The following essay of mine was published in the Op-ed pages of the Orlando Sentinel on January 10, 2013. I weight it against the unreasonableness of the NRA:
In 1989, in response to the Stockton school shooting, in which five children were killed and 29 were wounded by an assailant with an assault rifle, I wrote a newspaper essay describing the utter stranglehold the NRA had over our politicians and Constitution. Rereading the article today, I am struck not only by the utter lack of progress on gun control in the last twenty-three years, but that things have gotten shockingly worse. I wrote, in part:
“If Thomas Jefferson or George Washington could visit the scene of the recent massacre of children in Stockton, Calif., they would likely weep. They would weep not only for the gun-downed children of Vietnamese refugees seeking a sanctuary from war, but also for the Constitution itself.
“They could not imagine in their wildest fantasies that the Second Amendment could become as warped and perverted as to immerse their precious country in any bloody sea of AK-47 assault rifles and Uzi machine guns. They would weep to find that, alone among the Western democracies, the United States offers death by gunfire as an everyday occurrence.”
“Behind this historical perversion, wrapped in bloodstained flags of deranged patriotism, stands the National Rifle Association.
The shocking complacency of our society for twenty-three years is only exceeded by the NRA’s Wayne Lapierres antidote for bullets buzzing as thick as flies – more bullets. The NRA is actively trying to cram loaded and concealed weapons into the last hallowed venues left in our lives – churches, the work place and schools. I am trying to imagine a venue in this country where the NRA would agree that guns are inappropriate. I would venture to say baby cribs, but I remain unsure.
What has happened to our politicians in the twenty-three years since Stockton? They are, I feel, collectively suffering from the “Stockholm Syndrome,” a condition whereby prisoners or abductees begin to admire their captures. To say that our politicians at the time of the Stockton massacre were captives of the NRA would be an understatement. But to describe the situation just prior to the Connecticut school shooting is difficult, since the notion of senators and representatives as slaves is such a paradox. I picture them as the captive zombies in the “Walking Dead,” neutered, with nose rings, being led quietly across an apocalyptic landscape.
Even our Supreme Court (surprise) in Columbia V. Heller, has given its Constitutional blessing to reasonable gun control legislation. But when even the most tepid whiff of reasonable legislation is brought up, the NRA screeches about the “slippery slope” which ends in black helicopters and UN led house to house searches for guns. This is childish. Horrifically enough, the motivation behind this argument springs not from its member’s fear of criminals, but fear of the U.S. government itself. So, in essence, we are witnessing the most powerful lobby in the country reserving and expanding the rights of those who want the option to use military grade firearms against our current government sometime in the future. What a noble cause. What sort of nightmare have we sleepwalked our way into?
The original core of the NRA, the hunters, have been quietly left behind by the NRA as they are an aging and shrinking block of support. This explains the NRA’s two decade pandering to the paranoid right. While all other industrialized democracies in the world have moved toward rational restrictions on guns, far beyond what will or should occur here, we continue to stockpile a cache of almost 400 million weapons because of the fantasies of a fearful minority that these guns will be taken. A deadly snake has swallowed its tail.
In the early 1950’s, during the “Red Scare” Senator Joseph McCarthy similarly bullied this country and cowed our politicians. He finally went too far and was publicly called down by Army lawyer Joseph Welch, who said, as McCarthy blindly attacked an accused “You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?” Similarly, we need to demand decency and true citizenship from the NRA. Our zombies/politicians needed a ____ slap in the face. If the deaths of these children won’t’ wake them up out of graveling serfdom to the NRA, nothing ever will. Let’s at long last be adults about this – no one is going to break down gun owners doors and hysteria over reasonable restrictions should be treated for what it is – selfish, unthinking and unpatriotic.