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Following the tragic stories on the massacre of innocent children and adults, I ponder on how we all share the guilt for these crimes and wonder why it was so easy for a teenager to gain access to weapons of mass destruction – as was the case in the most recent killings of three children and their parents in Albuquerque.
The troubled lad who was armed to the teeth had plans to continue the rampage. Another misguided young man massacred 20-plus children and teachers at Newtown, Conn., raising a loud call for better control on the sale of guns – and the ban on the sale of military weapons.
As expected, the champions of the campaign to “protect the Second Amendment” from any attempts to change the status quo rushed to the forefront with “guns blazing.” The National Rifle Association and its far-right conservative interpretation of the Constitution have thus far prevailed through out the national discourse and bear quite a bit of responsibility for the continuing unacceptable levels of killings described.
However, we all must accept part of the blame as a nation.
The gun-control problem is only the tip of the iceberg of what ails us. America is a culture that glorifies violence and the use of firearms.
We need to acknowledge this fact and must note that as a leader of the Western world we lead in murder rates far above the rest of the industrialized countries.
We promote violence through movies, books, television, comic books and children’s toys. We revel in sports that involve deliberate blows to the head and body with one of these – boxing – having the primary objective of inflicting traumatic head injuries to the opponent.
Why do we condone war after war – most of which cannot be justified as protecting our national security? I agree that as the most powerful nation on earth, our leadership includes responsibility for helping weaker countries threatened by tyrannical despots, but only by resorting to military action as the last option. But wars including Vietnam, Iraq and repeated incursions into South and Latin America did not meet this test, and they were for the most part not to “protect our national interests.”
In such cases our men and women were placed in harm’s way and victimized by war-mongering polices – yet it goes without saying that they were committed toward serving their country and are worthy of our total support and recognition.
The Rachel Maddow MSNBC documentary, “Hubris, The Selling of the Iraq War,” should convince even the “true believers” of our country’s moral decay and propensity for repeating these costly foreign policy blunders. Even our progressive/liberal congressmen and women were duped or failed to question the validity of what they were told.
Under the present state of affairs and amidst a culture of violence that infects the entire world and, very acutely, our own country, there are no quick, easy answers to the problem. But we have to curtail the bloodletting at home.
The president’s proposal is starter. It will reduce the number of gun-related murders significantly yet preserve the integrity of the Second Amendment, though the NRA disagrees and has expressed fears that it will become a “slippery slope” resulting in banning the sale and possession of all type of guns.
For the long haul, we need to take steps toward becoming a more sane nation that does not need arms in people’s homes to feel safe; a nation that embraces non-violence in settling disputes; a citizenry that respects each other and is not motivated by fear when setting public policy; and a culture that recognizes that to change the world, the individual should change him/herself first.
