The May 12 print edition of the Macomb Daily (a suburban county of Detroit) carried an oped attack on gun ownership by Miami Herald writer Leonard Pitts Jr. He starts out by reporting on an 18 year old student who died rushing a gunman in his school and goes on to list a few other heroes who met the same fate.
He then declares:
""Don't blame the guns."
That's what gun-rights advocates always say in moments like this. And OK, fair enough. Lets not blame the gun"
From there he proceeds to blame the gun but not the gun itself just its existence in a free society. Like Ocasio-Cortez claiming that billionaires are not immoral themselves, just their existence is.
"But can we not blame this nation's insistence on easy and unfettered access to the gun? Might that not have the tiniest bit to do with the fact that gun violence is rampant here?
Instead of dealing with that causality, gun people ask us to take gun violence as some immutable fact of life, some intrinsic component of freedom."
There are three things wrong with those sentences. First, unfettered access to guns would mean me going to a gun shop, selecting a gun, paying for it and leaving. But that's not the reality we have. I had to apply for a permit, wait for a background check, take an 8 hour class in gun safety. Unfettered? Hardly.
( In a laissez faire economy it wouldn't be completely unfettered either. The above requirements would be demanded by insurance companies not the government. Any government involvement would be restricted to the framework of how best do we exercise our right to self defense while protecting the rights of others. For example, laws against brandishing in public, because such brandishing is an objective threat to the rights of others, would be a proper government concern.)
Second, "gun violence" is a cognitive package deal designed to deceive by packaging as a concept's defining characteristic two or more things that are not the same and thus don't belong together.
Gun violence can be used to assault and destroy life or it can be used to defend life. To package these two contexts--assault and defense--together in the concept of 'gun violence' and condemn both as equally evil is dishonest at worst or sloppy writing at best.
Third, someone needs to inform Mr Pitts that an individual's Constitutional right to life includes the right to defend that life and 'unalienable' means immutable and intrinsic. Notice too how he admits that he believes guns, inanimate matter, cause deaths when he uses the word 'causality.' But 'let's not blame the guns''?
Mr Pitts then tells us his view on why we citizens want to own guns in self defense:
"People are dying for nothing. For some fantasy of rugged self-reliance.
For some shortcut to macho. For some terror of the Other standing at the bedroom window. For nothing."
So your right to defend yourself and family against attack is nothing more than an irrational fear of a boogey-man in the bedroom window? Or a shortcut to macho? This is nothing but a smear of American's right of self defense. What's wrong with self-reliance rugged or otherwise? To be against self-reliance is to be for dependence. That must be what he wants of citizens.
The image that Mr Pitts is projecting is an image of self-reliance, independence, individualism, and self-defense. This is to be denigrated as fantasy?
I would like to point out that if you don't have a right to defend your life, then in fact and in reality, you don't have a right to life. How can you have a right to something you are not allowed to defend and keep? You can't and you won't. And this is what the gun grabbers want, your right to life in their hands, not yours.
Our ancient primitive ancestors believed that spirits and demons inhabited everything, trees, rocks, air, water etc., that some had a magic power to bless us while others could destroy us. Mr Pitts, in believing guns have a power to urge their owners to run around killing fellow humans is trying to return us to the primitive. Let's not fall for that.
He then declares:
""Don't blame the guns."
That's what gun-rights advocates always say in moments like this. And OK, fair enough. Lets not blame the gun"
From there he proceeds to blame the gun but not the gun itself just its existence in a free society. Like Ocasio-Cortez claiming that billionaires are not immoral themselves, just their existence is.
"But can we not blame this nation's insistence on easy and unfettered access to the gun? Might that not have the tiniest bit to do with the fact that gun violence is rampant here?
Instead of dealing with that causality, gun people ask us to take gun violence as some immutable fact of life, some intrinsic component of freedom."
There are three things wrong with those sentences. First, unfettered access to guns would mean me going to a gun shop, selecting a gun, paying for it and leaving. But that's not the reality we have. I had to apply for a permit, wait for a background check, take an 8 hour class in gun safety. Unfettered? Hardly.
( In a laissez faire economy it wouldn't be completely unfettered either. The above requirements would be demanded by insurance companies not the government. Any government involvement would be restricted to the framework of how best do we exercise our right to self defense while protecting the rights of others. For example, laws against brandishing in public, because such brandishing is an objective threat to the rights of others, would be a proper government concern.)
Second, "gun violence" is a cognitive package deal designed to deceive by packaging as a concept's defining characteristic two or more things that are not the same and thus don't belong together.
Gun violence can be used to assault and destroy life or it can be used to defend life. To package these two contexts--assault and defense--together in the concept of 'gun violence' and condemn both as equally evil is dishonest at worst or sloppy writing at best.
Third, someone needs to inform Mr Pitts that an individual's Constitutional right to life includes the right to defend that life and 'unalienable' means immutable and intrinsic. Notice too how he admits that he believes guns, inanimate matter, cause deaths when he uses the word 'causality.' But 'let's not blame the guns''?
Mr Pitts then tells us his view on why we citizens want to own guns in self defense:
"People are dying for nothing. For some fantasy of rugged self-reliance.
For some shortcut to macho. For some terror of the Other standing at the bedroom window. For nothing."
So your right to defend yourself and family against attack is nothing more than an irrational fear of a boogey-man in the bedroom window? Or a shortcut to macho? This is nothing but a smear of American's right of self defense. What's wrong with self-reliance rugged or otherwise? To be against self-reliance is to be for dependence. That must be what he wants of citizens.
The image that Mr Pitts is projecting is an image of self-reliance, independence, individualism, and self-defense. This is to be denigrated as fantasy?
I would like to point out that if you don't have a right to defend your life, then in fact and in reality, you don't have a right to life. How can you have a right to something you are not allowed to defend and keep? You can't and you won't. And this is what the gun grabbers want, your right to life in their hands, not yours.
Our ancient primitive ancestors believed that spirits and demons inhabited everything, trees, rocks, air, water etc., that some had a magic power to bless us while others could destroy us. Mr Pitts, in believing guns have a power to urge their owners to run around killing fellow humans is trying to return us to the primitive. Let's not fall for that.
