The author
Posted on 05/03/2012 1:16:31 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
The Trayvon Martin tragedy has given gun control activist new ammo. Another American is dead because we don’t exercise enough control over who carries guns, and few Americans want to admit this is a problem.
Guns seem to be everywhere, including many places where they should not be. Inevitably they end up getting people killed.
The Trayvon Martin death would not have happened if the man accused in his killing, George Zimmerman, had not been carrying a firearm. There was no need for Zimmerman, a self-appointed neighborhood watchman of a gated community, to be armed.
There is no need for the average American to be armed.
Aside from their use in hunting and for police protection, guns serve no purpose. You can argue about personal protection, but isn’t that argument what has Zimmerman facing second-degree murder charges?
Why do some people feel the need to carry around a gun — an object that could end someone’s life in a second? Do gun packers derive some feeling of power? Do they not understand the risk of turning a bad situation into a tragedy?
It’s hard to make sense of some Americans’ attitudes about guns. Don’t they understand that too many guns in too many hands can have such a negative impact on our country?
Never mind whether they’re unregistered or legally owned, guns are killing people every day. Accidental shootings, criminal acts and crimes of passion — they all are made worse when you insert guns in the equation.
Not all guns are evil. If someone wants to own a rifle and use it for hunting, they have that right. Gun owners who invest the time to train on how to safely use and store their guns are to be commended.
Accepting the responsibilities of ownership is essential. But inevitably, for every law officer who trains extensively, or for every gun owner who does the right thing, there are people who have no business owning guns.
They’re carrying high-risk weapons, and unfortunately, our nation’s lax attitudes about guns invite them to do so.
You could argue that the freedom to own without responsibility is what killed Trayvon Martin.
If there had not been a gun, Martin and Zimmerman would have scuffled. They would have punched and rolled around, and then each would have gone his separate way.
Nobody would have been killed, the story wouldn’t have made the news, and we wouldn’t be discussing it today.
Despite a 911 operator’s warning, Zimmerman felt compelled to track Martin. Would Zimmerman have continued if he hadn’t been carrying a gun?
Could stricter enforcement of our gun control laws make a difference?
The United States is seventh in the world in gun crime according to population. Canada, a gun-control nation, isn’t even on the list.
If we don’t exercise stricter control, perhaps more education would make a difference. If people understood the risks and responsibilities, how many would still feel as if they need to walk around town with a gun in their jeans?
If all gun owners acted responsibly — became educated and secured their guns when not in use — guns wouldn’t cause nearly as many problems.
But when guns wind up in places where there’s no good reason to be — as in the hands of an overzealous neighborhood watchman — we’re going to have problems.
*******
Jay Omar is a junior journalism major from Omaha at the University of Nebraska at Kearney.
email to:
omarjm@lopers.unk.edu
The author
And second: Why do some people feel the need to carry around a gun — an object that could end someone’s life in a second? Do gun packers derive some feeling of power? Do they not understand the risk of turning a bad situation into a tragedy?
... because, my young misguided friend, bad, henious, villianous people want to hurt other good people. Sometimes they want to hurt them for money or possessions. Sometimes they want to hurt them to rape the women. Sometimes, they want to hurt them simply because.
And only guns will stop them.
George Zimmerman might be dead had he not carried the gun. A lot of us would effectively be slaves or might be dead if we didn't have the right to carry guns. . . . Morons.
What a dweeb and sissy!
Please, 2DV...explain why this is up here. These words are from a meaningless fool, with zero experience or relevance in today's world.
This kid has never had to defend himself physically as an adult.
It's not the elementary school playground. When a man is bouncing your head off the concrete curb, you don't go home and have mommy put Neosporin on your boo-boo.
You go to the hospital. You may wind up in a wheelchair for the rest of your life. Or you may bleed out right there and die on the street.
Good God, we are raising such a generation of doughy, clueless pussies.
Sweet Jesus. This guy cannot write for a lick.
NO GUNS ARE EVIL. Evil is not an attribute you can attach to a physical object.
If I only posted articles and news stories that agreed with our values this’d be a site you could skip for a month and not worry about missing anything new. Note the author’s major in college. Five years from now he’ll be “editing” a George Zimmerman’s 911 call to make him seem racist.
Or Martin would have beaten Zimmerman's head to a pulp against the sidewalk killing him...
People like this idiot "author" need a swift kick in the head. Something needs to shake loose in their brain to return them to reality.
One need read not one word further.
Required reading for the young Mr Omar:
Pacifism: The Ultimate Immorality by Raymond Kraft
Last week, Jack and Jill Pacifisto were walking home through the park after dinner with friends, during which they had spent a few hours discussing the immorality of violence and war and their commitments to send more money to progressive activists over the next year. Suddenly, Tony Thug stepped out of the shadows and pointed a pistol at Jack and said, “Give me your wallet,” and, pointing the gun at Jill, “Your purse.”
“What?” asked Jack, incredulous, “Hey, we don’t want any trouble. We’re pacifists. We aren’t going to hurt you.”
“Not my problem,” said Tony, “Gimme your money.”
So Jack and Jill did, and then Tony said, “And now gimme your watches, rings, jewelry, everything worth anything.”
“Hey,” said Jill, “This is my wedding ring!”
And Tony said, “Not my problem.”
Jack and Jill handed over their wallet, and purse, and all their jewelry and Rolex watches, and then Tony shot them both twice in the chest and picked up the loot and stepped back into the shadows.
As Jill lay dying she whispered, “Jack? Why didn’t you fight back? Why didn’t you have a gun?” Those were her last words.
“I couldn’t,” whispered Jack. “I’m a pacifist.” Those were his last words.
A few days later, Bill Thaxton and his wife were walking home through the park after dinner, when Tony Thug stepped out of the shadows.
“Give me your wallet, your purse,” said Tony, pointing his gun first at Bill, and then at his wife. He did not know that Bill was an old lawman, and had been a Marine sniper when he was young, and was active in the Single Action Shooters Society and had a concealed-carry-permit. Tony assumed that the old man was just an old man with some money and a few credit cards in his wallet walking home from dinner.
“Sorry, friend, I don’t like guns, and I don’t want any trouble,” said Bill.
“Not my problem,” said Tony, “Gimme your wallet, your purse,” he said, waving the gun at Bill’s wife, “Rings, watches, everything.”
“And what if I don’t?” asked Bill.
“I’ll shoot you both. Her first,” said Tony, pointing his gun at Bill’s wife again.
“Well,” said Bill, “Okay, honey, do what he says.”
She tossed down her purse. Bill reached slowly for his left lapel with his right hand and then, like lightning, did a cross-draw with his left and came out blazing with his trusty little 9, nailing Tony three times.
As he lay on the sidewalk dying, Tony Thug was heard to mutter, “Damn, I shoulda stuck with the pacifists . . .”
An acquaintance wrote me last week to tell me proudly how he had been a pacifist since the ‘60s. His letter set me thinking about pacifism, which is the ultimate and vilest form of immorality.
If you are Hitler, or Saddam, or Osama, or Ahmadinejad, your desire to kill those you dislike is at least honest and open. You wear you hate on your sleeve and we know who and what you are. But the Pacifist wears his refusal to resist evil as if it were a badge of honor, and claims it as a sign of his or her absolute moral superiority. The Hitlers and Osamas are at least honest about who they are, the Pacifist is not. Not even to himself.
The German Pastor Martin Niemoller wrote a poem circa 1946 about the quiescence of German intellectuals in the face of the Nazi rise to power that has become famous. Translated, it reads:
When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent,
I was not a social democrat.
When they came for the trade unionists
I did not speak out,
I was not a trade unionist.
When they came for the Jews
I did not speak out,
I was not a Jew.
When they came for me
there was no one left to speak out.
The Pacifist says something like this, but, unlike Niemoller, without apology. He says:
When you come for my allies
I will not fight you,
for I am a Pacifist.
When you come for my countrymen
I will not fight you,
for I am a Pacifist.
When you come for my neighbor,
I will not fight you,
for I am a Pacifist.
When you come for my mother,
my father, my brother,
my sister, I will not fight you,
for I am a Pacifist.
When you come for my wife,
my husband, my son,
my daughter, I will not fight you,
for I am a Pacifist.
When you come for me,
I will not fight you,
for I am a Pacifist.
The Pacifist claims that he (or she) is too good to fight against evil, and this is the catastrophic intellectual and moral failure of Pacifism. In the guise of being too good to oppose evil, the Pacifist invokes the ultimate immorality by aiding and abetting and encouraging evil, on the pretext of being too pure, too wise, too sophisticated to fight evil, thereby turning the pretense of goodness and purity into an invocation and license for evil to act without opposition.
The moral stance of the Pacifist is, unwittingly perhaps, homicidal, genocidal, fratricidal, suicidal. The Pacifist says, in effect: “There is nothing good worth fighting for. And there is nothing so evil worth fighting against.”
The Pacifist is willing to give evil free reign, because he or she thinks or feels that fighting against evil is even worse than evil itself . . . an intellectual and moral equivocation of monumentally staggering proportions. In order to be a Pacifist, one must hold that Nazism or Islamism or Communism or any other puritanical totalitarian ideology that seeks to slaughter or oppress all the Jews or all of any other race or tribe is no worse, is not morally inferior, to the existence of Jews and Judaism, or whatever other race or tribe is the whipping boy of the day.
To be a Pacifist, one must hold that acquiescence to a Jihad that seeks to destroy Western Civilization is no worse than Western Civilization, even though the Jihad seeks to extinguish intellectual freedom, religious freedom, political freedom, and ultimately even the freedom to be a Pacifist.
As the English philosopher Edmund Burke said, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” The Pacifist replies, “I am so good that I will do nothing, I will hurt no one, even if that means that good will be destroyed and evil will win. I am so peaceful that I will not discriminate between the goodness of good and the badness of evil, certainly not with enough conviction to take up arms, literally or figuratively, against the triumph of evil over good, of totalitarianism over freedom, of barbarianism over civilization.”
And so the Pacifist, perhaps unthinkingly, unwittingly, mistakenly, is deeply mired in his intellectual confusion, but surely and unequivocally, the epitome of evil itself, For the Pacifist devoutly believes that by refusing to fight against evil he is affirming that he is good, too good and pure to oppose evil, too good and pure to fight evil, to good and pure to kill evil. But in the end, he is the enabler without whom the triumph of evil would not be possible.
I wonder what the numbers would show if the number of gun related homicides was reduced by subtracting the number of people who WERE NOT killed because they or someone nearby had a firearm. I would bet it would be a negative number meaning more people saved than killed. For instance, in 2005 there were 10,100 homicides. Of those at least 7,500 were criminals so that leaves 2,600 law abiding citizens as homicide victims during 2005. Now I do not have access to data on the number of people who were not killed BECAUSE they or someone nearby had a firearm, it is a no brainer to figure out that a whole lot more people were saved. With more people carrying weapons increasing every year a telling number is that in 2000 there were 12,600 homicides. So more law abiding citizens carrying weapons and there is a 20% reduction in homicides. Hmmmm. OK so maybe it is not a perfect correlation with other factors contributing, BUT, with more people carrying, THE NUMBER DID NOT GO UP.
Did you post this just to make fun of the author? His writing doesn’t seem that bad but his reasoning is close to what you would call idiotic.
Sounds like another Dan Rather in the making.
>>There is no need for the average American to be armed.
Idiot. Does this moron think that guns are the only weapon in the world? How would he fare versus a criminal with a knife, or a bat, or a brick? If all the guns disappeared from the earth tonight, I’d leave the house tomorrow with a bowie knife.
Criminals get to choose the victim, time, place, and mode of attack. I’m sure this guy believes in “fairness” so at least my choice of weapons should be mine.
>>NO GUNS ARE EVIL.
Some of the older 1911 fans I know say that plastic guns, and Glocks in particular, are evil. I think they are wrong and you are right. :-)
You forgot the Barf Alert.
Come on down to Anacostia and take a walk around.
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