Washington, DC (TLS). As expected, those with a vested interest in robbing law-abiding citizens of their inherent right to keep and bear arms are taking to the streets blaming America's 'gun culture' for the Virginia Tech shootings. The European press in particular has gone nuts over the incident, blaming Charlton Heston for the massacre.
Yesterday the Brady Campaign to ban handguns also blamed American society for the killings.
The killer has been identified this morning as a South Korean exchange student by the name of Cho Seung Hui, 23, a resident alien. The perpetrator was not even a U.S. citizen, which sends the theory about the 'American gun culture out the window.
Cho Seung Hui had an early morning argument with his girlfriend, Emily Hilscher, after which he shot and killed Hilscher and a dorm counselor, who had responded to attempt to intervene in the argument.
Later, Cho would walk across to the other side of the campus where he went on a shooting spree that left carnage, tragedy, and heartache in its wake.
The European press has clearly taken leave of its senses by blaming Charlton Heston and America's 2nd Amendment rights for this massacre that was caused by a crazed madman, a homicidal/suicidal monster who was not even a U.S. citizen.
No one is to blame for this except for Cho Seung Hui.
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
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5 comments:
Dear Sir,
I am a European who is desperately needing to discuss this issue with you or any American in favor of gun rights. First of all, let me maybe say a little something about myself. I've been in the US three times, twice for two months each as a kid, and once a bit later to visit friends. I lived in a family in Michigan, that one could probably characterize as WASP, so I do know a bit about the right republican part of the American society (I don't really know how to call it, sorry), but I am still eager to learn more.
First of all, I sincerely believe that we only receive half of the message on the other side of the Atlantic when somebody says something. That's why this Charlton Heston story is as carefully to be looked at as the angry letters from Americans who blame the European press for all the evil in the world.
First of all I would like to try to explain to you the point of view most of the Europeans (including myself) share on this issue. To begin with: we are as shocked and in deep mourning about this tragedy as every citizen throughout the world. You might recall the school massacre in Germany a few years ago, that until last monday, hold the sad record of the world's bloodiest school massacre. But then again, we are as sad about the victims, as we are sad about the fact that this happens so often in the United States and that thousands of people die every year from guns. And as sad as it sounds, I was not shocked when I heard there was a massacre in an American university, I was shocked when I heard about the high number of fatalities. I myself am a student and tried to picture me in such a situation on my campus. The reactions that followed in the European press did not blame Charlton Heston. I read the article you mean, and it blames the American gun culture, saying it is a country where the masses cheer when Charlton Heston says that he will never give away his guns. It was only an unimportant detail. Now in a well read newspapers European citizens answered to angry Americans who severely attacked European press statements. The European dilemma is the following: we want to help you (now every American will probably say: we don't need your help and we know this) but we don't want to sound arrogant or like we know the answer to everything. But I believe your objective is to prevent those killings as well. I was very amused when a newspaper article's headline quoted an American saying: "If only all the students would have had guns ...". And then I thought, please this can't be the serious answer of a rational human being. He said that less people would have died. But I say, how many people would have died if he had had no gun at all? Would he have been successful with a baseball-bat-killing-spree ? Now the objection to "no guns at all" is of course the 2nd amendment to the constitution. Every man has the right to possess guns. And Sir, I sincerely believe that someone like you can have guns. You are not the problem, I don't care how much guns you have, you are probably a lawful and harmless US-citizen. It is just that carrying a gun is such a great responsability and on this matter the state is too confident in its own citizens. It's like when I don't put a lock on my bike, of course I can have faith in the thousands of people who won't steal it, but there well be a few dozens who will. History has shown that people like Cho cannot handle the responsability of a gun. And he just had to walk into a story, pay 500 bucks with his credit card and walk out of the store with a glock 19. Now imagine exactly the same guy, the same psychopath in a store in Spain. He simply wouldn't get a gun. And in the US ? 200 million firearms and 41% of all households own a gun. How many disputes over a divorce, how many fights over drugs, how many school shootings end with people killing each other with guns. Of course people kill people and not guns do. But people with guns kill people. Of course you can say, it's the drug dealer's fault he pulled the trigger or it's that kid's fault. But what if he simply hadn't a trigger to pull ? Of course this doesn't mean that tragedys don't happen in Europe as well, and I already mentioned the shooting in Erfurt, Germany. But if you compare the annual deaths by guns you can't trust your eyes. And this is the most important point, you would say the more guns there are, the safer it is. But it's the contrary! How else do you explain the huge differences in the death rates ? By saying that Americans simply like to kill more ? Or that Americans have more problems ? And I am not scared or I don't feel in danger here. You are probably right, without a gun I won't be able to defend myself as good as with one, but I am not afraid because I know that the other persons have none neither. I mean it's an obvious logical question, what is safer, everybody has weapons or no one has weapons ?
I Sir do too blame the American gun culture. I believe that the problem is that people who support the present laws are not considering themselves co-responsible in any way for the present situation. But I believe they are. They are building and upholding a society where people think that problems can be solved with bullets. If you could save only one life, by accepting tough gun laws that would mean that you would have to give away your gun, wouldn't you do it ? The US constitution and the bill of rights are some of the finest documents the face of the earth has ever seen. But please, and I believe there lays the biggest problem (and maybe you could teach me more on this issue; I admit that as a European I can never feel the same thing about the constitution that you do as an American): it is not INERRABLE.
With best regards and in the hope of a better Euro-American understanding,
Anonymous
The notion of America's so-called 'gun culture' is a misnomer. The Press often speaks of this, as does academia and many of our European neighbors. But this is part of the problem. The issue is not guns. It is human beings and the 'culture of violence.'
Interestingly, the areas of the U.S. that have the lowest murder rate tend to be those with the most lax gun laws. Conversely, those areas with the most stringent gun controls tend to be the the very areas where gun violence is most prevalent.
Thus, it is most clearly not the guns. It is the culture.
Today, that culture of violence has very powerful allies in the field of music and film. It adversely effects our youth.
You make some excellent points in your argument from the European perspective, which I intend to address in an article in the near future.
But for now, suffice it to say that our history as Americans is steeped in a tradition that says it is better to risk harm and death to be free than to be secure but enslaved.
In like manner, it is not so much that we have a love affair with guns. It's just that we deplore a government that is so powerful to tell us we can't have them.
Read Thomas Jefferson. He says these things better than anyone. A government that is so powerful as to tell you that you can't own a gun is to be greatly feared. If they excerise this kind of control in that area, they will do it other areas as well.
Jeffersonians such as myself refer to that as 'tyranny.'
Thanks again for writing and for your detailed response.
Sincerely,
Martyn
Hello Martyn,
Thank you for your answer. I enjoy very much discussing theses issues. To respond to the link between low murder rates and lax gun laws: The states you are probably talking about are some prairie states where there isn't any criminality anyway. So in these states it doesn't matter if people own guns. I believe that in the states with strict gun laws (probably those with higher criminality, but due to other causes) the situation would be way worse if access to guns would be even easier. So I don't think that one can say: If the laws on gun possession are lax, then the murder rate is sinking. In fact, after an Australian school shooting years ago, the government went the way that I hope US would go some day. They massively bought back guns, and imposed stricter laws. Australia is way safer now. But does that mean that they live in a tyranny now and that they are enslaved ?
Jefferson said that if they restrict gun liberty they might restrict other freedoms as well. But why ? There is no reason to make that logical connection. This would mean that the English government has over the years become a dicatorship or Sweden has become an absolute monarchy. In stable democracies as America or Europe, gun laws are not what characterize a democratic regime. I am not free because I own a gun and I am not enslaved because I can't have one. This is the problem and the specificity of the US. A for an European secondary, banal and irrelevant right has a constitutional character. If you are afraid that the US becomes a tyranny, you shouldn't be afraid of stricter gun laws. Do you really think that that will lead your country to tyranny ? What leads your country to tyranny are weaker human rights standards, a weaker freedom of the press, weaker civil rights, and stronger corruption. These are the very central elements that enslave you, not tough gun laws.
And then to the gun culture. I believe there is one. It is simply related to American history, to pioneer times, when owning a gun was necessary to survive. How come we don't have that culture of guns. Guns are not important in Europe, nobody cares about them. Almost nobody has any and almost nobody feels the desire to posess some. If there weren't a gun culture, how come there are such powerful organisations like the NRA ? If there weren't a gun culture, how come that the gun is just as part of the American culture (at least from an European point of view) just as pancakes and maple sirup for breakfast. How many of your Presidents got shot ? (Were they at that point already playing Counter-Strike and listening to Marylin Manson?) And movies show not only a culture of violence but also a gun culture. The Western, the war film or the action thriller are very American genres.
To the culture of violence: if you say that this culture of violence is to blame, how come Europe hasn't America's murder rates. Are Europeans so peaceful, so loving and gentle human beings ? I know the youth in America and I know it in Europe and I can assure there isn't a big difference. We're all part of the Western culture and after WWII we soaked up a lot of your culture even if there are still differences. You can see that with a little delay, pretty much anything arrives sooner or later in Europe. Our kids play CS as well, listen to The Game or 50 Cent, our population keeps getting fatter and fatter as well, and so on... So if you have a culture of violence, we have it too.
Then I would like to say something on the prevention of tragedys. I believe that you want to forbid or that you blame something that you can't change. You can't change that half the people are idiots and that one out of a hundred is going to end up shooting someone. Trying to change that is not going to lead to less people dying. Of course honesty and respect of law is important and it would be great if we would live in a world where everyone lives by these values, but I think you know that the world is not like that. Cho doesn't care about Exodus 20,13. Of course one should first teach people that it is not right to kill, but if they don't learn that, then you have to prevent tragedies in other ways.
So that would be all for now. As to my identity and nationality, from where do you think I am ? We'll see if you can guess the right answer :-)
All the best and I hope we can keep up discussions,
Anonymous
Thanks for your reply, which helps continue the dialogue.
I have never understood the modern Western European aversion to gun rights. As an observer across the Atlantic, it seems to me that Western Europe is slow to learn its lessons from history.
For example, had the Jews been well-armed when the Nazis came to power, I highly doubt there would have been a Holocaust, at least not on the scale that it happened. The stage was set for totalitarianism when Germany first registered and then confiscated the guns of the citizens.
You must remember that our history as Americans is unique. It is a history that we value every bit as much as you value your own. From our perspective, we had to fight for the rights we have using our guns--against the very Europeans who had given us birth. And while we owe many of our foundational concepts of liberty to Europeans such as Dutch and French writers/philosophers, we here were ready to take freedom to the next level rather than sit back and wait.
It is a precarious notion to attempt to compare European and American culture, as if to say that Europeans would respond to violent messages in the same manner as Americans. Our situation is very different, culturally, economically, racially, religiously. For example, here we can trace the rates of crime by ethnic and racial groups. Racial minorities account for the vast majority of violent crime in the United States.
And no, the area to which I referred that has a very low gun violence rate when compared to the high number of gun owners is NOT the western states, though some of them would qualify. The mountains of Appalachia are much more heavily populated, the rate of gun ownership is high, yet the crime rate is low compared to the big metro areas, such as New York, Miami, San Francisco, which by the way, have a high rate of crime in spite of very strict gun control measures.
I still disagree about the so-called 'gun culture.' The NRA exists only to preserve and protect the right of ordinary citizens to keep and bear arms. The organization would have no purpose were it not for forces in government that seek to remove this right from the citizens.
Some of what you say about the creeping crawl of government tyranny seems to be denial. It is happening in Europe and Australia as much as it is happening here.
As President Ronald Reagan said, 'Government is not the answer, and the minute the electorate begins to view it that way leaves the door open to tyranny down the road.'
It may not happen today or tomorrow, but government that is powerful enough to take away the rights of citizens is powerful enough to enslave them. And I repeat, Jefferson stated that such a government is to be greatly feared.
In fact, not only is it entirely illogical but the embodiment of tyranny itself to conclude that in order to control the behavior of the deranged few we must remove the rights of all. To me, that is a very VERY dangerous philosophy.
Martyn
I don't know why you bother to debate these gun-grabbers anyway. You can't reason with the unreasonable. Logical thinking is not possible with them in their attempts to get our guns. Charlton Heston was right and I feel the same way. The only way they'll get my guns is to pry them from my cold dead hands.
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