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Opposition to gun control, once you strip away the grandstanding and chest thumping, amounts to a child's naked need for comfort and safety. Charlton Heston recently referenced the popular NRA slogan, "You can have my gun when you can pry it loose from my cold, dead hand." How guns can, ultimately, protect you from all adversaries I'm a little unclear on. I subscribe to an e-mail newsletter that sends me tidbits about history. A recent item from this newsletter described an Old West figure, a brilliant gunfighter, a man who could draw, aim and pull the trigger faster than lighting--and his enemies ambushed him and shot him in the back. No matter how many firearms a person owns and uses, no matter how good he or she is with them, it is no absolute guarantee of safety. It's a big world, and there's always room enough in it for someone who will not play fair.
Anyone looking for a balanced view on this topic, should look at the Web site put up by a group called the Potomac Institute. This group makes the point that simply suing gun manufacturers because it worked with tobacco is misguided. Firearms, obviously, are a much more dangerous commodity than tobacco. The Potomac Institute also, on their Web site, discuss a book by NRA member Stephen Halbrook. Halbrook expresses the NRA philosophy of being one of individual sovereignty. This means the United States of America has no authority over individuals, and should rely simply on a kind of general sense of good will and consenting "Common Values." The Potomac Institute Web site points out that the negative aspect of this philosophy is that when the authority of the government is called for its tone is often brutish.
Of course, it is possible to err in the other direction. Advocates of gun control, I hope, wince at the fact that a leading figure on their side is Rosie O'Donnell. This daytime talk show host, presenting herself as an advocate for America's children, makes me think of all mainstream children's pop culture. She recorded a song with the performer who does the voice of Elmo on Sesame Street, with that performer doing Elmo, on the recording. (I refuse to write, "She recorded a song with Elmo from Sesame Street." Reality, meet Make Believe. You two have nothing to do with each other.) She starred in the children's film (based on the children's book) Harriet the Spy. O'Donnell hosted an awards program on Nickelodeon, the children's television network.
U.S. children's mainstream pop culture/TV presents a delirium, a phantasm of a world where evil and despair don't exist but things that aren't very nice and gloominess do. For example, maybe my memory is hazy, but I remember being a lot more anxious when I was the age of the Rugrats characters. I also remember, when I was the right age to watch it, getting quickly bored with Sesame Street because Oscar the Grouch was the only character with whom I empathized.
O'Donnell, and the Million Mom March folks, want more gun control in the U.S. to protect children, and that's certainly admirable. But both they and their opponents get up each morning and put on their own set of delusions.
U.S. gun lovers think their weapons give them ultimate safety. (I believe David Koresh was responsible for his own destruction-- but he's still worth mentioning. His private armory, and private army, could not save him from the might of the government showing up on his doorstep--ready to destroy him, if necessary.) Gun control advocates seem out of touch with the fact that, as much as the world is filled with children to protect, it is also filled with all manners of rogues who mean decent people harm. Muggers and foreign despots aren't our friends, and they are just either ends of villainy's scale.
Surveying this whole topic of Americans and guns, I pick up the scent of madness. Passion is one of those qualities that makes life worth living. However, an excess of passion, and we fall, plummeting, to insanity. Don't ask me when we cross the line; I'm still looking for it.
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