The Right to Own...Death

As I sat last night at a Christmas service with mixed choirs including the children's choir, I had mixed emotions and was indiscriminately tossed between the joy of seeing young  children enjoying a church Christmas celebration and the aching sorrow knowing that 20 families in Connecticut have been robbed of this joy.

Feeling sorrow and saying our prayers for the families, however, is not enough-- faith without works is dead.  The most well-organized lobbyists in Washington, D.C. are those of the NRA.  Their members are those who in the midst of a mass shooting chide anyone from using a tragedy involving guns to even consider regulations.  They speak out against demeaning the memories of the victims by politicizing  the tragedy.  Of course, there is no right time to discuss the regulation of weapons.  They criticize the media for exploitation for the gun lobbyists and owners of these types of weapons do not want the public to see what carnage semi-automatic weapons can do.  It is exactly the time to talk about regulation of semi-automatics with large magazine capacities since they were not only used to murder 20 children and 6 of their teachers in a school but in nearly every mass shooting since the 1980s.  For the first time, however, we are dealing with victims so very young.

While the Internet is not a safe place for gaining verifiable research, one can learn much from the responses that gun owners have given for the need to possess semi-automatic assault weapons such as those most recently in the Connecticut massacre.

The most prevalent answer is some variation on the fact that they can.  Consider the following

"As a free man living in a so called free country, i am not going to justify my needs to anyone."

"My response to 'Why do you have/want/need an assault rifle?' would be "I want one."

"Same reason I have a 4 slice toaster instead of the more pedestrian 2 slicer: I want it."

"Because I can."

"Because they are a citizen and not a subject."

"why do you need a ball point pen, a computer or TV, surely the founders hadn't thought those would ever exist." 

"My usual reply is 'That is none of your business. Why do you have what you have? Do you want me nitpicking and asking you about why you own your posessions too?'"

"Do we really need these things? Yes, I may not use mine for the same purposes as the next person but mine is a precise and efficient tool that I use on a weekly basis. I don't use it for mass shootings of human beings for the reason that I am a law abiding, level headed American citizen. That should give me the right to own whatever the hell I want."

Then there are those who own guns because it is American.

"It's the people's last recourse against tyranny."

"It has less to do with the needs of the individual than it does with the needs of the Republic.  The Republic of the United States of America needs citizens to keep and bear military grade weaponry in order to have a pool for a well trained militia and as a final line of defense against all of the enemies of the Republic and its Constitution, foreign and domestic."

"Owning a black rifle is a civic duty, not an individual want or need."

"because governments,...all governments, eventually seek total power over those they govern....and fuck you, thats why."

IN fact, if everyone were to do this civic duty and be armed in public, many believe we would all be safer:

"In my opinion the only real deterrent is armed citizens who will react when they find themselves in those types of situations. It ain't much but it's a hell of a lot more than some "make me feel safe" ban on something that will only serve to disarm the ones that don't need disarming."

And then there are those who argue that since there are many more things than guns that may be used to kill, why not simply ban everything:

"Why not ban any vehicle that is faster than the speed limit? Why not ban long butcher knives? Why not ban the ability to "Supersize" your fast food order?  These all make just as much sense as banning large capacity magazines."

"In the right hands, a hand full of spoons and butter knives can injure many people, just like a seriously foggy morning and a slippery road. Should we, then, ban spoons, butter knives, and bad weather?"

"Anything could be used as an assault weapon look at David and goliath one little rock is all it takes I have an ar15 I didn't buy it to harm any one just to have fun with and kill pigs and stuff" 

"Might as well ask why someone needs a car that can go 160 mph when 70 is the speed limit. Or why do you need a compound bow when a traditional bow can do the same thing." 

"Tobacco kills more people then guns so, why not ban tobacco. Just another example."

"Guns don't kill people, people kill people, just like alcohol don't kill people, it's the people that are irresponsible and abuse it that kill and harm others due to alcohol. Ban guns, ban alcohol, ban drugs, ban whatever you want irresponsible people are still gonna find something&abuse it and it will get outta control and hurt others"

Sometimes, believe it or not, doing something simply because one can is not a good enough justification.  It is rather unsettling to know there are people in our communities who may never take the time to consider why they do the things they do.  What ever happened to "the unexamined life is not worth living."  For these people, there is no direction.  They are placed on the earth to do whatever they can get away with.

Civilization, however, is a process of collective self-examination and constantly refining our laws to a changing technological landscape and our moral absolutes to an ever-diversified human race.  In the process, some things we held to be morally appropriate in the past, such as indentured servitude or slavery, we recognize to be unjust.  And some things that we had no need to regulate-- such as highway speeds and air traffic-- justify the creation of new legal parameters.

And why do I feel particularly less safe knowing that a large group of those who own semi-automatic assault weapons are dong so to fulfill their civic duty?

I am also fairly confident that some of the weapons on hand in the U.S. Armed Forces might be able to take down a group of armed citizens fighting against tyranny.  I do believe at one time the weapons available to the federal government were similar to those of the cobbler or cooper-- the Second Amendment made more sense then.

While our friends have certainly identified a variety of things that may be lethal if in the wrong hands, I think we would all agree that while we would never ban our favorite McDonald value meal, many of us might consider banning extremely foggy mornings.   The truth, however, is that while many things can kill, guns are designed.  And semi-automatics are designed to kill more quickly and with less effort.  I have no doubt that anyone premeditating a mass murder will not choose butcher knives, spoons, butter knives, cigarettes (to force victims to smoke several packs a day until a large number contract heart disease or COPD and die?), drugs (to force a large group of people to ingest lethal amounts of drugs?), a slingshot, or for that matter perform an elaborate bad-weather dance to whip up a lethal storm.  The weapon of choice is the semi-automatic weapon with large magazine capacity.  When armed with semi-automatics, an individual is not only instantly more powerful than those he wishes to kill, but is able to kill many more victims.  For these mass-murderers the semi-automatic is the coward's choice.  Those who own these weapons must accept the fact that the potential for extreme carnage in the wrong hands outweighs their own right to possess them.

But for the fact that we are living through a nightmare in which the most innocent have been violently taken from us, their arguments would be part of a SNL routine.  The fact that they will continue to make these assertions and in mass numbers demonstrate how little they value humanity and how they will continue to dismiss logic, reason, and morality in favor of their own selfish and unexamined rights.

But our entire society has been whittled down to the financiers who compound the largest profits of free enterprise and the consumers who feel entitled to have as much as they want.  As a society, we are losing our sensitivity to how safe we and others are in having and using what we possess, and we are continuing our insensitivity to how our desire to own and the investor's desire for exorbitant profits affect the workers who produce what we possess.

This time, however, we must decide between a semi-automatic and a child.  This should be an easy choice, right?  Where your treasure is, there is your heart.

DEAR MR. PRESIDENT

Dear Mr. President,

     You have been elected at a very singular moment in American history.  You have been elected to begin the process of resuscitating an American middle-class that has been subject to the unfettered license of business leaders and financial moguls for the last thirty years.  For decades now, the very rich have benefited from continuing income tax cuts from a one-time high of over 90 percent to an all-time low of 28 percent.  Capital gains taxes and corporate taxes have also been so unconscionably low that CEOs and investment bankers have used their financial license to accumulate reckless amounts of capital for themselves and stockholders even as they cut jobs, reduce wages, eliminate benefits, and convert pensions to the 401 (k).  At the same time as businesses were booming and a few were drowning in new wealth, the workers no longer reaped any of these rewards.  In fact, the so-called entitlements weighing down the federal deficit are programs or agencies that are doing what the leaders of finance and industry have historically refused to do-- reigning in risky investments; working for an industry's long term health and not the short term pay-off; eliminating pollution; making products that are reasonably safe, food that is uncontaminated, and pharmaceuticals that are well-tested before being marketed; ensuring that workers have safe working conditions, monthly income upon retirement, adequate health care, unemployment income when they lose their jobs, and public assistance when they too often fall into poverty.  It is time for the top two percent to pay a little more!
     The federal government has had to spend trillions, while the top two percent have made their millions and billions relying like spoiled children on the federal government to spend whatever amount necessary to clean up their mess.  If it weren't so ignominious, we would almost have to laugh at the way in which the same people whose behavior has compelled the federal government to spend itself into debt, continue to demand a reduction in spending.  The Republicans preach that their upper class constituents require less and less financial regulation and taxes, but they do not believe that these same individuals have any other responsibility than making money for themselves and their stockholders.  The very rich have forced the federal government into debt and then complain that he government is spending too much.  The truth must be told that while government spending does not benefit the upper two percent of Americans, it is their reckless and avaricious business practices which are the proximate cause.
     If supply side, trickle down, economics really works, then why does a middle class salary have less buying power today than it did thirty years ago?  Why is America forced to have a greater number of two wage earner households than any European country?  Why has the typical CEO's salary gone from 40 times the average worker's to 400?  Why, over the last 40 years, has the compensation for American workers risen only 10 percent while the companies they work for have realized an 80 percent rise in productivity?  Why have big business lobbyists, whose sole job is to entice elected officials into supporting corporate interests, grown from 175 in 1971 to a record 15,137 in 2007, nearly 2,000 of whom are former government officials?  Why do Americans own only 40 percent of the nation's housing stock, when we owned 70 percent in 1985?  Why do only 18 percent of workers receive employer paid health insurance when 80 percent received this benefit in 1980?  Why do only 35 percent of workers receive life-time monthly pensions when 84 percent received them in 1980?  Why do the richest one percent of Americans take home 23 percent of the income?  Why does this same select group earn more money than the economies of Canada or France?  Why, during the Bush II years, did corporate profits rise to their highest level since 1943 while money going toward employee wages fell to its lowest level since 1929?  Why have the wages of a worker in Germany risen 30 percent since the 1980s while the wages of American workers have risen only 5 percent?  Why, in the last ten years, have U.S. companies hired 2.4 million overseas workers while eliminating the jobs of 2.9 million American workers?  Why can so few make so much money?  And why can't such incredible corporate profit trickle down the way we were promised it would? The reason lies in the fact that this economic theory was designed and implemented for no other reason than to increase the profits of CEOs, stockholders, and financial institutions.  Henry Ford did not have to attend an Ivy League School to understand that the best economic policy to garner profits for owners and investors is to keep workers healthy and happy, for as consumers, they will purchase and increase the demand for the excellent products they help to create.  Unfortunately the worker is no longer even an after-thought in what has come to be an "increase profits at any cost" mentality.  This is not only immoral, it is not only bad economics, it jeopardizes the freedom that all Americans are guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution-- if the majority of Americans lacks the freedom to earn a decent wage because a select few are taking that right away, then the Constitution is not worth the paper it is written on and America, at least in economic terms, is no longer a free country.
     Mr. President, those of us who voted for you did so because we believed that you would right our ship, that you would begin the turn-around that will take back the economic power for the majority which, since the mid 1970s, was actively stripped away by the prevailed few.  You won this election in spite of the high price paid to PACs to defeat you.  And you will certainly continue to face the tyranny of the plutocrats in the form of their high-priced lobbyists who will promise elected officials anything to solidify the status quo.  Let the inordinately wealthy understand that America is not an aristocracy but that it remains a democratic society where the majority rules.  Keep your eye on the prize, steeled against the criticism and insult delivered from the right.  We have your back because you have promised to have ours.


Sincerely,


David Kuyat, Ph. D.