The Children’s Crusade–2/3

Nothing New Under the Sun; U.S. Tried to Curb Gun Deaths in the 60s

Attempts at gun-control regulation have quite a long history in the United States. According to an article by Seth Cline, in U.S. News.com on Jan. 16, 2013, there was a major initiative in 1969. A commission formed by President Lyndon Johnson issued its own–admittedly timid–policy recommendations to address gun violence, which was rising amidst the social turmoil of the time. U.S. News and World Report said at the time:

Millions of Americans will be compelled to give up their pistols if Congress passes a law proposed by the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence. But Congress, it appears, is not at all likely to pass such a law—in this session, at least.

“Not a chance, none at all,” said Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield (Dem.), of Montana, when asked about the prospects of Congress accepting the Commission’s plan this year. Representatives of the Nixon Administration recently told a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee they saw no need for tighter gun laws now.

Pro-Gun Activists Respond with Fatuous Fire

 

The responses of the gun crowd were rapid and particularly ill-advised and seemed to delate their fear that the young people might put them up against the wall and win the day, or at least make it extremely complicated for the National Rifle Association and their Washington cohorts. The Washington Post commented:

As students were making their way to Florida’s Capitol in Tallahassee on Wednesday morning to demand gun law overhauls, a Republican lawmaker a few states away wrote a Facebook post that appeared to question whether the teenage protesters were, in fact, students. Pennsylvania state Rep. Daryl Metcalfe’s comments came as right-wing media figures have attacked the credibility of a handful of students who have become the most vocal advocates for gun control since a lone gunman killed 17 people at their high school in Parkland, Fla.

Representative Metcalfe committed a grave tactical error. His comments, besides being singularly tasteless in the circumstances in which he pronounced them, left him open to easy rebuttal. It was a simple matter for the students to establish that they were, in fact, students and that they were serious about pursuing the gun-control issue to its logical end. The injured parties in this matter are, after all, the kids themselves. Theirs is the most cogent right to redress. They are the underdogs against one of the best-financed and most powerful lobbies in the United States. Nevertheless, they know they’re fighting the good fight and they’re determined to see it through. Over the past century nobody has managed it yet, but who is prepared to bet against these kids?

Metcalf was not alone in his below-the-belt attack on the student activists. The entire right-wing media machine had ground into action. The Guardian was following them:

The sleaziest and most direct attacks on individual students have come from the right’s more conspiratorial fringe. On Jim Hoft’s pro-Trump, conspiracy-minded website, Gateway Pundit, Lucian Wintrich performed a hatchet job on David Hogg, suggesting that he was “heavily coached on lines and is merely reciting a script”.

The survivors are not elementary school students, or public employees, either shielded from media intrusion or disbarred from speaking out. They are confident young adults, many of them media savvy, and more than capable of matching the president when it comes to online snark. Several made it clear that “thoughts and prayers” in the wake of slaughter isn’t welcome.

The reactionary media’s ignoble insinuations that the spokes-people for the students are actors are both naive and counterproductive. I suspect this behavior won’t take long to come back on them. In this CNN clip, recorded on 23 Feb. 2018, in a textbook case of the cynical inversion of reality, NRA chief, Wayne LaPierre, discusses the reactions to the Parkland shootings. There should be a law against this brand of cynicism. You have to see it to believe it.

President Trump’s own observations on the events were typically Trumpish. Elaborating on his proposal to arm schoolteachers he said, “This would be a major deterrent because these people are inherently cowards.” In fact, he doesn’t know whether they’re cowards or not. Some mass gun killers might not be. He’s just talking through his hat again. Then he assured us that he would have faced the killer himself, unarmed. This is what the Spanish refer to as. “…valor a toro pasado,” “bravery after the bull has passed.”

P.S. There’s a Gaping Hole in Trump’s Proposal to Arm Teachers

President Trump’s pretense not to notice the failure to intervene of four law officers on the scene is an eloquent indicator that his armed-teachers solution could never work. If four well-armed-and-trained deputy sheriffs are incapable of preventing a deranged 19-year-old from killing 17 people with an assault rifle, what can we expect an English teacher to do, no matter how big her gun? Trump’s “solution” is a sick parody of a remedial measure. It’s just black propaganda based on wishful thinking.

The President’s thinking on preventive measures is representative of most of the right-wing thinking on the subject of gun control. Instead of seeking valid solutions to the school shootings–and all shootings–President Trump and the gun lobby decide on the measures that benefit them–and the NRA–most and then seek arguments to justify them. Even they should admit that this is the shabbiest form of false problem-solving. But they can’t because solving the problem is not on their agenda. What’s on their agenda is preserving at all costs the grotesque, NRA-engineered status quo.

What’s at the Bottom of All This?

The underlying cause of America’s most serious problems is common to all of the society’s ills: poverty and racism, guns and knives, greed and corruption, militarism, inequality and entitlement. Those are all effects. The cause that underlies them is inhumanity, the coldness toward others which has been nurtured in the United States throughout virtually their entire history. And the election of President Donald Trump and the personalities he has selected for his cabinet have multiplied this inhumanity factor many times.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

This lofty declaration is from the preamble to the U.S. Declaration of Independence. Today in America it sounds like black comedy.

Back to part 1/1

Part 3/3 coming soon

Read more rantings in my ebook, The Turncoat Chronicles.

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