CSotD: Open caskets open minds
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Dan Wasserman on gun control …
… and Kevin Kallaugher
There have been several cartoons recently about the lobbying power of the NRA over elected officials and the idea that the impact of Newtown has faded as the general bureaucracy of the legislative process has dragged things out.
But I like these, because I think the problem is simple denial, and the silence that enables it.
To start with, when only one side is willing to engage in meaningful discussions, you end up with misconceptions elevated to the level of critical demands.
Specifically, had the gun advocates not gone off on delusional misreadings of the Federalist and AntiFederalist papers and simply said, "Okay, let's talk," the element of so-called "assault weapons" might have been discussed rationally, in which case having it fall from the proposed legislation wouldn't have seemed like such a big deal.
I don't know if a lot of hunters want rifles with pistol grips. It's been a long time since I did any shooting and my preference for the more traditional style is based entirely on the fact that I've never tried the other. But I do know that you don't need banana clips for deer hunting.
Meanwhile, I'm wondering if there may be something similar at work here to what we've seen with the same-sex marriage debate.
Without drawing that specific parallel, Kal is suggesting that Congress may be misreading the support for reform of our gun laws. I suspect the same, and that the combination of NRA's professional lobbying and the right-wing slant of talk-radio and most news-site comments make it seem that a majority favor a hands-off approach.
Yet another case of listening to the grasshoppers and ignoring the cattle.
There is a practical element at work in this: While I don't believe that delusional paranoia is a sound basis for government, or that the Founding Fathers purposely wrote a poison pill into the Bill of Rights — despite having specified treason as a crime in the body of the document — others do, and we have to share the country with them.
The other day, a new dog came to the dog park, a large Siberian husky who Vaska thought was a great deal of rough-and-tumble fun, accompanied by a young man with well-toned muscles, a buzz cut on his head and a .45 calibre pistol on his belt.
Someone knew him from his high school years and, as they caught up, it emerged that he is now a police officer, at which point I remarked that I was glad to hear that because I am generally reluctant to ask a stranger why he is packing.
"I deal with some crazy people," he said.
Six months ago, I would have considered that a bit crazy in itself, and it may well be that he isn't perfectly suited for the job.
But six months ago, we didn't have district attorneys and prison administrators and county sheriffs being gunned down in cold blood.
I can't fault the guy too much, though I do think that, if it bothered me that much, I'd find another line of work. There certainly are plenty of cops who don't feel compelled to carry at all times, even now with the apparent start-up of the "war against tyranny."
And I do think it's going to get worse before it gets better, though the fact that new regulations won't squelch it on the spot is no reason to halt the process entirely.
I also think that personal experience and personal reactions are going to start coming into play in this debate, and that the more people-who-carry-guns are murdered, the less the NRA's Wyatt Earp approach is going to impress anyone.
Because besides Wyatt, there was also his brother Virgil, who lost an arm to a shotgun assault, and their brother, Morgan, who was shot to death by a gunman.
Wasserman's cartoon suggests — but again does not state — a link to Rob Portman's conversion on the topic of same-sex marriage, in which his personal experience of discovering he had a gay son caused him to abandon his theoretical opposition.
That's not a noble motivation and Portman was, properly, called out for lacking compassion and empathy until his own family became involved.
But maybe that's how things happen. Slowly, and personally. And by people refusing to shut up and look away.
Emmett Till's mother famously insisted on an open casket, saying, "There was just no way I could describe what was in that box. No way. And I just wanted the world to see."
And, though it may have been Gen. Walker and not Eisenhower who demanded that German civilians come see Buchenwald, so that they could never deny what had happened there, Eisenhower himself wrote, "I visited every nook and cranny of the camp because I felt it my duty to
be in a position from then on to testify at first hand about these
things in case there ever grew up at home the belief or assumption that
'the stories of Nazi brutality were just propaganda'."
Granted, lynchings did not cease with the death of Emmett Till, and there are still plenty who claim that the Holocaust is a myth, despite all evidence to the contrary.
It is not enough, however, to wring our hands and wish for change.
When Medgar Evers was gunned down, someone called him another martyr, to which writer Josh Dunson replied, “Oh, God no, we’ve already got too many martyrs."
Phil Ochs borrowed a tune from his pal, Bob Gibson, and turned it into a song that, a half-century later, is still too damn relevant for my tastes.
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