A Commentary by Doug Draper
A few days after the shooting massacre at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut this December 14, I was asked the following question by a Canadian border officer on my way back home from a short trip to Buffalo, New York – “Do you have any firearms in the vehicle?”
Protester holds up banner at NRA boss Wayne LaPierre’s Dec. 21 ‘arm-America’s schools’ rant.
It was a question I don’t recall being asked at the border since the tense year or so following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 and as I responded; ‘Absolutely not,’ I had no problem understanding why the question has been revived.
We were, after all, returning from a trip to Wayne LaPierre’s America – a country where a majority of state and federal lawmakers shiver in their shoes at the thought that they will be run out of office if they do anything to cross the grey-faced LaPierre and his National Rifle Association killing machine lobby’s vision of a country where every nook and cranny to turn every last nook and cranny is turned into an armed camp.
Turning on CNN on Friday, December 21 to a broadcast of an NRA media conference – held in Washington, D.C. a mere 90 minutes after the people of Newtown and many other communities across America tolled church bells 26 times for each of the children and teachers sprayed to death a week earlier with a military-style, rapid-firing rifle in the hands of a disturbed 20 year old – was like taking a journey through the haunted forest with flying monkeys coming after Dorothy and her dog, and the witch’s blood-curdling screams in the background.
The Dec. 22 edition of Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post takes an unprecedented shot at the NRA
“The only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” insisted LaPierre, who went on to charge that what America’s lawmakers should do now, instead of (as he put it) ‘exploiting tragedy for political gain’ by engaging in ‘another useless discussion about the availability of guns, is to place armed guards in every single one of America’s public schools.
LaPierre, who has been lobbying for the freest possible access to virtually any make and manner of gun produced and sold by his sponsors in the arms trade, blamed just about everyone and everything thing else but Mickey Mouse, Big Bird and, oh yes, guns for multiple murder tragedies that have become epidemic in his country. And of course, one of the biggest causes of these bloodbaths are mentally deranged people who are presumably even more crazy than he and his followers are.
Now I have not heard or read of one reasonable person in government, in law enforcement or in any other walk of life in the United States or Canada or any other country who has been touched by this latest tragedy in Newtown and so many others leading up to it say that mental illness, violent videos and a growing lack of parental guidance and community support in our societies today are not part of a lethal mix here. But to leave guns out of the mix is about as crazy as saying we would still have the same number of traffic accidents on our roads and highways without trucks and cars.
In fact, if you were to apply the NRA’s logic to incidence of traffic accidents, there would be even more accidents on our roads and highways if the number of trucks and cars on them was reduced or – God forbid – if trucks and cars were banned completely.
After all, LaPierre and his adherents insist that any school or other public or private place that declares itself to be gun-free zones is more susceptible to gun violence. Therefore, Americans and perhaps even we Canadians should allow virtually anyone who the NRA doesn’t deem to be mentally unstable to carry a gun and to whip it out and start shooting if, in their view, there is a threatening person in their midst.
Six-year-old Emilie Parker, one of the victims in the Sandy Hook school shooting. Contrast the compassion expressed by her father, Robbie Parker, at a media briefing with the cold-hearted rhetoric of Wayne LaPierre and his NRA.
And heaven help anyone who gets caught in the cross fire. It is one thing to have several bystanders injured, as they were, by stray and ricocheting bullets in a recent exchange of gunfire trained police officers engaged in with a shooter who had also murdered one person and was motioning to murder more near the Empire State Building in Manhattan. Imagine, hundreds of self-appointed cops pulling out and firing off guns in a shopping mall filled with thousands of people. And keep in mind that Virginia Tech – a university campus that remains the site of the worst school shooting to date in America (with a death toll of more than 30) had armed guards.
Yet in spite of all this, we continue to have LaPierre and people who think like him, including people who have shared comments with Niagara At Large to a recent piece I posted and which you can visit and read both the commentary and responses to it at https://niagaraatlarge.com/2012/12/17/when-will-america-ever-wake-up-to-the-fact-that-guns-kill/#more-8932 ) stick to their ‘guns don’t kill people’ line and whatever damn lies and statistics they can find to say there is no evidence that countries with tighter regulations on gun ownership have fewer gun crimes.
Trying to reason with these people is like trying to have a rational discussion with someone who still believes that smoking cigarettes or breathing in asbestos fibres has little or nothing to do with lung cancer or that the exponential increase in emissions of human generated carbon or greenhouse gases has nothing to do with the rapidly growing number of severe weather assaults we are experiencing in our and other regions of the world.
There is no way to engage in a reasonable discussion with people who choose to engage in black and whites, and fear-mongering – i.e. – ‘they want to take all of our guns away from us – and cannot imagine any possibility of at least making it more difficult for people to get access to assault weapons or military-style weapons that were designed for combat or for SWAT times and have nothing to do with the shotguns and rifles I grew up with in a family of duck and deer hunters.
The line that people talking about reasonable gun safety laws are out to take everyones’ guns away is a bald-ass lie, and I think the broad base of people in the middle who are willing to engage in a fair and honest discussion about guns have to finally say to the NRA and to the extremist on either side of the debate that they are not going to allow nonsense and madness to dictate what is done about regulating guns any more.
Frankly, as I watched LaPierre doing his rant at that December 14 media conference, it was horrifying to think that this monstrous creep, who came across as so cold-hearted and crazy that even the New York Post, owned by Rupert Murdoch of Fox News fame, ran his photo on its front page with a headline that read; “Gun Nut – NRA Loon In Bizarre Rant Over Newtown, ”apparently holds so much power over American lawmakers.
Contrast him with people like Robert Parker, the father of Emilie Parker, one of the first grade students shot down at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, who hosted a media briefing a few days after the massacre on his front porch and spoke for compassion and the need for people to do things that would benefit the greater community. His grace and courage, in the face of gun nuts like LaPierre and his followers, should inspire everyone as the United States wrestles with what to do with weapons of destruction that the country’s founding fathers could never have imagined when they wrote the second amendment to the American Constitution guaranteeing a right to bear arms.
Let’s hope that for the sake of the American people and of neighbouring Canada where significant numbers of guns from the U.S. are smuggled across the border for uses that have nothing to do with hunting, that U.S. lawmakers finally show the same kind of courage Robert Parker has and that those teachers who died trying to protect the lives of their young students did, and tell the NRA and the extremists it attracts to go to hell.
(Niagara At Large invites you to share your views on this post. PLEASE NOTE that we only post comments by individuals who also share their first and last name.)
Niagara At Large 
Well said Doug. I agree 100%.
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You’ve said it all Doug. Will you be priority posting this commentary to Rupert Murdoch to show that his opinion can occasionally be matched in another country? In fact, you should send it to every member of every level of U.S. government that supports the N {“N” = nutcases only welcome to join} R {“R” = required to have no conscience or common sense} A {“A” = absolutely blind to the fact that they are the ones promoting weapons of mass destruction}…AKA as agroup of bullies with an overinflated entitlement complex who believe that non-supporters are idiots.
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Everybody knows that automatic weapons have nothing to do with hunting.
I have personally never heard of a burglar or would be rapist, or thief being killed with an automatic weapon in someone’s home. Neither have I heard of a deer being sprayed with automatic gunfire. I think that most everyday folks don’t own a gun. Statistically, more people are killed who are a part of
the family, or a friend known by the family, in an accidental or fear based individual shooting without knowledge of who they were shooting.
My belief is that people have the right to bear arms.
Growing up in Canada, it was common to see a rifle on a farm. That was the extent of my gun experience.
I now live in the United States, and in my neighborhood, there is no gun activity – right now. However, I know absolutely that gun violence is everywhere and has no boundaries.
Banning automatic weapons is not going to be the the complete solution, however it is a huge, huge start.
I am proud of our President for standing up and insisting on stronger gun laws. As ‘civilized’ human beings, I believe that most people are for safeguards in our homes, our communities and the world. There is such a prevalence of killing in the name of what? God? Patriotism? Anger? Ego?We know that behind so many of these mass murders are people who have killed while in a state of mental confusion and disability.
We desperately need to act with Reason. I would love to see our country led by reason. It’s like the story of the Emperor and his clothes.
He had NO Clothes. We can’t pretend or ignore fact, and reason. Let’s protect our country, our institutions and our families, by passing laws that disallow automatic weapons, and the purchase of guns by mentally disabled people. Both tighter gun laws and mental health are equally important.
When the mental institutions were closed because they weren’t serving the people in them, the doors were left open and those people were let go into society. Those families who have been trying to get mental health facilities to pay attention to their loved ones in such dire need of mental help, have found that it is so hard to do. With all the health care cuts talked about and taking place, it is imperative that people who need the help, get the help. It is a twofold problem and needs a twofold solution.
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Nobody is trying to take away 2nd amendment rights. Anti-gun folks just want to restrict access by the public to big clip, rapid fire weapons whose major purpose is in fact battle or mass murder. Who cares about normal hunting type guns? The 2nd amendment was issued centuries ago. Times have changed. In the early 1900’s a man had to walk in front of a horseless carriage with a flag. Can you imagine that now? All people are asking is to adapt the 2nd amendment to modern times and modern weapons. The weapons at that time were antiquated single shot guns about as accurate as a 5c watch. Just adapt the rules to suit the new technology. The fascination with killing machines is a pathological mindset to the average individual. If someone gets their rocks off with those, fine. Restrict them to shooting ranges where they must be kept under lock and key when not in use.
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What was shocking to me, my brother and sister in law raised 4 kids in the next town to Newtown a place called New Fairfield 25 years ago, These towns are right out of a Norman Rockwell painting just near to Danbury where my sister in law was part owner of a travel agency, this was like Satan invading a paradise. When I lived in the US guns were quite rare now it’s like the wild west.This carnage has to stop.or take all the guns away and issue flintlocks to everybody. as per the firearm of 1776.
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Guns don’t kill people … people kill people.
That is the argument many of the paranoid Americans use to support their sick obsession with guns.
There is some truth in the statement. The problem is that the people who kill people usually do so with a gun!
I have a friend in St. Catharines who thinks we should all (or almost all) be given what he calls “concealed carry permits” whereby we could all walk around with guns on our hips etc. In our discussions about Newtown (which came close to ending our friendship) he accused me of using emotion in the discussion. Damn right I was emotional! I am a father, a grandfather and great-grandfather. You better believe I get emotional whenever I hear of the death of a child!
I don’t know why so many Americans are so paranoid about being oppressed by their government (that is one of their “reasons” for the second amendment).
The NRA and other such organizations are funded by the gun industry/manufacturers. They are absolute masters at manipulating the American public’s paranoia.
As far as I am concerned, they are a bunch of idiotic, fear-mongering, bozos who should NEVER be allowed to cross the Canada – U-S border!
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Why is it that every time we suffer a shooting disaster the so-called right wing nuts and the so-called left wing nuts rush to display their unbridled wisdom? Mudslinging, name calling and vitriol are only further confounding the issue?
The common wisdom is the thought that by banning things we can remove the threat. We have tried these efforts in the past with things like banning alcohol through prohibition, and prostitution and our ongoing efforts to penalize drugs. And how’s that working for ya?
As heart wrenching as the Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting in Newtown, Connecticut is, it should also be viewed in historical context before inadvertently making matters worse.
Connecticut has some of the toughest gun laws in the U.S. thereby informing mentally unbalanced gunmen that they are unlikely to face another gunman. This cowardly gunman raced to the safety of a young children’s classroom to satisfy his deadly inclination.
Prohibition did not prevent the mass shooting in Toronto, Ontario, Canada where we have some of the toughest gun laws: http://toronto.ctvnews.ca/murder-charges-laid-in-toronto-bbq-mass-shooting-1.1029580
The following link tells of the worst school disaster in U.S. history was perpetrated without the use of guns: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_School_disaster
In Switzerland every adult male is stands in defense of the nation. His defense weapon is the latest assault rifle and 5,000 bullets, yet somehow manages to refrain from killing his fellow citizens.
There are things that must and will be done to mitigate senseless killing, however, prohibition alone is not a single or viable answer.
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Preston, are you reading the other posts, in particular mine? I’m not against gun ownership but the times have changed. We are no longer in the wild west. Killing machines are for war, not Joe Public. Should Joe Public own a tank? The laws just need to be updated to meet the current sociological and technological changes. I don’t think most of us are going left or right wing nut about banning guns but just wish to initiate common sense discussions that are long overdue.
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You are absolutely right Linda and that is just what I said in my last paragraph.
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