[Newspoetry] guns and more guns -- mental illness and moral bankruptcy

[DL Emerick]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/26/opinion/26thu4.html

 

Guns and More Guns editorial in the NYT today.

 

The Times is partly right, but NRA's view is credible, too, in the same way.

 

Allowing arms in public, per NRA, would create a situation to confront a mass
killer, starting on a rampage.  Every NRA member, and fellow-traveler imagines
himself, like a grand hero - defending the public and the republic.  If a
mad-man were started shooting, the stalwart romantic hero of the NRA would
imagines himself bravely pulling out his gun and courageously shooting down the
scum-bag.

 

The unromantic side, to which the NYT ineptly alludes is this scenario.  The
magnitude of mass murders, as a death toll from any one single event, will go
down, but the magnitude of the such singular events itself will sky-rocket.  In
short, the NYT believes, and I believe this as well, that the total death toll
from having an armed public will vastly exceed that of the present conditions,
wherein the public is generally unarmed.  One only need look at road rage to
know things could be far worse than they are now.

 

However, the NYT should, as a matter of advocacy, in my opinion, not zoom in on
the NRA, as opposition.  Such an express denunciation simply railroads the
argument into a predictable clash, where rhetoric dominates and reason is
forsaken and lost.  Such a view as mine would require engagement with the
concerns of the NRA, seeking to get them to act positively, for once, instead of
negatively, when it comes to legitimate public concerns about the possession of
fire arms by certifiably dangerous persons, whether mentally ill or "merely"
morally bankrupt (as is alleged of those who kill for other reasons).

 

Of course, moral bankruptcy is a vague standard, unless it means the willingness
to kill others, to advance or to protect one's own interests, when they are only
marginally or minimally at risk, in some situation.  By my definition, be it
noted, Cheney and Bush and Rice, and such, are all morally bankrupt - and hence
should be disarmed by removal from office, and denied any future positions of
profit or trust in the United States.  We are at least as endangered by the
morally bankrupt as we are by the mentally ill - and, quite probably, even more
endangered when the weapons such moral bankrupts may have and use are WMD in the
skilled hands of a well armed military!!!

 

So, that is how I would approach the issue - zoom in upon moral bankruptcy, with
the subset of mental incompetence only illustrative and not central to the
debate.  Force any opposition to confront the vital question - of whether and
when anyone has a right to use deadly force upon others, even police officers,
but especially the other "international" police forces that we call the
military.  The right to keep and bear arms, that is, is relative to this other
right - the right not to be murdered, casually killed as a innocent bystander,
just because some governmental policy permits such casual expressions of force,
as tools in the hands that serve morally bankrupt egomaniacs.

 

The tool itself, as the NRA commonly says, is not to blame.  But, we are to
blame, when we permit such tools to fall into or to remain in bad hands.
Disarming Bush, Cheney, Rice would thus be the first step on the road to gun
sanity, for the deaths at Virginia Tech were much more caused by their own
policy attitudes and program practices, towards the use of weapons, as ego
expressions, though they were also due to any predictable occasional insanity on
the part of some person in the total public!!!

 

 

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