There's been some interesting pushback against the gun crowd recently from Western voices. Take the Kaiman's Lauren Russell who chides Montana's Tester and Baucus for opposing a federal ban on assault rifles:
I'm a native Montanan and am hard-pressed to see how the rights of American citizens should include owning firearms with the verb "assault" in the name. When the original ban was passed in 1994, critics and supporters alike acknowledged that it was mostly symbolic, a way to initiate tighter regulations that never materialized. On the 10-year anniversary of the Columbine massacre and after a gruesome month in which 57 people have been killed in eight mass shootings, a ban on assault weapons would be a welcome symbol of stricter regulation.
Or Kossak and Westerner, mcjoan, who thinks the debate over the ban on loaded guns in National Parks is hoo-hah:
Yup, Ronald Reagan put us on the slippery slope to the UN confiscating everyone's guns in order to impose one world order by ruling that people couldn't take their loaded, concealed weapons on their national park vacations. They could only have their unloaded, safely stowed weapons with them. And how could people protect themselves and their guns from the marauding hordes of international troops coming to take their guns away while they are on vacation in a national park if there gun was unloaded and in the trunk?
Or something.
This is really just about the least real gun issue imaginable. Really. Ronald Reagan put the regulations in place. Can they really be that much of a threat to America's gunowners?
Mcjoan also notes that park rangers are "12 time more likely to be killed or injured as a result of assault than FBI agents," and wonders who the lifting of the ban would help.
In the end, I have to agree with David Sirota on these issues:
Perpetuating this expenditure, bloodshed and posture in a nation of dwindling resources, humanitarian self-images and anti-interventionist impulses requires a culture constantly selling violence as a necessity. It's not just video games - it's the nightly news echoing Pentagon propaganda and "hawkish" politicians equating militarism with patriotism and "embedded" journalism cheering on wars and every other suit-and-tie-clad industry constantly forwarding the assumption that killing is a legitimate form of national ambition and self-expression. Is it any wonder that a few crazies apply that ethos to their individual lives, and begin seeing violence as a reasonable means to express their own emotions?
Sure, the assault weapons ban's expiration is an abomination. Absolutely, some video games are appalling. But we could ban all guns and video games and there would still be mass murders because neither the availability of firearms nor of Grand Theft Auto creates the original desire for violence.
Until we face that complex reality - or at least ask different questions - we'll continue being terrorized by Columbine killers.
Well, except that I'm not sure I support the ban on assault rifles. The point here is that there's a systemic problem with violence in this country that isn't really talked about in these gun debates. And obviously gun control isn't the solution. Gun control is a placebo.
And what seems to be going on in wake of the election and the recession is that a lot of folks are feeling adrift and powerless, especially conservatives, and rushing to stockpile arms. Guns, after all, are more than just a symbol of power, they're actual manifestations of physical power. Owning a gun means you have the power of life and death over your neighbors.
And lately buying guns has been seen as a way of voicing opposition to the current state of politics. But what does that mean, that arms symbolize opposition? How can that be seen as anything but a violent response to the democratic process? |
