New York Times Op-ed columnist Gail Collins compares incidences of gun violence in South Dakota to that of Central Park in New York City. She reports, “There were no murders and three serious assaults in Central Park in 2008, compared with five murders and 341 assaults in Sioux Falls alone. There was a horrible near-fatality in the park this week, but it involved a rotting tree limb that fell and hit a man on the head. If South Dakotans would like to come to visit carrying concealed chain saws, it is possible that we can do some business.”.jpg)
Throughout the article she makes a compelling point. It is one thing to believe in the right to keep and bear arms and quite another to become defensive and obsessed about it. It is alarming that so many gun advocates believe that gun ownership is the key to pesonal happiness and security.
If this is the key, it is rusty.
Whenever I write an article not for abolishing but for sensible gun control laws, I get angry, sometimes raged filled comments from gun advocates who do not come across as happy people. This fear-based mentality believes armed threats to personal well being is a constant danger, lurking around every corner. Rooted in a lack of trust, this worldview assumes that reality must be constantly defended against.
Whose reality?
According to the research, gun violence is most likely to occur in those places where guns are more accessible—small towns and rural areas. Given the stats, I can’t help but be grateful that I live in an urban rather rural location. Gun violence is a huge problem in some cities, notably Chicago. But to argue more guns equals more security makes no sense. Taken as a whole, however, gun violence is a greater threat in rural settings.
Gail Collins puts it precisely: “Gun advocates tend to think of themselves as representatives of small-town or rural values. But their worldview is so dark, you’d think they were living in a dystopian Gotham City. Senator Thune said he was worried that his daughter might have to drive home from college through states that would not allow her the protection of a pistol in the glove compartment. Senator Jim Webb of Virginia fretted about his elderly father checking into a motel without a loaded gun to keep the criminals at bay.”
As gun advocates like to say: guns don't kill people, people kill people." If the root problem is people, then isn't time to address directly this fear based world view that lives in so many of us?
Perhaps the deeper question is not what we believe about the right to keep and bear arms but whether we are contributing to an atmosphere of fear or trust.
This is what Gail Collins is saying and she is right.
"We see the world not as it is, but as we are.”
The greater our fear, the greater the need to defend. At a deeper level the gun control debate is not about guns but about the worldview we choose.
Comments
You have my permission to add this to your cliche' collection. Perhaps you can find a place for it in your next "don't worry, be happy" article.
"A conservative is a liberal who's been mugged a few times."
Spend any time at all looking down the barrel of a gun and you will really wish you had one. Makes it kinda hard to muster up any desire to trust in the inherent goodness in the human spirit. Your mileage may vary.
As a Canadian, I haven't heard that the chances of being mugged or shot are any less in the US for all the guns good people carry. I think the point of this article is that you have to deal with bad people as a community and not just be willing to shoot them down if they get out of line. Is the shoot out the only way you can imagine keeping the world safe?
That cuckoo lefty compares Central Park, swarming with mounted and pedestrian police officers and populated by relative strangers -- to a city with businesses to rob, long term enemies to shoot, the usual armed criminal element and way too few police officers. Additionally, while Central Park occupies 843 acres, Sioux Falls occupies 43,000 acres. I'd bet my boots the per-acre population of law officers is far greater than Sioux Falls could ever afford. But specious argument is the lib stock in trade. Although she looks nice enough, I'd guess this "writer" doesn't get out much and I doubt she's ever seen the inside of a gun show. Perhaps the shows haven't enough carpet or hand-scraped hardwood. She actually compared a New York kid walking home from school to a woman driving cross country through several states. Bias? Well whaddya' expect, it's the New York Times.
The concept that higher levels of gun ownership are associated with higher crime levels is based on a 1993 study from The New England Journal of Medicine called "Gun Ownership As A Risk Factor For Homicide In The Home" by Kellermann et al. Google the study and read it; October '93 issue. You will see that, of the 420 residential homicides surveyed, fewer than half involved shootings. And of the 190 fatal shootings in the study, not one, not even one involved the gun kept in the victim's home. Notice the title of the study itself; it says, "Homicide In The Home", not, "Gun Homicide In The Home". There is a good reason for that: more than half of those homicides were stabbing, or stranglings, or beatings or suffocations. Some victims died in arsons, for heaven's sake, but the researchers blamed the death on "gun ownership." What point is there in recommending that people not keep guns in their home, if you haven't demonstrated any mortality or morbidity as a result of having done so?
As an American citizen, it is our duty to own and maintain our weapon of choice. For some it is the pen, for others it is the handgun, for others it is a rifle. As for myself I choose the martial arts, which can be more dangerous than a gun, if discipline is not part of the training.
Himsa hurts whether it is from the pen or from the gun. I see no difference.
The writer is entitled to his/her opinion, but don't for a minute think that your lopsided viewpoint should be grasped for the whole of society. Some of us have been where you have been fortunate (evidently) to have NOT been. Don't tread on our rights, just because you feel safe in your steel cage in NYC.
The rest of us in the real world, love our families, our children, and our persons to actually defend ourselves as opposed to openly exist as sitting ducks.
-TMS
Life NRA Member
----"It is alarming that so many gun advocates believe that gun ownership is the key to pesonal happiness and security.If this is the key, it is rusty." Cute comment. Typically, as a backhanded liberal, you project your false ideas onto others, and then try to correct them. I'd try to reeducate you, but it's not my responsibilty. I'd stick to religeon and culture. You don't seem to have much of a grasp of human nature, particularly of people who understand firearms and their Second Amendment rights. By the way, do you folks go to a school or something that helps you make up your own reality? e.g. "Taken as a whole, however, gun violence is a greater threat in rural settings."
Correction: Both you and Gail project your idiocy onto others. Liberals can't "get it right". They don't know what "it" is.
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Gun violence has a MUCH MUCH higher incidence in urban settings. Look at the statistics of almost any major city. Urban centers are far more crime-ridden than rural areas. Not everywhere obviously, but as a general rule it absolutely holds true. Another thing you will find is that even in large cities with incredibly strict gun control (like Chicago as you mentioned), gun violence is still extremely high.
I find this a deeply ironic article to read.
Mr. Thompson's entire basis for wanting control is fear and distrust of what his fellow man might do yet he spends his entire article painting a picture of his opponents as the fearful.
Look into a mirror Mr. Thompson, look into a mirror.
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