.
D. Grant Haynes
I should note that the text offered here is taken from a Word document and doesn't resemble, typographically, presentation in the book.
Also, since I continued to read, proof, and read again for several months in the process of publication, there is a possibility some typo survives in this manuscript that was caught later in the production process.
D. Grant Haynes
The National Rifle Association (NRA) sells everything from its political agenda to its merchandise with a simple equation: more guns equal more freedom. The NRA steadfastly maintains that the 30,000 gun-related deaths and 300,000 assaults with firearms in the United States every year are a small price to pay to guarantee freedom.
Coalition to Stop Gun Violence
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Chapter 5
Gun Control
Since the April 16, 2007 massacre of 32 students at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia, and the appearance of an editorial statement of mine about that terrible event, I have been dumbfounded by the complete lack of any enthusiasm for the statement in which I call for stricter gun control, as I have for a decade.
A nominally progressive web site that generally publishes anything I submit frankly turned my anti-gun editorial down with the editor’s clear statement that she did not think more gun control was the answer.
And responses to my anti-gun position on give-and-take progressive forums have ranged from luke warm to outright hostile.
Clearly, a surprisingly large percentage of Americans of every political stripe want to see more handguns and assault rifles in this frenetic society which has seen three more shooting incidents in the 30 days between Blacksburg and this writing in May 2007.
Despite the present mayhem of gun-toting idiots who can kill their boss after a bad job performance rating--or their landlord if evicted from an apartment--or their girlfriend if she wants to break it off--many of my liberal and progressive friends assert in all sincerity that had every student in the Virginia Tech classes that were victimized by killer Cho Seung-Hui had a handgun, the carnage would have been less.
Seriously, readers from more sane cultures, this is the present mind set of the majority of Americans and their preferred solution to the growing problem of gun violence in America.
From my perspective, such a scenario--one in which every allegedly sane individual is armed with a death-dealing concealed weapon--would be a recipe for mayhem throughout America.
Do these proponents of more guns wish to return to the days of the lawless frontier when the “fastest gun” prevailed? Perhaps Cho Seung-Hui had been practicing a Black Bart-like “fast draw”. If so, he might have killed every student that reached for their own personal Glock, shooting it out of their hand O.K. Corral style. Or perhaps Cho Seung-Hui could have been dropped at some point by a brave student that had also been practicing his gun fighting style. We cannot know. But how many would have been struck by ricocheting bullets in this scene of sheer madness?
One thing I do know--or strongly believe, at least. Speculation about a return to an armed state in which every student in a college classroom--every worker in a crowded office--carries a loaded pistol is insanity. Hollywood and video game makers have conditioned a generation of Americans to think that excessive blood-spattering violence is the better way to resolve all problems. This is sad and it is also frightening.
I do not think more guns are the answer to gun violence in America. I think less guns are the answer, as I have indicated in the following statements about school shootings--statements that span a decade of violent deaths at educational institutions in this, the most violence prone of Western nations. -- D.G.H.
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Don't blame the children
April 3, 1998
Services had not been set for the five victims of the recent senseless violence at a Jonesboro, Arkansas, middle school when the tattered and, under the circumstances of the moment seemingly obscene, litany of the far right about gun control was heard once more in our land.
"Guns don't kill--people kill", these stalwart, self-appointed defenders of America were telling us even as we began to try to understand how and why two pre-adolescent children, ages 11 and 13, could or would set an ambush and murder with high-powered deer rifles four of their fellow classmates and a young teacher. It had happened at Westside Middle School in Jonesboro on March 24.
And then there were the inelegant locals--a mayor, a sheriff, and assorted others--all thrust into a limelight they never anticipated and were ill-equipped to handle well. Their biggest concern--the overriding question being discussed by these "law and order" folks--revolved around how long the two allegedly murderous middle school suspects could be kept locked away from decent people.
What troubled the local commentators most was an Arkansas law that would see the boys released from juvenile detention at age 18, even if convicted in juvenile court. Many wished there was a way to try them as adults so they could be incarcerated for life--or perhaps sentenced to death.
No one was talking about the complicity of the adults and institutions in the world of these children that have been responsible for forging them into the insensitive and violence-prone little animals they and thousands like them have become in America lately.
The adult world fashioned these children into what they are and punishment for their heinous crime should be directed at the real perpetrators--not at the small boys.
Perpetrators like the grandfather from whose home three deadly hunting rifles and seven handguns were allegedly taken in preparation for the killing spree.
Perpetrators like the hawkers of violence as a simple and readily available solution to every problem in this society--from the makers of movies whose only theme is mindless mayhem and conscienceless carnage, to the video game manufacturers who have constructed a virtual reality world for impressionable young minds--an electronic battlefield where death is as quick and clean and painless as clicking the mouse. SOCK! BANG! POW!--the opponent is electronically vanquished and there is no consequence.
Perpetrators like lobbyists for the National Rifle Association whose inordinate influence in Washington prevents politically sensitive lawmakers from passing meaningful legislation to restrict the sale and ownership of death-dealing weapons of all kinds--the only common sense solution to the national tragedy of a firearm-related death rate among American children that is 12 times higher than that of any other industrialized nation on earth.
And finally, there are the legions of well-meaning but unenlightened American men who glorify killing as sport, teaching their sons that the right of passage into manhood includes "getting their first buck". They too are far from blameless in the dilemma we now face.
Rather than heap scorn and heightened punishment scenarios on the two fresh-faced school boys who pulled the triggers in Arkansas, the real culprits--the individuals and institutions that enshrine guns and violence and the bloodthirsty customs and outgrown rituals surrounding them as "sport"--should be manacled.
And the avaricious purveyors of the excessive entertainment industry violence that desensitizes impressionable children about the sanctity of life should be led away with them.
These long-overdue changes would be a just and fitting memorial to the five innocent people who gave their lives in a hail of hunting rifle fire on that Arkansas school ground March 24.
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America's love affair with guns, violence must end
April 21, 1999
First there were the two students that were killed and the nine that were wounded by a fellow student at a Pearl, Mississippi, high school in October 1997.
Then only two months later--in December 1997--three were killed and five were wounded at a Paducah, Kentucky, high school.
And we all remember the horror of the Jonesboro, Arkansas, shootings three months after Paducah when, in March 1998, two children, ages 11 and 13, opened fire from the woods, killing four students and a teacher and wounding 10 others before they were stopped.
A month later--in April 1998--a 14-year-old boy in Edinboro, Pennsylvania, shot and killed a science teacher at a school dance.
And less than a month after the Pennsylvania shooting--in May 1998--America was rocked twice in three terrible days when news came of similar killings by teenagers at Fayetteville, Tennessee, and Springfield, Oregon, high schools. The toll in those May 19 and May 21 killing sprees was five dead and 20 wounded.
The insanity of free-wheeling murder by gun-toting students with real or imagined beefs against the system or individuals at American schools did not end in 1998, unfortunately.
The nation and the world are, even now, reeling in shock and disbelief in the aftermath of the recent massacre at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado.
In that April 20 shooting rampage 13 people died and 22 others were injured or maimed by two disaffected students who later turned their portable arsenal that included assault rifles, sawed-off shotguns and handguns on themselves.
The talking heads on television and elsewhere are busy discussing all that is wrong in American society that could cause kids with one of the highest standards of living in the world to be so unhappy that they elect to take their own and others' lives rather than stick around and grow up.
They cite erosion of the traditional family unit and a loss of a sense of identity--of ties to family, church and home--as sources of the rage the kids are expressing with their assault rifles.
And the print media wags, many of whom are fence-straddlers plagued by a paucity of spine in the face of the conservative business interests in their communities, are busy writing hand-wringing statements attacking equally "safe" targets.
They wax eloquent about a need to return to "old fashioned values." They cite the culpability of the electronic media for glorifying excessive violence in movies and video games merely to sell more tickets and tapes and 30-second prime time advertising spots.
Much of what all of these Monday morning quarterbacks offer is probably true, but none of it addresses the most patently obvious message in the series of tragic shootings at American schools during the last 18 months.
By and large, the commentators tiptoe past the obvious with limited comment, lest the traditional power structure in their little domains and in this WASPish society in general become offended.
There are far too many guns in America.
Guns of all sizes, shapes, calibers and intended purposes are too readily available and play too important a role in the work, play, thinking, attitudes and personal lives of too many Americans of all ages.
Had the disenchanted youths who have done all the killing on school campuses recently not had access to handguns, deer rifles, sawed-off shotguns and even military assault rifles in their homes and communities, they could not have murdered others as they did. And many innocent people would be alive today who aren't.
America's love affair with guns and violence as a way to solve problems--with the frontier mystique that is a holdover from a past that no longer exists--must end.
The National Rifle Association's unhealthy influence in Congress and in conservative circles of business and industry must come to an end too. The NRA is an anachronism at the close of the 20th Century and, like their current spokesman, Charlton Heston, the organization should retire from the scene.
There will never be a cessation of the killings at America's schools--or a turnaround in a death-by-gunshot incidence rate in the United States that is greater than that of any other civilized nation--until the American home with a cabinet full of hunting rifles, shotguns and handguns becomes the exception rather than the rule.
No amount of baloney about our "constitutional right to keep and bear arms" should be allowed to eclipse or thwart what all Americans of common sense and good conscience must know in their hearts in the wake of the Columbine High massacre.
Some of the guns have to go.
________________
It's time to confront the gun lobby
April 18, 2007
Americans are busily soul searching one more time after another mass killing at an educational institution.
This time the setting was a university rather than a secondary school.
But the ghastly spectacle that unfolded at Virginia Polytechnic University in Blacksburg, Virginia, on April 16 when a disaffected student--Cho Seung-Hui, 23--systematically executed 32 innocent students and faculty members was fully as terrible as other such recent massacres in America--only worse.
More were killed at Virginia Tech than at Columbine High School in Colorado eight years ago. And the killer's cold-blooded and methodical resolve, as well as an inexplicable lack of appropriate and timely responses from police officers on the scene, will put the Virginia Tech massacre in a class apart always.
Media pundits, politicians, university administrators, psychologists, clergymen and others talk endlessly now about what lessons might be learned from Virginia Tech.
The university should have had a better evacuation or lock down protocol in place.
University and other police officers should have been more diligent in protecting students from Cho Seung-Hui's rage after his first shooting spree in which he killed two individuals more than two hours before he reappeared on campus to kill 30 more students.
The mental health community should have done a better job of intervention when Cho Seung-Hui had, over several years' time, displayed symptoms of mental illness.
There is ample blame to go around in this botched and bungled phantasmagoric mess that, seemingly, could not have been handled in a worse way than it was handled.
But in all of the hand-wringing 24-hour non-stop media reportage and speculation about Blacksburg, few professionals and fewer politicians with their fingers to the wind and their campaign coffers chock full of National Rifle Association dollars in some cases, have been willing to state the obvious.
Cho Seung-Hui could not have murdered 32 people so efficiently in Blacksburg, Virginia, on April 16 without access to two pistols and endless rounds of ammunition for them.
Cho was a brooding youth. One of his teachers had identified him as deeply troubled because of the excessively violent nature of his fictionalized scenarios. She had even referred him for counseling.
He had had encounters with the university police over allegations of stalking others.
He had been described as a potential menace to himself and others by a mental health professional.
Should not these facts alone have been a red flag sufficient to dictate a more than perfunctory look at him when he sought to acquire death-dealing hand guns?
That should have been the case and would have been in a more sensible culture.
Had minimally effective gun control laws been in place in Virginia when Cho sought to purchase his pistols and cartridges, he would have been denied a permit and 32 dead Virginia Tech students and faculty members would be alive today.
For all practical purposes, anyone in this nation can obtain a firearm, regardless of his or her emotional stability, maturity, or legitimate need for the weapon.
This is wrong and is cause for people in more sane societies to fear for their very lives when contemplating a trip to America. This writer knows whereof he speaks because he lived in Great Britain for a time and was asked often about the danger of being gunned down in America.
What must they all think today?
More stringent gun control is the only answer to the madness of disaffected youths and others who, repeatedly, have walked into schools and work places and murdered innocent people.
But cowardly Democrats who should be at the forefront of gun control legislation are already distancing themselves from calls for tougher gun laws in the wake of the Virginia Tech tragedy.
Congressional Democrats fear the wrath of the National Rifle Association and that organization's clout with a certain segment of American voters too much to do what they know is both right and desperately needed.
Senate majority leader, Harry Reid (D-NV) squelched serious talk of more rigid gun controls following the Virginia Tech shootings. The Associated Press reported Reid's lackluster and cowardly response to questions of stricter gun control as blood was being mopped at Virginia Tech.
"After the worst mass shooting in U.S. history, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid cautioned Tuesday against a 'rush to judgment' on stricter gun control....
"I think we ought to be thinking about the families and the victims and not speculate about future legislative battles that might lie ahead," said Reid... ."
And you should also be thinking about the families and the victims of the next such massacre, Senator Reid.
A ban on the sale of assault rifles in the United States--one that was in place from 1994 until 2004 when a Republican Congress permitted it to expire--should be reinstated as soon as possible.
And hand gun acquisition requirements should also be made more restrictive as soon as possible.
The American with a legitimate need for a personal hand gun--certainly and especially a license to carry such a weapon on his person--should become a rare exception rather than the rule.
The Cho Seung-Hui's of this nation should never be permitted to purchase a handgun or an assault rifle. Background checks prior to the sale of a pistol should be infinitely more thorough--modeled, perhaps after the British system.
The only viable solution to the epidemic of mass killings at American educational institutions and work places is to drastically reduce the number of guns in the hands of Americans.
This can be done and should be done.
And to those who would at this point trot out the tired old bromide, "when guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns", one can only observe that we must start somewhere and at some point in time.
The process may take decades, but if assault rifle acquisitions are stanched altogether and hand guns are made infinitely more difficult to obtain, there will be ever fewer of each in circulation over time.
That would represent a move in the right direction and would be a fitting memorial to those who gave their lives at Virginia Tech because Virginia's gun laws had permitted a psychologically impaired youth to acquire the instruments to murder 32 people on a morning that will live in infamy throughout American history.
How many more Virginia Techs must occur before our elected representatives muster the courage to confront the gun lobby and do what must be done ?
__________________
Posted by DGrantHaynes at 11:00 PM | Link | 0 comments
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