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Ban People — They Kill
Paul Craig Roberts
V Dare
Tuesday April 17, 2007
The tragic murders of Virginia Tech students, apparently by an
insane person, will prompt new attempts to ban private ownership
of guns. Once
guns are banned, crime will explode. Households and vulnerable
members of society will lose the ability to defend, which will invite
more intrusions and attacks.
Knife crimes will rise as they have in Great Britain.
Gun prohibition will create a new industry for
criminals—gun running and black market sales. Police will conduct
stings by posing as black market gun dealers and entrap innocent
citizens driven by fear and threat to secure means of personal protection.
A large industry of family businesses dedicated
to meeting the needs of shooters, who would never shoot at anything
but a paper or clay target, will be wiped out. Gun clubs will close
their doors. Collectors of valuable Winchesters and Colts, beautiful
pieces of Americana, will have to give them up or be at risk of
prison sentences.
Gun banners might be surprised at the number
of Americans who provide parts and repairs for firearms that have
been out of production for 70 or 80 years. Other businesses provide
components from which dedicated hobbyists fashion ammunition that
is no longer commercially produced.
Marksmanship is an Olympic sport. A large number
of marksmanship events are hosted all over the country, with the
national championships at Camp Perry being the best known. I have
been a member of gun clubs for decades, and no member has ever shot
anyone, accidentally or intentionally. For an older person, marksmanship
is one of the few outdoor convivial pursuits, and the challenge
of mind- eye-hand coordination and windage calculation is rewarding.
Guns have been around for a long time, but these
crazy shootings are a new development that point to a failure of
culture to produce people with a sense of responsibility and self-control.
When I was a kid, a youngster could walk into a local hardware store
and buy a gun. There were no restrictions. If a kid was so young
that he couldn’t see over the counter, the store owner might call
a parent for approval. We all had guns, and we never shot ourselves
or anyone else.
One of my grandmothers thought nothing of me
and my friends playing with the World War II weapons my uncle had
brought back. My other grandmother never batted an eye when I collected
my grandfather’s shotgun from behind the door and went off to match
wits with the crows that raided the pecan trees or the poisonous
cottonmouth snakes that could be found along the creek that ran
through the farm.
My grandmother never worried about me until I
got a horse, a more dangerous object in her view than a gun.
We also all had knives, which we carried in our
pockets to school every day. We never stabbed anyone and very seldom
cut our own fingers.
We often had fights, more often wrestling each
other to the ground than fist fights. No one ever thought of pulling
a knife or a gun on his antagonist. Parents and teachers did not
exactly approve of fights, but they considered them natural. We
were not arrested, handcuffed and finger-printed for being in a
fight.
Except for war films, movie violence was rare.
I still remember the shock we all experienced when the hero in a
cowboy movie actually shot and killed the outlaw. Until that film,
the hero would shoot the gun out of the outlaw’s hand, knock him
out with a punch to the jaw, and deliver him rope bound to the sheriff.
I began my teaching career at Virginia Tech when
the institution still had its Cadets. Students marched in uniforms
with powerful military weapons that as far as I can remember still
had firing pins. No one ever loaded a rifle and shot someone. Indeed,
as a high school and Georgia Tech student, we had to take R.O.T.C.
We knew how to field strip a M1 30-06 rifle and could have procured
surplus army ammunition with ease, but no one was ever irresponsible
enough to load one of the weapons. When we had marksmanship practice,
it was at a firing range.
The change is in the behavior of people, not
the presence of guns. Banning guns does not address the cause of
gratuitous violence. We need to find the cause of the sickness in
our society that produces people who deal with their problems by
murdering others.
England has
discovered the truth of the NRA’s motto — “When guns are
outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.” The gun ban has only
disarmed the honest citizens.
Drugs are banned, but they are available almost everywhere,
as was alcohol during Prohibition. If a deranged person can’t obtain
a black market gun, he will make a
bomb.
Indeed, the Iraq war has greatly stimulated interest
in, and knowledge of, bomb-making. The longer the senseless occupation
of Iraq continues, the more likely that Americans, like residents
of Baghdad, will awaken each day to the news of 100 dead and 100
injured.
Gun rights are constitutionally protected, because
the
Founding Fathers did not trust even the limited and constrained
government that they created. To
infringe this constitutional right makes it easier to infringe
others. Certainly the Bush administration has shown no reluctance
to infringe such foundations of our political and legal existence
as habeas corpus and the requirement that warrants be obtained before
privacy is invaded.
If we lose the Constitution, we have lost our
country.
Responsibility goes with accountability. Government,
like people, becomes less responsible as accountability declines.
Indeed, it is impossible to have irresponsible people and responsible
government as the government is staffed by people.
In my day parents and teachers had authority.
Today teachers have no authority, which is why they have to call
the police to control the kids.
Child Protective Service has stripped parents of authority.
Children are taught at school to call CPS if they are spanked by
parents. Apparently, teachers cannot recognize the decline of their
own authority in the decline of parental authority.
I remember when a misbehaving kid picked up by
the police was turned over to his parents. Today, the kids are taken
to jail.
Humans are fallible and will fail in their responsibilities
to others and do bad things. However, today they fail more often
than in the past. The cause is not guns.
INFOWARS:
BECAUSE THERE'S A WAR ON FOR YOUR MIND
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