FOR THE BROTHAS: CULTURE AND INTELLECTUALISM: EDITORIAL: THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN WEAPONS AND VIOLENCE...

MOURNERS AT RECENT MASS SHOOTING IN CONNECTICUT

No matter what side of the argument you are on there is one fact that those who oppose and defend gun control laws must surely agree upon; every weapon in existence has the potential to wield violence…

UNDER THE NAZI REGIME OVER 11 MILLION INNOCENT PEOPLE WERE MURDERED

In Connecticut the death toll rose again when an unexpected assassin murdered his parents then took his anger to a local school murdering innocent children and adults. This incident touched me personally because I was a teacher and come from a family of educators. When I was a teacher I narrowly escaped being shot by a student who had stolen a gun from home or elsewhere and bought it to school perhaps with the intent of shooting me or one of my colleagues... Fortunately, one of the kids came to me and told me of the incident and I was able to notify the school police in time for the child to be apprehended before any violence occurred. Unfortunately these innocent people were not able to be forewarned and they, like me were totally unprepared for the possibility of such an encounter. It is sad but we must be prepared to be able to meet violence with some form of resistance... But what choices do we have? In our search for peacefulness we do not wish to become the very thing we fear... Our august president, Mr. Obama, was deeply moved by the incident as any man of conscience would be. In such times our troubled country looks to our president for guidance and hope... In such times our president is the voice of reason... He and his congress are the focal point of our biggest question: "How Do We Prevent This Tragedy From Happening Again?" Given time and thought I do not doubt that Obama will have a viable solution but will Americans take time to listen or will they allow themselves to be distracted by the many other cares and trifles of the day?

President Obama mourns the deaths of innocent students and teachers at a Connecticut School

It is a beautiful but I daresay naïvely, civilized fantasy to assume that people will be capable of the utmost discretion and maturity while they are in possession of firearms. Those who lived through the first 50 years of the Cold War know very well the potential of weapons, and who says that the Cold War has officially ended; rather it appears to have morphed into a dangerous game of hide and seek. Though an entirely separate story, the arms game is more than a fantasy played out during a couple hours of a 007 Flick, it is a haunting threat to the existence of civilisation as we know it!

THE COLD WAR CONTINUES IT'S THREAT OF MASS DESTRUCTION...

In many respects advocates of gun control have gone way too far in their zeal to rid the earth of violence… for it is not only due to guns, (their primary focus), that Americas homicidal rampage has raged to unprecedented heights. Furthermore, it is unfair to say that every person who owns firearms is a potential homicidal maniac.

GUN CONTROL COULD LEAVE INNOCENTS AT THE MERCY OF UNSCRUPULOUS CRIMINALS?

It is also unrealistic to assume every gun owner intends only to use it for recreational hunting; the last time I was in the Brooklyn I didn’t see any game animals, large or small walking up and down Atlantic Avenue! Notwithstanding, the licensing process for firearms is a covenant our local governments make with individuals binding them to lawful and humane and responsible use of their weapons, we must honor and respect an individual’s rights under the law. It seems that the problem is not with gun control in terms of limiting an individual’s right to possess firearms rather it is the responsible use, and management of firearms that deserves the most attention. Gun control advocates should not try to take guns from Americans nor deny them the right of possession. What gun control advocates should focus on is education and development of policy that would implement more responsible husbandry, for instance:

1. Require firearms to be stored in locked tamper-proof safes and firearms of semi-automatic and automatic status to be dismantled with key elements stored in separate safes with separate codes.

2. To have GPS technology embedded in semi-automatic and automatic weapons.

3. To exempt historic firearms from being locked in safes but limiting access to ordnance.

4. Registering ammunition and sales so that shells, casings, etc. can be more easily tracked to the original purchaser.

5. Regulating sales of arms and ordnance for tracking.

6. As part of arms regulation, developing a detailed psychological dossier on every registered owner of firearms including their family, roommates, etc., as a mandatory exercise on an annual basis and each time they re-locate. All weapons and ordnance should be registered to a permanent address. Each time an owner of firearms moves they would be required to re-register both firearms and ordnance.

7. A virtual database of firearms retailers and owners should be publicly accessible to taxpayers.

8. Schools, employers and other institutions must do a better job of documenting the potential for mass violence. People should not be profiled but if there is any reasonable cause to suspect a person might be prone to commit a crime using firearms, some law official should investigate. This is a common practise with child abuse, it does not mar a parent’s record but it does set up a precedent for historical analysis.

INNOCENT CHILDREN WERE VICTIMS OF CRIMINAL EXPERIMENTS DURING UNDER THE NAZIS... UNPRECEDENTED CONTROL OF INNOCENTS WAS ACHIEVED THROUGH THEIR FEAR OF GUNS...

We live in a time with an unprecedented ability to gather and store data but if such data is simply left sitting in a database it is ultimately of no use. An interactive database that has the ability to link chain incidents such as with a school could have the ability to predict problems early on. We need to look more into developing such interactive programs in order to be more proactive about gun related crimes. If you have seen the film, “Minority Report” you know that the whole idea of “Pre-Crime” borders on sheer fantasy but it does hold promise for those criminals that exhibit distinct patterns of violence.

MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. WAS KILLED BY AN ASSASSINS BULLET

Whether such technology can predict seemingly random crimes such as the one that occurred in Connecticut recently is uncertain. Random crimes are anomalies that truly require more intensive means of examination in order to anticipate and prevent. But we run the risk of profiling innocent people which is equally unacceptable as our need to gain early insight in the potential for violence of any kind.

VICTIMS OF THE ST. VALENTINES DAY MASSACRE

Whether you believe in gun control as a means of preventing violence or not one must agree i there are other factors having nothing to do with gun control that lead to acts of mass violence using firearms. In most cases the problem appears to be one of mental health. Whether a criminal who is mentally ill chooses to express their violence using a baseball bat, chemical weapons, firearms, bombs, knives or a bow and arrow is purely a factor of their choice.

MISSILES FROM THE EARLY COLD WAR ERA...

We live in a time when crimes involving weapons with the potential of mass destruction are very real. It could be intuited that people who create computer viruses are potential mass murderers because they seek to hurt people in groups rather than focusing on a one time singular target.

SANDINISTA GUNMEN

Our paranoia might lead to the kind of profiling that violates the civil rights of individuals who intend no harm whatever, so we must be careful moving forward. Banning guns is clearly not the solution to crime it is a poorly thought out reaction that would appear to be meaningful only to someone who has not really devoted much thought to the problem at all.

PRESIDENT ABRAHAM LINCOLN WAS KILLED BY THE ASSASSIN JOHN WILKES BOOTH

When a homicide has occurred film crews interview victims and by standers who deliver commentary based on emotion. We cannot take the emotion out of a homicide and we should not attempt to remove it… What we should do is gather ourselves when we have had a chance to process the horror of the crime so that we can develop successful strategies to help identify problems in their formative stages and to make it difficult for criminals bent on violence to elude detection while they carry out a premeditated crime.

There is definitely a direct relationship between weapons and violence. Human history has documented the reality that weapons are used to render humans docile through fear at the threat of moral injury. Weapons used in this manner have the ability to paralyze even the strongest of men without one shot being fired. This is the technique common to tyrants, criminals and psychopaths.

INNOCENT MEN MURDERED BECAUSE OF THIER RACE...

History shows us examples of how fear has been manipulated to murder and oppress billions of human beings. Guns and the treat of mortal violence was used to achieve the ends of the American Slave Trade from the 17th Century through the 19th Century; Hitler used guns to murder over 11 million Jews and other innocents during the 20th Century; Uganda has employed a series of genocidal enterprises including innocent homosexuals from the 20th Century to the present... the Klu klux Klan has used guns to murder and oppress Black American men and women for two centuries... Wnenever anger, fear and ignorance find tehmselves in the same place there is little doubt that some form of violence will ensue...

RELIGION IS OFTEN INVOKED TO JUSTIFY VIOLENCE AGAINST HUMAN RIGHTS...

The stream of gun inspired violence has broadened and has bought the country to its knees in grief... But it is not the guns who have loaded aimed and fired themselves at whatever fear they chose to kill away, it was a man! Men are the key, the bridge between guns and violence, the solution lay within us...