The following article was taken from the June 7, 1999 issue of The New American.
www.thenewamerican.com
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Lessons From Columbine High
by William F. Jasper
The response of the cultural, political, and media elite to the Columbine High School massacre has been as predictable as it has been sickening. Like vultures, the press and television talking heads descended on Littleton, Colorado before the blood of the victims had dried and began a non-stop exploitation of the gruesome crime. Their target: guns, the "gun culture," and access to guns, which they blame (of course) as the cause of the murderous mayhem. Their pontifications read, literally, like propaganda press releases from Handgun Control, Inc. (HCI), the lead spear chucker for the militant anti-gun lobby. Consider, for example, this claim from an HCI news release for April 27th: "While some would say that the topic of violence and youth is a cultural one, this focus distracts from the real issue. Although it is true that the culture that our children have been exposed to has become increasingly violent, it is access to guns that are [sic] making these crimes possible."
On the same day, at a White House press conference, Hillary Clinton acknowledged HCI President Bob Walker (who attended the event) and asserted that "limiting access to firearms can be, and should be, a bipartisan goal." Continued the First Lady: "We also know that we have to do everything possible to ensure that young people do not have easy access to weapons. It is criminal how easy it is for children in America to obtain guns.... Guns and children are two words that should never be put together in the same sentence."
Presidential Response
Hillary was followed by the President himself, who also took up the HCI mantra: "We have a huge hunting and sport shooting culture in America.... And everybody tells me I’ve got a constitutional right to keep and bear arms, so don’t fool with me; and every reasonable restriction is just the camel’s nose in the tent, and pretty soon they’ll come after my shotgun, and I’ll miss the next duck hunting season."
A few days earlier, at a highly publicized discussion with high school students in Alexandria, Virginia, Mr. Clinton had hounded the same theme. The President told the students that "it is unquestionable that more people have more access to more weapons," and then offered this typical, liberal boilerplate: "There is no other country in the world where it is so easy for people to get and misuse weapons. And we have a culture of having a right to own weapons, and a right to use them, and a big hunting culture...."
The White House is clearly "on message" with the rest of the establishment news and opinion cartel. Countless news broadcasts, editorials, and commentaries have relentlessly hammered the same idea: America is awash in violence because America is awash in guns. Clintonite comedienne Rosie O’Donnell went the limit with this line, turning her highly touted, daytime television talk show into a ranting soapbox for HCI and the anti-Second Amendment statists. In an emotionally charged rampage, Rosie asserted that it is the easy availability of firearms that is the cause of tragedies like the Columbine murder spree. Guns were not so accessible when she was growing up, she claimed. She did not have guns, nor did any of her friends. Indeed, said O’Donnell, in recent years it has been getting easier and easier for kids to acquire guns. Then, to thunderous applause, she vented her outrage at gun owners and the gun industry. "I know it’s an amendment," she said. "I know it’s in the Constitution. But you know what? Enough is enough."
Yes, enough is enough. Enough of lies, fallacies, and manipulative clichés. Enough of scapegoating and distractions. We cannot hope to put an end to the carnage wrought by the Dylan Klebolds and Eric Harrises in our communities by following the diversionary lead of Rosie, Bill and Hillary, and HCI propagandists. You do not need to be a "gun nut" to recognize the Big Lie that undergirds the foundational premise of their arguments: that it is the prevalence of guns in America and the ease of access to firearms that is responsible for the lethal violence afflicting our society.
The Way It Was
It is irrefragably true that for the past three decades access to all types of firearms has been getting not easier, but more and more difficult. That is an irrefutable fact that no amount of spin by Rosie, Hillary, or HCI can change. Allow me to illustrate this vitally important point from personal experience. Like tens of millions of American youngsters growing up in the 1950s and ’60s, this writer (along with my five brothers and five sisters) had easy access to firearms. My father, a World War II veteran and avid hunter, had several rifles, shotguns, and pistols. This "arsenal," together with hundreds of rounds of ammunition, was stored in a closet without any trigger locks. The same was true in the homes of most of my neighborhood friends. This was normal not only in rural communities, but throughout much of urban and suburban America as well. As young children, we were taught not to touch these weapons except under adult supervision. When we did handle firearms, safety was a prime concern.
Like most boys, my brothers and I had an interest in (not an "obsession" with) guns and looked forward to the times when we could go target shooting and hunting. While in our grade school years, we also had toy guns and, like millions of other boys, played army, cops and robbers, and cowboys and Indians. We were also heavily exposed to the John Wayne-Wyatt Earp-Wild West "gun culture" that today’s pop psychologists and gun haters love to cite as the roots of our current youth crime crisis.
I do not know about Rosie’s family or neighborhood, but I suspect that firearms were far more prevalent than she recalls. Like my sisters, and most girls, she was probably not much interested in guns and would not be a reliable authority on the availability of firearms, even in her own immediate evirons. Nevertheless, the fact is that when she was growing up guns were generally far more accessible in this country than they are currently. Buying firearms and ammunition was relatively easy in most states, and certainly far more lenient than today. Prior to passage of the 1968 federal Gun Control Act, just about anyone could purchase just about any kind of firearm anonymously through the mail. New and used guns could be bought over the counter at tens of thousands of department stores, hardware stores, sporting goods stores, and pawn shops — without any registration, background check, or waiting period. Firearms dealers were not required to have a federal license or keep records of their sales.
Yet, in this wide open, Wild West "hunting and shooting culture" we did not suffer the plague of mass murdering adolescents who now stalk our streets and school hallways. In the "gun saturated" communities in which we grew up, "teen violence" rarely escalated beyond the level of fisticuffs. Youngsters did not take firearms and murder their parents, parents did not slaughter their children, and spouses did not slay one another. And though bullying, cliques, and social ostracism were probably as prevalent in high schools of yore as those of today, students did not massacre their classmates and teachers. Such things were unthinkable. Why were they unthinkable? Because they were so absolutely evil and morally repugnant. They were unthinkable and repugnant because Christian morality and "middle-class family values" — so hated and viciously derided by the ’60s radicals who now dominate our culture — were still affording protection to society. But that protection, which had already been weakened by decades of sustained erosion, has now been almost completely decimated by the counter-culture revolutionists in their all-out, 30-year war against God, family, and country.
Culture Shock
Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were not products of the "gun culture"; they were the twisted products of the nihilist-hedonist-narcissist death culture that has been foisted on our society by the liberal soul mates of Rosie O’Donnell and the Clintons. It was not the John Wayne-Elliot Ness-Roy Rogers gun culture or "right-wing, religious bigotry" that produced the cold-blooded killers who calmly strolled through the halls of Columbine High joking, laughing, and cackling as they methodically slaughtered their fellow students, indifferent to their pleas and screams. Like teen murderers Luke Woodham of Pearl, Mississippi; Michael Carneal of Paduka, Kentucky; Kip Kinkle of Springfield, Oregon; Andrew Wurst of Edinboro, Pennsylvania; and Mitchell Johnson and Andrew Golden of Jonesboro, Arkansas, Harris and Klebold also were not "natural born killers." These boys were transformed into homicidal sociopaths by a combination of deadly factors whose causative contributions may be difficult precisely to quantify, but which are easily recognized as common denominators in these cases.
The young killers were immersed in a grotesque youth subculture that has been promoted, nurtured, praised, and defended by the self-anointed arbiters of today’s decadent fashion and culture. They are the products of the self-indulgent, pagan gospel of "sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll." Harris and Klebold were devotees of the hideous, Satanic, "Goth rocker" Marilyn Manson and the gruesome German bands Rammstein and KMFDM. Marilyn Manson (a stage pseudonym meant to pay homage to Marilyn Monroe and Charles Manson), an androgynous creature who works at being as repulsive as possible (and succeeds wildly!), is a self-proclaimed, ordained "minister" in the Church of Satan. His "music" revels in nihilistic rebellion, rage, alienation, death, and despair. His "Anti-Christ Superstar" rock tour was banned in some cities. According to this "star" entertainer, "America needs that anti-Christ figure, that anti-hero to save these kids from the oppression of right wing morality." Tell that to the kids who watched their classmates murdered by Manson’s anti-hero acolytes Harris and Klebold.
According to Satanic minister Marilyn Manson, "Satanism was never about worshiping the devil. It’s about man being his own god on earth. You do not worship anything except yourself." Eric Harris apparently took that message to heart, as reflected in this "philosophy" statement he wrote for his web site: "My belief is that if I say something, it goes. I am the law. If you don’t like it, you die. If I don’t like you or I don’t like what you want me to do, you die." Harris also posted the ultra-violent, obscene lyrics of KMFDM on his web site. Like Marilyn Manson, the group’s lead vocalist, En Esch, a seven-foot-tall transvestite, specializes in the extreme and the bizarre. One of the group’s songs, "Piggybank," features these lyrics: "If I had a shotgun, I’d blow myself to hell."
In addition to these toxic influences, friends of Klebold and Harris have reported that the young men were obsessed with the ultra-violent video games Doom and Quake. According to some reports, they also played Postal, a video game in which the "winner" caps the fun by committing suicide. On top of which, the demented duo also are reported to have been heavily influenced by the murderous mayhem glorified in such slick Hollywood offerings as The Basketball Diaries, Natural Born Killers, and The Matrix. Adding to this lethal mix was the drug Luvox, an antidepressant similar to Prozac, which was used by Eric Harris. We do not have any information on other drugs that may have been used by Harris and/or Klebold, but they have played a role in some of the other school murder sprees mentioned above.
Filling the Vacuum
What is painfully clear is that the Columbine killers and their fellow teen sociopaths imbibed deeply of the toxic waste that courses through the culture of death now engulfing our whole society. And they were particularly vulnerable to these toxins because the adults who aren’t actually involved in promoting this moral subversion and cultural pollution have, because of cowardice or indifference, done little or nothing to protect children from these influences. Moreover, they have allowed the militant secularists of academe, the decadent culture vultures of Hollywood, and the left-wing activists in the courts and legislatures to evict God, prayer, the Bible, the Ten Commandments, and moral absolutes not only from the government schools, but almost entirely from the public sphere. But nature abhors a vacuum, and the God-shaped vacuum we have allowed to be formed in our midst has been filled with diabolical venom that is now killing us.
In his Farewell Address of September 17, 1796, President George Washington warned precisely of this danger. The father of our country wisely noted:
Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness — these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked, where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice? And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.
In like manner, John Adams commented in 1789: "Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other." And in 1799, another giant of the founding period, Dr. Jedidiah Morse, presciently observed: "Whenever the pillars of Christianity shall be overthrown, our present republican forms of government, and all the blessings which flow from them, must fall with them."
The self-evident truth of these sentiments was universally recognized in their day. Virtually all of the American people of this period possessed firearms in their homes — without trigger locks, security cases, and gun safes — yet there is no record of any mass-murdering rampages. This was so because the people were morally, as well as physically, armed: They were taught, and understood, right from wrong. And they encouraged right, and discouraged wrong, behavior.
Shaking the Foundations
There was no clamoring choir of organized perverts, pseudo-savants, and tax-paid bureaucrats to challenge George Washington when he said: "It is substantially true that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government. The rule indeed extends with more or less force to every species of free government. Who that is a sincere friend to it can look with indifference upon attempts to shake the foundation of the fabric?"
Unfortunately, many of our leaders today not only "look with indifference" but are actively involved in shaking the foundation. Please note that Rosie O’Donnell did not direct any of her ire at Warner Brothers or Time Warner, her parent companies, which have been responsible for churning out some of the most violent, obscene, and degenerate "entertainment" imaginable. Nor did she take to task her fellow celebrities who luxuriate in lucre produced from the raw sewage that they pump into the living rooms, theaters, and stereos throughout our land. The hypocritical media/entertainment clerisy did not scourge SONY Corp. for inciting violence with a new video game ad that beckons none too subtly with this invitation to mayhem: "Get in touch with your gun-toting, testosterone-pumping, cold-blooded murdering side."
Nor did the anti-gun moralists express outrage at the incredible hypocrisy and crass commercial exploitation of MTV in scheduling a special "Fight for Your Rights: Take a Stand Against Violence" program immediately after the Columbine shooting. MTV, of course, has been a leading purveyor of all the worst filth and violence in popular entertainment. Only a few weeks before the massacre, MTV had featured a major extravaganza glorifying Marilyn Manson — and this after his influence had been so powerfully demonstrated in previous school murders by troubled teens.
Anti-Gun Hysteria
But the zealots will not be deterred from their agenda. "It isn’t our American culture that’s wrong," said Senator John Chafee (R-RI) a militant anti-gun bigot. "What’s wrong is our nation’s love affair with guns." He was backed up by Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA), who echoed Rosie and Hillary. "It’s time to say enough is enough is enough is enough," said the Hero of Chappaquidick, who, like our morally challenged President, is less than convincing when dealing with George Washington’s concerns of virtue and morality.
The fanatics all joined rank behind President Clinton’s sweeping gun control plan, which many of them admit would not have prevented the Littleton tragedy. The proposed law includes provisions for:
• Holding adults, including parents, criminally liable for allowing minors access to firearms, with mandatory prison sentences of three to ten years and fines up to $10,000.
• Mandating "safety locks" on all guns sold.
• Raising the legal age for handgun possession from 18 to 21 years of age.
• Banning possession of certain semiautomatic rifles by those under 21 years of age.
• Requiring a three-day (possibly extended to a five-day) waiting period for all handgun purchases.
• Limiting individual handgun purchases to one per month.
• Subjecting buyers of explosives to the same Brady law background checks required of gun purchasers.
• Requiring background checks on firearms buyers at gun shows.
The fascist-minded folks at HCI were deliriously joyful. "We almost don’t have adjectives to describe how important this comprehensive package is," said HCI communications director Naomi Paiss. "The level of public focus and outrage is unprecedented," enthused HCI public policy director Adam Eisgru.
At least some in the media denounced this sordid and exploitive spectacle for what it was. Denver’s Rocky Mountain News declared in an editorial: "Aides said Clinton is counting on public reaction to the Littleton shooting to pressure reluctant legislators to give their support [for his gun control package]. Such opportunism is distasteful in a time of general mourning. Contrast it with the Colorado legislators who withdrew their gun bills after the Columbine shooting. If Clinton’s proposals have merit, they do not need to sweep into law on a high tide of feeling."
Among those who recognized and exposed the brazen Clinton-HCI-Hollywood hustle is Mrs. Gail Keasling, whose own child was murdered by another young monster produced by the demented contemporary culture that Senator Chafee finds so perfectly salutory. In her open letter to Congress, she wrote:
As the mother of a murdered child, and as an intelligent person, I find the President’s exploiting of the school shootings highly offensive. My child was murdered with a fence post by a recidivist juvenile on probation. I see no one calling for a ban on fence posts. Eight-year-old Cary Medlin, of Greenfield, TN, after being raped and sodomized, was murdered with a knife. Eight-year-old Niki Read of Millington, TN, after being raped, was murdered with her own shoelace. I see no one calling for a ban on those items, yet they were used to murder small children....
We have more gun laws on the books than Carter has liver pills, yet people of all ages continue to murder others. First-degree murderers serve on average 5.6 years in prison. It takes 15-20 years to get a convicted killer executed.... Then you have the child shrinks who keep telling us we will damage our children if we tell them no, or dare to impose restraints on them. The government then backs the shrinks up by tying the hands of parents behind their backs. If we dare to spank, or impose restrictions on a child we are considered child abusers....
"More gun control will not change the hearts of those set to do evil," noted Mrs. Keasling. "Even if all guns in America were destroyed, those who have their hearts set on doing evil will do it anyway. More gun control will not deter one murder. Less violence produced by the entertainment industry would help, as movies, TV, and video games are a form of brainwashing. Are you going to impose VIOLENCE CONTROL on the entertainment industry too?"
© Copyright 1994-2000 American Opinion Publishing Incorporated
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