Sue Hartigan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
Posted for Bill..Sue
A look at Jonesboro through NRA crosshairs
I suppose you think I’m going to write another gun control column, don’t
you? You think the Arkansas killings
— four children and a teacher dead at the hands of a pair of barely
adolescent misfits — are going to send me off
like a 10-cent rocket, that I’m going to roll around on the floor,
wailing about the need to regulate firearms.
You’re wrong. The last time I wrote a column like that, hundreds — and I
mean hundreds — of gun lovers wrote
in to inform me of the error of my ways. Like a good liberal, I listened
to them with an open mind, and ... they
convinced me. Guns don’t kill people; they prevent people from killing
people.
Had the teachers and students on that Arkansas playground been armed
with decent weapons, they could have
returned fire and perhaps persuaded the two killers in the woods that
they were into a bad idea. In other words,
the incident shows not that we have too many guns, but too few.
That aside, the real point here is that the lives of four beautiful
children and a wonderful teacher are a small price
to pay for the preservation of our sacred right to bear arms, a right
without which we would be powerless to
defend ourselves against our government when it decides to take over. I
don’t know exactly what the
government is looking to take over, but a good share of the gun people
who write me worry about it a lot and
that’s good enough for me.
There are a lot of weak-kneed liberals, like I used to be, who cringe at
the thought of ever taking up arms against
our own troops, but a patriot’s got to be prepared to do what a
patriot’s got to do, even if it’s treason.
There are those who say we should at least try to keep guns out of the
hands of children. I don’t agree with that
either; neither do gun people. The National Rifle Association, the
uncivil rights organization, has made getting
kids hooked on guns a major priority for the future. Charlton Heston,
who figures to be the NRA’s next
president, has pledged to raise $100 million over three years to promote
guns to children.
"Kids are the future of the sports we all love," says one New England
gun maker. And the National Shooting
Sports Foundation adds: "Some youngsters are ready to start" shooting
"at 10."
Makes sense. You start keeping guns from 11-year-olds, then
13-year-olds, then 16-year-olds, and before you
know it you’re being invaded by Albania — which is the other big thing
gun people worry about.
Anyway, those kids in Arkansas took the guns and ammunition they used
from the house of one of their
grandfathers. How are you going to keep guns away from kids like that
without keeping them away from
grandparents, too?
Some are giving credit to television for the Jonesboro massacre. The
governor of Arkansas said it was proof that
there is too much violence on television and in the movies. This is the
"Guns don’t kill people, videos do"
approach, and I don’t buy it.
I grew up during World War II, and we did nothing but play war games.
Morning, noon and night, we urchins
were out in the vacant lots and alleys of Detroit shooting each other
with wooden guns.
None of us, however, ever graduated to slaughtering our schoolmates for
real. We couldn’t; nobody had guns.
When a kid went postal, he had to make do with a two-by-four or baseball
bat. Some really, really bad kids had
zip guns — homemade pieces fashioned out of short lengths of pipe — but
they were as likely to explode in the
user’s hand as fire a projectile.
Now, thanks to the tireless efforts of organizations like the NRA,
disturbed children can get at it with real
weapons that the Viet Cong would have been proud to have.
The NRA is being uncharacteristically reticent right now. "This tragedy
is so shocking to everyone in America,"
said a spokesperson, "so startling.... It extends beyond any political
debate and it would be inappropriate to
comment right now."
So sensitive, the NRA.
I am not so sensitive. As Mao Tse-tung used to say: "All power grows out
of the barrel of a gun." It was either
Mao or Heston; I get them mixed up.
Just in case the people who think the culture is at fault are right,
however, I propose instituting a five-day
waiting period for the purchase of books, records or videos, giving the
seller time to conduct a computerized
background check.
Better safe than sorry.
Donald Kaul is a columnist for The Des Moines Register.
--
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