It's Easy?

It's Easy? by Michael KAY

It's easy enough to blame the Tasmanian massacre on lack of gun control. Too easy. And too superficial. It is indeed, rather like blaming greed on food, or avarice on money. There is a link between being greedy and eating food but it doesn't follow that everyone who eats is greedy. It doesn't follow that everyone who uses money is a miser. By the same token, plenty of people who possess guns are perfectly peaceable. Many societies, such as France and Switzerland have considered that it is a citizens right - indeed, in the case of France, a proletarian right, ushered in by the French Revolution - to possess a gun without producing centuries of lone gun massacres.

Blaming the availability of the gun in itself is evading the moral issues involved and avoiding the other elements in the story. These include the individuals particular background and instability and the way in which society encourages people to deal with frustrations, disappointment and grievance. Sadly I predict there will be more single-man massacres such as Dunblane and Port Arthur however much gun law is tightened up because our global culture today enhances the climate for such wicked and demented acts.



IT'S EASY TO BLAME

The availability of guns for violent crime, Australia's homicide statistics tell a different story. Tasmania may have the slackest gun laws in the nation, but until last week it also had the lowest murder rate-at 0.85 per 100,000, lower even than that of Japan, a country with some of the world's tightest gun laws. Guns account for only 25%of homicides, says the Australian Institute of Criminology. Fists, knives and blunt instruments are the most frequently used weapons. Says Adam Graycar, the institute's director: "Most criminal activities don't involve guns. About one-third of armed robberies have a gun involved two-thirds don't. Attempted murder-about a quarter do, but three-quarters don't. Abduction-about 4% do, but 96% don't. Guns aren't the major thing in criminal activity". And when guns are used to kill, the most frequently used weapon is a simple single-shot .22-caliber rifle used in 40% of fatal shootings; exotic military style ordnance comes into play only 7% of the time.

TIME Australia May 13 1996.



Virtually everyone now is encouraged to have a grievance and taught they have the "right" to express that grievance at every turn. Traditional virtues such as patience, stoicism, endurance and fortitude are sneered at, and the spontaneous ability to demand, complain, get your own way and grab attention are admired.

What happens after all, if you do commit some horrible crime which shocks the world? First off, you get to be famous on TV. Your picture is flashed around the world. You are the centre of attention if captured alive and immortal if captured dead.

If you do survive, a cluster of psychiatrists, psychologists and smarty-pants lawyers will surround you, probing, analysing, and finally even explaining your crime.

Should you be in a country where the death penalty is administered for capital murder, a caterwauling of sentimental abolitionists will soon be set up to champion you. If you are clapped up in Gaol for life, you will attract a fan club of women with deformed minds who will write to you and ask you to marry them all incarcerated murders, from Peter Sutcliffe to Jeffrey Dahmer, have a slavering fan club of regular female correspondents.

Television and modern information technology will, in short make a mass murder a celebrity.

These deep-seated incentives to commit some outrage are far more compelling, it seems to me, than the legal possession of a gun.

The gun itself is an inanimate object; it requires an act of human will to pull the trigger. And that act in itself is triggered by factors, be they internal madness, or external stimuli, prompting the inherent rage.

Our external stimuli today endorse constant excitement, personal gratification and the validation of self by celebrity.

Men who years ago could take pride and satisfaction in humble accomplishments are now regaled by a parade of stimuli urging them to make their mark on the world. And some such crazed individuals will respond to that by competing for the Port Arthur killing record. After all if semi-automatic rifles are the weapon of choice for crazed out of control killers, WHY can't I, as an honest citizen, have one for defence against them or for any other reason? These random mass killers do NOT strike out against the armed members of society. They are not stupid enough to attack a Police station full of armed officers or shoot at soliders during live firing excerises.


More on "Gun Control"?

More on Firearms Training

© Copyright Michael KAY 1997.

More on "Media Watch" Mass Murder?

The Politically Incorrect Media of 1833!


LIBERTY

Liberty has never come from Government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of it.The history of Liberty is a history of resistance. The history of Liberty is a history of limitations of Governmental power, NOT the increase of it.

Woodrow Wilson.


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