I'm posting this because the Times charges for everything other than that day's paper...i.e tomorrow this won't be there unless you pay.
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Friday, April 23, 1999
Will the NRA Ever Give Enough Ground?
Littleton: It's not the bearing part that's so worrisome--it's the
using part.
By KAREN GRIGSBY BATES
It's a question that will--and
should--be asked over and over in
the wake of the bloodiest school shooting
spree in modern America: Can the
National Rifle Assn. continue to justify its stand on gun
possession and still think of itself as an organization of
rational human beings?
Guns don't kill people, as the NRA likes to point out,
people kill people. In this case, at Columbine High School
in Littleton, Colo., enraged, irrational, depressed young
men killed 14 of their fellow classmates and one teacher
and wounded many more. But you'll notice they didn't
club them to death with baseball bats. They used guns.
For years, the NRA has lobbied vigorously against
virtually every piece of anti-gun legislation introduced
around the country, from local to national levels.
Americans should be able to exercise their 2nd
Amendment rights, the group posits, and legally be
allowed to bear arms. Unconcealed, concealed, whatever.
Well, it's not the bearing part that's so worrisome--it's the
using part.
I'm not a gun fan, but I understand why, in certain
instances, a person might want keep one nearby, at
home, for self-protection. Until there are a lot fewer guns
on the street, it will be hard to convince worried residents
in high-crime neighborhoods that a gun, even one they
may not really know how to use, isn't better real-life
protection than a burglar alarm or a yappity dog.
But the NRA, despite its patronizing
blather to the contrary, isn't terribly
interested in making sure the law-abiding, mostly
minority citizens of Compton, East St. Louis, West
Oakland or inner Houston maintain the ability to protect
themselves with firearms. And while the organization is
more diverse today than it has been in years, a
demographic check of the NRA's roster probably would
reveal its members are, overwhelmingly, white, male and
fairly politically conservative. They believe in the 2nd
Amendment because bearing arms protects them from
everyone else. And so every incursion, no matter how
small or rational, is met with a blitzkrieg of resistance.
Intelligent compromise just isn't possible in such
circumstances, because there's always an explanation for
how each gun death tragedy is an exception to the rule.
You're probably starting to hear the rationalizations for
Columbine High already. NRA President Charlton Heston,
for instance, says tragedies like Columbine's could be
averted if armed guards are placed in every school across
America. But an armed guard was at Columbine, and he
was hopelessly outnumbered by the number and caliber
of firearms the adolescent assassins carried and used to
horrifying effect.
Gun advocates are right: A gun did not almost kill
Ronald Reagan's press secretary, James Brady; a person
did. But guess what he was using? Same for Colin
Ferguson on the Long Island Railroad when he calmly
slaughtered and wounded a car full of homeward-bound
commuters. And guns were merely the medium enraged
children chose in sad places like Jonesboro, Ark., West
Paducah, Ky., Springfield, Ore., Fayetteville, Tenn.,
Edinboro, Pa., Pearl, Miss., and now Littleton to dispatch
their classmates en masse. In those scenarios, it was
definitely people killing and wounding people. With guns.
Eventually, the cost will be too high
for even the greediest politicians to
support. They will begin to turn away NRA funding for
their campaigns and do the right thing, and the
long-postponed curtailment of guns will begin. But how
many more schools will have to suffer the agonies we
witnessed Tuesday in Littleton before this happens?
It is an ineluctable part of the human condition that
we sometimes kill each other. If we didn't do it with
guns, we'd find another way. I'm not naive enough to
assume that all homicide would cease if gun laws were
more stringent. But I can do the math: A knife, a rock, a
speeding vehicle cannot produce the kind of widespread
devastation one angry 16-year-old can with a loaded
semiautomatic weapon.
It's time for the NRA to wake up and realize that
eliminating citizen use of such weapons is something that
can--and should--happen.
- - -
Karen Grigsby Bates Is a Regular Contributor to This
Page
------------------
"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes"
[This message has been edited by DC (edited April 23, 1999).]
**************************************
Friday, April 23, 1999
Will the NRA Ever Give Enough Ground?
Littleton: It's not the bearing part that's so worrisome--it's the
using part.
By KAREN GRIGSBY BATES
It's a question that will--and
should--be asked over and over in
the wake of the bloodiest school shooting
spree in modern America: Can the
National Rifle Assn. continue to justify its stand on gun
possession and still think of itself as an organization of
rational human beings?
Guns don't kill people, as the NRA likes to point out,
people kill people. In this case, at Columbine High School
in Littleton, Colo., enraged, irrational, depressed young
men killed 14 of their fellow classmates and one teacher
and wounded many more. But you'll notice they didn't
club them to death with baseball bats. They used guns.
For years, the NRA has lobbied vigorously against
virtually every piece of anti-gun legislation introduced
around the country, from local to national levels.
Americans should be able to exercise their 2nd
Amendment rights, the group posits, and legally be
allowed to bear arms. Unconcealed, concealed, whatever.
Well, it's not the bearing part that's so worrisome--it's the
using part.
I'm not a gun fan, but I understand why, in certain
instances, a person might want keep one nearby, at
home, for self-protection. Until there are a lot fewer guns
on the street, it will be hard to convince worried residents
in high-crime neighborhoods that a gun, even one they
may not really know how to use, isn't better real-life
protection than a burglar alarm or a yappity dog.
But the NRA, despite its patronizing
blather to the contrary, isn't terribly
interested in making sure the law-abiding, mostly
minority citizens of Compton, East St. Louis, West
Oakland or inner Houston maintain the ability to protect
themselves with firearms. And while the organization is
more diverse today than it has been in years, a
demographic check of the NRA's roster probably would
reveal its members are, overwhelmingly, white, male and
fairly politically conservative. They believe in the 2nd
Amendment because bearing arms protects them from
everyone else. And so every incursion, no matter how
small or rational, is met with a blitzkrieg of resistance.
Intelligent compromise just isn't possible in such
circumstances, because there's always an explanation for
how each gun death tragedy is an exception to the rule.
You're probably starting to hear the rationalizations for
Columbine High already. NRA President Charlton Heston,
for instance, says tragedies like Columbine's could be
averted if armed guards are placed in every school across
America. But an armed guard was at Columbine, and he
was hopelessly outnumbered by the number and caliber
of firearms the adolescent assassins carried and used to
horrifying effect.
Gun advocates are right: A gun did not almost kill
Ronald Reagan's press secretary, James Brady; a person
did. But guess what he was using? Same for Colin
Ferguson on the Long Island Railroad when he calmly
slaughtered and wounded a car full of homeward-bound
commuters. And guns were merely the medium enraged
children chose in sad places like Jonesboro, Ark., West
Paducah, Ky., Springfield, Ore., Fayetteville, Tenn.,
Edinboro, Pa., Pearl, Miss., and now Littleton to dispatch
their classmates en masse. In those scenarios, it was
definitely people killing and wounding people. With guns.
Eventually, the cost will be too high
for even the greediest politicians to
support. They will begin to turn away NRA funding for
their campaigns and do the right thing, and the
long-postponed curtailment of guns will begin. But how
many more schools will have to suffer the agonies we
witnessed Tuesday in Littleton before this happens?
It is an ineluctable part of the human condition that
we sometimes kill each other. If we didn't do it with
guns, we'd find another way. I'm not naive enough to
assume that all homicide would cease if gun laws were
more stringent. But I can do the math: A knife, a rock, a
speeding vehicle cannot produce the kind of widespread
devastation one angry 16-year-old can with a loaded
semiautomatic weapon.
It's time for the NRA to wake up and realize that
eliminating citizen use of such weapons is something that
can--and should--happen.
- - -
Karen Grigsby Bates Is a Regular Contributor to This
Page
------------------
"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes"
[This message has been edited by DC (edited April 23, 1999).]